Fic: Intoxicated [Gossip Girl, Rated T. Blair/Serena]
Title: Intoxicated
Author: sionnain
Fandom: Gossip Girl
Pairing: Blair/Serena
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Contains spoilers for the most recent two episodes, though most takes place pre-Season 1. There is some brief girl!kissing. :)
Summary: Five times Serena Van Der Woodsen showed up drunk at Blair Waldorf's door.
AN: Thanks to E. and resolute for the beta! The quote is from the Thea Gilmore song Saviours and All.
Intoxicated
As you drain the glass and raise your hand for more/I'll take cover while you just take the floor.
i.
It's late, but not late enough, Blair thinks, for Serena to be able to get away with this. Who's so trashed at eleven-thirty that they can't even stand up?
Serena, apparently. Her hair is wild, wind-blown, tangled strands clinging to the soft contours of her beautiful face. Damn her, Blair thinks, with the viscousness only women are capable of, and only directed towards those they love and hate with equal, passionate fervor, damn her for looking so beautiful when I'd look like Lindsay Lohan after a cocaine bender. Serena's eyes are liquor-drowned, softened and dull and swimming with the peace you only find at the bottom of martini glass.
Or, from the look of it, seven of them.
"Hey, B," Serena slurs, and her words all tumble together after that, something about drinking and Grey Goose and some guy named Aric-with-an-A, words soaked in vodka and her continual quest to alleviate the loneliness that clings to her like a perfume, like some accessory from Bergdorf's. Blair's been drunk, sure. She's even had drinks on a school night--who hasn't? But Serena fumbles past acceptable behaviors and right into full-out debauchery like it's some sort of ingrained talent.
Maybe she'll get an award this year at honor's convocation. Student most likely to be hit by a cab while smashed on a school night.
"Serena, we have a chemistry test," Blair says, and by that, she means why can't you stop doing this, why can't you think about yourself, your future? Her words are all hard syllables and she doesn't mean it to sound like it does; like she's angry, like she's annoyed. And she is. But it's not because Serena showed up at her house drunk on a school night. It's because Blair was at home, studying for their test, and tomorrow Serena will breeze in and smile and not care that she doesn't get an A, will be happy with her grade as long as its passing.
Blair doesn't know how to stop caring. Not about chemistry, not about grades, and certainly not about Serena. She puts her arm around Serena's shoulders and inhales Serena's hair, something sweet beneath the cloying cigarette smoke, some weird cross between expensive and trashy that only Serena could manage without being on a tabloid. She leads Serena to her room, arm around Serena's waist, and doesn't say a word.
ii.
Blair doesn't like Georgina Sparks, not the moment she meets the girl at Kati's party in the sixth grade, and not any time afterwards, at all the parties and the sleepovers where they happen upon each other. Georgina reminds her of something that lives in the drain in a pool, slimy and waiting with teeth that will bite and devour the second you get too close to the bottom. Blair parties with the rest of them because it is expected, because she's not stupid enough to think resisting peer pressure to drink will make her anything but an outcast. But she's not dumb, she doesn't drink Absolut out of the bottle like Georgina, doesn't take drugs with misspelled names given to her by some guy named Thom she meets in an alley, for the love of God. What is she, an after-school special?
Georgina drinks like it's a contest, like it's an activity all its own, dances too fast in clothes too tight, gives it all away in seconds to whoever gets there first. That way lies nothing but ruin and a juicy tidbit on Gossip Girl, thank you very much, and Blair wants nothing to do with her. She's not surprised, though, when Serena befriends her. Serena is like a moth drawn to things that glitter and shine with bright intensity, no matter how they burn her in the end. And, oh, Georgina is going to burn Serena in the end, Blair just knows it, but there's no point in saying anything because Serena won't listen anyway. Georgina smirks at Blair when she and Serena leave the restaurant one night, when Blair intends to head home for beauty sleep and Georgina and Serena to some unknown club that spends its days as a meat packing plant, and Blair resists the urge to rake her nails down Georgina's sullen, smirking face.
Just you wait, Eyeliner. Serena will come back. And not to you. You're just a passing fancy, a fad. Like pashminas. Over and done in the span of a season, kiddo. On a discount rack at Lord and Taylor, or, hah, the Gap.
And she's right, isn't she? Serena stumbles home, eyes too large for her face and her laugh too loud and edged with something painful and broken. Blair doesn't know what she's on--she doubts Serena does, either. She just puts her arm around her friend's shoulders and listens to Serena's wild and scattered speech, and hope her friend doesn't wake her mom. Her mom thinks Serena needs therapy or an intervention. Blair doesn't disagree, exactly, it's just that you can't make Serena do things like that. You have to wait for her to fall and then hope she doesn't break anything.
