AN: Hi everyone! I am back with more fic. I wanted to get this posted much sooner, but unfortunately life came at me pretty fast the last few weeks so I've been really busy.
This is set between 'The Courtship of Wyatt's Father' and 'Hyde School Reunion.' I always wished we got to see more of how the relationship between Chris and Piper evolved over time and I feel like we were robbed a bit because there was such a big time jump. So this is just me exploring how complicated I think that entire six months must have been. There is some slight Leo bashing in this - not because I actually hate Leo but just because that is where Chris is at with his character at this point in the show. So, it's just appropriate. I hope that doesn't turn anyone off.
Hope you enjoy!
The Food
It started with the food.
It seemed that wrappers and greasy paper bags were popping up everywhere all of a sudden. In her office at the club. In her trash. On the tables of the attic. Though, perhaps they always had been there and Piper just hadn't really cared to notice. Hadn't paid attention. Perhaps she'd been picking them up without even a second glance while in one of her furious cleaning modes - anxious to get the house work done, anxious to have a clean and calm space to put her mind at ease, but never anxious about what it said about the way he was living.
It seemed crazy now - that she'd never really given any thought to how he was eating. To what he was eating.
He was so skinny.
He wasn't eating much - that was pretty clear. By the looks of him, he maybe had one solid meal a day. If that. And the meals he did have weren't exactly what Piper would consider nutritious.
She'd seen him eat here and there at The Manor in the past. It was usually in the morning when people were bustling around the kitchen and she'd made a batch of muffins or when someone had gone out to buy a bag of bagels or a box of donuts. He would help himself when it was easy to nick a bite without anyone taking too much notice. There were other times too, like when she was slicing up fruit to put in the fridge or when Phoebe or Paige would pull out some cheese and crackers to tide them over until dinner. He would graze occasionally when he felt like no one would care. But he never sat down to actually eat with them. Not for a meal.
He'd never been invited.
She had never invited him.
Piper had always promised herself that she wouldn't let her kids eat a ton of fast food. It was a sentiment that seemed almost laughable now as she opened the trash in the kitchen and saw the all too familiar yellow paper evidence of yet another McDouble that had managed to find its way into her child's stomach at some point that week.
She would add this to the long mental list of ways that she had failed him over the last few months - the list that kept her up at night and constantly haunted her waking thoughts. It wasn't as big as telling him that she never wanted to see him again, but nevertheless it was still a pretty big one for her. If the chef couldn't manage to make sure her children were eating well then what could she do?
She dropped the apple core she'd been munching on into the trash and slammed it closed. Maybe by banishing the sight of the wrapper she could banish the thoughts all together. But she was unsuccessful, especially as the bright white and blue lights and the jingling sound of orbs suddenly formed into the subject of said thoughts no more than ten feet away from her.
"Piper…"
The sound of him using her name felt like daggers plunging into her chest these days. It felt like rejection. It felt like an indictment for every single item on the mental list she had been keeping. But, if she was being honest, she wasn't sure that hearing him call her 'Mom' would feel much better. She wasn't sure if that would just make her feel all the more guilty and regretful. She wasn't sure if it would make the cognitive dissonance she'd been experiencing the last few weeks better or worse.
All in all she just wasn't sure if she was ready for that. She wanted to be… but the entire situation was so magically and emotionally complicated that she couldn't figure out what was going on in her own head.
She'd accepted in her mind that he was her son - the baby that she was carrying in her womb at that very moment. But sometimes when he was physically standing there in front of her he still felt like he was just… Chris. Her future-boy whitelighter that she'd known for months as nothing more than a… friend? A peer? A colleague that she merely put up with to meet a common goal? How would she have even classified their relationship up to this point?
The word tumultuous came to mind.
Thankfully, things had been relatively kosher between them in the days leading up to the bombshell her sisters had dropped on her a few weeks ago. But, it was an understatement to say that they hadn't always been. Piper had said some pretty horrible things to him in the not-so-distant past - things that they had never really talked about.
Even the good times she'd had with Chris up until this point seemed so odd now. Because, in addition to saying plenty of hurtful things to him, she had also said plenty of purely inappropriate things to him. Jokes, quips, innuendos… There were so many memories she had of conversations that no mother in her right mind would have with her children. And in hindsight, he did always tend to clam up when moments like that arose. She'd always taken it as him being too high-strung and just slightly prudish.
Now it made sense.
Chris wasn't being either of those things, he was just mortified. Kind of like the way he looked now.
"I didn't expect you to be here," he said, setting another greasy bag on the kitchen island between them. "I thought you'd be at The Club setting up for the band…"
The uneasy look on his face was enough to communicate that to her. If she needed any confirmation that he'd been avoiding her as of late, this was certainly it. Why else would he have come here to eat rather than heading back to the room he was staying in - the room where all of his things were - where all of his research was?
"I had a doctor's appointment this morning," she explained, making Chris look even more uneasy than he already seemed.
"Oh," he replied. And the two of them fell into a deeply uncomfortable silence as they stood there just staring at each other. Chris broke first, clearing his throat and looking to the ground as though he suddenly found his feet endlessly fascinating.
"You're uh… You're a peanut," Piper said. Awkwardly. Admittedly, it was an odd thing to say, especially out of context. But she couldn't help but think that his reaction to it was a bit out of proportion.
Chris blanched at the sound of the words. He swallowed and looked up at her, eyes wide with something that she couldn't really define.
"Wh - what?" he asked.
"That's what the paperwork says…" Piper nervously explained, grabbing at the pamphlet that she'd tossed on the counter. She pointed at the infographic she was referring to - a cartoon illustration of a tiny fetus contained within a uterus next to a headline reading 'At nine weeks, your baby is now the size of a peanut.'
"Oh," Chris replied. The strange panicked expression fell from his face, but it morphed into something else Piper wasn't quite sure how to read. It seemed almost… sad. He cleared his throat again. "Right."
Her mind was warring with itself again. The part of her that fully embraced the reality that he was her baby was screaming out to wrap him up in her arms and provide the comfort that he seemed to clearly need. But the other part… the other part wouldn't let her. It was filling her mind with doubtful thoughts - thoughts that made her question every single instinct that she had.
He doesn't want that from you, Piper. He's been avoiding you for weeks. Maybe you should take the hint.
You could barely tolerate each other a few months ago. Why do you think that's suddenly changed for him?
When have you ever seen Chris hug anyone? He's not a hugger. You'd just be forcing it on him to make yourself feel better.
He's an adult. Not a baby. He doesn't need to be babied. He doesn't want to be babied.
It would just make him want to avoid you even more.
"Do you want some lunch?"
The question had popped out before her rational mind even knew she was going to ask it. But the subconscious worked in strange ways sometimes. She might be doubting every maternal instinct that she had, but her culinary instincts were still well intact. If she couldn't bring herself to hug him, she would cook for him. Food was how she often showed love when she didn't feel like she could otherwise express it.
Surely he would know that about her.
Right?
She was his mother after all.
"I'm fine," he said, lifting the Taco Bell bag he'd orbed in with into the air and turning away from her to grab a glass from the kitchen cabinet.
It seemed far from fine in her book.
"I thought - you know - that you might want something a bit more substantial?" she asked. "Something with vegetables, maybe?"
"There's lettuce," he replied with a shrug while he crossed over to the sink to fill the glass with tap water.
