[fic] queens and their mirrors
fic: queens and their mirrors
fandom: gossip girl, tvd, btvs
characters: blair, jenny, dawn, elena (serena, dan, chuck, nate, alaric, isobel)
word count: 1,600
prompt: Saltzman sisters Elena and Dawn move into Blair's territory just as Jenny tries to make a grab for the throne
warnings: implied siblingcest(ish)
written for my own prompt fluffyfrolicker's AU comment ficathon and also keeping in mind the femslashbb August theme: Foreign
They come at the worst time.
Jenny is smirking at her and she's losing ranks so quickly she can feel her power slipping through her fingers. Like she's in some kind of terrible scifi movie like Nate is always trying to get her to watch and enjoy, her life force bright red strips of light that seep away from her and into Jenny fucking Humphrey. Jenny's eyes would light up red and she'd smile snarkily.
Instead she's just looking at her with wide eyes.
Like the little bitch didn't plan this all out.
Like this isn't what she wanted, to take her crown.
(For what it's worth, you’re my queen.)
(Has she said that yet?)
(Why would she?)
They walk in while Jenny is staring at her wide-eyed and everything is in flux, no one really knowing what side to choose. Maybe they planned it.
They're fucking awful. Unfashionable but somehow, a trainwreck of fashion. They make Serena's determinedly-messy hair and carefully mismatched accessories look positively unkempt next to their long, sleek locks and CONVERSE shoes. Next to Serena, Blair never felt over-dressed or stuffy, her headbands were a perfect complement to Serena’s crooked smile and Serena’s bangles the right shade of whimsy next to Blair’s pearls.
Look, maybe she didn’t rule the Upper East Side with Serena van der Woodsen’s help (explicitly) but it definitely didn’t hurt. They were thin without trying, 4.0 students without the bags under their eyes from stress, wealthy with a healthy shade of pride, beautiful without making it seem like a competition in the strictest sense. Somehow, though, the Saltzman sisters made everything that had for so many years appear as a natural state of fact - suddenly seemed and felt forced, fake, like they had any reason at all to try very hard.
(“Never make it look hard.”
“What?” Jenny had asked, nose wrinkled up, as she handed her a cup of coffee.
“Anything. Everything.”)
(Queens don’t have to try, they simply are.)
The Saltzman sisters jog in the morning before classes in worn out yoga pants with stains on the knees and fleece sweaters that bag at the elbows, Elena’s hair in a high pony that bounces and Dawn’s in a low braid that flicks across her back. They smile at passerby and keep perfect pace with each other. They stretch out leaning against one another, a hand on a shoulder, feet raised up on a shoulder, as if that’s a perfectly respectable position for girls to be in at four in the morning.
Gossip Girl has pics up every day for the first week.
And then other girls start running, the boys on the track team complain for one day and then stop, it’s no longer cool, it’s normalized.
Running? Sweating? Stinking? Showing the effort?
They should work out in the privacy of their own homes - or at least at a club - like any respectable person would. In clean, never-before-worn designer gear, not sweats with holes on the thigh.
The Saltzman sisters study with books all around them at all hours of the day. Like the scholarship kids do, as if they can’t just snap their fingers and know the answer. Blair’s been perfecting the art of that snap for years. She knows all the answers. She studies at home, in-between her mother’s charity functions and school events and shopping and making sure Gossip Girl sees her in all the right places. Elena taps her pen against her leg before an exam. Dawn scribbles notes in her books while walking to and from class in the hallways.
They actually turned down an invitation to have dinner with her because they needed to study.
She’s heard rumors that they enjoy spending the weekends with their parents, happily and devotedly married Alaric and Isobel Saltzman. They do truly horrendous things like camping and hiking in tents with their belongings strapped to their backs like pack mules.
Blair heard a girl in the hallway say with a sigh that it’s so nice they have great parents and how lucky they are to spend so much time with them. Pfft. Parents are for holidays and luncheons and family is messy, not Disney-sticky-sweet.
(Aren’t they?)
They dote upon Jenny Humphrey as though she was god’s gift to the earth. They bring her strange presents from unfashionably foreign places like Nairobi or Carrefour or Havana, but have never seen Paris or Venice. She’s even caught Dawn Saltzman braiding Jenny’s hair like she was a doll on the steps of the Met, her long fingers tangling through long blonde hair as Elena quizzed them in what sounded like Russian or something.
