Harper

And they're hands fit together.

They always have.

Palms press together tightly and fingers twine around one another before locking into place, sometimes squeezing so hard that it almost hurts and other times they're barely gripping at all.

You know that your hand would never fit together like that with his.

His was strong (surprisingly so because he really was a nerd) and long, powerful fingers easily locked together with her graceful, slender ones (even if you didn't know she was an artist, you'd be able to tell by her hands).

It's like two magnets whenever they're by each other and their hands meet as soon as they're close enough to touch.

And it wasn't even a conscious decision.

It wasn't like they saw each other and thought 'Oh, let's hold hands' (at least they didn't at the beginning, they might now, who knew?) but whenever they got near each other they had to touch somehow, and hands were the easiest.

It took you a while to notice, they did it so discreetly unless they felt they had a good enough excuse. It was just a brush of fingertips against each other, feather light, but it was enough to leave him grinning and her smiling all day.

After a while, you got used to it (yeah, so you used to think it was weird, but they were weird, so what did it really matter?) and it stopped hurting in your chest (a sharp pain that ached once it left) when he ignored you and fought with her and then walked away, they're hands swinging out at just the right moment and touching briefly before they both went about their days.

That's how you figured it out.

How you realized that they're as close to soul mates as anyone is ever going to be and that they love each other in one of those 'forever and always' kind of ways.

And for a while after you realized, you couldn't even look at them without cringing and feeling a strong desire to run from the room. They wouldn't look you in the eyes either, because they knew that you had figured it out and for a while you didn't see them touch at all, not even their hands.

And they looked incomplete.

So you came into the Substation and walked up to Alex, pulling her into a tight hug and not commenting when you felt her warm tears on your shoulder.

Justin walked down the stairs and you smiled at him, a sad smile that he returned before he crossed over the two of you and wrapped the both of you into a hug.

The three of you stood together there for immeasurable moments, and you only pulled away when you no longer felt Alex's slight shaking from her sobs and Justin's grip had lightened from bruising to simply tight. You backed away from them slightly, smiling again at them before lightly kissing their foreheads and striding from the shop.

You became Alex's best friend again, closer than you ever were before because now she really wasn't hiding anything from you. No secrets about magic or brothers that had somehow become more.

You wonder sometimes if the two have a correlation, if they would've gotten together without the bond that magic had given them, without the closeness that came from her mistakes and his quick fixes.

But then, you think about it, and you decide that they probably would have become whatever they were anyways.

Because they're hands fit together like matching puzzle pieces do.

A perfect match.

Juliet

It's the way he says her name.

That's how you know.

No matter what the situation is, whenever he says her name he speaks it smoothly, hope and love easily distinguishable along with a strong undercurrent of affection (but only if you know him, because he's gotten pretty good at masking it with fake annoyance).

He says it like it's his right.

You were so confused the first time you saw them together. You had thought they had been exes, but then he had introduced her as his sister.

It had taken all 300 years of your lifetime to keep the shock off your face.

She had came down the stairs while the two of you were hugging hello and you swear you saw jealousy flash in her eyes before she said something witty (you were too distracted by wondering why your boyfriend's ex was here to remember what she said) and he had shot something back and you had never seen his eyes shine like that before. Even when he asked you out, even after your first kiss, and even later when the two of you told each other you were in love, you had never gotten him to look and sound like he did when he was with her.

He smiled brighter and laughed louder and talked more.

But he also glared fiercer and argued more aggressively and his remarks were biting in a way that surprised you, because you didn't know that he could be like that.

When he was with you, he was gentle and romantic and just a little bit nerdy.

When he was with her, he was peaceful and furious, loving and hateful, cruel and kind.

When he was with her, he was everything.

She got all of him.

He gave her all of him.

It was as if he were put on this earth for no other reason than to love her.

Which, yeah, should've freaked you out, but you'd been alive a long time and seen stranger things.

You knew that you weren't ever going to be what he wanted (what he really wanted, not what he said he wanted, because the two were totally separate things).

You could be enough, but you couldn't be everything, not like she was.

Not like they were.

And you noticed it the first time that you saw them together, but it got clearer over time and you knew that you should stop dating him (every time that you felt her glare burn into you, the urge to break up got a little stronger) but you liked him and you wanted whatever you could get for as long as possible.

But still.

He isn't ever going to love you like he loves her.

Because he says Alex like it's his favorite word in the whole entire world and his days aren't complete unless they see each other and he says it at least once.

And he gives her all of himself.

Lets her all the way in and needs her in a way he doesn't need anything else, magic or you or even oxygen.

That's why you noticed that they were kind of perfect together.

Because he said her name the way he did.

Full of love and like and want and need.

He said it like it was everything to him.

Like she was everything to him.

Theresa/Mom

They made each other better people.

There were some couples that you liked separately, but when they were together, you kind of hated them. These people that were fine as individuals, but then when they were together they fought and they were bitter and no relationship should be like that.

And they weren't like that at all.

That's how come you decided they were going to last, the reason that you decided to let things go, to not comment when you noticed that they both came out of his room on visits home from college (where they somehow managed to get an apartment together) and to just let it go.

Because they were good people on their own.

She was your daughter, devious and evil but she had a good heart and she helped when it was necessary and you knew that she was a good person, no matter how hard she tried to hide it from the world.

He was cute and gentlemanly and witty and chivalrous in that Disney Prince kind of way, and so he was a little bit of a nerd, but really that wasn't a bad thing (and no, you just aren't just saying that because you're his mother).

