The Way Things Mesh
Disclaimer: all that apply. Just borrowing.
Rated: T
Summary: It wasn't often that Alex said that she loved her brother. But she would take drastic measures to make sure he stayed with her. Wasn't that almost the same thing?
(Did anyone really think she sent a carbon copy of Justin out into the world and didn't talk to him for that entire four years?)
This story comes from Season 3 - Episode 22, Delinquent Justin. (Beware of possible spoilers for the whole series.)
A/N: I wanted to expand and change this slightly. This isn't particularly a Jalex story, but I can't say there isn't any subtext, but it can be read as a sibling fic.
000
Alex hears the motorcycle and has a short moment to prepare. It doesn't help.
Her brother is freaking out about meeting himself - nerd. Alex sort of calms him down, but she's freaking out internally for other reasons.
Their parents had spent ten minutes yelling when they'd heard what she had done, but ultimately told her and Justin to handle it. Honestly, it was probably better that they had made themselves scarce for the moment… their mom would likely find another reason to cry.
"He's here", she announces when he's finally in her sight through the window. She thought she'd convinced him to cut that stupid hippie hair-
He high-fives her lazily when he walks into the Sub Shop. "Little Sis."
She groans and snatches the sunglasses off his face. "Are you stoned right now?!" she hisses.
"Relax, babe. It was just a bit of reefer-"
"I told you", she glares at him, slapping at his hands that were distractedly playing with her necklace because it was shiny. "Stop calling it reefer. Put these back on, and don't call me 'babe'!" She shoves his glasses at him.
"Gettin' a real negative vibe here", Duplicate Justin holds up his hands, index fingers crossed like he was warding off evil. "I told you. You gotta exhale the bad juju."
"Uh, Alex-?" Harper is watching the scene wide-eyed, like one does if they're about to witness a crash. She looks like she's about to have one of her awkward fainting spells.
She glanced over at her friend just in time to see her actual brother turning a scary shade of red as he started sputtering the way their dad did when Alex or Max did something that ended in a grounding.
"I- you- he-when- Alex!"
"How am I supposed to answer that?" she asks sarcastically.
Justin - her brother, not the duplicate - gives his duplicate a look up and down, and goes to talk to… himself. Duplicate Justin isn't nearly as excited to see his original version. He drops lazily into a chair and proceeds to tell them about the futility of life.
"-the stark beauty of silence, man", the Duplicate finishes.
Alex groans.
He pokes her elbow. "You should try it."
Her brother sighs harshly, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off an on-coming Alex-type headache. "Okay, Alex", he says through gritted teeth. "This was your plan. How were you going to fix it?"
She winces. "I, uh, hadn't gotten that far yet." Alex absently smacks the duplicate's hand as he goes for her shiny necklace again.
"What is he, a Kleptomaniac?" Justin hisses.
"No. He's stoned and thinks everything is beautiful", Alex rolls her eyes.
"Great", Justin tosses his hands in the air. "He broke our pledge to the 'Just Say No' campaign!"
"The stark beauty of silence-" the duplicate starts again.
Alex groans and shushes him. "Yeah, let's go to the lair so Justin can fix this!" she pumps her fist.
"Of course", Justin mutters. "Let's get rid of me before we get actual paying customers."
"Whatever", Duplicate Justin shrugs and follows.
Harper lets out an awkward, panicked laugh and races after them.
0
It takes a few hours for Justin to find the spell. In the meantime, Alex tunes out Harper who is attracted to Duplicate Justin - of course. And, ew. And she listens to Duplicate Justin defend her lack of planning and caring. It's as comforting as it is disturbing.
When Justin finds the spell and tells her to do it, she only protests out of habit.
"You don't want to do that", Alex hears College Justin sounding amused as she reads the spell to combine her brother with his duplicate.
"Do what?" she asks distractedly.
"Put our brains together", College Justin answers.
"Yeah, well, I didn't ask for your opinion."
Justin - her brother - clears his throat, and she looks up to find him and Harper staring at her.
"What?" she shrugs.
"You're talking to yourself", Harper says pointedly.
"No, I was-" she glares at the duplicate. "Stop doing that when people are around!"
"Alex-"
"There was a thing with magic mushrooms, okay!?" Alex nearly yells. "Geez, what's with the interrogation? You'll know in a minute-"
She does the spell, combining Normal- hah! - Justin with Duplicate Justin.
