Author's Note: And part two! Enjoy :D It takes place... oh, a few hours after part two? I renamed the fic slightly. Instead of 'Burn the Axis of the World' it is now 'Burning Axis'. Yayyyy.


"Where are you staying?" Trey asked Kaitlin once they'd officially driven into the city. He was obscenely tired by now, seeing as he'd been up for nearly 24 hours and the only thing keeping him awake was the strange high one got from sleep deprivation.

"With you," she answered in that tone that held no room for objections. "At least, for a little bit."

He didn't protest. There's no point. He was too tired to go drop her off somewhere else, too tired to fight with her and above all, he was unwilling to give up this little piece of Marissa right now. It calmed him. Then again, that could have been the sleep deprivation too. He probably wasn't making a very good impression on Kaitlin. As put together as she looked, he was the exact opposite. His eyes were bloodshot, hers were fine. His clothes dirty, hers impeccable. His hair mussed. Hers a little tangled, but that was all. Even the way she was sitting exuded poise and grace. As bad-ass as she was, it appeared that she'd never truly shake her upbringing.

"How old are you, Kait?" Both the question and the nickname slip out of his mind and off his tongue before he can process either of them.

She raises her eyebrows at 'Kait' but answered anyway, shifting the position of her purse. "I'm nineteen. And you're... what, twenty... three?" she guessed, face scrunching in concentration.

"Twenty-six." Fuck, he was getting old.

"Anything else?"

"No," he said, and then changed his mind. "Yeah. When are you going back?"

"Hopefully never."


When they get up to his apartment, he instantly wished that he was the type to clean. It wasn't totally gross but not clean by any stretch of imagination. Beer cans, random change, food wrappers and boxes, some clothes, some CDs, etc, etc. His apartment is a one room, one bathroom with a decent kitchen, living room and some other random space. Definitely not big but surprisingly, not all that cramped. It was home to him. Obviously.

"I'll sleep on the couch," he offered and the idea of sleep is so fucking amazing right now. He also thought he was being pretty damn gallant. He was proud of himself. "You take my bed. In the bedroom."

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed. "We'll share the bed. It's not like I have cooties or some kind of sleeping kicking syndrome. Unless you do."

"No... just..."

"I won't make a move on you, I swear," she teased, even though her tease was in that casual, bored tone of hers and she smirked.

"Damn."

Too bleary to think anymore, he stumbled into the bedroom like he was drunk and crashed on the bed. Kaitlin came in a few seconds later and he watched her strip down to a tight tank top that was from underneath her hoodie and low rising panties. The rest of her clothes (hoodie, jeans, boots, socks) sat on floor. She looked at him. He continued to look at her, trying to ward off the very wrong mental images his mind was receiving.

"Morning," she told him, because it wasn't quite appropriate for a good night seeing as it wasn't night and it wasn't really good, and then crawled into bed beside him. He'd be totally aroused if he could be anything but sleepy but he can't so he just closed his eyes and let the world slip away, one flimsy black particle at a time.


When Trey woke up, she was already out of the bed. He briefly wondered if Kaitlin had up and left and despite himself, he hoped that wasn't the case. He glanced at the digital alarm clock to his side. It was 5:44 PM. Shit. He looked at the floor near the door and her clothes were gone. Pulling himself up from his bed, he untangled himself from the blanket and looked at the clothes he'd been wearing for about two days now. Muttering, he peeled them off and tossed on a new out fit that looked more or less the same. He didn't know if Kaitlin was there. If she wasn't it was very, very possible he'd never talk to her again.

He opened the door.

She was standing near the open fridge, pawing through it for food.

Was he disappointed? Or relieved?

"Hey, sleeping beauty," she said without looking up from the fridge. She appeared to be very concentrated.

"What time did you get up?" he asked, running a hand through his unkempt hair while slowly making his way over to her, trying to shake off the stringy cobwebs of sleep.

"Like... one?" she guessed, finally shutting the fridge. "You have no fucking food."

"I wasn't expecting the company," he replied dryly, wondering how she managed to function without a lot of sleep. The idea was foreign to him.

"Bullshit. You have literally no food. Some milk, some orange juice, beer, some lemons – drinking games much? – and other scraps of things. How do you live?"

"So I haven't bought food recently, give me a break. What did you eat earlier then?"

"I saw a muffin on the counter."

"That was my muffin."

"By the way, cool bean-bag chair. What are you, twelve?"

"Did I ask you to come here?"

"Whatever," she said brusquely. "I'm ordering pizza. Anchovies cool?"

"Anchovies are sick," he told her, making a face.

"Anchovies are the best," she protested.

"No anchovies," he insisted with a hard look.

"Fine," she relented, heaving a big, exaggerated sigh. She dug out her Sidekick – he snorted at that, of course she had one – and stared at the screen for a minute, blinking. He watched her, intrigued.

"Kaitlin?" he prompted, raising his eyebrows.

