Chapter Text
If there’s one thing anyone who’s anyone needs to know about Runeterra High, it’s that the Piltovans and the Zaunites have always ruled, and they have never gotten along.
It’s a natural rivalry, really: Piltover and Zaun are disparate sides of a split town, bisected in the middle by a large highway that serves as a hemisphere marker that severs the two halves of their world. It’s not such a huge barrier when you look at it; just a stretch of asphalt, badly maintained by the municipality, with mile markers in faded blue. But to the people who live on either side, it might as well be a mountain. Unclimbable. Uncrossable.
Nobody knows that fact better than Vi. Despite being the leader of one of the two most powerful groups that have ever walked the halls of RH, she has spent her whole life being looked down on. Being lost, scared, not knowing what the next day of her life might bring. Even now, with the new semester having just started a few weeks ago, she has barely gotten her feet under her after the holiday break. She was never the best student, but things get even worse for her after long breaks, and she’s already had two conferences today about her grades. She barely even has any fucking homework, how could she already be behind?
Vi finds herself leaving her Math classroom in a similar state to a prisoner being discharged from jail: grumpy, exhausted, and discombobulated. She stares down at the list of incomplete assignments that the teacher went over with her in an effort to get her back on track before the semester gets too far underway and winces.
She feels an arm sling around her shoulders, and she knows who it is without even looking up. Mylo never did know when to cool it with the cologne. “What’s got you looking like that?”
He tries to poke into her space and look at the paper she holds, but she flicks his forehead, sending him reeling and clutching the center of his eyeballs. She sneers at him, folds the piece of paper unceremoniously, and shoves it into the baggy pocket of her cargo pants. It sits in there along with her dress code notes for the day—Mr. Roth is crazy if he thinks she’s going to change her shirt just because her abs are out, and he’s crazier if he thinks she gives a single shit about getting detention for the length of her t-shirt—and various gum wrappers and half-smoked cigarettes.
“Nothing,” she says. “Just more bullshit. Hey, you seen Senna today?”
“Nah, but I saw Akali. If you’re wondering who’s carpooling with who for the big game, she said both her and Sen’s cars are full.”
“I mean yeah, I was wondering that,” Vi says as they traverse the packed halls of Runeterra High. “But I was mainly gonna grill her for her calc notes. Damn teachers are out for my neck.”
“I get that. I’ll give her a call after school”
People try not to look at them as they pass, but Zaunites tend to draw attention, either based on the way they dress or the boisterous way they act. Vi doesn’t mind at all—why should she care that other people are worried about being loud and out there? She’s not scared of herself one bit, and everyone knows it. She shrugs her varsity jacket around her shoulders and keeps her chin up as she and Mylo pass, just to make sure nobody decides to try her nerves today. She’s not in the mood, and she makes it known.
On paper, Vi has it all. Senior captain of track and field. Awesome siblings. Stellar friends. A pack of Zaunites who would do anything for her, and who she would do anything for in return. Her life, for once, is actually going pretty well, despite the occasional bump here and there.
She’ll be damned if anyone tries to get in the way of that.
“Where’re we headed?” Mylo asks.
Vi huffs out a laugh at her adoptive brother. “Don’t you have, I don’t know a class to get your ass to?”
Mylo shrugs. “I took Home Ec credit. You only gotta show up and bake a loaf of banana bread, like, once every two weeks to get an alright grade. ‘S not like I’m doing the college thing, so what does it matter?”
“Better not let Vander hear you say that,” Vi grunts. “He’ll have your ass.”
“Baked, broiled, roasted, kebabbed,” Mylo sighs dramatically. He looks like he’s going to say something else dismissive, but he spots someone at the other end of the hall and jumps up and down. “Pow! Pow, get your ass over here!”
Vi’s face lights up when she sees her little sister, a freshman at RH and already a menace to general society, at the other end of the hall. She’s carrying some heavy-duty STEM textbooks in her spindly arms, and she’s chatting with her freshly-nabbed boyfriend Ekko, who grins back at her like a complete dork. Vi almost doesn’t want to interrupt their so-incredibly-freshman moment, but she wants to see her sister god damn it.
Powder turns around and waves them over. The Zaunites collect in the corner by the lockers that Powder freshly graffitied with her signature monkeys and neons (even if no one can prove it.) It’s Zaun territory, and it makes Vi proud to see it.
“Hey losers,” Powder says teasingly. “You guys headed to study hall? We’re headed that way.”
“I need some grub first,” Vi says. “Was planning to grab a snack from the machines. If you hit it hard enough, you can get two bags of Doritos for a dollar fifty. Want to come with?”
“You know I love Doritos,” Powder says. “Ekko? You game?”
“Of course I’m fucking game, I’m bored out of my mind,” he groans, slinging his arm around Powder’s waist. “Anything is better than what Heimerdinger has us doing in Intro to Engineering. Child’s play, I swear.”
“Okay, smarty pants,” Vi rolls her eyes and Mylo laughs beside her. “Let’s blow this joint. I gotta find Akali at some point before the end of the day to talk logistics for the game and the Zaun Bash.”
“Fuck,” Ekko sighs, ruffling his white locs. “I completely forgot that was a thing.”
“Babe,” Powder deadpans. “It happens every year.”
“Yeah, well, the start of the semester sucks. I lose track of everything.”
“Speaking of which,” Powder turns to Vi. “I have the best idea for the Piltover Prank this year. It’s time sensitive so I have to run it by you, but I think you’re going to love it. Totally makes up for that shit they pulled with the slime last year under the bleachers!”
“Okay, but remind me or I’ll forget,” Vi says. “Ekko, you know a guy for alcohol right?”
They’re lost in the buzz after that. The Zaunites busy themselves with talking about plans for the game and for the Bash, all the while the halls of Runeterra bustle around them, a cacophony of teenage angst and drama. Vi knows everyone at this school, and everyone knows her, for better and for worse. This is her stomping ground, has been for so many years, and she feels nothing but comfort and pride walking these halls. There aren’t a whole lot of situations where Vi feels big in this hard, hard world, but here at RH, she feels like with her friends at her side, she could take on the whole world.
“Oh jeez,” Powder mutters. “Here comes trouble.”
Vi’s eyes snap up and fuck, she spoke too soon.
The Piltovans gather at the end of the hall. They stand with an air of superiority, which just grates at Vi, their group tight like the unified ranks of an army. They sport a variety of varsity jackets not unlike Vi’s, but much more put-together. Their hair is sleek, their style highbrow, and as soon as they see the Zaunites appear in the hall with them, they immediately turn their disdainful stares toward them.
Mylo puffs up his chest. Ekko tucks Powder closer to his side. Vi sticks her hands in her varsity jacket, tucking her chin so she can look all the more menacing as she locks eyes with each and every Piltovan, using her best “don’t fuck with us” stare.
Then her eyes lock with baby blues, and Vi’s heart jumps in her chest.
Caitlyn Kiramman stands in the center of the pack. Captain of the cheer squad and the rifle team, she sports a varsity jacket with a variety of pins showing her impressive rank. Her hair, silky and black, cascades down her shoulders in perfectly styled uniformity. Her pleated skirt swishes around her long, long legs, and Vi can’t help but stare. Caitlyn must catch the slow flicker of her eyes because her lips part in something that would have looked like awe if Vi didn’t know any better.
But she does know better. She knows Caitlyn Kiramman, de facto leader of the Piltovans and resident Runeterra royalty, would never look at her with any expression other than disgust.
She watches Caitlyn’s eyebrows draw together. Ahri whispers something to her, but Caitlyn doesn’t take her eyes off Vi. The look between them is intense, charged with all the things the Piltovans hate about the Zaunites, and all the things the Zaunites hate about the Piltovans.
Time freezes between them, as it often does.
Something in Vi’s stomach burns hot as the sun, as it often does.
And Caitlyn flicks her perfect hair and turns away from Vi first, as she always does.
Reality snaps back, and the Zaunites move past the Piltovans with Vi still at the head. She tucks her hands even deeper into her pockets as the Zaunites talk shit around her, grumbling about the Piltovans and their pretty, privileged lives. As they talk she barely listens, because all of a sudden there’s nothing but blue eyes and dark hair in her mind, coupled with the fire that has not—and will not—quit burning inside of her.
Because nobody at Runeterra High has ever been able to get under Vi’s skin like Caitlyn.
* * *
The days come and pass in a flurry of make-up assignments and party plans. Vi teams up with Akali and Zeri to make carpool plans to the big game that’s coming up in just a few weeks, as well as for the Valentine’s Day Pep Rally that falls right before it. It’s the first home game against their bitter rival, Noxus High, and every year the school goes all-out. This year is no different, especially since the game just so happens to coincide with a holiday.
Zaun always goes all-out, and they can’t be upstaged by Piltover again this year, they simply cannot.
Vi is stressed with all the planning she’s had to do to prepare for all of the events—both school sanctioned and not—that her group is involved in. She’s running on empty, and it doesn’t help that Powder has been buzzing around her like a fly for almost a week now, pestering her about the Piltover Prank.
“Vi,” she’d said about a thousand times. “I really need to talk to you—”
“We have to do this before the pep rally—”
“Won’t have time before the Zaun Bash—”
“Viktor already got all the paper—”
“Still not sure who to use for it—”
"She never dates so it'll be perfect to get under her skin—"
“Logistics of picking locks—”
“Can’t wait to see the look on her face when she—”
Eventually, she went from giving noncommittal answers to just ignoring her sister entirely, as there is so much to do and such little time to do it. It was bad enough that most of Vi’s afternoons are taken up by practice for her chosen sport, but now she has to worry about getting her grades back up, and Vander has been on her ass about applying to graduate, and every time she turns a corner these days she’s seen Caitlyn Kiramman’s stupid perfect lips sneering at her, and… and…
“Hello?” her sister snaps her fingers in front of her face. “Earth to Vi? This prank isn’t going to plan itself—”
“Fuck, Powder!” Vi explodes, hands tightening into white-knuckled fists against her pants. “Just do whatever, okay? I don’t fucking care right now!”
Her sister blinks at her, expression slack. The Zaunites are all sitting on the bleachers, watching the kids below practice shot-put, and Powder isn’t the only person who’s staring at her. Mylo, Claggor, Senna, and Viktor all look at her like she just grew a second head, and that head just did all the exploding.
A whistle sounds below, and the athletes begin to run laps. Everything smells like fresh-cut grass, and it’s overwhelming Vi’s senses. She needs a god damn nap.
Powder’s face falls, expression flattening into something hard, reserved. She grabs her bag in a huff. “Fine, okay. I guess I know what I’m gonna do now. Thanks or whatever.”
Vi feels her chest deflate. She presses a hand to her forehead, pushing her bangs up and out of her face, and says, “Powder, wait, I didn’t mean—”
It’s too late, though. Powder is gone, and the whistle has been blown again.
“Dude,” Claggor says. “What gives?”
Vi watches her sister’s blue braids swing as she hustles down the stairs, making a beeline towards the entrance back into the school, and sighs. “Just my hot fucking head again.”
* * *
Vi feels like shit for the next two days. Powder isn’t exactly giving her the cold shoulder—they’re sisters and best friends, it’s kind of difficult—but she hasn’t let Vi forget about her slight either. Vi manages to keep her mind off it by finalizing the plans for the Zaun Bash and the Pep Rally, excited to finally show those stuffy Piltovans who’s boss, but she’s been seeing members of the rival group everywhere she looks, probably making plans of their own.
She sees Caitlyn, too—enough times to make her physically uncomfortable. They don’t share any classes, because Little Miss Know-It-All is in all AP and Vi is lucky to not be in remedial something-or-other, but they do share a lunch hour which means that she gets to stare at the back of her perfect head, watch her sit in those perfect little skirts of hers, and watch her eat tiny, polite bites like a fucking chickadee for longer than she’d ever care to normally. The Piltovans and Zaunites eat on the opposite sides of the cafeteria, but it’s a small enough space that their eyes catch on occasion, and Vi is always first to turn hers to the ground.
