… Aaaand we're back.
Welcome to the sequel for Carry Your Heart!
If you haven't read that yet, don't panic - here's a potted synopsis: Alex lives with Nicky in a big ass house Nicky inherited from her wealthy mum, and Piper shares an apartment with Polly, who isn't hugely keen on Alex. Alex and Piper are English teachers in a prestigious private girls school. They had a rough start, but they figured stuff out, and this is set a few months later. (The timeline is somewhat transient.)
I got lots of PMs between this fic and the last one, so if you made any requests, they'll be in here somewhere. If you have any more requests, I've only written the first few chapters of this story, so feel free get in touch if there's something you'd like to see.
Allons-y.
Alex took a deep, shuddering breath, her fingers curling into the bedsheets, knuckles white.
She released an achingly soft moan, and Piper's laugh echoed from between her thighs, head lifting for a brief moment to reprimand her.
"Sshhh!"
Polly was asleep next door, and Piper didn't want to run the risk of waking her during their penultimate night as housemates.
Alex had driven over just late enough to miss Polly, so it was imperative that she stayed under the radar.
She particularly didn't want to wake Polly when it was Alex's own fault that Piper was moving out in two days. At least, that's how Polly saw it.
"Jesus, Pipes..."
Piper grinned to herself, tongue pressing deeper into Alex as she followed her girlfriend's whispered adulation.
Alex began to writhe, and Piper pinned her hips to the mattress, which only served to make Alex worse.
She hated having to be quiet.
She hated having to be still even more.
(But by her own admission, she loved both conditions too. The only problem was that Piper knew it, and she was definitely using it to her advantage tonight.)
Alex was sweet in her mouth, and Piper could tell the end was near as her girlfriend's thighs began to tremble.
Piper pressed Alex to the bed with her forearm, her other hand reaching up to smother Alex's moans as her back arched away from the sheets beneath her.
If Alex had loved and loathed being silenced before, this amplified it a thousand times. Her fingers curled into fists as Piper's palm eclipsed her whimpers, pushing her over the edge with her tongue in all the right places.
Silence fell, with nothing but the sound of Alex's shallow breathing to span the distance between them.
Piper crawled up the bed, kissing the softest parts of Alex's body as she passed them, leaving traces of their last night in this bed to be washed away in their inevitable post-sex shower in an hour or so.
Alex brushed a few stray strands of hair away from Piper's face when she drew level, tasting herself on Piper's mouth when their lips met.
For someone who hadn't ever been down on a woman just a few months ago, Alex had to give her credit: Piper was a fast learner.
"Was that okay?"
Alex smirked hazily, limbs leaden as she lifted an arm to brush hair out of her face. "You don't need to ask every time."
"I like to ask." Piper planted another kiss on Alex's cheek. "I like the feedback. I like knowing how well I'm doing."
Alex rolled into her side so that they were facing one another, running her hand along the topography of Piper's body: the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the rise of her ass.
"Want me to grade you?"
When she reached the soft skin of Piper's outer thigh, she dipped inwards, trailing her fingers through the blonde curls gently.
Piper breath hitched a little. "What, a midterm report?" She laughed quietly, fighting to pretend she could ignore Alex's teasing.
Alex watched the way Piper's breathing hitched, the steady rise and fall of her chest losing its rhythm. "Unless you'd prefer some more practical feedback."
"Such as?" Piper was coming undone, Alex's mouth hot against her collarbones as she spread Piper's thighs and slipped inside.
"How about a demonstration?" Alex murmured into Piper's neck, pulling Piper to her.
There would be time for sleep later.
"That's a lot of shit."
Alex stood with her arms crossed, and said nothing in reply.
"I mean," Nicky continued. "I'm happy that she's moving in and all, but what is she, a prime-time television documentary hoarder?"
Alex relented. "I think we probably live in sparse conditions and she has a normal amount of person-stuff. It's not like she…"
Alex tailed off as Piper lumbered through the door with yet another box of books, grinning wildly.
