fic: so what if you catch me where would we land
She will nearly drop the flan - and the ceramic plate with it - when she sees Alex in Justin’s bed. Justin will be nowhere in sight.
Alex will say, “Mom,” and Theresa will not know whether it is an admission, or a plea, or a question. Possibly it will be all of these.
Max will appear in the open doorway, breathless from sprinting up five flights of stairs, and he too will say, “Mom,” and make as if to take the flan from her, which is probably a good idea because she doesn’t know if she can make it as far as the living room.
Then Justin will emerge from the bathroom, a towel slung over his hips, and this time Theresa will actually drop the plate, and flan will go flying everywhere. Max will pluck a piece of it off the carpet and announce, “Five second rule.” And when he swallows the yellow custard without further ado, understanding will finally dawn.
“You knew,” she will say to her youngest son.
Alex will make an impatient noise in the back of her throat. “I told you they’d figure it out eventually."
*
In twelve years, seven months, three days, eleven hours and fifty-one minutes, Jerry will make Max parallel park the car while Theresa goes up to Justin’s suite. Max will wish he had actually paid attention in driver’s ed. Or that Justin and Alex would, you know, answer their phones because to be honest he doesn’t know how long they expect to keep this up. By now he will have texted Justin twice and Alex five times (normally she can’t go twenty minutes without checking her phone). It will be Justin’s twenty-first birthday, and they will doubtless both be hung over, and Max will begin to suspect that circumstances are conspiring to prevent him from eating the flan Theresa made for the occasion. Which is extremely disappointing, because coconut flan is his favorite.
*
In twelve years, seven months, two days and nineteen hours, Alex will convince Justin to go to the bar instead of the symphony. (He’s finally legal and he wants to go to a concert? One without any singing? As if she’d let him.)
“We can go clubbing when you turn twenty-one,” he will protest. “That way we can use our real IDs.”
Alex will pout slightly and say, “What’s wrong with my fake ID? Do I look fat or something?”
And he will remind her that they ordered wine at the restaurant but that’s not the point, can’t he see, the point is that she knows what he needs better than he does, knows when it’s okay to give his inner dork free rein and when he needs to act like a human being; and as for herself, she needs Justin. It’s as simple as that. She’s always needed Justin.
*
In twelve years, six months, twenty-six days, and five minutes, Justin will catch Alex trying to bewitch her physics textbook into giving up the answers to the even questions. Which - well, maybe he should be happy she’s attempting to do the homework at all and not blowing it off like she usually does. He will try to show her how to do the problem but she will get bored quickly (he can tell because she’s playing with her hair). She will lean forward so that their thighs are touching and cock her head at the precise angle that means let’s blow this joint and he will forget what Newton’s Third Law says. Or rather, he will understand it in an entirely new light. Because this is them, this is Justin and Alex, how can anything she does fail to elicit an equal and opposite reaction from him?
*
In twelve years, six months, twenty-six days and four minutes, Alex will stop paying attention to what Justin is saying because she’s too busy looking at his mouth. It’s a damn fine mouth.
Alex will conclude that the best way to shut Justin up is, as always, to kiss him until he’s breathless. And if making out on the couch will convince him to do her homework for her - well, that’s just a bonus, right?
*
In eleven years, ten months, and thirteen days, they will bump knees under the dinner table and Justin will not be sure whether it was an accident or whether she’s trying to make him choke on his vegetables so she can conveniently dispose of hers during the ensuing ruckus. Knowing Alex, it will be a little bit of both.
Max will help himself to his third helping of cranberry sauce (Justin knows the face Alex will make before she even makes it) and their mom will boast to Grandma how Justin has made the dean’s list for the fifth semester running. Alex will mouth the words suck up and show-off and know-it-all.
*
In eleven years, nine months, and eighteen days, Justin will look at law schools.
Alex will lie in his bed clutching his pillow to her chest and refuse to get up. “Didn’t we agree we’d start a band?”
