"Okay, watch your step." Piper felt her knees buckling for the second time that night and the dead weight in her arms was suddenly slipping. There was a succession of loud thumps and a grunt as it fell to the floor and she winced and pushed hair out of her face. "Oops! Chris, get the light will you?"
Chris crossed the room and flipped the light on, throwing the Manor's master bedroom into stark relief. Leo was lying curled up on the rug, apparently quite content with spending the night there. Piper was glad that she had had Chris orb them in here. Half-carrying her practically unconscious husband up the stairs would not have been fun at all.
The strand of hair that she had not so long ago pushed out of the way flopped back into her face. Ever since she'd had it cut she'd been annoyed with it. That stupid apprentice had managed to cut this one tendril short so it never quite reached into her ponytail. She blew it out as she sighed and then raked it behind her ear, knowing that any position it was put into it would fall down soon. She never should have paid full price and tipped for a cut like this.
She put her hands on her hips, hovering uncertainly over her inebriated husband. How was she going to do this? She pursed her lips as Leo murmured in his sleep and curled up tighter. "You couldn't have orbed him onto the bed?" She demanded of Chris, who was still standing by the door with his hands shoved guiltily in his back pockets. He only shrugged a mute reply, which did little to help Piper put Leo to bed.
She looked at him and it took a while for the witch-whitelighter to catch on but eventually he removed his hands from his pockets and placed them in front of him, palms to the ceiling and his father levitated off of the ground and up to the height of the bed. He dumped the Elder rather unceremoniously on the mattress – which squeaked in protest – and Piper glared at him disapprovingly. He pouted and shoved his hands in his pockets again.
"I suggest you leave now before you see something you don't want to," Piper suggested, unlacing one of Leo's shoes and placing it beside the bed. She put the other one next to it so he could step into them in the morning and then set to work on his socks, pulling them off of his feet and balling them up, throwing them at the laundry hamper in the corner. Leo looked so peaceful when he was asleep, she realized. Even if it was a drugged, unnatural one caused by alcohol.
She smoothed hair back from his forehead and started unbuttoning his shirt, not even hearing Chris cotton on to the fact that she was undressing his dad and close the door behind him. She sat on the bad and the mattress dipped, causing Leo to stir.
His lips parted and he sucked in a deep breath of air, bleary and unfocused eyes coming into view as his lashes fluttered. She paused, waiting for him to go back to sleep but he sat up suddenly and she was forced to jerk her head backwards to stop herself getting head butted.
"Piper…" Leo said, screwing his eyes shut for a while. When he opened them he looked down at his bare chest and grinned wickedly at her. "Y'know, y'didn't have to wait 'til I was 'sleep. You could have jus' asked…"
"What?" She paused with the question still on her lips as she realized what he meant.
"Oh, no, Leo! I was- You've gotta sleep."
"Mmm…" he replied, and the deep sound made his chest vibrate. She pulled her hand back, not realizing that she had left it there when she finished undoing his last button. He took her hand back, moving with startling speed for someone so drunk and kissed the fingertips, smiling impishly at her.
"Leo, this is wrong…" she was taking advantage of him in a way she would never, ever like to be taken advantage of. She tried to pull her hand away again but Leo's strong hand held it there. It had been so long since the bed had felt full, so long since there was a comforting bulk to snuggle next to at night… The bed always felt cold now as well.
A king-sized mattress was made for two people, and Piper could never hope to warm the entire expanse of sheets. She gave a slight shriek, which she muffled quickly as Leo pulled her forwards and kissed her. She stiffened at first in shock and her first instinct was to pull away, but soon all she could do was respond because they were married and this was her husband and the love of her whole damn life and he had left her and she had missed him so much…
He tasted of beer and perhaps the hint of a cigarette, but he was every inch the man that she had married and as he raised his hips into the air to shuck off his jeans she found herself leaning into the kiss, deepening it as longing and lust took over her body. Just… just screw moral decency and moral codes and his fingers were tickling her spine as he reached up her shirt…
Learning to Tango
Moonlight striped across the bed, starkly accentuating Leo's sleeping bulk. The sheets moved as he breathed and Piper propped herself up on her elbow, staring sadly at him. Tonight had been a mistake. It would just make her want him all the more, when he should be with the Elders. She sighed, pulling the covers up tighter around her. It'd be okay. Somehow everything would work out. It always did for them. She led back down on her pillow, staring at the green numbers on her alarm clock. 3:06. The harsh neon green could be seen as spots when she closed her eyes, but soon she wasn't awake to see them.
