Doc Day Afternoon (NC-17) 3/4
iii.
Ten minutes later, Alex paces the lair like an expectant father with the clap as she watches the door. Though her knuckles have long since stopped cracking, she continues to try, a nervous habit she’s apparently picked up from Jerry, and oh man does she really not want to think about her father right now, so she forces herself to drop her hands to her sides.
“This is crazy, Alex,” she mutters to herself, as she continues to pace. “Parading around in your underwear in front of Justin is one thing, but this? OK, so he’s probably not going to show, probably would have shown up by now if he was gonna, so you’re probably in the clear…but what if he does? What if he does show up and wants to go through with it? Are you gonna go through with it? Because-“
She breaks off, realizing that she’s arguing with herself out loud, which is apparently a nervous habit she’s picked up from Theresa. Granted, she’s not doing it in Spanish, but holy shit why can she not stop thinking about her goddamned parents?!
And then she freezes as she hears the latch of the freezer door open. Moving quickly, Alex hurls herself down onto the small vinyl bench, throws her feet up onto the table, and picks up an old gossip magazine that’s been lying around the lair for months. By the time Justin walks in, she’s flipping through its pages with the air of bored impatience that she perfected when she was eleven.
“Good afternoon, Miss Russo,” Justin says, in what he probably thinks is a debonair, sophisticated voice. “The doctor will see you now.”
Alex waits a half second before she tears her eyes away from her magazine and looks up at him…and despite herself, blinks in surprise. Justin stands before her, looking every bit the part, having changed out of his T-shirt and jeans into a button-down, tie and dark slacks. A stethoscope is draped around the back of his neck, just like they wear them on Grey’s Anatomy. In right hand is his laptop, and in his left, a black medical bag…with, she notices, the Captain Jim Bob Sherwood logo stenciled across it.
“What’s up, Doc?” she deadpans as she looks him up and down. “Does the lab coat come with the playset? Or did you order that special?”
Justin’s right eyebrow twitches, and he clears his throat a little, but otherwise lets this pass. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Russo. I needed to…uh, refer to some online resources…before I could begin your examination.”
Alex snorts. “Wow, Justin…eighteen years and four girlfriends later, and you’re still relying on porn sites to show you where all the lady bits are?”
Justin pauses in the middle of setting his laptop and medicine bag down on the table next to her feet, and glares at her.
“Actually, I was looking up generally accepted methods for performing a physical examination, if you must know. If this is going to be the first one I ever do, I want it to be as authentic an experience as possible.”
“Well, you made me wait here and read old magazines while you took five times as long to get to me as you said you would,” Alex sighs, tossing the gossip rag aside. “So from where I’m sitting, it’s pretty authentic so far.”
“Ha-ha,” Justin says flatly, opening his bag to retrieve a pen and prescription pad. He takes a seat in the chair opposite her. “Should we get started?”
Alex feels her stomach lurch again, even as she affects an indifferent shrug. “Whatever. Where do you want me?”
“Oh, there’s fine,” Justin says, clicking the button on the top of his pen and pressing it to his pad. “So tell me a little about your medical history, Miss Russo. When was the last time you saw a physician?”
“What?” Alex raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you kidding me with this?”
“Establishing a medical history is the first part of any thorough examination,” Justin says, “especially when you’re seeing a patient for the first time. Tell me about your family, Miss Russo. Any congenital diseases or other hereditary conditions that I should be aware of?”
“My fam-?” Alex wrenches her eyes shut and shakes her head sharply. “Justin, you know my medical history. You’ve known me since before I was born!”
Justin gives her a pained expression. “C’mon Alex, play along. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right!”
“Alright, alright!” Alex snaps. “You want my medical history? Fine. I got my period for the first time when I was twelve-“
Justin’s face goes ashen. “Uh…”
“And I’ve been on birth control pills since I was fifteen,” Alex continues, pretending to be oblivious to his discomfort. “No wait-fourteen and a half. Only because they helped with the cramps, though, not because I was actually having sex, or anything.”
“Oh…kay?” Justin whimpers. “But what about-?”
“No, that didn’t happen until…when was it that Dean told me he was moving away? Last October? November?” Alex shrugs and waves a hand dismissively. “Anyway, what a mess that was. I mean, read all the smutty romance novels you want, they still never prepare you for how much blood there’s gonna be your first time-“
“And your grandmother has diabetes!” Justin says, clicking his pen again and tossing both it and the pad over his shoulder. “Fascinating! Let’s move on to the actual examination, shall we?”
Alex shrugs again, but can’t help the tiny smile that threatens to blossom across her face. She stands up and puts her hands on her waist. “So, where? Right here?”
