"This is all your fault. Again."

"That's what you always say," Alex said. She didn't look up from her spot on the couch, picking at her nails, but she could still feel Justin's glare at her from across the room.

"I always say it because it's always your fault!" Justin said. His voice was getting a little squeaky, like it did when he was getting extra mad at her.

"You know what, maybe it is usually my fault, but you didn't have a problem with our plan an hour ago."

"An hour ago I wasn't grounded," Justin said. His voice sounded different now - less mad and more depressed - so Alex decided to look over at him. He was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, head resting in his hands.

"Whatever, Justin, big deal." Alex made a face at him. "I get grounded all the time, it's not the end of the world or anything."

"Not to you, maybe." The words were muffled a little thorugh his arms.

"So you don't get to see your precious girlfriend for a few days. I promise, you'll live." Alex paused thoughtfully. "I think I liked you better when you didn't even pretend to have a life."

"It's not about her," Justin said. "We broke up anyway, you don't know what you're talking about."

"See that? I like you better already!"

"I can't believe I agreed to your stupid scheme. Your stupid shortcuts never work."

"Yeah, I was surprised by that, too," Alex mused. "Why did you agree to it? I mean, I'm missing an awesome party with Harper, but what are you missing out on? A robot convention?" She snorted.

"Don't be stupid," Justin said. He moved off the stool and sat down in the chair across from her. "First of all, that was in November. Second of all, that lasts like three days. Third of all, Dad would have let me off work early for that anyway."

Alex rolled her eyes. "Fine, then. What was it?"

There was a long pause. It was kind of awkward. Finally Justin said, "A study group. For chem. I just wanted to get there early to bone up."

"Wow," Alex said. "You know, I'm normally the last person to recommend telling the truth, but you should never, ever lie. Ever. For your own good. For the good of humanity."

"Well, we can't all have your natural talent," Justin said. Normally, Alex would take that as a compliment -- she was a good liar, and she was proud of it -- but Justin said it mean and snotty, like there was something wrong with her.

"Hey," Alex said, and then again, when he didn't look at her, until she had his attention. She threw a pillow at him. "What is your problem?"

Justin frowned at the pillow. "I can lie, you know."

"Justin."

"I lie about wizarding stuff every day to mortals."

"That's not the same thing."

Justin looked at her. His mouth was in a straight line. "I lie to you every day."

Alex felt cold somewhere in her chest, or maybe her stomach. "What-- what do you mean?"

He was still looking at her. She pulled her legs up on the couch, underneath her, curling up a little tighter. "Justin?"

"Forget it," Justin said, shaking his head. He turned his head so he wasn't looking at her anymore, just staring at the ceiling. Alex kept watching him.

It probably wasn't fair for her to feel betrayed. It didn't make sense. She lied to him all the time. She tricked him all the time. And they were brother and sister, and teenagers, of course they wouldn't tell each other everything. But that wasn't what Justin had said. He'd said lied. Every day.

She'd never thought about it before, but if she had, she would have guessed Justin was the person who wouldn't ever lie to her.

"Alex," Justin said, eyes still on the ceiling. "Forget I said anything."

"Yeah, sure," Alex said. "Whatever." She shrugged and looked away.

*****

Technically, the terms of this grounding included not being able to do magic, but Alex had always been a firm believer that what people didn't know, couldn't hurt them. This was especially true when it came to parents. Really, what they meant was not to do magic in front of them, where they would have to deal with it and punish her. Waking up at two a.m. and sneaking into her brother's room for a secret errand - well, that wasn't any of their business. They wouldn't want to know anyway. There was nothing wrong with that.

Watching Justin sleep probably counted as kind of creepy, Alex thought, but it was nice to see him when he didn't look all know-it-all and smug. He just looked... sweet. Still, she didn't have a lot of time, and Justin was never that heavy of a sleeper.

"Okay," Alex said. She took a deep breath and flicked her wand. "Justin's secrets make me blue, so show me something hidden and true!"

As soon as she finished the last word, Justin's eyes snapped open. Alex shrieked (just a little bit, though, not loud or anything) and jumped back a step.

"It's you," Justin said softly. He smiled at her in a sleepy grin and scooted over in his bed, closer to a wall, and flipped his covers half down. "Come on."

