The mere action of waking up felt like attempting to lift the weight of the world with her eyelids. When she tried to blink again, her eyelashes grazed the white sheet which was partially covering her face and making her look like the Phantom of the Opera. Next, she tried to speak, but the only sound which her throat allowed to pass through was a ridiculous croak, which nevertheless was enough to make the body beside her stir. They were both lying stomach down, completely naked except for the twisted sheet, one of Piper's arms dangling from the side of the bed, her hand firmly planted on the floor, while Alex was half-strewn on top of her, with her blue-streaked black hair snaked around Piper's neck like a scarf.
Little by little, her brain started to become aware of her immediate surroundings: the big bed, the hotel room. Yes, those were things she could recognize: the white sheets, the pastel wallpaper, the little lamps nailed to the wall above the bedside tables, the white doors with golden handles. And, above everything, there was Alex, the one constant she could count on. The hotel rooms could be as varied and different-colored as birds of paradise, but the dark-haired beauty never failed to be there with her, sometimes asleep, sometimes awake, and sometimes in a sweet, vulnerable, in-between state which always made Piper's heart swell. Whether they happened to be on a tiny bunk or a king-sized bed, they were always in contact when they fell asleep, and kept finding each other during the night. Sometimes their blind groping only culminated in satisfied sighs, and sometimes it awoke different parts of their bodies, shifting limbs, opening mouths, curling fingers. She liked it when it was slow, when it started with lazy, sloppy kisses and Alex's tongue traced her lips as if she was trying to paint over them. She liked it fast and hard, too, when they seemed to bump against each other in the dark like two strangers in a tunnel, when they fucked like two needy addicts, desperately holding onto whatever felt like skin, when she rode Alex's body like a wave -grinding on her thighs, her fingers, her tongue-, with the headboard as her only lifeboat, and their sweat mingled and made them slide easily against each other. She liked listening to Alex as well; in fact, the mere sound of her deep voice moaning was enough to make Piper wet, touched between her legs by an invisible, very warm tongue.
Her drowsy brain then widened its scope: which city, which country. Yes, that took a bit longer to determine. When she remembered them, Piper felt an involuntary pang in her stomach which jump-started her heart, making it race crazily. They were little, irritating stabs against the inside of her chest which she classified as remnants of the fright. She didn't want to think about it, how her relief had been about the thing being finally over, never to be done again, while Alex's relief had been about everything having gone according to plan, without any hiccups. She didn't want to think about her "costume" scattered across the hotel room floor, or about how desperately she had taken it off. She didn't want to think about how Alex had fulfilled her promise of eating her for dinner as a kind of reward for having done the job so well and the bonus of having skipped customs -even if that had been by mistake-, because Piper hadn't wanted to be rewarded - she had wanted to forget, and let herself be taken care of by Alex accordingly. And when the brunette had started whispering things like "Who's my bad girl," sweet and well-intended as they'd been, Piper had shut her up immediately by shoving her tongue inside the other woman's mouth.
Emptying the mini-bar had been rather helpful too, although now she was starting to be sorry to have taken that road to oblivion.
She felt a hand on her naked back, moving in circles, and then a wet kiss between her shoulders. "Morning, babe."
Forming actual words was still too complicated. Piper could only manage an answering groan while she reached back to stroke Alex's hair, her fingers sinking easily within the black, silky strands.
"I think someone's up for coffee," said the brunette, dragging her parted lips across the curve of Piper's neck. "Don't worry, I'm calling room service."
Even if she could tell that Alex was climbing out of bed carefully, the blonde still felt her entire universe move, as if she were a tiny raft adrift in the middle of an angry ocean. She pushed her face into the pillow and pulled it up around her head to cover her ears while Alex rattled on the phone in a humorous mixture of French and English, probably using more words than she had to just to prove that she could.
"Pipes? You awake?"
"No." She lifted the pillow just enough to peek at Alex, who was crouching next to the bed.
The brunette made a funny, scrunched up face at her and slid her index finger under the pillow, gently poking Piper on the nose.
Through the space between the pillow and the mattress, Piper watched the naked woman stand up and walk out of the bedroom and into the small sitting room. She couldn't help but visually trace Alex's sinewy arms, the seductive curve of her back, and the shape of her ass, particularly how her saunter transformed it into a very hypnotizing pendulum. Framed by the bedroom's white, double door, the brunette stretched -reminding Piper of a black panther- and then disappeared from view.
She managed to toss away the pillow, because it needed to be done quickly -like pulling off a band aid-, or not at all, and turned to lie on her back. The effort proved to be more costly than it should have been, and she could only conclude that gin was definitely not her drink, as confirmed by the nail being driven into her left temple. She hadn't even felt this badly in Tahiti, where she'd needed to spend every day, from morning to evening, lounging in the beach, dead to the world, to recover from the nightly parties. Alex had certainly made fun of her then and should have been making fun of her now, but where was she?