“No, waitasecond,” Justin says, leaning forward and digging around in his medical bag. After a few seconds, he pulls out his wand, twirls it around his finger, then points it at the work bench to the rear of the lair.
“As a physician I need to prove I’m able, conjure up an examination table.”
And in a flash, the work bench morphs itself into just that.
“I hate how they always have to rhyme,” Justin sighs.
“Or be in latin, I know,” Alex nods, taking in the sight before her. She cocks one eyebrow as she turns to her brother. “Stirrups, Justin? Really?”
Justin flushes darkly, and mutters something about ‘an authentic experience’ again.
“Well, then,” Alex says, grinning mischievously and snatching his wand out of his grasp, “in the interest of authenticity, I’m clearly overdressed.”
She doesn’t say anything, just holds the wand vertical before her and spins it in the air. Another flash-and a deliciously harrowing split second in which Alex feels completely naked-and her camisole and Little Miss Naughty panties are replaced with nothing but a short, thin paper gown.
Justin’s breath catches in his throat as he looks at her. She hands him back his wand, wearing a thin, tight smile that tells him, in the unspoken language they’ve shared as long as either can remember, that he’s not the only one who knows how to up the ante here, dude.
Justin lets his breath out slowly as he returns the wand to his bag. “Alright, Miss Russo, if you’ll kindly hop up onto the table, please…”
Alex begins to do just that, then lets out an involuntary squeak as her bare bottom touches cold vinyl of the cushioned table. She jumps back off and cranes her neck backwards in a vain attempt to see what’s going on back there.
“Hey, I don’t think this thing fastens all the way down!”
“Don’t look at me,” Justin says wryly as he approaches her. “You’re the one who insisted you were overdressed. C’mon, up.”
Alex pouts at him, but nevertheless hops back up onto the table, wincing just a little as she settles herself back onto the cold vinyl. Her bare feet dangle in front of her, and she starts to kick them back and forth like a little girl on a swingset.
“Knock it off,” he scolds, rapping her left knee lightly. (And then they both wince a little, acutely aware of just how much he sounds like their mother, there.) “OK, we’re ready to get started. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“That’s funny,” Alex snorts, “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
Justin’s eyes tighten at the corners a little. “All right, then. Here we go…”
He takes a deep breath, not even bothering to hide the fact that he’s steeling himself. And then he raises both hands, slowly, with careful determination. Alex’s stomach does a triple-somersault at the intensity of his gaze as he reaches for her-no going back now-
-and grabs her wrist with one hand, while looking at his watch on the other.
She blinks, then swivels her eyes up to his face. “Justin-? What the hell?”
“Vital signs,” he says, without looking up. “Step two. Pulse, respiration, blood pressure…hmm…”
“Hmm?”
Justin grimaces slightly as he focuses on his watch. “Your heart’s beating pretty fast, is all. Is everything okay?”
Alex snatches her wrist out of his grasp, and stares daggers at him when he looks up at her in surprise. “Look, let’s just assume that I’m, y’know, breathing and everything, and move on, huh?”
“But your blood pressure!” Justin protests, gesturing back to his bag on the table. “I have a real working cuff and everything!”
“Justin,” Alex says sharply. “Getting to use all of your little space doctor toys is not the point of this.”
“Not for you, maybe,” he sulks.
“Justin,” she says again, warningly.
He holds her gaze for a moment, then visibly deflates and casts a forlorn expression over his shoulder at his medical bag.
“Fine. We’ll move on to the HEENT, then.”
Alex brightens immediately, the way she always does whenever she gets her way. And OK, she doesn’t have a clue what HEENT means, but it sounds promising. Again Justin hesitates a moment, licking his lips, and the surge of anticipation she feels is almost palpable as he reaches for her and-
-begins massaging her scalp.
“What the HELL are you doing?!” Alex shrieks, jerking her head away from him.
He stares at her with his hands poised in mid-air, dumbstruck. “Uh, checking for growths, tumors, abnormalities…Head, Eyes, Ears, Nose, Throat. Step three.”
“Oh COME ON!” Alex shouts, crossing her arms over her thin paper gown. “God, you are so bad at this! You’re deliberately starting with all the boring stuff so I’ll lose interest and give up!"
“Uhhh, no?” Justin says, and he actually sounds offended. “I’m starting at the beginning, where you’re supposed to start?”
“BUT THAT’S THE SAME THING!” she whines, kicking her heel against the side of the exam table.
