Orange Is the New Black 1. Cosmically Wrong

The bed had been pushed all the way against the far wall, with one of its sides directly underneath the window frame - that was the only way it fit inside the tiny room. She didn't mind; it allowed her to have a bookcase between the foot of the bed and the wall, loaded with books up to the ceiling. Those that she had read several times -which were like an old, cozy sweater-, she had stacked on the lower half of the bookcase, so that she was able to reach for them just by sitting up. The bed's location also allowed her to be gradually awakened by natural light every morning - a nice, warm sensation she had learned to appreciate.

Running a lazy finger down the dusty Venetian blinds, the brunette squinted at the rectangular patches of yellow sunlight which were filtering into the room. She'd had a dreamless sleep, a deep sleep and, only when she glanced down at her own nakedness, did she recall that there had been a girl there with her that night. Yes, Alex vaguely remembered telling her to see herself out, since Cherry didn't approve of her bringing her conquests home - not when "home" was the backroom of their common workplace. But hey, if the girl had discreetly left before being caught and _without_ stealing anything, then Alex could definitely consider it an excellent night.

She showered quickly, jumped into a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and her favorite boots, and poked her head out the door which connected her place to the storage room. Then, she grabbed the little cart full of books and pushed it through a second door, which led to the proper store. Everything looked in order, she concluded, so the girl -whose face Alex couldn't even remember- had actually behaved herself.

Cherry arrived when Alex was reaching into the cart and pulling out the last handful of books. She examined their spines and arranged them gingerly on the shelf in front of her, ignoring her partner's early morning drabble, which undoubtedly had to do with the shitty traffic or the shitty cold - something or other was definitely shitty.

Returning the empty cart to the storage room, Alex glanced around the place with considerable pride, slapping her hands on the back of her calves to get rid of the traces of dust from the shelves (she would have to organize a cleaning session soon). The store was organized, without renouncing to that apparently messy, quaint quality which made secluded bookshops attractive, since it looked like one could revisit childhood friends or find a hidden treasure buried amongst other books in the stacks. There was also a small sitting area at the far end, where Cherry managed a tiny café. Alex had learned to value stillness as a way of securing a space that could be her own. After years of having no privacy whatsoever and no property to speak of, of being told what to do, when, and how to do it every waking moment of every single day, having that little, inconspicuous bookshop was very reassuring. Besides, the place contained most of the things which the brunette loved best.

"Hey, Alex," Cherry called out, in an unnecessarily loud voice from her corner behind the bar. "Shouldn't we be open already?"

The brunette turned her head towards the clock in the wall, the one with Tenniel's classic illustration from 'Alice in Wonderland', the White Rabbit checking its pocket watch. "Oh my God, you're right! Those poor people, shivering outside in the cold! Hundreds of them just _dying_ to get in!"

"Screw you, it's Christmas."

"Right… Wait, is that supposed to make a big difference?" Alex cried over her shoulder, while twisting the door lock and flipping the "SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED" sign to the "YES, WE'RE OPEN" side.

"Oh, you'll see, you skeptical bitch!"

"Fuck you _and_ your Christmas spirit bullshit," she barked out a laugh, swinging the door open and carrying their blackboard sign under her arm.

It was a busy morning, with intermittent crowds of people wading through the snow, trying to get to their jobs or perhaps just shopping for presents. Planting the sign securely on the sidewalk, Alex stretched her arms and squinted at the sun, reveling in its pleasurable warmth, although it only seemed to be successful at heating her face. It reminded her of those freezing mornings at Litchfield -Christmas in general did-, with the yard covered in snow and the monochrome-uniformed inmates jumping up and down and exhaling on their fingers.

When the cold started hurting her naked arms, she turned around to go back inside. More coffee, less memory flashes, she instructed herself, as if there was anything she could do to stop those. She reached out for the door handle, suddenly realizing that there was another hand on it already. Pulling away quickly, Alex glared at the person whose gloved hand she had touched, grumpily wondering what now, who was presently interfering with her caffeine needs?

"Alex?"

There was a blonde woman in front of her, wearing a purple ski jacket, a white, wool hat, and a shocked look. Instinctively, Alex opened her mouth, but had no intention or capacity of saying anything, so she forgot to close it. Seeing that face again made her freeze worse than the wintery climate; during what felt like an eternity, she didn't even blink, with her pupils nailed to the blonde's eyes. After everything that had happened, she had successfully buried every urge of seeing that woman ever again - there had been no hope, since her hope had already died; she had let the earth swallow her again, and bygones were bygones, right? In the end, time _was_ the longest distance, and it had done a fine job of making the woman seem unreal all over again for the second time in her life. And yet, somehow, here she was, in the flesh, not at all vaporous or ghostly but irritatingly full-fledged, and flushed, and living.

However, for God knew how many seconds -or even minutes-, Alex did not see her how she was now, but as the last time they had ever laid eyes on each other, years before - an image that still made her shiver.

* * *

With no one to reprimand her for it, she ran downstairs towards the chapel, bumping against a growing crowd of inmates. She asked what was going on, but there were guards pushing everyone out, commanding them to go to their blocks, saying that the show was over. However, profiting from the commotion, Alex squeezed her way past the small auditorium, sliding along the corridor's wall. She was trying to get to a smaller group of inmates who were huddled before one of the exits to the yard, where she had spotted a familiar shade of copper hair.

"What happened?"

Nichols turned to look at her with her eyebrows raised and her mouth half open, which instantly made Alex frown, for she considered Nichols a very hard woman to surprise. She then glanced at Morello, dressed as the Virgin Mary and equally serious, but she offered no explanation either.

"What is it?" Alex noticed her voice getting higher, as her concern increased. She had no idea as to why, but she was feeling a pang in her stomach, like a bad premonition.

"She did it, man. She fucking did it," someone said, sounding excited.

Unable to locate the voice, the brunette grabbed Nichols by the jumper and forced her to face her. "Tell me."

"It's Piper." There was a pause. "She… They're saying that she either killed that fucking meth head or that they killed each other."

Her blood froze in her veins. It had been more than worry; she had somehow sensed that it had to do with Piper, but now she couldn't believe her ears. She let go of Nichols and shoved her way towards the door, ignoring the other women's protests - she couldn't even see them. Alex tried to push the door open, but the guards had locked it from the outside. Placing her hands flat on the hazy glass, Alex distinguished two bodies on the ground: one blonde, wearing the standard prison uniform and brown jacket, and the other dressed in white. The latter was almost undistinguishable from the snow, if not for a mop of long, dark hair and… red.

There were bright-red stains splattered around the bodies as well, which Alex spotted between the gaps of the surrounding guards' legs, and that was what almost made her lose her mind. She slammed her shoulder against the door once, twice, unsuccessfully trying to open it. The banging did manage to make the people outside turn around, apparently jerking them into action. Two of them pulled Piper to her feet in a rough manner -which at least meant that she was alive- and started taking her away, her knuckles and fingers dripping blood, leaving a trail on the snow. The blonde opposed no resistance, but did stop one moment to glance in her direction, acknowledging her, although Alex detected no sign of recognition. Her eyes looked dead, congealed. Her entire expression was terrible, animalistic, with her face half shadowed by strands of matted hair and her lips pressed tightly, shaping her mouth into a straight line.

* * *

Snapping out of it and seeing Piper as she was now -fancy, in an informal kind of way, fresh, like she had just stepped out of a winter sports catalog-, Alex chastised herself for letting the past shock imbue the present. The blonde was looking at her uneasily, perhaps because if there was something that surely neither of them expected was to run into each other like this - not ever, in Alex's case, but definitely not like this. Come on, if anyone could simulate indifference… At the very least, she needed to hide that stupid weakness of hers under a lot of ready-to-be-used layers of attitude.

"Piper," she said, countering the blonde's incredulous tone with a more secure one, which gave her the upper hand for the moment, even after that long, stunned silence. "Where you going in?"

"Y-yeah. Yes, I was. Is it okay?"

Alex managed to fabricate a tight grin and gestured for her to enter the shop, holding the door open for her. One thing that she had always loathed about running into an ex-girlfriend was the fake politeness for the sake of normalcy, for the sake of peace -the single kiss on the cheek, the detached smiles, and the safe inquiries about the other person's wellbeing or their job- , when there was nothing normal about that. She didn't believe in that kind of posturing - not complaining about something that hurt just wasn't natural, and yet here she was, feigning civility, when their situation was much more intricate, much more fucked up, than a mere encounter between exes. This was the present playing dress-up with the past, the arrows going counter-clockwise, the merry-go-round becoming unhinged.

Walking straight to the tiny café, the brunette distanced herself from Piper and left her hovering near the entrance. Alex realized that she desperately needed a beer -or fifty- and one or two rounds of shots, but coffee would have to do - coffee as black as the mouth of hell, even if it wrecked her nerves, for she needed something strong.

"Of all the gin joints in all the world…" she muttered to herself, pouring half the pot into her mug.

"I know, right?" The blonde was suddenly directly behind her, with her hands bunched together like a well-behaved schoolgirl.

The shock of having her so close merely added another layer of unreality to the whole thing. Already in the Twilight Zone, Alex could only raise her mug and ask her dryly if she wanted a cup of coffee, which Piper accepted, instead of getting the hell out of there.

Just then, Cherry exited the storage room, stopping in her tracks as soon as she saw the blonde woman sitting at one of the little tables. "Morning. I'll be with you in a moment."

"I got this," Alex said, with a firm voice, surely piquing her partner's curiosity, since she never used to make coffee for anyone but herself.

Twirling her reddish hair between her fingers, Cherry peered at them from a respectable distance, yet making no effort to hide what she was doing.

The fact that Alex remembered exactly how Piper used to like her morning coffee only irked her more. If the blonde had changed in that respect, she said nothing - just nodded her thanks and took a sip of the hot liquid. She should've suggested that Piper should leave -it was too late now-, and the only reason why she hadn't was because she was too fucking dumbfounded to react properly. Consequently, she was presently slumped at one of the little tables, with Piper sitting in front of her, both having their coffee and acting very civilized - like there was nothing cosmically wrong about it.

"It looks like you're doing very well," Piper said, wrapping her hands around the cup.

"I guess I am."

"This place…" The blonde glanced around, pointed at several of the decorative posters -which had incidentally been chosen by Alex-, and smiled. "I pass it every day and I always mean to come in, but I'm always in a hurry."

"Not today?"

The blonde shook her head slowly. "Do you just work here or is it yours?"

"Mine. Well, half of it is. The other half is Cherry's." Alex jerked her head towards their red-haired spy, who took it as her cue to approach them. She was evidently tired of being a mere spectator of a boring ping-pong match. "Cherry, this is Piper."

"Yeah?" the redhead shook her hand, but suddenly froze, wide-eyed, because of course she knew who Piper was. Alex had told her about her heroin-importing, plane-hopping days with a certain blonde hottie, and she knew that they had ended up in the same prison, and that they had briefly resuscitated their romance there. Alex had been purposefully vague and cool about the details, but it wasn't like Cherry wasn't smart enough to fill in the blanks and perceive that there was a lot of messy, unresolved drama between them.

"Oh shit," Cherry blurted out, forgetting to let go of Piper's hand. "Holy shit."

Alex detached her attention from the other two and concentrated on staring at the table, for her surgical, analytical mind required a break. Among other things, her darting eyes had already informed her that the blonde's fingers were ringless, and thinking about those fingers reminded her of the image of her blood-soaked hands, and she just couldn't handle it all at once.

"You know, I've actually seen you once before," Piper was saying.

"Really? Where?"

"In prison," Piper grinned, glanced at the brunette. "During visiting hours. I remember you sitting with Alex. I think you actually looked at me."

"Yeah? Can you believe this fucker never told me _who_ you were?" Cherry stepped closer to Alex and unceremoniously punched her on the arm. "So secretive."

"Shut the fuck up, Cherry," Alex breathed out.

The redhead shrugged and promptly walked off to a different part of the store. The bell that was hanging above the doorway had rang a couple of times, and there were now three potential customers roaming the stacks, so Cherry started offering them her help - essentially doing Alex's job without complaining.

"She's nice," said the blonde, and Alex nodded, told her that she was. However, "nice" didn't quite cut it. An addict herself, Cherry had been there for her during Alex's addiction, trying to make her quit, helping her during the process, and later sending box after box of books to Litchfield. She had been the friend that Alex had always needed in elementary school, the shoulder to cry on when the two most important people in her life had vanished, and the person responsible for her newfound appreciation for some degree of permanence.

"Is she…? I mean, are you…?"

"Jesus Christ!" Alex spat out, earning the attention of everyone in the bookstore. But she couldn't care less, for Piper's questions had shot that weird, lukewarm courteousness of hers in the face, thereby igniting a ball of anger that she had kept silent and tight like a closed fist for a very long time. Anger she understood; anger she could justify. There were things that she hadn't said, things she would never say, however, if she hadn't known how to act before, now it became exceedingly clear. "Piper, there are so many issues with what you've just asked me that my head's gonna fucking explode."

"You're right. Of course you're right. I don't know what… I'm so sorry. Forget it," the blonde babbled hurriedly, holding up her hands.

"No, hey, you know what? Let's do this. First, what do you care? Second, she's a friend, a _good_ friend. You know, the kind that doesn't use you and -this is very important- doesn't bail on you."

"Right."

"And third, she's fucking straight. Okay? But, I mean, _really_ straight?" She would've preferred to provide zero information about Cherry, and let the blonde imagine -provided that she gave a shit-, but having the chance to say those things was just too valuable.

"Come on, Alex, I never claimed to be straight. You do know that there are other… other possibilities, right? Anyway, that's not important. And that other stuff… Look, I didn't mean to disturb you, I'll just go."

Piper stood up, looking seriously upset, which was good, although it didn't make Alex feel good. She had probably let things escalate a bit too much, consequently showing that she still cared, but hey, no amount of absurd posturing could be better than an injection of truth. The blonde reached into her pocket, and Alex shook her head vehemently, refusing to let her pay for her cup of coffee.

"Take it," Piper said, pointing at the money she had dropped on the table. Then, she smiled somewhat sadly. "Just remember what happened the first time you bought me a drink."

Was that a warning? An avalanche of memories started tumbling down; that casual meeting many years ago had set it all in motion, their entire relationship and its later revival. No wonder the blonde was cautious about repeating parts of their history, although Alex was sure that it had been more of a theatrical move than a superstition.

They would have never crossed ways. Never. Their universes would have never touched in a million years, and their lives would have followed their respective courses independently, like two parallel lines never crossing each other. However, their chance meeting on a random cold night in a certain bar had made the universe tilt slightly, and what was imperceptible for others had been life-altering for them. Were they going to keep running into each other, again and again, on pointed moments for the rest of their lives?

And who the hell knew what would've become of them if they hadn't met? _She_ wouldn't have landed in prison because she would have never lost control over her own life - that much was clear, Alex mused. No, she wouldn't have found refuge in heroin, which transformed her into something she'd never been -careless and dim-, which in turn made her an easy target. Who knew how that decade of her life would have developed? And who cared? Theorizing about a world which had never come to pass was just useless. The answer was just as unknown as Piper's hypothetical outcomes, although the blonde had been fucked up before meeting her, and would've been fucked up without her, as she was surely fucked up now too, well after her.

She guessed that she had only known fragments of her, perhaps a couple of pieces at a time and not more. To be fair, she had to admit that the blonde wasn't the only one who had dark corners, twists and turns, but Piper _was _volatile -she just was- and, after having been left to wallow in the weakest possible of positions, Alex's personal safety needed to come first.

With that, Piper moved towards the exit, but then stopped, turned around, and retraced her steps.

"You know, you look exactly the same," she said, with a gentle, Mona Lisa-like smile.

For the first time that morning, Alex dared to fix her eyes on Piper, really lingered on her features and on everything she could see. Her hair was back to being on the longer side, drooping both before and behind her shoulders; her clear eyes were warm and seemed rested. In prison she had been mostly on edge, as if composed of sharper lines, and had dark shadows under her eyes, which was understandable. She was softer now, fuller, and shiny, instead of shadowy.

Piper didn't look the same; she looked better.


	2. Elevator Music

"You know, you look exactly the same," she had told Alex, and yet that wasn't entirely accurate. It couldn't be true for neither of them; it was impossible to pretend that a significant number of years hadn't gone by. That was what one should do; one had to consider the years, because there had also been a part of truth to her words. At first glance, yes, of course the dark-haired woman had altered, but not enough so as to be anything other than the old Alex in Piper's eyes.

She recalled the line that Alex had quoted from 'Casablanca'. It suited the surrealism of their encounter quite well, somewhere between shock and trepidation. It wasn't even slightly funny that the small, inconspicuous bookstore which had caught her eye a million times belonged precisely to Alex. Piper understood the brunette's palpable impassiveness and even her posterior rejection, because she had to feel like there was nowhere she could run. Here it was again, that stubborn twist of fate -even if she didn't believe in destiny-, tying knots all over their timeline. She could agree with Alex's attitude on that point; it _was_ irritating.

Alex's knee-jerk, hostile reaction when she'd made the mistake of inquiring about her relationship with Cherry had surprised Piper. Finding the dark-haired woman still so sour about the past had been unexpected - not that she didn't understand where the anger was coming from, but it had been simple curiosity on her part, making conversation and nothing more. At least she hoped it was, for drawing straight, concrete lines was difficult, particularly while dealing with the shock of being in Alex's presence after so long.

The blonde had left the little bookshop shortly after, claiming that she had to go to work, which was arguably true, since she had to meet Polly, her business partner as well as her friend. It hadn't escaped her that Alex hadn't asked a single thing about her life, what she was doing now, or how she was. Taking into account the brunette's personality and how she used to mock small talk, it wasn't strange. "Elevator chitchat," she used to call it, "The conversational equivalent of elevator music." However, it shouldn't have appeared so superficial to her, if she would've considered the circumstances in which they'd last seen each other.

* * *

It had become blatantly obvious very soon that there was no way she could avoid that confrontation, not when that bastard Healy had ignored her cry for help and had slithered back into the building like the snake he was, leaving her alone with that other viper. And Pennsatucky was the kind of brainwashed, determined creep who was too far gone to be reasoned with. That woman was either pure evil, or completely insane, and Piper was in no position to make petty differentiations between those two states. There _was_ no difference. To make that woman interiorize a certain concept or idea, one would have to smack her head against a wall, break it open like an egg and shove it in.

By drawing her very special Secret Santa present from inside her jumper, Piper acknowledged that she would have to fight that religious nut. However, that wasn't enough, and Pennsatucky disarmed her easily, with a swift movement, slashing the palm of her hand open with a sharpened, wooden cross. Trembling, Piper stared at the stinging, bloody gash. This was real; this was actually happening to her, bizarre as it was to picture herself in a prison rumble. But the time of imagining was over.

"God loves me. He don't love you, 'cause you ain't worthy of God's love," said the Angel of God, in fact resembling a psychopathic clown.

Piper had been backtracking, going this way and that, jumping forward, crisscrossing like a very confused driver trying to find the correct path. There _was_ no correct path, she had already concluded, and now she was all alone. After losing Alex, after losing Larry, she had no one and nothing - not this life, not the other. There was only time, and prison, and no future. She had fucked up somewhere, but she could no longer see where. Her head was hazy, like dipped in mist, and there was a big space of nothingness sitting on her chest. All she'd wanted was to breathe some fresh air, because the pressure was beginning to choke her, but apparently, Pennsatucky wasn't even willing to allow her that small break. She had focused her self-righteous crusade on Piper because she personified everything she wished to destroy in the world.

"You ain't worthy of nobody's love. So I think it's time that you die."

She shouldn't have said that, because it was the last drop for Piper. She had nothing, nothing, and suddenly, something clicked inside her head. Her mind didn't deflect -it couldn't-, but shut down altogether, pressing the "power" button on the remote. She couldn't hold it in anymore and emptied herself, let everything drop and crash down at her feet, the different threads of her life which she was having so much trouble reconciling, focalizing it all on the freak before her.

It felt like someone else was doing it; she was seeing red, so far removed that she was experiencing everything in slow motion. Some instinct of hers nevertheless connected with Poussey, Black Cindy, Taystee, and Watson's advice, and was enough to make Pennsatucky lose her footing and stare at her from the ground with a pained and stunned expression. But Piper didn't stop there; she fell on her knees and started beating on the woman with her right fist, pinning her down with her left hand at first, until it wasn't necessary, until she started punching her with that fist as well. She was pounding on Pennsatucky, but mainly on herself, on every last aspect of her life, shattering it to pieces together with that woman's face.

Blood bloomed from her knuckles, mixed with that between her fingers -from the cut-, and with Pennsatucky's, but she couldn't stop. They had to stop her; they had to grab her and drag her off the freak, forcing her on the ground, face down, but she hadn't stopped, not really. She was still lost in that haze of liberating fury when she heard a banging noise and they hauled her to her feet. There, behind the door's dirty glass, was Alex, looking straight at her with huge, worried eyes, but Piper could do nothing about it, not with that stranger inside her body.

* * *

The truth was that their context was anything but common, so maybe it was stupid of her to expect normal questions, normal reactions, but she didn't believe that made her pretentious. Piper simply couldn't swallow the fact that she had been around Alex, talking to her, just like she'd never been able to be indifferent to her in the past. That morning, she had only confirmed that time was irrelevant in that respect.

The blonde entered the coffee shop and walked directly to one of the tables facing a wide window, which was their usual spot. Polly was already there, having tea and leafing through a couple of magazines at the same time.

"Was I early?" asked her friend.

"You're never early." Piper zipped open her jacket, took it off, and sat down.

"Then you're late. Is everything okay?" Polly closed the magazines and waved at the waitress. "Coffee?"

"Just water for me, thanks. I already had coffee."

"Yeah? So listen, I've got an idea."

