"Down to Her Level" for Smee
Title: Down to Her Level
Author: Dee (cupiscent)
Disclaimer: 'Gossip Girl' belongs to Cecily von Ziegesar, Josh Schwartz, and the CW. No copywright infringement intended.
Pairing: Blair/Jenny
Warning(s): S1 spoilers up through 1x13
Rating: PG-13 (language and themes)
Author's Notes: I have no idea if this is anything like Smee (smilingbomb) wanted. I hope so.
Summary: Blair is used to life being a full-contact bloodsport. She thinks she'll feel better if she drags Jenny down to her level.
Blair seriously considers just not going to school today. It's Valentine's Day, there is no possible scenario for the day that is not horrific. But Serena, as per usual, is one step ahead of her and shows up while Blair is still figuring out whether it would be best to call in sick via phone or text message. Serena will not let her back out. She's been doing so well at standing strong and she can't let some stupid Hallmark day get the better of her, she should face it on her feet and with her best friend by her side. Said best friend is wearing a lei, of all the ridiculous things. She dissolves into giggles when Blair even cocks a mildly concerned eyebrow at it. Humphrey, of course. As a Valentine's gift it sort of has style. Blair will be dragged over hot coals before she admits to even entertaining that thought, of course.
The corridors are rife with roses. Serena is a pleasant frangipani haven. She keeps her arm tucked through Blair's, hugging Blair's elbow to her side. It would be guaranteed to start those lesbian rumours up again, were it not for the fact that Serena and Dan are as bad every day of the week as the canoodling couples strewing the halls like leftovers from an orgy. Humphrey also gave Serena a little scrapbook of poetry, its pages thick and personalised, and Blair's agreeing that it's absolutely the most adorable thing she's ever heard of when they mince their cookie-cutter way across the courtyard. Penelope's in the centre, Harper at her side, both of their faces limned with a smug superiority that makes Blair glance to Kati and Iz, who have that eager look they get in the presence of excellent gossip.
Blair smells a dare. A moment is all it takes to remember that Saturday night would have been Kati's annual Chinese New Year party. Traditionally it devolved into a girl's night. Clearly Blair's name came up in the festivities. She supposes she should be flattered; instead she feels faintly sick (swallows hard against it) as they stop and little Jenny Humphrey steps out of their midst and slides a box of flowers onto the stone table.
It's a ridiculous bouquet - forget-me-nots and a white bear on a stick clutching a heart that says, "Don't be blue!" The trashiness just adds to the insult, of course, and if Blair were feeling slightly more charitable (which, needless to say, she isn't) she might commend Jenny for actually locking eyes with Blair's glare.
As it is, Blair slaps her palms down on the stone. The sting's therapeutic, but not nearly as satisfying as the flinch on Jenny's face. "How charming," Blair drawled, pushing herself up to standing. "A bouquet from the bitch who broke my heart." Serena's hand is on her sleeve, Blair's name on her lips, but Blair shakes her off to step around the table, snatching up the flowerbox with a grip so hard it bends the cheap blue cardboard. She gets right up in Jenny's face, watching the steel in those big, innocent blue eyes and relishing the fact that she's still taller. She's still strong, she's still intidimating, she's still Blair fucking Waldorf, you presumptuous little upstart, and she feels every inch of it as she snarls an inch away from Jenny's nose. "Pretty little Jenny. You're poison."
Blair stalks away, not even gracing Penelope and the others with a glance. There's a trashcan just inside the door, and she slams the flowerbox into it, setting the stupid fucking bear bobbling about on its stick. Valentining couples scatter away from her like petals, but she just turns around and goes back out into the courtyard.
Serena's on her feet as well, bag in one hand and poetry book in the other. They're all still standing there. Blair rakes a dismissive glance over the whole pathetic bunch of them, and says, "Shoo." Then she sits down again beside Serena, her back to the table and to them. Serena drops her bag as she sits again, clutching at Blair's hand in the space between them. From the corner of her eye, Blair can see Serena delivering the full force of her rarely seen ice-bitch glare across the table. There's muttering in the courtyard that Blair is not listening to. Eventually it dies down, and Serena turns towards her a little more, and Blair assumes that they're gone.
"I can't believe she did that," Serena says. Ordinarily she'd be the first one to brush it off or suggest that perhaps Jenny was sorry, but even her largesse is having trouble with this deed, apparently.
Blair thinks she can probably reconstruct how this came to pass. It's almost certainly Penelope who set the dare - this has her bitchy fingerprints all over it - and Blair thinks she may have done it to put Jenny in her place. It makes the corner of Blair's mouth curl; Penelope feels threatened by the freshman girl who beat Blair Waldorf. How cute.
It's hard not to think of it like that, as being beaten. As losing. No matter how many motivational van der Woodsen lectures she receives, Blair is still used to measuring her expectations by a relative framework. She's used to the competition, to measuring up and setting the standard. The notion that day-to-day life may not be a full-contact bloodsport seems a utopian ideal, one that she doesn't really believe in. Living like Serena does feels like tight-rope walking without a net. It's terrifying.
Blair's trying. She is. But she isn't any good at it.
They meet up with Humphrey at the school gate, and Blair almost lets Serena talk her into going with them for hot chocolate at some slumming-it place in Brooklyn, just because it's something she never would have done before. In the end she doesn't, because it's Valentine's Day and she's not actually going to let her best friend sacrifice her entire day in the name of moral support. Besides, the favours she would owe Dan just do not bear thinking about.
