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Vi has always been a creature of habit, crawling from one routine to the next. It’s the impact of life that interrupts her, that forces her from regularity, that dictates she does something else now. Something new.
She tries to settle into it, tries to make this a pattern too. It’s just that she’s just sick of it, all the pointless frivolity where she never seems to fit, and she knows the strides they’re taking are significant, knows battles can be fought in boardrooms too, but there’s nothing she contributes that’s not better suited for another person. Someone beats her to the punch, leaves her sprawling with her limbs all splayed, and she feels aimless, adrift in the clumsy motion of it all. She keeps her fists clenched beneath tables. A blow missed is worse than a blow never taken, an effort she has to compensate for after it’s already been exerted, so she just stops bothering.
Caitlyn looks concerned, often. Caitlyn looks to her, often, whether it is out of worry – the furrow of her brows making the dark fabric over her eye fold – or hope to urge her on. It always kicks up a little flutter in her chest to be looked at like that. Maybe just to be looked at by Caitlyn is enough. She thinks as much whenever she works away the tightness of her jaw to spare a few words – meaningless, really – just so she’ll stop, so she’ll stay, so both things can exist together and allow her to further acquaint herself with what it all means.
After enough instances of quiet ineptitude, Caitlyn catches on enough to soften. “You can stay home for the day,” she soothes with lips pressed to Vi’s forehead, “you don’t have to come, not if you hate it.” She sounds just a little sad as she withdraws, already half-dressed while Vi’s legs anchor themselves among the blankets.
She swallows back protests – they’d be lies, anyway – and rolls her shoulders. Reclines, slowly, back into the mess of pillows that wait to ensnare her, a whole cavalcade against her spine.
A barely there rounding of her cheeks betrays her as Caitlyn shuffles off to continue the rest of her morning route towards readiness. The sight is enough to put Vi more at ease than she’d been as she lapses quietly into the act of observation. Caitlyn is efficient, always, as she peels open wardrobes and slides well-fitted pants up legs that Vi can’t help but trace her eyes along the length of.
“You’re right,” she sighs out the confession when Caitlyn has her back turned, “I do hate it.”
Caitlyn swivels at the sound of her voice to catch Vi watching her, her spine straightening out a measure. She doesn’t shy away, though, from the fact that she’s being observed. If anything, Vi thinks she walks a little taller on her way back to the bed.
“I know,” she says, “I see the way you sit there and look as though you’re bracing for a fight.” Her hands come to wriggle beneath the covers, reaching until they find purchase. There’s sufficient room for Caitlyn to hook her fingers one-by-one between Vi’s, gentle but insistent as she tugs up, unfurls, and reveals the flat of her palm. Enough space exists that she is able to bring the now exposed skin right to her and press a kiss into it, lingering near the center of her hand before a wispy brush of Caitlyn’s lips teases the very tips of her fingers, too.
By the time she moves to her opposite hand, she’s not bracing for anything but the chance to smooth it down the side of Caitlyn’s jaw as soon as she’s done delivering another set of kisses.
“Cupcake,” she hums a warning, “careful. I might make you late.”
Caitlyn hovers; contemplative, at least, in her hesitation. Vi appreciates that she can see her turning over the thought of a day where they both ignore all that the world expects of them for simpler pleasures.
Eventually, Caitlyn hikes her shoulders up. She doesn’t pull back, but Vi sees an answer in that gesture nonetheless. “You know what they say,” her gaze darts down to where their hands still loosely connect, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” That sorrowful note from before has taken up residence in her words again, and this time Vi does not have the energy to resist it. It soaks its way down to her bones and settles there, cementing her to the bed.
“Yeah.” She’s not trying hard enough to keep up appearances and Caitlyn can tell, Caitlyn is concerned, but either she has no time today left to press or she too is weary, worn to the very edge of exhaustion. Vi’s not sure. The only thing she’s sure of is that she doesn’t want her to leave when she departs with a final kiss to the curve of her knuckles, that she feels guilty when she goes – for staying behind, for letting her leave alone, for being one more burden that Caitlyn has to bear – and that absence does not make the heart grow fonder, just colder.
She leaves bed with sheets dangling from her shoulders, pulls up one of the armchairs to the balcony that overlooks Piltover. It’s not a perfect view, not like she’d once thought, but it’s wide enough to give her a vantage point over streets that move more slowly these days, buildings that have begun to register as familiar.
It feels almost unfair that she can stop hating it now. There are segments of the streets still no less gilded than before. In the distance, spires with more significance than anything Zaun has been allotted stretch forever onward into the sky. The war has not taken everything. At the base of it, though, all Vi can see is another smoking heap of rubble and ash that people struggle to pull themselves out of in the aftermath of brutality that should have never been.
Sometimes she wonders if it is all a matter of karma, retribution, equal exchange. The world finally flipping on its head to give those who have never felt this pain a taste of it. Then she swallows, sick from the contemplation. There’s nothing equal about any of what she has witnessed. It’s just suffering, base and pure. She knows plenty about that, the senselessness of it, her time in Stillwater a lesson she will never forget.
She grips the sheets, soft and thick, more tightly around her body to remind herself that she can. Then she stands, unlocks the glass doors to the balcony, and pushes them open enough to hear the breeze. She doesn’t step outside, but the sliver that sits open is a reminder that she can do that, too, should she long for the touch of cool air upon her face.
Despite the sound of wind creaking by, Vi feels stagnant. Some part of her says that she should have just gone to that terrible meeting, that grinning and bearing it is the least she can do after everything, but it’s not. It’s a muscle to exert that she struggles to even move, twisting her mouth to form so much as sound some days. Other parts of her rot with neglect – forced to rust, to recover – while she waits, achingly, for the opportunity to be of use again.
The terrible part is that she knows there’s a chance for it. Fighting does not fade out all at once, not in war, and no matter how many times she has been reassured that what remains is insignificant enough that she is not needed, that it can simply be handled by others better suited, she wants so badly to be able to go.
She knows that she can’t. Her mind is a blur of blue, difficult to parse, but she thinks of her sister first and foremost, and she understands to die now would be to deny everything Jinx gave up for her.
Equal exchange, her mind supplies bitterly.
She can’t because she is more than the sum of herself, something that stirs and boils in her stomach the longer that she thinks of it. On her worst days it is easy to dismiss herself as a burden and be done with it, but even then – even then, that burden lying dead would be another body for Caitlyn to have to bury or pick out a coffin for, and ignoring all the grief it would cause her can’t absolve thoughts of how she’s still searching for somewhere to set the mementos she’d collected from Jayce’s forge within the seemingly endless rooms of the estate. Not enough to have them put away in some far off closet never to be seen again. Too much to lay them out where they serve as a constant reminder, rubbing on wounds so that the scabs can never settle. Vi watches the tools vanish to some new place almost daily and never says a word except to tell Caitlyn that she’d liked him, for what it’s worth.
When Caitlyn can’t return the sentiment on behalf of her loss, she doesn’t blame her. They had gone together to one of Ekko’s memorials, after all, and Caitlyn’s hand in hers had trembled only a bit at the sight of how much blue had been smeared boldly against the wall. That is enough.
Enough that she can’t go, can’t flee into the freedom of what the remnants of war might offer her. She is frozen solid, against her will, whether or not there is a whole city to be rebuilt in the grand somewhere of somewhere out there. Not so far off that she can’t just reach out a hand and practically brush against it.
Instead, she stands and starts to pace. The sheet falls flat to the floor, puddled around the armchair. She’s fortunate enough to have space here to make loose, circular motions as she goes. Her cell in Stillwater never permitted anything but back and forth lines, so much so that she had convinced herself there would be lines worn into the stone from where she trudged along. The only line that had ever existed, though, had been the stark one outside. The one that Caitlyn had crossed.
