Chris got up early the next morning. All things considered, he thought, he felt pretty well-rested. He dressed quickly in a pair of old jeans and a faded T-shirt, then checked his neck in the mirror. The Stoli's fingerprint had faded slightly to a dark purple mixed with green and yellow. He grinned.

That would look so cool as a background, he thought, eyeing it in the mirror. I wish I could take a pic…pix…pixt… His grin widened as he remembered Wyatt's new phone. Then he frowned. To get to Wyatt's phone, he would have to go to his room, and face…the Horror.

The Eternal Mess.

The Cesspool of Untidiness.

Chris shuddered slightly, then sighed and looked at the bruise once more. Oh, what the hell, he thought with a shrug.

Wyatt was still asleep when he orbed in. He looked around him at the mess his brother called a room and sighed. It was just…just…wrong to have a room this messy and not do something - anything - to clean it up. He glanced around for his brother's jacket and saw it hanging off the handle of the door. He began to navigate his way as carefully as possible through the minefield that was Wyatt's room's floor.

He had just made his way to the jacket and was lifting it off its resting place when he heard Wyatt say in a muffled voice, "You better have a bloody good reason for waking me up, Chris." He winced.

"I need to borrow your phone," he replied gingerly.

Wyatt groaned and rolled over to look at him. "Why don't you just buy one for yourself instead of waking me up when you try to steal mine?" he grumbled.

"Because I'm saving for a car," Chris informed him.

"No you're not, you're saving for a motorbike," Wyatt said, a modicum of amusement infiltrating his voice. He added, "Don't worry, I won't tell Dad."

"Thanks."

Wyatt sat up. "You can borrow my phone, too," he told him, "if you tell me what you want it for."

Chris arched his neck slightly and indicated the finger-print. "Photo."

Wyatt rolled his eyes. "You're crazy," he complained, lying back down.

"I inherited it from you," Chris told him.

"Who the hell are you gonna send it to, anyway?" Wyatt asked.

"Prue, who else?" Chris replied. "She'll think it's hilarious. And I'm gonna send it to my laptop, too. I'm thinking of putting a negative filter on it and having it as a background…"

Wyatt snorted.

"It would be a talking point!" Chris said defensively. His older brother rolled his eyes and rolled back over, burying his head in the pillow.

"I'm going back to my beauty nap," he told him, his voice muffled once again.

The opportunity was too great to pass up.

"Beauty nap? That could take weeks…" Chris said, then slapped his free hand over his mouth.

Wyatt, furious, sat up and flicked his fingers at him, hoping to TK him into the door, but Chris orbed out just in time. He orbed into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, looking at his reflection. He shook his head at himself.

Him and his big mouth. If only he could just shut up, or think before he spoke.

Maybe you should remember that next time you attack some innocent girl who needs a place to stay so she doesn't become demon-kibble, even if she does orb like a Whitelighter, a tiny voice whispered from the back of his brain.

"Shut up," he grumbled, trying to ignore the flicker of guilt. The voice was right. He had made a hasty generalization, even though it was a pretty well justified one. Just because she could orb didn't mean she was a Whitelighter, or fully a Whitelighter. Hell, he and his brother were living proof of that!

He made a resolution: next time he saw Eryn, he was going to be civil. He was not going to snap her head off. Hell, he might even apologise.

But right now…he held the phone up and smiled.

Carefully, he lined the camera up with his bruise, watching in the mirror as the image changed on the screen. When the bruise was fully centred on the screen, he took the picture, then turned the phone around to have a look.

After a moment, the picture of the bruise took up the screen. Chris laughed. It was so weird…to think he had a fingerprint on the side of his neck…

He saved it under "fingerprintpiccie", closed the phone and slid it into his pocket before orbing into the kitchen. He walked over to the pantry, pulled out a box of cereal, and set it down on the counter. He grabbed a bowl from the cupboard, then flicked his hand at the fridge. The door opened, and the milk soared out. It landed gracefully on the counter beside him as he poured the cereal into his bowl. He closed the box and sent it flying back into the pantry as he poured the milk into the bowl, before banishing the milk, too, back to its place. With a twitch of his fingers he sent the bowl flying over to the opposite counter as he grabbed a spoon from the cutlery drawer, then walked over and sat down at the counter. He scooped up some cereal and was about to raise it to his mouth when he noticed the smashed tile on the counter in front of him.

"Oh, crap…" he whispered, putting down his spoon and pushing the bowl aside. The triquetra tile from the back door was lying on the counter, smashed into three pieces. Chris vaguely remembered making it when he was little. His Mom had loved it, and had always commented on it. How had it been…? He groaned as he realized. When he had slammed the door the day before, he had heard the tinkle of breaking glass behind him. He hadn't thought about it since, but…that must have been it.

He sighed slightly, then frowned. Wyatt had obviously gotten to the tile before him. So why hadn't he fixed it? The pieces of the tile were laid out with half an inch between the blue, green and purple parts, but an entire inch between the purple and green sections. Chris opened his mouth to say a spell, then closed it. He reached out slowly and pushed the green third of the triquetra in until it was touching the blue third, and half an inch away from the last section, which was purple.

Chris sat staring at the triquetra for a few moments, then shook his head slightly and sat back and stared at the counter. He felt like…like there was something he had just been thinking about, but…now he couldn't remember. He sighed and got to his feet, pissed off.

If there was one thing Christopher Perry Victor Halliwell hated more than Demons, jocks and broccoli, it was having his mind screwed with.

Okay, it's either Cleaners, or one of those damned Farthin demons, he thought furiously, remembering when he and his brother had gone up against the tiny lime-green mind-manipulator demons. The evil munchkins had made the two of them believe that their own family was evil, and even thought that hadn't happened this time - at least, he was pretty sure…he hated his cousin Josh with much the same hatred he usually did - the experience had left him with the same weird sense of forgetting what he had just been thinking about.

He began to TK his breakfast to the sink, then stopped, TK'd it back to him and quickly took a couple of mouthfuls. I'm not gonna do that again…he thought before sending the bowl back along its original course. A few years back he'd…but it didn't matter, he was over it. Assured that the bowl was safely in the sink, he orbed out.