Title: Too Much
Pairing: Chris/Wyatt
Summary: Basically some Wyatt/Chris background.
Disclaimer: I don't own, please don't sue.
Warnings: Consensual brother 'cest, nothing too explicit. Oh, umm, slash. Should I mention this?
Notes: This is just rambly I came up with mostly at work. The majority of the Wyatt/Chris stuff online is all non-con and I wanted to figure out a way that the two could have gotten it on without Wyatt having to force Chris into it. This is what I came up with. Con-crit is, as always, welcome.
Chris doesn't know when it started. He's not even sure that there really is an exact moment that he can point to and say, "That, right there, is where it all began." It's more like it's always been there, like a slow-burn beneath the surface. He remembers lying curled up together in the same bed, innocent and sleep-warm, sharing the humid air from the tight space between them. They'd been so painfully young back then, and Chris aches for the freedom of it. It's one of his best and favourite memories of Wyatt.
He remembers a childhood of whispered secrets and touches that were just a little too intimate for the comfort of the casual observer. It's ironic, he thinks, but when they were kids he and Wyatt rarely really fought before that final rift. Their mother used to watch them with something like confused bemusement, no doubt comparing them to the legendary rows between the three sisters.
Too much and too close. That had been him and Wyatt. Brothers, friends, confidants. There had been so much room there for petty jealousies, the way that Wyatt was always special, always first. The way that their mother and the aunt's doted on Chris because he was the youngest. There had been resentment, but only very rarely aimed at each other. Wyatt had taken it upon himself to take his younger brother under his wing, fiercely protective almost as if he was compensating for Leo's long absences. In return Chris had looked up to him, worshipped the very ground that Wyatt walked on.
They were The Brothers Halliwell.
The family had gone so far as to encourage the bond between the two of them, so sure that if was just a more intense version of the one shared between the Charmed Ones. In a way it was. Their unique relationship was the sum total of everything that had come before them. Raised to magic and to power, they'd been disconnected from the rest of society, different even from magic-folk. Always other, unlike the sister's, who'd lived perfectly normal lives until they were grown adults.
It was for that very reason that they went to each other for everything, before the approached anyone else. Who else was likely to understand? Piper was the best mother that either could have ever asked for, but there was a fear in her, buried deep down inside. She never said anything, but she was wary of the sheer amount of power that her eldest possessed. When Chris had started to come into his own powers the two of them had gone to greater lengths to conceal much of it from her, neither wanting to see that flash of resignation that always washed over her features, if only for a brief moment.
Years later it had only seemed natural for him to approach Wyatt when he was running head first into puberty. He was scared and confused and all mixed up and Wyatt always knew what to do to fix that. What had followed didn't feel wrong or depraved. Not those first halting gropes between rumpled sheets or the sweet slick-slide of Wyatt's tongue against his as they learned the contours of each others mouths. Not even the feel of his brothers naked skin against his own, still so smooth and childishly soft.
For all that it would have been easy to blame all of it on Wyatt, there had been no malicious intent behind his actions, only the drive to teach his little brother, to show him. It would have been so easy to label it evil, but Chris couldn't lie. Not to himself and not about this.
Sometimes it was just something that kids did, but it had gone deeper between the two of them. Then, god, suddenly there mother was gone and without the Power of Three Paige and Phoebe had followed in her wake. Their hardly seen father handed them over to their grandfather, grieving stoically and too much a coward to face his sons' pain, their bitterness.
After that their bond had taken on a sense of desperation. They'd crawl into each others bed late at night, finding little-seen comfort in each others arms. If Victor knew or suspected he never said a word.
Outside of their nocturnal refuge they'd started to drift apart. Chris saw less of his brother as he spent more time at magic school, trying to learn more, looking for ways to get back at the demon who'd killed their mother. He started consorting with people who were closer and closer to the grey areas of the magic community. It made Chris nervous, but his unwavering belief in Wyatt left him incapable of considering that his brother might have been straying too far.
Until it was too late. Somehow Wyatt had gotten it into his head that they'd been betrayed by one of their own, a good witch that had been a friend of the family for some many years. Barely 17 years old, Chris had looked on in horror as Wyatt had stuck a knife through her stomach, without remorse and without pity.
Wyatt had been too prideful to admit later that he'd been wrong, that he'd been fed a lie by one of his so called sources. Even if he had have regretted the act it was already too late. The damage had been done and Chris had lost much of the faith that he'd had in his brother.
