Playing God
Huh. I'm surprised. Playing God got more comments that Old War Horses. I guess the changes really helped it. Well, this is another revised chapter, and it has quite a few changes.
Playing God
Jim/Blair, Brian/OFC
Summary: Aliah adores the fact that Blair is an open spirit raised by a free-minded and strong woman. However, when she realizes that he is denying himself love--specifically love for his police partner, Jim--she feels a need to intervene. She knows what it is to want something you can never have, and she won't let Blair suffer that way. If it takes a little playing God, she is the woman up for the job.
Part One
Aliah rolled to a stop next to her van, poking the mechanical lift into motion with a heavy thunk that hinted at repairs lurking in her near future. Blair caught up with her. "Oh man, I cannot believe you went there." Throwing himself against the side of her van, he leaned--a picture of disinterest. But his body was far too tight for her to believe his act. Since she was five years old, she'd watched bodies. The studio down the street had offered her beautiful bodies bending in time to music, the instructor brutally criticizing any failed line in the graceful limbs. Her own home had offered her the chance to practice on the darker emotions. Right now, Blair's body screamed of nonchalance, but it whispered more honest notes of fear.
"Oh please, I've gone farther. How long have you known me? I would think you would just stop being scandalized at some point." She smiled at him, and rolled her chair backwards onto the van lift.
"I've known you way too long for these games." Blair even added a small snort at the end, as if that would make him appear more believable. The man was adorable. Hopeless, but adorable.
"Games make life more interesting," she countered. She pressed the button, and the lift raised her so that she was eye to eye with Blair. "And for me, this doesn't even rise to the level of scandalous. If you want, I could try harder... come up with something that would really scandalize you." She offered him a licentious smile before she rolled into the van. She settled herself behind the wheel and waited as Blair threw his backpack in through the passenger side door and climbed in.
Blair shook his head sadly. "Man, I've been hanging out with Jim on the uptight side of the fence way too much, because trust me, this is feeling pretty scandalous. Aliah, you can't walk into the middle of a police station and accuse one of the cops of being gay."
"Accuse?" She twisted in her chair to face him. From the way his face warped into a caricature of itself, he understood exactly what she meant. One only accused people when the action carried blame. You would never accuse her of being black or disabled or a dancer, so if Blair wanted use the word accuse with gayness, she was even more worried about his karma, not to mention his happiness. If he couldn’t have Jim, he wouldn’t be happy, she could see that clearly. “So, if I like women as well as I do men, you would accuse me of something?” she demanded.
"You know what I mean." His blush was a gathering storm of guilt and embarrassment that darkened his cheeks.
"That to be called gay is an accusation?" she asked carefully. While she would expect such foolishness from many men, she had never expected it from Blair... not even the subtle unconscious unfairness that hid in his words. "Yes, I do know what you mean. I'm horrified, but I know what you mean."
"Oh man, no. Just no. You're so twisting things around here. The weirdness is you coming in and saying that about Jim and me." Blair's fingers curled around the strap of his backpack like a child clutching a favorite blanket. Aliah just watched him for a long second, studying the way Blair sat, stiff and prepared to flee. She started the van and headed out of the police parking and toward Central High. Blair was brilliant with the students, teasing out those shy creatures who hid in the shadows and who would probably hide even more if Aliah tried pursuing them. She'd been a daughter of the shadows herself, but somewhere along the line she had lost the ability to slide in and out of the dark. Blair still could.
The odometer clicked by the miles and traffic smog filtered in through the van's heater and silence lingered heavily on the air, like the odor of dead fish. "I just spoke the truth." Aliah finally defended herself against the quiet. She hated the anger, but she would hate to watch Blair whither in longing even more. Lancing a boil hurt. Allowing it to fester would kill the patient.
At first, she didn't think Blair was going to answer. Then he pulled his backpack closer and turned an angry face toward her. But Blair was Blair, and the anger faded to resignation before he finished his first word. "Okay, first, you are really not the one I'm going to listen to when it comes to relationships"
"I can't imagine why not," she quickly pointed out before he could get to his second point.
He cast a disbelieving look in her direction. "Okay, I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not, so I think I'd better just ignore it."
"I have a long line of very satisfied lovers in my past-- my love life is the grand adage. It is a slow, sensual dance that leaves the audience in awe." Aliah bridled her body, emphasizing just how satisfied she could leave a lover.
"Roberto?" Blair demanded, poking her ego with one sharp word-pin. Aliah flinched from the memory. That was a low blow.
She shrugged off the flash of pain and insecurity that name provoked. "Perfection always requires a flaw so the beauty of the overall pattern stands out in contrast. Roberto was the flaw."
"Kelly?" Word-pin.
This time she settled for ignoring him. Certainly she had her share of difficult relationships, but that did not change the fact that she was speaking only the truth about Jim Ellison and how he looked at Blair. The man was not someone Aliah would choose... at least she would never choose him for more than a night of very athletic and enthusiastic sex... but he and Blair obviously had some deeper connection.
