Future Fic. Kind of my ideas for a Charmed Sons spin off, just... with less Wyatt in this fic at least. Heh.Chris and his friends in High School as juniors, facing an overly-obsessive crush gone wrong.
Important: Set in the original timeline but slightly AU, so that Wyatt is not yet evil, and will not be until Chris turns eighteen and Piper isn't dead yet. Oh, and Bridget is only a sophmore.
A little background: This is pretty much unecessary, but I'll add it anyway, even though it doesn't really come into the fic. In my head, things go like this. Phoebe, now three times divorced if you include Cole, has a single daughter, Prue.
Piper is mostly on her own now with Wyatt and Chris, what with this still being the original timeline and Leo still being an Elder.
Paige has a husband and twins, one boy, one girl. Her and her boyfriend never really wanted kids, and then there was this skiing trip... and suddenly they had two. They fell in love with them, though, and got married soon after. They're good parents, just... a little unconventional.
Mmkay. Now THAT'S over... This is Quiet Please, I'm Stalking. It's another future fic that I cooked up from my crazy, crazy brain. I would have had this posted a lot earlier, but it didn't happen because I was trying to write it all before I posted again, but I'm kinda stuck at the moment. So I just decided to go ahead and post.
Usual shout-out to my Beta, who I adore.
Outside the circle of light cast by her lamp, Bridget's bedroom was obscured with shadows. The bed was unmade, the covers heaped and looking vaguely threatening, as if some kind of fat, dark serpent had coiled itself on top of the mattress. Clothes were strewn across the floor and pretty much every available surface. There had been clothes on her desk, but she had shoved them off and onto the floor in front of the door in order to make space for Nixa to spread out her books. She was curled up in the chair beside the window, her can of Diet Coke resting on the arm of the chair and clutched in her hand.
She took another swig, grumbling to herself about how the caffeine in it should have kicked in after about the third can. But no, it hadn't. It still felt like her mascara had been transformed into lead and was weighing her eyelids down. Every time she closed her eyes, even if it was just for a blink, the prickling in her eyeballs worsened. She groaned, rubbing her eyes and deciding that desperate times called for desperate measures. She pushed herself up off the chair and crossed to her vanity table, opened a drawer and pulled out a box of caffeine tablets. She popped two out of their blisters and palmed them, walking back to her Diet Coke.
"What are you taking?" Nixa asked, turning around in her chair and stopping writing, crinkling her forehead into a frown. The Hunter's blonde hair and flown into her face as a result of the turn and all she had to do, Bridget noticed with resentment, was run a light hand through it to turn it back to perfection. It wasn't fair. Her hair never managed to do that. But, then, Nixa had always been like that. Send her into a crowd of demons and it was unlikely that she'd chip a nail. She would claw her way out of her own coffin looking like a damn cover girl.
Bridget shrugged defensively, putting the pills on her tongue and draining her Coke to take them with. "This is a miniature study group, right? Well, these are miniature study aids." She smiled, nodding her head and, hoping against hope that she had deferred the question, reached back for her book.
Nixa cocked an eyebrow at her and set her pen down. "Huh. Yeah. FYI, calling me just because you realise that I own the Cliff Notes of The Scarlet Letter, the night before your essay is due, may I remind you, does not make this a study group. So, spill. What are those?"
Bridget rolled her eyes, letting her hand slap down to her side and snatched the packet from the vanity table's top and throwing them across the room at Nixa. "There. Mom. Are you happy now?"
"Caffeine tablets?" Nixa asked, reading the label. "Huh?"
"Yup. Caffeine tablets. Hey, do you want something to eat?" She crossed the room to the door and began picking up the clothes discarded on the floor, jamming them under her arm. "Just go help yourself. I need to go to the hamper." She left the room and came back without the dirty laundry, pushing hair out of her face, not expecting to see Nixa still sitting in the chair that she had left her in. The brunette stamped her foot and scowled. "'Help yourself'. That means full refrigerator privileges. What are you still doing here?"
"I already ate, firstly. Secondly, I'm still waiting for a reason for your insane caffeine intake. Fobbing me off with collecting your dirty laundry really won't help that."
