There are a few direct references to the events of "Wide-Eyed" and part one is kind of a follow-up, so if you haven't read that you might want to go take a quick look (it's short).
The title comes from the Neko Case song. The titles for each part come from (in order): "Daniel" by Bat for Lashes, "Heavenly Father" by Bon Iver, "Gimme Sympathy" by Metric, "Baby Britain" by Elliott Smith, and "Answering Bell" by Ryan Adams.
No specific timeframe here, but Nicky/Lorna are still in the 'just friends' stage. And now you'll see why I don't write fluff. You've been warned.
I. just kids in the eye of the storm
She'd torn through the room, a cyclone on two legs, and left nothing untouched: sheets and blankets half-ripped from the beds and trailing over the floor, books and paper and all the other small, meaningless objects that collect in corners and on shelves like dust now being crushed underfoot, and she was elbow-deep in the metal locker still looking, throwing things over her shoulder as she dug because suddenly everything in her life was soft and fabric when she needed a rock, a piece of glass, Chapman's fucking screwdriver.
The lock was already nestled in her pocket, the obvious choice for a weapon, but it wasn't the one Nicky wanted. This wasn't a copycat crime, a come-from-behind settling of scores. This was personal. She needed to make it personal, and she wondered again if she could do it with her bare hands.
It was because they kept insisting on calling her Reznikov, she thought. The way Red was just a smattering of details in a police report to them, the way they would never find anything to connect the attack to Vee, the way they would write off the incident as just another case of random prison violence – unremarkable, hardly worth the effort of investigation, a blip in their day to separate the coffee breaks.
Nicky had walked out of the questioning room with one purpose, her whole body clenched around the knowledge of what she had to do – what she should have done long ago, when Vee had first put her hands, her mark, on Lorna. Nicky had never been the quickest student, and she had just failed the second test in a row, but now she could show Vee exactly what lessons she had learned.
It filled her with a sense of grim satisfaction, the idea of taking Vee down herself. Vee thought herself so clever, so untouchable as she prowled through the halls and changed her face, her voice, to become whatever she needed to be in that moment. But there was always that glint in the corner of her eye, that bend in the very corner of her mouth that said I see you watching. Look close, little girl, and watch me get away with it all.
Nicky could take that much away from her, at least.
It was pointless to keep tearing apart her bunk as if the perfect shiv would materialize in front of her if she looked hard enough. She was going to have to make do with the slock and her fists and the burning that ran from her gut to her chest and up behind her eyes.
She kicked the door of her locker shut with a bang and became aware that she was being watched. Morello stood in the opening of the cube, both hands holding onto the wall like she was looking for something to anchor her too.
"You hear anything new about Red?"
Lorna had pitched the question carefully, like she wanted to have a normal conversation with Nicky, like it was just small-talk, like there was anything left to discuss.
"No."
Nicky's hands kept running over the surfaces of things aimlessly. She just wanted to go. She wanted Morello to walk away from this and stop looking at her like that, frowning and concerned, something about it taking her back to the day Tricia died, just a flicker before she forced those images out because Red was not Tricia, Red was not wheeled out of here in a body bag.
From the way Lorna stood in front of her, blocking her exit, Nicky knew that Lorna could tell what she was planning and was preparing to stop her, to talk Nicky out of it with the empty words everyone else had already been saying: It's gonna be okay. They'll catch whoever did this.
Lorna's eyes were wide and uncertain, but there was steel in there too, and in the way her red lips pressed together in a firm thin line. Her hands were clenching and unclenching slightly at her sides. It was easy to imagine her like this, being cornered by Vee in the bathroom, this tiny fierce thing who was trembling and nervous but refused to back down.
Her sleeve covered the mark Vee had left on her, but Nicky could see the X clearly in her mind, could see Red tapping Lorna on the head and reminding her not to pick at the scabs unless she wanted them to scar worse, the daily ritual of Lorna pouting and looking miserable (Nicky guessed 'scars' were on her list of things men didn't find attractive) while she tried to ignore the itch in her arm and Red slipping her yogurt or nail polish as a constant unspoken apology.
They had all been so stupid, falling back into their old routines after Vee had hurt one of them, like she wouldn't keep hurting them one by one until she got what she wanted.
"Lorna…" Nicky started, the beginning of a warning. She was an avalanche picking up speed. She would crush everything in her path, especially Lorna.
"What are you gonna do? Kill her and go to max for the rest of your life? I'm not letting you do that, Nicky."
"And just let Vee walk away? Are you fucking kidding me? She's not gonna stop unless someone makes her stop. I swore I'd get her after what she did to you, and Red stopped me, said she'd take care of it, and look where that got her. Fool me once, fool me twice, okay?"
Lorna swallowed uncomfortably, looking sick at what she was about to say. "I-I'll tell the COs, Nicky, I swear to God. They'll throw you back in SHU."
Nicky's teeth clamped down on the inside of her cheek quick enough to keep in the horrible thing that had almost escaped: And you think they'll take the word of a crazy person over mine? It wasn't true, she didn't really believe that, but she couldn't deny that it was the first thought to flash through her mind and some deep, black shard of her was still begging her to spit it out, to drive Lorna away in tears because it would make things easier for both of them.
"Fuck you, Lorna," she spat instead and surged forward, determined to walk straight through Lorna. Lorna's arms closed around her, grabbing handfuls of khaki, and she tried to tangle their legs together, trip Nicky up, send them both to the ground.
But Lorna was small, and it was easy to break her grip, to step around her, to push her away when she came after Nicky again and not even look at her as she fell against the bed. Nicky wasn't trying to hurt her – that was the thing, she never tried to hurt anybody, it just happened, a side effect she carried with her and unleashed on every unsuspecting person who stepped a little too close – but suddenly Lorna was looking up at her, eyes welling with tears and so scared. And Nicky wasn't sure if it was because she made Lorna cry or if it was the way her voice broke as she said, "Nicky, please," that made her freeze in the doorway.
She could hear Lorna breathing unevenly behind her. The lock weighed heavy in her front pocket, and it felt like even the slightest movement would send her tipping forward, across the line, and after Vee.
