Fic: Not Your Girl (Jenny/Blair, Gossip Girl) Rated T
Title: Not Your Girl
Author: Sionnain
Fandom: Gossip Girl
Pairing/characters: Jenny/Blair (unrequited)
Rating: Teen
Prompt: 349. Gossip Girl: Jenny Humphrey/Blair Waldorf. Jenny's conflicting feelings about Blair and why she is so interested in being friends with the other girl. Can be unrequited.
Summary: Jenny wants to be friends with Blair Waldorf more than anything. Sometimes, she's not sure why.
Author's Notes: Thank you very much to Carlos_thedwarf and Resolute for the beta! Any remaining mistakes are my own. This was written for the Lgbtfest, and the title and quote are from the song by Bree Sharp.
Not Your Girl
Your fingers string me like a pearl/You say I'm not your kind of girl...
Jenny sees Blair at school and wonders, sometimes, why she wants so very badly to be friends with her. She walks down the hall, or home from school, and she goes over the list in her head, her iPod shuffle running through songs she barely hears. This list is a list of reasons Why Blair Is A Bad Idea, or why Blair Is Not Worthy Of Her Friendship, just like those articles she's seen in Cosmo Girl about only being friends with people who deserve it, not to not sell yourself short just to be popular.
Are your friends worthy of you? Take this simple quiz and find out!
There aren't any simple quizzes, though. There's just Jenny, with her hopeful eyes and her eagerness to please, and whenever she sees Blair in the hallway she stops and straightens and tries to smile, make it enough but not too much. She pretends her outfit isn't mussed and that her hair isn't windblown, because Blair likes perfection and Jenny knows anything short of perfect won't be good enough. So Jenny tries her best, and smiles, and refuses to die a little inside when Blair's eyes slide right over her. Her body warms treacherously, like slipping into a bubble bath, when Blair deigns to speak to her; even if her words prick like ice on bare skin, cut like barbs vicious and sharp. Jenny is pretty sure smile even when your would-be friend says something callous about your outfit isn't an option on the quiz, and if it is, it's the one everyone knows not to pick.
Everyone knows you're supposed to go with the answers in the middle of the list. Those answers are the ones that, at the end, gives you a result like, you seem to have a good head on your shoulders about your relationship or he seems to be into you, but not like a stalker. You never want the one at the top with the most points, which usually says you're an ego maniac (you think the world revolves around you) or the one at the bottom with the least points, which says you're a doormat with no personality. (Try having a little pride in what you bring to the table.) You want the middle score, the average. But Jenny knows something the quiz doesn't; average isn't good enough for Blair Waldorf.
Jenny does this quizzes and picks all the right answers with the right point values, but she knows she's lying, especially if she's thinking about Blair. She knows she's the girl at the bottom, the one who wants nothing more than to catch the attention of the girl at the top. Popularity, and the quest for it, it's not like it's something foreign and strange. It's as natural to girls Jenny's age as breathing, isn't it? She's supposed to want to be pretty, to be popular, to have the right friends and get invited to the right parties. She's supposed to want this, isn't she? So it's not weird, then, that she does.
So why does feel weird? Why does Blair make her feel so...
Weird?
If she paid attention more in English, Jenny thinks she'd have a better word for it. Cosmo Girl isn't known for its scintillating vocabulary.
* * *
At night, Jenny lays on her bed and thinks about Blair. She runs her fingers over her stomach, wishing it was as flat, as toned as she imagines Blair's is. Her fingers touch her body and she feels cold, a little, and hot, too. Like maybe she wants the window open, wants to feel something cool caress her skin. But she doesn't get up, she lays in the darkness and feels her stomach rise and fall with her breath and thinks about possible conversation topics; movies, boys, music, shopping.
She tells herself she spends so much time thinking about Blair because the articles always say to do that. To find something you have in common and talk about that. She's read articles on being popular in Cosmo Girl, every article, actually, even the ones in Cosmopolitan about being friends with people you work with (though Jenny thinks it must be exhausting, trying to be popular your whole life--was this never going to end?) and making people like you. Oh, they don't call it that, but that's what they mean by things like how to strike up a friendship with that nice girl in your homeroom.
