The tennis ball thunked against the ceiling and fell back down, smacking into the palm throwing it before being tossed back up again. Chris was laying spread eagled on the bed, one of his hands resting behind his head as the other continued bouncing the ball off of the ceiling, the rhythm helping with his thinking.
Across the room, Ben sat cross-legged on a battered armchair that was so accustomed to him sitting on it that it had become stuck in his shape and hadn't moved back for many years now.
His oldest brother, Joel, slept in the room across the hall when he was home from college, and Ben had rescued the chair from being thrown out by his brother after Joel got something 'more comfortable'. What that something was Ben had never found out, but took the chair anyway.
Next to his brother's bedroom was another room, shared by his other older brothers, Matt and Jake. He knew that they had their eyes on his room, but, because they were born only eleven months apart, they'd been sharing all their lives. It wasn't as if Ben would move in with any of his brothers willingly anyway. Being the youngest of four automatically meant he was treated like a small kid all of the time, and his brothers patronized him constantly to get a kick out of his anger, something they at least found amusing.
It had been funny to them until they suddenly found themselves pulling on iced boxers in the mornings, or waking to find their eyelids frozen shut. Then it was back to amusement when Ben would get reprimanded for using his powers.
Ben watched Chris, trying to work out what it was he was preoccupied with. Chris had been throwing and catching that ball for about half an hour now, and speaking very little.
Chris took a blocking potion for his empath powers, meaning he couldn't be read by another empath, but over the ten years he had had this power it had grown and evolved, and he could project his emotions onto others. So when he was feeling really bad about something sometimes it was easy to pick these emotions up from him, but the blocking potion made him like a glass wall – something Chris, at least, liked. No emotions could get out unless Chris willed them to.
He always had his silences, and they were often when he was getting the least of his thinking done. Ben could tell that there were many issues chasing around and around in his brain that refused to stop, and therefore he could not think right now.
He winced slightly as he realized that he was psychoanalyzing his friend and stopped, gingerly pressing a bruise on his abdomen that he didn't remember getting. He took a sharp intake of breath and hissed as he touched it.
Both of them were still looking rather worse for wear from last night. Bruises stood out livid purple and rust red scabs snaked their way across flesh. Maybe Chris was angry at always having himself and his friends hurt and then not even getting to vanquish the demon that had done it.
"Are you going to do that all day?" Ben asked eventually, feeling the need for a break in the monotony. An amused smile playing across his lips as the ball slipped from his friend's grasp and fell off of the bed, bouncing once on the carpet before rolling under the bed.
"Not anymore." Chris huffed, dangling his upper body over the edge of the bed to root around underneath the piece of furniture. Chris's fingers brushed over many, many things that weren't his ball and his arm disappeared to the elbow as he pulled a face.
"Lots of things go under the bed. None of them come out," Ben told him with a small shrug. "Sorry."
"What, do the dust bunnies eat them or something?" Chris asked jokingly, his face falling. "That was so not funny because that's gonna happen one of these days..."
Images of over-sized balls of fluff bearing down on them crossed his mind, and he vowed to vacuum under his bed when he got home. He sighed, paused, and then, "Dammit!" He growled, hitting the floor with his free hand. He turned his neck to look at Ben and narrowed his eyes as he continued to search for his ball.
"Told you. You might as well go and see Bridget now you have nothing to distract yourself with. You still owe her, remember?" Ben asked, his eyes glinting mischievously as Chris frowned at him.
"You're enjoying reminding me of that, aren't you?" Chris asked, suddenly withdrawing his arm in triumph, revealing a baseball clutched in his hand. "Oh, this doesn't look much like a tennis ball." he frowned and examined it, turning it over.
"Hey, I've been looking for that." Ben said. Chris rolled his eyes and threw it at Ben, who caught it and put it on the desk next to him. It rolled across the surface and, by a freak chance, dodged all of the piles of junk and dropped between the wall and the desk. "Are you planning on losing your ball down there any time soon?" Ben asked hopefully, as Chris half-rolled, half-fell off of the bed and onto the floor, landing with an awkward thump and seeing spots as the blood rushed back down out of his head. He blinked a few times and shoved his arm in up to his shoulder, his fingers grazing over the carpet and the grittiness of dirt.
"No." Was the adamant but muffled reply, because he had the side of his face pressed into the comforter.
"Worth a shot." Ben shrugged and then paused, chewing on his lip. "So what happened with Wyatt last night?" His words seemed to shatter the playful banter in the room and he swallowed, half-afraid that Chris wouldn't reply. The witch-whitelighter had been skirting around this point for ages now, more worried, Ben assumed, about his up-and-coming time that Bridget was forcing him to spend with her than explaining about last night.
Chris ate away at the time it took to figure out an answer by rummaging extra-vigorously, mulling the events over in his mind. His shoulder was starting to ache and he shifted it to the left slightly, barely relieving the pain.
