Chapter 10: Similar Triangles

The merriment dashed out of Chris, replaced by the closest he would get to a heart attack, and he grasped at his chest. He really, really didn't want to turn around, but he didn't have a real choice in the matter. Leo expected an answer, and hiding wasn't Chris' style. He spun to face him.

With an elbow resting on the rail and his weight on one leg, Leo exuded a precarious calm. Chris didn't count it as a positive. A situation where he couldn't predict Leo's temper was always ominous. Wyatt, however, was blind to the tension in the room and squeaked at the sight of his father.

Having learned his lesson from the last incident, Chris wasn't in a hurry to mention Dan's name to Leo. Optimistic he could worm his way out, he said, "Piper went on a date?"

"She went somewhere, because I don't sense her in the house," said Leo.

Chris picked the most vague and most likely task Piper would do in the evening besides eating. "She's probably running an errand."

From his vantage point on the landing, Leo's eyes bore into his. "That's not what you told Greg."

Chris imagined Leo hovering in the upstairs hall, with his ear angled towards the main floor, and gulped. "How long were you eavesdropping?"

"Long enough to catch the part about Piper and Dan going to dinner." He jogged down the steps, and Chris leaned back in case he tried to orb them away on a whim. "Were you making it up for Greg's sake, or was there some truth to it?"

"The important thing is that I'm not going to turn out half-fireman," said Chris briskly. "So, what happened with the Elders? They sounded pretty mad this morning."

"They were. They didn't threaten to clip my wings, but they gave me a lecture and let me off with a warning." Leo waved it aside, unconcerned. "And it'll take more than that to put me off. Since you keep dodging the subject, I'll assume the dinner date is real."

"Fine, it is. But it's all good! We can handle this like mature, responsible adults," said Chris, flustered.

Leo didn't blow up, but some of the displeasure leaked into his voice. "Why did Piper go along with him?"

"More like he went along with her. The whole thing was her idea."

The subtle difference sank Leo's spirits lower, but he only had himself to blame. He hadn't done right by Piper since they'd vanquished the Titans. Erasing her pain had backfired, and so had complying with her request to be left alone. The burden of raising Wyatt alone had taken a toll on her, yet he'd done nothing to help. Sneaking in at night to see Wyatt wasn't enough, and he wished he'd returned sooner. He should never have left in the first place. He'd been naïve to think that Piper would suspend her dating life just because he was the father of her children.

"We've got to do something," said Leo, absently ruffling Wyatt's hair.

"Like what?" Chris asked warily.

"Dan ought to know the dangers of getting close to a witch. You and I could enlighten him. We could do it right now."

"Slow down. Are you saying we should…? Oh no. No way!" Chris shook his head so fiercely that it ached. "I'm not getting involved. Piper said it was friends-only, and I believe her."

"Weren't you the one who told me he was back? You could have waited for me to find out myself, but you didn't. You're not Dan's biggest fan either."

"True, but I wouldn't use him as my personal punching bag. We've got demons for that," said Chris. He shuddered at the notion of a second fight.

Chris was right, though Leo didn't like to admit it. He hadn't instigated the first fight, but he was no saint himself for letting Dan provoke him. Flying off the handle was the fastest way to lose Piper's respect, and it set a bad example for Wyatt.

"I guess it wasn't my finest moment," he said, and the shame he'd held at arm's length came flooding back to him, "but I swear there won't be a repeat." When Chris looked unmoved, he added, "Piper and I didn't break the rules just to give up. I have to believe what we had is strong enough that we can work out our differences."

"Crashing Piper's dinner is a great way to start," said Chris sarcastically.

Leo stroked his chin. Chris was choosing an inconvenient time to have doubts, but they weren't entirely unjustified. He tried a different tactic. "I'm surprised at you, Chris. You weren't like this with Greg. What makes Dan special? Even if he and Piper are going casual tonight, it can change tomorrow. But hey, it's your existence."

