'cause i'm not a princess
Okay, so. Please don't judge me for this? It's been kind of a stressful few months and this has been brewing in my head ever since i did a full listen of Speak Now and the genre-swap picspams that came up on my dash a few weeks ago (of Taylor Swift music videos as horror films about a young teenage girl stalker), so this mess has emerged:
title: bombshell
author: hyacinthian
rating: pg-13 (warnings for non-explicit violence? i mean, anticipate horror film esque motifing here with taylor swift lyrics)
author's note: i'm not counting this as rpf, since the persona of t.swift in her music videos is what i'm using here. and this is utter, utter crackfic so there was no real beta of any kind. this is really not to be taken seriously... at all?
summary: gossip girl/taylor swift music videos crossover. taylor swift meets serena van der woodsen at a coming out party, and it all goes downhill from there. featuring serena's relationship advice, taylor swift song lyrics, and serial murder.
It’s when they’re standing over the body, shovels in hand, that Taylor thinks that maybe this wasn’t the fairy tale that she had imagined it would be.
(Serena looks at her, lip gloss smudged across the corner of her mouth, and shrugs. “I guess we just start digging?”)
-
The first time Taylor (of the not-really-rich, not-really-Southern, transplanted Swifts) meets the Serena van der Woodsen, it’s at a coming out party. Not hers, obviously. Not Serena’s either. It’s for some girl - a friend of a friend - that she barely knows that has never said a word to her at all in all their two years of awkwardly attending the same classes together.
And that’s fine. At least she managed to get a dress out of it.
It would be kind of enchanted if she had the chance to actually meet someone nice. But everyone’s lightly sipping at their champagne and talking about other people in hushed tones - he’s so sweet, but I heard he ran the family’s accounts dry in Ibiza last year, and such an idiot, bless his heart - and she’s just holding her cup of punch and sitting in the corner. One thing’s for sure - there’s no Prince Charming within miles of this place.
The closest is maybe Sarah’s second cousin, Jeffrey, who groped her while they were making introductions, and that shouldn’t count in any universe.
And halfway into the brunch, enter Serena. Pretty drunk with perfect hair and a split lip from what Taylor’s assuming must have been a fight. Everyone’sso scandalized, and Serena just gives a small laugh and heads over to the waiter, plucking up another flute of champagne.
“Serena,” Mrs. Can’t-Remember-Her-Name tuts, “of the New York Van der Woodsens. I hear she’s quite the wild child.”
The other woman laughs. “Coke, is it?”
“It always is.”
Serena drains her flute and just meanders around the party, saying hello to the people she knows and searching for someone in particular. Who knows? But this is the most Hollywood thing Taylor’s ever seen in this part of Tennessee - Serena is Hollywood in the way that she walks, in the way that her hair is just that perfect level of messed up, even in her drunkenness.
(Their introduction doesn’t go quite as expected:
No expert chaperones to say that Taylor’s interested in music and just moved to Nashville, …and you, Serena? Just Serena sliding an arm over her shoulders, her skin so warm, and saying hi.
Taylor stammers, “Hi. I’m Taylor.”
Serena tosses her head, looking back over her shoulder at the rest of the party. “Hi, Taylor. I’ve had about enough of this, haven’t you?”
She isn’t even done with her hors d’oeuvre when Serena just pushes her out the door.)
-
“Okay,” Serena says, panting and leaning on the shovel handle. “This guy is really heavy. You couldn’t have been into the artsy emaciated types?”
Taylor laughs, but it comes out more as a nervous giggle. This didn’t happen. This couldn’t have happened. “Have you done this before?”
Serena moves towards her then, wrapping her arms around Taylor’s back. “You look stressed. Don’t look stressed.” Which would be good advice except for the fact that they may have just killed a man - they probably have just killed a man - and she’s pretty sure that she’d argue either insanity or self-defense except she can’t really think about how each one of those would go and she’s pretty sure she’d fall apart on the witness stand and they are literally burying a body right now, and she’s not sure how to deal with this.
“I’m, uh - ”
“It’ll be okay, T. It - um - just take it one day at a time. You didn’t mean to hurt him. It just… kind of happened?”