Here's the true irony of the situation: Jenny's a firm fixture on the steps of the Met, and Blair sees more of Dan Humphrey than his own sister does.
Said sister is waiting when Blair gets home, and she absolutely draws the line at walking away in her own damn building. "Are you lost?" Blair snaps, not breaking stride on her way into the atrium. Jenny follows close behind her and the doorman just lets her; Blair makes a mental note to have him fired.
"Blair," Jenny is saying. "Please. Can we talk?"
"I don't know how you can even think it's acceptable for you to address me directly," Blair tells the elevator call button. The marble wall is so highly polished she can see Jenny reflected in it, standing beside her and actually wringing her hands. She can't see Jenny's face, but she doesn't think she needs to; she's watched her former protege closely on a number of occasions, and knows well that the girl has about as much facility for artful dissembling as Blair herself.
"Blair," Jenny is saying, and--
"You're still talking!" Blair interrupts, but--
"Blair, please," Jenny wails, regardless. "I'm sorry!"
Blair's so stunned she actually turns and looks at Jenny. The girl's standing right beside her, near enough that their shoulders brush and Blair's looking right into Jenny's face from less than a foot away. Her eyes (those big, blue eyes) have tears threatening like rain on a cloudy day. Her bottom lip is pinker from her biting at it than from the lipgloss that Blair still recognises as being the colour she advised Jenny would look best on her. And she was right: like this - red mouth, shining eyes, splotches of pink on her cheeks - Jenny looks far too highly coloured and overwrought.
She's sorry?
The elevator sighs open with a well-modulated chime, and Blair stalks inside and presses the button for her floor firmly. She tosses her hair back over her shoulder, stares over Jenny's blonde, bereted head at the far wall, and mentally begins her chemistry homework.
The doors don't close again, and Blair blinks, refocuses on the here, now and the arm flung across the elevator doors. "Remove your hand," Blair demands.
"Then listen to me," Jenny says.
"I heard," Blair shoots back. "You're sorry. I didn't catch what you're sorry about - betraying me and ruining my entire life, abandoning me in my hour of need, or exposing me to public comment and ridicule yet again today. Not that it matters to me because I don't actually care how sorry you pretend to be, but when you've got as many indiscretions on your tally as you do, you may want to be a bit more specific about your apologies."
Blair can't quite believe she's said all that, but it seems that she has, is back across the elevator and in Jenny's face again. Jenny's face that's looking pale and panicked and Blair wants to slap her, wants to shriek come on, wake up, you can do better than this.
But Jenny stands her ground, at least. Hasn't backed up, hasn't let go. "I'm sorry about today," she says grimly, like she's going to get to the end of this apology if it kills her. "It was tacky and ridiculous and you've gone through enough; it was Penelope's idea--" Ha, so Blair was right about that. "--but I shouldn't have..."
She trails off, just staring at Blair as though she's run out of words or motivating force. "Shouldn't have just done everything people wanted you to?" Blair provides.
"I didn't!" Jenny protests, pink-cheeked and stung.
"Oh, you did." Jenny can go play the ingenue for someone who's of a mind to believe her, because Blair is not buying this, not from her. She knows what Jenny is; she's learned it the hard way and isn't likely to forget in a hurry. "You've done nothing but what other people said."
She prods a finger at Jenny's shoulder, rocking her back, but Jenny clings to the elevator door and holds steady. "You weren't complaining when I was doing what you said," she fires back.
Blair has a flush of satisfaction - that Jenny's still fighting, that she still has that steel, that Blair still has the power to make her spit and flash. "And you showed me, didn't you?" Blair drawled. "God, look at you." She smacks at Jenny's perfectly arranged blonde hair where it falls towards her shoulder. "Be their perfect porcelain princess, and stamp out anyone who crosses you. You're so one of us. And I'm so proud of you." Sarcasm tastes like bile against her back teeth. Jenny's hair was like silk against her knuckles; she has to fight the urge to yank.
"This wasn't what I wanted!" Jenny's voice is trembling on the brink; she's closer to tears than her face realises, closer to tears than Blair's ever seen her, and she wants to tip her over, wants to break her open, wants to punish her for being weak. How dare she be so weak when she's beaten Blair.
"No one cares what you want," Blair snaps.
She's stepping backwards into the elevator, tossing her hair, when Jenny's hand reaches out, fingers snaring imploringly in the lapel of Blair's coat as their owner says, "It was supposed to be us..."
Blair stops and Jenny's hand sags on her collar. Blair is staring at her, not sure she's heard what she thinks she just heard, so she sees horror bloom on Jenny's face, and knows that she has. Us, was it, little Jenny Humphrey?
There are so many ways Blair could revel in the triumph this new knowledge represents. So many ways she could rub in the fact of this admission. But gloating is gauche. She lets a smirk unfold on her own face as she continues her aborted step back into the elevator. Jenny's hand falls away from her like a piece of litter; Blair resettles herself against the back wall and Jenny just stares, knowing as Blair knows that her hidden, heated little secret rests now in the hands of the one person in the world with the most reason to see her cast down into the dust.