It's no different today. Vi eats the last of her burger quickly as the Zaunites laugh, yell, and joke around her, making the most noise out of anyone in the whole cafeteria. She stares at the back of Caitlyn’s head as she turns, face coming into perfect profile, and the harsh light in the room seems to frame the straight line of her nose impeccably. She points with her fork, twirling it like she’s telling a story, and her best friend Jayce laughs so hard he almost spews milk out his nose. The Piltovans hang on her every word, mesmerized by the beauty in front of them. It’s enough to make Vi gag.
“See something you like?”
Vi snaps back to attention, and it’s Ekko who spoke to her. Clearly they don’t know where she was looking, or he wouldn’t have made the joke knowing it was a Piltovan she was staring at, but her cheeks burn even so. The other Zaunites giggle.
“Shut the fuck up, Little Man,” she says, and the rest of the table ooh and ahh between them, but Ekko only grins wider and remarks about messing with her.
The bell rings and the Zaunites file out amongst the rest of the students, shoving each other playfully like puppies in a pen. They gather in the hallway near the cafeteria which holds many of the senior lockers—prime real estate, if you ask Vi—and a good amount of foot traffic coming from various places in the school. People of all years from freshman up to senior hurry through this hall, moving from one place to another like blood cells in a huge artery. It’s shocking just how orderly this chaos can feel, and somehow everyone always ends up where they need to go.
“We’ve got liquor and beer for the Bash,” Ekko reports mischievously. “Zeri was even saying she might be able to get her hands on one of her dad’s kegs, but no promises on that.”
“Excellent.” Vi’s grin is just as wicked. “And you’re sure Benzo won’t mind if we host it at yours?”
“Hell no, Benzo can hang,” Ekko assures her, arm glued to Powder like it has been for weeks. “He’ll make sure no one gives us trouble. He might make us listen to a bunch of stories about ‘the good ol’ days’ when he and Vander went here and tore the whole place up, but other than that—”
“Ahh!”
A yelp cuts through the hallway, followed by the clatter of a locker door flung against another locker. A huge sound shares the space with the exclamation, like a hundred loose pieces of paper sliding off a desk in the middle of class, and everyone in the hall looks around for where it came from.
There’s a loose circle of Piltovans gathered around a section of lockers, and Vi cranes her neck to see what they’re looking at. A few students part, clearing her line of sight, and what she sees she almost can’t believe.
Caitlyn is standing in front of a locker, presumably her own, hunched over with the door flung wide. Her eyes are blown wide as she stares in shock and horror at what sits below. And above. And adjacent to her frozen form. And… well, just about everywhere.
Vi barely registers that the flood of things that have just dropped out of her locker like a sack of bricks are individually cut-out hearts, some more hastily done than others. Some of them have words on them, some of them have photos or drawings on them. The only thing that seems to join them together stylistically is that they are all, in fact, shaped like valentines.
Lux immediately drops down and begins to help pick them up, ever the good Samaritan. Everyone in the hall is turned to look at her now, and there are clearly too many valentines strewn on the ground to get rid of in any quick fashion. It even looks like some of them are taped up in her locker or suspended by string from the top. Those’ll be a bitch to get off, for sure. In the midst of the silence, Caitlyn reaches down and, with shaking hands, picks up a single large heart off the floor.
And when Vi sees what is written on that card, her whole soul leaves her body.
Be Mine?
<3 Vi
Vi’s mouth drops open, and so do her eyes, and suddenly she sees her own face in a variety of embarrassing poses, both attractive and jokingly hideous, and she realizes exactly what kind of prank Powder wanted to pull on the Piltovans.
Zeri is the first to start laughing. She doubles over and squeals, “Oh my gosh, Kiramman, your face!”
The rest of Zaun is quick to pick it up, and soon the rest of the hallway is either gasping, laughing, or whispering in a strange combination of horror and mirth.
“You’ve got an admirer, Kiramman, what’cha gonna do about it?” Ekko teases.
“The undatable princess has a date, go figure.”
“Oh God, look at her—"
“Is someone going to help—”
“Piltover rattled by Zaun, never thought I’d see it—”
Vi turns to her sister, who is laughing and clapping her hands together like she’s watching a performance at the circus. When their eyes catch, Powder looks like the cat that ate the canary.
“I told you it would be epic,” she squeals in a half-whisper. “I just needed someone to give me a little inspiration, hope you don’t mind.”
Vi doesn’t really know what to do right now. All of Zaun is around her, laughing at the Piltovans as they scramble around Caitlyn, asking her if she’s okay, trying to cover the spectacle, but it’s only making the whole scene worse.
Vi hates the Piltovans. She does. She’s never held any love for any of them, much less their stuck-up leader. She should be laughing along with her comrades, ecstatic at one of the most successful Piltover Pranks they’ve ever pulled.
One look at Caitlyn’s face, however, and the frozen, mortified horror that stretches across it, is enough to sour her stomach.
Caitlyn’s eyes flicker up to hers, eyes wide like a deer in headlights, and it does something to Vi. Powder slings an arm around her shoulders and makes a face back at her as all of Zaun laughs in her face. Vi’s shoes feel glued to the floor.
I could get lost in those, she thinks like an absolute madwoman among the carnage, trapped by the bluest eyes in the whole world.
She’s trapped, still, when those eyes begin to water.
Before Vi can say something, anything, Caitlyn lets the fake valentine drop out of her hands. She looks around at the people staring her way, and when she takes a step back she stumbles on the pile of heart-shaped paper. She covers her mouth with both hands and runs for the stairwell, disappearing in a crowd of people.
“Caitlyn!” Mel shouts after her as Lux and Evelynn try their best to shove the papers back into her locker and close it with any kind of urgency.
Seething, Mel turns her attention to the laughing Zaunites and marches up, staring at Vi with all the bitterness in the world. Vi almost shrinks under the withering gaze. Mel’s finger meets the center of her chest.
“You’re a real jackass, Vi, you know that?” she hisses between her clenched teeth. Vi opens her mouth to reply but she’s gone, running in the direction Caitlyn went.
Vi is left reeling as the Piltovans clean up their mess and the Zaunites all stick around to watch the fruits of their labors, ripe for the picking. She feels Powder jostle her, arm still slung around her shoulders.
“That was gold, wasn’t it?” she says, brushing a tear from her eye. Tears. Tears, fuck, Caitlyn was crying. “We’ve gotta tell Vander. He’s gonna be so happy we stuck it to those—”
Vi shakes her arm off, and Powder stops.
“Vi?” she whispers. “What—”
“I…” Vi says, clutching her chest. She feels like if she doesn’t her heart might just leap right out of it, and she might bleed out on the floor all over those fucking valentines. She backs up one, step, two, and suddenly the stairwell Caitlyn disappeared down is all she can think about, all she can see.
Her body knows what she needs before her mind does. Her feet carry her, bolting in the direction Caitlyn disappeared in, leaving Zaun behind her.
* * *
Vi doesn’t even know where to look, or why.
She doesn’t see Mel at all, so this must be some new, unsearched direction. Not that she wanted to be on the receiving end of Medarda’s anger again, anyway, but something in her feels like she deserves it.
She doesn’t even know why she feels so bad. It was this time last year that Vi showed up under the bleachers after receiving a text from “Senna” only to arrive and get a whole tub of red-tinted slime poured on her head from above courtesy of the Piltovans, and if you’ve ever tried to get slime out of hair, you know it’s bitch and a half. She was pissed as all hell about it.
The year before that, Zaun slashed all of the tires of the seniors, and cut the wires to the cameras so nobody could see it was them. Three tires on each car, the dirty way.
The year before that, Piltover tied all the freshman with clear packing tape and dangled them by the feet over the pool and filmed it.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Always.
What’s so bad about that?
She runs down the back stairwell, the one closest to the teacher’s lounges, a stairwell no student in their right mind would be caught in because the teachers come and go so often. Vi is late for class, but she doesn’t give a fuck. Her footsteps are the only sound she can hear for a while.
Then, a whimper. Small. Soft.
Vi pauses at the landing, and there she is, below: Caitlyn, arms wrapped around her knees, curled up in a tiny ball against the wall with a curtain of dark hair hiding her shaking form. She heard Vi’s footsteps, and as soon as Vi stops, Caitlyn looks up.
Her face is puffy. There is red at the tip of her nose, below her eyes, at her cheekbones. Her chest heaves, half-angry, half-upset. She looks broken. Embarrassed.
She looks like a force of nature.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands, venomous and exhausted.
Vi pauses, because fuck, what is she doing here?
Instead of coming up with answers, she tromps down the stairs. She stands above Caitlyn for a moment, judging the extent of her anger, and when her back hits the wall and she slides down to sit beside her, legs spaying and crooking beside her curled form, she doesn’t make a move to get away from her. She looks too tired for that.
The silence is deafening. It’s class time, which means there’s no one to come interrupt them, and suddenly that fact seems all the more terrifying to Vi.
“That was low,” Vi finds herself whispering. “Sorry.”
Caitlyn doesn’t move, but the sniffling stops. She raises her head, but she keeps her gaze in front of her, eyes softly closed.
“I don’t need your pity,” she says.
“Oh I pity you, Kiramman,” Vi barks out a laugh. “I think a thousand things about you every day, and most of them aren’t that great. But I don’t pity you for this.”
Caitlyn’s head ticks in her direction, just a fraction. Her eyes open, and she looks at Vi quizzically. Vi sighs, scratching her head until her hair is surely a tangled, worried mess.
“We crossed a line,” she says simply. “We don’t fuck with feelings, period. Not my style.”
“I believe your friends would beg to differ,” Caitlyn snarls. “And there are no feelings involved.”
“Ditto, princess,” Vi says. “Wasn’t up for debate. But that doesn’t make what happened cool. I might think you’re an uppity bitch, but public humiliation is a little harsh.”
“Some leader you are, then,” Caitlyn whispers, and her comment hits Vi right in the gut.
“Alright, you’re really mad, I get it,” she sighs. “I deserve that at least.”
Caitlyn doesn’t even deign to respond. She and Vi just look at each other until it’s too uncomfortable to do so anymore, and Vi turns away, digging down deep for ideas on what to say.
“I mean, I was pissed last year, too,” she says. “Y’know, with the slime thing. Had to cut that shit right off my head. Gotta hand it to you—that was sick.”
Caitlyn blinks at Vi. “You… what?”
“You heard me.”
Caitlyn pauses, pursing her plush lips, red from worrying them between her teeth. “I didn’t know that.”
“What, did you think I just decided to shave half my hair off for fun?”
Caitlyn pauses, pondering. To Vi’s utter shock, something that might be a smile plays at the corner of her mouth. “Seemed like something you would do.”
A laugh escapes Vi’s throat before she can hold it back, and Caitlyn’s shoulders relax. “Are you saying you think you know me, Caitlyn Kiramman?”
Caitlyn sits up a little straighter and loosens her death grip on her knees, letting them fall slightly. Her skirt has ridden up, showing her shorts underneath that are there for modesty purposes. Her long legs stretch out beside Vi’s, and Vi feels suddenly like she’s about to combust for some odd reason.
She looks way prettier when she’s relaxed, Vi thinks, and she wants to slap herself for it. This is Caitlyn they’re talking about. Caitlyn Kiramman.
“No, Vi,” she says finally. “I don’t know you.”
It’s then that Vi’s heart and her brain diverge completely. Everything housed in her head begs her to close off this conversation, to shy away from all of the neurons that fire every time she lays eyes on Caitlyn, on her hair, her skin, her lips, her legs, her eyes. She said her apology, shouldn’t that be enough? Can’t that be enough?
No, her heart screams. It’s not enough.
“Then I’ll give you the chance to,” Vi says without thinking.
