Neurotic


Summary: "My name's not Chris Perry," Chris said, as if it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to say. "It's Christopher." He paused, almost reluctantly. "Christopher Halliwell."

Disclaimer: Charmed and Chris don't belong to me, doo dah, doo dah, I'm not making any money from this, oh, dah doo dah day.


Chapter The Nineteenth


Whatever Paige was expecting as a reply, it was not for Chris to burst out laughing hysterically, and fall to the carpet, beating it with his fist as he howled with laughter. Piper and Pippa exchanged a smirk and started to laugh too.

Phoebe, however, just looked confused.

"What did I say?" Paige demanded.

"The stupidest thing ever," Pippa snorted. Paige looked hurt. "In my time, this happened months later. So unless you're wishing this pregnancy to go on for a few more months…"

Paige pouted. "Well, it could still be the demons behind it, right?"

"Oh, god, she had a thought!" Chris snorted, covering his mouth with his hands and laughing helplessly.

Phoebe got to her feet and looked down at them. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Nothin'," Chris said, blinking up at her from the floor. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Phoebe gaped a little, and bent down to tug him up from the carpet, when the premonition hit her. Pulling away, she looked down sharply at him, and then across to where Piper was clutching her coffee. She stalked over to Piper, and tugged it away. Piper glared at her.

"How dare you!" Piper gasped as Phoebe walked across the room with her coffee, and poured half of it into one of the pot plants decorating the mantelpiece.

The plant promptly died, its tendrils turning brown and withering before their eyes.

"Paul's been poisoning your coffee," Phoebe said, her dark eyes watching the destroyed plant. "By the look of things, with the same potion that the Seer used on me."

"The one to make you evil?" Paige said. Her eyes widened. "Well, that explains Piper, but not him…"

Chris had shuffled to a sitting position by one of the chairs, and he glowered at Paige, looking between the sisters and his mom a little confusedly, as if just awakening from a dream. If this was true then he wasn't evil, and—and he'd just acted like a complete prat…

Like that's any different from normal.

Piper looked at the coffee mug which Phoebe was still holding, then at Chris, and her mouth dropped open. He figured that, maybe, she was beginning to come out of the stupor too.

Chris cringed, openly. Jeez, this whole thing was so screwed up. If they were going to find out from this… Maybe his Grandpa was right. He should have told them sooner. Now they were just going to find out, and be so mad at him…

"You've been testing my drinks for me?" Piper asked.

Chris blinked. Then he blinked again. He resisted the motion that he wanted to make and kept his mouth clammed shut. Man, was his mom really this stupid? It appeared she was.

"Uh, yeah," he said awkwardly, squirming. "Just to check if anyone was poisoning you, or anything."

Piper screwed her mouth up a little. "Yeah, great job," she deadpanned.

Chris pulled a wry face, but inwardly he was relieved. She could have found out, then, and you would have been in a hog's load of trouble. From the look on Pippa's face, she was thinking nearly the same thing. The potion must have affected her too.

"Sorry," he said, pulling a face and shrugging his shoulders. Then he realised something. "So I'm not evil?" He asked Phoebe.

Phoebe was still looking troubled, but was struck by the vulnerability in Chris' voice. She smiled softly, and dropped to his level. She put one hand on his shoulder.

"You're not evil, honey," she said simply, getting to her feet and grabbing the mug. "I'll take this upstairs, and see if I can whip up some sort of potion antidote."

"No, you don't," Paige said grimly, getting to her feet and standing forcibly in her way. Phoebe pouted at her.

"Did you drink some of it too?" Phoebe asked pointedly.

"Naw, I'm just better at potions than you are," Paige said, equitably. "And also, I am beginning to resent being the one left on babysitting duty. And – if your vision was close to the truth – I'm going to be a teacher one day, and that's a whole lot of babysitting."

"So shouldn't you get some practise?" Phoebe asked, looking torn. Paige stepped back a little, and Phoebe looked up in hope.

"All right, I'll race you," Paige said, surprising Phoebe. "First one to the Book of Shadows makes the potion."

Phoebe nodded, but as soon as she had, Paige orbed away. Loud laughter could be heard all the way downstairs. Phoebe scrunched her face up a little.