Her mind wanders after her. Absence. The heart, its fondness. She drifts from the bed – where she brings a pillow with still lingering scent worked into the fabric up to her face – to the bathroom – where she splashes cold water over her cheekbones and tells herself to get a grip – and ends up in front of one of the wardrobes. So much storage space, a fair amount of it which Caitlyn barely uses, placed aside instead to accommodate for her. Her belongings. Her existence here, however sparse it is.
The closet that’s been solely dedicated to anything she might own is laughably empty. Mostly, Vi has to admit, for the piles of clothing she leaves in place of properly hung up garments the way Caitlyn likes to keep her things. It’s not that she doesn’t care for the organization. It’s just that she doesn’t care right now. A shirt from the floor is just as fine as anything else is. Her clothing stays mostly clean, too. She would have imagined the responsibility to be that of some sort of estate attendant, but after watching Caitlyn gather everything up into her arms to deposit it into a basket just outside of her room, she’d caught wind of the fact that there was one thing Tobias Kiramman could do in substitution of being an actually present father.
Caitlyn had chastised her for saying as much, just as she’d chastised her for leaving heaps of discarded clothes to accumulate in the bathroom. Anywhere else and not a word, but Caitlyn treads carefully there, avoiding it sometimes entirely. It makes Vi’s stomach squeeze to dwell on why.
Not much in the wardrobe meant to be hers, but in one of Caitlyn’s, a collection of textiles unfurls. She tucks herself into them, curious, and smiles genuinely at the stories that reveal themselves to her. She gathers a sense for preferences – Caitlyn wears silk to bed often, something Vi had chalked up to a sign of affluence in Piltover but now suspects might be for the sake of comfort rather than anything else – and lingers on outfits she’s never had the chance to see before, wondering if Caitlyn would wear them at her request. It lessens the weight in her chest to think of teasing her about some of the more gaudy pieces, and the little things, scraps of lace that stick together – well. She has thoughts aplenty for those, too.
Near the side of the closet where clothing gives way to empty hangers, Vi takes notice of something unusual that sways, dark and draped, over the very end. The shade itself is not so out of sorts. Really, it must be recognition which inspires her to tug it out just a little further than all the other pieces, and even recognition isn’t really right, because…because it’s so clean she almost thinks it’s a replica, at least until the jacket falls free from its post and she can sense where the scars once were; leather that’s a little softer than the rest of it. The repair work is near flawless, anyway, only noticeable because she was the one to bear it as it had taken beating after beating. Turned over in her hands, she finds the embroidered hounds stitched into place where they had started to peel up. Her throat bobs then threatens to close.
The last time she had worn this, Jinx had – Vander had – so much had been different. Here it is, all in one piece, tucked neatly away.
Held in Caitlyn’s wardrobe.
Her heart twinges, strong enough to make her eyes water. She recalls the screams of a battle she shouldn’t have survived – waking in Caitlyn’s bed, the blistering terror of afterwards – and the soreness of wounds that hurt only enough to speak to the fact that someone had been looking after her. To think that Caitlyn had taken time to care for not just her but the leather she’d dragged in too, to see she had extended the effort of saving it –
She crumbles against it in lieu of having anything else to hold herself up with. She’s not sure when she stops crying, or when she crawls back into bed, or when Caitlyn finally comes home. She does know that she finds her in a dark room with a dark jacket and dark shadows beneath her eyes, and she utters a small, “Oh,” in response as she blinks down at her, hand cupping the base of her neck.
The touch smooths tension free from her muscles. Slowly she relaxes them, easing but not forfeiting her grip.
“I was,” Caitlyn starts, looking vaguely embarrassed. Vi realizes only then that she’d gone digging through her clothes to find the article she’s attached to so fiercely, and with a twitch of her lips, she lifts it, holding it so that Caitlyn can see it too. “I was saving that,” she reconsiders, “keeping it safe, in case you ever…” It is as though she is working through a knot, then, twisting this way and that to untie it, eventually resurfacing with, “Ever wanted to wear it again.”
Jayce’s tools – those little mementos – come to mind, and she’s not sure that Caitlyn is telling the truth, but she thinks she loves her a little more for lying.
Vi chuckles past the part of her that lights up in response to the idea of donning it again, says, “We’ll see,” and kisses her. She gets the sense that she is tying a knot into place, putting back all the progress that Caitlyn has worked hard to unravel.
It haunts her. It’s not enough to have it, to know that it’s there. If anything, it makes the wanting worse.
She takes it out each day, splays it over the bed. The leather is a dark blot, an ink stain on sheets.
Caitlyn lets her stay home more and more now. Really, Vi asks for it, tells her she’s too tired, watches the willingness to protest flicker and then fade in favor of what she believes must be best. Caitlyn is trying. Vi is not. Not in the way she should be, anyway.
Vi can’t go back to the battle she yearns for, but with the leather heavy over her shoulders, she can at least drench herself in war paint and descend again into depths that call her name, a mockery of misery that might just be enough.
Zaun is changing, just not so rapidly that she can’t find precisely what it is that she wants.
Vi relishes in the reality that there are some things that will never be pried away from the place that raised her. Gruesome once, they now serve as an indulgence for the exact sort of debasement that she’s seeking. It’s not the same, not exactly. She’s not out of her mind drunk and the fighting pit’s moved places, but she knows how to follow a trail, knows what to look for, knows how to duck her head to get in and though her hair isn’t as dark this time, she hears a howl ring out when she’s shoved her way through a decent portion of the thrashing bodies.
Eyes go wide – hers, the crowd’s – until a wave rises to drag her in with elbows hooked around her shoulders, pressure thick on every side. Those who have recognized her slap the two-headed hound on her back and drum a beat into the fiber of her being. Here, she doesn’t even have to try. She just is.
It certainly is strange to be fully cognizant while talks of winnings take place, to twist her head after the wild waving of slips of paper to signal allegiance ahead of any strikes and not feel it spin, to see the arena open up for her and step forward, stomach empty. In all actuality, Vi is not sure she is aware – clear headed like this, the bellow that booms in her ears is so much louder than it ever was before – but she steps up and sets her fists: ritualistic.
Her opponent is at a size disadvantage. Vi is aware that means nothing as far as her chances go. Some of her worst fights have been against little things like this. Unbidden, however, her mind taunts her. When the girl – woman? she looks so young – springs straight at her, hands hooked into claws rather than balled into fists, it spikes, gets worse; she’s on her back foot from the beginning.
A memory flashes in the first attack of sparring with Powder, back when she’d still been young enough to want to. Before her interests had swiveled stalwartly towards metal, tinkering with machinery, doing her best to blow things that weren’t Mylo and Claggor up.
Nails rake down her arm, a feral swipe that splits skin. Vi yelps, swaying after the action – the distraction – attempting to retaliate.
She used to beg relentlessly, head tilted back to bear watery blue eyes up at her, and after enough assurance that she’d take training seriously – swear on it, cross her heart – Vi had thought that maybe she could teach her enough to stay safe. To start with, at least. They’d work up from there – that was what Vander had done with her, wasn’t it? – and Powder would be proud, one day, to hold her fists up and know how to use them.
One punch meets air, a skinny waist jutting just out of place in time to avoid her. The next lands, but not with enough weight to do anything more than irritate her attacker for half of a heartbeat. She comes back with a vengeance, and Vi gets acquainted with the fact that her knuckles feel almost as sharp as her nails as they dig into the side of her face and make her jaw snap shut.
Most of the time it had been a matter of setting her loose on punching bags, seeing if Powder could do so much as make them swing. She was determined but slight, scrappy, and she struck almost solely with her hands, stopping short of engaging the rest of her body. More than anything, she was quick to give in to frustration, bubbling over and asking for boxing gloves, for boards to break, for Vi to step in herself and give her a real opponent.
