Wizard, Waiter, Brother, Spy (T/PG-13) 2/2
Part I | Part II
v.
Sitting alone in the dark of the living room, with his feet propped up on the coffee table, Max stared vacantly ahead at the at the blank television screen. His thumbs flew over the PS3 controller in his hands, completely on autopilot, proving his whole theory about muscle memory. But Max barely noticed, being so totally preoccupied with the jumble of thoughts running through his head…which was somewhat of a new experience for him.
And the single most prominent thought he had, the one he kept coming back to? “Well, duh.”
Because, seriously…probably the most surprising thing about all this was how utterly not surprised he felt. Of course Justin and Alex were dating, or in love, or whatever. It wasn’t like this was right out of left field, or anything. Hell, anyone with half a brain who spent more than five minutes together with them could see there was something more going on between them than just sibling rivalry. There always had been. It was plain in the way they always inevitably gravitated towards each other even though they swore up and down that they could barely stand to be in the same room, and the way each one’s life subtly revolved around the other, despite their insistence that they didn’t even want anything to do with one another.
Everybody commented on it, sooner or later. Harper continually called it a love-hate relationship, “or at least a love-antagonize relationship”, much to Alex’s eternal chagrin. Conscience had said once they shared an interesting slap-slap-kiss dynamic, earning Max a scowling admonishment from Justin that he spent too much time surfing TV Tropes. (Because, dude, So Random!? Wicked awesome fetish fuel page!) And even Professor Crumbs had observed to Dad-right after they’d reversed the spell that had turned him into a guinea pig-that the two of them reminded him more than a little of Tracy and Hepburn, or possibly Bonnie and Clyde.
To everyone else, it was remarkable…or, at least, something out of the ordinary enough to be remarked upon. But to Max, it simply…was. A completely normal part of everyday life since the day he’d been born, that the rest of the world just happened to find extraordinary. Y’know, just like magic.
Magic is real, and his older brother and sister are hot for each other? "Well, duh."
The kissing and the cuddling and all the sex stuff, though? That was new, and it was blowing his mind, just a little.
Well…on second thought, maybe not the cuddling, so much. Alex and Justin always did have a tendency to hug it out whenever they made up after a fight, which was often. Or whenever one of them had their heart broken or suffered a setback of any kind. Or whenever they came through a tough scrape together…which again, given Alex’s penchant for messing up, was a pretty regular thing. Or whenever-
OK, so yeah…the cuddling? Not exactly new.
And come to think of it, the kissing wasn’t entirely new, either. Sure, it had been awhile, but when they were kids, how many times had they dressed Max up like a priest so he could pronounce them man and wife? How often had he played the parts of all seven dwarves while Prince Charming woke Snow White from her apple-induced coma? And how many summers had they spent reenacting every scene from the Star Wars movies over and over again on the terrace, even the stupid, boring mushy ones that Max didn’t care about? Hell, now that he stopped to think about it, Alex and Justin had practically been kissing their way through Max’s entire childhood!
The sex stuff, though…that was new, though, wasn’t it? Sure, there’d been plenty of tickle fights. And water balloon fights. And pillow fights. And wrestling in pajamas, or in the pool at the rec center as they made half-hearted attempts to drown each other. And yeah, Alex tended to tackle Justin on the couch, and bounce up and down on him to make him nauseous until she got her way about something. And then there was the way that one of them walked in on the other in the bathroom at least once a month, sometimes more, while Max couldn’t remember either of them having walked in on him, ever…
“Oh, holy crap,” Max groaned, pressing ‘pause’ on the controller and bringing his hands up to his face to grind the heels of his palms into his eyes. Yeah, so even the sex stuff? Not so new. Gross, sure…but not new.
Also, while he was on the subject? Not nearly as gross as it occured to Max it probably should be, either. Not sickeningly wrong, for instance, like the way he felt when Alex ordered pineapple on pizza. And not gag-inducingly disgusting, like when the person who used the stall in the boys’ room before him had forgotten to flush, or he noticed a pube stuck to the bar of soap in the shower. (Ugh, barf.)
No, it was more like that vague sense of embarrassed discomfort that came over him when he caught a glimpse of their parents making out, sometimes, when they thought their kids weren’t looking: revolting, certainly, but oddly, comfortingly right at the same time. Necessary to his existence, even. Like air, or cupcakes. And wow, how messed up was it that he equated the two? (His parents and Justin/Alex, that was, not air and cupcakes. Duh.) In a way, though, it almost made a sick kind of sense. After all, hadn't both been couples for as long as Max could remember?
“Well, duh.”
Man, no wonder he’d always felt like such a third wheel around them. How could he not?
Max heaved a heavy sigh and shook his head as he picked up his controller and pressed ‘pause’ again. Alright, so his brother and sister? Totally dating, or in love, or whatever. Apparently, on some level, he’d always known about it, even if he hadn’t exactly known that he’d known. And surprisingly? He was OK with it, which probably meant he was just as sick in the head as they were.
So what to do about it? Pretend he didn’t know? Act oblivious? Go out of his way to deliberately misread the situation, the way he did with practically everything else in his life? Or-?
Frowning as a sudden thought struck him, Max glanced up at the ceiling just below where he knew Alex’s room to be.
-or was this a chance to prove himself? To be more than just a third wheel? To finally come into his own, and do something that neither Justin nor Alex could do?
“Well, duh.”
A smile spread slowly across Max’s face as he tossed the controller aside on the couch, then stood up and tugged his wand out of the back pocket of his jeans. Justin’s keep-away spell was still in effect, so going upstairs to you-know-where was out of the question, but casting the spell on the floor beneath them should be good enough for what he had in mind. Granted, the last time he’d done this, it hadn’t been on purpose, his powers not being entirely under control at the time, but it ought to work. Well, probably.
Grinning to himself, he raised his arm to aim the tip of his wand at the ceiling, and took a deep breath, trying to figure out how best to word the spell…
vi.
Justin woke first, wincing against the morning sun that shone onto his eyelids through the narrow slats of Alex’s mini-blinds, then again at the pins-and-needles sensation in his arm where it lay pinned between her pillow and the mattress. Curled up next to him, Alex snored lightly, the way she always did, although she was loathe to admit it. And though his arm was screaming at him, Justin spent a few moments just watching her sleep, in awe of how deceptively peaceful and innocent she could look when she wasn’t, y’know, conscious.
Yawning, Justin pressed his lips gently against her temple, then slowly sat up and eased his arm out from beneath her head. He hissed painfully through his teeth as he tried to shake the feeling back into it, then grunted in surprise as Alex swung her own arm at him, jabbing him lazily in the ribs with her elbow.
“Sh’dup,” she muttered sleepily into her pillow. “Too early…sleepin’…”
Justin snorted at her and shook his head. He reached up to scrub his face with both hands in an attempt to wake himself up, then glanced over at the alarm clock on her nightstand to see just how much longer he could let her sleep. Or at least he would have, if the clock was still there. Which it wasn’t, of course, having been thrown across the room at his head the night before.
“Oh, no,” Justin groaned, hurriedly reaching down to throw the sheets off himself. “Alex? Honey, it’s time to get up. Your alarm didn’t go off. I think we overslept.”
“Nggggh,” Alex grunted, reaching down to draw the covers over her head.
“Alex, I mean it! Get a move on!” Justin said loudly, sounding more and more panicked by the second as he rushed towards her bedroom door. “We have to get Max up and get the Sub Station open! Dad’ll flip if one of the regulars tells him that we opened la-“
He broke off suddenly as he opened the door and stared in shock at what lay beyond.
“The hell-?” Blinking, he shook his head sharply, closed the door, then opened it again. “Uh, Alex…?”
“Jus’ five more min’s, mom,” Alex muttered from beneath the covers.
Grimacing in confusion, Justin turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Honey, seriously…I think you’d better come have a look at this.”
“Ugh! God!” Alex growled, angrily thrusting the sheets up and off herself as she sat bolt upright. “Fine, I’m up! Now what the hell is so goddamned important that you won’t stop yammering for two lousy seconds to-“
She stopped in midsentence, her mouth hanging open as Justin stepped aside from the door, opening it wide so that she could see through it. There, where the hallway leading to the bathroom should be, was a long, empty stretch of dusty highway. Next to it, about three meters away, stood a white road sign with a forest green border, rocking gently in the breeze.
‘Welcome to South Dakota,’ it read in red cursive at the top. Then, in green again at the bottom, below a yellow caricature of Mount Rushmore: ‘Great Faces, Great Places.’
“South Dako-?” Alex asked, blinking up at her brother. “Justin, what the hell did you do?”
“Me?! I was just about to ask you the same question!” Justin said.
“I don’t even have my wand, dorkus! And why on God’s green earth would I send us to freakin’ South Dakota?” Alex snorted.
“Who knows why you do anything? You were trying to send Max there just the day before yesterday!” Justin frowned in puzzlement as he stared at the sign, stroking his chin . “Although, I did place a repellent ward on the door last night before I woke you up, just in case. Maybe I screwed it up? Had South Dakota on the brain, or something?”
“No, it wasn’t you,” Alex groaned, wincing and pressing her forehead into Justin’s shoulder as a sudden realization struck her. “It’s Max, egghead. He’s pranking us.”
“Ugh, you’re probably right,” Justin said, casting a glance around the room to locate the wand he'd dropped the night before, when Alex threw her clock at him. “We did kinda have a fight right after we closed last night…”
“And South Dakota’s obviously a dig at me. He must still be pissed that I tried to send him away.” Alex spied the blunt end of his wand sticking out from behind the door, and bent down to scoop it up. “Here, I’ve got it, let me: Though South Dakota’s swell and all, I’d rather exit to the hall.”
And though she twirled the wand in the air as she said it, and the tip of it flared chartreuse, the view through the doorway didn’t change. Justin and Alex blinked at each other before Justin held out his hand for the wand.