"He came in around midnight," he began finally. "Face was busted up pretty good. They thought I was asleep. Mom and my aunts orbed him home and he just fell into his bed. And then they woke me up because they thought they had to go and rescue me next." Ben could see his friend sigh even if he didn't make a noise.
Chris left out the part where his family barely noticed him, so deep was their concern for Wyatt, and the chill he got off of his sleeping brother when he had snuck out of his own bed to question Wyatt about what had happened. His brother's mouth formed a smirk even as he slept, and there was something so self-satisfying about that look, something so definitely not the Wyatt he had grown up with.
The dried blood on the scab on his lip and the way the bruise was leaking blood under his skin because he hadn't elevated his head enough was menacing, as if Wyatt had fought some great war and won.
Chris only hoped that that war had been between Wyatt and the Underworld, not within himself.
But in his best friend's room, with light streaming diagonally in through the picture window that offered a view of the bay and the whole place covered in sun that could only be from Southern California, his fears felt like that of a small child, a small child who realized that his brother had grown up and was not the same person that had played games with him anymore.
"So what had he been doing?" Chris closed his eyes, knowing that it was a fair question and that he owed Ben an answer.
This was top of Ben's priority list for finding out. What Wyatt had done so far made so little sense, and nagging suspicions were beginning to creep into his mind and tingle at the base of his skull, never allowing him to forget that they were there. There had always been something with Wyatt that Ben had never been able to pinpoint.
"Mom was talking to Aunt Paige this morning about all the scorch marks all over the Underworld."
Chris, too, had doubts about Wyatt, especially after his brother had left him in the cage all by himself. There was something about Wyatt's voice and posture, the cold and calculating way he had vanquished Drox that didn't sit well with Chris, and it would be a long time before he forgot how Wyatt's eyes had turned from blue to grey as a twisted smile lit them up, especially as he had to sleep with Wyatt just feet away with only a small cinderblock wall between them.
"You think he stole the demon's powers to go killing in the Underworld?" Ben asked incredulously, unfolding his legs and then tucking them back underneath him to relieve a cramp. The blood flow brought pins and needles to his toes, but he ignored it.
Something wasn't really adding up with Wyatt. As long as Ben and known Chris he'd known Wyatt, and the blonde witch-whitelighter had never liked him. There was some kind of aura around Wyatt that Ben didn't like, and he said so often enough. Chris, torn between his best friend and his brother, had always stayed as neutral as he could.
With Wyatt there had always been some element of danger there, especially when he allowed his mask to slip and showed off some of the raw power he possessed. Ben just didn't like the guy, and all of the reasons he came up with were poorly explained, argued, and just seemed plain petty. There was nothing solid, and you couldn't point fingers that way. That was the kind of thinking that started the Salem witch trials.
"I have no idea and I really don't want to think about it- And this better not be another baseball." he added, grumbling as he fought to remove his shoulder. His jacket sleeve was covered in dust and he blew and picked it off, grinning at the tennis ball in his hand.
He threw it hard at Ben, who barely managed to catch it before it hit his head.
"What was that for?" The witch demanded, tossing it back at Chris just as hard.
"For your stupid bed losing my ball," Chris answered, bouncing the ball off of the wall above Ben's bed and catching it.
The simple repetitiveness of this motion started to dull Chris's mind again, and he was pleased that he had managed to draw Ben away from questions. The rhythm soothed him and placated his brain, which was currently trying to run rings around itself and giving him a headache.
"When're you gonna see Bridget?" Ben asked, and when Chris looked the grin on his friend's face was enough to earn the ball being thrown at his head again.
The light-heartedness was back in the room, and Chris could feel the confusion fogging his brains begin to thin again, lessening its grip. Ben tried to snatch the ball out of the air but missed, and it caught the swiping motion of his hand and flew back towards Chris, hitting the floor and rolling back under the bed.
"HA!" Ben shouted in triumph, before laughing at Chris's face. Chris tk'd a cushion at Ben in annoyance.
Last One Standing
Bridget rounded the corner, balancing the towel she was using as a turban for her wet hair with one hand and using her foot to nudge out the stool under her vanity table.
She was singing under her breath the same song that had been stuck in her head, the annoying tune that got under her skin after she'd heard it on the radio and had not been able to remove since. She hummed her way through the tune when there got to a gap in the knowledge of the lyrics, avoiding stubbing her toe on one of her shoes.
Bridget growled slightly and plugged the hairdryer in with a little too much force, and was adjusting the mirror when the reflection made her turn and scream – the noise shattering the song in her head - and she had just enough time to be grateful before she jumped up from the stool, knocking it backwards and clutching one hand tighter around the towel she had wrapped around her body.
The sudden movement caused the precarious towel on top of her had to wobble and fall to the carpet with a kind of odd splat, and wet black hair tumbled down out of it as it dropped, sticking to her face. She raked it out of the way angrily with her fingers.