Serena falls asleep in Blair's bed, face turned sideways, a small smile on her face. Blair wonders what she's dreaming about, if Serena will remember in the morning.
iii.
"You know what it is, Blair," Serena says, leaning across the table, and Blair resists the urge to point out that Serena is about to get cereal milk in her hair. "S'that I make bad decisions, when I'm drinking."
It sounds like I make bad 'shishons, which might make Blair laugh, if Serena wasn't actually speaking the truth. Serena does make bad decisions when drinking. Blair thinks there is something about her best friend's free-spirited nature that makes it impossible, when intoxicated, for Serena to say no. Blair doesn't really know what to say--she loves Serena so she doesn't say the obvious Blair-retort, which would be, yes, bad decisions like that dress and handbag combo, or something like she might say to Isabel. Which would be wrong, anyway; even sloppy drunk and missing Fruit Loop-stained milk by a hairsbreadth--literally--Serena is still beautiful.
"Maybe you should stop drinking so much," Blair says instead, shaking her head at Serena's appearance across from her. Serena's elbows are are on the table and she has her chin in her hand, looking like a lost puppy, like something that needs to be petted and coddled and put in a crate at night so it doesn't chew up the furniture. Which is what Blair will do, in a minute; put the bowl in the sink and take Serena to her bedroom, make her friend wash her face, put her to bed in her bra and panties.
"Blair," says Serena, eyes heavy-lidded, her voice husky. "You drink, too."
"Please witness who is trashed at my table at two in the morning, and who was asleep after completing her history paper," Blair says, a tad testily, because she doesn't understand how Serena thinks the partying and the drugs and god knows what else she's doing is the same as having a few cosmos with friends on a Friday night. Blair orders drinks to match her outfit. Serena seems to order drinks to ensure she'll be out of hers in some hotel room as soon as possible.
"Did you go to sleep all by yourself?" Serena asks, batting her eyelashes, and Blair feels the first twinges of actual anger.
"What the hell does that mean, S?" Blair snaps, testy, because Serena knows she's a virgin, and Blair can feel something hot and ugly building up inside her. No, I'm not a slut, not like--
"No, silly," Serena says, giggling, clapping her hand to her mouth for a moment. "Like, not even any Valium? I know you loooove Valium," she sing-songs, and Blair shushes her, but that anger, that hot irrational anger, it seems to be a settling back somewhere dark and quiet. Blair does like Valium because it means she can stop thinking. She wonders if that's why Serena drinks so much, but she doesn't ask. That's not what best friends are for. Therapists and parents ask those questions. Best friends just let you in and give you Fruit Loops and orange juice and a place to crash, complete with an alibi for nosy mothers.
When Blair takes Serena to her bedroom, the same one where they've had sleepovers since they were old enough to talk, Serena leans heavily against Blair, puts her arms around Blair's neck. She tilts her head, smiles, and Blair feels Serena's hands warm on her back. "Hey, Blair," she says. There's something different now in her voice, something low and seductive and warm like honey.
Blair meets Serena's eyes for a long moment. Her body is strangely tense, a little too hot. She'll have to turn on the fan. Blair takes Serena's arms in her hands, unwinds them from around her neck. "I don't want to be another of your bad decisions, S," Blair says, and she can hear her voice isn't too steady, isn't too sure. "You should go to bed. Maybe have a shower?"
Serena flounces off towards the shower, adorable even when she can't walk straight, and pauses in the doorway. "You sure you don't want to join me?" she asks, pulling her shirt off. Serena's not wearing a bra beneath her top. She leans against the doorjam and smiles, bare-breasted and beautiful, and it works because it's seductive without trying.
"I'm sure, S," Blair says, and rolls her eyes, but she has to turn away when Serena's fingers go to the buttons on her low-slung jeans. The only thing she's sure of is that she's not doing this when Serena's drunk. If Serena hadn't been so wasted--
Blair doesn't really want to think about that. She's good at dealing with what is, not at what she might want to be.
iv.
Blair doesn't know it, of course, there's no way she would--but this is the last time Serena Van Der Woodsen is going to show up drunk at her house for a good long time. In three weeks Serena will be off to boarding school, and Blair won't be awoken by a girl in too much glitter and a top that is so small it's practically non-existent. Serena spills into the hallway, and this time, she's not doused in that alcohol-joy that she imbibes along with whatever she's been drinking.