”Great Faces, Great Places, return us to our rightful space…es,” he tried, after she’d reluctantly handed it to him. Again, the end of the wand flared brightly, but to no avail.
“Give me that!” Alex snapped, snatching it out of his grasp. “’Space…es?!’ Really?! God, your make ‘em ups are always so lame! You even rhyme like a dork!”
“Hey, it’s not like yours worked either,” Justin grumbled. “Believe it or not, I think Max must have actually used a spell lock.”
“Yeah well, it’ll be a cold day in hell before Max Russo, of all people, manages to out-criminal-genius me,” Alex sneered, waving his wand in the air again. “I’ll just flash us over to his room, then pound on him until he promises to undo it.”
The tip of the wand flared for a third time, only to leave them standing there staring at each other. Still in her room, the road sign rattling gently in the breeze just outside the door.
Over the next several minutes, passing the wand back and forth between them, they tried a few other things in turn-phasing themselves through the wall or the floor, or going out the window-but none of it worked. All roads, it appeared, led to South Dakota.
“Wow,” Justin said, impressed despite himself. “Max really thought this one through, for once.”
“What, seriously?!” Alex snarled in frustration. “So you’re telling me our little brother has really trapped us somewhere at the ass end of Buttmunch, Nowheresville?!”
“Well, no. Technically speaking, we’re actually trapped in your room on Waverly Place,” Justin pointed out. “We haven’t gone anywhere. The door’s just been enchanted to act as a portal, is all. Y’know, just like how the freezer door in the Sub Station leads into the lair, instead of-“
He broke off at Alex’s impatient glare, as she crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
“Yeah, OK,” he amended with a shrug. “For all intents and purposes, until Max decides otherwise or the spell wears off on its own, we are indeed stuck in the middle of Buttmunch, Nowheresville.”
“Well, isn’t that just perfect?” Alex groused, stalking across the room and throwing herself down angrily onto the bed. “As if I’m not grounded enough, as it is? Mom and Dad will completely lose their shit once it gets back to them that we didn’t open the Sub Station today. And you just know it’s me they’re gonna blame. Even if Dad doesn’t lose my wand at Grandma’s, I’m so never getting it back.”
“Er, you don’t think Max would try to run the place by himself, do you?” Justin asked from the doorway, concerned. “Because somehow I think that might actually be worse…”
Lying on her stomach, her arms crossed beneath her chin, Alex cocked a skeptical eyebrow up at him. “What, are you kidding me? Max has probably forgotten we even have a restaurant. I guarantee you he’s sitting on the couch right now, still pretending to play that stupid video game like the little retard he is.”
“Ugh, you really don’t know how much I wish you’d stop using the word ‘retard’,” Justin scolded her automatically, even as he began casting his grey eyes methodically around the room. “Seriously, Alex. It’s like you have no concept of just how offensive it is…”
“Oh, please!” Alex rolled her own eyes towards the ceiling. “Whatever, dude. You might wanna plug your ears and sing ‘lalala’ for a bit, then, because as far as saying offensive things about Max goes, I’m just getting warmed up.”
“Ah, here we go,” Justin said, smiling lightly as his gaze fell upon a framed photo of Harper and Alex that sat on her dresser. Crossing the room in three strides, he picked it up in one hand, and pointed his wand at it with the other. “Yeah, this’ll do nicely.”
“What’re you doing?” Alex asked, frowning.
“The Picture This spell,” Justin replied, twirling his wand around his finger. “It’s relatively simple, low-level scrying magic, the kind of thing I ought to be able to cast in my sleep. So if this doesn’t work, we know he’s somehow managed to cancel out our powers altogether.”
Alex blanched at this, as though the possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. “You really think Max could do that?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Justin shrugged. “Besides, I kind of want to check on him, anyway. Max unsupervised equals fire hazard. Not opening on time could actually be the least of our worries.”
Watching eagerly as Justin recited the spell, Alex breathed a sigh of relief as the tip of his wand flared white, and the image of her and Harper began to swirl and darken in the frame, replaced by a wide view of the Sub Station…which was not only open for business, but actually bustling with customers. Clad in a t-shirt and apron, Max darted from table to table, with pen and order pad in hand.
“Oh no,” Justin groaned, wincing as though the scene before him was actually causing him physical pain. “This can’t possibly end well…”
Getting up on her knees on the bed, Alex leaned on Justin as she peered over his shoulder, and gasped in surprise. “Ohmigod! Is Max actually waiting tables?”
“Apparently, he’s doing everything,” said Justin. He squinted and craned his neck to peer closely into the frame. “Waiting, bussing, making sandwiches…look, some people have their subs, already…”
“And they’re actually eating them!” Alex said in amazement. “On purpose! And nobody’s puking! Or throwing them back at him for getting their orders wrong, or anything! Jesus Christ, Justin…that lady there actually looks like she’s enjoying hers! How the hell is this even possible?!”
“He must be using magic, somehow,” Justin replied, grimacing deeply. “It’s the only explanation. We barely managed with three of us yesterday, and look: it’s easily just as busy now as it was then. I just hope he’s been discreet about it, because if he winds up exposing his powers to a whole restaurant full of mortals, there’s gonna be hell to-“
“Wait wait wait!” Alex squealed, cutting him off as she pointed frantically at the frame. “See that? Is that…is that me?!”
Indeed it was. As Alex and Justin watched, another Alex walked into frame from the left, carrying Max’s bussing tray, and set about clearing Table 9 just seconds after it had been vacated. She glanced up at Max as he passed, on his way back to the kitchen, having just finished taking an order at Table 7.
”Max, Justin says your order for Table 3 is up,” she told him.
”Right on, thanks,” Max grinned, then jerked his head towards the front of the Sub Station. ”I noticed a couple tables in the subway car that could stand to be wiped down, too.”
”I’m on it,” faux-Alex nodded, giving him a tight smile, then gave Table 9 one last quick buff with her dishrag before she hurried out of frame. And side-by-side in her room, somewhere just outside of South Dakota, Justin and the real Alex stared in silence for a long moment, stunned, before Alex turned to her brother and pinched him on the arm, hard.
“OW!” Justin shouted as he jerked away from her, nearly dropping the frame in the process. “What the hell was that for?!”
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t dreaming,” Alex growled, pointing angrily at the frame, “because there is no way in hell I’d ever let Max get away with ordering me to bus tables in anywhere but your sick and twisted imagination!”
“Alex…” Justin sighed, rolling his eyes as he reached up to rub his sore arm.
“No seriously, what the hell?! Bussing tables is his job! I don’t even clean up after myself when I eat there! And did you see how I was dressed? Why the hell do I have on that orange polyester fashion nightmare that Mom made us all wear on vacation? I could have sworn I burned that thing!”
“Well, if I had to venture a guess,” Justin mused, “I’d say Max most likely pulled a duplicate of you out of that photo we all took before we got on the plane to go back home. In fact, I’d almost guarantee that there’s a double of me in the kitchen, too, making sandwiches and dressed exactly the same.”
“Oh, sweet zombie Jesus…” Alex groaned, hanging her head. “This day just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? God, I just hope nobody I know from school comes in and sees us…them…whatever. Of all the pictures to pull us out of, why’d he have to pick that one?!”
“It’s actually a pretty inspired choice, if you think about it,” Justin said thoughtfully, his eyes a thousand miles away as the gears of his giant nerd-brain turned behind them. “You’d just gotten us back after watching us both get sucked up into that freaky tornado thing, remember? And you were so wracked with guilt and grateful we weren’t gone for good…it’s probably the only time in your entire life that he’d actually be able to talk you into bussing tables for him. Heck, I bet you would have agreed to almost any-hmmm.”
“Yeah, relax there, Pervy McPerverson,” Alex snapped as she bumped her hip against his side. “Don’t get any bright ideas. Vacation!Alex, there, is almost a whole year younger than me. She hasn’t completely lost her mind and fallen in love with your dorky butt, yet.”
“Oh, whatever. You were already so into me by that point, and we both know it,” Justin scoffed. He tilted his head to one side and pressed his free hand to his chest, over his heart. ”’Oh Justin-sniffle, sniffle!-you’re everything I’ve ever wanted to be! You make me a better wizard! Please don’t ever leave me…!’”
“HEY!” Alex yelled, and actually swatted at his head. “I thought we agreed you weren’t gonna bring that up, anymore?!”
“Right, right…sorry,” Justin chuckled, holding up one hand to wave her off, even as he struggled to surpress a grin. “Won’t happen again.”
“Argh, this is so typically Max!” Alex snarled. “It doesn’t make any goddamned sense. Why trap us up here, only to clone us and have them help him run the Station instead? He doesn’t come out ahead at all, so why bother?”
“We’re not supposed to know about that last part, though, are we? The duplicates helping him, I mean,” Justin pointed out, then shrugged. “Maybe he just wants us to think he didn’t need us. That he could do it all himself.”
“I…guess?” Alex said. “I mean, we did both kind of drive home the point that we didn’t need him at all, so…”
“So maybe he’s just trying to prove himself,” Justin concluded. “Then again, there is a second possibility…”
“Yeah? Which is…?”
“Well…he did know that we wanted him out of the way this weekend,” Justin said hesitantly, even as he tried to work it out for himself. “That we wanted to be alone together, for some reason…”
Alex blinked at this, then narrowed her eyes at him and snorted. “What, are you trying to say that you think he knows? Because, dude, it’s Max. I had him convinced that you were our butler until he was, like, six.”
“Yeah, I know, but…see, Conscience made this off-hand comment once, a couple months back. About our whole slap-slap-kiss dynamic, or something, just before he got integrated back into Max, and-”
“Oh wow, you too?” Alex said, as she back on her haunches and narrowed her eyes in memory. “Because I didn’t say anything at the time-I mean, we hadn’t actually even told each other yet-but now that you mention it, I definitely got the feeling that Conscience suspected there was something going on. Like, that we had a thing for one another, or whatever.”
