The sofa wasn't especially large, more like medium-sized, and yet there was a sizeable portion left over, huddled as they were against its back. Unlike Alex's previous little breakdown, their kisses had been heated but measured, as in a slow game of give and take. Every time their lips parted, she felt a curious emptiness in the mouth of her stomach, which replenished with a violent surge when their lips touched again - just as she'd noticed at the bookstore. Time had become subservient to their actions, dragging behind them like a loser, and those actions were cutting her to the bone, putting her inside a cycle of exposure and scrambling for concealment which, frankly, was draining.
Assertion, or self-assertion, was as important now as it had always been, if not more. After what had happened at the store, she was aware of having entered Piper's apartment like a strong gust of wind, scrutinizing everything and taunting her about this being a booty call, because she'd been unable to resist coming over, just like she'd been unable to resist hugging and kissing her against that bookcase. Her composure had gone to hell, with her feelings overflowing out of her mouth all the same - if not with words, with the gesture of taking Piper's hands and running her fingers and her mouth over them until her lips had felt on fire and the blonde had interrupted her with astounding ardor.
What she had learned now was that Piper still perceived herself as broken -or fucked up-, but Alex could do fuck all about it. She was no cure; no person, no substance, could be another person's solution, and that was the plain truth. "Broken" was a fitting description for Piper's state that night -which in turn had shattered Alex as well-, although her present expression was completely different to that hard mask of ferocity she had worn that night. Propping herself up on her elbow, Alex examined the woman's face with narrow eyes. Why was she staring at her like that?
"I remember," Piper softly said, although the rupture of the lengthy silence felt sudden all the same. "That night, you saw me. I saw you too, I understand."
Striving to keep a straight face, the brunette rolled Piper over so that the woman was on her back and not pinning her to the sofa's back. This enabled Alex to climb over her, retrieve her glasses, and sit at the edge of the sofa, slouched, with her elbows on her knees and her hands hanging in front of her. Piper sat up, scooted down to where she was, and placed a hand on her shoulder, slipping her fingers under the neck of her t-shirt.
"I didn't realize what that did to you," the blonde went on.
Alex merely remained as still as she could. "They were saying that you had fucking killed each other out there."
"They were- Fuck…" Piper shook her head and brought her other hand up to the Alex's cheek, so that the brunette would look at her. "Jesus, Alex, I'm so sorry."
"Don't. You don't have to say that." She felt her eyes welling up and, even though they didn't overflow, this was exactly why she hadn't wanted to touch the fucking topic and relive it all, and she doubted that Piper could grasp the real reason, if she would make the connection. "Look, I gotta get outta here."
She pushed herself up and dusted off some imaginary dust from the sides of her thighs - a sign of nervousness which she considered irritating, like having a tell. It wasn't like her to run away from anything, and especially it wasn't like her to dodge a particular subject in such a clumsy manner. However, she started striding towards the entrance. This was something which insistently tried to catch up with her, trying to mean something, trying to say something about who she was, when Alex had worked so hard at being the exact person she wished to be. It had previously made her cower, a few days before, with Piper, at the pub, and so she wanted nothing to do with it.
"Where are you going?" Piper stood up, walked several steps in her direction. "Wait, stop."
"I don't wanna talk about this. I don't have to talk about this." Lying down made everyone's height the same, but now, on her feet, she could make the best of her slightly superior stature, in spite of her stinging eyes and the way in which every single cell of her body was protesting the loss of Piper pressed against her. Indeed, the situation could be seen as rather ridiculous, or childish, if one didn't consider the context.
"Of course not. I just want you to know that I'm here."
Well wasn't that great? Wasn't that big of her? "It's not the first time you've told me that, Pipes. You should get yourself some new lines."
Having gathered her boots and her jacket between her arms, the brunette stood still, with her back to the front door. She started thinking about the past, about how it managed to inform the stuff in the present despite it being ancient history. If she'd done things differently the first time around, then Piper would have never felt unsafe with her, which was something she had reflected on at Litchfield too, it seemed, with the fear of things being the same, of the past repeating itself after prison. Back then, Piper had used the verb "freefall" to describe the course of their future lives, because that was what they'd been doing before going to prison, before Piper had left her, before her mother had died. The term had become extremely evocative for Alex, symbolizing everything that she'd done wrong, and she knew that this had become the chance for her to divulge or else let the moment fade, let everything fade, including the desire which was still bubbling under her skin, like residual energy.
Piper had kept moving towards her, until she was directly in front of her, with Alex's boots and jacket as only obstacle. "You don't have to say anything, but don't leave."
Her whole body was like a closed fist, tight, wrapped within itself, but she finally chose to liberate it with a sigh. The important thing wasn't that Piper had spotted her behind that door at Litchfield, but that she knew that Alex had done everything in her hands to get to her. "I tried to reach you, you know, but the guards had locked the fucking door."
"I heard you." Piper's eyes widened. "I heard you. The banging, that was you."
"Yeah," she said, with her voice barely above a whisper. Not one for covering her face during vulnerable moments, Alex held the woman's gaze as stoically as she could, hugging the bundle of clothes against her chest like the escaping lover of a married woman. "I was trying to make the damn thing open."
"Al, it's okay. I know you tried." The blonde placed a hand on her forearm, rubbing it back and forth and making her skin react. "I know."
No, she had no fucking clue. Noting the use of the old nickname, Alex looked at the woman with a skeptical scowl. She felt close to choking up, but persevered. "I didn't wanna leave you there like…"
This was why Piper had ended up leaving her, and why she couldn't trust her now, like she'd already informed her a few days ago. The remembrance of the blonde strewn across the frozen ground superimposed with another image, which came from the back of her mind to the fore: Piper as a distant speck of yellow, floating under the roaring cascade. She had shoved her way between the roaring inmates and had hit the door's unsurpassable barrier, with its hazy glass enabling her to see how they lifted the blonde, wet with snow, and took her away - the extent of Alex's powerlessness: being incapable of doing anything and knowing that she hadn't done enough, that she hadn't exactly been able to see when it had been her choice.
