Seven minutes and two tries is all it takes for Alex to turn invisible tonight. And the first try wasn't even all that bad. Justin probably wouldn't have noticed her eyebrows, anyway. It's a small victory, but given everything that's happened over the last couple days, she'll take it.
For once, she beats him to the basement. She's already settled in her rocking chair, idly laying out her soon-to-be-new art studio in her mind, when the hollow thud of his skull against that stupid pipe and his grunt of pain announce Justin's arrival.
She comes to attention as he makes his way down the stairs, rubbing his forehead and cursing under his breath. She breathes in sharply through her nose at the sight of him. It's been almost two months since the last time she spied on him like this, and though she wouldn't have believed it possible, he's even more cut now than he was then. His black cut-off tee clings to him almost like a second skin, showing off the swell of his pecs and even the slight ripple of his abs. His arms and legs look positively chiseled, every muscle thrown into relief even in the dim light of the basement. And even though he hasn't done anything yet, except drape his towel over the rail of the treadmill and start the music on his iPod, Alex can feel herself starting to get turned on.
She grimaces and shakes her head sharply, chiding herself to get her mind out of the gutter. She's not here for that, dammit. She's here because she's afraid for him—more tonight than ever before—because he's lost Juliet forever, and he blames himself, and she's all too aware of what Justin does when he blames himself for something, now. And judging from the look on his face when he mounts the treadmill and sets it running—that combination of anger and self-loathing that she's come to call his 'Batman face'—she knows that she's right to worry. He fully intends to kick the ever-loving crap out himself tonight.
He attacks the treadmill at a brisk jog, his speed gradually ramping up as the minutes pass. Almost immediately her eyes are again drawn to the telltale flutter in his shorts, just a few inches below the waistband. She flushes, forces herself to look away, struggles not to picture him naked. God, how can that be comfortable, running around all floppy like that? Doesn't it, like, chafe? Isn't there some kind of dude equivalent to a sports bra he could wear? Like a cup or a jock strap, or something?
Shaking her head again, she tries to distract herself by focusing on the music she can barely make out through his earbuds, still Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger on an endless loop. She's familiar with it now, knows why it seemed so damned familiar but maddeningly elusive at the same time: it was all over the place three summers ago when Kanye West sampled it on Stronger. You couldn't get away from the damn thing.
And while she's never been a fan of the song at all—or Kanye in general, really, because what kind of douche seriously shits all over a sweetheart like Taylor Swift on national TV?—it has kind of wormed its way into the Top 25 on her own iPod over the past couple months. Because the combination of two French dudes pretending to be robots while extolling the virtues of hard work and selfless dedication, laid beneath Kanye's shameless self-aggrandizing and insistence that his attraction to somebody "can't get much wronger"...yeah, that's kind of Justin and Alex in a nutshell, right there.
Lost in thought, she's suddenly pulled back to reality when the treadmill actually whines in protest, its speed having been pushed to the upper limit. Justin grimaces, his body slick with sweat from head to toe as his legs pump furiously beneath him. Alex swallows deeply and begins to wonder if it's possible to give yourself a heart attack at 18, ignoring the damp heat that's subtly growing in her core.
Twenty-three more anxious minutes pass without incident before the timer on the treadmill beeps and Justin finally allows himself to slow down. He steps off and bends forward, bracing his hands on his knees, his chest heaving as he greedily sucks down huge lungfuls of air. He barely gives himself a moment to recover before he's face-down on the floor, grunting as he launches himself into a series of push-ups. He counts them off in a breathy voice. Alex's lips move silently as she counts along with him. And by the time he's reached two hundred, her thighs are pressed so tightly together that they actually ache. She's convinced she'll probably be even sorer than he is the next day.
Two hundred crunches follow, then two hundred leg raises, before Justin finally pushes himself up off the floor, dusts off his hands, and moves on to the weight bench. And it's here that Alex really starts to get nervous. The rocking chair creaks beneath her as she leans forward on the edge of her seat, and brings one knee up to her chest to fish her wand out its hiding place in her right boot.