Taylor bites her lip, and nods. “Yeah.”
(They finish burying the body and Taylor thinks about saying a few words about his memory or something and Serena just shakes her head - that’s weird, you’re so weird but in a sweet kind of way - and then Serena says they definitely need a drink even if Taylor doesn’t have a fake ID and has never had a drink before.
Serena: “Then you definitely need a drink.”
It’s a cheap bar and Serena orders them shots of whiskey and keep ‘em coming and the guy doesn’t ask to see ID, and it just tastes awful.)
-
It starts out like this:
Serena flies down and just keeps talking about herself and the drama that she has to get away from in New York and Taylor thinks there’s a Tom and a Charlie in there somewhere (she’s not really following) and then Serena turns towards her, hand on her wrist - “Oh, my God, I’ve totally been talking about myself this whole time, haven’t I?”
“You’re just… having a hard time right now. That’s all. But I think - ”
“No, no, no, no - tell me about you,” she says, with that smile that makes Taylor think that maybe she does care.
So out it comes. The whole spiel. Drew and his perfect girlfriend and how she’s only been in love with him for forever and how they’re still really close friends and of course Taylor can’t say anything now because it would just make her look like a bad friend but she was the one who was there for him first and she was the one who loved him first and it just isn’t fair that she has to keep up this mask, you know?
And Serena’s nodding, and Taylor can’t really stop talking because it isn’t fair that she spent all this time being his friend and comforting him and listening to him and his problems and she knows that they’re close and she knows that if he would only just open his eyes to the possibility, he’d see that she’s always been right there. You know?
Serena nods.
“I even wrote him a song!”
“You wrote him a song?”
And, so, of course, that comes out too, and she’s just this weird girl, sitting in the park, singing to her much prettier friend - drew talks to me, i laugh ‘cause it’s so damn funny, and i can’t even see anyone when he’s with me, he says he’s so in love, he’s finally got it right, i wonder if he knows he’s all i think about at night -
And Serena looks up and says, “That’s really pretty, T. And I think you should tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“How you feel!” Maybe Serena doesn’t understand her at all. She can’t tell him how she feels - that’s why she wrote the song! “I think if you don’t tell him, you’re just going to be hurting yourself in the end.”
“It already hurts, so how much worse could it really get?”
Serena shrugs and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
-
It gets worse, but then it starts getting better.
She meets someone new.
And he’s perfect. He’s in her math class and he’s sweet and writes poetry and he’s on the football team but second-string so he isn’t really a jock the way the other guys are. He’s sensitive. And he smiles at her, and it feels like Drew is just a distant memory; everything about falling in love for the first time just sort of blurs her vision and makes her feel a little dizzy.
Over the phone, Serena is ecstatic, and talking about how she wishes her love life could be that smooth and instead it’s filled with slimy Upper East Siders who keep trying to get into her (metaphorical) pants and who are just rich and gross and if she hears about their Ivy League aspirations any more, she’s going to just lose it.
Taylor says, “I wrote him a song.”
“You wrote another song?”
Serena’s laugh is lower-pitched than she would have thought, but there’s nothing mean about it. “That’s what I do, S! I’m a songwriter.”
“Oh, are you?” Serena says, still giggling. “I thought you were just going to be a country star.”
“Well, hopefully, that too.”
“Come on, let’s hear it.”
-
The second time it happens, she swears she really just wanted to talk to him.
And they were in the kitchen of his house and she was leaning against the counter and trying to tell him her feelings and he just kept blowing her off, just kept saying that he didn’t want to listen to it, that he knew how she felt and that he didn’t want to be in a relationship with her, that they were friends, maybe, but that’s all that they were, and -
hey stephen i could give you fifty reasons why i should be the one you choose
all those other girls
well, they’re beautiful
but would they write a song for you -
And he doesn’t laugh but it’s a joke, Stephen, come on, it’s funny! She’s still just Taylor, the girl in his math class and she can’t quite figure out how to do the fractions with the algebra equations on them and sometimes he helps her out and she isn’t different, really, she isn’t, but he keeps looking at her like she’s just going to have some movie monster claw its way out of her chest or something and eat him alive.
“I really think you should go home, Taylor,” he says.