Caitlyn freezes. Color rises into her cheeks again, and that in turn makes Vi blush. “What?”
“I—I mean,” Vi says, mind scrambling to catch up to her mouth. “Look, the Zaun Bash is this weekend. Consider it an apology for all that shit, and an olive branch to Piltover. Bring whoever you want and come see Zaun for yourself.”
Caitlyn searches her face. She examines Vi’s whole expression like she’s a puzzle that Caitlyn can’t quite figure out, or worse, a bomb she can’t quite figure out how to diffuse. Vi has never been so thoroughly searched. She feels raw. Untethered.
“Is this another trick?” she asks, voice dipping back into a whisper. Vi hates how hurt she still sounds.
“If it is,” Vi says, “you can feel free to retaliate however you want. Hit me, cover me in paint, egg my house, run me over with your car. All I can do is promise you it’s not. Believe me or don’t.”
Caitlyn decides. Vi watches her decide, sees the gears grinding against each other in her mind, eyes still unable to tear themselves from Vi. Everything in Vi’s body wants to reach over, to fix her hair, to rub the red out of her cheekbones. It takes a thousand reminders of this is Caitlyn, this is Caitlyn, this is Caitlyn to keep her from learning just how soft the Piltover princess’ skin really is.
“Okay,” she says.
Vi lifts her eyebrows in shock. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Caitlyn nods. “Okay. But if this is a ruse, I promise you that Zaun will never recover. I will unleash hell on your head like you have never experienced.”
Vi doesn’t know why, but the smile that stretches across her face is as big as the sun, and something like excitement blooms in her chest. Caitlyn’s tears are gone, and she’s looking at Vi with the ghost of trust, eyes soft and blue.
Vi’s not sure what she’s aiming to get out of this. She certainly doesn’t think she and Caitlyn will ever be friends—hell, she’s shocked they’re even getting along right now, if she’s being totally honest—but there is a warmth that blooms within her whenever Caitlyn looks her way, and that’s not a warmth that her body can deny. If she can bask in it for even a moment without shame, then going out on a limb would be worth it. This vulnerability, this uncertainty—it’ll be worth it.
This would be worth it.
“Okay, princess,” she chuckles, the sound echoing like bubbles through the stairwell. “It’s a date.”
Notes:
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Chapter 2
Notes:
Super excited for this one, it is TENSE 👀
Also, I have a new multichap up! Read my latest long-term project break the ice and let me know what you think :)
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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The air smells like smoke and booze, thick and ambered, and that’s how you know that the Zaun Bash is ready to open its doors.
Vi has been readying the house like her mother’s coming to visit—and she doesn’t have a mother, which is a testament to her stress. Benzo’s place is nice, especially for Zaun, but it’s old and the whole place is decked out in 80’s brown, complete with dark wood-paneled basement walls and a godawful rust-orange velvet couch. Nobody in Zaun gives a fuck about the drapery, because Benzo doesn’t give a shit about kids drinking in their place as long as they’re safe and he's got the biggest place this side of the river, but for some reason Vi is sweating about the way the bottles look on the table.
She’s in the process of moving the loveseat for the third time, and she barely registers that she has an audience, Ekko, Pow, and Akali staring at her with craned necks like they’re watching an alligator maul a goose in the wild.
Is this a weird angle? She thinks to herself, grunting as she tries to move it back to where it was.
“Hey, Vi?”
Maybe, if I push it like this?
“Vi!”
Vi’s head snaps up, peering over the couch. She blinks once, twice. “Yeah? What do you need?”
The Zaunites stare back at her like she grew another head.
“Vi,” Powder repeats her name, slightly concerned. “You’ve moved that couch, like, a thousand times already. Give it a rest.”
“There’s literally no angle where this couch looks good,” Vi grunts. “Ekko, has Benzo ever considered, I don’t know, visiting a Raymour and Flanagan at some point this century?”
“Dude, chill out,” Akali says, sticking her thumb to the kitchen behind her where other Zaunites have begun to file in the back door, plopping their bags and coats wherever they can find a spare spot in the kitchen. Some people already have drinks in their hands, and that familiar Zaun noise begins to rise in the living room. “People are arriving. Just grab a drink and leave it.”
It isn’t until the Zaunites pile into the living room and shout when they see Vi that she realizes what she was doing, though she still isn’t really sure why.
She’s nervous. She doesn’t know why she’s nervous, and even though the Zaunites arrive at the party and pack the place wall-to-wall which always makes her feel at peace, she still can’t shake the sense of dread that she feels as the night begins to march on. She sits on that very couch in the center of the room, arms slung over the back of the couch telling stories, swishing around the beer that someone handed to her some time ago. She feels her easy smirks rise to her face, and she sits like a king among her favorite people.
The music thumps around her. Nobody complains about noise anymore in Zaun, and everyone is so used to it that it’s almost a comfort. The lights are low, golden and diffused through Benzo’s ugly lamps, but it works with the mood. Laughter and emphatic stories echo through the house, the party spreading like a virus from top to bottom.
Vi watches it all and feels herself relax, just a bit. Life didn’t always used to be this good. For a long, time, especially after she and Powder lost their parents and they weren’t sure if their next foster parent would be someone wonderful or someone despicable. When they found Vander and Vander found them, it was like the clouds opened up.
Vi gained a community.
Vi gained a family.
Zaun has held the Zaun Bash before the first big game of each semester, no matter the sport or the stakes. Vi isn’t the first Zaun leader to organize it, and she won’t be the last. As she looks out at the turnout and the air of unbridled fun that settles around her, she can’t help but think she did a pretty bang-up job this time. This might be their best turnout yet.
Vi is just starting to loosen up, to feel the sweet warmth of her second beer and the embrace of her family, when her blood runs cold as she hears Zeri shout:
“The fuck are you doing here?”
* * *
Caitlyn doesn’t know why she’s here.
She knows, objectively, what brought her here—though frankly, the concept still baffles her. Violet Vander, leader of the Zaunites, their rival clique, known delinquent and sworn enemy of just about every Piltovan and, by extension, her, had invited her to the Zaun Bash. The biggest Zaunite party of the whole year. To her knowledge, no Piltovan had ever willingly ventured to the other side of the river unless it was to mediate an issue between their groups, and even then those mediations never went… incredibly well.
As for the true why of the situation?
Well, she contemplates that as she reapplies her lip gloss in the flip-down mirror in Evelynn’s car. This is the third time she’s done this action, and she can tell the girls are getting restless.
“Come on, Cait,” Lux mutters nervously. “Let’s go inside already. It’s bad enough we came to Zaun without our parents’ permission. We shouldn’t stay longer than we have to.”
“I don’t even know why you wanted to come in the first place,” Mel mutters from behind her, arms crossed stubbornly over her low-cut, high-slitted black dress. “After the way they treated you this week.”
“Mel,” Caitlyn warns, smacking her lips. She smooths a modicum of static out of her hair and slips the mirror back up, taking a deep breath. “I told you, if this goes south you can personally rip Vi limb from limb with your claws.”
Mel snorts. “I think I’ll leave that one to Evelynn,” who flashes her long, sharp nails painted holographic silver for the night.
“Guys,” Jayce says nervously from the backseat, craning his head as best as he can in the cramped backseat. He gulps. “People are staring at us.”
“If things go well,” Caitlyn says with authority. “We can stay and have fun. If things go badly, Ahri and Kai’Sa are waiting at theirs with wine and rom-coms. It's a win-win.”
Mel stares at her with perfect furrowed brows. “You’re absolutely sure about this?”
Caitlyn takes a deep, steadying breath. Outside the safety of Evelynn’s windshield, Zaunites mill about on the front lawn of this “Benzo’s” house. There are so many of them, more than Caitlyn ever saw walking the halls of their little high school. This is a whole community, swarmed together to celebrate. Zaunites old and new.
They’re outnumbered, and they’re out of their comfort zone.
The only thing that steels her resolve is the thought of Vi. She remembers how sincere she looked, how upset she seemed at the fact that Caitlyn was upset after that prank gone sideways.
It still stings to think about, and she has to steady herself when she does. When she opened her locker and saw what tumbled out, that deluge of clearly fake love notes designed to make fun of her for never dating. She knows she’s known throughout the halls as Runeterra’s sexiest prude, which is something that she will never let people know gets on her nerves, but it does. It makes her feel so awful, but she keeps her chin up nonetheless. As if that wasn’t bad enough, but to see who they used to get under her skin…
The image of Vi’s name looped in curling, romantic script on all those fake love notes, the photos of her, is enough to make Caitlyn seize up all over again.
The Zaunites couldn’t have known.
They couldn’t have known what Vi does to Caitlyn, so that makes everything all the worse.
Steeling her resolve and straightening out her silver two-piece number, she opens the door with authoritative force. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
As soon as they step out and Evelynn locks her Lexus, the Zaunites begin to murmur. They point, clumping in smaller cliques to discuss their approach, but Caitlyn keeps her head up. She looks them in the eye as they pass, not antagonizing but now weak-spined either. Her silver crop top and miniskirt do little against the late-winter chill, but she’s used to it. She clutches the chain-link strap of her sparkly bag like a lifeline.
This is fine, she thinks as they step inside the bustling house. I’ve got my people right here behind me. This is fine. This is fine.
She’s hit by smoke and the smell of cigarettes. The lighting is low and golden and the walls are packed with Zaunites. She feels like a human stepping into a den of vampires, fascinated but not quite cunning enough to make an escape alone. Several faces turn to grimaces when they enter, including a neon-green-haired camo-covered girl behind a beer pong table.
“The fuck are you doing here?” she cries, nostrils flaring.
And that’s when all the attention is on them. Caitlyn can’t escape the stares now. She feels smaller than she ever has, and she can see Lux and Jayce shrink behind her a bit. Evelynn and Mel stand their ground, wary.
Caitlyn’s eyes trace the sea of Zaunites, and when they fall on the couch, her heart nearly stops.
Vi is there. She’s sitting with her arms flung over the back of the couch, friends on either side of her staring back at Caitlyn with worse stares than she. Her legs are crossed, heavy combat boots weighty at her feet. Dark jeans with massive rips expose the long, hard panes of her thighs, and she’s wearing a distressed red crop top with a harness looped over it, all chain. Her eyes are smoky, pupils dilated, and when she and Caitlyn lock eyes she gets up immediately.
Caitlyn clutches the chain of her bag and can’t help but notice that they match in that tiny way.
Vi’s approach feels like it’s in slow motion. Caitlyn’s heart pounds as Vi comes face-to-face with her, a mere foot separating them. She looks up slightly at Caitlyn, but despite her height they feel like equals on this stage. Vi crosses her arms and her sister sidles up next to her, dressed in short shorts and a raggedy pink and blue crop top.
“Who the fuck invited you?” Powder asks.
Caitlyn doesn’t tear her eyes from VI. Vi’s eyes roam across her form, lingering in places that would have made Caitlyn blush if she wasn’t so focused on steeling her face.
“I did,” Vi says, and all of Zaun erupts in dissent around her.
It takes a minute of yelling and gesturing for Vi to get them to calm down. Mel puts her hand on Caitlyn’s arm for support. Once Zaun gets under control again, Vi says, “If anyone has a problem with my decision, you can take it up with me personally. The Piltovans stay. No questions.”
Several groans echo through the crowd, but eventually they disperse, albeit they keep their eyes on the Piltovans. Caitlyn lets out a slow breath as Vi whispers something heated to her sister and gestures curtly with her head towards the kitchen. Powder glares in Caitlyn’s direction before going where her sister told her to go.
Vi turns back to Caitlyn, and there’s something that might one day become a smile playing at the edges of her lips. “Didn’t think you’d actually come, Kiramman.”
“I told you I would,” she says. “Kirammans never go back on their word.”