The moment passed, and she still stood there. She couldn't do it. And she could tell herself that it was for Lorna's sake, or for Red's, or her own, that this was the right thing to do, but the bitterness of failure crept up the back of her throat in a choking wave. She let herself hit the wall once, welcoming the sting, before going back inside. She fished the lock out of her pocket and dropped it at Lorna's feet, then dropped to her knees amidst the jumbled blankets and sheets as Lorna reached for her hand and pulled her down to the floor.
"What would Red do if she was here right now?"
"Slap me and call me an idiot, like always."
That made them both smile a little bit.
"Are you gonna slap me?" And Nicky wasn't sure if she was asking a question or begging for Lorna to hit her because she needed someone to, but Lorna wrapped her in her arms just in time.
She sat there in her destroyed bunk and cried into Lorna's shoulder, Lorna rhythmically stroking her back, and it wasn't until Lorna started murmuring "It's okay, I'm fine, Red's gonna be fine" that she realized she had been repeating I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry this whole time, apologizing for more mistakes than she could fit in her mouth before they came bursting out.
Nicky wasn't the crying type. She held her tears in with anger or poorly-timed jokes, a system she thought she had perfected. The last time she had cried like this had been with Red, detoxing in Litchfield's bathrooms. But, store up enough tears, years worth of them, and they had to go somewhere eventually.
She finally calmed down enough to sit back and wipe a sleeve across her eyes. She supposed she should feel embarrassed for breaking down on top of Morello, for leaving both their shirts smeared with snot and makeup run-off, but she didn't. Lorna's arm was still around her, and Nicky maneuvered closer until she could rest her head against her shoulder again.
"Yoga Jones is always talking about karma and stuff. You believe in that?" Lorna asked quietly.
"Just something people say to make themselves feel better about shit, isn't it?"
"I guess."
They sat together until Lorna had to leave to drive Miss Rosa to an appointment, which was just as well because Nicky needed to clean up the mess she had made of her bunk before the COs saw it and gave her a shot. She took her time, smoothing every wrinkle out of her bed, replacing every object to its original location, and she was finishing by lining up the spines of her books by color when the alarms for lockdown went off.
Rumors flew fast as all of the inmates returned to their bunks. There was talk of Mendoza brewing something up in the kitchen all day, talk of a missing prisoner, and one name kept coming up over and over again: Parker.
Nicky wished Lorna was back at her side or that she would stop feeling like a kid left home alone for the first time, her once-familiar house now full of strange noises and dark places that she had never known before.
…
It was days before they got the news that Vee had been found dead. The administration refused to release any details, so everyone was letting their imaginations run wild. Lorna never said I told you so, but every time she regaled Nicky with her own theories about what had killed Vee, her expression clearly indicated that she thought everything had worked out the way it was supposed to.
The news of Vee's death came on the heels of the news that Red would be released from medical the next day. They spent the morning making streamers and paper flowers, Nicky bent over a table making and abandoning card after card, the drawings either too childish or too gory, and what exactly did you say to someone who had survived an attempt on their life?
When the time came, their motley family crowded into Piper and Red's cube and prepared to yell "Surprise!" or "Welcome back!" in a display that Red would pretend to loathe but secretly love. Nicky stood fidgeting in the back, practically hiding behind Boo and Norma, unexpectedly nervous about having Red back again, about having a constant reminder of what Vee had almost taken from her pushed in her face.
She felt herself shrink back even more when Red stepped into the cube and a collective cheer went up, only to feel a gentle hand on her back guiding her forward, one of Nicky's forgotten cards slipped into her left hand (someone had smoothed out its creases again and again until they were only soft ripples in the paper) and Morello's voice chiming in her ear, "C'mon, c'mon, she's looking for you!"
Nicky turned slightly and caught sight of Lorna's huge smile before she was nudged the rest of the way into Red's waiting arms.
Maybe there was something to that whole 'karma' thing after all.
II. won't you settle down, baby, here your love has been
Nicky felt like death.
She lay huddled on her bed, her layers of t-shirt, sweatshirt, and blanket doing nothing to lessen her shivering. She never had understood how a fever could leave you so cold one minute and then boiling the next, bouncing you between temperatures like a broken thermostat.
Her main strategy for dealing with the fever, and the bastard of a headache pounding above her left eye, and the general feeling that she had been thrown out a window and then mauled by an over-eager guard dog was to loudly groan every once in a while so the rest of the block could experience her death throes with her. Sometimes one or five women would yell back, "Shut the fuck up, Nichols," and Nicky would feel slightly better until her head throbbed again.
"'m here all week," she called out after a particularly angry-sounding round of insults was sent her way, knowing that no one was actually going to come close enough to her to shut her up for fear of catching the plague.
Piper, naturally, had been the exception. She had stuck her head into Nicky's cube that morning after 'missing' Nicky at breakfast, to which Nicky had rolled her eyes and rolled over, trying to look as disgusting as possible in the hope that she could scare Chapman away. It helped that at that point she had still been sweating profusely, hair even crazier than normal where it wasn't plastered across her forehead, and looked pale and shaky.
"Fuck, Chapman, I think I'm gonna spew. Can you – ?" She had swallowed hard and gestured urgently to the waste basket across the room, which Piper had slid over with her foot before nearly running out of the cube. Since then, she had walked past Nicky's cube more often than necessary, but she hadn't tried to come in again.
It wasn't that Nicky didn't appreciate the concern, or the pointless attempt to somehow make her feel better, but she didn't think she could deal with anyone's bullshit but her own in this state, and she definitely didn't want to deal with anyone's attempt at 'bedside manner' either. She was going to wallow in her misery alone, but that didn't mean she couldn't annoy as many people as possible along the way.
"Chapman said you were feelin' bad."
Nicky's eyes snapped open at that unmistakable voice, startled to find Morello already halfway across the room instead of lingering in the doorway like any normal person would.
"Wait, you can't come in here! Respect the quarantine!" She pointed to the scrap of paper she had taped above her bed, a doodling of skull and crossbones surrounded by the words danger keep out in every font imaginable.
