A/N: Sorry for the delay on this...things have been kind of hectic, work wise, but I'm coming up on a three week holiday break, and I plan to make up for lost fic time. Enjoy!
Piper wakes up feeling vaguely ill and not at all rested. She's alone in the bed, which is unsettling enough - Alex almost always sleeps later, and on the rare occasion she gets up first, Piper usually doesn't sleep through her getting out of bed.
She can hear the shower running, and Piper has to tamp down a desire to let herself in and join Alex. Instead, she turns her face back into the pillow, childishly wanting to go back to sleep simply to avoid facing this day.
She'd dreamt about Alex's overdose; that hasn't happened in years. All those dim, slightly warped memories of speed walking through hospital corridors in high heels - in the dreams, they're absurdly high - trying to find Diane so she can be taken to Alex. In the way that dreams come with inherent faulty logic, Piper always understands that Alex's outcome depends on her getting there in time.
Piper rolls over and ends up pulling Diane's jacket from under the sheets.
Her throat tightens instantly, as she runs her fingers over the folds of the leather, thinking of Alex last night, crying into the jacket like her heart was breaking. She folds it carefully and leaves it on Alex's pillow before finally making herself get out of bed, deciding to be useful, heading to the kitchen to see if there's anything she can turn into a decent breakfast.
Out of the blue, it occurs to Piper that she didn't ask for any details about what happened. She doesn't know if Diane died at Friendly's, where she still takes shifts three days a week, or out for a walk or poker game or margarita night with her friends...or here in the apartment, all by herself.
Piper feels sick again. She averts her gaze, trying not to look at the door of the fridge, all those postcards.
A mean streak knifes through her, and for just a second Piper catches herself wondering spitefully if Alex regrets all the jet setting her business requires since it means they've only seen her mom a few times in the past two years.
Shame chases the thought almost instantly, so strong that Piper physically shudders at herself. She drives her knuckles into the door of the refrigerator, knocking a postcard from Greece onto the floor. She kicks it under the fridge and then forces herself to turn away.
She's standing at the stove, cooking eggs with anxiety pulsing behind her eyes, when she hears Alex call her name from the bedroom, a question with a rising note of panic behind it.
"I'm in here." Piper assures her quickly. She glances back over shoulder just as Alex comes to stand in the doorway, her hair wet from the shower, dripping onto the oversized band shirt she's wearing.
Alex doesn't come any closer, and for a heavy moment they just stare at each other. It still hurts to look at her: her eyes are squinty and bloodshot, and all her muscles seem strained, but the needy desperation that had rung through her voice only a few seconds ago is absent from her expression.
"You okay?" Piper asks quietly.
"We have to go the funeral home." It's not posed as an answer, but it may as well be.
Piper's fingers close around that weand hold onto it, relieved that Alex says it like it's a given. That they're still a we. On the heels of her relief, Piper realizes that Alex hasn't once asked why she's still here, or yelled at her to get out.
"Sure," she says, forcing a small, reassuring smile. "Whenever you're ready."
Alex huffs out a short, scoff of a breath at that but doesn't say anything.
Piper turns away from the stove completely. Alex isn't looking at her anymore, is staring around the living room with a heartbreakingly lost expression, as though she's been marooned someplace entirely unfamiliar. Piper aches for her, an actual, physical ache, but she can't quite bring herself to bridge the distance between them. It's like she's looking at Alex through a pane of glass.
But she wants to help, to show she's involved, an active, supportive part of the we. "Have you thought any about what kind of funeral...?"
Alex flinches and doesn't answer.
"I mean, did you guys ever talk about - "
"Of course we didn't fucking talk about it, Piper," Alex snaps. "She was only forty-three fucking years old." Her voice cracks. "Why the hell would we have talked about it?"
"Alex..."
"Don't." Alex bites out, pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes.
Piper's taken three tentative steps across the room when Alex uncovers her eyes and instinctually backs away. The movement feels like a punch in the gut.
