Piper had always been one to think. To anticipate her father's appearance at the second-rate movie theater; to obsess over, then compartmentalize her mother's detachment from family and affection for alcohol; to plan for safety and success. It wasn't a secret – Cal hid behind it, Polly embraced it. Piper herself knew that she was often overly deliberate, though she only considered it a personality trait and not a badge of her upbringing. But bars aren't typically known for being good places for thinking.
Alex has a voice like hot syrup; her eyes are dark and winged and rimmed with glasses. She laughs at Piper as soon as she spots her in that floral dress, attempting to hand off her résumé and ending up with a margarita instead. She picks the sheet of paper up off the bar without looking away from Piper, putting the drink on her tab and weaving between open flirtation and piercing sobriety with flustering ease. Piper rolls Alex's name over her tongue for the first time with a deep swallow and finds herself leaning slightly off her barstool towards her as Alex laughs at Piper's look of confusion over her own supposed profession.
Piper leaves the bar alone, without a phone number and without any coherent analysis of what Alex had made her feel. But she knows, even then, that she would eventually return to the bar. It had been a good margarita.
"Eventually" turns into the next night, and then two nights after that. Alex is there every time – sometimes alone, always eventually twisting her way over to Piper after spotting her walk in. The dress had been relegated to the bottom of Piper's laundry pile, but Alex still manages to nudge past Piper's self-assurance, only to laugh deeply and buy her another drink. By the end of the week, Alex slides a paper coaster inked with her phone number under Piper's hand. After winking and throwing back one final drink, for the sake of watching Piper's eyes drift down to her throat again, Alex walks away from a Piper who is very far from any semblance of intellectual control over the situation.
Piper sinks into her bed that night, pissed at herself, at her own inability to rationalize Alex Vause. If she had been honest with herself, she was already a little in love with Alex, or at least with how Alex made her feel – lighter and easier and more willing to laugh at herself than to watch Alex walk away for the night. She had jammed the soggy coaster into the side of her purse while catching a cab outside the bar; she pulls it out now and strokes across the square letters with the pad of her thumb. Shit. She unlocks her phone.
Alex had been good. Better than good. Breath-taking, literally. Piper had slammed her eyes shut early on, asking for more, taking what she was given, incoherent, trading talking for moaning. Alex was as smug in bed as she was in bars – knowing and smirking and licking at Piper's lips with the same flippancy she'd had on that first night. She'd nudged back up Piper's body before kissing her again, smiling against Piper's mouth, which was open with the same surprise she'd shown at the bar. Who are you.
Alex is called away, first by Amsterdam, then by another woman – a girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, a person who still felt she had a claim to Alex, who feels no remorse for the deepening bruise on Piper's cheek. Piper makes a show of retrieving her scattered clothing while still wearing Alex's polka-dot sheet – she leaves her shoes behind, dressing in the kitchen before leaving the apartment, slamming the front door.
But she goes back that night, back to the bar where she knew she'd find Alex. She watches her over her right shoulder while sipping wine instead of downing shots, waiting for Alex to walk behind her to the bathroom. Piper follows her and waves off last night with a sultry grin of her own. The bathroom empties and she leans over Alex's shoulder, breathing softly and offering more than she had thought she would. She kisses Alex, her tongue in her mouth, Alex's hand behind her neck, and Piper's eyes slam shut again. Alex pulls her into the bathroom and locks the door.
Piper doesn't think too much about what Alex keeps doing to her. She's moved into a perpetual state of lightness, of flirtation, of letting Alex whisper into her ear before pushing her down onto something. She has Polly over, who rolls her eyes while Piper giggles at Alex's impertinence and at her own pleasure. Seven times. Alex still licks up champagne bottles and flirts brazenly with Piper across any crowded room, but her smiles become softer, and she starts holding Piper longer.
