As the sky darkened, everything in the room became wrapped in long shadows, as if an explosion of black streamers had mysteriously occurred. It was the only indication she had of the passing time. Slumped on the sofa, with her bent legs against her chest, Piper spotted Alex dashing through the corridor, seeing her as a sudden flash of black of blue. From the little sounds she was making, Piper inferred that the woman was in the kitchen and was opening and closing the refrigerator, and then there was the unmistakable pop of a cork being unscrewed. Several seconds later, the woman reappeared, holding a champagne bottle by its neck.

The brunette hadn't yet stopped opening bottle after bottle, very efficiently consuming the great quantity of champagne she had stashed in the fridge on the day of their arrival, perhaps believing that they would have lots to celebrate in the so-called City of Love. Even the very resilient Alex had to be inebriated by now, and yet she kept retiring back to her desk and her phone after every visit to the kitchen. The brunette never paused at the doorway, and once more Piper didn't call out for her, since there was nothing to say. It had all been said already, it seemed, and the bedroom had become Alex's fortress, while Piper had claimed the living room as hers, making the corridor, kitchen, and bathroom neutral ground.

At the beginning of their stay, Piper had swallowed her anger and gone out to explore the city, rummaging the little shops and discovering cozy cafés where you could borrow books and read for hours. It had been amazing, but painful too, since those were the kind of things they would've done together, as in the infant stages of their relationship, back at the States, when she hadn't been sure of what they were or what they'd been doing. That recollection had made her miss Alex's presence all the more, really, because the feeling of uncertainty was there as well, but her previous, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, unthinking attitude was now apparently dead. The remaining sensation was one of vertigo before an abrupt cliff.

Because she was scared. Now she was scared - that was the biggest difference of all. This was not happening merely because Alex was perpetually busy and stressed, her responses now usually short and painfully sharp, but also because Piper felt that she had been losing herself by trading in her irritation and her worry for dinner dates with Alex, short walks around Montmartre or quick shopping trips to the Champs-Élysées. She couldn't help but believe that Alex had been using her own affection -and particularly her attention-, as currency in exchange for Piper's compliance. This had been a constant all through their trip around Europe, and in accepting those unspoken conditions she was only damaging herself. However, more than anything, this was because, even though she had always known that Alex's activities were all but legal, she had always felt safe, with the absolute surrender that comes with complete trust. She had placed her life between the brunette's very dexterous hands, knowing that this was a person who imported heroin for a living, but she wouldn't have joined her, gallivanting all across the globe, if she hadn't trusted her. Alex didn't even use to have to touch her to transmit that sense of security, like an invisible bubble surrounding her at all times. She had trusted Alex with her life, but all that, Piper mused, was now irrecoverable. She had stopped feeling safe with her.

One had to wonder, really, if said bubble was one of protection or deceit. The truth was that, for some time now, she had distrusted that permanent sense of walking on air, that lather of unreality covering their relationship. So much building over nothing, so laboriously, creating all those castles in the clouds… Or was it that she had once again started to picture a yet undetermined but existent expiration date hanging over their heads? They'd never stopped moving, never stopped travelling, still very much together, but they'd just been biding their time, hadn't they? The explosion had just happened to occur in Paris.

Disappointment was a very powerful thing. It bit off a fragment of one's heart and then returned it, rotten, to its place. It wasn't that bad when it was only a one-time thing, because it would only bother you once in a while (and what was a tiny pang of worry among a million fantastic things?), but then one day you'd feel another bite, and another section of your heart would become tainted. Piper pictured her own feelings like a stretched out paperclip, how it could never be returned to its previous, perfect shape and became a deformed imitation of what it used to be. One could try to put it back in the box, but it would still stand out like a sore thumb because one could never unsee it ugliness. Shaking the box to bury it under all the others wouldn't work either, because one still knew that it was there.

"I can't be with you," she had told Alex, after her already fragile hope had been shattered into a million pieces by Alex's request, especially because she had formulated it in such a way that had led Piper to believe that they were going to Istanbul together. Up until that moment, she had allowed herself to hope, but not anymore. Now she knew that she could no longer be with Alex, but still remained in that rented apartment. Perhaps she couldn't let go that easily of what had been the only constant in her life for such a long time (not so much lately), and wasn't prepared to feel even more lost than she already felt. And so she stayed motionless as an ice sculpture, keeping track of the woman's comings and goings and listening to her muffled voice of the phone, feeling stuck.

Piper hugged one of the sofa's cushions and once more glanced towards the doorway. She was startled to find Alex there, leaning against it like it was the most natural thing in the world, with a bottle under her arm and her feet bare. Since the woman's face, along with everything else, was draped in darkness, her expression was thus unreadable, and so Piper didn't say a thing.