Lorna just psssshed at her and put one hand against Nicky's forehead, saying, "Hot. Really hot."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Lorna muttered something to herself that sounded a lot like delirious before asking Nicky, "Did you take anything for it?"
Nicky gestured towards the pile of mangled plastic packaging on top of the metal locker.
"Useless, all of it. God forbid they give us drugs that actually do something in here."
She tried to think of something to say that would send Lorna frolicking off elsewhere. The kid was interrupting her pity party of one, and she couldn't imagine an outcome where Lorna's chatter did anything but make her headache worse. Lorna didn't seem like the caretaker type anyway – Nicky figured she would be glad to have an out.
But Lorna was already in motion, climbing over Nicky into the bed and sitting against the wall, and suddenly Nicky was half in Lorna's lap without knowing how she got there. Her mouth opened to protest, but her body had a different idea entirely, and she found herself sinking back into Lorna's body heat, burrowing as close to the source as possible because something finally felt good.
"Are you gonna throw up? 'Cause I just got these back from laundry…"
"I think this is the other kind of flu. I only said that to Chapman because I wanted her to leave me alone."
Lorna's hands were moving through the mess of her hair, and even though Nicky kind of felt like a dog being petted, it was so nice to be touched that she almost hummed with pleasure.
Still, she had to keep up appearances.
"What're you doing?" she grumbled, trying to sound irritated.
"Wondering what you would look like if you brushed your hair."
"Hey, I brush it, all right? I just don't go nuts about it like the rest of you. I like keeping my hair on my head, where it belongs."
"You ever do anything with it?"
"It's hair, Morello, not a small child. What am I gonna do with it – take it to the park?"
Lorna gathered Nicky's hair into one big bunch. "I bet you'd have a really thick braid – like a Disney princess."
"You notice how Jasmine's hair is drawn thicker than her waist? Not like that's gonna fuck up a little girl's body image or anything, right?"
"I was always more of an Ariel girl myself."
"Of course you were. Look, you don't have to stay and babysit me if you'd rather be working on your Rhianna collage or something."
"No, I'm good here." Lorna's voice took on a teasing quality. "And you've already killed all the feeling in my legs, so it's a little late to back out now."
"Just wanted you to know I'm not going to be that entertaining," Nicky said with a yawn.
Lorna shrugged. "What did you do when you were sick as a kid?"
"Watch TV, I guess? Sometimes my nanny told me stories."
"You want a story?"
"Sure, kid, lay it on me."
Nicky wasn't sure she particularly wanted to hear one of Lorna's stories, but it meant she could stop talking and zone out for a while. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the feeling of Lorna's fingers sliding through her hair and occasionally cringing when Lorna tugged a snarl out of place a little too roughly.
She didn't figure out what story Lorna was telling her until she caught the words magic carpet and monkey and realized that Lorna was just summarizing the movie Aladdin, songs and all, although thankfully she didn't sing. The plot took an unexpected detour into a rant about Jafar being the most obvious villain ever: "I mean, did they see him? You can't trust a man with facial hair that pointy! And don't even get me started on his cobra stick…"
Nicky wanted to request that Lorna do The Little Mermaid next, but the sounds of the prison, and Lorna's voice, and the feel of Lorna's body against her back were rapidly merging together into something dark and distant, and she was never sure if she got the words out at all.
…
She woke up, disoriented, as something moved underneath her. Cold air flooded in and Nicky groaned as Lorna kept moving away, muttering "sorry, sorry" as she tried to wrap the blanket around Nicky again.
"It's almost time for count. I gotta get back to my bunk."
Nicky just grunted and threw one arm over her face, covering her eyes.
"You coming to dinner?"
"Nah, I'm not hungry. No way I'm moving either."
"I could try to bring you something back."
"You, voluntarily giving up food? Impossible."
That comment earned her a sharp flick to the head, and she smiled as she listened to Lorna squeak in pain as she wobbled out of the cube, rubbing at the pins-and-needles in her legs where Nicky had fallen asleep on top of them.
The next hour passed in ebbs and flows: the sounds of inmates lining up for count and leaving for the cafeteria, her chills suddenly melting away into a heavy sweat that left her kicking at the blanket and tearing her sweatshirt off, her tired body telling her to go back to sleep while her brain stayed wide-awake.
The block was still empty when Lorna came back, having clearly eaten in record time. She handed Nicky a dinner roll and a cup of red jello, produced a clean spoon from somewhere, and Nicky wondered if this was Lorna's version of a superpower: making food disappear or materialize at will, pulling cutlery out of thin air as easy as a magician found his rabbit in a hat.
"Chapman said I should bring some mashed potatoes too, but she wasn't willing to give hers up, so…" Lorna shrugged.
"And still this is not the saddest meal I've ever had."
Nicky picked at the roll and forced herself to eat half of the jello because Lorna was watching her, but she really wasn't hungry, and the jello was too sweet and too runny to be appetizing.
"Want the rest of it?" she asked Lorna, holding the container out to her.
"Ew. Germs, Nichols." Lorna pretended to be disgusted, but Nicky thought she was eyeing the leftovers hungrily. "Besides, you haven't eaten all day."
"Doesn't mean I gotta start now."
"Are you feeling any better? You look…" Lorna stepped back a little bit and squinted at her, trying to find the right words.
"Are you trying to say I look gross? What happened to 'really hot?'"
"Fine. You look gross and hot. Happy?"
Lorna rolled her eyes as Nicky smirked playfully at her. She pressed her hand against Nicky's forehead again before sliding down and letting her touch linger against Nicky's cheek in a way that sent shivers down Nicky's spine that had nothing to do with her fever.
"Maybe you should go take a shower. Lower your temperature some, you know?"
That sounded like a pretty good idea to Nicky. Not that she was looking forward to the effort involved, but the thought of rinsing off some of the sickness and changing into something clean seemed like a fair trade-off for dragging herself down the hallway and standing under cold water for a few minutes.
