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It’s a well-known fact that Caitlyn Kiramman is far too good for Labrys Academy. A little over three years ago, when she informed her parents of her intentions to enroll there, her mother fainted. Actually fainted. She would be the first Kiramman in generations not to attend Durandal, and the first ever to attend Labrys. The socialites in her mother’s circle whispered it with the same scandalous tones they used that time a former friend of theirs wore something “off the rack” to a formal dinner.
Caitlyn didn’t care. She’d lived her life with a silver spoon in her mouth and dammit she wanted to prove she could do this. She could not only graduate with top grades, but do it from Labrys, and all the while dragging her fellow students up to her level kicking and screaming if she had to. It hasn’t been easy, nothing worth doing ever is, but she’s been doing a stellar job of it for two years now.
Which is why when she receives a B+ in a hand-to-hand combat evaluation, she feels herself clenching the desk so hard the wood actually groans and splinters under her fingers. She sees herself picking up the desk and chucking it out the window. But no, she was Caitlyn Kiramman, here to whip this place into shape, and she would lead by example. So she takes a long deep breath, waits for everyone else to filter out of the room and goes to speak with Coach Sett about how she could improve her grade.
“Oh uh, I dunno. Get a tutor or somethin’? Or just get bigger,” he grins and flexes a bicep larger than Caitlyn’s head.
Breathe in, Caitlyn, slowly through the nose, hold it, and out through the mouth.
“Do you have any recommendations for tutors, Coach?”
He doesn’t answer her, he’s distracted himself with the sight of his own bulging muscles. Caitlyn clears her throat.
“Oh! Hmm… whatserface, Pinky? Fat hands,” he motions toward her with his own rather large hands, “she’s a third year I think? She’s my best student, always gets S+”
“S+, sir?”
“S for Sett-approved!” He gives her two thumbs up. Caitlyn wonders how he has enough brain cells left to breathe.
“So your best student then?”
“Yup!”
“You don’t know her name?”
“Nope! Why?”
“Just making sure, Coach, thank you for your time.”
She wonders, not for the first time, if Principal Swain hires these people on purpose, or if he owes them money or something.
~
It doesn’t take much asking around to unveil the identity of her prospective tutor. Violet Vanderson. But oh my gods Caitlyn do not call her that to her face she’ll probably kick your immaculate ass. Unsolicited comments about her posterior aside, she took note of the information and resolved to keep an eye out for her in the cafeteria.
She needn’t have worried.
“What do you MEAN you took the last cupcake!?”
“Uh-uh-buh-buh-buh-bwah,” comes the reply from the unfortunate first-year, who is trembling so hard his teeth are audibly clacking together and one could probably use him as a very large maraca.
The pink-haired girl grabs him by the scruff of his shirt and he squeals. She pulls her free arm back threateningly, and Caitlyn moves before she even realises, striding from the door of the cafeteria to Violet’s side and places a farm hand on her tensed arm.
“That’s quite enough of that, let him go,” Caitlyn injects so much ice into her tone the temperature drops several degrees. The third year turns her head slightly so she can glare at Caitlyn from the corner of her eye.
“I need my dessert,” she growls.
“You can have mine, no-” she doesn’t even get to threaten her again the shift is so sudden. One moment the kid is dangling a foot in the air, the next he’s landed on his ass with an undignified “oof”. Violet’s face has gone from menacing to...well what Caitlyn can only describe as an impressive impersonation of a golden retriever.
“Alright let’s go!”
Caitlyn is, well, a little at a loss for words. But she supposes she can see why Coach Sett likes her so much. The pair of them seem to have a single-digit number of brain cells between them. As they approach Caitlyn’s usual table, the regular crowd of gawkers dissipate rather quickly on catching sight of the third year with her. Violet doesn’t care, maybe she doesn’t even notice, she just plonks herself down on Caitlyn’s usual seat like she’s been sitting there for years and looks up at her expectantly. Her expression sinks slightly when she sees that her bribe is not a cupcake, but a flan, though she immediately protests when Caitlyn implies she’ll just put it away.
“So, you’re that bossy second year with the ass right?” Violet says through a mouthful of flan. Some of it drips from the corner of her mouth and plops onto the table. “Katie?”
Caitlyn raises a brow.
“It’s Caitlyn, actually. Caitlyn Kiramman. And I would appreciate it if you and the rest of the student body would stop...talking about…”
“Your butt?”
