Hello! Welcome to my fourth one-shot! :) It's a bit smutty, so if that's not really your thing, I'm sorry and fair warning around the middle :) It's very mild though. So, the rating is still T. :) Anyways, hope you like it and as always read and review! :) This one's called "Cold Showers."

xx

Nicky walked into the dorm bathroom looking forward to a shower. She wasn't looking forward to one alone – Lorna had custodial duties earlier this morning and she couldn't bare to wake her. She'd looked so peaceful, curled up like a house cat on top of her mattress; such soft, small breaths emanating from such a soft, small body, that were somehow just sweet enough to get Nicky to brave one, lukewarm shower, in their stall, alone.

She was regretting that decision now as she passed the stall that came before theirs. Actually, right at this moment, she was missing the kid so much that she swore she could hear that lilting little voice, heavy with that poor man's posh accent, tunelessly murmuring song lyrics as she shampooed.

"I should be anywhere but here, on the plane, on the stage, on TV…"

Nicky knew that song. Of course, she knew that song. She'd taught her that song. One movie night eons ago, Nicky's pick finally won out and Annie played on that shitty projector and she sat in the front row, with Lorna as much on her own seat as she was in Nicky's lap, watching her mouth the song lyrics and the entirety of her favorite scenes with laughter on her lips and a smile just beneath.

"But I find myself here at the Snot House…"

Nicky almost laughed. The song reminded her of being in here.

Except, their Snot House had shitty, borderline fraudulent (although Nicky suspected it was) work detail and three-square meals a day that left them barely able to get by; and as Nicky saw it, Miss Hannigan, with her hefty supply of actual alcohol and showers with normal water pressure had no right to complain. No right at all. Sure, she was stuck with all these little girls and had no man whom she'd use to live a lavish lifestyle, but women were better for that anyhow. Unless that was just her sexuality talking. It could be.

Damn, she was really missing her girl. There was the voice again. Was she going crazy?

"Little shoes, little socks, please kill me, I'm serious."

Her hand reached out to rip open the curtain, feeling confident enough now that she could. That she knew who it was behind it. But then her hand stopped. She snickered. Really snickered this time.

"Please kill me, I'm not singing, I'm asking."

To hear those words come from her mouth was hilarious. Almost unfortunately so. If she didn't get her baby and her husband and her white-picket fence… Nicky was certain Lorna would rather die.

Nicky would give her all of the clichés in the world, full stop, if she could. It was just that they were in prison, cooped up in this shithole like a brood of chickens. (Damn Chapman and her dumb ass terminology for animal species. She didn't need to know any of it. Yet here she was). And the whole marriage and kids idyll with her wasn't exactly the way Lorna had it pictured in her head. Given that she wasn't a man and all that.

And that killed her. Not that she didn't like being a woman. Girl power and all that. Rah – rah - rah. It's just that sometimes she got the feeling that Lorna would be happier with a man. That she wasn't happy with her. Despite the twangy – "oh, no, hon, I'm plenty happy with you, trust me, plenty happy indeed – that spilled from her mouth in a lethargic, sticky sigh soon after she'd finished, that was supposed to placate her, Nicky wasn't sure she could quite believe her.

"Locked in a cage with all the rats…"

She'd done the bisexual girl in high school. The girl that teetered on the edge of the pool, barely dipping her toes in as an act of rebellion against her strict Catholic parents; or the girl who'd drank too many Jell-O shots at the house party, hair plastered to her cheeks, with a goofy grin and a screeching voice, who'd followed Nicky's beaconing upstairs, meeting her halfway and then giggle as she'd slyly quote Lou Reed into her hot, sweaty ear, in a hot, sweaty voice. "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side."

She'd done it and she'd hated it. It had ended in heartbreak. And she'd had no desire whatsoever to go back there.

Until she met her. Morello. Lorna. With a fiancé. Christopher. She didn't know his last name and frankly she didn't care. Lorna without Morello just wouldn't sound as nice.

So, Lorna Morello was just another bisexual girl. Woman. A woman whom Nicky had no business getting herself tangled up with. But all that flew out the window.

"Stupid girl," Red had said, sniffing out Nicky's sex hair (which wasn't all that different from the rat's nest usually, so that in itself was a talent) and that fucking June Cleaver lipstick on her neck. "She has a husband, Nicky."

