Naturally waking up from her sleeping slumber, the blonde goes to roll over but her movement is restricted by a strong arm resting around her waist. Taking in the feeling of Alex's arm looped around her body as well as her ass resting in the older woman's crotch, Piper sighs contently, closing her eyes over again as she lets out a deep breath, trying to contain herself.
Managing to finally shuffle her body around, Piper is given a view of the beautiful form sleeping next to her, chest rising to match her lungs' breathing pattern. She stares for longer than she probably should have, and in witnessing the brunette next to her shuffle closer in her unconscious state, the blonde has to hold back a groan at the feeling of their bare legs touching one another.
"What're you looking at?" a rough, tired voice comes from the older woman, eyes still closed over.
"How do you know that I'm not sleeping?"
"Well - for one, I don't think you would have replied to me so coherently if you were actually still sleeping, and I can feel you watching me," the brunette concludes, opening her eyes to see a set of sparkling, blue ones staring right back at her.
"Guilty as charged," Piper says, giving the older woman a toothy smile, which is mirrored in return.
Alex uses her elbow to lift her body up slightly and moves towards the blonde, turning their smiles into their first morning kiss. Neither bothered to care about the reality of their situation, just basking in the fact that they could do this without feeling guilty and or being caught.
"Al-" Piper moans out when the brunette's lips graze her neck, moving to where they suck softly at her pulse point.
The brunette proceeds with her actions, grinning into the hot skin at the feeling of a hand running through her hair, keeping her lips in place.
"Al if you keep doing that, I don't think I'll be able to wait any longer," Piper pants out, yet not removing the grip she has on the brunette's long hair.
"Mm-hmm," Alex hums, moving back up to the blonde's lips. "How long do you have until your meeting?" she goes on to ask, knowing Piper has an important meeting regarding the final stages of publishing for her book.
"2 hours," she replies, hooking her legs around Alex's hips and rolling them over so that the brunette's on her back. "As much as I'd love to keep doing this," the blonde begins, placing her hands on Alex's abdomen over her t-shirt, "we can't."
"You're right," Alex agrees, "because I'm taking you out for breakfast."
"You don't have to do that, Alex. I'm sure you have a lot of things to be taking care of right now," the blonde replies, hoping that it wasn't too obvious that she was referring to Alex cutting the final cord on her already broken engagement.
"Yeah, but I can do that after breakfast with you," Alex smiles, knowing what the blonde was trying to subtly hint at, yet not wanting to embarrass the younger woman by making a big point of it.
"Okay," Piper smiles. "Breakfast it is."
"What about this one?" the blonde asks, holding up a long, grey coat.
"Pipes - it really doesn't matter," Alex rolls her eyes, standing by the front door fiddling with the key ring on her car keys. "We have to get going."
"But I want to look nice," Piper shyly adds, looking between the two coats she's being indecisive about.
"The grey one," Alex smiles, sensing an element of nervousness radiating from the younger woman. "Can we go now?"
"You're not being very patient, are you?"
"Not when we're under time constraints, no, I'm not," Alex admits, opening the front door for the blonde to walk through.
"Fuck it's cold," Piper comments as they eventually exit the apartment building.
"Maybe you should have gone with the beige coat in the end," the brunette jokes, laughing when the blonde turns to hit her lightly on the arm.
"Funny."
The pair eventually settle down in a local, quiet location - one of which they're both familiar with.
"Bring back memories?" Alex asks as she takes a seat opposite the blonde in a booth.
"Hmm you might have to remind me," Piper smiles, eyeing the woman next to her.
"It seems like it happened yesterday," the brunette comments.
"It certainly doesn't look like it," the younger woman chuckles, alluding to the installation of a brand new window that is located at the end of the boothed table where they had first met. "Can I ask you a question?" the blonde adds, seeming somewhat indecisive as to whether she should go ahead while playing with the handle of her coffee cup.
"Of course you can," Alex smiles, encouraging the younger woman.
Leaning forward across the table, Piper goes ahead with her burning question, making sure to whisper as she does.
"Why her?"
Settling back to her side of the booth, feeling as though a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, Piper watches Alex's face change to one of amusement to one of slight concern.
"Pipes - you know you don't have to worry about that," Alex responds, knowing her explanation could seem like a cop out.
"I get that I don't, but I just want to know. You can be honest with me about it - it's not like you'll say anything that'll hurt me."
Alex tilts her head to the side, raising an eyebrow in a questioning fashion.
"Okay - maybe it will, but I can hack it… I mean I survived you getting engaged… just about," the younger woman tries to joke, giving the situation an element of - much needed - comedic relief.
"Well..." Alex pauses laughing at herself, "you really want to do this right now? It's gonna sound sentimentally cliché."
"I love sentimentally cliché," Piper prompts, not giving in to the older woman's excuses.
"Okay… I guess because I didn't think I had a chance with you I went with the next thing that came along that only required a minimal amount of effort."
"You liked me?"
"How could I not like you, Piper? You're you. Funny and smart and beautiful. Then there was the whole incident with that guy and the magazine articles, so I just assumed I couldn't turn your head." Alex reveals, before feeling an element of confusion given the amused smirk adorning Piper's facial features. What?
"I liked you too you know… like I was borderline infatuated with you, Al. I didn't really know how to deal with my feelings and then Sylvie started crashing in on our nights out and given the way she flirted with you, I knew that I wouldn't be able to top that. So maybe that gives you an idea as to why I left with that guy…"
"The night Sylvie first asked me out…" Alex adds, finally putting two and two together, having never thought of what else had happened that night before it took a terrible turn. "God this is so fucked," Alex laughs, running a hand through her dark hair.