"Remove your hand," Blair repeats sweetly, and this time Jenny does, her white fingers dropping away from the elevator door, which slid silently shut between them.
Blair ascends to her level in a warm glow, luxuriating in the anticipation of a beautiful, poetic vengeance (her favourite sort, especially when it's not happening to her). She doesn't rush it; lets Dorota fuss over her, takes her time unpacking her school things, gets out her chemistry homework and opens everything to the right page. She sets her phone above her books, just sitting there like a glinting promise of joys to come. It makes her smile every time she glances at it, even in the midst of unravelling covalent bonds. She allows herself short breaks between problems, just enough to tap a fingernail against her phone and consider possibilities for the best way to phrase this when she tells Gossip Girl. She even checks to make sure that "sapphic" means what she thinks it means, before discarding it as too much embellishment.
The oft-interrupted chemistry is only just finished when her mother raps her knuckles against the door, poking her head around a moment later (and a moment before Blair actually calls, "yes?"). "Darling," she says, like an admonishment. "The Rudermeyer dinner. Don't tell me you've forgotten. It's going to be delightful."
She wouldn't have added that last before a month ago. Eleanor's been treating her like old lace or a delicate creature. Feeling like both, Blair has appreciated it; she smiles a bright smile. "Of course not. I was just finishing up now."
Eleanor nods. "The turquoise crape would be lovely," she states, and eases back out of the room.
Dinner is tedious; in the duller moments Blair recalls to herself the look on Jenny Humphrey's face as the elevator door slid elegantly and inexoriably closed between them. All colour fled from her cheeks, eyes wide and pale, shocked perfectly, crystallinely breathless. Blair imagines her in her ridiculous warehouse bedroom, riveted with dread. Petrified by the thought of what Blair will do to her.
"You looked beautiful tonight," Eleanor tells her in the car on the way home, tucking a lock of hair behind Blair's ear. Blair's beautiful thoughts scatter beneath the touch; she twitches her head away, then smiles apologetically in her mother's direction. Eleanor smiles her breakable smile. "You seemed more yourself."
"I'm getting there," Blair tells her.
She doesn't send the message tonight; instead, she saves it to re-read in the morning and make sure it's still perfect. She considers it afresh over breakfast strawberries... but doesn't send it just yet. After all, Jenny knows Blair has this weapon, this sword lifted over her pretty little neck, which makes it effective even without dropping it. She's curious as to what Jenny might be willing to do to keep the sword from falling. She's curious as to how the girl will behave under the shadow. She's curious as to whether she'll even show up at school this morning.
She does. She's right there by the steps with the rest of them when Blair walks in with Serena (unleid but giddy on residual romanticism). Dan is waiting as well, and while he and Serena reunite like it's been four months since last they met Blair glances across.
Jenny's looking her way, over Harper's shoulder, as Penelope opines odiously about something or other. It's a steady gaze, concerned but not skittish; Jenny doesn't look away immediately. In fact, she waits until Blair lifts her eyebrow - well? - before turning back. She says something, cutting Penelope off, and slings her bag more firmly on her shoulder as she turns away from them.
She doesn't come across to Blair. She goes up the stairs. Blair doesn't know what this means.
"What are you frowning about?" Serena demands cheerfully, nudging her shoulder against Blair's. She's holding Dan's hand on the other side and has a stupidly Serena grin on her face.
Blair rolls her eyes. "Wondering how I can be best friends with such a ridiculous romantic," she states, leaning forward a little to say, "Morning, Humphrey."
"Morning, Waldorf," he returns.
Aren't they just the model of modern manners?
When Blair glances back up the stairs, Jenny's long gone, and Blair still doesn't know what it means. Us. She didn't look at Blair like a girl with a ridiculous crush. Blair knows what that looks like - ugh, Camilla Morrison and her insipid fawning back in sophomore year had been so embarrassing. Jenny has at least never deported herself in such a manner, for which Blair gives her due credit, despite her other copious and unforgiveable faults. And yet all this time, apparently... she was harbouring some fond notion of us. While she was being so useful, while she was showing she had a brain and some spirit, while she was actually making Blair respect her just a little.
Blair rereads the draft message saved in her phone in the corridor between classes. She doesn't look up, because she knows she's not going to see anything different from the new usual. Nate never even looks at her, these days, like she's ceased to exist entirely. Chuck looks only to sneer or leer, but never when Nate's nearby. And everyone else gives her the looks you give the object lesson, the moral of the story, the twist in the tale; here is what happens to girls who do not conform.
She thinks she'll feel so much better if she drags Jenny down to her level. She tells herself she will. If everyone's phones go off, right now, and when they've read the message they have someone new to stare at, to whisper about... then Blair will have taken her first step back towards the top. She'll be back in the competition, back in the bloodsport, back to climbing her way up on the shoulders of those she's unseated.
Blair looks up, takes a deep breath, and deletes the message.
That weekend she lets Serena drag her down to Williamsburg to go bowling (bowling!) with Dan and Vanessa. When they convene at the Humphreys' apartment, Dan and Serena are being gratuitously cute, and there's a stop-start shuttling noise from the closed door of Jenny's room that it takes Blair five minutes to recognise as a sewing machine. No sign of the crazy adult Humphrey, of course, because this family was the absolute last that could ever point a finger at the Upper East Side and be sanctimonious about absent parents. They're going to meet Vanessa at her cafe-bistro-workplace-thing and Blair waits until they're almost on the street before she says, "Oh, shoot, I think I left my phone. No no, I know right where it is, you go on ahead, I'll meet you there."