And that’s when she grabs the knife.
See? Accident.
-
Serena flies down immediately and they bury the body in the rain.
“This is good,” Serena says, panting, “No evidence.”
Taylor nods.
“These shovels feel less heavy than the last time.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
-
Serena makes Taylor practice alibis in front of the mirror (“Like it or not, T, you’re a terrible liar, and we have to fix that given your increasing body count.”) for two hours after they’ve washed up all the tools and washed their hands and gone home.
“You ever think about making a break for it?”
Taylor squints at her reflection in the mirror. Stupid glasses don’t even frame her face properly. That’s the last time she sends her mom to LensCrafters by herself. “For where?”
“I don’t know. California. Or something. Not Tennessee.”
“And not New York either?”
Serena sits on the edge of the mattress with a loud sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe not forever. I love it, and it’s home, but it’s home to too much drama and too much … messiness. You know?”
“Yeah,” Taylor says. “I know.”
“So! Alibis. What are you going with?”
“I was at home studying?”
“Tay, you need someone who can verify where you’ve been. Witnesses.”
“Well, there’s you.”
Serena shrugs. “Yeah, okay. But if you get caught, you’re the one that’s going to be doing time.”
“What about you?”
“My mom has got the greatest lawyer. He and I have a good relationship.”
-
The last one before they make a run for it, it actually happens in Arkansas.
They’ve lost a football game and they’re out eating afterwards and she’s sweaty from the marching band uniform and one of the idiots in the drumline stepped on her mid-crab-step so now she’s got to repolish her shoes.
And boy number three is two tables down from her, talking to Christy, the mellophone player. As if anyone even liked mellophone anyway. But he turns and smiles at her.
She stays later to talk with him and then her ride leaves and she needs to get back to the high school and can someone please give her a ride? And he offers, of course, because he’s secretly Prince Charming and it’s his white steed, or whatever, and yeah, they’re only going back to the high school but this could be the first step towards a happily ever after.
(What happens: the spell breaks, everything returns to normal.
She tries to talk about school and he’s smoking a cigarette out the window and being kind of a jackass - but a jackass who’s driving her back to the school, so not all bad - and she’s just trying to talk to fill up the silence with noise and he just goes can’t you just shut up for a second, his hand fiddling with the radio and she loves him okay and she just doesn’t understand what his problem is, and if he’d only just be patient, if he’d only just have the patience to sit down with her and listen to her explain, then he would understand.
She reaches for the steering wheel.)
-
It’s a small shed that she finds and she ties him up and she’s pacing because this isn’t how it was supposed to work but she just needs to make sure they’re on the same page here because she’s been in love with him for a really long time and maybe now he should know that before he enters into some kind of weird slutty sexual relationship with Christy - because, honestly, the mellophone players have been caught in the band room doing stuff before so never underestimate them, or something - and when he wakes up, he just screams.
And she isn’t expecting that because why would he scream? She’s his friend. She’s his friend!
“It’s me,” she says.
“Taylor, what are you doing?”
“I didn’t want us to get off on the wrong foot,” she says. “I mean, I just want to make sure that you understand where I’m coming from.”
“With what?”
And she tells him: “I love you. I love you, and you are nothing but mean to me.” He blinks at her. “So just - just tell me that you love me too.”
He shakes his head.
“Why not? Why can’t you?” she says, and she’s starting to cry and she hates that because people like him should not make anyone cry and here she is, crying over a stupid boy. Again.
“I don’t love you, Taylor. I mean - ”
“Fine.”
She storms out of the shed and leaves him there. (Serena will come pick her up.)
-
“That’s so awful, T, I’m sorry!” Serena gushes once she’s in the car. “You should find a way to get back at him.”
And Serena just keeps talking plans and it’s moments like these when Taylor thinks that it’s so lucky for her to have Serena around; Serena, who comes from a world where people throw Nair on top of other people’s heads!, who knows how to play this game and can teach her how to win it. Serena brushes the top of her head with her free hand and smiles.
“I love you,” she says.
“Aw, T, I love you too.”
-
The music’s becoming a motif.
