author's notes: Dedicated to theirishleprechaun. Love ya, dahling ;)
title: running through a field of sunflowers
summary/tag: the moment's like 'oh'.
ingredients: romance; the fluff of bunnies; excessive melted cheese- kinda like cheese-flavored cotton candy. you know you want to try it ;)
warning: yes, this is incest. deal, or go away. flamers won't (read can't) be prosecuted, but will most definitely be laughed at.
disclaimer: I don't own WoWP, Twilight, or anything else mentioned in this fanfic that I obviously don't own. However, I have been told that I belong to theirishleprechaun, so...
One day, Justin Russo wakes up to find his sister on the floor next to his bed. He runs a hand through his hair in confusion, leaning close to peer down at her face, and nearly jumps.
Because.
She looks innocent.
It's the strangest thing he's ever seen, and the expression on her face is like something out of a fairy tale instead of one his nightmares, so he can't help but stare for a little bit longer. Then, he pokes her.
"Alex," he whispers. He's not quite sure why he's whispering, but he thinks it has something to do with wanting her to look that innocent for as long as possible.
So, yes, he doesn't want to wake her up. But he should, because that's what responsible older brothers do, and if he isn't the epitome of responsible, then sliced bread isn't that amazing.
…Wait… he frowns, trying to come up with a better analogy. Honestly, sliced bread isn't that amazing. He's laying back on his bed, facing the ceiling, frowning and talking to himself about sliced bread and the quality of its amazing-ness- his former mission completely forgotten- when an all-too-familiar voice shakes him out of his reverie. Literally.
"Justin," Alex whines, shaking the nearest bedpost, "stop thinking. Your thoughts are annoying. And loud."
It takes his once again sleepy mind a while to figure out where her voice is coming from, so she graciously decides to help him out a bit. Reaching an arm up, she latches onto his arm and tugs violently- "Down here, stupid."
He topples comically to the floor, and she somehow manages to flick her wrist so that his body doesn't crash on top of hers. He lies beside her, panting heavily from his nearest-to-near-death experience, eyes wide. "What can I say," she says, smirking, "I've got skills."
"Yes," he says, recovering, "the skills of a bull in a china shop." She pauses, before turning on her side to face him. His eyes slide to the side, peering at her without turning.
"Huh?" she asks. He sighs, so she punches him. "Don't do that," she orders.
"Do what?" he cries in a slightly feminine squeak- slightly, alright? Justin Russo is an extremely manly man, and books shouldn't be judged by their squeaks… according to him, anyway. He rubs his shoulder, wincing in pain. She scoffs.
"Weakling."
"What did I do? You're sleeping in my room, and I'm getting punched for it?" He's trying to be reasonable, but his sister can't take him seriously when he squeaks.
"You did that sigh you do," she informs him, laughing at his pain.
At the confused look on his face and, yes, his whiny answer- "So I'm being punished for breathing a little differently?"- she gives a sigh of her own.
"And they call me dumb," she mutters. "You know. That sigh you do when you want to say 'oh, stupid little Alex, why can't you be as smart as me?', but you pretend you're too nice to say it. Yeah, that one. Jerk. What'd I ever do to you?" she accuses, pulling on the collar of his T-shirt and yanking him to her, nose to nose.
He tries not to inhale, because he's not entirely sure if whatever crazy disease she must have is contagious or not.
She tries not to inhale, because sometime during this crazy morning, she'd noticed he smells good. Which is, as we all know, absolutely abnormal for human beings in the early morning, so clearly, she concludes, he's just weird. The smell is probably chock full of contagious nerd-germs and geekiness. Duh.
He blushes, a red blotchiness spreading throughout his face and down his neck. At first she thinks it's some weird case of sunburn, but when he starts coughing nervously, she realizes.
"What now?" she snaps at him, tugging on his collar in an entirely unnecessary fashion (according to him).
"Well, um," he coughs. "You-you're my baby sister, Alex, and I say this because… I care, okay? Okay. Um… y-you're not exactly wearing much, are you?"
She raises an eyebrow. "Want me to wear a turtleneck?" she asks him, amused, not bothering to look down at what she's wearing.
He doesn't seem to understand it was a rhetorical question. "Well, maybe a sweater. You know, you should really watch what you're wearing, Alex. You'll only attract more perverted, very bad boys, like the boyfriends you've had in the past," he advises ever so helpfully.
Bad move.
The absolute worst possible choice he could have made.
She grabs a glass of water- his glass of water, for possible emergencies in which he might get dehydrated in sleep with no time to run downstairs to avoid a painful, waterless death. Bad thoughts, he tells himself, shaking his head like a wet dog.
Which, hilariously enough, is an appropriate allusion.
Because she's taken his glass of water and dumped it on his head. Then, like the considerate sister she has already demonstrated herself to be this morning, she pushes him down to the floor, sitting herself on his bed with a smirk plastered on her face.