Lorna insisted on coming with her, and Nicky didn't waste much energy trying to fight her. Getting Lorna all to herself in the showers under any other circumstances would have excited the hell of her, but she supposed convincing Lorna to help her strip and join her under the water was too much to hope for when she was so far off her game.
She had to grab onto Lorna halfway to the bathroom as a wave of vertigo rushed over her.
"I told you you should have finished the jello," Lorna said sternly, shaking her head.
Nicky peeled off her damp clothes and left them scattered all over the floor while Lorna fiddled with the taps in one of the showers, trying to find the perfect temperature and avoid the spray of lukewarm water at the same time.
She pushed Nicky in when it was ready. At first the water raised goose bumps all over her skin before her body adjusted and relaxed into the stream. She rested her head against the cool tile of the wall and stood unmoving, losing track of herself and time and the ache that went deep into her bones as everything washed down the drain.
She realized she had probably been standing there for more than a few minutes when the curtain rustled behind her and Lorna peeked in to check on her.
"Pervert," Nicky shot over her shoulder with a wicked grin as she tugged the curtain open even further. "If you wanted to join me, all you had to do was ask."
"I just wanted to make sure you hadn't drowned!" Lorna squeaked in exasperation and stomped away, no doubt seeking out one of the far corners of the bathroom where she'd stay well out of Nicky's sight.
"This is a pretty fucking small shower, Morello. If something happened to me, I can guarantee you'd be able to tell without sticking your nose in."
Lorna stubbornly kept her back turned as Nicky came out of the shower and halfheartedly dried herself off, and Nicky imagined that Lorna took great, vengeful pleasure in throwing dry clothes over her shoulder – only vaguely in Nicky's direction – as Nicky called out "shirt" or "pants" and had to chase them down in turn.
Lorna finally took pity on her and took on the job of trying to towel-dry Nicky's hair on their way back to the Suburbs. As necessary as the shower had been, Nicky felt newly exhausted and couldn't wait to curl up in her bed again. And for all her talk about wanting to be left alone, she couldn't deny the sense of relief that ran through her when Lorna, without hesitation, plopped down on the bed beside her, swiped the half-cup of jello off the top of the locker, and started eating – a clear indication that she wasn't going anywhere any time soon.
"I'm not gonna be the one looking after you when you wake up looking like this," Nicky pointed to her washed-out face, "all right?"
"Who says I'm gonna get sick?" Lorna asked around the spoon in her mouth.
"Uh, you did, with all your 'ew, Nicky has germs' talk."
She reached for her little skull-and-crossbones sign and stuck the paper to Lorna's forehead instead.
"You're part of the quarantine now, kid. Means you gotta stay here with me."
"For how long?" Lorna was quick to play along, her eyes alight with amusement.
"Until we survive the plague or it kills us."
"Or until the COs kick me out."
"Or until the COs kick you out."
Even though her chills were long gone, Nicky cuddled herself closer to Lorna, who let her, who settled closer to Nicky in return. It wasn't enough, this platonic comforting thing they were doing, it would never be enough for Nicky, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to savor every moment they spent touching like this, the easy familiarity they had between them.
"Tell me another story?" she asked quietly, sounding sleepy and pathetic even to herself.
"Why, so you can fall asleep during this one too and leave me talking to myself for three hours?"
"Hey, I can't help it if my circadian rhythm's all out of whack. I'm sick."
Lorna sighed, putting aside the empty jello cup she had been scraping the bottom of for the last five minutes. "What do you wanna hear this time?"
"Mermaid with red hair, Jamaican lobster sidekick – go."
"What, you've never seen The Little Mermaid?" Lorna sounded scandalized, a crease of disbelief deepening between her eyes.
"I may have seen it as a kid, but I'm betting it can't hold a candle to the Lorna Morello interpretation of events. Please, enlighten me."
Lorna jumped into the story, so engrossed in its telling that Nicky was free to stare at her, to watch the kaleidoscopic shift of her expressions as she took on different characters. Nicky's stupid little sign was still taped to her forehead, like Lorna didn't even realize it was there or otherwise didn't mind having Nicky's doodles all over her face.
Her head still hurt, she still felt like shit, but remembering the stroke of Lorna's hands through her and feeling Lorna pressed against her now almost made the day worth it.
Misery loved company and Nicky Nichols loved Lorna Morello and maybe those were just crumbs to live off – maybe that was all she would get, friendship in exchange for her love – but something inside her kept saying this is more, this is more, this is more.
III. come on, baby, play me something like 'here comes the sun'
Nicky was already running late to work, but she was determined to find her headphones before she left. She had a feeling it was going to be one of those days where she was going to need to drown out the many annoying sounds of the electrical shop – metal scratching against metal, girls complaining about broken nails, Chapman in one of her whiny moods – before she completely lost her mind. Luschek didn't much care for enforcing the rules as long as everyone showed up and banged on their lamps for the allotted number of hours, so Nicky had taken to bringing her music with her and tuning out whenever she needed to.
She finally spotted a black tangle under her bed and groped around until she snagged it, happily stuffing the mess into her shirt before she realized that the wires weren't just tangled, they had been mangled. The left earbud was hanging by one silver thread, the rest of the plastic and insulation frayed away.
"Aww, fuck," she groaned and hurried off, all thoughts of tinkering with lamps replaced by the need to find a way to fix these shitty headphones that had somehow become the key to keeping her sane.
…
"Any luck?" Piper asked again, peering over her project of the day to see if Nicky had managed to salvage the broken wires with electrical tape.
"Well, we're about to find out."
Nicky carefully plugged the headphones into her radio and tucked the buds into her ears before turning the music on. One sad crackle of static, then nothing.
"Fuck, I'm done." Nicky growled, pushing the radio violently across the table. It was stupid to feel betrayed by an inanimate object, but that was exactly how she felt.
Piper reached for the headphones and ran her fingers thoughtfully over Nicky's clumsy patch job. "I wonder what happened to them? They're totally torn up."
"Probably those goddamn rats. I heard someone down in Spanish Harlem found one in her bag of pretzels last week."
