Note: Thanks for your patience! This one got a little weird and book-y. Still using Rushmore quotes at the beginning. Always look forward to hearing your thoughts, especially if you have ideas for this story or prompts for other stories you'd like to see. I pretty much know where I'm going with this one, but a little extra inspiration is always nice!
…I'm a little bit lonely these days…
Nicky lingered in the entrance to the Suburbs until she was sure Piper was alone in her cube. She hadn't seen Red in the two days since their blowout, and if the sudden scarcity of Norma and Gina was any indication, Red and the family were going out of their way to avoid her as well.
Piper, busily scrawling away in a dog-eared composition book, remained oblivious until Nicky awkwardly cleared her throat. She wasn't there to apologize – not in so many words, at least – she was just looking for a distraction. "Hey. Chapman. You got any books I can borrow?"
Piper's eyes widened slightly at the sound of Nicky's voice, a brief look of something like panic rippling across her face. But Nicky had to give her credit – Piper was quick to let things go between them, hesitating only a little before she recovered with a bemused but genuine smile.
"Oh. Um. Sure. Take a look at the ones over there, and I'll get the other box out from under the bed."
Nicky moved over to the stack of books on the storage cabinet and began perusing titles and cover art. She didn't know what she was looking for, exactly. She wanted to escape, and as Litchfield was running short on getaway vans and secret tunnels of late, she thought this might be the next best option.
Piper laid more books out on her bed and hovered but was mercifully silent. A pale blue cover caught Nicky's attention, and she fished it out of the pile. There was a picture of a white bird, mid-flight, with an arrow piercing its heart and the words Everything That Rises Must Converge. The image was attractive for reasons she couldn't quite place.
"Hmm." Nicky held the book up for Piper to inspect.
"Flannery O'Connor? Oh, she's great." Before Nicky could pocket the book, Piper held up a hand. "Wait. Are you the kind of person who likes to read depressing shit when you're depressed? Because her stories are all…death and racism and miserable, terrible people. With a side of Jesus."
"But great," Nicky deadpanned as she dropped the book back onto the bed. Her eyes wandered over more titles: Atonement, The Depths of Despair, The Virgin Suicides. "I'm sensing a pattern here. What kind of fucked-up friends do you have, sending you books like this?"
"They mean well. But people don't really get what it's like, you know? They have a shitty day at the office and go home and watch some sad bullshit television show, and it's like schadenfreude, and they can forget about their stupid little problems for a while. They don't get that it's different in here."
They stood over the sea of books for a long moment before Piper intervened again. "Look, why don't you go to the library while I try to find something here that you might be interested in?"
Nicky nodded and shuffled out of the cube. Piper was being nice to her, and part of her felt bad that she wasn't doing more to extend the olive branch herself, but all she really wanted was a book and her headphones and an empty bunk where no one would bother her, and the less talking it took to get those things, the better.
...
"Self-help section is that way."
Poussey's voice was neutral, but there was a hint of laughter in her eyes. Ever since the cafeteria incident and her rapid deflation from prison terror to hermit who hardly left her cube, Nicky had the distinct impression that a good percentage of the inmates were laughing at her. She couldn't blame them.
"Does it look like I'm in need of the self-help gurus?"
"Shit, man, a body'd have to be blind to miss the rampage you been on since your girl got sent away. You need some kinda help."
Nicky sighed. "I'm looking for something that will stop me from climbing the fucking walls. You got any recommendations for that?"
Poussey shrugged, drawing her words out long and slow. "Maybe. Fiction or nonfiction?"
"Uh, fiction?"
Poussey smirked down at the cart she was sorting, pulled one of the books, and flipped it up at Nicky's chest. Nicky barely managed to snag it out of the air before it fell to the ground. She groaned when she saw the title.
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Hilarious."
She made to drop the book on the nearest table in disgust, but Poussey managed to stop laughing long enough to protest. "Don't be like that! Ain't you seen the movie? You don't wanna miss out on a classic just 'cause you're projecting your inner turmoil and shit all over the place."