"Like before," she said, smiling in spite of herself. Of course she wasn't only alluding to a single occurrence -nothing appeared to be isolated, everything part of the same miasma-, but wasn't it the most illustrative?
Nowshe understood, Alex mused, as she felt Piper's eyes digging into hers, and her fingers into her forearm. It took her a second to figure out that the blonde was trying to dislodge her arm from its bent position against her breast. Alex complied, letting her boots and jacket drop on the floor with a dry clunk without looking at them, instead watching Piper step over them. The blonde was suddenly standing so close to her that Alex was practically sandwiched against the door. She then brought her arms around Alex's waist, squeezing tight, like she'd hugged her the previous evening before leaving the bookstore, but this embrace seemed even more heartfelt. Alex sunk her fingers within the blonde mane, massaging the back of the woman's head, which was pleasurably warm, and pressed her lips on Piper's shoulder.
"I know, I know…" Piper was saying over and over, her tear-thickened voice like a hum against Alex's heart. "Come on."
Frowning suspiciously, the brunette allowed to be led down the flat's small corridor. She glanced down at their joined hands, which was something that -like everything else-, felt both old and new, and then she found herself in what had to be Piper's bedroom. The rolled-up yoga mat on the corner made her grin, and she momentarily forgot that she should be asking Piper if that was it for foreplay or what. Meanwhile, the blonde had let go of her hand and was busying herself with removing several items of clothing from on top of the bed.
Spartan Chapman indeed. Once more, the apartment's minimalism didn't escape her. What had the blonde said, "Simple needs, simple everything"? Yes, well, that was one way of seeing it. Alex herself had learned to appreciate those simple needs, although out of necessity; the primordial instinct of survival had required her to evolve, while in the past she'd just forced the world to bend. This here, however, looked like the cozier version of a prison cell.
"I thought we could talk more comfortably here."
Alex faced Piper, who was standing next to the double bed, gesturing towards it. She looked cute in her nervousness and self-justification, perhaps suspecting that Alex was stalling because she was feeling apprehensive or something. Indeed, she wasn't sure of being ready for the vulnerability that would come with this, but her body was already missing the contact, so she nodded and helped her pull back the covers.
They had done that a million times before, and it was likely that Piper was thinking that too, for they both started giggling at the same time, first to themselves, then together. The brunette leaped on the bed and lay on her back, one hand behind her head and the other arm parallel to her body, and her legs straight and on top of the covers. Conversely, Piper got into bed after her, slowly, slipping her feet beneath the covers, and then lying on her side, facing Alex. It made her think about the different ways in which they used to enter a swimming pool.
There was a small but significant space between them, like an invisible boundary with an invisible line which cut the bed in half, and she was still missing Piper's touch, so she let her hand travel along the sheet without detaching her eyes from the ceiling. It found Piper's fingers so soon that it could only mean that the blonde had been moving her hand as well. She dragged her fingertips up and down the blonde's palm, drawing random shapes with her nails and, for the moment, it was enough.
"Were you scared?" Piper asked, with a small voice.
"When?"
"When you didn't jump."
Feeling a twinge of pain in the mouth of her stomach, Alex shut her eyes and interlocked their fingers, but managed to answer. "I was paralyzed. That wasn't the worst thing, though. That wasn't the only reason I felt like an asshole later." With a reassuring squeeze, the blonde urged her to continue. "I just felt so fucking… relieved up there on that rock, with you down there."
It still surprised her - even the memory of that relief washing over her was surprising. The paralysis too, because it wasn't common for her to feel blocked and not react in some way or other. Maybe she'd simply been afraid of her feelings; or maybe -most likely-, sometime during that trip to Indonesia she had realized that Piper had felt inevitable to her, and she had been faced with a challenging choice. Being with Piper, being with Piper completely, absolutely, entailed making some changes and, by not leaping with her into the water she had instead chosen not to renounce to anything, because why shouldn't she have it all? She'd believed for a long time that she'd very smartly managed to have her cake and eat it too, and she'd reassured herself by believing that they'd been a team, because she hadn't forced that hot girl to do anything. She'd been too used to molding the world around her, she mused, trying to explain this to Piper. To her surprise, the blonde only nodded, without any major reaction.
"This isn't news to you," Alex said, letting go of the woman's hand and turning on her side to be able to look at her. "How come?"
"I don't know, I think… I think that one day I understood that your work and your safety would always come first - not ours, but yours. Like I told you, I was your girlfriend, and in the end you were treating me like some employee."
It wasn't like her feeling small; she had felt that way on counted occasions in her life and had done her best to cover her bases to keep herself from feeling like that ever again, but that hurt. And if it smarted, then it had to be the truth. She concentrated on staying still, as if moving would shift around the stuff inside her and make it more painful. However, Piper scooted towards her, surrounded her shoulders with one arm, and started kissing Alex's face and neck in a soothing way.
"I know you loved me," said the blonde, with her voice as comforting as her touch, and her face so close to Alex's that every tiny difference between this Piper and the other two Pipers she had encountered in her life jumped at her. Physically, neither of them were the same, and that simple instant of awareness was suddenly like a birdcall for her hope. What if she tried to trust time, like Piper did, and believe in change, change throughout?
"I know you loved me too," she retorted, and then laughed quietly, because what else could one do. "But we did a truly fucking horrific job at it."