(“Hungarian,” Serena says with a smile, as though that explains everything.)
(“Are you sure that’s not what’s bothering you? That they chose Jenny as their pet instead of you?”)
(Blair Waldorf is no one’s pet.)
The first party they attend is on the arms of college-aged brothers, Southern gentry from the look of them. Elena has a very pretty fight with the older one even though she came with the younger and they both storm out looking somehow simultaneously harried and amused. Later, her mother will ask how it was possible the Salvatore brothers managed to be at one of her social engagements and Blair never thought to introduce herself. Even Gossip Girl was slow on the uptake on that one, too busy following Serena up and down the East Side through a series of cab-induced disasters and a broken heel.
(Sometimes, Gossip Girl is a little short-sighted, Blair thinks with a sigh.)
She keeps waiting for them to fuck up, somehow. To make a glorious disaster of themselves and set the record straight. They are human, they make mistakes, they are not gods. And yet, they don’t. They laugh without seducing, they seduce without breaking, they break others without exposing themselves. Nate says something rather ridiculous about them not having the ability to manipulate. Chuck says something rather poetical about them being beautiful engineers in the art of manipulation. (“They are making a science out of an art and telling everyone that they’ve done nothing at all. And we’re all buying what they’re selling because the product is so damn beautiful.”) Serena says that she likes them and shrugs as though that’s the end of it. Dan gets a rather dreamy look in his eye and says something under his breath about life that she ignores, but gets the feeling she should have stuck around to hear. (“They cry when they break you, like it’s your fault to begin with. Like their whole life they’ve been hiding from this moment and you showing them what they’ve done to you is the worst thing you’ll ever do.”) She keeps waiting for a secret or a plot to unhinge them, but anything she tries only threatens to expose her.
(As if her world wasn’t clear on what she was and what she’s always been.)
(Only now it seems wrong.)
They dote upon her as if she was god’s gift to the earth, and she can’t believe a word they say. They bring her gifts from far-off, exotic places that smell like spice and earth. Dawn links her pinkie around hers when they walk through the halls and Elena blows her kiss when she passes them, jogging, in her car on the weekends. They dote upon her as they dote upon everyone. Everyone is an object for them to pick up and play with as they choose. There is no hierarchy to anything in their eyes.
(She’s longing to be at the top and she tells herself that it’s because she’s been there all along and they need to acknowledge it.)
(She’s longing to be at the top and there’s nothing else now but that.)
She watches them kiss, lips bright red in the moonlight, and hair loose about their waists, just as always. They laugh and explain adoption, lost and found as though those are words that mean anything at all. She thinks of their lips when she takes a bath later that night, hands slipping beneath the water, her moans muffled and harsh. She watches them swirl around each other as if there was only ever the two of them and the entire universe never mattered at all until it created them, long and lean.
(“You can’t be the center of every universe, leave theirs alone,” Dan says with hooded eyes. They both pretend he doesn’t understand.)
(She pretends not to understand herself and it’s not her first lie.)
She asks them, fingers light on her own martini glass, what is it like to kiss your sister as a party act. She acts like it is disdain that drives her, and not desire. She says it with her patented Blair Waldorf, Queen Bee voice. It is a voice that has brought girls to tears and boys to their knees. Dawn laughs, takes the glass from her, and says nothing at all. Elena doesn’t laugh, she laughs far less than her sister, she leans over and kisses Dawn on the neck once, leaving behind a smear of red lipstick. Elena watches Blair the whole time, eyes fixed and hard, unforgiving, unrelenting. “Kissing your sister is a lot like kissing a mirror as a child, it’s saying, I am beautiful.” Blair laughs hollowly, “So you are a narcissist.” Dawn looks at her as if to say aren’t you? Chuck or Serena pulls her away, saving her from what probably would come next.
(“They’ve already won the crown, Jenny. You didn’t hold onto it tight enough.”
“And yet, I’m still wearing it, what are you doing?”)
(When she spreads Jenny Humphrey’s legs out on her satin sheets and smiles as Jenny moans above her, Blair tells herself that it has everything to do with lust and nothing whatsoever to do with looking in the mirror.)
(When she meets the Saltzman sisters for luncheon the next day, they talk of the usual things and nothing on their mind. When she pulls them into the bathroom and locks the door behind her, no one pretends not to understand.)
