Dear Potential Readers: Well, I thought I'd try writing something just for fun, and somehow it has actually turned out to be longer than the second Harry Potter novel (and nearly as long as the third!) Writing this story has been more fun, mind-bending, and thought-provoking than I ever thought possible, and it's not even done yet! Even if you are opposed to Quincest and/or hate reading things as long as Harry Potter novels, I hope you'll give it a try and see if maybe it can make you see things in a different way, even a little bit! At the very least, I hope that I can make think, make you feel, make you laugh, warm your heart, and bring on some tears. Please please always feel free to tell me your thoughts, every chapter of the way! This has been a labour of love, and hearing people's responses to it is the most rewarding thing of all. Enjoy!

~ The Author

Chapter 1: Remove Us from the Scene of the Crime

Jamie got there first, but first was still too late. She dropped her backpack on the grimy pavement and took a moment, hands on knees, to catch her breath. She and Kim had run most of the sixteen blocks from the venue, where they had lingered too long, and that was why she was winded now, in a piss-smelling alley at 1:37am.

"Fuck," she muttered, taking a deep breath, hands on knees, head down. She was almost convinced she could smell the exhaust from the last bus still hanging in the frigid night air. Kim's footfalls were distant, then closer, then slow and heavy as she reached the rancid lane behind the port authority bus terminal.

"Ah, fuck," Kim swore, gasping. Jamie gave a quick glance at her breathless, red-faced travel buddy. "Not again," Kim moaned, as Jamie posted something about hypothermia on Twitter and hoped that the wheezing, gasping Kim wasn't going to have a heart attack right there in the alley. Her own breathing had returned to normal, as running was something she, unlike Kim, did regularly, and now she was starting to feel the biting cold.
"Why do you always have to hang around so long?" Kim asked, exasperated, exhausted.

"Why do you think?" Jamie replied, not taking her eyes off the screen of her cellphone to acknowledge the accusatory expression in her frustrated companion's eyes. Kim sighed, taking off her cap and rubbing a sleeve across her sweaty forehead, pulling the cap back on, down low over her eyebrows. Jamie sat down on her backpack, indifferent. It was inane to argue with Kim about why they had missed the bus. What difference would that make? The last bus back to DC was gone and they were in a sketchy lane behind the bus terminal at 1:40am and it was fucking cold. If Kim wanted to gripe about how Jamie was always late, she couldn't really argue. It was true. And she had lingered at the venue too long for the same reason that she'd arrived at the venue six hours early, and Kim knew why. She knew but didn't understand that some things are not really a choice.

"Well, let's go to a hotel then," Kim said, still gasping for breath. Jamie's eyes remained locked on her cellphone screen, her face illuminated faintly in its light, ghostly.

"I don't want to pay two hundred dollars for a hotel down here when the bus costs maybe nine dollars," Jamie said.

"When's the next bus, then?" Kim asked.

"Five," she replied, stuffing her phone and her icy fingers into the pockets of her pea coat, her shoulders hunched the way people do when they're cold, the way people do when they are self-conscious about being taller than all their friends.

"I'm not waiting here for four more hours," Kim protested. "It's freezing and it smells like piss in here!" Jamie shrugged.

"A cold smell's better than a hot smell," she said optimistically. Kim just stared at her. "Go ahead and get a hotel room if you want. I'm saving my money for the tour." This had been Jamie's sixty-fifth show. There were a lot of tour dates remaining and she wasn't going to spend money she didn't have on hotels when she needed to spend the money she didn't have on shows.

"You'll freeze to death or get raped or something," Kim said, aggravated.

"Doubtful," Jamie said. Kim stared at Jamie, hands in her pockets. Jamie met Kim's eyes briefly. She was never much for prolonged eye contact.

"Okay, well I'm going then," Kim said at last.

"Okay," Jamie replied. "See you later, then."

Kim paused for long enough to be sure that Jamie wasn't going to say anything else and then walked off. Jamie sighed, lonely and relieved. She drew her phone from her pocket again, and quickly became the mayor of PABT on foursquare.

. . . . . . . .

"Yeah, that one is like a block closer," Tegan said, "but the other one is way better."

"I don't think I'd go so far as to call it way better," Sara retorted as she and her sister turned onto 41st street.

"The slices are like twice as big," Tegan said.

"They are slightly bigger," Sara argued, shivering. "But the one on tenth is cheesier."