"Hint. Next time you agree to a race with a Halliwell, stipulate that no powers are to be used," Pippa advised. Phoebe pulled a wry face at the older version of Piper.


"Great, just great!"

Dan stared up at the truck pulling away from the drive. They'd come to deposit his new freezer, and deposit it they had. Right in front of him. When he'd complained, they only told him to read the small print, before laughing and driving off.

The small print, on his receipt, said that the delivery cost only constituted delivery to the building, and any consequent transportation necessary was customer to figure out.

He eyeballed the small freezer, and wondered if he could drag it up on his own. He really wished he had Paige's power at that moment, or Chris'. And anyway, maybe that delivery company is run by a demon, who knows...

Sighing, he bent over and managed to clamp his arms around the machinery. If I can just get it to the lift… Staggering under its weight, he managed to get it nearly to the door, when he realised that the door had slammed shut. Probably by the wind.

Gingerly dropping the freezer to the ground, Dan edged around it and managed to grab hold of the door, only for it to open a whole lot easier than he was expecting.

The reason for that became clear quickly, as he came face to face with a man in his fifties. He instantly liked the guy. His brown eyes held warmth and openness.

"Need a hand?" The man said.

"God, please," Dan said, with a smile of relief. He extended one hand. "I'm your new upstairs neighbour, Dan Gordon."

"Victor Bennett," said the other man, taking Dan's hand in a firm handshake. Dan frowned – he'd heard the name somewhere before, somewhere-

"You're Piper Halliwell's father, aren't you?" Dan said, even as he realised it.

Victor's eyes widened. "You know her?"

Dan nodded. "Uh, yeah. All of the Halliwell girls, actually… I just visited them yesterday to catch up. I-" He paused, awkwardly. "I only just heard about Prue. I'm so sorry for your loss."

A flash of pain filtered across Victor's face. "Yeah. It was—unexpected."

Dan was sorry he'd reminded Victor of the pain. "Uh-"

"Oh, right. Your freezer," Victor said. "If we can get it to the lift, that's half the battle over, right?"

They spent a very companionable ten minutes, heaving the small freezer to the lift, and then into Dan's apartment, chatting quietly about the girls. Dan admitted to being an old boyfriend, and to losing out to Leo, and they bonded over their dislike of the man. When Victor suggested having a drink at his apartment, it wasn't hard for Dan to say yes.

Dan shuffled awkwardly on the sofa as Victor passed him a bottle of freshly opened Stella.

"You don't mind drinking out the bottle, do you?" Victor asked easily, settling onto a chair. He noticed Dan's shuffling on the couch. "Uh, sorry about Lumpy. He's a little old."

"Lumpy?"

"The couch."

"I've sat on worse," Dan said, laughing. Victor grinned back at him. "You named your couch, though?"

"Oh, it wasn't me, it was-" Victor managed to finish his sentence, in a gurgled sort of fashion, when the object of his sentence orbed into the middle of the sitting room "-Chris!"

"Hey," Chris said, looking half-drunk. "Uh, Paul poisoned Piper with an evil-making potion, and it's affected me too. Aunt Phoebe's kicked me out, and told me to sleep it out here." He pouted cantankerously. "As if calling her a pixie was annoying. I only called her it forty-seven times. It's the hair-cut, dude, I tell you. Totally weird. No wonder she grows it long again in the future. Hey, Grandpa, are you having a heart attack?" Chris prodded the surprised Victor a little. "'cause I can't heal fully, and we'd have to call Leo down, and boy do I not want to do that-"

"Chris-" Victor managed to splutter, gesturing at Dan with his beer. Unfortunately, the still quite befuddled Chris took it to mean have some of my beer.

Chris looked disgusted. "Eww, man, that stuff's gross," he complained.

"CHRIS!" Victor bellowed. Chris winced, as if he had a hangover. By the look of things, Dan reasoned, he probably did. "We have a guest!"

Chris turned around slowly and blinked at Dan. "Oh. Hey, Dan," he said. "You're on my couch." He bodily picked up a surprised Dan from Lumpy, and promptly collapsed on it.