Blair did not take her hint. He continued to poke at the same spot. "And that weird guy who wore feathers?" he demanded. That relationship had been painful. Blair tapped the side of his face as though in deep thought. "How about that guy with the freckles? You know, the author?"
Of all the conversations Aliah was more than happy to have with Blair, a listing of her failure at love was not one. "We're not talking about my relationships," she informed him, merging into traffic with a lack of finesse that left the driver of a white Honda blaring his horn at her in furious bursts.
Blair gave a little snort of amusement. "Oh yeah, I can't even *imagine* why you don't want to go there." The sarcasm dripped from the words.
"You're too young to be so sarcastic."
"I'm an early bloomer," Blair shot back. "But seriously, you need to stay out of this with Jim. You're just making this so much worse. Jim and I are friends, just friends with absolutely no benefits other than getting to put up with his anal-retentive need for color coordinated dishes and total custody of the remote control. There is no unrequited love there, so stop trying to turn us into some damn romance story."
She sighed sadly as she turned onto Central Avenue. "You truly are an idiot."
"Says the woman who dated that guy with the feathers." Obviously Blair was feeling particularly aggressive today. The police had not been a good influence on him. Maybe Blair suspected that he had gone a little too far because the next sound was a weary sigh. "Aliah, please. I know you, and I know you have the best of intentions here, but if you go sticking your nose into this, you are so going to make my life way more complicated. Jim and I honestly are friends."
While Aliah was feeling far too generous to point it out, Blair had said so many times that a good friend made for a good lover. Of course Aliah was normally on the end of the argument that advocated for more carnal attributes in potential lovers. This reversal was awkward. However, if Blair insisted on being an idiot, as a friend, it was her duty to take the argument to its logical conclusion, no matter how awkward. If she could perform a perfect cabriole during auditions with her stomach in flutters and heaves from fear, she could get Blair Sandburg to admit that he was an idiot.
"You and I are friends, yes?"
Blair gaped at her in concern. "You know we are. Oh man, you're one of my oldest friends. I mean, you were the first person to try and corrupt me when I got to the university." He laughed. His smile would charm angels out of their underwear. "Trust me, you will live in my memory forever, and you’re actually the only friend I have that Naomi actually likes. Seriously likes." His hands fluttered around his face in imitation of that panic she'd first seen on him when he was sixteen and standing in the middle of her studio, dragged in by a student who had been unable to resisted the wide-eyed and helpless charm he had exuded, even back then when he had hidden it under a layer of cocksure adolescence. Aliah smiled at the memory. Blair had been so sweet then.
Older, he had a sharper tang to his personality, one that Naomi had never acquired. Naomi’s personality and her skin between her breasts where she sweated during sex were both sweet. However, that relationship had been one of her few successful ones, and she had promised Naomi to never tell Blair of their on-again, off-again assignations.
Aliah shrugged. "Someone should have told me you were sixteen. I would have toned down my naturally flirtation personality."
"I think they all assumed you noticed. I wasn't exactly a well-developed sixteen. I was more on the pathetically scrawny and self-absorbed end of the gene pool."
"Dancers and gymnasts simply do not age the same." Aliah dismissed his argument. In truth, she had wondered. As she walked out in only her dancer's tights and the headdress for her role in Le Corsaire, she had noticed him for his young face and brilliant blush. She made another noise indicative of just how unimportant her small moment of indiscretion had been. "You did not look that young. Eleanor just turned 36 and the woman looks like a china doll. She is a perfect replica of a woman in a miniature body, and she still gets carded when she buys a bottle of wine. I had no idea that the elven-faced young man with the deep blue eyes who suddenly appeared in my studio one day was so very young."
"You knew how old I was when you bought me beer."
"You stole the bottles from my refrigerator, and you never drank them."
Blair jerked. "Whoa... you knew?"
Aliah had to laugh. Blair truly could be a charming idiot at times. "Did I know that you would walk around with a beer trying to look like you were old enough to fit in? Of course."
"Oh man, I'm surprised you never called me on that. You have always been the first one to go poking at people for putting up a front. I thought I was totally good with the Bond impression-you know, pouring it out a little at a time so I was convincing. Adolescent beer subterfuge." Blair smiled at the memory of his own antics. It had been particularly charming-both his elaborate scheme and his unwillingness to get drunk. She’d fallen for him a little that night. He’d been so young and so unsure, and any other young man would have gotten drunk to escape the fear-the awkwardness. Blair hadn’t. If Aliah hadn’t ended up in Naomi’s bed, she would have seduced Blair and left him sweating and breathless on his eighteenth birthday.
Of course, she didn’t regret choosing the mother over the son because Naomi was so very delightful every time she breezed through town, and Blair… he was so very much in love with Jim. She would have lost him. At least with Naomi she always knew her lover would eventually return to her. These days, she clung to the hope that Naomi would show up sooner rather than later. Since the accident, lovers were not as easy to find. Even the charming Brian would, no doubt, take her for a delightful evening of eating and laughing and then politely abandon her on the doorstep. She missed hard, sweating, hungry sex.
"You were not that convincing with your beer, probably because so few men use the bathroom that often or take their beer in with them," Aliah pointed out, although in his defense, she had never seen anyone else notice.