“Well, Vanders don’t either,” Vi says, gesturing toward the alcohol. “You’re all welcome here for tonight. Call it a… tentative truce. Alc’s over there, keg’s in the basement, so is the dancing. Bedrooms are off-limits but the guest room is fair game. Bathroom’s upstairs, second door to the left.”
“Thank you,” Caitlyn says politely. “Don’t let us keep you.”
Vi nods, and without another word she escapes to the kitchen. Caitlyn presses a hand to her chest, and she hopes it looks to the other like nerves and not the fluttering of her disruptive heart.
Caitlyn marches over to the table with the alcohol. Three Zaunites watch her carefully as she swipes up the blue bottle of Pinnacle cake vodka, pours herself a double shot into a red solo cup, and down the whole thing in an instant. It burns on the way down, but if there’s one thing here Kiramman genes and several years of popularity are good for, it’s holding her liquor without wincing.
The Zaunites’ eyes are wide with surprise when she slams the liquor bottle back down. She turns back to her friends, who are looking at her with a mix of concern and unbridled excitement.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she grunts. “We came here to have a good time. Let’s have a fucking good time.”
* * *
The night goes on, and the Piltovans have their fucking good time.
Mel got a cup of wine in and immediately dragged Jayce to the basement to dance their gay little hearts out, Lux found a Zaunite who’s in her Bio class who didn’t look ready to bash her face in and struck up some curt conversation, and Evelynn disappeared with one of Vi’s more attractive female friends somewhere dark. At first, Caitlyn wanted to keep an eye on her friends to make sure nobody gave them trouble, but after an hour or so it became apparent that sticking together only reinforced their collective anxiety.
Caitlyn has made her way through every inch of the house, chatting, observing. The basement is all concrete and tiny windows, but it absorbs sound like a sponge, so she only noticed the thrumming music from below when she swung the rickety door open. People dance with wild abandon no matter what song is on, and Mel; and Jayce look like they’re loosening up a tad. Upstairs the kitchen is small and dated, but the counters are lined with bottles and rolling trays. The living room is relatively spacious, with an annexed den on the other side that overlooks a patchwork backyard where a bunch of Zaunites are playing a crude game with a hammer called “stump.”
The Zaunites have stopped staring at her with disdain and have let their curiosity get the better of them. She’s even had a few half-conversations with half-drunk people, asking her to tell stories of what life’s like on the other side.
She tries not to wince when she tells them.
All the while, Vi moves in her periphery. Ever the hostess, she moves from group to group, making sure everyone’s glasses are filled and everyone is having a good time. Her charisma is magnetic here, where her people gather around her in droves, and Caitlyn’s eyes can’t help but wander to her whenever they’re in the same room.
Those eyes, shockingly, are always on her as well.
Caitlyn is no fool. She knows what feelings are like between Piltover and Zaun. From the moment she laid eyes on Vi freshman year before they were the leaders of anything, she knew the girl was trouble all wrapped up in a pretty package. Her parents warned her to steer clear of the Zaunites, and she did so gladly.
There was always something about Vi, though, that made her knees weak. She’s attractive enough in a kind of devil-may-care way, and Caitlyn has known she was gay for a long time, but never in a million years would she ever consciously go for a girl like Vi. They’re incompatible, two moons pulled into the same planet’s atmosphere fighting for space. Any attraction between them was bound to end horribly, and Vi has never shown any reciprocated interest aside from some heated glances in the hall that could be brushed off as anger and resentment.
So, when she ends up on the couch with her legs crossed demurely, taking up as little space as she can with a cheap plastic martini glass in her hand, she’s ten flavors of shocked when Vi sits down beside her.
Caitlyn glances at Vi, and she can see Vi is surreptitiously watching her back, hiding it behind the rim of her bottle as she takes a swig. There’s a healthy flush on her face and the barest sheen of sweat at her brow, and it’s doing very confusing things to Caitlyn.
“Enjoying yourself, Cupcake?” Vi asks.
Caitlyn chokes around her liquor and the nickname. “Sorry, what did you just call me?”
Vi chuckles and nods towards her glass. “Cake vodka. I can smell it from here. The gross shit.”
“Why would you stock it if you think it’s gross?” Caitlyn asks, taking a sip from her drink to punctuate it.
“It’s cheap,” Vi says, “and Powder loves it.”
Caitlyn hums and they lapse back into silence, thick and awkward. Caitlyn doesn’t know what to say to her. This is the most she and Vi have spoken aside from arguments in the hallway or pleasantries exchanged in the few classes they have had together to save face for the teachers. They just do not interact if they are not at each other’s throats, and Caitlyn doesn’t know how to handle these small moments together in this arrangement of theirs. This “tentative truce” for the night as Vi called it.
“Having fun?” Vi asks.
Caitlyn huffs. “Well, I’m buzzed, if that’s what you’re asking. Comfortably on my way to drunk, but we’ll see where this drink takes me.”
Vi nods appreciatively. “This shape up to your Piltover parties over on the other side?”
That huff turns into a single laugh, and Caitlyn can tell Vi is beginning to loosen up as well. “Hardly.”
“House not big enough for you, baby?” Vi says, and she can tell that last word was a slip-up because it comes out as almost a hiccup. Vi doesn’t give away the blunder, though, and instead marks it with a wider grin. “No wine decanters and shit?”
Caitlyn giggles, covering her mouth with one hand as she lowers the glass from her face. “Wine decanters are tacky.”
“Oh, well excuse me.”
“You’re excused.”
They’re both smiling now, and—this is weird. This is weird, isn’t it, being so comfortable with each other like this? Piltover and Zaun, all tangled up in a one-night truce?
Why does this feel so nice?
Vi reaches into her pocket and takes out a pack of cigarettes, shaking one out. Then, as if realizing who she’s sitting next to, her eyes widen a fraction and she turns to ask, “Do you mind?”
“If you smoke?” she clarifies. When Vi nods, she shrugs. “It’s not my house. Do what you want.”
Vi cups her hand around the end of the cig and lights it, leaning backward with her arm flung across the back of the couch, just barely overlapping with Caitlyn, and takes a long drag. Caitlyn’s lips part and heat prickles its way up the back of her neck as she watches her relax into the exhale, smoke billowing from her nostrils like a dragon.
Oh my word, she thinks as Vi turns back to her.
“You know,” Vi hums, and when did she get so close? Did she sit so near to Caitlyn and she hadn’t noticed, or had they slid together throughout the course of their conversation? Their thighs almost touch, and if Caitlyn reached out a manicured hand, she could feel the heat of Vi’s skin through the rips in her jeans. “I’ve never actually tried that stuff. The cake shit, I mean. I just don’t like the smell.”
Caitlyn stares at the cigarette burning between her fingers so she doesn’t have to look her in the eyes. “It’s nice. Sweet.”
“Hmm,” Vi hums, looking into the little pool of liquor at the bottom of the glass. “Can I try?”
Heat rushes to Caitlyn’s cheeks. Before she can decide against it she’s nodding, head working almost against her will.
Caitlyn expects her to just take the glass out of her hands and try it for herself. Instead, Vi reaches over, fingers brushing Caitlyn’s digits tangling against the stem of the glass. She brings Caitlyn’s hand and the glass over to her mouth and, lips barely ghosting the edge of it, tips the liquor into her throat.
Caitlyn feels like she’s on fire, now, the blaze catching from her cheeks using whatever fucked-up desires she’s holding in her brain as dry kindling. She watches Vi’s lips as she swallows, wet with liquor, and when she pulls back she takes a moment to taste the alcohol on her tongue.
“Huh,” she says, genuinely surprised. “That’s not so bad.”
“See?” Caitlyn says, and she’s embarrassed to hear a nervous crack in her voice as she pries her eyes away from Vi’s lips. “I told you so.”
“I like an acquired taste,” Vi says, holding up the cigarette for emphasis before taking another drag.
Caitlyn stares and stares at the glowing bud on the end, and she licks her lips. “I’ve never tried.”
Vi notices her looking. “Smoking?”
“Yes.”
Vi’s eyes flicker back and forth between the object and Caitlyn. She watches her swallow thickly. “Would you… like to?”
Caitlyn’s pulse quickens, and she shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t know, I…”
Vi searches her expression and, at seeing her apprehension, scoots on the couch until their thighs are touching, and fuck—her skin is warm and she’s so solid against Caitlyn, she doesn’t even know what to do with herself. Caitlyn puts a hand against the couch to brace herself, but with Vi’s arm still slung behind them, the action only makes the moment more intimate.
“Here, Vi says, expression soft. Tentative. “This way you don’t have to do it yourself.”
Caitlyn is confused for a moment until Vi brings the cigarette up.
“Just breathe.”
Vi puts the cig to her mouth and takes her longest drag of the night, and then suddenly Caitlyn knows what to do, and her heart pounds in anticipation of it.
Vi leans in and breathes out, smoke billowing between them.
Caitlyn breathes in, feeling Vi’s hot exhale mixed in with all the nicotine, and it buzzes in her chest, her head. She feels Vi everywhere even if they aren’t actually touching, and she doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or the smoke or just her own stupid heart, but she feels drunk on her. Drunk on her warmth, her charisma, her presence. She could get addicted to this, to Vi’s attention.
Caitlyn’s eyes flutter open, and so do Vi’s. She doesn’t think either of them knew they ever closed them. Vi’s eyes are wide, but not in shock. No, maybe something closer to awe.
“How was that?” she asks, sounding out of breath.
Caitlyn can barely register what just happened. In their little bubble she can barely register several pairs of eyes on them in the living room, one of them being Powder’s as she and Ekko raid the alcohol table. Powder’s eyes are blown wide, and she mouths something that looks distinctly like “what the fuck” to her boyfriend.
What the fuck indeed.
“Amazing,” she says, and her heart feels like it’s soaring.
* * *
“There’s no way,” Vi says as they set up their cups. “I’m the resident Zaun beer pong champion. No way in hell you’re beating me one-on-one.”
Caitlyn smirks, already mostly drunk, but even so, she racks the cups like a champ. Vi begins to sweat as she remembers that Caitlyn is the captain of the rifle team, and if her record there has anything to say about it, she might a worthy pong adversary.
Vi stares at where her sparkly silver skirt rides up on her ass and pretends in her near-drunk state that it doesn’t affect her. She doesn’t know what changed tonight, but something changed, and it changed enough for her to invite Piltover’s princess to a friendly game of fucking beer pong, like they’re friends or something. The Zaunites gather around to watch.
“Here,” Vi says, tossing her the ball with all the fake cockiness of a mediocre white man. Which is, truth be told, a lot. “You can have the first shot.”
“So confident, are you?” Caitlyn asks, catching the ball with a mischievous look in her eye. She lines up the shot, guiding her elbow with her other hand like she’s done this a thousand times. Little miss popular might have, for all Vi knows, but she’s still determined to win. Vander taught her his skills, and he’s a pro beer ponger. “Care to tell me what I’ll get if I win?”
Vi doesn’t know where she got this boldness from, but she blurts out, “A shot of the best liquor in the house.”
Caitlyn lifts an eyebrow, clearly intrigued. “Oh?”
“I’ll show you where I hide it,” Vi grins. One of the Zaunites near her groans that it isn’t fair a Piltovan gets the nice alc, but she filters them out. “That good enough for you, princess?”
Caitlyn considers it for a moment, teeth toying at her plush bottom lip. God damn, Vi thinks with a shiver.
Then, with a perfect flick of her wrist, she sinks the first shot, and Vi knows she’s done for.
Caitlyn’s grin is wicked. “You’re on.”
* * *
Caitlyn serves her ass to her on a silver platter in under ten minutes.
* * *
Vi opens the door to the guest room and they stumble inside, giggling and shushing each other as Vi quickly shuts and locks the door behind them so no one can see where her expert alcohol hiding place is.