A few weeks in, she brings coffee to Piper, who's still in bed, still drowsing, arm flung over Alex's empty pillow, hair spilled over her face. Alex nudges Piper awake, sitting upright at the far edge of her side of the bed, waiting for Piper to grin up at her before biting her lip and frowning. Her joke on the first night hadn't been a joke – she really did work for an international drug cartel; that man at her house-warming party had been her boss; she traveled for business, but none of it was above board. She waits for Piper's response, holding her coffee between both her hands, not sipping, not realizing that she's holding her breath. Her chest tightens when Piper finally takes a sip of her own drink and licks a drop of coffee off the mug's edge, thinking, forehead wrinkled. She finally sets the mug down on the bedside table, without a coaster, taking Alex's mug out of her hands and doing the same with it. She straddles her, cupping her face, kissing her softly. Okay. It wasn't a careful decision, but Piper meant it. It was okay.
It was especially okay when Alex started taking her on her trips. First Bali. Piper hadn't initially believed that Alex was serious – for all her private tenderness, Alex was still unparalleled at spinning Piper's emotions. But she had meant it – the plane ticket, the hotel room, Piper's careful inclusion in all relaxation and exclusion from all of Alex's work. Soon it was Java, Jakarta. Eventually, Europe. Alex had been careful at first with the extent to which she displayed Piper to her associates – they weren't gentle men, and Alex's reputation depended on her own studied carelessness, which didn't apply to Piper. But Piper learns to hold her own. She learns to simper for local contacts, to drink and swear with Fahri and Kubra. She flashes a cop once so they can get away with public intoxication; she carries a bag to Brussels and shrugs distractedly when Fahri asks her how it went.
Alex knows that Brussels bothered Piper – she knows that Piper only did it for her, that she would do it again if Alex ever were to need it. But Alex had lain awake for the rest of that week picturing Piper's face when she had first told her she loved her. You do? Alex would push her face further into her pillow, like she had done that morning. You don't have to say it back. And then – then, Piper's smile, wide and unashamed. I love you too. And Alex would grimace in the dark, imagining that smile morphing into the tight mouth she had kissed in the Brussels airport, the tentative fear traced behind Piper's eyes by a mind that had been circling around her decision since she had first agreed. Alex knew Piper loved her – even more, than Piper was devoted to her. She remembered Piper's tongue against the coffee mug and rubbed a hand down her face, then across Piper's back. Never again.
But promises like that are hard to keep, hard when your work is dangerous and your girlfriend is patient. Piper lies across the bed in Paris, flirting up at Alex at her desk and flopping down, pissed, when Alex tells the truth. I'm so fucking stressed. Alex follows Piper to the other side of the room and promises a night out, but Piper kisses her with her eyes open, and Alex knows what has to come next. Hey. Piper turns, expectant, and Alex's eyes dim. She swallows, but they're both far from that first bar. She offers Piper a plane ticket to Istanbul and watches her face fall as she understands what Alex is asking. I specifically told you that I would never do that again. And Alex knows that, she remembers the stupid, short white wig she'd pinned to Piper's hair and kissed underneath when she dropped her at the airport. She remembers what they were like before she'd started drowning in work, before Piper had become bored with the idleness of her life whenever Alex wasn't around. Piper cracks, her voice getting higher in disbelief when Alex calls her an asshole. She says the words she'd discarded over a cup of coffee months ago: I can't do this anymore. She dodges Alex's accusations the way she'd once dodged her doubts, her fears about this life. About this woman. Don't you dare put this on me.
Alex stops, then; her eyes are watering, and her jaw juts out in defiance. She says the words Piper had swallowed months ago and miles away in a bed with polka-dotted sheets: You knew exactly what you were getting in to. And she had, of course. Piper knew that. It stung her eyes as she walked out of the room, down to the hotel bar, booking her flight on her phone between bitter swallows of margarita. She couldn't forget it as she left Alex sitting on the bed the next day without a girlfriend or a mother, dragging her suitcase into the elevator while swimming upwards against the pressure to think, to think, to think about what she was doing. But it was too late to reason her way out, and Piper knew that. She knew where the Brussels money had come from. She knew what she'd been doing, what she'd done.
She knew what Alex's throat looked like when she swallowed, how she smiled in the early hours of the morning. What she looked like when she cried.
Piper had always been one to think.