The sewing machine doesn't even pause when Blair knocks. "Yeah?" Jenny hollers from inside her room, and Blair supposes she must think it's Dan, come back for something.
Her supposition is confirmed when she steps into the room, leaning back on the door to close it, because the sewing machine stops dead mid-stitch, needle poised over rumples of black fabric, and Jenny's mouth is hanging open as she stares. Only for a moment, before she shakes her head, looking down at the material as though she can't remember what she's doing. She lifts a hand to her forehead, half-covering her eyes. "Um," she says to the machine. "Hi."
The room still looks the same: the little-girl with the touches of do-it-yourself funky style. Blair's a little surprised at how much she remembers of it, given that she wasn't here for that long on Thanksgiving. The garage door is down today. With the space enclosed, it feels much more soft and warm. Cozy. A haven. Blair comes in properly, sits on the end of the bed.
After a moment, Jenny twists around to look at her. Her chin's up, but there's a guarded look on her face. She says, "What are you doing here?" which is exactly what Blair would say herself, offensively defensive, anything to avoid asking Why didn't you tell anyone?
Blair brushes her skirt straight on her knee, and says, "The other day, when you came to my building and..." She purses her lips, skips over to the end. "What did you actually come to say?"
"Just," Jenny says quickly, then pauses. She tilts around on her chair, levering her shoulder up around her ear and twisting her fingers on the chair back. "To apologise for the flowers."
"For the flowers," Blair repeats, her voice sounding flat even in her own ears.
Jenny looks up sharply, fire and flint back in her eyes. "I'm not sorry for what I did, Blair. You can't just..." Too much energy, too much emotion; Jenny has to stand up, has to pace towards the door, facing away from Blair when she finishes with, "You can't just treat people the way you do."
Blair has her moments of wilful blindness, but even she can see they're not talking about how she behaved to Nate and Chuck. Nate, who won't even glance in her direction. Chuck, whose every glance screams slut (as though he has any license to throw stones from within his glass house).
Jenny, who has seen sides of Blair rarely let out in the daylight. Jenny, who knows precisely how she can be, how selfish, how petty, how desperate and lost, and who still came to apologise for something that could have just rankled unheeded. Blair would have let it. Blair wouldn't have apologised. Jenny had. After everything, Jenny had.
Jenny, who wasn't actually the one who broke her heart. The boys did that.
Blair tosses her hair back over her shoulder. She sneaks a glance up, and looks back down in a hurry when she sees Jenny has turned to face her. "I didn't... I don't know any other way to treat people. I've..." Words are piling up in her throat; they're spilling forth before she can line them up and ensure their respectability. "I've been something for someone else my whole life." Her father's little princess, Nate's pristine girlfriend, everyone's Queen B. "There are all these rules." She's wringing her hands together in her lap, can't seem to make them stop, can't seem to look up from them. "All these expectations. I don't... I don't know who I am."
The bed edge dips beside Blair, the gravity of Jenny's weight pulling her sideways, but she turns away, letting her hair fall like a curtain, like the elevator door between them. Jenny stays, though. Just sitting there, close beside her but not touching. After a moment, she says, "I had this idea of you. Everyone has an idea of you, I guess. You seemed so perfect. I didn't want to be one of you, I wanted to be your friend. I had this stupid idea..." There's so much castigation in the words that Blair twitches back around, catching a glimpse of blonde in her peripheral vision before her hair swings back between them. She feels Jenny shrug beside her, the faint nudge of her shoulder. "You're not perfect. But I think I still want to be your friend."
Blair lifts her hand to tuck her hair back behind her ear, arm brushing against Jenny's. She looks at their knees, in a row, skirt hems and stockinged knees, not matching but complementary somehow. "So when you said..." She still can't say it; skips ahead again. "Is that what you meant? Friends?"
Jenny's silent for so long that Blair feels a sick twist in her stomach. She looks up and then can't look down again, because Jenny is just there, their shoulders forming a line, and she's looking back at Blair. "I don't know," Jenny says then. "I'm not sure I know who I am either."
Blair's mouth is dry and her stomach's curled around itself. She's thinking... she doesn't even know what she's thinking, it's such a jumble. She's thinking that every man she's known has wanted to pose her like a doll. She's thinking about making out with Serena on a dare at her freshman year sleepover. She's thinking that she was right, so very right, about that shade of lipgloss for Jenny, because it makes her mouth shine and it tastes...
It tastes like summer, like coconut and cherries. Their knees knock together as Jenny turns towards Blair, breath on her cheek and hair like silk against Blair's knuckles as she brings her hand up to tuck in beside Jenny's neck, Blair's thumb on her jaw. They kiss again, Jenny's mouth open against Blair's parted lips, and Blair has her eyes closed, has no possible idea what she's doing. When she leans back again she's breathless and dizzy, blinking her eyes open.
It's terrifying. It's exhilirating. It's like tight-rope walking without a net.
She moves her hands. Tucks her own hair back behind her ears. "We're going bowling," she says, barely recognising her own voice. "Did you want to come with?"
Jenny smiles, quick as a kitten pouncing, and Blair's smiling back before she realises it.
