My Heart’s an Open Door

Another bedtime story for Clom. OITNB Series 1, set somewhere around 1.10 or 1.11.

Rated AA

* * * * *

It was stupid and reckless and it would all end in tears, probably her own, Alex Vause knew, but nothing had changed for her since she’d taken one look at twenty-three-year-old Piper Chapman in that bar, and her heart was gone. Well, not her heart at first. She was honest enough with herself to admit that she’d propositioned the ridiculously perky and pretty blonde because just looking at Piper made Alex wet and horny and desperate to corrupt her.

Corrupting pretty, rich girls had been her job, and Alex had been so damn good at it. Those college chicks had fallen for her in a second, eating up her bad girl ways and keen intelligence. It was why she was so successful and the other guys were not: because most of the other guys were, well, guys. They thought only in terms of strength and power, and so went after the weak ones they could bully around: the strung-out, desperate little girls from street corners, kids with no future who needed to escape their reality enough that swallowing sixty condoms filled with badly-cut heroin looked like a career choice worth making. And, as soon as they landed at an airport, they might as well have been wearing one of those stupid birthday card badges saying ‘I’m a first time drug mule’.

But that wasn’t what Alex did. Alex picked the pretty, perky co-eds from the good schools who wouldn’t get made as a mule in a million years. The girls she picked looked like they went to Amsterdam and Istanbul and Beirut on a whim, just because they were bored and rich enough that they could. They weren’t afraid of getting a black eye from her the way the junkie girls feared the guys. They were afraid that they wouldn’t get another chance to feel Alex’s tongue inside them, making them come so hard on her face that they’d shave their heads and turn Hare Krishna if only she’d ask. They feared that she wouldn’t let them feel her up while she muttered Kahlil Gibran in their ears.

But then there was Piper, and it wasn’t like that anymore. It wasn’t like that because she’d taken Piper home intending to fuck her hard and forget her, and ended up pretty much asking her to stay forever. When Piper came all over her fingers, staring her down like she fucked herself on drug dealers’ hands all the time, all Alex could think was that she never, ever wanted this beautiful creature to get caught up in her world.

And she wouldn’t have, if only Alex hadn’t fallen in love with her.

Falling in love with Piper was the best thing she ever did and the worst business decision she ever made, because she could hardly recruit a little harem of spoiled Daddy’s girls when she had Piper at home. If she’d still been able to whisper poetry while letting herself get eaten out, then she wouldn’t have had to ask Piper to get involved at all because there would have been some other, less pretty, more desperate little girl willing to make a cash drop to her suppliers. And if she hadn’t had to ask Piper to help, then Piper would never have left her.

It had been a mess, and she had never got past it. She’d gone back to her previous behaviour, picking up pretty little things who couldn’t live up to Piper in any way. When the DEA finally caught up with her, she’d been relieved because she couldn’t take the self-loathing anymore.

But she’d still fucked Piper over again, given her name to the prosecuting attorneys in her case in return for a shorter sentence. So maybe a little part of her was thinking that they would end up in Lichfield together when she did it. And maybe another part of her was still hurt by Piper walking out eight years ago.

But every stupid, shitty mistake she’d made with Piper would have been worth it just for the morning on the beach in Thailand when Piper had lifted her head from between Alex’s legs and said ‘I love you’ for the first time, with her furrowed brow so thoughtful, like she’d been considering it for quite some time before she decided that the appropriate moment to share it was right when she was doing something quite fucking spectacular with her tongue and some mouthwash. Now, every time Alex brushed her teeth, the tang of peppermint made her think of Piper telling her that she loved her. And the sex. That had been incredible, too.

The sex was still incredible, and Alex Vause was still in love with Piper Chapman.

Maybe her life was really fucked up beyond repair, but she would do it all again to be right where she was, in a shitty bed with no mattress, in a dorm where the cubes had four-foot-high walls with no privacy, with the only person she’d ever loved wrapped in her arms.