"Classic, huh? What else you got?"
"Can you give me something more to go on than 'I want a book that makes me feel less crazy'?"
"I don't know, normal books? What does everyone else read in here?"
Poussey, realizing that Nicky was going to be absolutely no help in this venture, started to wind through the stacks, plucking a few things from the shelves as they went and pushing them into Nicky's arms without comment. Nicky was left to look at the increasingly bizarre titles and wonder what exactly she was getting herself into.
When Poussey stopped to consult Taystee for more ideas, Nicky finally interrupted. "So far you've given me a book on rabbits and another one that I can't pronounce but can only assume is the name of some flesh-eating bacteria. Can we manage something maybe a little more sexy?"
"Uh-uh," Taystee said, "the higher-ups don't want no sex books in their library." She leaned closer to Nicky even though the three of them were already alone in that section of the stacks. "Chapman'll sort you out with the naughty stuff. Got me my 50 Shades. And don't be dissing Watership Down in front of Poussey – bitch cried for a week straight while she was reading it."
"Aww, man, c'mon, T! Why you gotta be telling everyone that? You know it was only because my daddy read that to me growing up, and I was feeling all nostalgic." Poussey had turned away from them, running her hands over her buzzed hair. "I didn't embarrass you for crying over Dumbledore even though you done read the books 8 times!"
And while the two descended into an argument over whose grief was more valid, Nicky decided to make her exit. She just wanted to go back to her bunk and shut everything out besides the stories about stupid rabbits and mental institutions she was now carrying with her, but it seemed that she couldn't help making one last stop along the way.
Why did it sometimes feel like everything in this prison led back to Piper Chapman?
...
The stack of books under her bed had grown considerably after her second visit to Piper. At first it was hard not to read just a few pages of one before throwing it down and reaching for another, as if a constant kaleidoscope of changing characters and settings would somehow calm her down instead of making her sicker, but she forced herself to stick to one book at a time. She plowed through page after page, hardly taking in what she read. It was the action that mattered – turning pages, shifting her eyes across and down until they burned, sucking absently at the papercuts that raced across her knuckles.
Of course her brain was looking for some way to translate this into a new drug. Somehow if she read fast enough, consumed enough words, she'd get high. It would change things. So she made reading into something violent. Drowned the voices inside with other voices. Surrounded herself with made-up people and problems so she wouldn't feel so goddamn lonely. Is this what it was like for Lorna?
She probably would have had weird dreams if she slept, but every time she tried it became the kind of sleep where you lie on your back and stare at the ceiling and wait for morning to come, never sure if your eyes ever close at all. She supposed some sleep must have snuck in here and there because she was still functioning, still walking and going to work and sort-of eating, but she could never pinpoint when it actually happened – it all felt like interminable waiting.
She always sat with Alex and Piper at meals now. They had never quite become part of Red's family, so no one was breaking any rules. Yoga Jones and Sister sometimes joined them, but if the arrangement was making life difficult for any of them, they didn't mention it. Nicky wondered if Red had sent them herself, to keep an eye on Nicky in that inscrutable and removed Russian way of hers, and she wished, not for the first time, that she had kicked her paranoid tendencies (at least when it came to mothers) along with her heroin addiction.
They didn't push her. They talked around her, leaving openings for her to jump in, but she never did unless they asked a direct question. Words stuck in her throat these days, like the food.
"So, Nichols," Alex said one day with her usual archness, "are you improving your mind with all that extensive reading you're doing? Learned anything new?"
Nicky kept digging her fork around her reconstituted mashed potatoes. "America gets its rocks off on reading about kids killing kids and mommy porn. That's fucking grim."
And that ended that discussion.
No one talked about Lorna either. It was strange how keeping company with the others only made things worse, made it all the clearer how much dead air there was in the space Lorna left behind. Eating wasn't the same without her. Nothing was the same without her.
