Chapter Text
It was a beautiful Friday morning in San Francisco. The too-common morning fog was nowhere to be seen, the sun was shining, and the temperature was cool indicating a pleasantly warm but not hot oncoming day. The band for P3 was booked, none of the staff had called in sick, and the deputy manager was handling all the logistics for the day.
Piper Halliwell wasn't thinking about any of that. She only stared at the sheet of paper in her hand, digesting the news it was giving her. It wasn’t that the information displayed there was surprising, but she now had lost any chance of second-guessing the results, which left her feeling a bit adrift. It was a page from her doctor’s office, with the result of the blood test she’d taken the day before.
Pregnant.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She admitted to herself that she wasn't feeling terribly confident. Giving birth the first time had been plenty hard enough, but she'd had Leo by her side then. Even if he was constantly pulled away, he'd been around. Now, she was facing another pregnancy, but this time without him, and it broke her heart. It was too soon, too soon since he'd gone Up There for good, for her to call him back. And, she admitted to herself, if she did call, at this point she wasn't even sure if he would come.
She gently rubbed her belly, already completely attached to the baby she knew was there, her heart squeezing for the absent father he or she wouldn't get to know. “You know what, little one?” she said softly, “Whether your father is here or not, you'll be just as loved as your brother. If I have any say, you'll grow up safe, and strong, and you'll live a full and happy life.”
Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself for the rest of the day. She'd already gone through what was now confirmed as her daily morning sickness, and the crackers she kept on the nightstand had helped soothe the queasiness.
She wondered what powers this one would develop; as far as she knew there was no great prophecy hanging like an axe over this child, for which she was profoundly grateful. It had taken her quite some time to accept Wyatt's destiny, and even though she eventually had, she still sometimes wished he could just be a normal kid, even a normal half-angel half-witch kid. This one might actually have a chance. And after the surprise that was Wyatt, she wasn't about to assume a boy or a girl. Whichever way, it was comforting to know that at least Wyatt wouldn't be an only child, even if he and this little sibling had to be raised by a single parent.
That thought brought to mind something cryptic that Phoebe had said a few weeks back; she'd dropped a hint, but had gone chasing after Chris right afterward, before Piper could get an explanation. Piper felt a familiar annoyance with their whitelighter rise up - future boy hadn't ever deigned to mention a second child, but there was no way she'd believe he didn't know of it.
Piper figured she'd have to pin down Phoebe once she got back from work - that had been right after her vision quest, if Piper recalled correctly, which indicated that she knew something. If so, the fact that she'd managed to keep a lid on it was almost miraculous, but at the same time exceedingly irritating, and she had no doubt it was somehow Chris’ doing. He seemed determined to interfere with just about anything and everything in their lives.
Suddenly determined to pry at least some answers out of him, Piper left the bedroom and headed toward the kitchen to make breakfast. The best way to loosen up a man was through his stomach, right? Well, she was an expert at that; maybe the magic of good food would work on their string bean of a whitelighter.
~ • ~ • ~ • ~
“Ooo, what's the occasion?” Paige said as she shuffled into the kitchen, still in her pajamas under a fluffy robe.
Placing a second batch of bacon onto a plate, Piper just shrugged. “I had a craving for a good hearty breakfast, that's all.”
Laid out on the kitchen table were several plates containing bacon, scrambled eggs, homemade hash browns, fluffy blueberry pancakes, and link sausages.
“Hearty enough to feed an army,” Paige teased. “How are you going to eat all this?”
“I'm not,” Piper said. “You are!”
At Paige's raised eyebrow, Piper caved. “Okay fine, I'm trying to get Chris to open up a bit, and I figure a full stomach won't hurt.” She hoped Paige didn't ask what she wanted him to open up about, as she wanted some time to process her pregnancy herself first.
“Good luck with that,” Paige muttered as she helped herself to the coffee pot, “you'd probably have better luck getting into Fort Knox.”
“Yeah well, it can't hurt to try,” Piper said. She looked up toward the ceiling and called out for the ever-shifty whitelighter. “Chris!”
They waited a beat, before Piper called again. “Come on Chris, when do we ever call you first? There's breakfast!”
A shower of electric blue descended into the kitchen before forming into the familiar lanky brunette. “What?” He asked somewhat crossly.
“I made way too much food,” Piper said. “You're skinny, you can probably put away a lot of this, right?”