"Chris…" she said, collecting her courage. "You should eat better. You need - "
"I'm not exactly rolling in cash, Piper," he interrupted, putting a clean end to her somewhat pathetic attempt at mothering him. "Groceries are expensive. Dollar menus are cheap. It's fine."
Her list of failures just kept getting longer and longer.
What had he been doing for money? And how on Earth had she never considered it?
Had he brought some cash from the future to live off of? Did he have some sports almanac that he was using to gamble with like some kind of real life Biff Tannen? Was he doing odd jobs here and there- the kind usually reserved for undocumented immigrants who weren't able to earn money through official channels the same way Chris wouldn't be without a birth certificate or a social security number or a valid ID? Was he stealing it? Selling drugs or God knows what else?
She filed the question away in her mind for another time. She wasn't going to grill him on that now. It would probably just start a fight that neither she nor he were prepared to deal with at that moment. For now she just wanted to communicate to him that it wasn't something he needed to worry about anymore. That he had access to all the food and money she could possibly provide him.
"You can always come here to eat, you know," she said. "You can come here for anything you need."
"That's nice of you. But I'm really okay," he said, dismissing her as if she'd merely offered him a piece of gum and not a home to come to. "I've been on my own for a long time. I can take care of myself."
His assurances did not exactly have the desired effect on her. If anything they only made her worry more - about what he was dealing with on his own now - about what he'd been dealing with on his own for far too long…
How long could he have possibly been on his own? He was only twenty-two. Four years max. Surely it couldn't have been any longer than that? Right? Surely, PIper wouldn't have let her children strike out on their own before they were legal adults. And even then… surely she would have made it known that she would always be there for them… Right?
The ominous feeling in her gut was telling her otherwise. The little comments that he'd made here and there about the type of future he'd come from were adding up to a sum Piper really didn't want to think about. Especially now that it was all so personal. It was all so much more real…
If she took what he said at face value, it meant that he had been on his own and without a family support system for longer than any person his age should have been. And she wasn't ready to ask where exactly she fit into that equation.
"I know you can take care of yourself," said Piper. "I'm just saying that you don't have to any-"
"The book's upstairs right?" he asked, cutting her off abruptly and somewhat aggressively.
"Y-yeah…"
"Great. Thanks."
He disappeared in another flurry of orbs before she was able to get another single word in, leaving her there alone, cursing herself and everything about her giant mess of a life. Cursing the fact that she apparently did not have the innate maternal capabilities needed to handle the extremely precarious situation she found herself in.
And cursing the damned staff at Taco Bell for being the people her own child went to for sustenance while she - the chef - couldn't even entice him with a sandwich.
The Snark
She'd been wondering for a while if things would ever go back to normal between her and Chris.
Or well... Perhaps that wasn't the best way to put it. Normal was a complicated term, after all. What was once the norm for them would probably never be the norm for them again. Nor should it be. Nor did she want it to be.
She just wondered whether things would ever feel normal again between her and Chris.
They used to have a pretty easy going relationship. Fights and regretful moments aside, they'd always been pretty comfortable in each other's company. He'd spent enough time around them that he was starting to feel like a member of the family before she even knew that he actually was a member of the family. She felt like she knew him rather well. And in many ways she did.
Chris was anxious and snarky and funny. He was smart and reliable. Insightful. He was a little reckless and foolhardy at times, but that was probably just a side effect of youth more than anything else. Piper admittedly found him a little neurotic and uptight, but it had never made her dislike him. It was just something she teased him about. Something she would use to get a rise out of him. Like something of an older sister.
Their conversations were quippy and sarcastic a lot of the time, but they were natural. They were casual. They were… normal. At least normal for them.
Now every word was measured. Every conversation was stilted. Every interaction was tense. It felt like there was an entirely different person in her house, though rationally she knew there wasn't. Chris was the same person he'd been all this time. The only thing that had changed was a single piece of information inside of her head - a piece of information that Chris had known the entire time no less.
If he could act normal around her all this time then why couldn't she?
And why did it seem like she was the only one who couldn't?
"Give me that!" Paige said, walking up behind him and snatching the notebook out of his hand.
"Hey!" Chris exclaimed, turning around to try to grab it back from her."Give that back!"
"No," Paige replied, dodging his attempts with ease. "You're taking too long. It's my turn." She looked down at what he had written on the page, her nose curling with judgment. "Your handwriting is terrible by the way. Piper, you need to send him to a better Kindergarten this time around."
Piper's heart started beating rapidly in her chest at Pagie's joke. It usually did when anyone directly brought up the elephant in the room. The elephant they tried to ignore for the most part, especially when they had to rally to get a demon vanquished. For the most part they tried to get on with things as normally as possible. But they were failing. Or at least she was.
"I - Um…" She had no idea how to respond to that - unless opening and closing her mouth over and over like a fish out of water was a logical and appropriate reaction.
"My handwriting shouldn't be your concern right now," Chris replied, not even bothering to wait for her to speak. "Your concern should be finishing this spell so we have a way to vanquish these demons before they come back here and kill all of us."
"Well, maybe it's taking so long because you're sitting there trying to find a word that rhymes with orange ," said Paige, pointing at a specific word on the paper and shoving it in his face.
And this was precisely where things were no longer normal.
Four months ago, Piper would have laughed at his expense. She would have made fun of him. She would have commented out loud about how that was an entirely stupid move when it came to spell writing. But now she was just frozen. Quiet. Unsure how she should react or if she should even react at all.
If she laughed at him would he be hurt? If she called it stupid move, would he think she thought he was stupid? If she teased him about it, would he get angry and orb away from her?
She was his mother. Was she supposed to tell Paige to stop? Was she supposed to come to his defense? Was she supposed to protect him from his aunt's mocking?
"Door hinge…" Chris replied with a tilt of his head and something of a far off look in his eyes. Piper blinked at him. Paige gawked.
"I'm sorry. What?" Paige asked with a look of confusion and incredulity on her face.
"Door hinge," Chris repeated, making eye contact with Paige. "It rhymes with orange."
"Oh. I'm sorry," said Paige, her annoyance and frustration abundantly clear. "I misunderstood. You're not sitting there trying to think of a word that rhymes with orange. You're just sitting there trying to find a way to work a line about door hinges into a vanquishing spell for a pack of demons that shimmer and don't even use doors. My bad."
Chris audibly sighed.
"I never claimed to be good at writing spells," he said, tossing the pen he was using back on the table.
"What? With genius pairings like orange and door hinge in your arsenal? Could have fooled me. You're a regular poet laureate."
"It's not my fault these demons explode into disgusting orange goo!" Chris exclaimed.
"Yeah. And it's a real shame that there's nothing that rhymes with goo ."
Chris scowled at her for a moment and Paige stood there silently challenging him to defend himself. He couldn't, of course. Nor did he seem to want to. Because in the end he wasn't stupid. And he knew it was a pathetic attempt at spell writing just as well as the two of them did.
"Alright, fine. You write it then," Chris said standing. "I need to go anyway. Phoebe's calling me."
"Phoebe?" Piper asked, suddenly sitting up at attention. "What does she need? What's wrong?"
