Chapel Hill; 2018
It's easy to fall back into the same old pattern once he gets home. Work, home, work, home. This is what he has done for the last 6 years and he welcomes the numbing monotony like ice to a burn.
By Wednesday, it starts to feel as if he's never left.
Max calls him Tuesday night after he and Annaleigh got back from dinner, tells him that she's running him ragged doing all the touristy stuff around old San Juan, complains good naturedly that he thought his honeymoon was supposed to be a little more leisurely.
Halfway into the conversation he asks Justin if their parents were weird with him and Alex after he left the reception.
"Not really," he says, a squirmy feeling in his stomach. "They went straight to bed when we got back to the loft and Alex was still asleep when I left so…"
He has an inkling she wasn't though. He hadn't been able to sleep the night before he left and if he knows his sister (which he does) he wouldn't have been surprised if it'd been the same for her.
Not to mention that, when he left, he could have sworn he saw a face at her window, for just a second, before it retreated back into the early morning shadows.
He still hasn't really slept since he's been back. The thrum of magic running underneath his skin itches at him all the hours of the day and night, familiar and yet not at the same time, and he scratches absently to no relief, like trying to rub away ghosts of a dream.
In total, he's gotten about 3 hours of sleep a night since he came home. Add in his research, his lectures, the daily workouts-not to mention the emotional drama-and Justin is exhausted.
He comes home from his jog later than usual, his body racked with fatigue. All he wants is a hot shower and bed.
Justin steps under the water and hears the distant roll of thunder that's been booming on and off all day coming closer. By the time he steps out of the shower rain is pounding against the windows and he wraps a towel around his waist, moving out of the bathroom, seeing a distant crack of lightning out of the corner of his eye.
And that's not all.
A quick moving shadow flits into his peripheral vision and he grabs a baseball bat leaning against the wall outside his bedroom door. His wand is on his bedside table so this is his best, and quickest, option.
Soft shifting and scuffling noises reach his ears from around the corner and he holds the bat up, gripping the handle the way his dad taught him, and he brings it up over his head as he steps around the corner, ready to strike.
The person on the other side, making all the noises, screams and then he screams-because the other yelp is one he recognizes.
"Alex…" He drops the bat to the floor with a dull thud.
"Geez, Justin." She presses a hand to her chest, eyes narrowed. "You scared the daylights out of me."
"I scared you?" he demands. "You're the one who broke into my house in the middle of a thunderstorm."
She snorts. "Its not breaking in if you don't lock the door genius." Alex shakes her head, a few droplets of water falling from the dark strands.
He looks beyond her, and sees her car parked beside his in the driveway through the kitchen window. "Did you drive all the way down here?"
With a shrug, she kicks her flip flops off and sets the large bag on her shoulder down beside her feet. "I was on my way home this morning and I got to that exit on turnpike to go south and I started crying."
Alex colors a little. No surprise. She's never been fond of talking about the emotional stuff and that's something that's unlikely to change. Under any other circumstance, this might be a touch amusing for him. But he remembers her stricken face before she walked away from him in the lair and all he feels is guilt.
"So I pulled over," she said. Wrapping her arms around herself, Alex steps closer to him and the warmth coming off her hits the bare skin of his chest and he really, really wishes he had some clothes on right now. "And I thought about it for a long time. And I realized," she stares up at him, earnest and hopeful and she looks 19 again in that moment, "that what I did to you in New York, well, it wasn't exactly fair, was it?"
Justin shakes his head. Is she…apologizing to him?
Who is this girl and what has she done with his sister?
"What do you mean?"
She inches closer, and her palm comes to rest in the bend of his elbow, thumb brushing the pulse point there. He knows his heart is pounding, erratic, uneven, and she must feel it too.
"When I asked you if you loved me," they both swallow, hard, "I put you on the spot and I'm sorry. I had no right to do that."
Furrowing his brow, he studies her closely. "You are Alex, aren't you? Not a clone or a hologram." He waves a hand in front of her face, pokes her in the shoulder just to be certain.
She smacks him on the arm, not enough to hurt, but enough to sting, and frowns. Justin grins in response. This is an Alex he knows how to deal with.
"You could have said all this over the phone," he tells her simply.
"I could have." Taking her bottom lip between her teeth and works it back and forth slowly. "But that's not all I need to tell you."
Dread seeps through Justin's body, a sense of foreboding settling heavy in the air around them.