“Now,” Vi says, moving towards the armoire on the left side of the room. Caitlyn stumbles onto the bed, legs buckling like a baby giraffe, and it’s damn near the cutest thing Vi has ever seen. She has to turn away from her to avoid the way she’s looking at Vi, with her pupils blown wide and that easy smile on her face, a smile Vi has never seen on the Piltovan before. “You can’t tell anyone, and I’m dead fucking serious about that. I get, like, one of these every Christmas and I need to make it last all year.”
Caitlyn snorts, twirling her hair as Vi removes a pair of sweatpants with a glass bottle between the pant legs from the back of the armoire. “Vi, darling, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t exactly run in the same circles.”
Vi’s fingers tighten around the bottle at that little teasing pet name, and when she draws it out of the balled-up pants, the amber liquid swishes around like a sunset. She plops down on the bed, happy for the silence in the guest room as the music thumps downstairs. She removes the shot glass from her pocket and begins to unscrew the cap, but Caitlyn’s hand stops her, fingertips soft and unmarked.
Vi looks up at her, eyebrow raised in question, but Caitlyn shakes her head. “I don’t need your liquor, Vi. Really.”
Vi pouts. “But you said—”
“I’ve tasted my share of expensive liquor, and in my opinion none of it is any better than the cheap stuff,” Caitlyn assures her, placing a hand on her knee and rubbing her thumb across it comfortingly. Vi’s cheeks flare up as she sets the bottle on the ground. “I just thought it was sweet you wanted to share with me in the first place.”
Vi chuckles, and the sound is terse and nervous. Her eyes flick down, away. “So why’d you tag along?”
Caitlyn’s mouth opens once, and it looks like she wants to say something, but then she closes it. Open. Closed. She looks like she doesn’t know either, but she can’t stop looking at Vi’s lips, and Vi’s resolve is crumbling with the last shed of her sobriety. “I... I don’t know. I just…”
Their arms cross one another on the bed behind them, X marks something, and they’re inches from each other now, close enough that Vi can pick out all the blue hues in Caitlyn’s eyes, or whatever is left of her irises, that is.
“I think I just wanted to be alone with you,” Caitlyn whispers.
Vi’s heart takes over and she simply says, in complete deadpan, “I’m about to do something incredibly dumb.”
Caitlyn’s eyes widen. “Wha—?”
Vi puts her hands on Caitlyn, then, wrapping around her waist with enough force to hoist her the slightest bit further onto Vi’s lap. Caitlyn’s legs part immediately, her body settling pliant against Vi’s on the edge of the bed. She gasps as Vi holds her close, one hand remaining at the small of her back, the other splayed across the warm, soft expanse of her back. Her skin is smooth and Vi’s hands sink into it when she presses.
Caitlyn’s arms come up around her neck, hands buried in her hair. Their noses are bruising, and Vi can feel her hot breath against her face, coming out in little pants.
“Tell me to stop,” Vi whispers, as if she could beg either of them to change their minds.
Caitlyn does not.
Instead, she surges forward and closes the gap, and Vi melts against her lips so much faster than she expected to. She’s like an ice cube under Caitlyn’s fiery grip, hands tight in her hair as their lips slot together, gasping into one another like they can’t get enough. Caitlyn presses into Vi’s lap so hard that Vi has no choice but to tip them backward, and when she pulls Caitlyn to her again, she can feel Caitlyn’s whine in the back of her throat. She eats it whole, kissing Caitlyn so many times in succession she loses count.
She feels floaty, like she’s not entirely sure this is real, that she just did that, but she doesn’t give a shit. She just cares about the feeling of her hands traveling over the expanse of Caitlyn, ghosting around her thighs and the curve of her ass, and the noises that she continues to make into Vi’s throat.
She doesn’t know where this desire came from, or when it started. Has it been there this whole time, seated secretly underneath her resentment for Piltover? Is it new, spurred on by every new thing she learns about the Piltover princess?
She only knows that it’s here, it burns hot within her, and Caitlyn seems to be feeling it too.
Caitlyn props herself above Vi, hair falling in her face and Vi’s as she draws away, panting. Vi can feel the line of her panties where her skirt rides up, and her shirt is askew. Vi’s eyes darken, seeing the state Caitlyn is in, seeing the state she put her in. Caitlyn doesn’t stay away long, because after a long, tense moment she dips her lips down, kissing down the long column of Vi’s neck, and Vi keens.
“Fuck,” she hisses, arms circling Caitlyn to keep her safe as she nips and sucks at the flesh at the juncture of her neck and clavicle, marching a line with her kisses up behind Vi’s ear. Vi’s hips buck up underneath her, pressing them so intimately together through their clothes. “Caitlyn…”
Caitlyn’s hands fist in the sheets beside her head. She sucks hard enough to leave a mark, Vi is sure of it, but she doesn’t care. In fact, she wants more. More kissing, more touching, more of Caitlyn. Anything. Everything. Whatever she is willing to give to her. Her mind goes absolutely blank as she feels Caitlyn’s hand at the swell of her breast, tugging at the chain harness that’s bound against her chest.
“How…” she whispers, and she sounds wrecked. “How does this—”
Vi swallows. She brings up her hand and captures Caitlyn’s wrist, guiding her hand to the hollow of her throat where the ring of the harness sits with two clasps on it. Caitlyn’s nails fumble with the little things, and all the while Vi cards her hands through Caitlyn’s hair, the strands silky against her fingertips. She almost purrs into her touch as she gets them undone and slips it clumsily off of her.
Vi grips the meat of her ass as Caitlyn dips her lips down lower, lower, until they’re pressed against the place an inch above her belly button. Vi gasps so loud she has to slap a hand over her own mouth, lest someone hear her like this. She’s flushed down to her collarbones as Caitlyn kisses and licks a line up her stomach, the hard plane of her abs, the muscles and skin twitching under her ministrations.
Vi looks down just as Caitlyn looks up, red-kissed lips pressing against the skin between her breasts, hands pushing the fabric up the tender swell of them.
Holy shit, Vi thinks. This is real.
And then there’s a knock at the door.
Gasping, they spring apart. Caitlyn’s cheeks are flushed and her lips are wet and swollen. Vi feels her shirt bunched up just at her nipples, and when the person outside knocks again, she scrambles to pull it back down over her chest. Caitlyn stumbles back off the bed, and as she stands she flattens her hair and frantically pulls her skirt down.
“Vi?” Zeri’s voice comes from the other side of the door as she simultaneously pounds on it. “You still in there? Vi-i-i?”
“Y—Yeah,” Vi says, clearing her throat over the crack. She and Caitlyn glance at each other nervously. “What do you need?”
“The princess’ friends want to leave,” she says. “They want to know where she is. She still with you?”
“Uh,” Vi looks at Caitlyn, and Caitlyn tentatively nods, caught like a deer in the headlights. “Yeah, we’re just finishing up. I’ll send her down.”
“Sweet, we’ve got another round of pong coming up, so join in when you can,” Zeri says.
Vi listens for her heavy footsteps to disappear, then she lets out a long sigh of relief. She runs a hand through her hair and leans back on one arm, staring at the ceiling like it can provide her some answers. She feels sober as ever, and she can vaguely feel the cool pile of chain beneath her fingertips below.
“I…” Caitlyn says, and when Vi looks back at her, she’s scrambling to find her bag. “I should go.”
“Yeah,” Vi says, even though that’s the last thing she wants.
She watches Caitlyn straighten her clothes out in the mirror above the wooden dresser, swiping a new coat of lip gloss across her mouth in hopes to hide the fact that she was kissing someone. Even now Vi can’t take her eyes off her, but when her eyes meet Caitlyn’s in the reflection of the mirror, Vi looks away immediately.
Without a word, Caitlyn rounds the bed and unlocks the door. Her fingertips hover at the rounded doorknob, shoulders hunched with uncertainty.
It’s then that she looks back at Vi, sitting prone on the bed, and says with absolute finality: “This can never happen again. You know that, right?”
The haze of their passion now dispersed, Vi’s mind operates a little more sharply. She regards Caitlyn, the leader of Piltover, and— “Yeah. I know.”
Caitlyn nods. She takes a deep breath, counts to three, and opens the door. She slips out, leaving behind only the scent of her perfume and the phantom feeling of her soft skin under Vi’s hands, like the last fragment of a dream that you can’t remember very well once you finally wake up.
Vi runs her hands down her face and flops back onto the bed.
This will never happen again, she thinks. It can’t.
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Chapter Text
It happens again.
The Monday after the Zaun Bash, Vi averts her eyes as she walks through the halls of Runeterra High. Nobody notices, of course, because Vi’s mere presence is enough to instill fear in most underclassmen, but Ekko notices immediately on their way into school from the parking lot. He gives her a look as she pockets her keys and steps through the front door, eyes glued to the floor, but she just shoots him a glare and keeps walking.
The halls are beginning to look a little more festive than they were ahead of the big game, and there are posters all over the place advertising the pep rally and all of the events leading up to it. Vi might be gutter trash all polished up in a varsity jacket, but she sure as hell loves a little bit of friendly competition, and she busies her brain coming up with ways to finally one-up Piltover.
That should keep her mind off things, right?
The first two periods pass by in an exhausted haze, as Vi tries her best to pay attention to the curriculum. Which, on the best of days, is a Herculean feat. Vi doesn’t dislike learning, she just hates doing it with teachers who are constantly expecting her to fail, and for Zaunites that’s very typical. She slogs through sines and cosines, fighting sleep until it’s third period, when she is blissfully granted leave for two periods.
She scoops up her books and makes her way back through the halls, waving to her fellow Zaunites that she sees when she passes on the way to the gymnasium. Her sneakers squeak over the freshly washed linoleum, and as she makes her way down the familiar stretches of hall that she has walked so many times over the course of four years, she thinks of Caitlyn.
She’s been trying hard not to, she really has. Those final words that stretched between them just past midnight at the Zaun Bash—This can never happen again—have echoed in her mind for two days now, just like the echo of Caitlyn’s sighs in her ear, her exhales and her sweet half-stifled moans—
Vi winces. Her nails bite the insides of her palms. She pushes away the memories like they’re intrusive thoughts, things that aren’t welcome in a Zaunite’s mind. It doesn’t matter that that encounter, those few blissful moments of soft skin, parting mouths and desperate hands, made her realize so many things about Caitlyn, namely that a lot of the feelings she’s harbored for the Piltover princess might not have been so angry at all.
That’s almost more embarrassing a thought than anything: the idea that she might have thought Caitlyn Kiramman was hot this entire time. Honestly, she could rationalize it—pretty much everyone at RH thinks Caitlyn is the hottest creature on the planet, and those desires have only been fueled by the fact that she strictly does not date and has made several public refusals since she walked through those doors as a freshman. She’s become a fantasy, an untouchable force of beauty and brains that most others wouldn’t dare to step to. The fact that Vi even challenges her as the leader of Zaun is a miracle of stubbornness, and a testament to Vi’s unbreakable resolve.
But at that moment, wrapped around Vi and gasping her same air, she didn’t look untouchable at all.
She looked reachable. Imperfect.
Human.
It wasn’t just the heated make-out session that made Vi think that, either. It was everything that led up to it: Caitlyn sitting alone on Benzo’s couch looking out of place, the way she snorted when she laughed at Vi’s jokes that she knew weren’t all that funny, the way she stumbled up the stairs half-drunk when Vi led her shushing and giggling to the guest room to get the good alcohol. So many moments. So many sides of Caitlyn that she has never seen. So much hidden behind that cold, beautiful, scary façade that she has known so well in the halls and yet never outside them.
Vi shakes her head as she hears the entrance to the gym, where several students are putting together folding tables. She really has to get it together, or she might convince herself she has a snowball’s chance in hell with the ice queen of Runeterra, who has already decreed that they will never, ever be anything aside from cold rivals living in completely different tax brackets.
The gym isn’t busy when she enters. The whole place has been emptied of equipment so all the various sports and clubs can set up their pep rally tables around the perimeter of the bleachers. There is a huge space in the middle that’s empty for performances and such, as well as an array of chairs for the marching band. Students decorate the walls with more posters and red-and-pink streamers, cardboard-cutout hearts and all that jazz.