The three of them had been dodging these demons all morning. They'd learned quickly that blasting them only made the situation worse when Piper had flicked her hands out in front of her to bring one to its timely end and it had coated every inch of the conservatory with a layer of rancid smelling orange goo. And right now Phoebe was on her own at her office. Piper was rightfully concerned.
Chris, however, looked over at her as if she was insane for even asking the question.
"I don't know," Chris replied, slowly. Like he was responding to a five year old. "I can't read her mind."
"Well… does she sound panicked? Hurt?" Piper asked. " Concerned?"
Chris shrugged.
"She sounds normal."
Well at least one of them did…
"Well just in case maybe you should take some potions with you before you - " Chris disappeared before she could even finish her sentence. " - go."
She slumped back down in the loveseat with a sigh and rubbed the tension out of her forehead. Not that it did any good. It seemed like tense was her natural state these days. And it wasn't good for Chris. For baby Chris that was… Adult Chris seemed perfectly content with the tension.
She placed a hand on the little bump on her stomach that had just recently started showing under her shirt, and when she looked over at Paige her sister was watching her with a look of sadness and concern.
"You okay over there?" Paige asked.
"Yeah," she lied. "I'm just…I don't know."
When she trailed off, Paige offered her a solemn smile and looked back down at the notebook she'd taken out of Chris' hands. She started writing again and Piper tried to gather her thoughts. But in all honesty, she didn't know what she was. She was too many things at once to narrow it down into an intelligible statement. She was sad. She was regretful. She was scared. And right now it felt like… like she might actually be jealous ? Of Paige?
Was that completely insane?
"How do you do that?" she asked her sister. Paige looked back up at her with intrigue written across her face and put the pen in her hand down on the table to give Piper her full attention.
"Do what?" she asked.
"How do you…" she took a deep breath. "How do you talk to him like nothing's changed?"
"Oh, Sweetie…" Paige soothed. She put the pen in her hand down and came over to join Piper on the loveseat, grabbing her hand and squeezing it tightly. "I don't know, really. I just had to remind myself that he's the same guy he's always been. But there was an adjustment period for me too, you know. It wasn't overnight."
"It seems like it was though," said Piper with a shake of her head. "I never noticed anything off between the two of you. Or with Phoebe either. It's like all three of you just went back to normal. Like this giant bombshell didn't change a thing for any of you."
"Piper…that's not true," said Paige."And it's not the same for us. I mean…you're his mother."
"Yes. Thanks for reminding me. Otherwise I might have forgotten to obsess about how horrible I've been to him for longer than five seconds."
She couldn't stand the look of pity in her sister's eyes. She didn't want it, and she didn't deserve it.
"Look, we all have regrets about things we said and the way we handled things," said Paige. "But we apologized. We're doing our best to make it up to him. There's nothing else we can do about it. And sure... Phoebe and I have been able to move on from it, but that's easier for us. We're just his dumb aunts. We're not about to give birth to him in six months. We're not his mother. It's only natural that you're having a harder time forgiving yourself for this than we did. But you need to."
"I'm just so afraid of hurting him again…" Piper said, tears flooding her vision. "I can't risk hurting him again, Paige. I just can't."
"I know, hun," said Paige. "But you have to let go of all this guilt and move forward. Things aren't going to get better until you can. You'll always be walking on eggshells, and he'll always think he's doing something wrong."
As Piper blinked, one of the tears that had been collecting in her lower eyelids trailed down her cheek. She wiped it away with the heel of her hand and looked up to the ceiling hoping that she could get the rest of them to go away. They probably only had so long until Chris returned with Phoebe in tow. And the last thing he needed to see right now was her crying over him.
"Besides…" said Paige. "Snarking at each other is how we communicate love in this family. He really is going to think you don't like him if you don't start doing it again soon."
Piper chuckled and sniffed.
"And it's not entirely true that nothing has changed between us, you know," said Paige. "There are a few things that are different now."
"Like what?" Piper asked.
"Well," said Paige. "For instance… I try not to talk about my sex life in front of him as much as I did before."
Piper snorted and quirked an eyebrow up at her sister.
"What sex life?" she asked in a sardonic tone. Their entire house had been a sexless wasteland for months now. Since Leo had left after Chris was conceived and Phoebe and Paige had both broken up with their respective boyfriends no one was getting anything. And none of them were very happy about it.
"See!" Paige responded with a bright smile and a pat of Piper's knee. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. I knew you still had it in you!"
Piper laughed again. She sniffed and wiped the remaining tears from her eyes with her left hand while squeezing Paige's with her right.
"Thanks," she said.
"Of course."
Paige gave her one last parting pat on her knee and went over to resume her spell writing. The two of them turned out to have perfect timing, because the moment Paige picked up the pen again, Chris and Phoebe appeared in the attic. Along with a pungent rancid smell.
"Oh, Phoebe!" Piper whined, turning up her nose at her sister. A wave of nausea overcame her and she had to fight the urge to throw up. She'd been doing more than enough of that lately. "You stink!"
" I stink?!" Phoebe asked, pointing at her chest and drawing attention to the wet patches of orange goo all over her blouse. "You should walk into my office if you want to smell something that stinks . It smells like a tannery in there! How are you getting along with that spell?"
Paige was still scribbling as Phoebe turned her attention over to her, wincing as she got closer and the smell got stronger.
"I think I've almost got something," Paige said right before Phoebe snatched the notebook out of her hands the same way Paige had just done to Chris.
Phoebe stood there for a couple seconds. Her eyes scanned over every line. Her lips moved as she silently read the words on the page. But then she suddenly stopped. She looked up from the paper. She furrowed her brows. Her mouth popped open in incredulity, and she turned to look at Chris, cocking in her head in disbelief.
" Orange ? Really?"
And this time when Chris sighed and nervously shoved his hands in his pockets… Piper actually allowed herself to laugh.
The Bartender
When Piper heard the ear splitting scream coming from downstairs, she started moving as quickly as she could, ready to blast any demons that had the unmitigated gall to attack in her place of business.
"Oh my God! Oh my God!"
It was Jessica. Piper could tell without even needing to see her.
She was new - a twenty-three year old LA native who was new to the area and attending grad school at UC Berkeley. And she was good. From day one she'd been able to handle their busiest nights with ease. She raked in tips better than any bartender she had ever seen. Though… that might have less to do with her skills as a mixologist and more to do with the fact that she was drop dead gorgeous and had mastered the subtle art of leaning over a bar in a low cut shirt. She was one of the best closers Piper had ever hired, and her registers were always immaculate.
Plus on top of all of that, Piper simply liked her. She was sweet. She was smart. And she was just the perfect amount of sassy to fit in with her and her sisters quite nicely. Suffice to say Piper wasn't interested in losing her, especially to a demon. And Especially on the night Franz Ferdinand was going to be there.
"Will you relax?!" a voice responded - a very familiar voice that froze Piper in her tracks. "It's a fucking spider."
She hadn't expected him to be there. Though, perhaps that was stupid of her. He did sleep there after all. Still, Chris was rarely at the club in the middle of the day. He was usually back at the house looking in the book or down in the underworld hunting a host of demons. She usually didn't think about running into him when she came to the club. And she definitely didn't think about him being on such informal terms with her staff.
Intrigued, she hung back at the top of the stairs, coming down just far enough so that she could see what was happening in the room below her without being noticed.
