Piper sat with Alex and Nicky around a table in the rec room. A rare era of peace, at least for the three of them, had settled over their usually dramatic prison lives. Piper and Alex had recently rekindled their relationship and couldn't be happier. However, with the two of them getting along there was a lack of 'dyke drama' which meant Nicky's teasing remarks had increased tenfold. Entertainment needed to come from somewhere.

'So after you two broke up the first time did you date anybody else?' Nicky asked them, leaning back in her seat and acting disinterested but Piper and Alex knew better.

The couple looked at each other, curious to hear each other's answers, but also reluctant. This wasn't a topic they ever broached; it was only likely to irritate them, or worse. There was a lot left unspoken: secret guilt, anger and pain. They had forgiven each other and let go of the past, but maybe they still needed to know what really happened after Paris. Then they would still promise to love each other no matter what.

Piper had been so disorientated after she packed up and went home, but she had to do it. She pretended everything was fine. Nobody knew about Alex and so nobody asked. Polly was the only one with some knowledge of what happened but hated Alex enough to happily help Piper move on.

For a while she was simply lost. In the day, she smiled, played Perfect Daughter, showed no cracks.

At night she wandered between bars and beds, consumed alcohol and meaningless sex with hot people - craving the chemistry, trying to recreate Alex. She didn't admit that, not in the day or at night. She didn't talk about Alex with anyone, not even herself.

After that, things eventually fell into place for her, whether they were permanent or not. At the time, she found what she needed in order to crawl back to her old, quiet lifestyle. Alex, and the real Piper, got boxed away in the furthest corner of her sad, denial-programmed brain.

Piper didn't want to share any of that, not with Nicky here. All Nicky wanted was a bit of banter (or that's all she was going to get - Alex was a master of keeping things to herself and Piper had learnt not to blurt out too much by accident, nothing serious anyway).

'You know about Larry,' Piper said. 'He was the only one that stuck.'

Alex raised a questioning eyebrow. 'Were there more?'

They could talk about this, maybe, meaningless relationships in the interim of their relationships.

Piper weighed it up in her head. 'Yes, there were a few, but, uh, that was a strange time.'

'All men?' Alex pushed.

'No, actually.'

Her girlfriend looked surprised.

Piper was hesitant to talk about finding other women attractive because Nicky would never let it go... It might be fun to make Alex a little bit jealous, though. However, she knew that if the two of them played that game then Alex would win hands down and Piper would end up calling on her sister-in-law to revenge-prank people all day long.

'The first person I "dated" after us was a girl. Short, blonde, perfect vision.'

The opposite of her ex in every way. Apart from being attractive in her own right, the whole relationship bombed. The girl was so unlike Alex that Piper just wished that she was Alex. All she did was compare the two of them secretly. For a while, she couldn't stop looking for the chemical connection that she had with Alex, making her dating life havoc and stressful for both her and Polly. All the while, she was inwardly denying what she was really looking for.

It was enough to make Alex laugh. 'Were you trying to ruin your image of women?'

'Perhaps I was trying to save it,' she shot back.

Alex rolled her eyes but she was obviously interested. She fixed her girlfriend with a steady gaze. 'What was she like?'

Piper grimaced at the thought. 'I was the controlling one. It was very weird. I broke it off.'

She was desperate for anything that took her mind off her old life. Larry, it turns out, was the final key in her transition. He was so unlike Alex but he was enough of a random, unfocused oddball to be his own character. There was no instant chemistry, just a slow realisation that he could be the one that allowed her to be the person everyone wanted her to be. Her mother was mostly pleased. Polly was overjoyed at her change in taste at the time. Looking back, she was glad that going through that phase in her life was now just seen as that, a phase.

Little to her knowledge back then, she had yet to find who she really was. Typically, she had to come back to Alex. She had to go through this prison hell to learn what she wanted and who she wanted to be.

'Many guys?' Nicky asked. She had sat up straighter and was looking between Piper and Alex, judging who to push for fun - and Piper was usually the victim of that game. Besides, getting a reaction from Piper was a surefire way of getting a reaction from Alex too.

'A couple,' Piper admitted. She wasn't enjoying the interrogation. She didn't like looking back, or looking inward, she just wanted to move forward in the best way possible. She was happy for now, with Alex. She just wanted to enjoy that for as long as possible.

'What kind of guys?'

'Hot guys. Totally unstable. They didn't last either. That wasn't what I wanted in the long-term.'

Even the best-looking men in her past didn't live up to Alex any more. In hindsight, they never would. She still loved hot people; she would admit to being shallow when it came to loving looks, but it was a scary realisation that Alex was the one. Finally, she was committing to that thought, for better or for worse. It only took her over ten years.