"What is it?" Blair asks, because she can tell, she knows there's something wrong. Serena looks up, eyes like stormclouds filled with rain.
"It's my brother," Serena sobs, and she falls forward, into Blair's arms. Blair holds her close while Serena cries, and Blair can feel Serena's tears on her neck.
"What's the matter with him?" Blair asks, and she's worried, she is, but she can't help but think it can't be that bad. After all, Serena's been out drinking, hasn't she?
"He--I don't know. I think there's something wrong with him," Serena says, and her voice sounds like it's been torn from the inside into a thousand pieces, and when she pulls back Serena's lovely face is twisted in exquisite and sublime sorrow. Blair wonders what that must be like, to have your emotions show like that on your face. It's not that Blair doesn't feel them. She does. Sure.
It's just that she's not Serena. Feelings don't play on her features like a matinee on Sunday.
Blair searches Serena's eyes and waits, waits for Serena to tell her, the thing that is transforming a joyous girl into this wreck of a thing in her arms. "Serena, what exactly is wrong with him?" And if you're so worried, why aren't you at home? Blair is finding it harder to not say the things she wants to say, the words that rise up like a torrent and threaten to drown her if she's not careful. It's happening more lately, more and more, and Blair wonders if one day she's just going to let go and then Serena will know all the ugly things, all the terrible things Blair sometimes thinks about Serena and never says.
But if Blair has anything, it's self-control. Which is, apparently, something her best friend could use an intimate evening with in lieu of strange men and designer drugs.
"Him and mom. They keep fighting. It's so awful, B." Serena sits on the couch, her tall, lanky body draped in an unaffectedly elegant sprawl on the cushions. "I don't know what's going on. When I try to talk to Eric, he just slams the door in my face and tells me I can't--that I don't--that I'm too self-involved to care."
Blair arches one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at that, and Serena sees it and her face crumples again. "I am, aren't I? I know I am, so I tried, I did, and he just got mad and he and mom were yelling and--"
"Serena," Blair interrupts, sitting next to Serena and taking the girl's hands in her own--Serena's skin is warm, like bathwater or the Mediterranean--"You do go out a lot. Maybe he's right. Or, you know, maybe he's just being a boy. I'm sure it's fine." Maybe your whole family is just a little emotional and none of you know how to act. Blair believes that, certainly. She wonders what she would do if her family behaved like Serena's. There are never slamming doors at the Waldorf residence, never, and no one cries unless it is in private and involves a teddy bear someone had gotten from their best friend on their ninth birthday.
Serena searches Blair's gaze, and Blair can see Serena's desperation for reassurance written plainly all over her face. "Do you really think so? I mean, it just...it's been really bad, lately, and that's why I left tonight."
No, it isn't, Blair thinks uncharitably, and before she can stop herself, she says snidely, "That, or was it because of a voicemail from Georgina?"
Serena looks wounded, like Blair's just slapped her, and she shakes her head and hides beneath the winter-wheat fall of her hair. "No," she mumbles, "I'm the one that called Georgina this time."
"Why?" Blair asks, the taste of her anger acrid and thick like smoke. "Why her? Why didn't you just come over here first? Or am I, what, second best now?" Blair is breathing hard, a little too fast, and she wants to stop this, wants to find her self-control. Wants to pretend like she's not hurt by Serena's new partygirl bff who has replaced her.
"B," Serena whispers, looking up, and they're sitting close together, and Serena's warm hands are on Blair's face, fingers like warm silk. "It's not...you know it's not like that. You're my best friend." Serena's words are so sweet, so heartfelt, and Blair wants to believe them. She does. It's just hard, thinking about doing her homework while Serena was out getting wasted with Georgina, and how she'll be tired now in English because Serena's crying on her couch. Georgina gets the partying and nothing after that, and while Blair knows that means she's important, it doesn't hurt any less to know she's not the fun one.
"Serena--"
Serena leans forward and kisses her, her mouth soft, and she tastes like cherries and something tart, like lime. Blair goes still and doesn't move, and Serena is kissing her and now Blair is kissing her back, tentative and shy but this isn't right, it's all wrong because Serena is drunk and it's not about anything but Serena trying to prove that Blair matters.
"Next time," Blair says, pulling away, and she pretends there's nothing in her voice but censure. "Next time, come here before you're trashed, maybe, hmm?" She stands up (not shaking, no, her legs are fine, perfectly fine) and throws the chenille blanket on Serena. "Sleep it off, S." Blair turns her back. She doesn't trust Serena in bed with her, not tonight. She won't think about why, and what might happen next time.
