xxi.
Hours later, sitting at the kitchen table, drumming her fingertips against the polished maple, Alex stares out the window, watching the storm. The snow piles up on the terrace, blowing into odd-shaped drifts around the covered barbecue and patio furniture. In the kitchen to her right, the kettle finally stops whistling as Harper takes it off the stove, and pours equal portions of boiling water into the two white ceramic mugs waiting on the counter. This is followed by the unmistakable tinkle of a metal spoon stirring the contents of both, then clattering lightly as it's set back down on the counter. And then finally one of the steaming mugs is set down in front of her, just as Harper retakes her seat across the table, sipping gingerly from her own.
Alex looks down at the cup of instant hot chocolate in front of her, and smiles at the white, gooey mess that fifteen mini-marshmallows make as they melt on the surface, then gratefully wraps her hands around it. It's not that she's cold, exactly, but watching the snowstorm combined with the day's events has left her feeling more than a little chilly on the inside.
"So?" Harper says to break the awkward silence between them, as she sets her own hot chocolate down on the table, without looking up from it.
"So," Alex nods, tilting her mug from side to side and admiring the patterns the marshmallows make as they collide with one another.
Alex lifts her mug to her lips and takes a small sip. Across from her, she senses more than sees Harper doing the same, as the awkward silence settles over them again.
"It's good," Alex says after she swallows, licking marshmallow foam off her top lip. "Better than mom makes it, even. I like how you mix in coffee creamer, instead of—"
"Alex, it's not that I don't get it," Harper blurts out abruptly, cutting her off. "Really, I do. Nobody understands better than I do what an irresistable piece of man-candy Justin is..."
Alex snorts, then winces and brings one hand up to her nose as hot cocoa threatens to spew out of it.
"...but...I mean, is this sort of thing normal in the Wizard World, or what? Because here, in the real world? It kind of makes you complete freaks of nature. No offense."
Alex can't help but smile at this, one of the most popular theories in Jalan-centric fics given voice by her bewildered best friend. As far as plot devices to make the ship socially acceptable go, 'it's perfectly normal in the Wizard World' is right up there next to 'OMG, somebody's adopted!' But she shakes her head.
"Nah," she explains. "At least not anymore. Justin did look into it—because he's, y'know, Justin—but came up with bupkis. He says that it used to be pretty common for brothers and sisters to...y'know...back in the olden days when magic was wild, and there were wars between wizard families. It was important to keep the bloodlines pure, and stuff."
"Like with European royalty, or the Egyptian emperors," Harper says.
Alex shrugs. "Sure, if you say so. But that was all, like, a gazillion years ago. It's kinda frowned on, now. I dunno if there's any actual laws against it—Justin didn't mention finding any, and I sure as hell haven't bothered to look—but nobody even really talks about it anymore. It's like they're embarrassed by the whole thing, or they want to sweep it under the rug, or whatever. And you know how the Wizards Council are total Nazis when it comes to P.R."
She rolls her eyes and snorts as she takes another sip of hot chocolate. "So, yeah...even in the Wizard World, we'd be complete freaks of nature, if you can believe it. I mean, nobody would think twice about Justin marrying that centaur chick he met on WizFace, but me? Sqiuck city. Go figure, huh?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Harper frowns, and to Alex's surprise, she sounds genuinely disappointed for her.
Alex shrugs, and goes back to stirring her marshmallows. "Whatever. It is what it is."
"And Justin told you all this? I thought you guys weren't talking."
"Not exactly. It was somewhere in the margins of...Book Three, I wanna say? Or Four, I'm not sure. I'd have to look it up, and who has the patience for that?"
"Oh," Harper says quietly over the rim of her mug, then smiles chuckles to herself.
"What?" Alex asks, narrowing her eyes at her best friend. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing, nothing," Harper grins, waving one hand dismissively. "It's just...I think that's the first piece of actual wizard history you've ever bothered to commit to memory without there being a test involved. And even then—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Alex grunts, tilting her chair back on two legs and looking back out towards the terrace. "So it was relevant to my interests, OK? Sue me."