"Hey. Wanna talk?" Alex finally asked, breaking the very long silence with her deep voice.

"About what?"

"Oh, you know… Us?"

"There is no 'us'." It felt like there hadn't been an "us" for some time, only the stubborn hope that there was, until Alex had gone and shot it in the face.

"You're still here," said the brunette, matter-of-factly.

Believing to have detected a flash of a smile, Piper quickly sat up, an action which the woman apparently took as an authorization to enter the living room. She padded towards her, stepping into the single beam of light, which came from the lamppost outside, filtered through the space between the curtains, and her face became alight with a golden glow. With her hair neatly tucked behind her ears, her forehead clear, and not wearing any glasses, Alex's features appeared softer, like there was nothing troubling her. Then, with the next step, she went back to being covered in shadows.

The silhouette finally crouched before her, setting the large, half-empty bottle on the coffee table. "Want some?"

Piper shook her head. "I don't feel like it."

"Why not? It might get you in the mood to finish our conversation."

"There's nothing to finish. It is finished."

"Yeah?" Alex grabbed the bottle and took a swig from it. "'Cause it really looked like you just turned around and fucking bailed."

Remembering the argument they'd had in the bedroom, Piper recalled that it was the first time she had ever welcomed Alex's habit of not being a pursuer; she'd felt relieved, because she'd needed to think and sort herself out. But now the brunette had indeed come to her, with the night.

Alex slowly raised her hand, stroked Piper's wrist, and then seized one of the corners of the cushion that the blonde was still hugging. She gave it a gentle tug, trying to make Piper let go of it, but the blonde refused to relinquish her protection.

"Alright, be like that." Alex sighed and kept silent for several seconds. "Why are you doing this?"

"I told you, this is not on me. You're doing this. But I guess it's all fine just as long as I don't open my mouth and agree with everything, isn't it?"

"My God, Piper, enough with the drama! You know I only asked because I really needed your help, and you straight up refused."

Going back to their previous argument once more, she remembered how sad Alex had looked after the initial outburst. She recalled her words "I thought we were a team," and felt an identical twinge of pain in her chest, which didn't mean that Alex's request had been fair. Just the memory of the trip to Brussels and what happened at the airport paralyzed her still, and knew she wouldn't be capable of doing anything remotely similar to that again and, most importantly, she didn't want to.

It seemed to her that they'd been on a different page for some time now, and Alex had talked to her like they were partners in crime, while all that Piper had been doing during their time together was gleefully ignoring the insignificant detail of where the money and everything else came from. What Alex hadn't understood was that participating in a money withdrawal in Bali or the transportation of that suitcase to Brussels didn't imply that she was part of the "team". She'd done the polite equivalent of covering her ears and singing "la la la" really loudly whenever the brunette wanted to disclose something about her work or simply comment on whatever she was doing. Perhaps she hadn't been clear enough, and that was her fault.

Undoubtedly, part of it was Alex's fault as well, for hearing her but not being able to really listen, or being unable to realize the implications of what she was doing, that she was a criminal, that she wasn't absorbed by any common office job. And Piper, who had felt somewhat like a stupid trophy wife, hadn't wished to be just that, but she also hadn't wanted to implicate herself more in Alex's business more than she already had. In short, she'd felt stuck for a long time, and now there was nothing left to do.

"Of course I refused! And you weren't asking; you implied that it was something I had to do, completely disregarding that I didn't want to do it."

"And you're disregarding that you'd be doing something for the both of us."

"I told you I wasn't your fucking mule."

"I love your bullshit rationales, they're so hilarious! How many times have I asked? You'd be the most expensive, most useless drug mule ever!"

"That's not the point."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Alex sat on the sofa very theatrically, without asking for permission. "Please, Pipes, do tell. What is the fucking point?"

"The point is that you are a drug dealer and there's nothing that's not wrong with that."

"Funny, and here I was thinking that the point is that you're a selfish asshole. You've been happy to ignore that for years, you are aware of that, right?"

"And I can't do it anymore."

"Not because it's wrong, mind you. It's because you're scared."

It occurred to her that the brunette appeared to be more interested in assigning blame -or rather, shifting it so that it pointed towards her- than finishing that horrid conversation from before. It was easier for Alex to throw shit at her face or simplify the facts by believing that either she was straight or she never really loved her enough to help her. Or maybe that was just Alex's way; it certainly wasn't the first time she'd tried saying all kinds of outrageous stuff just to get her talking or to get a reaction out of her - any kind of reaction seemed to satisfy her.

