192. burnt lungs, sour taste
Title | burnt lungs, sour taste
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Carter + Serena.
Summary | she's in the class a-team / stuck in her daydream / been this way since eighteen
Notes | Written for this ficathon.
He blames himself for Serena, sometimes.
There isn’t much logic to that. He hit the scene after she hit puberty, after all, and things like daddy issues and penchants for mischief go back to childhood. But still - sometimes he remembers Blair Waldorf glowering at him on the doorstep in a nightgown with a neckline so high you would’ve thought she belonged to a convent, watching the way Serena was hanging around his neck, he remembers leave her the hell alone -
And maybe he should have. You know?
Carter sees a lot of himself in that silly little teenager with the girly laugh and legs that should be illegal at her age. He sees someone whose future plans correspond with his own: this is what I will not be, never mind what I will.
Serena scorns sleep and likes to go swimming in the rain. She never stays away from him, no matter who tells her to. She’s already bored of weed at fourteen; it’s nothing to move on from there, just pills in the centre of his palm or a neat line of powder by the sink in her grandma’s bathroom, just c’mon, beautiful, I dare ya.
Serena on a high is a pretty, pretty sight ninety-nine percent of the time. She spins circles, she takes off her clothes, she looks at the pattern of the wallpaper like it’s going to tell her something very deep. She laughs at sad movies. She kisses him with those pretty pink lips.
He doesn’t get the crap side of it for a long time. For years that’s Blair’s territory, petting hair and soothing tears and holding the bucket for Serena to puke in. Carter has no clue about the cold showers and the stringy hair and Blair’s lies to Lily.
Carter doesn’t get any of that until Blair closes a door in Serena’s face. Serena will tell him the story weeks later: Blair said stop, Serena said no.
Serena’s exhausted in that mid-twenties way, having learned not to look like hell even if it’s what she’s feeling. Under her makeup, her cheeks are white. I love her, though, she says, like that has ever been enough.
Part of Carter wants to tell her not to pick drugs over a girl who’s loved her since the sandbox, not to pick away when here is an option, but he hasn’t exactly been setting any good examples.
She was fourteen when she lost her virginity. Carter knows because he was there, because he avoided it until after her birthday, as if suddenly on July fourteenth she wouldn’t be such a kid.
Serena was so confident with him, like this was old news, like she’d done it before. She’d seemed more than older enough.
After she’d seemed younger, though, all big blue eyes and sun-freckles on her nose. She chewed on her bottom lip and looked like she was uncertain of him, somehow. She hadn’t seemed quite ready to grow up then, and she hasn’t since.
They’re years and miles away from that summer in the Hamptons when Serena starts to unsettle him. He doesn’t like the look of her medicine cabinet; he doesn’t like the hazy look of her eyes.
When Carter asks her if she’ll marry him, she laughs, like he’s told the funniest joke.
He buys some stupid ring that’s supposed to reduce stress in the hospital gift shop and flashes it around in front of the nurses at the desk until someone lets him in to see her.
He holds her hair very carefully, in between both of her own. The tips of her fingers are faintly purple. He looks at her and says, What did you do?
She gives him a little smile, pink-lipped. She says she fell asleep, all lightly, like her voice isn’t all raw and scratchy from having her stomach pumped.
Blair is in the lobby in a wedding dress, her hair in disarray, her veil abandoned at some point, that idiot kid from Brooklyn completely failing at calming her down. She won’t come inside.
So Carter just says, It was an accident. He says, You made a mistake.
Serena just looks like herself, aside from whatever’s all broken and damp in her eyes. Everything I do’s an accident, she tells him.
They’re in bed on the evening of her thirtieth birthday; Carter’s pretending to read the paper, Serena’s got her knees pulled to her chest, staring at nothing. She looks over at him and tells him that she’s okay.
He feels caught, like she knows that he’s been raiding every drawer, counting every pill.
Then she says, You can go.
She looks so young to him right then, her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her chin on her knee.
I don’t want to, he finally says, and that’s the third time in his life that Serena ever cries in front of him.
In Santorini, she curled up in the bathtub in their hotel room and wouldn’t let him touch her. He’d never seen Serena do much more than laugh and gasp; the sobbing was a shock to him.
Carter fixed that with a pill under her tongue and a kiss on her temple, and years later, he’ll wish he hadn’t.
He busies himself around their apartment like a housewife, waiting for Serena to come back from the doctor. When the key turns in the lock he’s expecting news of a baby, expecting to present his plan about how they can make this work.
But Serena’s got a funny look on her face, and when she sees him standing there, sees dinner waiting on the table, she says, I can’t.
Carter doesn’t understand for a moment because he’s completely prepared to tell her how she can, but then it clicks.
Oh, baby, he says softly; it just spills out, the wrong thing.
Serena slams the door behind her when she leaves.
They used to trade parental horror stories. Serena would tell him the stories of the thousand ways her mother broke her heart, laughing her head off, as if none of it had hurt.
When they’re in their thirties and Serena says, I want - , Carter fills that sentence in a million ways. To adopt. A dog. A new house.
A cigarette, is how it ends, but yes is already on the tip of his tongue.
Serena sleeps under piles of blankets, her face tucked against the pillow, like she’s trying to hide from something. She always touches one of his feet with one of hers.
Carter slips his hand into her tangled hair, watching her breathe. He blames himself for all of it, sometimes, even if it’s illogical.
He thinks sometimes that he should have left it to someone else, to that kid from Brooklyn, to Nate, to anyone else in the world. Someone else should’ve loved her. Someone else would’ve done it better.