“You need to start small,” she’d said.
“I am small,” Powder had grumbled, dust billowing beneath her feet.
“Smaller, then.” Back to the bag, to the rattle of its chain.
To the rattle of her teeth as she’s hit again. Swift, meant to stun her. It does. She’s reeling, struggling for recovery, bent over and bleeding from somewhere. Vi sees it dripping down onto stone and hefts her head up right along with her fist.
Saying no to Powder was never easy. She’d set herself a task of avoidance from the start. It seemed inevitable that something would bend, if not break. The sound of the chain rattling had become like background noise, and Vi hadn’t seen it coming, had only noticed that suddenly the noise of the bag swaying was more subtle when it was too late. The knuckles that slammed into the side of her head were clumsy but still hurt, and when she’d blinked back shock, Powder had been there waiting.
“You weren’t even watching me!” She shouted, the image of indignant rage. She raised one fist to try for another punch, aimed an open palm for a slap.
Being pulled into that sort of fight had been easy. Defense quickly devolved into grabbing a hold of flailing arms and twisting, trying to restrain as she’d lied, “I was!”
She catches the chin of the woman trying to hurt her. It doesn’t matter. Her enemy’s head knocks back and she still smiles when she returns to smash the solid force of her palm to Vi’s temple.
“You weren’t,” Powder had kicked, had caught her in the ribs, “you weren’t!” She had refused to stop squealing. For all of her struggling, Vi had been impressed with her strength. She hadn’t thought to hold fast, to fight back, not fully, not in the face of an assault so unyielding, and when Powder had pinned her, finally, face scrunched in a display of concentration, she’d complied and let her lean her weight down so she could use one loose hand to aim straight at her in the shape of a pistol.
It hadn’t been until the gun had gone off that she’d finally allowed herself to laugh.
Powder’s face had fallen, then, and Vi knew. She’d known all along, whether or not she wanted to admit it to herself —
She’s fought dizzy before. She’s fought drunk before. She faces down the next blow and takes it, even as it makes her waver.
— It was too far gone. “Why won’t you just take me seriously?”
“Pow-Pow,” propped up on elbows, Vi had set her jaw, “I’m trying –”
“Shut up,” she’d sobbed, and with the force of it she’d swung her elbow back, a blow that connected straight with Vi’s jaw. She’d sworn, shoved Powder off of her, spat out blood from where she’d bit the inside of her cheek.
“We’re done,” and the chain stopped swinging for good, a squeaky sort of silence, “we’re done, Powder. You don’t hurt people that you love, not for real.”
Powder had never asked again. Vi had never volunteered.
Her eyes catch something in the stands. The betting slips for her are red – a darker hue of her hair, she imagines – and her opponent’s been assigned a vibrant magenta that is all too reminiscent of Shimmer. Swirling up in the seats, though, are shades of blue. It’s an old habit to pay any mind to this here and now. Usually she could weather the storm and hold out to wait for the privacy of her own hovel of a room, or at least find the flicker of such an impression in some place less violent.
She’d seen her at the bars under neon strobing lights. In alleyways. Beside her on the cramped cushion of her bed.
Not one of those times had Caitlyn looked so concerned for her.
Even at this distance, panic is evident. Vi frowns and fixates on that shift, trying to solve its meaning. Maybe it’s the crowd that thrums all around them. Caitlyn’s never liked noise this loud. Maybe it’s that whoever she’s shoving on the shoulder won't let her through. She’s not used to not getting her way.
Maybe it is the fist swinging straight for her, bludgeoning in on her vision until there is nothing but blurry shapes to see through half-shut eyes, and then, when that retreats, darkness.
She wakes up, rather unpredictably, somewhere soft, and worst of all with the memories of the previous night still ringing resolutely clear in the hollow space that is her skull. Some sense of fuzz sticks along the edges, lingering remnants from a deep and dire rest disturbed, but it is nothing like what she remembers – nothing like what she doesn't, thanks to nights blurred by an alcohol induced smog – from before.
Before she might have made peace with stumbling still half-drunk from bed to another bottle to dull the pain buzzing behind her eyes; a twisted type of maintenance. There is a familiar sense of that pain that haunts her now, except instead of emanating all throughout her head it’s localized to a tender spot on her face that throbs when she so much as shifts her eye beneath its lid. Blinking is significantly worse, mostly because she’s not really sure she can. Swollen skin stops the motion in its tracks, and around her tear ducts she feels liquid seep, unbidden, against her will.
It itches, burns, and before there is any consideration to be had Vi swipes over where some terrible bruise must be blooming. She can’t see it, but she feels its give beneath her fingers, well acquainted with the way blood vessels break under blunt force. Her own skin has been muddled with as many bruises as she’s bestowed – more, maybe, for the years spent in Stillwater – but pressure on this particular abrasion makes her wince back from her own touch with a hiss that falls sharp from a wide open mouth.
She must be getting frail, she broods in tandem with the pang that lingers in the aftermath of the hiss – the absence of sound – if one meager black eye is all it takes to evoke such a display of weakness. Hands, exploratory and a bit unsteady, extend to find evidence to the contrary. She holds herself around the ribs, sinking claws into old scores.
There is no pain there anymore, not unless she really presses, forcing nails to bite flesh, but there had been, once. Those wounds had gone so deep that they might have killed her. They might have killed her but they hadn’t.
They hadn’t thanks to Caitlyn, whose company – opposite the side of the bed that she occupies – is something she recognizes she can deny for only a dwindling amount of time. The window narrows like a noose around her neck. The fact that she is nearby now is a given. Try as she might have to wrestle her image from the depths of her mind, Vi knows there is simply no getting rid of her, not in the immaterial sense or in the way she exists now, warm and tangible and within her reach. So she turns to face her, equally grateful for her presence and a little afraid of it. An inevitable confrontation lurks. Vi’s not certain she’s ready for bravery, so she dawdles instead in the moments she has left to spare.
The first thing that she registers is that Caitlyn does not sleep like this typically, disheveled and in what she likes to call street clothes. Vi’s been on the losing side of one too many debates regarding what is and isn’t appropriate to wear to bed, fighting valiantly against silken fabrics and elaborate matching sets to settle instead for whatever best lets her skin breathe. Sometimes she wears nothing at all, which Caitlyn never argues against; an underhanded tactic, definitely, but one she thinks that neither of them mind the compromise of.
The next is that she is blanketed by a familiar jacket that has been loosely fitted over the top half of her. It looks stark in contrast with her peaceful figure, and it’s certainly not clean the way it had been when she’d plucked it straight from Caitlyn’s closet, one stud loosely hanging on while a stain darker than even the leather itself speckles the collar in uneven patches. The embroidery on the back looks like it’s seen hell, or a mud pit, or maybe both.
A low rattle leaves her, suitable to make Caitlyn stir.
She is slow to wake, at least, but Vi starts to think that’s worse. She has to watch everything develop, relaxation melting away to take the shape of a tense brow, a jutting lip, an expression that speaks volumes long before she says anything at all.
“Violet.” Her name from Caitlyn’s mouth is marked with adoration in almost every instance, but in this light it sinks into her chest with the potency of a blow only she can strike.
No response she has to offer can measure up, and so the most simple choice is what she opts for. “Morning.” She swallows. “Not a good one. I won’t lie about that.”
“Sit up.” An immediate command ensues. “Slowly,” is spoken a beat later, though no less firmly.
A tiny knot in her stomach twists and she doesn’t have time to discern whether or not she’s working through a bundle of nerves or if Caitlyn’s voice, taut and assertive, is setting in motion things it shouldn’t be, her blood both hot and cold inside of a network of veins. Temptation is too strong to resist a test of the waters. Vi murmurs, “Yes, ma’am,” but Caitlyn doesn’t laugh and the stab she takes at smiling only makes her swollen eye well up more.