She let Polly rattle on about advertisement and ways they could expand their business, although it was all going in one ear and out the other anyway. After years of balance, seeing Alex had shaken her up inside, yet on the outside, her hands were steady - she hadn't trembled once since she had kicked the shit out of Pennsatucky the night of the Christmas pageant. When downing two bottles of water didn't make Piper's mouth less dry, she couldn't take it any longer and had to interrupt.

"I ran into someone today," she said, not even waiting for her friend to ask her who. "Alex."

"Alex?" Polly leaned on the table to get closer, eyebrows raised, eyes wide open, her tirade all but forgotten. "_Alex_, Alex?"

"Yes. Alex, Alex," she replied, smiling despite herself.

"You ran into her? Just like that?"

"Just like that, on my way here."

"And?" Polly gestured with her hand for her to go on. "Was it bad?"

"No. Well, a little. I don´t know... it was just weird."

"Oh my God! You didn't…? You didn't, right? Because I'll kill you, I swear, I'll kill you and then I'll kill you again just to make sure you're dead. I'll kill her too. You're _not_ getting into that shitstorm again."

"Jesus, Pol!" Piper reached up to her forehead and pulled off her wool hat. "Nothing happened. We had coffee, we talked, she was pissed off."

"_She_ was pissed off? Listen to me, don't you dare feel sorry for her. That bitch, she's trying to manipulate you all over again. I know you, you can't stand people being mad at you, and you'll end up going after her with your puppy eyes."

Begrudgingly, Piper had to admit that Polly was right. She hated feeling that pulsating guilt in the mouth of her stomach; when she did, she would try to backpedal, and if that didn't work, she'd feel the desperate need to make it better. Her friend knew it, and surely Alex knew it too. Whether she had done it on purpose or not was irrelevant, really, and Piper was trying not to think about it, because that led to unraveling the brunette's intentions, and that was too dangerous.

No, Alex could've been merely voicing out the thorns in her side. She was probably making the brunette out to be more twisted than she really was - she hoped.

The biggest problem was deciding what to do now, if anything, because any course of action had to come from her. After tranquilizing Polly's snarky instincts, she left the coffee shop and went to her scheduled meeting with the kid who had designed their website, since it was ready for an update. Navigating the outside world had been deceivingly easy; how could've she ever believed that she'd had nothing to fall back on? She'd had more than most of the other inmates, but she'd needed some time to differentiate between losing everything and losing track of who she was. She'd been walking down two paths at the same time, but those paths had disappeared, leaving her stranded in the wilderness, not knowing which paths to create and where to start. Her readaptation had thus been misleading; she'd been able to move around as a free woman without great effort, but only because she hadn't lost everything - what she'd lost was her old context. She was still constructing a new one.

Piper wrapped up her meeting, texted Polly to let her know that everything had gone fine, and retraced her morning's steps in the crunchy snow. With no foreseeable path, no married life, and no real intra-history she could tell herself or anybody else, she would sometimes tell herself stories -stories of what had been close to happen, of what could have never been, of different circumstances-, but that was nothing more than mentally plucking petals off an imaginary flower. In contrast, there was something very real going on now, and the difference between knowing that Alex was out there somewhere and knowing exactly where and how she was, was more than a challenge for her mental balance. She couldn't help going back there.

The bookshop storefront was an oldened white, with its name in bottle-green lettering: "Backpages," it said, like the back pages of a book, like the sixties' song 'My Back Pages'. It had mint-green blinds, which were partly drawn now to protect the interior from excessive sunlight, she guessed, and a little bell over the door which marked her arrival into a magical place - a land where all she had to do to see the dark-haired woman was open that door. She recalled a different door to another world: that of the utility closet in prison, and Alex's quip about being the faun from "fucking Narnia", and how they'd managed to escape their reality for a short spell by clinging to each other.

Remembering those things made her shuffle her feet uneasily. They didn't usually cross her mind, since it had been a long time ago and there had been a very definite break between that first segment of her sentence and the rest, making the distance even greater. However, one thing was recalling a certain situation and a very different thing was imagining oneself in that situation again -that she couldn't do-, so it was almost as if the memory belonged to somebody else.

She passed the blackboard sign planted on the sidewalk, recognizing Alex's handwriting on it, and pushed the door open. There were five or six customers there, two of them having coffee at the little tables. Alex's friend waved at her from behind the bar and pointed to her left, where Piper made out the brunette between the stacks. Walking towards the woman slowly, Piper took the chance to look at her without her knowledge, for the first time in years. With her glasses on top of her head and the sleeves of her black t-shirt rolled up, Alex was pulling out a storybook from the top shelf and handing it to a boy who couldn't be older than six years old. The book had obviously been too high for him to reach.

"There you go," Alex said to the boy. When she spotted her, she returned her glasses to their place. "Hey, you're back."

"Hey," Piper made way for the little boy, who was carrying the book over his head and making airplane or maybe motorcycle noises. "Seeing you around children, that's a first."

"Yeah, I don't understand them. Not even when I was a kid. It's like trying to be nice to cats when you're a dog person." The brunette shrugged and faced the shelf.

"Still mad at me?"

"I'm not _mad_ at you, Piper," Alex answered, without turning around. "I just saw the chance of saying some true stuff and said it. That's it."

"Right. You could never help doing that."

"It is what it is. And you had to half-ass ask me if Cherry was my girlfriend."

"At least I asked you something, showed some interest about your life." Piper was about to add more, but stopped herself when the brunette sighed, shook her head, and faced her. She was wearing the same expression Piper had seen behind the dirty glass - those big eyes. It only lasted a couple of seconds, though, and then her cool demeanor returned.


	3. Common Courtesy

Anything she asked Piper would probably hurt like hell, whether it had to do with the present or the past. She was shaking a bag of questions but was unwilling to extract any of them, since being around her was stirring enough. Acknowledging that the blonde had returned to the bookshop had sent a direct jolt to her stomach, not unlike a stab. It wasn't like she hadn't expected her to be back, but her presence was still too much of a novelty. Alex had restricted her responses to short, curt sentences to prevent another diatribe, not for Piper's sake, but for her own -she was trying to keep her head above water here-, and yet the blonde had managed to get to her anyway. She had recovered almost instantly, but still.

That was why she had distanced herself from Piper in prison after the girl had chosen her fiancé over her. Zero contact -no demands for affection, no comfort for her afflictions, no guidance for her problems, no unscheduled laundry delivery, and no bullshit alert-, for even the slightest form of proximity would affect her. It had been a short-lived delimitation, but it would have proven effective, and so she would've stood by it, because every little thing Piper did affected her so damn much, and that would've been the only way she could've protected herself.

The thing which was presently bothering her was that Piper knew how to reach her now, but not the other way around, conferring the blonde a considerable amount of power over her. The ways she'd historically used to establish her domination were useless in this case. What was she going to do, use her charisma and physicality to seduce her or intimidate her? Come on. Unless… Unless she told her to get lost, of course, Alex mused. It wouldn't be the first time, and Piper would comply; she would only need to search for the appropriate words to prick her in all the right places. Show her anger and she'll be back; make her ashamed, and she'll be gone for good. It was really that simple… in theory.

Slipping her hand in the space that had remained on the shelf, the brunette straightened the slanted volumes and went back to facing Piper, who was running her fingers along the spines of the books which were at her height. She frowned at the image, because that was something Piper had done a million years ago, at the very beginning, even the first time she'd visited Alex's gorgeous loft. She remembered it so clearly because it hadn't taken her long to suspect that there'd been something different about that girl, and that she'd been leaving her prints all over the place with those apparently innocuous feathery touches.

Maybe there was too much fucking history between them.

"At least I asked you something, showed some interest about your life." Piper had said.

"Yeah, you did. So what?"

"So maybe you could return the favor?" the blonde gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Common courtesy?"

"What favor? You're just expecting to be rewarded for behaving like an actual human being, and I told you a long time ago that I wasn't going to do that anymore."

The pain in Piper's clear eyes was immediate and palpable. How was that for humiliation? She wasn't doing it because it made her feel good -because it didn't-, but because her instinct was trying to protect her. With a little additional push, Piper could be gone forever. The downside was that she had unloaded the big guns before even making up her mind about what she really wanted to do, and that indecision bothered her to no end, for it made her feel fragile.

"Fuck you," said the blonde, causing Alex to raise her eyebrows in slight amusement, despite the harshness.

"Nice one, particularly for the children's section. And I'm the one who doesn't know how to act around kids."

"Fuck you," Piper repeated, this time speaking through her gritted teeth. "I know it's obvious that I don't know what I'm doing here, but neither do you, so stop acting so damn offended and get off that high horse of yours because I'm just trying to talk to you."

"Why?" Alex asked, recovering her seriousness.

The one-worded question was simple enough, but it created a thick silence between them. They could talk themselves into a spiral, or pace in circles around a topic until their tongues were in knots, but the double-bladed question was perhaps the only one neither of them were prepared to answer, since the mere act of searching for possible replies implied entering very dangerous territory. Why bother? What did she expect to get out of this?

Leaning against the bookcase with crossed arms, Alex sighed and lifted just a corner of one of her protective layers, the one labeled "spite".

"Alright."

"Alright what?" Piper asked, her expression still pained.

"Come on." Alex circled the stacks and walked towards the door, gesturing for the blonde to follow her.

"Hey, Alex, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Cherry cried out, from the coffee area.

"I'm going out for a bit."

"What? You guys, don't go! It's like having my own mute soap opera! I was just gonna start selling tickets."

Alex shook her head and grabbed her jacket from the hanger next to the door. They hadn't really talked about what had happened that morning. She knew that Cherry was giving her space to figure out what it meant and what to do, while being ten times more goofy than usual to try and cheer her up.

"Where are we going?"

"We could use a drink, don't you think?"

"Wow," the blonde glanced at her watch, but Alex saw a hint of a smile. "You're still drinking like a sailor."

"Are you kidding me? Sailors drink like me."

Pulling up the lapels of her jacket to fight off the bitter cold, the brunette led them to the Irish pub at the corner of the street. It was her usual go-to bar, and where she picked girls whenever she felt the urge (she didn't need to go to a gay bar for that); here she knew the waiters, she owned the room, and it was less personal than hanging out in the bookstore. The shop was home, since her other properties had been forfeited and she was still incapable of setting foot in her mother's house.

They entered the pub, which was dimly lit independently of the time of day, wood-lined from ceiling to floor, and as dusty as a haunted house. Choosing a random booth, since the place was almost empty, they took off their jackets and sat on a wooden bench at either side of the table. Alex stood up immediately, though, and asked her if she wanted a beer.

"Beer it is," Piper said. "Red. But don't get crazy, just half a pint."

"Pussy," Alex retorted without thinking, but then she remembered something, a moment when Piper had all but called her a pussy, an instant in which she had felt that they were really together. It had fossilized in her mind wrapped in a myriad of danger warnings, and it was incredibly worrying how easily Piper's presence had cut through all of them and given new life to the thing.

The brunette hurried to the bar and waved at the waiter, who winked at her and commented on how early it was for her, quickly adding that he couldn't care less. Quite the contrary, Alex believed, since she could still party like she was in her twenties, challenge the customers into drinking contests, and animate the entire place; she should be drinking for free, really. She ordered her Guinness, Piper's Kilkenny, and a couple of whiskey shots, and took all of it to the table herself.

When the blonde saw the shots, she shook her head. "Seriously? Alex, I'm drinking on an empty stomach."

"Go on, like medicine," she commanded, raising her tiny glass and waiting for Piper to clink hers against it.

The nagging question was still hanging above their heads, like one of the pub's green lamps. What was the purpose of this?

"You come here a lot?" Piper asked, with a grimace caused by the whiskey.

"Yeah. You know how I like these places." She was thinking about the one in Brussels, the one which had big barrels and stools instead of tables and chairs, but she wasn't sure if Piper would make the connection, and wasn't sure if she wanted her to do so. The trip in which Piper had transported that suitcase full of money had been full of looming shadows, although Alex had only been willing -or prepared- to see them much later

"I know, but when I pictured you… I mean, I imagined you'd be lost in Thailand or Tibet, or someplace like that. You know, beaches or mountains. This is all much more… sheltered."

Alex had indeed roamed the world several times during the past years, and planned on doing it again soon, but those trips didn't seem quite as cheap now that she couldn't toss her money around like confetti. Getting immersed in the scenery with little more than a backpack was amazing and life-affirming, but it also triggered a steady flow of unwelcome memories from their travelling days. Without those, who knew where she'd be? That last thing she couldn't confess, of course, and restricted her answer, although admitting that she and Cherry could barely make ends meet didn't make her feel so hot.

Either way, she knew what Piper was doing. Did she really want Alex to ask her if she already had a bunch of kids or if she lived in a pretty house with a white picket fence? Fuck that, but it wasn't like she could put it off any longer, or else she shouldn't have taken Piper out for a drink.

"What about you?" she asked, surrendering after downing almost half her pint.

"I, um, own a soap business with my friend Polly. Remember her?"

"Soap." Alex felt a mocking smile on her lips and unsuccessfully tried to bite it away.

"And lotions. Excuse me, why is that funny to you?"

"I don't know… Have you gone all 'Fight Club' on me?"

"Fight-? Oh!" Piper made a face of immense disgust. "Oh no, no, that's gross!"

It was, but it was funny as well, and it appeared that she hadn't lost her outstanding ability to tease the blonde. The alcohol she had consumed was also helping her relax, together with the familiar place and the cozy illumination, and it was becoming easier to look at Piper, at the wisps of golden hair swinging from her shoulders, at her hands resting on the wooden table, at the tiny curve of her smile, and the depth of her eyes. And yet the persistent feeling of incredulity remained, blinking like a tiny light bulb inside her head.

The brunette leaned closer, her hands flat on the table, framing her empty glass and very close to Piper's fingers. This wasn't good. It had once been the most instinctive thing in the world to reach out and touch those hands, hold them, play with them, and it didn't really matter that it had been eons ago. There was a part of her which would find that natural, and that part of her was getting a bit tipsy, so she combated it with the worst thing she could come up with, the thing she was most apprehensive about.

"And how is… Larry?" she asked, trying not to make a face.

With obvious surprise in her expression, Piper answered slowly, as if every word was painful to utter. "There is no Larry. When I got out I… insisted, and we sort of gave it another try, but it didn't really work."

"It didn't work for you or it didn't work for him?"

Visibly uncomfortable, Piper glanced down. "It just didn't work, okay? Look, I know you talked to him in prison. He told me he visited you…"

Was she really attempting to blame her? Had it been her fault then that Piper's relationship had gone to hell? Certainly her conversation with Larry hadn't helped, but she hadn't done it to fuck Piper over, if that was what she meant. She had defended herself from his claim that she had been coaxing the blonde, like she had forced her to do anything in there. If she hadn't believed that she was actually talking to Piper before, she could believe it now, considering the amount of bullshit she was surely on the verge of hearing.

"What the fuck are you suggesting, Piper?"

"You couldn't shut up - you never can. You couldn't let me live my life, not after I got away from you the first time, not after I picked Larry."

"You picked safe and boring. Not exactly the stuff dreams are made of." Alex said, crossing her arms, and sitting back, no longer in any risk of touching the blonde.

"That was _my_ choice to make. I wanted something solid, I wanted to have some idea of what my future would look like, or at least try to move towards a certain common goal with someone. Is that so bad?"

"Maybe not, if you'd learned to quit fucking me over while you made your choices. During your little journey towards self-discovery you broke my fucking heart. Again."

"I know, and I'm sorry. Look, if it's any comfort to you, I broke mine too in the process," Piper said, her voice gentle again. Her expression was so terribly sad that it reminded Alex of that morning in prison when the blonde had communicated her that she had picked Larry. Not having the guts to do something was just like renouncing to it -there was no excuse-, and Piper had known it. She knew it now too.

"Of course it isn't a fucking comfort." Alex sighed. "Come on, I didn't want you to be miserable, I wanted us to be together, to be happy, like we once were."

"Jesus, Alex, you're the brightest person I've ever met, but sometimes, I swear…"

"What?" She dug her nails into the skin of her forearms and waited, but the blonde didn't finish her sentence. Her mind returned to the question back at the bookstore. "Why are we doing this? Do you want to be my friend?"

"I don't know… could be? Is that so outrageous to you?"

"Well… yeah, it is. Stop kidding yourself, Piper." Friends were something else. They had never been friends, and couldn't be friends. All their lives, they had been all or nothing.


	4. The Good and the Problematic

Naturally, the brunette had tried to make her feel guilty about her past choices, but Piper wasn't going to let her. Those had been legitimate choices to make, for her own wellbeing, and if someone could recognize survival, wouldn't that be precisely Alex? Alex who was certainly still Alex, and why wouldn't she? In her own words from long ago, she was a "pretty consistent" person, and it was clear that she had retained every ounce of her satirical attitude and her bite, as well as her humorous timing, which had been a big part of what Piper had always found attractive about the brunette; her self-aware magnetism hadn't been everything. Every one of those things had remained, both the good and the problematic.

All but one. One thing had compromised the brunette's cherished consistency, and it was the fact that she wasn't lost in a remote part of the world, which meant that somewhere along the line she had learned to value some degree of sedentarism. She had been right there in that tiny bookstore for who knew how long, under Piper's very nose, and the composure she'd managed to maintain before was not so easy to sustain now, after their argument. She felt drained psychologically and physically too, as a result. It felt as if she had spent the whole morning immersed in a row about the past, but in reality, that dispute hadn't started now; she had never stopped arguing during all those years, with Alex, with herself, and back. She'd done nothing else, apparently, and it was exhausting.

That silent passive-aggressive hostility which Alex had at first displayed in prison didn't sound so bad now, as a matter of fact. Sometimes the brunette could be worse than a pigheaded teenager. That was what Piper had almost said but finally hadn't. Alex _was_ bright; her fantastic mind could be quicker than light, but she was impaired by her refusal to come down her high horse. That slightly higher view was what had always prevented her from really seeing what she'd been doing with Piper back in the day when she'd been a skillful drug importer. In Litchfield Piper had believed that they'd be able to be _really _together, not only by name, and had started picturing a potential future for them, but Alex had only given her vagueness in return. More vagueness - that wasn't what she'd needed, so she'd jumped at the chance of marrying Larry, particularly since she'd believed she'd lost him. Alex's uncertainty had scared her even more because it had reminded her of the past, of how insecure she'd felt once she'd understood that the dark-haired woman would put her at risk if it ever came to that.

For all her intelligence, it was clear that Alex believed that the fault had been in her line of work, but that hadn't been the only thing which had dynamited their chances. The brunette couldn't see that Piper did not want it to be just like it once had been, and thus hadn't been in any position to offer her something different. Piper had once felt safe in their unpredictable lifestyle -that was undeniable-, because set against every single rapid change was Alex, the only constant she'd needed. However, when it had dawned on her that her own safety wasn't a given and that she couldn't count on Alex to be her rock, the clouds hadn't been able to hold their castle anymore. It had occurred to her that that hadn't been real safety, or that real safety was something else, perhaps something more conventional.

As for being "friends", Piper was conflicted. She looked at Alex, her black hair melding with the pub's darkness. It made her light-skinned face stand out more, like a full moon in the night, and she still couldn't believe that they were in each other's presence. For all their annoying quarrels, Piper couldn't help that the unlikelihood of their encounter had made her wish that it didn't have to end in that manner, on an abrupt, sour note, and then go their own ways like perfect strangers. That was what she meant by "friends". Was it that illogical, wanting to have her around, a person who had played such an important part in her life? Was it illusory then, to think that it was possible for them to sit down once in a while and have coffee or a drink without there being a massacre?

She tried to explain it to Alex, who started shaking her head. "How rational of you."

"You don't think it's possible. But you're here, you're right here and you're telling me that we cannot see each other."

That the brunette wasn't half across the world wasn't a mere question of money, of that she was convinced. What Alex had enjoyed about being loaded had had to do with the extra jolt of power it granted her -the tranquility as well, Piper guessed, since she hadn't had an easy childhood-, but she was certain that the brunette would've had no qualms about living in a shack and making a living by showing tourists around in a boat like a reformed pirate. There had to be something else.

Feeling a renewed flash of anger burning behind her pupils, Piper looked away. They had been playing a very complex game of tug of war for ages, focused on keeping the rope completely tense, for neither of them had wanted to relinquish one inch of their territory - much less step over the line. Whatever had motivated Alex to keep more or less still and build a life, it had nothing to do with her, and she needed to let it out.

"You didn't want to settle down before. You told me that the point of being with you was not knowing what was going to happen. And now I find you like this… you wouldn't do this for me, having something real that I could see, that I could touch, just to show me that you could, just to show me that it would be different."

"You wanted it to be different?" Alex asked, moving forwards again and placing her elbows on the table.

"I needed to know that you wouldn't leave me hanging again like-"

"Wait a second. Leave _you_ hanging?" the brunette let out a string of derisive laughter. "No, you did that."

"And you did too. You had no trouble in putting me in danger, of asking me to do illegal things for you even though I wasn't in 'the game'," Piper said, making quotation signs with her fingers. "I was your girlfriend, Alex, your fucking girlfriend. I know that I'm not blameless, but you aren't either."

"All I know is that as soon as shit gets messy, you bail. That's just who you are. So why would I want to get used to seeing you?"

* * *

She wasn't the same person anymore. She had tackled her problem head-on and not only that, but smashed its face to pieces. They had taken her away and locked her up in Solitary, and now time was nothing more than a variable; it was not hers and it had nothing to do with her. Every time they pushed a tray through the opening, Piper would cry out and ask them if Pennsatucky was alive, but she received no answer. She tried to keep count of the times they brought her food as a sort of very rudimentary clock, but her brain couldn't even do that properly.

They kept her there the entire holidays, the entire holidays and seven days, which was more than a punishment. As it turned out, she hadn't killed the woman, they were getting ready to transfer her to a different federal prison. It appeared that everyone had got tired of her, of the trouble that always seemed to follow her around, and of course nobody would want her to start talking about what happened in the yard.

