| Title: Shadows of Love (1/10) Author: Candygirl Rating: PG for language, the fun stuff ain't started yet. A/N: Set in May 2000. I have two NBL universes: one is my normal one where if anyone's gay, they keep it on the low-low. This is the Slashiverse where half the team is in bed. The other pairings are in the works. Summary: Unexpected desire always confuses things, doesn't it? Part I: A basketball player who thinks she's got it all figured out discovers otherwise. "'Courtship. The mating dance. It occurs in all species.' 'What the fuck are you talking about, doc?' 'You are flirting with each other, preparatory to mating. That's what it appears like to me.'" Mendes Fuad and Randy Dreyfus, 'The Dreyfus Affair,' by Peter Lefcourt ===== She was beautiful, intelligent, funny as hell, and completely unattainable. Yeah, that's the story of my love life. Especially since I was fantasizing about her while I was in bed with my lover. How foolish was I to be thinking about Lena when I know she would never? I loved Robin, my pretty little China doll, who was at that moment sleeping next to me with her arms wrapped around me and one hand resting tenderly on my breast. She was the only one who really understood me and my crazy ways, and I loved her. That was one thing I was absolutely sure of at that time. I treasured those moments with her. It's hard to keep up a relationship for someone in my shoes; when I'm in the city I'm usually with my team, and my coach is one of the worst sticklers when it comes to bringing nice girls back to the hotel during the season (or for some people who will go unnamed, nice guys). And almost immediately after we finish ballin', I have to go overseas to make more of what makes the world go round. October and May are really the only months that we the players have completely to ourselves, but she made them worth everything else. I was thirty-three years old, and starting to think about settling down. I've lived a peripatetic life; I've played for teams in Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Lake Como, Budapest, Moscow, and Barcelona, and I've unpacked my bags in a whole passel of other places. Still, New York draws me home. I grew up on Long Island, went into the City every chance I got- and now I'm too poor to live anywhere but Jersey. Good thing Robin let me sleep over, because she has a pad in the Village. Or stay over, anyway; we don't let each other get a lot of sleep. Have we met? I sincerely doubt it, but you might have vaguely heard of me. I play for the New York Empire of the NBL, a pro basketball league. My friends but rarely call me anything but one of my approved nicknames: Garden because I went to college and live in New Jersey (we all have state nicknames, but my home state is taken by the team) and Flamer from my last name, Candel. That isn't a typo. My real name is rather humorous. We'll get there later. Enough about that. I could feel Robin stirring against me. "Good morning, starshine," I serenaded her. "No singing this early," she mumbled. "Meanie mo." She propped herself on one elbow and stared at me. "You know, I don't think anyone's ever called me a mo before. What does it mean?" I shrugged. "Don't know. I used to hear it around school, back in the days." "Ugh, what time is it? Shove over, you're blocking the clock." Robin poked her head under my arm, so I took the invitation and locked her into place. "Come off it, we both have something to do today. I have a job, and you have to get to practice or your coach will skin you alive; I've met the man and I think he's an absolute bastard." "He's just scared. Just like ex-Coach Scott, he's scared. Coaches are always scared of power players. We're taller than they are. And someone like me, a nice WASP from the Island being what I am, that scares him worse than anything." Do I like it? No. I hate it like I've never hated anything else. But I'm all grown up, and I know that people act funny around me for reasons that they think make sense. She tickled me carefully and delicately, starting from the soles of my feet and moving up my legs. "I thought you were the one who wanted to get a move on," I teased. "It all depends on the kind of move. And the world can wait a few minutes," she panted as her fingers pulsed gently up the insides of my thighs to inevitably meet. She pulled me back into bed. I was extremely late to practice. ===== "Where have you been?" Don demanded of me later that morning. "I swear to God, you can't tell time, can you?" I was *this* tempted to tell him to go to hell on the express train, but I was raised right. Stop laughing! "I got caught up with Robin," I snapped at him. Coach Ibsen is a pretty decent guy- any guy who can put up with the insanity we of the Empire brew up has to be as patient as a saint- but sometimes he can be remarkably nosy. The other three of our unholy coterie started giggling, because they could probably imagine what we had been up to. Ronnie, Lou, Lenny, and I had been on the team since the beginning- the four of us were the last survivors of the original New York Empire, in fact. We've been through thick and thin, with a lot of thin. The three of them were invited to the Inaugural All-Star Game here in the Apple, along with our old friend Cass Tennys. Yes, the four of us were as close as four teammates will get. I know to this day that whenever I need a hand, I can count on Ronelle Taylor, Louisa Johnson, and Lena Wolfe. Yes, the same Lena I had been dreaming about while Robin slumbered next to me. She was my best friend and everything Robin wasn't: an inch taller than me at six-four, with long light brown hair that she was doing in cornrows that year, hazel eyes full of laughter that we shared, and a face that lit up when she smiled. She was one of the most famous players of the day because her college team had been the best in recent years; the Empire had landed her at the beginning for sheer pub, but her numbers weren't bad either. We tried not to let it get to her head. Usually we succeeded. "Stop that!" I mock-whined to them. Lena stuck her tongue out at me. At not-yet-twenty-seven, she was the youngest of our gang; at almost thirty-five Louisa was the oldest. I was a year younger than her, and Lou's sidekick Ronnie was a year older than Lena. "Seriously, not everyone here knows about Robin." "Only because there's newbies in here," Lena replied. "They always figure it out after they're with the team for, oh I don't know, a week. Maybe a week and a half for some of the slower people. Two weeks, tops." She waggled her perfectly tended eyebrows at that. I knew exactly who she was talking about: one of our favorite targets of teasing, the second-year power forward Teria Riley. She was a very Mississippi native who we called Big Country, and she still thinks I'm still a ballet dancer. I was- until I had my first growth spurt. But when I started looking over my classmates' heads, Teria was crawling about in diapers. It's been a while since I did plies, in other words. Yet Big Country still seeks my elusive tutu. For some reason, no one has wanted to tell her that I was playing with her mind. Ah yes, my team. There were the four of us who had been there since the beginning, of course. Then there was the 1999 influx, people we were just getting to know and like who had proven themselves sufficiently: Teria, Ruby McDonald, and Dre Varick. There was big Nerve Daly, but I was pretty sure she would be seeing the door soon, and I would be right. But the expansion draft had left us with a lot of roster gaps, and Big Mama Cassie had retired. So there were five new faces: Daricia Bell, Sheila Cameron, Karina Romanova, Carmen Villanova, and Kelsey Winters. Kelse was different; she was older, and she had known Ruby before she came here. She had also pranked me on her first day with the team, and although that originally annoyed me, it had also given me respect for her. I wasn't impressed with the other four. I'm not impressed with rookies, hardly ever have been. I know- fuck you care? But I had to think about the kiddies, because if I didn't, I would have been practically drooling all over Lena. Her offseason conditioning had been especially heavy, because she had to strengthen her busted knee. She looked even better than I thought she usually did, except for the cornrows. It's just my opinion, to which I am of course entitled, but I don't think white players should wear cornrows. It looks wrong somehow. In some way, though, she made it look right. Probably that love thing. It's fucked up better people than Fannie Candel, that's for sure. Yes, my name is really Fannie. And yes, I do have nieces and nephews, and yes, they do call me their Aunt Fannie. Have we got that all settled? Have you had your therapeutic laugh of the day? How could this be happening? At thirty-three, you would think I'd know myself pretty well. But I didn't know what was going on. I loved Robin... and I loved Lena. Was it even possible? And there was yet more funkiness to come. |