"No missed calls," she said and the way she said it made him feel kind of bad. Like she had expected calls, expected someone to miss her and notice her absence but there was no one. "Why do I expect different? I moved out. It's not like they have tabs on me. Never mind. What's the number of a pizza place here?"

He gave her the number, the address and in about forty-five minutes the pizza came. Kaitlin brought it over to the small living room area and set it on the coffee table. Trey went to the fridge and grabbed a beer. On second thought, he grabbed another beer for her and brought it over to him.

"Ooh, you do know I'm underage, right?" she teased, popping the top off the beer.

"You gonna tell anyone?"

"Nope."

"Good. Because I like to corrupt."He didn't really like to corrupt, but it usually happened anyway. Maybe it'd work out though. He fucked over Ryan and Ryan got himself a poolhouse. Kaitlin already had a poolhouse, but maybe he could do something for her too in some way. "Cheers." They clinked glasses and each took a drink.

Three pieces of pizza each and a few beers later, Kaitlin and Trey were both considerably buzzed. Not hammered, because as seasoned drinkers, it wasn't enough to completely intoxicate them, but they drunk enough. He remembered getting drunk with Marissa. That hadn't ended well. But here was Kaitlin, who was more of a rebel, a loner and completely unattached. Just like him.

Kaitlin finished off her third beer, setting the empty bottle to the side and looking up at Trey with her big green eyes wide and fuck, Trey wondered if Kaitlin knew exactly what effect that look must have on people. Probably, he figured, because Kaitlin seemed to know the world, know herself, and know what she was capable of.

"Trey," she said, practically purred and nudged herself closer to him, subtlety.

"Yeah?" he asked, and his voice sounded course and prickly in comparison to the saccharine tone she'd adopted.

"Why did you want to disappear so bad? What did you do that made you want to blend in?" Her tone shifted from the sweet one to a minx-like one. Or maybe a mix. Like someone who would seduce you, love you and then swiftly kill you. It scared the shit out of him but at the same time... it was enticing. Maybe he was just attracted to danger. He didn't actually register his words for a moment, but he could place the blame on the booze.

"Doesn't matter," he answered shortly, shaking his head.

"Yes, it does," she insisted with a little pout.

"No, it doesn't."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

And just as Trey was beginning to think this was getting ridiculous, she leaned over toward him and said, "Kiss me."

And Trey, who was powerless before his hormones, especially when inebriated, did. Even if sober there would be no way he would be able to resist. There was not an inch of him that didn't want her and that became very apparent when he stiffened. Encouraged, she continued kissing him, taking the beer bottle from his hand and clumsily placing it on the table.

Even though he was here and making out with Kaitlin who was so fucking hot he couldn't stop thinking about Marissa and he absolutely detested himself for it. But this was different. Very different. No beach, no coke... and Kaitlin wanted him. Trey revisited that night was Marissa often and he thought about the feeling of his lips crushing hers, his hands probing places that didn't want to be touched by him. He still remembered how she cried, and screamed that she didn't want him to even though she had been such a fucking tease and how she smacked him in the end with that fucking log and his body was now going fast and hard. He wanted to do this, he wanted to be in her and he doesn't know if 'her' means Kaitlin or the sick little fantasy of Marissa that still lingered.

Clothes were coming off now and their body heat was riling him up even more and he couldn't bring himself to look at her face. His hands kept going, his eyes were closed and he kept expecting some sort of resistance but met none. It didn't add up because Marissa was dating Ryan and they weren't on the beach and Marissa had told him no but here they were. He kept going, waiting for her to push him off at any moment but she didn't. Instead, she produced a condom from her near by purse without having to move an inch.

He pushed into Kaitlin, but to him, it was Marissa who cried out.

When they finished, they each laid there quietly and Trey let himself open his eyes. He glanced down at Kaitlin. He had just had sex with Kaitlin. Not Marissa, like he let himself imagine, but Marissa's little sister. He felt like an asshole, but he was used to feeling like an asshole. He'd fucked the replacement. He wondered if she knew what she was thinking.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. He looked down. She looked up. Their eyes met and he looked away quickly. She kept staring.

Finally, he got up and pulled his discarded pants back up.

She slid her clothes back on too and instead of watching her, he just stared at his hands.

"You knew her," Kaitlin said, and it was the first real thing either of them said before 'kiss me'.

Trey blinked. It was slow. The world blurred and then went back into focus. Kaitlin was still standing there, staring at him. Her face was hard, her hair was messy and her words were not the first thing he expected, post-sex.

"Who?" he asked dumbly.

"My sister. You knew her. And not just stupid old buddies, either. So don't even bother fucking lying to me."

Jesus Christ. She was saying this now?

"Fine," he agreed. "Yeah. I knew her. So what?"

"You're Ryan's brother."

Her words were like a punch in the stomach. She knew. She had always known. So why would she wait until now to tell him?

"Yeah." His hair was greasy. He needed a shower. He needed to extricate himself from this conversation.