Not even allowing her to make a phone call, she was asked to write a letter to someone who visited her to inform them of the transfer. However, the worst part of it was her own hesitation about who to address that letter to, Polly or her mother - certainly not Larry. He'd wanted to marry her straight away out of fear of losing her, and Piper had been in a hurry as well because she'd thought she'd lost him - the only solid thing in her life. Of course it had all gone to hell, and she had gone to hell with it, and she wasn't entirely sure of being back yet.

* * *

It hurt her that Alex was describing her like a capricious child, as if there hadn't been reasons behind her actions. She had been wrong about many things, yes, and she could never change or repair them, just like Alex could do nothing to alter her lot. Their only options were either letting them go or not, and so far it looked like Alex couldn't.

"Listen, the fact that we didn't end up together doesn't mean that it was all a lie. I wish you'd understand that."

The brunette pursed her lips and slid her index finger along the rim of her empty pint, collecting a bit of the remaining foam. "Why does it matter?"

"Because then we could stop fighting. I don't want to fight anymore." Their bickering was like having an acid in her brain, corroding it, shooting it full of holes, and the alcohol consumed wasn't helping her mental agility at all.

"Piper, if it wasn't a lie then you didn't want it badly enough. You didn't want _me_ badly enough. It's that simple." Alex spoke with a voice so level one could bounce a ball against it. Her responses were fast, ready-made, and thus disarming. Piper had to wonder if they had been composed years ago out of the brunette's own reflections, to be used as a shield against whatever challenge presented itself - against herself, against Piper's potential return.

That didn't mean that Piper had nothing to say to those remarks, but her answers weren't quite as swift as she would've liked, making her appear less sure or herself, especially if placed alongside Alex's. Things were definitely not that simple, but then it came to her: the simplest representation of her fear, like a shadow, creeping from the back of her mind to the fore, from the past to the present, from an anecdote to a pattern.

"I was scared," she began, and heard the brunette's tired sigh, but she went on. "I was scared… of falling down that waterfall again, of thinking that you'd be there with me and then finding myself alone."

Upon hearing those words, Alex's expression changed. She didn't look quite as ready to respond now. For a moment, Piper feared that the brunette would react with resentment and accuse her of pulling out the ugly stuff from the past to make a point, but they were both guilty of doing that - and besides, that incident hadn't been noteworthy just for Piper. She knew that it had scarred Alex in some way, for she remembered her saying that she was sorry, choking up about it hours after it had happened, and confessing her love for the first time. Alex had been more open afterwards, at least for a considerable amount of time, like a huge weight had been lifted off her chest.

Piper almost apologized, since she hadn't intended to wound her, but to illustrate her point. However, she kept quiet, for she saw the dark-haired woman retreating like a frightened child, sitting back and placing her bent knees on the edge of the table. This took Piper completely by surprise, and she didn't know how to react. Her instinct told her to stand up, go to Alex's side of the table, kneel down next to her, and take her hand, but she didn't do it. She was sure that the brunette would recoil from her proximity and her touch, and would thus obtain the spark of anger required to bite back at Piper's words. And that would hurt.

So Piper didn't move a muscle and waited until the woman found her words.

"You don't trust me." Alex said, with actual surprise, which Piper found somewhat outrageous.

"And you don't trust me."

"No… I don't. I'm scared that you don't care who you're with, just as long as you're not alone, that you don't want me as a person, but what I can give you."

"No. No, Alex, that's not…" Piper shook her head. They were both afraid of being used, convinced that they would eventually be taken for granted by the other. So Alex was right and this was pointless, this attempt of hers to reconnect at some level - and then she realized that the brunette wasn't talking in the past tense.

Time had indeed done tricky things to both of them. Like an addict, Piper had gone back to old patterns after her release, knocking on Larry's door even if he hadn't visited her once, and trying to break through his understandable apprehensiveness. Acting like he'd never really known her and spewing out what sounded like recycled words of wisdom from his parents, he hadn't been easy to convince, but they had finally given it another go, to several people's dismay (people on Larry's side of the equation). It had been a simple attempt to see if the shoe could still fit after everything that had happened, if it was just a matter of removing the prison element from the equation.

It wasn't. At first Larry had seemed more or less happy, and Piper had allowed herself to relax and believe that things were going fine, judging by the considerable time they were spending in bed. She had felt frozen for a long time, hardened by having to maintain the reputation which had preceded her in that second prison, unaccustomed to human contact because everyone had left her alone and she'd wanted nothing to do with it. Consequently, she had welcomed the touch of someone familiar, someone she loved, and the layer of ice covering her skin had started thawing. She had found the old path half-buried in the wilderness and had started pulling out the weeds that had grown between the cracks, telling herself that she was on the right track now. However, Larry had been simultaneously discovering that having sex with Piper didn't necessarily make her feel more his, that it wasn't a matter of possession (just like it hadn't been a matter of getting married) but of trust. Without trust and without knowing how to reconstruct it, it had all crumbled down very fast and very bitterly.

Profiting from Alex's downcast eyes, Piper took the moment to stare at her shamelessly. Shining in the yellow light, her skin was still an unavoidable source of attraction; that hadn't changed, and Piper didn't expect it to ever change. Piper's pupils were but a pair of brainless moths roaming what skin was visible, spotting several half-moon shaped marks on Alex's arms from where she had dug her black-painted fingernails.

"Maybe you're right, I don't know…" Relentless at wanting to make things okay, the blonde shrugged, tried a smile. "I don't know if I'm that person anymore."

"Oh, I'm sure you're not." The brunette smiled, and Piper was relieved for a second, but it was an odd kind of smile, both sad and knowledgeable. "I don't think you ever were who I thought you were."


	5. Drinking the Kool-Aid

"Not for more than a second," Alex added. "Not more than a second at a time."

Evidently bothered by her words, Piper shuffled her feet underneath the table. "That's not fair. We can't all be like you, you know, so… so sure."

She knew that one of Piper's issues had always been fabricating excuses for herself, both before and after doing something, then saying that she was sorry -and she _was_ genuinely sorry, which was the irritating part-, without renouncing to those excuses.

"So that was the problem? That you weren't 'sure'?

"I'm saying that it wasn't all a lie," the blonde went on. "I can admit that I wasn't brave, but I won't say that I tricked you to justify your anger, Alex. I didn't use you - at least not more than you used me."

So she wasn't evil, just fickle. Alex already knew that - neither of them were monsters, nor completely benign either. Certainly Alex wasn't oblivious to Piper's reasons for leaving her the first time; she wasn't fucking stupid. They had glossed over it in prison, hurrying to put a band-aid on it because they only had each other, because they made each other feel better, and because that enamored, lustful, teenage sensation had made them believe that everything would be okay and that there was a workable future for them outside.

After Piper had left her the second time, Alex had been less understanding. She had attributed it all to the blonde's cowardice (she herself had admitted that she lacked the guts), which in the end meant that she had chosen the straight and narrow instead of the wide and rocky. The brunette had felt that rejection deeply, infiltrating the most secret, guarded compartment inside her, but her mother had taught her early on that other people's scorn didn't imply that there was something wrong with her, but that there was something wrong with them. One didn't have to change to fit into other people's bullshit rules and aesthetic concepts, but be true to oneself, especially if one was awesome.

And now she was discovering that part of the reasons behind Piper's rebuttal had had to do with her own unwillingness to reach some kind of symbolic middle ground she hadn't been told about. She was learning that Piper had needed something different to their globe-trotting, wild years, but not necessarily because she had conformed to that dull, nuclear family ideal, but because Alex had made her feel unsafe the first time around, and so she had grown scared and wary of that way of life, and attached to ordinariness instead. Was that it?

The invocation of what had happened in Indonesia had been the last straw for Alex. She'd felt as frozen as that day at the waterfall. The unexpected knowledge that the episode had been haunting the blonde's mind for a very long time, stored in her memory alongside Alex's requests for doing illegal activities, had almost made her lose her shit. All those years later and she hadn't yet deciphered that meltdown completely, other than that there was some kind of weird blockage within her which had remained unaddressed because they had continued their adventurous relationship more united than before, with her enchanting powers still in place.

She'd believed that was the most important thing, being that unending beacon of attraction for everybody, Piper included, through her wealth and her charm. She'd thought she'd been living her very extraordinary life with the blonde, sharing it with her, when in fact she'd been sabotaging their every chance. There had been nothing mundane about travelling the world supervising heroin importation, and it had destroyed their relationship like the drug consumed its addicts, like it had undoubtedly done with her father's life. The realization had come to her during the last breaths of their prison rekindling: that they were just Alex and Piper, and that outside those walls she would just be Alex -no wealth, no real power-, but that would be enough for Piper. She'd miss everything else, but had wanted that so much, to feel that she was enough for her, without all the other additives. They'd almost had that in prison.

* * *

It was the first time she'd visited Piper's cube. The blonde had always been the one to come to her, but that was out of the question now. The block's inmates peered at her with curiosity; in such an asphyxiatingly small world, they all knew who she was and what had been going on. When she reached Piper's cube, though, it shocked her to see that all of Piper's things had vanished. The bunk and metal furniture were completely bare, and all that remained was a tiny piece of cello tape on the short wall.

Alex plucked the tape from the wall, wondering what it had been holding up. Not a picture of her family - unless she had grown more attached to them with the years. A picture of the fiancé? It was possible. An image representing the perfect, little life Piper had constructed for herself. However, something had broken inside Piper, making her discharge all her rage on the fucking meth head's face, and there was nothing Alex could do about it. She felt so helpless that it made her want to explode, but she restrained herself. She would _not_ lose her shit inside that fucking place.

"Girl, your girl's gone," Piper's bunk buddy said, entering the cubicle.

"I know." Alex looked at the woman with the corner of her eye. Taystee, wasn't it? She knew her from her job at the library, from that stupid A.A. meeting stunt she had pulled off to get Piper's attention at the beginning of her stay, and from her goodbye party just before Thanksgiving.

"I mean for good. Transferred. Guard came to put her stuff in a box and told me."

Transferred. They had transferred Piper, not Pennsatucky. Alex walked back to her own block, dodged Nichols's glances, and slumped on her bunk, placing the pillow behind her back. She opened a new book and stared at the first page, the blank one, for a very long time before turning it over and pretending to read with a serene expression.

* * *

No one was forcing them to speak or share a space; she could just get up and leave, return to her little kingdom of books with the sensation of slamming a door behind her. Instead, Alex ordered another beer. That thing between them had been playing dead for plenty of years, showing its ugly underbelly for so long that its other side had been only too easy to overlook. The newness of having Piper in front of her was enough to counterbalance its tingling effect, like an electric residue, a mixture of the old and the unfamiliar.

"'Kay, so what do you want, Piper?" she asked, refraining from rubbing her tired eyelids.

"If you could stop hammering me for, you know…"

"Drinking the Kool-Aid?"

The blonde looked at her with slight disapproval. What? Was that offensive to her? Had she been keeping such insipid company those last years? The better question, however, would once more be a simple "Why?" as in why was that important to her. Whatever Piper had in mind for them was utterly impossible. No, this was just a bizarre day, a limbo, and she didn't see how it could go anywhere, but there was a part of her that didn't want it to be over.

"I'm not the only one, am I?" Piper leaned forward, pointing at her with one hand, crossing the invisible boundary of the middle of the table with the other.

It was almost funny that Piper had got mad at her for settling down a little, thwarting her self-claimed consistency (she'd been consistent at being inconsistent, she guessed). If someone had told her years ago that that would be her life, Alex would've surely barked out an incredulous laugh, for that would've sounded a whole lot like domestication. But this was her life now, and Piper hadn't been able to imagine why.

"It's not like I haven't gone back to those places." Despite the strength of her affirmations and her effort to be tough on the blonde, the brunette noticed that she was wavering, which perhaps implied that she needed to drink up. "Nothing can drive me away from them for a very long time."

Not even her own memories, her own brain conspiring against her time and again. One moment she was crossing a wooden Thai bridge with no other company than the monkeys in the trees, and the next she was seeing a very youthful Piper skipping ahead of her with her long hair tied in a messy bun, her arms open, and a bright pink rucksack on her back. She was very well acquainted with the ways in which her own thoughts could and did betray her, and the years had taught her how to deal with them so that she wouldn't get dragged back into the gutter. It was important to have a place where one could lick one's wounds -or in her case, scars (the fact that the wounds had scarred a long time ago didn't mean that they weren't still scattered all over her body)-, and she had Cherry to thank for enabling that balance.

"But why stay here at all?"

"I did live here temporarily, you know. Remember my old place?"

"Of course."

Never mind that she had tried to prolong her stay in the country so that she didn't have to lose Piper during the first flush of their relationship. Having dodged the bullet, Alex lost some of her alertness. She was still looking at Piper from her side of the wide ditch that was cutting between them, but the blonde had taken off her white hat, and her arms were still stretched in front of her, with her hands flat and her fingers curled, as if they were reaching out towards the brunette, albeit reluctantly.

"So you think this is possible for us?" Alex asked, gesturing at the two of them and their drinks paraphernalia.

"You think I'm kidding myself."

"I don't get why you want us to see each other."

"You don't-" Piper shook her head. "Does there have to be a reason?"

Not always -not a pronounceable, thought out explanation-, but Alex couldn't go halfway around the world without thinking about that woman, and now she was asking to be a regular presence in her sanctuary. Besides, if Piper didn't have a reason, if she didn't want this because she required Alex to walk her through some stuff or cut through some bullshit like she had helped her in prison, then it meant that the blonde was feeling the pull of old times. And that was scary.

"I don't know. Do you meet up with _Larry_ once in a while?"

"We see each other sometimes, but we have common friends. It's not the same."

Right. Being the exception was a problematic thing. On the one hand, it meant that she was special on some level, and on the other, it made her into a glitch. She had always taken pleasure in being the black sheep, ever since she'd learned to embrace her individuality, but seeing herself as Piper's little anomaly had stung her in the past more than once. She had bit back, of course, for instance calling her "straight", but here it was again.

Piper had been her anomaly too, not in terms of gender but of feelings, to the point that she hadn't found anybody who could compete - not that she'd been doing much looking. There had been nothing too serious; when an itch presented itself, she mainly searched for volunteers to scratch it. That itch could be merely lust-driven, but sometimes she strove for affection as well - the ways of conquering differed, the ways of fucking someone did too. In its eagerness, her internal emptiness was quick to be filled but also returned swiftly, in an unending cycle. She wondered what that had been like for Piper after her, and how it was now. Those were dangerous musings, though, and she needed to shake them off.

"Look, I'll leave you my number," Piper said.

"Are we gonna text each other like a couple of kids now?" Laughing incredulously, Alex crossed her arms over her breast.

"If you want to see me, call me. It's simple." The blonde reached over to Alex's side of the table, lifted her pint, took the Guinness coaster, flipped it over, and scribbled her phone number on it. "I know how you like simple."

The gesture was completely unnecessary, since Piper had a coaster of her own directly in front of her, but she returned the cardboard rectangle to its place, even setting Alex's glass back on top of it. She was letting her decide; it could be like nothing had happened, like that insane morning had been a small accident. They'd had plenty of small accidents for a lifetime, she mused.

"I gotta go," Piper said, pocketing her pen and standing up.

"Me too. Cherry's gonna ride my ass… Not really, though," she added, after a pause. Alex was unable to suppress a smile, or a joke about Cherry being her girlfriend.

"I know, I know." Returning her smile, Piper stood up and put on her jacket.

It was important to try to stay on dry ground. Although she hadn't let it show, Piper's proximity had alarmed her, for a second not knowing what she was going to do. Now she knew. Alex lifted her glass and used her index and middle fingers to spin the coaster around like a roulette wheel.

This felt like an impasse; it seemed like she had got herself stuck in a blind alley, and the tricky thing about getting out of blind alleys was that one couldn't simply keep walking; one had to walk backwards for a while through already-trodden territory before one could choose a different option.


	6. Hamartia

Dropping her keys into the bowl at the entrance, the blonde pushed the door shut using her back, and then stayed there for a couple of minutes. She was still under the very confusing spell of having been in Alex's company, which contrasted sharply with the quotidian immobility of her apartment. Her books, her plants, her sparse decorations, they knew nothing about what had happened to her that same morning, and nothing seemed stranger than normalcy when something extraordinary took place.

Piper hung her jacket, stuffed her hat inside one of its pockets, and pulled off her damp boots. She padded her way to the open kitchen and checked the fridge for wine. There was the bottle of white she had started the previous night, which felt like a lifetime ago. This was what happened when one revived half a life span of history in a single day, she presumed.

She had spent her evening with Polly, Pete, and little Finn, hoping to distract her mind from what she'd done earlier -her grand gesture with the pen and the coaster-, which hadn't been purely on impulse, but a way of granting Alex some space and control - otherwise, Piper was the only one who knew how to find the other woman. They were breaking new ground now, and she was all too aware of the silent cell phone inside her pocket. Unfortunately, the get-together with her friends hadn't been all that helpful.

"So I hear you had a bit of a 'Close Encounter of the Third Kind' this morning," Pete had said, right off the bat.

"Polly!" she cried out with a whiny voice.

"Well, I had to tell him, or did you expect me to wait all day?"

"No… Of course not…" Piper had massaged her temples, anticipating a second, more aggressive warning from her best friend, and Polly had only dropped the topic after the blonde had assured her repeatedly that they hadn't banged each other's brains out at first sight. "My brain's intact, I promise."

But that wasn't exactly true, was it? When had any kind of encounter with that dark-haired woman left her unaffected? She could still bring out to the fore that early on sensation of being perpetually high (and knowing that it had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol), and it was more than a simple reminiscence; it was like a drug she hadn't yet expunged from her system, no matter how many cleanses she had tried.

In any case, Piper hadn't had the courage to mention to her friends that she'd seen Alex a second time that same day, much less that she had given her her phone number. It didn't really matter; as far as she could tell, Alex had little interest in meeting up again. Whether it was because the brunette had achieved a certain degree of indifference towards her (and she wanted to keep it that way) or because she was scared of the opposite, Piper had no way of knowing for sure; she could only judge what she had seen, and that was a mixed bag. Alex's responses had been expedient, for the most part inflexible, to the point that they'd looked rehearsed; others had been slightly more hostile, like a means of preventive protection, small explosions interlaced with her prickly sense of humor to stir up Piper's guilt; and then others had been remarkably warm and stripped of satire, like when she had told her that it wasn't a comfort that Piper had broken her own heart and that all she'd wanted was for them to be together and be happy like they'd once been.

That had been Alex's mistake. Pouring herself a big glass of wine, Piper thought about how every classic hero had a tragic flaw -a hamartia-, and that perhaps the brunette had been unable to perceive some ugly aspects of their relationship, or maybe she had, but her error had been perceiving herself totally capable -and entitled- to fix everything, manage everything. It was plausible that she had navigated through the span of their relationship with the wrong kind of lenses before her eyes, so to speak, while Piper knew that the only resilient power one could have over the world was adapting to the nicest portion of it one could manage to find.

It made her smile, anyhow, that she was likening Alex to a Greek tragic hero now. She would reject the comparison, Piper mused, bringing the glass with her into the room, since that would dispossess her of the reins of her own destiny, and condemn her to do the same thing over and over, like having an unbreakable hamster wheel for a life. Alex believed in change, but it was an active, external kind of change, so of course she wouldn't favor feeling like she was pushing a rock up a hill without consequence, only to start again the following day.

Remembering to retrieve her phone from the pocket of her pants, Piper undressed and got into bed. She propped herself up against the headboard using a couple of pillows and cradled the glass between her hands. The wine was delicious, and it gave her thoughts a certain refreshing spark, instead of making her sleepy. She wondered if the analogy wasn't too far-fetched, at least for her; hadn't they felt inevitable time and again? Were they going to keep running into each other, moving back and forth eternally, adding painful notches to the rings of their spiral?

Her cell phone started ringing, startling her terribly, since she had turned the volume all the way up so as not to miss a potential text from Alex. However, this wasn't the cute little sound of an arriving text message, but a straightforward call. Piper set the glass on the bedside table and picked her screaming phone, staring at the unknown number on the screen. Her fingers were completely calm as she slid the "unlock" symbol, but her heart was beating with a wild rhythm against the inside of her chest.

"Hello?"

"That was fast," answered an all too familiar voice, which then emitted a small chuckle.

"Hey," she was unable to repress a smile. "Alex."

"Yeah… Surprised?"

"A little. I wasn't sure you wanted to talk to me."

"We never used to talk on the phone much, did we?"Alex asked, changing the topic, like she didn't want to tranquilize her in that respect.

"No." After all, they'd spent most of their time together. Piper noted the minor differences in Alex's voice caused by this new medium, which made her sound a shade huskier. "I didn't think you'd call."

"Are you home?"

"Yes."

"Then what's the problem?"

"There's no… problem. I guess you don't like texting, huh?" Piper asked, instinctively reaching for the glass of wine and downing the last of its contents.

"Nah, I think it's bullshit."

"Okay…" Either she was stuck in a loop of screwing up or Alex was being difficult on purpose. It did seem more likely that the brunette was behaving defensively, since she'd had to make up her mind to call, thus resigning her will to not keep in contact. "Are _you_ home?"

"Yeah. The bookshop, the backroom… that's home."

"Really? It's like that dream of yours you told me about, the one you used to have when you were little," she added quickly, for fear that Alex would get offended by her surprise.

"Yeah, not exactly what I expected it to be, but hey. The shop's got everything - it only needs a music section and a tattoo parlor, but Cherry won't listen to me."