Unfortunately her subterfuge didn't appear to go over well. Piper wasn't sure she'd ever seen Chris’ eyebrows climb any higher.
“You called me just to have breakfast?” The incredulity in his voice was unmistakable. “Piper, I'm busy trying to figure out who gets to Wyatt. I don't have time for a relaxed breakfast.” He did look at the spread, though, his eyes lingering on the hash browns. Perhaps he wasn't as immune to the call of food as he pretended to be. Whitelighters didn't actually need to eat, but even Leo had admitted that it was still pleasurable to eat good food and it was missed if they skipped eating for too long. Their magical bodies were still grounded in their earthly lives, after all.
It didn't appear to be enough to keep Chris here, though.
“Hey, wait!” Piper forestalled him as he was about to orb away. “I'm sorry, you're right, I just want to talk to you.”
“About?”
Piper sighed, wishing that Paige had somewhere to get to since her attempt to get Chris sitting down and eating had failed. Phoebe was already gone to the paper, but Paige was unfortunately between temp jobs at the moment, and was sipping her coffee contentedly while nibbling on a piece of bacon. Chris was far too direct to engage in any kind of small talk, so Piper decided to deflect for a moment.
“We're running low on some potion supplies. I put together this list,” she produced a little sheet of paper that she'd made for expressly this purpose, then continued, “and I thought you might have a look at it before I go shopping.”
“Why didn't you just say so?” Chris said with a touch of exasperation. He took the list from her and sat at the island to read over it.
“And actually … Paige …” Piper began, only to be cut off by a growl from her still-sleepy sister.
“Oh no, Piper, really? This is like my first morning off in weeks,” Paige complained.
“Well, I'm sorry but I've got work to do too you know,” Piper said, “The shopping won't take you that long, and it'd really help me out.” In actual fact her workload this particular day wasn't that heavy, but she really wanted to get Chris by himself in a way that didn't make him immediately suspicious. He always seemed to have a sixth sense about when any of them were trying to pull information out of him, and nothing made him clam up faster. The best information they'd gotten about anything in the future was always when he was relaxed and dropped a hint of something by accident. But those moments were incredibly few and far between, not to mention not very useful since they usually just involved popular culture.
“Fine,” Paige sighed. “Guess I'll go get dressed then.” She snagged another piece of bacon and sent Piper a mean face on the way out.
“I'm adding witch hazel and burdock root,” Chris said, as he scribbled on the list with a pencil, “plus some finished potions that I think you should stock up on.”
“Finished potions?” Piper had never bought potions before, only brewed them. Though she did remember that Leo had purchased the potion that blocked her and Paige's emotions from Phoebe; she hadn't thought to be curious about where it came from until now.
“Some things are easier to buy because they require very specific conditions to be made which are hard to set up,” Chris said. “I'll let Paige know where to go.”
“Alright Chris, thank you,” Piper said. “Now actually, I also wanted to talk to you about something else.”
He frowned and stiffened. “What?”
“I went to the doctor yesterday,” Piper started, only to be interrupted when Chris suddenly shot out of his seat, looking extremely uncomfortable.
“Sorry Piper, I've got to go,” he said hastily.
“Hey wait a minute, you can't just orb out in the middle of-”
But he was already gone, leaving the shopping list behind and Piper hanging. She barely resisted the temptation to scream in frustration. He knew what she wanted to talk about, there was no other explanation for his hasty exit. There might have been if he had any other charges, but the Charmed Ones were his only responsibility so he had absolutely no excuse. Except for not wanting to talk about her baby.
You just wait, mister. We're going to talk at some point whether you like it or not, Piper thought. She sighed in resignation and looked around the kitchen, wondering what on earth she was going to do with all the food.
~ • ~ • ~ • ~
“It's a good thing you're so adorable for such a mess-maker, you know that, right?” Wyatt just giggled, unaware of his mother's consternation as she looked over the third top that he'd covered in food this morning. He was in his high chair munching on cereal bits while Piper put away the morning’s leftovers, but even though the cereal was dry he'd still somehow managed to cover his shirt in green softened marshmallow.
“Alright, come here big boy,” Piper said as she lifted him and pulled off his soiled shirt to wipe off his face. “I hope your little brother or sister is cleaner than you, but I'm not holding my breath.” She finished tugging on one of the many spare shirts that were stashed around the house (shirt replacement being a common occurrence), just as Paige sauntered back into the kitchen showered and dressed.