So you loved them separately, and it wasn't just because you had to, but because they were wonderful people.

But together, they somehow got even better.

They made each other nearly glow with happiness and she made him looser, funnier while at the same time he made her kinder, more thoughtful. And he opened doors for her (even though she rolled her eyes and stated with a Jus-tin that she could do it herself) and she baked him cookies when he was sad (he claimed they were poisoned but you saw him eating them at midnight after he thought everyone had gone to bed) and they balanced one another out so perfectly.

They were two halves of one whole.

And you know that you should be freaked out, disgusted, something, but you just couldn't bring yourself to be.

They needed each other, they always had. Ever since they were little, they had been partners, working and fighting and doing everything with only each other.

So you tried to be okay with it.

You tried to be okay with seeing their hands intertwine with one another and the two of them have hugs that were too tight and lasted too long and once you walked into the lair and saw them pressed up against one another, lips almost touching and that was probably the hardest moment of your life.

But then you saw Alex after Justin left for college, and your baby girl (she would always be your baby girl) looked so broken and lost that you hugged her and sent her off to his place for the weekend and when she came back grinning, you smiled too and hugged her again, tears filling your eyes.

You should feel disgusted or angry or something.

But they needed each other.

And they made one another better people.

And you could understand that, at the very least.

Max

You had been there, with them, for your entire life (and the majority of theirs, but you were the younger sibling).

He was your big brother. He fixed your messes and helped you out when you asked for it and looked out for you even when you didn't ask for it. He tried to teach you about responsibility and morals and the differences between right and wrong,

She was your big sister. She mocked you and pulled pranks on you and taught you everything that you know about lying and secrets and sneaking around. She looked out for you too, in a different way, but it was the best way she knew.

The three of you grew old (okay, maybe not old, but whatever, 18 is freaking ancient) and moved out, Justin going to Yale (of course) Alex going to some art school in California (and she didn't drop out) and you went to NYU (you loved New York, so why leave?).

And finally, finally, the three of you were going to be together again (and yeah, you are kind of bummed that the first time your seeing them in forever is just to see which one of you is the best at magic).

They were going to stay with you, neither one of them wanted to go home because mom would cry all over them and ask them to move back to New York and dad would make them work down in the shop.

Justin got there first, knocked lightly on the door and you answered and you hugged and there was conversation about your family and everything was comfortable and it felt like home.

Then she walked in (no, she didn't knock and no, you weren't surprised).

She came through the door, wearing brightly colored fashionable clothes, a smirk that you were surprised to find you missed resting on her lips.

You remember them looking at each other (and you patiently waited for them to pay attention to you again, because it had always been Alex and Justin, even after you were born) and their eyes lit up. They hadn't seen each other since her high school graduation (to your knowledge at least) and apparently they had missed each other.

A broad grin slid onto her face (and you still hadn't seen anyone make her smile like that except for him) and she was moving forward, hand reaching for his outstretched one, and a smile lit up his face as he pulled her into a tight hug. Her arms locked around his back and his slid around her shoulders and you just rolled your eyes, going into the kitchen to grab some orange soda.

When you came back out, they were sitting on the couch (closer than necessary and you should find that weird but as you had already said, they were Alex and Justin) and she was laughing while he told her some story.

You just looked at them for a couple minutes before Alex noticed you and jumped up from the couch, pulling you into a hug as you stared at the disappointment now covering Justin's face.

You hugged her back and the three of you sat down, laughing and talking and reminiscing, having come to some unspoken agreement to not speak about the giant elephant in the room (because really, Justin knew everything and you were pretty creative and Alex was just a natural at magic, so really, who knew what was going to happen?)

Around three in the morning you were sprawled out on the couch, both of them curled up on the floor, with some lame horror movie playing on the television and you fell asleep to the sound of Alex's laughter.

When you woke up and looked down, the two of them were so intertwined with one another that it took you a minute to actually figure out what body part belonged to which sibling.

You got up, yawning as you stepped over them and starting coffee in the kitchen, and not even two minutes later they both stumbled in, blindly reaching for the coffee they could smell brewing. You laugh as you give them some and a little while later the three of you are heading towards the substation.

Today is the day.

You get there quickly and then before you know it the competition is starting and all of a sudden you feel this rush whoosh through your body and that's it.

You're the family wizard.

They're both grinning at you, high-fiving each other and laughing at their dad's face.

You freeze for a second, trying to understand what just happened.

But then it hits you, like a hammer banging against your temple or lightning striking you and you breathe out a soft oh of understanding.

Moments flash through your head, Justin smiling at Alex like she's his whole world and Alex doing something stupid for the sole purpose of getting Justin to pay attention to her. You see them sleeping on your floor, limbs tangled and souls intermingled (which you couldn't actually see but it was more of something that you just knew). All these flashes of time, these random moments of life, crowding your mind until it's just so obvious.

They used to be Alex and Justin and somewhere along the way they became AlexandJustin, no spaces, no separation, no nothing without the other one.

So of course you got the magic.

Because this, giving up part of themselves, it was the only way that they got each other (which was all that they had ever really wanted and how had you not noticed before?).

And to them, having each other was more important than keeping their magic, or gaining acceptance from their family, have each other was more important than anything else.

So you smiled back at them, and their eyes lit with relief from the acceptance clear in your eyes.

So, yeah, it was a little unconventional (and mom was going to freak out) but it was still AlexandJustin and it was also the reason that you had all the magic.

So, okay, you could accept this.

You could accept them.