Author's Note: Thanks for the awesome feedback, guys. Keep it coming and Chapter 5 will be up in a few days!
Chapter 4: It Was After Noon
"Tegan, you're fit!" a girl in the Brighton crowd bellowed after the second song. Tegan looked around in the crowd for the speaker as several more people shouted their agreement. There was a lot of shoving and jostling up front but Jamie was safely on the other side of the barrier, with the security, so she didn't care. She zoomed in on Tegan's face as Tegan addressed the concept of her being fit.
"I'm fit," Tegan mused, tuning her Les Paul. "I was texting my mom this morning and telling her that in England, my body type is very athletic." There was laughter, hoots, and more than a little insane screeching.
"In England, fit means sexy!" a loud female voice shouted. Tegan nodded.
"Oh, don't you know we know it-"
"It means we want to have sex with you!" came the same voice.
"Oh, I realize you want to have sex with me," Tegan said to ecstatic shrieks from the crowd. Tegan's eyes flicked briefly to Jamie's camera, a slight wry smile crossing her lips. Jamie shivered a little as Sara stepped up to the mic.
"I think, the fact is that you. . . that you guys have like, this unrealistic, like, expectation of Tegan and if-"
"Come on," Tegan cut her off.
"No, I mean, I want to help them, like, because they're all screaming, like, orgasmically over you and if-"
"This is why there are sketchy fan sites about us. Because you say stuff like that," Tegan pointed out, and Sara laughed.
"No, I just mean that, like, maybe they haven't really considered the fact that you're actually just a human being and like, realistically, they'd probably be disappointed." Jamie could barely believe what she was recording.
"DISAPPOINT ME, TEGAN!" someone screamed, to the mirth of those on stage and in the crowd.
"All right!" Sara laughed. "That person has the right idea. Keep the expectations low."
"Yeah. I'm actually a very selfish lover," Tegan said, and Sara laughed.
"Yeah. You're like, you're probably like those people who go out for drinks with friends and as soon as it's your turn to buy a round you're like, 'whoah, look at the time!'" Tegan was laughing now, too, shaking her head at the weird analogy.
"Totally. This may not be the best time to tell you all this but for this tour, for our UK tour we rented a second bus just for me and Sara and like-" The response from the crowd was suggestively enthusiastic. Jamie laughed in disbelief.
"Yeah, this is probably not the time to divulge that, like, that little. . . morsel," Sara said, gripping the microphone stand.
"Haha, well, like, we've been touring for like a decade and for a lot of that time we were crammed into cars and mini-vans and like stacked up like pancakes and. . . for the last couple of years we've been sharing a bus with like eleven thousand people and we're like-"
"We need our space," Sara added.
"It's really Sara. She's so grumpy. Like you can't even talk to her before she's had like, six cups of coffee," Tegan laughed.
"More like two. But okay," Sara conceded. People screamed. Sara looked skeptical.
"I don't really know if that's worth all the, like, hooting, but. . ."
"Like I don't know if you know this but on our last record we had a trumpet player but Sara killed him. We were a ska band," Tegan said as Sara laughed. "But our trumpet player kept talking to Sara in the morning so she killed him and then we had to become a 'folk duo.'" Tegan made air-quotes around the words, to more cheers. "And anyway so we got this bus just for the two of us but there was a mix-up and we ended up with this bus with like one huge bed in the back when like we'd specifically requested one with two beds but we got this, like, ridiculously huge bed-"
"Seriously. It's like, the, like the most obscene bus. It's like, a porno bus-" Jamie thought the sound wave from the screams would knock her over. "Yeah. Awesome. So now I'm 28 and sharing a bed with my sister. Who kicks me like, sixty times a night. Like, it's like we're seven years old again except without the Spiderman pajamas-" The wave of shrieks washed over Jamie as she filmed, her back against the barrier, in amused, stunned disbelief.
"Okay, sure. You're the victim, when like, I'm the one waking up in the middle of the night freezing to death because you have all the blankets-" Jamie turned the camera back to Sara to catch her response. Are they literally talking about sleeping together? In front of a crowd of people?
"Okay. Okay. Yeah, and you snore. So I may have all the blankets but I still don't sleep."
"I don't snore. Only middle-aged fat guys snore!" Tegan cried incredulously to Sara's amusement.
"Oh, you do!" Sara assured her. Sara's eyes flicked to Jamie, too, but only until she caught herself. Tegan, however, looked down to Jamie and addressed her.
"Jamie, I don't snore, do I?" Sara looked like she might fall down. The hooting and jostling from the crowd buffeted Jamie from behind. "No! No! Perverts, you're all perverts!" Tegan said, backpedaling. "Jamie has a bunk on our bus. It's the girls' bus. Come on!" Jamie was laughing, her face heating up, as she kept the camera on Tegan. She honestly had no recollection of Tegan snoring. "Oh, Jamie sleeps like the dead, she wouldn't know." Sara laughed and looked at Jamie, who laughed too, and shrugged.
"I think the point is that we should have like, just stayed in our cramped little bunks because at least then, nobody was kicking us," Sara suggested.
"Yeah. I miss my bunk," Tegan said.
"Yeah. I miss sleeping directly above Ted. Ted, do you miss having me on top of you?" Sara asked cheekily, and Ted laughed, chewed his gum, and nodded. More deafening cries from the crowd - it sounded to Jamie like they had gone past the point of amusement and were now just screaming out of hysteria - with Sara and Tegan clearly enjoying the reaction they were provoking from the mostly-lesbian crowd, despite their protests.
