Title: don’t trust a poet (cause they prefer to bleed)
Fandom: gossip girl
Rating: teen
Length: ~1600 words
Notes: also for ladiesbingo, title from k.flay's you felt right, soulmate au

Blair wakes up the morning of her seventeenth birthday, immediately disrobing and standing before her full length mirror. She scans her front and back quickly, then more critically, sure to check behind her ears and the soles of her feet, the back of her neck and inner thighs.

Nothing.

No first name, not even a single letter, is anywhere to be found. She knew it was a long shot, and the last bit of hope shrivels up. At sixteen, often on the sixteenth birthday but also anytime before turning seventeen, your soulmate’s first name is to appear. Some people even have multiple, like her mother with daddy and Cyrus, and daddy with her mother and Roman. They explained it to her once when she was younger, all about how soulmates could be platonic or romantic or both, and one day she’d discover her own soulmate- or mates. And Blair, nine years old with her diamond tiara, had declared she’d have so many soulmates her skin would look like a newspaper. Her parents had all laughed, but Blair meant it- didn’t ever want to ever be alone.

She shivers, turning away from the mirror and getting dressed. It’s her day dammit, and that calls for a nice bright red.

.

Less than .00001% of people are nameless. A fact Blair clung to after turning sixteen and a half without any ink popping up. And then tighter and tighter with disbelief as the days continued to pass without change.

She’s probably the only one in their school- definitely the only one in their grade. Gossip Girl’s been doing a series of posts on what names people have, guessing who they match with. Tomorrow there will probably be some bitchy post about how very unlovable and insecure-

No. She’s not wasting any more of her thoughts on that gossip-mongering troll.

.

She loves S. She does.

She just also wants to strangle her sometimes. Like now.

Serena and Nate came to her party together, which Blair is fine with. It was Blair that told them to quit it with the secret dating bullshit they thought they were being sneaky about. Sure, Blair and Nate had been dating since they were children, had their lives planned out together, but the golden duo were soulmates. Who was she to stand in the way of true love?

So what, she’s bitter. So is half the upper east side.

Blair grabs a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, graciously accepting the happy birthday wishes from little Jenny. Her boring older brother weaseled his way into her party apparently, and her smirk turns vicious when Chuck hands him a glass of whiskey. He’s really slumming it tonight. The Eva on his neck didn’t slow down Chuck’s efforts to sleep with the entire school, in fact it seemed to hurry them. Dan hadn’t lasted long with Vanessa Hilton, the only reason she knows his name, incredible really that it happened at all. Hilton used to have such good taste, a shame.

Is and Kati are being proper minions, filling one ear with gossip and the other with flattery. They’re so good at it sometimes she forgets that they aren’t truly hers, devoted to each other. (Ever since the names came in, everything is different. They need her, but they don’t need her.)

They give her ammo on every party attendee, most of it she already knew or suspected, but there’s plenty of new stuff too. Like Eric meeting up with some mystery boy and Georgina tripping acid during the school trip- really it’s a mystery how the girl hasn’t been expelled yet. (A boring mystery at that, with new campus buildings constantly popping up with the Sparks name.)

There’s only one girl they fail to give her any information about, and Blair’s lips curl at the destitute hipster look. She must be one of the scholarship kids, and she wonders who let her tag along. As Blair approaches it becomes obvious she is kind of pretty, and that somehow makes the outfit- if it can be called that- all the more insulting.

“Dear me, did you not hear this is a black tie party?”

“I don’t see a single black tie,” she answers flatly.

Blair smiles, can work with this, can see her as the newest minion already. She’s been rather enjoying Jenny’s over-thankful attitude, how very ready she is to do anything. She could use another project like her. It’d be far more entertaining than the alternative.

“My name’s Blair Waldorf-”

She snorts, “I’ve sat behind you in Math for three years.”

“Oh.”

“Vanessa Abrams. Since you spend that class texting I won’t hold it against you.”

Blair lets out a little laugh, undecided if she believes her. “I’m sure Kati has some dresses tucked away that would fit you. Shall we?”

Vanessa raises an eyebrow, “I don’t need your charity.”

