Chapter Text
It was already dark outside by the time Caitlyn left her office – 8:00 on the dot. The majority of the station was a ghost town, having been deserted hours ago. Yet one particular enforcer waited by the door.
“You would think that arriving earlier would give you an excuse to leave earlier,” Vi teased, a smirk tugging at the corner of her scarred lip.
“It’s a demanding job,” Caitlyn replied, her voice terse. “And you know that I can’t stand odd numbers.”
“I know,” Vi said and reached out her wrapped hand to squeeze Caitlyn’s right shoulder.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Silence settled over them as Caitlyn locked up the station and quadruple-checked the alarms. It followed them down the empty streets toward home. Most shops and restaurants had already closed up, the only light from the occasional lamppost or stray corner store.
Vi spoke up. “You never finished what you were saying earlier.”
Caitlyn’s thumb twitched at her side four times. The compulsion, which had started as a way to ward off more bad grades back in her school days, had become second nature to her. It was as regular as breathing, as drinking water when her body needed it or sleeping when she was too exhausted to do anything else. In a way, these quirks were as compulsory for her to function as performance reviews were to her job. Without the release, she would be a prisoner inside her own head, forever wrestling with the ambiguity of the future.
“Erm, yes,” she replied, breaking herself out of her thoughts. Vi noticed the delay in Caitlyn’s response, but said nothing out of respect for her girlfriend. She understood that calling attention to it would only embarrass Caitlyn rather than be of real help. “Jayce conducting my performance review threw me off more than usual, I’ll admit.”
A snide joke at Pretty Boy’s expense arose in the enforcer’s head but she bit it back. Now was not the time. “How so?”
“As absurd as it seems, I believed his conducting my review put more pressure on me to remain professional and perfect,” Caitlyn said. Her thumb continued to fidget. “I feared that others would believe our friendship determined the outcome of it, that it would appear as if I was getting off on favors. Like my competency as sheriff was based on my connections rather than true merit.”
Vi smiled and took Caitlyn’s twitchy hand in her own. She squeezed it four times. “The Council knows about your friendship. If they really thought it would affect the review, they would have just chosen another Councilor to run it. Probably that prick, Salo.”
Caitlyn chuckled but kept her gaze downward. “I think I knew that, deep down. But my mind couldn’t stop returning to that insecurity. It played a major role in why my compulsions were so… much today. I'm well aware that it's illogical but I felt that if I didn’t do them, the Council would see me how I see myself, an imposter that was simply born into the right family.”
“Don’t say that.” Vi’s voice came out unexpectedly harsh. Her eyes narrowed in frustration at Caitlyn's negative self-talk, but the surprise on her girlfriend's face put out the fire instantly.
“Sorry,” Vi regained control of herself and softened her voice. This was absolutely not what Cait needed right now. “I just hate it when you talk about yourself like that. It’s just not true.”
Caitlyn smiled in forgiveness but didn’t reply. The silence overtook them once more, the sheriff immersed in her own thoughts and the enforcer allowing her to do so in peace.
Finally Cait spoke again. “A day like this would have felt like nothing during childhood. But while I know that I've made progress, both in my mental health and my career, there’s always the fear that I’ll go back to how I was.”
“Not possible,” Vi said. “You can actually get down to the Undercity without me fearing for your life now.”
The dark-haired woman scoffed and rolled her eyes and Vi laughed along with her, not-so-secretly proud of her joke.
Eventually, the laughter from the pink-haired woman faded.
“Seriously, though,” Vi's voice was earnest. “Those years are way behind you. In the three years we've known each other, I've already seen you get more in control of the OCD. Of course it will flare up when you’re under a lot of pressure. At least you didn’t break the punching bag in the local gym, right?”
Caitlyn laughed openly as she remembered the call she had received a week ago from Piltover’s gym staff. Vi had snapped the heavyweight bag clear off the wall following an emotionally taxing day of work, an outburst that earned her a week’s ban.
“I suppose you’re right.”
She took a deep breath as the laughter left her face. “Whenever I had a bad OCD day in youth, Mother would tell me that I was simply ‘sick’. She’d catch me staring at the clock on the wall, waiting for it to turn even, or note my inability to look her in the eyes or fully reply when I was counting, and say that I was ‘sick’. I knew she meant well; it was her own way of reassuring me that I couldn’t help my disorder, that it wasn’t me. However, this response only made me feel worse, like an invalid, even more of a misfit. I know that she had good intentions, but how she chose to express support did more harm than good.”
They had rounded the final corner of the sidewalk and now stood in front of the high-end apartment complex they inhabited. Vi said nothing, simply reaching over to embrace her girlfriend. She thought back to how Powder had been treated growing up, the whispered voices and sideways glances she’d earned just for being different. The truth was Vi could never fully understand what life with OCD was like, but at least she had insight into how unintentionally cruel people could be.
Words had never been Vi’s thing, but in this case she didn’t think any words could do the situation justice. Nevertheless, she took a stab at it.
“You know that no matter what you do or what happens, I’m not leaving,” she said, squeezing Caitlyn harder. “Good days and bad days, I’ll be there.”
Caitlyn hugged her back. Despite her best effort, she felt a tear spill onto Vi’s favorite red jacket. “Thanks, Vi.”
She broke away from the hug and cleared her throat – just twice – looking back to the ground. “Today’s flare-up reminded me how present OCD still is in my life. Even on good days I still have certain… idiosyncrasies… I would like to be able to refrain from."
Vi squeezed Caitlyn’s arm again, making sure to maintain sets of four squeezes. Her girlfriend leaned into her touch and smiled.
The sheriff cleared her throat another two times. “I think I’m going to return to therapy. For maintenance more than anything, but also to find ways to handle these flare-ups so they don’t trip me up as much as today.”
Vi’s face cracked into a toothy smile and Caitlyn startled slightly at the sudden change in demeanor. “What is it?”
“You’re just… amazing,” the enforcer replied. “No matter how hard life knocks you on your ass, you always get up again. Whenever you put your mind to something, it gets done.”
Caitlyn beamed back at her, the realization of Vi's words finally starting to set in, if only a little.
They stood at the front of their door, the pale moonlight shining down on them. And Vi leaned forward to kiss Caitlyn.
Four times, just for luck.