(Author's note: Warnings: alcohol abuse, mentions of drug addiction/overdose, possible OOCness (esp for Nicky), bad sappy sex, hospitals, very brief mention of suicide thoughts when it comes to Soso (much lighter than canon).
Opinions and constructive criticism are almost as important as a coffee date with Tasho and Prepon.)
There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars. (Jack Kerouac)
.
Maybe they're talking when they take off, but the moment when everyone starts with remembering comes silent, each of them staring outside a different window as the car advances on the highway, presumably symmetrical, all but Soso who sits in the middle of the back seat and stares forward, and is the only one who keeps speaking. The road is uneventful, a clean line, almost gamble-worthy. The landscape licks the windows quickly, brushing itself clean in green and cement blue and sunny, the sides of the road parting with considerable courtesy as they approach.
Piper is going through a breakup, breathing deeply with her head buried between her knees. Nicky is taking a break from drugs, and she's taking a break from Morello, and it's rough. "Take me away," comes the first gasp. "Let's go on a fucking roadtrip," it is rusty.
So Brook talks, and Alex drives, and Poussey presses her thoughts against the window, squeezing them shut between her earphones and the violet cotton candy clouds that are scraping the matte sky clean. Piper pays for the tolls when they reach them, her face a blank page for the glass to color. Alex's eyes try to meet Nicky's through the front mirror.
It's been a long time since they've seen each other smile.
.
In some other universe she would still be naïve and she'd be less of, and she'd romanticize the fuck out of it, the pain that comes with clarity and the dizziness that comes with the smell of gasoline and the thick rosy sunsets that they chase from petrol stations. They're an odd procession, with Piper and her favorite clichés and the distance she lets flow between them. Phones buzz, they turn their heads away from them. Maybe one of them is Red. She pictures the name appearing on the screens, written in all the different fonts of their phones as a missed call or a voice message blurry and heavy with her accent. Maybe she worried herself sick. Maybe beneath the harsh shell she still cares.
(Maybe one of them is Morello. Maybe one of them is a joke, a fucking transparent one that looks like herself.)
("I don't wanna do it anymore.")
Without a Red, or a Burset, or a Mendoza, Vause has taken over being responsible, filling their gaping with calories. She hands around sandwiches and coffees and gets back in the car, concentrating deeply into driving through the night, rolling a smoke after every tunnel, breathing sharply, always making sure that Nicky's puffy gaze hasn't twiched. Piper is anxiety, avoiding Alex, avoiding herself, dancing around the issue, obliviously embracing her denial. Soso has even stopped thanking them excitedly for bailing her out of jail and letting her tag along after getting naked in the middle of a violent protest. Nicky's frizzy head is bouncing through the mirror. It's all it does.
They stop to consult the map. There is no GPS, no time for it, no cooperation. Someone mentions Larry's name. No one dares to bring Morello up, only the constant buzzing of one phone or another, hitting dead on a wall and bouncing back. The empty paper cups make them miserable. They fight, stop the car. Nicky storms out, bangs the door, shelters her cigarette with the nest of her palm and lights it, squinting hard, dragging a heavy breath. The radio plays the Beach Boys. God only knows how they do it – avoiding gazes.
Piper gets back in the car, slams the door shut, looking straight ahead. She puts her seatbelt on. It's a signal.
On these days, they're eager to follow.
.
Nicky's a cracked shell, a hollow sickness, and they're treating her like it. Alex knows addiction, she knows messy. Nicky and Alex have gone at it hard, like friends do, twisted, inexorable. Morning finds them surrounded by sleepy, living statue complexes, snoring lightly, heads resting on shoulders, groggy, stiff. They wake their friends in front of the odd diner in the middle of nowhere, that looks like it's burst out of Saturday Night Fever, only post-apocalyptic.
They have sausages and ketchup and milkshakes with glazed cherries on top. Poussey fiddles with the tabasco, Soso inhales the cinnamon until she sneezes. Nicky tries to hit on the waitress. (A smirk does the job just fine). Morello keeps texting. Supposedly. Are there directions for that? What catchy pickup line are you supposed to say in order to run from yourself? Nicky thinks, where?
.
Piper takes over the steering wheel as Alex sleeps, unmoving. It's her money they're using for this. It's her lies to her parents that feed them eggs and bacon and Soso's vegetables and soy milk. She's the only one who answers her phone. There's a different power dynamic when she's the one who's driving, when she's the one who's breathing. She allows herself to steal a glimpse of Alex's sleeping form on the passenger's seat. And again. She lets Fleet Foxes play just for the sake of imagining Flaca's reaction. She switches stations before the song is finished. It's relaxing after that, Magnetic Fields and morning. Clarity. She thinks of Larry, his bad driving. She doesn't accelerate. She thinks, have they gotten mosquito repellents? She wants to chew on her fingernails. She tries to pretend that the steering wheel is therapeutic. Maybe it is. "Other people stress bake," Cal once said, "I stress drive". "You're going to kill yourself," she told him. "Nothing's gonna kill you harder than life," he replied.
Always pretentious. It's where the truth hides.
.
They've got one tent. Three people can sleep in it. Three people prefer to stay in the car. Alex and Piper have shared all the driving and are in no way planning to be deprived of their deserved right to the lowered front seats. "If y'all think I'm gon sleep out there and be some wolf's breakfast then piss the fuck off!" Poussey huffs and curls up with her iPod on what's left of the back seat. Nicky snorts something about "pussy pass" and watches as Soso, relatively experienced with several shades of hippie camping, does all the work for her. Soso is ridiculously excited and can't seem to shut up. Nicky knows there are no wolves here: this meadow's a safe camping spot, but she's started reconsidering about whether the seclusion of the tent will serve as a breather, seclusion, even. The idea of getting stuck in the car is still pressing against her chest.
She'd choose the wolves any day.