It couldn't be easy for Alex, having to do without the buoyancy of her previous wealth. At least Piper's remark apparently hadn't wounded her. The dark-haired woman hadn't disclosed a great deal of information from when she was a child, except that it had been hard and that her mother had made every sacrifice to raise her. Except for one time, during a nocturnal train trip, when she had snuggled against Alex and the brunette had covered her with her jacket, kissed her head, and told her that "bedtime story". As books were the only plane tickets to other countries she'd been able to afford and the only time machines she'd had to escape from a very ugly, very poor reality, Alex's childhood dream had once been to live in a library, "one of the big ones", where she'd believed every book in the world was available. She'd thought that was the only way one could live a hundred lives and do a million things.

The remembrance made Piper feel stupidly giddy all of a sudden, since it had come to her with incredibly accurate detail: the sound of Alex's voice against her ear -not above a whisper-, the soothing pressure of her arm around her back, and the combined scent of her skin and of her jacket. She felt much less nervous now, her heartbeat gradually slowing down, and seeing as Alex had seemingly calmed down as well, Piper closed her eyes and slid down on the bed to a more comfortable position. She released a breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding.

Alex laughed, with the most honest tone she had heard from her all day. "Fuck! I'm deaf!"

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry!"

"At least I know you've relaxed."

"I was just remembering…" she faltered, hesitant about the appropriateness of breaking into the memory box, deciding against mentioning the night train. "Your dream?"

"Yeah, well, I was just a kid. I wasn't aware that working for an international drug cartel would be the way to go."

"Don't you think that maybe it wasn't?"

"I think you want me to regret a whole lot of stuff, but what would be the point?"

"But wouldn't you do something differently if you could?"

"Pipes… What's the use? I mean, you just end up making a list of all the times you fucked up. Fuck that. What you can do is try not to make the same mistakes. You gotta try to make new ones."

Piper barely acknowledged Alex's joke, her giggle, and the "I'm hilarious" face she was probably sporting. Those things almost didn't register because the brunette had used her nickname, and it had been years since she'd heard it from that very voice. "So why would I want to get used to seeing you?" the brunette had asked her at one point that morning, directly after accusing her of leaving whenever things started to get messy. That fear was surely still there, but… could it be that through that tiny, probably unconscious concession Alex was starting to imagine the possibility, however faint, of this being something more than a very odd day?

With no distractions or pressures of the visual kind, Piper found that it was easier to have a conversation. Or it could be that both of them were tired, and thus they found it harder to rummage their minds in preparation for an ensuing argument. She turned off the bedside lamp and got more comfortable, curling up on her side with her phone resting on her cheek. This was definitely new territory for them, terribly adolescent too, but she liked it, precisely because it was different. After dredging up so much old history -which felt like dragging heavy feet along a muddy path-, it was refreshing to try something new -and safe- with Alex. What was comforting about it, though, was the weird familiarity of resting under the covers in almost complete darkness, listening to Alex's steady breathing for a long time.

"I'm just glad you called."

"Well you gave me your number. That was forward of you. Or you just wanted to leave it in my hands."

"Shut up," Piper murmured, having entered sleepiness. "What I want is to stop fighting. Don't you?"

"Not really, no," Alex answered, but her voice was gentle, as if her spirit wasn't in it.

"Maybe _that's_ your tragic flaw."

"My… What exactly have you been reading, Pipes?"

The blonde didn't answer. Instead, she drowsily smiled to herself because Alex had called her that again, and that was a small victory for a much bigger battle, one whose limits hadn't even been defined yet.


	7. Let It Ride

The brunette had been assaulted by Cherry as soon as she'd entered the bookshop, in spite of how inconspicuous she'd tried to move, due to that fucking bell hanging over the door. She had tried to walk swiftly towards the far end of the store to busy herself with anything she could come up with, wanting to find refuge between the stacks as if they were tall grass in a field, but her friend hadn't let her. Nosy reporters surely had nothing on Cherry, who had started questioning her about Piper, wanting to know if something had happened between them, and if so, what. When not even death threats had dissuaded the redheaded interrogator, Alex had rolled her eyes and told her that they had simply gone to the pub.

"Like you needed to get _that_ _woman_ drunk," Cherry had scoffed at her.

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Come on, Alex! There were, like, puppies and unicorns pouring out of her eyes every single time she looked at you! Don't tell me you didn't notice. Oh, and don't get me started on the way _you_ look at her."

"Fuck me," Alex had muttered under her breath, and turned around to rearrange a shelf that had been in perfect order. Earlier, Cherry had compared them to "a mute soap opera", and the woman didn't know the half of it, or the gravity of certain past events, or else she wouldn't be such an eager advocate, not even giving Alex a hard time for being absent from work.

"And don't pretend you're not gonna see her again."

With that, Cherry had finally left her alone, and Alex had been free to knock her forehead against the spines of the rearranged books several times. She had returned to the pub later, after closing up the store, to avoid the dilemma, with the Guinness coaster burning inside her pocket. She'd been perfectly conscious of the irony of having Piper's number now, after how it had bothered her before that the blonde knew how to find her while she couldn't. Well, now she could, and it hadn't felt a whole lot like being in control. Piper would surely state something like "What goes around comes around," and it did, except that it came around to bite you on the ass.

Alex had sat down on a stool at the bar, ordered a beer, and made a half-hearted effort at obtaining some company. That had been dead easy, because people required no effort - or rather, she was good at reading them, figuring out what they wanted, and presenting herself as a more than acceptable answer. She knew how to be extremely sociable without giving others more than a tiny percentage of herself; the rest was all flash, but they liked it - they liked her, just like Piper had fallen for it back in the day. If she chose to, she would never be alone. Soon she'd found herself sitting at a booth with a mixed group, hoping that their animated conversation and random hooting would be able to deafen everything that had been going on in the private quarters of her brain, but it hadn't, so she had gone back home - by herself, of course. She hadn't even tried to pretend that a mere quickie with a stranger could be a sufficient distraction; it wouldn't have been worth it. So Alex had closed the door to her little room, kicked off her boots, and jumped on the bed, covering her freezing arms with a blanket. Then, she had rummaged her pockets and extracted her cell phone and the slightly wrinkled, infamous coaster, glaring from one item to the other for a while. She shouldn't trust Piper. She shouldn't. The reality of the thing was that all that time hadn't been enough to forgive or forget, so why keep poking at it? Wasn't it a waste of time?

"Fuck," Alex had whispered, as she'd remembered her own words from long ago, in prison, about having a connection with someone, about how it never really went away. Okay, but one could always stop feeding the fire, cutting Piper off like she had indeed done in prison, regardless of the ways in which Cherry claimed they looked at each other.

It had been a long time since the brunette had indulged in the act of picturing herself with Piper, since it was a very unhealthy practice which only ended up making her feel more empty that before. Her top priority had to be to take good care of herself, and yet she'd closed her eyes and brought back every detail she'd been able to remember about this new Piper, because she had bumped into her during three radically different moments of their lives, and it had mattered very little, really, for Alex's heart had responded in the same way.

Wading across an ocean of shit was no fun, though. Sighing, Alex had dialed the number and waited, feeling a very annoying pang of fear as soon as she'd heard the phone ringing at the other side of the line. She'd started to tell herself that if Piper didn't pick up on the second or third ring she would hang up and never try again, and never meet up again. Those weak, childish thoughts had only angered her further, as did her own relief upon hearing Piper's soft "Hello", so it had taken her a minute to stop behaving like a petulant asshole.

After Alex had admitted to living in the shop's backroom, the blonde had gotten all evocative about her ancient dream, and it had been impossible to remain immutable. She had closed her eyes and wondered if they were going to start pulling out stories from the past, from the peak of their romance, because that was a dangerous game: it had the potential of making them either nostalgic or furious, or both. In any case, it would meddle with Alex's balance, she'd pretended not to take the hint, pretended that she hadn't remembered about leaning against the train's window and welcoming Piper against her body, covering her with her own jacket, and kissing her head after inhaling the scent of her hair. She'd thought she'd been doing quite well, in fact, until she'd realized that she'd been calling her "Pipes" for who knew how long. Luckily, the blonde had been on the verge of falling asleep, already in the babbling stage - no bullshit, just nonsense.

What the fuck did she mean by her "tragic flaw" - a mistake she was destined to repeat, a fault in her character? Alex shook her head and instead listened to Piper's breaths getting longer and calmer. It was like everything was slowing down, their body rhythms, and time as a whole, and it felt similar to that old sensation of being the only people left in the world. Taking off her glasses, she became suddenly aware that this was turning out to be a lot more intimate than she had expected. They'd been able to have sex in prison but not engage in other unhurried, perhaps even more intimate things than sex, such as sharing a bed at night, so this was like a weird sort of middle ground. Heartwarming, yes -because with her eyes closed, Alex didn't sense their distance, there was only what she could hear-, and very confusing.

Her gut told her to reject this, to say goodnight and hang up, but apparently there were two different instincts inside her, working one against the other, like that old method of torture which consisted of being pulled apart by horses galloping in different directions. She should quietly say goodnight and hang up, because this felt pleasantly uncomplicated when it really wasn't.

"Hey, you're falling asleep on me."

"No I'm not," Piper claimed, with a drunk-like voice. "You'd know if I were."

Alex opened her eyes and raised her eyebrows in the almost complete darkness of the room. No fucking way. She sat up, set aside the blanket, and waited, with her mind ready to spring into action. However, the blonde didn't add anything; she kept breathing deeply, probably not really conscious of what she had said. Was that better or worse?

Holding the phone between her cheek and her shoulder, Alex undressed and got into bed, her skin feeling acutely sensitive to the coolness of the sheets. She curled up on her side to warm up as quickly as possible and reluctantly closed her eyes again.

"Are you awake?" Alex whispered.

No answer. Relieved, the brunette stopped holding the phone, letting it rest on her temple and cheek. She lost her frown, which was the last remnant of tightness in her body -something like holding on to the edge of a precipice-, and allowed herself to be encompassed by the cocoon of Piper's steady breathing.

When she opened her eyes, the faded beginnings of sunlight were trickling onto the pillow between the blinds' openings. Alex had turned around sometime during the night, and now she was facing the window instead of the door. She rubbed her eyes, acknowledged that she had slept very soundly despite the night's rocky beginnings, and slid her hands along the bed until she found her phone, which she must've discarded at some moment.

The screen informed her that the call had been ended a little bit over an hour before, which made her swear under her breath - firstly, because that was going to cost her a fortune, secondly, because worrying about stupid considerations like money bothered her to no end, and thirdly, because it meant that they had "slept together", so to speak. Piper must've woken up and hung up.

It had felt good, she begrudgingly admitted, while sauntering towards the shower, and quite adolescent as well, although this bore no resemblance to Alex's teenage years. She had surrendered that part of herself which demanded safety and had made the call, and now she had no idea of how to proceed. Eyeing her cell phone like an enemy, Alex started to get dressed.

"Morning," Cherry said, as soon as Alex entered the store through the storage room. "Are we expecting anyone for coffee?"

"Not expecting."

"Doesn't mean that she's not gonna show up."

The curious thing was that she couldn't decide if those were good or bad news. However, there was one thing she did know, and it was that she'd had quite enough of the fear and the cowering away. This was not who she was, the person her mother had raised. "Get a hang over yourself," she would say. She was a survivor; she was someone who bit back, who fought fire with fire. She had always felt as one with the forces of nature, so who was this confused mess of sensibility and trepidation supposed to be? Was this occasionally bland way of life turning her soft?

No. Alex filled her mug, drank the necessary dose of coffee to jumpstart her brain for day, and made up her mind.

"Shut the fuck up, Cherry," she said coarsely, but her heart was not in it.

Resolutely, she went back to her room, where she found her cell phone still on the bed. Her thumb tapped Piper's number with decision, and she remained standing up, refusing to pace around while she listened to the tone, not unlike a ticking clock.

"Hey." The blonde's voice sounded infuriatingly cheerful. "Good morning. You've surprised me again. Looks like we both fell asleep last night."

"Looks like it." Alex sighed. "Listen, I'm not gonna do that again."

"Why not?" asked Piper, with a radically different tone.

"'Cause I don't know what this is, Piper. I don't know what we're doing, and I don't know what the hell you want from me."

"I'm just moving on instinct. I'm trying to do as I feel. All I know is that last night felt good. Didn't it feel good?"

"Yes," Alex admitted, breathing out heavily. "But that doesn't mean it _was_ good."

They had started to step into a suspiciously grayish area, but luckily, she had learned the difference between the things which made you feel good and the things which were inherently good for your wellbeing. There was an essential immediateness about the former ones which left you with an unpleasant aftertaste. The desperate need to feel good _right now_ because the pain was too much to bear was what had made her fall into addiction, so she had grown a bit wary of ready satisfaction and instant pleasure.

Besides, to her, Piper had always been about more than "now"; she had been different. Sure, at first their relationship could have been about "not yet", as in "I'm not ready to let go of you yet", but soon after embarking on their first trip Alex had understood that it wasn't about "yet" either. It had been more like "I'm not ready to let go of you, not ever". All or nothing. So what was this groping around for whatever felt good that the blonde was advocating for them? Fuck that. No fucking way.

"Can't we just wait and see how it goes? You're the one who told me you never knew what was going to happen. What else am I to expect?" Piper paused. "Can I expect anything else?"

"When I said that, I thought we were gonna be together. Nothing in the world fucking mattered and I thought I could trust you."

"If _I _could trust you again after all that you did to me, why can't you-?"

"But you _don't_ trust me," Alex interrupted her. "You told me yesterday, that you were afraid I was gonna leave you hanging… again."

"Yes, because trust needs time. We need time."

"Time for what?" she asked, frowning at the blonde's use of the "W" word.

"I don't know, for whatever's going to happen."

"But you don't just let things happen to you, Piper. You _make_ things happen. Take some responsibility."

"_You_ take some responsibility," Piper suddenly spat back. "Why does everything always have to be my fault?"

So now the blonde sounded really fucking enraged, and Alex could only share the emotion, with the fire bubbling under her skin. Feeling immature and ridiculous, as if she was stuck in a silly argument between children, the brunette had started moving nervously around the room, although not really being aware of where she was, not really seeing the walls or the window. She was picturing Piper in front of her, and she knew what the rage would move her to do if the woman had actually been there. It was good that they were talking on the phone and not face to face, because it was as if the warmth she had felt the previous night had entwined with the present anger, an anger born out of the effort of having to step on the brakes for her own sake until Piper decided what the hell she wanted. For all her resentment, Alex knew what she would want to do.

She hadn't wanted to feel so dependent again, ever, and yet here she was.

"I didn't say everything was your fault, Piper."

"But do you think it is?"

"No!" she answered emphatically. "I've just admitted that I kinda left you hanging."

"Okay. Okay." The blonde's voice was back to being level. "So, what do we do now?"

"You wanna let it ride," Alex said, not really answering the question. She could stay on her side of the ditch throwing pebbles at Piper or she could wade across the mud to the other side, where the blonde was standing - the latter option being one which would get her pretty wet and dirty. Throwing her head back in self-frustration, the still damp strands of her hair striking her back, Alex pursed her lips and nodded. Okay.


	8. Locals

After checking her watch for the fifth time, the blonde crossed her arms and leaned against one of the cars which were parked on the street. It wasn't late - this was just her own anxiety; she had arrived early, in fact, but she didn't want to enter the bookshop so as not to make Alex feel pressured or cornered. She could be naïve on occasion, but she wasn't blind; she could see that it had been hard enough for the dark-haired woman to agree to meet up that evening after work.

Although this wasn't a date as such, it did have a date-like aura. Piper hadn't dressed up so much, but she had made a fuss of her appearance in front of the mirror all the same. Even her hairdo, simple as it was, partly held up by several pins, had all of a sudden become problematic. The anticipation which had invaded her was not the least disagreeable, though. It added to that extremely pleasant warmth she'd felt the previous night during her conversation with Alex.

The store's door opened and out came the brunette, wearing a red plaid dress which looked more like a long shirt, black leggings, a studded belt, and tall boots. Piper smiled and looked at her without checking herself for the way in which she was doing those things. She remained still while the woman approached her with a tight grin on her face and her hands inside the pockets of her jacket.

"Hi," Piper said, almost afraid of jinxing the spell with her mere voice, because Alex had been understandably sensitive about their phone conversation and about continuing to see each other. She was aware that the brunette had to feel as if someone had pulled the floor from under her feet, cagey about the whole thing, and wondered how to make it better. All at once, though, it was hard not to smile. She felt like smiling.

"Hey. Shall we?" Alex's voice was loud and self-assured, like she was trying to make a point - and she probably was. It was only natural for her to try to secure her footing on this yet undetermined thing.

As they started walking slowly, their boots made crunchy sounds on the shiny concrete and the hazy globes of the lampposts emitted a relaxing, golden light. The windows and storefronts reminded her that it was almost Christmas and that she would have to go to her parents' house very soon, but she didn't want to think about that, not with Alex there, strolling beside her, albeit at a proper distance.

They arrived to a Greek restaurant Alex knew and sat at a little table flanked by two, very large, very leafy plants. The last time they'd gone to one of those restaurants had been in the Latin Quarter, in Paris, whether Alex remembered it or not, although this place looked significantly better. That had been during the final breaths of their relationship, before Piper had become totally disenchanted, since that city had been magical enough to make her want to hold her breath for a while.

The brunette was behaving in a worldly way, coolly, choosing too many dishes -perhaps channeling her excessive, old self-, and apparently not at all detached, but Piper knew her well enough to perceive a slight space between this face-level Alex and the one at her core. She understood the reasons behind that distance, and didn't even mind it that much; Alex had to do whatever she needed to do until she felt safe to trust her again. Moreover, this facet of hers had always been fun, historically: loud and flashy, outrageous and alluring. It was the one which showed up at parties, the one which Piper had first met, and although the woman wasn't being purposely flirty in her interactions, there had always been a natural seductiveness about her even while doing the most common things.

"Hmm, this is a good wine," Piper said, savoring the velvety, full-bodied drink. Alex had informed her that the name of its grape variety meant "sour black", which had almost made her chortle, because if intentional, this was Alex as a wine. Only Alex could have been egocentric enough to choose herself as a drink for their dinner, but wasn't this a way of taking a dig at herself as well, declaring that she was "sour"? Considering their last exchange over the phone, both of them were still bitter, but it was equally true that Alex was a believer of doing things in full force and not "half-assing" them - as she would say. If the brunette had told her that she was okay with trying this thing out, she would. So yes, this appeared to be Alex making an effort, while checking out if Piper was able to read between the lines - _her_ lines.

Additionally, the wine was high on alcohol - no surprise there.

"This is a _great_ wine," Alex clarified, and refilled their glasses.

"So, how was your day?"

"Pretty good," answered the brunette, without scoffing at the small talk. "This very young mom came to the store with her daughter… didn't know which book to get her. The kid was like… four, five? I don't know."

"Knowing you, you recommended 'War and Peace'."

"There's nothing wrong with a bit of Russian Realism, right?" the black-haired woman shrugged. "Nah, if you really knew me, you'd know I gave her-"

"'Where the Wild Things Are'," Piper interrupted her, not even asking if she had guessed correctly. She knew that Alex still wanted to be a bit of a mystery, and that she would be more comfortable believing that Piper didn't know her anymore, or that there were things she didn't care to remember, but she did. Details from the brunette's past had been scarce, like a tap that dripped sporadically, so Piper had deemed every single one of them important. Alex had fancied herself as a "wild thing" all her life, the girl who refused to return home to her warm supper and put an end to the rumpus.

In spite of the banquet that they were presently devouring, Piper was beginning to feel the effects of the red wine, and wondered if it was doing anything to Alex, loosening her up a bit. "Are you okay?"

"What do you mean?" Alex narrowed her eyes and rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her joined hands.

"I know this isn't easy for… either of us, but-."

"Piper, don't patronize me."

"I'm not." How could she express it without making Alex jump, as if pricked by a thorn? The brunette's walls were still high, effort or no effort, and she was going to attack anything which got remotely close to them, since she was unable to distinguish if it was a good thing or a bad thing. "Look, may I… may I say something?"

"I guess."

"Don't take this the wrong way - and before you ask what I mean by 'the wrong way', I don't know. Just… just let me say this, without linking it to the past or the future, or giving it double or triple meaning, okay? Let this stand by itself."

Predictably, Alex appeared amused by Piper's extensive outburst, but respected her request. "Fine."

"Good. So. What I want to say is that I'm glad we bumped into each other the other day. That's it. I've realized I'm happy we did."

"Whatever that means, right?" the brunette rolled her eyes, but then seemed to stop herself.

Instead of responding with the easier, expected dark humor, the woman's expression softened, and Piper merely looked at her, watched her drink up and sit back on her chair. That warmth in her features was more than she had expected, really, given that reciprocating the sentiment was definitely out of the question for Alex.

This was a peculiar situation for the two of them, with the brunette rebelling against it from the start, and Piper wanting to see what would happen. She guessed she was able to bear the uncertainty because she was now standing on solid ground, secure enough to explore this. She couldn't simply ignore that she knew where to find Alex, and couldn't act like they were strangers and had nothing in common. They wouldn't have had anything in common if they hadn't met on that certain night, but after everything that had happened, neither of them could pretend that there wasn't a perennial link between them.

She'd once envisioned it as a thread or a string connecting them, one which she'd ingenuously tried to break by putting distance between them, physical distance. But only life, with its infinite coincidences, could put temporal distance between them, just to break it a couple of days before.

For all of Alex's claims of impossibility, they were having dinner together, and that made her smile.

"What are you smiling about?" asked the brunette, noticing at once.

"You don't want to know."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Alex grasped the bottle and poured the last of its contents in Piper's glass.

"No, no, no, please." She tried to push the bottle away, but it was too late. "Do you need to get me drunk to feel calmer about this whole thing?"

She almost said "to feel calmer around me", which was fundamentally the same, but she didn't wish to break the already delicate balance. And yet the playful glint in the woman's eyes told her that she wasn't particularly impressed by her words or her irritation. The brunette's attitude could be extremely exasperating sometimes -this being one of those occasions-, because Piper both feared and hated not being taken seriously, but with Alex, that irritation used to translate itself into a very particular urge. It did so now too, aligning with those things which had remained unaffected by the passage of time.