She grips the handle tightly, feeling more than just a little self-conscious about what happened the last time she whipped it out like this. Shoving those thoughts aside, she watches intently as Justin stands with his hands on his hips, still breathing heavily as he eyes the barbell suspended in the rack above the bench...then turns towards the rack of weights next to it and begins selecting plates to add to it.
"Oh, Jesus fuck, Justin...are you kidding me?" Alex mutters to herself as he moves from one side of the bar to the other, and back again, loading the plates onto it. She doesn't have any clue what he's been benching lately, and math has never exactly been her strong suit, but even still...it looks like he's aiming to lift more than double of what he was when she got scared enough to put that stupid Man of Steel spell on him in the first place. Which, presumably, he still doesn't know about.
So is he fucking crazy, or what? Even if the spell hasn't worn off yet, he'll be lucky if the fucking bench doesn't collapse beneath him!
Apparently, fucking crazy is exactly what he is. Because after he's loaded on the last of the ridiculous number of plates and tightened the screws holding them in place, he doesn't give a second thought to lowering himself onto the bench beneath the barbell, and reaching up to wrap his hands around the grip. Alex holds her breath as he exhales smoothly, inhales deeply through his nose, then grunts as he lifts the barbell up out of the rack and over his chest.
His arms start to tremble almost immediately, and his complexion goes from pale to grape kool-aid in a matter of seconds even as his face contorts from the strain...but amazingly, he holds it steady, without wavering. He exhales slowly through pursed lips as he gradually begins to lower it towards his chest, the metal joints of the bench groaning beneath him. He stops it within an inch or three of his chest, arms shuddering but still in control, then inhales sharply and begins to push the bar back up.
Now, here's the thing about magic, as Alex understands it: at its root, more or less what it does is tells the laws of physics and probability to look the other way for a minute. As such, there are some spells which, once successfully cast, can essentially remain in place forever. For example: once you've managed to trick the universe into believing that your parents are, rather improbably, actually guinea pigs, it doesn't take a whole lot of convincing to let them stay guinea pigs.
Some spells, though, are more like rubber bands, in that you can only stretch them so far before the universe notices, says "Hey, waaaaaaait a minute...," and snaps them back. Trying to trick it into believing that your big brother can lift increasingly improbable amounts of weight, on a regular, ongoing basis over a period of several months, would definitely fall into the second category.
Of course, the more skilled a wizard is, the longer a spell will hold. Had Professor Crumb cast the spell, Justin could probably have bench-pressed a Boeing 747 until doomsday without the universe paying much attention. Had Justin himself cast the spell, he probably could have gotten away with lifting a city bus straight through New Year's Eve before the laws of physics and probability got wise.
Alex Russo, on the other hand—while certainly possessed of certain natural gifts—is not exactly the most skilled or practiced of wizards.
So guess what starts to wear off, riiiiiiiiiiiiight about...now?
"UNGH!" Justin grunts as he gets to the top of his lift. His eyes pop wide open in terror as his arms begin to spasm uncontrollably. The barbell dips dangerously, teetering from one side to the other, as he struggles to control it with his fading strength.
"Oh, crap!" Alex gasps, jumping up out of her seat and leveling her wand at the bar. "OK, OK, I can do this! Uh, though my brother's a geek and...um...superheroes don't...exist? No, wait..."
Shit, how did this go again? It ended with Man of Steel, right? So what was it she rhymed with steel? Dammit, all she can think of are all those stupid Batman-themed ones she couldn't get right!
"AGH!" Justin cries out as the wavering barbell drops several more inches. His face is a mask of agony as he struggles to keep it up and off of himself, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. "Oh, God...!"
"Ohhhhhh...fuck it!" Alex growls, flicking her wand again at the barbell. "Weights know your spaces, back to your places!"