Shuffling so that she can sit at attention isn’t pleasant. Vi doesn’t expect it to be, but still. She has to battle with a wave of dizziness that incites in her the urge to try again. She doesn’t think she’s ever been so aware of being seen like this, and she can’t lift her fists to block the threat of vulnerability, but —
Caitlyn holds either side of her face to prevent her from swaying. It’s alarming to think she can’t put an end to it herself. Even more alarming is the way she outright whimpers into the easy caress of hands that stabilize, hands that heal, hands that piece her together when she cannot do it alone.
— It is a fruitless attempt and she knows it; regardless, Vi makes one more pass, lungs past their capacity for the exhale of, “I wish you’d been there for the times the bruises were actually bad. Had a guy swing right at my jaw once, connected with my mouth instead. You could’ve kissed it all better.” It isn’t funny and she’s not truly laughing either, simply choking out a sound that hitches her breath back and forth.
“Stop it,” Caitlyn is significantly quieter now. Still sharp, but quieter. “You’re not – this is not amusing to me.”
“Right. Just, ah,” Vi clears her throat, face ablaze for wanton begging, “what’s the damage, doctor?”
Two fingertips trace the ridge of her brow bone. Tender, but not unbearable. “Your eye is nearly swollen shut.” Caitlyn clicks her tongue. “The bruise goes all the way out to here,” a tap comes against her cheek that makes her jump, “though that is hardly the extent of it all.”
“I’ve had worse.” She dismisses.
Caitlyn’s nostrils flare. “I know. If you could stand to hold your tongue, you’d know that I was not finished. You were concussed,” Caitlyn clips her voice into neat little syllables and Vi senses she is in genuine trouble. “I had to heft you halfway over my shoulder just to pull you out of the ring, much less to actually get you upright enough for any sort of travel.” The line of her chin creases deep across her face. “They were calling for your blood – for more of it, mind you – when we hobbled out.”
“Caitlyn,” Vi grits out, trying not to bend beneath her own imagined weight. War drums in her ribcage on behalf of the prickle of guilt and the anticipation of ridicule. It’s a long trek, there to here, here to there, and Caitlyn’s not frail, but Vi is familiar enough with the stretch of sinew that comprises her body to understand how much exertion it must have cost.
“I’m not angry at you for that,” Caitlyn cuts through her train of thought. “Even if all of my limbs were broken, I would still muster up the strength I needed to carry you home. I am upset,” she says, “that you went without me, that you did not say a word, that you left hardly a scent trail for me to follow –”
It is all too much, the tirade she marches straight forth with, and Vi blurts an abrupt, “Maybe,” her turn now to interject, “I was trying to…”
She never finishes, the final words fizzling on her tongue, but Caitlyn recoils nonetheless.
“All you do,” Vi shudders when Caitlyn won’t stir, “is worry about me. It’s exhausting.”
“For you?” There should be indignation to accompany how pointed her phrasing is, but all Caitlyn emanates is an aura of hurt. Vi swallows as she watches her tug on the jacket, easing it into place. It has a considerable amount of space around the shoulders; she has to cross her arms to keep it from slipping. She doesn’t want to go on anymore, seeing that. She wants it to be her arms around Caitlyn, not a too broad jacket, but the words have already spilled their way out of her.
“For both of us,” she answers, doing all she can to take cautious steps. “Cait, I can’t be what you are.”
“I’m not…” Caitlyn’s lip quivers a little. She looks lost. “I wouldn’t want you to…”
“No,” Vi says, not dismissive but settling, “no, I know, I know you said that…” Her jaw works as she attempts to recall the phrasing. “You see me bracing for a fight, all the time, and it’s because I need one. I need to feel like I’m putting something back in place. Like I’m leaving a mark on the world.”
Whatever it is that she says that causes it, she senses the resonance within Caitlyn decisively. She’s still quiet enough that it scares her, but in due time she speaks; a murmur of, “Let me look at you?” Practically a question rather than a prompt, it rings almost shy, given with the subtle outreach of Caitlyn’s fingers curling on the underside of her chin.
Vi doesn’t say anything at all. It’s a bit difficult to keep her focus on Caitlyn in the state she’s in – one half of her vision hardly more than a sliver of light that disorients her – but she finds herself drawn in nonetheless, watching for every variation in her face, brought forth, as always, towards the irresistible subtleties of blue.
Caitlyn sounds calm, first, not unlike her father on one of his surgical tangents as she begins, “You twitch terribly in your sleep, you know, so I was only able to keep a cold compress on your eye for a short while before you fell asleep,” her cheeks color, then, “before I fell asleep, too,” she chews on her lip, picking up speed, “and I’m not certain if it’s been more than twenty four hours, but ice becomes ineffective not long after that, which means heat comes next.”
“Cait,” Vi croaks.
She doesn’t stop, but she does take a deep breath as if to steady herself. Her next words are wound much tighter together, and she never breaks eye contact. “You’ve changed everything,” she says, “everything in my life, Violet, and I understand, but you can’t…please,” Her shoulders give a little tremor in the too big jacket that contains them. “Anything but this.”
When her hand shifts to hover the bruise that blackens her eye, Vi feels so much lighter than she should. She mirrors the motion, says again, “Cait.” Her own fingers poise over where the covering of an eyepatch typically sits. Caitlyn hadn’t gone to bed with that, at least, and so her hand cups in mock shape of it, not touching, just covering. “We match,” she tells her, whispering like she’s sharing a secret.
Caitlyn’s brows shoot up. She splutters. Finally, she laughs.
Anything but this entails a lot of things, the most perplexing of which comes when Caitlyn starts abandoning her obligations for quiet days at home too.
Vi had wondered, at least a little bit, about what it would be like to return to them. To show up, make an entrance. If nothing else, that might lift her spirits. Maybe the monotony would be fun this time. There was always the chance she just needed some perspective to really understand what she’d been missing out on.
Now she’s just suspicious. Her mind spins out in so many different directions she can’t catch up with a single one, and so rather than spend the time ruminating, sinking into the paranoia, the guilt, she just asks.
It feels surprisingly good to be direct, true to herself in a way she doesn’t anticipate but that fills her with satisfaction.
The sensation quiets into something else, though, when she gets her answer.
“Oh. Well,” Caitlyn strokes the spine of the book she’s flipped upside down to mark her spot, “I also hated it.”
Vi squints. “Uh. The meetings?”
“Attending them,” Caitlyn confirms, “yes. Especially without you present.” Her head twists back and then she says, “Not to say that you should have been there, only that –”
Her stomach seizes. “But you were really fucking good with all of that. That bureaucratic bullshit.” It’s like there are gears inside of her that have stopped functioning and she doesn’t know how to make them go again. She can hear machinery grinding, metal snapping.
“I was also really fucking good with a rifle.” A wistful smile spreads her lips thin.
“That’s not…” Vi can’t help it. She looks right at the lines that lead to the darkest point of Caitlyn’s face, obscured by a patch of fabric. Her eyes dart back as soon as she’s done it, but it still feels like a betrayal to acknowledge it at all.
She can’t look back, but she can’t move anywhere else either, not until Caitlyn calls out, “Vi. Can you come here?”
She’s sure she’s giving off the impression of a guilty dog slinking over with its head hung, but beneath that – beneath that, she struggles to temper herself. She curls up on the couch, lets Caitlyn peel her legs away from her body and lay them over her lap. All contact on her terms, at least for now. Vi is not sure she can manage any motion.
When silence stands between them, Vi aims to begin slowly. “So.” Caitlyn strokes a hand up and down the length of one leg. It makes her bubble with frustration how badly she wants it and how it can still not make everything pristine, perfect, put into place the way it should be. “You’re throwing your life away because you figure you can’t risk carrying on with it in case I do something stupid again.” There it is. A classic quick wind up and knock out punch, all the force carried in the conclusion.