They split the bill to avoid an argument and stood up to put on their jackets. That was when Piper became really aware of the wine's strength. She stumbled towards the other woman, who giggled without making any attempt to steady her. Was touching her too much, even in that completely expedient way? Impulsively, Piper called her a jerk, which only appeared to amuse Alex further, but she did hold the door open for her as she stepped out of the restaurant and into the clean chill of the street. A charming jerk, then.

That urge she was feeling was no stranger to her. It was like welcoming an old friend inside one's house - in this case, her body. And that old sensation knew its way around the insides of her body; she'd been flooded by it in prison and well before that. Now it was notably painful to endure, she noted, walking next to the brunette, both of them with their hands inside their pockets and their elbows far from making contact. She remembered how at the pub Alex had asked her to stop kidding herself, and wondered if she'd had a point. Piper knew that she had a habit of compartmentalizing her stuff and a way of reorganizing her ideas until they were -from an aesthetic viewpoint- correct. So maybe she _had_ been kidding herself about this, bargaining with herself, because supporting the idea of seeing how things went was very proper and nice - easy and gratifying to follow at first, but it was already getting harder.

Wordlessly, they agreed on going for a walk. They roamed the neighboring streets in the cold, going in aimless circles, and it felt both new and totally normal. If she tried not to fixate on the differences, she could perceive them as they'd once been - reflected on a shop window, standing side by side, discussing whatever the closed store was selling. That wasn't something she should be doing; this wasn't the past, and it was good that it wasn't. Even this Alex was at her core slightly different, but the sensations reaped were the same.

It occurred to her that they were stalling, there, in front of a random store. Perhaps Alex didn't feel like going home either. They could be just a couple of locals on a night out - they _were_ a couple of locals, undistinguishable from anybody else for the first time in history.

"So, do you regret meeting up tonight?" she asked, facing Alex, instead of looking at her reflection.

"Sorta…" The brunette smiled devilishly and turned towards her as well, towering over her a little bit.

"Why is that? Because it wasn't so bad?"

Alex diverted her eyes, as if she needed to think about something, but focused back on her after a moment. The look in those eyes was inviting and, whether Alex was doing it on purpose or not, it was complicating the blonde's existence considerably. Her hands turned into fists, scrunching the fabric of the inside of her pockets. Was Alex trying to provoke her with her silence, her almost imperceptible grin, her intense gaze, her proximity, and that slightly imposing height? And if she was indeed doing that, to which purpose? To assert herself? To check if Piper was still game? As harsh as it sounded in her head, she knew that was in the end an issue of trust.

They hailed a cab for Piper and, as the blonde opened the back door, Alex rested her arms on it, leaning on it from the other side.

"It wasn't so bad," said the brunette, having apparently lost all her loudness. It was a belated admission, but an admission nonetheless.

"You don't sound happy."

"No, I was really hoping it would be fucking appalling, you know?" Alex chuckled and shrugged. "But anyway, what can you do?"

The blonde understood what Alex was trying to say, and her insides tweaked with the need to step a little closer to the door of the cab that was separating their bodies or the need to get inside that car and ride off as fast as the driver would take her.

"Good night," she said, doing her best not to sound breathless.

"'Night." With that, Alex gently poked her on the nose with the tip of her index finger and detached herself from the cab's door, walking backwards.


	9. The Thing With Feathers

Sitting on the floor and surrounded by piles of books reaching the height of her temple, the brunette didn't respond to Cherry's strident requests to "spill", not even when she called her a "tight-mouthed bitch". The redhead had voted against undertaking a cleaning session in that particular moment. Convinced as she was that the Christmas spirit would bring hordes of customers to the store, she thought that making the store more uncomfortable for everyone to navigate was counterproductive, and it probably was, but Alex didn't really see how there could be a big change in their clientele.

Customers came and went, and Alex was hardly aware of them as they moved around the bookshop, like the changing shadows of the day. She sprayed the lavender-scented cleaning product on the empty shelf and rubbed at it conscientiously with a rag. Her previous job had been very much cerebral; it involved lots of play, sure, but it had been a strategic kind of fun. If she managed not to think about how this was radically different to the way she had pictured her adult years, the activity was almost relaxing in its simplicity.

Cherry approached her and sat beside her on the floor. "Hey. You know how I like to drill on you, but I'm just joking. You know that, right? 'Cause you're starting to worry me. I'm here for you, dude, don't close up on me."

"I'm gonna need you to quit fucking sponsoring me, Cherry."

"Tough shit. I'll never quit fucking sponsoring you, so act out all you want."

The thing was that she didn't know where to start. Her friend knew that they had gone out for dinner -a very unequivocal non-date date-, and Alex had already told her that nothing had happened, which was absolutely true, objectively. However, when asked if there had been "a moment", well… she guessed there had been several. Sharing moments had never really been a problem for them, except that maybe now it was, in the sense that it was kind of problematic - problematic for her, of course, since she'd never been one for kidding herself, not like Piper was prone to do. So for her it was mainly a matter of restraint and of memory, of not letting herself forget what Piper had done, because certain sensations could barge into one's fucking heart, blind to every fear. When combined, those sensations were easily disguisable as hope. And hope was a monster which could be caged, which could be killed, which she _had_ killed in prison by pressing her lips together and smothering it inside her body after Piper had made her choice.

It annoyed her that the barrier of resentment wasn't sturdy enough to keep her safe, that she needed to remind herself of past shit to have the necessary gall to fight the distracting stuff from the present. There was no big mystery to this, though, wasn't it? Why else had she commanded Piper to stay the hell away from her at Litchfield during the very end? It hadn't been pride but self-preservation. Without a clean break, she knew she would've suffered, and would've probably ended up going for another spin, because taking care of Piper was her weakness. That was why she'd wanted to know nothing about her problems, about her loves, or about her hates. And now… well, the fear was there, along with every other thing, things which had charmed in the past.

Reaching to grab a bunch of books from the nearest pile, the brunette noticed that Cherry wasn't there anymore. She stood up and poked her head between the stacks, spotting her friend back at the coffee area. What Cherry didn't know was that losing control with Piper could be truly fucking dangerous for her, not unlike a relapse; it would leave her standing there naked in more than one way. And yet she had claudicated during their phone conversation to let things circulate and evolve, so that they weren't condemned to stay stuck in the muck of the past: just shit-stirring and repeatedly throwing the same things at each other's faces. And wasn't that a good thing?

In essence, yes, it was, but it entailed letting go a little - for instance, accepting to meet up for dinner. Opening that door implied opening others, Alex mused, recalling the previous night's anticipation while she chose what to wear, before Piper came pick her up. There were areas inside of her which had been closed off for years and had dried up, but this opening of doors had flooded those areas once again.

The little bell over the door rang once again, but it was only more background noise to her, whether it was someone coming or going. She stroked her thumb over the spine of 'Bastard out of Carolina', placed it on its shelf, and scooted to the next one down, barely acknowledging the faint sounds of people's voices around the shop and the latter presence of somebody standing behind her. Begrudgingly, the brunette looked up from her sitting position on the floor, half-expecting it to be Cherry. However, as soon as she saw the person's jean-clad legs, she realized who it was, and finishing her ascending scan only confirmed that it was indeed Piper. The blonde was smiling bashfully at her and holding two smoky cups between her gloved hands, one of which was Alex's own dark-green mug.

"Hi. I brought you some coffee."

"All the way from the other end of the store?" Alex opened her eyes wide, jokingly pretending to be impressed, but then raised her hand to accept the scalding mug. "Well, it _is_ my favorite, so… thanks. And it's good to see that you haven't forgotten how to be a waitress."

"Yeah…" Shrugging, the blonde glided towards one of the piles and turned her head to the side to get a better look at the book titles. "So, what's going on?"

"Just a long-overdue cleaning session," Alex said, taking a sip of the brown beverage and looking at the woman from the corner of her eye.

Piper crouched next to her and picked up the duster, starting to swing it around perilously close to her face. "Need some help?"

Unable to keep herself from giggling, Alex lifted her elbow to deter the duster's feathers. "You know, I thought you had a job."

"I do, but I'm done for the evening. I'm actually supposed to be buying Christmas presents right now."

Alex glanced at the blonde's hands, covered by her fingerless gloves. She didn't particularly like thinking about Christmas, and tried to spend those crucial days as mundanely as possible, as any other set of days, rejecting Cherry's every invitation to go with her to her family's place. Invariably, it made her think of Litchfield, of Piper, and of red-spattered snow.

"So, is this okay?" Piper was asking, gesturing at the two of them.

"What, you think you're coming off too intense?" She chuckled into her mug, recognizing certain aggressiveness in her own prickly humor.

It wasn't the first time that she was applying the idea that the appearance of strength was almost as important as strength itself. It was the necessary start of actual strength. However, and contrary to Piper's claim during their dinner at the Greek restaurant, she hadn't been trying to get her drunk to feel calmer about what they'd been doing - at least not on purpose. She believed it had actually been the other way around: because she'd been feeling bizarrely comfortable, she'd been channeling her old behavioral patterns with Piper - the old careless, thoughtless, unadulterated fun. Which, honestly, was far worse. In a way, it was funny, since the blonde's concern was about Alex trying to tame her via alcohol to remain in charge, while Alex's worry was about having relinquished her control.

The previous night hadn't been appalling at all, like she had more or less already told Piper. It had made her connect with myriads of other enjoyable nights in their past, while it was just as true that the irritating things were infinitely more irritating because there was a ton of unresolved crap behind them.

They teamed up to rub the shelves spotless and restore the books to their place, with Piper noticing a lot of the titles and stopping to read out extracts from some of the volumes. She hadn't seemed offended by Alex's hostile wit, as if she understood its reason of being, and ended up losing the gloves, the scarf, the jacket, and the hat. At some point, Cherry informed them that she was going home, remembering to wink at Alex before vanishing.

There were a couple of seconds of silence after the store's door closed, a silence which was a bit somber, a bit respectful to the fact that it was the first time they'd been truly alone since they had bumped into each other. Then, Piper started talking about something Crazy Eyes slash Suzanne had told her very early one morning, when the blonde had been punished with janitorial duties. The woman had apparently explained to Piper that she undertook cleaning as an act of coping; when the feelings inside her got messy like dirt, she pretended that the filth was her feelings and the floor was her mind.

"She said that? Fuck me…" Alex breathed out and set down her empty mug, not quite believing that what she was hearing had actually come from that person. Wasn't that what she was doing now, quite literally?

"She also said that I had to start from the inside out, or else I would step on the clean." Piper smiled dryly. "And called me a mean person."

"Because of that radio show?" The brunette turned around, so that the stacks were now behind her and she could lean on them.

"Yes."

"Oh man, that explains why you haven't asked me about her, about how she did after you left! You let down your wife." She laughed, although the sharp pang in her gut told her that the matter wasn't humorous at all. The chance to take a jab at Piper was perhaps too tempting to pass by, even though it was dangerous, for it could only lead to more shit-stirring.

The blonde, whose face had already been somewhat grim, jumped to her feet at once, as if she had been pricked in the ass. "You haven't asked me how it was for _me_ either, or about what happened. It's like you don't care."

So now it was coming out. True, she hadn't asked. And of course Piper hadn't considered the reasons why. Apparently, that was too much to ask of her. Alex wasn't particularly eager to revisit the impotence of not being able to help, banging her shoulder against the door while Piper lay face down in the yard. Then came the million conjectures, which didn't really fade after the transfer, chiefly because Pennsatucky's accolades were Alex's co-workers, and they jabbered constantly about the event, convinced that Piper was the fucking Antichrist. And Alex didn't even have the energy to retort that if that was true, then it meant that evil had triumphed over their leader's godliness.

"That's what you think? That I don't care?" she asked, still sitting on the floor.

"Do you?"

Frowning, Alex stood up, leveling her eyes with Piper's. If she had to be clear, like transparent fucking water, she would say that she cared too much, but her self-preservation instinct was fighting tooth and nail to stop her from going back there. Instead, Alex just nodded, hoping that it was enough.

Hope? She had killed that monster already. Meanwhile, Piper was saying that she had lost her mind back then; she couldn't be precise about when, but she had, and Pennsatucky's provocative words had been but the spark to a ticking time bomb. The meth head had attacked her for real, though, lunging at her with a sharpened, wooden cross, and Piper had neutralized her with her bare hands.

"After that, I tried to get out of everyone's way. In the new place, I mean," the blonde went on, resting her back against the stacks opposite Alex. "Even if it wasn't really necessary… They all knew what I'd done somehow, and they were the ones to get out of my way."

"Jesus!" Alex uttered in surprise. The idea of a tough, hardened Piper wasn't that hard to picture, however, if she remembered the blonde woman wet with snow and blood which the guards had lifted from the ground. Yet another Piper had sprouted from the earth in that moment, so to speak.

"I had no fucking clue of who I was anymore, Alex. How could I? I had nothing. I'm aware it's an ongoing problem, so now I'm just trying to do as I feel. I know that comes natural to you, but it's not that easy for me."

It wasn't all that easy for her either, restricted as she was around Piper, but now more doors had been swung open, and a growing number of areas were becoming flooded. One thing she knew for sure, that there was an unshakeable tenderness in her heart towards that woman in front of her. Being told about the incident, as well as being reminded of how she'd felt that night and afterwards, were making her lose every ounce of her shit. Fuck. Skimming over the surface of Piper's words, Alex's picky mind would've highlighted the part about not having anything. Under normal circumstances, she would've said something about that, but now she couldn't. She felt tired and disarmed, and once that happened, she felt the old monster of hope resurrecting within her.

Piper the being of circumstance, the one who ran, was now motionless. Alex realized that neither of them was scurrying to preserve their pride, which was kind of extraordinary in itself. They were standing amidst the silence, with all the time in the world for once, and not "time" as in "sentence", or as the seconds left in a countdown. The brunette took off her glasses, placed them on top of her head and slowly, almost reluctantly, crossed the small distance between them, which seemed to her much bigger than it really was. With her lips and her brow pursed, and her heart beating like crazy inside her chest, Alex reached around the woman and pulled her close. With one hand behind Piper's head and the other halfway down her back, it wasn't a tight embrace, but tentative, gentle. She rested her cheek on Piper's temple, breathing in her familiar scent as calmly as she could, and closed her eyes to the multicolored books, for fear of becoming dizzy. There hadn't really been any physical contact between them yet -Alex hadn't even dared to touch the blonde when she had stumbled drunkenly at the restaurant-, because she feared what would happen and knew what would awaken. Now, it was all over her, like the dust that had been covering the shelves.

Opening her eyes, she saw that Piper was looking at her with that big-eyed gaze of wonder she remembered perfectly. With the chimes of the past and the present addling her brain, Alex shook her head and smiled in spite of herself, because hope was the thing with feathers, the thing which had perched itself in her soul, singing its nonstop, wordless tune. And being hopeful was her fucking weakness, the pulpy, mushy core which kept regenerating underneath the hardness of the surface and the wry, ironic layers.

"Hi," she said, because this felt like a second first meeting.

"Hi." The blonde returned her smile, moving her hands down Alex's naked arms.

Alex was painfully aware of those hands and what they were doing to her, as harmless as it seemed. Nothing was truly innocent, though; there was always an intention behind one's actions, whether one was aware of it or not. Piper's touch was hesitant, but unmistakably capable of giving her everything or leaving her with nothing at all, because it had already happened before. However, the brunette didn't move away; she couldn't. She didn't believe there were many things stronger than her, but this was.

Bringing her hand up to Piper's cheek, she combed back her hair with the tips of her fingers. She remembered their first night together, all those years ago. They had been standing exactly like this, with Piper gazing up at her in a similar way, when Alex had asked her if she was okay - but she didn't need to ask that now. She took one last look into her eyes and pressed her lips against Piper's, caressing them lightly, although there was nothing chaste about it.

She thought she wouldn't be able to bear more, but then she felt the blonde responding. With equal care, Piper closed her lips around Alex's and slowly let them go, creating a long-forgotten hunger which probably shouldn't have felt as good as it did.


	10. Margins

The blonde dropped heavily on the sofa. She felt as if she had just concluded running a marathon, even though she had done nothing of the sort. Mental exhaustion could have that tiring effect as well over one's body, she mused. If she could've been able to help it, she would have, but she had spent the entirety of her day thinking about what had happened the previous evening, and she was no better than an infatuated teenager. Piper put her feet up on the arm of the sofa and closed her eyes. First came the image of the dark-haired woman crossing the distance between them, which was the narrow corridor formed by the aligned bookcases. Next came the action of being gently pulled into an embrace, which had been startling to say the least, but also the perfect response to the way she'd been feeling. Piper had automatically squeezed her eyes shut and let the other woman cradle her between her arms, resting her head against her head. Every gesture had been so delicate that Piper had wondered if Alex had been scared of breaking her.

Then came the image of Alex's searching eyes, her confident little smile, and her husky, almost timid "Hi" - a very dangerous combination. Piper's hands had descended from the brunette's shoulders to her arms, in an instinctive search for skin, like looking for a piece of knowledge she'd once had, years ago, and which she'd been carrying on the tip of her tongue since they'd found each other again. Then came Alex's faint kiss pressing against her lips, lightly, like a tiny sigh which Piper had been eager to drink. She had responded just as carefully, though, because it had occurred to her that maybe the woman hadn't been scared of breaking her, but scared of breaking.

The mental effort, her present tiredness, seemed to come from trying not to think ahead. Piper pressed her fingers to her mouth, remembering how it hadn't taken long for things to heat up considerably, with her hands turning into fists and tugging at Alex's t-shirt to bring her closer. Sandwiched between the bookcase and the woman's body, with their kisses still slow and cautious and her brain cells in spontaneous combustion, Piper had relinquished her will and the floor beneath her feet. The brunette had been the one to stop, resting her forehead and her weight on one of the shelves, and not on Piper.

They had agreed that there was no rush, which, given that both of them had been breathless while saying so, was irrevocably funny. She had hugged Alex again before leaving, throwing her arms around her shoulders and squeezing tight, while the brunette pressed her hands against her lower back. She had walked out of the shop feeling higher than a kite, and that sensation hadn't subsided yet, not after an entire day. Huffing in frustration, Piper had wondered if that adolescent state of hers could be dealt with in an accordingly adolescent way, and so she'd slipped out of her clothes and leaped into bed. Asking herself if Alex might have been doing the same hadn't helped her relax one bit.

Now, with the table still set and the plates containing the tepid remains of dinner, Piper was just trying to be in waiting mode. She'd just had her friends over, and it had been quite disastrous. For all the habitual silence in her apartment, she'd opened the door to a small-scale hurricane. Finn had been the first to dash inside, then Polly, who had kissed her quickly on the cheek before shoving a tray into her arms (even after Piper had specifically told them not to bring anything). Pete had closed the door behind him, kissed her on the forehead, and taken the tray from her to set it on the table.

It had taken them a while to settle down, especially Finn, who had always loved climbing and jumping on her sofa, and Piper had never minded it much, since she aspired to have a comfortable home, not an imitation of a décor magazine. As usual, Polly had asked her husband to control _his_ son, and Pete had slung the boy under his arm like a weightless doll, taken off his sneakers, and tossed him back on the sofa, proclaiming that the crisis had been averted and that the Middle East would surely come next.

Piper had let her friends chatter and argue -they were apparently incapable of doing the former without the latter- until her brain had felt cushioned enough by alcohol to tackle the matter. She'd been feeling somewhat guilty about not having told Polly that she'd been "seeing" Alex and talking on the phone with her -in short, lying by omission-, even though things between them were anything but concrete.

"Please don't freak out," she'd said, with a feeble smile. But Polly had clamped her hand around the sleeve of her husband's shirt, yanked at it, and made him screech and beg her to quit clawing at him. Meanwhile, channeling the playground, Finn had started cheering for them to fight, which should've given them a clue about the absurdity of the situation.

"I warned you I'd kill you," Polly had menaced her.

"So it's on, then?" Pete had asked, pretending he hadn't seen his wife glaring at him. Before she'd been able to grab him again, he'd slithered out of her reach and taken Finn towards the sofa area, where Piper had books and things for him to play with for the boy's frequent visits.

"Nothing… Close to nothing has happened, but-"

"But? Listen to me. I won't be there to pick up the pieces, understand?"

"Yes… Fine." Piper had bowed her head, even though she hadn't believed that Polly would really abandon her.

"I know what you're thinking. That everything wasn't her fault, that you had a choice, that things are different now, yada yada. But she makes you crazy," Polly had pointed a finger at her. "She does. You know that's true."

Since she couldn't deny that, the blonde had preferred to remain quiet. She had examined and rationalized every single past occurrence, and yet it could all be summarized by the claim that Alex Vause drove her insane in more than one sense. The brunette wouldn't like that statement, she mused, since it exempted Piper from any responsibility -an excuse as poor as claiming drunkenness-, and that, in Alex's book, seemed to be one of her sins. She'd just wanted to inform them that Alex was back in her life, at least for the moment, but didn't think that the lecture was actually necessary.

Something was clearly on, even if it was shapeless, like a mist between them and all around them. It was definitely too soon to give it a name, particularly since Alex had strongly rejected it not so long ago, but it was a mutual thing, or else events wouldn't have escalated so fast. The brunette had displayed her naturally flirty self with her when they'd gone out for dinner, and then had jokingly poked her on the nose when they'd said goodnight, playing it safe without renouncing to be a tease. And then, the previous evening, Alex had been the one to initiate both the hug and the kiss. She hoped the woman didn't feel regret - not about the hug, because that had been a wordless apology of sorts for having made her feel like she didn't care about what had happened to her pre- and post-fight. It had been a choice. However, the kiss had been something else: born out of closeness and contact - the natural succession of events. It had therefore managed to slip between the cracks of Alex's otherwise sturdy barrier; and that was something she could've wished to take back.

