Revelations (Blue Bloods 3)

"Yeah, you don't think that's going to happen anymore?" Oliver asked, flipping through the radio stations. Amy Winehouse was singing about how she didn't want to go to rehab ("No! No! No! No!"). Schuyler met Oliver's eyes, and they smiled.

"You guys, that is so not funny. Turn it off or change it," Bliss admonished. "I don't know. I kind of don't think I'm going to college. Sometimes I feel like I don't have a future," she said, twisting her necklace.

"Oh shush," Schuyler said, turning around so she could talk directly to Bliss while Oliver found something more appropriate on the satellite radio. "Of course you're going to college. We all are."

"You really believe that?" Bliss asked, sounding hopeful.

"Totally."

Conversation dropped to a lull after a few minutes, and Bliss drifted off to sleep. In the front seat, Schuyler chose the music, Oliver letting her DJ this time. "You like this song?" he asked, when she settled on a station playing a Rufus Wainwright tune.

"Don't you?" she asked, feeling as if she'd been caught red-handed. It was the same song she and Jack always played. She thought she could get away with listening to it in the car. Oliver had a bit of an emo streak in him. She liked to tease him that his musical tastes ran toward music-to-off-yourself-by.

"You'd think I would, right? But I don't."

"Why not?"

Oliver shrugged, looking at her sideways. "It's like...too blubbery or something. Ech."

"What do you mean?" Schuyler asked. "Blubbery?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, I just feel like love isn't supposed to be so ... angsty, you know? Like, if it works, it shouldn't be so tortured."

"Huh," Schuyler said, wondering if she should change the station. It seemed traitorous to play a song that reminded her of another boy. "You are so unromantic."

"Am not."

"But you've never even been in love."

"You know that's not true."

Schuyler was silent. In the past month they had performed the Caerimonia twice. She knew she should take other familiars - vampires were told to rotate their humans so as not to tax them - but she'd been able to go longer than she'd thought without a feeding. And she had resisted taking other humans, not quite sure that Oliver would approve.

But Schuyler didn't want to think about their relationship - friendship - whatever it was. After Oliver's passionate outburst at the Odeon, it hadn't come up again. She wanted to diffuse the tension she was starting to feel in the car. "Bet you can't even name one romantic movie you like," she teased.

She felt smug when a few minutes went by and Oliver was still unable to name one romantic movie he could profess to enjoy.

"The Empire Strikes Back" Oliver finally declared, tapping his horn at a Prius that wandered over the line.

"The Empire Strikes Back? The Star Wars movie? That's not romantic!" Schuyler huffed, fiddling with the air-conditioner controls.

"Au contraire, my dear, it's very romantic. The last scene, you know, when they're about to put Han in that freezing cryogenic chamber or whatever? Remember?"

Schuyler mmm-hmmmed.

"And Leia leans over the ledge and says, 'I love you.'"

"That's cheesy, not romantic," Schuyler argued, although she did like that part.

"Let me explain. What's romantic is what Han says back. Remember what he says to her? After she says 'I love you'?"

Schuyler grinned. Maybe Oliver had a point. "Han says, 'I know.'"

"Exactly." Oliver tapped the wheel. "He doesn't have to say anything so trite as 'I love you.' Because that's already understood. And that's romantic."

For once, Schuyler had to admit he was right.