SAY A LITTLE PRAYER
gossip girl. 8886 words. inspired by/based on my best friend's wedding.
serena, blair, carter, dan. one-sided serena/blair. dan/blair. serena & carter bros 4 lyf.
summary: Blair's birthday came first, of course, and they'd celebrated drunk in Paris, giggly and silly, and Blair had teased, Now if you don't get married in the next year, you're mine.
note: For anonymous! My deep apologies that this is a day late, but as you can see it ended up being...longer than anticipated, haha. I wrote this fic in something of a fugue state; I busted through it in the last three days in such a fever that I barely even remember doing it. So...that was weird. But I hope you like this! It was a v. fun prompt and I love this movie.
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"You're in a good mood tonight," Carter observes.
Serena makes a face at him but even so she can't quell the little flutter of excitement she feels every time she looks at her phone, sitting face-up on the table to the left of her plate. "I'm always in a good mood."
She and Carter have been in Ibiza for a week so far and it's been a good week, all sun and sand, dancing at night, taking cute outfit pics for the blog against a backdrop of picturesque streets. It's one more stop on the European tour that never seems to end, and it's been at least a month since either of them was really home – though home is a tenuous concept at best.
Finally, Serena tells him, "Blair's supposed to call me tonight."
Carter just lifts his eyebrows, waiting for more. "Is that it? I wasn't aware talking to Blair made it a national holiday."
Serena flicks an olive at him. "It's not just that." It's something she's been thinking about a lot, actually, and it's giving her a fiddly, romantic feeling that might just be the result of too much champagne on foreign coasts – or might be something more. "Okay, so, when Blair and I were little… Really little, I think we were in the first grade, we made this pact that if neither of us were married by the time we were twenty-eight, we'd get married." Twenty-eight had seemed so old then, so impossible to think that they'd ever be grown up women with glamorous lives, like something out of a movie.
"And your birthday is next week," he supplies. "Beautiful, forgive me if I never took you for the marrying kind."
"I don't know what kind I am," she defers, swirling her wine around her glass a little. But she has been thinking about it. It had turned into something of a joke between her and Blair throughout the years whenever a boyfriend or girlfriend called it quits, a silly little promise reaffirmed in the middle of ice cream cries and movie marathons. Blair's birthday came first, of course, and they'd celebrated drunk in Paris, giggly and silly, and Blair had teased, Now if you don't get married in the next year, you're mine. "You know those kinds of things always meant more to Blair."
Making a deal with Blair, even and perhaps especially a casual one, was like signing your name in the devil's book with blood. Binding and non-negotiable.
"Yeah, but I'm not sure she's gonna propose to you over the phone because of something a six year old decided."
"I'm not saying she is," Serena protests, but there's that fiddly feeling in her stomach again. "It just seems like a coincidence, that's all." Carter still looks awfully disbelieving, so Serena decides to steer away from the topic. "Now shush, I have to vlog dinner."
"Oh shit." Carter drops the fork that had been about to dive into his chicken. "Let me put on some concealer first."
Serena hums You're So Vain pointedly while she gets her camera out.
Serena arrives at her hotel room tipsy – as in, tipping sideways on her dangerously high heels – and fifteen minutes shy of her phone call with Blair. She debates the merits of being able to squeeze a shower into that little chunk of time, and the result is that she's half naked trying to drunkenly brush her hair and teeth at once when the phone goes. Blair's ring is, as ever, Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend.
Serena abandons the toothbrush on the television stand so she can grab for her phone. "B!"
Blair's voice is low and warm and already laughing on the other end. "I can tell you're drunk with just one syllable."
"I'm on vacation," Serena says breezily. She strokes absently at the ends of her hair with the detangler, making faces at her oily foundation and dissipated lipgloss in the mirror above the dresser.
"Your life is a vacation," Blair says. As a lawyer her own life is anything but, and Blair particularly likes lording her hyper-responsible adulthood over Serena's shiftless existence.
"I know you didn't call just to give me a hard time."
"Nope, that's a bonus." Blair very audibly takes a breath, like she's steeling herself, and it immediately piques Serena's interest. "Okay. Are you sitting down?"
A slow smile starts to curl Serena's lips, like the bow on top of a present. "I'm a big girl, I can handle good news standing up."
"Are you so sure it's good?"
"I sort of have an idea," Serena admits.
Blair laughs again. "You're suddenly a psychic?"
"C'mon, B, just spit it out."
"First tell me if you're going to be back by the end of next week."
Serena's birthday. She'll be back by then. "Of course. Just tell me already!"
"Okay." Another pause, this one with something of a breathless giggle in it, and Blair announces, "I'm getting married!"
Serena sits automatically, though she misses the bed by a good four feet and goes sprawling on the floor, knocking her tailbone pretty hard for good measure.
"S? S, are you alright?"
Serena scrambles to right herself, heart beating much too wildly for a little spill. "Getting married? To who?" Suspiciously, "This isn't like that prince thing again, is it?"
"You're never going to let me live that down. I was twenty years old, I was an idiot." Blair releases a huffy little sigh. "It's not like that. It's – well, it's Dan."
If Serena wasn't already on her hotel room floor, that would've dropped her there. For a second she doesn't comprehend English anymore. "My Dan?"
She realizes what a dumb thing that is to say when the silence stretches too long on the other end.
"Your Dan, I mean. I guess I mean," she says. "You and Dan? You hate Dan."
"You know we've become very close over the years," Blair says.
"No, I don't," Serena says stubbornly. Sure, she remembers them having that weird little friendship affair however many years ago, but everyone was a mess then, and Blair seemed to drop it as soon as she got back with Chuck. Serena can't remember either of them mentioning the other in the intervening years. And, okay, she may not be in the country often, and she may not be kept abreast of every little update in her friends' lives but surely – surely they wouldn't have kept something like this from her?
"I hope you're not upset. Dan thought you might be. And I don't want you to think – we hadn't been seeing each other, not really, not more than usual, and we certainly weren't dating. But one day, out of the blue, he was going to visit his mother and I was seeing him off at the train and I was looking at him and I just thought – well, I just knew. It came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying." Blair laughs a little, softly, at the memory. "I asked him to marry me. And he said yes. So we're doing it – in two weeks." Her voice turns very earnest. "I understand if it might be strange, but I want you to be there. I want you to be my maid of honor."
Serena is still having some trouble grasping the basics of language right now. "Two weeks?"
"I've been trying to get ahold of you for the last month. I didn't want to tell you in a text."
Serena's heart starts hammering as she thinks of every call she'd missed or put off or blithely didn't pick up over the last four weeks. "But isn't that soon?"
Blair is both certain and damning on the other end. "Why wait?"
"Two weeks! Two weeks! Has Blair ever been the kind of person who would jump into something like this? The Blair I know would take like a year just to plan the most ridiculous wedding known to man. Two weeks!"
Carter is sprawled across Serena's unmade bed, passively watching as she stomps around the hotel room throwing things into her suitcase. He lights a cigarette. "Maybe he knocked her up."
Serena pauses, heels in one hand and makeup bag in the other. "Please don't put that out into the universe."
Carter gives her an amused little smirk as he puffs away. "You know Little Waldorf has always been a sucker for romance. Didn't you say something to that effect just the other night?"
"No," Serena says tightly, embarrassed. "I meant that Blair likes – she likes tradition and ritual and fate and –"
"Now you're just arguing semantics. Even I know Waldorf is a girl after a fairytale, and if there's anything more romantic than taking your time planning a Princess Di ordeal, it's being so in love you can barely wait a couple of weeks."
"Oh, what do you know about romance," Serena grumbles, stuffing a cocktail dress into a garment bag. "You pick up a different guy every night. Sometimes two."
"I'm just friendly," Carter says mildly.
"The point is–" Serena sits on top of her luggage so it'll close, then gestures Carter over to work the zipper. He groans and drags himself up reluctantly, cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. "The point is, they're all wrong for each other. They spent the last fifteen years hating each other's guts and, what, I go away on a couple trips and suddenly they're soulmates? Whatever Blair's peddling now, they were not friends."
Carter is giving her a curious look.
Serena frowns. "What?"
"Maybe…" He takes a slow, thoughtful drag and wets his lips. "Well, maybe they never told you because they thought you'd react like this."
Serena glares at him. "Can you call a car? I don't want to miss my flight."
He holds up his hands defensively. "Don't shoot the messenger, beautiful. I'm just sayin'."
She hauls her bag up off the bed and onto the floor. "Yeah, well, try saying less."
Serena took the earliest flight she could, so when she lands in JFK she's overtired and half-regretting begging the cutest flight attendant for a third mimosa. She drops her sunglasses on over her dark circles and fluffs up her hair a little, but no amount of primping is really going to help.
Blair is meeting her at baggage claim, so Serena hurries through the crowd with her oversized purse and carryon, eager not only to see Blair but to get some time alone to ask her about this whole marriage thing. To gauge Blair's seriousness. She scans signs and arrows, dodges Germans tourists and French toddlers, and then the crowd parts. Serena stops dead in her tracks. She swallows so hard it feels like her heart lands in her stomach.
Blair is standing over by the slowly rotating luggage carousel with Dan, though it would be more accurate to say she was leaning into him, her chin tipped up on his shoulder. They're talking about something that makes Blair smile. On its own that might be nothing, but it's Blair's best smile, the one people rarely get to see; it breaks over her face and wipes away the wryness and the snootiness and the sarcasm so she just looks happy. Blair's best smile, and she's giving it away to Dan in the middle of an airport.
Serena's stomach clenches but she bulldozes forward, pasting a smile on her face. "Guys!"
They turn to her as one, still easy and happy, and they step apart but don't separate entirely, fingers still tangled together. "Only you still look like a supermodel after nine hours on a plane," Blair says.
"Oh, stop," Serena says good-naturedly, reaching out to hook Blair into a hug. Once she releases Blair she pulls Dan over. "You too, mister."
Dan smiles. "I'm glad to see you."
"He's been having some kind of prolonged anxiety attack over the whole thing," Blair sniffs. "I told him it would be fine."
"Blair is grossly over-exaggerating."
Serena thinks her smile might be going a little thin and frayed around the edges, but she still pushes on. "Well, here I am. Feeling fine."
"Good," Dan says, and smiles a little, but his doesn't look entirely solid either. The moment lingers awkwardly until Dan steps forwards suddenly; Serena freezes, with no idea what he's doing, but he's moving past her to haul her seafoam green DVF luggage onto the ground. She hadn't even noticed it coming around.
"You remembered," she says.
"Hard to forget," he replies simply.
