At night when things got dull, which happened to be every night, Alex Vause liked to go for a walk. Which is odd; for a drug importer, she spends a hell of a long time going for walks. Irrelevant, stupid walks that don't achieve a damn thing. But it's nice, you know.
She enjoys the freedom.
Rings of cigarette smoke are there to keep her company, dancing around the edges of her upturned collar as pale moonlight filters meekly through the clouds. Alex thinks about all the shitty things that have happened to her over the years, and from time to time she considers what it would be like to keep walking, to walk and walk until her feet give out from underneath her
She doesn't think anyone would come looking for her. And if they did, they might just be on their way to kill her anyway. She should feel guilty, because she can be held, in part, responsible for the death of hundreds upon hundreds of people. But there's little time for that, or any form of empathy for that matter, in her line of work.
The walks are always so very somber and devoid of colours; everything seems to be losing its allure, the aesthetic of the world around her draining to a greyscale, day by day. It's been like this for years, and it shows no signs of getting better. Heroin had nearly killed her, so that was off the table.
So Alex decides to go for fucking walks instead. Needless to say, it's not exactly the glorifying redemption she had hoped for.
Alex dictates the acoustics of her walk, much like she controls every other aspect of her life, the steady thud of her expensive boots the only perpetrator to the calm while she continued her stroll through the neighbourhood. She looks at the picket fences; uninspiring and utterly boring in the starlight, and glances at the seemingly endless driveways housing silver SUVs and brown garage doors. Flickers of light still linger inside most of the windows, but Alex doesn't pay much attention to the insignificant shadows.
She loves the satisfaction she gets of walking through the very places she had once been tormented by.
A childhood of insulting nicknames and hateful glares that had once plagued her, had now transformed into a perverse delight at wielding more power than every member of these households combined. They had called her names and turned their noses up at the fact she was nothing but a dropout who would achieve a waitressing job at best. And now, they would look at her in awe when she entered a room or men would come to her in an alleyway and thrust a wad of cash into her hand, earned from their nine to five accountancy jobs or perhaps 'borrowed' from their wives. Of course, Alex would turn them away as they begged; she's not a drug dealer, nothing of the sort.
She imports. It's endlessly more pleasing.
Anyway, it's the middle of winter, freezing cold and tremendously dark, the way Alex likes it, and she walks down the familiar streets with her goddamn cigarette and stupidly expensive coat with the collar upturned, shielding the curve of her throat against the biting wind. That's the thing about having no one. You get to spend all your illegal cash on yourself. Fucking brilliant, she thinks.
Tonight's different, though. She's rather pissed off- really pissed off, because what is the point in any of this anymore? She's almost thirty and devastatingly unloved, without the capability to treat anyone with a semblance of respect, and kind of a complete asshole. No family; no one to love, and no one who loves her. Of course, she has too much money to count, but all it makes her want to do right now is cry. She turns down this empty street with a narrow road, and abruptly lashes out, kicking stones off the pavement and scattering them ahead of her in a temper, hating the world and the unfairness of it all. Her temper's a dangerous thing, and she should know better than to let it get the better of her. But sometimes she gets this overwhelming urge to smash things, just for the hell of it.
Abruptly, the atmosphere shifted, and Alex stopped in her tracks, as if burned by a lighter.
She'd turned the same corner a hundred times before, but something was different, and she doesn't like it. Alex likes to be the one who changes feelings with a raise of her brows or a tilt of her glasses. She does not like the odd feeling of uneasiness beginning to swathe around her. For a moment, all she sees is familiar sidewalk and low-hanging trees with their crisp leaves beginning to fall. A slight inhalation of breath, so soft she barely hears it, whips Alex's head upwards to look only metres in front of her. She stares.
"Are you alright?" Says the voice. It's this figure, a girl, sitting off the edge of the pavement underneath a streetlight with her legs stretched out into the road, as if she didn't give a damn if a car came flying round the corner and snapped them right off. Alex regards her curiously from the opposite pavement, hands in her pockets and cigarette between her teeth. This girl, she's only got on an oversized white t shirt on and ripped denim jeans, with red-rimmed eyes and these sunken in cheekbones.
Yet she has the courage to ask Alex, in her goddamn expensive coat, if she's alright.
"Me?" Alex replies, looking up and down the street, though she knows there's not another soul but the two of them within sight. She nods, and Alex walks over to her without thinking much about it. "I think I should be the one asking you that."
"Why?" The girl says, and she is just a girl, looks like one of those deer-caught-in-headlights type. The perfect type for a drug mule, Alex can't help but notice. But she's tragically beautiful, and although she's skinny and looks like she's drowning in her shirt, her eyes still sparkle with a challenge, and Alex can't help but look straight back at her, entranced by their gentle wonder. Alex notices her hair, then. It's the most terrific shade of yellow she's ever seen, mussed up and half tucked into the collar of her top.
