Thanks for all the feedback, and to those of you who sent me PMs. Every message reminds me that I'm writing this for a reason. Direct responses to reviews will be at the end of this chapter.
The remainder of the Piper's week sped by in a blur, and she didn't realised that Friday had rolled around until Nicky arrived in her classroom, unexpected and unannounced. They had crossed paths several times during the week - on the rare occasions that she had ventured to the bathroom - and Nicky's room was at the end of the corridor.
She had hoped to encounter Alex a little more, but the woman's room was either empty or ringing with heavy bass riffs, and Piper wasn't brave enough to enter when she knew she'd have to yell to be heard.
Nicky's visit was a welcome interruption, particularly as Piper had finished her few remaining tasks that morning, and was whiling away the final hours of the week with an unfinished novel in her lap.
The Business Studies teacher burst through the doors at a velocity unexpected after a week of work, but Piper supposed that Nicky had probably just been killing time too.
"Hey Chapman - "
"Please call me Piper, Nicky."
"Sure thing, Chapman. We're having a party tonight. It's tradition - last party before the students turn up. You coming?"
Piper smiled outwardly but faltered internally. "Who's we?"
"Vause and I."
Nicky's words hung in the air for Piper's consideration, the pounding drums of whatever Alex was listening to next door suddenly seeming louder. The music had become such background noise over the past week that she barely noticed the ever-present soundtrack, but in this moment it became a bugbear, crowding her thoughts.
Nicky sensed the tension and held up a hand, halting any impending conversation as she took several steps backwards to lean out of the door.
"Vause!"
There was a scraping of chair legs from the next room and the creak of a classroom opening, Alex's music flooding the corridor as the sounds escaped from the ajar exit.
"What?"
Although Piper could only see Nicky's side of the interaction, she knew that Alex was grinning, the expression evident in her voice. Nicky's response was a beatific beam, and Piper wondered just how close the two women were.
"Will ya turn that down? I'm trying to have a civilized conversation in here."
Alex's answering laugh was a sound that made Piper warm.
"It's gonna take a lot more than quiet music for you to find some civility, Nick." Came the reply.
Nicky remained motionless, smile not fading.
Piper heard a sigh drift out into the empty corridor, and could almost feel Alex's shrug of defeat from where she stood, despite being unable to witness it for herself.
"Fine," said Alex, at last. "But I'm choosing the music at the party tonight."
"I can't argue with that." Nicky nodded, graciously accepting the compromise. "If it's shitty, it's all on you."
Nicky returned to Piper's desk, and Alex's music dimmed. The Business Studies teacher gave a victorious smirk.
"I'm the real power behind the throne." She joked, jerking her head in the direction of Alex's room.
The overt familiarity of the pair was beginning to make sense.
"You live together?" Piper inquired.
Nicky moved to lean on a nearby table, settling in anticipation of a longer conversation. "Yeah, have done for a few years now. It was my mom's house, before she died. I had a spare room, or several, and Vause needed a place to crash. Two birds, one stone." She shrugged nonchalantly, as though death was a daily occurrence and a matter to be monopolised on.
"I'm sorry about your mother." Piper inclined her head a little, sincere.
Nicky rolled her eyes. "Thanks and everything, but we weren't exactly on speaking terms. She was some upper-east side New York socialite, chair-person of the board, heiress to a fortune, and I was a Bronx punk teaching night classes to illegal immigrants. But hey," Nicky spread her arms. "She paid for most of this place and got me the job, so I guess she wasn't all bad, right?"
Nicky's final comment gave Piper cause to pause, and she leaned forwards in her seat before posing her response. "Your mother put money into this venture?" Piper gestured vaguely at the building surrounding them both.
"Uh-huh."
"And your mother was presumably one Mrs Nichols, upper-east side socialite?"
"Yeah, what's your point Chapman?"
"Marka Nichols?"
Nicky bounced off the table and towards the desk at an alarming rate, placing her hands firmly on the wood either side of Piper's own. "Fucking serendipity. I knew I recognised you from somewhere. You're a Saint Agnes girl, right?"
She levelled a pointed finger near Piper's face, and Piper laughed, rising until she was level with Nicky. "I remember now - you were in the year above me!"
Nicky took a step back, running a hand through her hair and she weighed the odds of their reunion. "More like several years above you, but yeah. Fuck, what're the chances?" She rounded the desk and placed her palms on Piper's shoulders. "I guess it's decided then - now you have to come to the party."
Turning away from Piper, Nicky hollered out into the corridor, the sheer volume making Piper flinch. "Hey Vause, Chapman's coming tonight!"
After several seconds and the creak of hinges, Alex appeared in Piper's doorway. Her eyebrow was raised as she observed the couple by the desk, leaning against the doorframe in a manner that oozed cool.
Piper had managed to eschew almost all thoughts of Alex since their meeting days prior, but unable to find another interest to turn her attentions to, Alex seemed to be ever-present.
Piper liked to pride herself on being able to move on quickly, and Polly repeatedly mocked her for her ability to do so - the girl was like lightning, leaping from one charged target and onto the next, albeit with a tendency to leave scorch marks and burnt trails in her wake.
And yet here was Alex Vause once more, literally darkening her doorway, in the best possible way.
"Chapman's doing what tonight?" The implied double entendre was evident.
"Yeah, ha ha." Nicky shook her head at Piper before turning back to Alex. "She's coming to the party."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. I think we've got a new recruit into our evenings of drinking and debauchery."
Alex turned her eyes to the newcomer now, laconic, as she held the same gaze that Piper had encountered earlier that week. "Best news I've heard all week."