“Only if Max wins.”
“We’re not going to let him win on purpose, are we? I mean” - she will hasten to correct herself - “I’m definitely not going to let him win, since I already beat you once and I plan on doing it again.”
Justin will give her a deprecating look, like the thought of letting Max win the competition has never even crossed his mind, and Alex will pretend likewise. She will refuse to think about what winning might mean for either of them, or for that matter, what losing might mean.
Because if magic has been part of you since the day you first drew breath, you have no idea who you are without it. You have no idea if Justin will still be Justin and Alex will still be Alex, if JustinandAlex will still exist if (when) the power is no longer thrumming through their veins.
*
In ten years, eleven months, twelve days and five hours, Max will wake up in the middle of the night with a craving for Rocky Road Sundae. He will find Justin and Alex in the kitchen. Alex will be standing behind Justin’s chair, her hand resting on his shoulder, and there will be only one bowl of ice cream on the table in front of them.
Max’s eyes will flit between Alex and the ice cream, and an image will rise unbidden into his mind: Alex sitting on Justin’s lap, their heads close together; Alex jumping up quickly when she hears Max’s step on the landing.
Justin will open his mouth but Max will shake his head and head for the fridge. “I don’t want to know.”
*
In ten years, three months, five days, twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes, Justin will say, “Alex.” Nothing more. Just “Alex.” And she will think that she could probably spend the rest of her life listening to him say her name. (Yes, she realizes that to all intents and purposes she already has. So what?)
*
In ten years, three months, five days, twenty-three hours and thirty-one seconds, he will draw her into the circle of his arms and she will press herself against him, so that there’s no space left between them, her breasts mashed against his chest and his hardness against her -
She doesn’t think Justin’s face can get any more flushed than it already is, but she’s wrong. He will try to pull away. She will lock her arms around his neck.
“Alex -”
And she wants to tell him there’s nothing to be ashamed of; that she is inordinately proud of herself that she does this to him. That she wants him as much as he wants her.
But Alex has never been any good with words - that’s Justin’s specialty - so instead of telling him she will show him, and show him again, again and again, as many times as it takes.
*
In ten years, three months, four days, twelve hours, forty minutes and seven seconds, he will tilt her chin up and kiss her on the lips. They will draw apart, afterward, like they’re waiting to see if one of them wants to wipe their mouth with the back of their hand or something.
Finally Justin will say, “I’ve wanted to do that for awhile.”
Alex will roll her eyes. “Took you long enough, doofus.”
*
In ten years, three months, four days, twelve hours, and twenty-one minutes, Alex will corner Justin in the library after school. She will be brandishing his acceptance letter to Stanford. (So she was going through his stuff, all right, she admits it. And he made it hard enough to find, wedged between the pages of a book. A book on gardening spells, of all things. It still doesn’t give him the right to keep this kind of thing from them, from her, though.)
There will be shouting. Lots of shouting. (They’re not in the library anymore.) He will say, “Columbia is a good school” and “Mom didn’t go to a big name college” (“Mom went to college in Mexico.”)
Alex will forget what they’re fighting about. To be honest, she’s not sure why she’s angry with him. (It’s not like she used magic to create a duplicate of him and sent it off to college in his place because she couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving, or anything.) All she knows is that she learned to fight with Justin before she learned to walk, or talk, or lie convincingly (okay maybe not, maybe she’s a born liar). All she knows is that she’s supposed to be selfish, and most of the time that works pretty well for her. Yet when it comes to Justin, everything she knows falls apart.
(Which doesn’t make any sense, because Justin is like her one constant, the one person she can count on, always. She can’t imagine going a day without tormenting him. And what does it say about her that she’s never thought so hard about anything in her life, and now she’s thinking about Justin?)