"I'm surprised that did not lead to you publicly humiliating me," Blair said softly.
Aliah frowned at such an unkind description of her motives. "You were a child trying to fit in, and such a deception bothered no one. I never would have disgraced you." The light had turned red, and so she turned to enforce her words with a stern look that made it clear that she did not appreciate Blair so unkindly underestimating her tact. Slowly she smiled as she gathered for her next skirmish against Blair's self-imposed ignorance. "Now, this self-deception you have with your friend, Jim... that has grand potential for disaster. As you say, we've been friends for a long time, but you have never asked me to put aside my professional obligations. You've never asked me to miss a rehearsal or betray the confidence of one of my dancers."
"What? No way would I do that. I know how much your dance means to you."
"And yet you will ask that of Jim. I get the feeling that he is the sort of man who is equally involved in his profession." She gave him a sharp look before turning on the street behind Central High. Blair had the grace to blush at the truth of that. "Of course," she said airily, "my impression of him is based on nearly two years of hearing you describe all his attributes in great and loving and tiresome detail, the sort of detail one expects from besotted lovers and doting parents."
"I do not describe his attributes," Blair grumbled unhappily, but he didn't even pretend to believe his own words.
"Oh, you are such a sweet little idiot."
"Maybe you missed this the first two times I said it, but I am not taking relationship advice from a woman who dated a guy who wore feathers." And with that, Blair returned to the offense with a smug smile.
"So, you would rather ignore the fact that your handsome friend did challenge his boss over your questioning?" Aliah parked the van in the school lot and angled her chair toward Blair. "He chose you over his job." She raised a single long finger. "When he failed to protect you, he tried to protect you from your own foolishness by allowing you to blame him instead of targeting your boss." A second finger joined the first. "He feels guilt from his inability to protect you." The third finger went up. "He would risk censure or discipline in order to shield you from embarrassment." The fourth finger condemned Blair's assertion that Jim and Blair were no more than friends.
"Blair, as much as I would dearly love to teach you a trick or two now that you are old enough, I would not choose you over my profession. I might slip you in between two shows, if you'd like, but I assure you, I would leave you sweating and sated and collapsed on the floor of my dressing room as I went to make my second performance. I do not believe Jim would try to slip you in between the second and third act."
"Romantic." Blair's tone was anything but romantic, but sarcasm was the last defense of a failing argument.
"We all have our own definitions of romance," Aliah pointed out cheerfully. She did enjoy winning, and the scent of victory drifted sweetly on the air. "Myself? I adore the romantic story of the idiotic friends who cannot see the love before their eyes until another shoves their mutual noses in it."
For a second, Aliah believed Blair might capitulate and they could move on to the interesting portion of this plan-making Jim Ellison realize he was in love. But at the last minute, he shied away from the truth.
"Okay, if that's your plan, I'll take out life insurance on you now. Jim is going to hang your dead body from the flag pole to warn all comers. No fucking way is this some big romance. We wouldn't even qualify for a romantic comedy. And you know, I may take out life insurance on you anyway. You're fucking with Rafe's heart, and you're trying to manipulate Jim. You're poking two really big dogs at once. And yeah, Rafe is way quieter than Jim, but that doesn't mean he isn't going to be more than a little cranky when he figures out you used him. That's going to go over like a Playboy magazine on the hajj."
Aliah did feel a twinge of guilt. Brian had looked at her so sweetly. "I like Brian."
"Riiiight."
"He is handsome, and he clearly has good taste in women." Aliah smiled as she rolled backwards into her lift. The next car was close, but she was fairly sure she had the correct clearance. If not, her equipment had already proven capable of dragging the chair platform through the thin metal of these modern cars. She wouldn't try that with a classic Ford or steel-framed truck, but if another Honda tried crowding the access lane to a handicapped space, she could make them so very sorry without even slowing her lift down. The sweetest part had been watching the police write the idiot the ticket for blocking the handicapped easement while explaining that Aliah’s insurance didn’t have to pay for anything since he had been in the wrong. These days, she took pleasure where she could, and that had been most pleasurable.
Blair had to get out and wait as she maneuvered around and closed the van back up. She had hoped that the delay would distract him from the conversation about Brian, but as soon as Aliah had turned the lock on the side door of the van, he was there with his barbed words.
"What was that that you kept saying when I first told you about my new project with the police?"
She rolled her eyes at his pertinacity. "That was so long ago. It certainly is not important enough for me to remember now."
"Hmmm. It went something like, 'There is no such thing as....'" Blair paused as though struggling for a word even though they both knew what she had said many times. He was not only charming and cute but also manipulative and annoying.
"I never thought Blair Sandburg would be so petty." Aliah coated her words with disapproval. She hadn’t made blanket statements about police for quite a while now. Years, even.
Blair snapped his fingers as though finally remembering. "There is no such thing as an honest cop. Does that ring any bells at all? Any? I mean, you asked Rafe out, and Rafe is a cop, and you think all cops are dishonest, and you value honesty above all." He held his hands in front of him as though they were a scale tipping wildly from one side to the other. "Man, the cognitive dissonance in there is like.... wow."