"Shit," Piper pulls her out of her claustrophobic musings. Her instinct about having forgotten any kind of mosquito protection is proven to be true. Nicky almost unconsciously smacks her thigh even though she's refusing to wear shorts, as if anything could bite her through the thick black denim that completes her sad comfy dyke armor. After that, she can't stop itching for the rest of the night. Every inch of her skin that her hair touches is set aflame. She wants to punch shit and kick shit and gnaw her way out of her itchy skin before lying face down on the first thin layer of September leaves that cover the ground and cry herself to sleep.
They're responsible enough to light the bonfire away from the leaves, and they all got to admit that Soso knows a tip too many to keep it safe. Sweater Weather and Summertime Sadness are bursting from Piper's iPhone and they all groan but she reveals a bag of marshmallows and she's improvising on a DIY mosquito repellent made of vodka, jojoba and lemon oil, because she's a fuckin soap maker, and apparently that means she carries that shit with her and knows chemistry. She's looking more like her usual self than she has in years, and they don't dare ruin it.
It's been going well so far. They've been playing Truth or Dare and Nicky almost likes it, likes that it comes with the end of a nightmarish summer, likes that they're making her do things. She's a bloodhound for oblivion, and she's filling her lungs with smoke as she amuses herself with Soso's embarrassingly privileged (and secretly, painfully relatable) high school stories, and the obscene looks Chapman and Vause pretend to avoid sharing because they're an oblivious pain in both her asscheeks. And then Poussey reveals the weed, and it all goes downhill from there.
"Hey Washington, we agreed no drugs, is that so fucking hard for you to understand?"
"Yo sorry I brought you free stuff, and shit! It's just weed man, 's good for your teeth!"
Being a withdrawing addict with a heroin mule and a pot pusher for your besties is not an easy job, nor could it ever be, Nicky should have known that before she decided to land her sorry, half-dead ass in the hospital with a heart infection, smashing her already ruined head in the rock bottom that Red had always been talking about.
("You've disappointed me. Better get it together Nicky, cause you're alone now, you and your demons.")
Mothers. Always dramatic as fuck. What difference is there between them? Nicky thought she'd figured that out. Turns out she'll always be trapped in the same circle. Does she kill her mothers or do they kill her instead? Is the chicken the murderer, or the fucking egg and its salmonela?
Now her friends have agreed on treating her like a cause, one they pity, one they've stopped checking their phones about because Red hasn't called, so they've taken it upon their responsibility to pet her and nurse her and pretend like they deem her capable for anything more than suckling on their tits.
Maybe they're right, y'know. Maybe it's all she's got left.
"Nichols. Truth or Dare?"
"Suck my clit, Washington."
"Suck Soso's face yo'self."
So Nicky does. She curses Washington and her fucking complexes, the reflection of her broken heart on Nicky's palms, both of them falling for the straight best friend and breaking their neck in the gutter. She curses her and she thanks the fuck out of her as she swallows a shock of marshmallows off of Brook's mouth and tugs on her too big fluffy geometric pattern sweater, lantern eyes set on fire.
.
She slides down Soso's pants the moment they make it inside the tent. Girl doesn't ever shut up but Nicky still does her best to make her feel important, knows she has to do that. Sometimes she can almost see herself in her and her stupid romanticized abusive idols and her dreams of revolution, but then she remembers she grew up, then she remembers she only had to talk a little before she got tired of her own bullshit, before she realized that whoever was listening did it for something in return. That's how she grew up, expecting things from people for whom there was something in it. Exchange, payment, supply and demand, and her fingers knuckles deep in a wet cunt. That was her life up to then and she tried to pretend as if heartbreak was for pussies and as if she wasn't one, as if her bad heart was only sinking cause it was languid and dislocated, cause she was trying to keep herself awake.
Not anymore.
"Wow!" the little Asian girl is panting, sprawled back upon the sleeping bag, completely naked save for Nicky's unbuttoned blue flannel shirt. "This is almost as exciting at as – ah! As my first time! We were at a river festival it was – oh I love first… first times. It's like when you first – oh yes! when you first listen to the Beatles and you feel like… like your body's levitated above sea level and you can float through the lyrics… of like, the first that set the pace…"
Nicky remembers listening to the Beatles as if they were the only ones willing to listen to her.She remembers reading Paul and John's breakup letters and almost getting sick with betrayal, skipping school for two days straight in order to let that sink in, thinking is that what people are really like, is that what friends do?
(She learnt later, friends do each other, fuck each other, kill each other, shake hands with each other. She hates Soso for it so she fucks her up and then she shuts her up by suffocating her with her thighs. Soso is good and she hates her even more as she hears her muffled moans and she lets her eyes roll on the back of her head.)
She was screaming her name on Sunday mornings like she believed in her, like they were real, a song of worship, foolishly stretching itself into resembling reality and into reimagining it. She had gone as far as to think it was going to last, as to touch her that way, trying to pull the missing pieces together, never having to unlearn to live inside of her. She felt the highlights of pressure on her muscles as she mapped Lorna's body with the tips of her fingers. She remembers the tiny earthquake beneath her knees, the wooden floor of their apartment as it gave way and sucked her in. "I'm engaged." "Okay a'ight, what about you get me off first?" She remembers how she had needed a fix, how her insides melted limp beneath the burning tent of her skin.
"It's better that way, Nicky."
Her abdomen spasms, she comes slack on Brook's mouth, her breasts sore with the brunette's clumsy groping. Her scar's itching and she tries to ignore it but truth is, she wants to rip herself open and scream. They cuddle instead, languid and lulled by the crickets and the night birds. She doesn't have the energy to feel alone, but she wraps the Japanese girl in her fluffy sweater with the tangerine patterns, a tiny orange thing, sleeping and drooling peacefully on her until her arm feels dead. She manages to free herself and lies in her sleeping bag, feeling blessed by how comfortable the earth feels compared to hours on a car seat. She's shivering so she pulls a blanket over her sore figure, curling up in a fetal position, in the way she was ruined once, with words she would scribble in the pages of history books, remind herself how it used to be.
