Title: Alternate Endings
Fandom: Wizards of Waverly Place
Word Count: 1,997
Rating/Content: Jalex. PG to PG-13 for sibling incest (mainly implied), a few bad words, and unsupervised use of magic.
Spoilers/episodes: 'Beware Wolf' and 'Curb your Dragon'.
A/N: Something different. Alternate Endings will be a series of one-shots, episode based, built around what would have happened if the events in an episode of Wizards had taken a slightly different turn than they did on the show. It's not as dirty as it sounds. Also, not all of them will be Jalex… but most of them will. ;) I'll try to update weekly.
Beta: Gigantic thanks to my beta xUsexSomebodyx, for saving me from my own grammar (and the other thousand fixes and suggestions).
Summary: Ch 1: Beware Wolf
"My poor baby's a werewolf… what are we gonna do?"
"Well, I'm not shaving him."
-WOWP, Beware Wolf
Disclaimer: I don't Wizards of Waverly Place, or anything else that might look familiar. Damn, right?
"Alex, where are you going?"
"To tell Dad that Justin's' a dog, and I need him back right away!"
-WOWP, Beware Wolf
Didn't she tell Justin not to trust people on WizFace?
Alex just knows they're gonna find a way to blame her for this. Because even when it's not her fault? It's her fault. Which is completely unfair in this case, since she'd been the one to tell Justin that something was seriously wrong with his blind date. Oh, and little known fun fact? When you kiss a werewolf, you turn into a werewolf.
By the time they make it home from the park, Justin's transformation is a lot more noticeable. The moon hangs high in the sky, full and fat and gloating. It shines pale on his coarse-looking fur, glistens from his long teeth and curved claws. When the reflected twin moons of his slightly feral eyes lock on Alex she's forced to look away, shivering.
Back home, their dad produces the recipe for a potion to trigger Justin's reversion from lupine loser back to plain old teenaged wizard and full-on dork… but there's a catch, apparently.
With magic, there's always a catch.
"I'll drink anything!" Justin growls. At least, she thinks that's what he said. His gnarled, elongated snout is making him harder and harder to understand. His words seem to catch somewhere between his throat and his teeth, coming out all snarly and bitten-off.
And he smells funny; not bad, exactly, but not like anything she's used to. It's a wild-animal smell, like rain and cut grass, musk and magic, almost too strong, but strangely compelling: it's the kind of thing you could bury your nose in. It makes Alex itchy to leave the room.
Her dad clears his throat: he seems to be struggling against a smile. "It's not exactly a drinking potion," he says, losing.
And, naturally, it won't be good enough just to soak him in the stuff, either: Justin needs to be scrubbed. The paws are going to be a problem. As will the increasingly doglike behavior, probably: Mom practically has to threaten him with a rolled-up newspaper before he'll hop in the bathtub. Of course, his reluctance could have something to do with the fact that the "tub" started life as a Rubbermaid trash can, before it was rinsed clean of eggshells and rotting coffee grounds, by their mother, and filled with several gallons of potion. Either way, someone is going to have to help him out. Justin can't hold a sponge properly at this point, and if he tries to wash his face he's probably going to lose an eye, with those claws of his. Alex avoids eye contact, silently nominating Max.
Yeah, that's not going to happen. It turns out that her parents think she just MIGHT have had something to do with them not finding out about Justin's condition until after he'd escaped to the park with his werewolf girlfriend. Apparently, they'd been planning to spend the rest of their lives together.
("Okay, so I'm a werewolf," he'd protested. "Big deal! There's a price to love! Love hurts!)
(Yeah. Tell her about it, right?)
It goes without saying, almost, that Alex isn't thrilled about the idea of being Justin's personal attendant.
"Well," says her mom, after Alex's protests, and with a downright wicked grin, "I guess you could always shave him instead, if you want."
And okay, so, GROSS.
After the rest of her family has gone inside, Alex sidles up to the tub (trashcan, whatever) warily. Justin says nothing at all, just looks at her. His eyes aren't even the right color, they're all filled up with the moon. Instead of the calm blue-grey she's used to, his gaze is a fierce orangey yellow that glitters at her in a way she doesn't like. His eyes seem very bright.
(Twin moons.)
She swallows her discomfort. "Yeah, okay, so 'big bad wolf'? Are you gonna help me out here, or just keep staring at me like I'm…" Alex feels the words dry up in her mouth. She's not going to finish that sentence.
(…dinner.)
"Well, it's your fault," he rumbles, just as she's begun to suspect he's lost the power of speech. Her head snaps up.
"MY fault! My fault? Justin, how can you possibly blame this one on me?"
"Easy. You didn't tell Mom and Dad where to find me until I was like… Like this!" He barks, lifting his paws from the murky water, making droplets bullet onto her face and neck
And, okay, maybe he has a little bit of a point, there. Still: "Who told you to go out with her, Justin? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I said it was a really, really bad idea to date some stupid girl you hardly know and who you met on WIZ FACE!" She's shouting into his stupid, hairy face now, ignoring the warning chill up and down her spine when she leans into the warm animal musk of him.
