Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to WoWP.
A/N: Okay, this is my first fanfic in a long time, and I'm a bit rusty, so this is probably not very good. Feedback is greatly appreciated, including constructive criticism, and I'd love any advice anyone has about writing dialogue, especially for Alex.
This is supposed to be Jalex, sort of, but I wanted to avoid bludgeoning the reader with it. As concerns the Jalex ship generally, well, I could launch into some extensive metatextual defense of it, but for now I'll leave it that maybe I'm just a little bit sadistic...
She's sitting in her Advanced Lit class when she finally gets it.
She hadn't even wanted to take the stupid class, not at first.
Going to college in the first place hadn't seemed like a terribly appealing prospect, but Justin had left for NYU a few months ago, and the thought of being away from him for another three years had roused a strange, empty axiety somewhere behind her thoughts. Whenever she thought of attending Art School straightaway she felt cavernous echoes from it rippling across her mind.
It was not a nice feeling.
And, of course, there was the fact that Art School would mean work- a lot of work- and without Justin or Harper to help, (or copy off of), she'd have to do practically all of it herself. Gag. Me.
So instead she'd signed up for NYU, planning to take a couple of art electives and two or three large, easy classes in which she could use her textbook as a pillow.
Then she'd made the mistake of articulating her strategy to Justin. One two-hour lecture later, he'd reconceptualized her whole schedule, prioritizing classes which were more 'intellectually stimulating'. And her parents, as usual, had taken his side.
She hadn't minded, not really.
Even though it meant she ended up in this insanely hard lit class, where she actually had to, like, pay attention and stuff.
The professor, he's got this thing about dualities. Good and evil, black and white, mind and matter; ways to order the world by splitting it into two distinct categories.
Last week, they'd read an excerpt from Paradise Lost. It had been wordy and boring, and Professor Franklin had droned thoroughly on historical conceptions of good and evil.
This week, he goes off on some tangent about freakin' Neitzsche, of all people, because, hello, this is supposed to be lit.
But wait, it's not like it matters to her anyway, so what the hell.
On and on about dualities all semester, and in the back of her head, she'd recognized something in them, identified some pattern that was familiar and constant and always, always there.
Lucifer, the tempter, barrelling straight towards forbidden knowlege, completely heedless of all consequences. Not caring who he pissed off, even if it were freakin' God, or actually trying to piss God off (just to get his attention, maybe).
If she were Lucifer, would that make Justin God? Or, like, at least Michael.
And it's today that her professor goes off on his tangent about Apollo and Dionysis, about Order and Chaos, about dualities far more fundamental than those presented by Milton.
Yin and yang, that swirl of dark and light, swirling against and into one another- cooperative enmity- the two rows of teeth, upper and lower.
She messes things up, screws up the natural order, laughs as things fall apart, then watches Justin fix them for her.
Justin always fixes her mistakes.
(mistakes? is that what they were?)
It's not like she's ever thought about this before, not really, but here, sitting in class and, obviously, not about to think about class, it's what she finds herself doing.
And this isn't a nice feeling, either, palms sweating and stomach rolling and a slight, slight pressure behind her eyes all tell her that thinking about this (out loud) is a mistake.
She does it anyway. She wouldn't be Alex if she didn't make mistakes.
Justin always fixes her mistakes, and she always makes mistakes for Justin to fix; these are the unwritten scriptures of their relationship. And so what if, now and again, she catches herself looking forward to the second part of that a little too much, and a little too early? Thinking, All right, Justin, let's see you get me out of this one. It doesn't mean anything.
It certainly doesn't mean she's screwing things up on purpose just so she can watch Justin fix them.
(because, he always fixes them. for her.)
This isn't, like, some pathetic plea for attention.
And it's certainly not the expression of anything else.
And when she comes to him for help, she's certainly never scanning his face, searching his eyes for some sign, some hint of that mammoth, unspoken else.
And she's certainly never found it.
Without thinking she shudders, shifts her grip on the textbook. She's so dropping this class tomorrow.
(AN: The ambiguity at the end is intentional. In the second to last line, I wanted to blur the line between actual denial and the recognition of painful truth; in some sense Alex has to see this as one-sided, as any reciprocation on Justin's part would prove there was something to reciprocate)