"Okay, I get it!" Chris yelped. Not the kind of thing he wanted to visualize Piper doing. Thank god Wyatt was too young to understand their discussion. "You don't have to go into the details. I'm going."

Leo contained his glee as he patted him on the shoulder. He didn't really need Chris with him, but it felt right to include him, and he was grateful he hadn't pushed him away yet.

Chris, however, questioned his own wisdom. Warding off Piper's ex-boyfriend had never crossed his mind as a father-son activity—it had to be the weirdest thing he'd ever done.

The doorbell rang, and as Leo went to greet Sheila, Chris said under his breath, "Don't make me regret this."

"This Book of Shadows of yours," said Dan. "It's been in your family for four hundred years?"

"Give or take a few decades." Piper paused when the waitress came by to drop off chicken lasagne for her and prime ribs for Dan.

Looking around, Piper had to admit they were fortunate. They had secured a corner booth in the back, which offered them some degree of privacy. Had they come later, they would've been stuck near the front where Piper would've been reduced to speaking in code. As the casual dining restaurant filled up rapidly, the noise level soared to a deafening high, so she didn't need to lower her voice as much. "My mom used it, and Grams, and her mother before her."

At the mention of Grams' mother, Piper fidgeted in her seat. P. Baxter had been married to Gordon Johnson—her and Dan's past lives. Leo had been correct in saying that souls tended to travel in the same circle of friends and family, but destiny wasn't so strict that their interactions stayed static in each lifetime. She didn't explain the concept of past lives, not wanting to give him a complex over predestination. She didn't want to give herself the wrong idea although she wondered…

Her eyes strayed to the side, and she saw Leo and Chris squeezing through the crowds, making their way toward her.

"Piper, Dan! What a coincidence." Leo parked himself at the edge of their table, ignoring the vein pulsating on her forehead, and Chris hovered next to him.

"What are you guys doing here?" Piper groused. Judging from the way he eyed the pair, Dan wasn't thrilled to see them either.

"Chris and I decided to spend some quality time together," said Leo. Chris nudged him hard in the ribs.

The waitress who served their food scuttled over when she saw the newcomers. "Oh, do we have more guests for this table?"

"Yes," said Leo before Piper could disagree. He pointed to Chris and himself. "We'll both have the dinner special."

"Two rib eye steaks coming up," said the waitress. She scrawled their order down and ran off for the kitchen.

Miffed, Dan climbed out of the booth and moved next to Piper, so that Leo and Chris could sit across from them. Leo frowned at the arrangement while Piper hunched her shoulders and tugged at her hair. It seemed Leo hadn't broken out of his habit of inviting himself to other people's meals—on one occasion, he'd turned Cole and Phoebe's outing into a double date. In fairness, it had been a gut reaction on his part to act less like a Whitelighter and more like a regular person, but Piper doubted his motives were as honest this time around.

"So," drawled Chris. "Did we miss anything important?"

"For your information, I was filling Dan in about magic. Kid stuff for you guys," said Piper.

"Great! We've been meaning to give you a few pointers ourselves," Leo said to Dan. He folded his hands on the table, and Chris followed suit. They leaned forward looking innocent—too innocent for Piper's liking.

"Brace yourself," said Chris. "It's not pleasant."

"You'll find that most people don't last long around us," said Leo.

"As in they give up and leave or…?" said Dan slowly.

Leo supplied the answer. "They literally don't last long."

Piper coughed from swallowing her lasagne too soon. They were making no effort whatsoever to be tactful. None.

"We've all had our share of near-death experiences," said Chris. "I've been shot with Darklighter arrows. Very poisonous, very painful. And I've lost track of how many times I've been burned, cut, stabbed, hit with energy balls and thrown into walls."

"Not to mention someone tries to kill us at least once a day. Sometimes more."

"You're exaggerating," said Dan.

Chris shrugged. "I've been known to do lots of things, but exaggerating isn't one of them."

Dan touched his stomach and pushed his plate away. Piper noticed he looked paler than he did a minute ago and intervened. "Guys, I think Dan has heard enough horror stories for tonight."