"Are you trying to scare me to death?" She demanded, snatching the towel from the floor and pulling the larger one tighter still around her. She forced her heart rate to slow down and succeeded, quashing adrenaline rushes was one of the things that she did best. Shock was replaced by anger and her eyes narrowed.
"Um- uh- I..." Chris swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. His mouth opened and closed, failing to work in coordination with his brain. All he was able to focus on was a droplet of water running down from her hair, and he followed the bead's trail down past her collarbone until it soaked into the top edge of the towel, disappearing into the fabric.
"Hm," the Hunter said, smiling at the apparent loose connection. She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Chris..." she said slowly, walking a few paces towards him, her eyes questioning, searching his own. She shook her head and smiled.
His mouth opened as if he were about to say something again, but the roof was dry and his tongue was sticking to it. He managed an odd strangled noise that he hoped Bridget would take as a 'yes'. He swallowed again.
He had a dream like this once. It had been very nice, actually. Bridget wasn't featured in it of course, mainly because he didn't like to think of her that way. She was his friend and nothing more, but it led him to feeling awkward and wondering if he was going to go to that special level of hell. The place where they reserved for child molesters and people who talked into the theatre.
She stopped walking and leant forward, closer to him as if she was going to whisper conspiratorially in his ear. "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL HERE?!" The yelling made the young witch-whitelighter jump out of his skin and he stuttered an incoherent apology before dissolving in a swirl of orbs.
Satisfied Bridget smirked, sat down and picked up her dryer, flicking it on. The screeching filled the room and Chris's face replayed over and over against her eyelids as she leaned over and turned the volume up on her stereo to full to counteract the appliance in her hand.
Last One Standing
Chris leant against the wall outside Bridget's door, closing his eyes and forcing himself to control his breathing and stop the blood rushing around his body, particularly in his face. He forced the blood vessels to constrict again and turn his cheeks back to their normal colour and letting out a shaky breath.
Bridget was- and she... He groaned slightly, putting his head in his hands. Bridget was his friend and a damn good one at that and here he was sitting outside her room, thinking about... her...
He grabbed the ball that had been twice retrieved from under Ben's bed from his pocket and threw it viciously at the opposite wall, the thunk and rebound satisfying as it pinged off of that wall and then onto the one over his head. Some tension relieved he watched the ball roll and then come to a stop on the floor and he picked it up, throwing it at the ceiling.
Bad, bad thoughts. He wished they would stop circling around his head. He swallowed, hating his mind for bailing on him like that and leaving him a gibbering idiot in front of Bridget. His sense had totally been somewhere else, somewhere other than on the then and there with Bridget... He hated his brain, and hated his body for betraying him.
It was only Bridget, dammit. Plain, short, black-haired Bridget who loved kicking ass and had an incredibly twisted sense of humour. The Hunter he'd known for ages now. So why was he acting like this over her? He gnawed on his bottom lip and leaned farther back into the wall, feeling the bass from the Hunter's music making the wall vibrate. He smiled and shook his head, throwing the ball in the air and catching it, finally feeling the flush fade from his cheeks. It was just Bridget and her music and her hairdryer... and her towel.
Dammit.
Last One Standing
"Oh, Josh, why are you leaving me?" The woman asked, her eyes glittering with tears as she looked up into the man's face. Her face wore a pained expression, the sort of one you might wear if you had trapped wind.
"We've discussed this, Sally. I've got to go. My country needs me." He was dressed in army uniform, and had a kitbag slung over one shoulder.
"But I love you, Josh!" She sobbed, sitting down on the window seat and staring out, her chin held dramatically high, her lips trembling pathetically.
"Sally, don't be like this..." he took a step towards her and she turned her head away and he stood still
"Oh..." she gave an overdramatic sob and kept turned away from him, fingering the velvet of the curtains. She sniffed loudly, removing a lacy handkerchief from somewhere and dabbing at her eyes with the corner of it, the rest of the cloth held in her fist.
"Now I'll be back, Sally, trust me..."
"Oh, Josh, but I'll miss you so..." she lamented, her Southern twang getting more and more noticeable the more and more upset she got. Her hair was rigid and was stuck in place with several hairpins in waves and enough styling products to punch and fifty-foot hole in the ozone layer.
He tilted her chin upwards so she would look him in the eye, and she stood up, throwing her arms around his neck in one gushing movement.
"Josh!" She wailed, sobbing into her shoulder as he patted her back and made soothing noises.
"Now, now, Sally. You'll see me soon..." he said gently as he stroked her face.
"But what if I don't? What if I never see you again?" She asked, pulling her face from his jacket.
Sally's melodramatic wailing was setting Chris's teeth on edge as he started numbly at the screen, sighing as the black and white figures continued to play out their pathetic scene. His mind had wandered and he assumed it lost, and he hoped it had found something better to do than sit here and watch these movies.