"Cheesier isn't better," said Tegan, turning her collar up against the cold air.

"It is when you're talking about pizza," Sara replied to her twin. "Why are we going this way?"

"It's quicker," Tegan said lightly, taking her sister's arm and leading her.

"It's also like. . .the kind of place you take people when you want to rape and murder them," Sara muttered. "Are you planning on raping and murdering me?"

"Can't rape the will - shit!" Tegan hissed sharply, quickly encircling Sara's waist and pulling her around the corner into the alley.

"Tegan, what the fuck-"

"Shhhh," Tegan whispered, clasping a hand over Sara's mouth and pressing in close, pressing her hips into Sara's hips, and both of them back into the brick wall. Sara breathed against her sister's hand, as Tegan leaned in close, pressing against Sara more closely still. "Don't move," Tegan murmured, her face inches away from Sara's. "It's that fucking idiot who got on stage and got thrown out of the club. . ."

Sara's eyes remained locked on Tegan's as the older twin removed her hand from the mouth of the younger, but not without brushing her fingertips across Sara's lips. Tegan's pelvis shifted against Sara's, and the color rose in Sara's face.

"We don't want him to see us. . . like this. . . either," Sara breathed, as Tegan's eyes wandered down to Sara's mouth, and she bit her own lower lip. Tegan moved her hands to Sara's sides, and Sara drew in her breath and her eyes rested on Tegan's, whose eyes reflected back her own fear and uncertainty and, Sara's stomach twisted to recognize it: longing. She knew what her sister looked like when she was happy, when she was scared. . . and that was not how she looked when she brought her face just a little closer to Sara's.

"Shit, Tegan-" she hissed, at that moment, her eye catching something over Tegan's shoulder, pressing a hand against her sister's chest.
"Someone's there!"

Tegan turned quickly to see a girl, perhaps thirty feet away, hunched down against the wall.

"Did she see us?" Sara whispered, a little knot of panic in her gut.

"I don't. . . Hey, isn't that Jamie?" Tegan exclaimed, recognizing the telltale ponytail that fell to the girl's waist.

"Holy fuck, our biggest fan just saw you ...". Sara stopped, flushing in the amber light.

"Saw me what?" Tegan asked, daring her to say it, maintaining the pressure with her hips that kept Sara trapped against the wall. Sara's brow creased. She opened her mouth; closed it. Why did Tegan always want to make her say things that should never be said? Shame settled in Sara's stomach like a brick. "What?" Tegan repeated, soft but insistent.

"Tegan, stop it!" Sara said, pushing her sister back and scooting around her. With a tense but beseeching look over her shoulder, Sara quickly crossed the narrow street. The older twin followed, scowling at Sara's back, at the hot frustration she left behind.

. . . . . . . .

"Look me in the eye and tell me you don't find me attractive."

That's what Tegan was singing the first time Jamie set had eyes on her. What Jamie asked herself, standing there at Tegan's feet next to her no-longer-girlfriend, was how could anyone possibly say that to you? From that moment, she could no more cease her relentless following of Tegan than a suicide could stop falling after letting go of the ledge. Falling was falling. She was musing over that in her half-dream state, irritated with her own hopeless emotions that left her freezing in an alley in the middle of the night, when a soft touch on the top of her head startled her, and she awoke with a jump.

"Hey, Jamie," said an affable voice, and Jamie felt her heart leap up into her throat to see that face - those faces - smiling down at her.

"Oh- hi!" she said, caught off-guard, her brain still addled with sleep.

"Were you sleeping here in the freezing cold?" Sara asked.

"In this dark, creepy, smelly alley?" Tegan added, incredulously, with a grin so charming that all the reality surrounding it faded and receded and it was just Tegan standing there in the black universe.

Jamie was flustered; her pulse raced. She forced herself to conceal it, to be calm, as much as she could. They were both looking at her, then, and the two pairs of eyes simultaneously staring at her always gave her the startling reminder that they were identical, and both of them intently looking at her at the same time, expectantly, always multiplied her nerves exponentially.

"Uh, I guess I was sleeping, a little," she said with a short laugh, and the act of rubbing her eyes prevented her from seeing Sara's sigh of relief.

"God, you must be freezing!" Tegan said.

"Yeah," Jamie said, glancing at the time on the screen of her phone. "Three more hours till the next bus."