"And to Justin's," Harper observes quietly. "I mean, it seems like he's put an awful lot of thought into all this."
"Oh God, you don't know the half of it, Harper," Alex sighs as she watches the snow fall. "Twenty-five thousand freakin' words! And that's only the one fic I was allowed to read! There's at least a half dozen more like it out there that he hasn't even let me see! Ugh."
"That's definitely an awful lot of thought," Harper nods.
"You're telling me. Even if you strung every single essay, research project and book report I've ever written in my entire life together, end to end, I still don't think they'd add up to twenty-five thousand freakin' words!"
"That's because I write all those for you, Alex..."
"And that other one I read, the drabble?" Alex continues, ignoring her. "Sweet Zombie Jesus, Harper. He managed to say so much with exactly a hundred words. It was...I mean, it must have taken him...I can't imagine putting that much effort into..."
She trails off and exhales shakily, reaching up oh-so-subtlely to wipe the corner of her left eye. Just because the steam from the hot chocolate was irritating it. Totally.
"That sounds like it could be a little overwhelming," Harper says, "even if it wasn't coming from your own flesh and blood."
"Sister, you ain't just whistlin' Dixie," Alex replies in a low voice, then winces again and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Oh God, would you listen to me? I sound like Mister Laritate. As if my life weren't screwed up enough!"
"It's the good kind of overwhelming, though, isn't it?" Harper asks, with a wistful smile. "The kind that makes you all light-headed and giggly and short of breath...like Roxane standing on the balcony, being wooed by Cyrano's love poetry as he lays hidden in the rose bushes..."
"Uh, are these seniors you're talking about here, or something? Because the only Roxanne in our grade is De Fazio, and lemme tell ya, if anyone should be hiding in the bushes..."
Harper doesn't say anything in response, but tilts her head to one side and gives her The Look, causing Alex to trail off and shrug sheepishly.
"It...feels really nice, yeah," she admits, in a small voice. "All kinds of awesome, actually...but really scary at the same time, y'know? I just...I kind of don't know what to do with it, Harper."
"Hence, all the panicking and reflexive bitchiness," Harper sighs. "Well, I guess nobody could exactly blame you."
"Nobody but a few thousand crazy Jalan shippers," Alex snorts. "If they knew what I'd put Justin through this weekend, they'd come after me old school. Y'know, the whole 'angry mob armed with torches and/or pitchforks' kinda deal? Except they'd probably all tweet about it as they burned the Sub Station down around me. Hashtag 'DieHatefulBitchDie'. Snkt, I'll bet it would even trend..."
"There's really that many? Seriously?"
"It's the only book series with its very own Incest Yay page on TV Tropes," Alex nods. "Or at least it was, until TV Tropes got all boring and prudish. It's like suddenly they're all up with Jesus, or something. Or maybe Disney just cut them a deal, or threatened to sue, I dunno...but whatever, it's still the fan-preferred ship. And now I sound just like Justin and Zeke whenever they start going off about Han Solo shooting first in Star Wars and holy crap how did my life come to this, Harper?"
"That just completely boggles my mind," Harper says, shaking her head. "Uh, I mean that there are so many Jalan shippers out there, not the bit about you. Why aren't more people completely disgusted by the idea?"
"Why aren't we completely disgusted by the idea? Why are we sitting here talking calmly about it over hot cocoa instead of taking turns puking our guts out into the snow over how unbelievably freakin' gross this is? For Christ's sake, I'm seriously considering dating my—"
Harper's chin comes up sharply at this, eyes wide, and Alex breaks off so abruptly that her teeth actually click as she closes her mouth.
"Um," she says awkwardly, after a second. "Can I move to have that last comment stricken from the record?"
"Do you see a stenographer sitting in your living room?" Harper says wryly. Then, off Alex's blank look: "That's what they call those little old court reporter ladies with the freaky typewriter things on Law & Order, see."
"Ah," Alex says, smiling sheepishly. "Hoisted by my own retard, huh?"
