A/N: Howdy doody peeps. Another chapter for you lovely lot. This is all set in the 'present' and links into the opening flash forward that was in Chapter 2.

Hope you enjoy it and if you think it's more delicious than Organic Peanut butter or dark chocolate with 85% cocoa solids, then please leave a review!

Piper takes small sips of tepid coffee but she still feels slightly queasy. She's sat in Alex's apartment. It's small and a little cold, but she likes it already, because there's just something so inherently Alex about the detail of it. The living room is choc full of books, left in haphazard piles under the window, next to the couch and under the coffee table. Half empty cardboard boxes are littered around the room and a framed, vintage burlesque show poster is propped against a wall. On the window ledge, two empty beer bottles sit next to an over spilling ashtray.

'Sorry about the clutter' Alex says returning from the bedroom with a sweatshirt and some shorts in her hand, 'but I only moved here a few weeks ago, I keep meaning to unpack everything properly, but…well…you know…'

She passes Piper the clothes, 'You might want to change into these, I think what you're wearing may have got a little messy' she grins.

Piper finds herself flushing, embarrassed at the recollection of them having to pull over on the way here, so that she could puke. She's pretty sure she's broken every rule of seduction so far tonight.

'Thanks' she mumbles, setting the mug down on the table and taking the clothes. She begins unbuttoning her shirt and then stops, looking up at Alex awkwardly.

'Now you're getting all coy with me? When ten minutes ago I was holding your hair back so you didn't get chunks of carrot stuck in it?' she laughs.

'Errrmmm…I just….maybe I should have a shower?' Her mind is awash with thoughts. If Alex is going to see her in a state of relative undress for the first time, then she wants to make a good impression and right now she is cursing herself for wearing her slightly tired, every day underwear, but then she guesses that smelling of puke is a bit of a passion killer anyway and it's not like she had planned any of this.

'The bathroom is through there' Alex says pointing down the hall, 'and it has a big strong bolt on the door, it in case you're worried I might walk in on you whilst you're all soapy'. She's smirking, teasing her, but suddenly Piper's thoughts are diverted to them being naked together and it's making her feel hot and nervous, so she hurriedly leaves the room to shower and get changed.

She closes the bathroom door behind her, not bothering with the lock and stares at herself in front of the mirror. She looks flushed and tired. This was not how she envisaged the evening going when she called Alex, in fact her brain hadn't even thought that far ahead, she just needed to hear her, to know she wasn't with somebody else and now all of this feels surreal, exciting and fucking scary.

She undresses and turns the nozzle for the shower on, waiting for the water to heat up a little. The pressure is sporadic, but the hot water feels nice against her skin and relaxes her slightly. She finishes up quickly and dries herself with a towel hanging on the back of the door, guessing that it is Alex's. It somehow feels illicit that she's using the same towel that Alex has had next to her skin, illicit, but really quite delicious. She manages to locate some mouthwash in a cupboard under the sink and gargles with it several times. She feels a little more stable now, more human. She hears a knock on the door.

'You ok in there?' Alex asks.

'Yes, sorry, I feel much better now' she says quickly pulling the borrowed clothes on' She makes her way back to the living room and stuffs her other clothes into her bag.

'You could have just put them in the laundry basket'

'I don't want you to do my laundry for me'

'I thought you'd be used to that' she laughs, 'don't you have a maid or something?'

'I'm not royalty' she grins.

Alex pours her some fresh coffee. 'Just how much did you drink exactly?' she asks, taking a beer from the fridge for herself.

'Errmmm….close to a bottle of Champagne, maybe'. She takes a sip of the drink, the warmth of it makes her shudder a little.

'Must have been some celebration'

'Polly got engaged'

'Seems to be catching' she smirks.

'Not funny Al'

'No? You normally love my irreverent sense of humour, oh wait, that's right, you don't love anything about me at all do you?' she says teasing Piper about her comments over lunch.

'Asshole' she mutters under her breath, but finds herself struggling to suppress a smile all the same. She glances at the books under the coffee table and spots several by Edgar Allan Poe. 'You've read the Masque of the Red Death?' she asks spotting a yellowing dog-eared copy, precariously balanced on top of a pile.

'Yes' she says taking a seat next to Piper on the couch. She's so close that their legs are touching and rather than move, Piper is savouring the warmth and proximity.

'Don't you find him a bit dark?'

'We all have a dark side' she says, taking a sip of beer, 'we just need a bit of light to balance it out'

'So what's your light?' Piper asks, locking her gaze firmly with Alex's.

'Maybe I'm still waiting to find it' she grins.

The tension in the room immediately feels ramped up and Piper quickly averts her eyes back to her drink.

'So, you want to tell me what this is all about?' Alex asks placing the beer bottle on the table.

'Errrmm….I just got a bit drunk'

'Well duh, I figured that much out. Which one of us is the Smith grad here?' she laughs.