Now, Piltover and Zaun aren’t exactly school-sanctioned clubs, but nobody up top really stops them from operating. How can they, when Piltover and Zaun have been established as cliques for generations, going back even further than Vander and his gang? Decades have been put into this feud, and Vi will be dammed if anyone tells them Zaun can’t have a table. She scopes out the empty one that was promised to them, including the bins that Zeri and Powder painstakingly put together to decorate their space with, and she gets to work assembling Zaun’s little slice of the gym.
As she decorates their posters with broken hearts and Powder’s signature graffiti prints, she begins to unwind. She loses herself in the monotony of the action, cutting out hearts then ripping them strategically in half, creating general chaos on the tabletop that looks much more haphazard than any of the tables around it. Zaun was never known for doing things neatly, and she’s certainly not going to start now.
She’s just started forgetting about Caitlyn Kiramman when the girl herself walks in with Jayce at her side, carrying two duffel bags of decorating supplies and a general air of superiority with them.
Vi freezes as soon as she sees her. Her silky dark hair is pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and she’s sporting her varsity jacket as usual. Her jeans are tight and dark, riding boots hugging her shins, and when they drop their supplies at a table across the gym from Zaun’s, Caitlyn laughs at something Jayce says and it makes Vi’s heart squeeze a little bit tighter in her chest.
She looks beautiful. She’s not wearing any makeup today and she’s dressed plainly, unlike how she was at the Zaun Bash, but the sight of her still takes Vi’s breath away.
When the fuck did that start happening?
Vi takes a knee behind the table. Caitlyn hadn’t seen her when she came in, so if she is just incredibly careful and quiet, she might be able to avoid Caitlyn’s attention until she’s finished. She’s almost done, really, she just needs to adjust the poster a little bit and—
Shhhkk.
Vi blinks, pulse jumping as the poster tips over and slides down the length of the table and onto the floor in one smooth motion. The sound isn’t loud, but it’s enough to draw attention. She rounds the end of the table and grabs the poster, sliding it back onto the top of the table, and when she looks back up, Caitlyn is looking right back at her.
The world slows down like it always does when they’re together in the same space. Vi never really had the words to quantify what that meant before, when their exchanges were simply heated looks in the hallway and backhanded comments flung at each other after the final bell of the day. She still doesn’t know exactly what it means, only that now it feels like they’re the only people in this whole gymnasium, and it’s making Vi’s head feel light and fuzzy.
Caitlyn stares for a long moment. Her eyes flick back and forth from their tables, but Vi is too far away to discern much from that look. Jayce says something to Caitlyn and she finally turns away, so Vi returns to her work, cheeks burning.
* * *
Caitlyn can’t concentrate on the task at hand, and for good reason.
Her palms keep getting sweaty whenever she needs to separate pieces of construction paper. She fumbles with scissors and glue sticks as Jayce creates perfect hearts of blush pink and baby blue double-time like the overachiever he is. She even lays out the poster’s contents backward, and she only catches her mistake when Jayce points it out.
The entire time, she can’t help but steal glances at Vi from across the gym. She’s only wearing a white t-shirt tucked into an old pair of jeans with holes in the knees that definitely weren’t there when she got them, but from her messy hair down to her sneakers she looks so effortlessly attractive. Caitlyn was always so awestruck and horrified at how little Vi cared about what others thought of her and her appearance. It’s so contrary to how Caitlyn lives, obsessing over how she looks and acts every second of every day.
She used to think it was disdain. Jealousy, even, for a life lived in freedom.
Eventually, she realized she just liked Vi regardless of what she wore on her face or her body, and she just had to sit and deal with those feelings, because who was she kidding? They could never work. They still won’t ever work.
“What is up with you today, Cait?” Jayce asks, furrowing his thick eyebrows as she hands him a heart that she glued a little arrow to, just to punctuate the conflict that’s roaring in her own chest. “You’re, like, a million miles away. You almost superglued your hand to the table.”
“I did not,” she retorts.
“Well, not exactly, but you got close.”
Caitlyn sighs, and she has to keep herself from glancing over at Vi again. That would just be shameless, at this point, and she doesn’t want Jayce to suspect anything. None of her friends, not even the best of them, have been told what happened. In fact, Caitlyn’s sure she’ll take this information to her grave, the hidden memories of Vi’s strong body holding her so sweetly, the dark of her pupils blown wide as she gasped against Caitlyn, hips bucking—
“I’m just tired today, is all,” Caitlyn says. “I had a late night.”
Not entirely a lie. She spent all last night (and day, shamefully) thinking about what happened at the Zaun Bash, and how she will go the rest of her life never allowing herself that kind of freedom again.
Jayce looks skeptical. He sticks the heart she made onto the poster and says, “I spent all yesterday hungover. I don’t know what the Zaunites put in their drinks, but it knocked me on my ass. I swear I slept thirteen hours last night.”
“Oh, your poor gym schedule,” Caitlyn teases, rolling her eyes.
“My body suffers when I don’t treat it well!” Jayce exclaims. “I can’t help that I have standards for my health!”
“Should have thought about that before you agreed to accompany me to Zaun,” Caitlyn muses. “Perhaps you’ll think twice before taking a walk on the wild side again.”
“Speaking of wild side,” Jayce says, and Caitlyn’s hands freeze where they are. “You were pretty quiet on the car ride home. I know you said you were fine and all, but… Were you fine?”
Caitlyn sighs and presses a hand to her forehead. “What would make you think I wasn’t?”
“Nothing,” he says. “I don’t know. That whole thing was a lot for us and even though we ended up having fun I just want to make sure nobody was mean to you or anything.”
Caitlyn bites her lip and her cheeks heat up. How could she possibly explain to Jayce that not only was nobody mean to her after a certain point, but one particular individual was so welcoming, so open, that Caitlyn in turn opened and opened and opened until she was sure she’d be swallowed whole.
Jayce is almost finished gluing the final heart when she notices movement out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t want to glance up, but her curiosity gets the better of her just in time for her to see Vi, set-up nearly completed, heading towards the hall with the girl’s bathroom.
It’s then that Caitlyn enters the juncture of a crossroads, one that she never thought she would be standing at ever again. She sees a clear path, one filled with even cobblestones that are well taken care of, pristine. The lights illuminate her way, and the path is straight. To her other side is another path, gnarled and winding, with no footmarks to show where she should step. She might even see a little light up ahead, like a bonfire, and voices. Joyful voices rising, rising.
This is no time for metaphors, her mind supplies, but it’s too late for speculation on that little mental image because she’s already halfway across the gymnasium, having whispered some halfhearted “excuse me” to her best friend.
She hears the squeaks of her leather boots over the newly waxed wood. Nobody even looks at her twice as she passes into the hallway, because nobody could possibly know what she is about to do—even herself. She doesn’t even know what she should say to Vi when she sees her, if she sees her. She doesn’t know what her intentions are, just that she’s pulled towards that bathroom in some inexplicable way.
She pushes through the door without hesitation, and when she enters she immediately thinks that, huh, maybe she should have hesitated a little.
The bathroom itself is very standard for a public high school. White porcelain sinks that smell like generic cleaner, gray-hued stalls, classic tile flooring that looks like it hasn’t been regrouted in a decade. There are no other feet under the stalls, nor any sounds indicating that there is anyone else in here but them.
Vi stands in front of those sinks, head ducked, hands cupped under the running faucet. She collects the water and splashes it into her face quickly, pressing her wet fingers to her eyelids as if to rub away sleep, or something even more tenacious. The water sticks to the tips of her hair, and when she reached her fingers up and through her scalp, it dampens all the hair at the top.
Caitlyn shrinks back against the wall beside the door. She watches the tips of her hair go from magenta to deep burgundy, and she sighs just about the longest sigh Caitlyn has ever heard. Suddenly she feels like she’s intruding, and she debates how quietly she can make her exit.
Before she can Vi takes a deep breath, bracing her hands against the sides of the sink, and looks up at herself in the mirror. It takes her eyes a moment to find Caitlyn, but when they do, Caitlyn watches her pupils dilate, lips parting softly.
It’s a short-lived moment of softness, though, because her mouth immediately snaps into a hard line and she turns to look Caitlyn in the eye, expression tumultuous, conflicted. She spits out a firm, “What?”
Caitlyn recoils. “Nothing.”
“It’s something,” Vi sighs, running a hand through her hair, further dampening her locks. “Did you follow me?”
Caitlyn scrambles for a response. Seeing Vi like this, undone, standing resolute in front of her with her stupidly adorable varsity jacket and wet hair, is almost enough to remove Caitlyn’s faculties altogether. She didn’t think Vi would still have this effect on her, not after she so firmly told her that this was over—not just over, but nothing, it was never anything to begin with—but she was wrong. She was so, so wrong because Vi was able to drag her here with her mere presence, the mere idea that Caitlyn might be able to get her alone again. Caitlyn could feel its pull across a whole gymnasium.
Still, somehow she manages to say, arms crossed defensively: “A girl can’t go to the bathroom in her own school?”
Vi is not satisfied with that answer; Caitlyn can see it written all over her face. She watches her gaze rake over her body. Caitlyn is completely covered from head to toe, not a lick of skin showing but her hands and face, but she feels a shiver down her spine knowing that Vi knows what most of her skin looks like. Knows how it feels.
And Caitlyn knows how her skin feels, too.
“Look,” Vi sighs, wiping a palm over her temple. “I know you might feel the need to, like, talk about what happened or whatever, or you might think I want to talk about it, but we really don’t need to. It happened. We can just leave it at that.”
Caitlyn watches a drop of water travel from the side of Vi’s face down her neck, tracing the thick line of the tendon in her neck. She watches it collect even lower, in the hollow of her collarbone just above the neck of her white t-shirt, and she feels the last of her resolve leave her in one fluid motion.
Her logical mind knows this is a terrible idea. She and Vi can’t be anything, could never be anything. There is nothing at the end of that path but heartbreak and disappointment.
Her raucous heart has her reach behind her and lock the outer door.
The sound echoes through the bathroom like a gunshot. Vi’s eyes flicker down to the lock then back up to her, and they stay there as Caitlyn steps forward off the wall. She watches Vi’s expression darken as she approaches, still cautious but no less sure, and seeks out any sign that she’ll say no, in her body or with her words. In fact, Caitlyn expects her to.
Caitlyn can feel her breath on her face. Vi looks up slightly to Caitlyn; if Caitlyn was braver, she’d take her chin in her hand and make her look up, but truth be told Caitlyn still expects Vi to shove her away and agree with her earlier statement made after their rendezvous at the Zaun Bash. She wants Vi to hold her to that.
Caitlyn brushes her lips over Vi’s, a ghost, a test. She feels Vi breathe in, the sound wrecked and choked off, and she feels her plush lips part.
She doesn’t know who touches who when, only that she feels Vi’s hands slowly wrap around her waist, fingers warm circles into the material of her jacket. Caitlyn presses their lips together more firmly, feeling the moment when Vi decides to let go.
It’s a slow unraveling that happens between moments. Caitlyn threads her hands through her hair, pulling at the short locks there and she watches Vi’s eyes flutter shut. She sighs into her mouth, the sound wholly unintentional and uncontrollable, and Vi sighs too. She feels Vi become pliant in her hands just as she did the night of the Zaun Bash, and fuck, she never wants to let this feeling go.
She didn’t know how much she missed Vi’s touch. She thought it was something that, once she had it, she could learn to live without. She always knew that Vi was the kind of girl that could get under her skin, and she was so terrified to let that little part of her see the light of day, the part of her that pines for the bad girl like they’re some horrific rom-com trope.
Now, it has sunlight. Now, it can bloom.