A fiancé was different than a husband. A fiancé was expendable. Not in like a murder-y way. Jesus, she wasn't a sociopath, she'd told Red in response to her motherly chastising. "It just isn't a done deal yet."

"And you think you're big enough in the britches to change that, hm?" Red had asked her, her composure wavering none. There was no belittling, just a question. "Maybe," she'd responded with the smirk she flashes at all the girls. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

And Red ate her words.

"And I'm stuck with the scraps and I can't seem to find my way back. Get me out, get me out of here!"

Sure, it could be because this Christopher Whatever was just a blind, dummy, asshole who couldn't see that he had it good when he did, but now it was Nicky's chance to do it right and do it right she would.

Just then, as she sang one more line – "I'm ready to start 'em after all these years…" and her voice naturally petered out, transitioning into more of a hum, the water was switched off and Nicky could hear the drumbeat of the water droplets dripping from her body.

Smiling, she opened the flimsy curtain and there was Lorna, all exposed for her to see (and the entire dorm bathroom, but that was hardly something to be ashamed of in here). She let out a little squeal of surprise that appeased her, and Nicky chuckled.

"Hey, there babe. I see you beat me to the showers this morning, huh?"

She smiled a catlike grin that made little, innocent, straight-depending-on-the-day-it-suited her, Lorna Morello shake in her bare feet. And her bare everything else. It was hot.

"Uh, yeah, uh, I just wanted to – uh – "

She was blushing left, right, and center, and no matter how cute Nicky thought it was, it was best to just get right down to it. She knew what her plan had been. She'd wanted a hot shower. And to get it, she'd known she'd have to beat Nicky to it. It was the same thing Nicky and done to Lorna once or twice, too, except the difference was, Nicky had actually pulled it off.

"You just wanted to have a hot shower this morning. I get it. I'm not one to hold a grudge," she smiled at her again. "How was it? Was it as hot as you were imagining it would be?"

Nicky waggled her eyebrows suggestively before adding "did the showerhead do you justice? What do you call her again?"

Lorna rolled her eyes but laughed. "It was a he, and his name was Christopher. Before…everything…"

Seeing Lorna's vacant, forlorn expression almost made her drop the act entirely, but then in a blip almost too quick for human comprehension, it was gone, and a grin took its place.

"No, definitely not. It was cold."

"Awe," Nicky tilted her head and clucked her tongue. "Poor baby."

She reached her hand behind her back and shut the curtain again. Appraising her for a moment too long that she knew Lorna would find comfortable, Nicky widened her mouth in a savage smile.

"Do you need me to warm you up, buttercup?"

Lorna giggled. "Ha. Um…"

Nicky laughed. If the space was large enough, she knew Lorna would be shifting from foot to foot, weighing her options, dancing around the subject, something that wasn't idiosyncratic but still, uniquely Lorna.

She was still blushing, staring down at the poorly tiled floor and shitty shower shoes, and blushing, faint, powdery crimson on the apples of her cheeks, with the delicacy of those porcelain dolls her grandmother bought her when she was a child.

It was a fond memory she had of a person she was fond of, and having Lorna remind her of it, of something so innocent, while she was simultaneously suckered into a lewd state by her physical presence, was enough to take her even breaths and make a massacre of them.

Her shoulders and her arms were covered in goosebumps, her stomach was pale, but flat, with a core to brag about, smooth skin fading into an even paler groin, her hips like miniature valleys, water rivulets falling down them like rain, coupling together amongst her inner thighs, and between them lay a freshly lathered and shaven pussy and god damn did she want to do things to it with her tongue. Things that would make straight-as-they-come Lorna Morello scream until she had nothing left to give.

The vision in front of her that was her, for lack of a better term, girlfriend, was giving Nicky chills. The good kind. Not the kind that made her want to curl up into a ball and die at the hands of a heroin withdrawal. She hadn't felt like that in years. And it had been a little while – three days, twenty-two hours to be exact – since she'd felt like this, too.

"What are you waitin' for, hon?"

Nicky laughed. Lorna Morello and Sandra Freakin won't-go-to-bed-till-I'm-legally-wed-Dee were pretty similar, she'd give her that. That was hot.

