Disclaimer: I don't own OITNB or its characters.
Summary: Pure angst. Don't blame me, blame... Anon who requested it. A written take on the table scene in season 4 episode 9. With a little more dialogue, I guess.
Author's Note: So, it was really the end of September I last updated this... I'm glad I've gotten back to writing prompts - they're much easier and less sophisticated than writing big ass fics (don't worry, yes I'm still writing ITMOI also). If you have a prompt, inbox me on here or tumblr, I'm still taking them! Anyway, enjoy. Feedback/kudos is appreciated, thank you for it all and your patience so far.
Collectively, each of them at some point followed by the other had noticed at breakfast. It didn't take strenuous efforts to put two and two together of what was being demonstrated at their table. Usually chatty, unstoppably crude and full of witty eye-rolling remarks; their occasionally loudest companion remained unusually silent this morning. Alex and Piper merely exchanged glances between each other now and then. Questions, Nicky considered, rising from their shrugged shoulders and almost-pouting lips as if they'd suffered some short-term memory loss since their little adventure in the corn crops yesterday. She didn't bother to look up and lock eye contact with the pair in the slightest, after all, no one got her into this combustion but herself. Even still, their predictably simultaneous surreptitious peeps with vibrancy of ill-at-ease radiating from them, irked the heavy-headed and lost looking blonde friend to the point where couldn't refrain from an unshared, questionable brow raise.
It was understandable why neither of them wanted to intently or accidentally draw attention. It was slightly puzzling how they attempted to behave like nothing was perceiving them. Even so, it was something Nicky was secretly grateful for. They break off into a role-playing conversation on the topic of burgers, milkshakes, and massages. By that point, Nicky was dazed from even the titchiest ounce of bother she could barely manage to care for and had tuned her ears out long since.
It was Lorna, the blonde could sense, who was beginning to gain a grasp of it. Between mouthfuls of what ever boiled up loaf of alien-looking food, she often started to stare, and those stares were followed by frowns and scowls. She tends to give in and bite the bullet.
"Hey there." Lorna starts, giving the opposite woman a tap on the arm. Disrupted from her numb and senseless train of thought, Nicky's eyelids strain half open to allow a half-hearted glimpse at the perturbed brunette. "You're really being a bit of a downer." She remains in gloom and unfazed by Lorna's melodious and almost zestful take on pointing out her obvious down come. That does not, however, lead her to stray from an unmoved apology. "I'm sorry." There's a pause before she continues, "is my mood not up to your standards?" The brunette's relaxed facial tone switches upon comprehending Nicky's inflection of words.
"No one asked you to plop yourself down right in front of me." Lorna binks and twitches her head dumbfounded, although, she presses on to keep her ground. "I'm sitting here cause' we're… All friends." She gestures out the matter-of-fact to Piper and Alex, whom now wander their eyes around the canteen or remain eyeing up the ill-favored life resource sitting in the pale trays below them. Keeping their contact anywhere but on the pair who're instigating in the margin towards an argument. Nicky responds off the bat; with the query that's been sitting on her chest long enough to gain rupture and discomfort to their disrupted commitment. She shrugs, "is that what we are now?"
"You need to stop blaming me for finding someone, hon." Lorna protests rather sympathetically. Her eyes soften ever so slightly to directly address Nicky's shut off slump. The blonde, however, takes the tone as a grain of patronization. It marks her cue to flicker her mascara-coated lids shut and clump more of the yellow locks through her trembling fingers. "Mm'hmm," she murmurs, a distinct indication of disinterest. "It's not like my feelings for you just went away." Nicky head lifts up; her eyes now wide open to fixate on the brunette after her meaningless statement. There's a beat. "But I didn't just jump into the first pair of mookie pants that came along."
Not strictly accurate, nor argumentative, but Nicky didn't hesitate to let that one slip. Surpassing any brood or inclination of shame in presenting her green eyes - it's out of her depth, and at the very least hypocritical, but she's utterly in farce and facing defeat. Already defeated, quite potentially. Her personal, unintentional turn of attitude isn't surprising to herself. That's the junkie attitude. She was self-deprived of her usual artificial play-along because today was not a day she could allow herself to go by with. Her impulses screamed louder, blood pumped and throbbed and bones grew restless. It was flat and distasteful, but at least Lorna couldn't wriggle her way out of something laid out so bold. Or so, she thought.
Taken aback albeit flustered, Lorna's brows furrow and she glares in realization. Her voice grows sterner and slightly more demanding. "Look, I have no idea what you did…" Something like disappointment entwines her tone. "But you sure as fuck did something cause' you can't keep your head up right now."
"Don't try to change the subject." Nicky slurs. She straightens up, scoffing and shutting out any interest in even remotely addressing the subject of her short fall off the wagon. Completely aware of how she looks with a nervous sweat and clammy, pale skin, she doesn't allow it to intrude expressing her truthful instinctive thoughts onto Lorna.
"Nicky…" Piper interrupts, timidly chewing at the inside of her cheek when she does so. She nervously scratches at her neck beneath the collar of her cheap, small percentage of cotton made, prison issued khaki. Laying out her concern and ignoring an opposed glance from the black falcon-haired ex-lover opposite from her, "maybe you guys should-"
"No, no." The blonde croaks in oppose. Not bothering to turn by instead simply waving her hand away in Piper's direction to quieten her up. Alex's mouth twitches into a small lift whilst sending Piper a stern look. A look that reads 'I told you so.'
"You wanna know why I'm in a downer, Morello?" There's a rough cough and the brunette is left spleen; she formulates calculations in her brain as to where Nicky was headed. It wouldn't take the brightest bulb in the bunch to summarize a conclusion and during reading, there's a niggling urge to get up and leave. She hastily disposes the urge and retreats to the larger proportion of her that's absurdly stunned and intrigued by this unexpected presentation.
