A fairly frothy little valentine in honor of the day. Takes place mid-second season, almost entirely from inside Piper's head. Enjoy!
Before, she knew what she wanted: normal. Normal was her first priority. And if she couldn't get normal in this big, huge, massive chunk of her life, then she could at least carve out a normal relationship with a normal guy who was sweet and kind and sexy and who adored her.
After, normal didn't seem like such a good deal, because normal would have meant dead.
It wasn't just the saving her life, because to be honest, he'd done that before. It wasn't just the sacrificing everything he believed in, everything he was, not to mention his own chances to do good in the world, for her, and then not allowing her to feel at all guilty about it.
"My choice," he said, and he smiled like he meant it.
Now, she was the one who had a choice to make. Dan, the normal one. Leo, still definitely not normal, even if he was technically mortal again. For now.
And unlike before, where Leo pretty much backed away, telling her she deserved normal, she deserved someone who would be there for her, in a really sweet and selfless way even after she went out of her way to hurt him as much as she could with her words, with her actions, now, he's fighting for her. And it's awful to admit this, even to herself, but it makes a difference.
It makes her feel like there's something there worth fighting for.
The guilt is getting to her. Technically, she's still with Dan. She says she wants to make their relationship work, but while part of her is telling him the truth, part of her is definitely not. The part of her that wants normal clings to this, pushes her to feel things she can't quite convince herself she actually does feel.
The first time after she's released from the hospital that he takes her hand at the end of the night and tugs her in the direction of his house, his head titled and his lips crafted into a seductive smile, she folds her own lips into an apology.
"I can't," she says, and then she begins to lie. "The doctors say I need to recover my strength, let the rest of the infection work through my system before I engage in any type of strenuous activity, which means, you know…"
"Oh. Well, I can just hold you," he says, his eyes still pleading.
"That's really sweet, but it's better to avoid the temptation."
She'd slept with Dan too early, way too early, but she was in such a rush to get over Leo and to get on with her life, and besides, Dan was a nice guy. So what if she was in love with someone else? She was in lust with Dan, and for once in her life, that would be enough. And she soon discovered that the only time she didn't think of Leo was when she was in bed with Dan.
The difference now is that she doesn't want to stop thinking of Leo.
So she uses an excuse, and she pines for one and feels bad for the other, all the while lying to them both. She tells Leo "I'm with Dan" as many times as she can with her mouth, but every other part of her reaches out to him. She tells Dan he has nothing to worry about, when every concern he's ever had about her feelings for Leo are so accurate, it's scary.
And she puts him off. On Valentine's Day, the kiss she imagines in her head, the one with Leo, is a hundred times hotter than the chaste peck she gives Dan at the end of their date. She avoids being alone with him, using her sisters as buffers whenever she can. She fakes a cold. She sidesteps all conversations about their future, about his desires to accelerate their relationship, which have always bugged her just a little bit anyway.
She's confused. She's hurt, she's guilt-ridden, she's indecisive, she's fed up with her heart and everything it entails.
And one day, she isn't.
She's sitting there in P3, doing her thing where she watches Leo move through the club, part of her aware of his every move, whether he's behind the bar or busing a table or getting glasses from the back, like she's done every night for the past two weeks, and that's when she realizes how ridiculous it all is. He loves her. Fact. She loves him. Also a fact.
Dan deserves to be with someone who is not in love with someone else. Big, huge, giant fact.
The answer is so simple. There it is. It was there all along, and she was so afraid of the consequences, she almost forgot the most fundamental truth of all.
In a perfect world, she'd be strong and brave enough to tell Dan this immediately. But she backs off. The old doubts return, the confusion grabs hold of her again when she tries to come up with the right words to say. There was never anything wrong with them, nothing except for the teeny, tiny fact that as much as she may have started to love him, she was in love with someone else, and she used to make fun of girls who made those types of distinctions, but now she sees exactly what the difference is.
How do you say to someone, you're a really terrific person, and you've been the perfect boyfriend, but remember the guy you always feared would ruin everything? Yeah, that's who I really love. But we can still be friends.
Everything sounds wrong. She practices it in her head, and then hesitates and hesitates and then he leaves town for a week and she still didn't break up with him.
But. Before she can obsess about it too much, there's still Leo. Logically, she knows she needs to break it off with Dan before she tells Leo anything, but she's starting to go crazy, being around him so much and not doing anything about it. She has all these fantasies about exactly how she'll tell him, what she'll say to him. In most of them, she doesn't even talk at all, just raises her mouth to his, and lets her kiss give the necessary explanations.
She knows she's walking a dangerous line when she tells the three employees who are supposed to come in to help with inventory to stay home the next day. The acute pleasure of being alone with Leo is too strong to pass up, but at the same time, she dreads being so close to him without being able to tell him what she wants, what she feels.