“And if Conscience had suspicions, then that means Max did, too. Or does now, anyway. At the very least, he knows something’s up.”
“So, what? You think by doing all this-“ Alex waved her arm vaguely around the room, taking in both their magical window into the Sub Station, and the doorway to South Dakota-“that he’s trying to, like, catch us in the act, or something? See what we do if we think we can get away with it?”
“Well, he did say he was spying on you for Dad, but…this is way too elaborate a plan for Max. And besides, why give us a heads up that he was spying on you in the first place, then?” Justin reached up and scratched his head, considering. “No, the more I think about it, the more I think he’s just trying to kill two birds with one stone…”
“Oh, I’ll show him a dead bird or two,” Alex growled, reaching for Justin’s wand. “One fricasseed turkey, coming right up!”
“Nonono, that’s not what I mean,” Justin said as he grabbed Alex’s wrist to stop her. “I do think he’s honestly aiming to prove himself. But at the same time, maybe he’s also…I dunno…trying help us out, a little? Cut us a break? Give us a chance to, uh… y’know, ‘get down to stuff’?”
“Really,” Alex said, clearly skeptical. “Like, he’s just OK with it, or whatever. This is really what’s going through that big brain of yours.”
“Well, which do you think sounds more like Max?” Justin put to her. “Sell us out, or help us cover?”
Alex pursed her lips in silence for a moment as she considered this. “It has always kind of been the three of us against the world, hasn’t it?”
Justin nodded. “And did Conscience say or do anything to give you the impression that either of them disapproved?”
“No,” Alex admitted. “If anything, I got the feeling that he thought we were…kind of sweet, maybe?”
“Me too,” Justin agreed. “Look, third wheel or not, Max does tend to roll with us, Alex.”
“Agh, dude,” Alex winced. “Seriously. I’m already sleeping with you. Please stop trying to be cool to impress me.”
Justin grinned, and cast one last glance at the scene in the picture frame. Satisfied that the Sub Station wasn’t in any danger of catching on fire, at least not for the next few minutes, he placed it face-down on the dresser, then sat down on the bed at her feet.
“Well, either way, it looks like you and I have managed to fall ass-backwards into at least one day off,” he sighed. “Granted, we’ll either have to spend it cooped up in your room together, or thumbing a ride into Buttmunch, Nowheresville…”
“Cooped up in my-?" Alex propped herself up on her elbows, her eyebrows raised in stunned disbelief. Then, smiling and shaking her head fondly, she sat the rest of the way up and curled her legs beneath her as she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his midsection and laying her head on his shoulder.
“Um, hello?” Alex whispered into his ear, slowly and deliberately, as though she were explaining something to a small child. “Spending the weekend in bed together? Kind of the point of the whole failed ‘get Max out of the house’ scheme. Yes/no?”
“Oh. Hey, yeah,” Justin blinked, even as Alex gently nipped his earlobe, and started trailing tiny kisses down along his jaw. “I mean…after we take some reasonable precautions, of course…”
“Way ahead of you, egghead,” Alex grinned wickedly into his neck. “Check the top drawer of my nightstand. There’s a blindfold and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs in there, too, if you’re up for it.”
Justin looked at her blankly as he leaned over to grab his wand off the dresser. “Sound proofing, Alex. An anti-scrying ward or two. Just because Max may on our side is no reason to be indiscreet.”
“Whatever, Mom,” Alex said, rolling her eyes. Then, smiling as she nuzzled his ear: “Sound proofing, egghead? Planning to be loud, are we?”
“With a blindfold and fuzzy handcuffs in the mix?” Justin grinned as he held up his wand. “Count on it.”
Tilting her chin towards him with his free hand, he kissed her hungrily, the tip of his wand flaring bright orange as he twirled it in the air with the other...
And leaning against the counter of the Sub Station, holding a picture frame in both hands, Max grinned as the live feed from Alex’s room suddenly cut out, to be replaced by a photo of him and his family in their matching vacation outfits, albeit with two of them missing. Well, at least somebody was having a good time this weekend. And he had to admit, they actually were sort of sweet together, in a gross kind of way…
“The tuna melt for Table Six is up, Max,” Vacation!Justin said from the kitchen, where he was making sammiches like a freakin’ mofo in his patterened orange polyester shirt. “You have anything else for me?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I need a sixteen on white, with extra olives on the side for table two,” Max said, setting down the frame and consulting his order pad. “Or, wait…maybe that was a two on white for table sixteen? Man, I should probably start writing some of this stuff down…”
“’Start writing some of this-?’” Vacation!Justin blinked at him through the passthrough. “Max, what have you been using your pad for all afternoon, then?!”
“Oh, check it out! I keep getting lost in Halloween Sorority Party Disaster 4.5, so I’ve been drawing up a map of the sorority house from memory. See?” Max held up his pad so Vacation!Justin could see it, then proudly tapped the corner of it with his pen. “Finally figured out that’s where I left the chainsaw!”
“But…didn’t you say you were playing it from a hint book?” Vacation!Justin asked, puzzled. “Wouldn’t there be a map in there?”
“Oh wow, yeah,” Max blinked. “Man, I didn’t even think to look for one. Well geez, I guess I don’t need these anymore, do I?”
Vacation!Justin stared at him open-mouthed as he tossed his pad and pen over his shoulder, then brushed his hands together as if dusting them off.
“Max! Yes, you do! You were going to use them to write down the-!” Breaking off, Vacation!Justin exhaled sharply and shook his head at his younger brother. “You’re messing with me, right? Tell me you’re messing with me. Because you can’t seriously be this oblivious…”
One corner of Max’s mouth turned up in a smirk, and he shrugged.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But only when I need to be.”
Then, whistling to himself, he turned on his heel to head back to table twelve, to double-check whether or not they wanted olives on their number six.
vii.
Max’s spell lasted until Monday night, just after closing time, giving Justin and Alex two whole, luxurious days to laze around, make love, and just enjoy one another freely in the privacy of her room. Every few hours, food would magically appear on Alex’s desk like clockwork, much to their surprise, reinforcing Justin’s belief that Max was on their side. Funnily enough, though, the only drinks he sent up with the subs were bottles and bottles of Gatorade, as though he were worried that dehydration might become an issue.
If anything, the opposite proved to be true: going to the bathroom was initially a bit of a puzzler, since they couldn’t simply walk down the hall, proving that Max hadn’t thought of absolutely everything. At first Alex was determined to fashion a rudimentary funnel out of sandwich wrap and make use of their scores of empty Gatorade bottles, before a scandalized Justin forced her to reluctantly venture through the door and find a bush by the side of the highway. Fortunately, the blindfold and handcuffs weren’t the only surprises hiding in Alex’s nightstand: it also contained a bottle of warming lube that doubled as hand sanitizer.
“It kind of goes hand in hand with the anal beads,” she explained bashfully, and admitted to having spent some time shopping online with their mom’s credit card in anticipation of their big weekend together, which is how she’d wound up being grounded in the first place. “You’d be amazed what you can find on Amazon.”
And then Justin asked her how they worked, and they didn’t talk for awhile. Well, not in complete sentences, anyway.
It was kind of a bittersweet moment when the ”Great Faces, Great Places” sign started to shimmer like a desert mirage in her doorway, gradually fading from view to reveal the upstairs hallway. Though sad to have to return to the real world, at the same time they were sore, spent and beyond sated. And the idea of actually being able to take a shower after two days of near-constant sticky sweatiness was heavenly. They raced each other down the hall to be first, then tumbled in together, and brazenly made love one last time, slowly and quietly, under the rush of the faucet. Then they toweled one another off, retreated to their separate bedrooms to get dressed, and met each other at the top of the stairs to creep down together, unsure of what awaited them.
Max sat alone in the living room, slumped on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, chin propped on his hand as he stared glumly at the dark TV screen. He barely looked up as his siblings sat down on either side of him.
“Oh, hey guys," he sighed.
Justin and Alex exchanged a look of concern over the top of his head before she spoke up. “Everything OK, Maxie?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he shrugged. “Except I just finished the game, and the ending? It sucked sweaty donkey sac. It’s not even an ending really. I mean, you don’t even find out the secret behind the midget’s mask! The whole thing’s just a long, boring commercial for the next movie!”
He heaved a heavy sigh of disappointment, and tossed aside the hint book that was lying open in his lap. “Man, it’s gonna be such a waste of time and money when I can finally buy it in three years.”
Frowning, Justin opened his mouth to point out that he didn’t have to buy it if he didn’t want to, but Alex waved him off and pointedly jerked her head at Max, reminding him that there were more important things to discuss at the moment. Justin nodded at her, and awkwardly cleared his throat.
“Max, we, uh…we wanted to talk to you before Mom and Dad got home,” he said, “about everything that happened this weekend.”
Max blinked up at him. “Why, what happened? We worked ourselves to half to death at the Sub Station, you guys did your whole weird slap-slap-kiss routine the whole time, and I wasted two days doing something stupid that most people would probably think was completely insane. Sounds like your average weekend on Waverly Place to me.”
He shrugged, then, and turned back to face the TV with a characteristically blank expression on his face. And for a second-just a second-they almost bought it, just like always. But, for once, they didn’t roll their eyes or shake their heads at his practiced obliviousness, or facepalm over his apparent stupidity. Instead, they scrutinized him as they never had before, looking at their younger brother through narrowed eyes as though really seeing him for the first time.
“It wasn’t stupid or insane, Maxie,” Alex quietly grinned, her voice thick with emotion as she held her arms out and drew him into a hug. “In fact, it’s just about the sweetest, most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for either of us. Thank you.”
“Yeah buddy, thanks," Justin added, awkwardly laying a hand on Max’s shoulder. “We really appreciate it. Seriously.”
“Uh…OK?” Max said uncertainly over Alex’s shoulder, as he glanced from her to Justin and back. “Listen, if it means this much to you to avoid crummy movie tie-ins, then you’ll want to stay the hell away from the Avatar game, too. Because, man, that thing? Big steaming pile of crap.”