“No,” she says firmly, but it’s not enough to stop her.
“Pretty fucking obvious, Cait.” Just as it had felt good to be direct, it feels good to lament like this, to let the world circle her for one second. “I mean,” she scoffs, craning her neck to turn spite towards whatever is available, “what else are you doing here working your way through some ancient tome instead of –”
Caitlyn’s hand lifts off of her leg. The loss of contact makes her unstable. “It was my mother’s.” She sets the book aside, shuts it. Vi shuts her mouth too.
Sorry is hollow, pointless, so she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say another syllable.
It is Caitlyn who speaks instead, more composed than she should be. “Vi,” she mutters, “It was never a dream of mine to be a Councilor. I wanted…well,” she winces, “I wanted a chance to get my feet wet. For a while, that meant I wanted whatever it was my mother opposed the most.” She breathes a little laugh on behalf of herself. Vi remembers her, bright eyed on the opposite side of prison bars. “Being an Enforcer was a compromise, one I could come to terms with. But even that wasn’t fully right.”
She takes time to find her words, turns each one over in her head as a test before she dares to say a single one. “So,” she asks when she’s sure of them, “what did you want to be?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Caitlyn sighs. “A runaway, perhaps. I was so eager to escape.” Her attention turns back to the book, and though Vi feels a bit queasy, Caitlyn smiles as she taps the cover. “That’s the sort of story this follows. A girl who flees her home, finds out that the world is so much bigger than she ever anticipated.” Her shoulders settle back into the couch as she carries on. “The trouble is, I don’t want to leave anymore either. I owe a debt that I intend to pay.” The surety in her voice dips to a tone more private, more personal as she utters, “But the meetings, the Council, becoming my mother…There’s more to recovering than that.”
Her accusations can’t be erased, but they certainly feel less true now. The barbs firm against her skin are not so painful, not so pointed. She trusts Caitlyn, turns faith over to her, even when doing so is difficult.
“It’s okay to start small,” Vi replies, an assurance for them both. This time she might be able to believe it.
Caitlyn returns the weight of her hand to her leg. She is moored, made courageous, and she looks out at what frightens her. Confronts it. Clears her throat to ask, “Do you want to read it together?”
“Hm?”
“Your mother’s book.”
Light catches in Caitlyn’s eye. “Try to keep pace with one another, you mean? I only have one copy.”
“No,” Vi fumbles, “no, I mean…we read it out loud to each other, chapter by chapter. I could also,” she exhales sharply through her nose, “just read it for you. Before bed, or if…if you’re not going to be a Councilor, maybe,” she rolls her shoulders, “whenever.”
Her legs are discarded from their position. Caitlyn crawls to close distance between them, settles herself down on Vi’s lap, and from that spot she witnesses her come to life with a grin so bright it eclipses all else. “I want to give my seat to Zaun,” she confides.
“Okay,” Vi fixes her palms to Caitlyn’s waist, cranes her neck, and beams, “and the book?” The rest is for another time.
“Of course.” Kissing her widens the world. “I love you. Of course.”
Their lives narrow a touch without the constant interference of politics pressing in, but Vi discovers she doesn’t mind it. At the end of the day, Caitlyn is far from absolved of all responsibilities. It turns out that it’s not enough to say you want something and simply have it here in Piltover, even if you are a Kiramman.
She pens letters, pleads her case for representation on behalf of Zaun. She writes to those in The Lanes, too, and asks Vi what she knows. Who. No meaningful politicians, that’s for sure, but sharing her stories and watching Caitlyn scribble out notes, staining her fingers with ink even when everything from them is long gone is a generosity she can’t put to words. It’s all a part of a tiny step in a series of decisions still to be made, but at least she does it – mostly – from home.
Not always from the most comfortable of places within the grand estate that she occupies, Vi finds out, when more than once she’s sent to play scavenger hunt in the hallways after Caitlyn doesn’t come to bed. It’s a wonder that anyone has more than a single study – or a study at all – and most impressive is the fact that Caitlyn can fall asleep on the desks of all of them, regardless of how rigid they appear.
She suspects she’ll find her dozing off – head slumped – tonight as well, but as she sweeps into the lone room that emanates light through a crack in the door, she stumbles across a different sight.
Caitlyn definitely looks tired – enough that her head lifts only after Vi is already in the study, having slipped through the doorway – but she is alert to the point where she levels the uneven twist of her spine, bent in half over the desk, and clears her throat as a way of greeting.
Or, Vi considers, to proceed whatever it is she’s going to say about the fact that she’s wearing her jacket, leather affixed to her body. Warm tones from the hearth flutter over it, making light dance among the fabric’s ridges. With a smile toying at her lips, she beats Caitlyn to the chase. “I like the look.” In a few strides, she’s leaning on the edge of the desk, watching high cheekbones take on a beautiful flush.
“It was cold in here,” Caitlyn defends. Vi can see the way she searches for a target to lock onto.
She follows that trail, drags her eyes to the lit fireplace then back again. In Caitlyn’s wardrobe are dense fleece blazers, fur lined coats, any variety of clothing that might be a better fit for warmth than a jacket that barely comes halfway past her ribcage. Under the golden glow, her grin only broadens.
“Shut up.” She fidgets, protests her silence.
“Not saying anything, Cupcake. Just admiring.”
She is. She does. There are a few more flaws adorning the jacket this time, things Caitlyn either hasn’t had the time to patch up or this time hasn’t wanted to, but none of it matters. It looks good on her, and although that little nook in her wardrobe had brought tears springing to her eyes, as sentimental as it had been to see the spot that Caitlyn had shaped for a part of her to be cradled by, this sparks a sensation brand new.
Vi slides off her perch on the desk, slinks close. She puts one palm over the papers that litter the wooden surface to blot them out. “Let me take you to bed?” It is as simple as breathing.
Caitlyn’s chair creaks as she kicks it out, moves to stand, but Vi is there to stop her. “What…” she begins, the words stopped short.
“I said,” Vi slots arms beneath her, “let me.”
It’s all a show of fanfare, lifting Caitlyn up and kicking aside her chair; swinging open the door with a wide gesture she doesn’t need to escort them out. Every effort earns a giggle airy against the column of her neck, and then, as she marches through the halls, those breaths get closer, transforming into kisses that start merciful and devolve quickly into relentless focus for where her heartbeat is strongest.
By the time they make it anywhere close to the bed, Vi swears she is going to collapse. Caitlyn is weightless in her arms but her legs shiver and send shockwaves right to her core. Caitlyn, the criminal that she is, has brightened considerably from her time in the study for the realization of all she’s caused, and Vi wants – she wants –
She wants that fire to consume her, to eat her alive. She careens straight after it, crawls atop Caitlyn’s lap, and secures herself there.
Caitlyn, for her part, is just as active, just as hungry. Her hands weave, wrench in hair, then dart to reveal all, beginning first with her outermost layer. The jacket. She seizes at that, overtaken by what she can only attribute to being a base urge, and Caitlyn halts just long enough for her to speak.
“Keep it on,” Vi insists, hands brought to bunch around folds that collect at Caitlyn’s shoulders. The racing of her ardor addled mind means that logistics are hardly at the forefront, far less of a concern than the need to heave out, “Just – wear it. I want you to wear it.” All else, stripped back and bare, but this? Coal colored leather accentuates a lustrous line of skin from where it curls flush to Caitlyn’s neck. Fabric frames her silhouette; she wears the jacket with its collar popped, almost as though she hopes for it to swallow her whole.
