Author's Note: Comments, people, I need comments! What are you thinking of the sequel so far?! Help motivate me to post Chapter Four! It's done and just needs to be proofread… if you want it! ;)

Part II: It Only Fuels the Flames

Chapter 3: All Eyes Were On Our Table

Tegan's arms are around me again as the sick feeling fades. She saw us, but she's seen worse. She saw us that night in Calgary when she returned to the hotel room where we had fallen asleep naked, accidentally. She came in and we had only a sheet partly covering us and we were all tangled up in each other. I woke up when I heard the door and Tegan woke a half-second later to the sound of Jamie's voice. Shit, I'm sorry, she said, embarrassed, for herself and for us, and quickly backed out of the room.

That night had been different. It was the first time we'd been alone since the awful conversation at the airport where I told her it had to stop. In Vancouver, Jamie was there and things with her and Tegan were complicated and we all felt tense and uncertain I think. So much had happened and I just wanted to fix it. I looked at Tegan and just wanted to fix her because she was so broken. She told me about how those few days in Vancouver had been and I kind of wanted to hug Jamie for being there for Tegan but another part of me was like fucking throbbing with jealousy. None of this is her fault. She's not the one who is wrong, I had to remind myself. You are the fucking sick one. It's you. Not her. You. I told myself that again and again in Vancouver, while I felt lost, adrift, homeless.

What was going on with them? I needed to know. Like, I knew they were having sex but that's not what I mean. I mean I needed to know the nature of what was going on between them. It had been obvious to me that Jamie was in love with Tegan, and I wondered if Tegan was too fucking oblivious to notice it or whether she was just carelessly doing what she felt in the moment without thinking about the fact that someone's heart was in danger. Or if there was something much more to it.

That night in Calgary, Jamie went out to a movie with the boys. Tegan and I needed to be alone but I didn't know what that meant. We would either fight or we would grab at each other the way drowning victims grab at life preservers. And it sometimes isn't clear to me which of those two things will happen until they are already happening. They both come from the same place inside of us. Like how is it possible that I could want to strangle her, or something inside of me would make me want to lash out and hurt her because I know I can and it's so easy and it hurts me too and I know I deserve it. . . and then a moment later the desire to put my arms around her is so intense that I think my heart will cave in? This intense pulling that I have to fight against because my whole brain is telling me this is absolutely not how you are supposed to feel and there is something profoundly wrong with you while all the rest of me is like dying of starvation. For my sister. Fuck.

As it turned out, we didn't fight. We stood in that room, moments after Jamie had left, and Tegan looked at me with this expression that just mirrored everything that was going on inside of me, and can you even imagine what a relief that is? When things are too big to put into words but the other person is just reflecting it all back at you and just knows so you don't have to say anything? I think I started it. I think it's almost always me starting it, just like it's always me running away because I'm a frosted lemon coward next to her. People might not realize it but she's actually the strong one.

And then we were on each other and it's strange the way you can suddenly almost see yourself doing it and feel almost no agency over your own actions. We looked at each other for a long moment and when she circled around to my side of the bed and stood in front of me, her eyes were sad the way my guts felt. Sad and hungry, pushing and pulling, and after a moment of her standing there and giving me that gentle, almost beseeching look, I reached out and took her face in both of my hands and kissed her like all the oxygen in the world came from her mouth and her arms were around me. We were like those monkeys in that experiment those sick, twisted doctors performed years ago, where the baby monkeys were taken from their mothers and kept in glass enclosures with no physical contact. We were like those baby monkeys because depriving them of that made them sick and insane but all we want is to press against each other until we both die and that makes us sick and insane too.

Then we were on the bed and I needed to feel her skin so badly that I was just throbbing all over and her mouth on my neck was making me shiver. She was wearing that plaid shirt she likes so much and the buttons were harder for me to manage with my hands shaking a little. My hands always shake when she touches me. It wasn't dark yet, I remember, and the reason that stands out is because we had been naked together before but it had always been dark and so when I got her bra off, she pulled me closer and tried to hide and when she pulled my shirt over my head I felt the same way. She was milky and soft and warm and her body was so much like mine that it gave me chills. So much like mine except a little more fullness in her hips and breasts. And it was the first time I'd felt her nipple harden against my tongue, her hands in my hair as it happened, her moans soft and low.