"It's a tanktop, Justin, not freaking ling-er-ee," she tells him, emphasizing each syllable of the dirty, forbidden, incorrectly pronounced word. He holds back his gasp. Her language is so vulgar. He bites back his reproof, fearing that she'll find out where his backup glass of water is.
"Actually, Alex," he informs her instead, attempting to squeeze the water out of his shirt and act cool at the same time- as if he's not panicking over where his parents went wrong with her, "it's pronounced lawn-ger-ay." He tries to return her smirk. She scoffs.
"Whatever. English is so stupid."
"Oh? Should we all speak Spanish then?" he asks sarcastically.
"…Yesito?"
"SI."
"Close enough. It was in there. How do you know 'si' isn't actually short for 'yesito'?"
He groans. "Forget learning magic, Alex. If you can't even remember the most basic vocabulario de espanol…"
"Why would I want to learn vocabulario de espanol?" she asks, horribly mutilating each Spanish pronunciation, "If I know magic, I can know all vocabularios! Not that I'd want to…" she mutters. "So, what's 'vocabulario' Spanish for?" she adds.
He groans again.
She slaps him.
"Stop abusing me, Alex."
"Why?" she laughs. "It's fun."
And then, she pulls a fast one on him. Like, the fastest fast one that can ever be pulled on Justin Russo. So fast he has to blink three times.
She smiles. It's the brightest thing she's ever worn since infanthood, and he can somehow imagine her in a bright sundress with a white, wide hat, strolling with him through a field of sunflowers… he stops. That's weird, he tells himself. He looks back at her impossibly angelic face, blinking three more times.
The next thing he knows, he's smiling back. He seems to have forgotten that the root of her bright happiness is his own pain, and he can't keep from staring at her face.
"Justin? Alex! Get down here! You just missed your bus!" their mother cries. Alex gets up.
"Don't worry, Mom, I'll just use magic," she hollers back with a mischievous grin. Just like that, her smile morphs into same old, dirty rotten Alex.
She leaves Justin behind, sitting on the floor of his bedroom, staring at his door, his mouth open in a silent 'oh'.
.
He catches her making a romantic montage with her boyfriend in the rain. He's only thinking about her health, honest, and that's the only reason why he watches them. If she gets a cold after sucking that werewolf's lips for such a long, long time, without a break-
He grits his teeth.
She's going to get a cold, he decides. She will. That werewolf is going to make her sick.
He glances down. They're still going strong. His fists clench. If she doesn't get sick on her own, so help him, he'll use magic and make her sick.
He lets out a growl of frustration two minutes later when Mason the freaking Werewolf decides to employ the manners of normal humans and give Alex his coat. She smiles back at him. She freaking smiles at Mason the Werewolf. She's only smiled like that at Justin once.
Justin changes his mind. He's going to make them both sick.
He sees her walking back into the sub shop and marches down, already prepared with a ten minute long lecture to accompany his dad's. His face morphs from merely grim to downright furious as Alex dances around with a dreamy smile on her face. Maybe he should reword a few points in his lecture. Alex effing Russo, what, in the name of science do you think you're doing? Do you realize you're going to get- no, then she'd get suspicious. Do you realize you could get sick? What in the name of the periodic table of elements were you thinking? He allows himself a small smile. Perfect.
He's about to continue mentally editing his lecture when his father walks down the staircase. Ooh, this is gonna be good. He smirks.
And then he falls to his knees, his mouth open in shock.
Because his father goes over to his little princess and kisses her on the head, before losing all composure and enveloping her in a giant, teary hug, crying loudly and exclaiming- through his sobs- about the train of womanhood and Beauty and the Beast.
"Now, dear, I don't think it's fair to call Mason a beast." Justin turns to see his mom wiping her hands on a towel and leaning on the counter, watching the spectacle.
"No, no, that's not the point, Alex is the Beauty, and I don't wanna give her up…" Jerry sputters, still crying. He buries his head in his daughter's shoulder, and Alex pats his back awkwardly.
"Justin, why are you on the floor?" his mom asks suddenly, looking like she's given up on having anyone normal in her family.
"No reason," he mutters, dusting off his pants and making to walk up the stairs.
"Oh no you don't," he hears someone hiss, and suddenly his shirt is roughly yanked until he collides with his father and sister, the latter glaring at him. "If I'm going to be suffocated, so are you," she whispers in his ear. He has no idea why he feels so elated about this. It's probably because she's in pain. "Oh, dad, Justin's been crying in his room over Juliet lately because he thinks he's not good enough for her…" she says loudly. The big man hugging her looks up, his eyes watery, before pulling Justin into the circle of watery love and gasping out words of what he must think is comfort.