"God. So inappropriate," Tegan said. "And Johnny, do you miss me sleeping under you?" Johnny laughed, nodding.
"Tegan's such a bottom," Sara said.
"TOP ME TEGAN!" came the frantic cry from the crowd, followed by a series of shouts of agreement.
"Someone's not listening," Sara put in, to Tegan's amusement.
"Yeah, like Sara said, I'd just disappoint you," Tegan said to the crowd. "This next one's for all the tops in the crowd." Screams, some shouts of Sara! Sara! From the stage, Ted gave Jamie a wry grin and Jamie laughed, with a little nod. Tegan nodded, laughing, and added. "Yeah, this one's for Sara."
. . . .
Jamie climbed onto the bus, borrowed camera in hand, careful to make a reasonable
amount of noise before she entered.
"Any luck?" Sara asked her, pouring a cup of coffee in the kitchen area.
"Well, they said it shouldn't be too hard to fix, and they should have it ready in time for us to pick it up when we're back in London," Jamie explained, holding up the borrowed camera. "But they let me borrow this one in the meantime. It's almost the same. So, next time you guys think it's a good idea to hand out the set list yourself before leaving the stage, maybe give me a little, like, warning, or. . ."
"Oh, yeah, sorry about that," Tegan said, cringing.
"Yeah, I didn't expect them to dive like that," Sara said apologetically, glancing over at Tegan. "But that's good, because Tegan was planning on being super interesting for this part of the tour so it would be a shame to not, like, be able to capture that." Tegan smiled, handed a hoody to Sara as she slid past her and went to the fridge.
"When am I not super interesting is a better question," Tegan said, grabbing a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and sitting down next to Sara in the dining area. Jamie sat across from them and switched on the camera, scrolled through a few menus. Sara was concentrating on a sudoku puzzle in a newspaper and Tegan leaned in close, presumably to get a better look, but it was clear to Jamie that this was just a pretext to get close to Sara. Tegan's eyes idly scanned over the puzzle as she pressed her lips against Sara's shoulder. Sara tensed, her pencil halfway through writing a number, frozen.
"Tegan," Sara said, her voice quiet but tense, and Tegan's mouth smiled against her shoulder.
"It's fine," Tegan said with a laugh, teasing, her voice almost as low. "She's seen us naked, so. . ."
"God, don't remind me," Sara muttered, writing little numbers in the little boxes, blushing as Tegan
lay one hand on her arm. Jamie, testing the white balance on the camera, was surprised that this innocent contact between them had such an effect on her; the warmth spread through her as Sara relaxed, a little, under Tegan's touch.
"So, guys. Twenty-eight," Jamie said.
"Yep! Coming to the party tomorrow?" Sara asked.
"Haha. . . where else would I be? Do you think you want cameras there?" Jamie asked, and they glanced at each other.
"Well. . ." Tegan started skeptically.
"Yeah. We don't want to miss it if Tegan gets drunk and passes out with her shirt
up over her head," Sara said.
"Definitely. We need to preserve those moments for all time," Tegan said sarcastically.
"Well I'll bring the camera then," Jame said, switching it off. "It looks fine. Ready to go?"
With the camera in hand, Jamie set out with them to take in a few of the London sights on their day off. At Piccadilly Circus, Jamie got Sara on camera saying "How is this a circus? There are literally like, no elephants here." They went to some overpriced shops with surly staff, ate some fantastic Indian food, and ended up on a nearly-empty boat for a Thames River tour. They sat on bench seats facing each other; Sara and Tegan sat together, their legs touching while Jamie, across from them, filmed the sights and kept her lens off of the two of them as Tegan took hold of one of Sara's hands, pulled it into her lap and squeezed it with both of hers.
"Tegan, aren't you worried that, like, the other tourists will be asking themselves 'why are those two girls with the same face, like, touching each other like that. . .'?" Sara asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
"We don't have the same face," Tegan said with a smile.
"But still. We definitely look related," Sara argued, but didn't pull her hand away from Tegan's two-handed grasp.
"The boat's almost empty," Tegan went on, her smile never leaving her face. Jamie smiled too, her camera fixed on the sights that swept past as they motored down the river.
"Yeah, but you're making Jamie uncomfortable," Sara said, grasping. Jamie gave them a
brief look, smiling, and turned her gaze back to her camera, as if nothing in the world could possibly interest her more.
"You really aren't," she said.
"Maybe if we get naked and fall asleep on top of each other," Tegan suggested cheekily, to an increasingly red-faced Sara.
"Jesus, Tegan, you're like. . . shameless," Sara said, awed, shocked, embarrassed. Tegan laughed, smiled, and her smile faded. She was quiet for a moment.
"I wish that were true."
"I didn't mean-" Sara started, alarmed.
"I know," Tegan said dismissively, turning her head to Sara, smiling warmly. Sara met her gaze with a look that was both warm and questioning. She glanced around quickly; there were two other couples on the boat, but they were both up in front, facing the other way. Sara looked back at Tegan, and Jamie thought for a moment that they might kiss, but instead, Tegan dropped her eyes to Sara's hand, which she held snugly, and Sara's eyes turned back to the river.