And it blooms. It blooms between them like a tiny sun, a gathering of warmth in Caitlyn’s gut as they clamor around each other like, well, teenagers. Caitlyn’s hands clutch at her hair, her cheeks, nails scratching the back of her neck and shoulder as their kisses grow more heated, more desperate. Vi grabs at her back, slipping over the fabric of her jacket, and they’re so close now that Caitlyn can’t tell when Vi ends and she begins. She feels her back being gently pressed against the bathroom wall, the tile cold against the back of her head as she leans back, gasping for air as Vi unzips her jacket and attacks her neck, sucking at her thrumming pulse in just the perfect place to hide with her collar.
Caitlyn feels lightheaded. She feels like she’s on some drug, and she fears she’s getting hooked. She gasps as Vi presses her to the wall, running her lips across whatever skin she can bare, and feels her chuckle.
Caitlyn asks, breathless: “What is it?”
Vi snorts again, louder this time. Caitlyn can feel the vibration of it all across her chest, and bashfully wishes Vi would dip her head just the slightest bit lower. “Nothing.”
Caitlyn frowns at the ceiling, feeling her eyelids flutter as she feels Vi’s leg slot between hers, settling right where she needs it most. Fuck. “I’m sure you think I’m—ah—eating my words right now.”
“I definitely want to eat something,” Vi says, her voice a warm growl against her, and a blush blooms across her cheeks.
“Crude.”
“You literally started it.”
Caitlyn sighs again, the sound a bit agitated this time as Vi works over a particularly tender spot, lurching as she catches the oversensitive skin between her teeth. Caitlyn pulls her hair and she lets up immediately, a tidbit of information Caitlyn tucks away for later—
Later? Who is she kidding?
“I did mean it,” she says, and Vi pauses. Vi looks up, eyes adorably wide and, more importantly, absolutely unconvinced. Her eyebrow quirks as if to say, “Oh yeah?” Caitlyn’s heart just about leaps out of her chest. “This is really the last time.”
She expects Vi to agree with her. To pull away like she had that night at the Zaun Bash, fix her jacket, unlock the door, and leave right then and there.
Instead, she just bursts out laughing. Full-out belly laughs, right there in the middle of the bathroom.
Caitlyn’s face burns. “I’m not joking, Vi!”
“I know you aren’t, that’s what makes it even funnier,” Vi says between gasping breaths. She still has not freed Caitlyn from her place pinned against the wall, and Caitlyn is flip-flopping between uncomfortably turned on and aggravated. Vi’s leg is still pressing against her, and it’s taking all her wherewithal not to press down against it.
When Vi looks back up at her, her eyes are full of mischief, and Caitlyn knows she’s fucked.
“You’re lying to yourself, princess,” she hums, lips dipping low to ghost against the line of Caitlyn’s jaw. “You want this.”
“I—” Caitlyn can’t even get the words out. She bites her lip and squeezes her eyes shut as Vi does what Caitlyn couldn’t bring herself to: she presses her knee up against her, eliciting a breathy groan from Caitlyn. “Shit, Vi, would you please quit it? We are not fucking in a school bathroom.”
“Give me your number and we can fuck other places,” Vi says.
“No,” Caitlyn repeats, hiding her blush as she tries to conceal the fact that she’s never actually fucked anyone, though she doubts Vi has either. But then again, who knows? She really knows nothing about her strangely irresistible Zaunite. “This is the last time.”
“Whatever you say,” Vi says, capturing her lips once again.
Caitlyn has no choice but to melt into her warmth. No matter how hard she tries, Vi just has a way of dragging her back to her. It’s been like that for the entire time Caitlyn has known the Zaunite, even during those years when her attraction felt a little more like hatred. In fact, she thinks if Vi keeps this up, she might never be able to say no to her again.
“But,” Vi hums against her skin, “you can still give me your number right?”
* * *
Despite Caitlyn’s best (worst) efforts, every time they meet that week seems to not be the last time.
* * *
“This is the last time,” Caitlyn says as Vi pulls her under the bleachers after track practice, as if she didn’t text Vi an hour earlier and wait for her in the stands like some kind of idiot. She felt so out of place, and she could feel eyes on her as she tries to avert her gaze from Vi, who sprinted across the track like a bullet and hardly broke a sweat. Eventually, she couldn’t even look away.
“Mhm,” Vi hums, the sound choked off as Caitlyn drags her into the roughest, most desperate kiss of her life.
* * *
“I mean it,” Caitlyn gasps as Vi presses her into the grassy ground, trees surrounding them at all angles. They’re in the forest behind Runeterra High, where all the kids go to drink and smoke on the weekends but remain largely deserted during the day. Vi sticks her hands in her shirt, rucking it up, and she whines as her lips press wetly, sweetly, against the underside of her breast. “Last time.”
“Of course,” Vi sighs, unconvinced.
* * *
Vi’s breath hitches as Caitlyn holds her in her lap in the driver’s seat of her car, parking lot empty by this hour, pressing down as Caitlyn undoes the button of her jeans, not even quite sure as to what to do once it’s open. She lets her lips blaze a trail up the strong column of her neck, and revels in the noise she feels buzzing against her tongue when she groans.
“Let me guess,” Vi murmurs, cheeks and neck red as Caitlyn memorizes the way her jaw feels under her tongue. “Last time?”
“Last time,” Caitlyn agrees, eyes wide, tracing her finger reverently over the line of her exposed underwear.
* * *
“Last—ah—” Caitlyn stares at the ceiling of her bedroom, through the gauzy canopy of her bed, sweat sticking her baby hairs to her forehead. Vi groans between her legs, kissing the naked flesh on the inside of her thighs as her fingers work inside her, burning her inside and out. She brings a hand to cover her mouth as Vi crooks her finger, touching her someplace nobody has ever touched her before. “Fuck, last time Vi, I mean it, I mean it—”
Vi doesn’t make a move to respond, but her hands say everything her mouth doesn’t.
They call her bluff, and they call it hard.
* * *
And thus, the pep rally arrives.
It almost feels anticlimactic, given the tense typhoon of conflict and emotions Vi has found herself swept up in over the past week. The morning of she almost forgot the costumes and props for the Zaunites in her car and just walked into school empty-handed, but thankfully her sister whipped some sense into her at the last second.
She’s been in a daze for the past day and a half, ever since she spent the afternoon at Caitlyn’s house, hours spent losing themselves in each other in ways Vi never thought she could. In fact, she’s been in a fog all week, only surfacing when she’s in the arms of a certain Piltovan, the very girl who has managed to take her whole senior year and turn it on its head. The girl who, frustratedly, has not texted her since they had sex in her bed.
Vi doesn’t know what happened. One minute, she knows exactly who she is, what her place is in this town, this school. The next, she’s lost in a girl she never should have let herself indulge in, wondering if next time really will be the last time (as Caitlyn Kiramman keeps so firmly stating.) One day, Vi knows Caitlyn just won’t come back. She won’t text her. She won’t give her that meaningful look in the hallway. She’ll go off to some posh university and leave Vi, the sumprat she is, behind.
Why should Vi bother putting off the inevitable?
Trouble is, she still can’t stop thinking about Caitlyn. The Piltovan has wormed her way into Vi’s every waking thought since the Zaun Bash, maybe even before then. She thinks about Caitlyn’s silky hair in math class. She traces the same lines in her desk that she traced over Caitlyn’s thighs absentmindedly in English. Hell, she can barely make it through PE without having to stop in her tracks and melt into a puddle on the soccer field as she thinks about the way Caitlyn said her name in her bedroom, like a prayer, like she’s never felt anything like that before with another person—
“Hello?” Powder says, snapping her fingers in front of Vi’s face. “Earth to Vi?”
Vi snaps to attention as someone places something on her head from behind that feels like a headband. She adjusts it, still half in a daze. “Huh? Oh sorry, Pow, what’d you say?”
Powder groans, all decked out in graffitied hearts and bright neon colors. They’re in the first-floor bathroom, the biggest one they could find, the Zaunites all getting changed into their pep rally costumes. It’s a whirlwind of activity as everyone helps each other with their makeup, their costume pieces, their props. Vi is facing one of the long bathroom mirrors, dressed in thigh-high fishnets, red biker shorts, a torn white crop top, and various studded apparatuses slung across her head, her waist, and her arms. Her regular tattoos are on display, but Powder added a few more stylized, Valentines-y ones in addition to those, “For theme!” she said.
She tugs at the shirt and fishnets uncomfortably. Normally she wouldn’t be caught dead in an outfit like this, but she has to admit, she looks hot as shit. Not to mention the school would never let outfits like this fly on a regular basis, as evidenced by all of her visits to the principal’s office because her usual athletic crop tops violate dress code, so everyone is eager to go all-out.
“I said,” Powder sighs, “you should be the one to go out first. Y’know, lead the pack.”
“I thought that was Ekko’s job.”
“Ekko isn’t our leader,” Powder grunts, smudging more eyeshadow onto Vi’s eyes despite her protests. “Besides, you’re the most popular Zaunite. It makes the most sense.”
“I guess.”
Powder draws her brush away from Vi’s face and frowns at her sister. “Okay, what the hell has been up with you?”
“What?”
“You’ve been weird all week!” Powder exclaims, startling Akali who is trying to wrestle her hair into low pigtails with heart-studded hair ties. “Ever since all that junk happened with Kiramman and the Zaun Bash it’s like you’ve been on another planet. We really need you on, like, actual Earth today, so get it together.”
Vi blinks up at Powder, who quirks an eyebrow expectantly, and just sighs. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’ve kind of been dealing with some stuff this week.”
Powder’s expression softens. “Want to talk about it?”
Hell no, Vi thinks, and just the thought of Powder knowing that she and the leader of Piltover have been lowkey fucking is enough to snap her back to reality. “N—No, it’s fine. Just senior stuff or whatever.”
“Well, I’m here if you need me,” Powder says, packing up her makeup supplies. “Always. But for now, we’ve got to get situated.”
“Right,” Vi says, adjusting her armband as she stands and cups her hands around her mouth. “Okay everyone, listen up! You’ve got three more minutes to get your shit on, then we’re all heading down to the lower gym! Got it?”
Everyone yells back their understanding, and Vi makes her way out into the hall. So many other clubs decked out in Valentine’s Day garb hustle around the space, flyers and props in their hands. Every organization’s theme is a little different, but everyone has kept the Valentine’s Day spirit.
She can hear the cheers of the students of RH within the gymnasium, various top 100 hits blaring through the industrial speakers within. Vi can hear the teachers making announcements about other upcoming school events. As the Zaunites cluster outside and Vi gets them in place outside the gym doors, she finds her gaze traveling over the other students, looking for the Piltovans.
Or, more specifically, one Piltovan.
When the clubs begin to file in, whooping and cheering as they are announced, it’s pure chaos. The Zaunites start to get hype, and when the Zaunites get excited, there’s no undoing it. She’s elated seeing her friends—her family—so excited for this, but she still seeks out Caitlyn in the raucous crowd.
She looks and looks until the Zaunites are called out, and she leads them into the Runeterra gym.
The gym is packed wall to wall with students sitting in bleachers. The marching band plays in the back of the room and the teachers chill on a makeshift stage built by the theater crew. The music is loud but the Zaunites are louder, led by the proudest leader on the planet. Vi waves her hands, egging her people on, and the level of crazy in the room hits a record high. The students of Runeterra High are eating their heartache costumes up, and Vi can’t get enough of the attention. It isn’t often that Zaun is looked at positively, but they sure know how to get a party started. This whole school knows it.
The other clubs line either side of the gym, flanking each set of indoor bleachers. Zaun is ushered to the empty spot in front of the table Vi set up at the beginning of the week as the last few clubs come out, and Vi slaps high fives all down the line of her group. They look great, they feel great—nothing can derail this moment for Vi.
That is until she looks across the gymnasium and sees Caitlyn, and Caitlyn sees her.