Jenny doesn't have things in common with Blair, that's really the problem. Blair is fabulously rich, popular, smart and beautiful. And bitchy, in that way only really popular girls who are fabulously rich and smart and beautiful can be, and not nice at all. Jenny is...what? Sort of short, with round eyes and a narrow chin. She's not rich at all, even if her dad swears their loft is really going to be worth something when this neighborhood is revitalized, and she looks like a fifteen-year-old in her uniform. Which is appropriate, but she wants to look like Blair--all sleek grace and classic features, fox-like eyes and a posture like she knows the world is just waiting to curtsy when she walks by.
Jenny wonders, sometimes, if she wants to be Blair's friend, or if she wants to be Blair. There may be some other option, something else that makes her feel uncomfortable and vaguely ashamed, but Jenny doesn't think about that often. Of course she wants to be Blair's friend, what girl at Constance doesn't? They mimic Blair too, don't they? Her way of dressing, her speech, the way she lightly licks the curve of her yogurt spoon when she's finished. That's what Jenny wants, too. Maybe she finds something oddly graceful in the way Blair tilts her head when she laughs, finds something riveting in the smooth curve of her throat. But that's okay, isn't it, because she's doing what the articles say, she's noticing.
At night she goes over every encounter she had that day with Blair, every sighting, every casual glance and snide comment. Somewhere in the middle of it, Jenny always falls asleep pretending it went somehow different; that Blair hooked arms with her in the hall, made room for her on the steps, held out her yogurt spoon with a sly smile and an inviting glance.
Sometimes Jenny goes to school with a half-formed idea of something to say to Blair, some hurried throw-away casual-sounding conversational snippet she thought of while applying her makeup in the mirror at home, ignoring Dan's continual admonishes to hurry up. Oh! I like MAC lipstick, too! But then Blair shows up, hair gleaming and eyes like some polished gem, all cold sparkles and hard edges, and Jenny never knows quite what to say, and all her words die on her lips.
On which, as it happens, she's wearing Cover Girl.
* * *
Jenny isn't sure when the first time is that she thinks about kissing Blair, but she's pretty sure she's in class. The problem is, the second she thinks about it she can't stop thinking about it, and...God, if it was hard to talk to Blair before, what is she supposed to do now? Jenny is really sure this isn't in any of the Cosmo Girl quizzes; nowhere is there the do you think about kissing her option, and if so, it's minus a zillion points and it's the one you should never, ever pick.
It's just that sometimes in class or when she's bored, all she can think of is Blair's mouth, petulant and smirking, pressed against her own. In her head Blair's mouth tastes like cinnamon, maybe a little spicy, maybe a little painful. Jenny thinks this means she's a little too obsessed with being popular, or maybe she's like, trying to become Blair through osmosis or something? That must be it, because, God, why would Jenny ever want to kiss Blair? Jenny wants to kiss Nate Archibald, or Pete Wentz. Zac Efron, maybe. But definitely not Blair Waldorf.
There are easier ways of getting some MAC lipstick, Jenny tells herself firmly. And being Blair's friend. She'll totally go ballistic if you do that. She doesn't seem to like kissing Nate in public. Blair's too reserved. She wouldn't like it if you did that, not at all. And why would you?
Blair won't kiss Jenny back, that's for sure. Won't press her mouth against Jenny's, put those long fingers on Jenny's shoulders, twist them in her hair where it hurts and makes Jenny feel like she's trapped. Jenny thinks she fantasizes about this because it would be proof, irrefutable proof, that Blair likes her. You don't kiss people you don't like, right? Even if it hurts a little? And then she wouldn't have to worry about saying the right thing, about dressing in the right clothes and knowing all the right names of expensive shoes. One kiss, and that would be it. Blair would like her, Jenny would be--
What? Popular, certainly. And kissing Blair Waldorf. Those were good things. Wait, no. The first was the good thing, the being popular. The second--well, she wouldn't have to kiss Blair after she was popular, right? It would only have to be the one time.
The bell rings, and Jenny is still at her desk. She's doodling something on her notebook, unintelligible swirls, only half-aware of what she's doing. They are not B's, they are not W's, but Jenny doesn't know what they are supposed to be. The ink stains on the paper are stark, curved black lines sharp against the soft white of the page. They don't make any sense. Nothing make sense and she feels hot, flushed, like maybe she has a fever.