Her jaw clenches.
“Yes, thank you.”
Violet swallows before speaking again, thankfully.
“Hey if you’ve got it, flaunt it, Cupcake.”
“Pardon?”
Violet shrugs a shoulder before digging in to more flan.
“Seemed fitting. Better than uh, flanhead?”
“You could just call me Caitlyn.”
“Boring.”
Caitlyn rolls her eyes, considers giving up on this whole stupid endeavour. Honestly, what was she thinking asking Sett for advice, of all people? The man incapable of stringing more than five words together in a sentence unless it was about his muscles? A B+ isn’t awful, really, it’s practically an A, it just means she has room to improve.
Who is she kidding?
“Listen, Miss Vanderson-”
Violet’s nose scrunches up in disgust.
“Call me ‘Vi’.”
“Alright then, Vi. I hear from Coach Sett you are somewhat of a prodigy when it comes to unarmed combat. It appears, much to my chagrin, that I have a weakness in this particular field. I was hoping perhaps we could come to an agreement whereby you agree to tutor me in the field.”
“Uh...you want me to teach you how to fight better?”
“That would be the essence of it.”
“What’s in it for me?”
The nerve of this blockhead.
“What would you like?” Caitlyn spits through clenched teeth.
“Hmm, get me out of detention twice a week so we can do your training.”
“Is... is that all? What about days you don’t have detention, surely-”
“I have detention most days. Look, here comes Professor Shen to gimme some now for yelling at that freshie.”
“I...okay?”
“Sweet! See? Like a cupcake. Detention’s boring. I’ll meet you after classes at the gyms alright?” Vi winks and gives her a thumbs up as she goes to meet Shen halfway to receive her earful.
~
That afternoon, she’s pleasantly surprised to not only see Vi at the gyms as promised, but already set up and ready to go. She’s even booked them the use of one of the smaller studio rooms with the springy floors and the wall of mirrors that usually gets used by dance clubs, or students practicing martial arts.
Vi’s in a sports bra and baggy sweatpants and in the middle of doing stretches on the floor, facing the mirror. The door to the room is opposite the mirror so Vi spots her reflection when Caitlyn enters. She doesn’t come out of her position when Caitlyn comes in, just winks at her via the mirror.
“Heya Cupcake. Get yourself warmed up for me, yeah? Don’t wanna pull anything in our first session.”
Caitlyn is...well to be honest she’s a little distracted. Vi has tattoos, a lot of them. There’s one particular intricate pattern of interlocking gears and pistons that covers most of her back, up and over the bump of her spine and disappearing under the fabric of her bra. Whatever pose Vi is stretching in make her shoulder blades pop and-
Well look, Caitlyn came to terms with her sexuality a long time ago and she was perfectly content with it. Of course she’s bisexual, she has good taste, there are sexy people in all genders. But she really thought she was over the gay-panic-gawking-at-girls phase of it all.
Vi catches her staring in the mirror and snorts.
“See something you like, Cupcake?”
Caitlyn scrambles for a witty and intelligent retort.
“Uh..” is what she settles on.
“I don’t mind honestly, but if that’s what you’re really after, I am gonna have to charge extra.”
Caitlyn finally comes back to herself, scowls and goes to the other end of the room, as far from Vi as possible, and starts stretching.
Vi spends a few more minutes stretching, before getting up and making her way over to Caitlyn, looking at her. Not in any sort of lascivious way, but more like she’s sizing her up, the way Caitlyn imagines she herself looks at her rifle, or her opponents in combat. Caitlyn’s on the floor, legs spread and leaning forward, chest almost touching the ground.
“You’re flexible, that’s good. And pretty tall, for a girl. We can work with that,” Vi says, more musing to herself than Caitlyn. Caitlyn is surprised honestly, at the observations. Not that she didn’t know it about herself, but she’s honestly surprised that this is the same knucklehead from the cafeteria earlier, that she’s even capable of being this astute.
“Can you, uh lie back, straight, and tuck your hands just slightly under your butt?” Vi asks, no hint of flirtation, and Caitlyn finds herself honestly appreciating this version of Vi. She does as Vi asked, and Vi instructs her to keep her legs straight together and lift them about and half a foot off the ground, and lower them again without touching the floor, to do this ten times in a row. Caitlyn does as she’s told. The first few are easy enough but by the time she gets to the tenth rep, her abdominal muscles are starting to burn, and she drops her legs and all then tension in her body to flop on the floor when she’s done.