"I wanted you to tell me how you felt, but I've never actually come out and told you how I feel and that's what wasn't fair," Alex tells him. "So when I got back on the road, and I got to the exit for DC, I kept going because if this," she gestures between their bodies, "is ever going to be resolved, I have to tell you-"
"Alex, stop." Justin takes hold of her arms and he knows the panic rumbling through his body is evident in his eyes. "Please."
She jerks free, presses her hands against his neck. "I can't."
Her finger curls along his ear, thumb dipping into his parted mouth, and God, there's no going back from here. Alex kisses him like she's pouring everything she has into him, arms skimming down his neck and around his shoulders. He's caught off guard, and his first instinct is to respond so he does, working his lips over hers until Alex makes a small noise in the back of her throat and he jolts back to reality and jerks away, hands on her shoulders to maintain some distance. When his eyes open Alex is panting, face flushed, and he has to suck in a deep breath because that felt a little like drowning.
"Do you remember that day, when we were supposed to have the competition?" Her words fall out in a rush, emotions plain as day on her pretty face. "I remember that you looked at me and you were confused, and I think I know why."
He remembers that day well, and the expression twisting her features into something he didn't recognize, something that touched his heart none the less. "You'd never looked at me that way before," he breathes. How he wishes he had the courage to pull all the way back away from her but he's just not that strong.
Alex smiles and gently pries herself loose from his hold. He watches, dumbstruck as she pulls off the slouchy cardigan sweater she's wearing and lets it fall to the floor. "That was when it really hit me."
"What?" he asks, almost afraid to know the answer.
"You're always so focused, and I watched you and for the first time it wasn't something I wanted to make fun of you for," she says, pink cheeked and he fights the urge to smile. "And I just knew."
He waits, chest tight, blood rushing in his head.
"I knew that I…" She sucks in a quick breath. "I knew that I loved you."
All the breath in Justin's body leaves in a long exhale that physically hurts and he can't decide whether this is a good thing or not, to finally know.
"And I know you loved me, Justin, I could feel it." This time her hands go to the hem of her tank top and she starts to tug it up.
Stopping her is instinctual. Taking hold of her wrists, pining them in the circle of his hands, its all second nature to try and stop her from doing something he worries she'll regret.
"Justin…" Her whining is something he's heard many, many times before, and it leaves them both exasperated. "I'm an adult and I know what I'm doing. You don't have to protect me anymore. I want this." She presses her frame back against his body. "And I know you do, too."
"How can you be so sure of that?" Justin demands. He knows it's a dirty trick, to try and make her doubt herself like this, but he's desperate. "You don't know how I feel-then, or now."
"Then tell me," she seethes defiantly, piercing into his eyes and then dropping them to his lips. He leans in, and their lips lightly touch. She wets hers quickly, only to scare him away with how much it affects him. Justin drops his arms and releases the cage around her. This is a bad, bad idea.
He starts to walk away, cause this is a conversation he'd rather have clothed and he'd prefer a little distance between him and his sister, some distance and some time to think, to breathe, to cool down.
But of course she follows him. "Justin…would you stop walking away from me." He can hear her stamp her foot, like so many times before. Quite a fete given that she's barefoot.
"I'd like to get dressed."
"And I'd like a million dollars and a pony," Alex retorts dryly. "Get over it."
He mutters under his breath, "Easy for you to say, you're wearing clothes."
"Look, Justin," she takes hold of his arm so he'll turn around. "I know this isn't easy for you. You never break the rules and the one time you did it blew up in your face. But its hard for me, too." Justin looks at the sparkle of tears in her eyes and just like that, his resolve crumbles. "Can't we just…can we at least try?"
She looks at him and he can see clearly now, like a veil has been lifted. Alex is just as scared as he is, and maybe she always was, masking it with her bravado, acting like she was so sure.
Justin wants to say yes, so badly, but the words just won't come and with the minutes slipping away in silence like sand draining from an hourglass, he clenches his teeth together, tension straining the edges that define the moment in a gesture of defiance that may prove fruitless, but he can't bring himself to give up this last shred of his dignity.
"Here's some advice; stop listening to your sister."
His father could just as easily be speaking right at Justin's ear. He hears the words so clearly and knows he should listen just like he knew it then, and there's so much more at stake now.
Then he looks at Alex, really looks at her, and sees the girl who upturned his life from the moment she was born only to do it again when she was 19. And everything changed.
Really, who listens to voices in their own head?
Dignity be damned.
Justin moves into her, tilting her face up to his with his hand, fingers stroking the soft skin of her cheek. "You loved me?"