Thank you for participating in the first ever round of the Gossip Girl Fic Exchange!
Author: Dee (cupiscent)
Disclaimer: 'Gossip Girl' belongs to Cecily von Ziegesar, Josh Schwartz, and the CW. No copywright infringement intended.
Pairing: Blair/Jenny
Warning(s): S1 spoilers up through 1x13
Rating: PG-13 (language and themes)
Author's Notes: I have no idea if this is anything like Smee (smilingbomb) wanted. I hope so.
Summary: Blair is used to life being a full-contact bloodsport. She thinks she'll feel better if she drags Jenny down to her level.
Blair seriously considers just not going to school today. It's Valentine's Day, there is no possible scenario for the day that is not horrific. But Serena, as per usual, is one step ahead of her and shows up while Blair is still figuring out whether it would be best to call in sick via phone or text message. Serena will not let her back out. She's been doing so well at standing strong and she can't let some stupid Hallmark day get the better of her, she should face it on her feet and with her best friend by her side. Said best friend is wearing a lei, of all the ridiculous things. She dissolves into giggles when Blair even cocks a mildly concerned eyebrow at it. Humphrey, of course. As a Valentine's gift it sort of has style. Blair will be dragged over hot coals before she admits to even entertaining that thought, of course.
The corridors are rife with roses. Serena is a pleasant frangipani haven. She keeps her arm tucked through Blair's, hugging Blair's elbow to her side. It would be guaranteed to start those lesbian rumours up again, were it not for the fact that Serena and Dan are as bad every day of the week as the canoodling couples strewing the halls like leftovers from an orgy. Humphrey also gave Serena a little scrapbook of poetry, its pages thick and personalised, and Blair's agreeing that it's absolutely the most adorable thing she's ever heard of when they mince their cookie-cutter way across the courtyard. Penelope's in the centre, Harper at her side, both of their faces limned with a smug superiority that makes Blair glance to Kati and Iz, who have that eager look they get in the presence of excellent gossip.
Blair smells a dare. A moment is all it takes to remember that Saturday night would have been Kati's annual Chinese New Year party. Traditionally it devolved into a girl's night. Clearly Blair's name came up in the festivities. She supposes she should be flattered; instead she feels faintly sick (swallows hard against it) as they stop and little Jenny Humphrey steps out of their midst and slides a box of flowers onto the stone table.
It's a ridiculous bouquet - forget-me-nots and a white bear on a stick clutching a heart that says, "Don't be blue!" The trashiness just adds to the insult, of course, and if Blair were feeling slightly more charitable (which, needless to say, she isn't) she might commend Jenny for actually locking eyes with Blair's glare.
As it is, Blair slaps her palms down on the stone. The sting's therapeutic, but not nearly as satisfying as the flinch on Jenny's face. "How charming," Blair drawled, pushing herself up to standing. "A bouquet from the bitch who broke my heart." Serena's hand is on her sleeve, Blair's name on her lips, but Blair shakes her off to step around the table, snatching up the flowerbox with a grip so hard it bends the cheap blue cardboard. She gets right up in Jenny's face, watching the steel in those big, innocent blue eyes and relishing the fact that she's still taller. She's still strong, she's still intidimating, she's still Blair fucking Waldorf, you presumptuous little upstart, and she feels every inch of it as she snarls an inch away from Jenny's nose. "Pretty little Jenny. You're poison."
Blair stalks away, not even gracing Penelope and the others with a glance. There's a trashcan just inside the door, and she slams the flowerbox into it, setting the stupid fucking bear bobbling about on its stick. Valentining couples scatter away from her like petals, but she just turns around and goes back out into the courtyard.
Serena's on her feet as well, bag in one hand and poetry book in the other. They're all still standing there. Blair rakes a dismissive glance over the whole pathetic bunch of them, and says, "Shoo." Then she sits down again beside Serena, her back to the table and to them. Serena drops her bag as she sits again, clutching at Blair's hand in the space between them. From the corner of her eye, Blair can see Serena delivering the full force of her rarely seen ice-bitch glare across the table. There's muttering in the courtyard that Blair is not listening to. Eventually it dies down, and Serena turns towards her a little more, and Blair assumes that they're gone.
"I can't believe she did that," Serena says. Ordinarily she'd be the first one to brush it off or suggest that perhaps Jenny was sorry, but even her largesse is having trouble with this deed, apparently.
Blair thinks she can probably reconstruct how this came to pass. It's almost certainly Penelope who set the dare - this has her bitchy fingerprints all over it - and Blair thinks she may have done it to put Jenny in her place. It makes the corner of Blair's mouth curl; Penelope feels threatened by the freshman girl who beat Blair Waldorf. How cute.
It's hard not to think of it like that, as being beaten. As losing. No matter how many motivational van der Woodsen lectures she receives, Blair is still used to measuring her expectations by a relative framework. She's used to the competition, to measuring up and setting the standard. The notion that day-to-day life may not be a full-contact bloodsport seems a utopian ideal, one that she doesn't really believe in. Living like Serena does feels like tight-rope walking without a net. It's terrifying.
Blair's trying. She is. But she isn't any good at it.
They meet up with Humphrey at the school gate, and Blair almost lets Serena talk her into going with them for hot chocolate at some slumming-it place in Brooklyn, just because it's something she never would have done before. In the end she doesn't, because it's Valentine's Day and she's not actually going to let her best friend sacrifice her entire day in the name of moral support. Besides, the favours she would owe Dan just do not bear thinking about.