Next to him on the couch Bridget had her legs curled under her and a bowl of popcorn on her lap. She sobbed and blew her nose into a tissue, discarding it onto the floor with a sea of others and grabbing another Kleenex out of the box to dry her eyes with.
"Bridget, this film isn't even in colour!" The witch-whitelighter complained, hoping that blowing her nose had taken her out of the film enough for her to answer him. He wanted his complaint to be heard now, but she shushed him with a wave of her hand.
Chris sighed and rolled his eyes, breaking the screen's reflection in them. He hated this stupid film. The lead actress had blubbed her way through the whole damn thing, breaking down every time an eyelash fell out, and the main actor just spoke in a deep voice and comforted her every time. Pathetic.
When Bridget had asked him to watch these with her as his 'servitude' she knew how much it was going to torture him. He looked into her face and wondered if there was sadistic pleasure going on behind the tears. It was Bridget, so there most probably was. He groaned but she spoke up.
"Shush! He's about to propose!" Bridget demanded silence, and he suddenly realized that she had seen the film before. She was mouthing the words to some parts apparently subconsciously, and she knew the plot. So why was she watching it again? Her face was stained with tear tracks and yet her eyes remained fixed on the TV. The white tissues scattered all over the carpet like engorged snowflakes and she crumpled the one she had in her hand and tossed it down with the others. Chris rolled his eyes in a reaction that he was told was typical of him and tried, tentatively, again.
"Bridget..."
She threw the cushion she was hugging to her chest at him. "Quiet!"
He raised his hands and froze the cushion, grabbing it out of the air, realizing that the force of Bridget's throw, had been intending to force the wind out of his diaphragm so she could get some peace. He pushed the cushion onto the floor and rolled his eyes.
Sally gasped, putting both hands to her mouth as Josh bent on one knee and pulled out a box from his breast pocket. "Oh, Josh..."
"See here, Sally," he said, opening the lid. "This ring was my grandmother's. I know she'd want you to have it. Now you know I'm coming back..."
"Oh!" Sally said, holding out her finger for Josh to slip the ring onto. Soon her shaking hands returned to her quivering lips and she began to cry again.
"Is that the only thing she can say? I'm sensing a pattern here... 'Oh, Josh...' and then she cries..." Chris asked, exasperated at the woman. He could nearly feel is brain dribbling out of his ear and onto the couch as the grey cells slowly died off one by one. This wasn't fair, he needed those guys...
This was boring, and... boring... He couldn't even think of a decent synonym for what this was, that was how mushy and runny his brain felt. He was sure that if he moved his head it would slosh against the inside of his skull. He sighed loudly, looking at Bridget who was clutching yet another Kleenex in her hand and, lips trembling, was mouthing the words.
Chris looked back at the screen and in front of it where assorted discs scattered across the carpet. He heart skipped a beat when he realized that they must have watched all of them by now. Finally, it had taken them long enough to get through them.
"Remember, Sally, I'll always be with you." He took her hand in his and put it over her chest. "In here."
"Oh, Josh..." Chris muttered darkly, just as Sally uttered those very words. He sighed heavily once more, he really couldn't help himself. He could think about something else...
Special hell...Chris paid more attention to the movie in the last five minutes than he had throughout the rest of the day.
Cheesy string music blared and the camera zoomed out on the lovers' last passionate clinch, their kissing the last thing on the screen until the whole thing faded to black and The End was scrawled across the screen. At last disappeared as well, and the screen turned blue, with writing on it in white saying 'stop'.
Chris immediately sagged with relief and Bridget, deprived the box of its last tissue to blow her nose a final time. She sighed dreamily and then blinked a few times, before clapping her hands together.
"Right." The Hunter slid off of the couch and began stuffing tissues into the wicker wastepaper basket. Chris yawned, stretched and blinked and went to undo the blinds. Early-evening sunlight slanted into the room, and Bridget hissed and squinted. "Do you know how bright that is?" She demanded, shielding her eyes.
"Yup," Chris said, turning his back to the window and grinning, shoving all four fingers on both of his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, leaving his thumbs out.
Bridget narrowed her eyes at him. "Being a smartass will be the death of you, you know that?"
Chris only shrugged and smirked as Bridget sat back on her heels, stuffed the last Kleenex away and half-crawled over to the entertainment centre, ejecting the disc out and putting it back into its box.
"I don't think I've ever watched these all in one go before..." Bridget said, sniffing and wiping her nose on the back of her hand and sorting out her eyelashes with her fingers. Within five minutes no one could tell that she had been crying.
"Um." Chris was itching to go now, be anywhere but here where he could still here those damn people echoing around in his head, their situations imprinted deeply into his brain as if they had been done with a branding iron.
"Chris?" She asked at last, looking into his face.