She curled up, drawing her legs tighter to her stomach in a protective manner, her body already recognizing the tiny miracle growing inside her womb.
Learning to Tango
Leo squeezed his eyes shut at the sudden onslaught of light. And this was San Francisco. Mornings were foggy and murky and yet there was still far too much light. His head pounded and he managed to crack one eye open to look at Piper's alarm clock. It was 5:27. Piper would be getting up in about forty-five minutes. He looked at her sleeping form, curled up and with her hair splayed across the pillow. He reached out to stroke her cheek but then pulled it back. He'd done enough damage here already.
That… that had probably just made Piper more confused, and he could already hear the Elders jingling way too loudly in his head, signalling that he had to go again. It wasn't fair to keep putting her through this… The Elders jingled again. That was probably what had woken him up. Better than any damn alarm clock…
He quietly and gently sat up, pinching the bridge of his nose. He remembered last night. Which was surprising, because he knew he had had enough alcohol to down at lest three bull elephants. Perhaps the remembering was part of the spell. He'd felt it lift last night when he realized that he was being unfair to Piper. It had dissipated, just like that, when he realized he was hurting his sort-of wife just by being here.
He swung his legs out of bed, finding himself naked. A blush raced up his neck and into his face even though the room's only other occupant was fast asleep and summoned his Elder robes to him in a flurry of orbs. He rubbed the back of his neck and closed his eyes again, waiting for the room to stop spinning and his stomach to stop churning… He summoned his orbing power but the bright lights made him cry out in unexpected pain. He reappeared and waved a hand at Piper – who had just started to stir – calming her back into sleep.
As he walked towards the bathroom he was nearly floored by his own jeans. Well at least he knew where some of his clothes had gone… The door creaked open and the overhead light made him hiss in pain but he reached into the bathroom cabinet and found a bottle of Aspirin. He filled the glass by the sink and took four. It was kind of hard to overdose when you were dead, he reasoned, replacing the bottle and making sure the childproof cap had clicked. Besides, the Elders couldn't heal self-inflicted wounds. But perhaps they'd make an exception, as it was very likely that they were all feeling the same…
He emptied the rest of the glass down the sink, watching the water swirl as it gurgled its way down the plughole. The sink looked like it was going to get blocked soon. He held a healing hand over the waste pipe and the water slipped away smoother. Satisfied, he disappeared into a cloud of orbs as the drain swallowed the last few drops of water.
Learning to Tango
Piper murmured and rolled over, looking at her alarm clock. It was ten past six. Groaning at her internal clock she turned to look back at Leo, only to find his side of the bed empty. She tested the sheets with her hands, running them over the cotton. But they were cold. Leo was long gone. Perhaps this was for the best. I mean, he had to be an Elder now. He had more responsibilities… So why didn't it feel right inside? She stared at the pillow, still indented where his head had been the night before and with a sudden movement that surprised her, reached out and yanked both ends of the pillow, plumping it and smoothing the surface, smoothing away all evidence of his stay.
She pulled the top sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her. Curious now she got out of bed, her makeshift dress trailing behind her as she walked. She tucked it in at the top so she could move without holding it and reached the full-length mirror, modelling it slightly, but with none of the lustre she had used yesterday at the mall with her sisters and Bridget. Smiling slightly at her complete inability to make a sheet look even remotely alluring she walked off towards the bathroom to get ready for the day.
Forty minutes later she emerged bright and shining, taking a pleasure that was alien to her in the fact that she had just used a good portion of the hot water. Probably more than her share. But who cared? Just this one, who really cared? She pulled on her kimono over her silk pyjamas and shoved her feet into her slippers. The radio on her clock was playing Delta Goodrem's Lost Without You.