Bridget glowered, flouncing over her chair. She snatched up the Coke can and crushed it, dumping it on the floor with its fallen brethren. She then folded her arms across her chest, gripping at both sleeves of her top with her fingers. "Just so you know," she said, looking up, "if you laugh, you die. Got it?"
"So it's funny?"
"Oh, for you, it'll be freaking hilarious," Bridget grumbled. "For me? Not so. It's… Okay, you know that movie where those people can't go to sleep because they'll get killed in their dreams?"
"Nightmare on Elm Street?"
"Bingo. Anyway, yeah. That's my predicament right there."
Nixa looked horrified. She got out of her seat. "Demonic trouble? And you didn't tell us? Oh my God, Bridget…"
"I wish it was demonic trouble," Bridget said sullenly, looking back down. A slight blush of red spread across her cheeks. "I can deal with that. You know, stab, stab and crisis over. Okay, so I won't die per se, I exaggerated a little, but I wish that it was just dying."
"Okay… I've gone from being pissed at you to totally out-of-my-depth confused. What are you talking about?"
Bridget sighed, biting her lip. "I've… been having these dreams. These really scary, disturbing dreams that make me want to stay awake forever."
"Like… Hunter disturbing?"
Bridget shook her head, poking her finger around in a small hole in the worn fabric of the chair's arm. "No. Not supernatural dreams. I already said that. I can deal with those. These are cold sweat, sitting bolt upright dreams." Some of the thread snapped and she continued to pull, eventually tearing so she could see about an inch square of yellow stuffing.
"What about?" Nixa prompted, sitting back down in her chair.
"Remember, you laugh, you die," Bridget said, savagely pleading. "And, if you tell everyone, I swear to God—" She hated the panic in her voice but she couldn't control the fear that was making it waver.
"Just tell me!"
Bridget looked down at her work, suddenly finding her half-completed essay fascinating. She picked at the corner of the page, tearing it off and trying to build up enough confidence to tell Nixa. "Ben," she blurted quickly. "Ben. I've been dreaming about Ben."
Nixa frowned. "Ben? Just Ben? And these dreams are disturbing… why? Dreaming about Ben has stopped you sleeping? That— Oh! OH! Oh my GOD! Bridget!"
"I can't control my subconscious!" Bridget wailed in her defence. "There's nothing I can do! I go to sleep and suddenly, we're making out. I mean, it doesn't make sense because I don't think of Ben in that way at ALL. But we're making out and then it's all WHOA, shirtless Ben and then he, he, he pulls at my shirt and stuff and—"
"Stop! I take it back! I wanted you to share but there is such a thing as over sharing! Ew! I mean, he's Ben… Ben! And you're Bridget. It's so wrong… Ben, your best friend? My best friend? Remember that? Why?"
Bridget hid her face in her hands. "I know," she moaned. "I know… So far, I've woken up with my skin crawling before it gets anywhere past PG13 but one night I might not wake up in time, you know?"
Nixa pulled a disgusted face. "There is so no advice that I can offer. I mean, what are you meant to say to that?"
"I want to die…" Bridget said, still not looking up, knowing that her face was burning. "Please kill me…"
Nixa looked down at the caffeine tablets on the desk and picked them up, crossing the room to Bridget. She poked her friend in the shoulder with the packet. "Here," she said. "You're going to be needing these."
Quiet Please, I'm Stalking
Ben was chewing on his pen lid, shredding the thin red plastic with his teeth. The pen itself was absently scrawling doodles all over his pad. He twisted his mouth in thought and jammed the pen back into its lid in his mouth, cocking his head and adding a series of random spirals over the mass that he had already drawn in the margin with a different colour. He sighed and threw his pen down onto the page, rubbing his eyes.
The bell rang for lunch and startled him. He jerked and looked at his watch, shaking his head when he saw the time. He stretched and turned in his seat as students began to pour into the quad, searching for a trace of one of his friends. He finally saw Chris with his head down and his arm deep in his backpack. Ben stood and waved the witch-whitelighter over, but Chris didn't see. Ben rolled his eyes heavily and sat back down, deciding that Chris could make his own way over.