Except, of course, there isn't a next time, not for a while. In a matter of weeks, Serena is gone, and Blair has all the uninterrupted sleep she wants. She won't admit that she misses it, sometimes, that she thinks about the taste of cherries and lime, and Serena's lips, and what might have happened if she'd not stood up.
Would Serena have stayed? Blair doesn't know, doesn't think so, but sometimes she wonders.
v.
Of course, Serena's gone.
Blair stands in her living room, confused, wondering what the hell you're supposed to do after your best friend says I killed someone, cries on you for ten minutes, and then vanishes when you go and get the Valium. She walks through the penthouse and picks things up, puts them down again. Blair's mind is racing. She thinks about taking some of the Valium herself, but ultimately decides against it. She needs to be focused. She needs to be sharp.
Serena comes back a few hours later, predictably, as trashed as Blair's ever seen her. "If you tell me you were out with Georgina," Blair says, hands on her hips, because since Serena came back Blair is trying very hard to say things, letting those dark words spill over because it's better than forcing the dam to crack, "I will kick your perfectly toned and supermodel-quality ass from here to Queens, S."
Serena shakes her head, and she starts crying. "You never liked her," she says, slurring all the syllables it is possible to slur, falling forward towards Blair. Blair catches her--of course--and leads her over to the couch, the one where Serena kissed her, the one Blair can't look at without remembering the taste of cherries and anger. "Shoulda listened, huh? Blair, my Blair." Serena's fingers are light like butterflies on Blair's cheek.
"Yes, you should have listened," Blair says bossily, forcing Serena to sit. "And from now on, you are going to listen to me when I tell you someone is a Eurotrash rehab baby waiting to happen, hmm?"
Serena nods, but Blair doubts she's going to remember that in the morning.
Fine. She'll just keep saying it. People learn by repetition, don't they?
Blair sits patiently, feeding Serena water while her friend cries and says things that don't make sense about the wedding (Blair doesn't want to think about that, weddings make her think about Serena and Nate and betrayal and, ugh, Chuck and his fondness for sleepy-eyed stares and dark limos) and Georgina and she's sorry, so sorry, and can Blair ever forgive her?
"You need to sleep," Blair says, brushing Serena's hair off her forehead. "You need to sleep, and then in the morning, we'll figure this out. And you're going to stop getting trashed because I am seriously limiting the amount of times you get to show up drunk at my door. Boundaries. I'm getting some." Blair smiles a little at Serena, softening the harshness of her words. It's finally occurred to her that Serena needs this, needs Blair. Tough love. Something like that.
I could be a therapist, Blair thinks, holding Serena while her friend sobs herself nearly sick in her arms. "We'll call Nate and Chuck in the morning."
"Dan," Serena sobs, fingers curling into Blair's shoulders, a soft pressure.
Blair rolls her eyes where Serena can't see. "What about him? S, this isn't about Dan." Although Blair wouldn't mind, not really, if it was--it would be better to have Serena crying over breaking up with stupid Dan than killing someone with Georgina, or whatever Serena's terrible story is about.
"I don't--don't call him," Serena begs, raising her head. "I don't want him here. He...he thinks only the best of me."
"And I don't, is that what you're saying?" Blair smooths Serena's hair back, again, because strands keep getting caught in the tears on her cheeks. How does she look so beautiful, even now?
"You see me," Serena says quietly. "All of me. The good parts and the bad. You always have." Serena reaches out and touches Blair's mouth, lightly, with her fingers, tracing the shape of them. Blair shivers and makes a note to close the window. Clearly, it's too cold in here. "Blair, do you remember that time I--"
Blair shakes her head and moves away. She puts her fingers against Serena's mouth, quieting her. "Yeah. Come on, S. Time for bed. In the morning--" Blair stops, eyes widening, because Serena is sucking her fingers, softly, licking like a kitten at milk. Her eyes are on Blair's. Blair can't breathe, it's like the air has been sucked out with a vacuum, like there's nothing here but Serena and the soft touch of her tongue on Blair's fingers. "No. Not like this. You're drunk. Come on." Blair stands up, just like she did the last time. A rejection, because Blair Waldorf is no one's drunk indiscretion. Not even Serena's.
This time she takes Serena to her bedroom. Blair knows she's strong enough to say no.
As she helps Serena into bed, as she promises they'll make everything all right in the morning, Blair wonders if she'll ever be strong enough to say yes.
