fic: pillars of salt.
wizards of waverly place. justin/alex. 2344 words. And that is how they should have seen it coming.
notes: a few of you have read part of this, however it's now twice as long so take a look please. For firstillusion. It would be for corleones also but she blackmailed me into an icon a while ago and then didn't deliver fic so.
It starts with a sandwich. Ham and Swiss on rye.
It starts with a sandwich that’s sitting on his plate, until she takes a bite out of it, teeth digging deeper into the groves his mouth wrought.
She picks up his sandwich, takes a bite out of it, and he doesn’t complain, just brings it to his own mouth. And that is how they should have seen it coming.
Shared sandwiches, and too little space. His hand on the small of her back, knees bumping under tables, smiles unwittingly shared across rooms. Always a bit too close, a bit too comfortable. Even for siblings. Especially for siblings.
They should have seen it coming.
He lifts the sandwich, lips splitting over it, and smiles at her from the corners of his eyes. She smiles back.
The world tilts.
-
Magic is a funny thing. Cumbersome and elegant, and unpredictable and measured, all at once.
Magic is family, and power, and fun and when it pulses through her veins, when it gathers at her fingertips, Alex feels uninhibited, free, alive.
When she looks at Justin and feels the same way, she knows she’s in trouble.
And not the good kind either.
-
They have a fight, the night before Justin leaves for university.
They have a fight, a proper one, not raised voices and sharp words, but wands pointed at faces and the glow of magic suddenly turned sinister.
Max stands in the corner, cowers really, tries to play mediator without getting in the middle.
They have a fight and when she’s screaming always so right, aren’t you Justin! Alex really means don’t go.
They apologize later, under Dad’s watchful glare, apologize and the words don’t ring as false as they should.
In the morning, before he leaves, Justin kisses her forehead, one short peck, but his arm swings across her back, and his warmth intoxicates, and she’s almost certain she can feel his heartbeat against her temple, in perfect synchrony with her own.
-
Justin leaves and the dynamic shifts, in a blink and you’ll miss it sort of way.
Alex is the oldest now, the leader, the one who watches over Max.
Alex has responsibilities now, and maybe she expected them to taste bitter. Instead it’s loneliness that lingers on her tongue.
There’re less schemes now, still some, but the depth lacks and the guilt is more in her smiles than her acts (adult she may not be, but everyone knows falling hurts without a net).
Less schemes and more homework and grades take a steady hike upwards and it’s her wand that blooms magic first during lessons (and if her rabbits are sometimes pink, at least they don’t bark).
Some days she stares at the empty seat in the Lair and wonder if brothers are allowed to hurt your heart so badly.
-
There is Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and a dozen weekends, and countless phone calls
-she answers a few times, picks up the phone and his voice is rough, from what she’d like to think is laughter, as he stumbles over greetings and then Mom is there with coos and I miss yous and Alex leaves the room, emptiness leaking into her chest-
and the year passes by. But still, summer comes as a shock.
He walks in, still sharp lines and clean surfaces, but smoother now, less awkward, more settled. He walks in, still emotion, and fire, and magic, and Justin, and she wonders how it got to here.
He walks in, a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, a smile just for her, and she leans against the counter, and its not simply because leaning makes everyone look ten percent better.
-
Summer, and heat, and Justin’s back from university, and Alex can’t find it in herself to pick fights, and the whole world, all the lines, distinctions, definitions, blur around the edges.
It’s the heat, she reminds herself. The heat blurs everything. The heat crawls under her skin, sinks deeper and deeper, until its attached to her bones, and the whole world blurs. Blurs and blurs and blurs. Except for Justin.
Justin is never out of focus.
Summer and heat, and Mom and Dad are pulling double shifts, and Max is away (always away, and she labels this growing up) and it’s just the two of them. Just Justin and Alex, on a couch, in the depths of summer.
Sometimes I love you so much it feels like hate.
It doesn’t really slip out, though if asked she’d say so. The threads of restraint have been pulling themselves apart for weeks, unraveling under the sun’s harsh glare, and this was a conscious decision.
This was a conscious decision, and Justin’s hand is wrapped around her ankle and their limbs tangle on the couch, and she tells the truth, and then her lips meet his.
He leans in first.
-
This is how the summer goes:
Days wasted away in the chill of the living room or Lair, they watch television or listen to time pass. Nights spent wandering city streets, nearly cool air licking their skin, vendors and beggars calling to them, hands intertwined.
Some evenings, after obligatory family dinners, she slips into his room, other nights he comes to her, and sometimes he talks and sometimes she talks and sometimes they both just sit quietly, and Alex starts to think that this is what settled relationships feel like.