More than anything, Piper wishes she could take the break up back. She'd been right to do it, she knows that even now, but it isn't worth this...it isn't worth feeling like she's having to frantically knot together all the recently severed threads between them just to reach Alex.
Alex shakes her head, hard, like she can shake out the emotions. Schooling her face into a blank expression, she visibly steels her shoulders before heading back to the bedroom, muttering as she goes, "I think you're burning those eggs."
Piper turns back to the stove but doesn't turn it off right away. She just stands there while the smoke makes her eyes tear, inhaling the scent of burnt eggs and feeling like she's ruining a memory.
Alex wears her mom's jacket to the funeral home. Piper doesn't say anything about it, but she keeps reaching for Alex's hand and clasping her fingers around the leather sleeves instead.
When they first get to the funeral home, Alex's eyes come alive with this wild, panicked light, and Piper's genuinely worried she might bolt from the room, but as soon as they sit down on an ancient couch across from the somber looking funeral director, she gets an almost defiant look in her eyes, like the man is antagonistically setting her a challenge.
Then she starts buying whatever he recommends, the highest quality coffin and headstone and service fees. Piper can sense the funeral director pick up on this, that the twenty-four year old clearly has more money to spend than he'd assumed, and he starts pitching every possible extra.
Piper wants to reign her in, point out how unnecessary this all is, how it definitely won't serve whatever purpose Alex is aiming for, but she sits silently and without protest. Piper knows better than to talk to Alex about money.
Alex stays in business mode for almost all of the meeting, and it seems to help her get through even non-monetary decisions: service a the funeral home, no minister, one of the funeral directors who's certified as a celebrant, a personal eulogy, quick burial at the graveside.
She doesn't falter until he asks about a viewing.
"Oh..." Her eyes dim and her lip trembles almost imperceptibly. When Piper curls her hand around three of Alex's fingers she doesn't pull away. "I, uh...I don't..." A muscle is jumping in her jaw. "I don't know if she'd want that, but..." Her voice trails off, and for the first time since they got there, she looks at Piper.
Mercifully, whatever barrier is wedged between them seems to fall away, and Piper instinctively realizes what Alex is thinking: she needs to see her mother again.
Piper squeezes her fingers, then turns to the funeral director. "Is it possible to do just a...private viewing? Not open it up to everyone at the funeral?"
"Of course," the man answers smoothly. "Whatever you'd prefer. We can set aside time for a private viewing before the service, just the family."
Alex isn't looking at anyone; Piper gives her hand another squeeze, asking gently, "That okay with you?"
"Yeah." Alex flashes Piper a quick look of gratitude, so sincere it makes her heart turn over. "That'd be fine."
A few minutes later, she gets her checkbook out, and the steely glint comes back into her eyes. Piper stays quiet, trying to hide her wince at the numbers on the check.
Alex doesn't talk in the car ride back to the apartment, just glares out the window while Piper drives. They keep the radio off.
When they pull into the parking lot of the apartment building, Alex breaks the silence out of nowhere, "What was that look on your face?"
Piper slides a glance at her. "What look?"
"When we were about to leave." When Piper doesn't jump in to explain God knows what look, Alex clarifies, "That fucking holier-than-thou judgey look you get."
Piper parks the car, pulls the keys out, and unbuckles her seat belt, but Alex is still staring expectantly, her glare demanding an answer. It's the longest she's looked at Piper all day.
Piper sighs. "Al, it's not a big deal, I just...did you really need to buy the most expensive everything?"
Alex stiffens, and Piper instantly regrets saying it. If her goal was to deter Alex's spending, she should have spoken up before the check was signed, but she didn't, so mentioning it now is only about getting a word in.
She touches Alex's arm, tone soothing and conciliatory, "Al, I'm sorry, I just...I know you want it to be perfect, that you want to do it right, but...your mom wouldn't care how much you spent...she doesn't need that."