Cursing her weakness, her dependence on that dark-haired woman, she hauled her own body to a sitting position and then planted her feet on the floor. This was the trickiest part. Grabbing the headboard for support -just like several hours before, but in a very different context-, Piper pulled herself to a standing position and began walking tentatively around the room. She was, in fact, inversely retracing their path towards the bed. Her feet ran into the now-empty miniature transparent bottles from their mini-bar raid, and she had to suppress a wave of nausea, also brought on by spotting some elements of her disguise as "a proper young lady" intermixed with Alex's jet-black clothes.
There was a knock on the door, and Piper kept very still in her naked state as she listened to Alex opening the door and muttering her "merci beaucoup". When the door closed once more, Piper poked her head out of the bedroom and saw that the bellboy had rolled in a small cart full of pastries, and she could also smell coffee and hot chocolate. One empty teacup had been set on the coffee table before the sofa.
To Piper's relief, the brunette hadn't greeted the bellboy stark naked, but had thrown on the hotel's bathrobe, and had left the other one for Piper, draped on the arm of the sofa. However, she frowned upon seeing Alex sitting at the small desk, with her back to the food, typing away on her laptop and stopping every once in a while to sip on a cup of coffee.
"Did you just order everything they had?" she asked, entering the sitting room and putting on the bathrobe.
The black-haired woman just shrugged, without turning around. "You need to eat something, don't you? Get that stomach to work on something solid."
Piper sat cross-legged on the sofa and picked a plate which contained two waffles. Brussels was, after all, known for them, among other tasty things. She also poured herself some of that delicious-smelling chocolate, even if her brain probably needed coffee more, but who could resist?
"You know what? I think I actually prefer your pancakes," she said, as she chewed, starting to feel better.
"Huh?"
"Nothing." She sighed, fixing her eyes on the back of the brunette's head.
Alex's shoulders slumped and stayed like that for a moment before she slung one arm over the back of the chair and turned to look at Piper. Her lips were pressed together tightly, and there was a tiny frown knitting her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, babe. I have to finish this. I gotta coordinate-"
"Okay," Piper raised one hand to make the brunette stop talking. She didn't want to know. "It's okay."
"Although I will have some of that," Alex said, reaching out to seize Piper's hand, the one that held a half-eaten waffle. The brunette took a big bite from it and shielded her sugar-covered mouth, giggling like a naughty child, and turning around to face the computer again.
The blonde finished stuffing herself and went into the bathroom to take a shower. It was a blatant ploy to attract the brunette towards her, leaving the door open so that the running water was clearly audible. Piper stood there among the white marble, fists clenched, waiting under the warm cascade of water. However, Alex did not sneak into the shower behind her; she didn't even step into the bathroom.
When she exited the bedroom through the white double door, already dressed, she acknowledged that the brunette hadn't moved from the computer.
"Al? Aren't we going out to explore?"
"You go ahead. I'll catch up with you later." Alex answered, her voice automatic, unemotional.
"What?" Piper approached the small desk, even if she could see the white screen with the corner of her eye. "Are you telling me to go out by myself?"
The brunette took off her glasses and exhaled a frustrated sigh. "Well, Pipes, it's not fucking Fallujah, you know? I'm just saying that I can't go out right now, but you can do whatever you want. Go to museums. I don't know, buy some souvenirs. But hey, if you wanna stay here at the boring hotel, be my guest."
Piper frowned at the woman, all at once feeling a bit ridiculous for being so desperate to be reassured, tranquilized, told that everything was fine. However, at the same time, she was just requesting that sense of security which Alex had always given her. Wasn't it only natural to miss something her body had grown accustomed to? Her mind automatically rewound to their trip to the inland part of Bali, all rice fields and Hindu temples, and remembered an eleventh-century temple called Goa Gajah -the "elephant cave"-, and how creepy it had seemed at first, with an assortment of demons and menacing creatures carved on its façade, its entrance a big mouth that literally swallowed you when you went in. The brunette had made fun of her cowardice, because the scary-looking exterior contained a mere bathing place excavated on the inside of the mountain - but Piper had already felt safe before entering the cave, all because Alex had imbued her with courage by grasping her hand.
That was it; she just needed Alex to be Alex and do her thing: take her hand, sweep her away, and submerge her into the magic of that city like she had done with every other place. And she needed it now more than ever, since she still felt all tingly from having brushed the dangerous part of Alex's life with the tips of her fingers. What she didn't need was to see Alex with her head stuck in that life, so absorbed by it.
She was aware of her own neediness, of course, it irked her, but she hadn't seen her dependence as a bad thing before, not as a sign of weakness per se, because there had never been negative consequences to it. It was just a fact she'd accepted many, many months ago - a fact laced with other truths: that she needed Alex; that she felt disconnected to everyone else; that before Alex she had been sleep-walking through her own life; that Alex made her feel safe.