Alex never gave the house more than a cursory clean, but this time she had made an effort. They periodically had friends from work over, but tonight there would be newcomers present, and she'd rather they didn't realise how messy she and Nicky were until they were at least halfway through the first term.
Alex was also vaguely aware that Nicky had made special efforts to ensure Piper Chapman would attend "for some bonding time", for which Alex was at least a little grateful; the newcomer was cute, if nothing else. It would be beneficial to get to know her a little better, although perhaps not in the getting to know sense that Nicky had in mind.
But then, if Wednesday had been any indication of the blonde's predilections...
Nicky ploughed in through the open back door with her arms full of bottles, placing them unceremoniously onto the freshly wiped wooden work surface.
Her colleague in the Business department, Carrie "Big Boo", followed closely, setting down a crate of beers on the floor.
"Well, that should do me for an hour." The latter laughed, toeing the box with her boot.
Alex appraised their haul. "Did you remember the mixers?"
Boo's head whipped around. "Which pussies'll be wanting mixers? The only thing that goes with beer is more beer."
"Yeah, or snacks. And we bought a shit tonne of snacks." Nicky shrugged, dropping down into an empty chair at the table.
"I'm sure that this is exactly what your mother had in mind for you to spend your inheritance on." Boo laughed.
Nicky shrugged, evidently capable of caring less. "I think she was mostly mad that she didn't have chance to write me out of her will."
"If there aren't any mixers, what're the nice girls supposed to drink?" Alex asked skeptically, revisiting their original conversation. "Or are you going to tell them that they should've brought their own?"
Boo's laugh was an uproar in their quiet kitchen, a fist-fight in a five-star hotel. "You know nice girls Nicky? What, d'you tell 'em you were Paris Hilton's junkie cousin?"
Nicky rolled her eyes. "Ah, fuck." Rising to her feet, she levelled a pointed finger with Alex's face. "Number one - fuck you. Write a shopping list or something next time." Turning to Boo, she slapped the woman on the back jovially. "Number two - we're going back out. Get your keys. Number three -"
Alex raised her hands in mock surrender as Nicky leaned past the departing Boo to express her frustration once more. "Fuck you."
"You already said that, Nick."
Alex watched them leave, resisting the urge to gesture at their thrice-drafted pre-party shopping list taped to the fridge, the top of which was adorned with a single, thrice-underlined word: mixers.
Two hours had passed since the party had first started, and nobody had stormed out, yet.
As a result, Nicky was officially classing this as a success.
Boo had been promised a spliff if she made it through the evening without upsetting any attendees, and usually when they gathered so many women from one workplace in a single space, shit hit the fan fairly swiftly. But apparently not tonight.
The new girls seemed decent, much to Nicky's surprise. Stella, a new member of the music department, was deep in conversation with Taystee by the CD player, and had brought a bottle of tequila, despite claiming to be straight edge.
Morello - this year's driver's ed tutor - was preoccupied trying to teach the drama staff a seemingly complex choreography routine from West Side Story. Nicky watched her body sway in time to the soundtrack evidently playing in her mind, before begrudgingly deciding better of making a move, at least for now.
Making her way through to the kitchen for another beer, Nicky found Alex on the back step, door wide open as Red - known as such for her heritage, hair, and multitude of jokes about communist Russia - held court.
Nicky couldn't hear the words of the Home Economics teacher, but she knew that they would be heartfelt. She watched the monologue end with the woman approach Alex and embrace her.
Alex's mother had died the summer before, and although time made the passing easier, Red had somewhat filled the maternal gap left empty in Alex's life, as well as her own. Nicky was eternally grateful for the older woman's support.
Alex had always appreciated Nicky's willingness to turn a blind eye to her less enjoyable emotions, and her housemate dutifully repeated this act as Alex entered the kitchen through the back door, brushing away embarrassed tears with the back of her hand.
"I think Alex may need another beer." Red followed, patting the brunette on the shoulder as she moved past her, heading away into another room.
Nicky obliged, setting a chilled bottle down in front of Alex, who slumped at the table to toy with her new vessel of alcohol.
"Chin up, stretch." Nicky ruffled Alex's hair. "Chapman should be here soon."
The brunette rolled her eyes involuntarily, a grim laugh falling from her lips.
"Hey," Nicky chided. "She's waspy, and entitled, and I bet she's always asking if they stock shit in whole-grain, but so what? She's cute."
Alex huffed out a sigh, reluctantly relenting. "Yeah, she's got that whole Bambi schtick going on."
Nicky nodded approvingly. "That's the spirit Vause. She might even talk literature to you. I know how you love that."
Alex glanced up from the label she'd been peeling away from the brown glass, eyeliner smudged, and laughed a little. "Great. Then maybe I can cry on her, instead of an ageing Russian woman."
"Sure," Nicky shrugged. "Chicks dig a weeper. Shows you've got a heart somewhere inside that black pit of a soul."
With a gentle punch to Alex's bicep, Nicky left her alone with her thoughts.
Adam - your imperative "update" was kind of pointless, but consider your wish granted...
Bobbiejelly - I think that's because anything to do with Nicky is awesome.
JayJamie - Glad you liked it. I'll keep writing if you keep giving the nicest feedback anyone has ever given me.
WB79 - Consider the build-up about to become more built up. Or something. We're approaching a climax, essentially. (Interpret that how you will...)
Guest3- I won't be making the chapters much longer I'm afraid, as I'm writing this on a bit of a time limit, and in order to post regularly, I'm keeping my chapters short.
Valevauseman - Every two weeks, friend.
Moanzs - Cool. If you keep reading, I'll keep posting chapters.
Vausemaniac - your reviews are immensely helpful. Please keep giving them.