And that woman had a fiancé on the outside. One day, Piper would get out and she’d marry Larry and live a happy non-Alex life again. Alex wanted that not to be true. She wanted to think that there was a future where she and Piper were together and she wasn’t a drug dealer and they could just be in love and not desperate and unhappy in a series of foreign hotel rooms. It wasn’t going to work out. They were destined to come together and fall apart, maybe again and again and again, but being together forever wasn’t going to happen for them. She’d still fall every time, though, because it was always worth it, no matter how many times her heart got broken.

“I can hear you thinking,” Piper said, rubbing her cheek against Alex’s forearm, which was tucked under her neck.

“Who me?” She tried for nonchalance, even though she knew she couldn’t fool Piper, not even for a minute.

“Yes, you.”

“Not me, kid.”

Piper turned in her arms and rubbed her lips against Alex’s cheek. Alex shut her eyes and inhaled the scent of Piper’s hair. How the hell she could still smell like a warm summer’s day when she had only prison commissary shampoo was beyond her. She had to add something to it, something she’d learned from her soap-making business.

“Tell me,” Piper said, her voice low and sleepy and dirty, just like it had been on the beach in Thailand.

“I’m thinking your hair smells really good.” Alex slipped her hands under the hem of Piper’s khakis, dancing her fingers across skin and grinning to herself at the way she arched into the touch.

“Polly sent me some new oils.” She nibbled on Alex’s ear. “Now tell me what you were actually thinking.”

“Nothing.” Alex shrugged.

“Tell me.” Piper bit hard on her earlobe and growled, but not in a fun, sexy way.

“Fine, I was thinking that one day you’re going to get out of here and marry Larry, and then I realised how corny that sounds—marry Larry—like it’s from a song or something, so I was trying to remember where I knew it from.” Better to hide the truth in a lie, she thought.

“Yeah, that’s not it.” Piper pulled back and frowned at her, trying to get a read.

“Yes, it is.” She held Piper’s gaze and hoped her poker face was up to it.

“You think about that? About me and Larry?”

“Yeah. No. I don’t know.” All the fucking time, because Piper didn’t belong to her anymore, and she’d go running back to him as soon as she was able and all Alex would have was her heart broken again.

“You shouldn’t. He’s not here. I am. I’m here with you now.” Piper trailed a finger down Alex’s front, then settled her hand on Alex’s hip.

“I know you are.” It was stupid and wrong to give into her hope that this time would be different, when Alex knew damn well that it wouldn’t, because Piper didn’t really know what she wanted, except that it was always something else. And talking about it wouldn’t help, so she pulled Piper back against her, so tight that maybe they wouldn’t need to talk anymore.

They stayed like that for a while, just holding and being held. Alex let her world narrow to just having Piper in her arms, smelling amazing and starting to move against her just a little, in a way they couldn’t do anything about with so many eyes on them.

“Harry,” Piper said, nuzzling her face into Alex’s neck.

“What?” Her hands found their way back to skin, the way they always did.

“The song. It’s ’Tis Harry I’m Planning to Marry. It’s from Calamity Jane.”

Calamity Jane, who was fine living on her own terms and set up house with girl and sang of having a secret love and then threw it all away and married the guy in the end anyway. And, fuck. What the fuck was she thinking of, being with Piper Chapman who knew everything and understood nothing? So, she laughed. She laughed until she was shaking, turning over onto her back and pulling Piper on top of her.

“What?” Piper asked.

“Calamity Jane? Calamity fucking Jane?” She dissolved into giggles again.

“What’s so funny about Calamity Jane?”

“Oh God, baby. If you don’t know what’s funny about Calamity Jane, then I can’t explain it to you.”

Piper’s face was all scrunched up. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” she softened her voice and raised her hand to tuck blonde hair behind Piper’s ear, and, damn, she was so fucking pretty, “that your inner gay is showing, Pipes.”

Piper still didn’t understand. It was written on her face and in her body language. But it didn’t really matter anyway, because Alex would keep falling for her and keep making the same stupid mistakes with her over and over.

“Why don’t we go to the chapel and I’ll show you my inner gay in person?”

Alex nodded, because why the fuck not?