Hi, guys. This is my first Orange is the New Black fanfiction and, to be honest, I've only seen a few episodes, so my knowledge of the show is not very extensive. I have, however, fallen very madly in love with Alex Vause - thus the following. Please, let me know what you think via reviews. As I watch more of the show, I will incorporate more characters in the story. Tiffany will definitely make an appearance at some point.
Piper never wanted to be that girl.
That girl with a conventional white house and a conventional yellow mailbox, who lived in the conventional suburbs with a conventional SUV. She never wanted a conventional marriage with a conventionally attractive husband who worked at a conventional job during the week and conventionally insisted they both go to the conventional Church in their conventional town with their conventional 2.5 kids. It has all seemed, so, well, ordinary. Yet here she was, three years after her release from prison, living in a small, conservative white town with her normal life, normal husband, and, in about four months, normal kid.
She gazed across the table at John, her husband of two years, whom she'd met about seven months after her release from jail. Despite her infrequent attempts at contacting him after her time was up, Piper had only once gotten ahold of Larry. She felt a pang in heart as she remembered him telling her about Julianna, the woman he'd met shortly after finding out that Piper had cheated on him with Alex. Images of her begging him to give her a second chance, insisting that her experiences had changed her flicked through her head like images on a projection screen.
"Please, Larry! I love you!"
"Piper, you know that I'll always love you, too. But…we aren't good for each other."
"Larry, please…" she begged, not even trying to stifle her sobs. "I broke it off with Alex. I won't ever see her again. It was just sex."
Larry sighed. "Piper, even if you believed that, it's not the point. While you were in there, I did a lot of thinking. Thinking for once about what's best for me, thinking about what I want and…"
His voice trailed off.
"And what you want isn't me," Piper finished in a voice totally devoid of emotion.
"Piper," Larry began, pausing as though heavily contemplating what to say next. "It isn't that I don't care for you, but I'm getting older, I've got to grow up, and I just…"
"Just what?"
"Want something more stable. I mean, when we first met, I was captivated by you. By your adventurous spirit, your bisexuality, Hell, even your tumultuous past fascinated me. You were a mystery that I wanted to figure out."
Piper bit her lip, tears streaming down her cheeks. "W-what changed?"
Larry paused. "Time. Piper, all of that was fine and well when we were in our early twenties, but the fact is that I'm going to be thirty six in a year and…"
For the first time, Piper could feel a spark of anger, slowly growing inside her.
"And what? Suddenly you're too mature for me, the bisexual ex-con?"
"Piper, please, I'm not trying to fight with you. You are who you are and that's fine. But Julianna - she's really lovely, works as a registered nurse, and is already planning our weddin-
"You're engaged?!," exclaimed Piper. "Glad to see you weren't too heartbroken by my incarceration."
"I was going to tell you. I just didn't know how."
Piper was no longer crying. "Yeah, 'sorry Piper. While you were at the lowest point in your life, I was off fraternizing with some girl while planning our fucking future of white-fences, soccer games, and family cookouts' doesn't exactly roll off the tongue."
"There's nothing wrong with wanting a conventional lifestyle, Piper," retorted Larry, growing defensive. "And as I recall, you weren't exactly pining away for me in prison. Unless your way of showing that you missed me is eating out your ex girlfriend in a Chapel."
"Fuck you," hissed Piper. "Fuck you and your stupid, oblivious, suburban, heteronormative life. You don't know what it's like in a fucking prison. You don't know what I've been through. You don't get me."
"No, I don't," answered Larry in a suddenly calm voice. "And therein lies the problem."
After that, Piper never again heard from Larry. Following a few one night stands and a particularly nasty drug binge with a girls who resembled a certain black-haired beauty from her past, she realized one morning as awoke naked next to yet another stranger, head throbbing from a wicked hangover, that she needed seriously to get her shit together.
And she did.
Despite her criminal record, Piper managed to get into a fairly reputable accounting program at a local university and, shortly after graduation, managed to land a good job as a CPA at a firm in Twinsburg, Ohio. Though far away, she accepted the opportunity with zeal. Finally, she had a chance to reinvent herself.
For the first time in her life, she tried.
She tried to appear interested when her female colleagues engaged in frivolous gossip about attractive men at the firm. She tried not to talk about her past. She tried to abandon any and all lesbian tendencies. And she tried to permanently rid herself of her destructive ways. And, with some practice, she succeeded. She was accepted into the inner circle of the cliquish, conventional women at work. She excelled at her bean-counting 9-5 job. She was, by all counts, normal for the first time in her life. Even her perpetually strained relationship with her parents began to improve.
Though she never told her new friends anything about her dark past, she found she somewhat enjoyed spending time with them, albeit in small doses. Though part of her longed for the passion of her past – of Alex – the rational side of her knew it was better, much safer this way, in her conventional, if not boring life. And so when John Kerwings, a conventional man, normal by anyone's standards, asked her on a date, she said yes. When he asked her to be his girlfriend, she said yes. When he asked her to join his Church, she said yes. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes. Although ordinary, John Kerwings was a good man, decent in bed, with a stable income, and everything she needed to safeguard herself against the unpredictability of the world. They had a reasonable marriage and were reasonably happy, granted she would never tell him any details about her time in prison or with Alex.
Alex.
To this day, that name made Piper's heart skip a beat. While part of her longed to see her again, she knew, logically, that Alex was either in jail, a foreign country, or – considering her line of work – dead. Piper cringed at the very thought of the woman she once loved lying lifeless and made it a habit to regularly read the newspapers and watch the news for any sign of her.
Truth be told, her ordinary, conventional life was going well. That is, until she saw her.