Imagine…Sandra leather-pants-wearing-cigarette-smoking-50's-pinup girl Dee leaving Danny Zuko slack-jawed at the carnival while he watches her make out with Rizzo. Hotter.

Now imagine Lorna I've-got-a-fiancé-and-we're-getting-married – Morello leaving Christopher What's-His Name: she breaks up with him over the phone one minute and is giving it to Nicky Nichols behind the alter of the chapel the next. Now that, friends, would be something to rave on about.

"What am I waiting for, babe?"

Lorna's eyes were steely, hard. Dark with lust and velvety with bliss and she hadn't even touched her yet. Oh man, this was going to be fun.

She didn't hesitate, and as proud as Nicky was, she was taken aback too. The girl had come a long way from staring googly eyed at old wedding magazines and going on about Christopher like he was God.

"Fuck me."

"Woah there. Are you begging me for it?"

Lorna shook her head, no. Her curls were damp and sticking to her cheeks. Nicky wanted to brush them out of the way but she dare not move.

"No. I'm telling you to."

Shit. And that's how it started.

Nicky could only remember glimpses.

The way Lorna grabbed mercilessly at her bare throat, the imprint of her golden cross an insignia both of irony and satire: if she was such a godly woman, would she be fucking a woman, or letting a woman fuck her, so roughly?

Of course, Lorna couldn't answer that. She couldn't get anything out past the string of deep, heady moans coming through her lips, her head bashed against the tiled wall, probably bruised, not like she cared.

Nicky thought she looked so pretty like that, beautiful, caught up in the heated throes of passion, sexy and raw, vulnerable and in control all the same; the way she hid her hands in Nicky's hair and pushed, sending her back against the curtain, separating her thighs with small, strong hands. My turn.

It was a blur after that. She had no hope of recollection before they slumped back against the wall, breaths slipping and sliding in the lingering steam as they held each other and let the water run cold.

…

A couple hours later, after lunch during down time, Boo came striding past her bunk, whistling with a smirk on her face.

"So, Nichols," she started, leaning nonchalantly against the brick wall of her cube. "How was your shower this morning?"

Nicky scoffed. Her preamble could use a little work, honestly. "It was cold. Thanks for that by the way."

Boo chuckled, then shook her head. "Oh, my bad. I thought you loved cold showers."

"Where'd you hear that?" she asked.

She was genuinely curious – because who actually liked cold showers? – but more in the realm of mildly pissed off because she knew Boo's game, knew how she played it.

"Morello. She was prancing around here, telling everyone that she'd take a cold shower any day, so people could use up all the hot water they so pleased and it wouldn't bother her any."

Of course. Seriously, Lorn? Also, she couldn't help but notice that Boo's fake accent was horrifically strong and more Boston than Italian. It was kind of disgusting, and Nicky found herself offended on Lorna's behalf.

"Yeah, well," Nicky murmured, elaborating none. "That's the kid for you. Always running her pretty little mouth off."

"What'd you do? You must've really made her week, huh, Nichols? Nobody in the right mind would give up a hot shower for sex. Unless…a cold shower? Is that some kind of kinky sex shit?"

Nicky said nothing. The smirk that tugged at the corners of her mouth was tamed.

"Seriously?" Boo laughed.

"Are you and Morello into some kind of kinky sex shit? I have my fair share of kinks, but that's new. Cold showers. Huh. I guess the freezing water intensifies the orgasm by freezing your extremities, instead of heating them? Am I right? Or sort-of right, at least? Come on, give me something."

Nicky just shook her head, turned back to her book. The Life of Pi. The kid had her reading now.

"Something like that."

The water was only cold near the end, and it intensified nothing. Because cross-bearing, lipstick-wearing baby-bride Lorna Morello was coming down from her third orgasm by then.

She smirked. And Boo raised an eyebrow.

"There's a chip in the wall. If you look closely, you can see it."

"Alright then." Boo whistled, beginning to walk away. "I'll have to check it out next time I go jerk off."

"Jesus Christ," Nicky mumbled to herself but not loud enough, so Boo would hear. The last thing she wanted was for that to be something the woman could feed off of. Nothing to get her started again.

Except, she was with Lorna on this one. Cold showers did beat warm ones. Officially, now. The kid had a point. A very good point. They'd make a habit of this, Nicky would make sure of it.