"No, Alex, it's—forget it." Harper lets out a long-sufffering sigh, and shakes her head. "Look, trust me: I am thisclose to screaming 'See you in P.E.' and running out of here as fast as my fashionable yet sensibly-priced chunky heels will allow me. But, frighteningly enough, you and Justin being...whatever it is you are...is not the freakiest thing I've had to deal with since I've started living here."
"No?" Alex asks, in a small, hopeful voice.
"Far from it, in fact. It actually kind of pales in comparison to the whole 'running for my life from relentless Monster Hunters' thing you put me through, for one," Harper says pointedly, then shrugs. "Besides, in a weird way, I think I've kind of always...known?"
Alex blinks at this, then narrows her eyes. "Known what?"
Harper shrugs again, then turns to look out the window at the snow herself, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. Alex leans forward on the edge of her chair, determined to calmly wait, and give her the moment she needs to gather her thoughts. But when that moment drags out into two, she huffs impatiently and kicks her under the table.
"Harper, c'mon! Known what exactly?"
Harper's entire body jolts as Alex startles her out of whatever reverie she was lost in, then turns back to face her. And the bottom drops out of Alex's stomach as she realizes the redhead's eyes are red-rimmed, and misted over with tears.
"That Justin would never look at me the way he looks at you," Harper says, with a vagely syrupy undertone in her voice. "That his life could never revolve around me the way it does around you."
Harper sniffles, grimaces as if annoyed by it, then reaches up to angrily wipe her nose.
"You're his everything, Alex," she continues. "You always have been, and you always will be. Miranda, Juliet, me...none of us ever stood a chance next to you."
"Harper..." Alex murmurs, feeling her own eyes beginning to sting.
Harper shakes her head sharply, and raises one finger as if to forestall her, even as a tear begins to roll down her cheek.
"And then there was that time I was stuck in your head with you, on Family Game Night, remember? And we were fighting for control of your body, and I got all flirty with Justin? You weren't fighting me very hard when that happened, Alex..."
"I—" Alex sits bolt upright, taken aback by this sudden violation of their unspoken pact never to speak of that night again. "That's only 'cause I'm lazy..."
"Not when it comes to getting your way, you're not," Harper snorts. "You put up a token resistance, sure...but even then, it felt to me like you wanted it to happen. You wanted me to make you flirt with him. And you would have let it go even further, if I'd—"
"OK, now I'm on the verge of screaming 'See you in P.E.!'" Alex cuts her off, wincing and shaking her head sharply. "Stop being gross!"
"But that's just it, Alex! It's not gross! It should be, but it's not!" Harper titls her head to one side, her eyes going soft at the corners. "It's actually kind of...sweet, in way. Romantic. Starcrossed lovers, burning for each other with a secret, forbidden passion..."
"Ugh, Harper..." Alex groans, pushing her chair away from the table and stumbling up out of it, needing to get away. It's not that Harper's wrong, exactly, but the truth of it is all too much, too fast. It's one thing for Justin to muse about these things in the margins of books, or for her to lie awake and go over them in her head in the dead of night...but to hear them out loud like this, coming from the mouth of her best friend, makes it tangibly, frighteningly real somehow...and it scares the everloving crap out of her.
Alex takes two steps away from the table, but stops in her tracks as she catches sight of her MacBook. Open on the coffee table, displaying the hastily captured, low-quality cell phone photo of the painting she'd done in art class weeks ago. The one she'd called 'Forbidden Flame'.
Alex inhales deeply, and lets it out in one long, shuddering breath. Christ almighty, when the hell did her life become such a goddamned soap opera?
"Justin writes epic, painstakingly detailed romantic prose. You express yourself in other ways," Harper observes quietly, watching her. "That painting you did, it's of that exact same moment he wrote about, isn't it?"
Without taking her eyes off it, Alex nods. "The campfire scene. It's when I knew, that there was something more between Justin and me. That we weren't just..."
She trails off, finding it difficult to find the words, to form them around the twin golf balls that have suddenly taken up residence on either side of her throat, making it hard to breathe. And she's as much grateful as she is surprised when Harper comes up beside her, wraps one arm tightly around her shoulders, and tilts her head against Alex's.