Maybe she's getting sick.
* * *
After the sleepover incident--she likes to think of it as an incident, something that is major, like a political event they learn about in Current Events, Watergate or Sexgate or something--Jenny doesn't want to be Blair's friend, not anymore. She no longer lies awake and thinks about things she can talk to Blair about, no longer comes up with involved conversational topics that will lead Blair to exclaim, in profound and grateful shock, you know, I like you, Jenny Humphrey. Little J. That nickname, the one that thrilled her like Christmas morning or birthday cake or other sweet and cherished things, it wasn't because Blair liked her. It was because Blair thought she was worthless.
Jenny is not worthless.
Blair wanted to hurt her. Blair wanted to pull her wings off, like some sort of kid they put in counseling for torturing butterflies or something like that, just because--because, what? Blair had nothing better to do? Jenny had seen an episode of Montel Williams about teen psychopaths. The Danger Next Door. That was Blair. An evil, conniving bitch. And Jenny should not feel guilty because she stood up to her, because she gave Blair a taste of how it felt to be treated like nothing.
The Danger Next Door, the Jenny Humphrey Show.
Jenny feels satisfaction when the girls turn on Blair, when it's Blair standing at the foot of the steps and looking up at her, Jenny Humphrey, Little J. She takes Blair's place and she takes Blair's friends, and she doesn't think about being popular or Cosmo quizzes or any of it. She thinks about finding Blair in the hallway, pushing her back against the wall. Leaning close, next to that perfect skin, inhaling Blair's scent that smells like something that burns.
Maybe I'll let you have it all back, Jenny says to Blair, and the other girl is trapped and doesn't have anywhere to go. Maybe I just need one thing from you and you can have it all back like it was.
What is it? Blair will ask, proud and defiant even then, and Jenny won't answer, she'll just kiss her. The kiss Jenny couldn't ask for before, now she'll just take it, because she can. And it won't be because she wants to be Blair's friend. It will just be because Jenny doesn't like her, not anymore, and she wants Blair to know. That will be it. That will be all.
Right?
Author: Sionnain
Fandom: Gossip Girl
Pairing/characters: Jenny/Blair (unrequited)
Rating: Teen
Prompt: 349. Gossip Girl: Jenny Humphrey/Blair Waldorf. Jenny's conflicting feelings about Blair and why she is so interested in being friends with the other girl. Can be unrequited.
Summary: Jenny wants to be friends with Blair Waldorf more than anything. Sometimes, she's not sure why.
Author's Notes: Thank you very much to Carlos_thedwarf and Resolute for the beta! Any remaining mistakes are my own. This was written for the Lgbtfest, and the title and quote are from the song by Bree Sharp.
Not Your Girl
Your fingers string me like a pearl/You say I'm not your kind of girl...
Jenny sees Blair at school and wonders, sometimes, why she wants so very badly to be friends with her. She walks down the hall, or home from school, and she goes over the list in her head, her iPod shuffle running through songs she barely hears. This list is a list of reasons Why Blair Is A Bad Idea, or why Blair Is Not Worthy Of Her Friendship, just like those articles she's seen in Cosmo Girl about only being friends with people who deserve it, not to not sell yourself short just to be popular.
Are your friends worthy of you? Take this simple quiz and find out!
There aren't any simple quizzes, though. There's just Jenny, with her hopeful eyes and her eagerness to please, and whenever she sees Blair in the hallway she stops and straightens and tries to smile, make it enough but not too much. She pretends her outfit isn't mussed and that her hair isn't windblown, because Blair likes perfection and Jenny knows anything short of perfect won't be good enough. So Jenny tries her best, and smiles, and refuses to die a little inside when Blair's eyes slide right over her. Her body warms treacherously, like slipping into a bubble bath, when Blair deigns to speak to her; even if her words prick like ice on bare skin, cut like barbs vicious and sharp. Jenny is pretty sure smile even when your would-be friend says something callous about your outfit isn't an option on the quiz, and if it is, it's the one everyone knows not to pick.