One Justin stands in front of her, mouth gaping open, looking vaguely scandalized. He stares at Alex suspiciously. "Why do I want chicken and waffles…?"
Alex stares back at him unblinkingly, and there's a beat of silence before she runs for the door yelling, "See you in PE!"
"Hey! That's my line!" Harper shouts after her before following.
Justin took several steps after her and seemingly changed his mind, throwing himself back on the couch and groaning into his hands. He was probably going to have to sift through four years of memories before he talked to Alex.
Echoes of Alex saying, "The other you is mad at me right now; let's hang out" reverberate in his head.
0
Alex wasn't sure how furious Justin was with her. The scales of bad to worse between the two of them were fairly unbalanced.
On the one hand, she didn't think this was worse than the time she'd made him invisible, nor as bad as when she almost wished the entire family from existence… but this could be right up there with that time she'd broken into his room last year and ruined a potion he'd been working on for three months.
He'd given her two weeks of silent treatment, despite her apologies, before she'd gotten desperate. She'd actually felt bad that time.
She cast a spell that she'd hoped would fix things, only wanting him to remember that he didn't hate her, but things hadn't quite happened that way. Her intention was twisted into a spell that would cause her brother to see her as the young girl he'd cherished when they had been attached at the hip.
'My brother and I are having a brawl, but please remind him of how he felt when we were small.'
It was two days of parental evasion when the dam burst. Only when their mom was yelling at Alex about some other irresponsible thing she had done that Justin had yanked Alex behind him and yelled at Theresa. "How dare you! You can't talk to my sister like that!"
"Excuse me!?"
"Justin-" Alex tried to interrupt before they both got grounded.
"She's my sister, and you can't yell at her!"
Alex grimaced as she was wrapped in a protective hug, and had her hair petted like a puppy. Harper was trying not to choke on her green beans that she was shoveling into her mouth while watching the show unfold.
Well, the jig was up.
It had been an awkward situation to explain to their Dad so he could untangle what had happened with the spell. She supposed it could have been worse, but having to admit she couldn't stand the silent treatment from her brother for a couple weeks had been super embarrassing.
Justin should have been angry that she'd cast a spell on him to basically be nice to her, but he never said a word about it.
Later, when they're parents were no longer hovering, he gave her a hug that was so short that her arms were still at her sides when he went upstairs.
When she went to her bedroom, she locked the door and pulled out the box. She sent one of Justin's Captain Jim-Bob Sherwood t-shirts back to his bedroom.
She slept easy that night.
00
So she decides to let her older brother simmer, hoping he would calm down a bit. Meanwhile, Alex takes the subway to NYU and lets herself into Justin's old dorm room. She does a spell to make his things pack themselves into boxes.
When she's done, she shrinks the nine boxes to the size of dice and puts them in her bag.
She gets back to the apartment three hours later with two cups from Java Hut.
She sets one on the counter in front of Justin as she passes to go upstairs. He's talking to Max at the breakfast bar while their mom cooks dinner.
Alex has her foot on the bottom step when he speaks. "What is this?" Justin asked.
"Dirty Chai", she answered with a shrug. "Duplicate you liked it before he got all hoity-toity with me." Alex grimaced and ran up the stairs.
"Dinner's in half an hour!" Theresa yelled after her.
"Okay!"
She sets the boxes in front of her brother's bedroom door and makes them big again.
She conjures a Post-It note and writes 'Justin's Dorm Junk' before slapping it on one of the boxes.
Her parents don't yell again until dinner that night when Max asks her if she can make a duplicate of him so he can stay home from school.
00
"Help", Justin's voice was croaking in her ear through the phone.
"What the- it's early", she whined.
"I'm dying, and it's your fault. You sent me to college and I have a massive hangover."
Alex snorted. "Sounds like a 'you problem'", she teased.
"Alex", he complained. "You owe me."
Alex grumbles a few curse words and throws her blankets off. "Fine", she gave in. "I'll bring breakfast-"
Justin wakes up from a dream that he's fairly certain is a memory and gets up, feeling thirsty and thinking about food.
0
"What are you doing up?" Alex hisses once she gets to the bottom of the stairs and finds her brother in the kitchen. "What happened to your 'self-imposed bedtime'?" Her eyes roll.
Justin gives her a mild glare. "Gee, I don't know, Alex. It's almost like I have the schedule of a college student."