...
She chased herself out of bed to read in the chapel, reluctantly, and only because she suspected she might develop bed sores if she stayed in her bunk any longer. She was barely two steps inside, doors still swinging against each other in her wake, when all the air in the room got sucked out.
She thought for a second that maybe sleep had finally caught up with her and nightmares were her reward, but then it hurt, just trying to breathe, it all hurt, and she knew it was real.
She thought about her heart, as far as thinking could go when the world suddenly decided to change directions, and she was on the ground now, clutching uselessly at carpet and wood, all the colors were confused, and there was a jackhammer in her chest, her heart, finally fucked up enough that it would just stop – and wasn't it funny, it was going to fail when she was sober and maybe starting to get things right and use it properly – and the only sound was the blood jackhammering through her ears, there was no breathing, there was no white light, and everything was gone gone gone
…
"Nicky."
"Nicky, can you hear me?"
"Nicky, you need to take some deep breaths. Do it with me."
The sounds reminded her of the ocean as they rocked against her, and she was shaking – being shaken? – as she opened her eyes to see Chapman crouched in front of her, gripping her shoulders and asking her to breathe.
"Piper," she rasped after a few long moments of them breathing into each other's faces, "you can stop looking like you have a dead body on your hands. I'm fine."
Piper slumped down onto the floor next to her. "You scared the shit out of me."
"Yeah, me too." Nicky frowned. "I don't know what happened."
"Panic attack. Your first time?"
"Yeah."
They sat in silence, both trying to collect themselves. Nicky, still sweating and trembling, felt the familiar sense of humiliation and failure creeping up her back just like it had all those times she'd woken up weak and confused in hospital beds with a disapproving mother standing over her or yelling over the phone. Chapman was definitely an improvement in that department. As Red had said, there were much worse people to be stuck with.
"Jesus, that was worse than overdosing."
"I'll take your word for it."
"You ever have one of these before, Chapman? You certainly knew how to handle it."
Piper smiled at her. "Besides the one I had my first day here? Yeah, a few. When your girlfriend works for an international drug cartel, it's kind of in the job description." She fiddled with the hem of her shirt, in a gesture that reminded Nicky so powerfully of Lorna that she had to look away. "And you didn't see me when we first found you – all the hand-wringing, chicken-with-its-head-cut-off flailing stuff. Can we pretend that part didn't happen?"
Nicky snorted, still fixated on the chapel doors rather than Piper. "Can we pretend all of this didn't happen?"
"I'm not going to tell anyone." Piper suddenly looked around the chapel as if she thought they were being watched. "I sent Alex for water at least ten minutes ago. Where the hell is she?"
"And you and Alex were coming to the chapel because…?"
Piper rolled her eyes. "Seriously? We were just going to – oh, forget it!" She threw up her hands when she saw Nicky's expression. "You know what we were going to do," she muttered darkly as she pushed herself up. "Want some help back to your bunk?"
"No, I'm good, I –" Nicky sighed as Piper stared her down, hands on her hips. "Okay, Chapman, this is the part where you see that I'm lying and cleverly devise a way to help me despite my protests."
"You're hopeless, Nichols. Absolutely hopeless." Piper helped pull her upright and wrapped an arm around Nicky when she saw how unsteady Nicky still was.
Hopeless. You're telling me, kid, was all Nicky could think.
"Now act casual. Everyone's going to think we just fucked."
They made it back to Nicky's cube with surprisingly few run-ins with curious inmates or knowing looks from COs. Nicky collapsed on the bed, exhausted, wishing Lorna was there to be her big spoon or to lull her to sleep with incessant chatter about wedding dresses and Bora Bora Bora – those speeches never failed to knock her out, and she could use a good knocking out at the moment. Piper stood half-in, half-out of the cube, quickly re-approaching her hand-wringing state of uncertainty as she wondered whether Nicky would accept any more comforting gestures from her.