"Can you give me a hand?"
Nicky elbowed Alex in the ribs. "Yeah, Stretch. You're the butch in this relationship; give the girl a hand."
Piper added the box she was carrying to the ever growing pile, and looked vaguely affronted. "I can be butch."
The two onlookers made a noise that epitomised the concept of skepticism.
Alex raised an eyebrow. "I'll grab some stuff from the car."
Piper followed the brunette towards the exit, and Nicky sidled back into the kitchen.
She was happy to have Piper living with them - the huge house had felt empty with only two occupants - and it would be nice to spend her limited downtime with someone a little more sociable.
Alex's tendency to shut herself in her room for hours wasn't exactly ideal, and while Nicky liked spending time alone too, it was easier to keep the tough stuff at bay when she surrounded herself with people.
She rummaged around for coffee-making components before taking a seat at the table.
Thumbing through her phone, she found Morello's number.
It had been one of the longest semesters of Nicky's life, and they were finally - sort of - dating.
Lorna refused to define the relationship, but Nicky was happy with the compromise they'd reached: they were a couple in all but name.
Free tonight? She tapped out idly.
She had been semi-seriously joking about taking the diminutive brunette out on a date for weeks, but Lorna's fear of them being seen together in public, "all romantic like", terrified her.
Message sent, she finished her coffee and returned to her room.
Morello would come around, hopefully both literally and figuratively. All she had to do was wait.
Alex eyed Piper's open suitcase over her open book, watching Piper unfold and refold items of clothing like a laboratory experiment.
She had lived with partners before, but Piper was so far proving to be an oddly antithetical mix of horribly disorganised and anally retentive.
It made Alex's head spin. But then, Piper usually did that anyway.
"What're you reading?" The younger woman asked as she busied about, closing another newly-full draw and opening the one above it instead.
"Fun Home."
"That Alison Bechdel book? The one they made the musical about?"
"Yeah." Alex closed the book. "You haven't read it?"
Piper shook her head as she tossed the now-empty box she'd been unpacking aside. "Nope."
"You'd better get up on your lesbian literature." Alex teased. "You're a homo now."
"I like to think of myself as 'label free'."
"Okay, but you'll never get your gay card if you can't at least quote Sappho when asked."
Piper grinned and turned away, waiting until Alex had returned to her reading before she replied.
"Again Desire agitates me, the limb-loosener / bitter-sweet, inescapable, creeping on all fours..."
She watched as Alex slid her book closed, tilting her head to one side before shuffling off the end of the bed towards her.
"Are quoting Sappho at me, Miss Chapman?"
"I might be."
Alex continued to advance across the room, smirking.
"You are very hot."
"And also cute. Don't forget cute."
The brunette wrapped her arms around Piper when she reached her, kissing her softly. "And cute."
"Are you hungry?" Piper was asking about dinner, but Alex's eyes affixed themselves firmly to her lips, and the younger woman's heart fluttered beneath her ribcage.
"I could eat."
"I mean actual food."
"That's what I was thinking..."
Her hands began to wander from Piper's waist down to her hips, before roaming across her ass.
Piper giggled, but couldn't push aside how many hours it had been since they'd last eaten. It was early evening now and her stomach was growing impatient.
Her line of inquiry hadn't worked, so she aimed for Alex's more academic nature instead.
"Wine comes in at the mouth, and love comes in at the eye / That's all we shall know for truth, before we grow old and die / I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh."
It worked: Alex balked and pulled back, eyebrow raised.
"The Sappho won you points, but you're not cute when you quote Yeats."
"No?" Piper asked coyly, tongue pressed firmly in her cheek.
"No. Yeats is not cute."
"I thought you liked cantankerous old Irishmen who died surrounded by their many wives and mistresses."
"I do not."
"Oh. Can we get food then?"
Alex grew wise. "Sure, kid."
Alex fumbled around in the kitchen, opening cupboards seemingly aimlessly while she waited for the water to boil in the pan on the stove.