Why was the world so intent on reminding her that Leo was gone? She glared at the green numbers and they glared back, even switching from 06:53 to 06:54. The cheek of it! She flicked her wrists and accelerated the particles within it and the song was lost in the clock's dying wail.
Hm. She'd have to polish that scorch mark out. Feeling light-hearted as if she'd just vanquished a worthy adversary she opened the door and headed for the stairs. Her eyes immediately came to rest on a shattered picture frame, and she remembered the mess that awaited her downstairs. She rubbed her eyes and the lowered her hands, glaring at the door across the hall.
Learning to Tango
The door burst opened and Ben's body immediately jolted into action. His brain was several minutes behind but that didn't stop him readying a fireball in his hand and throwing it at the source of the noise. When you were rudely awoken in the future it was never a good thing. Unless it was Bridget awakening you rudely. Well, then again, that wasn't a good thing but it was nothing to throw a fireball at.
An invisible, familiar wave passed over the room. Someone had stopped all of the molecules in the vicinity. Forcing his eyes open he saw Chris ready for action as well, his body tensed and his fist curled around the hilt of an athame. Ben's fireball was suspended in midair between the daybed Ben was sleeping on and the doorway where Piper was standing, her hands were still raised and the expression of fear still on her face.
Gradually she was able to form words. "And I thought Paige was grouchy in the mornings."
"Sorry," Ben said sheepishly, extinguishing the fireball, "force of habit."
"Hm," was all the response he got from Piper, and he sat up straighter in the bed as the wrenched the curtains open. Light spilled into the room. The sun was already starting to burn the fog off and Ben's squinted, seeing red spots dance before his eyes.
"Mom?" Chris asked, sitting up as well and using a hand to shield his face from the light. "It's-" he screwed his eyes shut and then forced then open, "like seven AM."
"Exactly. The early birds clean up the house after the consequences of the spell they screwed up yesterday."
"Okay. We get it," Chris grouched, rubbing his eyes. As Piper sailed towards the door he pushed the comforter off of him, letting air rife with the chill of morning into his bed.
Learning to Tango
Bridget squirmed to get comfortable against the pillows in her back. She found a vaguely comfy position and flipped channels with the remote. Chris and Ben were buzzing around her with two black garbage bags, tossing cans and bottles into them. She smirked to herself as she reached for her tall glass of caffeine free iced tea next to her and took a sip through the long straw. Oh, the Manor was so definitely much better than Magic School. She was glad that Piper had had Chris orb her here, because 'being cooped up in a place like that was no good for a woman with child.' Ha. With child. That sounded so… natural and hearth and home-y. Nope, she had decided that the term she was going to use for her current status was knocked up.
So now she was here, in the airy sunroom of the Manor. One set of French windows behind her was propped open with a fern, and she relished the cool breeze blowing in through the window, dispelling the sultry heat that so much glass brought.
She sucked pensively on the ice cubes dry as Oprah blabbered to some woman who thought she had problems. Bridget snorted. Go on a talk show when you had real problems, not when you found out that your boyfriend was cheating on you with your daughter. And besides, the daughter was far more attractive. And younger. And hadn't stretched her face too tight with too much Botox and left the skin looking scrawny on her neck. Maybe she'd tune in later when the incest did start. Families were so screwed up.
She twisted her head over the back of the couch to yell vaguely in the direction where she'd last seen Chris. "Hey, what about naming the kid Oprah? I mean, she'll be smart, and rich, and famous and help lots of people."
"I thought the baby was a he?" Ben questioned, poking his head around the door.
Bridget stared at him stony faced. "Oh, because a woman couldn't wield the power of all evil, is that it? We must be the inferior gender. Of course, because I'd like to see guys go through childbirth." she paused. "Oh, and I want lots and lots of medicine. None of this breathing crap, got it?"
"Oprah? Is she the one that can't hear people at the back or something. There was like this big thing about it when she got sued?" Chris licked his thumb and scrubbed at a Sharpie scrawl, cursing the person who had left the marker in reach. It didn't budge. "Why do permanent markers have to be so permanent?" he groused.
"And she's not that old in this time. She can still hear the people at the back, thank you very much. That woman is amazing." She paused as Chris gave in trying to get the pen off the white wall. "Ooh, we could name the midget Sharpie!" she said, suddenly enthused.