"You don't need to babysit me, Piper. I'm a big girl."
Piper nodded, and half-turned to go before suddenly blurting, "Maybe you should come to yoga with me."
Nicky turned awkwardly in bed to give Piper the full force of her contempt. "That's quite possibly the worst idea I've ever heard."
Piper nodded again, as if to say fair enough, but Nicky didn't miss the quiet "Think about it" that trailed behind her as she left.
"Hey, Piper," she called back. "Thanks."
...
She went to yoga.
She made the mistake of taking her place next to perfect Piper at the front of the class. There was no one to ogle, no asses to admire as she stood wobbling beside Piper's rock-solid forms, trying to contort her body into some impossible lightning-bolt shape. She didn't even have time to lust after Yoga Jones, although she did finally learn what 'chaturanga' meant. It wasn't nearly as sexy as she had hoped.
She swore she could hear Boo laughing at her, and the woman wasn't even in the room.
When the session was over, Piper turned to her, oblivious to her struggles, and said, "That was fun, wasn't it?"
"Oh, yeah, it was great. Especially 'child's pose' – I really nailed that one."
Yoga Jones came over to join them. "You know, Morello has problems with keeping 'soft eyes' too. You're just thinking too hard about the movements."
"Somehow I doubt the problems in my life arise because I'm 'thinking too hard.' Thanks anyway, Jones."
She hurried away before she could embarrass herself further, vowing never to return to that particular class again.
...
She was passing Boo's cube when she heard a loud, "Bitch, you stole the best pussy from me again with those last girls," explode from her left. Well, she could hardly ignore that sort of summons.
"You rang, Boo?" she asked casually as she strolled into the cube.
Boo, looking decidedly peeved, crossed her arms. "Guess I was wrong about the whole 'desperation drives them away' thing."
"Hey, take it up with the girls, okay? They chose me. I just went along for the ride."
"Bullshit."
Nicky groaned. Boo was not going to make this easy for her. "Look, I heard there's a new van of girls coming in later. Wanna check it out?"
Boo smirked. "With you, Oh Monogamous One?"
"No, see, monogamous means I only have one partner. You can't accuse me of sleeping with two girls and then accuse me of mating for life in the same conversation."
Boo held up a finger and used her mock-sagacious tone, which mostly just made her sound a little like Chang. "Ah. But monogamy of the vagina and monogamy of the heart are two different things, young grasshopper."
"Seriously? That's just creepy, Boo."
"Cut the shit, Nichols. You may still be collecting orgasms, but we all know who you're really holding out for. You haven't fucked anyone and meant it since that girl walked in here, and you know it."
Nicky didn't know how to respond to that. Which Boo interpreted as permission to keep rolling along, barely pausing for breath. "I heard about your little swooning fit. Are you trying to steal the plot of a Victorian novel? What's next, wandering the moors in a delirium, calling out for your lost love? Mad woman in the attic – well, we've already got a few of those. Tuberculosis? That would show some commitment. You are aware that all those stories end in tragedy, right?"
Nicky held up hers hands in surrender. "All right, all right, Jesus, can you just stop?"
Boo immediately shrugged and switched gears. "Sure, son. What say we go fetch us some pussy?"
"I'm just there to look, not bite, this time. I'll let you have all the pretty ones." Her own slight acknowledgement that not everything Boo had said was full of crap.
"Let me? The day you let me have anything is the day I…" Nicky couldn't hear exactly how Boo finished that threat as the older woman disappeared from view, leading the way down to the transfer cells. Nicky hurried to catch up.
"Hey, that thing we talked about before…my mistake, yeah?"
"Please. If I ever find out who took that shit, I'll neuter them myself. Man, when I think of how set we would've been with that in our pockets…"
Boo waited until they were almost to the rooms before she brought her guns out again. "Soooooooo, I hear you're Chapman's new yoga buddy."
Nicky was never going to live that one down.