Maybe he shouldn’t have. You know?
fin.
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Carter + Serena.
Summary | she's in the class a-team / stuck in her daydream / been this way since eighteen
Notes | Written for this ficathon.
He blames himself for Serena, sometimes.
There isn’t much logic to that. He hit the scene after she hit puberty, after all, and things like daddy issues and penchants for mischief go back to childhood. But still - sometimes he remembers Blair Waldorf glowering at him on the doorstep in a nightgown with a neckline so high you would’ve thought she belonged to a convent, watching the way Serena was hanging around his neck, he remembers leave her the hell alone -
And maybe he should have. You know?
Carter sees a lot of himself in that silly little teenager with the girly laugh and legs that should be illegal at her age. He sees someone whose future plans correspond with his own: this is what I will not be, never mind what I will.
Serena scorns sleep and likes to go swimming in the rain. She never stays away from him, no matter who tells her to. She’s already bored of weed at fourteen; it’s nothing to move on from there, just pills in the centre of his palm or a neat line of powder by the sink in her grandma’s bathroom, just c’mon, beautiful, I dare ya.
Serena on a high is a pretty, pretty sight ninety-nine percent of the time. She spins circles, she takes off her clothes, she looks at the pattern of the wallpaper like it’s going to tell her something very deep. She laughs at sad movies. She kisses him with those pretty pink lips.
He doesn’t get the crap side of it for a long time. For years that’s Blair’s territory, petting hair and soothing tears and holding the bucket for Serena to puke in. Carter has no clue about the cold showers and the stringy hair and Blair’s lies to Lily.
Carter doesn’t get any of that until Blair closes a door in Serena’s face. Serena will tell him the story weeks later: Blair said stop, Serena said no.
Serena’s exhausted in that mid-twenties way, having learned not to look like hell even if it’s what she’s feeling. Under her makeup, her cheeks are white. I love her, though, she says, like that has ever been enough.
Part of Carter wants to tell her not to pick drugs over a girl who’s loved her since the sandbox, not to pick away when here is an option, but he hasn’t exactly been setting any good examples.
She was fourteen when she lost her virginity. Carter knows because he was there, because he avoided it until after her birthday, as if suddenly on July fourteenth she wouldn’t be such a kid.
Serena was so confident with him, like this was old news, like she’d done it before. She’d seemed more than older enough.
After she’d seemed younger, though, all big blue eyes and sun-freckles on her nose. She chewed on her bottom lip and looked like she was uncertain of him, somehow. She hadn’t seemed quite ready to grow up then, and she hasn’t since.
They’re years and miles away from that summer in the Hamptons when Serena starts to unsettle him. He doesn’t like the look of her medicine cabinet; he doesn’t like the hazy look of her eyes.
When Carter asks her if she’ll marry him, she laughs, like he’s told the funniest joke.
He buys some stupid ring that’s supposed to reduce stress in the hospital gift shop and flashes it around in front of the nurses at the desk until someone lets him in to see her.
He holds her hair very carefully, in between both of her own. The tips of her fingers are faintly purple. He looks at her and says, What did you do?
She gives him a little smile, pink-lipped. She says she fell asleep, all lightly, like her voice isn’t all raw and scratchy from having her stomach pumped.
Blair is in the lobby in a wedding dress, her hair in disarray, her veil abandoned at some point, that idiot kid from Brooklyn completely failing at calming her down. She won’t come inside.
So Carter just says, It was an accident. He says, You made a mistake.
Serena just looks like herself, aside from whatever’s all broken and damp in her eyes. Everything I do’s an accident, she tells him.
They’re in bed on the evening of her thirtieth birthday; Carter’s pretending to read the paper, Serena’s got her knees pulled to her chest, staring at nothing. She looks over at him and tells him that she’s okay.
He feels caught, like she knows that he’s been raiding every drawer, counting every pill.
Then she says, You can go.
She looks so young to him right then, her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her chin on her knee.
I don’t want to, he finally says, and that’s the third time in his life that Serena ever cries in front of him.
In Santorini, she curled up in the bathtub in their hotel room and wouldn’t let him touch her. He’d never seen Serena do much more than laugh and gasp; the sobbing was a shock to him.
Carter fixed that with a pill under her tongue and a kiss on her temple, and years later, he’ll wish he hadn’t.
He busies himself around their apartment like a housewife, waiting for Serena to come back from the doctor. When the key turns in the lock he’s expecting news of a baby, expecting to present his plan about how they can make this work.
But Serena’s got a funny look on her face, and when she sees him standing there, sees dinner waiting on the table, she says, I can’t.
Carter doesn’t understand for a moment because he’s completely prepared to tell her how she can, but then it clicks.
Oh, baby, he says softly; it just spills out, the wrong thing.
Serena slams the door behind her when she leaves.
They used to trade parental horror stories. Serena would tell him the stories of the thousand ways her mother broke her heart, laughing her head off, as if none of it had hurt.
When they’re in their thirties and Serena says, I want - , Carter fills that sentence in a million ways. To adopt. A dog. A new house.
A cigarette, is how it ends, but yes is already on the tip of his tongue.
Serena sleeps under piles of blankets, her face tucked against the pillow, like she’s trying to hide from something. She always touches one of his feet with one of hers.
Carter slips his hand into her tangled hair, watching her breathe. He blames himself for all of it, sometimes, even if it’s illogical.
He thinks sometimes that he should have left it to someone else, to that kid from Brooklyn, to Nate, to anyone else in the world. Someone else should’ve loved her. Someone else would’ve done it better.
Maybe he shouldn’t have. You know?
fin.