The end of her wand flares yellow, and suddenly the heavy plates on either end of the barbell wrench themselves loose and levitate through the air as though they weigh nothing, bobbing one by one towards the rack to the side of the bench. Justin gasps in surprise and relief as he pushes the now-unladen bar up away from himself and tosses it to the side, where it lands on the concrete floor with a clatter. Wincing at the soreness in his tortured arms, he pushes himself up off the bench into a sitting position and watches in amazement as the plates sort themselves into the rack by size and weight.
And then, as the echo of the clattering bar dies away, and the last five-pound plate has settled, he narrows his eyes and begins peering around the basement suspiciously.
"Alex?" he calls, tugging his earbuds out of his ears and shutting off his iPod. "I know you're here. Show yourself."
Her stomach clenched into knots, Alex holds her breath again, just like the last time he suspected she was here. Maybe he'll think he did it all himself, subconsciously. Stranger things have certainly happened...
"Alex, don't make me cast 'See Invisibility' on myself, OK?" Justin says firmly. "Even if you used a spell lock, I'll still be able to counter it."
Ugh, not that she remembered to actually use a spell lock. Just getting the invisibility spell down in the first place was pain in the ass enough. Goddammit, why did he have to be so good at this? Making a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, Alex spins the end of her wand in a tight circle, and wills herself back into plain sight. Justin gasps as she suddenly appears before him in the rocking chair.
"There," she says petulantly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Happy?"
Justin closes his eyes, then hangs his head and sighs. "So it was you, then."
"Um, duh?" Alex scoffs. "I thought we'd established that."
"I was bluffing," Justin says, without looking up. "I didn't know for sure. I was hoping that maybe I'd...I dunno, willed the weights away subconsciously, or something."
Well, crap. All she'd had to do was keep her idiot mouth shut for thirty more seconds...
"How long?" Justin asks, breaking into her thoughts.
Alex blinks, confused. "What?"
Justin raises his head finally, glaring at her angrily. "How long have you been watching me do this?"
"I dunno," Alex shrugs, looking down at the wand she holds in her lap. "A while, I guess, off and on..."
"Off and on," Justin parrots bitterly. "Right. So a couple months ago, when I thought I felt somebody cast a spell on me, was that you too?"
Alex rolls her wand back and forth between her fingertips. "Um...maybe?"
Justin snorts in disgust and shakes his head, then stands up abruptly and begins to pace like a caged animal.
"So all this, then," he says, gesturing at the weight bench and the treadmill with both hands, "everything I've accomplished over the past—what, five months? Six? All that's been because of magic. And you."
"What? No!" Alex protests. Then, off his look of skepticism: "OK, so maybe I helped a little, but that's only because you were going at it so crazy hard! I was afraid you were gonna hurt yourself!"
"Then you should have let me hurt myself!" Justin snaps. "How else am I going to figure out what my limits are? How else am I supposed to push myself past them? Dammit, Alex, I told you these spells are only as good as I am! Do you have any idea how far you've set me back?"
"Set you back? Justin, you were trying to lift, like, three times your own weight! You've been taking whatever the spell lets you do and adding onto it, more and more, every single day! I've seen you! Even with it, I thought you were gonna pop something!"
"That's not the same thing," Justin growls.
"Really? Then where do you think all those muscles came from, Popeye?" Alex snarks. "I haven't been force-feeding you spinach in your sleep, or whatever."
Justin glances down, at his arms and his chest, and belatedly Alex realizes just how proud her formerly-scrawny nerdling of a big brother must be of his progress these long few months.
"The spell could have done that," he says skeptically.
"It didn't," she says. "Like you said, it's only been as good as you are. And OK, so maybe you saw a huge jump in how much you could lift that night I cast the spell...but tell me you haven't been ratcheting that up little by little in the weeks since. Tell me you haven't been pushing that envelope as far as you can possibly push it."
Justin rolls his eyes. "Well...sure, maybe, but—"
"I know you have," Alex cuts him off, standing up off the rocking chair and walking towards him. "Because that's who you are, and that's what you do."