Silence hovers between them for a few moments, and then Alex jerks away from Piper's touch.
"Screw you," she growls, getting out of the car and slamming the door behind her with unnecessary force.
Stomach knotting, Piper trails after her into the apartment. Alex waits until the door closes before she rounds on Piper, eyes blazing. "You want to talk to me about what my mom needed? She needed a fucking house, Piper! And I was so goddamn close but I never got a chance to buy her one, so why the fuck not spend the money on a goddamn fucking top of the line casket and gravestone because that is the only thing she needs now!"
She's crying by the time she finishes. They both are.
"Alex..." Piper chokes out, reaching for her, but Alex paces away, uninterested, muttering to herself, voice thick with tears.
"I can't fucking stand this place, I just wanted her out of here, this fucking piece of shit apartment - "
"Stop it," Piper bursts out before she can stop herself. "Don't say that, Alex, it's not fair, I...I love this place."
"Well good for you, Pipes, you never had to fucking live here."
"That doesn't matter. I've spent a lot of nights here, for fifteen fucking years, I'm allowed to love it. We've been all over the world, we've seen practically everywhere that's beautiful - "
"Thanks to me."
Piper ignores that and plows on. "- and this apartment is still my favorite place." She softens her tone, swiping her sleeve across her soaked cheeks. "The first time we kissed? Right there." She nods at the kitchen, then turns to the record player, on the bottom shelf under Diane's record collection. "Every band I love, you introduced me to in this room. Every New Year's Eve, every Fourth of July, we spent on your roof. God, Alex, we had sex for the first time here, and a few hundred times after that - "
"Oh, fuck off, Piper," Alex is practically sobbing the words, but her face is contorted with fury. "You don't get to act like that should matter to me anymore, cause it sure as hell doesn't matter to you."
It stings like a slap, and Piper closes her eyes briefly, telling herself that this is the grief talking, that she can't take it personally.
"That's not true. And you know it."
"I don't know shit."
A crooked, helpless sound lurches from Piper's throat. "Well, I know I was happy almost every second I was here. And you were happy a lot of the time, too, and so was your mom - "
"Don't talk to me about my mom - "
"Don't talk to me like she was some stranger I barely knew." Her voice breaks, tears surging fresh.
Alex's face twists, the rage in her eyes fully igniting. "Fuck you. Yeah, you know what, Piper, my mom loved you. But only because I wanted her to, so I didn't tell her everything. In high school, when we stopped talking...I didn't tell her it was because you were a bitch who decided you were done with me. And when we broke up, I didn't say you fucking ran off to school without telling me, that I had to follow you just to get left again. I never let her in on how fucked you could be."
The slaps are coming hard and fast, and Piper's got her arms wrapped around her stomach, protectively.
It's the grief talking, just the grief, it is, but Piper doesn't know how to not take this personally. It's the most personal thing there is.
She sucks in a stuttering, sob of a breath, and turns on her heel, heading for the door.
"Where are you going?" The change in Alex's tone startles Piper into stillness. The question is shot through with panic, her voice high and wavering and wet.
Piper exhales slowly, then turns around to meet Alex's eyes, all the fight drained from her voice. She speaks slowly, overly calm. "I need to at least go say hello to my parents. And it seems like maybe...you don't want me here, right now, at this moment."
Alex's face tightens; it couldn't be more obvious how untrue that is.
It's completely unfair to want anything from Alex right now, to expect her to do anything more than simply get through this, but Piper wishes Alex would just ask her to stay.
She waits long enough, but Alex doesn't correct her, doesn't ask for anything.
"I'll be back," Piper promises anyway, just before she closes the door.
For the past two years, the visits to her parents when she and Alex are in town are brief and perfunctory. She's half convinced they'd be properly estranged if it wouldn't look bad to the neighbors.
So they keep up appearances, but behind closed doors, her parents are shockingly uninterested in how she and Alex are sustaining themselves for two years worth of travel. Piper tends to imply that they're working their way around Europe, staying at hostels long term and working brief gigs, teaching English or waitressing at cafes, but they don't even seem interested in the lie.