When everyone seems to be sleeping she gets hold of her phone, battery almost dead. There are several missed calls, much less than what she expected from the way the constant buzzing seemed to tug like handcuffs around her lungs. There are four texts. No Red. Two Morellos. She needs something. A tequila shot from Soso's neck. A punch in the fucking throat.
She was running like mad, she was barefoot on needles. She got Flaca to hack the account, save Lorna's sorry ass from the feds. Lorna was scared shitless, clinging on her like dear life itself. She held her and stroked her hair as she cried, then when the danger was over she got her drunk and tucked her to bed. "Christopher can't know," was all she had sobbed. "Don't worry, kid," Nicky had kissed her cheek.
Booze makes her vomit and smoke makes her dry.
[From: Morello|00:16] Nicky where r u? I'm worried
[From: Morello|00:19] Pls talk 2 me xx
She turns her phone off for good, swallowing the lump of wool that's biling up her throat, filling her chest with mud, bringing her on her knees in some bloody swamp, in her mother's Louboutins. Soso is snoring on her side.
We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die
and I'm not ashamed to say the roar of guns and cannons almost
made me cry.
.
Alex wakes up with a shudder even though it's the sun that makes her stir. Her toes are threatening to fall off and Poussey has confiscated the blanket on the back seat. She curses. Piper is curled up on the lowered driver's seat like a baby. She wonders what it will be like for her, if it'll feel as weird as it feels from Alex, waking up at dawn at a meadow, away from her work and responsibilities (but not away from the emails she quickly responds to on her phone), stiff and sore inside Cal's car. Alex looks at her and her heart jolts. She takes her heavy leather jacket and wraps it around Piper's shoulders, before getting out of the car to breathe some clean air.
Piper and Poussey wake up shortly after, before the watercolors of the sunrise have evened out on a brand new turquoise sky. It's still misty and cold, but the sun has started warming up everything he touches. Poussey stumbles out of the car, crankily grunting "Sorry for taco blocking." Alex snorts. They all find in horror that Soso is a heavy sleeper, and when they try to wake her up they figure out she's also a pretty naked one. They gather the tent and brush off Nicky's offers to drive; not a good idea. Alex drives instead, through relatively empty highways and breathtaking landscapes, up and down hills, industrial areas and green forests that seem to run away from the car that heads to a suppressed horizon. They see all different states of the sky, from counting clouds and filling up the missing parts to start sweating profusely in the angle that sun hits their faces.
They're listening to some French song about lovers and nice weather and Piper is wearing a huge pair of sunglasses and a retro headscarf, as if they're driving across the French Riviera, and gets in a fight with Poussey about cultural appropriation and being a pretentious bitch. Nicky can't help but snicker, but everyone is appalled by the way Soso chooses to remain silent through the drive, even when Mika comes up on the radio and they all start singing Blue Eyes to the top of their lungs.
Nicky is listening to her own music because of course she is. She's the one sitting on the passenger's seat now, and Poussey who's sitting behind her can hear Janis Joplin bursting loudly through her earphones, a weird alter ego relationship, built on a path of frizzy hair and an appetite for self-destruction.
It's the point where their phones start buzzing again and they answer with more or less truth. Poussey always calls her dad first, loves him a lot, hides nothing and cheerfully shares her news. Morello keeps storming everyone's phone with freaked out messages. As for Brook, she finds several messages from her parents, in that tone she can always hear pound through her head and make her pump with anxiety. She ignores a message from Meadow, telling her about a series of autumn festivals and inviting her to make headpieces together when she returns.
("This is cultural appropriation, Meadow. Remember when I told you about it? We can't wear these… these feathers! It's straight up disrespectful to another culture! These feathers had a unique significance, they were signs of rank or family or given after a battle achievement!" "Oh come on, the concept is different! One, we're pacifists anyway, and two, they're done out of admiration for another culture! Sides we're gonna look so good!" "No, Meadow. We're going to look ridiculous. I'm Asian and you are the shade of white chocolate with a shot of espresso young adult novels tend to use to describe skin tones! We can't wear them with hot shorts and tribal side-boob tank tops!" "Why do you care so much? No one's gonna notice aside from several Tumblr freaks, it isn't even that important!")
("It is important to me".)
So she lets Piper do her thing on her one side, and she lets Poussey take silly selfies for Snapchat on her other side. She leans forward and tugs on Nicky's sleeve instead. "Will you stop avoiding me?"
Nicky turns around, taking her earphones off her hears with an amused expression. "Hey, what about you leave me with my fuckin music for a while, huh?"
"No. We need to talk and we're going to do it now, while we're trapped in a car with three other people, because you think I'm a tool for you to screw around, Nichols, but I'm not."
"Listen kid, I'm not having your baby dyke drama right now, I'm really not."
Everyone is trying to look away, biting lips and lowering eyes. Alex just keeps on driving.
"I thought we were friends…"
"And what, I don't fit in your fancy BFF criteria? Oh Geez, did Meadow eat you better?"
"No I get it," Brook narrows her eyes and presses her lips together. "This is your thing, right? Fucking people up because you're seriously fucked up."
"No kid, you're just fucking annoying."
"Is that what you told Morello? That's she's fucking annoying? Is that why you're avoiding her calls and let her get sick with worry? Makes you feel good to have everyone begging you?"
"Morello and I were different," Nicky spits. Brook was wrong. The secluded environment of the car couldn't trap Nicky Nichols. Alex has just enough reflexes to open her eyes widely in horror and pull the brake just a second after Nicky throws her door open and jumps out of the car, sliding over the road.
Alex is really starting to feel like a fucking babysitter, one that's soon gonna have a heart attack.
.