“Wait, what?” Frowning, Alex pulled away and held him at arm’s length, one eyebrow raised. “What are you talking about?”
“Video games, duh,” Max replied. “What are you talking about?”
Alex blinked at this, then looked past him to shoot a look of confusion at Justin.
“Max, it’s OK,” Justin chuckled. “We know that you know.”
“Oh, right on,” Max said, grinning over his shoulder at him. “Uh, am I supposed to know that I know what you know that I know, though? Because, honestly? I don’t know that I do…”
Justin’s eyebrows knit themselves together in confusion, and his lips actually started moving silently as he tried to work this out for himself. Alex rolled her eyes and grunted in frustration. Reaching out to cup Max’s chin in her hand, she turned his face back towards her.
“Max, seriously,” she said. “We talked about it, and we’re totally cool with you knowing. We trust you, more than anybody. You don’t have to play dumb, for once.”
”Hello!” Jerry’s voice called suddenly from downstairs, causing all three Russo children to freeze in their seats. ”Anybody home?”
“Hey, somebody’s gotta do it, right?” Max said quietly, with a wink. He reached out to give her hand a quick squeeze before he leaned over the back of the couch towards the stairs. “We’re all up here, Dad!” he called.
“Ungh!” Jerry grunted, red-faced and out of breath as he struggled to navigate up the spiral staircase into the living room, while dragging the first of his wife’s bags behind him. “I still don’t understand what your mother needed all this stuff for. And why the hell do we have so many twisty stairs in this place, anyway?”
Justin, being who he was, leapt up off the couch immediately and hurried over to help. Alex waited until he was already halfway there before she stood up herself, as though she’d wanted to help, but Justin had beaten her to it. Max didn’t even take his feet off the coffee table.
“Thanks, son,” Jerry said as Justin took the suitcase from him. “Wow, I thought for sure we’d come home and find you kids all still cleaning up the Sub Station after such a busy weekend, but it looks pretty spiffy down there. What, did you guys close up early tonight, or something?”
“Nah, usual time,” Max replied smoothly, even as both Justin and Alex turned to look at him. “Alex helped me bus today, so it went a lot faster than usual.”
“She did?!” Jerry asked, staring at Alex in disbelief. “But she doesn’t even clean up after herself…”
“That’s nothing, Daddy,” Alex beamed. “Max waited tables all weekend. And he was awesome at it! You should have seen him!”
Jerry blinked. “He…what?”
“It’s true, Dad,” Justin said, nodding sagely. Then, off his father’s look of skepticism: “No, really. There are witnesses, I swear.”
Jerry looked blankly at each of his kids in turn, incredulous. “Wait, so Alex was bussing, and Max was competently waiting tables… so, is this Bizarro World I’ve come back to, or something? Because I’m almost afraid to ask whether Bizarro!Justin remembered to make the deposit, or not.”
Justin’s face fell, as all the color drained from it. “Uh…”
“Dad, c’mon,” Max scoffed, a little more loudly than was absolutely necessary. “It’s Justin. Of course he made the deposit. Duhr.”
“I did?” Justin blinked. Then, off Alex’s look of exasperation: “Uh, I mean, I did! But only because Max…um…made me.”
“Made you,” Jerry repeated, looking at Max in surprise. “Really.”
“Oh, totally,” Alex broke in quickly, before Justin had an aneurism, or something. “Max really came through for us in a big, bad way, Daddy. In fact, I think it’s fair to say we probably wouldn’t have done it this weekend, without his help.”
“Heh,” Max and Justin grinned, almost in unison.
Jerry frowned. “Why is that funny?”
All three Russo children glanced at each other guiltily for a second, before turning their eyes back to their father.
“Uh, it’s funny,” Justin stammered, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck nonchalantly as he flushed a deep shade of red, “because of the, um…inherent irony-“
“Yeah, nobody cares, egghead,” Alex cut him off, chuckling as she threw her arms around Jerry and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Welcome home, Daddy. We’ll go help Mom bring up the rest of the luggage, OK?”
“Wait, you’re actually volunteering to help, now?” Jerry said, gaping at her. “Man, I really have come back to Bizarro World, haven’t I?”
Alex rolled her eyes as she pulled away from her father, and let out a sigh. “Seriously, people, I’m almost eighteen. Is it so incredibly hard for everyone to grasp that maybe I’m actually maturing, here? Besides, if this were Bizarro World, wouldn’t Justin be, like, cool and good-looking?”
“Oh, har-har,” Justin said flatly, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her towards the stairs. “You am so funny, Alex. Me am laughing hysterically. C’mon.”
“Dork!” Alex giggled as they went bounding down the stairs, one after the other, without so much as a shove or an elbow to the ribs. Looking for all the world like two people who were content, even happy, to have spent the entire weekend in one another’s presence. Jerry watched after them, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, then reached out and snagged the back of Max’s collar as he tried to follow them.
“Hold up there a second, double-oh-seven,” he said pointedly. “So what’d you find out?”
“Huh?” Max said, staring at him blankly. “Oh, you mean the-? Yeah, nothin’, sorry.”
“Nothing?!” said Jerry. “After three whole days? Really?”
Max shrugged. “Well, nothing worthwhile, anyway. Turns out the whole thing’s just a crummy tease. If you want, just read the hint book and skip playing the game altogether. In hindsight, I wish that’s what I’d done.”
“Hint b-? Max, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Video games, duh!” Max replied. “What are you talking about?”
“Alex and Justin!” Jerry yelled in annoyance. Then, with a quick glance over his shoulder at the stairs, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “You were supposed to find out what’s up with them, this weekend! Your mission, remember?”
“Oh, that! Yeah, that turned out to be an even bigger bust than the game, actually. I dunno where you got the idea that they might be in kazoos, or whatever-”
“Cahoots, Max,” Jerry said patiently, closing his eyes. “The word is ‘cahoots’.”
“Well, whatever you thought they might be in, you were way off,” Max said.
“What, really?” Jerry asked. “There were no parties? No boys? No magic? No…shenanigans?”
“Not that I saw,” Max said. “Honestly? It was pretty boring. Alex barely left her room for two days, and for all I saw him outside of the Sub Station, Justin might as well have been in another state, entirely.”
“Oh,” said Jerry, sounding almost disappointed. “So you’re telling me that you guys opened and closed the Sub Station on time every day, Alex endured her punishment responsibly, like an adult, and there were absolutely no wacky hi-jinx of any kind to be had, magical or otherwise.”
“Pretty much,” Max nodded. “Like I said: boring.”
“Huh,” Jerry said, shaking his head. “Bizarro World. It’s the only explanation.”
“Or,” Max said, holding up one finger, “maybe Alex is right, and we’re all finally growing up and acting mature, and junk.”
Jerry considered this for a moment. “Yeah, I’m really more inclined to go with my theory. Listen, can you go get Alex’s wand back from wherever you hid it? I should probably give it back to her tonight, given that she inexplicably didn’t break any actual rules this weekend…”
“Ohhhhhh yeah, about that,” Max said with a wince. “Remember how you told me to stash it somewhere she wouldn’t find it? But the lair seemed too obvious, right? So I…uh…hid it in the freezer downstairs, instead. Because, seriously, how often do we even use that door for that?”
Afraid that he knew where this was going, Jerry’s shoulders slumped. “And...?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you,” Max cautioned him. “Because what Alex’s wand did to Grandma’s tomatoes that one time? Walk in the park compared to what it’s done to the imitation ham…”
“Uggggh, Max!” Jerry groaned, reaching up to cover his face with his palm. He heaved a long-suffering sigh as he shook his head and rolled his eyes at his youngest child. “So much for Bizarro World. I should have known an uneventful weekend was too much to hope for from you kids.”
“You do have to admit, though,” Max said, “on a scale of one to ‘Uncle Kelbo is secretly Shakira’, this actually ranks pretty low.”
“The fact that we even need a scale like that disturbs me more than you’ll ever know, but you do have a point,” Jerry groused. “Fine. I’ll go get Justin. You grab your wand and meet us downstairs by the freezer so we can take care of this before your mother finds out.”
And just like that, Jerry was headed down the stairs, focused on fixing yet another one of his kids’ magical snafus, his suspicions about Justin and Alex-whatever they might be-completely forgotten, at least for the moment. Probably longer, once he actually saw what was waiting for them.
Max grinned to himself as he watched him go. It hadn’t been easy to transmute imitation ham into the feral mutant pseudo-pig creature that was currently residing in the Sub Station’s freezer, particularly not while using his sister’s wand. (Y’know, just in case there was any truth to that whole ‘tying the signature of an illegal spell to the wand that fired it for periods of up to twenty years’ thing.) In fact, it had been just about the most difficult spell he’d ever attempted on his own. But screwing up on purpose had always been Max’s forte, and once he’d finally gotten it down, it was also easily the most satisfying thing he’d ever done with magic in his short life, too. (And not just because the pseudo-pig thing had turned out looking really gross and cool, either.)
No. It was because, for the first time in his life, Max Russo had a purpose, beyond making sure that everyone’s expectations of him were acceptably low. Something to stand for. Fight for. Care about.
And OK, so that something? Kind of weird. And more than a little gross, if he stopped to think about it too hard. But at the same time, not so much. Because it was them, and it made them happy, and they were the two people he loved most in the entire world.
”Well, duh.”
He wasn’t ready to talk to them about it, yet-and he wasn’t sure he ever would be, because dude, effed up!-but he could do this for them. Would do this for them, because they needed him to, even if they didn’t know it yet. As much of a genius as Justin might have been, and as much of a criminal mastermind as Alex was, neither of them had anything on Max when it came to knowing how to hide in plain sight, or distract people from seeing the truth. After nearly sixteen years, it had more or less become his super power.
And after all, like their Dad had always said: with great power, came great responsibility.