The doorbell rang all of a sudden, making her spring from the sofa and scramble for her shoes. She paused briefly before the mirror, regretting it because her expression looked on edge, and then opened the front door.

The brunette was standing there with her hands inside the pockets of her jacket and an impossibly smug expression on her face. "Hey."

"Hey," Piper smiled nervously and gestured for her to come in. "Did you get here okay?"

"Yeah, it was easy." Alex started pacing around the place, but then seemed to notice her wet boots and stooped down to pull them off. She returned to where Piper was standing to drop the boots at the entrance and jerked her head towards the cluttered table. "Dinner party?"

"Yeah, they left a while ago. Sorry for the mess."

"And then you called me," she raised an eyebrow and grabbed a bottle. "May I?"

"Sure." Piper handed her a wine glass which had remained untouched and then retreated a few steps, simply watching Alex do her thing of walking around a room nonchalantly, touching one thing, inspecting another, owning every inch of the floor and every surface, expanding like a gas. She wondered if Alex was aware of her own gift, or if it just came to her like second nature.

"So, Pipes, is this your version of a booty call?" the brunette casually asked, with her back to her.

"A b-… No! I mean… I asked you if you wanted to hang out and you said yes!" She thought about what Alex had asked her the previous evening, if she believed she was "coming off too intense". It did worry her, since this thing was still under trial, although the impulse of seeing the brunette was always stronger.

Piper heard the laugh before she saw the face, informing her that Alex was teasing. Of course she was, and of course she still found it enjoyable to make her freak out and struggle to explain herself hurriedly. Striding towards Alex with her hands poised menacingly, Piper launched an attack, but the dark-haired woman wasn't intimidated. She slid past her, glass in hand, and hopped towards the sofa area, where she calmly continued her inspection.

"It's very, uh, frugal, but I like it."

"Pete calls me Spartan Chapman, but I don't care." She kept on pursuing Alex, who always managed to slip out of her reach in the last moment. "Simple needs, simple everything, huh?"

"I guess… Who's Pete?"

"Oh, he's Polly's husband."

Spotting the toys, the books and the crayons caused Alex to stop moving abruptly, which in turn made Piper collide against her and drop on the sofa like a dead weight. The brunette, who had fortunately kept the wine from spilling, thus putting an end to the chain reaction, turned to her with apparent calmness, although her eyebrows looked like a pair of question marks turned sideways. Piper smiled from her sprawled position on the sofa and informed Alex that she did not have a child, that those were things for Polly's son.

It seemed that the chance at motherhood had slipped between her fingers, just like marriage had. Both were things belonging to a different Piper from another era: things she would've had if conditions had been different. If she'd married Larry the first time around, she would've already had children, she was sure, because that was the established order of things - and she would've wanted to have those children, too. However, things were completely different now -_she_ was completely different-, and even though she'd been free for years and could have married someone or had a child on her own, it seemed to her that prior life questions no longer applied to her, that those things were no longer for her, and she no longer wanted them.

It wasn't entirely a matter of time, but of circumstance. She'd made a series of choices which had earned her a big void of nothingness and had propelled her into a fight with the embodiment of hate. She had then proceeded to smash that being into pieces, but had mainly ended up shattering herself. And yes, she had a life, she was out - for all intents and purposes, she had recomposed herself, but being repaired wasn't exactly the same as having never been broken, was it?

There had been a time in Litchfield when she had refused to make choices, clumsily skidding from one path to another, but feeling relieved when she avoided a crash. Something had to give, she saw it so clearly now, but back then, she'd been living between margins, and her primary concern had been moving forward in time without touching either border. That had been more like surviving, worrying about the right choice and postponing every decision as long as she could, when there were no good or bad choices - just choices, and one couldn't decline to make them. One had the obligation to choose, since one hardly ever made decisions in a vacuum; usually, there were other people waiting around, which was a very helpless place to be.

Alex set the glass down on the coffee table and sat on the sofa. Glancing at her, Piper repositioned herself and leaned against the woman, who raised her arm so that she could snuggle against her body. Having felt weirdly incomplete all day, as if her system had lacked a certain substance, the blonde now sighed in satisfaction, which increased when Alex brought down her arm and started rubbing soothing circles on her back.

"You okay?"

With a dry smirk, she nodded, but then shrugged. As difficult as it was to say -and even formulate-, it was important to be brave about this, for both their sakes. Silencing this or that had never worked in favor of their relationship, and it wouldn't really do for this thing between them either. She had picked Larry and other people on the basis that it was easier; less twists and turns meant fewer explanations, and much less deciphering to do on both parts, because it scared her that she could be defective, that she wouldn't be able to work properly with a complicated relationship, and that she would end up hurting herself and others once more.

"Tell me. What is it?" Alex combed back her hair and placed a finger under her chin to read her expression better.

"I'm just… frightened," Piper sighed. "Of being broken, I guess. I mean, I can walk around and no one will notice a thing, but what if I am kidding myself? Not with you… but with myself."

"Pipes…" The brunette shook her head, took off her glasses, and pulled her to a higher sitting position so that their faces were leveled. "Are you telling me that you're scared you're fucked up?"

Detaching herself from Alex, she slouched and finished off her wine. "I know you think I am."

No comment, no contradicting remark. Had she really become all that stupefied by being close to the brunette and sharing several kisses that she had managed to forget that Alex didn't trust her? The woman just reached out to play with several strands of her hair. "What exactly do you think you're unsuited for?"

"I don't know…" A bit of everything, it seemed. She leaned back on the sofa, letting Alex surround her with her arm again.

"So, now that you've become self-aware, does that mean you'll autodestruct?" the brunette asked, giggling and giving her several shakes, as if she was a robot about to explode.

"Fuck you!" Piper cried, trying to liberate herself from the woman's grip and only ending up collapsing on the sofa, sulking, with Alex hugging her from behind. "I was being serious."

"I know." The brunette kissed her behind the ear and then scooped her hair out of the way to deliver another kiss on the back of her neck. "Hey, it has faded a bit."

It took her a couple of seconds to realize that Alex was talking about her fish tattoo, which she could never actually see. Accordingly, time must've taken its toll on it as well. She turned around, so that she was now facing Alex, both of them lying on their side, and placed her hands on the brunette's shoulders. The overwhelming proximity made her close her eyes, giving in to her little touches, however infuriating that woman could be.

When she opened her eyes a moment later, she noticed that Alex wasn't looking at her face, but at her hands, which had slipped from her shoulders and were now bunched up clumsily at the height of their chins. What was the matter? Piper frowned, and was about to ask her out loud, when the brunette grasped her hands as if they were the most fragile thing in the world, and started kissing the tips of her fingers one by one, then kissed her palm, and continued down her long lifeline. Then she turned her hand over and ran her thumb across her knuckles, which she then kissed as well, with escalating fervor, moving on to her fingers. Alex wasn't merely kissing her now, but capturing the skin of Piper's fingers between her scalding lips, and making it damp, as if touched by the early morning dew.

Piper merely stared in bewilderment at what was talking place between her skin and Alex's mouth until she couldn't take it anymore. She moved one of her hands to cup Alex's cheek, and kissed her first on the forehead, then on the mouth. Alex's parted lips opened up for her, and that space, that suspense between one kiss and the next made her feel as if she was being engulfed by a living flame. Their bodies moved closer instinctively, and Piper wondered if she could actually liquefy into the fabric of the sofa.

In that instant, the significance of what Alex had done hit her, and she needed to stop and stare into the woman's eyes. Her hands. The incident. She suddenly thought she understood why Alex hadn't asked her about the aftermath.


	11. Some New Lines

The sofa wasn't especially large, more like medium-sized, and yet there was a sizeable portion left over, huddled as they were against its back. Unlike Alex's previous little breakdown, their kisses had been heated but measured, as in a slow game of give and take. Every time their lips parted, she felt a curious emptiness in the mouth of her stomach, which replenished with a violent surge when their lips touched again - just as she'd noticed at the bookstore. Time had become subservient to their actions, dragging behind them like a loser, and those actions were cutting her to the bone, putting her inside a cycle of exposure and scrambling for concealment which, frankly, was draining.

Assertion, or self-assertion, was as important now as it had always been, if not more. After what had happened at the store, she was aware of having entered Piper's apartment like a strong gust of wind, scrutinizing everything and taunting her about this being a booty call, because she'd been unable to resist coming over, just like she'd been unable to resist hugging and kissing her against that bookcase. Her composure had gone to hell, with her feelings overflowing out of her mouth all the same - if not with words, with the gesture of taking Piper's hands and running her fingers and her mouth over them until her lips had felt on fire and the blonde had interrupted her with astounding ardor.

What she had learned now was that Piper still perceived herself as broken -or fucked up-, but Alex could do fuck all about it. She was no cure; no person, no substance, could be another person's solution, and that was the plain truth. "Broken" was a fitting description for Piper's state that night -which in turn had shattered Alex as well-, although her present expression was completely different to that hard mask of ferocity she had worn that night. Propping herself up on her elbow, Alex examined the woman's face with narrow eyes. Why was she staring at her like that?

"I remember," Piper softly said, although the rupture of the lengthy silence felt sudden all the same. "That night, you saw me. I saw you too, I understand."

Striving to keep a straight face, the brunette rolled Piper over so that the woman was on her back and not pinning her to the sofa's back. This enabled Alex to climb over her, retrieve her glasses, and sit at the edge of the sofa, slouched, with her elbows on her knees and her hands hanging in front of her. Piper sat up, scooted down to where she was, and placed a hand on her shoulder, slipping her fingers under the neck of her t-shirt.

"I didn't realize what that did to you," the blonde went on.

Alex merely remained as still as she could. "They were saying that you had fucking killed each other out there."

"They were- Fuck…" Piper shook her head and brought her other hand up to the Alex's cheek, so that the brunette would look at her. "Jesus, Alex, I'm so sorry."

"Don't. You don't have to say that." She felt her eyes welling up and, even though they didn't overflow, this was exactly why she hadn't wanted to touch the fucking topic and relive it all, and she doubted that Piper could grasp the real reason, if she would make the connection. "Look, I gotta get outta here."

She pushed herself up and dusted off some imaginary dust from the sides of her thighs - a sign of nervousness which she considered irritating, like having a tell. It wasn't like her to run away from anything, and especially it wasn't like her to dodge a particular subject in such a clumsy manner. However, she started striding towards the entrance. This was something which insistently tried to catch up with her, trying to mean something, trying to say something about who she was, when Alex had worked so hard at being the exact person she wished to be. It had previously made her cower, a few days before, with Piper, at the pub, and so she wanted nothing to do with it.

"Where are you going?" Piper stood up, walked several steps in her direction. "Wait, stop."

"I don't wanna talk about this. I don't have to talk about this." Lying down made everyone's height the same, but now, on her feet, she could make the best of her slightly superior stature, in spite of her stinging eyes and the way in which every single cell of her body was protesting the loss of Piper pressed against her. Indeed, the situation could be seen as rather ridiculous, or childish, if one didn't consider the context.

"Of course not. I just want you to know that I'm here."

Well wasn't that great? Wasn't that big of her? "It's not the first time you've told me that, Pipes. You should get yourself some new lines."

Having gathered her boots and her jacket between her arms, the brunette stood still, with her back to the front door. She started thinking about the past, about how it managed to inform the stuff in the present despite it being ancient history. If she'd done things differently the first time around, then Piper would have never felt unsafe with her, which was something she had reflected on at Litchfield too, it seemed, with the fear of things being the same, of the past repeating itself after prison. Back then, Piper had used the verb "freefall" to describe the course of their future lives, because that was what they'd been doing before going to prison, before Piper had left her, before her mother had died. The term had become extremely evocative for Alex, symbolizing everything that she'd done wrong, and she knew that this had become the chance for her to divulge or else let the moment fade, let everything fade, including the desire which was still bubbling under her skin, like residual energy.

Piper had kept moving towards her, until she was directly in front of her, with Alex's boots and jacket as only obstacle. "You don't have to say anything, but don't leave."

Her whole body was like a closed fist, tight, wrapped within itself, but she finally chose to liberate it with a sigh. The important thing wasn't that Piper had spotted her behind that door at Litchfield, but that she knew that Alex had done everything in her hands to get to her. "I tried to reach you, you know, but the guards had locked the fucking door."

"I heard you." Piper's eyes widened. "I heard you. The banging, that was you."

"Yeah," she said, with her voice barely above a whisper. Not one for covering her face during vulnerable moments, Alex held the woman's gaze as stoically as she could, hugging the bundle of clothes against her chest like the escaping lover of a married woman. "I was trying to make the damn thing open."

"Al, it's okay. I know you tried." The blonde placed a hand on her forearm, rubbing it back and forth and making her skin react. "I know."

No, she had no fucking clue. Noting the use of the old nickname, Alex looked at the woman with a skeptical scowl. She felt close to choking up, but persevered. "I didn't wanna leave you there like…"

This was why Piper had ended up leaving her, and why she couldn't trust her now, like she'd already informed her a few days ago. The remembrance of the blonde strewn across the frozen ground superimposed with another image, which came from the back of her mind to the fore: Piper as a distant speck of yellow, floating under the roaring cascade. She had shoved her way between the roaring inmates and had hit the door's unsurpassable barrier, with its hazy glass enabling her to see how they lifted the blonde, wet with snow, and took her away - the extent of Alex's powerlessness: being incapable of doing anything and knowing that she hadn't done enough, that she hadn't exactly been able to see when it _had _been her choice.

"Like before," she said, smiling in spite of herself. Of course she wasn't only alluding to a single occurrence -nothing appeared to be isolated, everything part of the same miasma-, but wasn't it the most illustrative?

_Now_she understood, Alex mused, as she felt Piper's eyes digging into hers, and her fingers into her forearm. It took her a second to figure out that the blonde was trying to dislodge her arm from its bent position against her breast. Alex complied, letting her boots and jacket drop on the floor with a dry clunk without looking at them, instead watching Piper step over them. The blonde was suddenly standing so close to her that Alex was practically sandwiched against the door. She then brought her arms around Alex's waist, squeezing tight, like she'd hugged her the previous evening before leaving the bookstore, but this embrace seemed even more heartfelt. Alex sunk her fingers within the blonde mane, massaging the back of the woman's head, which was pleasurably warm, and pressed her lips on Piper's shoulder.

"I know, I know…" Piper was saying over and over, her tear-thickened voice like a hum against Alex's heart. "Come on."

Frowning suspiciously, the brunette allowed to be led down the flat's small corridor. She glanced down at their joined hands, which was something that -like everything else-, felt both old and new, and then she found herself in what had to be Piper's bedroom. The rolled-up yoga mat on the corner made her grin, and she momentarily forgot that she should be asking Piper if that was it for foreplay or what. Meanwhile, the blonde had let go of her hand and was busying herself with removing several items of clothing from on top of the bed.

Spartan Chapman indeed. Once more, the apartment's minimalism didn't escape her. What had the blonde said, "Simple needs, simple everything"? Yes, well, that was one way of seeing it. Alex herself had learned to appreciate those simple needs, although out of necessity; the primordial instinct of survival had required her to evolve, while in the past she'd just forced the world to bend. This here, however, looked like the cozier version of a prison cell.

"I thought we could talk more comfortably here."

Alex faced Piper, who was standing next to the double bed, gesturing towards it. She looked cute in her nervousness and self-justification, perhaps suspecting that Alex was stalling because she was feeling apprehensive or something. Indeed, she wasn't sure of being ready for the vulnerability that would come with this, but her body was already missing the contact, so she nodded and helped her pull back the covers.

They had done that a million times before, and it was likely that Piper was thinking that too, for they both started giggling at the same time, first to themselves, then together. The brunette leaped on the bed and lay on her back, one hand behind her head and the other arm parallel to her body, and her legs straight and on top of the covers. Conversely, Piper got into bed after her, slowly, slipping her feet beneath the covers, and then lying on her side, facing Alex. It made her think about the different ways in which they used to enter a swimming pool.

There was a small but significant space between them, like an invisible boundary with an invisible line which cut the bed in half, and she was still missing Piper's touch, so she let her hand travel along the sheet without detaching her eyes from the ceiling. It found Piper's fingers so soon that it could only mean that the blonde had been moving her hand as well. She dragged her fingertips up and down the blonde's palm, drawing random shapes with her nails and, for the moment, it was enough.

"Were you scared?" Piper asked, with a small voice.

"When?"

"When you didn't jump."

Feeling a twinge of pain in the mouth of her stomach, Alex shut her eyes and interlocked their fingers, but managed to answer. "I was paralyzed. That wasn't the worst thing, though. That wasn't the only reason I felt like an asshole later." With a reassuring squeeze, the blonde urged her to continue. "I just felt so fucking… _relieved_ up there on that rock, with you down there."

It still surprised her - even the memory of that relief washing over her was surprising. The paralysis too, because it wasn't common for her to feel blocked and not react in some way or other. Maybe she'd simply been afraid of her feelings; or maybe -most likely-, sometime during that trip to Indonesia she had realized that Piper had felt inevitable to her, and she had been faced with a challenging choice. Being with Piper, being with Piper completely, absolutely, entailed making some changes and, by not leaping with her into the water she had instead chosen not to renounce to anything, because why shouldn't she have it all? She'd believed for a long time that she'd very smartly managed to have her cake and eat it too, and she'd reassured herself by believing that they'd been a team, because she hadn't forced that hot girl to do anything. She'd been too used to molding the world around her, she mused, trying to explain this to Piper. To her surprise, the blonde only nodded, without any major reaction.

"This isn't news to you," Alex said, letting go of the woman's hand and turning on her side to be able to look at her. "How come?"

"I don't know, I think… I think that one day I understood that your work and your safety would always come first - not ours, but yours. Like I told you, I was your girlfriend, and in the end you were treating me like some employee."

It wasn't like her feeling small; she had felt that way on counted occasions in her life and had done her best to cover her bases to keep herself from feeling like that ever again, but that hurt. And if it smarted, then it had to be the truth. She concentrated on staying still, as if moving would shift around the stuff inside her and make it more painful. However, Piper scooted towards her, surrounded her shoulders with one arm, and started kissing Alex's face and neck in a soothing way.

"I know you loved me," said the blonde, with her voice as comforting as her touch, and her face so close to Alex's that every tiny difference between this Piper and the other two Pipers she had encountered in her life jumped at her. Physically, neither of them were the same, and that simple instant of awareness was suddenly like a birdcall for her hope. What if she tried to trust time, like Piper did, and believe in change, change throughout?

"I know you loved me too," she retorted, and then laughed quietly, because what else could one do. "But we did a truly fucking horrific job at it."


	12. The Steps of Anticipation

They had fallen into a comfortable silence after Alex's sardonic laughter had faded. What she had affirmed about them having done "a truly fucking horrific job" at loving each other was probably accurate - if not feeling-wise, at the actual putting those feelings into practice. They had known each other for the staggering span of almost two decades now, and they'd spent more time apart than together -a lot more-, before prison and after prison, which was a decent indication of how catastrophic they'd been; what else could have that unearthly capacity of making two people ricochet so far from each other that they required almost ten years to get reunited again? They _had _found each other, though, for the third time in their lives, so one could ask oneself which was stronger, the twist of fate putting them in each other's paths, or their own internal disaster?

Once she had compared them to a pair of planets sharing an orbit and, although she had conjured that mental picture back at Litchfield -with Larry circling in another, much wider orbit, incapable of really understanding what was going on, she couldn't disregard it. Like those imaginary planets, sometimes one chased the other, sometimes they caught up, and sometimes they weren't even visible to each other, whilst making their joint orbit tremendously unstable.

Her fingers crept under the woman's raven mane, while Alex's hand slid to her waist, then to the small of her back. The touch was light and ticklish, which made her shudder, and goose bumps bloomed on the entire left side of her body. She'd been kissing Alex's neck before, in an effort to reassure her, since she knew how challenging their conversation had been for the brunette, how strange it had been -for both of them- to listen to that woman admitting her own powerlessness, to see her being sorry for not reacting, or for being unable to react. Her immobility, her absolute entitlement -which had made her take Piper for granted in the past-, had been in part what had caused them to crash as a couple and have those trust issues. Such an earthly term, "couple", Piper mused, for something so intricate, not unlike calling Penelope's shroud a plain old cloth.

Now, with this somewhat unprecedented intimacy and Alex drawing irregular shapes on her back, Piper wanted to say something, although she didn't quite know how to articulate it. She just didn't want Alex to recoil like the other day at the pub, or want to flee from the apartment again. "I'm not letting you carry the blame on your own."

The brunette laughed, making Piper's entire universe shake with the vibration of her chest. "Yeah, no, don't worry, that's not gonna happen."

Of course not, because Alex was gritty, not the type of person who forgave and forgot: she saw, she remembered, and furthermore, she reminded one of it. No sidestepping, ever, and Piper knew -as she had noted a number of times in the past- that she needed some of that in her life, for she was prone to self-justification and a superficial relationship with words (the better they looked or sounded, the truer they seemed). Meanwhile, for Alex, the dirtier she got her hands with her words, the truer they supposedly were, and sifting through them, she then assigned responsibility with those unclean hands.

"Okay," Piper said, raising her head to peer at the brunette's face to make sure she was all right. However, once she did, Piper found that she couldn't remove her pupils from Alex's pale eyes, for they were like burning ice. She recognized that look, the look of unabashed hunger; it had presented itself in the past very frequently, regardless of whether they'd been in the bedroom or at a public place.

"Okay," Alex echoed, with a nearly imperceptible smirk. Without breaking eye contact, her fingers tiptoed up Piper's spine, going further underneath her top.

It made her draw a sharp intake of breath, which Alex indeed noticed, acknowledging it with a slight raise of her eyebrow. She was getting lured by the warmth emanating from the brunette's skin, which wasn't unlike a deafening vibration. Her fingers closed around the long, black strands of Alex's hair, in a last effort to hold on to something - in this case, the very thing causing her to sink, which admittedly wasn't much of a solution. Alex had her entire arm underneath her top now, with her hand kneading the back of Piper's neck.