"But we didn't get to the good part yet," said Leo eagerly. "We haven't talked about the demons who disguise themselves as people we know—"

She shot him a death glare. "Leo!"

"In short," he said hastily, "Magic isn't all it's cracked up to be."

"I can't complain about my leg injury after this," was Dan's feeble reply.

Leo and Chris' food arrived during an awkward silence at their table. Leo picked at his meat with his fork, Dan took an interest in the art print on the wall and Chris' utensils clinked as he munched on his steak. Piper itched to freeze the room, but didn't because her power wouldn't affect Chris.

Chris sloshed the water around in his glass and spoke up, breaking the tension. "I heard you used to play for the Seattle Mariners."

Dan gave him a curt nod. "I did up until I busted my leg. You a baseball fan?"

Chris' eyes brightened in an almost child-like way that amazed the other occupants at the table.

"Absolutely! I love baseball. I used to play in the Little League when I was a kid, and I had an album this big full of trading cards." He held his palms apart to illustrate the album's thickness.

Any qualms Dan had about Chris seemed to lift in light of their common interest. "Impressive. Did your dad ever take you to a live game? Because watching from a TV just isn't the same. You have to be in the arena to experience that adrenaline rush."

Chris gave Leo a sidelong glance. "My dad was too busy with work to take me."

"That's too bad," said Dan. "You said you were from the future, right? Will my team win in the next few years?"

Chris could have named all the World Series winners for the next decade if he didn't feel bound by his policy on time travel. "Nice try. You'll have to wait like everyone else."

Dan shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

Piper felt Chris was taking his "future consequences" motto too far, and wasn't afraid to say so. "Don't be silly. Talking about sport results isn't going to destroy the timeline." He stared her down. "Fine, then why don't you tell us more about yourself?" In the time they had known him, Chris hardly talked about his past. After learning of his love for baseball, she was curious about other aspects of his life as well.

"I can't. I shouldn't have said anything to begin with," he said, flushing.

"One of these days you'll look back and realize you didn't have to be so neurotic."

"Protecting the cosmic balance does not make me neurotic!"

"There's a fine line between caution and paranoia. Don't you agree, Dan?"

Dan held up his hands, as if afraid to incur either person's wrath. "Don't look at me. I'm Switzerland."

He and Piper struggled not to laugh, and the corners of Chris' mouth pulled up in a faint grin. Everyone moved on to matters not related to witchcraft—everyone except Leo. He mechanically cut and chewed his steak as they engaged in small talk. Chris hardly treated Dan as his best friend or anything like that, but he appeared more at ease than Leo had ever seen him, and a hollow feeling filled Leo's stomach. No one stopped to ask for his input in the discussion, not even Chris.

He'd had enough. "Can I borrow Chris for a minute?"

Chris sent an inquisitive look Leo's way as they headed to the men's washroom in the back. After checking for other people and finding none, Leo glared at him.

"What's going on, Leo?" asked Chris.

"You're not supposed to consort with the enemy."

He blinked. "What's with the Elder-speak? You've been Up There too much."

"Not funny, Chris."

"It's kind of hard to deal with him and not 'consort'," said Chris who had yet to figure out why Leo had taken him aside.

"Deal with him, yes. Act like you're old friends? I don't think so."

"Would you calm down? All we talked about was baseball."

"You never told me you liked baseball."

"So?"

Leo clammed up at once. He couldn't go further without disclosing the real reason for his irritation, but Chris didn't have to be an empath to see through him. "Huh, turns out I'm not the crazy one after all," he said, chuckling. "I never pegged you for the insecure type."

Startled by Chris' accurate assessment, Leo tried to laugh it off. "I don't know about that."

"You've got it backwards. If anyone should be envious, it's Dan. You're the one with the cool powers, and you're the one Piper married, not him."

It struck Leo as absurd that he should need reassurance from Chris. He felt foolish for dragging them here, and was groping for a way to end the conversation with some of his dignity intact when another customer entered. Their privacy was gone, and Piper would wonder where they went if they stayed too long anyway, so they returned to the eating area.