-30-
Part I | Part II
v.
Sitting alone in the dark of the living room, with his feet propped up on the coffee table, Max stared vacantly ahead at the at the blank television screen. His thumbs flew over the PS3 controller in his hands, completely on autopilot, proving his whole theory about muscle memory. But Max barely noticed, being so totally preoccupied with the jumble of thoughts running through his head…which was somewhat of a new experience for him.
And the single most prominent thought he had, the one he kept coming back to? “Well, duh.”
Because, seriously…probably the most surprising thing about all this was how utterly not surprised he felt. Of course Justin and Alex were dating, or in love, or whatever. It wasn’t like this was right out of left field, or anything. Hell, anyone with half a brain who spent more than five minutes together with them could see there was something more going on between them than just sibling rivalry. There always had been. It was plain in the way they always inevitably gravitated towards each other even though they swore up and down that they could barely stand to be in the same room, and the way each one’s life subtly revolved around the other, despite their insistence that they didn’t even want anything to do with one another.
Everybody commented on it, sooner or later. Harper continually called it a love-hate relationship, “or at least a love-antagonize relationship”, much to Alex’s eternal chagrin. Conscience had said once they shared an interesting slap-slap-kiss dynamic, earning Max a scowling admonishment from Justin that he spent too much time surfing TV Tropes. (Because, dude, So Random!? Wicked awesome fetish fuel page!) And even Professor Crumbs had observed to Dad-right after they’d reversed the spell that had turned him into a guinea pig-that the two of them reminded him more than a little of Tracy and Hepburn, or possibly Bonnie and Clyde.
To everyone else, it was remarkable…or, at least, something out of the ordinary enough to be remarked upon. But to Max, it simply…was. A completely normal part of everyday life since the day he’d been born, that the rest of the world just happened to find extraordinary. Y’know, just like magic.
Magic is real, and his older brother and sister are hot for each other? "Well, duh."
The kissing and the cuddling and all the sex stuff, though? That was new, and it was blowing his mind, just a little.
Well…on second thought, maybe not the cuddling, so much. Alex and Justin always did have a tendency to hug it out whenever they made up after a fight, which was often. Or whenever one of them had their heart broken or suffered a setback of any kind. Or whenever they came through a tough scrape together…which again, given Alex’s penchant for messing up, was a pretty regular thing. Or whenever-
OK, so yeah…the cuddling? Not exactly new.
And come to think of it, the kissing wasn’t entirely new, either. Sure, it had been awhile, but when they were kids, how many times had they dressed Max up like a priest so he could pronounce them man and wife? How often had he played the parts of all seven dwarves while Prince Charming woke Snow White from her apple-induced coma? And how many summers had they spent reenacting every scene from the Star Wars movies over and over again on the terrace, even the stupid, boring mushy ones that Max didn’t care about? Hell, now that he stopped to think about it, Alex and Justin had practically been kissing their way through Max’s entire childhood!
The sex stuff, though…that was new, though, wasn’t it? Sure, there’d been plenty of tickle fights. And water balloon fights. And pillow fights. And wrestling in pajamas, or in the pool at the rec center as they made half-hearted attempts to drown each other. And yeah, Alex tended to tackle Justin on the couch, and bounce up and down on him to make him nauseous until she got her way about something. And then there was the way that one of them walked in on the other in the bathroom at least once a month, sometimes more, while Max couldn’t remember either of them having walked in on him, ever…
“Oh, holy crap,” Max groaned, pressing ‘pause’ on the controller and bringing his hands up to his face to grind the heels of his palms into his eyes. Yeah, so even the sex stuff? Not so new. Gross, sure…but not new.
Also, while he was on the subject? Not nearly as gross as it occured to Max it probably should be, either. Not sickeningly wrong, for instance, like the way he felt when Alex ordered pineapple on pizza. And not gag-inducingly disgusting, like when the person who used the stall in the boys’ room before him had forgotten to flush, or he noticed a pube stuck to the bar of soap in the shower. (Ugh, barf.)
No, it was more like that vague sense of embarrassed discomfort that came over him when he caught a glimpse of their parents making out, sometimes, when they thought their kids weren’t looking: revolting, certainly, but oddly, comfortingly right at the same time. Necessary to his existence, even. Like air, or cupcakes. And wow, how messed up was it that he equated the two? (His parents and Justin/Alex, that was, not air and cupcakes. Duh.) In a way, though, it almost made a sick kind of sense. After all, hadn't both been couples for as long as Max could remember?
“Well, duh.”
Man, no wonder he’d always felt like such a third wheel around them. How could he not?
Max heaved a heavy sigh and shook his head as he picked up his controller and pressed ‘pause’ again. Alright, so his brother and sister? Totally dating, or in love, or whatever. Apparently, on some level, he’d always known about it, even if he hadn’t exactly known that he’d known. And surprisingly? He was OK with it, which probably meant he was just as sick in the head as they were.
So what to do about it? Pretend he didn’t know? Act oblivious? Go out of his way to deliberately misread the situation, the way he did with practically everything else in his life? Or-?
Frowning as a sudden thought struck him, Max glanced up at the ceiling just below where he knew Alex’s room to be.
-or was this a chance to prove himself? To be more than just a third wheel? To finally come into his own, and do something that neither Justin nor Alex could do?
“Well, duh.”
A smile spread slowly across Max’s face as he tossed the controller aside on the couch, then stood up and tugged his wand out of the back pocket of his jeans. Justin’s keep-away spell was still in effect, so going upstairs to you-know-where was out of the question, but casting the spell on the floor beneath them should be good enough for what he had in mind. Granted, the last time he’d done this, it hadn’t been on purpose, his powers not being entirely under control at the time, but it ought to work. Well, probably.
Grinning to himself, he raised his arm to aim the tip of his wand at the ceiling, and took a deep breath, trying to figure out how best to word the spell…
vi.
Justin woke first, wincing against the morning sun that shone onto his eyelids through the narrow slats of Alex’s mini-blinds, then again at the pins-and-needles sensation in his arm where it lay pinned between her pillow and the mattress. Curled up next to him, Alex snored lightly, the way she always did, although she was loathe to admit it. And though his arm was screaming at him, Justin spent a few moments just watching her sleep, in awe of how deceptively peaceful and innocent she could look when she wasn’t, y’know, conscious.
Yawning, Justin pressed his lips gently against her temple, then slowly sat up and eased his arm out from beneath her head. He hissed painfully through his teeth as he tried to shake the feeling back into it, then grunted in surprise as Alex swung her own arm at him, jabbing him lazily in the ribs with her elbow.
“Sh’dup,” she muttered sleepily into her pillow. “Too early…sleepin’…”
Justin snorted at her and shook his head. He reached up to scrub his face with both hands in an attempt to wake himself up, then glanced over at the alarm clock on her nightstand to see just how much longer he could let her sleep. Or at least he would have, if the clock was still there. Which it wasn’t, of course, having been thrown across the room at his head the night before.
“Oh, no,” Justin groaned, hurriedly reaching down to throw the sheets off himself. “Alex? Honey, it’s time to get up. Your alarm didn’t go off. I think we overslept.”
“Nggggh,” Alex grunted, reaching down to draw the covers over her head.
“Alex, I mean it! Get a move on!” Justin said loudly, sounding more and more panicked by the second as he rushed towards her bedroom door. “We have to get Max up and get the Sub Station open! Dad’ll flip if one of the regulars tells him that we opened la-“
He broke off suddenly as he opened the door and stared in shock at what lay beyond.
“The hell-?” Blinking, he shook his head sharply, closed the door, then opened it again. “Uh, Alex…?”
“Jus’ five more min’s, mom,” Alex muttered from beneath the covers.
Grimacing in confusion, Justin turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Honey, seriously…I think you’d better come have a look at this.”
“Ugh! God!” Alex growled, angrily thrusting the sheets up and off herself as she sat bolt upright. “Fine, I’m up! Now what the hell is so goddamned important that you won’t stop yammering for two lousy seconds to-“
She stopped in midsentence, her mouth hanging open as Justin stepped aside from the door, opening it wide so that she could see through it. There, where the hallway leading to the bathroom should be, was a long, empty stretch of dusty highway. Next to it, about three meters away, stood a white road sign with a forest green border, rocking gently in the breeze.
‘Welcome to South Dakota,’ it read in red cursive at the top. Then, in green again at the bottom, below a yellow caricature of Mount Rushmore: ‘Great Faces, Great Places.’
“South Dako-?” Alex asked, blinking up at her brother. “Justin, what the hell did you do?”
“Me?! I was just about to ask you the same question!” Justin said.
“I don’t even have my wand, dorkus! And why on God’s green earth would I send us to freakin’ South Dakota?” Alex snorted.
“Who knows why you do anything? You were trying to send Max there just the day before yesterday!” Justin frowned in puzzlement as he stared at the sign, stroking his chin . “Although, I did place a repellent ward on the door last night before I woke you up, just in case. Maybe I screwed it up? Had South Dakota on the brain, or something?”
“No, it wasn’t you,” Alex groaned, wincing and pressing her forehead into Justin’s shoulder as a sudden realization struck her. “It’s Max, egghead. He’s pranking us.”
“Ugh, you’re probably right,” Justin said, casting a glance around the room to locate the wand he'd dropped the night before, when Alex threw her clock at him. “We did kinda have a fight right after we closed last night…”
“And South Dakota’s obviously a dig at me. He must still be pissed that I tried to send him away.” Alex spied the blunt end of his wand sticking out from behind the door, and bent down to scoop it up. “Here, I’ve got it, let me: Though South Dakota’s swell and all, I’d rather exit to the hall.”
And though she twirled the wand in the air as she said it, and the tip of it flared chartreuse, the view through the doorway didn’t change. Justin and Alex blinked at each other before Justin held out his hand for the wand.