She hesitated a few seconds before she climbed into his bed beside him. She lay down carefully, making sure not to infringe on his side of the bed, but as soon as she was settled, Justin's arms came around her, pulling her in closer and pressing them against each other.

"Missed you," Justin said. His chin was hooked on top of her head, so his breath was against her hair and her face fit into the crook of his neck. "Missed you so much," Justin repeated, and she could feel it when he pressed his mouth light against her hair and suddenly she was aware of how they were touching, all the way down their bodies were connected, their feet laced together, her boobs against his chest, her stomach against... him.

Alex swallowed hard. "Justin. Are you awake? Justin?"

"Shut up, Alex," Justin said. "We'll talk in the morning." His hand rubbed circles against her back and her hip, just under the hem of her pajama stop, and it was half comforting and half not comforting at all, sending little sparks all through her from her head to her toes.

"Go to sleep," Justin said, whispered, really, his voice low and quiet and almost a grumble, even. "Go back to sleep."

When she woke up, it was to the sound of Mom calling her to get her butt out of bed before she was late for school, already, and Alex was in her own bed, her own sheets and bedspread and pillows, perfectly alone. She felt like she had just been completely winded, and she lay in bed, panting at the sudden pain in her chest, until Mom came up and pulled her out of bed herself.

*****

It took Justin until third period before he remembered the night before.

When he remembered it, he tripped over his own shoes and fell flat on his face. It wasn't too unusual for him, so no one really noticed - which was good, since he was hyperventilating and getting hard at the same time. Getting hard. Which was the whole problem, and really, what was wrong with him?

But Justin was a smart guy, and he knew that the answer was really simple: everything, basically. Everything, because he wanted...

He made himself stop thinking then. He'd shown Alex; there was no way she couldn't realize what it was he wanted. And why had he done that? He'd been dreaming about it for a long time, and lately it had started to bleed over into reality, so that when he looked at her he thought - sick things, really sick things. So he'd buckled down, layered himself so that he never, never showed her what he was really thinking anymore.

But Alex wasn't stupid. Kind of dumb, maybe, in the way where she just had other priorities. But stupid? No way. Not his Alex. She had to have noticed.

Which meant, he thought, staring at his uneaten sandwich during lunch, that she'd had something to do with last night.

- well. Aside from being in his bedroom, anyway.

It came to him during seventh period, right before the bell. Magic. Of course she'd used magic. She couldn't have known what she was looking for - or maybe she did, and she just didn't know what he was going to reveal. That was the problem; he didn't know how much she knew, what spell she'd used.

He thought about it during eighth period. If she suspected, he thought, it was over. She'd never speak to him again, and he'd deserve it. She just wanted her brother back; but if he'd ever been able to be just her brother, the vacation had ended that.

The final bell rang and he had no more answers than he'd started with. He was humiliated and fucking scared - because now he had to go home, had to face her, knowing that he'd revealed pretty much everything he hated about himself.

Plus, a whole school day had gone by and he hadn't learned anything. He was scaring himself.

She was lying on the couch when he got home. "Do you think I could pull that off?" she said, pointing at the T.V.

A couple was making out; he thought it might be a soap opera. Or at least, he would have thought it, if he'd been able to think at all. "What? The kissing? Do you have a boyfriend?" He was talking too fast, too neurotic. God, she knew. She knew.

But she just rolled her eyes. "God, no, you spaz. The dress. That would look good on me, right?"

"I don't..." He looked down at her. He knew exactly what she felt like now; he wanted to touch her in a way that hurt. He was lying more than ever now. "I think," he said finally, "that you should probably never wear that kind of thing. because you should be a nun. Who never talks to boys."

Smooth, Justin. Very smooth.

But something sparked in her eyes - she almost looked mad. "Maybe I won't, then," she said, turning back to the T.V. in icy silence.

"Alex? ...come on, Alex," Justin said. 'No boys' meant him, now? That was -

Weird, actually. Did she count him as a boy? "Fine, then," he said. "I'll get more done with you being quiet anyway."

"You are so full of it," she said immediately.

He couldn't help but laugh, his guard down. Her face lit up in response. "See? I'm great. You don't have to lie to me."

He froze. She didn't know what she was saying, of course, but - "I have to go upstairs," he said, and did, taking them two by two.

He did his homework and called down when Mom tried to get him to have dinner. At eight o'clock someone knocked on his door. "Go away, Alex," he said.