"Well…" She stumbles, searching for an answer to what was a ridiculous kind of question in the first place. "You look…cold." Alex manages to reply as she takes the cigarette from her lips. She still hasn't moved forward, but the yellow-haired girl has that little intriguing smile on her face.
"I am cold." She says it with not an ounce of bitterness, and Alex has to admire her for it. "You must be Alex." The blonde says, and Alex has never heard anyone say her name so exquisitely.
"How could you possibly have known that?" She challenges, raising an eyebrow.
"Mutual friends." Comes the answer that's not really an answer at all. Alex feels unsettled, because this girl, whoever she is, is already a step ahead. She knows Alex's first name, has known of her beforehand. Maybe she's even formed an opinion in her head about Alex before even meeting her
"Take my jacket." Alex offers, unbuttoning it. The blonde peers up at Alex from the pavement as she stubs her cigarette out with the toe of her boot. The girl is in no position to be refusing the warmth of a coat and body heat as Alex takes a seat beside her, shivering at the cool ground beneath her, briefly wondering how she went from brooding and temperamental to giving her coat to a complete stranger and sitting beside her underneath this gloomy streetlight.
Alex looks at the girl, and she looks back. Neither of them understand a damn thing.
"Well, I think it's only fair you tell me your name." Alex says, and without knowing too much about it she's already shown an interest in the girl.
"Piper." She replies, but doesn't give a last name. Alex has never met a Piper before, save for in popular fiction, but she likes it. She's different, already. Piper doesn't exactly sound proud of her name, so instead of asking what mistakes she's made to find herself in the middle of the street freezing to death, Alex just asks her if she's alright. She's oddly eager to make conversation with the girl looking up at her with those bright blue eyes
"Are you gonna kill me?" Piper asks bluntly instead, Alex is honestly speechless for a moment.
"Christ. No, I'm not gonna fucking kill you." Alex exclaims, and Piper just smiles a little and looks down at her lap.
"The fact that disappoints me should tell you if I'm alright or not." She says quietly, and Alex doesn't quite know how to come back from that. But she keeps sitting there, with no intention of leaving the girl. Piper scares the hell out of her.
"What's a girl like you doing walking around so late at night?" Alex tries again.
"A girl like me?" Piper repeats, and she has the audacity to be a little smug about it. Alex would usually be offended as she realises the blonde is attempting to turn her end from end and figure her out.
"Yes, a girl like you." Is all Alex says, refusing to play into the girl's hands.
"Well I was home, and now I'm here. So it goes." Piper with the bright face and yellow hair shrugs. "Isn't this such a nice time of year to walk?" Alex can tell the girl is being intentionally vague, but decides to let it slide as she nods her agreement.
"What makes you say that?" Alex replies. She's not interested in talking about herself, not one bit. She wants to figure this terrific little blonde thing out, wants to learn why she should think such a thing.
"Well it's cold, but not freezing, and it's dark but not in a scary, disappearing sort of way. It's quiet, but it's not the fearful kind. Kind of makes me think the world's not all bad." Piper tells her. Alex can smell a hint of alcohol off the girl's breath that pans out in front of them. "I'm not afraid of you, you know." She says now, her voice a little more serious. Alex glances down at her with a sly grin.
"Why should you be afraid?" Alex wonders.
"Well, I know that you're a drug dealer," Piper reveals. Alex is slightly taken aback, but she has to admire the blonde for her courage to sit here in the dark with someone who she's never met, but knows to be involved with the wrong side of the law.
"You do?"
"I do."
"And you're not afraid?"
"Nope." Piper says with an adamant shake of her head. Alex doesn't think she's ever smiled for so long in her life.
"You should be." She says, choosing not to correct the fact that she's not exactly a drug dealer. She glances up at Alex, enticing blue eyes dancing with forbidden mischief. Her face looked so soft, so innocent, but her eyes tell a different story. Piper was something of a closed book, begging for someone to come along and open her up.
"You're not going to hurt me." Piper informs Alex. The brunette frowns quickly, because she doesn't like how Piper knows things about her before she even knows them herself.
"You want a smoke?"
"Sure." Piper takes the cigarette easily from between Alex's fingers, but someone as pure and innocent as Piper doesn't look right with it. She barely has it between her lips before Alex snatches it back, her brows furrowed as she looks hard at Piper. "What the hell did you do that for?" Piper cries, and tries to get it back to no avail as Alex leans away from her. She looks so sad, and so goddamn pretty and Alex doesn't know where the hell she is because she cares about Piper. She cares about Piper more than she's cared about anyone in a long time.
"Smoking's bad for you."
"You smoke."
"Because I don't care about good and bad, or wrong and right, Piper." Alex smirks, and Piper smiles her first genuine smile back at her. It damn near makes Alex want to kiss her right then and there on the sidewalk. "Listen, do you wanna go for a walk?" Alex asks her seriously after a moment. Piper's face positively lights up, as if someone's just offered her their hand in marriage or something wild like that.