Except, of course, that all of this happens outside the realm of familiar eyes. Except, of course, that there is a crimson vowel stitched to her chest and it’s no A (and yes, she read that book, grades are getting better. Remember?)
Looking back, years later, she will think of this summer as tender kisses in doorway shadows, as the narrow strip of peace between her childhood and adult years. She will remember those kisses as the tenuous middle ground between outright wrong doing and following the rules.
As the place where she and Justin always wound up in the end.
-
She waits for it to fall apart around her. Waits for Max to walk in at an inopportune moment, waits for Mom and Dad to figure it out, waits for Harper to… do whatever it is Harper does.
The moment never comes.
And maybe if she were less self-aware she’d say this was the universe’s way of paying her back for dealing her a hand where the king of hearts is her brother.
As it is, she doesn’t dwell on ifs too much. Just enjoys the ride while it lasts. Enjoys Justin before he comes to his senses.
There is one moment, one single moment where she feels cracks open, feels the earth tremble beneath her. One moment, and they’re sitting on the couch (again), and it slips out of one of their mouths into the heated air.
This is wrong. Isn’t it?
Probably.
Alex clicks on the television; Justin reopens the book; the day goes on.
-
Summer ends and Justin goes back to school.
Summer ends; autumn comes and goes, bringing winter in its wake. Bringing early nightfalls and dark days and cold. Hard biting cold.
Halloween and Thanksgiving ghost by. Justin calls Wednesday nights, when the rest of the family is working. Justin calls and Alex tells him about recent tests and Harper’s latest outfits and this week’s detention.
Justin calls and the hours slip past.
-
There is Christmas and a New Year and Easter and then another summer has come.
Another summer and Alex holds an acceptance letter she never thought to see. Art school and San Francisco lay in the cards now, and congratulations roll in with steady disbelief.
Justin’s comes with a dash of I told you so, a hint of anger, and more than enough pride.
She thinks of hallway kisses and late night phone calls and a lifetime of smiles. Her heart hurts.
-
Distance brings them closer.
The weekly phone becomes daily, voices cracking across the country, his laughter ringing loud in her ear, and sometimes she misses him, and sometimes she doesn’t.
She takes to wearing long skirts and flowing shawls, the ever-present sun softening her edges. She picks classes over parties, homework over movies, and transforms herself into someone more than full of potential, into someone full of promise.
She transforms herself into something more than Justin Russo’s younger sister.
They talk daily and at some point the guilt, the shame goes away.
-
They go on a family vacation the summer of Max’s eighteenth.
-
Two years gone and Max turns eighteen.
Max turns eighteen and there are three adult wizards in the Russo family.
The clock ticks.
-
They go on vacation the summer of Max’s eighteenth.
Two years have passed since what she labels the past. The future glimmers dimly on the horizon, cuts through the gloom of present day distractions, cuts through everything.
Two years have passed. Two years of limbo, of unanswered questions, of uncertain ties.
They go on vacation to the same sandy island of years past, because Mom and Dad don’t remember what happened there, because Mom and Dad never will.
They sit on beaches, let sand whisper across bare skin, watch the sun dance across the sky. The water ripples and shifts, Dad eats and Mom lounges, Max flirts with girls.
He’s grown handsome with time. Like his older brother, Max has a hint of charm thrown in with his eccentricities. Like Justin, there is dash of beauty to Max’s form.
Pride. Counter-intuitively she feels pride for her brother.
-
Heat licks at her skin. The day clings to its last breathes, and the heat licks at her skin, and they’ve moved from the beach to the pool.
You ever wonder what the world would have been like if we had never existed? You ever wonder if it would have changed anything?
Philosophical isn’t a mood she wears with particular ease, isn’t a mood she wears at all.
On her way to growing up she may be, but she’s still Alex. She’s still sent on missions of destruction, she’s still sneaky and conniving and often cruel, she still avoids rather than admits to, and honest conversations will never be her home.
Alex…
He stretches her name out into two syllables, bends it over his lips, and it’s times like this that she’d give him anything, anything at all, if he promised never to leave her.
Not now. Please. Please, just not now. After. When we go home, then we’ll do this.
A nod and his eyes are hard. He takes her hand, in an almost innocent gesture, to soften the blow of his anger. She feels it anyway.
Feels it more acutely than drowning.
-
Their last day on the island and she wakes up early, too early. She wakes up with the sun and stands at the water’s edge. Stands and stares as the sky. Stares and hopes for answers, for assurances, for anything at all.
