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 Twenty-Seventh


"33rd street is just around the corner," Dan said, looking up from the street map, and looking at Paige slowly. She nodded.

"Let's go." They remained in silence as they hurried along the street and around the corner. A small sign proclaimed it "33rd –t-eet."

"Well, you can say that for the author of this book," Dan remarked. "Their attention to detail is quite impressive."

Paige flashed a half-smile at him. "This is building number four." They stopped outside a dark, sombre looking building. Dan unconsciously moved to take point, but Paige hustled him out of the way with a glare. Dan was a little surprised, but he followed her. Normally women would let him go first, but he was beginning to see Paige wasn't like a lot of the women he'd known before.

"Mullen bros., detective agency." Paige's voice was hushed as she read out the neatly painted sign on the doorway. "There's more than just one of them?"

Dan blinked. "The cover might have said Mullen brothers," he said, slowly, trying to remember what the book had looked like before Paige opened it. "But why would your sisters only write Eddie Mullen on the poster?"

Paige looked at him, worry in her dampened gaze. "I don't know," she said softly.

"Well, shall we?" Dan said, looking at the door. Paige nodded determinedly, and they moved forwards together to open the door.

When they entered the room there were two people standing there, an older man who had a sneer on his face, and quite a young man. Maybe even in his teens, Dan realised.

"Oh, sorry," Paige said. "Didn't mean to interrupt."

"The newcomers?" the older of the two drawled. He looked like some kind of crime boss. "Eddie, I thought you said you didn't know them."

"Um, I don't. I've never seen 'em before in my life," Eddie mumbled, more to his feet than them.

"You're Eddie Mullen?" Paige questioned briefly. "You look a little young to be a private detective."

Eddie flushed awkwardly.

"You don't like them young, toots?" the older man said, in quite a slimy way as he eyeballed Paige. "You ought to take a gander my way."

Paige couldn't quite stop the look of repulsion that slid across her pretty face, but she did manage to hold it in a little.

Dan felt himself bristle, and he stepped in for her. "Hey, why don't you gander somewhere else, buddy? Who are you, anyway?"

The older man chuckled. "My name's Johnny. Johnny the Gent. I think you made the

acquaintance of a few of my boys."

"Johnny. Right. Yeah, I think they dropped your name in between Tommy gun blasts," Paige said, imitating his swaggering style of speaking.

Johnny chuckled again. "Simple misunderstanding. Everyone's on edge on account of the Falcon."

"They mentioned that before," Dan hissed in realisation to Paige, who just nodded quietly at him.

"The Falcon as in the Maltese Falcon?" Paige asked.

"Nah," Eddie said, as if Paige were an idiot. "Everyone knows the Maltese was a fake. This one's the real deal. The Burmese Falcon."

"Burmese?" Dan scoffed. "You can't be serious?"

"Total rip-off," Paige agreed.

"Rip-off or no, I figure that's why you're here. You wouldn't happen to know where it is, would you?" Johnny asked, patting his gun.

"Maybe we do," Paige said calmly. Dan shot her a look to say are you CRAZY? but she just shot him a demure confident look back. "But that's between us and Eddie. We have business to discuss. Alone."

"Thanks," Eddie said, sarcastically. "I got enough business."

"No, please," Paige said, pleading. "You're the only one who can help us. See, we, uh ... we came to you through this… real special book. We just can't seem to find our way back."

From the look on Eddie's face, he caught Paige's meaning, and he stared at them.

"Be polite, Eddie. Hear 'em out. Besides, it might be lucrative." Johnny headed for the door, and threw a loaded look at Paige and Dan. "I'll be in touch."

Eddie sighed, and when he looked at Paige it was a look heavy with irony. "Of all the books in all the libraries in all the world, you gotta get sucked into this one?"


"So who's this Barbie fellow?"

Chris looked up at Victor, and snorted helplessly. "I forget how funny you are sometimes," he said, laughing into his hand. "Barbas. Demon of Fear." He paused, thoughtfully. "Although I may have to start calling him Barbie now." He snorted again with laughter.

Victor screwed his nose up a little. "Glad I amuse you."

"I'm glad that you're glad you amuse me."

"I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad that I amuse you."

"I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad that you're glad that you amuse me," Chris replied, his face the picture of innocence.

"Well," Victor said plainly, "I'm just glad."

The burst out laughing, and Chris held his stomach a little.

Instantly, Victor had bent to his knees and looked at Chris, hard. "Are you all right?"

Chris pulled a face. "Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing some food and a night's sleep won't cure."

"Hah, one step ahead of you," Victor said, smirking. Chris frowned at him, and Victor waved a menu at him. "Number One Noodle Son coming right up. I wasn't sure of your favourite, so I pretty much ordered some of everything."

"Are you kidding?" Chris grinned. "That is my favourite."