The others had finished and were arguing over the bill. Dan offered to split the cost, but Piper wouldn't hear of it and insisted on paying the full amount herself. He caved in, and while Piper took care of the bill, Leo and Chris finished the rest of their dinners. The went their separate ways after that—Chris and Leo wandering into a nearby alley to orb unseen to the manor, and Piper drove Dan back to the hotel.

Dan was quiet during the drive, but eventually he turned to Piper, his face obscured in shadow. "How much of what Leo and Chris said before was true?"

Piper gripped the steering wheel hard, tempted to downplay the facts a bit, but that would have been dishonest. "Everything," she said.

"Including the part about people…?" He drew his index finger across his throat.

"Yeah. If it's any consolation, even witches aren't safe. I didn't tell you exactly how my sister died." Piper focused on the road ahead rather than look at him. "A demon attacked and we were too late to save her."

Dan blanched and spent the rest of the drive staring out the window. When she pulled up to the curb nearest to the hotel, he thanked her for dinner, bade her good-bye and disappeared into the building. Give him more time. He'll accept it, she thought, but she wasn't so sure.

On the way home, her thoughts strayed to Leo and Chris. Their presence hadn't ruined the evening—quite the opposite, in fact. The setup, strange as it was, had been enjoyable, though it probably helped that Leo and Dan had never spoken to each other directly. Yet, something about Chris and Leo's antics bugged her. They seemed to be in on a secret that she couldn't identify. She didn't like it. Secrets in the Halliwell family were a ticking time bomb for disaster.

Sheila was gone by the time she pulled into the driveway and strolled into the house. She dropped off her purse in her room and found Leo lowering Wyatt into his cradle. Piper felt guilty about interrupting his nightly ritual of sitting in the nursery until Wyatt fell asleep, but her impatience took precedence.

She rapped on the doorframe to get his attention. "You. Me. Downstairs," she ordered and took them down to the sunroom. She flipped on the lights and called out," Chris!"

Chris orbed in, and he noted Piper's confrontational stance and the way Leo folded his arms as though defending his space. "Can I ask what this is about?"

"I'm not an idiot," said Piper. "You followed me because you were mad that I went out with Dan."

Leo leaped to his defense. "Don't take it out on Chris. It's my fault; I persuaded him to come with me."

Chris bobbed his head towards Leo in gratitude, but Piper saw the exchange, and it fuelled her suspicions further.

"I don't care about that. It's you and Chris that bother me. When did you two get so buddy-buddy? First you guys avoid each other, then you act like you're the dynamic duo."

"We resolved our differences," Leo replied, moving to stand next to Chris.

"A little too fast." These two didn't solve their problems. They suppressed them until they boiled over into another spat over Chris' trustworthiness. "And why would Chris go with you, anyway? I get your reasons for not liking Dan even though you're way out of line," Piper said to Leo. Then she pointed at Chris. "But you—my social life doesn't affect you. So explain to me why it matters to you."

"I think you and Leo should work things out," said Chris. "For Wyatt's sake."

Her instincts cried foul. Chris was losing his edge as a liar, or maybe she was getting better at picking out his lies. If she pushed hard enough, perhaps she would get the whole truth out of him for a change.

"Whitelighters often get attached to their charges—"

"Shut up, Leo," she said.

At six foot one, Chris eclipsed Piper's five foot three frame. Yet the height difference didn't stop him from trembling before the woman who resembled his mother, but wasn't her—not yet. He wasn't aware of himself backing away from Piper until his legs collided into a chair.

"I'm not going to repeat myself. Why does it matter to you if I'm with Leo, Dan, or another guy?"

"Piper…"

"Well?"

"Because I…" His palms became sweaty and his mind jammed. Chris wordlessly sought out Leo's aid. Unfortunately, Leo was as lost as he was—the most he could do was move his lips and Piper, at that particular moment, would have ignored him anyway.

"Spit it out!" she snapped.

"Because I want my parents back together!"