Vi claws at the thin tank top still covering Caitlyn’s chest. Her hooked grasp drags free a response, amused. “I can’t keep it on and take this off, you know.” The low rumble of Caitlyn’s chuckle, an amorous sound, drums desperation to the beat of a steady pulse she has no choice but to chase the draw of.
More methodical approaches exist, maybe, or rather less drastic ones. Still, skimming so close to the surface, Vi has no impulse to hold back now. What she really aches for is the chance to plunge herself forward and press into what’s right there, what’s waiting; fabric between fingers and then in the firm grasp of clenched fists. Caitlyn might reprimand her for this, she thinks first. She might like that, she thinks second. Then she pulls until thread splits and tears, a ragged mess made from desire.
The raw thrill that blisters where cloth bites into her hands is a better burn than any fight has ever brought surging forward for her. Her heart leaps with the realization.
As coiled tight as Vi is, poised to strike, Caitlyn pursues without reluctance. Cleaves a path right for her, catches her bottom lip in her teeth, and if she’d thought herself familiar with ideals of push and pull, ebb and flow, Caitlyn allows for none of it. A fierce delivery of fangs dictates that she stays still. Vi gasps brazenly for it, mouth split open, and Caitlyn takes advantage of that too, tongue heavy on hers until she’s satisfied enough to settle. Eager teeth come to fit right back around her, and though the pressure itself is not too much to bear, Caitlyn finds her own way to mirror motions from earlier – to pull, to tug – compelling Vi to whine for release.
There are imprints left behind after Caitlyn yields. Hot puffs of breath exacerbate the sting, the way they stick to swollen lips. If the way Caitlyn watches her is anything to judge by, she must look depraved – must be depraved – because running her tongue along the ridges is not enough. She bites down, holding onto her own hurt, and lets it simmer. Incentive builds the longer that she sits, driven forth by a frantic feeling that she has to give as good as she gets. Her palm spreads flat over Caitlyn’s sternum, applies pressure there, and shoves until she is sent back against the bed.
Vi anticipates retaliation. She expects that Caitlyn will not relinquish so willingly, not yet, not while blood still sings hot beneath the blistering of her lips, but the only recourse she offers is a curious propping of herself up on her elbows. Caitlyn does not lunge, just watches, head inclined as she grins, and that feels more dangerous than anything else she could do.
Her voice is steady when it comes. Low, carried in the back of her throat. "What do you like," she asks, "about seeing it on me?” There is a sliver of pale skin that creeps tantalizingly forward from where the jacket splits in half, and still it does not demand even half as much of her attention when weighed with the glint of blue that binds her to every word Caitlyn is saying. “That it's yours? That I'm yours?"
As if she is a puddle of fuel that a lit match has been dropped into, Vi ignites. “Yes,” she groans, and she descends to show Caitlyn just how much she likes it. “Fuck, Cait,” there are no hands on her yet she is shaking anyway, stilled only by the stability of slotting a knee up against Caitlyn, “yes.”
It’s exhilarating to see Caitlyn’s composure slip too, even the slightest amount. Shoulders still covered in dark leather go rigid, and as much as Vi would like to slip under the jacket to smother that tense slope in kisses until Caitlyn relents right into her every touch, there is something to be said for how plainly the sound of fabric catching on the bed sheets betrays her. None of her squirming is subtle. Not even the slightest twitch can be silenced. It signals a weight undeniable, a distinction that has never been drawn before between them.
Hovered over but not held down, Caitlyn has the opportunity to further her stirring into full on gestures, broad sweeping as she stirs in her restlessness and reaches for what remains. The jacket stays, of course, but the shredded remains of a shirt that still litter her abdomen are discarded with haste. She’s left lying in a pile of torn thread as she moves next to angle her hips, and though Vi tries to assist, her hands are met with impatient swats. Caitlyn acts efficiently in discarding her shorts, at least, and with them goes whatever she’d been wearing beneath. Irrelevant, Vi thinks, as Caitlyn once more fits their bodies together and all else falls away aside from that point of contact – that single, scorching hot connection – which gives no friction at all.
Vi feels it just as obviously as Caitlyn does, wet heat that drags but does not resist her effort to lean up and in. As she bears down, as she sinks towards a throat that thrums visibly with a pulse, as everything is finally pried back from her, save for the jacket, Caitlyn breathes, “I want more.” Vi fixates on the beat of blood beneath her flesh, laving her tongue over it. When the rhythm quickens, she remembers the sting of her lips and bares her teeth to graze them over satin skin. There’s a jolt – hers or Caitlyn’s in origin, she can’t say – and then a hand in her hair, tight at the roots as Caitlyn cries, “Give me more, Vi, make me wear you.”
Every word entices, tangling so acutely within her that she can imagine nothing more than obeying – Caitlyn wants, but Vi needs – and like a storm set to break, she crashes down, set loose. The blur of bite marks she leaves behind in her initial rush to remedy the boiling that churns deep in her gut is just that, a blur, spread chaotically across Caitlyn’s body.
Regret brews just long enough for Caitlyn to recognize it. She must, with the way she surfaces to guide Vi – hesitant, reconsidering her frenzied attack – back to her body. It’s only when Vi has her mouth on Caitlyn – the rigid curve of her ribcage bent like a bow – that she feels her exhale again, a rush she had not realized she was restraining.
The next path she cuts has some semblance of discipline to it. At least, Vi makes a plan for where she wants to put her mouth, press her teeth. The jacket has fallen further open than before, but it still leaves a line for her to follow. She imagines the marks before she makes them, using the cool metal of the zipper as it caresses her cheek as a way of a guide. Slowly but surely an outline is formed, an impression put to flesh, and even if Caitlyn were to shed the jacket now, evidence to its prior presence will linger.
Not every trace she leaves is apparent. There are those that are not divots dug in with teeth. Some she soothes with kisses along her path. Others are tender and take time as she sucks heat to the surface rather than drawing it out with canines poised to cut straight to the point.
She ends up with her face near flush to the flare of Caitlyn’s hips. Leather stops just above where her figure widens, cropped short so that the curl of it cups her breasts, her ribs, but little else. Here, she is reverential, all tongue and careful touch, and though her knee has retreated she remembers clearly the heat between her thighs, thinking of it as she moves closer. Caitlyn catches her before she can get there, though, with a thumb that slips right between surprised, stilted lips. She hooks her, reels her in, pulls her right to the surface.
Slow and slack jawed, Vi winds her tongue up to test the pad of Caitlyn’s thumb, feeling for the give of it. Caitlyn shivers, making fabric bunch against the bed, and that is all Vi needs to secure her hold around the digit and suck. A nail presses to the inner hollow of her cheek as Caitlyn traces there, scrapes slowly to encourage her. By the time her thumb smears a wet path out of the corner of Vi’s mouth she’s abandoned her past pursuits, brought back to loom at almost eye level with Caitlyn once more.
Caitlyn seems to consider her for a moment, shadows dancing in the depths of an eye that has gone the shade of endless ocean blue. Then, taking the thumb that had been in Vi’s mouth only a moment ago, she circles a spot on her own body, a bruise that has already begun to form under the force of teeth bringing it forth. She clenches her thighs together, shakes, and says, “Another.”
It dawns on her then that this is more than build up to an eventual shift, a next step, an inevitability of expectation. Vi hasn’t touched her, hasn’t done more than give her a knee to grind against, and yet Caitlyn keens high in her throat, clasps her teeth but whistles breath through the cracks regardless. She feels a little bit like the air escaping in those gaps, all of the sudden, except she doesn’t want to escape, she wants to stay stuck in the cavities Caitlyn chisels out for her to fit within.
Usually, when they tangle together like this, she tries her best to be considerate. Opposite her own wishes, she avoids leaving the most blatant of bruises where anyone might notice them. Caitlyn is a woman with status, still, no matter what she has forfeited in the aftermath of it all, and sometimes Vi can sense the urge to shrug her off, the back and forth of their teasing that ends abruptly with agreements to behave herself even if she is the only one cementing such certainty into her own mind.