"Oh, well come on," Tegan said. "Come with us. There's a party at our hotel bar and we can't make a decision about pizza around here so let's go and get something to eat! I'm not leaving you in this toilet of an alley to get, like, abducted by organ thieves or something!"

"Ha!" Jamie laughed shortly, nervously. "Well, okay. . ." She agreed, proud of herself for sounding slightly hesitant when she wouldn't have hesitated, really, even if Tegan had suggested they start an organ trafficking ring together.

Tegan extended a hand and pulled Jamie to her feet. Even slightly hunched, she was nearly a head taller than the twins.

. . . . . . .

It had been her sixty-fifth show and she had talked to them many times before, but although she made every effort to contain herself and act like a normal human being when she spoke to them, the nerves never left her. She struggled to think of something worthwhile to say; everything out of her mouth sounded absurd and boring to her. If she could ask a witness, they would say that she never said anything actually stupid, but she herself felt incapable of saying anything memorable in those moments. Tegan was chatty and warm; Sara more reserved but still, somehow, familiar. She was a fixture at their shows. It comforted them too.

The bar was crowded. Sara said something off-hand about talking to someone called Jack, and disappeared.

"Do you want a drink?" Tegan asked Jamie magnanimously.

"Uh, something 'virgin?'" Jamie replied, and Tegan smiled and went off to the bar. Jamie sat at a high table and waited, her head swimming. Part of her disbelieved that this was all happening at all, and she thought momentarily that perhaps she had actually passed out at the bus station and was still there, unconscious, sitting on her backpack and leaning against the wall, possibly about to have her organs stolen. By then she had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours; had spent hours on a bus; hours in line at the venue like an idiot in the freezing cold; had run half-way across the city; and was now waiting for Tegan to return with her drink. Exhaustion mixed with adrenaline, leaving her feeling kind of strung out and jumpy. Maybe she was actually hallucinating. Did hallucinations accompany organ theft? Was she going to wake up in a bathtub full of ice cubes with a note pinned to her chest which read Call 911?

Tegan returned with a beer for herself and something fruity for Jamie.

"Thanks," Jamie said.

"Don't worry," Tegan said. "My beer's a virgin too."

"Oh, well that's good. . ." she said, annoyed with herself for not knowing what else to say, fearing momentarily that the beer joke may have been at her expense, but not getting the joke if it was. Tegan grinned. It was very loud in the bar; Tegan suddenly leaned in, close enough to Jamie that she could see her own reflection in Tegan's labret piercing.

"So how many shows is that?" She shouted over the din. Jamie's guts twisted a little, from the question, from the proximity, from the nearness of Tegan's lips. Tegan tucked some stray hair behind her ear and took another swallow of beer as Jamie strained to formulate an answer, even though the sensation of Tegan's breath on her cheek made her feel like she might be about to black out. Call 911. . .

"Umm. . . sixty-five, I think it is. . ." she said, unaccountably shy. Was it weird that she'd been to sixty-five shows? Did they think she was weird for having gone to that many? Even though speaking to Tegan always made her feel like her guts were liquefying, she needed to conceal that. Were they flattered that someone would follow them from city to city - country to country - or did they think she was an obsessed freak? She fiddled with the straw in her drink. Tegan smiled, her eyes crinkled.

"Wow," she said, and looked like she was about to say something else when Sara approached and spoke in Tegan's ear. Jamie didn't stare, but the intensity on Tegan's face roused her curiosity. Tegan listened, said something back that Jamie couldn't hear, and nodded before Sara gave Jamie a quick squeeze on the arm and left.

"Everything okay?" Jamie asked tentatively. Tegan finished her beer, waved a hand.

"Oh yeah. It's fine," Tegan said.

Others came and went, chatting with Tegan. Jamie and Tegan conversed off and on to each other, to the people who came and went; at one point, Sara came back and talked with Jamie for a while about virgin cocktails; disappeared again; she talked to Tegan about all the shows she'd recorded, about grad school, about past, present, and future girlfriends. Tegan was appropriately sorry to hear of Jamie's recent heartbreak; Jamie offered the same sympathy to Tegan when she heard of the latter's predilection towards straight girls. If Jamie's drink had been less virginal, she may have asked how Tegan felt about straight-looking gay girls, but her drink did nothing to help her then. Tegan had several beers, which may have been virgin but seemed to be having not-so-virginal effect anyway. Tegan brought up having dated a fan, and they discussed why this may or may not have been a good idea and Jamie laughed at Tegan's self-deprecating story over the cacophony in her brain. Tegan had dated a fan? It was a sharp blow to her guts.