Here's the true irony of the situation: Jenny's a firm fixture on the steps of the Met, and Blair sees more of Dan Humphrey than his own sister does.
Said sister is waiting when Blair gets home, and she absolutely draws the line at walking away in her own damn building. "Are you lost?" Blair snaps, not breaking stride on her way into the atrium. Jenny follows close behind her and the doorman just lets her; Blair makes a mental note to have him fired.
"Blair," Jenny is saying. "Please. Can we talk?"
"I don't know how you can even think it's acceptable for you to address me directly," Blair tells the elevator call button. The marble wall is so highly polished she can see Jenny reflected in it, standing beside her and actually wringing her hands. She can't see Jenny's face, but she doesn't think she needs to; she's watched her former protege closely on a number of occasions, and knows well that the girl has about as much facility for artful dissembling as Blair herself.
"Blair," Jenny is saying, and--
"You're still talking!" Blair interrupts, but--
"Blair, please," Jenny wails, regardless. "I'm sorry!"
Blair's so stunned she actually turns and looks at Jenny. The girl's standing right beside her, near enough that their shoulders brush and Blair's looking right into Jenny's face from less than a foot away. Her eyes (those big, blue eyes) have tears threatening like rain on a cloudy day. Her bottom lip is pinker from her biting at it than from the lipgloss that Blair still recognises as being the colour she advised Jenny would look best on her. And she was right: like this - red mouth, shining eyes, splotches of pink on her cheeks - Jenny looks far too highly coloured and overwrought.
She's sorry?
The elevator sighs open with a well-modulated chime, and Blair stalks inside and presses the button for her floor firmly. She tosses her hair back over her shoulder, stares over Jenny's blonde, bereted head at the far wall, and mentally begins her chemistry homework.
The doors don't close again, and Blair blinks, refocuses on the here, now and the arm flung across the elevator doors. "Remove your hand," Blair demands.
"Then listen to me," Jenny says.
"I heard," Blair shoots back. "You're sorry. I didn't catch what you're sorry about - betraying me and ruining my entire life, abandoning me in my hour of need, or exposing me to public comment and ridicule yet again today. Not that it matters to me because I don't actually care how sorry you pretend to be, but when you've got as many indiscretions on your tally as you do, you may want to be a bit more specific about your apologies."
Blair can't quite believe she's said all that, but it seems that she has, is back across the elevator and in Jenny's face again. Jenny's face that's looking pale and panicked and Blair wants to slap her, wants to shriek come on, wake up, you can do better than this.
But Jenny stands her ground, at least. Hasn't backed up, hasn't let go. "I'm sorry about today," she says grimly, like she's going to get to the end of this apology if it kills her. "It was tacky and ridiculous and you've gone through enough; it was Penelope's idea--" Ha, so Blair was right about that. "--but I shouldn't have..."
She trails off, just staring at Blair as though she's run out of words or motivating force. "Shouldn't have just done everything people wanted you to?" Blair provides.
"I didn't!" Jenny protests, pink-cheeked and stung.
"Oh, you did." Jenny can go play the ingenue for someone who's of a mind to believe her, because Blair is not buying this, not from her. She knows what Jenny is; she's learned it the hard way and isn't likely to forget in a hurry. "You've done nothing but what other people said."
She prods a finger at Jenny's shoulder, rocking her back, but Jenny clings to the elevator door and holds steady. "You weren't complaining when I was doing what you said," she fires back.
Blair has a flush of satisfaction - that Jenny's still fighting, that she still has that steel, that Blair still has the power to make her spit and flash. "And you showed me, didn't you?" Blair drawled. "God, look at you." She smacks at Jenny's perfectly arranged blonde hair where it falls towards her shoulder. "Be their perfect porcelain princess, and stamp out anyone who crosses you. You're so one of us. And I'm so proud of you." Sarcasm tastes like bile against her back teeth. Jenny's hair was like silk against her knuckles; she has to fight the urge to yank.
"This wasn't what I wanted!" Jenny's voice is trembling on the brink; she's closer to tears than her face realises, closer to tears than Blair's ever seen her, and she wants to tip her over, wants to break her open, wants to punish her for being weak. How dare she be so weak when she's beaten Blair.
"No one cares what you want," Blair snaps.
She's stepping backwards into the elevator, tossing her hair, when Jenny's hand reaches out, fingers snaring imploringly in the lapel of Blair's coat as their owner says, "It was supposed to be us..."
Blair stops and Jenny's hand sags on her collar. Blair is staring at her, not sure she's heard what she thinks she just heard, so she sees horror bloom on Jenny's face, and knows that she has. Us, was it, little Jenny Humphrey?
There are so many ways Blair could revel in the triumph this new knowledge represents. So many ways she could rub in the fact of this admission. But gloating is gauche. She lets a smirk unfold on her own face as she continues her aborted step back into the elevator. Jenny's hand falls away from her like a piece of litter; Blair resettles herself against the back wall and Jenny just stares, knowing as Blair knows that her hidden, heated little secret rests now in the hands of the one person in the world with the most reason to see her cast down into the dust.