“Listen, Alex,” Justin snaps-and for once, he doesn’t just seem merely annoyed, or perturbed, but genuinely angry-“you’re the one who said I’d make a crappy doctor if I couldn’t do this. So I’m doing it, OK? Start to finish, beginning to end, the right way. Any time you feel like conceding that you just might be wrong is fine with me. We can end this whenever you want. Otherwise, I intend to show you just how good a doctor I know I can be.”
Alex stares back at him, shocked. But then again, not…because really, why is she surprised? This right here is the very essence of Justin, after all. Focused, determined, methodical. Ten minutes with a laptop and open internet access are all he needs to become an expert at something. And the easiest way to push him into doing something-anything-has always been for her to tell him that he won’t be any good at it.
But, as usual, he’s completely missing her point.
Apparently, he takes her silence as either stubbornness or consent-or maybe a little from column A and a little from column B-because he reaches up and starts palpating her scalp again. This time she doesn’t pull away.
"You idiot," she sighs, mostly out of frustration, but partly because what he’s doing feels…well, kinda nice. "I never said you couldn't be a good doctor. I just said you wouldn't be a good doctor."
Justin’s fingers pause for a second, then move down her head and begin probing the skin just below her temples, above her ears. "And there's a difference?"
"Duh!" Alex says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world.
Justin frowns at her, perplexed, as the pads of his fingers work their way down into the hollow spots below her ear and behind her jaw. "That makes little to no sense."
Alex closes her eyes, and involuntarily makes a little noise in the back of her throat. Wow. She didn’t even know she was sensitive there…
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” Justin asks, a tinge of concern creeping into his voice.
“S’fine,” she mutters, and it comes sounding out a lot breathier than she intended. “What the hell is this you’re doing, anyway?”
Because I kind of want you to never stop, she doesn’t add.
“Palpating your lymph nodes," Justin replies.
“Lymph nodes?” she snickers, as he trails his fingers down along the curve of her throat, massaging either side of her trachea. And ohmigod, it’s heaven. “Did you just make that up? Because that totally sounds made up.”
“No, Alex,” he sighs. “They’re part of your immune system. Look it up."
“Shyeah, like that’s gonna happen,” she snorts. She feels Justin draw his fingers from her throat, and she kind of leans forward a little, as if pursuing them, and actually has to stop herself from whimpering in disappointment.
“You’re breathing heavy,” Justin observes. “You sure you're alright?”
Alex opens her eyes finally, gazing wryly at him. “You’re supposed to be the doctor. You tell me.”
“I’m going to take a look at your eyes and ears, now,” he says, ignoring her. He pulls an…eye-ear-throat exam doohickey, whatever you call it…out of the pocket of his lab coat, then points to the brick wall on the far side of the lair. “Pick a point on that wall about eye level, and keep your eyes on it, OK?”
“Justin, this is retarded,” she says, staring at the wall as he peers through the eye-ear-throat thingy at her, standing so close that she can feel his breath hot against her cheek.
"Don't say retarded, Alex," Justin scolds her. "It's ignorant and offensive."
"Ugh! Fine, it's mentally-challenged, then! I'll bet you don't even know what you're supposed to be looking for, do you?"
“Oh ye of little faith,” he grimaces, switching from one eye to the other. "I'd offer to explain, but it's technical, and since we both know how science just makes you sleepy-"
"Hey, I still stand by what I told Mr. Laritate," Alex cuts him off. "If they expect people to stay awake during Sophomore Bio, they shouldn't schedule it so damned early."
"You had it first thing after lunch, Alex."
"Exactly! Dude, my sugar coma doesn't wear off until two o'clock, at the earliest!"
"And this is precisely why I'm going to make an awesome doctor," Justin says, bringing the eye-ear-throat thingy closer to her, "while you spend the rest of your life asking people if they'd like fries with that. Because I actually care about things like school and science and, I don't know, graduating."
Alex starts to roll her eyes, but an annoyed tsk! from Justin makes her bring them level again.
"Well, duhr. Of course you're going to get the science and the methodology or whatever right, you egghead,” she says. “Because that's what nerds do best. And you’re, like, their king or something.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he says drily. He stands upright, pulls some little attachment for the eye-ear-throat thingy out of his pocket and snaps it onto the end of it, then moves to her right side and peers through it into her ear. “Bonus points for your correct use of the word ‘methodology’, by the way.”
“Thanks ever so,” she says flatly, even if she is actually kind of proud of herself. “And like I said, you seem to like helping people, i.e. me, so you’ve got that going for you. But you're still way too squeamish and repressed to actually be any good at it."
“We'll see about that,” Justin says, as he finishes with her other ear. “All right, that’s about as much as I can do without a tuning fork…”
“A tuning fork?! What the hell do you think I am, a Steinway?”