Serena has him gagged and bound in the kitchen and they’re talking about what to do to scare him. The knives or something more scary. (What’s scarier than knives?) And Taylor doesn’t want him to be hurt or anything, she just wants him to be maybe a little terrified. Maybe enough to wet his pants, even.
And he’s crying now and he keeps bouncing his knees and around the gag, he just keeps telling her that he’s sorry and that they can go on dates and he really didn’t know what he had when she first told him that she loved him and he was just scared, but it’s okay now because he isn’t scared anymore -
Serena leans her elbows against the counter, smirking. “I think Queen T might end up singing at you a little bit.”
And Taylor actually did bring her guitar so it’s all set for this woeful ballad that she wrote not too long ago (borderline power anthem, but really woeful ballad) and she just strums a few strings and this is so crazy - Serena’s swaying her hips a little bit to the music -
all this time i was wasting hoping you would come around
been giving out chances every time and all you do is let me down
(“You let her down!”)
and it’s taken me this long, baby, but i’ve figured you out
you’re thinking we’ll be fine again, but not this time around
“Please!” he shouts, and Taylor just reaches for the closest thing and she wraps it around his neck and she just wants to see him actually be scared for once in his life. She wants him to know the kind of person that she is, to look her in the eyes and know just who he’s hurt.
-
“You can’t keep doing this, T. They’re going to start calling you a serial killer.”
“I’m going to take him out back,” Taylor says.
-
The first time Taylor meets Serena, Serena presses her lips against a cocktail napkin and writes her phone number on the corner.
“Call me if you ever want to talk or something.”
-
And when they zip out to California, her parents are worried, Serena’s parents are worried, but Serena knows someone everywhere so they’re all right. Taylor makes her first record and it does really great, and everything’s finally coming into place.
(Serena hugs her after they hear the news; “See, I told you you’d make it.”)
-
-
EW: So the title of your sophomore album is Speak Now -
TS: Speak Now, yeah.
EW: Can you tell us how that came about for you?
TS: Um, well, I mean, I think it was about coming to a point in my life where I was learning that sometimes you have to say the things that you don’t want to, and get them off your chest before they start festering inside and becoming some sort of monster that you don’t really know how to deal with, you know?
EW: Like about being honest with yourself?
TS: About taking action. You have to speak now, or forever hold your peace, you know? [Laughs.]
title: bombshell
author: hyacinthian
rating: pg-13 (warnings for non-explicit violence? i mean, anticipate horror film esque motifing here with taylor swift lyrics)
author's note: i'm not counting this as rpf, since the persona of t.swift in her music videos is what i'm using here. and this is utter, utter crackfic so there was no real beta of any kind. this is really not to be taken seriously... at all?
summary: gossip girl/taylor swift music videos crossover. taylor swift meets serena van der woodsen at a coming out party, and it all goes downhill from there. featuring serena's relationship advice, taylor swift song lyrics, and serial murder.
It’s when they’re standing over the body, shovels in hand, that Taylor thinks that maybe this wasn’t the fairy tale that she had imagined it would be.
(Serena looks at her, lip gloss smudged across the corner of her mouth, and shrugs. “I guess we just start digging?”)
-
The first time Taylor (of the not-really-rich, not-really-Southern, transplanted Swifts) meets the Serena van der Woodsen, it’s at a coming out party. Not hers, obviously. Not Serena’s either. It’s for some girl - a friend of a friend - that she barely knows that has never said a word to her at all in all their two years of awkwardly attending the same classes together.
And that’s fine. At least she managed to get a dress out of it.
It would be kind of enchanted if she had the chance to actually meet someone nice. But everyone’s lightly sipping at their champagne and talking about other people in hushed tones - he’s so sweet, but I heard he ran the family’s accounts dry in Ibiza last year, and such an idiot, bless his heart - and she’s just holding her cup of punch and sitting in the corner. One thing’s for sure - there’s no Prince Charming within miles of this place.
The closest is maybe Sarah’s second cousin, Jeffrey, who groped her while they were making introductions, and that shouldn’t count in any universe.
And halfway into the brunch, enter Serena. Pretty drunk with perfect hair and a split lip from what Taylor’s assuming must have been a fight. Everyone’sso scandalized, and Serena just gives a small laugh and heads over to the waiter, plucking up another flute of champagne.