Everyone knows you're supposed to go with the answers in the middle of the list. Those answers are the ones that, at the end, gives you a result like, you seem to have a good head on your shoulders about your relationship or he seems to be into you, but not like a stalker. You never want the one at the top with the most points, which usually says you're an ego maniac (you think the world revolves around you) or the one at the bottom with the least points, which says you're a doormat with no personality. (Try having a little pride in what you bring to the table.) You want the middle score, the average. But Jenny knows something the quiz doesn't; average isn't good enough for Blair Waldorf.
Jenny does this quizzes and picks all the right answers with the right point values, but she knows she's lying, especially if she's thinking about Blair. She knows she's the girl at the bottom, the one who wants nothing more than to catch the attention of the girl at the top. Popularity, and the quest for it, it's not like it's something foreign and strange. It's as natural to girls Jenny's age as breathing, isn't it? She's supposed to want to be pretty, to be popular, to have the right friends and get invited to the right parties. She's supposed to want this, isn't she? So it's not weird, then, that she does.
So why does feel weird? Why does Blair make her feel so...
Weird?
If she paid attention more in English, Jenny thinks she'd have a better word for it. Cosmo Girl isn't known for its scintillating vocabulary.
* * *
At night, Jenny lays on her bed and thinks about Blair. She runs her fingers over her stomach, wishing it was as flat, as toned as she imagines Blair's is. Her fingers touch her body and she feels cold, a little, and hot, too. Like maybe she wants the window open, wants to feel something cool caress her skin. But she doesn't get up, she lays in the darkness and feels her stomach rise and fall with her breath and thinks about possible conversation topics; movies, boys, music, shopping.
She tells herself she spends so much time thinking about Blair because the articles always say to do that. To find something you have in common and talk about that. She's read articles on being popular in Cosmo Girl, every article, actually, even the ones in Cosmopolitan about being friends with people you work with (though Jenny thinks it must be exhausting, trying to be popular your whole life--was this never going to end?) and making people like you. Oh, they don't call it that, but that's what they mean by things like how to strike up a friendship with that nice girl in your homeroom.
Jenny doesn't have things in common with Blair, that's really the problem. Blair is fabulously rich, popular, smart and beautiful. And bitchy, in that way only really popular girls who are fabulously rich and smart and beautiful can be, and not nice at all. Jenny is...what? Sort of short, with round eyes and a narrow chin. She's not rich at all, even if her dad swears their loft is really going to be worth something when this neighborhood is revitalized, and she looks like a fifteen-year-old in her uniform. Which is appropriate, but she wants to look like Blair--all sleek grace and classic features, fox-like eyes and a posture like she knows the world is just waiting to curtsy when she walks by.
Jenny wonders, sometimes, if she wants to be Blair's friend, or if she wants to be Blair. There may be some other option, something else that makes her feel uncomfortable and vaguely ashamed, but Jenny doesn't think about that often. Of course she wants to be Blair's friend, what girl at Constance doesn't? They mimic Blair too, don't they? Her way of dressing, her speech, the way she lightly licks the curve of her yogurt spoon when she's finished. That's what Jenny wants, too. Maybe she finds something oddly graceful in the way Blair tilts her head when she laughs, finds something riveting in the smooth curve of her throat. But that's okay, isn't it, because she's doing what the articles say, she's noticing.
At night she goes over every encounter she had that day with Blair, every sighting, every casual glance and snide comment. Somewhere in the middle of it, Jenny always falls asleep pretending it went somehow different; that Blair hooked arms with her in the hall, made room for her on the steps, held out her yogurt spoon with a sly smile and an inviting glance.
Sometimes Jenny goes to school with a half-formed idea of something to say to Blair, some hurried throw-away casual-sounding conversational snippet she thought of while applying her makeup in the mirror at home, ignoring Dan's continual admonishes to hurry up. Oh! I like MAC lipstick, too! But then Blair shows up, hair gleaming and eyes like some polished gem, all cold sparkles and hard edges, and Jenny never knows quite what to say, and all her words die on her lips.
On which, as it happens, she's wearing Cover Girl.