She bites her bottom lip. "Right." She'd already apologized once. Alex steps around him to dig the ice cream from the back of the freezer.
Justin is staring impatiently at the oven that was reheating a few slices of pizza. He gets distracted watching her build a banana split.
He may have his love of candy under control, but ice cream was his weakness.
Alex grabs two spoons and takes a seat at the island.
Several minutes later he brings a plate over with several pieces of pizza. In return, she pushes the other spoon toward him.
They trade food and eat in silence.
She tries not to let her mind wander back to the predicament she'd caused this time, but it's unavoidable.
Before Harper, she never really had any other friends. Justin had always been her safety blanket, more than any of her favorite toys.
It was uncomfortable to admit that she hadn't exactly grown out of it.
00
Almost a full week later, Justin barges into Alex's room after dinner.
"Where are the keys, Alex?" he demands.
She doesn't look up from her sketch pad. "What keys?"
He narrows his eyes, not fooled by her feigned disinterest. "The keys to the motorcycle", he says pointedly. "And for that matter, what did you do with the motorcycle?"
"Shrunk it so Mom wouldn't have a heart attack", she shrugs. "It's safe."
"Where is it?" he repeated.
"Don't tell me you want to ride it, Mr. Safety", she lets out a quiet laugh.
"Maybe I want to sell it", he says flatly.
"Lucky for you, I'm keeping it safe then", she grins unhelpfully.
"It's somewhere in here, isn't it?" Justin looks around the mess in her room in annoyance.
"It's possibly the coolest thing you own", Alex stares at him in annoyance. "Do yourself a favor and at least keep it for later."
He mutters a spell that will put the mess away in her bedroom, hoping he'd have a better chance at finding his stuff.
Alex shrugs. "I mean, if you want to clean my room-"
His annoyed look manages to shut her up.
"Are we going to talk about it?" Justin asks finally.
"Talk about what?"
"Any of it, Alex!"
"Hmm… no thank you."
"Come on, Alex. This isn't a game."
"Don't be a buzzkill. Have you found your tattoo yet?" She grins.
"It is just Henna, right?"
She snorts.
He crosses his arms and stares at her, looking vaguely perturbed.
She raises an eyebrow in response.
'We have to talk about this at some point, Alex.'
She sucks in a breath.
Wow. She did not like that one bit.
"Get out of my head, Justin!" she snaps.
He shrugs. "I probably could have fixed this when it happened. It's been too long. We're stuck with it now."
She throws herself back on the bed with an exasperated groan.
He just snorts. "You shouldn't have eaten magic mushrooms."
"Me?!" she demands. "What about you! You should have known this was going to happen!"
"That wasn't really-"
"Not you", she flaps a hand in his direction to shut him up. "The other you! He's not here, but he's still in there!" Alex points at his face accusingly.
He blinks at her. "We've gotta stop letting you out in public", he mutters.
"Oh, shut up!" she pouts. "I asked you- him, 'Is this a good idea?' And he was like, 'Relax, man. It's cool.' This is not my fault."
He frowns. "Alex-"
"You can go now", she huffs.
"Alex." Justin sighs. "He wasn't actually me… technically."
"Don't be stupid", she snaps. "I know that."
"I would have never taught you how to drive-"
"Oh, please. I could have manipulated you into doing it too. You just would have cracked and told Mom and Dad."
"There's nothing wrong with having a conscience!"
"Anyway", Alex continues. "It kept me alive while Harper tried to drive Mr. Laritate's car in Driver's Ed. That was- something." She grimaces. "And I passed with flying colors without magic."
He cocks a suspicious eyebrow.
She raises her right hand. "Girl Scout's honor. Swearsies." Like when she was six.
Justin huffs a laugh. "Yeah, okay. I still want my keys though."
She blinks at him. "What keys?"
His left eye starts twitching. "What keys-? Alex!"
She laughs as he spun around and left her room - probably before he tried to smother her with a pillow.
"Brunch on Sunday?!" she yells after him, chest aching with repressed laughter.
It took a few seconds.
But he finally yells back through their shared wall. "Okay!"
00
A/N: And we're done. This is the first thing I've posted in a good long time, and it's not my normal fandom for posting, but I rewatched the whole series and this has always been one of my favorite episodes.
So, yeah. Leave a comment. Thanks for reading. (This is a one-shot.)
Happy holidays to those who celebrate, and have a safe New Year.