"No," she said. "Let me in."

He didn't answer, sitting at his computer chair, unable to move. If she said anything else he'd have to let her in. Not that she'd make him, or anything - he just wouldn't be able to keep her out. He never could.

But she went away silently. He told himself he was glad and got into his oversized flannel pajamas, already exhausted.

He closed his eyes at nine and stopped trying to keep the images out. They weren't nearly as x-rated as, like, porn... but they were Alex. He couldn't help it. Something had broken in those few minutes he'd stared at her without knowing she was his sister. He'd cared about her before, maybe a little more and maybe in a little bit of a different way than he should have, but nothing too major - not until he'd forgotten her. Then all he'd seen was a beautiful girl, someone who loved him, and he loved her back reflexively, without even thinking about it.

But it was wrong. And so he was bright red with shame even as he thought about her in her pajamas, curling up next to him, kissing him - touching him carefully, more comforting than anything else, except that she was running her fingers all over him, making him hope she'd never move away.

"I love you, you know," dream-Alex said. "You're a total loser dork, but I love you."

This was how it had gone last night, and God, what did it say about him that this fantasy was just like that, with them pressed chest-to-chest? He'd been able to feel her breasts, and he'd wanted - he still wanted -

"Just a kiss," he whispered. That was all he'd take. Just a kiss, or maybe two, but just kisses...just kisses. He exhaled raggedly. All he wanted was to kiss her.

"Yeah, you would say that, you prude," dream-Alex said. She was different from him, not scared at all - ready to go the second she climbed in with him, because his Alex never lied to herself, never hid from herself. She was brave and smart in ways a hundred books couldn't teach Justin to be.

And it was still true, in this fantasy, that he'd never take more than a kiss - but dream-Alex took way more, as much as she wanted, and Justin let her because he'd let her do anything, because he loved her. And he could never, never stop.

He didn't touch himself because there was a line there, a huge line drawn with two thick permanent markers and colored in with bright red Sharpie. It was a line he was never going to cross. So he lay there, completely still, hard but not doing anything about it, just picturing Alex, over and over again, kissing her in her mind like he never would when his eyes were open.

"Alex," he whispered.

"Justin?"

Scared. Loud. Not like dream-Alex at all, and - he opened his eyes.

She was standing there, staring at him with wide eyes, nothing like dream-Alex, nothing like normal Alex.

He couldn't say anything. What was there to say?

After a tense moment of staring, Alex's expression cleared. "God," she said. "This is so gross."

He was pretty sure he was going to die, right then and there. "I don't - I - you did magic." He latched onto it, because his rage let him forget his hard-on. "You did magic! We're grounded! You can't do magic!"

"You are such a goody-goody two-shoes jerk," Alex said, losing that soft lost expression and jutting her chin out. "Like you've never used magic when Mom and Dad told you not to? Please. You're forgetting that I know you, Justin."

Except - he could tell it hit her at the same time it hit him. "No," Justin said. "I don't think you do."

Her eyes went downward. His cheeks turned bright red.

"Yeah," she said. "Well. You know what? I hate liars. Liars suck. Roll over."

He was so ready to die that he thought he heard her wrong. "What?"

"Roll over," she said again. "As in, get on your side. Just do it, okay?" she added when he didn't move.

He obeyed, because - well, he kind of owed her this. And part of him was hoping, tiny and secret and ashamed. Part of him really was hoping.

She slid in behind him and wrapped her arms around him immediately, like she'd done it before. He just stopped himself from asking something really stupid and jealous that would make her leave, and instead just leaned back against her.

"This is going to be so weird," Alex said, lips moving against the back of his pajama top. "Also, these pajamas are so ugly, Justin, seriously."

"What's this?" he said, ignoring the crack about the pajamas. He was a straight-A student; he knew how to get to the point.

"You know," she said. "This. The thing. That we have."

She was blazing her way forward way more bravely than Justin thought he ever would, so he really couldn't get crabby at her for sounding a little scared. He was scared, too. And maybe...if he was careful, he'd get his Alex back. And this time, maybe he wouldn't have to lie to her.

"Yeah," he said, pressing back against her. Her hand moved to splay on his stomach, pushing his pajama top up so that her fingers were warm against his stomach. "Okay," he said. "This thing."

"This thing," Alex agreed, and kissed his spine.