"Oh God." As soon as Piper heard the word 'rat' she threw the headphones down and made a face like she was trying hard not to gag.
Nicky sulked for the rest of the day, poking aggressively at her lamp with a series of sharper and sharper tools until she had given herself so many mild shocks – swearing loudly each time – that Piper wrestled the screwdriver away from her and made her read instructions out of a poorly-translated repair manual instead.
"It says you should 'find looperation of wire and oscillate slippery to top.'"
Piper glared at her and snatched the book away. "Oh, come on, those aren't even words."
"And you say you went to college. Oscillate, Chapman, oscillate!"
Luckily Luschek let them go before Piper turned on Nicky with her pliers, and Nicky slunk away with her useless headphones back in her pocket, wondering what she was supposed to do now. She didn't hear Lorna until the girl came up right behind her, tugging at the sleeve of her jacket.
"Nicky? I've been calling your name all the way across the yard!"
Lorna was slightly flushed from sprinting after her, her smile slowly fading as Nicky just looked at her expectantly, not saying anything.
"What's wrong?"
Nicky dug out the headphones again and pushed them at Lorna, who gently unraveled them and examined the taped-over break. When she looked back up, her eyes were sympathetic, but Nicky doubted that she really understood why Nicky was so upset about something so trivial.
"Have you checked commissary yet?" Lorna asked.
"You know they never have any, and when they do there's already a waiting list fifty girls deep."
"If you have something Chang wants, maybe you can get a jump on the next shipment?"
Nicky knew Lorna meant well, but her optimism just frustrated her further, and it was a struggle to keep those feelings in check already.
"Even if there was some secret stash of earbuds back there, it's pointless. Chang is incorruptible."
"You can share mine until you get your new ones."
"Thanks, kid," Nicky said, trying to sound like she meant it.
They walked the rest of the way back to their dorm without speaking, Lorna only breaking the silence once to ask, "What'd you do to them anyway? They got wrecked."
"I think a rat tried to snack on them. Hope the bastard choked."
Lorna looked at her skeptically. "Maybe you just wore 'em out –" she started before seeing the muscles twitch angrily in Nicky's jaw and hastily amended her thought with a squeak. "No, the rats, definitely the rats."
…
Nicky had a count going: one day, three days, ten. It pissed her off.
The fact that she couldn't control her reaction to losing something as stupid as a pair of headphones pissed her off even more. She didn't want to count the days without music, she didn't want to care as much as she did, she didn't want to retreat to that place inside her where she wore a permanent scowl and became unreachable, but here she was.
It wasn't all bad. Lorna was true to her word and shared her headphones with Nicky on movie night, and it was nice to be that close to her again, to experience the weird intimacy that came from resting their heads together, half of the sound nestled in Nicky's ear and half in Lorna's and the difference stretching between them, through them, like the vibrations Nicky felt ripple through Lorna's body and into her own whenever Lorna laughed.
Lorna came by Nicky's bunk a few times to offer up her headphones for Nicky's 'chapel time' as she put it, but after Nicky turned her down again and again she slowly stopped offering.
Nicky hated the expression Lorna got on her face every time she refused, but she didn't know how to explain the problem and didn't bother to try. She missed the headphones that belonged to her, the way few things in prison did. They had truly been hers, something that had always been waiting for her in just the right spot, something that had carried her for the past three years, letting her escape and feel whole if only for a few hours at a time. As sweet as Lorna's offers were and as stupid as it was to deny them, Nicky had no interest in using headphones she didn't have history with.
She was laying on her back, beating out a rhythm against the pillow with her head, when Lorna said, "Got something for ya, Nichols" from the doorway, and a small, light package abruptly landed on Nicky's chest.
The familiar black shape inside the plastic made Nicky sit up fast and start tearing it open, using teeth where her nails failed, until she was staring down in amazement at the brand new headphones in her lap. The earbuds were nothing fancy, but they were a hell of a lot nicer than the cheap shit commissary sold.
Lorna was still in the doorway, smiling hesitantly and twisting her hands together as she waited for Nicky's reaction. Nicky got up and dragged her inside so they could talk without being overheard.
"Where the hell did you get these?" she asked softly, smiling a little at the end so Lorna would see that she was happy, just confused.
"Red."
Nicky blinked. Lorna was one of Red's girls, sure, but she couldn't quite picture Lorna going to her for something like this or, even more surprising, Red agreeing to help.
"It took some convincing," Lorna told her. "She's still a little gun-shy after all the trouble she's had with her supply lines."
"No shit. The last competitor tried to kill her, and Pornstache wasn't much better."
Lorna was still looking at her anxiously. "They're good, right? I told Red to get you something good – nothin' crazy, so the COs don't notice, but something that'll last you."
"They're perfect." They grinned at each other, and Nicky threw one of her arms around Lorna in a brief hug as a more sobering thought crossed her mind.
"Must've cost you big, huh?"
"Nah, not so much. Just a few favors I gotta do for Red."
Guilt suddenly welled up in Nicky. She didn't deserve any of this, especially after the way she had been acting for the past week and a half.
"I…thanks, kid," she said weakly.
"Sure!" Lorna bounced out of the room, good deed done without a second thought and still blissfully unaware of how much her gift meant to Nicky.
…
Nicky found Red alone in her cube and dangled her new headphones in front of her as she sat down on the opposite bed.
"So, Ma, what'd Morello have to do to get these?"
Red looked amused as she pulled a small tube from her pocket. "I told you I liked her lipstick."
"Lipstick, really? I'm pretty sure these are worth more than a tube of – " Nicky paused to snatch the lipstick away from Red and read its label. "Lady Danger – who the fuck names these things?" Nicky laughed.
"You have your headphones. She has her lipstick. Priorities," Red said sarcastically, raising her hands in the air as if she had given up hope for them all.
It took a moment for the full magnitude of Red's words to hit, but when they did, they struck Nicky to the core. Lorna prided herself on doing her hair and makeup every day, her lipstick as much a part of her as her as her accent or her laugh or her ability to stuff a whole waffle into her mouth without blinking. It meant everything to her in here, in the same stupid way that Nicky's headphones meant everything, and she had just given it up.