How long could a pair of elements dance around each other before reacting? Not that long, she presumed, for the moment her eyes flickered down to Alex's mouth, then back up, Piper knew that she was toast. Alex leaned in and crossed the last inch suddenly, surprising her. She frowned as soon as their lips grazed, immediately pressing on, wanting more, and the brunette complied in an unhurried but deliberate way, pressing their hips together with every kiss and stopping the pressure during the very short-lived separations. It incited her to push Alex's head closer so that there would be no space between their mouths, hoping to fight that maddening expectancy. It still wasn't enough; the touch of Alex's tongue, it seemed, only drove her crazier. She grabbed the hem of Alex's jeans and pulled at it in an effort to keep their hips together.

The weight of the woman's body on top of her made her gasp. She recognized this; she had missed this, and even thought about this the evening after kissing Alex at the bookstore. The brunette started moving her hand up and down Piper's side, with her thumb tracing circles on her skin. She wanted to say that she was painfully aware of what that thumb was doing to her with every stroke, and where it was gradually approaching, but Alex had to know, obviously. Piper's legs spread invitingly, with a will of their own, a will she would no longer try to restrain. A guttural moan started at the back of her throat when she felt Alex's thigh pushing between her legs and the woman nestle against her thigh. She could feel the heat between the brunette's legs even through the fabric of their pants, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut, for she thought she might start to cry.

When Alex started rocking back and forth, Piper released the edge of her jeans and lowered her hand to the woman's ass. She felt the brunette smiling between their kisses, and was tempted to ask what was so funny, but then Alex's thumb reached the underside of her breast, and her hand closed around it, and the blonde became swallowed up by a more commanding temptation. Her back arched at the contact, and a sigh escaped from her parted lips, interrupting their kiss.

Alex took the chance to finish pulling up her top and tossed the garment into oblivion. With the brunette now straddling her lap, Piper sat up and surrounded her waist with her arms, seeking the warm skin hidden by the t-shirt. Their faces were leveled, and Piper could distinguish a lot of things in Alex's brazen eyes, because even though she could use her attitude as makeup and the corner of her smile as a hiding place, her eyes projected the truth. She could see desire there, still ablaze, mixed with raw emotion, and dumbly wondered if Alex was capable of reading the same thing in her gaze. Of course she could; Alex was an excellent reader of books, of people, of every readable thing that fell between her skilled hands.

"You look amazing," said the brunette, glancing down at Piper's half-naked body.

"Shut up," she giggled, closing her eyes when she felt the woman's caresses, for fear of not being able to bear everything at once.

"And you feel the same."

"You too." It was nothing but the truth, since white lies or idle compliments were absolutely superfluous to them. Clearly they had changed, but elicited the same perennial giddiness in each other, which was the single miracle Piper was able to believe in.

"You smell the same," the brunette went on, and took her lower lip between her teeth. She dragged her lips under her chin and along her jaw. They came to rest on her earlobe, like a fluttering whisper. "And you taste the same."

The list, together with the careful way she was speaking and touching her, killed her. It had been too long, much too long, and their connection in prison had been about too many other things apart from being together - rushing to dig out the tiny crumbs of gold that would make them feel slightly better. Even before prison, the fun had given way to a frantic scramble for possession - like when she and Larry had attempted to make things work. She knew that this was different, and wasn't that precisely what she'd wanted?

Becoming very serious, Piper lifted the woman's t-shirt over her head, with their movements and the long, black hair cascading around them generating a small current over their nakedness. For a second, she got lost in the sea of skin, until she remembered a very simple fact: that sea was her home and, as such, she knew it like the palm of her hand. She bent her head to kiss the brunette's goose bumpey shoulder, and froze when she felt a hand on her belly and the very distinct, liberating sound of her jeans being unbuttoned.

She let Alex set her back down on the bed, and cover both of them with the sheet, heads and all. The room had enough light for them to see each other under the thin, cocoon-like layer, for her to glimpse the flash of Alex's smile before she kissed her. She raised a hand to Alex's cheek, but the brunette had started a downward path, and she could only close her fingers around a bunch of raven hair. When she felt Alex's breath on her chest, she tightened her grip and instinctively shifted to get her skin closer to Alex's mouth. The string of kisses circled her breasts, with several swaying strands of hair tickling her skin, and when the sweet torture finally reached her nipples, with Alex's tongue making them wet, and Alex's lips enveloping them, and Alex's teeth gently nipping them, Piper whimpered like a wounded animal. It was a foreign enough sound, and at first she wasn't sure of who was emitting it, but she knew those lips and knew that skin, and this was just her body reacting to them.

The brunette began to slowly peel off her pants, and Piper finished kicking them off, immediately moving on to ease Alex out of hers.

"You in a hurry?" Alex asked, breathlessly, as Piper flipped her over, but her eyes were filled with excitement. She made room for the blonde's hips between her legs and combed her hair behind her ears, so it wouldn't fall on their faces. Playful as ever, Alex then turned to bite one of Piper's hands, which she had planted on the bed for support, at either side of the woman's head.

"No," Piper let her whole body softly come down over Alex, enjoying the flicker it produced. "I'm not. I just missed you."

For a moment, she expected Alex to deliver some snarky remark apropos, but she didn't. She kissed her again, becoming like water underneath her, encouraging her to move. Piper could not only feel her heat now, but the dampness through her underwear, and rubbed against it with a groan. Answering her with a deep, mouth-to-mouth moan, Alex briefly propped herself up to remove her own bra. The blonde understood; it had to feel like lead on her body.

"Don't stop," the woman whispered, breaking the kiss, and Piper wasn't planning on doing so -not ever, if possible-, but Alex's loaded voice was like a direct shot to her lower belly. She thought she would come just by hearing it and listening to its echo in Alex's broken breathing pattern, but she didn't want it to happen with any kind of barrier between them, so she disobeyed the brunette and clambered off to get rid of her own panties. Then, she kissed her way to Alex's breasts, and took advantage of the woman's arching back to gently slide off her underwear.

The brunette raised one of her legs, which Piper kissed before reverting to her position on top of the woman. They both grunted at the unobstructed contact, pausing for several moments to acknowledge how it felt to be together for the first time in God knew how long. Slowly, Piper started grinding against Alex, gasping into her mouth, wordlessly swearing that she wouldn't stop, and Alex squirmed underneath her, helping her create a heavenly cadence. They kissed, and bit, and kneaded their bodies, connected by their sexes, and mouths, and hands. She worked hard at Alex's body until she felt the woman squirming, shaking underneath her. They cried out almost at the same time, searching for each other's eyes during that eternal fragment of time, clinging to each other until Piper couldn't balance herself anymore. She collapsed on top of the woman, feeling wet all over, panting but unable to catch her breath. Alex pulled back the sheet which had been covering them, and they opened their mouths to the breeze and fresh oxygen around them, as if they'd just exited a greenhouse. Her fingers dug into Alex's hair while she waited for her gasps to subside, and when she was finally able to lift her face from the crook of Alex's neck, she collided against the woman's expression, which was devoid of any hardness.

It shocked her to see her eyes shiny with tears even when they were not falling - which, she guessed, was due to what little composure Alex had left. Still, Piper felt a sudden rush of tenderness towards Alex which she couldn't restrain. She couldn't help remembering a moment when she had stood before the bookstore, remembering them together and being unable to imagine herself in that situation all over again. Until their dinner "date", she'd more or less believed her own civilized approach to their relationship. Now, snuggling against Alex's body, she knew that was all mere dust - it wasn't possible, not when _this_ was possible.

"Hey," she whispered, raking back Alex's hair with the tips of their fingers. "Are you okay?"

Alex nodded, closing her eyes for a minute and then turning her over so that Piper was on her back. The look in her eyes was now back to being cat-like, in a "I'm not done with you yet" kind of way. She descended Piper's body and settled between her legs, with her hands stroking the insides of her thighs. It amazed her how ready she was again, how anxious, placing her hand on Alex's shoulder to urge her on. She was half-sitting up, not wanting to miss anything as the brunette approached her lips, which were still wet, giving them a long, slow lick. She felt the vibration of Alex's deep voice as her tongue moved between her lips and mercifully stroked her without teasing; it seemed they were both just as desirous.

Her hands, which hadn't shaken once since she'd used them against Pennsatucky, turned into fists and pulled on Alex's hair perhaps too hard, but she wanted every inch of that woman inside her. Catching Alex's eye between her half-closed eyelids, Piper nodded, welcoming her fingers, welcoming anything that had to do with Alex. The brunette circled her clit with her tongue, closed her lips around it, and sucked on it at an increasing pace. Piper couldn't even tell if she was being loud or if she was imploding, but she climbed up the steps of anticipation as fast as she could, eager to reach the top. And when she did, breathless, she let the sensation rip her in half - or rather, into pieces. For the longest of instants, she felt dissipated, until the slow-motion fall made her land back on the bed, aware of Alex kissing her parted mouth. Sluggishly, she was able to respond, and to comprehend what Alex was saying, her smile audible in her voice: "You do taste the same."


	13. War Wounds

The first thing the brunette saw when she blinked her eyes open was her own wrist, which had a reddish bruise on it. At some point during the night -maybe more than one- she had thrown her arms backwards, instinctively trying to hold on to something, and hit the headboard, hard. Now she was sprawled on the bed, face-down, with her head turned to the side and her hand before her face. She blinked again, remembering where she was, and then, like a confirmation, she noticed that that there was another hand underneath hers.

Similarly prostrate at the other side of the bed, like her mirror image, was Piper, brilliant and golden as the light which was entering through the curtains. Her yellow mane was badly ruffled and swathed around her shoulders, so that only a strip of her back was visible between her hair and the sheet. Alex closed her eyes for a minute, since the sight -albeit slightly blurry- was a bit too much. There was no disbelief, for her awakening senses were already blaring out the story, and even if they hadn't, her memory would supply the confirmation, because there was no way she could ever forget what had happened, after so many years, that night in that bed. Her mind was as full as her body felt wasted.

Once they'd started touching, it had been impossible for them to hold back. She couldn't stop herself even now, she noted, moving her hand under the sheet to caress the woman's back. The blonde stirred in response several seconds later and reached out to touch her face, without opening her eyes. Wasn't she awake? Alex tilted her head and kissed the palm of her hand, an action which caused a somnolent smile to form on the woman's lips. Moving on to her fingers, the brunette remembered how they had trembled as they'd released her hair and searched for her face in an outburst of post-climax tenderness. They'd kissed as if those had been the last they'd ever share, like it had been the end of the world or something. Before that, though, Piper had been pulling her hair hard, and -at one point- had bitten on her lip a bit too enthusiastically, so that now the brunette was tonguing a little, bumpy sore.

This survey of her "war wounds" made Alex smile fondly, since she was now carrying physical reminders on her skin as well as inside her head, so whatever happened… No. She stopped herself before her mind could arrive to that dangerous point. It was her self-preservation, always alert, which pushed her to speculate about Piper's possible reactions to what had happened, but Alex didn't want to do that. She was trying to prevent her brain from feeding her cautionary memories and telling her that once more, she was just an anomaly, a blip.

Her teeth softly nipped the tip of Piper's thumb, and she finally witnessed the first actual sign of life: the blonde's glistening eyes peering at her through her lashes. There were a few seconds of very visible confusion, during which Alex did nothing, allowing her to reach her own conclusions, but then Piper slid across the center of the bed, eliminating the distance between them. She snuggled against Alex's body, sighing on her neck, and murmured the sloppiest version of "Good morning" she'd heard in years. True, they couldn't have slept more than two or three hours -and it felt like it, too-, but it made her chuckle all the same.

"Are we feeling our years? Huh, Pipes?"

"Screw you," slurred the blonde, with her mouth on Alex's clavicle, and then added, "You're older than me."

The brunette shrugged and pressed her lips to Piper's forehead, breathing in her scent. The fact that Piper had approached her immediately after regaining consciousness, without a drop of hesitation, brought tears to her eyes, and she had to squeeze them shut. It wasn't the blonde who had wanted to leave the apartment, though, she reminded herself; Piper had invited her over and asked her to stay, so why the fuck was she flooded by this stupid rush of insecurity? And then it came to her: because she believed she was at her weakest - statistically, about the time one would expect Piper to volatilize from her life.

Her body, which she'd dared to consider sated, became sparked by the renewed proximity. This, of course, wasn't incompatible with that nagging anxiety of hers, she acknowledged, with a scowl. She bowed her head to kiss Piper's lips, slowly, as if they were made of a warm, dense liquid, while wrapping her fingers around a fistful of blonde hair. The blonde moved against her in that unhurried manner, easing her fingers between her legs, then massaging the inside of her thigh. Alex echoed her motions with equal sluggishness, pressing onto her own hand with her leg, rocking against Piper's fingers, and tracing Piper's tongue with her tongue.

She sensed they were trying to make this last as long as they could, purely enjoying each other's bodies, their reactions, the rising and falling hum of their moans, without the element of desperation of that night. And when Alex felt she could no longer restrain herself, she tightened her grip on Piper's hair. The current of pleasure hit her then, making her come abruptly, with Piper's voice ringing in her ear. She closed her eyes as the gentler ripples washed over her, like the morning waves lazily lapping the rocks on the beach, and didn't move a muscle until they subsided. This felt too good. She couldn't help smiling at Piper and feeling as giddy as a fucking schoolgirl. Being responsible for eliciting those sensations in Piper felt incredibly good as well, but where was her feeling of empowerment, the surge of wellbeing which had always come from making the blonde hers?

It had been like the cravings of an addiction -which was something the brunette could easily recognize-, pursuing that sense of power, in her job, in her daily life, and with Piper too, mixing itself with her love towards the girl. However, there was none of that now. She was aware of its absence, but… no, she didn't really miss it, not where it concerned Piper. Making Piper feel good had become an end in itself, without that constant pressure to conquer. You lived a certain way for a sufficient amount of time, you started calling it home, and you considered yourself incapable of living any other way. Her brief stint with addiction, however, had altered her in the sense that she no longer believed that anything which brought immediate pleasure or oblivion was automatically worth doing. Your lovers could abandon you, your own brain could be your worst enemy and betray you, and the surroundings you built from scratch could crumble to dust, leaving only loneliness. Simplicity -real simplicity- was the best friend she could ever aspire to have. The brunette remembered the old dream of being just Alex and Piper, without all the other shit, simply roaming the world together.

Feeling the soft touch of the woman's lips on hers, Alex opened her eyes. Neither of them was particularly excited about getting up, but they both needed to be somewhere soon, or else their phones would start ringing, and there'd be explaining to do. The brunette wasn't worried about Cherry, who'd be satisfied with being an enormous pain in the ass, but guessed that Piper could be standing on shaky ground with her friend Polly. As far as Alex was concerned, Polly could go fuck herself if she found out what was going on and didn't approve of it, but she knew that she shouldn't disregard the fact that this was Piper's best friend. Unfortunately, that counted for something, so she pushed herself to her feet.

They stepped into the shower, with the vertically-striped screen of water falling all around them and between them. She looked down at Piper, squinting at the tiny droplets which were ricocheting from their bodies and trying to get into her eyes, and poked her on the nose. The blonde giggled in response, trespassing the curtain of water to kiss her. They seemed to have reverted to a juvenile state of silliness; what was more, they were a pair of horny teenagers, with the same amount of hyperactive hormones - if not the same sense of balance. Striving for equilibrium inside that small tub, with Alex's loud laughter bouncing off the tiled walls, Piper frantically grabbed at the plastic curtain, tearing down most of it and making them lose their footing.

"I don't know about you," said the brunette, sat on the bathtub with one leg hanging out and Piper collapsed on top of her. "But I'm so fucking turned on right now."

The blonde burst out laughing, and could barely reply. "Yeah, me too, me too. It's hard to think of anything sexier than this."

With that, the last of the rings holding the shower curtain up snapped, making the damn thing float down over their heads. Alex punched at the translucent greenhouse, laughing at that last touch of hilarity; despite their acrobatics having failed them completely, the moment was weirdly perfect. She helped Piper up, wrapped them both in a towel, and scooped her matted hair from her face. When they managed to return to the bedroom, Alex snatched her glasses from the bedside table and started hunting for her clothes.

"I could lend you something if you want," Piper said, sticking her head inside the closet.

"Do you wanna play dress-up? Nah, it's fine." She let her eyes travel down the blonde's naked back, unable to suppress a smirk. "I'll change when I get home."

"Let me walk you?" asked Piper, turning around for a moment, flashing her a sweet, almost bashful smile.

The brunette merely nodded, zipping up her jeans and putting on her t-shirt. She needed a moment, for this felt a bit too good overall, a bit too familiar in some aspects, and new in others - for instance, she never thought she'd hear that free, joyous laugh of Piper's again. With her damp hair falling over her shoulders, Alex paced into the living room, where the table was of course still covered by the remains of the blonde's dinner party. She started piling up the plates and absentmindedly placing them in the sink of the open kitchen, making a mental note to address the starkness of that apartment.

"Hey." The blonde, who was already dressed, entered the kitchen and hugged her from behind. Alex froze, since she didn't want to move and lose the contact of Piper's body against her. "Don't. Leave it."

"It's fine, it's done." Alex shrugged, unable to contain a shiver when she felt the blonde pulling down the back of her t-shirt and delivering a hot kiss between her shoulders. She wondered how the hell they were supposed to get out of the apartment if it went on like this.

"I told my friends that we were starting to see each other. When they came to dinner last night… Last night! It seems like days ago…" Her voice trailed off, after letting out a short laugh.

Well there it was. Listening to that piece of news automatically made it possible for her to leave the place. They stepped out into the street, where sudden sight of crowds of people startled her. It was too easy to get used to being with Piper and forget that the rest of the world was an actual existing, populated thing. She had feared that before it happened, and she guessed she still did.

Narrowing her eyes at the blinding sunlight, the brunette started walking towards the bookstore with Piper beside her. She stuffed her left hand inside the pocket of her jacket and left her right hand free, swinging it as she walked; once, twice - the third time, it was intercepted by Piper's gloved hand. Swearing internally, Alex threw her head back and squeezed their interlocked fingers together, at once feeling an all-too recognizable tingle in her lower belly.

"So, how did it go, with Polly and… whatshisname?"

"Not very well," Piper answered, staring ahead and with a nervous smile on her lips. "Does it freak you out that I talked to them about you?"

Not so much. She had already figured out that it was probable that Piper's friends didn't like her. What was really causing her to fly off the fucking handle inside was the overwhelming sensation of vertigo. When they reached the familiar white storefront with the green blinds behind the display windows, Alex peered at the blonde -who was shuffling her feet and biting her lower lip-, unsure if she wished to go in or leave for work already.

"Look, Pipes, if I'm not drinking coffee in thirty seconds I'm gonna transform into fucking Hulk, so…"

"Okay." The blonde nodded. "It's just… I hope…"

"What?"

"You're mulling over something." Piper brought a hand up to her temple and started drawing circles with her fingertips. "If it has to do with me, with what we did, with all this…"

"Yeah?" Alex asked, urging her on without confirming that it was true.

"I hope you know that I'm okay with this." The blonde surrounded Alex's shoulders with her arms and crossed the distance to her lips. Alex found that she was kissing her back like they hadn't been going at it since the previous night, and that, together with Piper's reassuring words, made her feel better, even daring to jerk her head towards the shop's door.

"It has to be a quick coffee, though," Piper began, following Alex into the store. "I need to make an appearance at least, or Polly-"

"Well, well, well," a strident voice interrupted the blonde. "If it isn't Aphrodite, the fucking goddess of love herself. Who kept you from opening the shop this time, freaking Sappho and all her cohorts?"

"Fuck me…" Alex muttered, sighing heavily. She sauntered over to the coffee corner, towards her friend - the person who had yelled so angrily. "Shut the fuck up, Cherry."

"The hell I will," the redhead retorted, but fell silent upon spotting the blonde woman standing near the door. As her frown faded, Cherry gave a little wave and broke into a big smile, talking to Alex through her clenched teeth. "Oh my fucking God. You were with Piper? Why didn't you text me?"

"Text you? Are you kidding me?" Scoffing at her friend, Alex gestured for Piper to approach. She poured herself a more than adequate dosage and fixed another coffee for the blonde, the way she remembered she used to like it.

"Once a womanizer, always a womanizer, huh?" Piper asked, sitting down at the other side of the bar.

"Not always." The brunette placed her folded arms on the bar, leaning against it, and bent forwards. With their faces but inches apart, she gazed into Piper's eyes until the woman lost the staring contest and a smile appeared on her lips.


	14. Lights Out

Entering the shop, the blonde paused for a moment to observe the clusters of people as if she was watching the documentary of a long-lost civilization which had nothing to do with her. She waded through them as they clawed at the shelves for an original Christmas gifts, something to help their friends and families with that pesky and very common New Year resolution of taking better care of one's health and one's body. Among that kind of merchandise, one could find Piper's and Polly's soaps and lotions, wrapped up in rustic-looking, colored paper and string packages that screamed "Purchase me, I'm homemade and natural".

Piper found her friend arguing with the shop's owner about the placement of their products, and she loitered at a respectable distance until they finished, because she didn't consider herself ready to face that quotidian stuff yet. Half her brain, it seemed, was still back at her flat, where it had all taken place, or perhaps at the bookstore, where she'd just left Alex. They'd had their coffee with Cherry's doting presence fluttering around them, but it hadn't bothered Piper. What little she had seen of that woman, she'd liked; she found her particular brand of brutal kindness funny, although Piper was mostly amused by how grumpy Alex got after her excessive remarks - a side of the brunette she'd scarcely witnessed. They hadn't been very talkative while sipping their coffee; however, judging by the brunette's series of expressions and the knowing glint in her eyes, she'd been remembering pointed scenes from the past night and that morning… and Piper had been doing the same thing. After exchanging "see you later's", the brunette had walked around the bar, kissed her on the cheek, and disappeared through a door - the door to the backroom, Piper had guessed, where she lived, where she'd gone to change her clothes.