“Serena,” Mrs. Can’t-Remember-Her-Name tuts, “of the New York Van der Woodsens. I hear she’s quite the wild child.”
The other woman laughs. “Coke, is it?”
“It always is.”
Serena drains her flute and just meanders around the party, saying hello to the people she knows and searching for someone in particular. Who knows? But this is the most Hollywood thing Taylor’s ever seen in this part of Tennessee - Serena is Hollywood in the way that she walks, in the way that her hair is just that perfect level of messed up, even in her drunkenness.
(Their introduction doesn’t go quite as expected:
No expert chaperones to say that Taylor’s interested in music and just moved to Nashville, …and you, Serena? Just Serena sliding an arm over her shoulders, her skin so warm, and saying hi.
Taylor stammers, “Hi. I’m Taylor.”
Serena tosses her head, looking back over her shoulder at the rest of the party. “Hi, Taylor. I’ve had about enough of this, haven’t you?”
She isn’t even done with her hors d’oeuvre when Serena just pushes her out the door.)
-
“Okay,” Serena says, panting and leaning on the shovel handle. “This guy is really heavy. You couldn’t have been into the artsy emaciated types?”
Taylor laughs, but it comes out more as a nervous giggle. This didn’t happen. This couldn’t have happened. “Have you done this before?”
Serena moves towards her then, wrapping her arms around Taylor’s back. “You look stressed. Don’t look stressed.” Which would be good advice except for the fact that they may have just killed a man - they probably have just killed a man - and she’s pretty sure that she’d argue either insanity or self-defense except she can’t really think about how each one of those would go and she’s pretty sure she’d fall apart on the witness stand and they are literally burying a body right now, and she’s not sure how to deal with this.
“I’m, uh - ”
“It’ll be okay, T. It - um - just take it one day at a time. You didn’t mean to hurt him. It just… kind of happened?”
Taylor bites her lip, and nods. “Yeah.”
(They finish burying the body and Taylor thinks about saying a few words about his memory or something and Serena just shakes her head - that’s weird, you’re so weird but in a sweet kind of way - and then Serena says they definitely need a drink even if Taylor doesn’t have a fake ID and has never had a drink before.
Serena: “Then you definitely need a drink.”
It’s a cheap bar and Serena orders them shots of whiskey and keep ‘em coming and the guy doesn’t ask to see ID, and it just tastes awful.)
-
It starts out like this:
Serena flies down and just keeps talking about herself and the drama that she has to get away from in New York and Taylor thinks there’s a Tom and a Charlie in there somewhere (she’s not really following) and then Serena turns towards her, hand on her wrist - “Oh, my God, I’ve totally been talking about myself this whole time, haven’t I?”
“You’re just… having a hard time right now. That’s all. But I think - ”
“No, no, no, no - tell me about you,” she says, with that smile that makes Taylor think that maybe she does care.
So out it comes. The whole spiel. Drew and his perfect girlfriend and how she’s only been in love with him for forever and how they’re still really close friends and of course Taylor can’t say anything now because it would just make her look like a bad friend but she was the one who was there for him first and she was the one who loved him first and it just isn’t fair that she has to keep up this mask, you know?
And Serena’s nodding, and Taylor can’t really stop talking because it isn’t fair that she spent all this time being his friend and comforting him and listening to him and his problems and she knows that they’re close and she knows that if he would only just open his eyes to the possibility, he’d see that she’s always been right there. You know?
Serena nods.
“I even wrote him a song!”
“You wrote him a song?”
And, so, of course, that comes out too, and she’s just this weird girl, sitting in the park, singing to her much prettier friend - drew talks to me, i laugh ‘cause it’s so damn funny, and i can’t even see anyone when he’s with me, he says he’s so in love, he’s finally got it right, i wonder if he knows he’s all i think about at night -
And Serena looks up and says, “That’s really pretty, T. And I think you should tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“How you feel!” Maybe Serena doesn’t understand her at all. She can’t tell him how she feels - that’s why she wrote the song! “I think if you don’t tell him, you’re just going to be hurting yourself in the end.”
“It already hurts, so how much worse could it really get?”