The beach is not crowded enough, the end of August does that to beaches even though the sun is shining brightly in contrast with the breezy nights, making the sand burn like coils beneath their feet. Piper is dizzy from the car ride and feels more out of her depth than she looks in her tanned skin and tropical floral bikini, her hair highlighted and her nose scattered with freckles. When it comes to Alex though, Piper is still unprepared. She can't recall a single moment when the older woman didn't look in her element, even though she doesn't entirely fit in, she doesn't know if there's any place that would be enough for her right now. She's too big for this universe, too gorgeous, too real. She's wearing a black halter swimsuit and her hair is pulled up and she looks so different from her usual, concentrated self, more relaxed, more accessible. She remembers the oceans between them. She wonders if there's enough space for them to dissolve. She asks herself, where?
Alex comes to sit next to her. The outlines of their bodies fit; their thighs pressed together, their shoulders brushing. Piper fiddles with a stick, draws spirals on the sand. Alex's skin is radiating warmth, Piper swallows hard, feeling her cheeks burning. It's not that they haven't spent time close to each other before. Waltzing around possibilities and schemes, sleeping next to each other in the car and whispering things in dark corners but never that intimate, never free enough to hold onto each other in ways that keep her awake at night. The woman leans forward, smile tainted behind the thick-rimmed glasses she's still wearing. "You got your sunscreen?"
She remembers Larry applying sunscreen on her back, awkward and gentle and teasing, laughing on the crook of her neck, splashing water and chasing her on the waves.
"You're full of clichés," she chuckles faintly, her eyes distant.
"Aren't you?" Alex smirks, quirking an eyebrow as she takes the bottle of sunscreen from Piper's hands and squirts some on her back. Piper's heart catches on her throat as Alex's smooth hands work her muscles loose. She forgets about Nicky and her cigarettes and worrying too much and wanting to be uncharacteristically alone. She forgets about Soso and Poussey tackling each other in the sea. Alex is touching her and God how she's missed her.
And then Alex leaves to look for Nicky, and Piper is alone again and dizzy again and possibly acquiring a heatstroke, so she gets up and lets the waves lick her toes. The water is freezing cold and she squirms at the feel of it, yet she walks forward with a steady pace as if it's cathartic. She thinks of her parents who think she's with Polly in a spa in LA, and their money they've been living on. She thinks of Larry who actually is with Polly. That new Larry she got to meet the last month, the Larry who cried and threw shit on the floor and fucked her best friend, the Larry who saw through her and her rawness, the lives she'd been trapped between and Alex's place in them long before she did.
Her toes have stopped touching bottom so she dives in completely until her teeth are not chattering anymore, until her frantic heart finds its chill. She's swimming with long dips chasing sunrays and their glimmer, tasting the salt and feeling it dry on her lips when she gets on the surface.
"Is this you?" Her eyelids slide shut and she shudders when she feels someone touching her weightless, underwater, a leg pressing behind her knee, soft skin brushing softly on her sides. She turns around, breathless, to taste Alex's rich breath floating between the clouds on the thick, salty air, her voice echoing through the inside of her veins, as if she's talking to her through the pipes of a bathtub that vibrates as if it's home, and her body is home, and she doesn't feel lost anymore. "I can't see shit without my glasses."
Maybe this is my chance, that sick, selfish part of her that craves the power that comes with it hums. Maybe this is the part where we're unequal, the part where I only get to look at you, worship you. The part where I take you in and memorize the ways I can touch you and the globe between your fingers. The part where I lull you to sleep and get to know what your skin has to tell me. The part that you owe me.
She's been numb, unconscious even, until she realizes that she's claiming her cautiously, like a coward, her fingers brushing over the smooth curves of her face, tracing her cheekbones, craving to kiss her eyes. Alex isn't smiling. She looks small instead, that's a first. Maybe it's that she's not wearing her glasses. Maybe it's that she's wet and cold and pressed against her in a way that makes her feel like she can own the universe, but doesn't know how.
.
Nicky Nichols has always been an enigma, and Poussey would rather stay away. She's a sex monster, craving and drinking people in for the biggest part of her life, yet she's never seen her naked, braless and in shorts against the heat, in the full bikini glory of her tattoos, or walking around her apartment barefoot and in her underwear. She's a dyke queen, tasting and fucking in the dark, yet she's never seen her exclusive, never attached, except with a woman who will never be available, who is incapable of loving her right.
She remembers of the girl she ruined, the girl who held her hand and taught her German and weaved flowers through the buttons of her jacket. The girl she fucked in her pyjamas on a rooftop, the girl who made her taste like metal.
Poussey tries to stay away from Nichols and from herself so she walks around the shore, finds silence behind some cliffs. Nichols is there sitting on a rock alone, completely naked save from her towel that is tightly wrapped around her body and the water hugging her ankles. Her head is thrown back and she's motionless, loud rock music bursting through her earphones. Poussey lays low, sitting on the sand, awkwardly hugging her knees and digging tunnels with her toes. Her lips are parted; every now and then she runs her fingers through the roots of her sidecut. Eventually she stands up and walks to her, kicks her side with her foot, forcing her to snap back into reality. Nichols raises an almost non-existent eyebrow, gestures at her to sit in her private little piece of the beach. She offers her an earphone that storms Sex Pistols. Poussey imagines her sucking someone off in a canoe in the middle of the ocean, that terrible smirk of hers. Fuckin pathetic.
"You think of her?" Nichols asks, pulling her feet close to her body as if she's trying to cover it. Poussey's heart runs a marathon.
Yes she fuckin thinks of her. Hasn't stopped, not for a second. She sees her in everything they could be doing together, in the beauty of the nature they're crossing, in the laughs and the jokes they could be sharing. She tried really hard to lock her behind her ribs and swallow the key. Turns out she's transparent.
She thinks of the kiss she stole, of how dirty it felt. Of breaking the rules and breaking her heart as she thought maybe, maybe she loves me, maybe she doesn't know the way. She thinks of her eyes crawling away, of her voice, sympathetic, condescending. "P I'm not – I don't…"
"Why?" Poussey croaks, crossing the line, this fucking line that everyone's been foolishly tiptoeing around. "Do you?"