"And you’re mother once took great pains to point out that all police were pigs. Do you remember that?” Aliah asked.
“Yeah, but Naomi is not asking any of them out on dates.”
“You've become a pessimist. Jim is a bad influence." Aliah gave the oversized wheels on her chair a hard push, sending her gliding toward the main office where one of the principals waited for them. Blair chased after her. She did not want to get into this conversation. As a black woman and an immigrant to this country, she did have rather uncompromising views about police, but after the accident, it had been police to sit by her bed and offer comfort while taking her statement. Police had pursued the drunk driver who fled from the scene, leaving her trapped in the twisted wreckage of her car. The prosecutor had listened to her and talked to her about possible sentences and pleas. True, they didn’t punish the man as much as Aliah would have preferred, but she did understand that public drawing and quartering was not an option. Twelve years had been much more than she’d realistically expected. However, that grief was still new and shiny enough that she could not discuss it without her emotions overwhelming her better sense. Unfortunately, Blair chased after her, still intent on chasing this hole in her defenses.
"Oh no. This is coming all from years and years of watching you have spectacular blow-outs in a long string of relationships. Rafe is not the type to jump from one relationship to another. And he is not the type to bounce back fast if things get ugly. So, do not even start this with him. You're welcome to fuck with me all you want because I totally get where you're coming from. I think you're way off base and heading farther out with every passing minute, but I can see where you're coming from. This is totally from a place of love. Manipulative, obsessive, and delusional love, but man, sometimes you remind me more of my mother than I want to really stop and think about considering that you are so totally hot."
Aliah stopped to give Blair a confused look. She’d lost track of the argument somewhere in there, but she did appreciate the compliment. "I'm coming from the fact that you are in lust with your friend. Even worse, you are in love with him."
Blair ran to get in front of her and stopped so that she had to grab at the wheels to keep from careening into him and sending them both tumbling to the concrete. "Don't go there," Blair begged. She had never seen such anger from him, but then honest anger was at least evidence that she was close to lancing this boil of emotion that Blair was allowing to fester.
"The only time I do not go somewhere is when the facility is not accessible by wheelchair."
"Then consider Jim ADA-unfriendly," Blair said with a seriousness that Aliah was not used to in Blair. "Think of him as having a huge flight of stairs right in front of him and there is no fucking ramp. Assume that your wheelchair is going to get mired in the fucking swamp of doom if you come within a mile of the man."
"Coward." Aliah had never used that word with Blair before, but this anger... this was not something she ever wanted to see in Blair. She knew anger. They were friends and dance partners and sometimes lovers, but it was a dangerous dance and Blair did not know the steps. Anger would consume him.
Blair, however, was already shaking his head as though Aliah had said something amusing. "Coward has a connotation of one who shouldn't be afraid. As your friend, I have a right to be very, very afraid for you if you go poking at Jim. Jim or Rafe."
Aliah frowned at that. Perhaps it was not the relationship, or the sexual orientation, but the man himself who bred such fear in Blair. “Is Jim dangerous?" she asked slowly.
"In the hitting you way? No, never," Blair blurted. "But man, he can so verbally rip someone to pieces if he wants, and he can be a cold, unforgiving bastard."
She studied him for a long second. "Which is why you've never told him that you lust after him," she finally concluded. Blair shook his head immediately, but his face darkened with the truth.
"I don't lust after him. God, you really do have a one track mind. I thought it was only getting laid that you got this obsessed with."
"And yet, you deny it only now. Up until now, I have not heard denials. You two are circling each other, dancing pas de deux while trying to ignore each other. That sort of willful ignorance never ends well," she warned before she navigated around Blair and continued down the gum-stained sidewalk.
"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind." Blair sighed, but he apparently gave up on winning this battle. "So, are you ready to go talk to these kids--terrorize a new generation of young people?"
"I do not terrorize," she said firmly.
"Oh yeah, yeah you do. It's part of your charm. Damn, no wonder Jim took such an immediate hate of you. "
"He just hates that I might be a rival for your affection."
"Oh no, I think he'd hate you anyway." Blair nodded knowingly, but now a smile quirked the edges of his lips.
"You're feeling particularly emotionally supportive today, aren't you?"
"Now look who's feeling sarcastic."
"Smartass."
"Yeah, but you love me anyway." Blair turned his smile on her; the man could charm the devil himself if he put his mind to it. Sometimes Aliah wondered exactly how the small, over-awed child from so many years ago had squirmed his way into her life so firmly.
"I've grown used to you. There's a difference."
Blair's smile grew. "Whatever."
"We have work. Go turn some of that charm on these young people," Aliah suggested as the turned the final corner to the main courtyard at the center of the school. Blair gave her one last smile before he wandered into the shade between two buildings. Aliah rolled toward the office in search of the principal, but she knew that once she returned to the courtyard, Blair would be here, reeling in the shy and lost souls from the edges of the crowd. Right now, Aliah had other issues to tend, but she would deal with Blair and Jim eventually. It might take time, but she did not walk away from a problem... not even metaphorically.