He comes to her with his characteristic quiet. Slings his arm across her back in an echo of a long ago gesture. She sinks into his heat.
They stand there, two lonely shadows at the edge of the world, never saying a word.
He never says a word, but maybe he promises her that it will be all right anyway.
-
Books teach her about more than words. Books teach her about loneliness and despair and want and greed and obsession. Books teach her about religious fervor and nihilism and hope.
Books teach her about a hundred-thousand-million things and sometimes they remind her why she never wanted to read them in the first place.
Most of all, books teach her about uncertainty, about the consequences of a single choice, about what can be lost.
And this is why she hates them, with unquenchable fury, with unending rage. In the dark of night she hates books.
In the dark of night she hates Justin, hates herself, hates everything.
In the dark of night she hates.
The morning light reveals her heart’s lies.
-
The competition comes.
A rainy day and the competition comes and she clings to her cherry red wand, holds it like a lifeboat. Readies herself, steels herself for what she must do.
Before, they stand in the Lair. The three of them. The Russo children.
Together as equals, one last time, and they haven’t been like this for months, for years.
She hugs them, she hugs her brothers, holds them against her chest and they’re both taller than her, both have to stoop as she grabs them by the hair.
Let’s not forget, okay? Let’s please not forget.
Their hands tangle together, the Russo siblings forever, and she smiles, and they smile.
For one shining moment it is all so simple.
-
It turns out to be much the same as the last time around.
The wizard competition doesn’t seem much harder, much worse, much different than last time around, except the energy. The energy is different, better and worse all at once.
Justin wins. This is no surprise.
What is?
Alex lets him.
-
After, they go home.
As though nothing has changed, they go home.
It’s quiet for weeks. They avoid each other, in a careful back and forth that causes more tension than even the Russo household is used to.
Eventually, it catches up to them.
Early morning and no one else is awake, he glows, as he has since the victory. She itches to touch, itches to feel his warmth, his power, his magic.
The crunch of cereal is the only sound over breakfast, his discomfort is palpable, she aches to ease it.
Look… Alex, I… I mean…
The tension coiled at the base of her spine melts away. He’s sweet when worried.
It’s alright.
A pause and her heart beats too hard.
I don’t think it was the magic I was really attached to.
Her eyes catch his, the world spins softly on.
Alright then.
A smile is tossed from one mouth to the next.
Alright then.
notes: a few of you have read part of this, however it's now twice as long so take a look please. For firstillusion. It would be for corleones also but she blackmailed me into an icon a while ago and then didn't deliver fic so.
It starts with a sandwich. Ham and Swiss on rye.
It starts with a sandwich that’s sitting on his plate, until she takes a bite out of it, teeth digging deeper into the groves his mouth wrought.
She picks up his sandwich, takes a bite out of it, and he doesn’t complain, just brings it to his own mouth. And that is how they should have seen it coming.
Shared sandwiches, and too little space. His hand on the small of her back, knees bumping under tables, smiles unwittingly shared across rooms. Always a bit too close, a bit too comfortable. Even for siblings. Especially for siblings.
They should have seen it coming.
He lifts the sandwich, lips splitting over it, and smiles at her from the corners of his eyes. She smiles back.
The world tilts.
-
Magic is a funny thing. Cumbersome and elegant, and unpredictable and measured, all at once.
Magic is family, and power, and fun and when it pulses through her veins, when it gathers at her fingertips, Alex feels uninhibited, free, alive.
When she looks at Justin and feels the same way, she knows she’s in trouble.
And not the good kind either.
-
They have a fight, the night before Justin leaves for university.
They have a fight, a proper one, not raised voices and sharp words, but wands pointed at faces and the glow of magic suddenly turned sinister.
Max stands in the corner, cowers really, tries to play mediator without getting in the middle.
They have a fight and when she’s screaming always so right, aren’t you Justin! Alex really means don’t go.
They apologize later, under Dad’s watchful glare, apologize and the words don’t ring as false as they should.
In the morning, before he leaves, Justin kisses her forehead, one short peck, but his arm swings across her back, and his warmth intoxicates, and she’s almost certain she can feel his heartbeat against her temple, in perfect synchrony with her own.
-
Justin leaves and the dynamic shifts, in a blink and you’ll miss it sort of way.
Alex is the oldest now, the leader, the one who watches over Max.
Alex has responsibilities now, and maybe she expected them to taste bitter. Instead it’s loneliness that lingers on her tongue.
There’re less schemes now, still some, but the depth lacks and the guilt is more in her smiles than her acts (adult she may not be, but everyone knows falling hurts without a net).
