A/N: Recently, I came across some spoiler discussions from when it was first learned that Chris was Piper and Leo's second son. Someone speculated that maybe Piper and Leo had been secretly meeting up all through the first half of season six, and no one else knew about it. Obviously, that didn't happen, but it inspired this multi-chapter fic. After reading the ratings guide and other people's stories that explore the sex stuff, I'm marking this as T because it's not ever very graphic, but if you think it should have an M rating, please let me know. And, as I'm new to this community, I want to thank d-scarlet, WelshCanuck, and Rowdy Romantic for my first ever reviews!

The First Time

takes place between the episodes Sword & the City and Little Monsters

The first time, it's an accident. She's tired from a particularly long fight against a rather stubborn demon, from Chris's endless whining, from Phoebe and Paige's boyfriend problems, from another health code violation that needed dealing with at the club, from Wyatt's toothache, but it's not the type of tired that makes her physically exhausted. It's the type of tired that attacks her defenses, the carefully constructed ones that allow her to have these types of conversations with her estranged husband without completely flipping out.

"So, tell me again what the doctor said about Wyatt," she says, shaking her head as if to physically clear the emotion that has washed over her. For the last four years, every problem she's had with her sisters, with demons, with whatever, she's turned to this man, and every part of her longs to throw herself into his arms like she's always done.

"He prescribed an antibiotic. Wyatt's next dose should be in two hours, but don't worry, I'll stick around and take care of it. You should get some sleep."

"Sleep." It comes out like a snort, which she's sure is insanely attractive, though she's too tired, too agitated to care.

"Piper, are you OK?"

"Actually, no. I got kind of caught in the crossfire today and I have this wound that's been bugging me. I'm sure it'll be fine in a few days."

"Let me heal you."

"No." On Leo's puzzled look, she waves a hand. "It's just – it's in a bit of an awkward place. I'd have to take off my jeans."

Leo smiles at her. "I've caught that show before."

"Oh, whatever." She sighs, and lowers her zipper in one quick motion.

"That looks like painful." His voice is full of sympathy as he kneels down in front of her, his right hand around her waist for balance as his left hand hovers above the nasty gash on her thigh. As his powers begin to work, his hand brushes up against her healing skin, and she lets out an involuntary gasp.

"Piper? Does that hurt?"

"No." Just the opposite, in fact. Without thinking, she sinks down to her knees, and he reacts by catching her fall, wrapping his arms around her body. Her hands go straight to his face, that beautiful face she thought she'd look into for the rest of her life, as they kneel together on the bedroom floor.

She kisses him. She is clear about this: she's the one who makes the first move. But he kisses her back, his mouth as eager as her own, and he doesn't stop to say how wrong it is, how they shouldn't be doing this, it complicates things, it goes against everything she says she wants, until her bra is tangled in his shirt on the other side of the room, and his jeans, too, are zipped open like hers.

You're right," she says, the soft skin of his ear between her teeth. "It's a really, really, really bad idea, but it's going to happen anyway."

She is somehow able to block out everything but the wanting; she pretends for a second she's the kind of woman who could treat sex casually. In a way, she's always been a tiny bit jealous of her younger sisters' abilities to separate the emotions from the physical; the only time in her life she'd ever slept with someone on the first date was, well, with Leo. She tries to go back to that, in her mind, to when he was new and unfamiliar and she knew nothing of his life or of his past, but even that is too painful, because there's no way to separate the man he is now -- her husband -- from the man he was then, who, to be honest, she was already halfway to falling in love anyway.

So she doesn't think at all. She just does. And after all they've gotten wrong in the past months, it's quite satisfying to remember when it comes to this, they can still get something exactly right.

"This doesn't change anything," she says to him immediately after, before he can even speak or act, and she instinctively steels herself against the look of pain that flashes across his face. She has trained herself against this, against thinking about what he feels, what hurts him, because how she functions is by convincing herself that she she's the only one whose been wronged.

"It can't. Not now. You know I –"

"Don't," she says, already knowing she can't bear to have him finish that sentence. "We can't do this again."

But they do.