He thinks of the pink in her cheeks then; when she says she first knew it, sees her flushing now, feels the warm tingling of chance pulsating in his veins. Alex nods, blinking rapidly like she wants to look away but she doesn't. There's an expectation in the air. The need to ask; about now, how she feels, if it's the same, is there but he can't quite bring himself to voice the question.
Before he really knows what's happening, Justin closes the space between them and kisses her, fists his hand in her hair, and they hit the wall outside his room with a thud. He feels her return his kiss, and then his mind shuts down completely, giving in, pure and simple. He pulls her tight against his body, his hands searching out the slope of her curves, a thrumming sense of joy rising within him as she continues to kiss him like she's trying to climb underneath his skin.
His hands slip underneath the thin cotton of her shirt and pushes it up, her hands leaving their place in his hair to let him jerk it off over her head and then they're back, tangling in the thick strands, skimming his shoulders, while he unbuttons her jeans and shoves at them. Alex kicks her legs free and Justin feels the wall against his back again, harder this time, his towel coming loose and falling away. He begins walking her backwards, easier when her lips move down his neck and he can see over her shoulder. As one they tumble onto the bed, hands roving everywhere within reach, building up a slow burning heat between them, and for the first time, none of it feels wrong, not at all.
…0…
The fist thing Justin is aware of when he wakes up is that its stopped raining, the gentle pattering of a muted thumpthumpthump like a heartbeat that had lulled him off to sleep is gone, allowing for the birds to chirp in the bushes outside.
The second is that he smells Alex all around him. No surprise, given that she's draped over him, cheek against his neck, legs on either side of his. He breathes it in deep and exhales with the bone deep contentment of release, of relief, of an absence of worry. Justin smiles and tries not to move so he won't wake Alex. He feels pretty good, and not just because this is the first night he's slept more than 3 hours since the week before.
In all honesty, Justin believed that there would be untold amounts of guilt if he and Alex were ever to end up crossing that final boundary. But here they are, and oddly enough there is no guilt. His world has spun itself of the axis, nothing the way it had been when he woke up the day before, yet all the bleakness he had been carrying around with him has melted away.
He can't remember the last time he woke up with a smile on his face.
Noise draws his eyes down and he realizes that Alex is talking in her sleep. Raising his head up so as better to see her mouth, the corners of his mouth twitch up as he tries to figure out what she's saying. He has no luck; it's all gibberish, but its cute, so cute that when his alarm clock begins to blare he has to force himself to get out of the bed.
Alex whines when he rolls her over to the other side of the bed so he can get up. "Ugh, its too early to be awake. Normal people sleep in after sex."
Blushing like a schoolboy, Justin starts to gather his clothes for the day. He knows she's not trying to embarrass him (he doesn't think), but it does for the simple reason that she's so cut and dry about it.
"Normal people have jobs they have to be on time for, too," he tells her.
That seems to rouse her a little bit more and she finally takes her head out of the pillow to shoot that devilish little Alex smirk she does so well at him. "I didn't hear any complaints last night."
He'd fidget if he were dressed, but being naked makes him want to at least appear a little more nonchalant-its not as comical to blush fully dressed as it is in the nude. Instead he leans down and kisses her long and slow and languid, making Alex lift her head in search of more when he pulls back. That indistinct, Alpha Male-esque pride thing that he pretends to abhor kicks in full tilt at the little pout on her face. "You really have to go?"
"I'll be back by noon at the very latest," he assures her. She starts to get out of bed too, but he tells to go back to sleep and that he'll bring lunch home with him.
…0…
Justin hasn't been so thankful for a Friday since he was in high school. He races through his lecture, cuts the question portion by at least half, and by then it's already after 10.
The parents and students in the audience, there for orientation or just merely shopping around, seem a bit bewildered by his obvious rush. They'd been told he was thorough, meticulous, detailed, there's no doubt in his mind and he can't help but feel they're being shortchanged compared to the other 4 days this week, but today he's not trying to avoid going home to an empty house. Today he is more than ready to get back home, a home where Alex is waiting for him.
Being that he's been so adamant about staying busy, Justin's been doing office hours after the lectures, and spending the rest of the day poring over research articles in the library, or in the lab, trying to ignore the inane chatter of grad students hoping to impress a professor, even one as young and green as Justin.
But he's not doing that today, and if it weren't for the faculty meeting that he learned about the day before, he'd already be on his way home.