Less schemes and more homework and grades take a steady hike upwards and it’s her wand that blooms magic first during lessons (and if her rabbits are sometimes pink, at least they don’t bark).
Some days she stares at the empty seat in the Lair and wonder if brothers are allowed to hurt your heart so badly.
-
There is Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and a dozen weekends, and countless phone calls
-she answers a few times, picks up the phone and his voice is rough, from what she’d like to think is laughter, as he stumbles over greetings and then Mom is there with coos and I miss yous and Alex leaves the room, emptiness leaking into her chest-
and the year passes by. But still, summer comes as a shock.
He walks in, still sharp lines and clean surfaces, but smoother now, less awkward, more settled. He walks in, still emotion, and fire, and magic, and Justin, and she wonders how it got to here.
He walks in, a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, a smile just for her, and she leans against the counter, and its not simply because leaning makes everyone look ten percent better.
-
Summer, and heat, and Justin’s back from university, and Alex can’t find it in herself to pick fights, and the whole world, all the lines, distinctions, definitions, blur around the edges.
It’s the heat, she reminds herself. The heat blurs everything. The heat crawls under her skin, sinks deeper and deeper, until its attached to her bones, and the whole world blurs. Blurs and blurs and blurs. Except for Justin.
Justin is never out of focus.
Summer and heat, and Mom and Dad are pulling double shifts, and Max is away (always away, and she labels this growing up) and it’s just the two of them. Just Justin and Alex, on a couch, in the depths of summer.
Sometimes I love you so much it feels like hate.
It doesn’t really slip out, though if asked she’d say so. The threads of restraint have been pulling themselves apart for weeks, unraveling under the sun’s harsh glare, and this was a conscious decision.
This was a conscious decision, and Justin’s hand is wrapped around her ankle and their limbs tangle on the couch, and she tells the truth, and then her lips meet his.
He leans in first.
-
This is how the summer goes:
Days wasted away in the chill of the living room or Lair, they watch television or listen to time pass. Nights spent wandering city streets, nearly cool air licking their skin, vendors and beggars calling to them, hands intertwined.
Some evenings, after obligatory family dinners, she slips into his room, other nights he comes to her, and sometimes he talks and sometimes she talks and sometimes they both just sit quietly, and Alex starts to think that this is what settled relationships feel like.
Except, of course, that all of this happens outside the realm of familiar eyes. Except, of course, that there is a crimson vowel stitched to her chest and it’s no A (and yes, she read that book, grades are getting better. Remember?)
Looking back, years later, she will think of this summer as tender kisses in doorway shadows, as the narrow strip of peace between her childhood and adult years. She will remember those kisses as the tenuous middle ground between outright wrong doing and following the rules.
As the place where she and Justin always wound up in the end.
-
She waits for it to fall apart around her. Waits for Max to walk in at an inopportune moment, waits for Mom and Dad to figure it out, waits for Harper to… do whatever it is Harper does.
The moment never comes.
And maybe if she were less self-aware she’d say this was the universe’s way of paying her back for dealing her a hand where the king of hearts is her brother.
As it is, she doesn’t dwell on ifs too much. Just enjoys the ride while it lasts. Enjoys Justin before he comes to his senses.
There is one moment, one single moment where she feels cracks open, feels the earth tremble beneath her. One moment, and they’re sitting on the couch (again), and it slips out of one of their mouths into the heated air.
This is wrong. Isn’t it?
Probably.
Alex clicks on the television; Justin reopens the book; the day goes on.
-
Summer ends and Justin goes back to school.
Summer ends; autumn comes and goes, bringing winter in its wake. Bringing early nightfalls and dark days and cold. Hard biting cold.
Halloween and Thanksgiving ghost by. Justin calls Wednesday nights, when the rest of the family is working. Justin calls and Alex tells him about recent tests and Harper’s latest outfits and this week’s detention.
Justin calls and the hours slip past.
-
There is Christmas and a New Year and Easter and then another summer has come.
Another summer and Alex holds an acceptance letter she never thought to see. Art school and San Francisco lay in the cards now, and congratulations roll in with steady disbelief.
Justin’s comes with a dash of I told you so, a hint of anger, and more than enough pride.
She thinks of hallway kisses and late night phone calls and a lifetime of smiles. Her heart hurts.
-
Distance brings them closer.
The weekly phone becomes daily, voices cracking across the country, his laughter ringing loud in her ear, and sometimes she misses him, and sometimes she doesn’t.
She takes to wearing long skirts and flowing shawls, the ever-present sun softening her edges. She picks classes over parties, homework over movies, and transforms herself into someone more than full of potential, into someone full of promise.