"And I guarantee you it says just as much as Justin's stories, without saying anything at all," Harper says, giving her shoulder a squeeze. "It's beautiful."
Alex breaks out into a wide grin, flushed with pride at the compliment despite herself. "Really?"
Harper nods lightly. "Easily the best thing I've ever seen you do. Much better than all those lonely little wolf paintings you've hidden in the corner of my room..."
"Hey! It was a phase, all right? If Chegal can have a blue period—"
"I know, Alex," Harper says soothingly. "And I still think our plan's a good one. You should definitely show it to him. He has to see it."
"But he thinks I'm you, now!" Alex whines, stomping her heel in frustration. "If we post this on julia_alan using my future_haley account, he's just gonna think you painted it!"
"Honey, nobody who really knows you is gonna think I painted that," Harper says. "Especially not Justin. Not when there's so much of you in it."
"Then he'll think I painted it for you!" Alex protests, shaking her head furiously. "Paying you back for years of doing my homework. And years. And years..."
"Then maybe it's time that you came out of the rose bushes, there, Cyrano," Harper chuckles, "and show Justin that how you feel about him is as plain as the nose on your face."
"All right, who the hell is this Cyrano dude you keep going on about? And what's with the crack about my nose?" Alex reaches up to prod it self-consciously. "Look, I can't help it that I'm half-latina, OK? That's racist, Harper."
Harper blinks in surprise, then tilts her head to one side to give her The Look again. Alex rolls her eyes, and sighs.
"And what about you?" she asks, still gingerly poking her nose. "Are you sure you're gonna be OK with this? I mean, you've been in love with Justin almost as long as...well, y'know..."
"I'll be fine," Harper says, giving her a tight smile. "I wasn't lying when I told Zeke that I was over him. This whole thing just drudged up some old feelings I never put into words before, that's all."
"Yeah, join the club," Alex snorts. "I'm president. You can be secretary."
"Besides," Harper smiles, "in the books, Hayley winds up with Zack, doesn't she?"
"Yeeeeah," Alex nods, almost reluctantly. "Although there's a very small but devoted and outspoken fan movement that supports pairing her with Sam..."
"What? Me and Max? Seriously?" Harper cocks an eyebrow at Alex as though she's just noticed sweet potatoes growing out of her ears, then shakes her head and grins. "No, I think I definitely ship Zayley, myself."
"Uh-huh, you would," Alex sighs, fighting the urge to roll her eyes again. Oh well, so much for making her personal head-canon into reality. At least she could tell her fellow Sayley-ers she'd taken a stab at it. "All right, so what do you say? Still post it?"
"Oh, definitely!" Harper says cheerfully, then narrows her eyes and smirks deviously at the painting displayed on the Macbook. "But that's not all you're gonna do..."
Author's Note: I actually hadn't intended to write this scene. In fact, I sort of took it for granted that Harper would be in Alex's corner, just like she has been through everything else over the years, so I'd actually intended for this whole conversation to happen "off screen", as it were. Enough people wrote in to say that they couldn't wait to see Harper's reaction, though, that I realized that I had to give the moment its due, and I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. It wasn't planned, but I really dig how the story's evolved on its own (with your help), so that Alex's friendship with Harper is almost as central as her relationship with Justin is. (Which only makes sense, given that she's eventually going to be the one who writes Charmed & Dangerous.)
Unfortunately, though, this meant putting off the Jalex-y fanservice I've been promising for one more chapter. But fear not! As Harper alludes to at the end of this one, it is definitely in the cards for the next one, promise! And then the next chapter or two after that is going to be fairly schmoopy before the next big complication (which I may have kinda sorta foreshadowed a little in this chapter) rears its head. (What? You didn't think it was gonna be all smooth sailing from here, didja?)
Anyway, thanks again for all your kind feedback. As you can see, it's helping to make for a better story. And as always, thanks also for the favorites and alerts. They're very much appreciated, as is your patience with the erratic update schedule of late. Work finally ought to calm down a little after this week, so hopefully the next update will be up sooner rather than later.
Oh, and for the record? I happen to like Selena's nose... :P