Vi runs through a few more exercises like that with her, and it’s not till they near the end that Caitlyn realises each of her requests has focused on the weaker muscles of her body. Her legs, abdomen, and lower back get put through the ringer, but Vi doesn’t get her to do a single body-weight exercise involving her arms or upper back, just some light stretching.
After a quick water break, Vi gets her to stand opposite her on a large crash mat.
“Alright Cupcake, can you tell me the first rule of not losin’ a fight?”
“Uh, strike first, fast and hard.”
“That sounds like three rules to me but that’s okay, come at me.”
“Pardon?”
“Show me that. Say I’m coming at you, you’ve got no weapon with you, no backup. How would you deal with me? Show me.”
Caitlyn rushes at her, and Vi smirks.
“Bzzt, wrong!” She says, grabs Caitlyn’s arm and uses it to redirect her momentum, flinging her to the mat. Vi follows her down, straddling her hips and using her thighs to pin Caitlyn’s legs together, and one hand to pin her wrists above her head. She pokes Caitlyn’s stomach, just below her ribcage. The sudden jab makes her gasp and her stomach muscles flinch. “There goes your liver Cupcake, you’ll wanna get that treated quickly if you don’t wanna bleed out.” She teases her, then pokes, not as hard as before, Cialtyn’s left armpit, and a soft spot on her neck, “and there goes two major arteries. Triple dead.” She concludes, getting back up and offering Caitlyn a hand up. Her face is flushed, with embarrassment, of course, not anything else. Absolutely not.
“Rule number one of not losin’ a fight. Don’t get into fights.”
“So it was a trick question?”
Vi frowns, tilts her head.
“You’re smart, Cupcake. I’m bigger than you, and you know for a fact I’m a better fighter. Maybe I got bigger arms but you,” she playfully pokes above Caitlyn’s eyebrow and the second year instinctively swats it away, her petulance only seeming to amuse Vi, “you got a bigger brain, use it.”
~
They continue that way, meeting twice a week for training. Vi is a surprisingly observant and patient teacher, it turns out. She never berates Caitlyn for not being good enough, never makes fun of her, only ever venturing into light-hearted teasing. Caitlyn finds herself loosening up, not just physically, but socially too. She doesn’t need to succeed every time with Vi, she even tells her as such.
“Rule number uh, what are we on? Four? Doesn’t matter if you get knocked down, so long as you get back up.”
She finds herself allowed to fail and try again. Vi isn’t like any of her teachers she’s ever had, looking at her with mild disappointment if she gets anything under 90%. Not like her mother who thinks the worst thing in the world is her daughter being anything less than perfect all the time. Not like her peers who look at her like she’s some sort of idol to be worshipped, but never touched. Vi knocks her on her ass at least once every five minutes, grins at her, tells her what went wrong, and tells her to try again.
And it’s working, she feels it. She gets to a point where she looks instinctively not at the fist that’s already in her face, but the shoulder that’s tensing to throw that fist. She’s quicker, lighter on her feet. Before they started, any blow to the gut would have had her winded, but she’s stronger now, it still hurts, but she’s able to recover.
Vi’s a good teacher, but she’s even better company. When they’re packing up, she prattles on about her kid sister and what she makes, or this new ramen place that opened in the city, or the cool fight in the latest chapter of Star Guardians. It’s refreshing, the mundanity, and Caitlyn finds herself reciprocating. Student council drama, this one really clingy freshie that’s very sweet and earnest but please go away I’m busy, new tea blends she wants to try. When Vi mentions she’s never actually had tea, Caitlyn gasps and invites her back to her dorm, and so they add that to their routine, going to one or the other’s room to get something to eat and drink and do homework.
Caitlyn wonders how Vi can be so level-headed and smart when it comes to fighting, but academics seem beyond her. She’s intelligent, Caitlyn knows it, she’s seen it, but it seems no one ever had enough faith in Vi to see it themselves, not even Vi herself. She thinks through it, looks at how Vi teaches her to fight. She always gives her examples, hypotheticals of different situations, and then they run through them, figuring it out as they go. So she tries that, comes up with some practical applications for things like mathematics. It turns out Vi is actually very good at geometry, once she’s able to translate the theories and concepts into actual shapes in her mind. She remembers how Vi likes reading comics, so she encourages her to read more of them, even try some light novels, and suddenly Vi’s grades in English lit start to improve too.