It's the wrong thing to say. She feels herself drowning, too heavy to swim, becoming a trophy, a huge shiny one like Brook before her. Nichols calls her kid and fucks her in a stinky wooden cabin and she's like, merde. Fuck Nichols and her fucking self-entitlement. Fuck Nichols and her pain and her smoke and her been-there-done-that.
("Fuck me, Nichols." "That's pretty much the plan.")
She's feeling like a big fucking idiot, wishing with all her heart that she could think of no one but Taystee when she comes, writhing on the tips of Nichols' fingers, and feeling fucking blessed when she doesn't.
"You a'ight?" Nichols asks with a hint of concern, breathless, panting with the effort against the wall of the cabin, naked, white, soft, offering her a cigarette that she's somehow managed to smuggle in here, despite the apparent lack of her clothes.
"Fuckin peachy," Poussey growls under her breath. "But now shut the fuck up."
"The fuck is it, Washington?"
She's already on her knees, shaking off her half tied bikini top. "Now I'm sucking you off."
They've never been together in this; she's never particularly cared for all the things they don't share. Yet Poussey is travelling around for a reason to stop drinking, n'importe lequel, et Nichols est déjà là.
.
Piper drives while Alex rests. Nicky receives a light punch on her arm when she calls her Mama Vause. She winks and says something about her mommy issues, then goes off to flirt with the odd camper. Soso falls asleep on the sand, her head resting on Poussey's lap, wrapped inside Piper's Smith hoodie. Alex and Piper are sharing a blanket on the sand. Their bare ankles are tangled together, their fingers are tracing circles and again, it's kind of inevitable.
"Don't you dare pretend you fuckin know how to talk constellations," Piper huffs, a smile tugging playfully on the corners of her lips.
Alex shrugs her shoulders, throws her head back to the heavily embroidered tulle of the sky. "Everyone's bullshitting their way through them. See that one over there? It's the Galina Reznikov constellation. See that starry complex that looks like a dick? It's a cosmic piroshky. And that flickering one? It's her ego, and the crippling guilt of fucking up and following shit methods to help her children get through drug addiction. See, easy!" she smiles when Piper snorts a laugh. "Go ahead, you try now."
"Mhmm, I think I can clearly see the famous Morello constellation over there. It's currently feeling pretty, witty and gay…"
"And racist…"
"And racist. Also, reconsidering life choices, shooting other stars to save its sorry ass." A star falls, one in a series of many, crossing the sky like a firework. "I hate falling stars," Piper murmurs grumpily. "They're putting so much pressure on me like, they're practically telling me my life will never be the way I wish, just because I'll never catch one on time. That's fucking unfair."
Alex smiles and says nothing. Lately, she's started feeling like a satellite.
.
Red doesn't call. On a brand new note, Tricia does, and Flaca as well ("I swear y'all fucking putas"), both worried out of their minds for not knowing if Nicky is okay and where they've all disappeared. They arrive on a shitty motel late at night, and get themselves three rooms. Nicky stays in a room alone. Her newly charged phone buzzes, once, twice after that. She'll never get used to the radioactivity that storms through her body every time Morello's name appears on the screen. She hangs up and shoves it down the bottom of her rucksack.
Red still hasn't called.
She meets Vause at the bar. She looks confused, a gigantic sexy puppy with a lost husky voice and tracksole boots, avoiding flip-flops like the roadtrip plague.
"Kubra is going to fucking kill me," she says hoarsely, taking a deep drag of the cigarette that Nicky has lit for her.
"Smoking's going to fucking kill you," Nicky teases before claiming her cigarette back, letting her eyes roll with orgasmic bliss.
"So is life. Only slower." Her hand finds Vause's and she squeezes it over the counter. And then, "let's get you a fucking drink."
It somehow always ends up with her taking care of people. With her temporarily becoming people's Red.
She knows that Vause of all people understands. What she doesn't know is, which side she's on.
.
They don't even discuss the whole motel situation. Piper and Alex are sharing a room. A bed. Inevitable. Better live with it.
It's a sleazy little room, swinging on the verge of being clean. Alex can't stand the white fluorescent lights, so they walk around in the dark. Piper watches her brush her teeth, strip to a black fitted camisole and taking off her glasses. She's been overthinking things, making all kinds of schemes in her head, only to find Alex going through it as if it's natural.
"Alex?" Piper sits on the edge of the bed, gaze drifting out of the tiny window.
"What is it, kid?"
"Do you think this is where we're supposed to be right now?"
The dark haired woman smiles faintly, tapping the space on the bed next to her. "Come over here."
Piper looks up and raises her legs on the double bed, stretching over her side, not trying to separate their space anymore. Her face looks silver against the pillow. Her knuckles brush over Piper's cheek, an unsynced response to getting to know her, and she inhales her rich scent. "You're doing great, kid. You've got to trust me."
She doesn't try anything. Piper lies back and stares at the shadows that enter through the window and dance on the ceiling, laying still under the blanket with her head resting on her wrist, at the sound of Alex's peaceful breathing.
.
They wake up fitting perfectly, facing each other, Piper's forehead tucked in the hollow beneath Alex's chin, knees bent and almost touching in a mirrorlike image. Nicky raises an eyebrow when she sees them but says nothing. Poussey groans that she's hungry. No one dares to wake Soso just yet. Piper offers to go get them some breakfast from the village. Alex looks up at her, says "I'm coming with you".
They need to drive for a few minutes and she takes over again. "You go, Kerouac," Piper teases her. It's akin to a ghost town, complete with the grey, overcast weather that comes with the change of the season. The arrival of autumn has always made Alex feel weird, yet she's clinging on it. She remembers the horror of going back to school, the anxiety of her mother, the ambiguity of her feelings towards the colors that suited her, the colors that are blooming rusty on the sidewalk.