Next he saw Nixa. The blonde was cradling her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder, using her free hands to adjust her hat and brush her hair. She didn't look happy and was talking animatedly into the phone, scowling. She looked up momentarily and saw Ben. She gave a quick wave of recognition with her hairbrush and made a beeline for him, finishing fixing her hat and grabbing Chris's sleeve and dragging him along with her.
Bridget was last out. There were people on the steps in front of her, and she glared at them and even yelled a little, but they didn't move. Annoyed, she cast them one last blistering look and leapt over the stone banister, landing softly on the grass and stalking towards the table. Ben rolled his eyes again and looked up to greet Chris and Nixa. The blonde slammed her cell phone closed and tossed it down onto the Formica tabletop, glaring at it. She threw her bag down as well and sat down heavily, putting her face into her hands.
"What's wrong?" Ben asked concernedly.
"Oh, my parents just don't talk to each other, that's all. They've both booked things that they need to be away for that overlap for an entire ten days, which leaves me at home looking after everything and Lenora. I'm just annoyed, that's all, because… blah. It's okay. I'm calm now. I'm calm. Stress has proven to be as bad as smoking for causing premature ageing… I'm cool. Wonderful. So. What are we doing? What's happening?"
"Well, Ben has been cutting class to sit here and doodle," Chris remarked, frowning as he flipped through his friend's notepad.
Ben snatched the pad back and shoved it into his bag. "I have not," he retorted, wrenching the zip closed. "I was given permission to. It was meant to inspire me to write… something about…" He broke off and frowned. "My given subject, which I don't even remember. Hence the doodles. Hey, Bridget."
"Hey," Bridget said shortly, putting her bag down on the table.
Nixa smirked at her, her lips twisted in wry amusement. "Hey Bridget," she said in a singsong voice. "How was your evening?"
"Okay, let me make this clear," Bridget said deliberately. "I've upgraded it. It's no longer a death threat, it's a death promise. Capiche?"
"Oh, God, that's tragic," Ben said. "Who says capiche anymore?"
Bridget hit him upside the head and sat down dignifiedly, letting out the breath she'd been holding. "So, what's going on around here anyway? No drug gangs to bust?"
"Nope. As soon as they see you walking up, they all flush their stashes," Ben said.
"Damn straight," Bridget said, stretching languidly and yawning widely.
Chris sat down opposite Bridget and then broke into a grin. "Bridget! Look! It's your stalker!"
Bridget groaned, placing her head on the table. "Has he seen me?" she asked, pulling her hood over her head and wishing that she could be a chameleon.
"Well, he's staring right at you," Ben said, cocking his head. "I'm guessing that's a yes?"
"This has got to stop," Bridget moaned. "I can't have a freshman trailing after me constantly like a puppy dog. Why? Why me? Nixa is so much hotter than me, and he isn't drooling all over her. What did I do to deserve this? Don't answer that," she added, anticipating that Ben was about to add a snarky comment. "Or you will be singing castrato."
"I think it's cute," Nixa declared, smiling to herself. "He likes you. You're probably his first crush. It's sweet."
"But he's fourteen. I mean, shouldn't he be playing with… Power Rangers or Action Man? Come on, Ben still does and he's seventeen."
"Damn you. How did you find the secret panel in my closet?" He narrowed his hazel eyes into a glare but couldn't come up with the strength to hold it there for long and just ended up grinning.
Chris snorted. "Huh. See, you're worried about her finding the secret panel in your closet. I'd be more worried that she's been in your bedroom without you knowing."
Ben shrugged nonchalantly. "Come on. If it's believable that Bridget can have a stalker then what makes it so terribly hard to grasp that I have one? Speaking of which, do you know his name?"
"Ken," Bridget mumbled disgustedly. "I mean, what a name that is. Why would anyone's parents name their kid after a plastic doll that is so not anatomically correct? They should put that on the box, by the way. I was nine before I realised that that was nowhere near what real guys had in their shorts. But, yeah. Isn't that just handing your kid a complex?"
"That, and Barbie dumped Ken's ass," Ben added absently, picking at his nails. "He's got to live with—" He caught Nixa, Chris and Bridget staring at him incredulously. "What! She did! She's now shacked up with some… surfer dude whose name I forget. Don't look at me like that! Why are you looking at me like that? It was on the Internet!"
"Sure…" Bridget smirked, drawing the world out. "We believe you."