Playing God
Jim/Blair, Brian/OFC
Summary: Aliah adores the fact that Blair is an open spirit raised by a free-minded and strong woman. However, when she realizes that he is denying himself love--specifically love for his police partner, Jim--she feels a need to intervene. She knows what it is to want something you can never have, and she won't let Blair suffer that way. If it takes a little playing God, she is the woman up for the job.
Part One
Aliah rolled to a stop next to her van, poking the mechanical lift into motion with a heavy thunk that hinted at repairs lurking in her near future. Blair caught up with her. "Oh man, I cannot believe you went there." Throwing himself against the side of her van, he leaned--a picture of disinterest. But his body was far too tight for her to believe his act. Since she was five years old, she'd watched bodies. The studio down the street had offered her beautiful bodies bending in time to music, the instructor brutally criticizing any failed line in the graceful limbs. Her own home had offered her the chance to practice on the darker emotions. Right now, Blair's body screamed of nonchalance, but it whispered more honest notes of fear.
"Oh please, I've gone farther. How long have you known me? I would think you would just stop being scandalized at some point." She smiled at him, and rolled her chair backwards onto the van lift.
"I've known you way too long for these games." Blair even added a small snort at the end, as if that would make him appear more believable. The man was adorable. Hopeless, but adorable.
"Games make life more interesting," she countered. She pressed the button, and the lift raised her so that she was eye to eye with Blair. "And for me, this doesn't even rise to the level of scandalous. If you want, I could try harder... come up with something that would really scandalize you." She offered him a licentious smile before she rolled into the van. She settled herself behind the wheel and waited as Blair threw his backpack in through the passenger side door and climbed in.
Blair shook his head sadly. "Man, I've been hanging out with Jim on the uptight side of the fence way too much, because trust me, this is feeling pretty scandalous. Aliah, you can't walk into the middle of a police station and accuse one of the cops of being gay."
"Accuse?" She twisted in her chair to face him. From the way his face warped into a caricature of itself, he understood exactly what she meant. One only accused people when the action carried blame. You would never accuse her of being black or disabled or a dancer, so if Blair wanted use the word accuse with gayness, she was even more worried about his karma, not to mention his happiness. If he couldn’t have Jim, he wouldn’t be happy, she could see that clearly. “So, if I like women as well as I do men, you would accuse me of something?” she demanded.
"You know what I mean." His blush was a gathering storm of guilt and embarrassment that darkened his cheeks.
"That to be called gay is an accusation?" she asked carefully. While she would expect such foolishness from many men, she had never expected it from Blair... not even the subtle unconscious unfairness that hid in his words. "Yes, I do know what you mean. I'm horrified, but I know what you mean."
"Oh man, no. Just no. You're so twisting things around here. The weirdness is you coming in and saying that about Jim and me." Blair's fingers curled around the strap of his backpack like a child clutching a favorite blanket. Aliah just watched him for a long second, studying the way Blair sat, stiff and prepared to flee. She started the van and headed out of the police parking and toward Central High. Blair was brilliant with the students, teasing out those shy creatures who hid in the shadows and who would probably hide even more if Aliah tried pursuing them. She'd been a daughter of the shadows herself, but somewhere along the line she had lost the ability to slide in and out of the dark. Blair still could.
The odometer clicked by the miles and traffic smog filtered in through the van's heater and silence lingered heavily on the air, like the odor of dead fish. "I just spoke the truth." Aliah finally defended herself against the quiet. She hated the anger, but she would hate to watch Blair whither in longing even more. Lancing a boil hurt. Allowing it to fester would kill the patient.
At first, she didn't think Blair was going to answer. Then he pulled his backpack closer and turned an angry face toward her. But Blair was Blair, and the anger faded to resignation before he finished his first word. "Okay, first, you are really not the one I'm going to listen to when it comes to relationships"
"I can't imagine why not," she quickly pointed out before he could get to his second point.
He cast a disbelieving look in her direction. "Okay, I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not, so I think I'd better just ignore it."
"I have a long line of very satisfied lovers in my past-- my love life is the grand adage. It is a slow, sensual dance that leaves the audience in awe." Aliah bridled her body, emphasizing just how satisfied she could leave a lover.
"Roberto?" Blair demanded, poking her ego with one sharp word-pin. Aliah flinched from the memory. That was a low blow.
She shrugged off the flash of pain and insecurity that name provoked. "Perfection always requires a flaw so the beauty of the overall pattern stands out in contrast. Roberto was the flaw."
"Kelly?" Word-pin.
This time she settled for ignoring him. Certainly she had her share of difficult relationships, but that did not change the fact that she was speaking only the truth about Jim Ellison and how he looked at Blair. The man was not someone Aliah would choose... at least she would never choose him for more than a night of very athletic and enthusiastic sex... but he and Blair obviously had some deeper connection.
Blair did not take her hint. He continued to poke at the same spot. "And that weird guy who wore feathers?" he demanded. That relationship had been painful. Blair tapped the side of his face as though in deep thought. "How about that guy with the freckles? You know, the author?"