"Only if it's someplace warm."
"It's real warm. I promise." Alex says. Piper blushes, and she believes her newfound companion. Alex slips her fingers between Piper's and doesn't once let go as she leads her gently back the way she came, without a clear intention in mind. Piper seems so happy all of a sudden, like no harm could ever come to her again as they both talk about whatever takes their fancy, nothing hard or heavy.
It's nice to just talk to someone about nothing, for once. Everyone needs that every so often.
It's easy, being with Piper. She makes Alex feel good about herself, and it's at that moment that Alex decides this girl with her pretty face and endearing manner deserves more than wandering around half drunk and alone in sub zero temperatures. Alex swears she's just doing this for Piper. She really does.
"It's so pretty around this part of town." Piper remarks suddenly. She wants to keep Alex talking, of that the brunette is sure. She laughs, rather sarcastically, and Piper raises her eyebrows to ask what for.
"If this is pretty to you, kid, I'm gonna have to show you my definition of the word someday." Piper's a little bit too drunk to understand what Alex means, but the undercurrent of hatred for her description of the neighbourhood is enough to worry the blonde. She glances around, away from Alex's lovely, gorgeous face, at the fences and the brickwork and the cars that all look the same. She looks back at Alex, and Piper's understanding of the word pretty is completely different. Alex smirks, because she knows exactly what the blonde is thinking.
"Why would someone like you do such a thing for someone like me?" Piper attempts to coax a little more out of her companion.
"You interest me, and you're obviously above the type of people who describe places like this," She gestures disdainfully at the houses. "As pretty." Piper almost tells her that she comes from a family of people who think exactly that, that she was brought up in an area basically identical, but she thinks better of it. Alex already knows, anyway; one glance into Piper's awestruck face tells her exactly what she needs to know. They share a smile, something Alex has never really done with anyone save for her mother, and continue for a few minutes in silence. It manages to be both thoughtful for Piper, yet dreadfully uncomfortable for Alex. It's as if her conscious is trying to tell her that this could end up as something a lot more complicated than offering a stranger a bed for the night. Alex ignores it anyway, and neither of them question it as she leads Piper inside.
And so it goes. Alex takes Piper home; she doesn't kiss her, doesn't flirt with her, and doesn't push her any further to explain how on earth the girl found herself in such a worrying position. Alex treats her nicely and makes her tea, even giving the blonde one of her big sweaters to sleep in. Piper protests about sleeping in Alex's bed, because it's so big and wide and she could probably get lost in it.
"You don't even know me." She murmurs quietly as she sinks into the pillows. "Why are you being so nice to me?" Alex sits by the foot of the bed in her own sweater, intending to sleep in the guest room.
"I know you well enough to know you deserve better than spending a night on the streets." The look on Piper face tells Alex that she's completely right. Piper is broken, ruined, and Alex doesn't ask why any of it happened because it's really not any of her business. Piper will tell her story in good time, if that's what she wants. Or she'll wake up in the morning and leave, and Alex will let her go.
Which doesn't mean Alex won't be sad as hell about it, but she'll still wave her goodbye and wonder why she never seems to be good enough for anyone.
"Goodnight, Piper." Alex whispers softly, and she's about to turn off the light before Piper calls her back.
"Alex." It's the first time she's said Alex's name, and it sounds better than she's ever heard it. The look on Piper's face positively kills Alex, with those bright blue eyes that shouldn't ever look so sad. For a fleeting, fanciful moment, she imagines Piper asking her to stay, to hold her until she falls asleep. Instead, all that is forthcoming is a teary "thank you." Alex smiles back at the blonde through the darkness.
"No worries, kid. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
Later, when Fahri calls and asks if she'd found any mules recently, Alex doesn't even entertain the idea of mentioning Piper. She remembers how Piper had been equal parts terrified and intrigued by her, and how she didn't give a damn whether she lived or died. She remembers how Piper's laugh sounds, thinks about the way she looks at Alex as if she could never do wrong by her.
"Piper trusts you. You're all she has," Alex reminds herself.
"No." Alex tells Fahri firmly. "Maybe tomorrow." She hangs up before he replies, and just keeps on thinking about Piper.
And in the morning, Piper doesn't leave. In the days and weeks to come, Alex can't get enough of Piper and she's absolutely smitten with Alex, too. It takes over a month for Alex to work up the courage to even kiss the girl; it's nervy and messy and ridiculously perfect and every time Alex thinks back to it, her heart soars, it really does. Weeks turn into months, and Alex tells Piper she thinks she might love her. Piper says it back, she puts her faith in Alex, every goddamn piece of her, and Alex guards that with her life.
Years down the line, when Alex turns to her wife one evening and asks her why she ever stayed after that first night, Piper laughs and smiles and simply answers,
"There was nowhere I'd rather go."
A/N: Just to pass the time. :)