"Yeah?" He turned to look at her as she got up and brushed the knees of her dark jeans off. He smiled goofily at her and she rolled her eyes.
"I don't want anyone knowing about these movies, ok? If you tell anyone I'll be forced to kick you, got it?"
Chris gaped again, blinking in surprise. That hadn't been what he thought Bridget was going to say, and it had thrown him. "Just try it."
"And have you hide behind your freezing power? Please..." she clapped her hands together. "You're done, you can go now."
Chris rolled his eyes and kept his gaze locked on her face before orbing away.
Last One Standing
"And then she threw you out?" Ben asked, frowning in confusion.
Chris looked at the other witch, pleased to see that he too was incapable of understanding the way Bridget's mind worked. He was so confused about Bridget, and sitting her talking it over with Ben was barely helping, mainly because Ben didn't get it either.
"Not exactly... She just like dismissed me or something." Chris sighed and rolled over, staring at the ceiling. "My servitude was done, and she just- You know what? I don't know."
Ben paused, chewing on his bottom lip. He slowly began, "So she doesn't like you? Or she does." Ben settled farther back into the chair. "Or she doesn't like you and doesn't want to know- Or she actually likes you, but can't tell you?" Ben paused again, running a hand over his eyes. "This is so confusing."
Again Chris was comforted by Ben's confusion; it meant that it wasn't him in the wrong, if Ben agreed as well. "You're telling me! You weren't on the end of it..." Chris sighed again and began to count the cracks in the ceiling, results of a recent earthquake.
"Chris, she just wanted you to watch those stupid movies with you, which are all really un-Bridget-like, by the way."
Bridget, he assumed, would be watching ass-kicking action movies with explosions and gunfire, and Kung-Fu hand-to-hand combat. She would, in his mind, spend the whole movie complaining about how poor the fighting looked, and how she could always do it better. But sappy romances...?
"Yeah. Don't tell her I told you about those. Threats were made-" he paused, chewing on his bottom lip. "But..."
"Yeah, 'but' is the word... I really though she liked you, man... I mean she's always... And she didn't try anything?"
Chris shook his head no. He couldn't work out why. He thought that Bridget had had a crush on him for ages, and today had been the perfect opportunity for her to show him that. That was what he had been expecting; a display of what he had assumed was a mutual feeling between them.
"Maybe you're just not meant to understand her, ok? She's just acting really, really weird but she's female, and it's like in her job description or something." Ben gave a feeble half-shrug off of Chris's look. "Sorry, I'm not helping, am I?"
"No."
The conversation hit an awkward snag and faced derailment, and Ben did the first thing that came to his mind. "Here, have a tennis ball," the witch said, throwing it onto his friend's chest.
Chris rolled his eyes and started bouncing it off of the ceiling lazily. "You think I'm so easily distracted, don't you?"
Ben laughed. "No," Chris sat slightly up and cocked a sceptical eyebrow at him. "I know so." Ben ducked immediately and the ball hit the back of the chair where his head had been moments before.
Last One Standing
"No!" Nixa said, her eyes alight with the wonder. "Seriously?" She looked back towards Bridget, who had fallen back slightly as the crowd thickened outside The Gap, which was having a sale.
Bridget used her elbows and soon she was walking side by side with Nixa again, squeezing out of the crowd. "Yup," she replied, her voice flat.
Nixa was quizzing her on her afternoon with Chris. Bridget didn't know why exactly, she was, after all, far too unsure about what had happened – or, in fact, hadn't – that she couldn't even begin to work it out for herself, let alone for Nixa.
She saw the way Chris reacted when he caught her just out of the shower and she though that it meant that things would progress well afterwards, but nothing had happened. She didn't get it.
Nixa didn't notice. "So he saw you-"
"Uh-huh."
"And he-"
"You got it."
"Wow..." Nixa said, dumping three bags full of shopping next to an empty chair and sat on it as Bridget dragged one over from a different table. "I bet his jaw hit the floor."
Nixa was way too chirpy for a time like this, and Bridget scowled up at the night sky, which was winking deep blue at her through one of the glass pyramids on the roof of the mall. She looked back down at Nixa and the crowd in the Dairy Queen. "You know for a girl against the Bimbo Stereotype you sure do shop a lot," she mused.
Nixa frowned. "I'm high-maintenance. There are high-maintenance brunettes as well, you know." She paused awkwardly, scrambling for words. "And quit with the subject changing!"
Bridget sighed. "Ok. We watched the movies and..."
"And?"
The glare Bridget shot Nixa shut the blonde up for long enough for her to continue. "And that was it. We watched the movies. I don't think he liked them all that much, but we watched them."
"Wow." Nixa put her bag on the table and rummaged through it for a little while, but pulling nothing out. "That sucks... Were you... nice to him?"
"Hey!" Bridget snorted. "I'm always nice!"
Nixa raised a sceptical eyebrow at her.