"Sorry, ugh, Muccio? What is it these days?" A disingenuous, thin smirk accompanies her impractical carbonated-like tonality. Lorna fails to muster up a comeback, and only responds by tightening her chest and swallowing thickly. "It's been like months, I mean… How do you even meet someone? Let alone…" She already heard enough.
"Okay – stop it."
"Get married?"
"Stop it, stop it!"
A flash of exhaust and disgust translates from Nicky's orbs. A sickly, bile taste erupts Lorna's throat. She could've sworn she gained the attention of possible tens of fellow inmates within the canteen, as well as Alex and Piper – who're now glaring apprehensively in revelation.
"You left." The brunette spits. It's a release to let out the cognizance of the debate, no matter how much it boils her insides. "You were the one who left, alright?" A fraudulent smile tends to aside her next sentence. It's almost pitiful; absurd what her own eyes were witnessing. "I didn't know if you were coming back. And it's your fault, because you love heroin more than you loved me." Her uncontainable rage vents out before she'd even managed to construct the words sufficiently and she assumed at best that her point had beamed across, only until she's met with a grunt of a response.
"You're full of shit." Nicky grumbles. "We all know it. You know it, so why don't you stop with this pitiable, desperate make-believe bullshit you enforce into your and our heads? Hell..." There's an enthusiastic scoff. Her words are slurred, and eyes remain droopy, but she's far from finished. Neither is the latter. "The fuck are you talking about?" Lorna hisses. She's cut off instantaneously. "Oh, you know what I'm talking about –"
"No!" The brunette ferociously yells; her petite body leaning over to spew her decline. "You got in Max. You got back to drugs, and it's your fault. What did you expect us to do, huh? Cry over you? Pick up your fucking pieces? Well, it's not gonna happen. You could've gone to Red, you could've come to me, but you were too busy high out of your skull. And it's on you, Nicky. So, stop acting like I owe you something when you pushed me out." Her voice begins to tremble and turn thick. The tears are yet to threaten her eyes, though she feels the build-up becoming dangerously closer.
"For your information…" Nicky's hefty eyes roll. The false presumed accusations were sickeningly nauseating. Her blood boils and head pounds. This had to be over with - otherwise cold turkey would be the only option left on the table. "I was clean at the time, you peanut-brained, fickle-hearted whore. So…"
The words seethe through her teeth, her veins pulsate ferociously and her heart thumps heavily. Maybe it was out of tiredness, spite, or purity of rage. It's a pointless consideration between the three as the lines soon become fazed and fuzzy; Alex and Piper eyeball in disapproval, shame and almost disappointment. Lorna is stilled – nothing more she can do than glare. She appears frozen in composure as the redness of her lips tweak and nostrils flare. Nicky marks her queue to leave, until –
"So," Nicky dreads as a familiar thick accent sounds. Red approaches with a crisp beam and proud stance. Her powerful mixed features of bold dignity and sharpness look almost overtaken by the warmness of her cheeks. She looks as if in battle with holding back a gleeful laugh of her apparent happiness. "How is everyone, hmm?" Red wonders with her smile still present.
"Oh, you know." Piper takes the query. "Pretty awesome." She responds with the pinch of extreme sarcastic enthusiasm. All the while, Nicky can still sense Lorna's eyes piercing onto her. Her back straightens and eyes roll as she remains being passive-aggressively monitored. Sensing the difficult tension withheld in the air, the mother figure shifts concerned and unconvinced glimpses with each seated member. Her sharp brows quirk up in a questionable manner in her favourite daughter's direction. There was something off.
Red needn't be concerned, nor even questionably amused for much longer. Lorna takes a stance. She rises from her place – without breaking her peer to indirectly address the Russian chef and alert some awareness. "She's on drugs, Red." Her monotone, vacant and tired tone slips. The blonde was over the line and out of her bound. The brunette distinctly knew she had only one option of getting her back in the way it stung the most.
The red-haired woman sank with realization. Her soft eyes now grazed with anxiety, fury, grief and perception through the blonde's strange and child-like response. Nicky does an unfulfilled, weak attempt of coaxing over her unusual state. "Oh, god." She exclaims, sighing and scoffing, rolling her eyes and twirling her hair. She's a tot caught with stolen candy. Her head falls back into her open palm; shaking into it embarrassed and defeated, she shoots Lorna a cold scowl.
"Just take a look at her. She's smacked out of her guard."
Red's features wipe clean. Only her instinctive thoughts are left to kick in as a failed mother. Nothing said, or anything said would plummet to make any minor difference. The brunette is stranded only to exchange very brief eye contact between Alex and their prison mother. Waiting for a much-expected routine of singling out, a slap to the head or even any implication of a small scolding, she's instead met with the sound of uneasy silence and hefty emits of vexation from Nicky.
"What, are we all gonna pretend this isn't happening?" She demands incisively. Red simply turns on her feet and strolls away. No glow of telling off for later, or even slight chunter under her breath to remain behind. It feels as if everything took place in Lorna's head for an instant. The Italian woman scoffs in irritation for her lack of support and confrontation.
"Sounds like a yes." Alex helplessly points out.
It takes a short while for Nicky to process everything. The outburst, the turn of events, the ignition of short-tempered looks of rage shared. Once it does, she's second to rise from her place. One last pitiful combined look of mixed victory and defeat is transmitted at Lorna as she leaves. No words are spoken as the brunette plops back down in her chair. Confinement, anger and hurt cluster her thoughts and shower her mood. Everyone remains in silence.