*
In ten years, two months, and fourteen days, Justin will see his sister in a bikini and decide that he’s going to hell. In that order. It’s not like he’s never seen her in a bathing suit before - if he thinks back far enough, he’s probably even seen her na-
No, better not. He glances up from his book (what in God’s name possessed him to bring Dante to the beach?) and now she’s talking to a lifeguard, some guy who’s tanned and muscled and at least five years too old for her, and Justin doesn’t believe in violence but he’s starting to rethink that position. And he tells himself it’s just brotherly protectiveness, but there’s a reason Alex is the acknowledged liar in the family.
The lifeguard isn’t even looking at her face. The problem is, neither is Justin.
Yup. Straight to hell.
*
In nine years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days, Alex will accidentally turn herself and Harper into pizzas. (Harper’s will be topped with marshmallows and kimchi). Justin will turn them back.
“What part of ‘no magic while you’re grounded’ is so hard to understand?”
“Yeah, well you’re grounded too, which means you’re not supposed to do magic either. Except remember how you just did? Like, two minutes ago?”
“Fine. Next time I’ll wait until one of the customers comes over and takes a bite out of you.”
“Ew! Gross.”
“Not to mention it’s your fault we’re grounded in the first place.”
“Hey, that wasn’t - ” she will begin, but then she’ll stop. Because she prides herself on being able to read Justin like an open book (except she would never, you know, read an actual book) and the look on his face right now? Definitely not his let’s lecture Alex look.
“I just - ” and for some reason he will look pained when he says this, “I won’t always be here to bail you out.”
She will gaze at him out of guileless brown eyes and ask, in all seriousness, “Why not?”
*
In nine years, one month and twenty-two days, Alex will flick her soda tab in the general direction of the trash can. It will skitter across the floor before it gets there. Harper will take a sip of her Coke while Alex makes a face at hers.
“This is dumb. There are like twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and the tab comes off in five or six twists, tops. So this thing about the name of the boy you’re going to marry is totally dumb.”
“Alex,” Harper will point out, “Your boyfriend’s name is Dean.”
*
In three years, nine months, and eleven days, Justin will come down with the chicken pox. Max, who’s never had it, will be shuffled off to Kelbo’s. (Kelbo’s! What are his parents thinking?) Theresa has never had it either, but Jerry doesn’t have any luck convincing her to leave. (Something about “my house” and “my son” and “my life.”)
He’s not sure, because everything becomes a little woozy at this point, but he thinks he remembers being fed a lot of soup. Also a lot of medicine. It’s hard to tell the difference after a while.
And he knows that sick people have vivid dreams or whatever, but he will swear that he remembers Alex being there. Taking his bloated, pockmarked hand in her own small, slim one. Holding on until he falls back into a fitful sleep.
*
In five minutes, Alex will pitch forward out of the swing and scrape her knees in the sandbox. (How do you scrape your knees in a sandbox? Aren’t those things designed to be kid-proof?)
She will cling to Justin after he helps her up, her tears soaking through his shirt. His brand new Star Wars shirt. He will sigh and wrap an arm around her and they will stagger home. He will wonder why he took her to the playground, when he could have been playing video games with Zeke.
Then she will lift her head from where it’s muffled against his chest and smile at him like he’s the best brother in the history of the world. And even though he’s not - even though there are times he would gladly strangle her - it’s also true that he would give up an entire week of video games without a second thought, if it means making her smile like that again.
*
Right now, Justin will stand behind the swing to push Alex, whose cries of “Higher! Higher!” are punctuated by giggles. And he doesn’t know why but he’s laughing too. It can’t be because he’s having fun, since he’s too old for this.
Alex’s laughter is infectious. Eventually, he will join her. Alex always gets what she wants.
fin
A/N: Three things. One, I will never, ever complain again about how unnecessarily complicated it is to form the future tense in Spanish, because English only has "will," and as you can imagine I am sick unto death of using it. Two, I totally stole the style of the last sentence in the second-to-last section from ohladybegood 's fic, which is way more awesome than mine. Three, I wrote this because the cynic in me doesn't believe in Jalex + happy ending, and my shipper heart will take nothing less, so I went doh! Just write the story backwards! Problem solved.