"Shit, why would she do that?"
Red rolled her eyes, exasperated by Nicky's thick head for the thousandth time. "She cares about you. Or maybe she was as sick of you moping around as the rest of us."
"Still…the lipstick might mean something to her, but it's not worth much to you."
"She's also doing 'hard labor' in the greenhouse for the next month."
Nicky thought back to all the times Lorna had 'helped' Red in the kitchen and gave her ma a look. "That seems more like a punishment for you than anything else."
Red sighed. "I know. But I had to make her feel like she was paying for it somehow."
"What do I have to do to get the lipstick back?"
"Ask me."
"Can I have Morello's lipstick back, mommy?" She batted her eyelashes at Red until Red nodded that she could keep it.
"You girls are making me soft. If anyone asks, I made you take over shaving duties from Norma, got it?"
"You've got a twisted sense of mother-daughter relationships, you know that?" She cleared her throat slightly before continuing, hoping she sounded casual enough. "I could, uh, come work in the greenhouse too. Make sure you don't bludgeon Lorna to death with a basil plant or whatever."
"That might be a good idea. But you're there to work, not to make love eyes at her over my tomatoes."
…
Nicky woke up extra early on Sunday morning to meet Red and Lorna at the greenhouse. She stopped by Lorna's bunk before she left, slipping Lady Danger under the pillow for Lorna to find later while Boo snored in the other corner.
Red was already barking orders at Lorna when she let herself into the greenhouse, the creaking door causing both women to turn around in surprise.
Red went back to work, but Lorna skipped over to her.
"What're doing here?"
"I sassed back to Red yesterday, and this is my punishment."
"Oh. She didn't mention anything about you."
"Well, I'm here now, so let's start planting things before Red smacks us both with that trowel she's holding, all right?"
They set themselves up at a long table against the windows, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they transferred seedlings into pots. Nicky offered Lorna one of her earbuds and now they were swaying to Van Morrison, Nicky humming and Lorna full-on singing along to the music. Nicky was sure that Red was going to kill them any minute, if not for the singing then for the amount of dirt they were spreading on the floor instead of in pots, but she didn't care much. She'd take whatever lumps Red gave her if it meant she could watch Lorna a little longer from the corner of her eye, feel Lorna's voice coursing into her through the wires and the skin brushing skin and the electricity in the air that connected them.
IV: counts the waves that somehow didn't hit her
"Nichols, you have a visitor. Report to visitation."
Nicky's head snapped up at the announcement, and she wondered if she had imagined it, if spending the last three hours watching people frost cupcakes on the Food Network had melted her brain enough to make her hear things.
But a few of the other women in the rec room had paused their games of poker or Scrabble to look at her, no doubt aware that Nicky was going on almost a year since her last visitor, and that made the announcement real enough.
She stood up slowly and started the long walk to visitation, the one that always left her questioning if anyone from the old days was even alive enough to come see her or if it was one of her mother's lawyers bringing paperwork again, her signature required once a year to keep money flowing into her prison account – the money she wished she was strong enough to reject, but it was easier to sign off on the forms, easier to keep her mother off her back for another year, with no questions asked or fights over the phone. This was the extent of their relationship now – a transaction, a business deal, and Nicky liked to think they were both happier this way, each denying the existence of the other except for the small paper trail they left through each other's lives.
She peered through the windows into the visitors' room, trying to pick out a familiar face, but all the tables were already filled with other couples, other families, and relief washed over her – maybe this had been a false alarm after all.
Nicky stepped into the room anyway, a mistake that caught up with her a half-second later when she locked eyes with her, sitting straight and narrow and closed-off in the very corner of the room, as far away as possible from the other prisoners and still looking like she felt contaminated by everything around her.
It had been years since they had been this close, even with the linoleum and the tables and the distance of an entire room stretching between them, and her mother had her pinned down in a second, a butterfly stuck to a collector's board with every centimeter exposed and on display. Examine the wings. Look at the pretty colors. Find the flaws.
Walking away wasn't an option.
Every step stripped away years, continents, the layers of her defenses, and she felt herself falling backwards in time: needles and hospital beds and feeling constantly lonely at twenty-six; sullen, eternally bored, and chain-smoking at sixteen; labeled doesn't-play-well-with-others at six; drawing pictures for a woman who was not her mother (she didn't understand that yet) as a toddler.
Nicky wondered if her mother could see the same things, if she felt anything but disgust for her surroundings, as she folded herself into the empty chair left for her – slouched, arms crossed with every bit of defiance she could summon, determined to make her mother speak first.
"Nicole. You look…well."
Her mother hated uncomfortable silences, but Nicky wasn't feeling in a charitable mood. She could sit and stare all day while her mother got whatever she needed to off her chest and then they could both pretend this had never happened.
"I had to return to New York to take care of some business. I thought it might be good for us to talk after…after all this time."
Another gap in conversation that Nicky refused to fill.
"You're clean," her mother finally said, the inflection halfway between question and statement. She had seen Nicky high, addicted enough times to know the difference.
"Kinda have to be in here."
"Oh, so you do still speak," her mother said coolly. "You expect me to believe there's no black market, no drug smuggling in this place?"
"I don't expect you to believe anything." She bit each word off angrily.
"I trust the money going into your commissary account has been sufficient?"
"Yes."
Her mother stopped talking, and Nicky almost laughed. Two minutes and they had run out of topics, had exhausted every last connection between them.
"What, not gonna ask me what I've learned? If I'm ready to contribute to society now?"
Her mother, shockingly, did not have a snappy answer to that. She hardly seemed to be paying attention, her gaze fixed somewhere over Nicky's shoulder. Nicky turned to see what was so interesting, and her heart sank as she caught a glimpse of Lorna lingering in the very corner of the visitors' room window, trying to look everywhere except at Nicky and her mother but ducking out of sight completely when she saw both of them staring at her in return.
"Friend of yours?" Her mother asked drily, her voice taking on the tone it always did when she was reminded that her daughter liked girls.