Of all the conversations Aliah was more than happy to have with Blair, a listing of her failure at love was not one. "We're not talking about my relationships," she informed him, merging into traffic with a lack of finesse that left the driver of a white Honda blaring his horn at her in furious bursts.
Blair gave a little snort of amusement. "Oh yeah, I can't even *imagine* why you don't want to go there." The sarcasm dripped from the words.
"You're too young to be so sarcastic."
"I'm an early bloomer," Blair shot back. "But seriously, you need to stay out of this with Jim. You're just making this so much worse. Jim and I are friends, just friends with absolutely no benefits other than getting to put up with his anal-retentive need for color coordinated dishes and total custody of the remote control. There is no unrequited love there, so stop trying to turn us into some damn romance story."
She sighed sadly as she turned onto Central Avenue. "You truly are an idiot."
"Says the woman who dated that guy with the feathers." Obviously Blair was feeling particularly aggressive today. The police had not been a good influence on him. Maybe Blair suspected that he had gone a little too far because the next sound was a weary sigh. "Aliah, please. I know you, and I know you have the best of intentions here, but if you go sticking your nose into this, you are so going to make my life way more complicated. Jim and I honestly are friends."
While Aliah was feeling far too generous to point it out, Blair had said so many times that a good friend made for a good lover. Of course Aliah was normally on the end of the argument that advocated for more carnal attributes in potential lovers. This reversal was awkward. However, if Blair insisted on being an idiot, as a friend, it was her duty to take the argument to its logical conclusion, no matter how awkward. If she could perform a perfect cabriole during auditions with her stomach in flutters and heaves from fear, she could get Blair Sandburg to admit that he was an idiot.
"You and I are friends, yes?"
Blair gaped at her in concern. "You know we are. Oh man, you're one of my oldest friends. I mean, you were the first person to try and corrupt me when I got to the university." He laughed. His smile would charm angels out of their underwear. "Trust me, you will live in my memory forever, and you’re actually the only friend I have that Naomi actually likes. Seriously likes." His hands fluttered around his face in imitation of that panic she'd first seen on him when he was sixteen and standing in the middle of her studio, dragged in by a student who had been unable to resisted the wide-eyed and helpless charm he had exuded, even back then when he had hidden it under a layer of cocksure adolescence. Aliah smiled at the memory. Blair had been so sweet then.
Older, he had a sharper tang to his personality, one that Naomi had never acquired. Naomi’s personality and her skin between her breasts where she sweated during sex were both sweet. However, that relationship had been one of her few successful ones, and she had promised Naomi to never tell Blair of their on-again, off-again assignations.
Aliah shrugged. "Someone should have told me you were sixteen. I would have toned down my naturally flirtation personality."
"I think they all assumed you noticed. I wasn't exactly a well-developed sixteen. I was more on the pathetically scrawny and self-absorbed end of the gene pool."
"Dancers and gymnasts simply do not age the same." Aliah dismissed his argument. In truth, she had wondered. As she walked out in only her dancer's tights and the headdress for her role in Le Corsaire, she had noticed him for his young face and brilliant blush. She made another noise indicative of just how unimportant her small moment of indiscretion had been. "You did not look that young. Eleanor just turned 36 and the woman looks like a china doll. She is a perfect replica of a woman in a miniature body, and she still gets carded when she buys a bottle of wine. I had no idea that the elven-faced young man with the deep blue eyes who suddenly appeared in my studio one day was so very young."
"You knew how old I was when you bought me beer."
"You stole the bottles from my refrigerator, and you never drank them."
Blair jerked. "Whoa... you knew?"
Aliah had to laugh. Blair truly could be a charming idiot at times. "Did I know that you would walk around with a beer trying to look like you were old enough to fit in? Of course."
"Oh man, I'm surprised you never called me on that. You have always been the first one to go poking at people for putting up a front. I thought I was totally good with the Bond impression-you know, pouring it out a little at a time so I was convincing. Adolescent beer subterfuge." Blair smiled at the memory of his own antics. It had been particularly charming-both his elaborate scheme and his unwillingness to get drunk. She’d fallen for him a little that night. He’d been so young and so unsure, and any other young man would have gotten drunk to escape the fear-the awkwardness. Blair hadn’t. If Aliah hadn’t ended up in Naomi’s bed, she would have seduced Blair and left him sweating and breathless on his eighteenth birthday.
Of course, she didn’t regret choosing the mother over the son because Naomi was so very delightful every time she breezed through town, and Blair… he was so very much in love with Jim. She would have lost him. At least with Naomi she always knew her lover would eventually return to her. These days, she clung to the hope that Naomi would show up sooner rather than later. Since the accident, lovers were not as easy to find. Even the charming Brian would, no doubt, take her for a delightful evening of eating and laughing and then politely abandon her on the doorstep. She missed hard, sweating, hungry sex.
"You were not that convincing with your beer, probably because so few men use the bathroom that often or take their beer in with them," Aliah pointed out, although in his defense, she had never seen anyone else notice.