“No, you’re not a Steinway. It’s used to test the range of your-y’know what? Never mind.” Justin crosses around in front of her, pulling a tongue depressor out of his pocket. “Let’s just check out your oral cavity, huh? Open wide and say ah.”
“What, just like that?” Alex scoffs. “Aren’t you at least going to buy me dinner, first?”
“Alex…” Justin growls, even as he flushes all the way up to the roots of his hair.
Alex shrugs playfully. “Well…OK, but it’s not every boy who gets to check out my oral cavity on the first date. I mean, even Mason had to wait until-”
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” Justin cuts her off, poking the tongue depressor into her mouth before she can finish her sentence.
“Ahhhhhhh,” she echoes him, opening wide and rolling her eyes as he presses down on her tongue and peers through the ear-eye-throat thingy into her mouth. And though she's still convinced that he probably has no idea what he’s looking for, he spends a good five minutes looking for it anyway.
He shoves her tongue first to one side, then the other, lifts it up to the roof of her mouth, then uses the tip of the tongue depressor to probe the little hangy-ball thing at the back of her throat. He seems a little taken aback when she doesn’t gag, and when he tries again, she closes her eyes and purses her lips seductively around the depressor, her cheeks hollowing as she sucks on it gently. Justin jerks his fingers away from it as though it might actually burn him.
“Oops, sorry,” Alex says sheepishly, slipping the depressor out of her mouth and handing it back to him with a grin. “Force of habit. Mason could get pretty big when he wolfed out. I learned to cope.”
“Ugh, I really don't need to hear about that!“ Justin makes a face like he's going to be sick as he shoves the tounge depressor and the eye-ear-throat thingee into the pockets of his lab coat.
"Oh please," Alex scoffs. "Testing my gag reflex like that? I know how boys' minds work, even one as dorky as yours. Tell me you weren't wondering if I could deep-throat, just now."
Justin clears his own throat uncomfortably, and changes the subject. "Alright, so that's the HEENT done. You ready to admit you're wrong yet, or should we continue?"
"Depends," Alex replies with a shrug. "What's next, and how boring is it gonna be?"
"Well, let's see," Justin says, consulting the open laptop on the table. "Next up is the..."
He trails off as his eyes go wide, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he visibly gulps.
"Is the...?" Alex prompts him, curious.
"The, uh..." Justin closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. "The torso exam."
A mischievous smile begins to spread across Alex's face. "Torso? As in chest?"
Justin swallows deeply, pulls the stethescope from behind his neck and starts fiddling with the silvery disc part of it. "They are commonly accepted synonyms, yes."
"Heheheheheheh!" Alex laughs wickedly, sensing victory within her grasp. "Yeah, I think we'll keep going."
Without looking up at her, Justin sighs and nods in resignation, as though he expected as much. "Fine," he says, pressing the silvery disc part of the stethescope between his palms and holding them up to his chest. "Just give me a second to--"
"What, pray?" Alex scoffs. "'Dear Lord, lend me the courage and the strength to feel up my sister'?"
Justin stiffens and glares at her over his shoulder. "To warm the stethescope, actually. Unless you'd rather it be ice-cold when I use it on you?"
"Oh. Uh, thanks,” Alex mutters. God, he can be such an absolute doll, sometimes. Even when he's also being kind of a dick.
“Don’t mention it,” he says flatly. Still warming the disk between his palms, he comes up beside her, and jerks his head slightly to the right. “OK, lean forward a little.”
Alex frowns at this, surprised. Shouldn’t he be asking her to lean back? But she only hesitates a second before she shrugs and does as he asks, because he’s Justin, and she assumes he knows what he’s doing. Slowly, she leans forward, bracing her forearms on her thighs and clasping her hands between her knees-
-and then she gasps as Justin pulls on one of the ties holding her robe closed. It falls open around her, exposing the bare skin of her back to the air from her shoulder blades all the way down to her ass. And though it really isn't all that cold in the lair, she feels goosebumps pucker up all along her spine almost instantly.
Instinctively, both hands fly to her breastbone and her elbows clamp to her sides to hold the flimsy paper robe in place.
“Jesus, Justin-!” she breathes. “Warn a girl, maybe?”
He snorts in response as he moves around behind her, placing the stethescope’s earpieces in his ears. “Seriously? First with your underwear, then that whole display with the tongue depressor, and now suddenly you’re worried about your modesty? Relax, I just need some room to work.”
OK, so maybe he has a point, but she’ll be damned if she tells him that. She opens her mouth to protest some more, just on general principle, when she feels something cool and metallic press firmly into her back, just above her left shoulder.