"Fuck buddy, actually," Nicky smirked back, just to see the disapproval in her mother's face. "Speaking of, where is Paolo the Wonderboy?"
Her mother's eyes narrowed, and finally they were back in familiar territory, taking turns baiting each other when their forced attempts at civility failed completely.
"Aw, don't tell me you upgraded to a new model! I miss everything in here."
"That's quite enough, Nicole."
"C'mon, mom. You wanted to talk, let's talk."
Her mother shook her head. "I had hoped prison would make you grow up a little. I see I was wrong, once again."
She stood up, pulling a post-it note with some numbers scribbled across it out of her purse and setting it on the table in front of Nicky.
"If you feel like calling this Christmas – not that you've ever called before – we'll probably be at the house in Riverside. You have my number."
And without so much as a goodbye or a glance backwards, her mother walked out of her life, a scene replayed so often that Nicky couldn't even guess how many times she had watched it happen and done nothing to stop it.
She crumpled the paper in her fist and pretended that no one was looking at her with curiosity as she hurried out, letting the CO on duty search her for contraband before being released back into the safety of Litchfield's halls.
Lorna was still waiting outside, her face creased with worry, but Nicky pushed past her, muttering, "Sorry, not now," as she drifted down the hallway, making for the nearest bathroom.
She practically collapsed onto one of the toilets, her legs shaking too badly to hold her up anymore. She buried her head in her hands, her mother's note crinkling against her skin and something like claustrophobia creeping up her back as she tried to take deep breaths. It was just shock, she told herself – shock that her mother had gotten to her here, of all places, and nothing more than that.
Gradually the shaking subsided enough for her to stand, her hand almost steady as she held her mother's phone number over the water. The seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as she waited for the paper to fall, but it never did, and she found herself tucking it into her pocket instead.
Nicky moved over to the sinks to splash some water on her face, catching her reflection in one of the mirrors as she bent down. She froze, pinned once again by the eyes studying her (even if they were her own), and suddenly she couldn't bear to look at herself anymore, the scrutiny of her mother still sitting heavy on her skin.
She wasn't aware of her fist flying forward to connect with the mirror until the single reflection shattered into hundreds, concentric circles spreading out from a bloody center as tiny shards of glass rained down on the counter around her.
In the broken pieces, she saw Piper standing behind her, clutching her toilet paper a little too hard, and Nicky reluctantly turned to face her.
"I heard you had a visitor. I'm guessing it didn't go well," Piper said carefully.
"I didn't walk away from it smelling like Shalimar, if that's what you mean."
Nicky looked down at the torn skin on her knuckles, the blood slowly dripping to the floor. It didn't even hurt.
Piper gestured to the ruined mirror. "Do you think anyone will notice?"
Like it was a genuine question, like maybe there was a chance everyone would overlook the blood and sharp edges Nicky had left everywhere.
"You wanna hang around and find out?"
Piper shook her head vehemently, and Nicky stole a handful of toilet paper from her to press against her knuckles as they walked out. She didn't think she needed stitches, but if she did she was screwed, because she wasn't about to show her face in medical five minutes after destroying government property.
"If they start asking about it, we can blame it on Ferguson's face."
"How so?"
"How so? Face ugly enough to break a mirror. Have you never watched a movie in your life? Jesus, Chapman."
They reached the doors of the Suburbs. Piper looked at her, her legs dancing a little like a kid who desperately needed to go to the bathroom but was afraid to say anything, and asked, "Do you want help with that?"
"Nah, I've got it, Chapman."
Piper scurried away, no doubt in search of a bathroom with less drama going down in it.
Nicky went back to her bunk and sat heavily on the bed, peeling back the layers of toilet paper to see that her knuckles were still sluggishly leaking blood but didn't look too bad otherwise.
"Nicky? Can I come in?" Lorna stood peeking shyly around the wall of the cube.
"Yeah, sure, kid."
Lorna took one look at the sodden toilet paper wrapped around Nicky's hand and the few spots of blood that had stained the leg of her khakis and said, gently, "Oh, Nicky."
Before Nicky could respond, Lorna disappeared for a minute, returning with a handful of gauze and bandaids and a bottle of antiseptic and settling herself down next to Nicky.
Lorna had always kind of seemed like a girl who would get squeamish at the sight of blood, but there she was, calmly picking small pieces of mirror out of Nicky's hand and pressing gauze down with efficient hands.
She seemed to know what Nicky was thinking and said, "If you lived with my family, you'd be good at this kind of stuff too. Kids always falling out of trees, getting' in fights…" She gestured at Nicky's knuckles. "This is pretty boring, actually."
"Always have been a disappointment."
Lorna bit her lip slightly, everything in her trying not to hurt Nicky as she looked up through her lashes. "That was your mother?"
Nicky fought back the urge to say "Red's my mom" because Lorna knew that already, that wasn't the question, and so she said, tightly, "Yes."
Lorna nodded, her fingers grazing over the back of Nicky's hand again, and it was clear she wouldn't take the conversation any farther if Nicky didn't want her to.
And it would be so easy to change topics, to go back to talking about Lorna's family, but it was like holding her mother's phone number over the toilet bowl all over again: Nicky couldn't quite bring herself to let go.
"Do you think I look like her?"
"Since when do you care what you look like?" Lorna tugged lightly at a strand of Nicky's wild hair before tucking it back behind her ear. "You're Nicky."
The unspoken you're not your mother hung in the air between them, and Nicky thought if Lorna said her name enough times, maybe it would erase all the times her mother had called her Nicole, that name that had never really been hers, the one she could never live up to.
"Sometimes I think about locking Red and my mother in a room together and seeing who comes out alive."
"Is that even a question? Red's a bear. Your mother doesn't stand a chance."
Lorna started brushing antiseptic across Nicky's knuckles and went through three bandaids before giving up completely because they all refused to stick. She had pushed her sleeves up at the beginning to keep her shirt clean, and Nicky could see the mostly-healed chain of scars that wrapped around her arm.
Lorna followed her gaze and twisted her arm slightly to line up her old wounds with Nicky's.
"We match now."