The two of them were both standing behind the bar. Chris was holding a glass in his right hand and examining the floor beneath them with great interest. But that wasn't what really caught Piper's attention. What really caught her attention was the way that Jessica was cowering behind him using him as something of a human shield - touching him.
"I don't do spiders!" she exclaimed before suddenly jumping in the other direction and screaming again. "Oh my God, Chris! Get it!"
"I'm getting it! I'm getting it!" he said, bending down for a second. When he came back up, there was a large black spider contained between the glass he had been holding and a thin piece of paper.
"Kill it!" Jessica exclaimed.
"I'm not going to kill it," Chris argued. "It hasn't done anything wrong."
"It exists, " said Jessica. "That's wrong enough in my book."
"What?" Chris asked, lifting the glass to his eye level and peering inside. "You don't think it's cute?"
Chris made a move to lift the glass up and let the spider free, but Jessica screamed again. Piper rolled her eyes, entirely annoyed at the level of dramatics that she was engaging in. She expected Chris to be annoyed as well. After all, Chris' natural state was annoyed. If she or either of her sisters had ever acted like that around him, the expression on his face would be downright murderous. But to her great surprise he didn't even seem the least bit perturbed by Jessica's behavior. In fact, he was almost encouraging it.
"Come on. Look at him!" he said, shoving the glass in her face with a laugh.
"Stop it!" Jessica gave him a playful shove, and Chris set the makeshift glass cage on the counter, laughing at her expense the entire time. "You're such an asshole."
"Asshole?" he asked. "Three minutes ago you were begging me to come save you from the evil spider and now you're insulting me? See, now I'm not so sure it's going to be worth my while to take it outside and get rid of it. I might just let it out again."
"Don't you dare!"
"What's in it for me if I don't?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Jessica. "I guess you'll just have to hang around and find out…"
A brilliant smile spread across his face, and her gut wrenched at how familiar it looked.
Leo…
He had Leo's smile.
It was the first piece of him she'd seen in Chris beyond his eyes - another piece of a puzzle that she was so ashamed she'd never managed to piece together herself. She was collecting them now - the pieces. Her nose. Her chin. Leo's eyes. Her hair. Her father's stature. Prue's powers. Leo's smile.
He'd never smiled like that for her before. It was a sudden realization that she did not like. And it wasn't the only thing that she suddenly did not like…
"I thought you liked Jess," Phoebe said a few days later as they sat in the VIP section of P3.
"I used to," Piper replied. She took a sip of her club soda, and Phoebe looked back and forth between Piper and the bar in confusion.
"Okay well… What happened? Why are you suddenly eyeing her like you started working for the CIA?" she asked right as Piper watched the girl in question ignore her customers in favor of leaning over the bar to trace her fingertips lightly over her son's bare forearm.
"That happened!" Piper exclaimed, pointing at the pair of them.
"Is that Chris?!" Paige asked, eyes wide, craning her neck to try to get a better look. When she finally maneuvered herself in a position where she could see, Chris was pushing himself forward to get closer to Jessica. He tucked a strand of hair behind the girl's ear and whispered something in it that made her laugh. "Wow. I didn't know he had it in him…"
"How long has this been going on?" Phoebe asked, amused.
"At least a week," Piper answered. "Maybe longer. Who knows!"
"Well, good for him," said Paige, settling back in her chair. "It's about time he got laid. Maybe it'll finally put him in a better mood."
"No!" Piper yelled, shaking her head. "No no no! This is not a good thing. Okay? This is a disaster. That girl is twenty-three years older than him! Besides, what if something happens?! I'm not interested in becoming a grandmother at thirty!"
"Piper… Don't take this the wrong way, but you're sounding a little jealous," Phoebe said, causing Piper blanch.
"Jealous?!" she asked. "Phoebe, that's disgusting . I'm not jealous of - "
"Jealous - maybe - that Chris isn't willing to find any free time to spend with you, but he is willing to find some to spend with a sexy young bartender…"
"That's not what I - " Piper interrupted herself as she watched what was happening across the room. She'd expected Chris to sit back down on his stool when he was finished saying whatever it was he had to say into the ear of her promiscuous employee, but he didn't. Instead he brought his hand up to her cheek and the next thing she knew their lips were touching in a gentle kiss. "Oh hell no!"
PIper lifted her hands in the air, and she was just about to flick them out in front of her to freeze her entire club save for the three of them and the incredibly stupid young man they were all watching. But, apparently, Phoebe disagreed.
"Piper, no!" she said, grabbing onto her arm and stopping her from using her powers. "You can't just freeze everyone because you're uncomfortable with your son having a personal life. You'll just piss him off. Besides, it's personal gain.
"It's not personal gain!" Piper argued. "I'm protecting the very fabric of space time here!"
"It was a kiss. I don't think we're all going to fall into a cosmic wormhole any time soon because of it," Phoebe said with a sigh. "And even if it is more than that… I know that you're trying to get your feelings straight when it comes to baby Chris versus adult Chris, and I can't imagine how difficult and confusing that must be for you. But adult Chris is just that, Piper. He's an adult . I'm sure he's figured out how to prevent any permanent consequences of that kind of thing by now."
"What he needs is to figure out how to keep it in his pants in the first place!"
"Well, I've yet to meet a twenty-two year old guy who's got that figured out…" said Paige.
Piper glared daggers at her. "I'm just saying."
"I can't believe you two are acting so calm about this!" said Piper. "I mean even if nothing horrible happens, then what? What if he develops feelings for her and ends up getting his heart broken because he has to go back to the future and leave her here?"
Phoebe shrugged.
"Well… Sweetie…" she said, gently. "Then he gets his heart broken. You can't protect him from life . He's got to live it on his own."
"The hell I can't!' said Piper.
She turned around again, ready to finally go through with her plan of freezing the room and ending the situation entirely. But as soon as she looked back over at the bar she noticed that something was different.
Chris was no longer sitting on the stool he'd been taking up. The beer he'd been drinking was sitting there abandoned. And Jessica was nowhere to be seen.
"Wha - Where did they go?" Piper asked, looking between her sisters.
"I'm not sure we really wanna know…" Paige grumbled into her drink.
Piper didn't wait for another word to be said. She practically jumped up from her seat and headed straight for the bar, pushing herself through patrons to get to the front.
"Dennis!" she yelled, tearing her only working bartender's attention away from a vodka and cranberry he was in the middle of mixing. "Where did Jess go?" she asked.
Dennis turned around and looked back and forth, confusion and surprise written across his features.
"Uh… I have no idea," he replied. "I didn't even see her leave. She didn't tell me she was taking her break or anything."
"Great!"
She stepped away from the bar, allowing the customers to fill in behind her. And as soon as she moved, her eyes landed on a door across the room. The door to her office - to the room where her son slept. If she was going to find the two of them together somewhere, it was most likely there. She made an executive and somewhat insane decision and bounded to the door, pouding on it violently the moment she got there.
"Chris! Chris, I need to talk to you!" she yelled, waiting for a response. None came. "Christopher, open the door!"
She stood there for a couple more seconds, contemplating whether or not she was going to barge in there if she didn't get an answer. But, just as she was about to push the door open a loud crash sounded from the storeroom down the hall.