More than one person - Jamie lost track - brought drinks to their table, and Jamie herself tried a few different kinds of virgin drinks, and rejected a few not-so-virgin drinks, while carrying on a variety of conversations with a variety of people.

This kind of situation made Jamie feel like a chicken at a duck pond. Everyone drinking, disposing of their inhibitions, getting loud and stupid. She fought with her contempt for this behaviour, while envying the ridiculous bonding she was never a part of. She felt shy and awkward there with her virgin cocktail, chatting with an increasingly drunk Tegan. While she hated being around drunk people in general, increasingly-drunk Tegan usually also transformed into an increasingly-huggy Tegan, something that Jamie had been spectacularly lucky enough to experience before, and something she would have enjoyed even if her organs were literally, at that moment, being stolen.

Things started shifting, though. Sara was back. There were fans jostling her to get closer to Tegan, someone asking stupid questions, telling them they should play more older music, Sara barely containing her irritation, Tegan chatting politely. Ted came by with a pretty girl and introduced her to Jamie, telling the girl that Jamie was at every single show. Jamie felt self-conscious about that; was she just a groupie who didn't get to sleep with the band? Maybe Ted's girl would think that, but Jamie felt Tegan smiling at her. Johnny came by and picked up Tegan's Blackberry quickly, before Tegan's hand could retrieve it.

"Aha!" Johnny said victoriously. "Now Tegan, what am I going to see when I turn this on?" he asked her.

"Nothing!" Tegan said as Johnny clicked the phone to life, scrolled through the text messages.

"Nothing? What's this then?" Johnny asked, turning the screen so that Tegan - and Jamie - could see the inbox full of messages to and from someone named Casey. Tegan sighed, took a long drink of beer. "Don't text her! She's trouble!" Johnny said earnestly.

"I know, I know," Tegan said. Everything she said conjured song lyrics in Jamie's mind.

The Blackberry vibrated in Johnny's hand, its screen lighting up.

"It's her again. What do you want to do, Tegan?" he pressed, teasing and not teasing. Tegan sighed.

"Delete it," she said heavily. Johnny nodded, satisfied.

"Good girl," he said.

"Did Sara send you?" Tegan asked dryly. Johnny returned the phone, not responding to the question.

"There you go. All better," he said, smiling at Jamie as he left. Tegan shook her head, her grin fading as she finished her third beer.

Everything seemed to get quieter, more under-watery. Jamie watched, eyes heavy as some girl got pushy with Sara and Tegan intervened and it very nearly became tense. She leaned her head back against the wall. She saw Sara leave with the lead singer from the opening act. Tegan was off getting another drink, stopping to talk to two girls who wanted a picture.

The room shifted, turned. Was it getting dark? Everyone's voices got farther away. People were swirling around them, ebbing and flowing around the table Jamie shared with Tegan. Ted and Shaun were there now and Jamie passively wondered how long they'd been there. Why, Jamie wondered, were her arms so heavy? Would it be okay to just maybe put her head down for a bit?

Not then but some time later, she'd be able to piece together bits of the journey. Her left arm was slung over Tegan's shoulder; Tegan's right arm around her waist. She just wanted to lie down. Walking had never seemed like less of a possibility. She nearly careened into a wall, but Tegan kept her mostly vertical and guided her down the stale, tacky hotel hallway.

"Whoah, steady there, Jamie!" Tegan said with a laugh, quickly grasping Jamie around the waist with both arms as they both stumbled into the wall. Jamie was taller than Tegan the way that trees are taller than shrubs. "You're heavier than you look!" Tegan laughed. "Okay, right foot. . ."

"Sorry," Jamie said, blearily. She didn't drink, and she didn't use drugs. This feeling was not at all familiar.

"Nah, you're fine, you're fine. . ." Tegan said encouragingly. "Just a few more steps. . ."

Again, it all got dark.

. . . . . .

The sound of soft voices seeped into her dream, and then drew her, slowly, up to the surface. A foreign bed, a musty hotel comforter. Her head, throbbing. She wouldn't remember how she got to the room for a few more days. She would never know who had put the drug in her drink, but she wondered, later, whether it had been intended for Tegan.