Nicky didn't have the heart to point out the differences: one an act of defiance done to protect the family, the other an act of Nicky's oldest friend, self-destruction. Still, she couldn't help but return Lorna's smile as they both looked down at their scars, and Nicky thought that if a few marks on her skin was the price for choosing Red, it was one she would pay over and over again.
She knew who her family was.
V. oh girl, I'd tear 'em down myself
"Interested in upping the stakes some, Nichols?"
Nicky stopped shuffling cardboard letters around the table and squinted over at Big Boo. "What do you have in mind?"
"We each set a challenge for the other, loser has to complete said challenge."
"All right. You're on."
They finished setting up the Scrabble board before they named their respective challenges.
"No pussy for a week," Nicky said, grinning wickedly at Boo.
"Son, son, you are seriously underestimating me."
"That includes your own, Boo."
Boo looked slightly more impressed. "All right, I accept. Now, you…get Morello to kiss you on the lips. Not a one-second peck either – I'm talking full contact, maybe some tongue, witnesses and all."
"Aww, c'mon," Nicky groaned. She should have known Boo would pull something like this. "Leave Morello out of this. Gimme something good."
"Deal or no deal, Nichols."
Nicky finally nodded. She was a better Scrabble player than Boo, and they both knew it. She just had to not fuck up this one game.
Nicky took an early lead, but it wasn't long before she realized how much trouble she was in. Her hand was filled with vowels, limiting her play to two- or three-letter words, and when Boo stole the last triple word score out from under her, she threw the rest of her letters down in disgust. Game over.
Boo cackled as she brandished the score sheet in front of Nicky's face.
"On your way, Nichols. You've got a lady to woo."
"What if I can't get her to do it?"
She was tempted to not even try. Lorna would be horrified at the proposition, and Nicky couldn't say she blamed her. This could only end in disaster.
"I'm sure I can think of some way to make you pay up," Boo said with a dangerous glint in her eye. Whatever she had in mind was not going to be pleasant.
Nicky walked away, pulling absently at her hair. She knew Lorna was probably in her bunk right now, so she took the most complicated route to get there, stopping first in all the places she knew Lorna didn't frequent. When she finally made it to the Suburbs, she found Lorna lying on her stomach in bed, humming under her breath and marking magazine pages with tape.
Nicky knocked on the wall, and Lorna sat up with a smile when she saw Nicky.
"What's up, Nichols?"
Nicky was already pacing in the doorway, finding it impossible to stay still. "Look, I don't know how to say this, so I'm just gonna say it. I made a bet with Boo that I could get you to kiss me, and I know we're not like that anymore, but I'm asking you to help me out, just this once, as a friend…"
Lorna's face got a little more closed-off, a little more creased with confusion and distrust, with every word that came out of Nicky's mouth, and Nicky could see it all unraveling in front of her: all the time spent on rebuilding their relationship after Lorna had called off the physical part, feeling closer than ever even without the sex, and Nicky had just ruined it all, crossing every line she knew she could never cross.
Nicky sighed, sick of herself. "You know what? Forget it. This was a really stupid idea. You know how I get – I can't say 'no' to a challenge, but that's totally my problem, and I shouldn't have let you get dragged into this. Sorry. Can we forget I ever said anything?"
Lorna was still staring at her with that look on her face. Nicky didn't wait any longer to make her escape, hating herself for fucking things up so quickly, her goddamn mouth causing nothing but damage every time she opened it.
She automatically headed for the chapel, a place where she could avoid both Boo and Lorna for a while. She didn't turn when she heard footsteps gathering speed behind her, not wanting to talk to anyone right now, but suddenly Lorna was at her elbow, softly pulling at Nicky's arm until she stopped.
Lorna concentrated most of her attention on their shoes, swallowing deeply before she spoke.
"It's just a kiss, right? It doesn't mean anything."
"You really don't have to," Nicky said seriously. There was no way she was going to let Lorna talk herself into fulfilling Boo's stupid bet for her. She didn't deserve that.
"No, it's – it's okay. I can do it." Lorna looked up at her questioningly, stubbornly, as if she wanted to know if this was still what Nicky wanted.
Nicky sighed. "Just pretend I'm your sister or something, all right?"
Lorna recoiled slightly at the thought. "You're not helping…"
"Sorry. Pretend I'm Ryan Gosling or whoever you girls fantasize about these days."
Lorna nodded quickly, planting her hands firmly on Nicky's shoulders as she raised herself slightly up on tiptoe and brought their lips together. It was pretty chaste, as kisses go, but Nicky closed her eyes and leaned into it, her hands settling at Lorna's hips and holding her there as long as she dared.
Lorna pulled away first, both of them avoiding eye contact. Nicky cleared her throat and tried to think of something to break the awkwardness between them.
"Um, so…"
"So…"
They both tried to speak at the same time, then stopped again, waiting for the other to go first in a stand-off that stretched on and on.
"I should probably go…" Nicky started. "I'll figure out how to make this up to you later, okay? You just saved me from becoming Boo's bitch for the foreseeable future – that's huge."
Lorna frowned at her. "Wait, won't you need proof that I did it?"
"Well, actually – "
But Lorna never let her finish. One hand snaked up to the back of Nicky's neck as she kissed Nicky again – purposeful this time as she left her lipstick smudged over Nicky's mouth.
Lorna leaned back to check her work, and Nicky didn't think she imagined the look of satisfaction she saw there.
She couldn't wait to finish what she had been trying to tell Lorna before.
"I was gonna say, Flaca's about 20 feet behind you. This shit's going to be all over the prison in about five minutes. Sorry, kid."
She slapped Lorna playfully on the ass and started walking back to the rec room without waiting for Lorna's response.
"The look on Boo's face better be worth it, Nichols," Lorna suddenly yelled after her.
Nicky grinned, aware that she looked half-crazy to everyone else. Lorna Morello had just kissed her. Twice. In that moment, it felt better than sex, better than heroin, better than anything else in her life to walk down that hallway with Lorna's lipstick smeared recklessly across her face, and she was going to make damn sure that everyone knew it.