"Remove your hand," Blair repeats sweetly, and this time Jenny does, her white fingers dropping away from the elevator door, which slid silently shut between them.
Blair ascends to her level in a warm glow, luxuriating in the anticipation of a beautiful, poetic vengeance (her favourite sort, especially when it's not happening to her). She doesn't rush it; lets Dorota fuss over her, takes her time unpacking her school things, gets out her chemistry homework and opens everything to the right page. She sets her phone above her books, just sitting there like a glinting promise of joys to come. It makes her smile every time she glances at it, even in the midst of unravelling covalent bonds. She allows herself short breaks between problems, just enough to tap a fingernail against her phone and consider possibilities for the best way to phrase this when she tells Gossip Girl. She even checks to make sure that "sapphic" means what she thinks it means, before discarding it as too much embellishment.
The oft-interrupted chemistry is only just finished when her mother raps her knuckles against the door, poking her head around a moment later (and a moment before Blair actually calls, "yes?"). "Darling," she says, like an admonishment. "The Rudermeyer dinner. Don't tell me you've forgotten. It's going to be delightful."
She wouldn't have added that last before a month ago. Eleanor's been treating her like old lace or a delicate creature. Feeling like both, Blair has appreciated it; she smiles a bright smile. "Of course not. I was just finishing up now."
Eleanor nods. "The turquoise crape would be lovely," she states, and eases back out of the room.
Dinner is tedious; in the duller moments Blair recalls to herself the look on Jenny Humphrey's face as the elevator door slid elegantly and inexoriably closed between them. All colour fled from her cheeks, eyes wide and pale, shocked perfectly, crystallinely breathless. Blair imagines her in her ridiculous warehouse bedroom, riveted with dread. Petrified by the thought of what Blair will do to her.
"You looked beautiful tonight," Eleanor tells her in the car on the way home, tucking a lock of hair behind Blair's ear. Blair's beautiful thoughts scatter beneath the touch; she twitches her head away, then smiles apologetically in her mother's direction. Eleanor smiles her breakable smile. "You seemed more yourself."
"I'm getting there," Blair tells her.
She doesn't send the message tonight; instead, she saves it to re-read in the morning and make sure it's still perfect. She considers it afresh over breakfast strawberries... but doesn't send it just yet. After all, Jenny knows Blair has this weapon, this sword lifted over her pretty little neck, which makes it effective even without dropping it. She's curious as to what Jenny might be willing to do to keep the sword from falling. She's curious as to how the girl will behave under the shadow. She's curious as to whether she'll even show up at school this morning.
She does. She's right there by the steps with the rest of them when Blair walks in with Serena (unleid but giddy on residual romanticism). Dan is waiting as well, and while he and Serena reunite like it's been four months since last they met Blair glances across.
Jenny's looking her way, over Harper's shoulder, as Penelope opines odiously about something or other. It's a steady gaze, concerned but not skittish; Jenny doesn't look away immediately. In fact, she waits until Blair lifts her eyebrow - well? - before turning back. She says something, cutting Penelope off, and slings her bag more firmly on her shoulder as she turns away from them.
She doesn't come across to Blair. She goes up the stairs. Blair doesn't know what this means.
"What are you frowning about?" Serena demands cheerfully, nudging her shoulder against Blair's. She's holding Dan's hand on the other side and has a stupidly Serena grin on her face.
Blair rolls her eyes. "Wondering how I can be best friends with such a ridiculous romantic," she states, leaning forward a little to say, "Morning, Humphrey."
"Morning, Waldorf," he returns.
Aren't they just the model of modern manners?
When Blair glances back up the stairs, Jenny's long gone, and Blair still doesn't know what it means. Us. She didn't look at Blair like a girl with a ridiculous crush. Blair knows what that looks like - ugh, Camilla Morrison and her insipid fawning back in sophomore year had been so embarrassing. Jenny has at least never deported herself in such a manner, for which Blair gives her due credit, despite her other copious and unforgiveable faults. And yet all this time, apparently... she was harbouring some fond notion of us. While she was being so useful, while she was showing she had a brain and some spirit, while she was actually making Blair respect her just a little.
Blair rereads the draft message saved in her phone in the corridor between classes. She doesn't look up, because she knows she's not going to see anything different from the new usual. Nate never even looks at her, these days, like she's ceased to exist entirely. Chuck looks only to sneer or leer, but never when Nate's nearby. And everyone else gives her the looks you give the object lesson, the moral of the story, the twist in the tale; here is what happens to girls who do not conform.
She thinks she'll feel so much better if she drags Jenny down to her level. She tells herself she will. If everyone's phones go off, right now, and when they've read the message they have someone new to stare at, to whisper about... then Blair will have taken her first step back towards the top. She'll be back in the competition, back in the bloodsport, back to climbing her way up on the shoulders of those she's unseated.
Blair looks up, takes a deep breath, and deletes the message.
That weekend she lets Serena drag her down to Williamsburg to go bowling (bowling!) with Dan and Vanessa. When they convene at the Humphreys' apartment, Dan and Serena are being gratuitously cute, and there's a stop-start shuttling noise from the closed door of Jenny's room that it takes Blair five minutes to recognise as a sewing machine. No sign of the crazy adult Humphrey, of course, because this family was the absolute last that could ever point a finger at the Upper East Side and be sanctimonious about absent parents. They're going to meet Vanessa at her cafe-bistro-workplace-thing and Blair waits until they're almost on the street before she says, "Oh, shoot, I think I left my phone. No no, I know right where it is, you go on ahead, I'll meet you there."