She started walking in that direction, and as soon as she made it through the doorway she was met with an image that was only partly what she expected to see. The two of them were practically fused together. Their hair was tousled and their clothing rumpled. At some point, Chris had lifted her onto a palette of boxes and was standing in between her legs. He'd pushed her skirt up to a somewhat indecent level, and one of his hands was holding on to her thigh. But Piper didn't even have time to be scandalized. Because, the part of the image she hadn't expected to see was that his other hand was holding onto the handle of an athame pressed firmly against her throat.
"I could just shimmer away, you know," she said, panting.
"Oh really?" Chris asked with a smirk. "Crystal."
In less than a second, a white crystal appeared at his feet in a flurry of orbs, and the pair of them were both trapped in an impenetrable cage of white electricity. It was then that Piper noticed the four other crystals around the palette. He must have put them before he'd brought her back there. He must have put them there at some point earlier in the day.
It was a trap.
He'd planned this.
He'd known.
"I underestimated you," said Jessica - or whatever her name actually was - with a breathy laugh. Cocky even as Chris held a knife to her throat.
"Clearly."
"But you know… you can't orb away now either," she said, leaning away from him.
"I don't need to," he replied, pressing the athame deeper against her neck as she tried to pull away
"I thought whitelighters were supposed to be pacifists," she spat.
"Then I guess it's a good thing I'm not a whitelighter."
Jessica looked momentarily surprised. But she quickly gathered herself again. She hardened her expression and sat there, thinking. Measuring her options. Piper was doing the same, wondering whether or not to make her presence known. On the one hand, she'd been in way too many situations when a trigger happy use of her powers had ruined an otherwise well thought out plan her sisters had made. But on the other hand…
"I'm not above being a double agent, you know. If you let me live, I could bring you information. And that's not the only way I could make it worth your while," she said. She dropped her voice to a sultry whisper and started running her hand down Chris' chest. She pouted at him, biting her lip and flashing him a pitiful doe eyed look. "Please don't kill me, baby. I promise I won't be a bad girl. I haven't done anything wrong yet."
As her hand reached his belt buckle, Piper's urge to intervene won out. She stepped forward and lifted her hands, ready to blast the girl into a million pieces with a flick of her wrists. But in the end she didn't have to.
"You exist," said Chris. "That's wrong enough in my book."
In less than a second the athame sliced through her throat with a swipe of Chris' hand. Jessica let out a wailing scream and burst into flames, disappearing into a pile of ash on top of her most recent shipment of Heineken.
"And I'm not your baby."
Chris fished through the pile of ash in front of him and picked something out of it, some kind of necklace or amulet by the looks of it. He stuffed it in his pocket and turned around, freezing in utter horror the moment he saw her there with her hands raised in the air. They stood there in a standoff for a few seconds, both of them feeling incredibly uncomfortable and neither one of them knowing what to say.
"How much of that did you see?" Chris finally asked, looking pale as a ghost.
"Enough to know my new bartender was apparently a demon," Piper replied. Chris swallowed and walked past her as quickly as he could, practically running away. But she followed him. "Do you do that often?!" she asked.
"Do what?"
"Use… sex as a weapon against demons?!" she answered, whispering the word sex as if it was a horrible swear word she shouldn't be speaking in public.
" She was using sex as a weapon," CHris replied as he turned to face her again. "I just find it's best not to bring knives to a gunfight."
"Chris!"
"She's been prodding me for information about you for weeks ," he said. "Asking questions. Trying to get to know your schedule. Trying to find out how your pregnancy is going. What daycare Wyatt goes to. If Leo's around… She's been practically throwing herself at me to get closer to you . I had to let her think she was succeeding so I could get the upper hand."
"Chris, you can't do this!" said Piper. "You're in the past!"
"Gee, thanks for reminding me," said Chris. "If it weren't for the fact that most of the people I know in the future don't exist yet and the infuriating lack of wifi everywhere, I might have forgotten."
"Don't be a smartass!" said Piper. "Don't you realize what could happen if you go around sleeping with random bartenders or... demons? You could end up having your own half demonic kid sitting next to you on the school bus!"
"I didn't sleep with her," Chris replied with a shrug.
"No. You just had your hand up her skirt. My apologies."
"Where do you think I got the athame from?" Chris asked, entirely too nonchalantly. Piper opened her mouth to start laying into him, but Chris interrupted her before she could. "Look not that it's any of your business, but you don't have to worry about me sleeping with anyone in the past, okay? I'm not that stupid. And even if I was - I'm not really interested in having sex with anyone right now. Let alone demons. You may have forgotten - but less than a year ago I was engaged . And then I watched the woman I wanted to marry die a bloody violent death at the hands of my brother. So, spare me the birds and the bees. Okay, Piper? I don't need it. Besides, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on in that department."
He glazed quickly down at her stomach and then back into her eyes before quirking his eyebrows at her. Piper's mouth dropped open in shock and she let out an unattractive guffaw at the ironic audacity of that statement. Chris turned back around and started walking away from her again, heading toward her office.
"Yeah, you're welcome!" she yelled after him once she regained her facilities.
She didn't know whether she wanted to hug him or slap him. Rationally, she realized that he was probably only lashing out at her as a result of the vulnerable and painful emotions he'd almost let slip just then, but regardless the lashing hurt. And the truth of the matter was that she wasn't well practiced at being a mother to someone old enough to speak in full sentences. She hadn't yet developed the skills to steel herself against that kind of verbal assault.
"Where are you going?!" she yelled again.
Chris turned around. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the necklace that he'd shoved into his pocket early and spread his arms out, walking backward as he spoke.
"To figure out who she was working for!"
The Hug
Nesting.
Piper was definitely nesting.
The last time she had gone out and spent this much money at one time was when she was pregnant with Wyatt and decided to go out and buy up the entire stock of her nearest Baby Gap. She was doing the same thing now. Only this time when she'd gone to the mall she hadn't walked into the Baby Gap at all. She went right past it and walked straight into the regular store. And not the women's section either.
She'd done a bit of accidental sleuthing the day before when she'd walked into the office at the club to go through some paperwork and noticed a worn out pair of jeans crumpled on the floor next to the couch. Without even thinking twice, she bent town to pick them up and look at the tag, making a note of the size.
Now, the handles of four giant shopping bags were cutting through her fingers as she walked through the front door of The Manor. They were stuffed to the brim with everything she could possibly buy - pants, shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts, socks, undershirts, underwear. Though, of course, she had no idea what kind of underwear he wore, and she really didn't want to ask. Instead, she just bought one of every kind they had. She even bought him some aftershave and a pair of sunglasses. After all, summer was in full swing. Surely he would need some sunglasses at some point. Right?
She felt like she had gone absolutely insane as she was walking through the mall - buying all these clothes for a person who probably didn't even want them, who would probably be annoyed that she'd decided to do it without his input. But she couldn't help it. There was something within her that just had to do it. Something irrational.
Even when her rational mind kept telling her that she should be mad at him.
It had been three weeks since their confrontation in the backroom of P3. Three weeks since those ugly words had been exchanged between them. Three weeks since he had walked off and left Piper to go home to bed with tears in her eyes.
The demon that had been collecting information on her had been taken care of - something that Piper only learned about through Phoebe. Apparently, she hadn't been the only one he'd sent minions out to collect information on. In addition to Jessica the bartender, there was also Brittany the new intern at The Bay Mirror and Paul the new recruiter at Paige's temp agency.