Still, things had stayed much the same after that, even as Wyatt's influence grew. Chris didn't know what else to do or who else to go to. Victor's health was already failing and Leo had proven to be a lost cause as a father. So Chris stayed.
Their encounters turned awkward, tense and bereft of the depth that Chris had always associated with the way he felt for his brother. He felt a little broken after each time, laying there afterwards, spent and physically sated.
He missed the Wyatt of Before. Golden, sunny Wyatt who was always so quick with his smiles. He hadn't realized it then, but that thought was what sparked the first seeds of his crazy plan to go back in time to change things before they'd even had a chance to happen.
The catalyst had come in the form of Bianca. He'd saved her from being slaughtered by one of Wyatt's new-found henchmen, knocked nearly unconscious on the cold stone ground. He'd vanquished the demon lackeys and brought her home and healed her up as best he could. Afterwards she'd been thankful and so beautifully dangerous. She was warm in a way that Wyatt hadn't been in so many months and Chris found himself unable to turn away from that.
It was so easy to get her to think the same way he did, to make her listen to him. It made him hopeful that maybe with time he could get his Wyatt back. After all, if he could get a Phoenix, an assassin who'd had a certain way of life pounded in since birth, to see the light, then shouldn't Wyatt be a piece of cake? With that conviction in mind, Chris let himself be happy for a time.
It didn't take long, though, for Wyatt to find out about his brothers new 'friend.' He was jealous. There was no misinterpreting what followed. He stormed the manor in a fury, lobbying about accusations, calling Chris' loyalty into question. Chris had tried to argue, tried to make him see sense, that he wasn't betraying Wyatt, but it was all to no avail. They stood in the living room of the manor, Wyatt in the doorway, his hair long and lank in his face, expression livid. Chris was on the other end of the room, standing just in front of Bianca's slighter form, determined even in the face of his brother's anger.
It didn't work. Wyatt didn't budge and neither did Chris, until Wyatt turned abruptly and stalked out. The destruction rained down on the city had started shortly after that confrontation. More damage followed with each successive attempt to get the other to see eye to eye. Wyatt's temper was out of control and he was taking it out on the world.
Victor died of lung cancer, his bad habit finally catching up to him. Chris took solace in the fact that he hadn't lived long enough to witness much of what Wyatt had become. After he died, though, the deed to the manor fell into Wyatt's hands by right of inheritance. Chris found himself kicked out of his own home, made to watch as the place where he'd grown up was stripped of all happiness and made a symbol of Wyatt's tyranny.
He and Bianca were forced to go to the resistance for help. They were suspicious of him, but Chris was a resource. He knew Wyatt better than anyone else in the world. It still wasn't enough and Wyatt continued to tear the country apart. The resistance was a rag-tag band of mortals and magic-users, the group getting smaller with each day that went by. None of them were powerful enough to put up much of a fight when faced with Wyatt's henchmen. Except for Chris, who refused to fight his brother head on.
And so his mind went back to the before and he started to hatch the most ridiculous plan. Wyatt had been good once, a long time ago. Had been even better, he thought, before Chris himself was born. A baby, pure and uncorrupted. If he could just go back and find out what had seeded that burning resentment for authority, both good and bad, maybe he could stop his brother from becoming a monster.
Maybe things wouldn't be the same. Maybe he and Wyatt would never be as close in a changed future, but they'd be together and that was what really mattered.
It was laughably easy after that, even with just him and Bianca in on the planning. Gaining access to the manor, diverting Wyatt's probes and finally summoning the Book of Shadows. It was too easy, and Chris wasn't sure whether to think that maybe Wyatt had some sort of trap waiting for him. Or maybe Wyatt was just that arrogant, that he'd leave the Book un-shielded, even knowing that Chris was out there and was fully capable of calling it to him.
In the end, Chris got through the portal and into the past. Later he wondered if that was when Wyatt had gotten Bianca, right after Chris had left her alone. He hoped not. With all that he was, he hoped that Bianca hadn't been left to his brother's mercies all those months.
Living with his parents' distrust isn't easy. He hadn't expected it to be, but he also hadn't expected it to hurt this much. The first time he'd laid eyes on Wyatt had nearly taken his breath away. His little face and blond curls were enough to make Chris want to weep.
It was that which drove him through the rough patches. His fathers blind anger, his mother's indifference; it's all worth it, if only he can find the evil that had taken his brother from him.
He'll find it even if it kills him.