Author's Note: I just realized that the story thus far has a higher wordcount than the first Harry Potter book. Holy shit! I am so irrationally excited about that… thanks for sticking with me this whole time!

Chapter 11 - A List to Convince You

The night of the Newcastle show, Jamie came across Tegan in an empty room backstage. The boys were setting up, and Sara was asleep on a sofa in another room; it was a while to go before sound check. She found Tegan sitting on the floor with her laptop to one side, an acoustic guitar in her lap. As she walked in, Jamie heard her softly run through a chord progression, singing in a very soft voice, and then stop to type something on her laptop. She saw Jamie, and looked unaccountably embarrassed.

"Oh, hey," Tegan said with a shy grin. "Busted." Jamie crouched down next to her and looked at the screen.

"Yeah, that's for sure. I mean, what do you think you are? A songwriter?" Jamie said wryly, to Tegan's sheepish laugh.

"Haha, yeah, well. . . we usually don't like to get caught actually writing a song. We prefer to claim that the songs come to us from God, already written." Jamie laughed.

"Well, I won't tell anyone," she said with a grin.

"Good, because this one is, um. . . partly about you, and like. . . when we were in Vancouver. And stuff." Tegan was blushing, but she smiled all the same. Jamie gave her a surprised look.

"Me?" Tegan nodded, and scrolled up to the top of the page.

"You, and some of it is about Sara and. . . it's about those whole two weeks, mostly. And about like. . . how I think I behaved towards you, um. . . around that. . . before I knew that you felt. . . before we. . . uh. . . well, before . . . haha, holy fuck," she laughed, clicking something on her keyboard. "Why don't I just play this crappy recording for you and leave the room. Sound good? Okay," Tegan said shyly, laughing and getting up as the rough recording started playing on her laptop. She gave Jamie a quick wink and left her alone with the song.

Begging like

You might

Take order in your own hands

I stare

Seems like I don't care

Drop a chance in your hands then. . .

Jamie listened intently, feeling it, the lyrics loaded with meaning after Tegan's words. She laughed a little, feeling like she knew which lines were for her, which were for Sara, and which for Tegan herself. Many of the lines conjured images in her mind. . . of Tegan asking Jamie to touch her. . . of Sara standing with her bags in Tegan's doorway. . . of all of the ways that Tegan didn't even know the world had been mean to her. She was thinking then that the only cure for both her and Sara was Tegan herself, which was so much pressure on one person, so much for one person to be, when Tegan came back into the room.

"So?" Tegan asked nervously, sitting on the sofa with her guitar.

"It's good," Jamie said. "I like in the bridge where you-".

"The bridge of what?" Sara asked, her voice still thick with sleep, her eyes puffy. She shuffled over to the sofa and flopped heavily next to Tegan.

"I showed Jamie a new song," Tegan explained, smoothing Sara's hair down on the side. "Your hair is all standing up. . .".

"Can I hear it?" Sara asked, leaning her head against Tegan's shoulder and closing her eyes. "I'm so sleepy. Is the show over yet?"

"Yeah, we played without you. Nobody noticed," Tegan said. Sara chuckled. "Jamie sang backup. It was fine."

"Thanks Jamie," Sara mumbled, rubbing her eyes. "I was wanting to kind of phase myself out of the project anyway."

"Happy to help," Jamie said with a smile. "Want me to play the song? Apparently it's about. . .um," Jamie started, and Tegan grinned at Jamie and her tendency to let things slip.

"It's about both of you. . ." Tegan explained, shy again, turning her head and pressing her lips against Sara's forehead as Jamie clicked a couple of keys and the song started again. While the song played, Sara's head rested against Tegan's shoulder, and Tegan's head rested against Sara's, and Jamie sat on the floor in front of the computer, and they were all quiet. The two on the sofa closed their eyes, and it was only Jamie who saw when Johnny stopped in the doorway and gave them a surprised look.

"Well aren't you guys cosy?" Johnny commented, with a surprised smile at the girls, who immediately straightened up.

"Shit, I fell asleep," Tegan muttered, embarrassed, as Sara got up and went to the washroom without a word.

"We need you guys on stage in fifteen minutes," Johnny said, somewhat bewildered. Jamie gave him a nod and a smile and he was off again. Jamie looked over at Tegan, who was fiddling with her guitar again, her face a little pink.

"You know, there was nothing. . . unusual. . . about what you guys were doing. Except for maybe the way you reacted when he saw you," Jamie said softly, and Tegan shook her head, turned one of her tuning pegs again.

"We never used to. . . like. . . nobody is used to seeing us touch each other at all so. . ." Tegan said, getting up.

"But I don't think you want to, like. . . overcompensate too much. That will be suspicious too, you know?" Jamie suggested, thoughtfully. Tegan nodded, listening. "Like if you jerk away from each other all the time. . ."

"Yeah, you're right," Tegan said, pausing for a moment and thinking. "And. . . I don't know, she said suddenly, "I've been so distracted but thanks for the sweet present. Pineapples really will never be the same." She grinned.

"Well, I mean, a pillow shaped like a pineapple? How often do you see one of those. . ." Jamie mumbled, suddenly shy. She'd bought the pineapple pillow in Leicester Square and had wrapped it with a note, For when I can't be there when you cry.

"Well," Tegan said, closing her laptop and meeting Jamie's look again. "It's really sweet. The note too. . ." They looked at each other for a moment, and then Tegan leaned in and hugged Jamie, who returned the hug tightly, and they lingered in each other's arms for a long moment. "But, I still hope you'll be there when I cry," Tegan said, softly, her lips near Jamie's ear. Jamie's chest fluttered a little at Tegan's warm breath on her ear, at the smell of her hair, the warmth of the embrace.