Serena barely gets a chance to have a single conversation with Blair, despite the fact that Blair is demanding Serena stay at her apartment instead of a hotel, because she is almost immediately plunged into hectic wedding preparations. It seems every branch on the Waldorf family tree has decided to show up, including Blair's bitchiest second cousins and the genuinely terrifying Granny Waldorf, who usually will only show up if someone's died.
Jenny is there, which surprises Serena (Jenny has been making good time as a London transplant for the last decade, at least), but what's even more surprising is that Jenny is making Blair's wedding dress.
"Very homespun," Blair says dryly. "Family-oriented. See what marrying a Brooklynite is doing to me?"
"Gotta say I'm pretty shocked." Serena winces as one of Jenny's assistants, a petite and plump girl with neon pink hair, stabs her yet again with a pin. "Do you really have time to have all this made? Can't I get something off the rack?"
Blair closes her eyes and puts her hand over her heart. "I don't know why you want to hurt me, Serena."
She laughs. "I just mean – two weeks, B."
"I know, it is a little crazy," Blair muses. "Oh well."
Serena's eyebrows crawl towards her hairline. Oh well? She's not sure she's ever seen Blair so unruffled about anything ever in her entire life. There was that one time she and Nate got Blair to smoke a joint freshman year, but even then Blair just got panicky and paranoid. "Okay, Pod Person Blair, where's the real one?"
Blair smiles before getting up to tug at the bodice of Serena's gown, fiddling with the way it lays. "I just want to be married. We almost eloped, you know." She lifts her gaze up to Serena's, still smiling and sparkly, and Serena feels crushed in a vise. "But I couldn't imagine doing it without you."
"That's sweet, B," Serena says, but she feels distanced from it all of a sudden. It's like when she left New York the last time she stepped into some kind of portal where time moved more slowly than in the real world, and now that she's back everyone's moving in double-time. It is always faintly startling how much things move on without her.
Serena's not so sure she's willing to take it lying down, either.
By the end of her first week back, Serena is cranky and over it. She's sat through too many bridal brunches and family dinners, made small talk with visiting Humphreys and spent nearly an hour at the mercy of Roman's niece, who is apparently a dedicated fan of Serena's channel. The girl was only satisfied when Serena promised to do her hair for the wedding, an oath she has no intention of keeping. Thankfully Blair is too much of a control freak to delegate much to anyone else, but she's been pestering Serena about those somethings borrowed and etcetera, so Serena will have to deal with that at some point.
Today is yet another event in her calendar: Blair's bachelorette party, though it hardly counts as one at all. Blair turned down all attempts to make it trashy or fun, so it's just another dinner out with people Serena isn't interested in spending time with. And Blair and Dan decided to combine the bachelor/bachelorette festivities, another unbearable layer on the entire endeavor. At this rate she's never going to see Blair alone again for the rest of their lives.
She gets a little – just a little, barely even at all, she might refer to herself as delicately smashed if anything – drunk on Blair's signature cocktail, some non-mojito cucumber mint gin nonsense. So, delicately smashed, she finds herself getting a little clingy, arm looped through Blair's. "And do you remember the time," Serena is saying, laughing, "that we went on that double date in Paris and you pushed me into a fountain?"
Blair gives her an indulgent smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, and it seems obvious that the rest of the table is losing interest in the retelling of the Adventures of Serena and Blair. Dan is over at another table with Nate and Jenny and some other people who must be his friends, but halfway through Serena's story of stealing champagne from Harold and Roman's wedding, Dan makes his way over to squeeze into the seat next to Blair.
He doesn't so much as glance at anyone besides Blair. "Hi."
Blair turns away from Serena already smiling, though her arm is still linked with Serena's. "Hi. Are you having a good time?"
"B," Serena interrupts. "B – do you remember when – Dan, you wouldn't know, this was before we met you – do you remember that time we were dancing on that bar – well, okay, I was –"
Blair and Dan have both turned to look at Serena and she realizes right then exactly what's bothering her about the two of them; they have this almost condescending air about them, people who have found themselves settled and are now looking down on their poor single messy friend with benign pity.
"I actually think that was Georgina," Serena finishes weakly. She's not sure why she can't work up any of the things she means to say: Sundays with cappuccino and Audrey, Blair braiding her hair at night during sleepovers, putting her arms around Blair while she was crying and making all the bad stuff go away. It's too intimate to say so messily.
The conversation mellows into awkwardness again, and Dan tries to crack it with a joke, as usual. "Drinking a lot?" he wonders, brows drawn together, amusement on his face.
And even though it's nothing really, Serena's stomach sinks. It's just that way Dan has about him, this thing he does, where he can casually and without ill intention say something that makes Serena feel like total crap.
"It is a bachelorette party," Serena says. "Sort of. I think I'm going to go get some air."
Their faces fall a little, Dan's regretfully, but Serena isn't interested in any of it just now. She didn't do anything she came here to do tonight; she didn’t get Blair's full attention, she didn't really remind Blair of their friendship, their good days. She was just the same old Serena she always is, ridiculous and trashed.
Serena flops down onto the curb like she used to do when she was fourteen outside of bars, when she couldn't find it in her to care about anything, especially herself.
Blair comes outside to find her after a few minutes. She lays down what must be Dan's jacket and then perches gingerly on the curb beside Serena. She smiles a little, but it's that indulgent smile Serena doesn't like, the one that makes it seem like Blair is humoring her. "You were pretty shocked when I told you, huh?"
"Shocked? No." Serena shakes her head and offers up her own fake smile. "Alright, maybe a little… A lot." She drops her gaze, expression warming. "I fell off the bed."
"I knew I heard a thump!"
"This all seems really…out of left field for me," Serena admits.
"I know," Blair says sympathetically. "It's harder now to be close. Getting older, the distance –"
"That's not what I mean," Serena murmurs.
Blair falls silent, and after a minute she shifts closer and puts an arm around Serena, head on her shoulder. It lasts half a second and then she's pulling away again. "Come on, let's go back in. I have it on good authority that there might be cake."
Serena nods but doesn't move. "I'll be there in a minute."
After Blair goes back inside, Serena digs out her cell phone and calls the only person who would even halfway get how she's feeling right now.
"Carter? I need you."
Carter arrives by the next morning, rumpled and sleepy. He looks good otherwise, tan and mussed and effortlessly hot, drawing the gaze of passersby just standing there waiting by the line of taxis in his white t-shirt and shades. Serena pokes her head out of her car.
"Baizen!" she calls. "Look sharp!"
He looks towards her with a lazy grin before scooping up his solitary duffle bag and walking over. "Girl can barely handle a week without me. You know I left a very promising one night stand for you."
She pushes the door open. "I'm sure you'll find another."
Once they're driving back towards Manhattan, Carter pushes his sunglasses up and takes her in. "Okay, honey. Shoot."
Serena rolls her eyes a little but it ends up spilling out anyway. "This has been, without fail, the worst week of my entire life. Blair hasn't been this obnoxious about a boy since Nate when we were thirteen, except it's about a million times worse because it's Dan. And, you know, at the risk of sounding like a total psycho, he was my Dan first."
Carter is looking at her with something akin to mounting horror. "Oh god, are you in love with Humphrey again now?"
Serena is silent. Then she says, "Not with Dan."
Blair was hers first, too.
Carter covers his face with one hand. "Serena."
Stubbornly, and very fast, Serena says, "Blair is my one constant. She's always been there. I can't lose her." She bites her lip. "It was always her and me – always, it was always us, I always came first."
Carter sighs as he loops his arm around her, pulling her against him. "Oh, beautiful. You got yourself into a fine mess, didn't you?"
Serena brings Carter along to that day's pre-wedding event – and for a quickie wedding, there really are a lot of them – which is a family brunch and, thankfully, the last bit of nonsense until the day of. Blair's face falls the minute she sees them swagger in together.
She grabs Serena by the arm and pulls her off a few feet. "Can you please explain to me what Carter Baizen is doing here?"
"He's my friend," Serena says. "And business partner!"
"Your YouTube channel is not a business," Blair says impatiently. Carter is across the room making small talk with Harold and Roman, and Blair glares at him over Serena's shoulder. "You know how I feel about Carter."
If asked, Serena would not be able to explain her behavior in the following minutes. There are three things floating around her head – one, she's still smarting over the bachelorette party; two, she has confusing tummy-swimming feelings about Blair; three; she has the sudden urge to catch Blair as off guard as she herself was caught – and they coalesce into one incredibly questionable decision.
"I didn't want to tell you like this, B," Serena says. "He's my fiancé."
She thinks if Blair tried to sit down in this moment, she'd probably miss the chair.
"What?"
"Yeah," Serena says with false bravado. "We were going to announce it on the vlog, you know, do a whole cute thing – and I didn't want to steal your thunder –"
Blair stares at her. "I was under the impression both you and Carter had edged towards opposite sides of the sexuality spectrum."
Serena laughs, waving a hand. It's true that she can't remember the last time either of them dated someone of the opposite sex, but it's not like they were never involved; Serena's interest in men has gone the way of Carter's interest in women, but it was still there, somewhere. Probably.
"These things are fluid, B," Serena says.
Blair gives her a doubtful look, but it's nothing to the narrow-eyed fury she shoots in Carter's direction.
As they take their seats Serena sidles up next to Carter and mutters through her teeth, "We're engaged, by the way."
The look Carter gives her speaks to how well they get each other; he knows immediately what's going on and he is not happy about it. But as soon as they sit he's turned on the full Carter charm, all lazy grins and attractive sprawl. He slings his arm around Serena's shoulders.
"Serena has an announcement," Blair says, sounding rather brittle. "S?"
"Oh, B –" Serena shakes her head. "I don't want to take away from –"
"She and Carter are engaged!" Blair announces. "Isn't that something?"
Everyone all down the table blinks for several minutes before breaking into customary congratulations – all except Dan and Blair, who look disconcerted and huffy.
"My goodness, Serena," Eleanor says. "We didn't think you'd ever settle down!"
"I thought Carter was gay now?" Kati stage-whispers to Iz.
"I thought Serena was gay now?" Iz stage-whispers back.
"I for one am glad to see both my girls so happy," Harold offers. "And both at once!"
"How did you two meet?" Roman interjects.
"Serena did coke off his abs when we were fourteen," Blair says snidely.
Eleanor immediately chastises her. "Blair!"
Blair does not appear abashed in the slightest. "Well, it's true."
"We had something of a troubled time growing up," Carter says smoothly. He looks at Serena, deeply into her eyes, and for a second it feels like when they would play good at galas when they were teenagers – a game that they're in together. He must feel it too, because he smiles, and Serena returns it. "But we grew out of it together."
Everyone oohs and ahhs.
"Charming," Dan mutters.
"Like a fairytale," Blair adds.