"I'm surprised that did not lead to you publicly humiliating me," Blair said softly.
Aliah frowned at such an unkind description of her motives. "You were a child trying to fit in, and such a deception bothered no one. I never would have disgraced you." The light had turned red, and so she turned to enforce her words with a stern look that made it clear that she did not appreciate Blair so unkindly underestimating her tact. Slowly she smiled as she gathered for her next skirmish against Blair's self-imposed ignorance. "Now, this self-deception you have with your friend, Jim... that has grand potential for disaster. As you say, we've been friends for a long time, but you have never asked me to put aside my professional obligations. You've never asked me to miss a rehearsal or betray the confidence of one of my dancers."
"What? No way would I do that. I know how much your dance means to you."
"And yet you will ask that of Jim. I get the feeling that he is the sort of man who is equally involved in his profession." She gave him a sharp look before turning on the street behind Central High. Blair had the grace to blush at the truth of that. "Of course," she said airily, "my impression of him is based on nearly two years of hearing you describe all his attributes in great and loving and tiresome detail, the sort of detail one expects from besotted lovers and doting parents."
"I do not describe his attributes," Blair grumbled unhappily, but he didn't even pretend to believe his own words.
"Oh, you are such a sweet little idiot."
"Maybe you missed this the first two times I said it, but I am not taking relationship advice from a woman who dated a guy who wore feathers." And with that, Blair returned to the offense with a smug smile.
"So, you would rather ignore the fact that your handsome friend did challenge his boss over your questioning?" Aliah parked the van in the school lot and angled her chair toward Blair. "He chose you over his job." She raised a single long finger. "When he failed to protect you, he tried to protect you from your own foolishness by allowing you to blame him instead of targeting your boss." A second finger joined the first. "He feels guilt from his inability to protect you." The third finger went up. "He would risk censure or discipline in order to shield you from embarrassment." The fourth finger condemned Blair's assertion that Jim and Blair were no more than friends.
"Blair, as much as I would dearly love to teach you a trick or two now that you are old enough, I would not choose you over my profession. I might slip you in between two shows, if you'd like, but I assure you, I would leave you sweating and sated and collapsed on the floor of my dressing room as I went to make my second performance. I do not believe Jim would try to slip you in between the second and third act."
"Romantic." Blair's tone was anything but romantic, but sarcasm was the last defense of a failing argument.
"We all have our own definitions of romance," Aliah pointed out cheerfully. She did enjoy winning, and the scent of victory drifted sweetly on the air. "Myself? I adore the romantic story of the idiotic friends who cannot see the love before their eyes until another shoves their mutual noses in it."
For a second, Aliah believed Blair might capitulate and they could move on to the interesting portion of this plan-making Jim Ellison realize he was in love. But at the last minute, he shied away from the truth.
"Okay, if that's your plan, I'll take out life insurance on you now. Jim is going to hang your dead body from the flag pole to warn all comers. No fucking way is this some big romance. We wouldn't even qualify for a romantic comedy. And you know, I may take out life insurance on you anyway. You're fucking with Rafe's heart, and you're trying to manipulate Jim. You're poking two really big dogs at once. And yeah, Rafe is way quieter than Jim, but that doesn't mean he isn't going to be more than a little cranky when he figures out you used him. That's going to go over like a Playboy magazine on the hajj."
Aliah did feel a twinge of guilt. Brian had looked at her so sweetly. "I like Brian."
"Riiiight."
"He is handsome, and he clearly has good taste in women." Aliah smiled as she rolled backwards into her lift. The next car was close, but she was fairly sure she had the correct clearance. If not, her equipment had already proven capable of dragging the chair platform through the thin metal of these modern cars. She wouldn't try that with a classic Ford or steel-framed truck, but if another Honda tried crowding the access lane to a handicapped space, she could make them so very sorry without even slowing her lift down. The sweetest part had been watching the police write the idiot the ticket for blocking the handicapped easement while explaining that Aliah’s insurance didn’t have to pay for anything since he had been in the wrong. These days, she took pleasure where she could, and that had been most pleasurable.
Blair had to get out and wait as she maneuvered around and closed the van back up. She had hoped that the delay would distract him from the conversation about Brian, but as soon as Aliah had turned the lock on the side door of the van, he was there with his barbed words.
"What was that that you kept saying when I first told you about my new project with the police?"
She rolled her eyes at his pertinacity. "That was so long ago. It certainly is not important enough for me to remember now."
"Hmmm. It went something like, 'There is no such thing as....'" Blair paused as though struggling for a word even though they both knew what she had said many times. He was not only charming and cute but also manipulative and annoying.
"I never thought Blair Sandburg would be so petty." Aliah coated her words with disapproval. She hadn’t made blanket statements about police for quite a while now. Years, even.
Blair snapped his fingers as though finally remembering. "There is no such thing as an honest cop. Does that ring any bells at all? Any? I mean, you asked Rafe out, and Rafe is a cop, and you think all cops are dishonest, and you value honesty above all." He held his hands in front of him as though they were a scale tipping wildly from one side to the other. "Man, the cognitive dissonance in there is like.... wow."