"Sometimes, Justin, you'll find that your girlfriend is too beautiful for you, and you feel really bad. But it's okay! As long as she doesn't make it obvious that she's cheating on you-" his dad chokes- "then she must like you."
Somehow, the whole family is pulled in, and Justin finds his arm slung around Alex's waist, her head leaning against his shoulder. She turns up slightly and shoots him a wry smile.
"How do you plan on getting out of this?"
He doesn't answer. There's something about the way the light sparkles in her eyes, or maybe it's the fact that she feels so warm, or maybe it's because her face is so close to his- whatever it is, something has him speechless. She frowns.
"Justin," she persists, nudging him with her shoulder.
He recovers, and gives her an awkward, yet smug look. "This is your fault. Get us out of it."
He's not really surprised when he finds himself covering for her as she escapes from the tear fest- after all, isn't that what he's always done? He is surprised, however, when she returns the favor.
"Alex? Since when are you nice?" he asks her teasingly.
She doesn't answer.
"Alex?" he puts a hand on her shoulder, turning her slightly. Well, that's what he means to do, except he's distracted by how warm she feels. Again.
She shrugs away, and he feels cold all over his body. "Don't expect me to do this again," she says gruffly. "It's just a stupid family hug, not an emergency, and I need you to do my homework, that's all."
"No," he tells her after a pause. "Do it yourself."
"Justin!" she whines. "I can't do it without you!"
"You've done plenty of things without me! If you can save our family from disappearing completely, you can do your homework," he tells her, his patience suddenly thin.
"But I wouldn't have if I hadn't lost you! I can't do anything without you!" she yells at him in frustration.
The moment's like oh.
He doesn't know why, but something about the way she says that makes him giddy.
It's so stupid. It's just homework, after all.
.
"Justin," she whispers his name through the phone.
"Alex?" he asks, sitting on the couch in the lounge of his dorm building. A blank document on Microsoft Word stares at him in the face accusingly, chastising him for not completing his paper earlier. He welcomes the break, minimizing the window and temporarily forgetting about the huge paper that's due tomorrow. "What's up? Why are you whispering?"
"Um… I need you." Her voice is hoarse and raw, like she's been crying. His eyes widen in an instant.
"Alex? What's wrong?" he asks urgently.
"Do you think you could- no, I guess that'd be too much to ask, and I'm not gonna make you use magic, so…"
"Alex," he says firmly. "What happened?" He can hear her sniffling, but it sounds distant, like she's trying to hold the phone away so he can't hear.
"M-M-Mason…"
He understands immediately. Before he's realized what he's doing, he's in his sister's room, wand in his hand.
"Justin?" she asks, looking at him in surprise. She looks like the picture of misery, clutching some ratty teddy bear in one arm and her cellphone in the other. He notices her eyes glance down to his hand, than flash back to his eyes in surprise. "You used magic…"
"Yeah, well," he says, clearing his throat. "Um… you said something about Mason."
She turns away, as if suddenly realizing how pathetic she looks. "You look nice," she says bitingly. He glances down at his Captain Jim Bob pajama pants and stained, oversized tee.
"Is this why I've used magic to come here even though I have a huge paper due tomorrow? And if I don't ace it, I'll get a B. A B, Alex, do you understand-"
"Alright, fine! We broke up! Happy?" She glares at him with reddened eyes.
His face softens, and he hugs her. Holds her, actually. For 30 seconds, and then she begins to bawl into his shirt, so he proceeds to turn on the T.V. and watch all of the Twilight movies, replaying the parts she keeps wanting to see again- mainly shots of Taylor Lautner- and nodding in agreement to her exclamations of "Now that's what a werewolf should look like!" And when they finish, they watch the whole set all over again.
He stays with her the entire night, and she doesn't bother reminding him of his paper, because that's what little sisters do, she reasons. She figures it's best to maintain their regular relationship as if he's never seen her weakness, and making him fail will do just that.
She tells him sometime during the second movie that if she were Bella, she would pick Jacob because he's warm and the kind of guy who wouldn't break up with her ever. Sometime during the third movie, she snuggles closer into her brother, and he wraps his arm closer around her, cocooning her in warmth. Her eyes snap wide open. What the heck, she thinks, people shouldn't be allowed to be this comfortable. Or warm. She eyes the goosebumps on her arms, watching in fascination as they go down.
"Hey, Justin," she asks him sleepily later on, "are you going to leave me now?"
He looks down at her. "Of course not." He says it like it's matter-of-fact, and like she's stupid for even considering it.
She doesn't know why, but it makes her feel loved, and mushy, and all the emotions she says she hates even though she really wants to feel them at least once.
She doesn't know why, but he makes her feel every emotion in the world.
"Oh," she says simply. She hopes, in a part of her heart she plans on hiding from the world at all costs, that he understands what she wants to say in that one word.
.