(Queens don’t have to try, they simply are.)
fandom: gossip girl, tvd, btvs
characters: blair, jenny, dawn, elena (serena, dan, chuck, nate, alaric, isobel)
word count: 1,600
prompt: Saltzman sisters Elena and Dawn move into Blair's territory just as Jenny tries to make a grab for the throne
warnings: implied siblingcest(ish)
written for my own prompt fluffyfrolicker's AU comment ficathon and also keeping in mind the femslashbb August theme: Foreign
They come at the worst time.
Jenny is smirking at her and she's losing ranks so quickly she can feel her power slipping through her fingers. Like she's in some kind of terrible scifi movie like Nate is always trying to get her to watch and enjoy, her life force bright red strips of light that seep away from her and into Jenny fucking Humphrey. Jenny's eyes would light up red and she'd smile snarkily.
Instead she's just looking at her with wide eyes.
Like the little bitch didn't plan this all out.
Like this isn't what she wanted, to take her crown.
(For what it's worth, you’re my queen.)
(Has she said that yet?)
(Why would she?)
They walk in while Jenny is staring at her wide-eyed and everything is in flux, no one really knowing what side to choose. Maybe they planned it.
They're fucking awful. Unfashionable but somehow, a trainwreck of fashion. They make Serena's determinedly-messy hair and carefully mismatched accessories look positively unkempt next to their long, sleek locks and CONVERSE shoes. Next to Serena, Blair never felt over-dressed or stuffy, her headbands were a perfect complement to Serena’s crooked smile and Serena’s bangles the right shade of whimsy next to Blair’s pearls.
Look, maybe she didn’t rule the Upper East Side with Serena van der Woodsen’s help (explicitly) but it definitely didn’t hurt. They were thin without trying, 4.0 students without the bags under their eyes from stress, wealthy with a healthy shade of pride, beautiful without making it seem like a competition in the strictest sense. Somehow, though, the Saltzman sisters made everything that had for so many years appear as a natural state of fact - suddenly seemed and felt forced, fake, like they had any reason at all to try very hard.
(“Never make it look hard.”
“What?” Jenny had asked, nose wrinkled up, as she handed her a cup of coffee.
“Anything. Everything.”)
(Queens don’t have to try, they simply are.)
The Saltzman sisters jog in the morning before classes in worn out yoga pants with stains on the knees and fleece sweaters that bag at the elbows, Elena’s hair in a high pony that bounces and Dawn’s in a low braid that flicks across her back. They smile at passerby and keep perfect pace with each other. They stretch out leaning against one another, a hand on a shoulder, feet raised up on a shoulder, as if that’s a perfectly respectable position for girls to be in at four in the morning.
Gossip Girl has pics up every day for the first week.
And then other girls start running, the boys on the track team complain for one day and then stop, it’s no longer cool, it’s normalized.
Running? Sweating? Stinking? Showing the effort?
They should work out in the privacy of their own homes - or at least at a club - like any respectable person would. In clean, never-before-worn designer gear, not sweats with holes on the thigh.
The Saltzman sisters study with books all around them at all hours of the day. Like the scholarship kids do, as if they can’t just snap their fingers and know the answer. Blair’s been perfecting the art of that snap for years. She knows all the answers. She studies at home, in-between her mother’s charity functions and school events and shopping and making sure Gossip Girl sees her in all the right places. Elena taps her pen against her leg before an exam. Dawn scribbles notes in her books while walking to and from class in the hallways.
They actually turned down an invitation to have dinner with her because they needed to study.
She’s heard rumors that they enjoy spending the weekends with their parents, happily and devotedly married Alaric and Isobel Saltzman. They do truly horrendous things like camping and hiking in tents with their belongings strapped to their backs like pack mules.
Blair heard a girl in the hallway say with a sigh that it’s so nice they have great parents and how lucky they are to spend so much time with them. Pfft. Parents are for holidays and luncheons and family is messy, not Disney-sticky-sweet.
(Aren’t they?)
They dote upon Jenny Humphrey as though she was god’s gift to the earth. They bring her strange presents from unfashionably foreign places like Nairobi or Carrefour or Havana, but have never seen Paris or Venice. She’s even caught Dawn Saltzman braiding Jenny’s hair like she was a doll on the steps of the Met, her long fingers tangling through long blonde hair as Elena quizzed them in what sounded like Russian or something.