“Breathe in,” Justin instructs her.
“Wait, what?” Alex sits up a little and peers over her shoulder at him. “I thought you said this was a chest exam?”
“Torso exam,” he corrects her, with a smirk. “Upper body. Back totally counts.”
“But you said-!“ Alex blinks at him, then snaps her head forward, her bottom lip jutting out in a classic Alex Russo pout. “I get it. Classic bait and switch. Dirty trick."
"Breathe in," is all Justin says in response, but there's a smile in his voice when he says it.
She does as he asks, for once in her life, breathing deeply in and out as the stethescope gradually crisscrosses from one side of her back to the other, all the way down. His gaze on the slow rise and fall of her naked shoulders is like a gentle, persistent weight. It takes everything she has not to turn and glance over her shoulder at him, to look into his eyes and see what he's thinking...because that would give him a chance to see what she's thinking. Which could be...awkward.
"You’re squirming," he admonishes her, as the cool metal bell presses against her skin. “Quit it."
"Oh, bite me!” she snaps over her shoulder at him, and out of the corner of her eye she sees him flinch and yank the stethoscope out of his ears as her voice-amplified through her chest-threatens to blow out his eardrums. “You sit here half-naked and see how well you manage! How many different places do you need to listen to me breathe, anyway?”
“Um, just a couple more, actually,” Justin replies. Allowing the stethoscope to dangle around his neck, he comes alongside the exam table and tugs on the end opposite to her, bringing it up to a 45-degree angle. “I’m, uh, going to need you to lean back, OK?”
Alex sits up slightly, still pressing the top of her robe to her breastbone, and raises an eyebrow at him. One corner of her mouth curls up in a wicked smirk as she scoots back on the table and lies back. “So this is a chest exam, after all.”
“This part is, yes,” Justin admits, and as much as he tries to feign composure, his burning cheeks give him away. “I, uh…I’m going to need to pull down your, um…so if you could maybe just cover your…uh…y’know, like hug yourself, sorta?”
Alex’s eyebrow arches even higher, and her smirk grows even more wicked. She reaches first one arm and then the other beneath the paper robe, crossing them over one another as she covers her right breast with her left hand, and vice versa. And even though there’s not much chance of him seeing anything, Justin still takes the predictably chivalrous precaution of staring fixedly at the ceiling until Alex signals her readiness by kicking him in the ribs.
“Ngf!” he grunts, then reaches down to lift the top of the thin robe, peeling it off her slowly from her throat all the way down to her abdomen, before he carefully folds it just below her navel and drapes it over her legs.
“Should your hands be shaking like that?” Alex wonders aloud. “I thought good doctors were supposed to have a steady hand.”
“I do have a steady hand,” Justin grumbles. “It’s just…cold in here.”
“Dude, it is so not.”
“Really? Then why do you have goose bumps all over?”
“I-“ Alex’s mouth works open and closed for a few seconds as she struggles to come with a retort. “Shut up.”
“Uh-huh, good one,” Justin mutters, rolling his eyes as he puts his earpieces back in. “Just relax. I’ll be done in a second.”
“Relax? Gimme a break, I feel ridiculous. Like I should be on the cover of Maxim, or something.” Alex snorts as she adjusts her grip on her breasts. “’Hi, I’m Sarah Michelle Gellar. Do you like magazines that show models and other celebrities holding their own boobs?’”
Justin’s hand pauses in midair, holding the stethoscope’s disc thingie just above her skin as he fixes her with a confused look.
“Hello? It was an SNL skit she did?” Alex says. “Topless? Will Farrell was in it? No? Jesus, dude...do you not get any pop culture references that don’t involve, like, Klingons or lightsabers?”
Justin frowns and shakes his head slightly, then presses his stethoscope to the right side of her throat, just above her collarbone. “Deep breaths.”
“Yeah, ‘cause that’ll be real easy, what with my arms constricting my chest like this,” Alex snarks.
“Hey, that’s for your benefit,” Justin says, moving the disc to the other side of her throat. “Anytime you feel like letting go, be my guest. I can h-h-handle it.”
“Oh yeah, th-th-th-th-that sounded real c-c-c-convincing there, Porky!” Alex laughs. “As if your head wouldn’t explode if I so much as reached up to scratch my nose.”
“Clinical detachment, remember?” Justin says, as he moves the stethoscope back to the other side of her chest, and down a little. “To me, it’s no different than looking at a diagram in a text book.”
“You mean the ones hidden under your bed that you just read for the articles?”