Alex rolled her eyes again. 'No shit. You could have stayed with me if that was the case.'

'Yeah... They were just a distraction. For a while I was lost. Then Larry... Larry was a safe bet. I could start again with him. Polly was relieved, ironically.'

And now Polly and Larry were together. Piper still felt the slight sting of betrayal because of it, but then she just had to look at Alex. That and Polly would always be her best friend, no matter what.

Nobody here enjoyed talking about Larry; Nicky was quick to divert the conversation. 'What about you, Vause?'

Piper instantly focused. She was ready to be jealous - and Alex knew what she was like, had probably put as much thought into all this as she had. Like Piper, Alex was unlikely to share too much with Nicky there. They were inwardly serious, outwardly bantering.

'There were a couple...'

What?!

'Men or women?' Piper teased.

Alex's eyebrows arched. 'Well, there was this one guy that got further than usual...'

'You're kidding?' Nicky looked sceptical.

'Of course she's kidding,' Piper answered for her.

Alex had never really been into serious relationships before her.

'Yeah. I didn't have anything serious. I had lots of sex but I didn't date. I got into drugs and I wasn't in any state to be in a relationship after that.'

Piper looked at Alex, torn between apologising profusely and covering her ears so she couldn't hear anything further. She didn't want to imagine the pain that Alex went through. The guilt was there, bubbling in the back of Piper's mind, occasionally pushing past her barriers and threatening to break her... Alex was such a strong person, Piper couldn't believe she had caused a big impact by leaving... She also came to the conclusion that she hated everybody who had ever slept with her girlfriend. She'd much rather focus on her jealousy instead of guilt.

'And what did they look like?' Nicky asked.

'They were mostly blondes. I never used to be into it.' Alex didn't push any more about drugs or heartbreak. She even offered a teasing smile, offering Piper a way out.

Piper smiled back, somewhat in relief. 'You weren't really into romance before me.'

'And you weren't into fun.'

Piper pushed Alex on the arm. 'Hey!'

Alex always teased her about things that were true, which was incredibly annoying. The brunette found it way too amusing to poke fun at her and what made it even worse was that Piper's attempts at teasing her girlfriend back rarely had the desired effect.

Alex laughed. 'It's true!'

Piper always ended up on the defensive side of a losing battle.

'I was into fun! Just not the this-could-get-me-arrested-or-killed kind of fun that you chased!'

Alex readjusted her glasses with her thumb and forefinger and smirked. 'I was in it for the business.'

'Yeah? Well, I was in it for you.'

Alex's expression turned more serious and they stared at each other, lost in their memories, lost in what they thought their past really meant.

Piper shook her head. 'There was this one guy who hit on me when I got home - he was super good-looking - but when he introduced himself as Alex it was an instant no.'

'You know what the annoying thing was?' Alex questioned, ignoring the previous comment.

Piper blinked at her, all ears.

'Hearing your voice in my head, all these random facts and stupid sarcasm wherever I went.'

Piper started to laugh. 'I completely shut you out. I locked you down. Polly couldn't speak about you. People never found out. I flipped my lifestyle so I didn't miss your smug face and cocky remarks.'

'You guys are opposites,' Nicky commented in amusement. 'How do you even work out together?'

'Quite poorly,' Piper admitted, although she didn't believe it for a second and never would.

Alex smirked at her. 'A shared sense of adventure, similar humour, complementing personalities and a lot of sex.'

Piper internally agreed. '...We're both fucked up.'

'Yeah. We are.'

They looked at each other. Piper reached out to touch Alex's hand and Alex smiled at her, interlocking their fingers.

'I missed you,' Piper said.

She might have hidden it, but a part of her always belonged to Alex. Even after years of not seeing each other, being with Alex always felt right.

'I missed you too.'

When Piper realised all that, after making it through the aftermath and still getting back together with Alex... that was when she knew their love was inevitable.

Author Notes:

I really, really want to delete this one but I've been told I'm not allowed to! I don't know why I wrote this considering I'm not keen on writing speculative, canon timeline stories. In hindsight, it wouldn't have been posted.

Since we don't know much about the gap between Piper and Alex breaking up and then meeting again, and what they did in regards to new relationships, I didn't feel that happy writing this. I don't see either Piper or Alex just opening up about this stuff - not in front of a third party.

I just enjoy the teasing relationship between the two of them and looking at how they deal with situations so differently. I was looking forward to finding out more in season 3 (oh, how naive I was).

I have spent way longer making the covers for these short stories than actually writing them. I think I have my priorities the wrong way round. Ha ha.