Ben shot Bridget a withering look and then delved into his bag looking for the lunch that he had packed. His three friends took their cues from him and produced their various foodstuffs from their bags. Nixa took a bite of her sandwich and chewed. She swallowed, about to say something, but she was interrupted by a shadow and a voice.
"Hi, B-Bridget," the freshman stuttered, swallowing hard. He pressed his lips together, gripping the strap of his backpack so tightly that his knuckles glowed white and using the other hand to shift floppy brown hair on his head.
Bridget offered Ken a wintry smile in response and pulled out a bottle of juice from her bag. "So, yeah. Ben has a Barbie Doll collection, huh? Who knew?"
Ben glared at Bridget but then smirked, his eyes dancing. "Oh, no, look, you lost your table," he said to Ken. Some sophomores had invaded Ken's vacated seat. "That sucks. You should come and sit here. I'll shift up; you can sit next to Bridget."
Ben would have dropped dead, foaming at the mouth with his still-beating heart pulsating in front of his eyes if looks could kill. Bridget was clenching her teeth so hard that she was afraid that she was going to break one of them inside her mouth. "There's not much room, really," she bit out at Ben, clenching her fist.
"Come on; don't be so greedy with the space, Bridget. There's plenty of room. Or is this about you being fat again? Because, you are so clearly not. I mean, look at you. You're thin and toned and very attractive. I would date you but you are, in fact, so stunning that you intimidate me. Don't you agree, Chris?"
Chris blinked, looking temporarily thrown. "Um, wha— Uh, yeah. Yeah. Why someone hasn't snapped you up I just do not know."
Bridget turned her glare on Chris, this time adding a jot of disbelief in. "You as well! I swear, I am going to tear out your ribcages, start a hat collection and then make tacos out of your livers."
"And, what's more, she's so modest. She doesn't like anyone pointing out her positive traits," Nixa chipped in sunnily, brushing imaginary crumbs from her top and smiling. "So come, sit. What's up?"
"OW!" Ken yelped as soon as he sat down, delving under the table and rubbing at his shin.
"Oh, did I kick you?" Bridget said. "Sorry, kid. I was aiming for Ben. And Chris. And… not so much Nixa, because she'll kick me back but I was plotting something. I think I'll go put a green sock in with all of her whites."
Nixa narrowed her eyes, affronted. "I'll turn your entire wardrobe tie-dye."
"You wouldn't dare," Bridget said, staring the blonde down.
"Oh, wouldn't I?"
"Before you start tearing each other's clothes off and this gets very Pay-per-View, let's remind ourselves that we have a kid's brain here that it's gonna screw up. So, let's save this for later. Preferably on webcam." Bridget punched him in the shoulder and Nixa threw the last piece of her sandwich at him before leaning over the table and hitting him as well. Ben paused, but then nodded sagely. "Yeah, I think I deserved that from Nixa but Bridget? Anti-voyeurism? I'm shocked."
Bridget smiled, sickly sweet. "Hm. Yeah. I wonder how much money I would make out of filming me making sure that the only food you'll ever eat in your life will be through a straw?"
"A lot," Ken said suddenly, squirming in his seat when the four older teenagers turned to look at him in surprise. "What? A lot of people don't like him."
Ben snorted, twisting his mouth in thought. "Okay… Just gimme a minute. I'm sure that the hurt and the anger will kick in any minute now… There it is. Oh, wait, no… Hang on… Well, huh. It didn't. Thank God for my apathy, otherwise their rejection might have stung somewhat." He flicked Nixa's crust from his shirt to the floor.
Ken looked confused, perhaps having entirely missed Ben's sarcasm. "I saw you the other day, Bridget," Ken said. "You were grocery shopping."
"God will be pleased that giving you eyes wasn't a total waste of time," Bridget said. "And, yeah, I was. My parents are… somewhere doing something and I ate everything. I was Mother Hubbard, except I wasn't getting a dog a bone, more like getting me some Hershey's. But we lacked Hershey's, because I ate it all. Like everything else in the house. Hence my supermarket trip that you saw me on."
"My, my parents g-go away a lot too."
"Is that why you were there?" Bridget asked, picking at her bag moodily and trying to distance herself from the conversation.