Staring at that door while she'd been putting on her jacket, the blonde had wondered what Alex's room looked like; she'd wanted to follow her, but mostly, she'd felt Alex's sudden absence as if someone had just severed one of her limbs or pulled out a vital organ. They hadn't really determined _when_ they'd see each other again, but there'd been an unspoken understanding that they would, just like one felt the need to eat when hungry and drink when thirsty. Another basic necessity, Piper mused: Maslow's hierarchy plus one - Alex Vause as a physiological need.

"Where the hell were you?" Polly asked, finally fixing her eyes on her.

The blonde responded with a smile, wondering if she'd rather tell her the truth here, in the middle of a crowded nature store, or wait. She felt that specific, Alex-shaped need acutely, now that she was somewhere radically different to the bookshop and her apartment, surrounded by loudness and consumerist mania, and at a considerable distance from the brunette.

"With Alex," Piper answered, deciding on taking the leap. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged, with her lips pressed tightly, trying to communicate that she hadn't been able to help it. Of course Polly would accuse her of being off her rocker and Alex of being a manipulative vixen, which she proceeded to do without raising her voice, but being very clear about what she thought about it. From Polly's viewpoint, even though Alex couldn't be blamed for everything that had gone wrong with her life, Piper had to know better than to keep getting closer to the person who had "coincidentally" been around every time Piper's life had made a crazy turn. And yet the blonde could only think about her conversation with Alex the previous night, and how all the other amazing, brilliant things wouldn't have happened if the brunette hadn't fallen off her high horse at last.

That must've hurt, she mused, fiddling with the packaging of one of their products and bearing Polly's disapproving stare quite stoically. It wasn't a matter of pulling out a number of fabricated validations or explanations for what she was doing -she could have, due to her tendency towards self-justification-, but she didn't want to. This had more to do with acceptance than explanations, and so she shrugged again, increasing her friend's anger but remaining calm herself.

However, with Alex's absence growing inside her and cyclic memory shots of the night and that same morning bombarding her consciousness, Piper diverted her eyes for a moment to glance down at her own hands. She frowned, detecting a small tremor on her fingers, and immediately being invaded by a feeling of dread.

"You want to ruin your life again?" Polly was saying, surely taking Piper's withdrawal for indifference. "Go ahead. You guys are totally made for each other."

Under different circumstances, Piper would've scoffed at her friend's cheesy comeback, which didn't even suit them or the situation. Most likely, they had ruined each other's lives a couple of times, but people were certainly not _made_ for each other, and if they were, she and Alex definitely weren't. They were more like a scientific experiment gone wrong, causing certain unmixable elements to be irresistibly attracted to one another in the miasma of the explosion. At the very least, they were improbable - and yet, inevitable.

The package dropped from her hands, but it thankfully didn't break, since it was only soap. Hurriedly, the blonde returned it to its shelf and clasped her hands in front of her. How long had this been going on? Since last night? Piper felt her heartbeat galloping inside her chest, and her breaths getting thinner and quicker, as if she was about to choke, or drown. This was a panic attack, wasn't it, like the one she'd had at Litchfield? Not knowing what to do, she went outside in search of fresh air, cutting off Polly mid-sentence just when she was advising her to treat the days she was about to spend with her family as a period of reflection. It took her a while to calm down, causing her to wonder if the sheer magnitude of what had happened during those few days had only reached her now. What if she'd believed that meeting up with Alex and remembering it all had been affecting her considerably, when in fact it had only been the tip of the iceberg?

Like a sleepwalker, she followed Polly around all day until the woman rightly accused her of being useless and sent her home with a weary sigh - home to pack, to be precise, which she dutifully did. Piper finished doing that as the sun started to wane, and was left sitting cross-legged on the large, unmade bed. It felt like being stranded in the middle of a white, ruffled sea which had been frozen in time. It was a snapshot which captured what had happened between them and, in a way, this was where she had woken up from a decade-long slumber.

Her natural instinct was contrary to staying there, since she'd had quite enough of remaining in pause mode, like an insect stuck in amber which could nevertheless continue breathing in its crystal cell. Piper shot one last glance at her trolley, jumped to the floor, and grabbed her jacket. She walked fast, resolutely, pushed by the increasing rightness she was feeling as she approached the bookshop.

The chipped, white storefront with the cheerful, green lettering stood before her, seemingly greeting her, even though the blackboard sign with Alex's spiky careful handwriting was missing. She stopped before the "SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED" sign on the door, and then went around the building -something she'd never done before- until she reached the alley behind it. Piper knew that the brunette lived in the store's backroom, which had to be right there, behind that window. Instead of curtains, the window had mint-green Venetian blinds, identical to those of the display windows on the façade. If Alex wasn't there, she would phone her, or maybe try the Irish pub where they'd gone…

No. There _was_ someone there; Piper could make out their shape right under the window. Gently, she rapped on the glass with her knuckles, and saw the figure shift to a position where their heads were at similar levels. Recognizing Alex's clear eyes through one of the gaps, Piper waited for her to unlock the window and slide it open.

"Hey," Piper simply said, her breath coming out as a condensed cloud of vapor. She slipped her fingers between the horizontal shades, wriggling them as a kind of wave, and smiling when she felt Alex's hand squeezing them.

The brunette then proceeded to pull up the blinds so they could see each other properly. Shivering due to the cold air that was entering the room and looking genuinely astonished to find her there, Alex was kneeling down on her bed, which appeared to be pushed against the wall, directly below the window.

"Hey! Are you playing Romeo now? Hang on, I'll open the door for you."

"No need." With that, the blonde placed her hands and her knee on the ledge and clambered through the open window.

Her forehead banged against the folded blinds, discharging a cloud of dust into the room and causing her to lose her balance and plummet on top of Alex - so much for impulsive, romantic gestures. They collapsed in a tangle of limbs and exclamations of surprise, thankfully cushioned by the bed, although Alex complained about stabbing herself on the back with the hardcover novel she'd been reading. Piper raised her head from the woman's breast to glance around the small room, whose only source of illumination came from Alex's reading light. She was particularly impressed by the bookcase located at the foot of the bed so that it seemed to loom over it, completely overloaded up to the ceiling with volumes.

When she returned her attention to the woman underneath her, Piper realized that she was wearing little else apart from a long, black t-shirt from an unknown rock band, and that her skin was covered in goose bumps.

"I'm so sorry," Piper said, rushing to close the window and rubbing at the brunette's arms and legs, and Alex, who was still laughing at their disastrous performance -her features relaxed and soft as a child's-, stopped when it seemed to dawn on her what the blonde was doing to her. She raised her hand, unzipped Piper's jacket slowly, and helped her out of it. Then, she took off her shoes and softly pushed her down on the bed, covering both their bodies with the sheets, making it impossible for either of them to be cold anymore.

Piper brought her hands up to the brunette's face, pausing to stroke the corner of her mouth with her thumb, and very carefully took off her glasses, giving her every chance to stop her. There was no reason for her to do that, of course, but Piper remembered that she'd only done that once before, in Paris, as a last-ditch effort to reach her, but Alex had proven to be unreachable then.

"You wanna tell me something," Alex quietly said, affirming, not asking. She took her lower lip between her pursed lips, releasing it very slowly, and then rubbing their noses together. As a way of encouragement, it worked rather nicely.

The capricious alignment of time and space and tiny planets chasing each other had provided her with another chance, and so Piper returned her hand to the woman's cheek. Incapable of unseeing the very slight tremor of her fingers, she took a moment to close her eyes and swallow.

"Sometimes something happens to you…" the blonde mumbled, and then shook her head, catching herself. "I mean, sometimes you do something and it changes you."

"What did that Appalachian meth head _do_ to you?" Alex asked, caressing her hair. She knew about the attack, of course, and knew that Pennsatucky had said something provocative, igniting a spark within Piper, but didn't know the specifics. The blonde hadn't been able to explain it the previous night, plus Alex hadn't been yet ready to listen, countering her seriousness with mockery, but perhaps they were at last standing on the same place, at the same level.

"You remember how she thought she was the voice of God or whatever… but she was just the unfortunate creature who happened to say out loud something I already believed, that I didn't deserve anyone's love." Piper's shrugged. "And I would've killed her if they hadn't stopped me."

While in the SHU, she had spent almost two weeks convinced that she was a killer, and somehow hadn't stopped feeling as one, even after they'd informed her that she wasn't. She had effectively dragged that sensation with her up until the present like a dirty blanky - that she was a destroyer, a destroyer of lives, mainly her own. Everything had remained more or less untouched until now, when some sort of secret door had been opened, illuminating everything.

* * *

"Lights out!" the disembodied voice of a guard cried out.

She was back in orange, but this time, she was no novice. Remembering her original intention of getting ripped in prison, Piper almost twisted her lips into a smirk, because of course she had, although in a different sense of the word - that which went with "apart".

However, even in the semi-darkness, her expression remained stern and motionless, for she didn't know what to expect from those unknown women. One of the possibilities was definitely some kind of attack, since everybody had somehow found out what she'd done back at Litchfield - probably through the mail she kept receiving, because she had fans now, and many more detractors. She invariably threw it all away, for neither group could be very sane to begin with if they were writing her letters. Consequently, there was a permanent feeling of expectancy in the pit of her stomach. Although most of the inmates appeared to fear her, she kept waiting for those who'd want to challenge her, prove themselves in some way, or avenge the religious freak.

Piper maintained her eyes open and concentrated on applying layer upon layer of hardness to her face, striving to become hardened as a diamond, solid, impenetrable. Because the second you were perceived as weak, you already were. This time, no one would dare… No one would fucking dare.

* * *

She'd emerged from prison like a block of ice, and had immediately set out to look for warm things which could defrost her. Later, she had reverted, or morphed into a post-Alex, pre-Larry holding pattern (a barer, healthier one), wrapped herself up within a flimsy casing of sanity, and called it a life. She was no longer trying to be that "nice, blonde lady"; she wasn't trying to be anything, really, which had left her completely unprotected and unprepared for her third encounter with Alex.

When she finished speaking, the blonde simply stayed still, like an empty seashell on the sand, because there was nothing more to say. She'd let it all drift out that open door, a door which Piper couldn't manage to locate, and thus was unable to close. Alex kissed her head, her forehead, down her temples, and across her cheeks. Before reaching her lips, she pulled away, and Piper could see that she was crying, noticing the brunette's tears before her own.

"You're not in prison anymore," Alex whispered, her voice hoarser than usual. "Okay?"

Her fingers closed around her blonde hair, pulling at it, and Piper welcomed the radiating but minor pain as a sign of life. Nodding in response, she dove into Alex's lips, knowing that now that she had really emptied herself of everything, she could start replenishing all she had lost. The brunette grasped her face, kissing her hard, kissing her gently, kissing her every which way, and, although Piper was perfectly aware of the fact that being with Alex was certainly not a panacea, she visualized the image of the brunette reaching out to close that door within her.


	15. Shadow Play

Her fingers wrapped around the sheet underneath her, which was damp with sweat. She squeezed it hard within her fist and reached out behind her with her other hand, urgently, trying in vain to make Piper hurry. Tortuously, the blonde dragged her lips down Alex's back, switching to bites -soft and not so soft- when she got to her ass. Alex, who was on her hands and knees, felt her own legs starting to tremble as Piper's fingers alternated with her tongue. She smacked the wall with her open hand, strands of black, soggy hair sticking to her face, curling into the corners of her open mouth like hooks. It didn't take long for her arms to fail her and her face to hit the pillow, which muffled the long cry that erupted from the innermost core of her body, breaking its way out of her. For a second, she felt shattered into a million pieces, or perhaps down to her atoms, floating in the darkest nothingness, but then her organism recomposed itself, and her sluggish mind once again started to become conscious of its surroundings.

Breathless and lightheaded, she smiled when she felt Piper crawling over her sprawled body and scooping her sweaty hair out of the way to kiss her neck and cheek. She had tried to hold on to the crest of that wave of pleasure for as long as possible, but now, face down and momentarily spent, Alex wished to engrave on her skin the enticing sensation of having that woman's naked form lying on top of her.

"Oh my God," the brunette managed to mouth out. If she hadn't been trying to catch her breath, she would've laughed, out of sheer, joyful incredulity.

Echoing that feeling somehow, Piper chuckled into her ear. Perhaps they were now more in tune than ever, she mused, rolling over and taking the woman with her. Scary as it was, it was equally exhilarating. She thought about this present desperation of theirs as opposed to the one in prison. Back then, it had been mostly about survival and tricking themselves into believing that they were free, while this… this was a lot like living. Alex kissed the blonde, tasting herself on her lips, knowing that they were on each other, and finding it extremely reassuring. She raised Piper's arms over her head, pinning her wrists against the pillow, and let her weight slowly descend on the woman's welcoming hips. Their avid mouths found each other within the yellow and black weave of hair, crashing like a contained explosion of heat, and as Alex grinded against her own personal version of heaven, the single thought inside that mushy brain of hers was if this was actual freedom at last.

The blonde groaned encouragingly, with her fingers digging into the skin of Alex's ass. The sound made the brunette move faster, and when she felt her own wetness on Piper's thigh, she gripped the woman's other leg, bending it around the small of her back. They were trying to get even closer, or maybe fuse themselves together like two liquids, and Alex went back to pinning the blonde's arms over her head, letting their hips do all the work and guide each other with every thrust. She was sucking on Piper's earlobe when the blonde grasped her face and found her lips again, capturing Alex's lower lip between her teeth.

"Ow," she whispered, as the woman's teeth sunk precisely into the little sore they had caused the night before.

"Sorry," Piper whispered back, cupping her cheek and kissing her softly instead. But she was already gasping, letting Alex know that she was close and, with their breasts merging and parting, their nipples grazing deliciously, the brunette realized that she was just as ready.

Her deep voice hummed against Piper's lips. Not wanting to break off the kiss, Alex plunged her tongue into the other woman's mouth, doing her best to encompass the rhythm of her hips with the caresses of her tongue until breathing became an issue. Their bodies clenched in unison, gripped together as if they were a wet rag being wrung out by a pair of hands, writhing until there was nothing more to release. She let go of Piper's wrists, for a second worried that she'd been grasping them too tightly and, as her thumbs stroked that pale, soft skin, she felt a strong desire to remind her once more that she didn't have to create imaginary shackles for herself ever again. There was still shit between them, but they were okay.

It was already early morning, which meant that they must've boiled the night away between the frenetic frictions of their skin. Again. This time, however, they were at her place, which implied having the blonde's indelible fingerprints not only all over the store, but in her sacrosanct bedroom, which had been Piper-less until that night. And then, as if her mind wanted to prove that fact further, the brunette started seeing fragmented memories projected on the wall behind the bed, like a shadow play of yearning motions and shady shapes, and above all, the stubborn effort to conquer that rudimentary sundial and thus obtain their sweet revenge on time.

At least that was how she perceived it. The blonde's hand swept over her forehead, clearing it from random strands of sweaty hair, and Alex closed her eyes for a minute, simply letting Piper touch her in that subtle, almost nourishing manner, which hadn't been that common back in the day. She sensed something different, sort of more evolved, about the way in which they were together now. However, her thoughts were interrupted by the dry, abrupt sound of a door slamming, and then the sharp "Hello?" of an unmistakable voice.

"Oh man…" Alex sighed, with her lips pressed against the blonde's neck. "Already?"

"Shhh…" Frantically, Piper attempted to cover Alex's giggling mouth and her own at the same time. "Don't move, let's just stay here."

"No problem." The brunette propped herself up on her elbow and peered at the other woman. "You're the one who's probably got tons of family shit planned, though."

Nodding, the blonde placed a hand on her cheek. "Don't you?"

"No." No fucking way, in fact. She never saw what family she had left, because those people didn't count as such. Maybe with the occasional exception of her aunt, no one had given two shits about her or her mother, and they'd both built themselves into fiercely independent beings, only reliant on each other, like a team. After her mother's funeral, Alex had avoided going back there, and had refused every one of her family members' requests to "do something with the house", or rent it, or sell it to them, and they could go fuck themselves, because Alex was adamant about the place where she'd been raised. Her mom's home remained still, unchanged, frozen, like a tangible -even habitable- fragment of the past, but one which she hadn't faced as of yet, keeping it at a secure distance.

"You could always come with me."

"Yeah, no thanks." Alex chortled at the suggestion, in any case believing that Piper was kidding, even though there'd been nothing nonchalant about her tone of voice. She returned her attention to the woman's body, running her fingers down her stomach, but Piper snatched up her hand, deterring her advances.

"I'm being serious."

"You wanna take _me_ to your parents' place?" Scoffing at the woman, Alex sat up on the bed and looked out the window through the blinds, suddenly thankful of the fact that she'd been sensible enough to pull them back down hours before, and not give any neighbors an eyeful of what they'd been doing. Her mind was wandering, which she found extremely irritating, because it could only mean that there was something making her queasy.

Not just "something", but what Piper was saying and what she could be implying with it, as if it hadn't been tricky enough for her to surrender to her own drives and feelings in relation to Piper. Now that she had, this was the first insinuation of them having to handle this thing between them outside of themselves, interlaced with the real world. If the past was any indication, they'd been great at stuff like having fun together, and fucking, and loving each other, while being fairly shitty at the real-life rendition of their relationship. There'd been too many problems and intricacies then, and there was no shortage of issues now.

Squinting at the incipient sunlight, Alex felt tempted to ask the blonde if she was out of her fucking mind or what, wanting to take her to a meet and greet with her goddamn family. She didn't ask though, because she was aware that Piper's notion of her own sanity was presently a sensitive topic, and instead decided on being gentler.

"C'mon, Pipes…" she breathed out and gave the blonde's fingers a squeeze. Could Piper really imagine her at her parents' house, formally meeting them, sitting round the table for dinner? Was that what she wanted? More importantly, Alex was trying to determine if she could picture _herself_ there, and of course envisioned the most cringe-worthy, impossibly Christmassy scenario, with the turkey, the decorations, and the carol-singing around the tree.

"It's fine if you don't want to." Piper disentangled their fingers and sat up, positioning herself behind Alex and crossing her arms around the brunette's waist. She kissed Alex's shoulder and then rested her chin on it. "But I wouldn't ask if I didn't mean it."

That didn't make her change her mind, since the one thing her already bruised ego did not need was having the Chapmans treat her like a member of the fucking lumpen. Without the security blanket of her power and her wealth, she wasn't feeling much up to it. However, the fact that Piper was willing to take her -and wasn't just offering for the sake of offering- was a big thing, and it made her feel as less of a blip in the blonde's life, which had been one of her nagging fears. Or maybe it was due to the zesty sensation of having Piper's nakedness nestled against her back in a sort of upright spooning. She leaned backwards, realizing that every little old-new thing they did immersed her one step deeper into something she'd dreaded when they'd started talking and seeing each other: getting used to being with Piper and missing her physically like one misses a drug - that the woman once more became indispensable to her. Not everything that felt good was actually good, she automatically reminded herself, but shouldn't one consider that this thing between them, this rekindling of an old fire, had made them understand each other better?

"Wouldn't you rather go someplace else," Alex sheepishly began, "with me?"

"You mean like a trip?" asked the blonde, her voice bubbly and irresistible. It reminded her of that of the younger Piper she had lived and travelled with all those years ago.

"Alex, you in there?" Cherry's strident voice sounded much closer now.

"Gimme a second!" she shouted back. Then, she glanced at the woman behind her and raised her eyebrows. "Coffee?"

The "second" widened considerably when they realized that they needed an urgent shower, where the blonde left more of her invisible trails, sandwiched between Alex and the white tiles. They emerged from the storage room like two guilty teenagers, mop-haired and soaked and giggly, trying to make their way to the coffee area as quickly as they could, but Cherry was behind the tiny bar, coffeepot in hand, so there was no escape.

"Oh my fucking God!" the redhead cried. She set down what she had between her hands and rushed to hug them. "You guys! I'm so happy!"

"Me too," Piper said. There was nothing wishy-washy about her tone, and that made Alex look down at her for a moment, postponing her sarcastic reaction.

"Jesus! Are you planning on doing this every day? You already saw us yesterday."

"Well you better get used to it." Cherry returned to her place behind the bar and poured them coffee, commanding them to sit at one of the little tables.

It was better to accept it than to fight it, she mused, wondering if that pestering quality was what made her friend a quality sponsor. Alex gulped down the dark-brown liquid, inspecting the blonde over the brim of the green mug, noting how adorable she looked with her tussled hair a shade darker than usual and a borrowed t-shirt. The shirt was big on her, with its collar displaying Piper's clavicles and its short sleeves hovering over her bent elbows.

"What?" asked the blonde, her lips breaking into a smile. Her expression, however, turned into instant worry, and she brought her hand up to her neck. "Oh no, is it a hickey?"

Almost coughing out her coffee, Alex laughed and reached out to retrieve Piper's hand and set it down on the table. Their fingers interlocked easily, already used to being together, and the sight made the brunette smile.

"No, I was just thinking that you looked cute. And… if there's a hickey," she began, winking at the woman, "it's not there."

She diverted most of her attention back to her coffee, unable to contain the smirk on her lips as she glimpsed Piper's flushed struggle to keep still in her seat. Another flashing memory appeared in her mind, one of the blonde squirming as she sucked on the inside of her thigh and bit on the spot where her thigh met her ass. Knowing that Piper was thinking about the exact same thing was like an injection of warmth extending all over her body, and it helped her feel less concerned about the fact that there apparently was an underlying negotiation going on between them, albeit a negotiation without terms. Perhaps they were just shuffling their feet, with their eyes on each other's attempts to delimit their place and establish their footing on the dusty ground.


End file.