--Finis
Author: sionnain
Fandom: Gossip Girl
Pairing: Blair/Serena
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Contains spoilers for the most recent two episodes, though most takes place pre-Season 1. There is some brief girl!kissing. :)
Summary: Five times Serena Van Der Woodsen showed up drunk at Blair Waldorf's door.
AN: Thanks to E. and resolute for the beta! The quote is from the Thea Gilmore song Saviours and All.
Intoxicated
As you drain the glass and raise your hand for more/I'll take cover while you just take the floor.
i.
It's late, but not late enough, Blair thinks, for Serena to be able to get away with this. Who's so trashed at eleven-thirty that they can't even stand up?
Serena, apparently. Her hair is wild, wind-blown, tangled strands clinging to the soft contours of her beautiful face. Damn her, Blair thinks, with the viscousness only women are capable of, and only directed towards those they love and hate with equal, passionate fervor, damn her for looking so beautiful when I'd look like Lindsay Lohan after a cocaine bender. Serena's eyes are liquor-drowned, softened and dull and swimming with the peace you only find at the bottom of martini glass.
Or, from the look of it, seven of them.
"Hey, B," Serena slurs, and her words all tumble together after that, something about drinking and Grey Goose and some guy named Aric-with-an-A, words soaked in vodka and her continual quest to alleviate the loneliness that clings to her like a perfume, like some accessory from Bergdorf's. Blair's been drunk, sure. She's even had drinks on a school night--who hasn't? But Serena fumbles past acceptable behaviors and right into full-out debauchery like it's some sort of ingrained talent.
Maybe she'll get an award this year at honor's convocation. Student most likely to be hit by a cab while smashed on a school night.
"Serena, we have a chemistry test," Blair says, and by that, she means why can't you stop doing this, why can't you think about yourself, your future? Her words are all hard syllables and she doesn't mean it to sound like it does; like she's angry, like she's annoyed. And she is. But it's not because Serena showed up at her house drunk on a school night. It's because Blair was at home, studying for their test, and tomorrow Serena will breeze in and smile and not care that she doesn't get an A, will be happy with her grade as long as its passing.
Blair doesn't know how to stop caring. Not about chemistry, not about grades, and certainly not about Serena. She puts her arm around Serena's shoulders and inhales Serena's hair, something sweet beneath the cloying cigarette smoke, some weird cross between expensive and trashy that only Serena could manage without being on a tabloid. She leads Serena to her room, arm around Serena's waist, and doesn't say a word.
ii.
Blair doesn't like Georgina Sparks, not the moment she meets the girl at Kati's party in the sixth grade, and not any time afterwards, at all the parties and the sleepovers where they happen upon each other. Georgina reminds her of something that lives in the drain in a pool, slimy and waiting with teeth that will bite and devour the second you get too close to the bottom. Blair parties with the rest of them because it is expected, because she's not stupid enough to think resisting peer pressure to drink will make her anything but an outcast. But she's not dumb, she doesn't drink Absolut out of the bottle like Georgina, doesn't take drugs with misspelled names given to her by some guy named Thom she meets in an alley, for the love of God. What is she, an after-school special?
Georgina drinks like it's a contest, like it's an activity all its own, dances too fast in clothes too tight, gives it all away in seconds to whoever gets there first. That way lies nothing but ruin and a juicy tidbit on Gossip Girl, thank you very much, and Blair wants nothing to do with her. She's not surprised, though, when Serena befriends her. Serena is like a moth drawn to things that glitter and shine with bright intensity, no matter how they burn her in the end. And, oh, Georgina is going to burn Serena in the end, Blair just knows it, but there's no point in saying anything because Serena won't listen anyway. Georgina smirks at Blair when she and Serena leave the restaurant one night, when Blair intends to head home for beauty sleep and Georgina and Serena to some unknown club that spends its days as a meat packing plant, and Blair resists the urge to rake her nails down Georgina's sullen, smirking face.
Just you wait, Eyeliner. Serena will come back. And not to you. You're just a passing fancy, a fad. Like pashminas. Over and done in the span of a season, kiddo. On a discount rack at Lord and Taylor, or, hah, the Gap.
And she's right, isn't she? Serena stumbles home, eyes too large for her face and her laugh too loud and edged with something painful and broken. Blair doesn't know what she's on--she doubts Serena does, either. She just puts her arm around her friend's shoulders and listens to Serena's wild and scattered speech, and hope her friend doesn't wake her mom. Her mom thinks Serena needs therapy or an intervention. Blair doesn't disagree, exactly, it's just that you can't make Serena do things like that. You have to wait for her to fall and then hope she doesn't break anything.