"And you tried to rape her. Marissa told me all about it, a few years ago. Ryan's brother who had attacked her on the beach. And she shot you after you nearly killed Ryan. I know all about it. I'm not a fucking idiot."

He just sat there, still looking at his hands. There was no way to defend himself. Everything she said was true.

"And you killed her!"

That got his attention. "I wasn't in that vehicle," Trey told Kaitlin in a shocked tone. "That wasn't me."

"No, it wasn't. But if you hadn't fucking tried to rape her, she wouldn't have shot you! She wouldn't have been expelled from her school and had to go to that gross public high school! She wouldn't have met Johnny." He heard a catch in her voice when she said that name. Who the fuck was Johnny? "Or Volchok. And he wouldn't have run her over! It was your fault!"

He could not take this. Could not take the magnitude of her words and all they meant. Could not handle the grief flooding from the old scab she'd picked out. Could not handle the guilt that was mixing in with the flood, like an additional tide coming in, designed just to take you under and drown.

"Why?" he thundered, getting up from his seat. "Why would you just tell me now? Why not before?"

For that she had no answer. "You had sex with me," she said instead.

"Yeah! I did! What, do you think I raped you? I didn't hear any fucking complaints on your side!"

Tears began to pool up in her eyes. "No. But you weren't having sex with me. You were having sex with her."

As fast as his temper rose, it dropped down again and it felt oddly like those few years ago when he first heard Marissa was dead. Everything just... stopped. And he felt sick and violent and had so much loathe. But it wasn't for Kaitlin. It was for himself. Would it ever stop chasing him around? Would she ever stop haunting him?

"I loved her," he said finally and he was too much of a pussy to look up at Kaitlin.

"God!" Kaitlin yelled, in a strangled sob. "Of fucking course you did! Everyone did! Everyone that ever knew her was completely bat shit in love with her! Because she was so fucking perfect and Marissa could do no wrong, no matter how much she fucked up, no matter how many pills she swallowed or things she stole, she was still perfect and loved, and you, even you ..." She stopped. She physically could not speak anymore. The tears had come, and sobs kept crashing through and her body was shaking. It got to the point where she was crying so violently she was making no sound except for shaky gasps of breath. She sank down to the floor and he was crying now too because he didn't know how to fix this. He was the fuck up. He attacked Marissa. He apparently effectively killed her that day. He had sex with her underage sister and the list went on and on and on. And he couldn't make one thing on that list better. He couldn't take any of it back. Just add on to it.

He wiped underneath his eyes, trying to rid of any and all evidence that he had, in fact, been crying. He could have the small little fragments of his pride, right? "Kaitlin," he said, and hard as he tried for a steady tone, it was shaky and weak. "Why did you come here?"

"I don't know!" she cried out and her face was streaked with an unfortunate mix of eyeliner and mascara. "Because I'm stupid. Because I thought it'd solve something. Anything."

"And?"

"Nothing."

He wished he could feel sorry about that fact but he couldn't. He had his own stuff to dwell over. He was selfish. That's how it had always been. He wasn't sorry, but he told her he was anyway. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah."

The world fell back onto the appropriate axis again. There was a shift in the air, a movement in the atmosphere and they both breathed in. Maybe they could start over.

There was a silence.

"I should go home."

"Probably," he agreed, but neither made a move.

"Do you hate me?" she asked quietly and she looked small and vulnerable. Gone were the vixen eyes and enter the murky green ones that ached for some reassurance. He couldn't tell it was an act.

"No."

Another silence.

"Do you want to leave?" he asked after a moment.

"No," she answered, mirroring the tone he had previously assumed. "I want to stay."

Trey would spend his entire life trying to do the right thing but failing miserably. He spent his life falling in with the wrong crowd, falling love with the wrong girl and eventually just falling into this stupid pit that he couldn't quite climb out of. Life did not work in his favor. Evidently, it did not work in Kaitlin's either. Each had a sibling that overshadowed them in every sense of the matter. They were everything that Kaitlin and Trey were not. And even if he tried... once again, he would fail miserably. Maybe he could change that. Maybe he could kick life in the ass right back and scream, "Do not fuck with me anymore." Life was not easy and somedays he wondered why he bothered to live one. Because he had to. Because he had to try, at least, because there was always that small but stubborn part of his mind that said, 'don't give up at any cost. Don't be a chicken shit. Do this, Trey, and give it your all.' A survival instinct, something that kept him alive and kept him breathing. But it didn't evoke feeling. That was up to him. And that would require some sort of faith. As a rule, he didn't like to believe in faith. Look where faith had led him. Nowhere. So he simply ceased to exercise it. But maybe... just maybe... with that would come the possibility of doing something right. So when would he seize it? When was the right moment and what was the right thing to do? He had to make up his mind and he had to make it up quick but he wanted to do this right.

He breathed out and told Kaitlin in a small but strong voice, "So stay."

He didn't know if it was the right moment.

He didn't know if it was the right thing to do.

She nodded and said, "Okay."

But he'd find out.