"Yes, I am! I am scared, okay? Are you happy now?"

She tossed the cushion at Alex, who caught it with her right hand quite easily and set it aside. Then, Piper tried to stand up, but the brunette snatched her by the wrist and pulled her back down. She lowered her eyes when she felt Alex's hand drawing spirals on the underside of her arm, and wanted to swat that hand away, and knew that she probably should. Instead, she allowed it to move upwards, close around her shoulder, and pull her into an embrace.

The brunette then ventured to press her lips against her neck, delivering tiny kisses to her skin until they reached behind her ear. Piper murmured Alex's name and turned her head to avoid those kisses, but ended up making matters worse because her lips were now closer to Alex's. During those last months, she had tried time and again to call the woman's attention, to communicate to her somehow that she was there, until she'd ran out of patience and believed she had nothing more to give. Finally, she had sat on that sofa like an empty shell, and now Alex was there beside her, the Alex who perhaps was still blind and still believed.

It had always been tough for her to resist the dark-haired woman, who was now expertly moving in the shadows like a black liquid. This reminded Piper of how they used to find each other in the darkness of the bedroom, in the middle of the night, and how the fact that they knew each other's bodies so well never diminished that sudden hunger. But she was sure that those were not precisely the most appropriate thoughts.

"Stop it," she whispered, involuntarily making their lips graze.

"Is that what you want?" the brunette asked, the mockery in her voice completely audible.

Alex crossed the millimetric distance and kissed her, tentatively at first, then possessively, making Piper sit on her lap. And Piper found that this was akin to trying to break a long-acquired habit: it was easier to indulge in it than to refrain, and the body recognizes what it wants, feeling relief when they are reunited.

She surrounded Alex's shoulders, letting the woman's hands snake under her shirt and caress up and down her back. Piper then slid one leg under one of Alex's so that they were straddling each other, and the woman's hands immediately moved to her ass, pressing their hips together. The sensation left her breathless for a second and she gasped into Alex's mouth. But it wasn't enough, and Alex seemed to understand, as her fingers reached under her ass and teasingly raked between her legs. The discontinuous contact drove her crazy, and for an eternal moment Piper forgot about everything that was troubling her, what she wanted to do and what she had to do. She buried all of it under the sounds that she and Alex were making, and that sofa could be anywhere in the world, which meant that they could be sharing it during any moment in time, during the span of their relationship; it could've been the sofa in Alex's loft, or the one at the Seychelles. And it didn't even need to be a sofa, really; it could've been their bed -Alex's bed- too, or even a dingy sleeping bag, who could tell now?

Their mouths crashed together and, as the final shocks of pleasure subsided, their kisses simmered down. Piper grabbed a handful of Alex's raven hair and dared to look into her eyes, finding everything she didn't want to see, because it was all coming back to her now, and she knew that her stand remained the same, while Alex already appeared to be teasing her into having another go. It seemed like their timing was stubbornly off, and there was no longer any way of repairing it, nor any reason to try, and that other distance between them -the one that wasn't physical- still existed. What she believed Alex couldn't understand was that this wasn't under her control like everything else, that this she wouldn't be able to fix. This wasn't a story they would laugh about one day. This was the end.

Staring at their interlocked fingers, Piper acknowledged that the fact that she was feeling lost wasn't entirely Alex's fault, but the responsibility to solve the problem was indeed hers. She believed that it was each person's duty to know oneself, and she wouldn't achieve that by staying, because that implied drifting and floating forever… only not forever, because she was now aware of the risk, and believed that Alex would have no qualms about putting her in the center of that risk again. And what scared her even more was what she thought would be Alex's reaction whenever that danger decided to present itself.

Her mind rewound back, several years back - objectively, not a whole lot of time, but their time together had felt so loaded with intricate, tiny details, such a tapestry of moments that it felt as if it had lasted a lifetime. However, her very efficient mind paused at token memories, singling them out of that rich context, and then stringing them together. She hadn't made much of them then, apart from some momentary anger, but for instance, she recalled the importance Alex had given to the waterfall incident, having let Piper leap into the thundering waters by herself. She thought about that feeling she had of standing before a cliff. How it had thrilled her before, but only because she'd been like a baby, enjoying everything without knowing the meaning of fear, in the knowledge that Alex would always be there to hold her. She had been stupid like that. But now her eyes were open, she was aware of the real state of things, and knew that in reality she was standing before that hole in the ground with her arms stretched and completely unprotected. Now she understood that Alex was programmed in such a way that she wouldn't crash with her, if Piper was ever to fall, because Alex's own safety would always come first.

And so should Piper's. She knew that her consent as a willing prey was over.