Serena falls asleep in Blair's bed, face turned sideways, a small smile on her face. Blair wonders what she's dreaming about, if Serena will remember in the morning.
iii.
"You know what it is, Blair," Serena says, leaning across the table, and Blair resists the urge to point out that Serena is about to get cereal milk in her hair. "S'that I make bad decisions, when I'm drinking."
It sounds like I make bad 'shishons, which might make Blair laugh, if Serena wasn't actually speaking the truth. Serena does make bad decisions when drinking. Blair thinks there is something about her best friend's free-spirited nature that makes it impossible, when intoxicated, for Serena to say no. Blair doesn't really know what to say--she loves Serena so she doesn't say the obvious Blair-retort, which would be, yes, bad decisions like that dress and handbag combo, or something like she might say to Isabel. Which would be wrong, anyway; even sloppy drunk and missing Fruit Loop-stained milk by a hairsbreadth--literally--Serena is still beautiful.
"Maybe you should stop drinking so much," Blair says instead, shaking her head at Serena's appearance across from her. Serena's elbows are are on the table and she has her chin in her hand, looking like a lost puppy, like something that needs to be petted and coddled and put in a crate at night so it doesn't chew up the furniture. Which is what Blair will do, in a minute; put the bowl in the sink and take Serena to her bedroom, make her friend wash her face, put her to bed in her bra and panties.
"Blair," says Serena, eyes heavy-lidded, her voice husky. "You drink, too."
"Please witness who is trashed at my table at two in the morning, and who was asleep after completing her history paper," Blair says, a tad testily, because she doesn't understand how Serena thinks the partying and the drugs and god knows what else she's doing is the same as having a few cosmos with friends on a Friday night. Blair orders drinks to match her outfit. Serena seems to order drinks to ensure she'll be out of hers in some hotel room as soon as possible.
"Did you go to sleep all by yourself?" Serena asks, batting her eyelashes, and Blair feels the first twinges of actual anger.
"What the hell does that mean, S?" Blair snaps, testy, because Serena knows she's a virgin, and Blair can feel something hot and ugly building up inside her. No, I'm not a slut, not like--
"No, silly," Serena says, giggling, clapping her hand to her mouth for a moment. "Like, not even any Valium? I know you loooove Valium," she sing-songs, and Blair shushes her, but that anger, that hot irrational anger, it seems to be a settling back somewhere dark and quiet. Blair does like Valium because it means she can stop thinking. She wonders if that's why Serena drinks so much, but she doesn't ask. That's not what best friends are for. Therapists and parents ask those questions. Best friends just let you in and give you Fruit Loops and orange juice and a place to crash, complete with an alibi for nosy mothers.
When Blair takes Serena to her bedroom, the same one where they've had sleepovers since they were old enough to talk, Serena leans heavily against Blair, puts her arms around Blair's neck. She tilts her head, smiles, and Blair feels Serena's hands warm on her back. "Hey, Blair," she says. There's something different now in her voice, something low and seductive and warm like honey.
Blair meets Serena's eyes for a long moment. Her body is strangely tense, a little too hot. She'll have to turn on the fan. Blair takes Serena's arms in her hands, unwinds them from around her neck. "I don't want to be another of your bad decisions, S," Blair says, and she can hear her voice isn't too steady, isn't too sure. "You should go to bed. Maybe have a shower?"
Serena flounces off towards the shower, adorable even when she can't walk straight, and pauses in the doorway. "You sure you don't want to join me?" she asks, pulling her shirt off. Serena's not wearing a bra beneath her top. She leans against the doorjam and smiles, bare-breasted and beautiful, and it works because it's seductive without trying.
"I'm sure, S," Blair says, and rolls her eyes, but she has to turn away when Serena's fingers go to the buttons on her low-slung jeans. The only thing she's sure of is that she's not doing this when Serena's drunk. If Serena hadn't been so wasted--
Blair doesn't really want to think about that. She's good at dealing with what is, not at what she might want to be.
iv.
Blair doesn't know it, of course, there's no way she would--but this is the last time Serena Van Der Woodsen is going to show up drunk at her house for a good long time. In three weeks Serena will be off to boarding school, and Blair won't be awoken by a girl in too much glitter and a top that is so small it's practically non-existent. Serena spills into the hallway, and this time, she's not doused in that alcohol-joy that she imbibes along with whatever she's been drinking.