They'd been working the same angle on her sisters, cozying up to the people they were closest to to gather as much information so that their boss could formulate a coordinated attack against them at a time when they would be the most vulnerable. Though as far as Piper knew, neither Brittany nor Paul had any inappropriate entanglements with her son. But then she'd always been warned against assuming things…
Piper did know, however, that apparently Chris had taken care of the demon in question by himself. And she wasn't quite sure what to do with that information. Other than endlessly worry, of course.
The entire three weeks had been something of an emotional rollercoaster for her. It felt like she was constantly oscillating between extremes. At one moment she was ready to break down into tears over the fact that her son didn't seem interested in offering so much as a hello every now and then, but then at the next she was grateful for the space. At one moment she was angry at him for the things he had said to her outside the storeroom in P3, but then at the next she wanted to wrap him up in her arms and comfort him over the loss of the woman he loved. At one moment he felt like a complete and total stranger to her, but then at the next he felt like her baby .
The pregnancy hormones didn't help.
In the end, though, she missed him. She wanted him home. She wanted him safe. Apparently, she wanted to shower him with an entirely new wardrobe.
She made her way through the foyer and past the stairs, stopping only to heave the bags onto the dining room table for the time being. And she was just about to call out to her sisters when she suddenly heard the very voice that she hadn't heard in three weeks coming from the kitchen.
"...s'not about a demon."
Piper froze. Her heart rate picked up and she quietly started itching herself toward the doorway, careful not to be seen. She caught a quick glimpse of him standing by the table next to Phoebe who was sitting with her laptop in front of her and a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose.
He was there. After weeks of radio silence, he had finally shown himself in The Manor. She was flooded with a sense of happiness and relief at the sound of his voice. Yet, at the same time a troubling question popped into her mind.
Had he only shown up because he'd sensed that she wasn't there?
Had he orbed in to see Phoebe? And, if so, why Phoebe?
Why not her?
Why his aunt and not his mother?
"Well I don't want to kill any warlocks or darklighters today either. I have a column to finish and a date later tonight. So - "
"Why is it that every time I show up in this house you all just assume I have a demon for you to vanquish?"
There was a pause in the conversation, and Piper could practically see the incredulous look on her sister's face.
"Okay. Fine!" said Chris. "I'll give you that most of the time that's what I'm here for, but not always."
"Okay…" said Phoebe before taking a deep breath. "Then what are you here for? Is it possibly to say hello to your mother and let her know that you're still breathing? Because she would probably appreciate that."
Piper would appreciate that more than either of them knew. In fact, she spent most of her day hoping to hear the tell-tale jingle of orbs in her ear or see the bright blue and white lights out of the corner of her eye.
"Piper doesn't want to see me."
Suddenly, it felt like a lead weight dropped into the pit of her stomach. She began to feel a little lightheaded and had to quietly walk toward one of the chairs around the table to sit herself down.
He'd said the words so casually, as if he was proclaiming a fact as simple as the sky being blue or the ocean being deep. It obviously felt so true to him. How could he ever think that she didn't want to -
"I will get my son back, and when I do I don't want to see you anymore."
It felt as if an athame had pierced her right through the heart as the memory of that day popped into her head. She'd already been living with the guilt of the things she'd said to him that day before she'd even found out that she was his mother. Now, the guilt she felt thinking about that day was so intense that she had blocked it out entirely for months.
Now, apparently, it was catching up to her.
"Oh. Chris… Honey…" Phoebe eventually muttered. "That's not true. She - "
"Look I didn't come here to talk about Piper either, okay?" he said, quickly interrupting her.
Piper heard her sister audibly sigh.
"Alright," Phoebe said. "Then tell me what you need."
"I was wondering…" Chris trailed off. She heard him take a deep breath, and even without seeing his face it was clear that he was struggling to get the words out. Whatever his reason was for being there, it obviously wasn't something that he wasn't comfortable communicating. Nothing that Chris seemed particularly comfortable communicating much of anything other than frustration. "I was wondering if…" He took one more breath, and the next words out of his mouth came out in a rapid fire. "I was wondering if you might have any plans to see Grandpa today?"
"Grandpa?" Phoebe asked.
Grandpa?
Piper was momentarily taken aback. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting him to say, but whatever it was that definitely hadn't been it.
Grandpa.
Chris was talking about her father.
And hearing him refer to her father as 'Grandpa' was a trip she wasn't expecting to go on that afternoon. Although… It made perfect sense that he would. After all, that's who her father was to him. It's just that she never really thought about it before - about Chris' relationship with her father. She barely thought about her own relationship with her father. In fact… she was just realizing that she hadn't even told her father that she was pregnant yet. She should probably get on that…
"Yeah…" Chris replied, his voice full of unwarranted shame and embarrassment. "I just… I used to spend today with him usually. I was curious if he might… be here? Later?"
"Oh, Hun. No. I'm sorry," Phoebe answered. "He's in New York right now on business. I called him earlier this morning, but he won't be home for another couple weeks."
"Oh," said Chris. Piper could hear the disappointment in his voice. "Okay. That's okay."
"But you know…" Phoebe said in a leading tone that always set off alarm bells in Piper's mind. "It is Father's Day."
Chris was silent. But if he was reacting to Phoebe's not-so-subtle hint the same way Piper was, his face was probably saying more than enough.
Phoebe had been becoming increasingly more insufferable with her hinting the further Piper got into her pregnancy. The occasional little comments she used to make about telling Leo had eventually become weekly little comments. Now, they were nearing daily comments, and there wasn't anything little about them. They were about as subtle as an energy ball to the chest.
"What's your point?" Chris eventually asked, his tone clipped.
"Nothing!" Phoebe exclaimed. "Just… You know… If you were going to spend the day with anyone…"
"If I was going to spend the day with anyone… what?" Chris asked as Phoebe's sentence trailed off.
"If you were going to spend the day with anyone you could spend it with - you know - your father ."
"What father?" Chris asked - deadpan.
Piper's eyes closed. Her shoulders slumped and she let out a mournful breath of air.
In all her life she had never imagined that she would hear her own children speak so coldly about their father.
She didn't know when she had gotten here. She didn't know how she had gone from a young happily married woman to a divorced single mother of two boys. It all seemed to have happened out of nowhere. For a while she'd been able to live in denial, thinking that Leo would never completely abandon their family - that she'd always be able to count on him in the end. But now, she couldn't really deny it any longer. It was becoming increasingly more obvious that she was on her own - completely on her own.
And what hurt the most wasn't the pain that she was going through. It was the pain that she knew her sons would go through - the pain that Chris was confirming at that very moment.
"Chris!" Phoebe scolded.
"What?" he asked. "If the man had any interest in being a father, he would be here. As it is, he hasn't seen his kid in months."
"He doesn't even know about you," Phoebe argued.
"I'm not talking about me," Chris replied with a scoff. "He was a shitty father to Wyatt too, you know. He might have been better to him than he was to me, but not by much."
"Wyatt adores Leo," said Phoebe.
"That will change," Chris insisted, confidently. "And it'll change long before he loses his mind and becomes the ruler of all evil. Trust me."
Piper closed her eyes, but in the end she had to open them again. Staring at the table cloth under her fingers was the only way to keep out the images of her little boy's red face contorted in despair with tails falling down his cheeks every time his father orbed away from him. Wyatt was still so happy to see Leo every time he showed up. But Chris was right… Eventually that would change. It was only natural that it would change.
