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By the time Queenie realized what Tina had thought, it was far too late to pretend she hadn't. She stopped mid-spell, her wand in her hand and food hovering in the air as she felt Tina's eyes on her from the dining table, her thoughts running in guilty self-defeating circles, and Queenie pressed her tongue to her teeth and said, "I think we ran out of sugar."
"Oh," Tina said, and Queenie didn't need to be a Legilimens to read the relief in her voice. "I can pick some up tomorrow?"
"Would you?" Queenie said, tone artificially light, and let the pie finish baking itself as she sent the soup pouring into their bowls on the table. "That'd be swell. I was going to, but Mr. Andrews kept me late; he's always asking for more coffee."
"You shouldn't keep working if that's how he's treating you," Tina said, pouncing on the topic like a dog on a bone as Queenie took her seat. "Queenie, you deserve better than that heel bossing you around like you're not useful - "
"Hey," Queenie said, gently, and looked at Tina the way she always had, head tilted, halfway through her eyelashes - and then she forced herself not to, her smile feeling oddly fixed on her face. "It's all right. You know I can handle Mr. Andrews."
"Just because you can doesn't mean you should have to," Tina said, and the stubborn glint in her eye, the quiet understanding in her thoughts made Queenie's heart do a flip in her chest. This was all on her, she knew, and it was a awful thought that she struggled to keep off her face. Tina could read her anyway, her thoughts and expression concerned, and Queenie just - couldn't.
She laughed, instead, the way she knew Tina liked, and was terribly conscious of the way she pressed her hand to Tina's, laid flat on the table. "Give it another month or two before you barge in curses blazing, Teenie," she said, with a smile she didn't feel. "I'll manage. You know I do."
Tina's gaze followed the sway of Queenie's hair, the line of her neck, and it was with a flush of guilt in her mind she said, "Yes," her voice choked, and cleared her throat. "Yeah. I know."
The problem was, Queenie could even pinpoint the moment it started: the first time she noticed Tina noticing another woman. They were at the Blind Pig when she'd walked in, a lovely witch in a pale pink dress and a necklace of shimmering pearls. Tina'd always kept an eye on the door and Queenie an eye on Tina's thoughts, so Queenie knew immediately, intimately, the way Tina thought of her mouth on the woman's exposed collarbone, of lifting her hair from her neck, of sliding the flimsy straps of her dress off her shoulders.
It made Queenie feel hot all over, then cold and strange. She told herself it was the idea of Tina kissing someone, when that someone'd always been a man before; the idea of Tina thinking of a woman that way, thinking of her soft, creamy skin and how it would taste. Queenie kept an eye on the woman long after Tina's thoughts turned away, wondering what Tina could have seen in her, and found herself cataloguing the way she walked, the brightness of her laugh.
And she could pretend it was being lost in Tina's perception of her that made Queenie do the same, unconsciously; she tossed her hair in the way that drew Tina's eye, took her dress straps off the way Tina dreamed of pushing them from someone else's shoulders. But she knew it wasn't just harmless flirtation when she woke from a dream of Tina doing the same to her: pressing her sweet mouth to the side of Queenie's jaw and the curve of her breasts, sliding her fingers into the place between Queenie's legs where she ached.
Tina was dreaming of it, too, though the woman in her dreams was faceless, and Queenie bit her lip and tried not to think of the noises Tina would make if she kissed her.
And the fascination didn't stop; Queenie couldn't help but follow her sister's thoughts of women, her sensual dreams at night. Every time she pushed a little further, flirted a little more, and it sent a guilty thrill of anticipation through her whenever she did. She dropped her voice sometimes, to that sultry register Tina thought of, brushed her hair wearing just a chemise as Tina changed into her night-clothes and got ready for bed. They were sisters, there were no real secrets between them, but Queenie still found her gaze lingering on the shadowed dip of Tina's spine, wondering how her skin would taste.
But Queenie's own secret thoughts were one thing; Tina responding to Queenie's flirtation with a startled, terrified flush of attraction was entirely another. She'd forced Tina into this, she knew, made a study of what Tina wanted every time she did, and the sudden guilt felt like a knife to her chest. Tina's thoughts had turned back to horrified self-recrimination by the time Queenie had had enough of the silence: she said, "Tina - "
"I'm sorry," Tina said, too quickly, and pushed back her chair with a scraping sound that made her wince. "I'm sorry, Queenie, I wasn't thinking - "
"No," Queenie said, "I'm sorry," and Tina closed her mouth, opened it again, and then looked at Queenie with a quirk of amusement in her uncertain smile.
"It was just a thought, right?"
Maybe they could laugh about it, if Queenie said it was. But she saw the way Tina's thoughts fixated on her before she forced them away, and every time Tina glanced again at her bitten-pink lips, the robe slipping off her shoulders, Queenie was reminded all over again that she'd wanted this enough to push. "Teenie," she said, "I - I really made a mess of all this, didn't I?"
"You didn't do anything," Tina said. Queenie shook her head.
"I did," she said. "You were thinking about that girl at the bar, the one you were sweet on for a while, and you liked the way she talked to you and flipped her hair - "
"What are you talking about?" Tina said. She'd taken a step closer, and her thoughts had switched entirely to concern Queenie wasn't really sure she deserved. "Queenie - "
"I," Queenie said, "I made you want me, like I wanted you." It was only a few steps to Tina and less when she stepped forward again, and Queenie couldn't look at her and not want to kiss her. "I was listening, you know, when you thought about her - about all of them," she admitted, the words dragged out of her. "The things that caught your eye, everything that you liked... I took some pointers, that's all." Queenie glanced at Tina, whose expression was complicated, her mind awhirl. "I'm sorry," she said, quietly. "I shouldn't have. But I just - wanted you to notice me."
"You're my sister," Tina said. "You'll always come first."
Tina was noticing her now, Queenie knew, though she had to look quite a sight. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and looked up at Tina through her eyelashes as Tina stepped closer and laid a careful hand on her shoulder.
"How long?"
Queenie said, "Teenie, you can't - " and bit her lip until it hurt. "Ages."
"I should've noticed something was up," Tina said, her voice oddly gentle. Queenie couldn't stand hearing her thoughts. "You - you wanted this, right? Me?"
When Tina kissed her, it was nothing and everything like she'd dreamed. The angle was clumsy, their noses bumped, and Queenie wanted so much to pull her in and keep her there it felt like a physical ache in her chest. Her gasp came out on the edge of a sob and Tina smoothed a hand over Queenie's hair like she hadn't since they were children, said, "Shh, shh," as Queenie hid her face in Tina's neck.
"You're being awful," she managed, and could feel Tina's smile in her thoughts. It cheered her terribly, to know she hadn't ruined everything, and Queenie pulled away to see the soft understanding in Tina's eyes.
"It's all right," Tina said.
"What I did - "
"I know my own mind," Tina said, "you haven't changed it - and I've always known you might be listening in." She kissed Queenie again, and this time was better, sweeter, her mouth warm and wet, her hand on the back of Queenie's neck and Queenie let herself forget for a moment to drag her in and kiss her the way she'd dreamed of. She knew what Tina liked, what made her blood heat and her breath quicken and Tina's cheeks were as flushed as Queenie felt by the time she let her go.
"Well," Tina said, and cleared her throat, and Queenie had to kiss her again.