"What is it?" Blair asks, because she can tell, she knows there's something wrong. Serena looks up, eyes like stormclouds filled with rain.
"It's my brother," Serena sobs, and she falls forward, into Blair's arms. Blair holds her close while Serena cries, and Blair can feel Serena's tears on her neck.
"What's the matter with him?" Blair asks, and she's worried, she is, but she can't help but think it can't be that bad. After all, Serena's been out drinking, hasn't she?
"He--I don't know. I think there's something wrong with him," Serena says, and her voice sounds like it's been torn from the inside into a thousand pieces, and when she pulls back Serena's lovely face is twisted in exquisite and sublime sorrow. Blair wonders what that must be like, to have your emotions show like that on your face. It's not that Blair doesn't feel them. She does. Sure.
It's just that she's not Serena. Feelings don't play on her features like a matinee on Sunday.
Blair searches Serena's eyes and waits, waits for Serena to tell her, the thing that is transforming a joyous girl into this wreck of a thing in her arms. "Serena, what exactly is wrong with him?" And if you're so worried, why aren't you at home? Blair is finding it harder to not say the things she wants to say, the words that rise up like a torrent and threaten to drown her if she's not careful. It's happening more lately, more and more, and Blair wonders if one day she's just going to let go and then Serena will know all the ugly things, all the terrible things Blair sometimes thinks about Serena and never says.
But if Blair has anything, it's self-control. Which is, apparently, something her best friend could use an intimate evening with in lieu of strange men and designer drugs.
"Him and mom. They keep fighting. It's so awful, B." Serena sits on the couch, her tall, lanky body draped in an unaffectedly elegant sprawl on the cushions. "I don't know what's going on. When I try to talk to Eric, he just slams the door in my face and tells me I can't--that I don't--that I'm too self-involved to care."
Blair arches one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at that, and Serena sees it and her face crumples again. "I am, aren't I? I know I am, so I tried, I did, and he just got mad and he and mom were yelling and--"
"Serena," Blair interrupts, sitting next to Serena and taking the girl's hands in her own--Serena's skin is warm, like bathwater or the Mediterranean--"You do go out a lot. Maybe he's right. Or, you know, maybe he's just being a boy. I'm sure it's fine." Maybe your whole family is just a little emotional and none of you know how to act. Blair believes that, certainly. She wonders what she would do if her family behaved like Serena's. There are never slamming doors at the Waldorf residence, never, and no one cries unless it is in private and involves a teddy bear someone had gotten from their best friend on their ninth birthday.
Serena searches Blair's gaze, and Blair can see Serena's desperation for reassurance written plainly all over her face. "Do you really think so? I mean, it just...it's been really bad, lately, and that's why I left tonight."
No, it isn't, Blair thinks uncharitably, and before she can stop herself, she says snidely, "That, or was it because of a voicemail from Georgina?"
Serena looks wounded, like Blair's just slapped her, and she shakes her head and hides beneath the winter-wheat fall of her hair. "No," she mumbles, "I'm the one that called Georgina this time."
"Why?" Blair asks, the taste of her anger acrid and thick like smoke. "Why her? Why didn't you just come over here first? Or am I, what, second best now?" Blair is breathing hard, a little too fast, and she wants to stop this, wants to find her self-control. Wants to pretend like she's not hurt by Serena's new partygirl bff who has replaced her.
"B," Serena whispers, looking up, and they're sitting close together, and Serena's warm hands are on Blair's face, fingers like warm silk. "It's not...you know it's not like that. You're my best friend." Serena's words are so sweet, so heartfelt, and Blair wants to believe them. She does. It's just hard, thinking about doing her homework while Serena was out getting wasted with Georgina, and how she'll be tired now in English because Serena's crying on her couch. Georgina gets the partying and nothing after that, and while Blair knows that means she's important, it doesn't hurt any less to know she's not the fun one.
"Serena--"
Serena leans forward and kisses her, her mouth soft, and she tastes like cherries and something tart, like lime. Blair goes still and doesn't move, and Serena is kissing her and now Blair is kissing her back, tentative and shy but this isn't right, it's all wrong because Serena is drunk and it's not about anything but Serena trying to prove that Blair matters.
"Next time," Blair says, pulling away, and she pretends there's nothing in her voice but censure. "Next time, come here before you're trashed, maybe, hmm?" She stands up (not shaking, no, her legs are fine, perfectly fine) and throws the chenille blanket on Serena. "Sleep it off, S." Blair turns her back. She doesn't trust Serena in bed with her, not tonight. She won't think about why, and what might happen next time.