Alex will say, “Mom,” and Theresa will not know whether it is an admission, or a plea, or a question. Possibly it will be all of these.
Max will appear in the open doorway, breathless from sprinting up five flights of stairs, and he too will say, “Mom,” and make as if to take the flan from her, which is probably a good idea because she doesn’t know if she can make it as far as the living room.
Then Justin will emerge from the bathroom, a towel slung over his hips, and this time Theresa will actually drop the plate, and flan will go flying everywhere. Max will pluck a piece of it off the carpet and announce, “Five second rule.” And when he swallows the yellow custard without further ado, understanding will finally dawn.
“You knew,” she will say to her youngest son.
Alex will make an impatient noise in the back of her throat. “I told you they’d figure it out eventually."
*
In twelve years, seven months, three days, eleven hours and fifty-one minutes, Jerry will make Max parallel park the car while Theresa goes up to Justin’s suite. Max will wish he had actually paid attention in driver’s ed. Or that Justin and Alex would, you know, answer their phones because to be honest he doesn’t know how long they expect to keep this up. By now he will have texted Justin twice and Alex five times (normally she can’t go twenty minutes without checking her phone). It will be Justin’s twenty-first birthday, and they will doubtless both be hung over, and Max will begin to suspect that circumstances are conspiring to prevent him from eating the flan Theresa made for the occasion. Which is extremely disappointing, because coconut flan is his favorite.
*
In twelve years, seven months, two days and nineteen hours, Alex will convince Justin to go to the bar instead of the symphony. (He’s finally legal and he wants to go to a concert? One without any singing? As if she’d let him.)
“We can go clubbing when you turn twenty-one,” he will protest. “That way we can use our real IDs.”
Alex will pout slightly and say, “What’s wrong with my fake ID? Do I look fat or something?”
And he will remind her that they ordered wine at the restaurant but that’s not the point, can’t he see, the point is that she knows what he needs better than he does, knows when it’s okay to give his inner dork free rein and when he needs to act like a human being; and as for herself, she needs Justin. It’s as simple as that. She’s always needed Justin.
*
In twelve years, six months, twenty-six days, and five minutes, Justin will catch Alex trying to bewitch her physics textbook into giving up the answers to the even questions. Which - well, maybe he should be happy she’s attempting to do the homework at all and not blowing it off like she usually does. He will try to show her how to do the problem but she will get bored quickly (he can tell because she’s playing with her hair). She will lean forward so that their thighs are touching and cock her head at the precise angle that means let’s blow this joint and he will forget what Newton’s Third Law says. Or rather, he will understand it in an entirely new light. Because this is them, this is Justin and Alex, how can anything she does fail to elicit an equal and opposite reaction from him?
*
In twelve years, six months, twenty-six days and four minutes, Alex will stop paying attention to what Justin is saying because she’s too busy looking at his mouth. It’s a damn fine mouth.
Alex will conclude that the best way to shut Justin up is, as always, to kiss him until he’s breathless. And if making out on the couch will convince him to do her homework for her - well, that’s just a bonus, right?
*
In eleven years, ten months, and thirteen days, they will bump knees under the dinner table and Justin will not be sure whether it was an accident or whether she’s trying to make him choke on his vegetables so she can conveniently dispose of hers during the ensuing ruckus. Knowing Alex, it will be a little bit of both.
Max will help himself to his third helping of cranberry sauce (Justin knows the face Alex will make before she even makes it) and their mom will boast to Grandma how Justin has made the dean’s list for the fifth semester running. Alex will mouth the words suck up and show-off and know-it-all.
*
In eleven years, nine months, and eighteen days, Justin will look at law schools.
Alex will lie in his bed clutching his pillow to her chest and refuse to get up. “Didn’t we agree we’d start a band?”
“Only if Max wins.”