Justin glares at her as he nudges her elbow aside and presses the stethoscope to a spot just below the swell of her right breast. “And how would you know what’s hidden under my-?”
He breaks off as Alex suddenly jerks away from him with a shriek, her hands lifting off her breasts just long enough to give him the briefest glimpse of her nipples.
“You JERK!” she howls, hurriedly covering herself again. “You did that on purpose!”
“What? How? I don’t even know what I did!” Justin says, holding up his hands in front of him. It takes him a second to drag his eyes away from her chest, where she’s readjusting her hold on herself. “What happened?”
“I’m ticklish there, egghead!” Alex growls, “As if you didn’t already know!”
“Oh, right.” Justin purses his lips off to one side and gets a faraway look in his eyes for a second, like he does when he’s trying to work through a calculus problem, or figure out a way to undo a spell Alex messed up. “OK, there’s a trick for that. Here, give me your hand.”
Alex tilts her head to one side, and lifts her breasts a little. “Hi! Hands full, remember?”
“Oh c’mon, Alex,” Justin sighs. “You’re not so big that you can’t manage to cover yourself with just one arm for a few minutes.”
Alex glares at him for a moment, then awkwardly draws her left arm all the way across her chest, smushing her left breast down with her elbow while cupping her right one in the palm of her hand. “Yeah, so this is comfortable. Except, y’know, not.”
“Geez! It’s only for a minute or two!” Justin says. His eyes are riveted to her face, and he appears to have forgotten how to blink again, which nearly makes her smile despite herself. Grunting in mock-exasperation, she draws her right hand out from under her left arm, and holds it out to him. He takes it, and places it over his own right hand, which holds the silvery disc part of the stethoscope. Alex grips the back of his hand lightly as he reaches down and presses the cool metal disc to her skin, back in her ticklish spot. She still feels her body tense in response, but it’s not nearly as bad as last time.
“Better?” Justin asks, still being oh-so-careful to look her in the eye.
Alex shrugs her shoulders reluctantly. "I guess.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Justin smiles. “Deep breath.”
Alex breathes in deeply through her nose-and if it’s a little shaky, it’s only because she’s still ticklish, that’s all-and Justin’s eyes finally leave her own as he turns his attention to the stethoscope, staring at it with the kind of intense focus he usually reserves for potions or the latest issue of Captain Jim Bob Sherwood. She exhales slowly, and he nods to himself, then lifts her hand along with his and presses the silvery disc part to the exact same spot on her right side.
“Justin?” she asks, before she breathes in again.
“Mmmm?” he mutters, without taking his eyes off the stethoscope.
Alex strokes her finger across the skin at the base of his hand, just below his wrist. “You have goose bumps, too.”
Justin’s eyes flick up to hers for just a second. “Deep breath, OK?”
The corners of Alex’s lips turn up in a gentle smile as she inhales deeply, if shakily, and then lets it out, nice and slow.
Once more, Justin’s eyes take on that far-away look as he listens, and he nods to himself again, apparently satisfied with what he hears. If he notices that her finger is still stroking back and forth across his wrist, he doesn’t let on.
“Alright, you can breathe normally again,” he says, as he stands upright and slides his hand out from under hers. She doesn’t return it to her breast, but instead drapes it lazily over her tummy. “That’s more or less the chest exam done. Let’s move on to-“
“Pfft! Not even!” Alex sneers. “That was more like an ‘everything-but-the-chest’ exam!”
Justin blinks at her in surprise, then chuckles nervously and looks away as he drapes the stethoscope back over his neck.
“C’mon, Alex…you don’t seriously intend for me to-“
“'If we’re going to do this, Alex, let’s do it right,'” she parrots at him, pitching her voice higher and more nasal in an imitation of his. “'Beginning to end, authentic experience, blah blah freakin’ blah…'”
“I do not sound like that!” Justin protests, scowling at her.
Alex juts her chin out at him. “I just remembered something we didn’t cover in my medical history, Doc: breast cancer runs in my family.”
“What?” Justin shakes his head sharply. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Well, I’ve just decided it does,” Alex says, “which is something a responsible doctor would want to check his patient for, yes/no? Even if the thought of looking at lady bits gives him a nosebleed?”
“Alex…”
“I’m very worried, Doctor Russo,” Alex says, suddenly sounding small and timid. She tilts her chin down just enough so that her brown eyes look up imploringly at him through her lashes. “I thought I felt a lump in shower, yesterday. Could you check it out? Pwease?”
And now it’s Justin who’s breathing in and out shakily. He chews on the inside of his cheek and looks away across the room. Again, Alex watches his internal debate play out across his features, plain as day, his need to prove himself a capable doctor weighed against the sheer fucked-upedness of what she’s goading him to do.