“Hey there, how's my favorite nephew this morning?” she cooed as she gave Wyatt a quick tickle on the belly.
“Messy,” Piper replied, “but fed. Can you drop him off at Magic School before you go shopping? They said they've got some sort of craft activity planned today and I'm hoping that'll wear him out so he'll actually nap this afternoon.”
“Sure,” Paige said, grabbing the bag with his additional spare outfits and snacks. She picked up the sheet of paper Chris had dropped earlier. “Is this the list?”
“Yeah,” Piper said, feeling a bit guilty. They really did need the ingredients she'd put together, but she probably would have waited until next week if she hadn't needed the list as a distraction for getting Chris to come and talk. Well, what was done was done. “Chris put some other things on there, but I'm not sure where to go for them,” she said.
“That's okay, he's mentioned the marketplace before, so I think I know where to go,” Paige cocked her head slightly to the side. “You know, it's sometimes a bit disconcerting how much stuff he knows that we've never heard of before.”
Piper had no reply to that. Chris looked, and often acted, so young that it was easy to forget that he might actually be older than they were. Not for the first time, she wondered how old he really was, or if his past self had died yet. She once considered trying to look him up - the name “Perry” wasn't that common - but she ultimately decided it would be more frustrating than it was worth. Plus, Leo probably would have found out anything that was easily findable when he'd been in his ultra-suspicious phase. Chris had once mentioned not being a whitelighter for very long, so she suspected he wasn't that much older than he looked, but then again he'd lied about so much already she couldn't really take anything he said at face value.
“Alright, little man, are you ready to go to school?” Paige interrupted her thoughts by picking up Wyatt and settling him on her hip. “Say bye-bye to Mama,” she leaned over so Piper could give him a sloppy kiss on his chubby cheek.
“Be good for the teachers, okay Wyatt?” Piper smiled and gave him a little wave.
“Be back before you know it,” Paige said, before dissolving in a swirling swarm of bright lights.
Sighing, Piper grabbed the many soiled shirts and headed to the laundry room. She had just started the wash cycle when she was interrupted by the ringing of the house phone. She turned into the kitchen to answer it, cradling the receiver on her shoulder as she wiped detergent off her hand. “Hello?”
“Hi, Piper, it’s Amanda. Do you have a sec?” came a young woman's voice.
Amanda was one of the bartenders at P3. She was studying for a doctorate in Russian literature, but needed the extra income to make ends meet so she’d been working three days a week for the past few months.
“Hi Amanda, what’s up?” Piper replied curiously. All the P3 employees had Piper’s home number in case of emergencies, but nobody had ever called off-hours before.
“I really hate to do this … I know I don’t really know you all that well … but I have a huge favor to ask," Amanda sounded quite tentative. "I have a friend in my class who just lost her apartment in a fire. She’s got a place to stay for now, but she lost pretty much all her possessions. I remembered you talking the other day about donating a big box of clothes and … I was thinking instead of that if you could maybe give her some of them? She’s only got a handful of things to wear even after some emergency shopping, and I think you’d be about the same size. Or at least close enough. I don’t think she cares what they are, just something else to wear. If you’ve already given them away or are uncomfortable with it, that’s fine too I don’t want to impose-”
“Stop, stop, it’s fine!” Piper interrupted the stream of consciousness with a laugh. “I haven’t given them away yet and I’d be perfectly happy to give her some things.”
“Oh, phew, thank you!” Amanda exclaimed, the relief evident in her voice. “I know she’ll really appreciate it, you’re the best!”
“No problem at all, it’ll make me feel even better knowing they’ll be helpful. Shall I bring the box to the club?”
“Actually, I was hoping to pick them up later this morning? I'm not on until Monday and I’d rather not make her wait.”
“Alright, that’s fine. I’ll be home all day today so anytime is fine as long as it’s not too late.”
“Perfect! Thank you so much!”
Piper grinned, feeling her mood lighten. As frustrating as it was to manage the club sometimes, dealing with suppliers and bands and bureaucracy, little moments like this one kept her grounded - it reminded her that she could be helpful in ways that were normal, not just magical.
“You’re welcome,” she said into the phone. “I’ll see you in a bit then. Oh by the way, what’s your friend’s name?”
There was an infinitesimal pause before Amanda replied. “Linette,” she said. “Her name is Linette.”