They buy some donuts and text the others that they might be late, assuring them they're just exploring the place. Both their phones are stormed with Morello's anxious texts, asking if they know how Nicky is doing, if they are with her, if she's angry at her. Something tugs uncomfortably in Alex's chest, but she respects Nicky's need to stay away. They're walking through a forest when she realizes Piper is wearing her leather jacket. "This doesn't look half bad on you," she winks, and Piper flushes, triumphant.
She'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees
make you think she means it this time
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair
She doesn't expect it, doesn't know where it comes from. They're just walking in the autumnal landscape, discussing escaping and its connotations, when Piper simply punches a tree and pulls back with gritted teeth, looking wild, disheveled. Alex doesn't want to know if Larry has anything to do with it or if she does, if Piper has unconsciously stumbled out of her limits. Her first instinct is to get angry. "The fuck, Pipes?" she asks, taking her wrist in her hand to assess the damage. "The fuck do you think you're doing?"
when it got cold we bundled up…
"I don't even know anymore". Her knuckles are bleeding, she's staring down at her feet, like an embarrassed child.
it's better to feel pain than nothing
at all.
.
Nicky has just managed to stick her hand out of her sweatpants when there is a knock on the door, feeling slightly less sick and slightly more numb. She licks her lips and lies back against the pillow, legs crossed on the bed, her boots still on. Poussey scrunches up her nose. "Ew. You're fuckin gross. Go wash your fuckin hands."
So Nicky does, laughing hoarsely, and comes out of the tiny bathroom to sprinkle water on the girl's face. Poussey kicks her calf with her purple boot. "Why you bein' a dick to Brook while I get special treatment?"
Nicky shrugs her shoulders, lighting a cigarette and giving one to Poussey. "Cause she's got nothing to say yet she talks too much. Also, I feel kinda protective of you."
"You're a fuckin discriminatory asshole."
("You're so good with me, Nichols. Y'always take care a'me, and I feel safe around ya, even when you make me feel like you're trying to crawl up your way to my womb.")
Poussey bites her lip, fiddling nervously with the strap of her acid overalls. "Yo girl's been spamming my phone, asking 'bout you."
"What about your girl? She spamming you?"
"This ain't a battle, Nichols."
([From: Taystee|16:39] Hey P, sorry I've been kinda lost lately, Vee needed my help. I'll txt ya p soon, stay safe.
[From: Tayste|11:42] Took yo snap. Nice beanie. HI'm outta town. Take care.)
Yeah you still kiss me sometimes
but it's just on the cheek
She takes off her electric blue beanie and tosses it on the bedside, then fishes in the pocket of her dungarees for a travel flask of Jack. "That be your poison?" she smiles faintly.
Nicky's eyes open widely and she takes the small flask, uncapping it and inhales deeply before downing half of it. "Man I wanna get real fucking drunk. I feel like a fuckin prisoner."
"Sometimes I feel like nobody gives a shit, y'know?" Poussey's voice cracks. She touches Nicky's hand. "Damn, don't you ever feel like ya really need a girlfriend?"
And you say that I hurt you
and your voice is like a prayer
(You know I'm done, I'm fucking done with the way you use me as if I'm disposable just to get you off while you shut your eyes and think of his dick. I didn't use you Nicky, we were friends, we were helping each other out. I can't have this anymore, your whining and your fears and your pathetic little dreams. Fuck off, kid. I hate you. I hate you so much. Get the fuck outta here, Nichols. Sure. I'll fucking get out of my fuckin Upper East Side apartment that you use in order to feel fancy. Out. Get. OUT. Go fuck yourself, Lorna.)
(Have a nice life, Nicole.)
(You were never really part of it.)
"I have kid." She stares at their entwined fingers, pulls away as if it's electric. "Nothing lasts."
(He hates me, Nicky. I've been really, really bad, and now he hates me and doesn't wanna see me again.)
(Fuck'im, kid. Fuck him and his small sad dick. You're better than that.)
(Ya don't understand. No one will ever care for me.)
Oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you
so much
"C'mon, let's go get smashed."
(I'll always care for you, kid. I'll always be here.)
Yeah, your kind of truth, darling,
is just the ghost of your lies
.
It starts to rain shortly after, and they've got to run out of the forest. Alex stops in a pharmacy and patches Piper up under the shelter of a kiosk, movements practiced, almost mechanical. Piper has taken Alex's jacket off and is holding it stubbornly to her chest, careful so that it won't get wet. "You better wear that," Alex mutters. None of them wishes to walk but into the rain, which doesn't look like it's gonna stop anytime soon.
"I don't wanna ruin your stupid jacket."
"You're really fucking stubborn, do you know that?" Alex snaps.
"Oh, shut up already!" Piper grunts, shoving her away with her newly patched hand.
"No, you shut up!" Alex replies with a second shove on her chest that causes Piper to trip and fall back on the wall. For a moment there Alex looks almost ready to apologize, shocked with her strength.
Piper stands up instead, grabbing Alex's shirt and straightening her feet on the slippery street. "Why do you always feel so inevitable to me?" she hisses, closing the distance between them.
Their kiss tastes of rain and stale coffee and it's not like anything Piper had imagined it to be, not sparkling like champagne and fireworks, not dirty and stolen, like betrayal. Their mouths slide together, slack, needy. Alex's fingers get tangled in her wet hair, pulling her head back, exposing her jaw and neck for her lips to swallow the raindrops off of them. Piper pulls her body close as if it's shore, hands sticking on the layers plastered on her skin. "Let's get back to the car," Alex breathes ruggedly against her lips.
They arrive to the car dripping wet and aching with the rain that falls like needles on their bare skin. They're laughing and clutching onto each other like tipsy teenagers, and Piper's phone buzzes once, twice, so she picks it up, chest inflated with excitement and need and the effort to speak louder than the rain, head hyperventilating. It's Soso. She snorts a small giggle, looks at Alex clearing her glasses as if she's the world. Then she stumbles once, twice, rain dragging its way down her face slowly, tingling her. Her lips go pale and she nods, three, four times. She covers her phone with her hand before lowering it, as if it's that very phone delivering the news that must not hear her voice falter.