Today, though, Caitlyn bares the entire expanse of her neck, chin cast so far back that Vi can hardly distinguish the details of her expression as she waits. Another, she’d asked. Vi smothers her in every ounce of affection she has ever held back. She kisses her for the times she couldn’t, appreciative of the responsive way Caitlyn’s throat rumbles below her lips. She follows the line of her jaw right to its connection at her chin and kisses there, too, smoothing out lines of tension that have eased but not erased themselves, remembering how tightly she’d once clenched the muscle, grinding it even in her sleep.
Vi dots blemishes from neck to nape and even that does not satiate Caitlyn. "Here," she gasps, tapping untouched skin, "you haven't been here yet." She catches on to Caitlyn’s game, gives her another, then one more, then dares to nudge the points of her fangs to the barrier of a bruise she’s already left. Supple skin bends under the pressure she applies.
Only after all of that do adamant hands return. This time Vi meets the touch of fingers with readiness, and she’s gentle, lavishing each one with lips that glide over nails and knuckles and try to take as much of Caitlyn into her mouth as she can manage. When it’s Caitlyn’s trigger finger that finds itself against the tip of her tongue, though, Vi seals her mouth all the way shut, and she doesn’t bite, just tests the weight of her teeth on fragile cartilage and bone.
All of the little stuttering breaths Caitlyn has been affording herself snap together at once, a high note to signal the extension of full lungs. “Vi,” she says, or at least that’s what it most sounds like, the babbling sort of noise that she makes at once, “Vi, Vi,” she spares all of her breath to expel it, incoherent until she manages to demand, “stay.”
Caitlyn’s finger, still surrounded. Vi’s teeth, still taut.
She feels unable to keep her head up, suddenly, blinking away a fog of arousal so thick that it is tangible. This whole time she’s been kept from falling apart by the honed precision of Caitlyn’s command, her voice, her focus, but now she can feel it unravelling, can feel the infectious spread of need not unlike that of a sickness.
There is something more that Caitlyn wants. Vi can tell by the way her head rolls, the shift of the leather, the fact that each breath she expels is a heavy puff shot straight from her mouth. She won’t say it, though, or maybe she can’t, jaw quivering with unspoken force, and Vi cannot speak either, silenced still by the command to stay, but she takes a chance on understanding.
No point to starting slow, not like this, not with Caitlyn pliant, open, all but pleading. Vi weaves her hand down, skates deft fingers along her clit, then slips them inside of her. Caitlyn stops breathing altogether – Vi won’t have that – until she spreads the width of her fingers a touch to feel the stretch of her, and then she is babbling again, this time fully wordless noises that seize below the hitch of inhale, exhale, a struggle to keep a steady rhythm.
It won’t be long, she can sense it, and it isn’t. She swears she comes before Caitlyn does, fingers engulfed in the heat of her, slick all the way down her palm. Caitlyn tenses and that’s it, all she needs to send the last fragments of her sanity scattering. Vi’s teeth around her finger clamp, just for a moment, close enough to pinch. Vi sees stars set to the sound of a genuine hiccup rattling its way out of Caitlyn’s chest, so charming that it strikes some clarity back into her.
Clarity that allows a chance for her to sweep away the haze that dims her head. Her jaw slackens, freeing Caitlyn’s finger which tumbles loose to twitch atop a bare thigh. Coated in her own spit, Vi watches as it is shaken by each shiver of remaining sensation, and when Caitlyn goes to lift her hand up, away, she presses her face down in place of it.
Caitlyn jumps when she echoes her earlier insistence in the form of a question. “Another?” So close, her breath barely has to travel to cloud right at Caitlyn’s cunt.
That tease of contact rips another, “Vi,” right out of her. Her hips buck, so reactive that Vi has to reposition herself to avoid being thrown off.
“Come on, Cupcake.” She feels light, emboldened. “You can take it.” Then she closes her mouth over her clit.
Caitlyn thrashes harder that time, her whole body in motion as it arcs off of the bed. Her thighs clamp like a vice grip and one knee comes to knock Vi in the side of the head in a gesture not unlike taking a punch. It’s not as precise and it makes her laugh, a vibration that ripples right where her tongue flexes. She holds it firmer for pressure that Caitlyn can grind onto. Caitlyn, who absorbs everything she is given.
When Vi lets up, licking lower down soaked folds, she drops her guard. It’s amusing, really, how readily she melts into sheets, sobs out full body breaths that make her ribs heave and bend, because Vi does not intend to back down for long. She dips her tongue into her just long enough that Caitlyn can adjust to it, and then she drags a wide, flat stripe all the way up, wetness smearing over her chin.
Obscene noises infuse the air as she fills as much of her mouth as possible with Caitlyn, the slick glide second only to the rasp of her breathing, and then, when Vi hones once more in on her clit, Caitlyn falters. Her throat catches, so rigid it cuts in half her breath as a desperate chime crawls out to take its place. Vi has to struggle to see it, eyes lifting all the way – Caitlyn’s body obscures so much of her – but from where her head lolls to the side, tightly shut eyes screw up and a tear streaks its way down the ridge of her cheek.
It causes her to ease up – to stop, even – until Caitlyn takes notice, until she’s being guided right back into place by a hand heavy on her head. A wordless reassurance that roots her to burning skin. Caitlyn doesn’t open her eyes but she does keep her neck bared, and from where Vi rests she can see a ring of bruises beginning to take shape. Marks she’s made.
At the end of it, Vi skims one hand finally beneath the leather of the jacket. She’s gentle there in a way she isn’t with her mouth, tearing Caitlyn apart to the sound of her crying, of her coming again, a tune she’ll never tire of hearing. She doesn’t wrench the fabric away, doesn’t do anything to free Caitlyn from the heavy heat, just lets her hand splay out across her heartbeat as it heightens, peaks, and eventually stabilizes.
Caitlyn crashes in the afterglow, a quick flicker even more quickly snuffed. When she wakes, wanting, Vi is there, administering all that she needs. Water for a parched throat, silk clothes to change into, gentle touch to gloss over dark violet bruises and bite marks that litter every inch of her skin.
All that Vi asks is to hold her hand against Caitlyn’s heartbeat again, longing for the thrum of it.
Disturbances to the Kiramman estate are few and far between these days. Even accounting for visitors that Vi only loosely recognizes, she’s learning to be civil. She understands, above all else, that maybe she was wrong in the first place. She might be the one with rugged edges and a low tolerance for bullshit, but Caitlyn’s capabilities for hosting and entertaining and saying much beyond what she imagines she should, what she’s been trained to, are…
Not at all comparable to the way she wields a rifle; confident, steadfast, a habit she ultimately recovers from the rubble. She doesn’t shoot the same, but the fact that she shoots again at all is incredible. Vi accompanies her on occasion to the range, takes a stab at the targets, notes her hands as far less practiced, her aim inferior. Caitlyn cheers and kisses her anyway for each mark she makes.
Someday, she wants to test another kind of exertion with Caitlyn, wants to share in the things holy to her, too. The chain stopped swinging long ago and Vi’s not sure she’ll ever be able to take a swing, fully formed, that can teach the truth of combat, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe, the same way Caitlyn celebrates each ring she hits on her way closer into a bullseye, Vi could clap and laud the sweat beading on her back – slick between slender shoulders – as a sign that they’d made it out alive.
Small motions stretch sore muscles. In compact measures, Vi comes to feel more comfortable with things that would have sent her spiraling.
Like, for example, Sevika on their doorstep.
She trudges right inside, or Caitlyn invites her, or…Vi’s not really sure it makes a difference. What she cares about is how much harder it gets to move, all of a sudden, like she’s circling a snake. Like that snake is circling her.