Over to her right, on the other queen-sized bed, voices, and movement. In the murky light, she could make out dark shapes superimposed over the slightly less dark background. There was slow movement, rustling of sheets, the soft, wet sound of lips. Who?

It was all fuzzy. Her eyes, her mind, still under water. She blinked, strained to focus. There were two people in the bed next to hers, and they were only black shapes, but even with the lingering traces of the drug in her body, she knew what was happening.

"Tegan," she heard a low voice gasp; a female voice. Tegan? Was she in a hotel room with Tegan? Fragments of the last few hours came back to her, slowly, hazily. She mentally checked to make sure all of her organs were still accounted for.

Low murmurs; the bed creaked slightly; the shapes rolled, shifted. The one on the bottom was then on top. Jamie held completely still, her eyes adjusting to the dark. She could make out the shape of one female body pressing hips down against the other, legs tangled; the shape of faces, close together. The one on top - who was it? - ran fingers back through the hair of the other, and then mouths found each other. She heard Tegan's voice, certainly Tegan's voice, moan softly into the mouth of the other, and without separating or breaking this slow, deep kiss, the figure on top shifted her hips, lowered a hand, pushed the other's knee to the side. Jamie couldn't see what the hand was doing then, but she could well imagine in spite of her brain haze because after the adjustment down below, the one on top slid up slightly and then smoothly pressed her pelvis into the other's, eliciting a muffled moan from the one below.

"Oooh," Jamie heard Tegan's voice, and then a very soft sssshhhhh from the other, the top, who was slowly, rhythmically sliding her hips up, in, back, down. . .

Jamie heard the two of them obviously trying to stifle their raspy, hitching breaths, but the sounds intensified nevertheless as the movement of the dark and shifting shapes intensified. Low gasps escaped from both of them and when the top started thrusting faster, a moan escaped Tegan before she could stop it and the one on top softly hissed again, sssshhhhh, but didn't slow down. Jamie's heart was in her throat and the warmth was spreading in her, from her stomach upward, to her cheeks; from her stomach, downward. The two shifting figures in the bed, Tegan and someone, reached a point where they lost track of themselves; attempts to remain quiet came closer to failing, and while the sounds were still muffled and low, to Jamie there was no mistaking the shuddering, gasping breaths of the two as the one on the bottom came, and then, one, two slow thrusts later, the one on top followed, convulsing. They gripped each other, the figure on top dropped her head, kissing the shoulder and neck of the one below, who lay back, catching her breath. When the top started to withdraw, there was a soft protest from the one below, who wrapped her legs around the other's waist, trapping her. Jamie lay there, frozen, blood whooshing in her ears as she listened to their breathing gradually slow to normal amid the soft sounds of their slow kisses.

"Oh," she heard a soft voice again. A very, very soft laugh.

"I love you." Tegan's voice, low and spent but with a trace of sadness. And the soft, whispered reply, after a slight pause, unmistakably Sara's voice:

"I know." There was another long kiss, and then the one on top extricated herself from the encircling limbs of the other. Jamie didn't move as the top stood next to the bed, fiddled with something at her waist. There was a jingling thud as something hit the floor and, wordlessly, the standing figure dressed, quickly.

"Sara. . ." said a very quiet voice from the bed. There was no reply. The one Jamie now knew was Sara opened the door and was very briefly outlined in the golden light of the hallway, and Jamie was easily able to confirm, to her own clouded disbelief, that the silhouette was indeed Sara's before the door swung closed with a faint click. There was no movement from Tegan for a moment, and then Jamie saw her shadowy figure slide over and reach down to the floor between them, retrieving the thing that Sara had dropped on the floor. Tegan stood, furtively grasping for her underwear, a t-shirt, and quickly pulling them on before climbing silently back into bed. There was a moment of silence and then muffled noises that sounded like Tegan crying, very quietly, with something pressed to her face to muffle the sounds.

Frozen, Jamie stopped her own surprised gasp, pressing her lips together. Sara's voice. And Tegan's. . .

Jamie was awake, wide-eyed, long after Tegan's whimpering breaths subsided.

. . . . . . . . . . .

For an AWESOME illustration of the first chapter, go to drawnquincest dot tumblr dot com backslash post/48753581093/christ-this-took-all-day-i-swear- drawing-girls