"Well I said he could have popcorn... That was... kind of nice, right?"
Nixa laughed and shook her head. "So you watched movies... And then nothing... That sucks... I said that already, didn't I?"
"Hey! It didn't suck... He just didn't... I thought he liked me... Romantic films and it was dark and... Nothing. Nada, zilch, zero. What's up with that?"
Bridget sighed. She thought Chris liked her, like liked her, as she would have said had she been about eight. But Chris had had all those damn opportunities today and yet nothing had come out of it. Her head was reeling.
"He didn't even try to... you know?" There was a hopeful note in her voice, and Nixa was sure that Bridget would tell her every detail, but when she looked into Bridget's face all she saw there was disappointment, so she pushed the question away. "Nothing?"
"No, he was just half-dead with the movies. I like my movies." Bridget pouted and sighed. "He just didn't..." There was something on the table that had stuck there and solidified, and Bridget picked it with her nail, shaving it off layer by layer in a heap of thin curls.
There was a pause as Nixa struggled to find something to say. Bridget became more and more absorbed in scraping at the table and more and more conscious of the gunk she was getting up her nail.
"Will chocolate help?" Nixa asked, leaning forward towards Bridget and taking her hand in hers, pulling it away from the sticky spill. "And stop that, it's gross."
"Bah. I hate men... They're confusing... You wanna become a nun with me? We could run off and see if any monks want us..."
Nixa cocked an eyebrow at her.
"I forgot about the celibacy, huh? No sex for the nuns..." Nixa was still looking her as if she needed to be committed, and she sighed. "Chocolate? Definitely."
Nixa blinked. "Then ice cream is the way to go," Nixa said, with a happy shrug as she leant backwards. "And it's all one me, mainly because that guy's here again..."
"Ok. I'll sit here moping." The Hunter took out her chewing gum and pressed it onto the underside of the table.
"Lovely." As Nixa walked past she patted Bridget on the head. "Good girl." Nixa left to go to the counter.
"Make it double chocolate!" Bridget called, wincing as she realized that the whole of Dairy Queen had heard her. Heads turned in her direction and, cheeks aflame, she smiled weakly and muttered, "Great, just great..."
Last One Standing
"Hey, Wyatt." Chris said dully, tossing his bag onto his bed and coming down the stairs.
He was surprised to see his brother awake, especially after he had been so hurt and drained last night. A closer inspection revealed that none of the traces of his absentee stint remained on his face. He was sitting on top of the comforter on his bed, his back against the headboard.
Chris narrowed his eyes slightly as creeping suspicions came to the surface of his mind. There was something –different- about Wyatt. Just something that he couldn't place his finger on. He shook his head, obviously having been spending far too much time around Ben.
"Hey," the blonde said, taking in Chris's features. Chris had a split lip, a bruise on his jaw and a scab masking a cut above his eye. Every step Chris took he was reminded that the wounds Wyatt could see were the least of his worries. His ankle burned and when he had stumbled in the street on the way home he swore he had felt a rib grate together. Maybe he had fractured a couple of them. "Dad came by earlier, healed us all right up. You weren't here."
"Figures..." Chris muttered, feeling his ribs protest as he shrugged his jacket off. He had taken a long, hot shower this morning to ease the aches but they had come back with friends. He saw a purple bruise on his arm as his sleeve rolled up as he removed his jacket, and yanked the sleeve of his long-sleeved t-shirt down.
Chris hooked his jacket over the banister and flopped onto his bed, burying his face in his pillow and closing his eyes, wishing that everything could just disappear, and that he could stay in this darkness forever.
"So you saw what I did with the demon yesterday, right?" Wyatt asked after a short silence, and Chris rolled over to look at him, his hair mussed at different angles and his eyes bleary and blurred with tiredness. It seemed that everything in the world was going around inside his head right now and he just wanted it all to stop. Chris said nothing, just blinked at his brother and willed him to continue with his eyes. "Pretty cool, no?"
"If you call wrenching out a demon's heart cool, then yeah..." Chris pulled a face, not really knowing where Wyatt was going with this. Again he felt something different within his brother, but he pushed it to the back of his mind.
"So that's a yes, then?"
Chris opened his mouth to protest but couldn't summon the energy or the words and closed it again, apparently in doing so allowing Wyatt to plough on.
"Well why don't you try it, then?" The glint in his brother's eyes unsettled Chris, and he subconsciously sat up with a frown on his face.
"What do you mean?" He asked slowly, eyes slightly narrowed.
Wyatt got up, the gleam still present. It was enough to start Chris's heart fluttering as he looked into Wyatt's eyes, searching them with his own green ones to try and see what Wyatt's next move could be. He concentrated and tried to pull a reading from his brother's emotions, but the jolt he got from trying hit him almost painfully near his heart and he winced, as if his power had been turned against him.