The first time Vi gets a B, she’s absolutely ecstatic. She runs all the way across campus to where she knows Caitlyn will be, and sweeps her off her feet in a bear hug when Caitlyn steps outside her classroom. The students around them gasp, thinking Vi’s about to violently squeeze the life out of their beloved president, but Caitlyn just laughs and wraps her own arms around Vi’s neck. It’s only a B, but it’s miles away from where Vi used to be, and Caitlyn wants to mark the occasion. She leans back, bracing her hands against Vi’s shoulders, still elevated off the ground.
“We should go to that ramen place you like tonight. My treat,” Caitlyn says, and without thinking, without even realising she’s doing it because it feels like the most natural thing in the world, she leans forward and kisses Vi’s sweaty forehead. She hears gasps from the gathered crowd, and Vi’s grip loosens for a second and she can feel herself slipping, but Vi recovers quickly, beams at her and enthusiastically agrees. She goes to get herself cleaned up, leaving Caitlyn alone with her classmate who she can hear mumbling and whispering behind her.
Caitlyn, quite frankly, finds herself not giving a shit.
~
Yeah, so, it’s time to face the facts, she’s got a big ‘ol lesbian crush on Vi. Why wouldn’t she? Vi’s gorgeous, boisterous, outgoing, kind, and patient with her. And she cares, she cares so much about everything. She cares about her sister, wants to give her the world. She told Caitlyn that’s the whole reason she enrolled, she’d get steady work and health insurance as a Hero. Enough money to live in a nice apartment and send Powder to whatever school she wanted. For fuck’s sake, Caitlyn just enrolled in Labrys to prove she was better than everyone. She treats Caitlyn normally, like a friend. Not like a prodigy, or a tool for social gain, just an honest-to-goodness friend.
Therein lies the rub.
Vi is just about the only real friend that Caitlyn has, and she doesn’t want to ruin what they have over a dumb crush of all things. So she does with her feelings for Vi what she does with all of her emotions, puts them in a box, locks the box, throws away the key, flings the box into the sun.
And Vi, very much the yin to her yang, jumps into the sun after the box and brings it back.
“Do you wanna uh, go to the Heartseeker dance with me?” Vi asks her, panting and looking up at Caitlyn who has managed to pin her to the crash mat one day.
“Bwah?” The gears of Caitlyn’s brain grind to a screeching halt.
“It’s no problem if you don’t!” Vi says quickly, eyes darting away, “I just uh, I like you, a lot, Cupcake. Figured I’d never know unless I tried.” Vi’s face was already flushed from exhaustion, but now her face has turned the same shade of pink as her hair.
Caitlyn’s brain-gears are slowly starting to turn again.
“Heart...seeker?”
“I just, I remember you checking me out that first day and I know you’ve done it other time to so i’m pretty sure you like girls and thought maybe you’d like me and it’s like I said it’s totally fine if you don’t I just hope I haven’t made things awkward and-”
There’s a spark and suddenly Caitlyn’s brain is firing on all cylinders again.
“Oh Vi, shut up you beautiful idiot,” Caitlyn breathes, cups a hand under Vi’s chin and turns her head back to her so they’re looking into each other’s eyes. This time she’s fully aware of herself as she leans down and capture’s Vi’s lips in a kiss. It all tastes of salty sweat, and both their mouths are dry from their training, but Vi’s lips are soft and pliable and welcoming. It’s all that Caitlyn would never admit to having imagined. She feels Vi try to move her leg, so she lifts her own slightly to let her free it. Vi rises her leg up over Caitlyn’s hip, places a hand on her side and…
Flips them over.
“Rule number 69,” she says, pulling away from a stunned Caitlyn and wiggling her eyebrows suggestively, “never let your opponent distract you with a makeout session.”
“Hope you didn’t try to use that one on Coach Sett.”
“...”
“Vi.”
“......”
“Vi!”
“I’m fucking with you, Cupcake,” she says, grinning, and leans down to kiss Caitlyn’s cheek, “so, is that a yes?”
Caitlyn pretends to ponder it.
“I want to wear the tux.”
“Baby, you’d look good in assless chaps and a garbage bag.”