"And you’re mother once took great pains to point out that all police were pigs. Do you remember that?” Aliah asked.
“Yeah, but Naomi is not asking any of them out on dates.”
“You've become a pessimist. Jim is a bad influence." Aliah gave the oversized wheels on her chair a hard push, sending her gliding toward the main office where one of the principals waited for them. Blair chased after her. She did not want to get into this conversation. As a black woman and an immigrant to this country, she did have rather uncompromising views about police, but after the accident, it had been police to sit by her bed and offer comfort while taking her statement. Police had pursued the drunk driver who fled from the scene, leaving her trapped in the twisted wreckage of her car. The prosecutor had listened to her and talked to her about possible sentences and pleas. True, they didn’t punish the man as much as Aliah would have preferred, but she did understand that public drawing and quartering was not an option. Twelve years had been much more than she’d realistically expected. However, that grief was still new and shiny enough that she could not discuss it without her emotions overwhelming her better sense. Unfortunately, Blair chased after her, still intent on chasing this hole in her defenses.
"Oh no. This is coming all from years and years of watching you have spectacular blow-outs in a long string of relationships. Rafe is not the type to jump from one relationship to another. And he is not the type to bounce back fast if things get ugly. So, do not even start this with him. You're welcome to fuck with me all you want because I totally get where you're coming from. I think you're way off base and heading farther out with every passing minute, but I can see where you're coming from. This is totally from a place of love. Manipulative, obsessive, and delusional love, but man, sometimes you remind me more of my mother than I want to really stop and think about considering that you are so totally hot."
Aliah stopped to give Blair a confused look. She’d lost track of the argument somewhere in there, but she did appreciate the compliment. "I'm coming from the fact that you are in lust with your friend. Even worse, you are in love with him."
Blair ran to get in front of her and stopped so that she had to grab at the wheels to keep from careening into him and sending them both tumbling to the concrete. "Don't go there," Blair begged. She had never seen such anger from him, but then honest anger was at least evidence that she was close to lancing this boil of emotion that Blair was allowing to fester.
"The only time I do not go somewhere is when the facility is not accessible by wheelchair."
"Then consider Jim ADA-unfriendly," Blair said with a seriousness that Aliah was not used to in Blair. "Think of him as having a huge flight of stairs right in front of him and there is no fucking ramp. Assume that your wheelchair is going to get mired in the fucking swamp of doom if you come within a mile of the man."
"Coward." Aliah had never used that word with Blair before, but this anger... this was not something she ever wanted to see in Blair. She knew anger. They were friends and dance partners and sometimes lovers, but it was a dangerous dance and Blair did not know the steps. Anger would consume him.
Blair, however, was already shaking his head as though Aliah had said something amusing. "Coward has a connotation of one who shouldn't be afraid. As your friend, I have a right to be very, very afraid for you if you go poking at Jim. Jim or Rafe."
Aliah frowned at that. Perhaps it was not the relationship, or the sexual orientation, but the man himself who bred such fear in Blair. “Is Jim dangerous?" she asked slowly.
"In the hitting you way? No, never," Blair blurted. "But man, he can so verbally rip someone to pieces if he wants, and he can be a cold, unforgiving bastard."
She studied him for a long second. "Which is why you've never told him that you lust after him," she finally concluded. Blair shook his head immediately, but his face darkened with the truth.
"I don't lust after him. God, you really do have a one track mind. I thought it was only getting laid that you got this obsessed with."
"And yet, you deny it only now. Up until now, I have not heard denials. You two are circling each other, dancing pas de deux while trying to ignore each other. That sort of willful ignorance never ends well," she warned before she navigated around Blair and continued down the gum-stained sidewalk.
"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind." Blair sighed, but he apparently gave up on winning this battle. "So, are you ready to go talk to these kids--terrorize a new generation of young people?"
"I do not terrorize," she said firmly.
"Oh yeah, yeah you do. It's part of your charm. Damn, no wonder Jim took such an immediate hate of you. "
"He just hates that I might be a rival for your affection."
"Oh no, I think he'd hate you anyway." Blair nodded knowingly, but now a smile quirked the edges of his lips.
"You're feeling particularly emotionally supportive today, aren't you?"
"Now look who's feeling sarcastic."
"Smartass."
"Yeah, but you love me anyway." Blair turned his smile on her; the man could charm the devil himself if he put his mind to it. Sometimes Aliah wondered exactly how the small, over-awed child from so many years ago had squirmed his way into her life so firmly.
"I've grown used to you. There's a difference."
Blair's smile grew. "Whatever."
"We have work. Go turn some of that charm on these young people," Aliah suggested as the turned the final corner to the main courtyard at the center of the school. Blair gave her one last smile before he wandered into the shade between two buildings. Aliah rolled toward the office in search of the principal, but she knew that once she returned to the courtyard, Blair would be here, reeling in the shy and lost souls from the edges of the crowd. Right now, Aliah had other issues to tend, but she would deal with Blair and Jim eventually. It might take time, but she did not walk away from a problem... not even metaphorically.