Even her laugh is intoxicating; raspy and heartfelt and when she's really happy, it hits her eyes in a way that is magical and glorious and just so fucking perfect that Piper's heart can barely contain itself.

'I just missed you, that's all'

'So you called me, drunk?'

'You didn't want me to?' Her heart is thumping outrageously now, maybe she has got this all wrong, maybe Alex just enjoys flirting with her and it's nothing more, maybe it's Sylvie? Fucking, goddamn, Sylvie.

'It's just that you've been acting weird for days and then tonight…' She's staring directly into Piper's eyes now, as if she's searching for the answers first hand and Piper doesn't know where to begin, because she's not even sure how she got here; when it was she realised that her feelings went beyond snatched coffees, walks in the park and discussions about why anyone would read anything written by Sylvia Plath for pleasure. Her head is swimming, but she's not sure if it's the remnants of the Champagne or something else.

'Piper?'

'I don't know what you want me to say….I just…..' she's struggling for the words now and she's beginning to wish she was drunk again, because everything seems so much easier when the edges are softer and fuzzy. She takes Alex's hand, it feels warm and familiar and fits so perfectly with her own. Piper's breathing feels stilted, because the gravity of what she is about to say has just hit, and it's scaring the hell out of her, because she knows once words are out there, everything shifts, the planes of life are re-aligned.

'When I'm not with you, I wish I was and when I am, I don't want to leave.'

Alex gets up from the couch and walks towards the window, and for a second, Piper thinks she hasn't heard. She rubs the condensation from the windowpane with the sleeve of her jumper and stares out into the frosty night. 'You're engaged Piper' she says, frustration blurring the edges of her words 'and I have no intention of being the last wild oat that you sew before you go off and live the bourgeois dream'

'What? You think this is what I'm doing?' She's feeling a little shaky now, it could be the come down from the booze, or the blood that's pounding behind her eyes, but either way, Alex's comment hits her full and hard in the chest.

'Well isn't it? We flirt, we have fun….we're friends. You wanted to be friends, nothing more. Remember?' She says it likes it's a jibe of some sort and it's effective, there's no doubt about that.

'Fuck you!' Piper snaps, desperately trying to fight back the hot pin pricks of tears from spilling over, 'you don't ever get to throw that in my face, like ever, you hear me Alex?! I was doing what I thought was right'

'You mean safe?'

'What?'

'If you were with me, your cosy little suburban dream would be blown up in smoke within seconds, wouldn't it? And I don't think you can handle that and deep down you know it, so you've been keeping me at arms length all this time, fighting with yourself.' Her eyes are flashing with something dangerous now and Piper is so taken aback by the ferocity of her statement, that for a moment, she feels as though she has been winded.

'Take a look around you' she says, gesturing to the apartment, 'this is me. You know why I moved here?' she says looking directly into the blues of Piper's eyes, holding them captive, 'because I couldn't afford the last place. I couldn't afford that last roach infested shithole. Everything you see here, the crappy books, posters, rickety table, that is all I own in the whole fucking world. This is literally it. I don't have any savings, any retirement provision and if a rainy day should come a knocking, them I'm royally screwed, because I will sure as hell be drowning'. She turns away from her now and stares back out of the window, her breath making fuggy patches on the glass.

'You just don't get it Al, do you? Any of this'

'We're friends' she says, without any real conviction.

'You just don't get it' Piper repeats, the words jarring in the back of her throat: almost unable to escape. 'None of that matters to me, you make me feel something I didn't think I was capable of'. She pauses, trying to regulate her breath and wishing she could rewind the whole evening, start from scratch. She glances up catching Alex's reflection in the window, the lights from the street below have softened it somehow, making her appear vulnerable and Piper has never seen that side to her before. It immediately causes her heart to wrench and she finds herself desperately fighting off the overriding urge to walk up behind her and envelop her in an embrace.

'Al, look at me please' she says softly.

'I think you're still drunk Piper, you don't know what you're saying'

She shakes her head. 'No, this is the first time my head has felt anything like clarity, for months. Al please, I need you to listen to me'.

Alex moves away from the window, the lines of her face softened. She's crouching in front of Piper now, looking directly into her eyes and Piper can't lie to her, even though she's been deceiving herself for weeks.

'So tell me then' Alex says almost whispering. 'What is it you want?'

'You' she replies firmly. 'I want you'.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Piper is lying awake in Alex's bed. Hazy light from the street lamp filters through the slats in the blinds and illuminates a messy pile of Alex's clothes in the far corner of the room. She checks the time on her phone, it's 1am, she's been tossing and turning for half an hour.

She called Larry hours ago and told him she would be staying at Polly's for the evening. He mumbled a quick response, too distracted by a film he was watching and that was that. The ease in which she was able to lie to him surprised her a little, she never thought she would be capable of that, but then she had never imagined that her world could have been turned upside down in this way either. That's the problem with life, every so often it catches you off guard.

