Do not own Orange Is the New Black or any of the characters.

I know I've been a very bad writer and have left you guys hanging yet again. Well, I'm not going to make you guys wait any longer.

Enjoy!


"Nice tits."

Alex turned around to face Nicky, who was smiling cheekily at her. She knew that Nicky was referring to the painting and not her actual breasts, which weren't currently on display. The taller woman just raised an eyebrow and shrug her shoulders slightly as if to say she wasn't going to argue with her friend over this. She agreed, her tits were quit nice.

"I'm a muse. What can I say?" Alex replied smugly.

Nicky laughed in response to this statement of Alex being a muse. She could clearly see that her friend was a muse to Piper.

"When did you guys get here?" asked Alex, noticing for the first time the woman standing beside Nicky.

"A couple of minutes ago," replied Lorna with a bright smile. Her lips were painted in their signature fire engine red. "We thought we would miss all the excitement, but it looks like the party is still in full swing here...isn't it?" The small Italian woman peered around the gallery which was still filled with people, despite it being close to closing time for the opening night.

"Yeah, the show got a good turn out," replied Alex as she too looked around the room. But instead of taking in the people around her, she was looking for one person specifically. She had lost sight of Piper yet again. After meeting and talking with Cal for a bit, the blonde had been swept off in meeting yet another gallery owner.

"So where is the artist?" asked Nicky as she snacked an arm around Lorna's waist and looked up at Alex.

"She's talking to some gallery owner over there," gestured Alex to the far side of the room where Piper stood with a frizzy-haired woman. The woman didn't look like much to Alex, but according to Piper, she owned one of the most successful galleries in the City.

Nicky looked over her shoulder and nodded her head in understanding before looking back at Alex. "So, how's it been going so far?"

"It's been going..."stated Alex. There wasn't much to report, she thought. Most of the night had involved what they were currently doing now, standing around and talking. And occasionally looking at the art. It had been fun to meet all the other artist of the show and being recognized by a few people as the model for Piper's painting. Piper wasn't the only one having her moment of fame tonight.

"Anyone recognize you?" asked Nicky, yet again gesturing to the painting of Alex behind them.

"Fuck ya!" replied Alex smugly. She was pretty proud of the attention she had gotten that night. She hadn't been expecting it. Most of the time the model wasn't present for these things. Or if they were, it wasn't that big of a deal. However, the way that Piper had captured Alex in the painting and seeing their relationship together in the flesh had gotten people's attention.

Both Nicky and Lorna laughed at this.

The trio of women continued to talk and move around the gallery space for a few moments longer before they were joined by Piper.

Piper touched Alex lightly on the arm as she leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

"Hi," whispered the blonde, smiling.

"Hi," whispered back Alex, who couldn't help but grin back.

The couple stared at each other for a second longer before returning their attention back onto their friends.

"I'm glad you guys could make it," spoke Piper towards Nicky and Lorna. "Are you enjoying the show so far?" She was hoping that they were enjoying it. She was happy that they had come out too. She hadn't known them for too long, but they had quickly become one of her closest friends in the City. She knew that had to do a great deal with being Alex's girlfriend and them being her best friends too. But Piper liked to think that even if her and Alex weren't together, that Nicky and her would still had become friends.

"Yeah, it's been good," replied Nicky. "Alex gave us the tour of the show...Nice painting by the way!"

"Thanks!"

"Maybe you could do one of me next..." Nicky winked at Piper, raising the drink in her hand up and taking a sip from it. "I could be Adam or something."

"Um...I'll think about...how about that?" replied Piper.

"What Chapman? You don't want to see all of this?" asked Nicky as she gestured to her body. "Or do you have something against a female Adam...because I got to say that seems a little hypocritical..."

Piper knew that Nicky was completely bullshitting her like normal. She hadn't intended to do a religious piece when she first started painting Alex. and she still wouldn't call it that. It was just a paining of her girlfriend as she sees her really. A confident, no bullshit, strong woman. Just like when she first saw her standing there in the centre of her drawing class.

"Hey! There is only room for one muse in this relationship," cut in Alex, pulling Piper close to her side. She didn't want Piper looking at anybody naked but her. Despite Nicky being her best friend, she wasn't sharing.

"Fine. Whatever. Me and Lorna here will start making our own artwork, isn't that right babe?" Nicky glanced over at Lorna who was trying to hold back her laughter.

"Nicky...we aren't really artist," tried to explain Lorna.

"What are you talking about?" asked Nicky in all serious to her girlfriend. "Don't you remember that hole I drilled in the wall last summer when trying to hang that picture? That was fucking a piece of artwork..."

"Oh yeah. I have seen that...it was a piece of art," agreed Alex, nodding her head in all seriousness.

"...It represented the futility of blue collar labour in a technological age," explained Nicky of the hole in the wall that she claimed was an art piece. "And vaginas."

Lorna rolled her eyes at her girlfriend's claims that she was an artist or that the deep hole in their bathroom wall was a pierce of art. It was far from it, in her opinion. It was more like a piece of crap in her life that needed to be fixed. The hole had yet to be replastered and fixed up. The picture that was suppose to be hung originally when the hole was created had yet to be put up either.

Piper could help but be slightly amused by the couple's banter together and Nicky's claim that her work was a piece of art. She knew that it was all just bullshit though. Like most art she thought, some of the explanations that the artist came up with them to support their work where complete bullshit. She was guilty of it herself. But she found that is what was needed some times to succeed. People just didn't want to hear that you painted your girlfriend one night and that was it. They wanted to hear that the woman in the painting represented women as a whole in a society/world run by man. And that women where still looked down and like Eve, can be influenced easily by temptation...Or something close to that. She couldn't exactly remember what she had told that reporter who had asked two glasses of wine earlier about her painting and the thought process behind it.