Time slows. The screams of the students in the bleachers and her fellow Zaunites fade into mere background noise as she and Caitlyn lock eyes. She watches Caitlyn’s eyes, those baby blues, widen until they're perfect doe-like circles, and Vi’s resolve crumbles right there in the middle of the gym.
Vi’s eyes wander. The Piltovans have a much more refined look, all pastels and purples in direct contrast to Zaun’s red, white, and black. She’s wearing a knitted pink crop top that hugs her chest like a glove. She has a small purple jacket and a purple hat, neck adorned with jewelry so gaudy it looks like candy. Her heels are tall and purple, ending just below a fucking purple miniskirt, the pleats settling perfectly around her hips and the tops of her thighs.
If that wasn’t enough to strike Vi down on the spot, the next and most massive arrow that enters Vi’s chest, pinning her where she stands, is the excruciatingly indisputable fact that Caitlyn Kiramman is blonde.
It’s a wig. Vi knows it’s a wig, mainly because her eyebrows are still dark, but it still does something to Vi that cannot be undone. The locks hang silky and slightly wavy, the color barely touched by strawberry. It perfectly complements the color palette of her outfit, and it makes her eyes look bluer than ever.
They stare at each other. It’s like they’re the only people in this whole gymnasium, and after a long moment of staring, of longing, Caitlyn’s lips form over the smallest word, the tiniest, most delicate, breathless hi Vi could fathom.
It’s then that Vi realizes that she wants Caitlyn. She wants Caitlyn in a deeper way than just heated glances in the hallway, than just hookups, than just the constant promise that every moment spent together will be the last.
She doesn’t want to let Caitlyn go.
* * *
The pep rally goes off without a hitch. The clubs and organizations all participate in games and friendly competitions—dizzy bats, three-legged races, freeze dance, octopus tag. Everyone has a fucking ball, and the Zaunites get to flex their competitive side.
They win as much as they lose. Powder and Vi kill the three-legged race, but Zaun didn’t stand a chance in dizzy bats thanks to their combined lack of coordination. Ekko helps the teachers emcee for a stint but then returns laughing to their group, slinging an arm around his girlfriend and planting a firm kiss on her cheek. Powder blushes like a beet.
The entire time, Vi steals glances at the Piltovans, and Caitlyn is always looking back at her. Vi feels a jolt rocket down her spine each time, but she also gets to see Caitlyn in the middle of her laughter, high-fiving Mel and the other Piltovans, just as elated as Vi. She looks so beautiful when she’s happy, and fuck, all Vi wants to do is keep her happy.
When the pep rally ends and the Zaunites busy themselves with handing out paper Valentines to students in the crowd, Vi slides her phone out of her pocket, looks around, then types out a text:
Vi:
meet me in the locker room after this
please
Vi puts the phone back in her pocket and pauses. When she turns to find Caitlyn in the crowd, she’s standing with Mel, Jayce, and Evelynn, talking and laughing. She watches and hopes to God nobody sees her doing so, until Caitlyn reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone.
She stares at the screen. Vi tries to see if her expression changes, but she’s just too far away. The resulting moment of contemplation is made even more painstaking because of that, but eventually, Caitlyn looks up, and after a moment of searching the Zaunites she finds Vi.
She stares. Vi waits, heart stalled.
And then, almost imperceptibly, Caitlyn nods.
* * *
The girl’s locker room is quiet. Vi can hear the sounds of cheering and teenage joking outside, but nobody needs to be in the locker room today, so nobody ends up in the locker room today. Plain and simple. This leaves Vi plenty of time to pace and brood while she waits for Caitlyn, biting her lip hard enough to mark.
She can’t stop thinking about how Caitlyn looked, head-thrown-back laughing, having the time of her life during the pep rally surrounded by her family. Because really, Piltover is Caitlyn’s family just as much as Zaun is Vi’s. They are the same, in that respect.
In fact, there are so many ways that Vi and Caitlyn are the same, things that Vi constantly overlooked over the years as she convinced herself and convinced herself that their worlds were separate. They both care about their groups. They treat their friends like their family. Their lives have been dictated by their image, and they both have less freedom than they ever thought they did. They put themselves into these little boxes, compounded by the stresses and pressures of high school, and the only time they have let go of those labels that others have shoved onto them—that they have shoved onto themselves—is when they’re together.
Vi doesn’t know how she didn’t see it before. She was so blind.
She hears the door open. Vi snaps to attention, but her heart sinks when she just sees Zeri and Akali come through the doors, waving to her. She gives a halfhearted wave back.
“Hey Vi, we were looking for you,” Zeri says. “Powder said she saw you come in here. We’re all going for food before the game and were wondering where you’d like to hit.”
Vi takes a deep breath and rakes a hand through her hair. “Just Jericho’s is fine. Listen, can you guys just give me like five minutes? I have something I need to take care of, then we can go.”
Akali looks her up and down, examining her stressed body language. She purses her lips. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Vi says. “I am.”
Zeri and Akali exchange a strange look, but they nod and leave the way they came. Vi waits for the door to close completely, the sound echoing through the empty space, before she lets out yet another long sigh. Seems like she’s full of nothing but sighs these days.
“Vi?”
Vi freezes. She takes a deep breath to compose herself, bracing for impact, then slowly turns to face the familiar voice.
Caitlyn stands there in the middle of the locker room, flanked by rows of lockers and benches. The lights are off but the windows let in natural light, giving everything a sky-blue tinge. Everything seems bluer around Caitlyn, really.
She’s still wearing her goofy pep rally outfit, as is Vi. She holds her hands in front of her stomach demurely, and she can barely lift her eyes to meet Vi’s. Her hair is a little disheveled from the games, but she still looks so incredible. Vi doesn’t even know what to do with herself.
But most of all, Caitlyn looks nervous. She looks more nervous than Vi has ever seen her.
Vi doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing for a long, tense moment. Her eyes flicker up from Caitlyn’s body to her eyes, glinting and blue, and she says, “Hey, Cupcake.”
Caitlyn shifts from foot to foot, the leather of her thigh-high boots squeaking against the freshly cleaned linoleum. “You look great.”
Vi feels the corners of her mouth quirk up. “Back ‘atcha. Whose idea was that?”
She gestures to the wig and Caitlyn blushes, bringing a hand to clutch at the ends of her hair. “Ahri’s. She wanted to match.”
Vi snorts. “Figures.”
Another long moment of silence follows. Even though Vi is the one who asked Caitlyn to meet her here, she still feels like she doesn’t quite know what to say to her. And what could she say that would convince her that this isn’t the biggest mistake either of them will ever make? That taking a chance on this, even if it’s a brief chance, is better than never trying at all?
“Cait,” Vi starts. “I—”
“Wait, Vi,” Caitlyn says striding forward until they’re so close Vi can’t help but blush. Caitlyn blushes too, twice as hard. “I… I don’t need you to say anything.”
“I feel like I need to,” Vi says, breathless now that she’s so close to Caitlyn once again. Her heart feels like it’s about to leap out of its chest just from the smell of her, clean like her shampoo.
“No, you don’t,” she repeats, insistent. “Vi, I know I have been a bit... apprehensive about our arrangement, but—”
“It’s okay,” Vi says, feeling that familiar pang in her chest. So this is how it is. “I get it. I didn’t think you’d want anything serious to come of this in the first place, and I didn’t either. I never saw you coming like that, and it’s crazy that any of this between us even happened in the first place… I don’t even know what I’m saying right now, fuck.”
Vi rakes her hands through her hair, but she can’t bring herself to look away from Caitlyn, who listens with rapt attention. “If you just want this to end here, before things get dicey, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I would understand. I just have to let you know that I think that would suck. A lot. Because I’m really into you.”
It’s clumsy. Vi knows this, but the words just tumble out of her mouth, crude execution and all. Part of her wants to keep her newfound feelings for Caitlyn to herself, but who is she kidding? She’s seen Caitlyn naked. She’s seen Caitlyn in so many ways, bad and good; there’s no keeping it in now.
So, when Caitlyn blurts out, “I’m really into you, too,” Vi can hardly believe it.
Dumbfounded, Vi says, “What?”
“I’m really into you,” Caitlyn repeats, as if she can barely believe her words either. “I’ve been into you for so long, I just didn’t know what to do with all of that. I thought we could never work, and I still think we can’t, but I don’t know if I can stand being apart from you any longer.”
Vi gapes like a fish. She wipes a hand over her mouth, still baffled, and asks, “Even if it’s a terrible idea?”
Caitlyn nods, and there isn’t a hint of doubt in her expression. She reaches forward and takes Vi’s face in her hands, and the gesture is so gentle Vi almost sighs. She feels her delicate, deft thumb brush over her cheeks, and she lets herself be cradled, be seen.
“Even if it’s the most terrible idea,” she says, and she kisses Vi.
Vi melts. She clutches Caitlyn’s arms like they are the safety bars on the edges of the roof of a tall building. She feels Caitlyn shaking with nervousness, but soon she feels Caitlyn fall against her, melting in that same glorious way, and there’s nothing to be nervous about anymore.
It all just feels so… perfect. Vi never thought she would ever use that word to describe any kind of relationship she might have with Caitlyn Kiramman, platonic or otherwise, but she can’t imagine another label now.
She always thought Caitlyn was beautiful from afar, even if she never realized it until she saw those Valentines tumble out of her locker. She was an ethereal beauty, a girl she could never hope to stand near or begin to shape up to. When compared to Caitlyn, she felt like nothing. Like gutter trash. The teachers thought it. The student of Runeterra High thought it. Hell, even Vi thought it sometimes, on her worst days.
It was only when she saw the real Caitlyn, and Caitlyn saw the real Vi, that she began to see just how wrong she was. How wrong they were.
Vi parts her lips, letting Caitlyn’s tongue pass near her teeth, tracing the seam of her lips until she’s gasping, tilting her head to get close to the other girl. She’ll never get enough of this feeling, this softness that comes with undoing Caitlyn. She wraps her arms around her waist, losing herself in the soft curve of her waist.
She loses herself so much, in fact, that when the door slams open, she barely hears it.
It’s only when Caitlyn jumps and her lips release Vi’s with a soft pop that Vi is able to see the startled look on her face. Vi turns her head, and her stomach drops out of her ass.
Powder is standing in the doorway, hand splayed across the front of the locker room door as if she stalled halfway into entering. Ekko is behind her, mouth agape, and Powder’s face is frozen in an expression of shock and absolute disbelief.
Behind them, most of Zaun stares inside at Caitlyn and Vi.
Powder’s eyes flicker between Vi and Caitlyn, who are so frozen that they haven’t even thought to untangle themselves from each other. And why should they? Cat’s out of the bag now, no shoving it back in. Still, however, Vi’s lips search for an explanation, something to say to her group who is looking on at the two of them like aliens freshly landed on Earth, but all that escapes her lips is a series of “uh’s” clumsy enough to have come out of the mouth of a toddler.
It's a long, tense moment before Powder, mouth still agape, manages to say, “Uh, sorry, I’ll just—fuck, I’ll just wait—yeah—”
She stiffly stands straight, turns heel, and marches like a newly animated statue back into the hall until the locker room door falls back into place lightly behind her, the sound echoing like cannon fire.
Vi’s heart races. She feels Caitlyn’s nails clutching at her shoulders. There is no silence like the silence of being found out, and that quiet weighs between them like a heavy confession. An inevitability.
Until, finally, Caitlyn snorts, the sound beautiful and awkward.
“Shit,” she says.
When Vi finally looks back at her, a smile is shaking its way onto her face, like she’s trying as hard as she can to shove it down. It’s nothing at all like perfect.
“Shit,” Vi grins.
It’s even better than perfect.
Notes:
Thank you so much for sticking with this fic! It's been a busy, busy few months for me, but I'm so happy to be back into the swing of things. It's farewell to this fic (and these sexy, sexy skins) for now, but hopefully I'll have more in store for these dumb teens in the future :)
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