Holding his gaze, having closed the distance between them, Alex reaches out to press the palm of her free hand against his chest. He lets out a small gasp as she digs the tips of her fingers a little into his firm pectoral muscle, then runs her hand up to his shoulder, and slides it down along the curve of his bicep.
"This is all you," she says, her voice coming out a lot huskier than she'd intended. "Magic didn't have anything to do with it, and neither did I."
Justin looks down at her hand as it finishes tracing the contour of his arm, and comes to rest at his wrist, just above his right hand. The corner of his mouth quirks up into a little half-smile before he glances bashfully back up at her.
"Yeah, you did," he sighs.
"No," Alex says, with a shake of her head. "I mean it, Justin. All your hard work—"
"You were the reason I started all this in the first place, Alex," he interjects quietly.
Alex gives a start at this, visibly taken aback. "Wait, what? I thought this all started because you wanted to be a better Monster Hunter!"
"Well, yeah," Justin admits with a shrug. "But only so you'd stop having to come to my rescue all the damn time. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was for me? I'm supposed to be the one who takes care of you. Who fixes the things that you screw up. To have you. suddenly doing it for me made me feel..."
"Like I was calling your masculinity into question?" Alex asks, quoting Conscience verbatim.
Justin blinks at this, then cocks an eyebrow at her. "I was gonna say 'weak', but thanks..."
"Why? Just because I'm a girl, and you're the man?" Alex asks, with a roll of her eyes. "Or because I'm your baby sister?"
"Uh..." Justin looks away across the room, awkwardly reaches up and begins rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand. "Would you believe neither, actually?"
Now it's Alex's turn to raise an eyebrow, as she crosses her arms beneath her breasts. "Oh, this should be good. Explain."
"OK, at first I thought maybe that might be it," Justin admits. "The whole 'rawr, I'm a man' thing, I mean. But the more I thought about it... I really don't think I'm wired to be that big a male chauvinist, y'know? And it's not like I had any problem letting Juliet take on Mason for me..."
"Don't sell yourself short, egghead. You got a few good licks in," Alex says, surpressing a shiver at the memory. "That whole flying kick thing you did was actually pretty badass."
"I know, right?" Justin grins, flushing with pride, then blinks and awkwardly clears his throat as he remembers they're talking about him attacking her very-recently-ex-boyfriend. "Uh, anyway, so...no, it wasn't the whole stupid macho thing..."
"Conscience seemed to think otherwise," Alex says.
"Uh, Conscience was a part of Max," Justin points out. "OK, so he was arguably the best part of Max, but still...are you seriously going to put even a lick of faith into the reasoning of any part of him?"
Alex scrunches up her nose, but says nothing in response. He does have a point. In fact, she vaguely recalls making the exact same argument herself a few months back...
"And I genuinely don't think it was the 'baby sister' thing, either," Justin continues after she doesn't say anything, "because I clearly didn't have any trouble letting Max talk me into dragging him along on one half-baked, harebrained scheme after another to track the mummy down..."
"Yeah, still haven't forgiven you for that, by the way," Alex says. "I mean, seriously...picking Max over me? Ouch, dude."
"I know, I know," Justin nods ruefully. "It, uh, seemed like a good idea at the time?"
"So what was it, then?" Alex demands. "What is it about me that put this wild hair up your ass and made you think you had to turn yourself into Batman, or whatever?"
Justin doesn't answer right away, just looks at her hand where it still rests on his wrist, as close as she'll allow herself to come to taking his own hand in hers. She begins to feel self-conscious in the silence that follows, and is about to prompt him again when he suddenly heaves a heavy sigh that seems to come from the soles of his feet, then sits down heavily on the padded bench, his face in his hands.
"Let's just say," he says, his voice muffled, "that I think it's probably a good thing that I'm going to be going away to college in a few months. For both of us."