"I remember the first moment I saw her," Carter continues. "The light – neon strobe – catching in her hair. The dress she was wearing – scandalously short, of course. Our eyes met across the dance floor, and with that one look, I was hooked. We moved towards each other. If I think about it, I can almost hear the song that was playing – can you, beautiful?"
Serena shakes her head minutely with big panic eyes. When Carter gets going about something it can be near impossible to stop him. Serena has a feeling this is one of those times.
He gives a deep, resonant hum. Then he parts his lips and sings, slower than the tempo of the actual song, "Oh, when you walk by every night, talking sweet and looking fine, I get kind of hectic insi-i-ide –"
Carter has many talents, but music is not among them. But he looks good, and he purrs the lyrics more than anything, so by the time Kati and Iz kick in with backup vocals, everyone is entirely swept up.
Serena thinks the song that was actually playing when she met Carter was Beyoncé's Naughty Girl, so at least this isn't that. Her eyes meet Blair's helplessly across the table while Carter croons away – drawing the attention of the whole restaurant by now, and at least one enterprising tween who seems to recognize him and Serena – and gives an embarrassed little shrug. Blair returns the look with a disbelieving one of her own, utterly unimpressed with this entire situation, and something in Serena feels distinctly satisfied.
Then Dan nudges his nose against Blair's cheek and mutters something in her ear that has her letting out a surprised laugh. And just like that, Serena's momentary victory is quashed.
Later, on the cab ride back to Carter's hotel, Serena punches him in the arm. Carter, for his part, can't stop laughing.
"Do you think the Mariah Carey sold the heterosexuality or hindered it? I could've sworn I saw Roman giving me an up-and-down."
"You are an idiot," Serena huffs.
"Blair was jealous, at least," he muses. "Isn't that the whole point of this?"
Serena fidgets, crossing her arms and shrugging. "No."
"Oh, come on, beautiful," Carter says. "Maybe you're opaque to everyone else, but I can see right through you. You want Waldorf. You're trying to make it happen."
"No, I'm just – All I'm trying to do is show her that she's rushing into things. That maybe the ending she's supposed to have isn't the one she's setting herself up for."
"The one she chose, you mean," Carter says pointedly.
"Blair's heart gets her into trouble," Serena insists. "I don't want her to get hurt."
"All our hearts get us into trouble, beautiful. Trying all these things, these little games, getting in the way – all you're gonna do is make it worse when she finds out."
"What's your point?"
"My point is that you should be honest with her." Carter is looking at her intently but Serena doesn't want to be looked at, so she's keeping her gaze trained anywhere else. "Look, honey, if there's one thing I learned in rehab, it's that. You have to come clean. It's the only way anything halfway decent is going to come of this."
Serena gives him a half-hearted little push. "I hate when you act all wise."
Carter grins at her. "Would you rather I try and fuck the groom?" Serena starts laughing. "That would put an end to it, huh?"
Serena pushes him again, then pulls him in so she can rest her head on his chest. "Let's make that Plan C."
Carter presses a kiss into her hairline. "You got it, beautiful."
The next morning, Serena takes Blair out for an apology breakfast to make up for Carter turning her brunch into a singalong. They take their pastries and coffee to Bethesda Terrance and sit on the steps facing the fountain, the sun bright on their faces.
"You know," Serena starts, then stops. She swallows a burning mouthful of coffee. "Carter and I aren't actually engaged."
Blair gives her a faint look of curious surprise, her eyebrow arching. "Is that so?"
"I don't really know why I said that," Serena admits. "I think I'm just feeling…weird about everything. To say the least."
"Yes, I have noticed that a bit. I can't say I'm disappointed about Carter – that is one mistake you could do without making."
"Yeah." Serena ducks her head. "I just can't believe you're really getting married. And to Dan."
Blair half-smiles. "He's utterly hopeless, you know. Gets dressed every morning like he's doing it in the dark. Never remembers to shave or get a haircut. Plays the most egregious music; he will literally play the same song for six straight hours if he's writing. And he gets emotional during cheesy commercials. Isn't that embarrassing?"
Serena laughs softly, wistfully.
"I've been thinking a lot, too. I know the wedding is taking up so much of our time, but I haven't forgotten you, you know." Blair studies her slightly. "I miss you, Serena. I've missed you for months. We get these little moments like we're having now, where it's just us, and I can't help but realize how it's been missing from my life – and how much I needed it. This might be the last time for a while we get to be like this, just the two of us."
Serena's throat constricts a little. "Yeah."
"Dan said to me once… It was so long ago now, before everything. He told me that when you have something to say to someone, you have to say it – even if it doesn't change anything, because then they would know how you felt." Again the smallest smile curves her lips. "I think it took more than ten years for that to really sink in for me."
Serena swallows hard as she meets Blair's steady gaze. "What happens if you don't tell them?"
Blair's shoulder lifts and falls, a graceful little shrug. "I suppose the moment just passes you by. And then you can never really get it back."
They look at each other for a long moment. Blair's expression is more gentle and open than Serena thinks she has ever seen it in their entire life together, but Serena's throat is so choked with words none of them can complete the journey to her lips. So she doesn't say anything. And Blair doesn’t say anything. And that's that.
It's a dumb thing to do.
Serena's one major maid of honor task is to acquire things for Blair that are old, new, borrowed, and blue, because there are some nonsense traditions that Blair apparently cannot do without. So Serena goes uptown to her mom's place to dig through her old boxes of high school garbage with the idea of finding some cutesy trinket that could cross more than one attribute off the list. She finds a gold bracelet studded with blue stones that might do nicely. She also finds the story.
Sometime in the lengthy up and down relationship she had with Dan, which Serena is resolutely not thinking about in the lead-up to the wedding, Serena ended up with a couple of his old notebooks. He would leave stuff at her place, she would borrow things, occasionally he'd even ask her to read something. Serena would always joke about holding onto his scribbles and selling them on eBay once he was famous.
These days, Dan is sort of famous.
It's a story dated from the end of their senior year. Serena remembers it as soon as she scans the first line, because she'd found it by accident all those years ago too, and she and Dan had a fight about it. He swore he was never going to show it to anyone and he gave it to Serena just so she could be sure, and then they kissed and made up as was their wont.
It's a story about a bitchy popular girl at a high school that is definitely not at all Constance Billard, a girl whose parents ignore her and friends hate her and gets walked all over by the boys in her life. It's satirical and mocking and mean, but even back then Serena had been a little jealous that he wrote about someone besides her.
So maybe that is one of the many factors motivating Serena.
Inside put Dan on the map but he's done well for himself since, with a string of popular books and movies based on those books and a handsome face that lends itself well to televised interviews. It never hurt that his misbegotten teen years were so heavily observed, a funny little phenomenon that gets attention on the internet now and again, articles popping up about that weird Gossip Girl thing that went down in New York.
The fact that this story is about Blair before Dan loved her and that they're getting married imminently only means that when Serena submits it, Vanity Fair online is eager to publish.
It's a stupid thing to do, but Serena does it.
The story comes out the day of the wedding. To say that Blair is furious would be putting it mildly.
"I don't understand what this is supposed to accomplish," she fumes, snapping her laptop shut with a painful sound. "Is some derogatory juvenile diatribe about me supposed to be a grand romantic gesture? Because if it is, I'm missing the romance."
"Did he say why?" Iz wonders, nose wrinkling. "I mean, did you ask?"
"No," Blair says bluntly. "I'm not speaking to him."
Kati worries her lip, then exchanges a worried glance with Iz. "What about the wedding?"
Blair doesn't answer.
Serena is jittery and on her third espresso of the morning, wishing she had some kind of bad habit like smoking to escape into. She shouldn't have done it, but hasn't decided yet whether she regrets it or not. That's entirely dependent on Blair.
"Let's go for a walk, huh, B?" she asks, hands gentle on Blair's tense shoulders. "Just give yourself a little time to think?"
They walk down Fifth towards the Met, Central Park to the right, sundrenched and leafy. It would be a nice place for a wedding, Serena thinks absently. If she ever got married, she would do it right by the fountain. Dan and Blair are getting married at the Plaza; Serena never thought she'd see the day Dan Humphrey got married at the Plaza. But maybe he won't.
While they walk Blair unloads a steady stream of vitriol about Dan, about how stupid it was that she even decided to do this, about every foolish romantic decision she's ever made her in life. By the time she's done they're at the steps, where Blair collapses in an elegant heap of worn-out rage. Serena sits gingerly beside her.
"So are you still going to go through with it?"
Blair deflates. "I don't know. I just don't understand. I didn't think he thought about me like that anymore." More stridently, she adds, "I'm not like that anymore."
Serena sees then that this is about more than feeling embarrassed on an important day. "You never were, B."
"Yes I was," Blair sighs. "I was awful. I was awful to everyone all the time because I hated myself."
Serena has never heard her speak so bluntly, and she counters it with increasing softness. "Never to me."
Blair snorts, looking at her with disbelief. "Especially to you. Has all that time with Carter destroyed your brain cells by osmosis?"
"No," Serena says. "I know you, Blair. I always have. And maybe it's been hard for you and maybe you've handled things the wrong way, but it's just because you're too – your heart is too –" She takes a deep breath. "Delicate."
Blair smiles slightly. "You let me get away with too much."
"I love you," Serena says.
"Dan never lets me get away with anything," Blair continues. "It's the most irritating thing. I think it's why I pushed him away for such a long time, but now it makes me feel so –"
"No," Serena interrupts, more urgently, her heart beating so hard in her chest and those three espressos sparking her veins. "Blair, I love you."
"I heard you, S," Blair says, amused. "I love you too."
"No," Serena says for the third time in as many minutes, feeling herself get desperate now. "I have to say this quick, okay, or you'll never hear it. Which you need to. Remember?"
She has Blair's attention now. "Serena, what's –"
Serena just says it. "I love you. I've loved you forever, but I was stupid, I took it for granted that you would always be there and I was scared, because I knew it was real. And I'm always scared of anything real. I know this is the worst time, I know I always have the worst timing but – choose me. Marry me. Let me make you happy."
Anything else that might have been in Blair's expression is blotted out entirely by her shock, though there is the hint of something else forming, something that will probably decide Serena's fate. Before it can crystalize, she cups Blair's face in her hands and kisses her, which she hasn't done since they were teenagers pretending it was nothing – though there was a moment during Blair's birthday trip, a moment that hung between them like champagne bubbles, that Serena thinks she will always regret not taking.
"Blair?"
Blair pulls away from Serena, turning in the direction of the voice, and there's Dan, standing there at a total loss. He opens his mouth to speak but doesn't manage it, instead turning sharply and getting almost immediately swallowed by the crowd thronging the streets, tourists and people in suits on their lunch break and teenagers killing time. In a blink, he's gone, and Blair is up without a second thought, calling his name as she surges after him. Serena is half a step behind her.