But today Piper goes straight to the kitchen and hugs her mom hard, full up with sentiment for about thirty seconds until Carol, patting her stiffly on the arm, says archly, "Well I was hoping you might eventually stop by."
Just like that, Pipe defaults back to irritated bemusement. "I've been with Alex, Mom. At the funeral home."
"Yes, Cal told us about Diane. Horrible. And she was quite young, too, wasn't she?" Piper's not sure if that's meant as a dig or if she's just oversensitive. Either way, she shrugs away from her mother. "How is Alex?"
"Not good."
"When's the service?"
"Saturday." Two days away, so the paper can run the info tomorrow. Carol nods, and without thinking, Piper blurts out, "You don't have to come."
"Don't be silly, Piper, of course we have to go. We've known Alex for years."
Piper suppresses an eyeroll, because a better answer would be that Alex is dating their daughter (maybe, possibly, as far as they know), but Alex hasn't been in the Chapman house in years. Every tie they've come back to the States since Piper's college graduation, she's gone off for the obligatory visits on her own, reluctantly leaving Diane and Alex in the apartment. She always invites Alex, especially for Christmas dinner, not wanting to seem like she's shutting her out, but Alex never wants to come. Not that Piper can blame her.
"Your dad won't be home for a few hours," Carol tells her, eyebrows high.
"I know. I'll wait..." Then, though her mother doesn't seem to be wondering, Piper explains, "I'm letting Alex have some alone time."
Carol nods like that's perfectly reasonable, but Piper can feel her gut coiling with knots of guilt anyway. She hadn't waited five minutes after getting back from a goddamn funeral home before leaving Alex alone in an apartment full of Diane's stuff.
But there's an unmistakable relief in getting away, and Piper wasn't exactly unaware that it would be a few hours before she'd be able to see her dad.
She can hear music from somewhere in the house, and she wants to retreat upstairs and hide out with her brother for a few hours, maybe dip into his stash of weed and hide from the whole damn world, but she thinks of Alex crying into her mom's jacket and makes herself stand in the kitchen with her own mother, asking questions and offering stories and making a fractured attempt to catch up.
She and Cal drive to see their grandmother, and end up bringing her back to the house for dinner. Piper keeps her phone in her hand the whole night, trying to believe that Alex would call if she really needed her.
She's been gone over four hours when she finally leaves; her mom sends her off with a stack of casserole trays and tupperware containers to take to Alex's, less of a thoughtful gesture than her need to follow protocol.
Piper feels split at the seams during the drive back to Alex's, equally torn between relief and dread, driving above the speed limit and cursing red lights even as she fights off periodic urges to drive off course, circle backroads just to put off her arrival.
Piper tenses up when she enters the apartment, like any number of unknown disasters could have erupted in her absence. But Alex is just sitting on the couch smoking, even though she quit years ago. It's strangely familiar, and for a second Piper feels comforted, but then she starts taking in the details: overflowing ashtray, nearly empty bottle of vodka, leather jacket clutched in Alex's lap.
"Hey."
"Hey," Alex doesn't even glance over. Piper could be anyone.
Hesitantly, she sits down beside Alex on the couch. They sit in silence for awhile, Piper watching Alex chain smoke. At one point the landline rings, and when Alex doesn't react, Piper half rises to get it.
"Don't," Alex mutters almost absently. "People have been calling all afternoon, I had to unplug the answering machine."
"What people?"
"Mom's friends. They can read the paper to figure out when the funeral is. And I don't need food."
Piper casts a doubtful glance at the phone. "I can handle the calls if you don't want to -"
"Fuck, Pipes, just ignore it."
The ringing stops. They go back to their silence. Suddenly, randomly, Piper misses music.
Ten minutes later, there's a knock on the door. Alex closes her eyes for a second, but then she stands up to answer it, not looking at all surprised.