"Why?" Alex frowns, trying not to show how badly this stings, and failing miserably. "Are you that eager to get the hell away from me?"
"No," Justin replies, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Quite the opposite, actually. In fact, I kind of can't stand the idea of being away from you."
She also fails miserably at hiding the sappy grin that blossoms on her face when she hears this. Dammit, she used to be much better at this. Shaking her head in confusion, she sits down on the bench next to him, peering at him intently.
"Justin, you're talking in non-sequitors again. What does you going away to college have to do with this whole 'death by exercise' deal you've got going on, here? And what do either have to do with me?"
"Oh, only everything," he groans—in frustration or annoyance, she's not sure which—and she feels a sharp pang of guilt over the way she tingles at the sound of it.
"Look, I really wasn't prepared to talk about this tonight, Alex," Justin says, still not looking at her. "Or, y'know, ever. I don't know if I can even actually manage to say the words out loud without spontaneously combusting, or something."
Alex smiles lightly and holds up her wand. "I happen to know a really good a really good flame retardant spell."
Justin snorts at this. "You would, wouldn't you?"
"I'll have you put out before you even realize you're on fire," Alex says confidently. "So stop stalling and spit it out, already."
She hears Justin's breath catch in his throat, then shudder as it lets it out slowly. He's so obviously, painfully nervous that it's actually making her nervous just to sit here next to him.
"I didn't like looking weak to you because of how I feel about you, Alex," he says quietly, his voice quivering just a little. "See, the thing is...
He trails off into silence, and Alex has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from rolling her eyes or groaning impatiently. "The thing is...?"
"The thing is," he repeats, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "that I think I might...maybe...love you, a little bit."
Alex's blood turns to ice water in her veins, even as her cheeks begin to burn furiously. Her heart leaps up into her throat at the same time that the bottom drops right out of her stomach.
"Well, duh, egghead," she chuckles, nudging him lightly in the ribs with her elbow, with a nonchalance she definitely doesn't feel. Because there's no way he means it the way she wants him to, not even a little bit. "I'm your sister. Even if I wasn't eminently loveable, I think you'd have to, anyway. It's, like, the law or something."
She waits for him to take the bait, and gape at her in amazement at her correct use of the word 'eminently', because her using big words always impresses him enough that he forgets what they're fighting about, if only for a second. But for once, he doesn't even notice, and just shakes his head furiously.
"No, Alex!" he groans, sounding absolutely miserable. "You don't understand! I don't just love you. I'm actually..."
He trails off again, closes his eyes and just breathes for a moment, the same way he always does right before he lifts the barbell off the rack to begin a set of lifts: steeling himself, gathering the strength and determination necessary to forge ahead.
"I'm in love with you, Alex," he says finally. Then, with a snort, he adds: "In a pretty definitively against-the-law kind of way."
Alex stares at him dumbly, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open, as a whole world of possibilities she never dared consider begins to unfurl itself before her in her mind's eye. Justin's eyes tighten at the corners as he studies her reaction, and she realizes she'd better say something quick before he throws up, or something.
"But you were in love with Juliet, and had absolutely no problem looking like a complete pussy in front of her!" she blurts out.
Justin blinks in surprise, then looks at her flatly. Whoops. Yeah, probably shouldn't have gone with the first thing that popped into her head.
"Um, your words, not mine," she adds quickly. "OK, so maybe I'm actually paraphrasing a little, but—"
He continues to look at her flatly, then raises his eyebrows for emphasis. And then she gets what he's trying to tell her.
"Oh," she says quietly.
"Yeah," he sighs, running his fingers back through his hair. "Oh."
"But you were completely retarded for Juliet!' Alex exclaims. "With all the goofy nose kisses, and the sobbing after the mummy took her, and your stupid, cutesy...Snuggly...Boo-Boo...Kitty Fuck..."
"McCutiekins," Justin corrects her automatically.