"I hope so, too," she said, as they slowly and reluctantly released each other. "I mean, I hope you don't cry at all but if you do. . . I hope I'm there." Tegan gave her a long, warm look, and a smile which was only slightly sad.

"Well," Tegan said at last. "Shall we?"

"Yeah," Jamie said.

She grabbed her camera and followed Tegan to the stage.

. . . . . . . . . .

"This next song," Tegan started, smoothing her hair off to the side and then grabbing, twisting something on her mic stand, "Sara wrote for me." Jamie needed to bite her tongue to keep her laughter out of the video; she could feel the craziness starting.

"Tegan," Sara started to protest, and Jamie panned across to Sara's disapproving gaze. The crowd howled their approval, while Sara shook her head. "No. It's not about her. None of them are about her. Just the fact that you would, like, that you thought of saying that is like. . . it makes me so sad for you."

"I mean, her earlier songs about me were more romantic than the newer ones, but still. . . I'll take it," Tegan went on, disregarding Sara's protest while the audience's mirth gained momentum.

"None of my songs are about you. Not the romantic ones, not the dark ones, not the sad ones, none of them," Sara clarified, and then suddenly stopped. "Oh, wait, there was one-" Sara's sentence dissolved in cheers from the audience, and she paused before moving on. "I wrote one song about Tegan. It's called 'Tegan Didn't Go To School Today.'"

"That's the first song you wrote about me. It's about the day I skipped school to stay home with you-"

"No, you weirdo," Sara said over the din, as Tegan stooped to pick up a bra that had been flung on stage, and then hung it on the end of her keyboard stand while the crowd squealed their approval. "The song is about the fact that you didn't go to school one day because you were a fucking little punk and you were like, off being drunk and slutty with someone. A boy, probably." The cheers turned to hoots, and Tegan laughed.

"It's okay. I understand why you don't want to tell them. I mean, it's private. It's something special between us. It's nobody's business," Tegan said, her eyes stopping briefly, laughingly, on Jamie's lens before moving back to the crowd.

"Yeah. If that were, like, true, then I would wonder why you were telling the story to like, the dozens of people who are here at this show and will be watching this video later-"

"Yeah, good point. You guys can keep a secret, can't you?" Tegan asked the crowd, who shrieked their assent. "See? It's fine. It's between us."

"You're filthy. Look at them! Some of them believe you! They're like, 'Oh well they're both gay so that sounds reasonable,'" Sara said, giving Jamie a little start when she looked down at her and shook her head with a grin.

"Oh, don't make it into a gay thing," Tegan laughed. "You'd want me just as much if I was a dude. You're not a homosexual. You're a Tegansexual. . ." Jamie tried harder than ever to keep the camera steady as she made a mental note of this new level of inappropriateness in their stage banter.

"Tegan, holy shit, tomorrow there's going to be, like, we're going to see like, blogs about us and our mom is going to call us in tears because she's online obsessively reading every new thing about us and like-"

"Well, we can't keep it from her forever!" Tegan exclaimed, and Sara's look of disbelief sent Tegan into another peal of laughter.

"Sick. You're a sick sick weirdo and I share, like, one hundred percent of your DNA-"

"Yeah, so if I'm a sick weirdo, you're a sick weirdo," Tegan pointed out.

"This is like, a nature versus nurture kind of scenario-" Sara went on. "It's like, we have the same DNA but I guess I had like, a better place in the womb and got more prenatal like. . . whatever. . . nutrients or like-"

"Plus, you were sitting on my ear," Tegan helped, indicating the asymmetrical curve of her left ear.

"Right. I got more nutrients and you got a weirdly misshapen ear and like, a sick twisted mental illness," Sara said.

"Yeah. And you got the asthma," Tegan added, to which Sara laughed, and nodded.

"Right. You got a weird ear and like a perverse, psychotic like. . . mental problem, and I got a moderate case of asthma," Sara concluded as the crowd went into hysterics.

"SIT ON MY EAR, SARA!" someone shouted, and for a moment Jamie thought it might have been the same person who had shouted DISAPPOINT ME TEGAN! in one of the recent shows.

"Haha, sure. Get naked and cover yourself in like, placenta juice-"

"Believe me, after seven months, you'll be so over it. At first you'll be like, oh my God, Sara is sitting on my ear, I hope this never ends! But at the end of nine months you'll be like, get the fuck off of me right now," Tegan explained to the hysterical fan. "It's like on the bus, in our huge bed, and like Sara falls asleep on top of me and at first it's fine and after a couple of hours I'm like, fuck-"

"Come on. You can't even lie convincingly. You know that if any of that were true, you'd be like, Sara, lie on top of me forever! And I'd be the one who would be like, get the fuck off me, I can't sleep with your hot breath on my neck-"

"Totally," Tegan laughed, and Jamie could hardly hear their amplified voices over the manic shrieks of the crowd. "Yeah, that's probably true."

"And you should probably thank me for sitting on your ear, because otherwise we'd be like, really identical. It's like, the only thing that makes you special," Sara taunted, as Tegan laughed and kicked at the pedals at her feet.

"Haha, totally. Thanks for sitting on my ear for seven months," Tegan said.

"It's my pleasure. And thanks for giving me the good spot in the womb," Sara said, with a laugh, "because it's really paid off."

"Oh, any time. It's the least I could do," Tegan said, and Sara snorted at her.

"Okay. Let's get back to the music portion of the evening," she said.

"Yeah. This next one is for me."