She’d refused to meet anywhere else, Caitlyn had told her. It had been hard to accept. Harder still to admit she understands. Sevika is not the sort of person she wants to sympathize with. The connection that stretches between them is as fine as a single line of silk. She would call Sevika a traitor in an instant and she knows the other woman would do the same, would mean every word.
The only reason she doesn’t anticipate an outright attack is because among the countless things Sevika is, stupid is not one of them. That doesn’t keep her skin from prickling, though, when an intrusion all but waltzes its way into her home, her domain, a space she’s made sacred.
Whatever welcoming atmosphere they’re trying to cultivate, Sevika sniffs it right out. She shows no regard for them or her surroundings. She lights her pipe before she even sets herself up in a chair, blowing smoke straight out of her nostrils to lead into another heavy drag.
Vi can tell exactly what she’s doing. It doesn’t piss her off any less.
Caitlyn takes advantage of temporary silence to initiate, “I doubt that I have to review why we are here, but even so,” that tight line of her chin betrays her, “I have asked for your presence to discuss ceding the seat held currently by House Kiramman to a representative of Zaun, henceforth and furthermore into the future –”
Sevika barks a laugh that scatters smoke and smiles – snarls – all teeth. “Yeah,” she drawls, “you want to extend your little invitation, I got that. You wrote it all down in those letters you sent my way. Us Zaunites can read, you know.”
“Right.” Vi watches Caitlyn’s throat bob and tells herself not to intervene.
Sevika lets her pipe sizzle, sizing Caitlyn up in a way meant to be blatant. She sweeps her eyes up, down, up, down, so many times that Vi could crack the countertop she’s holding onto in half if she gave herself the chance. “Funny,” Sevika comments languidly, “that when your shit starts to crumble, you come crawling around on our streets looking for scraps. Not enough firepower to make that Council of yours keep going, huh? Gotta look in the gutters?”
She rises to her full height, but rather than meet Caitlyn face to face, she slinks to the side of her. Her gaze tangles in the threads of distinctive Zaunite black and red that stretch over Caitlyn’s shoulders and Vi’s stomach flips. It’s not that she hadn’t known – Caitlyn wears the leather comfortably, regularly now, as much a part of her as it ever was a part of Vi – but Sevika smells blood and barrels straight towards it. “Not enough to use us,” she smirks, “now you’re literally stealing the clothes off of our backs, too.”
It’s Sevika’s hand – the one still made of flesh, the one that can feel – settling on Caitlyn’s spine that splinters what little control she has left. The fine line vanishes. She’s on her in a second, twisting a wrist as she spits, “Fucking – off of her, now.” A part of her aches to make it worse, but she keeps the pressure consistent.
“Vi,” Caitlyn separates herself from them, her voice a short intake of breath. Her hold loosens so that Sevika has the room to slither free.
“Good dog,” Sevika coos at her, “down. Do what she tells you.”
A blazing blue pinprick darts for her, and that breath, hitched, runs dry enough in Caitlyn’s throat that she can hear it. “I’ll find someone else.” Vi’s heart is pounding.
“What?” Sevika sounds a bit startled, actually, as Caitlyn commands her focus. It’s like ice over heat, two opposing forces that clash and connect. Sevika, evidently, thinks her show of smoke is the only way to solve things.
“I said,” she goes on to echo, “that I will find someone else. You cannot be the only official representative that Zaun sees fit to elect. Thank you,” and she shows her teeth, too, as she loops one arm through Vi’s, tucking them together, “for your time.”
Appalled eyes bulge out. Sizing two of them up, she figures, is more to take on. “Zaun doesn’t elect officials,” Sevika guffaws. Vi thinks she recognizes something in the pitch of it, the way it lifts high and stretches thin, and when it stops, when the dust dies down, there’s an opportunity waiting.
“It could,” Vi extends the branch first. With the tendril in her hand, she is a kid poking at a viper, prodding it, waiting to see what it will do. She feels Caitlyn shuffle at her side, but she doesn’t protest, doesn’t tell her she’s taking this too far. It’s not sympathy, what she feels as she looks at Sevika. It’s something else unspeakable.
Caitlyn’s chin clenches a bit tighter when she nods. Sevika, with lips pursed, sighs long and loud. She reaches for her pipe again; has to relight it.
“Real fucking sharp mouth on you, you know that?” An accusatory swing of the pipe comes to point at Caitlyn and Vi swallows down so many things – pride, fondness, warmth that she can’t work her way around – as she sees that it’s the mouthpiece facing her. “I know that,” Sevika grunts. “Look at what you did to my hand.”
Caitlyn being any closer to Sevika than is absolutely necessary seems dangerous, but just as Caitlyn hadn’t held her back, Vi doesn’t restrain her from taking a step and surveying what’s presented to her.
“Not very nice,” Sevika says, bitter as acid. “I only have one.”
“One is enough,” Caitlyn declares, the sheen of her eye flicking up from Sevika’s hand to her face. She smiles – truly smiles, this time, however sharp her edges – and then she tilts the pipe up. The challenge is clear as day.
Vi decides, then and there, that she needs to devise a method to focus on her discipline. Caitlyn’s mouth closing around the tip of the pipe is…Vi’s not the jealous type, she tells herself, but she kind of wants to twist Sevika’s wrist all over again – wants to snap it clean off – because she shouldn’t get to see her like that. Not from that angle. Not at all.
Soon as smoke touches her lungs, Caitlyn hacks up a genuinely horrendous cough. The urge leaves her, melts away, all so that she can soothe a hand down her back and return them both to face Sevika, whose eyes shine with mirth now rather than malice.
“Guess I’ll be seeing you,” Sevika affirms, a deal struck. No handshake exchanged, no papers signed, but there’s camaraderie that swirls in puffs of smoke still spilling out of Caitlyn’s lungs. The promise of continuation.
“I’m not a Councilor,” Caitlyn tells her, more true than ever before.
“No,” Sevika chuckles, “but I am.”
The scent of tobacco hovers even after she goes. Vi lights candles, swats at the air, warily eyes even the jacket, wondering if it will have to be treated.
Caitlyn, from the couch, observes her routine. “I’m sorry,” she mutters, “that it was her.”
Vi shrugs. “It’s who Zaun wanted.” Her nose scrunches. “Or at least…at least she gives a shit. That’s something.” It’s okay to start small, she reminds herself. Sevika might not be that – a tidal wave, a downpour, a snake that strikes at every opening – but these moments of miniscule acceptance can fill the gaps that she has to pave over in the name of advancement. She sighs and carries herself, worn, to laze beside Caitlyn, bodies melding together. Curious, she asks, “What was all that about, by the way, with her hand?”
There is a frail sort of tension that takes up residence in Caitlyn’s form before she admits, “I bit her. There was a scar.”
Despite the quiet way she confesses it, Vi clasps a hand over her mouth. Snorting, she can’t stop the chuckles that leak out from behind the barrier she has crafted. “Is that, like, a thing for you?”
“Vi, please.” Caitlyn sounds sincerely mortified. “She was trying to dislocate my jaw. I was working with what resources I had available.”
“And now,” Vi wheezes – she should have snapped that wrist, she knew it – “she’s got a seat on the Council.”
Caitlyn leans over so that she’s near, their noses brushing at the ends. “That she does.”
Vi drinks in a touch that tickles, their breaths which mingle in dual exhales. She indulges in every last sensation. “Mmm,” she hums, letting the vibration carry, “they’ve probably seen worse.”
Caitlyn’s lips crinkle with a smile. She exhales, “Piltover,” scarcely a sound, “city of progress.”
Progress be damned, for the whole world slows to a perfect pace when Caitlyn’s cheek slots into position against her palm. It is steady, it is absolute, and it is all that she needs.