The sewing machine doesn't even pause when Blair knocks. "Yeah?" Jenny hollers from inside her room, and Blair supposes she must think it's Dan, come back for something.
Her supposition is confirmed when she steps into the room, leaning back on the door to close it, because the sewing machine stops dead mid-stitch, needle poised over rumples of black fabric, and Jenny's mouth is hanging open as she stares. Only for a moment, before she shakes her head, looking down at the material as though she can't remember what she's doing. She lifts a hand to her forehead, half-covering her eyes. "Um," she says to the machine. "Hi."
The room still looks the same: the little-girl with the touches of do-it-yourself funky style. Blair's a little surprised at how much she remembers of it, given that she wasn't here for that long on Thanksgiving. The garage door is down today. With the space enclosed, it feels much more soft and warm. Cozy. A haven. Blair comes in properly, sits on the end of the bed.
After a moment, Jenny twists around to look at her. Her chin's up, but there's a guarded look on her face. She says, "What are you doing here?" which is exactly what Blair would say herself, offensively defensive, anything to avoid asking Why didn't you tell anyone?
Blair brushes her skirt straight on her knee, and says, "The other day, when you came to my building and..." She purses her lips, skips over to the end. "What did you actually come to say?"
"Just," Jenny says quickly, then pauses. She tilts around on her chair, levering her shoulder up around her ear and twisting her fingers on the chair back. "To apologise for the flowers."
"For the flowers," Blair repeats, her voice sounding flat even in her own ears.
Jenny looks up sharply, fire and flint back in her eyes. "I'm not sorry for what I did, Blair. You can't just..." Too much energy, too much emotion; Jenny has to stand up, has to pace towards the door, facing away from Blair when she finishes with, "You can't just treat people the way you do."
Blair has her moments of wilful blindness, but even she can see they're not talking about how she behaved to Nate and Chuck. Nate, who won't even glance in her direction. Chuck, whose every glance screams slut (as though he has any license to throw stones from within his glass house).
Jenny, who has seen sides of Blair rarely let out in the daylight. Jenny, who knows precisely how she can be, how selfish, how petty, how desperate and lost, and who still came to apologise for something that could have just rankled unheeded. Blair would have let it. Blair wouldn't have apologised. Jenny had. After everything, Jenny had.
Jenny, who wasn't actually the one who broke her heart. The boys did that.
Blair tosses her hair back over her shoulder. She sneaks a glance up, and looks back down in a hurry when she sees Jenny has turned to face her. "I didn't... I don't know any other way to treat people. I've..." Words are piling up in her throat; they're spilling forth before she can line them up and ensure their respectability. "I've been something for someone else my whole life." Her father's little princess, Nate's pristine girlfriend, everyone's Queen B. "There are all these rules." She's wringing her hands together in her lap, can't seem to make them stop, can't seem to look up from them. "All these expectations. I don't... I don't know who I am."
The bed edge dips beside Blair, the gravity of Jenny's weight pulling her sideways, but she turns away, letting her hair fall like a curtain, like the elevator door between them. Jenny stays, though. Just sitting there, close beside her but not touching. After a moment, she says, "I had this idea of you. Everyone has an idea of you, I guess. You seemed so perfect. I didn't want to be one of you, I wanted to be your friend. I had this stupid idea..." There's so much castigation in the words that Blair twitches back around, catching a glimpse of blonde in her peripheral vision before her hair swings back between them. She feels Jenny shrug beside her, the faint nudge of her shoulder. "You're not perfect. But I think I still want to be your friend."
Blair lifts her hand to tuck her hair back behind her ear, arm brushing against Jenny's. She looks at their knees, in a row, skirt hems and stockinged knees, not matching but complementary somehow. "So when you said..." She still can't say it; skips ahead again. "Is that what you meant? Friends?"
Jenny's silent for so long that Blair feels a sick twist in her stomach. She looks up and then can't look down again, because Jenny is just there, their shoulders forming a line, and she's looking back at Blair. "I don't know," Jenny says then. "I'm not sure I know who I am either."
Blair's mouth is dry and her stomach's curled around itself. She's thinking... she doesn't even know what she's thinking, it's such a jumble. She's thinking that every man she's known has wanted to pose her like a doll. She's thinking about making out with Serena on a dare at her freshman year sleepover. She's thinking that she was right, so very right, about that shade of lipgloss for Jenny, because it makes her mouth shine and it tastes...
It tastes like summer, like coconut and cherries. Their knees knock together as Jenny turns towards Blair, breath on her cheek and hair like silk against Blair's knuckles as she brings her hand up to tuck in beside Jenny's neck, Blair's thumb on her jaw. They kiss again, Jenny's mouth open against Blair's parted lips, and Blair has her eyes closed, has no possible idea what she's doing. When she leans back again she's breathless and dizzy, blinking her eyes open.
It's terrifying. It's exhilirating. It's like tight-rope walking without a net.
She moves her hands. Tucks her own hair back behind her ears. "We're going bowling," she says, barely recognising her own voice. "Did you want to come with?"
Jenny smiles, quick as a kitten pouncing, and Blair's smiling back before she realises it.
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