"Oh, no, my parents aren't away now… But they might be soon. You never know," Ken said, leaning towards Bridget so much as he spoke that Ben started to get uncomfortable with the invasion of his personal space.
"Siblings to keep you company?" Bridget asked mechanically, still not looking at him and sounding bored.
"I have a sister," Ken volunteered.
"Go you. Me? I'm an only child."
"Well, she is my half-sister," Ken corrected quickly. "And, and, and she's older than me. By like six years or so. So I don't really count her as a sister. Not really. So, I'm like an only child too. Sort of."
"Sure, if you mentally snip out the part where you, I don't know, have a sibling," Bridget said dryly, pulling a face. She searched her memory for another topic of conversation, feeling obliged to come up with something despite the fact that this was all her friends' damn fault in the first place and had nothing to do with her. Damn her parents and their ability to instil manners on her. Damn them to hell. "Uh… So, do you like… Um… do you… Take classes? Which classes are you taking?" Bridget was hoping to any deity that was listening, even one of those ones that lived in trees, that he would find her the most dull person on the planet and just leave. So far, it wasn't working too well.
"Well, there's English 9…"
Bridget grunted sympathetically, pulling a face. "Ick. Yeah. I remember that."
"I don't like it," Ken said. "It's..." he paused, struggling for a word to slot into the sentence gap.
"I like it," Bridget said, cutting in on him. "I like English. It's very important. Sometime, however, it can be ick but that's just something that you've got to work through, right?"
"Definitely. English is good, I suppose. Yeah, it's really important and all, but it can be… ick sometimes. But good. I like it."
"Well, this is fun," Ben cut in sarcastically. "There was a catfight about to break out and I traded it for this?"
Chris made a noise of agreement. "Yeah. If I were you, I'd sue every single member of your family that dropped you on your head when you were a baby and damaged your… cavity in which your one lonely synapse sits."
"You mean there's actually oneup there?" Bridget asked in amazement, tapping on Ben's skill. "You know, it's true. You really do learn something new every day."
Ben rolled his eyes. "Well, you're all boring and I'm fun. And so, to emphasise this, I'm going to get my pad back out and work through my lunch break because otherwise the editor will kill me and it'll be, 'Ben, you failed Journalism' and no one fails Journalism. I could get a trophy, though… Hm…"
"If you spent as much time working as you do gazing into space and thinking up snarky commentary, you would get so much more done," Nixa commented. "And that reminds me. I need to go and do some work of my own. If you want me, head towards the library. I'll be the one rocking the joint."
"Sounds fun," Chris said. "Are we all still on for tonight, by the way?"
Ben nodded. "Coffee at The Cabana? Of course."
"The Cabana?" Ken echoed, frowning. "I don't think I've heard of that…"
"Caffeine Cabana on Geary Boulevard," Ben explained. "We just call it The Cabana because it's our home from home."
"I'm there," Nixa said. "As always."
"Ditto," Bridget said, swinging her bag onto her back too. "I am, however, out of here. I might come to the library with you, Nixa. If you don't mind me talking whilst you're raising the roof, that is."
"Talking? Could this be a very interesting topic that we recently discussed?" Nixa asked coyly, a smirk twisting her mouth upwards. "Because I could totally ditch Biology for that."
Chris cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Secret code? Did I miss something here?"
"Yup," Bridget said shortly, standing up and giving no indication that she was about to continue. "Hell yes. Now, Nixa?" She started walking backwards away from them slowly, beckoning Nixa to follow with her eyes. "We have work to do."
"Oh, by the way, just checking," Ben said, swivelling in his seat to call to the girls' retreating backs, grinning at them. "Tonight, will you be incorporating some kind of pillow fight into your webcam routine?"
Nixa and Bridget stopped walking, turning slowly on their heels to glare at Ben. They exchanged affronted looks before striding back over to Ben as one. Bridget grabbed his shoulders and pulled him backwards off of his seat, sending him tumbling practically head-over-heels to the floor, and Nixa grabbed Ben's bag and stalked off with it, dumping it in a trashcan.
"Was that a 'no'?" Ben asked, his voice muffled by half a mouthful of the leg of his jeans.
Aaaaaaand end. All comments welcome.
Twisted Flame