The subway was surprisingly quiet as the couple got on and took the seat by the window. They were at the back of the train, so they could look out and watch the world disappear from behind.

Piper immediatly took off her heels which were killing her feet and stretched out her long legs into the seat in front of her.

"Give me those," spoke Alex, indicating for Piper to put her feet into her lap.

Piper looked at the brunette through the corner of her eye and smiled softly at her request. She immediatly did what she was told and moved her feet into Alex's lap, shifting her weight in her seat so that she now had her back pressed up against the window and was facing Alex.

Alex studied Piper for a second as she began to slowly rub her left foot. Piper, she couldn't help remark looked like a young girl. Her high pony tail had long ago fallen out of it's elastic and was a tumble of soft waves around her shoulders. There was a rosy tint to her cheeks, which Alex knew wasn't from Piper's blush but the numerous glasses of red wine she had consumed through out the night.

Piper's eyes were closed as exhaustion slowly began to seep into her veins. She could tell that Alex was watching her. And usually she would call her out on it. But she didn't have the energy at the moment. She was in too much of a dream like state to care that her girlfriend was watching her sleep. This was the perfect ending to a great night she thought. There was something so romantic about the subway at night she thought. Maybe it was her drunkenness talking here, because usually the subway cars were anything but romantic at night, especially when she was alone on them. However, tonight was different. The soft sounds that the train was making as it moved through out the tunnel to the next stop was calming like the gentle rock of a boat or the movement of a car during a long journey. Not to mention the feel of Alex's fingers on her foot, rubbing circles into her aching arch.

As she drifted further into sleep, she did not feel the train come to a stop or hear a crowd of people come on.

Alex couldn't help but sit up a little straighter in her seat as she watched the crowd of people come into the car. Even though it was late, this stop was always one of the busiest ones in the city. There was a mixture of people in the crowd, some were exhausted looking, clearly coming from late shifts at work. Some where happily drunk and high from their previous bar hopping and where going off to another. Alex still held onto Piper's foot, but she stopping rubbing it for a second as she waited for the crowd to move further down the car and for the train to begin to move again. She didn't know why she was nervous about this crowd of people on the subway. She wasn't normally a nervous rider. She wasn't a normal commuter on the subway, but she wasn't foreign to it either. Maybe it was because she was afraid in someway that these fellow commuters would disturb her and Piper.

Alex felt she needed to be alert, like a mother bear ready to attack at any moment of a threat. Her green eyes narrowed slightly as they swept over the faces of the others on the train. No one was paying any sort of attention to her and Piper in the corner. There was a young business man in a suit sleeping. A older woman in bright aqua blue scrubs reading a worn out paperback novel. The group of drunks were seated further away, so she couldn't see them as clearly as she could the others. But she could tell that there was about five or six of them. A mixture of boys and girls, who were younger then she was. About 21 or younger she assumed.

As the train continued to move and Alex's nerves fluttered away slightly, her attention remained on that group. She found herself fascinated by them. Not because she hadn't seen or experienced a group of drunken teenagers or because they looked like young Hollywood starlets and she was captured by their beauty. No, they didn't look nothing like the sort. They were average looking kids, dressed in jeans and t-shirts. They were clearly not trying to get into any of the hottest clubs or bars that night. Maybe they were coming from a buddy's house party and going to another one. Or heading out to some dingy bar to hear a friend's band play or one of their favourite indie punk bands play.

The longer she watched and listened to them, she couldn't help, but reflect on her own experiences at that age and what Friday nights use to be about. She remember before the drugs or when it wasn't always about the next hit or high, that nights out were filled with seeing the next Nirvana and Bowie.

As she listened to the high drunken laugh of one of the girls in the group, the train came to a sudden stop. Her shoulders hit the back of the seat, throwing her out of her nostalgic daydream to reality.

She swore as the stop name was announced and the doors quickly opened. It was their stop. Alex swore again as she reached for Piper's shoes which were laying underneath the seat.

"What's wrong?" mumbled Piper as she opened her eyes.

Alex didn't bother to answer her as she stood up, picking Piper up in the process. She figured it would be either to carry Piper out then wait for her to put on her heels and walk out herself.

To an outsider, it might have looked like Alex was kidnapping Piper at her sudden bolt from the train car and Piper crying her name loudly in confusion. However, she was just a woman who didn't want to miss her stop.

The doors closed quickly behind Alex as she stepped firmly onto the subway platform. She couldn't help but sigh in relief as she walked slowly into the middle of the platform and finally put Piper down.

The couple stared at each other for a brief moment before both smiling. Alex was no longer thinking about the group of teenagers on the train or about her past as she looked into the blue orbs of her girlfriend's eye. All she was thinking about now was how lucky she was to have her here in her life.

"What?" asked Piper after a moment had passed and Alex was still staring at her like that.

"Can't I just look at my girlfriend?" stated Alex, a small smirk appearing on her face. Piper hated when she stared at her for a long time like that, but Alex just couldn't help herself sometimes.

Piper just shook her head playfully, before dropping onto the bench beside them. Without saying a word, she then reached for her heels in Alex's hand and began to put them back onto her aching feet.

She was going to make Alex give her another foot rub when they got home, she thought to herself. Clearly the first one hadn't done the trick as her feet began to protest as she stood up.


Thanks for reading and review if you would like.

Julie