In the end, she blurts it out. She watches the confusion flicker across his face, then disbelief. She knows the feeling: she's been living on the edge of "do I really get to have this?" for weeks now. For a second, watching his smile, feeling his mouth against hers, she's lulled into believing everything is perfect now, but then she remembers Dan, the one who believes she's still his girlfriend, and she reluctantly backs away from Leo's kiss.
The next week is brutal. In some ways, it's like nothing has changed. She watches him at the club, moving from station to station, suppressing the irrational jealousy at the attention he draws from the female patrons. He never looks at a single one of them, beyond a polite smile, but she knows what they see when they look at him, because she sees it, too.
"I think it's best if I leave for a few days," he says at two in the morning as they travel through the club, lifting chairs onto tables. "Just until you get a chance to talk to Dan. Unless you still need me to work here until you find someone else?"
"No. No, you're right," she says, but her heart sinks at the thought of not seeing him for five whole days.
She gets through it. Fortunately – she can't believe she's using that word – the latest demon attack keeps her occupied and distracted. She breaks up with Dan, and it's as awful as she expected, even though he does all the work, practically breaks up with himself, and it couldn't be any easier, and yet. It still feels like the worst thing she's ever done.
But then, still, somehow, she comes out the other side, and gets to have the best thing ever.
The thing with Leo is, when you start a relationship with someone you already love, someone who already keeps your secrets for you, someone whose life you've saved, and vice versa, it's different. She finds herself marking the occasions, planning what she calls the perfect first date, even though they already had a first date over a year ago. Perfect for a witch and a whitelighter is bound to be a relative term, of course, and the event turns into disaster, but she almost doesn't care, and he certainly doesn't care, and they spend so much time together anyway, what with all the demon hunting.
The biggest change between before and now is that he's around so much more, whenever she wants him to be, really. She doesn't know what he had to say, what he had to do to convince the elders that he was needed around the manor so much – or maybe he didn't say anything at all. Maybe he's changed, too. Maybe that's his aftereffect of having lost her once before. He doesn't say, and she doesn't ask; she's just happy it's different now.
"Can you stay over?" She asks him, half shy, half playful, two days after their abbreviated first date.
"I can," he smiles. "How about Thursday?"
She writes it on the calendar, convinces both her sisters to give her the whole house for the evening, and it's Phoebe who is the willing co-conspirator, helping her dig out all the candles in the house and place them throughout the living room before taking off for the library, and Prue who is the selfish one who almost ruins everything by refusing to leave. Piper looks around at her wasted effort, dozens of lit candles and music on the stereo and the bottle of chilled wine, and then she looks at Leo and she smiles.
Who needs candles, when she's got her very own bedroom?
She missed him so much, this way, how he knows exactly how to kiss her, how to touch her, how to keep her awake practically all night long, and then how to hold her in his arms so she can finally fall asleep.
"You look beautiful," he tells her, touching her hair.
"Thank you." She smiles up into his green eyes. "You should take off your jacket, stay awhile."
"Maybe I will."
It's not the only item of clothing she wants him to take off, but she forces herself to slow down a little. She leads him over to her bed, and they sit, facing each other.
"Hi," she whispers.
"Hi," he echoes back. He leans toward her, catching her waist with his arm and pulling her close. She raises her mouth to his, and she's lost in his kiss, lost in the way she feels when he's with her. This isn't only where she wants to be, it's where she needs to be. And part of her thinks that this is how it will be forever, even if forever turns out to be not that long after all.
She's safe with him. Her emotions are clear and steady and all pointed in the exact same direction, and it's been so long since anything felt this uncomplicated, this perfect, this absolutely right, that she falls right into him. She's not just seduced by his touch – which she is – but comforted by it, too.
"I love you," she tells him, because it's important for her to say these words now, as their kisses grow deeper.
He stops, pulls away from her slightly, still holding her face in his palms, and looks into her eyes. "You don't know what it means to me to hear you say that," he says. "And to know you feel that way."
She leans forward to kiss him again, gently pushing him backwards as her mouth meets his until he's lying back on her bed. He reaches for her, pulling her down with him, as their kisses become deeper and more urgent. His hands slide down her bare back, his fingers easily, almost effortlessly, undoing the simple tie that holds her shirt together. It's by far the sexiest top in her wardrobe, a black silk tank that feels smooth against her skin, the coolness of the fabric a contrast to the warmth of his touch.
It's as perfect as she'd imagined, as wonderful as she remembers, but better, even. She knows there's so much more to their relationship than just the physical, but here, in this moment, everything is wrapped up in this. At some point, they finally fall asleep, still tangled in each other's embrace, and she wakes before he does, his leg slung across her hip, his arms cradling her to his chest.
"Good morning," she whispers, reaching up to touch his cheek.
His green eyes slowly open, and his lips turn up into a beautiful smile as she runs her fingertips over his perfect mouth.
"Am I dreaming?" She asks him, wrapping both arms around him and snuggling close to his bare chest.
"I hope not," he says, pressing his lips to the top of her head.