He knows he's distracted, knows his colleagues can see it, but he just doesn't have it in him to care. He shrugs off the offers of lunch on his way out, begging off with excuses of having somebody waiting for him which, given his track record, probably sounds like a lie and is calling in an order for burgers at the same diner he took Max and Annaleigh to before he's even out of the building.
The only neighbors he has within walking distance are a married couple in their early 30's, Kyle and Rachel, who live about a quarter mile from him. They're on pretty good terms Justin supposes; friendly enough to chat when they run into each other at the mail box or out at the supermarket, but not enough so that he actually knows anything about them other than the fact that they're both from in state, met at the college, and want kids 'someday, maybe' and he likes it that way.
So when he sees Kyle walking down his front steps as he pulls in beside Alex's convertible he's more than surprised. He can't remember Kyle ever being in Justin's house, nor he in his beyond the odd holiday celebration he's been invited to on necessity of being within hearing distance.
"Hey," she says, balancing the food and his briefcase while trying to lock his car door. "What's going on?"
Kyle grins, a knowing grin that give Justin the vague notion to slug him, and he tilts his head toward Justin's house. "Some house guest you got there, man."
Justin fights a groan. Who knows what Alex has said or done.
"Yeaaaah," he says slowly.
"Anyway," Kyle goes on, "Rachel and I are heading out for a few days and I wanted see if you could get the mail, maybe water the plants. We're boarding the dogs, so that's not an issue. I saw the car and figured you'd traded or something."
"Uh, sure. No problem." Justin is ready for him to leave now.
Kyle thanks him and walks away, turning to give him two thumbs up and another of those looks before disappearing down the path cutting back to his own property.
He walks in to the blasting of melodic blues and finds Alex leafing through the textbook for his freshman level class in a pair of cutoff jeans and a black bikini top, hair secured on top of her head with pens from Justin's desk. Pausing, Justin takes a moment to just take in the picture she makes. He feels like he's had this dream before.
Alex turns the page, doesn't look up. "You gonna keep staring at me, or do I get my food now?"
Plastering a look of innocence on his face, Justin walks in and sets the takeout bags and cup holder on the coffee table. They're barely out of his hand before she snatches one and begins devouring French fries.
"I have food here you know," he quips, popping straws into their milkshakes.
Snorting, Alex tears open a ketchup packet and squirts it onto a small stack of napkins. "No, you have rabbit feed, Justin. I thought guys in their 20's lived on frozen pizza and over processed snack cakes."
"Um, that would be you," he tells her. "Call me crazy, but I'd like to live past 40."
"Excuse me, but that's not exactly a salad I see you eating there." She bumps his shoulder with hers and then works her feet across his lap as she settles back into the pillows.
She asks about his day, laughs at his admittance of his rush to get back, and tells him she spent the morning on the beach, hence her state of dress-or undress depending on how you looked at it. Sitting her empty cup and sandwich wrapper on the coffee table, she stands and stretches, tugging the pens so her hair falls loose between her shoulder blades. "And I think I brought about half the sand back with me in my hair. I'm gonna go take a shower."
Justin had had his feet propped up on the coffee table and he puts them down on the floor to let her pass by, but he changes his mind at the last second and hooks a finger through her belt loop to pull her down onto his lap.
"Justin!" Her voice is high, higher than normal, caught somewhere between indignation and humor and her eyes are very wide.
Grinning, he bends his head and presses an open kiss on her collarbone and he feels the skin of her back erupt in goosebumps underneath his palm.
Alex is quick to reciprocate and she untucks the polo shirt from his chinos and tugs it off over his head and she stands up, hand on the back of his neck to pull him along with her.
"Where are we going?" he pants out as she drags him along in her wake, lips fused to his neck.
Alex pulls away just for a second to give him that 'are you kidding?' look of hers. "Shower, duh."
Face splitting in a grin that hurts its so wide, he tugs her back against his chest and they resume their walk to the bathroom. Alex manages to get his belt buckle undone when he hears the front door opening.
"Hey, Justin, I brought you the house keys dude." Kyle pops around the corner of Justin's hallway and stops dead in tracks. He turns abruptly, clears his throat. "Sorry man, I uh…I'll knock next time."
He makes a speedy exit and Alex collapses against him in giggles. "That guy really needs to work on his timing."
When he opens his mouth to respond, the phone in his pocket begins blaring out the Jeopardy theme. Alex rolls her eyes, groaning, and she leaves him to answer it when he says that ring is for the Chair of his department.