After the abundance of beaches and open spaces, this was a big change of scenery. Piper paced around the city, feeling like one of those children raised by wild animals who are abruptly brought to civilization. It was true that "home" had felt weird, but familiar as well, like remembering a past life or living in a constant déjà vu, but this… She roamed the Grand Place, throwing back her head to contemplate the town hall, which looked like a Gothic castle. Many of the buildings seemed downright medieval, with pointy roofs and lots of narrow windows.
Leaving the central square, she found the city's main symbol and one of its main attractions: a bronze fountain statue of a little boy peeing. She did what Alex would surely recommend her to do if she had been there: sit in a café and watch, examine the people, listen to their incomprehensible languages, and get into the ebb and flow of the place. Alex would also say that beer was an excellent remedy for a hangover, so Piper ordered a glass and kept to herself.
There were hundreds of varieties of Belgian beer, and Piper had very-conveniently landed on the place which had all four-hundred of them, plus more than a thousand others from every corner of the world. She was sure that Alex would love the café, with its entrance signs bearing pink elephants, its barrels for tables, and heavily decorated interior.
Unsure of how long she'd been in that dimly-lit bar, the blonde downed the last of her pint and was about to get up to leave when she thought she spotted a familiar silhouette swinging her hips to zigzag around the stools and barrels. However, she didn't gesture towards the figure until she saw the gleam of the yellow lights reflected on her glasses.
"Alex?"
Smiling widely in surprise, the brunette raised her eyebrows and moved faster in her direction. She was already holding a big glass of brown beer between her hands, and was wearing leather pants and a red checkered shirt. Unaccustomed to running into Alex, because they always went together everywhere, Piper suddenly didn't know what to do, apart from standing up. The dark-haired woman embraced her, which could seem excessive for the time they'd been apart, but the blonde found that she needed the hug. She leaned into the other woman, surrounding her shoulders with her arms, pressing their breasts and thighs together.
"How did you find me? Did you have me followed?"
"Have you followed?" Alex laughed and shook her head, scoffing at her. "Are you fucking kidding me? Who do you think I am?"
"Then how are you here?"
"Duh! Because this is only the best fucking bar in the world! I was dying to come here! I knew you wouldn't be far; this is the area tourists always visit first… the peeing boy and whatnot."
"Yeah, I saw that. And I knew you'd love this place. You do like your horror vacui."
Nodding, Alex surveyed the plaque-covered walls. There were signs of different brands of beer everywhere in sight, ceiling included. "You know me, I'm a bit excessive. Come on, let's get you another beer."
"Wait." Piper grasped Alex's hand and caressed up her wrist, reaching the woman's tribal bracelet tattoo. "I'm sorry… about before."
"It's fine." The brunette looked down at their entwined hands for a moment and then freed herself to place her glasses on top of her forehead. "But you know that I gotta work, don't you? You know that all that drug money pays for some very nice things."
Piper shrugged. "And you know that's not what I care about."
"Look, I'm just a bit stressed out. It's not a big deal."
Covering Piper's hand with her own, Alex smiled in that enchanting, quizzical way which had drove the blonde crazy since the very first moment they'd met, with that same twinkle in her blue eyes. But that was then and this was now, and the fact that the feeling it provoked was absolutely the same made Piper quiver from the inside out. Her very irritating weakness once again didn't matter, because Alex was there with her.
"I just… I just don't want to lose what we have."
"Well, now you're being dumb." Alex cupped her face and kissed her slowly, like a caress of the lips, and ran her fingers down her hair. "Come on, let's do some tourist stuff."
They exited the bar, with Alex surrounding her shoulders and Piper circling the woman's waist. Inevitably, she felt relief, while still needing some reassurance, but the brunette was busily chattering about architecture, about going for a walk in some park, about buying souvenirs.
"Buying souvenirs? You?" Piper asked, eyeing the brunette suspiciously.
"Yeah, chocolate, for my mom. I promised her."
Nodding slowly, Piper thought about how Alex phoned her mom regularly, or managed to send her a postcard, no matter where they were. She had heard her through the phone, commanding Alex to take care, chastising her for being away for too long, telling her that she would like to see her more often. It made Piper consider her own relationship with her family and Polly, the person she still had the audacity to call her best friend. She was estranged from them; she couldn't keep up with her own stuff, let alone with theirs, and she wouldn't be buying them souvenirs anytime soon.
"Hey, Pipes, you know what Brussels is renowned for?"
"Beer and chocolate?"
"Yeah. And?"
"I don't know. Peeing infants?"
The dark-haired woman chuckled huskily and tightened her embrace, awakening Piper's body, making her consider returning to the hotel, souvenir-buying be damned.
"Velvet and lace," Alex said, slowly pronouncing the words and smiling cheekily. "Wanna go shopping? And let's get some chocolate for ourselves too."