Serena shrugs and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
-
It gets worse, but then it starts getting better.
She meets someone new.
And he’s perfect. He’s in her math class and he’s sweet and writes poetry and he’s on the football team but second-string so he isn’t really a jock the way the other guys are. He’s sensitive. And he smiles at her, and it feels like Drew is just a distant memory; everything about falling in love for the first time just sort of blurs her vision and makes her feel a little dizzy.
Over the phone, Serena is ecstatic, and talking about how she wishes her love life could be that smooth and instead it’s filled with slimy Upper East Siders who keep trying to get into her (metaphorical) pants and who are just rich and gross and if she hears about their Ivy League aspirations any more, she’s going to just lose it.
Taylor says, “I wrote him a song.”
“You wrote another song?”
Serena’s laugh is lower-pitched than she would have thought, but there’s nothing mean about it. “That’s what I do, S! I’m a songwriter.”
“Oh, are you?” Serena says, still giggling. “I thought you were just going to be a country star.”
“Well, hopefully, that too.”
“Come on, let’s hear it.”
-
The second time it happens, she swears she really just wanted to talk to him.
And they were in the kitchen of his house and she was leaning against the counter and trying to tell him her feelings and he just kept blowing her off, just kept saying that he didn’t want to listen to it, that he knew how she felt and that he didn’t want to be in a relationship with her, that they were friends, maybe, but that’s all that they were, and -
hey stephen i could give you fifty reasons why i should be the one you choose
all those other girls
well, they’re beautiful
but would they write a song for you -
And he doesn’t laugh but it’s a joke, Stephen, come on, it’s funny! She’s still just Taylor, the girl in his math class and she can’t quite figure out how to do the fractions with the algebra equations on them and sometimes he helps her out and she isn’t different, really, she isn’t, but he keeps looking at her like she’s just going to have some movie monster claw its way out of her chest or something and eat him alive.
“I really think you should go home, Taylor,” he says.
And that’s when she grabs the knife.
See? Accident.
-
Serena flies down immediately and they bury the body in the rain.
“This is good,” Serena says, panting, “No evidence.”
Taylor nods.
“These shovels feel less heavy than the last time.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
-
Serena makes Taylor practice alibis in front of the mirror (“Like it or not, T, you’re a terrible liar, and we have to fix that given your increasing body count.”) for two hours after they’ve washed up all the tools and washed their hands and gone home.
“You ever think about making a break for it?”
Taylor squints at her reflection in the mirror. Stupid glasses don’t even frame her face properly. That’s the last time she sends her mom to LensCrafters by herself. “For where?”
“I don’t know. California. Or something. Not Tennessee.”
“And not New York either?”
Serena sits on the edge of the mattress with a loud sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe not forever. I love it, and it’s home, but it’s home to too much drama and too much … messiness. You know?”
“Yeah,” Taylor says. “I know.”
“So! Alibis. What are you going with?”
“I was at home studying?”
“Tay, you need someone who can verify where you’ve been. Witnesses.”
“Well, there’s you.”
Serena shrugs. “Yeah, okay. But if you get caught, you’re the one that’s going to be doing time.”
“What about you?”
“My mom has got the greatest lawyer. He and I have a good relationship.”
-
The last one before they make a run for it, it actually happens in Arkansas.
They’ve lost a football game and they’re out eating afterwards and she’s sweaty from the marching band uniform and one of the idiots in the drumline stepped on her mid-crab-step so now she’s got to repolish her shoes.
And boy number three is two tables down from her, talking to Christy, the mellophone player. As if anyone even liked mellophone anyway. But he turns and smiles at her.
She stays later to talk with him and then her ride leaves and she needs to get back to the high school and can someone please give her a ride? And he offers, of course, because he’s secretly Prince Charming and it’s his white steed, or whatever, and yeah, they’re only going back to the high school but this could be the first step towards a happily ever after.
(What happens: the spell breaks, everything returns to normal.
She tries to talk about school and he’s smoking a cigarette out the window and being kind of a jackass - but a jackass who’s driving her back to the school, so not all bad - and she’s just trying to talk to fill up the silence with noise and he just goes can’t you just shut up for a second, his hand fiddling with the radio and she loves him okay and she just doesn’t understand what his problem is, and if he’d only just be patient, if he’d only just have the patience to sit down with her and listen to her explain, then he would understand.