("You're just jealous that I'm falling in love," he'd told her, in the park, before his transformation. "Yeah, that's it, I am! I'm falling in love!" )
"It's still your fault," Justin growls softly. But he drops his eyes anyway, because no matter how hairy he gets, they're still Justin and Alex, and they have a certain way of doing things.
"Anyway, I can't," he grumbles apologetically, indicating his paws, "not with these things. So are you gonna help me, or not?" He cocks his head at her like a dog, begging. The expression would be oddly endearing, if she didn't hate him so much.
You owe me, Alex, he doesn't say. But she knows it; they both do. She does owe him and she always will. She'll never be able to even up the tally.
DAMN him.
Bristling in annoyance, Alex unbuttons her sweater and tears it off. "WHAT?" She huffs in response to Justin's look. "This is a cute sweater! I'm not gonna wreck it just so I can—can wash my brother!" There's no way to make that sound right. She looks down at her tank top: it covers all the important stuff. "Besides, this is fine."
Her brother's wolfish smile fails to be reassuring.
"Justin!" She cries short while later, beyond exasperated. He just grins at her, tongue lolling, then resumes trying to squirm away. For the love of Peace and Justice, it's like washing Dragon.
Alex is drenched. She wonders how long they've been at this, and whether her parents and younger brother have stopped giggling yet, or have perhaps suffocated to death on their own stupid amusement at her predicament, somewhere in the loft. Justin's drenched too, along with the chairs, the terrace, and a good portion of the sidewalk below… all soaked. And Justin is still a dog.
"Okay, that's it," Alex snaps. Shucking her sandals, she snatches up a stiff brush and a washcloth, scales the side of the trashcan-cum-werewolf-washing-station, and slides in. The water is warm and sudsy, with a faint medicinal smell.
"You're going… to change… back!" she pants, pinning one arm behind his back in a practiced wrestling hold. Ignoring his whimpering protests, she scrubs mercilessly. When water and potion run into his eyes, she doesn't slow. Trapped, Justin begins to howl.
The long, mournful note carries across the honeycomb of terraces and into the clear night. It's haunting and ancient. Alex flicks him in the nose.
"Hey!" Justin yelps, cupping a protective paw around his injured muzzle.
Alex resumes her tender ministrations with the brush. "The neighbors will hear you!" She hisses, working the stiff bristles between his shoulder blades, then up his neck and behind his ears."
"That feels… kinda good," Justin sighs.
Figures.
Alex cups her hands to dump palmfuls of potion onto his big, dumb head, massaging it roughly into his scalp. Justin starts making those little growly noises like Dragon getting his belly rubbed (which she SO is not doing, not even if he asks). She grimaces, ordering, "Close your eyes," and immediately drenches his face with the washcloth. When Justin gasps and splutters, it makes her smile.
"Hey!" he barks again, twisting away.
"Sorry," she grins.
Alex releases her hold on his captured arm in favor of grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. She slides around him in the narrow Rubbermaid until she's facing him. She wipes his face while he reflexively tries to bat her away, still half-blind from the water in his eyes.
Woah, do these look sharp or what! Alex catches the flailing paw and pins it firmly to his side. "Don't think I won't go get the leash," she mutters, but smiling.. Justin smiles back… Or maybe he's just getting too hot in the tub.
She dunks the washcloth and rubs roughly down the side of his throat. He arches his neck to let her do it, twisting his head to give her better access. Handfuls of fur come off as she scrubs.
"Hold still, Justin," she warns, catching a fistful of the hair on his head, trying to hold him in place as he begins to wriggle happily. She rinses his neck and begins on his collarbone and the slope of his shoulders. Without looking up, she asks "Why did you say it was still my fault?"
Justin stops his wiggling abruptly. "When?"
His voice, she notices, is a little less… growly. More like Justin's supposed to sound. "Just now, dummy," she mutters, sudsing grime and hair from his surprisingly well-muscled chest—er, from his chest. It seems like he doesn't answer her for a long time.
"Just that I went out with her because of you," he says, finally. His voice is low and oddly pitched.
Alex stops what she's doing to look up at him, and sees two things at the same time. One, that Justin is almost entirely, well, Justin, and two, that her hand has fallen from his hair to the slippery nape of his neck. She decides not to move it right away.
Furless, he glistens in the reflected glow of the streetlight, dripping with water and magic. Alex pushes a sopping lock of hair out of her face, frowning at him. She notices for the first time that she's a little breathless, that her clothes are clumped and sticking to her, swollen with water. She discards the dripping rag on the tub's edge, sloshing potion.
"I only went out with her because of you," he says again, sort of guiltily, his voice soft. His eyes are his own warm grey-blue, and they reflect nothing but Alex, as he looks at her. She looks back. She's still touching him, and he's Justin again.
Say what you mean she wants to demand, but the words lodge in her throat.
Instead, she tosses back, "You mean to prove your stupid point right? Because I told you it was a bad idea?" Her poker face is on, but her heart's beating a crazy rhythm. She knows that's not what he means.
She knows he'll never admit to anything.
The night stretches out around them, warm and clear and still. There's was no one else on the terrace, or awake in the loft. Almost, she'd swear that there's no one else in the entire world. From somewhere not too far away there's the sound of someone howling.