"I don't understand what I'm doing here," he says in exasperation to his sister. Somehow, through the evil manipulation of Alex Russo, he's been roped into helping Harper look for a wedding dress, even though her wedding with Zeke is 10 months away.
"Shut up, Justin. Just give your honest opinion. Then, sugarcoat it a million times," she tells him brightly.
"…You're mocking me."
"Am not. I'm just making use of your… surprisingly feminine expertise," she tells him with a smirk. "When do you plan on coming out of the closet?"
"I'm not gay! I just take good care of my appearance, for strictly professional reasons, of course."
"Justin. You're twenty five years old, and you're still not chasing girls like normal guys. That seems pretty suspicious to me."
"We're not normal, Alex," he says, grinning wryly. She shoots him a dirty look. "Well, it's not like I can prove I'm straight to you right now. We're at a bridal store, and it's not like I want to screw a mannequin," he says, attempting to infuse the same level of biting sarcasm into his words as she does naturally.
He fails miserably.
He realizes his failure when she starts laughing, choking out something about a disturbing mental picture. He narrows his eyes at her.
"Hey-" he grabs her arm and pulls her close- so close- to him, until they're almost nose to nose- "I'm not."
She stares at him- right into his eyes, and he freezes. Her mouth parts in a silent oh, and it takes all his willpower not to stare.
"I see," she says slowly. They spring apart instantly, and not a moment too soon, because Harper walks in wearing a mass of ruffles and bows.
"So, guys, what do you think?" she asks brightly, twirling for them. He sugarcoats his next words 2 million times, but Alex beats him to the chase.
"Next," she orders in disgust. He hides a grin as Harper scowls and flounces away, feeling immensely guilty for it.
"Way to sugarcoat it," he says, smirking.
"I did! Like, 2 million times!" The sparkle in her eyes tells him otherwise. Nowadays, he can read her like a book.
.
Mason comes back into her life seamlessly just before she graduates college, so Justin grins and bears it, pretending he doesn't want to smash the werewolf into a million pieces.
He wins the Russos over flawlessly- with the exception of Justin- and even proposes flawlessly. Justin doesn't say a word. He punches walls instead, wondering why he, a devout disciple of Gandhi, wants to destroy Mason so much.
On the day of her wedding, when the rest of the family is outside of her dressing room, trying to comfort her dad- when it's just the two of them alone- she turns to him with tears in her eyes.
"Justin…"
"Alex," he murmurs in an effort not to choke. Why does she look so beautiful all the time? Why does he wish she was wearing black instead? Why is the sun dancing in her hair? He chokes.
"Justin… Idon'twannadothis." She stares at him expectantly, tears still unshed, eyeing his shocked face.
"Uh... what?" he asks.
She sighs in frustration. "I said, 'Idon'twannadothis!'"
"I'm sorry… I must be hearing things…" he says slowly, like he's floating around in her diary or something.
"Justin!"
"Did you say you don't want to do this?" he asks slowly, wondering absently why it's getting easier for him to speak all of a sudden.
"Yeah," she says impatiently, like she's handing him the last piece to an important puzzle only to find he hasn't put anything together.
"And by 'this', you mean... getting married to Mason?"
"Duh."
"Oh."
He clears his throat awkwardly, and he can't choose between telling her how happy he is and trying to talk her into continuing with the wedding.
(Because that's what responsible older brothers do, and if he isn't the epitome of responsibility...)
"So? What are we going to do?"
There's something about the way she says 'we' that makes his heart seize up, makes the sun shine even brighter, makes him go over to her and kiss her without a warning (because he's the older brother and he's supposed to be the epitome of responsibility and what else is he supposed to do?)
"…Oh." She says it so simply, like it's not a big deal that her brother just randomly broke the law (and probably a million moral codes), that it makes him get teary eyed with some warped form of happiness.
"What are you crying for? Wuss," she snaps, blushing. She's blushing.
He grins.
"Come on, Alex. Let's get out of here."
"It's going to be hard to sneak out."
"Really hard," he mutters.
"And it wouldn't have been so hard if you didn't wait till the last minute. What took you so freaking long?"
He looks at her in surprise. "You knew?"
"Oh, Justin, you idiot. I can read you like a book. Now stop crying already. Such a baby," she mutters. "Let me put some jeans on under this."
"Wait. You aren't joking are you? And I'm not crying, I'm just allergic to… your wedding dress," he finishes awkwardly, pretending her answer doesn't hold the weight of his world.
She pauses in the middle of pulling on the second leg of her jeans and turns around. Shuffling to him, both legs tangled in her jeans, she kisses him. "No," she says, smiling at him softly.
He's hit with a blinding vision of the two of them running through a field of sunflowers hand in hand, the cops on their tails.
"Oh," he says, smiling back.
Because he's the older brother, and sliced bread isn't really that amazing.
review, review, review, because those are the best things since sliced bread :)