"Well, me too," Victor said genially. "That's why I ordered it. Great minds think alike, though, eh?"

"And simple ones the same," Chris intoned solemnly. Victor shot him an evil look. "Give me a break, my father was a Whitelighter. Clichés are programmed into my brain."

"So you're acknowledging Leo as your father now?"

Chris looked sharply at Victor, then away. "I guess," he said, even if it was somewhat subdued.

"He's trying," Victor said, a little unsure as to why he was defending Leo. But then, you are similar, even if you don't want to accept it.

Chris just shrugged his eyebrows a little, and pulled the blankets up to snuggle beneath them. "He always tried," Chris said, somewhat bitterly, somewhat lost. Victor looked at him to try to ascertain what he meant by that, but Chris was stubbornly looking elsewhere. He sighed.

The doorbell went then, and Victor went to answer it, collecting the two bags loaded with different kinds of boxes and wrapped parcels. "Food's here," Victor called, as he paid and tipped the delivery guy, who squeaked his thanks and dawdled off. Chris moved as if to get up and help, and Victor stopped him with a glare. "Sit there. If you'd done what I told you and eaten properly yesterday you wouldn't be in this state now."

Victor dragged the small coffee table over to Lumpy, and set up his chair on the opposite sides.

"I presume I'm allowed to open the bags on my own?" Chris questioned sarcastically.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to be sarcastic at dinner time?" Victor retorted.

"Yeah," Chris said.

"Then-"

"You asked if she'd told me, not if I listened," Chris said, reaching for a box and then expertly spearing a noodle on one of the cheap chopsticks that came with the meal.

"Yeah, you get that smart back-talking from your mother," Victor grouched, as he swapped his chopsticks for one of the plastic forks and ignored Chris' smirk.

"Why, thank you, kind sir," Chris said lightly, his eyes shining.

"Ah, what a difference a noodle makes," Victor said. Chris looked confused. "You look so much better."

"Oh," Chris said. "I don't know if it was entirely exhaustion why I collapsed." He looked worried, and bit on his lower lip for a few seconds.

"Hm?"

"Well, Barbas…" Chris looked down at his box of noodles, his appetite suddenly gone. "I don't know if you need to know this."

"Will it screw up the future?" Victor questioned.

"It screwed up me." The words came out bitterly, with a self-hating tone that Victor hated. Chris looked up, caught Victor's expression, and sighed. "When I was growing up, I saw Wyatt do things. Do things he shouldn't. I won't tell you what he did. I hope you'll never have to know what he's capable of if we fail. I tried to tell my family, and at first they thought it was jealousy that I wasn't as powerful as my older brother. Then they thought I was going crazy." He shut his eyes, tight. "I thought I was going crazy."

The words hung uncomfortably in the air for a while, until Chris had composed himself a little and could continue.

"I started getting depressed, and I didn't know why. They took me to a lot of doctors, therapists, and- I pretended I was getting better. But I just hated myself. More and more. And I believed them, a little more every day." Chris inhaled slowly, and exhaled slower. "And then we found out it was Barbas. Just too late. I think Wyatt planned it that way."

Victor frowned, the news hard to take. "Just too late?"

Chris looked up, and his eyes were dark, like the lull before a storm. "The day before I thought mom died," he admitted, his voice rough. "But he did me one favour."

"What was that?"

"Because we only found out that it was Barbas so close to mom and Paul dying- well they didn't- oh, you know what I mean… Well, there was no official record of me being sane." Chris' face looked a little haunted.

Victor reeled backwards, shocked. Record of him being sane? "You got registered insane? With this family's fucking track record, they registered you as insane before checking out every possible reason?"

Chris was surprised at the venom in Victor's tone. He looked startled, as if he might shy away at any point, but a quiet pride for his grandfather shone on his face too. "That was your reaction then, too," Chris said, again with that self-deprecating tone. "Mom told you that you couldn't swan into our lives, get to have fun with us, swan away again and then tell her how to raise her own kids."

"That's classic Piper," Victor said, clearly disgruntled. "It won't happen this time. I swear it."

Chris nodded his thanks.

"It still doesn't stop what happened to you, though," Victor said gruffly, annoyance still pinking his cheeks. "What was the one favour, then? Getting you…" He searched for the least painful word. "…deregistered?"

"Naw," Chris said. "After dad died-" He winced as if hurt. "Uh, well, Wyatt was of age to adopt all of us, but I was still registered as- well- you know. There's a law in this region that to adopt a- an insane person- you had to be over 21. Wyatt was—was of age to adopt Paul and Melinda, but he couldn't take me."

"You were kept by the state?" Victor said, his eyes wide. "That's awful-"

"No, no," Chris said softly, looking up at Victor. A smile crossed onto his face, and Victor felt it like the first sight of snowbells after a long, hard winter. "You adopted me."