“We’re not going to let him win on purpose, are we? I mean” - she will hasten to correct herself - “I’m definitely not going to let him win, since I already beat you once and I plan on doing it again.”
Justin will give her a deprecating look, like the thought of letting Max win the competition has never even crossed his mind, and Alex will pretend likewise. She will refuse to think about what winning might mean for either of them, or for that matter, what losing might mean.
Because if magic has been part of you since the day you first drew breath, you have no idea who you are without it. You have no idea if Justin will still be Justin and Alex will still be Alex, if JustinandAlex will still exist if (when) the power is no longer thrumming through their veins.
*
In ten years, eleven months, twelve days and five hours, Max will wake up in the middle of the night with a craving for Rocky Road Sundae. He will find Justin and Alex in the kitchen. Alex will be standing behind Justin’s chair, her hand resting on his shoulder, and there will be only one bowl of ice cream on the table in front of them.
Max’s eyes will flit between Alex and the ice cream, and an image will rise unbidden into his mind: Alex sitting on Justin’s lap, their heads close together; Alex jumping up quickly when she hears Max’s step on the landing.
Justin will open his mouth but Max will shake his head and head for the fridge. “I don’t want to know.”
*
In ten years, three months, five days, twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes, Justin will say, “Alex.” Nothing more. Just “Alex.” And she will think that she could probably spend the rest of her life listening to him say her name. (Yes, she realizes that to all intents and purposes she already has. So what?)
*
In ten years, three months, five days, twenty-three hours and thirty-one seconds, he will draw her into the circle of his arms and she will press herself against him, so that there’s no space left between them, her breasts mashed against his chest and his hardness against her -
She doesn’t think Justin’s face can get any more flushed than it already is, but she’s wrong. He will try to pull away. She will lock her arms around his neck.
“Alex -”
And she wants to tell him there’s nothing to be ashamed of; that she is inordinately proud of herself that she does this to him. That she wants him as much as he wants her.
But Alex has never been any good with words - that’s Justin’s specialty - so instead of telling him she will show him, and show him again, again and again, as many times as it takes.
*
In ten years, three months, four days, twelve hours, forty minutes and seven seconds, he will tilt her chin up and kiss her on the lips. They will draw apart, afterward, like they’re waiting to see if one of them wants to wipe their mouth with the back of their hand or something.
Finally Justin will say, “I’ve wanted to do that for awhile.”
Alex will roll her eyes. “Took you long enough, doofus.”
*
In ten years, three months, four days, twelve hours, and twenty-one minutes, Alex will corner Justin in the library after school. She will be brandishing his acceptance letter to Stanford. (So she was going through his stuff, all right, she admits it. And he made it hard enough to find, wedged between the pages of a book. A book on gardening spells, of all things. It still doesn’t give him the right to keep this kind of thing from them, from her, though.)
There will be shouting. Lots of shouting. (They’re not in the library anymore.) He will say, “Columbia is a good school” and “Mom didn’t go to a big name college” (“Mom went to college in Mexico.”)
Alex will forget what they’re fighting about. To be honest, she’s not sure why she’s angry with him. (It’s not like she used magic to create a duplicate of him and sent it off to college in his place because she couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving, or anything.) All she knows is that she learned to fight with Justin before she learned to walk, or talk, or lie convincingly (okay maybe not, maybe she’s a born liar). All she knows is that she’s supposed to be selfish, and most of the time that works pretty well for her. Yet when it comes to Justin, everything she knows falls apart.
(Which doesn’t make any sense, because Justin is like her one constant, the one person she can count on, always. She can’t imagine going a day without tormenting him. And what does it say about her that she’s never thought so hard about anything in her life, and now she’s thinking about Justin?)