Except, of course, there isn't a next time, not for a while. In a matter of weeks, Serena is gone, and Blair has all the uninterrupted sleep she wants. She won't admit that she misses it, sometimes, that she thinks about the taste of cherries and lime, and Serena's lips, and what might have happened if she'd not stood up.
Would Serena have stayed? Blair doesn't know, doesn't think so, but sometimes she wonders.
v.
Of course, Serena's gone.
Blair stands in her living room, confused, wondering what the hell you're supposed to do after your best friend says I killed someone, cries on you for ten minutes, and then vanishes when you go and get the Valium. She walks through the penthouse and picks things up, puts them down again. Blair's mind is racing. She thinks about taking some of the Valium herself, but ultimately decides against it. She needs to be focused. She needs to be sharp.
Serena comes back a few hours later, predictably, as trashed as Blair's ever seen her. "If you tell me you were out with Georgina," Blair says, hands on her hips, because since Serena came back Blair is trying very hard to say things, letting those dark words spill over because it's better than forcing the dam to crack, "I will kick your perfectly toned and supermodel-quality ass from here to Queens, S."
Serena shakes her head, and she starts crying. "You never liked her," she says, slurring all the syllables it is possible to slur, falling forward towards Blair. Blair catches her--of course--and leads her over to the couch, the one where Serena kissed her, the one Blair can't look at without remembering the taste of cherries and anger. "Shoulda listened, huh? Blair, my Blair." Serena's fingers are light like butterflies on Blair's cheek.
"Yes, you should have listened," Blair says bossily, forcing Serena to sit. "And from now on, you are going to listen to me when I tell you someone is a Eurotrash rehab baby waiting to happen, hmm?"
Serena nods, but Blair doubts she's going to remember that in the morning.
Fine. She'll just keep saying it. People learn by repetition, don't they?
Blair sits patiently, feeding Serena water while her friend cries and says things that don't make sense about the wedding (Blair doesn't want to think about that, weddings make her think about Serena and Nate and betrayal and, ugh, Chuck and his fondness for sleepy-eyed stares and dark limos) and Georgina and she's sorry, so sorry, and can Blair ever forgive her?
"You need to sleep," Blair says, brushing Serena's hair off her forehead. "You need to sleep, and then in the morning, we'll figure this out. And you're going to stop getting trashed because I am seriously limiting the amount of times you get to show up drunk at my door. Boundaries. I'm getting some." Blair smiles a little at Serena, softening the harshness of her words. It's finally occurred to her that Serena needs this, needs Blair. Tough love. Something like that.
I could be a therapist, Blair thinks, holding Serena while her friend sobs herself nearly sick in her arms. "We'll call Nate and Chuck in the morning."
"Dan," Serena sobs, fingers curling into Blair's shoulders, a soft pressure.
Blair rolls her eyes where Serena can't see. "What about him? S, this isn't about Dan." Although Blair wouldn't mind, not really, if it was--it would be better to have Serena crying over breaking up with stupid Dan than killing someone with Georgina, or whatever Serena's terrible story is about.
"I don't--don't call him," Serena begs, raising her head. "I don't want him here. He...he thinks only the best of me."
"And I don't, is that what you're saying?" Blair smooths Serena's hair back, again, because strands keep getting caught in the tears on her cheeks. How does she look so beautiful, even now?
"You see me," Serena says quietly. "All of me. The good parts and the bad. You always have." Serena reaches out and touches Blair's mouth, lightly, with her fingers, tracing the shape of them. Blair shivers and makes a note to close the window. Clearly, it's too cold in here. "Blair, do you remember that time I--"
Blair shakes her head and moves away. She puts her fingers against Serena's mouth, quieting her. "Yeah. Come on, S. Time for bed. In the morning--" Blair stops, eyes widening, because Serena is sucking her fingers, softly, licking like a kitten at milk. Her eyes are on Blair's. Blair can't breathe, it's like the air has been sucked out with a vacuum, like there's nothing here but Serena and the soft touch of her tongue on Blair's fingers. "No. Not like this. You're drunk. Come on." Blair stands up, just like she did the last time. A rejection, because Blair Waldorf is no one's drunk indiscretion. Not even Serena's.
This time she takes Serena to her bedroom. Blair knows she's strong enough to say no.
As she helps Serena into bed, as she promises they'll make everything all right in the morning, Blair wonders if she'll ever be strong enough to say yes.
--Finis