"Blair!" she calls, but Blair doesn't turn, instead weaving through passersby, calling Dan's name. It goes on like that for more than three blocks, this futile chasing, until Serena sees Blair get into a taxi heading downtown. Fuck, Serena thinks, but she waves down a cab too, barreling into it and keeping her eyes on Blair's, something out of the stupidest movie known to man. "Follow that car!"
Serena fumbles for her cell phone as traffic slows them to a painful crawl. "You would not believe," she starts as soon as Carter picks up. "This is what comes of telling the truth, Carter!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down – What have you done now?"
"I told Blair I loved her! And we kissed! And Dan saw, and now she's chasing him downtown somewhere, and I'm chasing her, and I don't even know why people bother trying to drive in New York City–"
"Blair is chasing Dan," Carter repeats. "And you are chasing Blair."
"That's what I just said!"
"Serena, who is chasing you?"
Serena, busy glaring at the surrounding cars, falters. "What?"
"You kissed her and confessed your love and put yourself on the line – very admirable, we should all be so stupid – and now you're running her down in Manhattan. But she's not running towards you, Serena."
Serena doesn't know what she's supposed to say to that. "This is all your fault!"
"Who's chasing you?" Carter says again. "Nobody. That's your answer."
"I'm hanging up on you," Serena snaps, but she doesn't.
"Just because you love her doesn't mean you're the one." He doesn't say it unkindly, but it still stings. "Serena, would you even be doing this if there wasn't someone else?"
Serena does hang up then.
Blair and Dan would never have known each other if it wasn't for Serena; she was the bridge that crossed the gap between them, the one thing they had in common. Only apparently that isn't true. Apparently behind her back, for who knows how long, they've been building other bridges, tons of them, so many that the Serena-shaped one has been rendered entirely obsolete.
Would she even be doing this if the someone else wasn't one of them?
Blair gets out of her taxi at Penn Station, so Serena throws whatever cash is in her wallet at her own driver and takes off after Blair. The throngs inside the building are even worse; Serena has to dodge piled-up luggage like jumping hurdles, and she startles more than one wandering brunette who she mistakes for Blair. Stations are stations to Serena, each busy and shiny and overwhelming in its own way, but Blair has always hated it here, preferring the romance of Grand Central.
She finally spots Blair standing hopelessly under the big departures board, scanning the crowd and looking lost.
"I have another confession to make," Serena begins. "This one's worse."
Blair starts, hand going up to her heart. "Serena, I can't right now. Dan isn't answering his –"
"Just listen." Blair takes a breath and does so, giving Serena her attention. "The story? That caused this whole big…mess. Dan didn't send it in. I did. He wrote it when we were like seventeen, I found it in a box of old stuff and I – I sent it."
Blair stares at her.
"I'm sorry," Serena says. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking and I just –"
"You did that?" Blair's voice is low, deadly. "You? Do you even realize what you –" She's picking up speed as her anger grows. "Of course you do, that's why you did it, I –"
"I've been acting like a total lunatic since I came back to the city, just trying to –" Serena presses her lips together. "Trying to make you pick me instead. Trying to win some kind of tug of war that no one was playing except me. And all I ended up doing was ruining everything."
Blair is still looking at her.
"But I'll fix it, I will," Serena promises. "I – Let's find Dan, we can find him and I'll talk to him and I'll tell him that it was all me, that you had nothing to do with it. And he'll believe it because, let's face it, he knows me. He knows just how stupid I can be."
Blair sighs. "Serena –"
"No, don't. Just let me make it up to you."
"Serena, all these cringing apologies aren't very attractive."
Whatever Serena has been expecting, it wasn't that.
Blair goes on to say, "You have never, presumably, served a girl at Nairtini, or outed someone's non-existent drug problem to every Ivy league college in the country, or treated everyone you ever met like they were a servant, or spray painted offensive epithets on someone's fashion line –"
"You were a teenager," Serena protests weakly. "I'm old. I should know better."
"And you will," Blair says. "Next time." This new level of patience and understanding in Blair is perhaps more chilling than when she loses it. "You know, it's pretty flattering. That you love me that much."
Serena looks at her with something like amazement. "Except it turned me into a neurotic psychopath."
"I've heard love can do that under the best of circumstances," Blair says, and she even smiles a little.
It's too much for Serena's tender heart to take, at least right now. It's too much to be forgiven; she'd rather she hadn't been. "We should find Dan… Why do you think he came here?"
"It's where I proposed," Blair says, and Serena knew that, she remembers now. "There's something terribly romantic about train stations. They always make you feel like someone is going off to war."
Serena would laugh, but she can't yet. "Is that why you did it?"
Blair meets her eyes again. "No. I just suddenly knew that if I didn't say it, I'd regret it."
Serena takes a deep breath. "Let's go find him, okay?"
They go their separate ways to locate Dan, who is answering neither calls nor texts, and could quite literally be anywhere in the cavernous station – or anywhere beyond it, really. Serena has never wished for the return of Gossip Girl in her life, but she does still have a coterie of little teenagers hanging on her every word. So she tweets a picture of Dan and asks her NYC followers to let her know if any of them see him.
And what do you know? Thanks to modern technology and fangirls, Serena locates Dan leaning moodily against a wall eating a pretzel. He does not seem surprised to see her.
"I knew it was you," he says. "Who sent the story. You had the only copy, because you never wanted it to see the light of day, in case it hurt Blair."
Serena wets her lips. "Yeah. I've been struggling with some questionable logic lately."
"I'm aware," Dan says. "I am not sure you've spoken directly to me more than twice in the last two weeks."
Serena steps up next to him and leans back, reaching out to snag a bite of his food. "Well, you did steal my girl."
"Is that what happened?"
"I never thought of myself as a jealous person," Serena says. "I saw people get jealous all around me. It was so toxic, and I always thought: at least that's not me."
"But it's everyone," Dan says.
"It's everyone," Serena agrees. "Is that why you fled the scene?"
"I… Any time I'm around you guys, it's like I'm a visitor from another planet. It's like you're speaking a language only the two of you know. If anyone was going to come between us, it'd be you. So…is that what you did?"
When they look at each other, there is genuine apprehension in Dan's expression, real nerves and worry that he's keeping bottled. Dan so casually leaning here, eating, nondescript and unnoticeable; inside, a storm.
"Dan," Serena says finally. "She loves you. Go get married."
The wedding goes on without another hitch. Serena walks down the aisle and stands there while her friends exchange their I do's. She leads them into the reception, hand-in-hand with Nate, Dan's best man. When the moment comes, she clinks her fork gently against her glass and waits for everyone to quiet down, then gives a thoughtful and loving speech right off the top of her head.
It's only when Dan and Blair are leaving late that night with plans of getting right on a plane for an Italian honeymoon that Serena feels a little crack in her placid façade. Everyone is hustling for a last glimpse of the bride and groom, and Serena feels buffeted by the happy partygoers yet at the same time totally removed from them, engulfed and unable to catch her breath. She turns to push through to the other side, away from the line of goodbyes, and then she feels a hand on her arm turning her back.
Blair pulls her in close and Serena is crushed against the tulle and satin of her tea-length wedding dress, like a 1950s prom queen. Or Audrey Hepburn. She's flushed with happiness and she smells like Blair, the same perfume she's been wearing since they were eighteen years old. That perfume will never belong to anyone else. "I love you," Blair murmurs in her ear, sound almost swallowed up by the noise. "I'll see you soon."
Then she's gone, back in Dan's arms underneath a shower of environmentally friendly flower petals being tossed by the guests. She doesn't turn back once, but Dan does, raising a hand in a wave. Serena returns it.
Then she goes to get a cocktail.
Serena stays late at the wedding, maybe later than she should, helping herself liberally to the open bar. She watches the crowd thin out, listens to the band, and just – feels. She lets the entire experience wash over her and doesn't shy away from it, and it's not too bad, really.
Then her phone buzzes, Carter flashing across the screen making a kissy face. His ringtone has been officially changed to Mariah Carey.
"You never gave me an update," he says.
"I did what I had to do."
"Split them up? Are you Mrs. Blair Waldorf now instead of Dan?"
She smiles. "No. I said goodbye."
"I'm proud of you," Carter says. "You're like a real grownup. Though I'd feel better if you were dancing."
"Oh, maybe in another thirty or forty years," she jokes. "Maybe I'll feel like dancing then."
"Oh, beautiful," he sighs. "I can picture you sitting there all alone at your table, sparkling in your black dress, haven't touched your cake –"
"Did I tell you my dress was black?"
"Looking so lovely and sad, like an album cover or a Sofia Coppola movie –"
"Carter, I don't think I ever told you what color my dress was."
"And just like a movie, suddenly the perfect pop song starts playing, the one that encapsulates your exact shade of mood and heartbreak." The band starts kicking up a slow, jazzy version of Fantasy. "Okay, maybe not that song, but –"
Serena stands up immediately, a laugh bubbling just behind her lips, turning in place to try and spot him.
Carter continues to narrate, a low, smooth voice in her ear. "And you're off your chair, wondering, searching, feeling him there but unable to see him. Questions race through your mind in time with the pounding of your heart. Will you find him? Will Cinderella dance again? Is it just a sweet, sweet fantasy?"
"Carter," Serena says, laughing now, and then the crowd parts and there he is: sitting at the bar and smiling at her, waiting.
"There he is," Carter says. "Sleek. Stylish. Radiant with charisma. Bizarrely, he's on the telephone – but then, so are you." He slides off his stool and moves in her direction, free hand in his pocket. He's wearing a tux, and even Serena would be hard pressed to say he doesn't look a little debonair. "And he comes towards you, the moves of a jungle cat…" Carter reaches her, plucking the phone from her hand and dropping it into his pocket, then doing the same with his own. "You assume, quite rightly, that he is gay, like most devastatingly handsome single men of his age. But then you think, what the hell. Life goes on."
Carter holds out a hand and Serena gladly gives him hers, still smiling, feeling light and fragile all at once.
"Maybe there won't be marriage," Carter says, making a face. "Maybe there won't be sex." He waggles his eyebrows at her. "But by God, there will be dancing."
Carter spins her out in time with the music and Serena grins, spinning back. It didn't go away; she's still sad, still wrung out, still lonely – but not alone. No feeling is forever, however much it seems like it is.
"You know I have to 'gram you in that tux," she tells him.
"Ha," Carter says. "Two steps ahead of you. I'm already wearing foundation."