It was only a question of how long it would take.
"Look…" said Phoebe, imploringly. "I understand that there's a lot of future resentment that you're dealing with, Chris. And I know that must hurt. A lot. I get it. I'm glad that you apparently have such a good relationship with your grandfather, but he wasn't exactly the best father to us either. So, I know how you feel - "
"Grandpa is nothing like Leo."
"Yes he is, Chris," said Phoebe. "They're both two men who love their families but had to make difficult choices for the greater good."
Chris scoffed. But Phoebe went right on talking.
"Your grandfather walked away because he knew that in the end we were safer with Grams and that we needed her guidance to become the witches that we are today. And your father went up there to become and Elder because he had no other choice - "
"Of course he had another choice!" Chris yelled. Piper wondered if it was perhaps the angriest she had ever heard him. And it tore her to pieces to think about.
"You said yourself that he had to - "
"Oh, come on!" Chris exclaimed. "He may have needed to play Elder for a little while to solve the Titan problem, but don't get it twisted. He's up there because he chose to go up there. The Elders managed to do just fine without him while he was in Valhalla. They were doing just fine without him for all those months he was down here following me around like some crazy stalker!"
"I'm just not sure that's true, Hun," Phoebe argued. "He's been under a lot of pressure to go back up there. He's just been delaying the inevitable -"
"Bullshit!" Chris yelled. "He chose to leave, Phoebe. He chose this. Not the Elders. Not me. Him! He's the one who went back. He's the one who picked them over his wife and child. He's the one who slept with my mother after toying with her emotions for months, got her pregnant, and then left her again."
"Chris…"
"He's a fucking asshole! And the sooner you all accept that and move on with your lives, the happier we'll all be. Wyatt and baby me included!"
At that point, Piper couldn't listen anymore. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, she lifted herself from her chair and walked back over to the kitchen doorway. She felt an unbridled need to barge in there and wrap him up in his arms and never let go. But by the time she got them in her eyeline once again, she realized it was all for naught. Phoebe had already done it.
"Oh, Sweetie…" Phoebe said as she held him tightly despite his obvious discomfort at being hugged.
Why was he so uncomfortable just being hugged ?
"It's not my fault he left," he insisted. Quietly. The anger and resentment was entirely gone, replaced by something far more vulnerable - far more desperate. He even finally let himself give into the hug, relaxing his shoulders wrapping his arms around her to squeeze her back.
"Of course it's not, Sweetie," said Phoebe. "Of course it's not your fault."
PIper stepped forward again, no longer willing to stand idly by and let her sister offer him the comfort that she needed so badly to give him herself. But, the moment her footsteps made an audible sound, Chris' eyes flashed right to her over his aunt's head. They went wide for a moment and filled with something that she could only describe as shame and embarrassment. She tried to get closer to him, but it was no use.
He was gone in a flurry of orbs, leaving her there alone with Phoebe and her thoughts.
She felt like such a failure as a parent. She and Leo were both such failures as parents. Their son would rather spend Father's Day with his grandfather than his own father. And after weeks of wishing that she could comfort him over the grief he'd expresed at P3, it was Phoebe who he'd ultimately opened up to about his feelings for the first time since arriving here. It was Phoebe who he'd let give him a hug.
She supposed it made sense though.
After all, Phoebe was the empath. Phoebe was the one with a Psychology degree. Phoebe was the advice columnist.
Piper was just his mother.
The Fever
Piper couldn't remember the last time she had the house to herself.
It would have been months ago, back when Paige was still living with Richard and Phoebe was living in Hong Kong. The house had been much quieter those days, but Piper still hadn't been able to take advantage of nights alone. Not with Wyatt taking up all of her time and the obsessive demon slaying rampage Chris had gone on to bury all of his grief and anxiety.
A true night to herself… well it might have been years since Piper had one of those. And she needed it. Badly.
Wyatt was upstairs in the nursery fast asleep. The poor little guy was knocked out from the virus he'd caught at his daycare the other day. Phoebe was at some gala for the paper, and Paige was out on a date with some guy she met at P3. There hadn't even been much demon activity since Chris' little tussle with the scabber demons the week previous and - God willing - there wouldn't be for just one more night. She was too pregnant, too tired, and too underdressed in her pajamas, robe, and slippers to be dealing with demons that night.
She couldn't have the glass of wine she desperately wished she could drink, but she settled for a nice steaming cup of tea. She'd fluffled all the pillows and cushions to be in the perfect position to support her aching back. She even went as far as to grab a cushion from one of the arm chairs to throw over the coffee table so she had a comfortable place to rest her swollen feet. The lights were all turned down to a cozy glow and she was completely settled in and ready to press play on her dvd copy of Sleepless in Seattle when she was suddenly interrupted by the sound of orbs.
"No!" she said, not even bothering to look over at her son as he appeared across from the couch. "I'm not vanquishing any demons tonight. They can wait until tomorrow."
"I didn'd come here aboud a dembon."
His reply caught her attention immediately. Not because of the words he said, but because of how wrong they sounded. He didn't sound like himself at all. His voice was raspy, and every consonant he spoke was rounded out in that trademark way that could only be achieved through an incredibly stuffy nose.
"What's wrong?" she asked, abandoning her movie for a moment and setting the remote down on the coffee table.
"Nothing," Chris replied. But the violent fit of coughs he descended into didn't do much to convince her of that. "Id's jus allergies. I was wondering if you had any Benadryl?"
"Chris! That's not allergies."
" Yes id is," he replied, stubbornly before waving his hand around in a nonchalant gesture. "Id's the…pollend and the… stuff. The mold…"
"Oh my God," said Piper. "Will you stop?"
"I don'd have timb to be sick," Chris argued. "I jus need somb Benadryl."
"Benadryl isn't going to cut it. You sound awful . You probably caught some kind of - Oh no…" Piper deflated in her seat. "I bet you caught what Wyatt had."
Chris sniffed again and his expression hardened. He seemed to give up the fight to prove that he wasn't sick the moment he realized that he could blame his brother for something. As nice as it was to finally convince him to stop arguing with her, she couldn't be too happy about the reason why. Especially since the brother in question was just eighteen months old…
"Gread!" he said, nodding ironically. "He really is trying to make my life miserable ad ebery giben oppordunity. Eben as a baby."
"He isn't trying to do anything. He's not even two," Piper admonished with a roll of her eyes. "Come here."
She beckoned Chris down to the couch, and the lack of argument she received only highlighted how sick he actually was. He flopped down next to her and threw his head back against the cushion, closing his eyes and groaning. Piper was almost annoyed at his dramatics, but when she lifted a hand to feel at his forehead, her annoyance quickly shifted to concern.
"Oh, Sweetie…" she said, stroking gently at his brow with her thumb. He didn't even flinch. His eyes remained closed the whole time and it almost seemed like he was about to drift into sleep at any moment. "You're burning up."
"No I'mb nod," he argued before going into another fit of coughs. "I would be able to tell if I had a feber."
"Well, clearly not. Because you obviously do, " Piper insisted. "And it's no wonder either. You eat like crap. You don't get enough sleep. You constantly overwork yourself. Your immune system has gone to hell. It's honestly a miracle that it took so long for this to happen!"