"Hmm - well, it could be going a whole lot worse. I mean, you could have already been married by now," Piper jokes, but before Alex gets the chance to add a rebuttal, a member of staff walks over to take their order.
45 minutes later, the pair are walking down the street, heading towards Alex's car, before Piper is politely stopped by two female teens asking for a picture. The brunette watches the tall blonde in awe, admiring how she carries herself even when amongst strangers.
"Al-" Piper voices, snapping Alex out of her daydream.
"Hmm? Sorry."
"Could you please take the picture?" the blonde asks, knowing she had interrupted one of Alex's intense internal thinking sessions.
"Oh, yeah. Sure," the brunette complies, taking the phone and snapping a few pictures of the trio.
"Maybe photography is your secret calling," Piper voices once the teens leave and they continue their short journey back to the brunette's car.
"What like being a personal photographer that follows you everywhere?"
"Well, the following me around everywhere bit I wouldn't mind," Piper flirts, biting her lower lip as she brushes her body up against Alex's, moving to get to the passenger side's car door.
The older woman chuckles, trying to be subtle as she watches the blonde's ass crossing her path, only to look away when she's being caught, shaking her head sideways to rid the sudden influx of dirty thoughts entering her system.
"Things are looking real good, blondie," Nicky says from where they're sitting informally in her office.
"When do you think it'll be done by?"
"Maybe about 3 weeks to a month. Alex practically did most of the editing with you anyway, so that was a major time saver," Nicky pauses, sitting back in her chair. "Speaking of Alex-"
"What about her?" Piper quickly interjects, suddenly worried at the prospect of what could come out of the wild-haired, totally unpredictable, woman's mouth.
"I wanted you to help me organise her bachelorette party," Nicky voices, smiling widely with excitement.
No matter how hard she tried, Piper couldn't contain the sudden drop in emotion that covered her face, feeling a flash of worry that despite the words and promises Alex had relayed to her the evening before, she was very much still in a committed relationship on the verge of getting married.
"Piper?" Nicky probes, sensing something's wrong with the younger woman.
"No, it's just that I'm not going to the wedding. I'm at a…"
"You're missing Alex's wedding? Does she know?"
"I think so, yeah."
"Fuck man," Nicky pauses, fiddling with the pen resting between her fingertips. "You still like her, don't you?"
"What?! Nicky, no… I-"
"You don't have to play dumb with me, blondie. It's been pretty obvious to me for quite some time now, but I guess not so much for specs - well, she is practically blind I guess."
"She's getting married, Nicky," Piper counter argues, knowing that both herself and Alex had agreed to not tell a soul about their recent romantic developments.
"Mm-hmm," the wild-haired woman mumbles, offering an unreadable expression. "So you'll still come on the bachelorette party?"
"I can't I'm-"
"Please. It would mean a lot to her," Nicky pleads seriously, knowing the light in which her best friend sees the woman currently sitting opposite to her.
Huffing out a loud breath, knowing that Alex's best friend won't get off her back about it, the blonde gives in, hoping it will all fall through anyway in the end. "Okay. I'm in."
"I knew you couldn't say no," Nicky says in an excited tone - one of which makes Piper both entertained and nervous at the same time.
'We have a problem.' Piper sees illuminate her phone screen as she turns on her device having left Nicky's office building. It's a message from her publicist, which - especially from previous experiences - she knows is never a good sign.
'What is it?' the blonde types out, and within a few seconds of sending the message, another appears in response with a link attached.
Clicking on and opening the link, the device automatically switches to the blonde's Twitter app, and as the page loads, Piper's eyes widen at what she sees, internally cursing herself for letting Alex rush them out of her apartment that morning.
Keeping up to date with her Twitter page is something she tries to do often, yet in seeing the flood of notifications coming her way, the blonde's immediate reaction is to delete the app and hide under a rock until it's safe to come back out.
It's an uploaded version of the image she had kindly posed for with the two female teenagers on the street earlier in the day, except the caption and the comments are alarming. Despite identifying that she does look good in the image, it seems as though Alex hadn't held back during their make out session in bed that morning, considering two hickeys are visible in the picture - not overtly obvious, but visible enough - as well as unseeable - once you know they're there.
Fuck, Piper thinks; the caption does comment on the polite nature of the exchange, but is then followed by pointing out the marks on her neck in capital letters. The tweet has nearly 3,000 retweets and just over 7,000 likes, which has no doubt been screenshot and sent around various other branches of social media. The worst part of it all is the first exchange in the comments, one of which is an addition from the person who had tweeted the picture in the first place. Someone had asked who Piper had been walking with before the picture was taken, and in seeing the response entailing that she was with a 'tall', 'hot', 'woman' with 'glasses' that was called 'Al', the blonde nearly drops her phone, now fully standing stationary in the middle of the street reviewing the situation unfolding.
That tweet in itself had revved up its own form of conversation, and the blonde couldn't even begin to imagine how the number of searches for her name, along with written comments about her in online forums - especially after she addressed the fluidity of her sexuality, have increased.
Closing down the app, the blonde considers replying to her publicist, but not only can't she reveal the entire truth about the situation; she doesn't really know what to say. The image doesn't really bother her; it isn't the end of the world - people have sex, but the alarming issue about the problem is that Alex is being brought into the picture. An engaged, very much so - at the minute - taken, Alex, and if the media were to find out her full identity and make their regular set of assumptions, this could really fuck things even up more than they already are.
Deciding that she needs to speak to Alex first, Piper instead sends her a message.
'I need to talk to you ASAP. Call me when you're alone.'