And despite the fact that she really wants to win, when the set of his jaw and the tightness at the corners of his eyes begin to suggest that he’s on the verge of backing down, Alex surprises herself by blurting out “Captain Jim Bob Sherwood would do it for…Jennifer…Star!”
Justin turns his head slowly to look at her, one eyebrow raised, and Alex grins because she knows she’s got him now.
“Jessica Moon,” he corrects her, in an overly patient voice as he reaches for the arm covering her breasts. “And I’m pretty sure that would be a violation of the Comics Code Authority, anyway.”
Alex snorts. “Dude, are you actually gonna check out my boobs, or just stand there talking in Nerd all day?”
Justin glares at her out of force of habit, but there’s no malice in it. His hand trembles as he places it over Alex’s wrist, and she feels her body shudder in response as his little finger grazes the underside of her right breast. He hesitates a moment, and swallows, clearly having second thoughts, so she raises her eyebrows at him in a silent challenge. His eyes narrow slightly, resolute, and then he wraps his fingers around her wrist, and gently lifts it away from her chest.
She’s not sure which one of them inhales louder as he gets his first really good look at her, naked from the waist up. Justin’s complexion goes from merely beet red to full-on Cherry Kool-Aid, and Alex’s entire body flushes in return.
Justin’s eyes are all over her as he sets her arm down at her side, and not with that old familiar intense determination, either. It’s a needy, hungry look she’s only seen a few times before-once a few months ago, when she walked into the lair unexpectedly and caught him and Juliet tangled on the bench with his hand up her skirt, and once when she was twelve and hid in his closet to spy on him beating off to their mom’s Victoria's Secret catalogue. Alex feels her body respond instantly, both to the memories and his present scrutiny, her breasts suddenly feeling tight as her nipples stand up at attention.
“Well, look at that,” she chuckles nervously as she looks down at them. “Guess it is cold in here.”
“I’m feeling kinda warm, actually,” Justin says, reaching up with his tie to blot away the few beads of sweat that have appeared on his brow. To his credit, his voice only cracks a little. He clears his throat and sets his shoulders back, struggling to regain his composure.
"Don't pass out on me now, Justin," Alex warns him. "Only one of us knows CPR, and it isn't me."
"I'm fine," Justin growls, and it very nearly sounds convincing. He starts to reach for her, hesitates, then moves to the head of the table to lower it so it lays flat beneath her.
"Sorry," he says. "Works better if you’re lying all the way down. Forgot to do that before."
"S'okay," she shrugs, and smiles at the way even the slightest movement of her breasts draws his eyes to them immediately. He takes a deep breath, starts to reach for her, hesitates, then brings his hands together and begins rubbing them vigourously. He smiles at her apologetically as she furrows her brow in confusion.
“Sorry,” he says again. “Warming up my hands. Forgot to do it befo-“
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Alex snarls impatiently, and reaches up to grab him by the wrists. She yanks down, hard, nearly pulling him off his feet. He squawks in surprise, holds his palms out to steady himself against her, and then squawks again even louder as he realizes his hands are covering her breasts.
“There,” Alex says, holding his hands against her before he freaks out and pulls away. “Examinate away, already.”
Justin’s eyes and mouth form three perfect O’s, and his breathing is shallow and rapid. For a second Alex is terrified that maybe she’s finally pushed him too far, that he’s actually going to have a real aneurism this time, and drop dead right then and there. But then, behind his eyes, she can see the science nerd part of his brain start to kick in.
“It’s ‘examine’,” he says, a little breathlessly, because correcting Alex always calms him down. “Not ‘examinate’.”
“Sooorr-rry!” she says sarcastically, but she grins, because she knows it’s going to be fine.
Alex releases her grip on his wrists, and lowers her arms to the table next to her. Justin hesitates, then shifts his hands to either side of her chest. His fingertips begin probing her skin just forward of her armpits and work their way down along the sides of her breasts with a gentle, rolling motion.
“Let me know if I’m pressing too hard, or if it hurts at all,” he says.
“Mmmkay,” she sighs, closing her eyes and smiling lazily. “Feels kinda nice, actually.”
Justin’s fingers pause for a split second, then resume.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, and he sounds as relieved as he does grateful. “Uh, do you think you could lift your arms up above your head for me, maybe?”
Alex brings her hands up and cradles them behind her neck, her breasts spreading and flattening against her chest as she does. “This alright?”