”Great Faces, Great Places, return us to our rightful space…es,” he tried, after she’d reluctantly handed it to him. Again, the end of the wand flared brightly, but to no avail.
“Give me that!” Alex snapped, snatching it out of his grasp. “’Space…es?!’ Really?! God, your make ‘em ups are always so lame! You even rhyme like a dork!”
“Hey, it’s not like yours worked either,” Justin grumbled. “Believe it or not, I think Max must have actually used a spell lock.”
“Yeah well, it’ll be a cold day in hell before Max Russo, of all people, manages to out-criminal-genius me,” Alex sneered, waving his wand in the air again. “I’ll just flash us over to his room, then pound on him until he promises to undo it.”
The tip of the wand flared for a third time, only to leave them standing there staring at each other. Still in her room, the road sign rattling gently in the breeze just outside the door.
Over the next several minutes, passing the wand back and forth between them, they tried a few other things in turn-phasing themselves through the wall or the floor, or going out the window-but none of it worked. All roads, it appeared, led to South Dakota.
“Wow,” Justin said, impressed despite himself. “Max really thought this one through, for once.”
“What, seriously?!” Alex snarled in frustration. “So you’re telling me our little brother has really trapped us somewhere at the ass end of Buttmunch, Nowheresville?!”
“Well, no. Technically speaking, we’re actually trapped in your room on Waverly Place,” Justin pointed out. “We haven’t gone anywhere. The door’s just been enchanted to act as a portal, is all. Y’know, just like how the freezer door in the Sub Station leads into the lair, instead of-“
He broke off at Alex’s impatient glare, as she crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
“Yeah, OK,” he amended with a shrug. “For all intents and purposes, until Max decides otherwise or the spell wears off on its own, we are indeed stuck in the middle of Buttmunch, Nowheresville.”
“Well, isn’t that just perfect?” Alex groused, stalking across the room and throwing herself down angrily onto the bed. “As if I’m not grounded enough, as it is? Mom and Dad will completely lose their shit once it gets back to them that we didn’t open the Sub Station today. And you just know it’s me they’re gonna blame. Even if Dad doesn’t lose my wand at Grandma’s, I’m so never getting it back.”
“Er, you don’t think Max would try to run the place by himself, do you?” Justin asked from the doorway, concerned. “Because somehow I think that might actually be worse…”
Lying on her stomach, her arms crossed beneath her chin, Alex cocked a skeptical eyebrow up at him. “What, are you kidding me? Max has probably forgotten we even have a restaurant. I guarantee you he’s sitting on the couch right now, still pretending to play that stupid video game like the little retard he is.”
“Ugh, you really don’t know how much I wish you’d stop using the word ‘retard’,” Justin scolded her automatically, even as he began casting his grey eyes methodically around the room. “Seriously, Alex. It’s like you have no concept of just how offensive it is…”
“Oh, please!” Alex rolled her own eyes towards the ceiling. “Whatever, dude. You might wanna plug your ears and sing ‘lalala’ for a bit, then, because as far as saying offensive things about Max goes, I’m just getting warmed up.”
“Ah, here we go,” Justin said, smiling lightly as his gaze fell upon a framed photo of Harper and Alex that sat on her dresser. Crossing the room in three strides, he picked it up in one hand, and pointed his wand at it with the other. “Yeah, this’ll do nicely.”
“What’re you doing?” Alex asked, frowning.
“The Picture This spell,” Justin replied, twirling his wand around his finger. “It’s relatively simple, low-level scrying magic, the kind of thing I ought to be able to cast in my sleep. So if this doesn’t work, we know he’s somehow managed to cancel out our powers altogether.”
Alex blanched at this, as though the possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. “You really think Max could do that?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Justin shrugged. “Besides, I kind of want to check on him, anyway. Max unsupervised equals fire hazard. Not opening on time could actually be the least of our worries.”
Watching eagerly as Justin recited the spell, Alex breathed a sigh of relief as the tip of his wand flared white, and the image of her and Harper began to swirl and darken in the frame, replaced by a wide view of the Sub Station…which was not only open for business, but actually bustling with customers. Clad in a t-shirt and apron, Max darted from table to table, with pen and order pad in hand.
“Oh no,” Justin groaned, wincing as though the scene before him was actually causing him physical pain. “This can’t possibly end well…”
Getting up on her knees on the bed, Alex leaned on Justin as she peered over his shoulder, and gasped in surprise. “Ohmigod! Is Max actually waiting tables?”
“Apparently, he’s doing everything,” said Justin. He squinted and craned his neck to peer closely into the frame. “Waiting, bussing, making sandwiches…look, some people have their subs, already…”
“And they’re actually eating them!” Alex said in amazement. “On purpose! And nobody’s puking! Or throwing them back at him for getting their orders wrong, or anything! Jesus Christ, Justin…that lady there actually looks like she’s enjoying hers! How the hell is this even possible?!”
“He must be using magic, somehow,” Justin replied, grimacing deeply. “It’s the only explanation. We barely managed with three of us yesterday, and look: it’s easily just as busy now as it was then. I just hope he’s been discreet about it, because if he winds up exposing his powers to a whole restaurant full of mortals, there’s gonna be hell to-“
“Wait wait wait!” Alex squealed, cutting him off as she pointed frantically at the frame. “See that? Is that…is that me?!”
Indeed it was. As Alex and Justin watched, another Alex walked into frame from the left, carrying Max’s bussing tray, and set about clearing Table 9 just seconds after it had been vacated. She glanced up at Max as he passed, on his way back to the kitchen, having just finished taking an order at Table 7.
”Max, Justin says your order for Table 3 is up,” she told him.
”Right on, thanks,” Max grinned, then jerked his head towards the front of the Sub Station. ”I noticed a couple tables in the subway car that could stand to be wiped down, too.”
”I’m on it,” faux-Alex nodded, giving him a tight smile, then gave Table 9 one last quick buff with her dishrag before she hurried out of frame. And side-by-side in her room, somewhere just outside of South Dakota, Justin and the real Alex stared in silence for a long moment, stunned, before Alex turned to her brother and pinched him on the arm, hard.
“OW!” Justin shouted as he jerked away from her, nearly dropping the frame in the process. “What the hell was that for?!”
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t dreaming,” Alex growled, pointing angrily at the frame, “because there is no way in hell I’d ever let Max get away with ordering me to bus tables in anywhere but your sick and twisted imagination!”
“Alex…” Justin sighed, rolling his eyes as he reached up to rub his sore arm.
“No seriously, what the hell?! Bussing tables is his job! I don’t even clean up after myself when I eat there! And did you see how I was dressed? Why the hell do I have on that orange polyester fashion nightmare that Mom made us all wear on vacation? I could have sworn I burned that thing!”
“Well, if I had to venture a guess,” Justin mused, “I’d say Max most likely pulled a duplicate of you out of that photo we all took before we got on the plane to go back home. In fact, I’d almost guarantee that there’s a double of me in the kitchen, too, making sandwiches and dressed exactly the same.”
“Oh, sweet zombie Jesus…” Alex groaned, hanging her head. “This day just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? God, I just hope nobody I know from school comes in and sees us…them…whatever. Of all the pictures to pull us out of, why’d he have to pick that one?!”
“It’s actually a pretty inspired choice, if you think about it,” Justin said thoughtfully, his eyes a thousand miles away as the gears of his giant nerd-brain turned behind them. “You’d just gotten us back after watching us both get sucked up into that freaky tornado thing, remember? And you were so wracked with guilt and grateful we weren’t gone for good…it’s probably the only time in your entire life that he’d actually be able to talk you into bussing tables for him. Heck, I bet you would have agreed to almost any-hmmm.”
“Yeah, relax there, Pervy McPerverson,” Alex snapped as she bumped her hip against his side. “Don’t get any bright ideas. Vacation!Alex, there, is almost a whole year younger than me. She hasn’t completely lost her mind and fallen in love with your dorky butt, yet.”
“Oh, whatever. You were already so into me by that point, and we both know it,” Justin scoffed. He tilted his head to one side and pressed his free hand to his chest, over his heart. ”’Oh Justin-sniffle, sniffle!-you’re everything I’ve ever wanted to be! You make me a better wizard! Please don’t ever leave me…!’”
“HEY!” Alex yelled, and actually swatted at his head. “I thought we agreed you weren’t gonna bring that up, anymore?!”
“Right, right…sorry,” Justin chuckled, holding up one hand to wave her off, even as he struggled to surpress a grin. “Won’t happen again.”
“Argh, this is so typically Max!” Alex snarled. “It doesn’t make any goddamned sense. Why trap us up here, only to clone us and have them help him run the Station instead? He doesn’t come out ahead at all, so why bother?”
“We’re not supposed to know about that last part, though, are we? The duplicates helping him, I mean,” Justin pointed out, then shrugged. “Maybe he just wants us to think he didn’t need us. That he could do it all himself.”
“I…guess?” Alex said. “I mean, we did both kind of drive home the point that we didn’t need him at all, so…”
“So maybe he’s just trying to prove himself,” Justin concluded. “Then again, there is a second possibility…”
“Yeah? Which is…?”
“Well…he did know that we wanted him out of the way this weekend,” Justin said hesitantly, even as he tried to work it out for himself. “That we wanted to be alone together, for some reason…”
Alex blinked at this, then narrowed her eyes at him and snorted. “What, are you trying to say that you think he knows? Because, dude, it’s Max. I had him convinced that you were our butler until he was, like, six.”
“Yeah, I know, but…see, Conscience made this off-hand comment once, a couple months back. About our whole slap-slap-kiss dynamic, or something, just before he got integrated back into Max, and-”
“Oh wow, you too?” Alex said, as she back on her haunches and narrowed her eyes in memory. “Because I didn’t say anything at the time-I mean, we hadn’t actually even told each other yet-but now that you mention it, I definitely got the feeling that Conscience suspected there was something going on. Like, that we had a thing for one another, or whatever.”