She sighs deeply. The continuous dripping of the kitchen tap is irritating her, but if she listens carefully enough, she can hear Alex breathing, asleep on the couch in the living room. She kicks the covers off, frustrated, desperate to feel Alex next to her, but segregating themselves in separate rooms had been Alex's idea. She was convinced that Piper was still a little tipsy and might regret anything they did tonight and now Piper is wishing to god that she hadn't been drunk and sick because lying here, all she can think about is kissing Alex. What she would taste like, what she would feel like and she doesn't think she can wait a minute longer to find out.

She picks up her cell phone and dials Alex's number. She can hear it ringing in the other room and after a few seconds, she answers, her voice a little croaky from sleep. 'Piper? What the fuck?'

'I can't sleep, can you read me a bed time story?' she says grinning.

'So you called me from the room next door? You're fucking nuts' she laughs.

'Is that a no then?'

'I don't know any bedtime stories'

'Use your imagination, I'm sure that's very vivid'

'Well, you have a point there' she laughs, 'but that could be dangerous'

'That sounds like a promise' she whispers.

'But what I have in mind won't help you sleep…'

'Maybe I don't want to sleep?'

'And maybe you're still a little drunk'

'I'm not…really…'

'Piper…..'

'I'm not…..I just don't like sleeping in a strange bed by myself, it always freaks me out' she pauses, desperately wanting to feel Alex close to her, resentful at this imposed torture when she is less 30 feet away.

'Just how many strange beds have you slept in? And here was me thinking you were a proper young lady'

'There is a time and place for being proper, just as there is for being improper' she says her voice tinged with mischief and feeling a strange sort of buzz. But it's definitely not alcohol related. 'So….'

'So?'

'Will you come and keep me company?'

There's a pause and for a moment Piper thinks that Alex has hung up, but then she hears her sigh. 'I'm not sure that would be a good idea'

'Why not, because I'm engaged?' Suddenly that word feels strange, like she's referring to somebody else's situation, because the thought of being bound to anyone else, well, it just doesn't feel right at all.

'Yes…..and I don't trust myself to be that near you…in bed…'

Piper knows it shouldn't, but this immediately sends goose bumps up her spine.

'But we could just cuddle…' she says not even convincing herself.

'You want me to come in there and cuddle? And how long do you think that would last for?' Alex replies, clearly unconvinced.

'As long as you wanted it to'

'So about half a second then' she says grinning.

'Really? Half a second is all you could manage?'

'At a push'

'And then what would happen…' she asks, enjoying the turn the conversation has taken.

'I'm hanging up now Pipes, go back to sleep'

'No wait…'

'What?'

'Do you think this could work? You and me I mean?'

There's silence for a few seconds as Alex mulls it over. 'Yes' she whispers 'and that's the scary part'

'Why?'

'Because I always fuck stuff up and what we have….well I wouldn't want to ruin that' her voice sounds different now, heavy with emotion.

'Or maybe we could be an even better version of what we already are?'

'Piper and Alex version 2.0 you mean?'

'Why not?' she laughs.

'Because life isn't like that Pipes and I don't want to hurt you, not for anything in the world.'

'Why don't I get a say in this?' she says, petulantly.

'You do…but aside from anything else…well this isn't an ideal situation is it?'

They're both silent again, after all, neither of them can dispute that point.

'So just to clarify' Piper says, first to break the stillness, 'that's a no to cuddling me?'

Alex laughs, 'just go to sleep Pipes, we both have work in the morning, we can talk more tomorrow.

'But I'm frightened' she says softly.

Alex laughs, 'quit being an idiot, there's nothing to be frightened of'

'There is' Piper replies, her tone suddenly sombre as the realisation dawns on her unforgivingly.

'Really, what's so frightening?'

'I think I'm in love with you'

The line goes quiet again and this time Alex has hung up. For a second, Piper is worried she's made a mistake, that her revelation has pushed Alex away and then she sees her standing in the door way, her eye's shimmering in the shadows.

'Al?' she says, getting out of bed and walking towards her. But she doesn't reply, instead she locks her gaze with Piper's, pushes her firmly against the wall and kisses her, hard and deep.

The result is electrifying, as every inch of Piper feels as if it is tingling, under some sort of strange, tantalising spell. Alex's lips are soft and hungry; a juxtaposition of tenderness and desire, endless weeks building up to this moment: a crescendo of ecstasy and yearning.

Her lips continue their trail now, as they move down to Piper's neck and collarbone, her hands caressing every inch of Piper's body as it prickles with desire and she cannot control the soft moans that are now escaping her lips. She takes Alex's hand and begins guiding it to where she desperately wants to be touched, where her longing is centred.

This is not Larry, this is not safe, pleasant love making, this is raw, passionate, dangerous. This is what she has been missing out on.

Alex.