Serena laughs, burying her face in his shoulder. "How does the song go? You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you–"
No feeling is forever, and there's no telling what the future might bring. Serena will have to wait and see.
gossip girl. 8886 words. inspired by/based on my best friend's wedding.
serena, blair, carter, dan. one-sided serena/blair. dan/blair. serena & carter bros 4 lyf.
summary: Blair's birthday came first, of course, and they'd celebrated drunk in Paris, giggly and silly, and Blair had teased, Now if you don't get married in the next year, you're mine.
note: For anonymous! My deep apologies that this is a day late, but as you can see it ended up being...longer than anticipated, haha. I wrote this fic in something of a fugue state; I busted through it in the last three days in such a fever that I barely even remember doing it. So...that was weird. But I hope you like this! It was a v. fun prompt and I love this movie.
"You're in a good mood tonight," Carter observes.
Serena makes a face at him but even so she can't quell the little flutter of excitement she feels every time she looks at her phone, sitting face-up on the table to the left of her plate. "I'm always in a good mood."
She and Carter have been in Ibiza for a week so far and it's been a good week, all sun and sand, dancing at night, taking cute outfit pics for the blog against a backdrop of picturesque streets. It's one more stop on the European tour that never seems to end, and it's been at least a month since either of them was really home – though home is a tenuous concept at best.
Finally, Serena tells him, "Blair's supposed to call me tonight."
Carter just lifts his eyebrows, waiting for more. "Is that it? I wasn't aware talking to Blair made it a national holiday."
Serena flicks an olive at him. "It's not just that." It's something she's been thinking about a lot, actually, and it's giving her a fiddly, romantic feeling that might just be the result of too much champagne on foreign coasts – or might be something more. "Okay, so, when Blair and I were little… Really little, I think we were in the first grade, we made this pact that if neither of us were married by the time we were twenty-eight, we'd get married." Twenty-eight had seemed so old then, so impossible to think that they'd ever be grown up women with glamorous lives, like something out of a movie.
"And your birthday is next week," he supplies. "Beautiful, forgive me if I never took you for the marrying kind."
"I don't know what kind I am," she defers, swirling her wine around her glass a little. But she has been thinking about it. It had turned into something of a joke between her and Blair throughout the years whenever a boyfriend or girlfriend called it quits, a silly little promise reaffirmed in the middle of ice cream cries and movie marathons. Blair's birthday came first, of course, and they'd celebrated drunk in Paris, giggly and silly, and Blair had teased, Now if you don't get married in the next year, you're mine. "You know those kinds of things always meant more to Blair."
Making a deal with Blair, even and perhaps especially a casual one, was like signing your name in the devil's book with blood. Binding and non-negotiable.
"Yeah, but I'm not sure she's gonna propose to you over the phone because of something a six year old decided."
"I'm not saying she is," Serena protests, but there's that fiddly feeling in her stomach again. "It just seems like a coincidence, that's all." Carter still looks awfully disbelieving, so Serena decides to steer away from the topic. "Now shush, I have to vlog dinner."
"Oh shit." Carter drops the fork that had been about to dive into his chicken. "Let me put on some concealer first."
Serena hums You're So Vain pointedly while she gets her camera out.
Serena arrives at her hotel room tipsy – as in, tipping sideways on her dangerously high heels – and fifteen minutes shy of her phone call with Blair. She debates the merits of being able to squeeze a shower into that little chunk of time, and the result is that she's half naked trying to drunkenly brush her hair and teeth at once when the phone goes. Blair's ring is, as ever, Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend.
Serena abandons the toothbrush on the television stand so she can grab for her phone. "B!"
Blair's voice is low and warm and already laughing on the other end. "I can tell you're drunk with just one syllable."
"I'm on vacation," Serena says breezily. She strokes absently at the ends of her hair with the detangler, making faces at her oily foundation and dissipated lipgloss in the mirror above the dresser.
"Your life is a vacation," Blair says. As a lawyer her own life is anything but, and Blair particularly likes lording her hyper-responsible adulthood over Serena's shiftless existence.
"I know you didn't call just to give me a hard time."
"Nope, that's a bonus." Blair very audibly takes a breath, like she's steeling herself, and it immediately piques Serena's interest. "Okay. Are you sitting down?"
A slow smile starts to curl Serena's lips, like the bow on top of a present. "I'm a big girl, I can handle good news standing up."
"Are you so sure it's good?"
"I sort of have an idea," Serena admits.
Blair laughs again. "You're suddenly a psychic?"
"C'mon, B, just spit it out."
"First tell me if you're going to be back by the end of next week."
Serena's birthday. She'll be back by then. "Of course. Just tell me already!"
"Okay." Another pause, this one with something of a breathless giggle in it, and Blair announces, "I'm getting married!"
Serena sits automatically, though she misses the bed by a good four feet and goes sprawling on the floor, knocking her tailbone pretty hard for good measure.
"S? S, are you alright?"
Serena scrambles to right herself, heart beating much too wildly for a little spill. "Getting married? To who?" Suspiciously, "This isn't like that prince thing again, is it?"
"You're never going to let me live that down. I was twenty years old, I was an idiot." Blair releases a huffy little sigh. "It's not like that. It's – well, it's Dan."
If Serena wasn't already on her hotel room floor, that would've dropped her there. For a second she doesn't comprehend English anymore. "My Dan?"
She realizes what a dumb thing that is to say when the silence stretches too long on the other end.
"Your Dan, I mean. I guess I mean," she says. "You and Dan? You hate Dan."
"You know we've become very close over the years," Blair says.
"No, I don't," Serena says stubbornly. Sure, she remembers them having that weird little friendship affair however many years ago, but everyone was a mess then, and Blair seemed to drop it as soon as she got back with Chuck. Serena can't remember either of them mentioning the other in the intervening years. And, okay, she may not be in the country often, and she may not be kept abreast of every little update in her friends' lives but surely – surely they wouldn't have kept something like this from her?
"I hope you're not upset. Dan thought you might be. And I don't want you to think – we hadn't been seeing each other, not really, not more than usual, and we certainly weren't dating. But one day, out of the blue, he was going to visit his mother and I was seeing him off at the train and I was looking at him and I just thought – well, I just knew. It came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying." Blair laughs a little, softly, at the memory. "I asked him to marry me. And he said yes. So we're doing it – in two weeks." Her voice turns very earnest. "I understand if it might be strange, but I want you to be there. I want you to be my maid of honor."
Serena is still having some trouble grasping the basics of language right now. "Two weeks?"
"I've been trying to get ahold of you for the last month. I didn't want to tell you in a text."
Serena's heart starts hammering as she thinks of every call she'd missed or put off or blithely didn't pick up over the last four weeks. "But isn't that soon?"
Blair is both certain and damning on the other end. "Why wait?"
"Two weeks! Two weeks! Has Blair ever been the kind of person who would jump into something like this? The Blair I know would take like a year just to plan the most ridiculous wedding known to man. Two weeks!"
Carter is sprawled across Serena's unmade bed, passively watching as she stomps around the hotel room throwing things into her suitcase. He lights a cigarette. "Maybe he knocked her up."
Serena pauses, heels in one hand and makeup bag in the other. "Please don't put that out into the universe."
Carter gives her an amused little smirk as he puffs away. "You know Little Waldorf has always been a sucker for romance. Didn't you say something to that effect just the other night?"
"No," Serena says tightly, embarrassed. "I meant that Blair likes – she likes tradition and ritual and fate and –"
"Now you're just arguing semantics. Even I know Waldorf is a girl after a fairytale, and if there's anything more romantic than taking your time planning a Princess Di ordeal, it's being so in love you can barely wait a couple of weeks."
"Oh, what do you know about romance," Serena grumbles, stuffing a cocktail dress into a garment bag. "You pick up a different guy every night. Sometimes two."
"I'm just friendly," Carter says mildly.
"The point is–" Serena sits on top of her luggage so it'll close, then gestures Carter over to work the zipper. He groans and drags himself up reluctantly, cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. "The point is, they're all wrong for each other. They spent the last fifteen years hating each other's guts and, what, I go away on a couple trips and suddenly they're soulmates? Whatever Blair's peddling now, they were not friends."
Carter is giving her a curious look.
Serena frowns. "What?"
"Maybe…" He takes a slow, thoughtful drag and wets his lips. "Well, maybe they never told you because they thought you'd react like this."
Serena glares at him. "Can you call a car? I don't want to miss my flight."
He holds up his hands defensively. "Don't shoot the messenger, beautiful. I'm just sayin'."
She hauls her bag up off the bed and onto the floor. "Yeah, well, try saying less."
Serena took the earliest flight she could, so when she lands in JFK she's overtired and half-regretting begging the cutest flight attendant for a third mimosa. She drops her sunglasses on over her dark circles and fluffs up her hair a little, but no amount of primping is really going to help.
Blair is meeting her at baggage claim, so Serena hurries through the crowd with her oversized purse and carryon, eager not only to see Blair but to get some time alone to ask her about this whole marriage thing. To gauge Blair's seriousness. She scans signs and arrows, dodges Germans tourists and French toddlers, and then the crowd parts. Serena stops dead in her tracks. She swallows so hard it feels like her heart lands in her stomach.
Blair is standing over by the slowly rotating luggage carousel with Dan, though it would be more accurate to say she was leaning into him, her chin tipped up on his shoulder. They're talking about something that makes Blair smile. On its own that might be nothing, but it's Blair's best smile, the one people rarely get to see; it breaks over her face and wipes away the wryness and the snootiness and the sarcasm so she just looks happy. Blair's best smile, and she's giving it away to Dan in the middle of an airport.
Serena's stomach clenches but she bulldozes forward, pasting a smile on her face. "Guys!"
They turn to her as one, still easy and happy, and they step apart but don't separate entirely, fingers still tangled together. "Only you still look like a supermodel after nine hours on a plane," Blair says.
"Oh, stop," Serena says good-naturedly, reaching out to hook Blair into a hug. Once she releases Blair she pulls Dan over. "You too, mister."
Dan smiles. "I'm glad to see you."
"He's been having some kind of prolonged anxiety attack over the whole thing," Blair sniffs. "I told him it would be fine."
"Blair is grossly over-exaggerating."
Serena thinks her smile might be going a little thin and frayed around the edges, but she still pushes on. "Well, here I am. Feeling fine."
"Good," Dan says, and smiles a little, but his doesn't look entirely solid either. The moment lingers awkwardly until Dan steps forwards suddenly; Serena freezes, with no idea what he's doing, but he's moving past her to haul her seafoam green DVF luggage onto the ground. She hadn't even noticed it coming around.
"You remembered," she says.
"Hard to forget," he replies simply.