*
In ten years, two months, and fourteen days, Justin will see his sister in a bikini and decide that he’s going to hell. In that order. It’s not like he’s never seen her in a bathing suit before - if he thinks back far enough, he’s probably even seen her na-
No, better not. He glances up from his book (what in God’s name possessed him to bring Dante to the beach?) and now she’s talking to a lifeguard, some guy who’s tanned and muscled and at least five years too old for her, and Justin doesn’t believe in violence but he’s starting to rethink that position. And he tells himself it’s just brotherly protectiveness, but there’s a reason Alex is the acknowledged liar in the family.
The lifeguard isn’t even looking at her face. The problem is, neither is Justin.
Yup. Straight to hell.
*
In nine years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days, Alex will accidentally turn herself and Harper into pizzas. (Harper’s will be topped with marshmallows and kimchi). Justin will turn them back.
“What part of ‘no magic while you’re grounded’ is so hard to understand?”
“Yeah, well you’re grounded too, which means you’re not supposed to do magic either. Except remember how you just did? Like, two minutes ago?”
“Fine. Next time I’ll wait until one of the customers comes over and takes a bite out of you.”
“Ew! Gross.”
“Not to mention it’s your fault we’re grounded in the first place.”
“Hey, that wasn’t - ” she will begin, but then she’ll stop. Because she prides herself on being able to read Justin like an open book (except she would never, you know, read an actual book) and the look on his face right now? Definitely not his let’s lecture Alex look.
“I just - ” and for some reason he will look pained when he says this, “I won’t always be here to bail you out.”
She will gaze at him out of guileless brown eyes and ask, in all seriousness, “Why not?”
*
In nine years, one month and twenty-two days, Alex will flick her soda tab in the general direction of the trash can. It will skitter across the floor before it gets there. Harper will take a sip of her Coke while Alex makes a face at hers.
“This is dumb. There are like twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and the tab comes off in five or six twists, tops. So this thing about the name of the boy you’re going to marry is totally dumb.”
“Alex,” Harper will point out, “Your boyfriend’s name is Dean.”
*
In three years, nine months, and eleven days, Justin will come down with the chicken pox. Max, who’s never had it, will be shuffled off to Kelbo’s. (Kelbo’s! What are his parents thinking?) Theresa has never had it either, but Jerry doesn’t have any luck convincing her to leave. (Something about “my house” and “my son” and “my life.”)
He’s not sure, because everything becomes a little woozy at this point, but he thinks he remembers being fed a lot of soup. Also a lot of medicine. It’s hard to tell the difference after a while.
And he knows that sick people have vivid dreams or whatever, but he will swear that he remembers Alex being there. Taking his bloated, pockmarked hand in her own small, slim one. Holding on until he falls back into a fitful sleep.
*
In five minutes, Alex will pitch forward out of the swing and scrape her knees in the sandbox. (How do you scrape your knees in a sandbox? Aren’t those things designed to be kid-proof?)
She will cling to Justin after he helps her up, her tears soaking through his shirt. His brand new Star Wars shirt. He will sigh and wrap an arm around her and they will stagger home. He will wonder why he took her to the playground, when he could have been playing video games with Zeke.
Then she will lift her head from where it’s muffled against his chest and smile at him like he’s the best brother in the history of the world. And even though he’s not - even though there are times he would gladly strangle her - it’s also true that he would give up an entire week of video games without a second thought, if it means making her smile like that again.
*
Right now, Justin will stand behind the swing to push Alex, whose cries of “Higher! Higher!” are punctuated by giggles. And he doesn’t know why but he’s laughing too. It can’t be because he’s having fun, since he’s too old for this.
Alex’s laughter is infectious. Eventually, he will join her. Alex always gets what she wants.
fin
A/N: Three things. One, I will never, ever complain again about how unnecessarily complicated it is to form the future tense in Spanish, because English only has "will," and as you can imagine I am sick unto death of using it. Two, I totally stole the style of the last sentence in the second-to-last section from ohladybegood 's fic, which is way more awesome than mine. Three, I wrote this because the cynic in me doesn't believe in Jalex + happy ending, and my shipper heart will take nothing less, so I went doh! Just write the story backwards! Problem solved.