“And if Conscience had suspicions, then that means Max did, too. Or does now, anyway. At the very least, he knows something’s up.”
“So, what? You think by doing all this-“ Alex waved her arm vaguely around the room, taking in both their magical window into the Sub Station, and the doorway to South Dakota-“that he’s trying to, like, catch us in the act, or something? See what we do if we think we can get away with it?”
“Well, he did say he was spying on you for Dad, but…this is way too elaborate a plan for Max. And besides, why give us a heads up that he was spying on you in the first place, then?” Justin reached up and scratched his head, considering. “No, the more I think about it, the more I think he’s just trying to kill two birds with one stone…”
“Oh, I’ll show him a dead bird or two,” Alex growled, reaching for Justin’s wand. “One fricasseed turkey, coming right up!”
“Nonono, that’s not what I mean,” Justin said as he grabbed Alex’s wrist to stop her. “I do think he’s honestly aiming to prove himself. But at the same time, maybe he’s also…I dunno…trying help us out, a little? Cut us a break? Give us a chance to, uh… y’know, ‘get down to stuff’?”
“Really,” Alex said, clearly skeptical. “Like, he’s just OK with it, or whatever. This is really what’s going through that big brain of yours.”
“Well, which do you think sounds more like Max?” Justin put to her. “Sell us out, or help us cover?”
Alex pursed her lips in silence for a moment as she considered this. “It has always kind of been the three of us against the world, hasn’t it?”
Justin nodded. “And did Conscience say or do anything to give you the impression that either of them disapproved?”
“No,” Alex admitted. “If anything, I got the feeling that he thought we were…kind of sweet, maybe?”
“Me too,” Justin agreed. “Look, third wheel or not, Max does tend to roll with us, Alex.”
“Agh, dude,” Alex winced. “Seriously. I’m already sleeping with you. Please stop trying to be cool to impress me.”
Justin grinned, and cast one last glance at the scene in the picture frame. Satisfied that the Sub Station wasn’t in any danger of catching on fire, at least not for the next few minutes, he placed it face-down on the dresser, then sat down on the bed at her feet.
“Well, either way, it looks like you and I have managed to fall ass-backwards into at least one day off,” he sighed. “Granted, we’ll either have to spend it cooped up in your room together, or thumbing a ride into Buttmunch, Nowheresville…”
“Cooped up in my-?" Alex propped herself up on her elbows, her eyebrows raised in stunned disbelief. Then, smiling and shaking her head fondly, she sat the rest of the way up and curled her legs beneath her as she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his midsection and laying her head on his shoulder.
“Um, hello?” Alex whispered into his ear, slowly and deliberately, as though she were explaining something to a small child. “Spending the weekend in bed together? Kind of the point of the whole failed ‘get Max out of the house’ scheme. Yes/no?”
“Oh. Hey, yeah,” Justin blinked, even as Alex gently nipped his earlobe, and started trailing tiny kisses down along his jaw. “I mean…after we take some reasonable precautions, of course…”
“Way ahead of you, egghead,” Alex grinned wickedly into his neck. “Check the top drawer of my nightstand. There’s a blindfold and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs in there, too, if you’re up for it.”
Justin looked at her blankly as he leaned over to grab his wand off the dresser. “Sound proofing, Alex. An anti-scrying ward or two. Just because Max may on our side is no reason to be indiscreet.”
“Whatever, Mom,” Alex said, rolling her eyes. Then, smiling as she nuzzled his ear: “Sound proofing, egghead? Planning to be loud, are we?”
“With a blindfold and fuzzy handcuffs in the mix?” Justin grinned as he held up his wand. “Count on it.”
Tilting her chin towards him with his free hand, he kissed her hungrily, the tip of his wand flaring bright orange as he twirled it in the air with the other...
And leaning against the counter of the Sub Station, holding a picture frame in both hands, Max grinned as the live feed from Alex’s room suddenly cut out, to be replaced by a photo of him and his family in their matching vacation outfits, albeit with two of them missing. Well, at least somebody was having a good time this weekend. And he had to admit, they actually were sort of sweet together, in a gross kind of way…
“The tuna melt for Table Six is up, Max,” Vacation!Justin said from the kitchen, where he was making sammiches like a freakin’ mofo in his patterened orange polyester shirt. “You have anything else for me?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I need a sixteen on white, with extra olives on the side for table two,” Max said, setting down the frame and consulting his order pad. “Or, wait…maybe that was a two on white for table sixteen? Man, I should probably start writing some of this stuff down…”
“’Start writing some of this-?’” Vacation!Justin blinked at him through the passthrough. “Max, what have you been using your pad for all afternoon, then?!”
“Oh, check it out! I keep getting lost in Halloween Sorority Party Disaster 4.5, so I’ve been drawing up a map of the sorority house from memory. See?” Max held up his pad so Vacation!Justin could see it, then proudly tapped the corner of it with his pen. “Finally figured out that’s where I left the chainsaw!”
“But…didn’t you say you were playing it from a hint book?” Vacation!Justin asked, puzzled. “Wouldn’t there be a map in there?”
“Oh wow, yeah,” Max blinked. “Man, I didn’t even think to look for one. Well geez, I guess I don’t need these anymore, do I?”
Vacation!Justin stared at him open-mouthed as he tossed his pad and pen over his shoulder, then brushed his hands together as if dusting them off.
“Max! Yes, you do! You were going to use them to write down the-!” Breaking off, Vacation!Justin exhaled sharply and shook his head at his younger brother. “You’re messing with me, right? Tell me you’re messing with me. Because you can’t seriously be this oblivious…”
One corner of Max’s mouth turned up in a smirk, and he shrugged.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But only when I need to be.”
Then, whistling to himself, he turned on his heel to head back to table twelve, to double-check whether or not they wanted olives on their number six.
vii.
Max’s spell lasted until Monday night, just after closing time, giving Justin and Alex two whole, luxurious days to laze around, make love, and just enjoy one another freely in the privacy of her room. Every few hours, food would magically appear on Alex’s desk like clockwork, much to their surprise, reinforcing Justin’s belief that Max was on their side. Funnily enough, though, the only drinks he sent up with the subs were bottles and bottles of Gatorade, as though he were worried that dehydration might become an issue.
If anything, the opposite proved to be true: going to the bathroom was initially a bit of a puzzler, since they couldn’t simply walk down the hall, proving that Max hadn’t thought of absolutely everything. At first Alex was determined to fashion a rudimentary funnel out of sandwich wrap and make use of their scores of empty Gatorade bottles, before a scandalized Justin forced her to reluctantly venture through the door and find a bush by the side of the highway. Fortunately, the blindfold and handcuffs weren’t the only surprises hiding in Alex’s nightstand: it also contained a bottle of warming lube that doubled as hand sanitizer.
“It kind of goes hand in hand with the anal beads,” she explained bashfully, and admitted to having spent some time shopping online with their mom’s credit card in anticipation of their big weekend together, which is how she’d wound up being grounded in the first place. “You’d be amazed what you can find on Amazon.”
And then Justin asked her how they worked, and they didn’t talk for awhile. Well, not in complete sentences, anyway.
It was kind of a bittersweet moment when the ”Great Faces, Great Places” sign started to shimmer like a desert mirage in her doorway, gradually fading from view to reveal the upstairs hallway. Though sad to have to return to the real world, at the same time they were sore, spent and beyond sated. And the idea of actually being able to take a shower after two days of near-constant sticky sweatiness was heavenly. They raced each other down the hall to be first, then tumbled in together, and brazenly made love one last time, slowly and quietly, under the rush of the faucet. Then they toweled one another off, retreated to their separate bedrooms to get dressed, and met each other at the top of the stairs to creep down together, unsure of what awaited them.
Max sat alone in the living room, slumped on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, chin propped on his hand as he stared glumly at the dark TV screen. He barely looked up as his siblings sat down on either side of him.
“Oh, hey guys," he sighed.
Justin and Alex exchanged a look of concern over the top of his head before she spoke up. “Everything OK, Maxie?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he shrugged. “Except I just finished the game, and the ending? It sucked sweaty donkey sac. It’s not even an ending really. I mean, you don’t even find out the secret behind the midget’s mask! The whole thing’s just a long, boring commercial for the next movie!”
He heaved a heavy sigh of disappointment, and tossed aside the hint book that was lying open in his lap. “Man, it’s gonna be such a waste of time and money when I can finally buy it in three years.”
Frowning, Justin opened his mouth to point out that he didn’t have to buy it if he didn’t want to, but Alex waved him off and pointedly jerked her head at Max, reminding him that there were more important things to discuss at the moment. Justin nodded at her, and awkwardly cleared his throat.
“Max, we, uh…we wanted to talk to you before Mom and Dad got home,” he said, “about everything that happened this weekend.”
Max blinked up at him. “Why, what happened? We worked ourselves to half to death at the Sub Station, you guys did your whole weird slap-slap-kiss routine the whole time, and I wasted two days doing something stupid that most people would probably think was completely insane. Sounds like your average weekend on Waverly Place to me.”
He shrugged, then, and turned back to face the TV with a characteristically blank expression on his face. And for a second-just a second-they almost bought it, just like always. But, for once, they didn’t roll their eyes or shake their heads at his practiced obliviousness, or facepalm over his apparent stupidity. Instead, they scrutinized him as they never had before, looking at their younger brother through narrowed eyes as though really seeing him for the first time.
“It wasn’t stupid or insane, Maxie,” Alex quietly grinned, her voice thick with emotion as she held her arms out and drew him into a hug. “In fact, it’s just about the sweetest, most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for either of us. Thank you.”
“Yeah buddy, thanks," Justin added, awkwardly laying a hand on Max’s shoulder. “We really appreciate it. Seriously.”
“Uh…OK?” Max said uncertainly over Alex’s shoulder, as he glanced from her to Justin and back. “Listen, if it means this much to you to avoid crummy movie tie-ins, then you’ll want to stay the hell away from the Avatar game, too. Because, man, that thing? Big steaming pile of crap.”
