[ fic ] ticking away my time ; chuck/jenny, gossip girl
Fourteen years old.
This is her Cinderella night - a golden ticket to the world she only dreams of belonging to. It’s all dim lights and loud music and people laughing and a glowing bar, and maybe in the morning she’ll go back to being Brooklyn Girl but she’s going to soak up everything about tonight while she can.
She’s heard of him - who hasn’t? - but she never expected him to single her out. Dark looks and eyebrows raised, and she follows him, knowing that she doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into.
A glass of champagne in her hand - she feels like an adult - and they’re standing on the roof. The city stretching out around her and she’s never felt like she was on top of the world until now. This is what she wants.
His hand curving around her neck, under her hair, his mouth on hers, pressed against the skylight and everything is so sharp - frigid air on exposed skin - and she wonders if this is what it feels like all the time for them. Heightened, a different world entirely.
She feels young again, and so far out of her league. Moment of courage - later she’ll think it was cowardice - when she texts her brother. HELP.
Dan and Serena Van der Woodsen - momentary awe - are there to save the day. There’s a punch and a curse and then there’s Chuck looking at her and the look says it all.
She failed. She’s not one of them.
(She’ll never be one of them.)
Fifteen years old.
No longer a little girl; she’s gone toe to toe with Blair Waldorf, earned the respect of Queen B herself.
He still makes her shiver when he appears at Lily’s home - soon to be her home? Fists clench and she still doesn’t know whether she hates him or wants to prove him wrong.
She’s not expecting “I’m sorry.”
She’s supposed to be self-confident, sure of herself, no longer the Little J who needed approval from people like them. She’s not supposed to feel so triumphant when there’s a glimmer of respect in his eyes, just because it means he knows she wasn’t just another Blair-wannabe.
But it’s hard to stop craving approval.
(Especially when it’s finally being given.)
Sixteen years old.
She was Queen.
She was everything she ever wanted.
Everything she ever wanted only lead to her sitting on a couch with him, shakily drinking Scotch for the first time and wondering how she never realized the truth he’s telling her: the world she longed after doesn’t exist.
It was all for nothing - now she has nothing.
Neither does he; it only takes a brush of her fingers against his to remind her. Then it’s lips brushing lips, no struggling this time. She gives in to what she resisted; he gives in to what he’s regretted.
It’s so disgustingly poetic.
(They’re so going to hell.)
Seventeen years old.
Hudson is exactly what she needed. It’s an escape, much better for her sanity.
She sits on the roof and stares at the horizon sometimes. Too often. What you need isn’t always what you want. She doesn’t know what she wants.
There’s a sewing machine on the desk on her room - new, a present from her mom. ‘I want you to be happy here’ is the subtext, she decides. She looks up dress designs, buys and measures fabric, and then lets it all pile up beside the sewing machine.
She hasn’t turned it on once.
She’s waiting for something but she doesn’t know what she’s waiting for and it’s hard to be patient. She’s never been patient.
There’s a missed call on her phone. She spends the next two days wavering, finger on the CALL button, hesitating, then the phone slipped back in her pocket. Then out again, so she can stare at the missed call. One time, she actually calls back, holds the phone to her ear until she hears the quiet “Hello”, then presses END. This time there’s no question that it’s cowardice.
(It’s always been cowardice.)
She feels ageless, disconnected from time.
“Are you going to hang up on me again, Jennifer?”
She shakes her head. Realizes he can’t see, manages “No” in a hoarse voice. What’s happened to her?
“I’m back in New York.”
I heard you were shot. She thinks it, doesn’t say it. There’s silence long enough that she’d normally think they’d been disconnected, then finally courage in the form of a whisper: “New York isn’t far.”
That night, she purchases her train ticket online. Tells her mom she wants to visit her dad and Dan.
She’d feel guilty for lying if it wasn’t so easy.
(There’s too much she already feels guilty for.)
She feels older than she is.
Shows up at the Empire, rides the elevator all the way up to the top.
She used to love heights.
It takes little time, and even less words. They progress from his mouth on hers to her skin against his, breathing becoming a shared thing, and both of them desperately searching for something they can’t find in themselves.
It feels just like the first time.
(It feels like nothing at all.)
She feels younger than she is.
It only takes one “Blair” to be the end of everything - except that everything is nothing when it comes to them.
She stiffens underneath him. He freezes when he realizes.
Then she’s pulling her clothes back on, thankful that he speaks in subtext as much as she does because right now the subtext is saying what she won’t vocalize: ‘This is over.’
She gets that he has his own demons to exorcise - but she’s not going to do it for him. ‘To use and be used’ isn’t exactly what she dreamed of when she was a little girl.
She does feel little again, though. Remembers how once upon a time, she would have been overcome at the thought of any connection to Blair, because it would mean that she was worthy.
Fate and irony must be friends.
(But not her friends.)