"Are you trying to give this kid a complex?" Ben asked, dumping a bottle from the top of the TV into his bag.
"I have several, and I turned out just fine," Bridget deadpanned back before turning back towards the TV.
"I don't like Oprah," Chris said. "She's so…" he struggled for a diplomatic way to put his objections. He couldn't tell Bridget that Oprah was boring. She loved the show, and might bite him.
Bridget stabbed the up button on the remote with her thumb and Jerry Springer graced the screen. Chris was relieved. It meant that she probably wouldn't be asking about Oprah anymore.
Bridget smiled at the set. Ah, some real television. Not an episode went by without someone hitting someone with a chair. She settled back into the cushions once again, debating whether to grab one of the boys and ask for a refill. Ben passed in front of the screen and she yanked one of the pillows from behind her head and threw it at him.
He snatched it from the air and grinned at her, moving out of the way of the TV long enough to see that Jerry had moved into his final thought. Dammit, she'd missed all of the punch-ups.
Ben threw the cushion back at her, his garbage bag clinking. "You're getting slow, you know that? Must be all that extra weight."
"Oh yeah?" Bridget challenged, looking him up and down. Ben smirked at her as she struggled to get herself out of the mountain of cushions she had created and then laughed when she flopped back into them. "Just you wait!" she threatened, picking up the remote again and flipping the channel. "Just you wait."
"What for?"
"You'll see."
"You're stalling because you can't get up, aren't you?"
Bridget stretched languidly. "Yup."
"Thought so."
"Can," Bridget said, gesturing towards the sideboard where a can was half-hidden behind picture frames.
"Nope," Ben said, gesturing to his clinking bag. "I've got the bottles. We're not only cleaning up, we're separating the trash and recycling too."
"CHRIS!" Bridget hollered.
"I'm right here," he replied patiently. When he moved, Bridget noted, his sack made light, metallic clanking.
"Good. Can on the cabinet."
Chris rolled his eyes and tossed the offending article into his bag, just as Piper walked in through the dining room from the kitchen, disconnecting the cordless phone with a beep.
"That was the Police Station," she said, watching as Ben and Chris both tensed nervously. With all that had been going on, they had practically forgotten that they were out on bail. Ben wormed his finger through the plastic of the bag in his hand, poking it through the other side. Piper kept them in suspense as long as she could bear it; enjoying the effect it had on them.
They had tried to kill her this morning, after all. Unintentionally, sure, but they had still tried. Chris was searching her face, trying to determine an answer in her eyes. "And you're off the hook."
The collective sigh of relief in the room nearly overwhelmed her as the tension in the air raced past her for an exit. Chris grinned, his life suddenly so much more ameliorated than five minutes ago. That was one less thing to worry about.
Ben let out a shaky breath, grinning from ear to ear. Check off one dark cloud hanging over his head. Now, if he could just get rid of the other fifty or so before they all banded together and struck him dead with a lightning bolt, he'd be just perfect.
"It turns out that the Captain thought that Sheridan's case was a load of fabrications based of circumstantial evidence."
"Basically, he thought it was a load of crap," Bridget translated airily; reaching for her glass before remembering that it was empty.
"Yeah, thanks for that," Ben returned sarcastically.
"No problem. I know you have a problem with big words."
"So," Piper said, sitting down on the couch, "without that threat looming over you, there's room to add one of my own, right?"
She was chirping, Chris noticed. That was never good. She only chirped when she was self-satisfied – namely giving out punishments. "Uh… Yeah, in a minute Mom…" Maybe he could put her off for a while. Cleaning up the stupid house after the stupid Elders trashed it was definetly punishment enough?
He turned his back on her as he walked purposefully out of the doorway, just waiting for her wrath to befall him. He chewed his lower lip, waiting for the explosion.
"Christopher Perry Halliwell!" His shoulders slumped in defeat at his full name and he turned to face her. She was glaring. Crap. People said that Piper was the place he had got his glare from, but he didn't believe it. He could never look that scary.
"Yeah?" He tried casual. There had to be some kind of way to disarm her. He tried innocent. Perhaps that would do it. There was nothing he could think of that worked on her in the future. Except tears, and they had done more harm that good once he'd reached double figures, because Wyatt had just called him pathetic.