Blair rolls her eyes, “Don’t worry I’ll only let you try on the ugly dresses I was planning on burning. This way it’s tax deductible.”

Vanessa snorts again, but she follows her.

.

Vanessa doesn’t become her next project. She refuses to be, and Blair nearly discards her. If it wasn’t for the whole no-soulmate thing and Serena becoming Serena-and-Nate, she would have. The only time Vanessa allows Blair to dress her up is when she’s drunk. Blair likes her better that way anyways, her arguments have more amusement and less heat.

It comes out that Vanessa and Dan were soulmates, his name faded on her hip, nearly invisible.

“I wasn’t enough for an artist like him. Growing up together, being best friends for so long, none of it mattered. We were dating when the Hilton thing happened, and he tried to play it off like we were mistaken and he found his real soulmate.”

“What a dick,” Blair says, too angry to formulate a better response.

“Joke’s on him, the name faded after that.”

“Did he ever try…?”

Vanessa laughs, low and bitter. “Of course. He thought I’d be happy being his backup plan, as if- I need more liquor for this.”

Blair smiles, calling the bartender over. “I got you”

And two appletinis later they never get back to Dan, move on to happier topics like the future and Yale and filming.

.

It shouldn’t be surprising that V becomes her closest confidant and friend over the months, but it is. She’s still close with Serena of course, and she has all of her minions, but there’s something special about Nessa. Maybe it’s because they’re never going after the same goals, she doesn’t feel inadequate when Vanessa shines. (It doesn’t hurt that she had Blair star in her artsy black and white art project, a modern Hepburn feeling film.)

She learns about V’s terrible parents (they aren’t terrible they just want different things for me!) and Blair tells her about growing up with two then three then four parents, Dorota the only one always there. Nessa says her life sounds like the before part of an adventure book, and Blair likes that. Her older sister, Ruby, gives V free rein. As long as Vanessa wants to stay with Blair she does, and it doesn’t take much time before the guest room is converted into V’s room. (She charms all of her parents, her mother especially as they talk art.)

It’s a slow realization, but Blair loves Vanessa. Loves how passionate she gets about film noir, how her eyes flash when she’s mad, how she can create stories at the drop of a hat- the two of them making new backstories for passing strangers. Nessa honestly believes in helping other people, beyond simply writing a check. (Which Blair might have suggested the first few times V said she had to go help out at a local soup kitchen. Eventually a truce was reached with lowering volunteer hours and also dropping off a sizable check.)

Blair waits until her birthday, it seems like a fitting time to tell Nessa. Most of the guest list is the same as last year with some additions. Seeing Serena and Nate fawning over each other doesn’t make her gut clench anymore, hasn’t in ages. Is and Kati are closer than ever, more minion in name than active practice- the two of them dancing all night. Chuck’s with his new fling of the moment, some girl from another school Blair doesn’t recognize- one far too pretty for him. Little Jenny’s grown up dressed in one of her own designs, with Nelly Yuki of all people on her arm. Dan seems to be solo, and Vanessa probably invited him, the lovely bleeding heart that she is.

After Nate, she promised herself she’d never get emotionally involved with another named person again. That she’d somehow find one of the other seventy thousand or so nameless people, one that would be her age and attractive and smart and snarky and make them hers. The promise seems foolish now, much like her dreams to marry into royalty (as if she doesn’t have enough fame or fortune).

“I want to keep you,” Blair says, and it’s something she’s told Vanessa before, but never like this. Never when they’re both on an eleventh floor balcony overlooking New York, moon shining above them, and her hand gently cupping V’s cheek. Never like a scene that could be taken directly out of any of Nessa’s favorite films.

Vanessa smiles, wraps her arms around her and inches closer. “Only if I get you.”

One of them must move even closer, Blair isn’t sure, too caught up in V’s new answer. Not ‘how does it feel to want’ or ‘you already have everything you want princess’ or ‘I’m not the type to be kept’. Ecstatic fireworks are already crashing in her mind before the kiss, and once their lips meet, Blair loses all sense of time and thought.

There’s only pleasure and Vanessa. Just the way things should be.