"What's the matter? Can't pull any of that emotion stuff on me?"
Chris said nothing, only sighed. "Huh?"
His head hurt and he suddenly felt himself lose control of his empathy powers, a huge array of emotions hitting him hard enough to force his eyes closed. The emotions running through his blood felt as if they had sharp edges, gouging out their own channels through his skin.
Quite suddenly, they stopped.
"What the fuck was that?" Chris panted, his eyes moving left and right as he tried to suss his brother out.
"What was what?"
Chris paused, Wyatt's innocence confusing him. What had happened? All he knew was that he had tried to get a reading off of Wyatt and then... Had Wyatt known that that would happen to him?
"You ok, Chris?"
Chris blinked, looking up into Wyatt's face and jumping backwards when he realized how close his brother had got without him realizing.
"Uh..." Chris felt the cold wall on his back and swallowed.
"Yeah..." Wyatt frowned. "So what about those demons, then? Huh? Come on..." his expression cleared as he said this, his eyes alight with the passion of a madman.
"Do what you want to do with demons, Wyatt, ok? I'm beat so just..."
Wyatt caught Chris's arm, and the younger teen squirmed slightly in the grip, looking back up at Wyatt again, trying to keep the fear from him.
"What are you afraid of?"
Chris suddenly realized that Wyatt had been invading his own emotions and was reading them with startling clarity through the blocking potion he had taken.
"You mean you don't want the power of it all? The feeling of power like this coursing through you? Do you?"
"Let go!" Chris demanded, as Wyatt's fingers dug deeper into his forearm. The gold of his brother's class ring gleamed in the light spilling from somewhere, and Chris couldn't register where it was coming from.
"Come with me, Chris."
"You're crazy, Wyatt..." He grabbed his brother's wrist with his free hand and tried to pry the hand holding his arm off, eventually squeezing in just the right spot to make Wyatt's knees buckle with pain. Wyatt cursed and released his arm. Chris glared at him, the pain of broken blood vessels throbbing beneath his skin. "That hurt!"
"There's no pain, Chris. There's no fear, no doubt. Just power. And morons like you who are too weak to see it..." Wyatt suddenly lunged for his brother again, knocking the lamp on the table to the floor.
The light tilted wildly and it thudded as it bounced twice on the carpet, sending its rays across the ceiling and down onto the wall and into Chris's eyes. Chris let out a shout and Wyatt was blasted backwards into the wall above his bed, landing on it was the harsh sound of broken springs.
"What the HELL is happening down here?!" Piper demanded from the stop of the stairs, her brown eyes blazing. "Come on, then! Someone own up!"
"Mom, I... it..."
Suddenly a wave of something hit Chris again and the feeling of metal being scraped across ceramic tiles shot through him, chilling him to the bone. He could barely distinguish the rush of emotions through his body they were just there, working their way through his system... From somewhere distantly he heard his mother calling him but he swayed twice and hit the floor, unfeeling as one of his ribs gave a final snap.
Last One Standing
"I don't think he's taken his blocking potion recently..."
The voice was above him, he realized, and his brain churned the words through, working their meaning out about thirty seconds after they were said. He opened his eyes and saw at the ceiling of the basement above him. A small light was burning and he realized he was naked from the waist up. He had been sleeping in the boxers he had been wearing that day.
He gave a quiet, groggy groan. Great, someone had put him to bed as if he were about six. Finally his brain caught up and he sat up, thanking whatever deities that were out there that no after affects of whatever had hit him had decided to linger. It took a couple of minutes for his eyes to focus and then he was fine and he sat up.
"Hey..." he murmured.
A hand sliced through the air and his mother slapped him on the shoulder. "Don't you hey me! You scared me half to death!"
"Sorry..." Chris rolled his eyes. "Who were you talking to just now?"
"Your Aunt Phoebe. Seeing as she has expertise in the whole empath area, you know?"
As far as Chris knew, he and Phoebe were the only two Halliwells so far to possess the power of empathy. It was a burden and they both knew it, in ways that no one, unless they had the power, could understand.
Piper continued, "Are you ok? You don't need healing up?"
Chris looked down at himself, and realized that his rubs were encircled with tight white bandages. They constricted his movement slightly, and on his nightstand there was a bottle of antiseptic. More antiseptic. That would be why all of his cuts were stinging.
If truth were known Chris really felt like he did need healing. He looked at Wyatt's bed but his brother was gone, and his father would never answer his summons to heal him, so it looked like it was going to be a painful night for him. He sighed and resigned himself to it.
"Where did Wyatt go?"
"Out... He seemed pretty worked up... Were you two arguing?"
Chris remembered every detail of what had happened all too clearly. "I don't remember."
Piper paused, smoothing the comforter. "Can I talk to you, Chris?"
"What about?" He settled backwards against the headboard and concealed a wince. He didn't want anything to do with Wyatt and his hands, though, not until Chris knew that Wyatt was acting normal again.