This was her first meal with Piper since she moved in; she didn't want to mess it up.
Alex had opted for simple (as Piper hadn't been able to decide what she wanted), and set to stirring the tomato sauce she'd thrown together, as she wondered if they had anything else to add to their spaghetti.
Her Mom had taught her enough for Alex to be a passable cook, but she wasn't exactly confident in the kitchen. She'd always been more focused on devouring whatever her Mom had made - which was always delicious when made from scratch, however rare that had been - instead of thinking about the recipe.
Nicky drifted into the room. "What're we making kids?"
Alex looked up, glad for the distraction. "I'm making spaghetti. You want some?"
"Depends. You gonna burn it like last time?"
Piper guffawed. "How do you even burn spaghetti?"
Alex bristled, gesturing with the wooden spoon in her hand, a smattering of sauce flecks hitting the worktop. "I was distracted!"
"You were sexting." Nicky tasted some of the stray sauce on the tip of her finger before turning to Piper. "She was sexting you, actually So really, I think she's trying to say it's your fault she burnt the pasta."
Nicky turned back to the stove, elbowing Alex aside and taking the offending implement from her.
"Move over, Paula Dean. I've got this."
"I resent the implications of that reference."
"Yeah, well I resent the fact that someone who is the living embodiment of food poisoning is making my dinner." Nicky reached for the spaghetti on the counter to add another portion for herself, then set to tampering with the sauce.
Alex relented, retreating to the safety of the table and her girlfriend.
"I would've made great spaghetti." She mumbled into Piper's neck, burying her face under the guise of a kiss to cover the relief she felt at being usurped.
"I'm sure you would."
Surfacing, Alex planted another small kiss on Piper's cheek, taking the seat next to her. "Can you cook?"
"I wouldn't call myself a chef, but I can make a meal."
Nicky snorted with laughter on the other side of the room, and Piper grew uncomfortable. They had both had cooking lessons as part of their education, and Piper's own ability in the kitchen was only poor due to a lack of practice.
"You have lessons or did your Mom teach you?"
"Uh," Piper hesitated. She was always reluctant to make reference to her privileged upbringing, which was often in stark contrast to Alex's. "Lessons. Mom was more hands-off."
While Alex would speak of her Mom often and with great fondness, Piper was less inclined to do the same. She had a reasonable relationship with her parents, but they were clueless about her relationship with Alex.
Although she knew it wasn't exactly sustainable, she hoped to keep them in the dark for as long as possible.
"You remember your first meal here?" Nicky asked from the stove.
"Yeah, we sat on the floor surrounded by boxes you refused to unpack, and ate stale bagels that you found when you arrived. You still won't told me where you found those." Alex arched an eyebrow at the back of the chef's head.
"Number one, fuck you. We had a great night, and what's life without a little mystery?" Nicky fired back, smirking. "And number two, I wasn't asking you."
"Oh!" Piper seemed politely surprised to be involved. "Didn't we have spaghetti and meatballs?"
"I don't want you thinking that's all we eat." Nicky started to plate up. "But that is essentially what we're having for dinner tonight."
"You worried about your reputation, Gordon Ramsay?" Alex quipped.
"Don't be an idiot sandwich. Just do me a favour." Food was passed around, and Nicky took her place at the table. "If Morello happens to ask either of you tomorrow what I whipped up for dinner, say it was something incredible."
Mouth full of food, Alex tilted her head. "Why would we do that?"
"Because when she asked what my plans were for tonight, I used the phrase haute cuisine."
Alex laughed through the meatball she'd just bitten into, mumbling around the mouthful. "Do you even know what that means?"
Piper opened her mouth to define the phrase, but Nicky powered on regardless, a rudderless speedboat on a sunny day.
"So I figure, 'cuisine' is obviously food, right? And 'hot' sometimes means good. But this isn't just 'hot', it's like, 'haute', which is even better. Right Chapman?"
