A/N: Dipping my toe back into the OITNB fandom with this one... this is just a taster because I wanted to keep the first chapter short. I've had this in my drafts for several months and I've finally managed to actually make something of it.
It starts with a headache.
The word grates on Nicky, not because she herself is immune to them, or because she doesn't believe that Lorna has one, but because of the familiarity of it. She remembers, as a child, wanting to play with her mom, and the response always being "not now, Nicole, Mommy has a headache". Mommy can't come to your recital, she has a headache. Mommy isn't eating dinner with us, she has a headache. Little Nicole would tell her nanny that she wanted to go and help Mommy feel better, that she'd make her some tea, or read her a story, or do any of the things Jasmin did for her when she was ill. It wasn't until she was much older that she understood the sad look on Jasmin's face, or why she was never allowed. Her mom had a headache alright: it was her.
Still, she knows when Lorna looks at her with that pinched expression, her eyes puffy, her hair scraped up into a messy bun on the top of her head, and tells her she doesn't want to go for dinner because she has a headache, that Lorna's telling the truth. The prick of recognition in her is brushed aside because Lorna, unlike her mother, regularly chooses to spend time with her, and she doesn't make excuses. Lorna, above all else, loves her, unlike her mother.
Nicky tries to act all nonchalant about it, but as she goes back to the kitchen, cuts toast into little hearts – leaving the crusts for herself - and puts them onto a plate for Lorna, she knows it's showing. She knows this part of her is always showing when she's around Lorna, and she almost hates herself for it. It's been three years, she reminds herself, but it doesn't feel like three years, not when two of them were spent in Litchfield, another spent constantly running, constantly trying to ditch that part of her that she left behind there.
She knows she's a different person. They both are. Lorna – headache aside – is healthy. Nicky's clean. She can't confess to not thinking about drugs anymore – she doesn't think there's a single part of her that believes that that will ever be the case – but she hasn't gone near them, hasn't even contemplated seeking them out. As she squeezes open a packet of paracetamol, puts two on the side of Lorna's plate, she doesn't think about it, and she knows there's a time when yes even that would have sent her itching for something stronger. But it doesn't. She knows that the next step is to be able to do all these things without thinking about it at all – without congratulating herself for jumping every little hurdle - but she also knows that that's a long way off.
Lorna laughs at the toast. It's a rich sound, and it tugs at the corners of Nicky's lips, and she's glad no one from Litchfield can see them. Nicky Nichols has turned into a sap. She knows it's what they all think. She sees it in that glint in Red's eyes, in that prim, pleased little smile Chapman gives them when they go over for dinner. So what if she has? Lorna's worth it.
"You want me to pull the drapes?" Nicky asks, her voice just as gruff as ever, and when Lorna shakes her head she sits on the side of the bed with absolutely no grace. There's not a single ladylike quality in her; but then, some things never change, and Lorna grins at her. It doesn't quite reach her eyes, and Nicky silently prays that it's the headache.
She can't help it. Every so often she gets scared. She remembers what Lorna was like. That it wasn't all that long ago and that there's nothing to say she's magically cured. She'll probably never be magically cured, whether she takes her meds or not (but she is taking them and that's what's important).
By the fifth or sixth headache, Nicky's beginning to feel a sense of deja vu.
Lorna doesn't want to come to Piper's. She doesn't want to go get pizza, or go downtown for beers, or visit Franny and the kids. She doesn't want to do anything. She stays in bed and Nicky makes her a whole fucking scene out of her lunchtime salad, and pretends the laugh that Lorna lets out when she sees the tiny faces made out of fruit doesn't sound hollow and insincere.
After a couple of days, she's better, and one night they spend hours playing arcade games, until they have enough ticket stubs for one of the giant stuffed toys. Nicky proudly carries the penguin with the sunglasses home on her back whilst Lorna scoffs cotton candy, and she thinks maybe everything's back to normal.
When, in the middle of the night, Nicky wakes up to find Lorna talking to nobody, and that three syllable name drips off her tongue with the ease of habit, Nicky has to bite her tongue. She grinds her teeth together and tries to go back to sleep, all the while wanting to punch something, wanting to fucking set the room alight; anything to make it make sense.
In the morning, when Lorna has a headache, Nicky doesn't believe it. Nicky snatches her medication off the side table and rattles the bottle in front of her face and yells and when Lorna starts to cry, she doesn't stop yelling. It rips at her insides, to be the one who causes that look that she's tried so hard to take away so many times, but she can't quell the fight inside of her, the anger that's bubbled up, the disappointment. The realisation that even now, even after all these years, she still hasn't been enough. She's never going to be enough.
Lorna stays in bed all day, and Nicky spends her day running people down on GTA, pushing buttons too hard, and shouting at the TV, in a desperate attempt not to self-destruct. She leaves the bedroom door closed, and the game blaring, trying to drown out the noise in her head.
In the evening, without a word, Lorna emerges from the bedroom, grabs a tub of ice cream from the kitchen, and curls up next to her on the couch. They sit in silence, besides Nicky grumbling at the television, until she runs out of lives and slams the controller down in frustration.
"I'm sorry," she finally says, and the word slips off her tongue easier than it used to.
Lorna smiles, "s'okay. Now come on, gimme a go at that. I wanna kick some ass."
Nicky watches her sleep, unable to switch her brain off. She likes the expressions Lorna makes, the way her forehead creases, and her lips twist. She's not a peaceful sleeper. She mumbles in her sleep, as if even unconscious she can't keep herself from talking. It's not that she's restless, or that her sleep is riddled with nightmares. It's just fitting for her, really; that she can't even stay still and quiet in sleep.
More than anything, Nicky wants desperately to protect her. It's been at the forefront of her mind from almost the first time she met her. It had taken her by surprise, at first. She wasn't used to putting other people first. Drug addicts are reckless, selfish monsters. Creatures of habit. Litchfield had torn apart those cancerous parts of Nicky's personality, bit by bit. Through Red, through Lorna... hell, even through Piper. But it still comes as something of a shock just how often she puts Lorna's needs before her own, how gentle and loving and sensitive she can be around her. At first, she had been mortified. Ashamed, even. Now she is able to acknowledge that maybe that was just what she needed. Maybe Lorna has helped her to grow as a person.
She feels guilty for shouting, but that doesn't stop her from taking the bottle from the side of Lorna, emptying it out into the palm of her hand, and counting the tablets one by one. She doesn't want to feel like she can't trust her, but she's worried. They have fallen into this comfortable routine now, and this behaviour is not Lorna. Not the one she's grown accustomed to having, anyway.
She drops the pills back into the bottle and puts it back where it came from, sighs, lies down with her arms behind her head, and stares at the ceiling.
Why is it still so hard?