She reaches for the steering wheel.)
-
It’s a small shed that she finds and she ties him up and she’s pacing because this isn’t how it was supposed to work but she just needs to make sure they’re on the same page here because she’s been in love with him for a really long time and maybe now he should know that before he enters into some kind of weird slutty sexual relationship with Christy - because, honestly, the mellophone players have been caught in the band room doing stuff before so never underestimate them, or something - and when he wakes up, he just screams.
And she isn’t expecting that because why would he scream? She’s his friend. She’s his friend!
“It’s me,” she says.
“Taylor, what are you doing?”
“I didn’t want us to get off on the wrong foot,” she says. “I mean, I just want to make sure that you understand where I’m coming from.”
“With what?”
And she tells him: “I love you. I love you, and you are nothing but mean to me.” He blinks at her. “So just - just tell me that you love me too.”
He shakes his head.
“Why not? Why can’t you?” she says, and she’s starting to cry and she hates that because people like him should not make anyone cry and here she is, crying over a stupid boy. Again.
“I don’t love you, Taylor. I mean - ”
“Fine.”
She storms out of the shed and leaves him there. (Serena will come pick her up.)
-
“That’s so awful, T, I’m sorry!” Serena gushes once she’s in the car. “You should find a way to get back at him.”
And Serena just keeps talking plans and it’s moments like these when Taylor thinks that it’s so lucky for her to have Serena around; Serena, who comes from a world where people throw Nair on top of other people’s heads!, who knows how to play this game and can teach her how to win it. Serena brushes the top of her head with her free hand and smiles.
“I love you,” she says.
“Aw, T, I love you too.”
-
The music’s becoming a motif.
Serena has him gagged and bound in the kitchen and they’re talking about what to do to scare him. The knives or something more scary. (What’s scarier than knives?) And Taylor doesn’t want him to be hurt or anything, she just wants him to be maybe a little terrified. Maybe enough to wet his pants, even.
And he’s crying now and he keeps bouncing his knees and around the gag, he just keeps telling her that he’s sorry and that they can go on dates and he really didn’t know what he had when she first told him that she loved him and he was just scared, but it’s okay now because he isn’t scared anymore -
Serena leans her elbows against the counter, smirking. “I think Queen T might end up singing at you a little bit.”
And Taylor actually did bring her guitar so it’s all set for this woeful ballad that she wrote not too long ago (borderline power anthem, but really woeful ballad) and she just strums a few strings and this is so crazy - Serena’s swaying her hips a little bit to the music -
all this time i was wasting hoping you would come around
been giving out chances every time and all you do is let me down
(“You let her down!”)
and it’s taken me this long, baby, but i’ve figured you out
you’re thinking we’ll be fine again, but not this time around
“Please!” he shouts, and Taylor just reaches for the closest thing and she wraps it around his neck and she just wants to see him actually be scared for once in his life. She wants him to know the kind of person that she is, to look her in the eyes and know just who he’s hurt.
-
“You can’t keep doing this, T. They’re going to start calling you a serial killer.”
“I’m going to take him out back,” Taylor says.
-
The first time Taylor meets Serena, Serena presses her lips against a cocktail napkin and writes her phone number on the corner.
“Call me if you ever want to talk or something.”
-
And when they zip out to California, her parents are worried, Serena’s parents are worried, but Serena knows someone everywhere so they’re all right. Taylor makes her first record and it does really great, and everything’s finally coming into place.
(Serena hugs her after they hear the news; “See, I told you you’d make it.”)
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EW: So the title of your sophomore album is Speak Now -
TS: Speak Now, yeah.
EW: Can you tell us how that came about for you?
TS: Um, well, I mean, I think it was about coming to a point in my life where I was learning that sometimes you have to say the things that you don’t want to, and get them off your chest before they start festering inside and becoming some sort of monster that you don’t really know how to deal with, you know?
EW: Like about being honest with yourself?
TS: About taking action. You have to speak now, or forever hold your peace, you know? [Laughs.]