"Ha. No, see, that innocent look is the trick Phoebe used to pull all of the time. Not gonna work, mister."
He rolled his eyes, another turn blocked. His mother had truly seen it all. There was just no getting round her.
"Anyway, did I teach you to walk away from me when I'm talking to you?" Piper demanded, her anger flaring again. "I know I most certainly did not. So come and stand here while I talk to you, got it?"
Uh-oh. This was what should have come out last night, before Leo had thrown himself on her and been all-pitiful. He had just delayed the inevitable. He walked back towards the sunroom, leaning on the doorframe.
"Okay. Here goes. You came here to save your little brother, yeah? Well, big brother. But right now, he's littler than you. Anyway, you didn't come here to argue with your father or throw parties or get drunk or anything like that. So dammit you will stay in this house and figure out how to save your future and what you're going to do when all the demons try to attack us when your baby is born!" She nodded at Chris's suitably shocked expression and stormed out in the direction of the kitchen. "Now, I'm going to P3. If this place isn't spotless when I get back, so help me…"
A couple of seconds of stunned silence hung in the air after she left. "Did… did she just ground me?" Chris asked faintly, disbelieving. Wasn't he a little old to be grounded? And this meant no more trips to the Underworld, which were pretty much essential for determining who was after Wyatt.
"Yes. You're Mom is one badass witch. Do you think she'll adopt me?" Bridget asked, staring in admiration at the kitchen.
Chris looked to Ben for support, but found the other witch grinning smugly.
"Ha."
"Hey, you're meant to be my best friend!" Chris said, dropping his bag full of cans.
"Yeah…" he managed the remorseful act for all of about two seconds before grinning again. "Ha."
Chris was punching Ben in the shoulder in a vain effort to gain some kind of support when Piper came back in, dressed in her jacket and with her purse slung over her shoulder.
"And while I'm in Mom mode? Ben, what I just said goes for you too, got it?"
"What!" Ben howled as Chris stopped punching him and started laughing instead. "You're not my mom!"
"Heh. Nice observation," Bridget muttered from the couch. She'd taken on Ben's abandoned smugness, and was smiling as she watched someone profess their undying love on TV.
"No, but your mom doesn't know you exist yet, so I'm the next best thing. And besides, if I don't extend it to you, you'll only help him come up with some crazy escape plan." She moved into the parlour, grabbing her keys from the foyer table. "And look after Bridget!" She called. "Lord knows is hard enough being pregnant. And Bridget? Make sure they do as they're told. I gotta run; we're getting a beer delivery today. Tell Phoebe or Paige that they can order out for dinner, got it? And NO MAGIC!"
Piper had left the Manor and was reversing her SUV when Ben came out of his astonishment enough to speak. "What… what just happened?"
"You got busted," Bridget told them in a singsong voice. She reached for her glass and rattled the ice cubes at them peremptorily. "Any chance of a drink around here?"
Learning to Tango
The Manor got about seven hundred channels, and Bridget was thoroughly bored with all of them. She finally clicked the TV off, trying to remember when it was that TVs came with voice command as standard. She had tried yelling at this one at first, then remembered that she was in the backwards past.
Phoebe had walked through the Manor's front doors bleary-eyed and not even noticing the state the place was in about five hours ago, not long after Piper had left, in fact. She had finally got her column to the editor and she had practically fallen asleep on the stairs. Eventually, the middle sister had managed to make it to her room, and Bridget was sure that she was still passed out on her bed.
Paige wasn't home yet, but then if the witch-whitelighter had come home, then she would have orbed straight onto her bed without bothering with the front door or tricky stairs, so Bridget would never know unless she wanted to brave the tricky stairs, and she didn't.
Yawning, she decided to turn to her other form of entertainment. "BEN!"
He slouched in tiredly from the direction of the living room. "What now?"
Ah. There was the entertainment. She smiled to herself, realizing that she was doing a lot more smiling than normal. It was actually quite a workout, she decided. She'd have to do it more often when she got to the future. Being in charge was fun.