* * *
Jenny isn't sure when the first time is that she thinks about kissing Blair, but she's pretty sure she's in class. The problem is, the second she thinks about it she can't stop thinking about it, and...God, if it was hard to talk to Blair before, what is she supposed to do now? Jenny is really sure this isn't in any of the Cosmo Girl quizzes; nowhere is there the do you think about kissing her option, and if so, it's minus a zillion points and it's the one you should never, ever pick.
It's just that sometimes in class or when she's bored, all she can think of is Blair's mouth, petulant and smirking, pressed against her own. In her head Blair's mouth tastes like cinnamon, maybe a little spicy, maybe a little painful. Jenny thinks this means she's a little too obsessed with being popular, or maybe she's like, trying to become Blair through osmosis or something? That must be it, because, God, why would Jenny ever want to kiss Blair? Jenny wants to kiss Nate Archibald, or Pete Wentz. Zac Efron, maybe. But definitely not Blair Waldorf.
There are easier ways of getting some MAC lipstick, Jenny tells herself firmly. And being Blair's friend. She'll totally go ballistic if you do that. She doesn't seem to like kissing Nate in public. Blair's too reserved. She wouldn't like it if you did that, not at all. And why would you?
Blair won't kiss Jenny back, that's for sure. Won't press her mouth against Jenny's, put those long fingers on Jenny's shoulders, twist them in her hair where it hurts and makes Jenny feel like she's trapped. Jenny thinks she fantasizes about this because it would be proof, irrefutable proof, that Blair likes her. You don't kiss people you don't like, right? Even if it hurts a little? And then she wouldn't have to worry about saying the right thing, about dressing in the right clothes and knowing all the right names of expensive shoes. One kiss, and that would be it. Blair would like her, Jenny would be--
What? Popular, certainly. And kissing Blair Waldorf. Those were good things. Wait, no. The first was the good thing, the being popular. The second--well, she wouldn't have to kiss Blair after she was popular, right? It would only have to be the one time.
The bell rings, and Jenny is still at her desk. She's doodling something on her notebook, unintelligible swirls, only half-aware of what she's doing. They are not B's, they are not W's, but Jenny doesn't know what they are supposed to be. The ink stains on the paper are stark, curved black lines sharp against the soft white of the page. They don't make any sense. Nothing make sense and she feels hot, flushed, like maybe she has a fever.
Maybe she's getting sick.
* * *
After the sleepover incident--she likes to think of it as an incident, something that is major, like a political event they learn about in Current Events, Watergate or Sexgate or something--Jenny doesn't want to be Blair's friend, not anymore. She no longer lies awake and thinks about things she can talk to Blair about, no longer comes up with involved conversational topics that will lead Blair to exclaim, in profound and grateful shock, you know, I like you, Jenny Humphrey. Little J. That nickname, the one that thrilled her like Christmas morning or birthday cake or other sweet and cherished things, it wasn't because Blair liked her. It was because Blair thought she was worthless.
Jenny is not worthless.
Blair wanted to hurt her. Blair wanted to pull her wings off, like some sort of kid they put in counseling for torturing butterflies or something like that, just because--because, what? Blair had nothing better to do? Jenny had seen an episode of Montel Williams about teen psychopaths. The Danger Next Door. That was Blair. An evil, conniving bitch. And Jenny should not feel guilty because she stood up to her, because she gave Blair a taste of how it felt to be treated like nothing.
The Danger Next Door, the Jenny Humphrey Show.
Jenny feels satisfaction when the girls turn on Blair, when it's Blair standing at the foot of the steps and looking up at her, Jenny Humphrey, Little J. She takes Blair's place and she takes Blair's friends, and she doesn't think about being popular or Cosmo quizzes or any of it. She thinks about finding Blair in the hallway, pushing her back against the wall. Leaning close, next to that perfect skin, inhaling Blair's scent that smells like something that burns.
Maybe I'll let you have it all back, Jenny says to Blair, and the other girl is trapped and doesn't have anywhere to go. Maybe I just need one thing from you and you can have it all back like it was.
What is it? Blair will ask, proud and defiant even then, and Jenny won't answer, she'll just kiss her. The kiss Jenny couldn't ask for before, now she'll just take it, because she can. And it won't be because she wants to be Blair's friend. It will just be because Jenny doesn't like her, not anymore, and she wants Blair to know. That will be it. That will be all.
Right?