"Whatever!" she snaps, waving one hand dismissively. "Justin, you were willing to overlook the fact that her parents liked to eat people! If you'd been any sweeter on that girl, she would have given you diabetes! Are you honestly trying to tell me that none of that was real?"
"No, it was," Justin says firmly. "It is. But the thing is, Alex, when it comes right down to it...whenever I've had the choice between putting her in harm's way, or you, I've always chosen her, haven't I? And she's been the one to pay the price for it."
"Justin, it's not like that," Alex protests. "You didn't even know the mummy was going to be at the museum that night. You gave her up to him to save her life. And you didn't ask her to take Mason on the way she did..."
"But I didn't stop her, either, did I?" Justin says. "I was too busy protecting you. And now she's gone, and old, and alone. But as horribly guilty as I feel about it, as awful a person as I know it makes me...both times, I can't help but be grateful that it was her I lost, and not you."
He looks up at her then, his eyes glittering with barely-contained tears.
"Don't you get it, Alex?" he asks, his voice raw, his face ashen. "It's not that I don't love Juliet, because I do. It's just that I love you more."
Alex breaths in sharply, feeling as though he's just sucker-punched her in the stomach. She blinks as her own eyes begin to sting with tears.
They stare at each other silently for a long moment before Justin wrenches his eyes shut and sits forward with his elbows on his knees. He drops his head forward and laces his fingers tightly behind his neck.
"I'm sorry to lay all this on you," he says, as several teardrops spatter against the concrete floor below his face. "I never meant to. I told myself I never would. But you asked, and I've never been able to say no to you, and...God, how fucked up am I?"
"Justin..." she begins, then trails off, for once in her life at a complete and utter loss for words. Because they just don't make words for what she's feeling, what she wants to say.
So instead, before she even realizes what she's doing, Alex throws her arms around her brother, clambers into his lap, and proceeds to kiss his pain away, determined to do anything and everything he needs to make it all better.
He looks up in shock as he feels her lips press against his damp cheek, then jerks backwards in surprise and confusion as she swings one leg over both of his, straddling him. "Alex? What are you—?"
"Shhhh!" she hushes him, placing one hand on the back of his neck and drawing his face towards hers. He gasps as she smashes her lips against his, wraps her arms around him and presses her body as tightly against his as she can physically manage. She can feel him give into it for a split-second, his lips softening below her assault, his body sagging against hers almost with relief. But then everything in him goes rigid, and he braces his hands against her shoulders and pushes her away.
"Alex, stop!" he snarls as he holds her at arms' length, his expression wavering from confusion, to hurt, to anger, and back again. "Don't toy with me! I know you're heartbroken over Mason, but we both know you don't really want this!"
"But I do want this, Justin," Alex says, breathlessly. "Oh God, I so do. I wanted it even before Mason, and I mean way before. Hell, the only reason Mason even happened is because I wanted this so much!"
Justin blinks at this, then breaks into a wide grin. Then he blinks again and frowns in confusion as his brain catches up to him. "Wait, how's that again?"
"Justin...just shut up," she growls in exasperation before she attacks him again. And this time, thankfully, he totally just goes with it. His lips part slightly beneath hers, the tip of his tongue fluttering lightly between them against her teeth, and then he groans into her mouth as she accepts his invitation and thrusts her own tongue against his.
Alex's heart swells as they kiss, threatening to burst, overflowing with more joy and gratitude than she ever thought possible. Tears spill down her cheeks from the corners of her eyes, seeping between their lips and tasting salty on her tongue as it wrestles with his. And she's so happy that she forgets to be mortified by the sheer, Harper-ish girliness of it all. Seconds grow into minutes, then into God only knows how long, without either of them once coming up for air. And even though she's starting to feel dizzy and out of breath, Alex refuses to stop. Because this, right here, is everything she's ever wanted, for as long as she can remember. For the first time in her life, she feels at peace. Whole. Sated.
At least right up until the moment when, y'know, she doesn't anymore. And she realizes that she wants—needs—more.