Moments later she was pulling my jeans and my underwear off with both of her hands and I never thought it was possible to feel more naked but her eyes were on mine and she came back and we kissed again and part of me wanted to bite her lips but I didn't, and part of me wanted to eat her tongue but I didn't. Instead, I rolled onto her and my hand moved down her body and found that wetness that was the same as I felt and for a moment my head fucked me up again, like your sister is wet for you and then I thought about being in Vancouver and kissing Jamie because something about that seemed sane, and made it seem okay, and if I'd had a chance I would have gotten naked with both of them because somehow it didn't seem as sick that way. And then I guess my brain wanted to rescue me from my sickness because I thought of the almost nine months Tegan and I spent naked pressed against each other, wet and floating, and for a second I didn't care. We were one egg and then we were two people and we grew from nothing together in a dark watery place and we belong together. We're the same stuff! We touched each other then, before we were even aware of it, so why can't we do it now? The idea that I can't touch her is like someone telling me I can't touch myself. And while sometimes I admit that the fear and anger I feel make me just want to fuck her, I didn't feel like that at that moment and maybe that's because she's so gentle so that's how I felt, too, or maybe it's because we'd made each other cry enough by then.

Then my fingers were inside of her, warm and wet and squeezing like that, my God, and the moment before she came, I kissed her again because the moment when she comes I want to feel the vibrations from her voice moving through me and then, when it really happens, she can no longer kiss me back but squeezes me so hard. For a second I wished I had the strap on so I could feel her squeeze me with all of her limbs. But for another second I wished I were a boy so we could feel that together. And for yet another second I didn't wish for anything because the spasms inside of her squeezed my fingers again and again and I thought I'd pass out because I don't know how to get closer to her than that. And she's always so sweet in that moment and for a second I wonder if she was sweet like that with Jamie but I don't have much time to think about it because she says something to me in a whisper, I need to feel you, and then she is rolling over me and my stomach flips right over when she presses down on top of me and pushes one knee aside. She's never done that and it really does something unexpected to my body. And then I feel that constriction in my throat, that almost-panic I get when I am no longer able to tell myself that I am just doing something for her but that I am getting pleasure from being touched by my sister. But pleasure isn't really the word for it, any more than desert flowers get pleasure from rain. Man, I'm almost as cheesy as Tegan but how do you describe something like that without sounding cheesy? The desire to be touched by her is like, the same desire that the planets feel about maintaining their orbit around the sun. What happens if it stops? They will be flung out into space and explode and scatter and become nothing.

And so I wanted to stop her but I couldn't and when her hot hand touched me I knew what she found there and the sudden upsurge of shame collided with the intense need for her to not stop because I was so turned on already it only took a few minutes for me to come, with her mouth on my breast, my hands in her hair, and then around her tight as she slid up to my face and kissed me again. Like often happened when we kissed, my mind flashed to our first kiss when we were sixteen and she sang this is the last honest look I'll ever give and how I didn't even know how much pain I was causing her and something came over us and we kissed each other in a way that surprised us. A moment before that she'd sung I don't know how to hold you without shaking and she must have been fucking psychic because we were both shaking and we've been shaking ever since. And she grabbed the front of my stupid tiger t-shirt and totally just clung to it when she came and for a moment it was so beautiful I thought I'd fucking die and then I remembered who she was and I was ashamed and that made me angry and the fear made me run off and leave her like that, still shaking. And I didn't see that shirt again for about eleven years.

But this time, she touched me slowly and tenderly but I came easily and fast, and the tears came too, suddenly, surprisingly, a moment later. She murmured something, worried, and gently removed her fingers and came back to me. I covered my eyes because who doesn't feel stupid for crying after sex?

"I'm sorry," I said to her, but the spasms in my chest interfered with all of my words. "I'm so sorry. . . about. . . Casey," I managed to get out. It was a relief to finally say it but when you try not to cry all the time, and it finally comes out, watch out. And then Tegan was there and she touched my face and pressed her cheek against mine. We were both warm and damp and sticky.

"Shhhh, I'm sorry too," she said softly. "I'm sorry for hurting you. . . everything with Jamie. . ." I just decided not to fight the wave of tears anymore because that was just fucking exhausting. So I cried and let her hold me which was a rare rare thing. And she's pretty fucking emo so when I cried, she did a little bit, too. So we just stayed like that, wrapped up in each other.

So Jamie found us like that, yeah. We didn't mean to but we fell asleep stuck to each other. We'd rolled and shifted and wrapped ourselves around each other and I was half on top of her with one leg over her hip and the sheet was barely covering us and we were both naked and we fell asleep and then Jamie came in and then quickly went back out and I was horrified but Tegan wasn't, not really. She was only a little embarrassed and said she already knows! and I don't think she saw anything too shocking. And so she kissed me again in that way that nobody else in the universe will ever be able to do. You're me and you're mine and I'm you and I'm yours. Then we got dressed.