"You missed a spot on the floor. Clean it up, it's bugging me. Sitting there, all sticky and nasty…" She wrinkled her nose at it.
"Where?" Ben demanded, looking in the direction she was. The floor looked perfectly clean. He should know – not so long ago he'd been scrubbing the tiles.
"You can't see it unless you're down here. It's a trick of the light."
"Uh. Huh."
"I mean it!" Bridget said indignantly, grabbing his sleeve and yanking him down with enough strength to make his knees buckle.
"Ow! I'm glad to see that your pregnancy hasn't affected your strength at least… Your brain, yes, your strength, apparently not so much. But do you have to do that? Jeez, I'm going to need new knees before I'm thirty."
She stabbed her finger at the sticky spot and his eyes followed it, where a slightly dark patch was gleaming glutinously by the side of one of the armchairs.
"How did I miss that?" Ben asked, groaning in defeat and a little pain as he got back to his feet. Bruised kneecaps. Not fun.
"You put your bucket on it," Bridget informed him, adding, "Dumbass."
"Well, it was nice of you to notify me before; you know when I was actually cleaning the floor."
Bridget smiled sweetly. "Heh. Oops."
Ben rolled his eyes, sighing. He gave up. The mortal way sucked - it just took way too long. And there was no way he was going to get a bucket and fill it up again, especially as it involved boiling the kettle because this house never had enough hot water. "Let the object of-"
"Uh, uh, uh. No magic, remember? Go get your bucket."
Ben looked her up and down, and then smiled at her, sickly sweet. Bridget shifted against the cushions and narrowed her eyes at him, trying to work out what he was going to do. She so knew that smile. That was the smile Ben used when he had the trump card.
"Ben…" she said, drawing out his name warningly. He smiled wider.
"I don't care if I'm being astute,
Let Bridget quickly mute."
Ben stepped back to admire his handiwork, folding his arms across his chest and sitting in the armchair next to the spill. It was the first time he'd sat down all day, and he let out an audible sigh, grinning as Bridget mouthed obscenities at him. Once again paying silent homage to whichever Halliwell had written the spell he picked his nails as she struggled to get up, but she was even more confined to the couch than she was this morning and every time she tried to brace herself against the cushions she just fell backwards into them again. They were her downfall, apparently, working with her slight bump to prevent her from rising.
Bridget snatched the remote from its resting place and threw it angrily at his head. It was dead on course when it suddenly stopped in midair. It was hovering, bobbing up and down slightly as if it were floating on choppy water.
"Sorry, Bridget. The remote has metal in it."
She glared at him, and he knew that if she was able to get up, he would be so dead right now. The remote was drifting lazily towards his hand when Chris's voice in the doorway made him jump. The remote clattered to the floor and the batteries sprang out, rolling separate ways across the floor.
"What's going on?"
"Bridget lost her voice," Ben replied smoothly, as Bridget gesticulated wildly in vain in an angry charade, trying to get Chris to understand her. Unfortunately for Ben, he did.
"You mean you lost Bridget's voice?"
Ben shrugged. "Potayto Potahto."
"Why can't she get up?" Chris said worriedly, watching Bridget again attempt to get up from the midst of the cushion stack.
"She made herself too comfortable," Ben supplied. "I mean, she's not even that fat yet, so it can't be the baby's fault…" He blinked as Bridget made a scurrilous hand gesture, looking sanguinary at him. He fought the urge to gulp. "All that? Aimed at poor little me?" He could joke, but in truth it kind of scared him. He was just thankful she was confined to the couch…
Suddenly Bridget dissolved into a flurry of blue and white orbs. The cushions looked almost relieved as they were able to spring malleably back to their former shape. The indent of Bridget still lingered, however, as she reappeared next to Ben and began attacking him mercilessly with one of the cushions from the heap, trying her best to yell herself hoarse. She stopped suddenly and dropped the pillow, pressing her hand to her stomach and smiling serenely.
"Bridget?" Chris asked, taking her hands and looking into her eyes. She scowled at Ben, who was just removing his arms from his head, and snatched Chris's hand, pressing it against her stomach.
"It's moving…" Chris said, smiling goofily. Ben rolled his eyes. "It's like… moving…"
"Yes, Chris. We established that. And anyway, I thought you didn't do kids?"