“Wait, what?” Frowning, Alex pulled away and held him at arm’s length, one eyebrow raised. “What are you talking about?”
“Video games, duh,” Max replied. “What are you talking about?”
Alex blinked at this, then looked past him to shoot a look of confusion at Justin.
“Max, it’s OK,” Justin chuckled. “We know that you know.”
“Oh, right on,” Max said, grinning over his shoulder at him. “Uh, am I supposed to know that I know what you know that I know, though? Because, honestly? I don’t know that I do…”
Justin’s eyebrows knit themselves together in confusion, and his lips actually started moving silently as he tried to work this out for himself. Alex rolled her eyes and grunted in frustration. Reaching out to cup Max’s chin in her hand, she turned his face back towards her.
“Max, seriously,” she said. “We talked about it, and we’re totally cool with you knowing. We trust you, more than anybody. You don’t have to play dumb, for once.”
”Hello!” Jerry’s voice called suddenly from downstairs, causing all three Russo children to freeze in their seats. ”Anybody home?”
“Hey, somebody’s gotta do it, right?” Max said quietly, with a wink. He reached out to give her hand a quick squeeze before he leaned over the back of the couch towards the stairs. “We’re all up here, Dad!” he called.
“Ungh!” Jerry grunted, red-faced and out of breath as he struggled to navigate up the spiral staircase into the living room, while dragging the first of his wife’s bags behind him. “I still don’t understand what your mother needed all this stuff for. And why the hell do we have so many twisty stairs in this place, anyway?”
Justin, being who he was, leapt up off the couch immediately and hurried over to help. Alex waited until he was already halfway there before she stood up herself, as though she’d wanted to help, but Justin had beaten her to it. Max didn’t even take his feet off the coffee table.
“Thanks, son,” Jerry said as Justin took the suitcase from him. “Wow, I thought for sure we’d come home and find you kids all still cleaning up the Sub Station after such a busy weekend, but it looks pretty spiffy down there. What, did you guys close up early tonight, or something?”
“Nah, usual time,” Max replied smoothly, even as both Justin and Alex turned to look at him. “Alex helped me bus today, so it went a lot faster than usual.”
“She did?!” Jerry asked, staring at Alex in disbelief. “But she doesn’t even clean up after herself…”
“That’s nothing, Daddy,” Alex beamed. “Max waited tables all weekend. And he was awesome at it! You should have seen him!”
Jerry blinked. “He…what?”
“It’s true, Dad,” Justin said, nodding sagely. Then, off his father’s look of skepticism: “No, really. There are witnesses, I swear.”
Jerry looked blankly at each of his kids in turn, incredulous. “Wait, so Alex was bussing, and Max was competently waiting tables… so, is this Bizarro World I’ve come back to, or something? Because I’m almost afraid to ask whether Bizarro!Justin remembered to make the deposit, or not.”
Justin’s face fell, as all the color drained from it. “Uh…”
“Dad, c’mon,” Max scoffed, a little more loudly than was absolutely necessary. “It’s Justin. Of course he made the deposit. Duhr.”
“I did?” Justin blinked. Then, off Alex’s look of exasperation: “Uh, I mean, I did! But only because Max…um…made me.”
“Made you,” Jerry repeated, looking at Max in surprise. “Really.”
“Oh, totally,” Alex broke in quickly, before Justin had an aneurism, or something. “Max really came through for us in a big, bad way, Daddy. In fact, I think it’s fair to say we probably wouldn’t have done it this weekend, without his help.”
“Heh,” Max and Justin grinned, almost in unison.
Jerry frowned. “Why is that funny?”
All three Russo children glanced at each other guiltily for a second, before turning their eyes back to their father.
“Uh, it’s funny,” Justin stammered, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck nonchalantly as he flushed a deep shade of red, “because of the, um…inherent irony-“
“Yeah, nobody cares, egghead,” Alex cut him off, chuckling as she threw her arms around Jerry and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Welcome home, Daddy. We’ll go help Mom bring up the rest of the luggage, OK?”
“Wait, you’re actually volunteering to help, now?” Jerry said, gaping at her. “Man, I really have come back to Bizarro World, haven’t I?”
Alex rolled her eyes as she pulled away from her father, and let out a sigh. “Seriously, people, I’m almost eighteen. Is it so incredibly hard for everyone to grasp that maybe I’m actually maturing, here? Besides, if this were Bizarro World, wouldn’t Justin be, like, cool and good-looking?”
“Oh, har-har,” Justin said flatly, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her towards the stairs. “You am so funny, Alex. Me am laughing hysterically. C’mon.”
“Dork!” Alex giggled as they went bounding down the stairs, one after the other, without so much as a shove or an elbow to the ribs. Looking for all the world like two people who were content, even happy, to have spent the entire weekend in one another’s presence. Jerry watched after them, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, then reached out and snagged the back of Max’s collar as he tried to follow them.
“Hold up there a second, double-oh-seven,” he said pointedly. “So what’d you find out?”
“Huh?” Max said, staring at him blankly. “Oh, you mean the-? Yeah, nothin’, sorry.”
“Nothing?!” said Jerry. “After three whole days? Really?”
Max shrugged. “Well, nothing worthwhile, anyway. Turns out the whole thing’s just a crummy tease. If you want, just read the hint book and skip playing the game altogether. In hindsight, I wish that’s what I’d done.”
“Hint b-? Max, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Video games, duh!” Max replied. “What are you talking about?”
“Alex and Justin!” Jerry yelled in annoyance. Then, with a quick glance over his shoulder at the stairs, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “You were supposed to find out what’s up with them, this weekend! Your mission, remember?”
“Oh, that! Yeah, that turned out to be an even bigger bust than the game, actually. I dunno where you got the idea that they might be in kazoos, or whatever-”
“Cahoots, Max,” Jerry said patiently, closing his eyes. “The word is ‘cahoots’.”
“Well, whatever you thought they might be in, you were way off,” Max said.
“What, really?” Jerry asked. “There were no parties? No boys? No magic? No…shenanigans?”
“Not that I saw,” Max said. “Honestly? It was pretty boring. Alex barely left her room for two days, and for all I saw him outside of the Sub Station, Justin might as well have been in another state, entirely.”
“Oh,” said Jerry, sounding almost disappointed. “So you’re telling me that you guys opened and closed the Sub Station on time every day, Alex endured her punishment responsibly, like an adult, and there were absolutely no wacky hi-jinx of any kind to be had, magical or otherwise.”
“Pretty much,” Max nodded. “Like I said: boring.”
“Huh,” Jerry said, shaking his head. “Bizarro World. It’s the only explanation.”
“Or,” Max said, holding up one finger, “maybe Alex is right, and we’re all finally growing up and acting mature, and junk.”
Jerry considered this for a moment. “Yeah, I’m really more inclined to go with my theory. Listen, can you go get Alex’s wand back from wherever you hid it? I should probably give it back to her tonight, given that she inexplicably didn’t break any actual rules this weekend…”
“Ohhhhhh yeah, about that,” Max said with a wince. “Remember how you told me to stash it somewhere she wouldn’t find it? But the lair seemed too obvious, right? So I…uh…hid it in the freezer downstairs, instead. Because, seriously, how often do we even use that door for that?”
Afraid that he knew where this was going, Jerry’s shoulders slumped. “And...?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you,” Max cautioned him. “Because what Alex’s wand did to Grandma’s tomatoes that one time? Walk in the park compared to what it’s done to the imitation ham…”
“Uggggh, Max!” Jerry groaned, reaching up to cover his face with his palm. He heaved a long-suffering sigh as he shook his head and rolled his eyes at his youngest child. “So much for Bizarro World. I should have known an uneventful weekend was too much to hope for from you kids.”
“You do have to admit, though,” Max said, “on a scale of one to ‘Uncle Kelbo is secretly Shakira’, this actually ranks pretty low.”
“The fact that we even need a scale like that disturbs me more than you’ll ever know, but you do have a point,” Jerry groused. “Fine. I’ll go get Justin. You grab your wand and meet us downstairs by the freezer so we can take care of this before your mother finds out.”
And just like that, Jerry was headed down the stairs, focused on fixing yet another one of his kids’ magical snafus, his suspicions about Justin and Alex-whatever they might be-completely forgotten, at least for the moment. Probably longer, once he actually saw what was waiting for them.
Max grinned to himself as he watched him go. It hadn’t been easy to transmute imitation ham into the feral mutant pseudo-pig creature that was currently residing in the Sub Station’s freezer, particularly not while using his sister’s wand. (Y’know, just in case there was any truth to that whole ‘tying the signature of an illegal spell to the wand that fired it for periods of up to twenty years’ thing.) In fact, it had been just about the most difficult spell he’d ever attempted on his own. But screwing up on purpose had always been Max’s forte, and once he’d finally gotten it down, it was also easily the most satisfying thing he’d ever done with magic in his short life, too. (And not just because the pseudo-pig thing had turned out looking really gross and cool, either.)
No. It was because, for the first time in his life, Max Russo had a purpose, beyond making sure that everyone’s expectations of him were acceptably low. Something to stand for. Fight for. Care about.
And OK, so that something? Kind of weird. And more than a little gross, if he stopped to think about it too hard. But at the same time, not so much. Because it was them, and it made them happy, and they were the two people he loved most in the entire world.
”Well, duh.”
He wasn’t ready to talk to them about it, yet-and he wasn’t sure he ever would be, because dude, effed up!-but he could do this for them. Would do this for them, because they needed him to, even if they didn’t know it yet. As much of a genius as Justin might have been, and as much of a criminal mastermind as Alex was, neither of them had anything on Max when it came to knowing how to hide in plain sight, or distract people from seeing the truth. After nearly sixteen years, it had more or less become his super power.
And after all, like their Dad had always said: with great power, came great responsibility.
-30-
Part I | Part II