Serena barely gets a chance to have a single conversation with Blair, despite the fact that Blair is demanding Serena stay at her apartment instead of a hotel, because she is almost immediately plunged into hectic wedding preparations. It seems every branch on the Waldorf family tree has decided to show up, including Blair's bitchiest second cousins and the genuinely terrifying Granny Waldorf, who usually will only show up if someone's died.
Jenny is there, which surprises Serena (Jenny has been making good time as a London transplant for the last decade, at least), but what's even more surprising is that Jenny is making Blair's wedding dress.
"Very homespun," Blair says dryly. "Family-oriented. See what marrying a Brooklynite is doing to me?"
"Gotta say I'm pretty shocked." Serena winces as one of Jenny's assistants, a petite and plump girl with neon pink hair, stabs her yet again with a pin. "Do you really have time to have all this made? Can't I get something off the rack?"
Blair closes her eyes and puts her hand over her heart. "I don't know why you want to hurt me, Serena."
She laughs. "I just mean – two weeks, B."
"I know, it is a little crazy," Blair muses. "Oh well."
Serena's eyebrows crawl towards her hairline. Oh well? She's not sure she's ever seen Blair so unruffled about anything ever in her entire life. There was that one time she and Nate got Blair to smoke a joint freshman year, but even then Blair just got panicky and paranoid. "Okay, Pod Person Blair, where's the real one?"
Blair smiles before getting up to tug at the bodice of Serena's gown, fiddling with the way it lays. "I just want to be married. We almost eloped, you know." She lifts her gaze up to Serena's, still smiling and sparkly, and Serena feels crushed in a vise. "But I couldn't imagine doing it without you."
"That's sweet, B," Serena says, but she feels distanced from it all of a sudden. It's like when she left New York the last time she stepped into some kind of portal where time moved more slowly than in the real world, and now that she's back everyone's moving in double-time. It is always faintly startling how much things move on without her.
Serena's not so sure she's willing to take it lying down, either.
By the end of her first week back, Serena is cranky and over it. She's sat through too many bridal brunches and family dinners, made small talk with visiting Humphreys and spent nearly an hour at the mercy of Roman's niece, who is apparently a dedicated fan of Serena's channel. The girl was only satisfied when Serena promised to do her hair for the wedding, an oath she has no intention of keeping. Thankfully Blair is too much of a control freak to delegate much to anyone else, but she's been pestering Serena about those somethings borrowed and etcetera, so Serena will have to deal with that at some point.
Today is yet another event in her calendar: Blair's bachelorette party, though it hardly counts as one at all. Blair turned down all attempts to make it trashy or fun, so it's just another dinner out with people Serena isn't interested in spending time with. And Blair and Dan decided to combine the bachelor/bachelorette festivities, another unbearable layer on the entire endeavor. At this rate she's never going to see Blair alone again for the rest of their lives.
She gets a little – just a little, barely even at all, she might refer to herself as delicately smashed if anything – drunk on Blair's signature cocktail, some non-mojito cucumber mint gin nonsense. So, delicately smashed, she finds herself getting a little clingy, arm looped through Blair's. "And do you remember the time," Serena is saying, laughing, "that we went on that double date in Paris and you pushed me into a fountain?"
Blair gives her an indulgent smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, and it seems obvious that the rest of the table is losing interest in the retelling of the Adventures of Serena and Blair. Dan is over at another table with Nate and Jenny and some other people who must be his friends, but halfway through Serena's story of stealing champagne from Harold and Roman's wedding, Dan makes his way over to squeeze into the seat next to Blair.
He doesn't so much as glance at anyone besides Blair. "Hi."
Blair turns away from Serena already smiling, though her arm is still linked with Serena's. "Hi. Are you having a good time?"
"B," Serena interrupts. "B – do you remember when – Dan, you wouldn't know, this was before we met you – do you remember that time we were dancing on that bar – well, okay, I was –"
Blair and Dan have both turned to look at Serena and she realizes right then exactly what's bothering her about the two of them; they have this almost condescending air about them, people who have found themselves settled and are now looking down on their poor single messy friend with benign pity.
"I actually think that was Georgina," Serena finishes weakly. She's not sure why she can't work up any of the things she means to say: Sundays with cappuccino and Audrey, Blair braiding her hair at night during sleepovers, putting her arms around Blair while she was crying and making all the bad stuff go away. It's too intimate to say so messily.
The conversation mellows into awkwardness again, and Dan tries to crack it with a joke, as usual. "Drinking a lot?" he wonders, brows drawn together, amusement on his face.
And even though it's nothing really, Serena's stomach sinks. It's just that way Dan has about him, this thing he does, where he can casually and without ill intention say something that makes Serena feel like total crap.
"It is a bachelorette party," Serena says. "Sort of. I think I'm going to go get some air."
Their faces fall a little, Dan's regretfully, but Serena isn't interested in any of it just now. She didn't do anything she came here to do tonight; she didn’t get Blair's full attention, she didn't really remind Blair of their friendship, their good days. She was just the same old Serena she always is, ridiculous and trashed.
Serena flops down onto the curb like she used to do when she was fourteen outside of bars, when she couldn't find it in her to care about anything, especially herself.
Blair comes outside to find her after a few minutes. She lays down what must be Dan's jacket and then perches gingerly on the curb beside Serena. She smiles a little, but it's that indulgent smile Serena doesn't like, the one that makes it seem like Blair is humoring her. "You were pretty shocked when I told you, huh?"
"Shocked? No." Serena shakes her head and offers up her own fake smile. "Alright, maybe a little… A lot." She drops her gaze, expression warming. "I fell off the bed."
"I knew I heard a thump!"
"This all seems really…out of left field for me," Serena admits.
"I know," Blair says sympathetically. "It's harder now to be close. Getting older, the distance –"
"That's not what I mean," Serena murmurs.
Blair falls silent, and after a minute she shifts closer and puts an arm around Serena, head on her shoulder. It lasts half a second and then she's pulling away again. "Come on, let's go back in. I have it on good authority that there might be cake."
Serena nods but doesn't move. "I'll be there in a minute."
After Blair goes back inside, Serena digs out her cell phone and calls the only person who would even halfway get how she's feeling right now.
"Carter? I need you."
Carter arrives by the next morning, rumpled and sleepy. He looks good otherwise, tan and mussed and effortlessly hot, drawing the gaze of passersby just standing there waiting by the line of taxis in his white t-shirt and shades. Serena pokes her head out of her car.
"Baizen!" she calls. "Look sharp!"
He looks towards her with a lazy grin before scooping up his solitary duffle bag and walking over. "Girl can barely handle a week without me. You know I left a very promising one night stand for you."
She pushes the door open. "I'm sure you'll find another."
Once they're driving back towards Manhattan, Carter pushes his sunglasses up and takes her in. "Okay, honey. Shoot."
Serena rolls her eyes a little but it ends up spilling out anyway. "This has been, without fail, the worst week of my entire life. Blair hasn't been this obnoxious about a boy since Nate when we were thirteen, except it's about a million times worse because it's Dan. And, you know, at the risk of sounding like a total psycho, he was my Dan first."
Carter is looking at her with something akin to mounting horror. "Oh god, are you in love with Humphrey again now?"
Serena is silent. Then she says, "Not with Dan."
Blair was hers first, too.
Carter covers his face with one hand. "Serena."
Stubbornly, and very fast, Serena says, "Blair is my one constant. She's always been there. I can't lose her." She bites her lip. "It was always her and me – always, it was always us, I always came first."
Carter sighs as he loops his arm around her, pulling her against him. "Oh, beautiful. You got yourself into a fine mess, didn't you?"
Serena brings Carter along to that day's pre-wedding event – and for a quickie wedding, there really are a lot of them – which is a family brunch and, thankfully, the last bit of nonsense until the day of. Blair's face falls the minute she sees them swagger in together.
She grabs Serena by the arm and pulls her off a few feet. "Can you please explain to me what Carter Baizen is doing here?"
"He's my friend," Serena says. "And business partner!"
"Your YouTube channel is not a business," Blair says impatiently. Carter is across the room making small talk with Harold and Roman, and Blair glares at him over Serena's shoulder. "You know how I feel about Carter."
If asked, Serena would not be able to explain her behavior in the following minutes. There are three things floating around her head – one, she's still smarting over the bachelorette party; two, she has confusing tummy-swimming feelings about Blair; three; she has the sudden urge to catch Blair as off guard as she herself was caught – and they coalesce into one incredibly questionable decision.
"I didn't want to tell you like this, B," Serena says. "He's my fiancé."
She thinks if Blair tried to sit down in this moment, she'd probably miss the chair.
"What?"
"Yeah," Serena says with false bravado. "We were going to announce it on the vlog, you know, do a whole cute thing – and I didn't want to steal your thunder –"
Blair stares at her. "I was under the impression both you and Carter had edged towards opposite sides of the sexuality spectrum."
Serena laughs, waving a hand. It's true that she can't remember the last time either of them dated someone of the opposite sex, but it's not like they were never involved; Serena's interest in men has gone the way of Carter's interest in women, but it was still there, somewhere. Probably.
"These things are fluid, B," Serena says.
Blair gives her a doubtful look, but it's nothing to the narrow-eyed fury she shoots in Carter's direction.
As they take their seats Serena sidles up next to Carter and mutters through her teeth, "We're engaged, by the way."
The look Carter gives her speaks to how well they get each other; he knows immediately what's going on and he is not happy about it. But as soon as they sit he's turned on the full Carter charm, all lazy grins and attractive sprawl. He slings his arm around Serena's shoulders.
"Serena has an announcement," Blair says, sounding rather brittle. "S?"
"Oh, B –" Serena shakes her head. "I don't want to take away from –"
"She and Carter are engaged!" Blair announces. "Isn't that something?"
Everyone all down the table blinks for several minutes before breaking into customary congratulations – all except Dan and Blair, who look disconcerted and huffy.
"My goodness, Serena," Eleanor says. "We didn't think you'd ever settle down!"
"I thought Carter was gay now?" Kati stage-whispers to Iz.
"I thought Serena was gay now?" Iz stage-whispers back.
"I for one am glad to see both my girls so happy," Harold offers. "And both at once!"
"How did you two meet?" Roman interjects.
"Serena did coke off his abs when we were fourteen," Blair says snidely.
Eleanor immediately chastises her. "Blair!"
Blair does not appear abashed in the slightest. "Well, it's true."
"We had something of a troubled time growing up," Carter says smoothly. He looks at Serena, deeply into her eyes, and for a second it feels like when they would play good at galas when they were teenagers – a game that they're in together. He must feel it too, because he smiles, and Serena returns it. "But we grew out of it together."
Everyone oohs and ahhs.
"Charming," Dan mutters.
"Like a fairytale," Blair adds.