Chris's secretive nature was so normal that Piper barely blinked. "Well... You know about Drox? And..."
"And how you didn't come and save me?"
The way Chris said those words drove blades through her heart. The way his eyes showed the pain but his voice never wavered; it was just a simple, direct question. It hung in the air, making it feel stale.
"Well... yeah... We thought you were in the Underworld and when we got there... and when we got there Wyatt was there and we... He was all beat up, honey..."
No it isn't. It's not ok that you went looking for me and then found and cared for Wyatt first. I'm second born, not second best.
Chris gave a slightly pained smile and instead said, "It's ok, Mom."
"Chris?"
"I promise. Wyatt needed you more..." he began berating himself for the lies. What had Wyatt turned him into? All of his instincts told him to tell his mother what had happened with his brother, how crazy Wyatt had been, crazy enough to make Chris use his power on him.
She hugged him. "I know he did. You proved yourself quite a fighter yesterday, you really did. I'm surprised. It was like you'd practised..." she raised an eyebrow at him.
"What have I ever had to practise with?" Chris asked, laughing slightly.
The way he fell into these lies chilled him. It was the start of a web of lies, and he could feel himself spinning it with every word he said. In the end, he would be a fly, stuck in the middle of it.
"Yeah. I'm sorry for not letting you go. You're a witch, with witch instincts, and witches have been hunting demons for so long, well..." she paused, meticulously straightening the comforter even though she could not have ironed it any flatter. "You promise me you don't feel upset because we didn't get you first?"
Piper looked into her son's eyes. She needed this, this reassurance from Chris that she had done nothing wrong, and that he still loved her. The issues he had with his father were another matter, and could never be solved here, but she had to know that her son didn't feel let down.
The pleading in his mother's eyes scared him. There was a look in her eyes that was pleading with him, and he didn't like it. He'd never noticed it before, if it had ever been present at all.
Lies. No mother. It's not okay. Why don't you ever seem to love me?
"I promise."
Part of that was true. He would love his mother whatever. She was one of the best things in his world, so capable of being a mother and a father that he barely noticed Leo's continued ignorance of him. His face fell slightly. He had felt resentment towards her and Wyatt, he had felt that she had forgotten him, and didn't care.
The sticky silk strands weaved their way through each other in a never-ending, spiralling pattern.
Last One Standing
Yeah, yeah. It took me bloody long enough, huh? Sorry, I really am. But now Last One Standing is over. Isn't it sad? I've really got to spend some time working on Flames next, maybe get it back up to speed and then it will be more Learning to Tango.
This is my last and most important year of school, and it's crippled my social life. Seriously. I have three papers that all count towards my grade that need to be in on Monday, and another 2 that have to be in next week. It's really not looking good I'm afraid, it's so damn unrelenting. Well I've got LOS out now, and it's done. I really hoped you enjoyed it, because I know I have.
Pixie Wildfire: - Happy, happy... Happy tree... Hee....
Alexis Rose: - I'm done now! It took me long enough but I'm done.
NoAlias: - Wow, I wonder what I was smoking when I wrote that? Heh, yeah, evil, bad Wyatt. Bad. Thanks for reviewing.
Claddagh Ring: - Soon... About that... Heh, sorry. Thanks for the review.
Kel: - Yup, it's all over now... I'm upset...
Chattypandagurl: - Thanks.
Charmed Amber: - is blocked at our school, cuz under 13s go to it and they might get all kidnapped or something stupid like that. Damn little kids... I need some little kid spray... Heh. Thanks for your review.
Dominique1: - Heh. Yeah, you see what I did there?
Stony Angel: - There. Try not to wait any more.
Queen Isa: - Heh, yeah... I didn't put that in there... Sorry
Ok, I'm so tired now. Washed out completely. Final edits and my thanks are sandwiched in between all of the school work I have to do. It looks like I'm going to be reaching for the coffeepot if I want to go out tomorrow...
Thanks to:
Pixie Wildfire couldn't do all of this without her poking me and demanding more. :D Love you.
ChRsTiNe17
M J Rosemary
Aldrea7
cherry7up56
Nemesis' Arrow
HollyShadow
NoAlias
Chattypandagurl
Toni
Claddagh Ring
Stony Angel
Dominique1
AK8
Marysmary
princesscatie21
GaladInzel
karen
Taynna
Pink-Charmed-One
Charmed Amber
Random insane person
Flephanie
MerlinHalliwell
CaliforniaChick
Succubus-69
PiperHalliwell025
Rafiki
Jessie
Erica
ashlee
DoRK47
Queen Isa
Alexis Rose
As Always
Kiseki-no-neko
deranged black kitten of doom
zoned-out
Kel
I tired so hard not to miss anyone out, and if I did I'm sorry. I think that's it for LOS now. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.
Latah,
Twisted Flame