Dan blinked, and poked Chris in the shoulder. Chris' reply was to snore at him a little bit. "He's asleep," Dan said, arching a look at the surprised Victor.

"You know? About- everything?" Victor said, as Chris began to snore. He frowned. "Never mind. You were over there yesterday, you'll have seen the two Pipers running around. This is weird. He doesn't snore, normally."

"He said something about a potion," Dan suggested helpfully.

"Oh. Oh." Victor reached over to the phone and dialled Phoebe. "Hi. Chris just appeared over here… yeah… ahuh… she did?... oh. Oh, okay." He rang off. Dan looked at him expectantly. "Apparently Paul has been poisoning Piper's coffee with a potion that makes the drinker turn evil. Paige and Phoebe found out the only way to completely reverse the potion was-" His shoulders twitched with laughter.

"What?" Dan demanded, curious.

"-vodka," Victor finished, laughing. "And lots of it!"

Eyes wide, Dan stared at him, down at the snoring Chris, and then started to snigger too. "You planning to go over there tomorrow?" Dan asked.

Victor nodded, barely able to restrain his mirth enough to stop laughing. "Uh, yeah. Guess I'd better go with sleeping beauty over there. I don't know if they can orb if hung-over."

"I might come with you," Dan admitted. "The idea of two Piper's, hung-over and in the same few metres of each other…"

It was a long while until they stopped laughing.


Paul put his head down as he tramped down the long tunnel down to Yenene's lair in order to return the vial he'd just emptied into Piper's coffee. The potion had already been taking effect. He hoped Wyatt would be happy.

As he rounded the corner to the bulbous almost scientific lab, he was expecting to see Yenene already there to take it. Instead, she was sat on one of the desks, her arms crossed across her expansive chest, and she was scowling.

"You messed up, boy," Yenene growled.

Paul blinked furiously at her. "What do you mean?"

"They know," she said, tiredly. Paul froze.

"They know what?" He asked.

"About the potion," Yenene said.

Paul blinked a few more times for good measure. "But I only just put a fresh lot in," he complained.

"Well, you messed up," Yenene said.

Paul realised he wasn't going to really get much more out of this conversation. "Bet my older brother wasn't too pleased when he found out about that," he said instead, reluctantly.

"No, your older brother was not."

Paul felt the chill creep up his spine, and restrained the violent shiver that wanted to break out. "Hello, Wyatt," Paul said casually as Wyatt stepped out from behind one of the crags.

"You don't sound surprised to see me," Wyatt commented. "Even though you know, as well as I, that time projections cannot go this far underground."

"It's because you got sloppy," Paul said. "You know, as well as I, that time projections cannot leave physical remains, and yet you left your footprints on the sand."

"Well, perhaps we have both been foolish," Wyatt acquiesced with a slight inclination of his head. "Yenene, you may go."

"But it's my hole-" she started to protest. Wyatt turned his gaze upon her, and Paul enjoyed a quiet second of superiority. He knew from experience that no one could survive that gaze for long. Staring at Wyatt for any length of time inevitably gave one the feeling of falling, along with the accompanying sensation that there would not be a soft landing at the end of it all. "Fine," she snapped as she bustled from the cave. "I'm getting paid, else I'd complain some more."

Wyatt darkly watched her go, and then gestured. A silence barrier crackled around them. "I do not trust that she's left completely," he explained. "You used too much, Paul. It should not have worked that quickly."

Paul knew, but decided to feign ignorance. "I used what she gave me," he said. "Maybe you should have made sure that she didn't give me so much."

Wyatt ignored the tone of petulance in Paul's voice. "Be that as it may," he said tiredly. "I have my own plan of actions for this time to pursue. I need you to proceed to the previous plan of action."

Paul's eyes grazed along Wyatt's face, searching for some way to back out and finding none. "I shall have Paige attacked tomorrow," he promised.

Wyatt's eyes, if it were at all possible, turned evil colder. "See that she is," he said, with a cold menace born of much practise.

Paul nodded as Wyatt orbed away, and his eyes were downcast as he walked back out of the cave, and past a muttering Yenene back on her way in. He had to find a way out of this… He needed Paige alive, although he could never explain to Wyatt why. The only problem now, with Wyatt now hounding his every move, was how