"I remember the first moment I saw her," Carter continues. "The light – neon strobe – catching in her hair. The dress she was wearing – scandalously short, of course. Our eyes met across the dance floor, and with that one look, I was hooked. We moved towards each other. If I think about it, I can almost hear the song that was playing – can you, beautiful?"
Serena shakes her head minutely with big panic eyes. When Carter gets going about something it can be near impossible to stop him. Serena has a feeling this is one of those times.
He gives a deep, resonant hum. Then he parts his lips and sings, slower than the tempo of the actual song, "Oh, when you walk by every night, talking sweet and looking fine, I get kind of hectic insi-i-ide –"
Carter has many talents, but music is not among them. But he looks good, and he purrs the lyrics more than anything, so by the time Kati and Iz kick in with backup vocals, everyone is entirely swept up.
Serena thinks the song that was actually playing when she met Carter was Beyoncé's Naughty Girl, so at least this isn't that. Her eyes meet Blair's helplessly across the table while Carter croons away – drawing the attention of the whole restaurant by now, and at least one enterprising tween who seems to recognize him and Serena – and gives an embarrassed little shrug. Blair returns the look with a disbelieving one of her own, utterly unimpressed with this entire situation, and something in Serena feels distinctly satisfied.
Then Dan nudges his nose against Blair's cheek and mutters something in her ear that has her letting out a surprised laugh. And just like that, Serena's momentary victory is quashed.
Later, on the cab ride back to Carter's hotel, Serena punches him in the arm. Carter, for his part, can't stop laughing.
"Do you think the Mariah Carey sold the heterosexuality or hindered it? I could've sworn I saw Roman giving me an up-and-down."
"You are an idiot," Serena huffs.
"Blair was jealous, at least," he muses. "Isn't that the whole point of this?"
Serena fidgets, crossing her arms and shrugging. "No."
"Oh, come on, beautiful," Carter says. "Maybe you're opaque to everyone else, but I can see right through you. You want Waldorf. You're trying to make it happen."
"No, I'm just – All I'm trying to do is show her that she's rushing into things. That maybe the ending she's supposed to have isn't the one she's setting herself up for."
"The one she chose, you mean," Carter says pointedly.
"Blair's heart gets her into trouble," Serena insists. "I don't want her to get hurt."
"All our hearts get us into trouble, beautiful. Trying all these things, these little games, getting in the way – all you're gonna do is make it worse when she finds out."
"What's your point?"
"My point is that you should be honest with her." Carter is looking at her intently but Serena doesn't want to be looked at, so she's keeping her gaze trained anywhere else. "Look, honey, if there's one thing I learned in rehab, it's that. You have to come clean. It's the only way anything halfway decent is going to come of this."
Serena gives him a half-hearted little push. "I hate when you act all wise."
Carter grins at her. "Would you rather I try and fuck the groom?" Serena starts laughing. "That would put an end to it, huh?"
Serena pushes him again, then pulls him in so she can rest her head on his chest. "Let's make that Plan C."
Carter presses a kiss into her hairline. "You got it, beautiful."
The next morning, Serena takes Blair out for an apology breakfast to make up for Carter turning her brunch into a singalong. They take their pastries and coffee to Bethesda Terrance and sit on the steps facing the fountain, the sun bright on their faces.
"You know," Serena starts, then stops. She swallows a burning mouthful of coffee. "Carter and I aren't actually engaged."
Blair gives her a faint look of curious surprise, her eyebrow arching. "Is that so?"
"I don't really know why I said that," Serena admits. "I think I'm just feeling…weird about everything. To say the least."
"Yes, I have noticed that a bit. I can't say I'm disappointed about Carter – that is one mistake you could do without making."
"Yeah." Serena ducks her head. "I just can't believe you're really getting married. And to Dan."
Blair half-smiles. "He's utterly hopeless, you know. Gets dressed every morning like he's doing it in the dark. Never remembers to shave or get a haircut. Plays the most egregious music; he will literally play the same song for six straight hours if he's writing. And he gets emotional during cheesy commercials. Isn't that embarrassing?"
Serena laughs softly, wistfully.
"I've been thinking a lot, too. I know the wedding is taking up so much of our time, but I haven't forgotten you, you know." Blair studies her slightly. "I miss you, Serena. I've missed you for months. We get these little moments like we're having now, where it's just us, and I can't help but realize how it's been missing from my life – and how much I needed it. This might be the last time for a while we get to be like this, just the two of us."
Serena's throat constricts a little. "Yeah."
"Dan said to me once… It was so long ago now, before everything. He told me that when you have something to say to someone, you have to say it – even if it doesn't change anything, because then they would know how you felt." Again the smallest smile curves her lips. "I think it took more than ten years for that to really sink in for me."
Serena swallows hard as she meets Blair's steady gaze. "What happens if you don't tell them?"
Blair's shoulder lifts and falls, a graceful little shrug. "I suppose the moment just passes you by. And then you can never really get it back."
They look at each other for a long moment. Blair's expression is more gentle and open than Serena thinks she has ever seen it in their entire life together, but Serena's throat is so choked with words none of them can complete the journey to her lips. So she doesn't say anything. And Blair doesn’t say anything. And that's that.
It's a dumb thing to do.
Serena's one major maid of honor task is to acquire things for Blair that are old, new, borrowed, and blue, because there are some nonsense traditions that Blair apparently cannot do without. So Serena goes uptown to her mom's place to dig through her old boxes of high school garbage with the idea of finding some cutesy trinket that could cross more than one attribute off the list. She finds a gold bracelet studded with blue stones that might do nicely. She also finds the story.
Sometime in the lengthy up and down relationship she had with Dan, which Serena is resolutely not thinking about in the lead-up to the wedding, Serena ended up with a couple of his old notebooks. He would leave stuff at her place, she would borrow things, occasionally he'd even ask her to read something. Serena would always joke about holding onto his scribbles and selling them on eBay once he was famous.
These days, Dan is sort of famous.
It's a story dated from the end of their senior year. Serena remembers it as soon as she scans the first line, because she'd found it by accident all those years ago too, and she and Dan had a fight about it. He swore he was never going to show it to anyone and he gave it to Serena just so she could be sure, and then they kissed and made up as was their wont.
It's a story about a bitchy popular girl at a high school that is definitely not at all Constance Billard, a girl whose parents ignore her and friends hate her and gets walked all over by the boys in her life. It's satirical and mocking and mean, but even back then Serena had been a little jealous that he wrote about someone besides her.
So maybe that is one of the many factors motivating Serena.
Inside put Dan on the map but he's done well for himself since, with a string of popular books and movies based on those books and a handsome face that lends itself well to televised interviews. It never hurt that his misbegotten teen years were so heavily observed, a funny little phenomenon that gets attention on the internet now and again, articles popping up about that weird Gossip Girl thing that went down in New York.
The fact that this story is about Blair before Dan loved her and that they're getting married imminently only means that when Serena submits it, Vanity Fair online is eager to publish.
It's a stupid thing to do, but Serena does it.
The story comes out the day of the wedding. To say that Blair is furious would be putting it mildly.
"I don't understand what this is supposed to accomplish," she fumes, snapping her laptop shut with a painful sound. "Is some derogatory juvenile diatribe about me supposed to be a grand romantic gesture? Because if it is, I'm missing the romance."
"Did he say why?" Iz wonders, nose wrinkling. "I mean, did you ask?"
"No," Blair says bluntly. "I'm not speaking to him."
Kati worries her lip, then exchanges a worried glance with Iz. "What about the wedding?"
Blair doesn't answer.
Serena is jittery and on her third espresso of the morning, wishing she had some kind of bad habit like smoking to escape into. She shouldn't have done it, but hasn't decided yet whether she regrets it or not. That's entirely dependent on Blair.
"Let's go for a walk, huh, B?" she asks, hands gentle on Blair's tense shoulders. "Just give yourself a little time to think?"
They walk down Fifth towards the Met, Central Park to the right, sundrenched and leafy. It would be a nice place for a wedding, Serena thinks absently. If she ever got married, she would do it right by the fountain. Dan and Blair are getting married at the Plaza; Serena never thought she'd see the day Dan Humphrey got married at the Plaza. But maybe he won't.
While they walk Blair unloads a steady stream of vitriol about Dan, about how stupid it was that she even decided to do this, about every foolish romantic decision she's ever made her in life. By the time she's done they're at the steps, where Blair collapses in an elegant heap of worn-out rage. Serena sits gingerly beside her.
"So are you still going to go through with it?"
Blair deflates. "I don't know. I just don't understand. I didn't think he thought about me like that anymore." More stridently, she adds, "I'm not like that anymore."
Serena sees then that this is about more than feeling embarrassed on an important day. "You never were, B."
"Yes I was," Blair sighs. "I was awful. I was awful to everyone all the time because I hated myself."
Serena has never heard her speak so bluntly, and she counters it with increasing softness. "Never to me."
Blair snorts, looking at her with disbelief. "Especially to you. Has all that time with Carter destroyed your brain cells by osmosis?"
"No," Serena says. "I know you, Blair. I always have. And maybe it's been hard for you and maybe you've handled things the wrong way, but it's just because you're too – your heart is too –" She takes a deep breath. "Delicate."
Blair smiles slightly. "You let me get away with too much."
"I love you," Serena says.
"Dan never lets me get away with anything," Blair continues. "It's the most irritating thing. I think it's why I pushed him away for such a long time, but now it makes me feel so –"
"No," Serena interrupts, more urgently, her heart beating so hard in her chest and those three espressos sparking her veins. "Blair, I love you."
"I heard you, S," Blair says, amused. "I love you too."
"No," Serena says for the third time in as many minutes, feeling herself get desperate now. "I have to say this quick, okay, or you'll never hear it. Which you need to. Remember?"
She has Blair's attention now. "Serena, what's –"
Serena just says it. "I love you. I've loved you forever, but I was stupid, I took it for granted that you would always be there and I was scared, because I knew it was real. And I'm always scared of anything real. I know this is the worst time, I know I always have the worst timing but – choose me. Marry me. Let me make you happy."
Anything else that might have been in Blair's expression is blotted out entirely by her shock, though there is the hint of something else forming, something that will probably decide Serena's fate. Before it can crystalize, she cups Blair's face in her hands and kisses her, which she hasn't done since they were teenagers pretending it was nothing – though there was a moment during Blair's birthday trip, a moment that hung between them like champagne bubbles, that Serena thinks she will always regret not taking.
"Blair?"
Blair pulls away from Serena, turning in the direction of the voice, and there's Dan, standing there at a total loss. He opens his mouth to speak but doesn't manage it, instead turning sharply and getting almost immediately swallowed by the crowd thronging the streets, tourists and people in suits on their lunch break and teenagers killing time. In a blink, he's gone, and Blair is up without a second thought, calling his name as she surges after him. Serena is half a step behind her.