Chris was smiling ear to ear, and Ben suddenly didn't want to burst his friend's bubble. So he sat there while Chris waited for another movement and got none, and until Bridget pulled away from Chris impatiently and started beating Ben half-senseless with the cushion again.
He finally gave in, his voice muffled by his arms. "Okay! Okay!
"Reverse the spell I cast here,
And let the magic disappear."
He timidly lowered his arms, looking at Bridget from between them as he let them fall. Bridget waited until his hands were touching the chair before hitting him twice more around the head.
"Don't do that! Ever again! Do you hear me!"
Ben gave her a mock salute. "Yes ma'am."
She made an enraged noise and raised the cushion again, but Chris grabbed her arm and orbed her across the room and back to her couch.
"Okay, let's get you sitting back down before you hurt yourself."
"I'm not going to hurt myself!" Bridget said scornfully. "Him, however-" She tried to make her way back across the room, rolling up her sleeves as she did so. Chris took her hand and sat her back down on the couch.
"Okay, well then you're gonna hurt the baby. So be calm, got it? And it'll all work out…"
"It's not going to work out until I get to drop an anvil on your friend's head," Bridget growled darkly. She was slightly placated when Chris retrieved the remote and reassembled it, and then when he flicked the TV on a channel popped up that made her squeal and say, "Oh my God, I love this show!" Very soon, she was watching it intently, all afore mentioned ideas of crushing Ben's skull with a heavy weight forgotten.
Ben smiled at his narrow escape, and Chris pulled him up and out of his chair with a roll of his eyes to get the Manor finished before Piper came home.
Learning to Tango
Ben had his feet, clad in white socks, up on the couch in the attic, leaning against one of the arms with a spiral-bound notebook resting on his knees. Three pages were flipped over the top and he was currently scribbling on a new page. Chris was sitting in an armchair, his legs draped over the left arm, his back leaning on the right one. He had a similar pad on his knees and was scrawling with a rapidly blunting pencil that was in dire need of sharpening.
The Book of Shadows had been closed and abandoned on its podium, having yielded its few clues already. Now they were trying to find connections between demons, attacks and Wyatt. The house was quiet. Paige and Phoebe had both woken up in high spirits with a surprising amount of energy, and had taken Bridget with them to P3. Piper was working the bar that night, so the silence was kind of oppressing.
"Okay, so what have you got?" Chris asked at last, feeling that he had to do something to break the hush.
"You first."
Chris turned his pad around to show Ben, who tilted his head to one side and squinted in confusion.
"What is that?"
"They're little ladybugs…" Chris said, turning the pad back towards him to finish off an antenna. Doodling had always helped him think. There were ladybugs bordering the page. In the centre of the sheet, there was the word 'Wyatt' encircled. There were lines coming off of it, like rays from a child's drawing of the sun, but all of the lines were empty.
"What are they doing?"
"Marching," Chris said simply, holding his tongue between his teeth to shade in a spot. He looked up from his word and caught his friend's Ben's expression. "To, uh… war…" He cleared his throat and straightened up, flipping the cover over the pad.
"You just added the last bit on in a vain attempt to stay macho, didn't you?"
"Maybe." Chris tore the page off, balled it up and threw it at Ben. It hit the side of his head and bounced to the floor. "Fine. Let's see what you have then."
Ben flipped his pad around. "I got stars," he said.
Chris rolled his eyes, shaking his head. "O…kay… And what's the blob in the middle?"
"A crescent moon."
"Ooh, very poetic."
"Thank you," Ben said, adding another star in a small, unused corner. The pad was a mass of crazy lines and doodles. Chris squinted at them, tilting his head in a vain attempt to make sense of them.
"Wait, does it have eyes?" Chris demanded, leaning closer to the drawing, nearly falling off the armchair as he attempted to look at the moon on Ben's page.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because… I don't know. It does, okay? It's a person moon."
"Wait… Actually, more to the point, why does it only have one eye?"
"It's a profile of the moon, okay?" Ben paused, as if realizing what he had just said, and tore the pages off and crumpled them, throwing them down on the floor next to Chris's. "We should really draw guy stuff, you know? Like cars and planes and crap like that."