"Ten minutes," he promises, kissing her quickly before she makes her way to the bathroom and he flips the phone open.
She finds him on the couch, staring off into space and his phone still in his hand.
"What happened to ten minutes?"
He looks up at her, takes in her damp hair flowing around her face and the way the white of his tee shirt makes her tan skin seem to glow. Alex has been stealing his clothes her whole life, and the way it drapes on her slender frame makes him ache.
"That, uh," he scrubs a hand over his face, distracted, "that was the Chair of the engineering department. I just got a job offer." She doesn't respond so he continues. "It's a good one; better pay, more lab privileges, the opportunity to work with one of the leading researchers in the field."
"Wow." She sits beside him and their knees bump. "That's amazing, Justin."
"Yeah, it is." He agrees and looks away from her, unable to see her when he finishes the sentence. "And it's in Seattle."
Several seconds pass before she speaks and when she does her voice is thick with emotion. "Seattle as in all the way across the country Seattle?"
"Yeah."
She leans her head on his shoulder and her fingers wind their way through his larger ones. Turning his head, Justin inhales the scent of her shampoo and his soap mingling together and he's hit with a deep pang in his chest that he's all too familiar with; home.
"I guess we could do long distance," he tells her. "Visits here and there, or I could just stay here."
"No." Alex's voice is firm, brooking no argument and he is taken aback. "Justin, this is a big deal. You have to take it."
He shakes his head. "But Seattle-"
"Have I told you that I've been thinking about selling my gallery?"
That throws Justin off his train of thought for a minute and then when it does seep through his endorphin and worry addled brain he's still not entirely sure of the meaning behind the words.
"I don't…what does that have to do with it?"
Chuckling and rolling her eyes at once, (quite a fete he thinks) she snuggles into him, nose brushing that spot behind his ear. "It wouldn't make much sense for me to keep it when I'm going to be moving."
"You're moving?" His brow creases.
"How are you a teacher?" she asks. She climbs into his lap, tucking her legs against his thighs and twining her arms about his neck. "If you're moving to Seattle, I'm moving to Seattle. But you better believe that you are going to be buying me a whole case of anti-frizz crème because that humidity is going to be murder."
Blood rushing, he feels the rational part of his brain going fuzzy and what his friend Marlin, the psych professor in the office next to his, calls the 'happy center' lighting up like Christmas. "You're coming?"
"What part of 'I love you' did you not get?"
She smiles and he smiles and he kisses her, chests pressed together, and Justin feels the reverb of her heart beat a hurried tattoo beneath her skin, while his pounds back in echo.
…0…
Having grown accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of waves lapping, Justin instructs the Seattle realtor that he only wants a house on the water and she emails him photos that he forwards to Alex until they find one that they both love.
He's set to leave the next day, three weeks before the fall semester starts up so he can get his bearings but at the moment the only thing on his mind is that the movers are having difficulties getting his desk out the front door without disassembling it.
Growing more frustrated by the minute, when his phone rings and he sees 'Alex' flash across the front the steps outside onto his porch, happy for the break.
"Hey."
"Justin…"
Immediately, Justin hears the tears in her voice, the dull, throaty croak. "Alex, what's wrong?"
A sob breaks free from her, and he sits on the steps that lead don to the beach, panic rising high in his body. "Alex, tell me, please."
"Mom called me last night…" She takes a deep shaky breath. "And she kept telling me how much she missed us and how she wants us to come back and visit and I just kept thinking that if…she knew what we were doing…again…"
Dread, cold like the hand of death, takes hold of him in the blistering heat of a Southern summer day. "Alex, you're scaring me here."
She's full out crying now, sniffling and hiccupping and that goes with it but instead of sympathy, he's slowly filling with something akin to rage.
"I'm so sorry, Justin. I love you and I want to…but I can't. I just-"
He cuts her off, flipping his phone shut and he stands, emotions cresting inside him to a degree he's never felt before. One of the movers comes out to talk to him, but he ignores the man and walks with purpose to the edge of shoreline, flinging his phone out into the water.
Before he can think better of it, Justin digs his hand into his pocket and pulls out the one thing that he hadn't packed, the one thing he didn't trust letting out of his sight.
The diamond sparkles in the midday sun, glimmering like a thousand tiny shards of pure light in the sun's rays. He snaps the lid on the little velvet box shut and raises his arm, letting go until there's nothing in his line of vision but a tiny black dot that sails against the blue backdrop until it drops, disappearing into the choppy waters of the Atlantic.
…0…