"Blair!" she calls, but Blair doesn't turn, instead weaving through passersby, calling Dan's name. It goes on like that for more than three blocks, this futile chasing, until Serena sees Blair get into a taxi heading downtown. Fuck, Serena thinks, but she waves down a cab too, barreling into it and keeping her eyes on Blair's, something out of the stupidest movie known to man. "Follow that car!"
Serena fumbles for her cell phone as traffic slows them to a painful crawl. "You would not believe," she starts as soon as Carter picks up. "This is what comes of telling the truth, Carter!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down – What have you done now?"
"I told Blair I loved her! And we kissed! And Dan saw, and now she's chasing him downtown somewhere, and I'm chasing her, and I don't even know why people bother trying to drive in New York City–"
"Blair is chasing Dan," Carter repeats. "And you are chasing Blair."
"That's what I just said!"
"Serena, who is chasing you?"
Serena, busy glaring at the surrounding cars, falters. "What?"
"You kissed her and confessed your love and put yourself on the line – very admirable, we should all be so stupid – and now you're running her down in Manhattan. But she's not running towards you, Serena."
Serena doesn't know what she's supposed to say to that. "This is all your fault!"
"Who's chasing you?" Carter says again. "Nobody. That's your answer."
"I'm hanging up on you," Serena snaps, but she doesn't.
"Just because you love her doesn't mean you're the one." He doesn't say it unkindly, but it still stings. "Serena, would you even be doing this if there wasn't someone else?"
Serena does hang up then.
Blair and Dan would never have known each other if it wasn't for Serena; she was the bridge that crossed the gap between them, the one thing they had in common. Only apparently that isn't true. Apparently behind her back, for who knows how long, they've been building other bridges, tons of them, so many that the Serena-shaped one has been rendered entirely obsolete.
Would she even be doing this if the someone else wasn't one of them?
Blair gets out of her taxi at Penn Station, so Serena throws whatever cash is in her wallet at her own driver and takes off after Blair. The throngs inside the building are even worse; Serena has to dodge piled-up luggage like jumping hurdles, and she startles more than one wandering brunette who she mistakes for Blair. Stations are stations to Serena, each busy and shiny and overwhelming in its own way, but Blair has always hated it here, preferring the romance of Grand Central.
She finally spots Blair standing hopelessly under the big departures board, scanning the crowd and looking lost.
"I have another confession to make," Serena begins. "This one's worse."
Blair starts, hand going up to her heart. "Serena, I can't right now. Dan isn't answering his –"
"Just listen." Blair takes a breath and does so, giving Serena her attention. "The story? That caused this whole big…mess. Dan didn't send it in. I did. He wrote it when we were like seventeen, I found it in a box of old stuff and I – I sent it."
Blair stares at her.
"I'm sorry," Serena says. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking and I just –"
"You did that?" Blair's voice is low, deadly. "You? Do you even realize what you –" She's picking up speed as her anger grows. "Of course you do, that's why you did it, I –"
"I've been acting like a total lunatic since I came back to the city, just trying to –" Serena presses her lips together. "Trying to make you pick me instead. Trying to win some kind of tug of war that no one was playing except me. And all I ended up doing was ruining everything."
Blair is still looking at her.
"But I'll fix it, I will," Serena promises. "I – Let's find Dan, we can find him and I'll talk to him and I'll tell him that it was all me, that you had nothing to do with it. And he'll believe it because, let's face it, he knows me. He knows just how stupid I can be."
Blair sighs. "Serena –"
"No, don't. Just let me make it up to you."
"Serena, all these cringing apologies aren't very attractive."
Whatever Serena has been expecting, it wasn't that.
Blair goes on to say, "You have never, presumably, served a girl at Nairtini, or outed someone's non-existent drug problem to every Ivy league college in the country, or treated everyone you ever met like they were a servant, or spray painted offensive epithets on someone's fashion line –"
"You were a teenager," Serena protests weakly. "I'm old. I should know better."
"And you will," Blair says. "Next time." This new level of patience and understanding in Blair is perhaps more chilling than when she loses it. "You know, it's pretty flattering. That you love me that much."
Serena looks at her with something like amazement. "Except it turned me into a neurotic psychopath."
"I've heard love can do that under the best of circumstances," Blair says, and she even smiles a little.
It's too much for Serena's tender heart to take, at least right now. It's too much to be forgiven; she'd rather she hadn't been. "We should find Dan… Why do you think he came here?"
"It's where I proposed," Blair says, and Serena knew that, she remembers now. "There's something terribly romantic about train stations. They always make you feel like someone is going off to war."
Serena would laugh, but she can't yet. "Is that why you did it?"
Blair meets her eyes again. "No. I just suddenly knew that if I didn't say it, I'd regret it."
Serena takes a deep breath. "Let's go find him, okay?"
They go their separate ways to locate Dan, who is answering neither calls nor texts, and could quite literally be anywhere in the cavernous station – or anywhere beyond it, really. Serena has never wished for the return of Gossip Girl in her life, but she does still have a coterie of little teenagers hanging on her every word. So she tweets a picture of Dan and asks her NYC followers to let her know if any of them see him.
And what do you know? Thanks to modern technology and fangirls, Serena locates Dan leaning moodily against a wall eating a pretzel. He does not seem surprised to see her.
"I knew it was you," he says. "Who sent the story. You had the only copy, because you never wanted it to see the light of day, in case it hurt Blair."
Serena wets her lips. "Yeah. I've been struggling with some questionable logic lately."
"I'm aware," Dan says. "I am not sure you've spoken directly to me more than twice in the last two weeks."
Serena steps up next to him and leans back, reaching out to snag a bite of his food. "Well, you did steal my girl."
"Is that what happened?"
"I never thought of myself as a jealous person," Serena says. "I saw people get jealous all around me. It was so toxic, and I always thought: at least that's not me."
"But it's everyone," Dan says.
"It's everyone," Serena agrees. "Is that why you fled the scene?"
"I… Any time I'm around you guys, it's like I'm a visitor from another planet. It's like you're speaking a language only the two of you know. If anyone was going to come between us, it'd be you. So…is that what you did?"
When they look at each other, there is genuine apprehension in Dan's expression, real nerves and worry that he's keeping bottled. Dan so casually leaning here, eating, nondescript and unnoticeable; inside, a storm.
"Dan," Serena says finally. "She loves you. Go get married."
The wedding goes on without another hitch. Serena walks down the aisle and stands there while her friends exchange their I do's. She leads them into the reception, hand-in-hand with Nate, Dan's best man. When the moment comes, she clinks her fork gently against her glass and waits for everyone to quiet down, then gives a thoughtful and loving speech right off the top of her head.
It's only when Dan and Blair are leaving late that night with plans of getting right on a plane for an Italian honeymoon that Serena feels a little crack in her placid façade. Everyone is hustling for a last glimpse of the bride and groom, and Serena feels buffeted by the happy partygoers yet at the same time totally removed from them, engulfed and unable to catch her breath. She turns to push through to the other side, away from the line of goodbyes, and then she feels a hand on her arm turning her back.
Blair pulls her in close and Serena is crushed against the tulle and satin of her tea-length wedding dress, like a 1950s prom queen. Or Audrey Hepburn. She's flushed with happiness and she smells like Blair, the same perfume she's been wearing since they were eighteen years old. That perfume will never belong to anyone else. "I love you," Blair murmurs in her ear, sound almost swallowed up by the noise. "I'll see you soon."
Then she's gone, back in Dan's arms underneath a shower of environmentally friendly flower petals being tossed by the guests. She doesn't turn back once, but Dan does, raising a hand in a wave. Serena returns it.
Then she goes to get a cocktail.
Serena stays late at the wedding, maybe later than she should, helping herself liberally to the open bar. She watches the crowd thin out, listens to the band, and just – feels. She lets the entire experience wash over her and doesn't shy away from it, and it's not too bad, really.
Then her phone buzzes, Carter flashing across the screen making a kissy face. His ringtone has been officially changed to Mariah Carey.
"You never gave me an update," he says.
"I did what I had to do."
"Split them up? Are you Mrs. Blair Waldorf now instead of Dan?"
She smiles. "No. I said goodbye."
"I'm proud of you," Carter says. "You're like a real grownup. Though I'd feel better if you were dancing."
"Oh, maybe in another thirty or forty years," she jokes. "Maybe I'll feel like dancing then."
"Oh, beautiful," he sighs. "I can picture you sitting there all alone at your table, sparkling in your black dress, haven't touched your cake –"
"Did I tell you my dress was black?"
"Looking so lovely and sad, like an album cover or a Sofia Coppola movie –"
"Carter, I don't think I ever told you what color my dress was."
"And just like a movie, suddenly the perfect pop song starts playing, the one that encapsulates your exact shade of mood and heartbreak." The band starts kicking up a slow, jazzy version of Fantasy. "Okay, maybe not that song, but –"
Serena stands up immediately, a laugh bubbling just behind her lips, turning in place to try and spot him.
Carter continues to narrate, a low, smooth voice in her ear. "And you're off your chair, wondering, searching, feeling him there but unable to see him. Questions race through your mind in time with the pounding of your heart. Will you find him? Will Cinderella dance again? Is it just a sweet, sweet fantasy?"
"Carter," Serena says, laughing now, and then the crowd parts and there he is: sitting at the bar and smiling at her, waiting.
"There he is," Carter says. "Sleek. Stylish. Radiant with charisma. Bizarrely, he's on the telephone – but then, so are you." He slides off his stool and moves in her direction, free hand in his pocket. He's wearing a tux, and even Serena would be hard pressed to say he doesn't look a little debonair. "And he comes towards you, the moves of a jungle cat…" Carter reaches her, plucking the phone from her hand and dropping it into his pocket, then doing the same with his own. "You assume, quite rightly, that he is gay, like most devastatingly handsome single men of his age. But then you think, what the hell. Life goes on."
Carter holds out a hand and Serena gladly gives him hers, still smiling, feeling light and fragile all at once.
"Maybe there won't be marriage," Carter says, making a face. "Maybe there won't be sex." He waggles his eyebrows at her. "But by God, there will be dancing."
Carter spins her out in time with the music and Serena grins, spinning back. It didn't go away; she's still sad, still wrung out, still lonely – but not alone. No feeling is forever, however much it seems like it is.
"You know I have to 'gram you in that tux," she tells him.
"Ha," Carter says. "Two steps ahead of you. I'm already wearing foundation."
Serena laughs, burying her face in his shoulder. "How does the song go? You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you–"
No feeling is forever, and there's no telling what the future might bring. Serena will have to wait and see.