"Nicky's in the hospital."
.
("Nicky OD'ed.")
("They don't know if she's gonna make it. I'm sorry.")
("You okay? Lorna? Can you hear me?")
(She could hear the screaming sirens and the howling of the road as she tore it apart and the bloody screeching of her skin as it felt it unroll down her face, the frantic riot of her angry heart, angry, angry, furious.
How could she do that to her?
They told Red she wasn't gonna live and then Red wouldn't see nobody. They asked if the girl had any biological parents. Course she does, she wanted to scream. Are you fuckin stupid? Everybody does. Sometimes they give birth to us. Sometimes they kill us.
Did she kill her?)
Will I ever visit your tombstone?
Will I ever pay for my crimes?
and, I ask you: if I'm on fire
why am I so cold?
(She didn't. Nicky had opened her eyes and croaked some godawful nasty joke and reached for her and Lorna had laughed and cried, God how she cried.)
Lorna cries while she drives in the highway; counting hours, counting breaths so that she can keep it under control, keep it together for Nicky. The sky is dark and she watches the rhythmical movement of the widescreen wipers as they clean the glass of the rain that patters and returns and feels like it's flowing down on her and returns, crippling its way under her skin, under her melting mascara.
(She stayed awake with her at nights, cooling her forehead and braiding her hair back after she vomited. Red would call twice every hour, and ask her to keep it a secret from Nicky, to help her learn, but Lorna couldn't do that, couldn't be harsh. She wanted to shelter her and make sure she wouldn't leave.)
("Don't you dare to do this to me again, ya hear me Nichols?")
(It felt like a paradox, taking care of her, when Nicky had always been the one to stay awake at nights just to make sure Lorna was breathing.)
Will I ever walk through the city
Will I ever look without seeing your face
on every stranger
and every forgotten soul?
She fixes her mascara again on the front mirror, her heart running races. She's driving like she's never gonna stop, like a machine. For Nicky.
.
Piper follows the directions Soso gives her through the phone. Alex is shaking throughout the entire ride. Piper murmurs comforting nothings, but it's merely a ritual, just repeating the same words until they stop making any sense, her fingers entwining with Alex's on every stop. She pulls over in the parking of the small provincial health center and they storm out of the car.
Soso greets them in a relatively busy corridor, dark circles under her eyes. "Mild alcohol poisoning, nothing serious. She's stable. You need to talk to Poussey, she keeps blaming herself."
Poussey's eyes are puffy and she's rocking back and forth on a plastic chair.
"Hey P," Piper places a hand on her knee, steadies her. "None of this is your fault, you know that, right?"
"You're fucking stupid," Poussey chokes. "Course it's my fault. I shoulda kept an eye on her. She asked me to leave'er alone at some point. Then they called me from the bar."
"She's okay, P. It's not your fault."
They let them in not long after. Nicky looks pale and small with her mane barely covering the pillows, but also completely awake and a fucking asshole. Alex looks like she wants to kick her but she curses her instead: it's the first time they notice the cracking in her voice, and she presses kiss on her sweaty forehead.
"Y'all going fuckin soft, I love it!" Nicky croaks.
"How you feelin, asshole?"
"Triumphant, they didn't get to open me up this time. Also, like there's no intestines left to puke. But hey, they gave me a Kinder Bueno for free! Fucking provincial people, man! Wait till they learn I'm a lesbian." She nudges Alex's shoulder who glares at her murderously. "Hey, easy Vause! My flesh ain't rotten yet!"
"Red hasn't stopped calling, apologizing," Nicky looks up, vulnerable. "Said you must go back now." Piper grins mischievously. "Sent someone here, who thinks you need to talk."
If I walked in your black boots
If I walked in your black dress
would you hold me tight
or just beat me for wearing your clothes?
Morello bursts through the door, soaked to the bone, eyes red-rimmed and mascara running down her cheeks. She crosses the room and throws her arms around Nicky's figure, not giving her a choice. Nicky holds her breath and it's painful, before she deflates, lump melting in her throat, wrapping herself around the smaller woman, letting her eyes tingle shut, burying her face in her neck.
"Will ya forgive me?"
"I've already forgiven you a fuckload, kid."
"I'm so sorry, Nicky! I've been calling y'all all day and no one would answer. Red told me not to worry, that you can take care of yourself, but I thought I'd die. Please don't leave me again, I dunno what I'll do without you!"
"You're wet," it's all she can come up with, voice raspy.
"I always am," Lorna sobs and chuckles at the same time.
"I'll need your fuckin vomit bucket Nichols, I swear!" Alex grunts.
Nicky clings on Lorna, rubbing comforting circles on her back. "C'mon, kid. Time to go home."
When I finally crumble
I won't have to fall too far.
.
Soso has a story she's pretty sure people are not willing to hear, so she shuts up, and only talks about the couple of nights she spent in jail. She knows the person they think she is when they describe her, she is not that person. Maybe that's who she tried to kill, the person they perceive.
"You can talk to me," Poussey tells her, and she wonders where the girl has been all her life.
So she tells her about the bottle of pills on the side of her bed, about changing her mind the moment she felt she belonged somewhere, failing to mention she just gets too excited too quickly about things and that she's usually let down. She tells her about how she wanted this trip to set her free, to set the stakes low, how it is to be taught that you're never enough.
They lie on the sticky mattress of their motel room with a map sprawled down upon them and Poussey shows her where she's lived. She squeezes her hand, lets Brook make plans. She hears all about them.
[From: Taystee|18:29] I missed u, Pea.
Maybe, she thinks, maybe we're getting somewhere.
.
At some point right before twilight Piper muses, Alex was made for travelling. She was made for faded colors and dark racing trees, she was made for driving a car in the beginning of autumn, bursting music, pacing forests, interchanging between eerie quiet and acceleration. Alex Vause is a cat, independent and sleek and honest, always coming back. Piper is letting her emotions flow on the road, drive her through the overcast giddiness that's swirling in her head.