Piper didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Despite their similar upbringings, there were clear parts of their classes that Nicky had refused to adopt.
There was a moment of silence, as Piper opened and closed her mouth like a particularly slow goldfish, before laughter broke out between her friends.
"Oh my god, did you see her face?" Nicky guffawed, stabbing her fork into her pasta. "She genuinely thought I didn't know."
Alex, still laughing, placed her hand affectionately on top of Piper's. "We were just fucking with you, kid."
Piper flushed pink.
"I know I'm not exactly classy, but you can't be the daughter of Marka Nichols and not know fine dining." Nicky muttered fondly through another mouthful. "This'll be fun; I'm glad you moved in."
Alex squeezed Piper's hand, warmth in her gaze as she grinned at her. "Yeah, me too."
Piper exhaled in relief. If this was the worst hazing she could expect from these two wonderful women, then she had little to worry about.
She'd have to stay on her toes, but she knew it all came from a place of love.
Taking a forkful of spaghetti, Piper mused aloud. "I will tell Lorna that you made something incredible for dinner. Maybe, Canard à l'Orange?"
Nicky nodded approvingly at the blonde. "Sounds like a fair deal. I mean, I did make you this delicious Italian dish."
"... And I'll suggest that she asks you to make it for her too. Since you're so up on haute cuisine."
Alex smothered a laugh, and Nicky paled. "Aw, shit."
On the other side of the city, in a partly empty apartment, a phone rang.
Bleary eyed, the rental's sole remaining occupant slid out of bed begrudgingly, padding across the pinewood floor in socks and little else.
"I'll get it!" She yelled, seemingly to someone who was no longer there.
The phone continued to ring as she reached it.
"Jesus Christ, I said I'll get it!"
Still, nobody came to answer the phone on her behalf.
Scooping up the handset, she sweetened her exasperation with the honey of politeness.
"Hello?"
"Polly, is that you?"
Polly paused. She recognised that voice. "Mrs Chapman?"
"I'm sorry to be calling so late, but we just got back from the Seychelles and I've been trying to contact Piper all week! Blasted girl won't answer my messages, but you know how she is, always neck-deep in work."
Polly wanted to drop a scathing remark about something else Piper was currently, constantly, grossly deep into, but she held her tongue; this was absolutely the wrong Chapman family member to share it with. Instead, she back-channeled amiably, dropping random affirmations in alongside Mrs Chapman's ramblings.
"So, is she there?"
Oh, shit. Piper had clearly forgotten to tell her parents she was moving house.
"Uhh…" Polly tried to smother her panic. She hated lying. "No. She's in bed."
"Already? But it's only eight. Is she ill?"
"Yes?" Her rising intonation was a dead giveaway, but by that point it was too late.
"You don't seem sure. Polly, is everything alright?"
"I'm so sorry Mrs Chapman, I've got to go. There's someone at the door!"
"A visitor, this late?"
"Yes, it's… My boyfriend."
"Polly, you didn't tell me you were seeing anyone!"
Piper would have a lot to answer for in the morning.
Polly swallowed hard and tried to curb the conversation. "It's been lovely to chat to you Mrs Chapman, but I really do have to go now."
"Well, please tell Piper I called."
"I will."
"And you must get her to tell me all about your new man!"
"Uh huh. Good night Mrs Chapman."
Polly didn't wait for a reply, slamming the handset back into its cradle unceremoniously.
She allowed herself a few slow, deep breaths before traipsing begrudgingly back to her bedroom, alone.
It made her sad that the biggest lie of all had been about her love life.
Under the covers once again, Polly flicked open the messaging app on her mobile.
20:09
Sorry I couldn't come to help you move in. I hope it went well. BTW your Mom called. She doesn't know you've moved out. I didn't tell her anything, but you need to call her!
Polly pulled the covers up under her chin. It was cold, and she resented not having anyone to complain to.
Unlocking her phone again, she sent a final message before considering sleep.
20:11
Also, I told her I have a boyfriend, so I sort of need a favour…