(“Hungarian,” Serena says with a smile, as though that explains everything.)
(“Are you sure that’s not what’s bothering you? That they chose Jenny as their pet instead of you?”)
(Blair Waldorf is no one’s pet.)
The first party they attend is on the arms of college-aged brothers, Southern gentry from the look of them. Elena has a very pretty fight with the older one even though she came with the younger and they both storm out looking somehow simultaneously harried and amused. Later, her mother will ask how it was possible the Salvatore brothers managed to be at one of her social engagements and Blair never thought to introduce herself. Even Gossip Girl was slow on the uptake on that one, too busy following Serena up and down the East Side through a series of cab-induced disasters and a broken heel.
(Sometimes, Gossip Girl is a little short-sighted, Blair thinks with a sigh.)
She keeps waiting for them to fuck up, somehow. To make a glorious disaster of themselves and set the record straight. They are human, they make mistakes, they are not gods. And yet, they don’t. They laugh without seducing, they seduce without breaking, they break others without exposing themselves. Nate says something rather ridiculous about them not having the ability to manipulate. Chuck says something rather poetical about them being beautiful engineers in the art of manipulation. (“They are making a science out of an art and telling everyone that they’ve done nothing at all. And we’re all buying what they’re selling because the product is so damn beautiful.”) Serena says that she likes them and shrugs as though that’s the end of it. Dan gets a rather dreamy look in his eye and says something under his breath about life that she ignores, but gets the feeling she should have stuck around to hear. (“They cry when they break you, like it’s your fault to begin with. Like their whole life they’ve been hiding from this moment and you showing them what they’ve done to you is the worst thing you’ll ever do.”) She keeps waiting for a secret or a plot to unhinge them, but anything she tries only threatens to expose her.
(As if her world wasn’t clear on what she was and what she’s always been.)
(Only now it seems wrong.)
They dote upon her as if she was god’s gift to the earth, and she can’t believe a word they say. They bring her gifts from far-off, exotic places that smell like spice and earth. Dawn links her pinkie around hers when they walk through the halls and Elena blows her kiss when she passes them, jogging, in her car on the weekends. They dote upon her as they dote upon everyone. Everyone is an object for them to pick up and play with as they choose. There is no hierarchy to anything in their eyes.
(She’s longing to be at the top and she tells herself that it’s because she’s been there all along and they need to acknowledge it.)
(She’s longing to be at the top and there’s nothing else now but that.)
She watches them kiss, lips bright red in the moonlight, and hair loose about their waists, just as always. They laugh and explain adoption, lost and found as though those are words that mean anything at all. She thinks of their lips when she takes a bath later that night, hands slipping beneath the water, her moans muffled and harsh. She watches them swirl around each other as if there was only ever the two of them and the entire universe never mattered at all until it created them, long and lean.
(“You can’t be the center of every universe, leave theirs alone,” Dan says with hooded eyes. They both pretend he doesn’t understand.)
(She pretends not to understand herself and it’s not her first lie.)
She asks them, fingers light on her own martini glass, what is it like to kiss your sister as a party act. She acts like it is disdain that drives her, and not desire. She says it with her patented Blair Waldorf, Queen Bee voice. It is a voice that has brought girls to tears and boys to their knees. Dawn laughs, takes the glass from her, and says nothing at all. Elena doesn’t laugh, she laughs far less than her sister, she leans over and kisses Dawn on the neck once, leaving behind a smear of red lipstick. Elena watches Blair the whole time, eyes fixed and hard, unforgiving, unrelenting. “Kissing your sister is a lot like kissing a mirror as a child, it’s saying, I am beautiful.” Blair laughs hollowly, “So you are a narcissist.” Dawn looks at her as if to say aren’t you? Chuck or Serena pulls her away, saving her from what probably would come next.
(“They’ve already won the crown, Jenny. You didn’t hold onto it tight enough.”
“And yet, I’m still wearing it, what are you doing?”)
(When she spreads Jenny Humphrey’s legs out on her satin sheets and smiles as Jenny moans above her, Blair tells herself that it has everything to do with lust and nothing whatsoever to do with looking in the mirror.)
(When she meets the Saltzman sisters for luncheon the next day, they talk of the usual things and nothing on their mind. When she pulls them into the bathroom and locks the door behind her, no one pretends not to understand.)
(Queens don’t have to try, they simply are.)