"Alex," the pizza guy at the door nods in greeting, stepping fully into the apartment with his bag. Piper frowns as Alex takes out her wallet, handing over a stack of bills that Piper is pretty sure includes at least one fifty.
Then the pizza guy unzips his bag, pulling out three pizza boxes and handing them to Alex before his hand emerges again, holding a small plastic bag.
Alex flicks a glance over, expecting a reaction, but Piper's mind feels wiped blank with shock.
Alex takes the bag and replaces the pizza boxes as the guy holds the flap open. She nods at him. "Thanks, Mitch."
"Gimme a call if you need more."
When he goes Alex turns to face Piper, her posture already defensive.
And suddenly all of Piper's sympathy and concern goes on mute, and she shoots to her feet, anger flaring. "What the fuck."
Alex's voice is so damn tired. "Fuck off, Pipes, just leave it alone..."
"I will not leave it alone. You fucking idiot asshole." Her chest is heaving, her every word spiked with anger. In a quick, childish motion, Piper seizes Alex's wrist, using her other hand to forcibly pry Alex's fingers open. Her knuckles go white as she tightens her grip on the bag, and for a second they struggle, like six year olds fighting over a toy.
"You promised, Alex!" Piper's voice splinters, hot tears forming in her eyes.
Pain splashes across Alex's expression. Up close, her eyes are unfocused and her breath smells like vodka. "I promised my mom. And I kept that promise. And now I don't have to anymore."
"You promised me, too!" Piper's yelling now.
Alex's eyes go icy. "Sorry if I don't give much of a shit about anything I ever promised you."
"Do you not give a shit about your life either?!"
"At the moment, not particularly ."
Blood red rage bleeds into Piper's vision. "Fuck you." Almost against her own volition, Piper lets go of Alex's hands and shoves her. Alex stumbles back, surprised enough that her grip loosens, and Piper reaches out to easily pluck the bag of powder from Alex's hand. Alex makes a low, stuck sound of protest, making a grab for it, and Piper instinctively shoves her again, not hard, but Alex is drunk and distracted and so she ends up on the floor.
Piper gasps, snatching her hands behind her back like she's afraid of what they might do, the bag still clutched between her fingers.
Alex doesn't make a move to get up. Instead she starts to cry, sobbing like a little kid, looking small and forlorn huddled on the floor. Piper's chest feels cracked wide open, tears streaming down her own cheeks. She's never seen Alex cry this much; she wonder if she'll ever be able to watch it without following suit.
She makes herself walk past Alex and doesn't look back even when Alex chokes out her name. She pours the heroin into the toilet, flushes twice, and then goes back to the living room.
Alex is still on the floor, still crying, crying so Piper can actually hear it, and she kneels behind her on the carpet, hooking her chin over Alex's shoulder and wrapping her arms around her. Alex wilts against her immediately, and Piper feels herself unconsciously rocking back and forth, whispering apologies and reassurances.
They stay like that for nearly five minutes, and then Alex says softly, her voice scraped raw, "I shouldn't have said that about lying to my mom...she really loved you."
"I know she did," Piper answers shakily, kissing Alex's temple. "You know why?" She weaves her fingers through Alex's hair. "Because she saw how much I loved you."
She feels Alex shudder. "Pipes..."
"I mean it. When you were in the hospital, she started telling me about when you guys first moved here, when you and I met. And how glad she was that we became friends. She said she'd always worried about you being a lonely kid, by yourself in the apartment so much - "
"So you're saying my mom thought I was a friendless loser?" Alex glances back, giving Piper a hollow, exhausted smile, and it makes Piper want to cry again.
She smiles instead. "She also told me you freaked out when you thought you might have to move away from me in fifth grade. Proving what I always suspected...you already loved me when we were ten."
Alex lets out a short, surprised laugh; in that moment, Piper would do anything for her. She'd follow Alex around the world another dozen times, on the off chance she could make her laugh again.