Chris scratched the back of his neck with the end of the pencil. "Heh. Yeah... You better burn them."
"Good idea. Before Bridget finds out and teases us mercilessly for the rest of out lives." Ben reduced the balled pieces of paper to piles of ash.
"I think she already knows about the doodling," Chris reasoned. "Because, you know, she always doodles like knives and guns and crossbows and stuff like that…"
"You know, considering your kid is half-Bridget, you should decorate its nursery with weapons hanging everywhere. Cuz, you know, it'll like them whether it's a boy or a girl."
"Oh, a telekinetic baby in a room full of weapons. Why can't I see that working? And anyway, I thought you said earlier that you were against giving the kid a complex? Don't you think hanging weapons where normal people would have a mobile will give him a complex?"
"It has Bridget as a mom. It's gonna have like five before it's born."
Chris laughed, smiling into the distance. "I'd say at least six."
In the small lull that followed, Ben put a fingernail in his mouth and chewed on it. He made a disgusted sound and tore the hand away from his mouth. "Why can I still taste cleaning products are turpentine?"
They had had to resort to painting about five layers of paint over the Sharpie signatures, and then to wash the brushes they had used turpentine that made the whole kitchen shimmer with fumes and even hours afterwards, Ben could still taste and smell the tang on his hands.
"The same reason I'm so damn tired?" Chris tried, stretching and trying to get comfortable in the awkward position. "Because we were up at seven and spent all day cleaning up?"
"No, duh?"
Chris rolled his eyes. "And anyway, maybe I nasty taste will stop you biting your nails. How long have you been doing that? Fifteen years? Sixteen?"
Ben glared at him, wanting to chew on a nail defiantly but unable to because of the brush-cleaner. "So? It's not like I'm the only person in the world with a bad habit."
"Heh… Look, I'm going to go to bed, okay?"
"I'll flip you for the bed," Ben said immediately, scrabbling in his pockets for some change only to remember he'd been completely broke since he had got to the past. Everything was in the future.
"You flipped me for the bed last night," Chris reminded him, "and I won."
"So? You used your power."
"And? You used yours!"
"I did not!" Ben returned, looking shocked at the prospect.
"You did, because the lamp on the nightstand was somehow dragged mysteriously towards you."
"Oh, that proves nothing," Ben said dismissively.
"Fine. I'll race you."
"Fine. And NO ORBING!" Ben yelled, breaking into a run out of the attic and down the stairs, Chris hot on his heels and shouting about how Ben could have at least said 'GO!'
The city looked so far away beyond the attic windows, so calm and peaceful. And as another day towards it potential destruction oozed from the streets in the wake up slinking night, the city lights sparkled across the Triquetera on the book, the only symbol of hope for them all.
Learning to Tango
Stony Angel: - Heh. Thank you, hun. Well, hard times are coming up for Chris and Bridget. (And not the damn novel. God, I hate, hate, HATE that book), but the real thing as well. So we are perhaps in the future and it's late and I'm tired and babbling is fun and thank you.
chattypandagurl: - Wow! It's a chapter! Heh. It's odd. It's late, and I'm hallucinating about playing checkers with seashells on the ceiling. Yay. Anyways, thank you. Thank you, thank you twinkle toe.
ilovedrew88: - They should poke him with a sandwich maker… Mwahahahahahaha. Ha… I have a sandwich maker. It lives in the cupboard and is called George… Hello George… George says he'll bite me if I poke Leo with him. Let's not try that… We'll use the BLENDER! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… Yeah… Sleep good, remember that. I forgot to sleep. It's bad. Yes. Thank you. You're a very, very nice person… Maybe you could live in a jar? Of honey… Made from bees… Bzzzzz… Bzz…
mizunderstood writer: - Heh, thanks. Thank you shiny twinkle remote control la la la thank you happy me now bye bye.
As Always: - We have a rambling creeper that is meant to ramble up the house, but it doesn't it GROWS because it's a plant and it's green and twinkle and gah and thank you and twinkle and I want a creeper called Fred.
Pixie Wildfire: - Of course… Heh. Yay. Twinkle thank you happy birthday bye bye.