"Please don'd yell ad me," he said. "I hab a headegg."
Piper was torn. On one hand she did want to keep yelling at him. She'd been warning him that this was bound to happen for months. He was a young man in otherwise good health. He shouldn't be taken down this easily by a common bug from a daycare. She'd been begging him to take better care of himself, and she'd been ignored at every turn.
But on the other hand, she just wanted to smother him. Take care of him. Mother him. And this was the first opportunity to do so that he'd ever actually given her.
"I'm going to go get you some Tylenol," she said. It seemed like a good first move. He needed fluids and he needed something to get his fever down.
"I'll get it…"
"No!" Piper exclaimed, gently pushing him back down on the couch as he tried to get up. "You stay right there. I'll be right back."
To her amazement he didn't fight her. He merely closed his eyes and settled into the couch, moving only to kick his shoes off. And by the time Piper returned with a large glass of water, a bottle of Robitussen, and pills in her hand, he had made himself entirely at home.
She looked closely at him as she walked back to the couch, cataloging the dark circles under his eyes, the thin layer of sweat on his forehead, and the redness of his cheeks. The most noteworthy thing about him, though, was the fact that he had practically melted into the couch. He was curled up, his feet tucked underneath him and his arms wrapped around a throw pillow that he'd pulled out from behind his back. His head was lolling to the side and resting comfortably against the back cushion of the seat.
Piper had never seen him look so relaxed in all his time here. And it made her wonder how many movies they'd watched on this couch together in the future. It made her wonder if it was something he had fond memories of doing with her, or was her life cut short too early for him to even remember?
"Is this what you're watching?" Chris asked, lifting up the DVD cover with something of a sour expression on his face.
"I don't have to watch it…" she replied with a sigh as she slipped back into the seat next to him. "Take these." Chris obeyed without argument. At least until she handed him the cap full of Robitussin. "And this."
"Ugh, no," he said, shaking his head. "I hate that shit."
"I don't care," PIper replied. "Take it and I'll let you have the remote."
Apparently, that was concession enough. Chris threw back the cap full of cough medicine, grimacing as he swallowed and chasing away the taste with a large gulp of water. True to her word, Piper picked up the remote from the coffee table and traded it for the bottle of medicine.
She settled herself into the couch, watching with interest as Chris flicked through channel after channel. She took note of every choice he made as if it would provide some deep insight into who he was as a person.
There were the things he passed by quickly - the local news, melodramas, and home improvement shows. Then there were the things he took a moment to consider before deciding to move on - old episodes of Friends and Seinfeld, a Giants game, Mythbusters. Ultimately, it was the image of a young Harrison Ford dressed in a white shirt and a black vest with a gun pointed at his chest that finally inspired him to stop.
"Yes, Greedo. As a matter of fact I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba that I've got his money..."
The moment Piper realized what it was, she made a face eerily identical to the one Chris had made when he'd inquired about her movie selection.
Star Wars.
Piper hated Star Wars .
Did she really want to spend her one free night to herself watching Star Wars?
"Just how much Star Wars am I going to be forced to watch in the future?" she asked.
"A lot."
She figured that would be the answer before she even asked the question.
She'd been forced to sit through it once with a guy that she dated in culinary school, and she promised herself that she would never go through that misery again. Yet, here she was, ten years later and sitting on her own living room couch, submitting to suffering through it a second time to please a man.
Though this time around it felt very different. Because it was an entirely different kind of man…
And it was that exact moment when she had a sudden and very anxiety-inducing realization for the first time.
Two boys.
She had two boys .
There were so many things that she didn't know about boys - so many frames of reference that she was missing. She'd grown up with sisters - with her Grams. She'd grown up in a world of women. She knew that plenty of girls and women liked things like Star Wars and comic books and sports, but she and her sisters had always been pretty stereotypical in their cultural interests. Piper knew everything about the things that little girls typically liked. But little boys… She'd always hoped Leo would be there to help her with the boy things.
Superheroes. Sports. Trucks, cars, and trains. Transformers and GI Joes. Star Wars.
She was going to have to get used to feigning interest in a lot of things that she had no personal interest in over the next eighteen years. But such was the life of a mother. She would sit through Star Wars a thousand times to make her boys happy. And she probably had. Knowing Chris, he likely wouldn't tell her as much - future consequences and all. But nevertheless, she couldn't stop herself from wondering.
Her mind was lost in thoughts of the future as the movie continued on. Eventually, she heard Chris' labored breaths even out and it was clear that he had fallen asleep. Yet, for some reason she still didn't change the channel. She just sat there with him and continued to watch as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker rescued the princess and ran from Darth Vader.
He might wake up.
And if he did, he might still want to watch the movie.
She didn't want to disappoint him if he awoke to see that she had changed the channel.
When he did finally wake up, it was with a sudden and violent fit of coughs. Piper watched as he curled into himself as he got through it. His eyes were closed tightly and she could see the clear signs of pain on his face. Piper had been there before - when you cough so hard for so long that your head starts throbbing and your ears start ringing. Once it was over, he let out a pitiful moan that broke her heart into a million pieces.
"Uuuughn…" he uttered, shifting on the couch to lie back down again and go back to sleep.
Piper thought he would just try to make himself comfortable again in the same position. But he didn't. Instead, he started practically falling in her direction. His head landed on her thigh and his face burrowed into the soft throw blanket over her legs.
"Mommy…" Her breath caught in her throat. "I don't feel good."
Piper froze. Her right hand was now hovering in the air over his head, and she had no idea what to do with it. It had been resting on her tummy before he had moved, stroking a very different version of Chris on her lap. But now there were two of them there and she didn't know where to set it down. With her stomach being as big as it was, she hadn't realized that she had that much room on her lap at all. But he found it.
Chris most likely didn't even realize what he'd said. He was probably a bit delirious from the combination of his fever and being on the edge of sleep. Knowing him, he would most likely be absolutely mortified if he did realize what he had said.
But then maybe he did realize what he said and he was just too weak and tired to care…
Piper had felt that way before as an adult. She knew the feeling well. When you're just so sick and every muscle in your body is aching and your head is throbbing and your body is wracked with chills and all you want to do is cry to the heavens that you want your mommy. Piper had been there. She'd felt that. She'd said that out loud - long after her mother was no longer for this world and when no one was even around to hear her plea.
She finally made a decision about what to do with her errant hand. She set it down on his head and started brushing her fingers through his hair. As he lay there, she watched her fingernails lightly graze over his scalp, captivated. She'd never touched his hair before. It was deceptively thick. Silky. Soft. It felt like hers. He needed a haircut badly, but that was an argument for another time.
Right now she just wanted to sit there and savor this moment. She wanted to bask in the feeling of being needed by him - wanted by him. He hadn't gone to Paige or to Phoebe. He hadn't gone to her father. For the first time he'd come straight to her. And in that moment she realized something. She didn't feel that separation anymore - the cognitive dissonance she'd been struggling with for months. Her hand felt just as right on the top of his head as it had felt on her stomach. They felt the same to her now. They both felt like they were equally… hers.
They both felt like her baby.
"I know, Peanut," she said, softly, with unshed tears clouding her vision. "You're okay. Mommy's got you. Just go back to sleep."
The End
AN: Thanks for reading! Please leave a review. It would mean a lot. :)