She transforms herself into something more than Justin Russo’s younger sister.
They talk daily and at some point the guilt, the shame goes away.
-
They go on a family vacation the summer of Max’s eighteenth.
-
Two years gone and Max turns eighteen.
Max turns eighteen and there are three adult wizards in the Russo family.
The clock ticks.
-
They go on vacation the summer of Max’s eighteenth.
Two years have passed since what she labels the past. The future glimmers dimly on the horizon, cuts through the gloom of present day distractions, cuts through everything.
Two years have passed. Two years of limbo, of unanswered questions, of uncertain ties.
They go on vacation to the same sandy island of years past, because Mom and Dad don’t remember what happened there, because Mom and Dad never will.
They sit on beaches, let sand whisper across bare skin, watch the sun dance across the sky. The water ripples and shifts, Dad eats and Mom lounges, Max flirts with girls.
He’s grown handsome with time. Like his older brother, Max has a hint of charm thrown in with his eccentricities. Like Justin, there is dash of beauty to Max’s form.
Pride. Counter-intuitively she feels pride for her brother.
-
Heat licks at her skin. The day clings to its last breathes, and the heat licks at her skin, and they’ve moved from the beach to the pool.
You ever wonder what the world would have been like if we had never existed? You ever wonder if it would have changed anything?
Philosophical isn’t a mood she wears with particular ease, isn’t a mood she wears at all.
On her way to growing up she may be, but she’s still Alex. She’s still sent on missions of destruction, she’s still sneaky and conniving and often cruel, she still avoids rather than admits to, and honest conversations will never be her home.
Alex…
He stretches her name out into two syllables, bends it over his lips, and it’s times like this that she’d give him anything, anything at all, if he promised never to leave her.
Not now. Please. Please, just not now. After. When we go home, then we’ll do this.
A nod and his eyes are hard. He takes her hand, in an almost innocent gesture, to soften the blow of his anger. She feels it anyway.
Feels it more acutely than drowning.
-
Their last day on the island and she wakes up early, too early. She wakes up with the sun and stands at the water’s edge. Stands and stares as the sky. Stares and hopes for answers, for assurances, for anything at all.
He comes to her with his characteristic quiet. Slings his arm across her back in an echo of a long ago gesture. She sinks into his heat.
They stand there, two lonely shadows at the edge of the world, never saying a word.
He never says a word, but maybe he promises her that it will be all right anyway.
-
Books teach her about more than words. Books teach her about loneliness and despair and want and greed and obsession. Books teach her about religious fervor and nihilism and hope.
Books teach her about a hundred-thousand-million things and sometimes they remind her why she never wanted to read them in the first place.
Most of all, books teach her about uncertainty, about the consequences of a single choice, about what can be lost.
And this is why she hates them, with unquenchable fury, with unending rage. In the dark of night she hates books.
In the dark of night she hates Justin, hates herself, hates everything.
In the dark of night she hates.
The morning light reveals her heart’s lies.
-
The competition comes.
A rainy day and the competition comes and she clings to her cherry red wand, holds it like a lifeboat. Readies herself, steels herself for what she must do.
Before, they stand in the Lair. The three of them. The Russo children.
Together as equals, one last time, and they haven’t been like this for months, for years.
She hugs them, she hugs her brothers, holds them against her chest and they’re both taller than her, both have to stoop as she grabs them by the hair.
Let’s not forget, okay? Let’s please not forget.
Their hands tangle together, the Russo siblings forever, and she smiles, and they smile.
For one shining moment it is all so simple.
-
It turns out to be much the same as the last time around.
The wizard competition doesn’t seem much harder, much worse, much different than last time around, except the energy. The energy is different, better and worse all at once.
Justin wins. This is no surprise.
What is?
Alex lets him.
-
After, they go home.
As though nothing has changed, they go home.
It’s quiet for weeks. They avoid each other, in a careful back and forth that causes more tension than even the Russo household is used to.
Eventually, it catches up to them.
Early morning and no one else is awake, he glows, as he has since the victory. She itches to touch, itches to feel his warmth, his power, his magic.
The crunch of cereal is the only sound over breakfast, his discomfort is palpable, she aches to ease it.
Look… Alex, I… I mean…
The tension coiled at the base of her spine melts away. He’s sweet when worried.
It’s alright.
A pause and her heart beats too hard.
I don’t think it was the magic I was really attached to.
Her eyes catch his, the world spins softly on.
Alright then.
A smile is tossed from one mouth to the next.
Alright then.