She fucks her on the back seat, never filling the silence with whispers and sweet nothings, always hissing her meaning in sharp, short doses, violent intakes of breath from Piper's skin, from every pool of sweat that glints on the smooth curves of her body and her face. Her hands straddle through the distance from her hips to her neck and back, weaving patterns beneath her fair isle sweater, grappling her hips under her cutoffs and kissing her face, saying mine and it's wrong, but Piper knows she would give her every chance she asked for, she would hang the moon another way for her, so she parts her lips and mouths mine, and when she scribbles hymns on her skin again she lets her write mine.
And from the rain comes a river running wild that will create
an empire for you
.
Nicky is aware that Morello is looking at her through the mirror while she drives. They drive for hours, and Nicky drifts in and out of sleep, a hazy state of floating that's starting to feel comfortable. They stop four or five times when she's dizzy, give the smug horizon freedom to advance. Autumn has started weaving its threads of cinnamon and gold through the earth and nipping on the sky, and Nicky clings desperately on the misty greyness. At some bumpy part of the road, Nicky's eyes jolt open, she catches Morello's voice as she sings along to 'Bang Bang, my baby shot me down' in a horrid voice. Nicky smiles and goes back to sleep.
When Lorna shakes her shoulders and calls her, hours later, sounding positively exhausted, Nicky's still lethargic. There's a disgusting aftertaste in her mouth and everything hurts. It takes a while to register that they're back in NYC, that it's the middle of the night, that it's not raining anymore. It feels fucking weird.
The lift is groggy, like a waiting room and the verdict is upstairs. They promised her talking yet there's not been much of it yet. Her heart feels dull; she wouldn't let it be any different.
She watches as tiny Lorna Morello, with her pea coat and smudged mascara, carries her bags and tent upstairs, unlocking the door as if it's her home, and peering inside. Nicky simply follows. They avoid turning the lights on and stand in the middle of the living room facing each other.
Lorna lets the bags slip on the floor and cups Nicky's face, pulling her close. Their lips falter together and suddenly Nicky has no recollection from all her practice, her kissing techniques and fuck manuals she could write and become filthy rich. She's learning how to explore, how to be surprised and lose track and shake irrevocably in Morello's arms, forgetting to wish she could have it unseen. Lorna notices, of course. She breaks the kiss, pauses time for a second or two just to experience this, her shock, her pained expression, the tension on her jaw, all of it that makes it real, a parchment of symptoms and sins unrolling between their chests. Nicky hadn't even thought about how scared she really was before the brief moment when Lorna's wet, sweet lips leave her own, when she experiences abandonment again, thrust upon her like an electric wave, but Lorna hushes her, lets her own unsteady hands travel down her shoulders, her arms, fingers tugging around her wrists and lifting them to her lips.
She kisses her softly and Nicky lets her, astounded even by her own tolerance, by her patience in a moment she feels she's gonna burst like a fucking supernova. In the dark of the room she can almost picture the red imprints Lorna's smudged lipstick leave on her pulse.
"I love your tattoos, Nichols," Lorna murmurs in her accentuated voice. "I missed'em so much." Her grip locks around Nicky's wrists, and she drags her to the corridor, and through the bedroom door.
She's seen this reckless litany happening before, falling back on the bed like drunk because they're kissing so much, fiddling with buttons and zippers and elastic and never completing a task because they're aching, and they want it messy. And yet this time is different. Nicky lays still on her back, save from the tumult of her heart and watches Lorna as she takes the lead. It's just habit and the insecurity that comes with baring yourself when she makes an attempt to sit up and change the pace, but Lorna pulls her into her arms, sliding a hand behind her back to unclasp her bra. "Let me see you."
She feels the wall she's built around her trembling uncertainly, feels Lorna's eyes burn through her naked skin, exposed and sprawled over on the mattress. "Babe…" she mouths huskily, feeling her back arching up as Lorna traces her tongue over the outline of her breast, her fingers sliding down between her thighs where she finds her weak with yearning.
"Tonight I'm gonna fuck you, ya hear me Nicky Nichols?" she bites her lip, eliciting a loud moan that is soon muffled by Lorna's mouth on hers as she eases two fingers inside her. "I'm gonna fuck you so hard you're gonna soak the sheets so that we gotta do our laundry tomorrow and then I get to fuck you on the washing machine while the neighbors give us weird looks, tha's how hard I'm gonna fuck you!"
Nicky tilts her head on the side, gasping for air, her fingers curling on the sheets as Lorna nips on her throat. "You're – uh, real shit at dirty talking."
"I learnt from the best," Lorna smirks, thrusting her fingers inside her rhythmically until they feel numb. "Ain't that the point where you tell me I'll be the death of you?"
"Screw you, kid," Nicky rasps out. Lorna trails kisses on every exposed, pounding surface of her skin as she continues to fuck her.
"Nah," she traces her tongue over her bottom lip, grinning smugly. "Screw you."
Nicky's eyelids droop and she leaves a series of soft groans, her legs hooked tightly around Lorna's waist, as if she's trying to fit back where she belonged, to shove themselves together.
"Don't do that again to me, Nichols," Lorna forces her to meet her gaze as she pants ruggedly, squirming in her arms. "You're not allowed to leave me – ever!"
Nicky would oblige, she really would and she would make it known, providing that her body wasn't currently being hit with a wave of electricity that left her breathless and unfeeling, like dust spread beneath Lorna's weight, parted by a thin sheen of sweat that started from the part where their abdomens met, and crowned their foreheads as they touched.
Lorna's hand comes to rest on her chest, feels her pulse even out against her body. "I love your heart, Nicky," she says with a stubborn naivety, so tacky it hits home, like it's obscenely real.
"Good," Nicky mutters, brushing a strand of Lorna's hair off her face. "'Cause it's not going anywhere."