“Yeah, that’ll do,” Justin nods, as his fingertips make their way along the undersides of her breasts, towards her solar plexus. Alex flushes a bit, thinking back to the little thrill that shot through her at the thought of giving him a flash of underboob through her camisole, and how ridiculous that seems now. His fingertips reach her ticklish spot again, and she giggles and squirms a little. But instead of admonishing her as she expects, Justin merely smiles fondly at her, stills his fingers until she settles down, then resumes.
“So far, so good,” Justin observes as his fingertips come together at her sternum.
"Gee, just what every girl longs to hear,” Alex says flatly. "So happy you approve."
Justin grins. “I mean I haven’t found anything out of the ordinary so far, is all. Do you, uh…want me to keep looking, though?”
Alex’s cheeks burn as she nods, ever so slightly. “It’s best to be thorough, right?”
(And wow, there’s a sentence she never thought she’d say out loud. Because thoroughness? So usually not her thing.)
“Oh, absolutely! Thorough is best. I wholeheartedly concur,” Justin agrees, a little too enthusiastically, and it makes her giggle again. She closes her eyes and lolls her head to the side as he presses the fingertips of both hands to her right breast, skirting the edge of her areola, and begins probing around it, gently but firmly.
And it’s so strange, and not just because it’s her brother. It’s not like this is the first time a boy has ever touched her like this-well, not exactly like this, but whatever-but it’s never really done anything for her before. Granted, that might have been because of the boys in question-Dean fumbling to work one boob out of her bra beneath her shirt, groping it as he fucked her urgently in the cramped back seat of her father’s car; Mason all tender and attentive and primly British, fondling her like a porcelain doll who might crack if he handled her too roughly-but while she’d always liked the attention, loved the feeling of power it gave her to know what touching her did to them, she’d never gotten off on it herself at all.
And yet here she is, with Justin touching her as clinically and methodically as only he can manage, and not only does it feel all kinds of amazing, it's actually turning her on in ways Alex never thought possible. She was already a little damp down there, from the moment he started touching her throat, but now? She’s well on her way to being wetter than she's ever been. Her Little Miss Naughty panties, if she were still wearing them, would almost be soaked right through. Her nipples stand so erect that they actually ache for her to touch them, and she genuinely has to bite her bottom lip to keep herself from begging him to.
Instead, his fingers circle around her breast away from the nipple, and whether it's standard exam protocol or he's deliberately teasing her, she can't tell. It's excruciatingly delicious either way.
His fingertips reach the top of her right breast, just below her collarbone, and pause. Just as she's about to open her eyes and ask what's wrong, she hears him take a deep, shuddering breath, steadying himself. And then his hands transfer themselves to her left breast, and Alex has to reach up and grip the head of the table to keep her hands from plunging between her thighs to relieve the persitant need that's building there.
"Alex?" Justin asks hesitantly, as his fingertips probe in a circle around the edge of her areola. "You alright?"
"Mmmhmm," she replies, her mouth clamped firmly closed, not trusting herself to say any actual words. She presses her thighs together tightly beneath the gown folded over her lap, as much to stop them from quivering as to control the throbbing burn thats threatens to consume her.
"We're almost done," Justin says, his fingers picking up the pace as they circle around her breast. "Just a few more minutes..."
He sounds concerned, and it occurs to her that he's probably misinterpreting her reaction as him causing her pain or discomfort. And that's honestly OK, because the sooner he's done, the sooner she can barricade herself in her room with her Magic Wand (the battery-operated one), and frig herself into oblivion. Part of her wants to laugh at how Mister Always Right couldn't be more wrong if he tried, but she doesn't even dare to so much as breathe right now, lest she give herself away...
And then, unexpectedly, it becomes a moot point as Justin gently rocks her swollen nipple between two fingers.
"UNH!!" Alex cries, as her head throws itself back and her spine arches clear off the table, completely of their own accord. Startled, Justin releases his grip and starts to draw his hand away, then makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat as she grabs his wrist, then presses his hand back down onto her breast, covering it with her own. She opens her eyes to see him staring back, his eyes a roiling turmoil of confusion, concern and-could that maybe be hope?
“Alex, I’m so sorry,” he says, all in a rush. “I swear I didn’t mean to-“
“Well, duh. Of course didn’t mean to, egghead,” she breathes, as reassuringly as she can manage. Then, taking a deep breath, she jumps in with both feet, the way she always does: “But if you think I’m letting you stop now, you’re even dumber than you look.”
Justin’s hand convulses around her breast as he blinks in surprise. And grins.
And just like that, the invisible dam between them-the one they’ve never talked about, never even acknowledged, but been acutely aware of since they were old enough to stop taking baths together-quietly and irrevocably bursts.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV