Work Text:
The first drawing showed up on a Wednesday morning.
Caitlyn's mail had a habit of arriving disastrously late during weekdays so she generally just ignored its arrival entirely until the morning. On this particular Wednesday morning, she shuffled out to her mailbox, still in her panda patterned pajamas and dressing robe and half asleep despite the efforts of her fresh mug of coffee. She pulled a short stack of mail from the box and turned back towards the house, her slippers scuffing along the driveway as she flicked lazily through.
Bill for Jayce, ad for Caitlyn, bill for Caitlyn, something from the car dealership for Mel, a—
Caitlyn stopped dead in the middle of the driveway and frowned at the loose, folded piece of paper. It was nice, thick sketch paper, the jagged edge evidence that it had been torn from a sketchbook. Hesitant and expecting the worst, she tucked the actual mail into her dressing robe pocket and slowly unfolded the paper.
She nearly dropped her mug.
Sketched out in beautifully rendered detail was her. The outfit was from a few days ago and she looked to be in class, a notebook in front of her and a pencil in her hand. There were folds in her shirt and flyaways from her hair but in the drawing she was beautiful. Her face flushed red. On instinct she knew to be fruitless, she lifted her head and scanned the street along the house. No onlookers? No one hiding in cars watching?
Satisfied no one was watching or waiting, she hustled inside the house, slamming the door behind her. The mail was dropped haphazardly on the end table by the door and she raced up the stairs, paper clutched to her chest into her own room where she proceeded to slam that door as well, pressing her back stiffly to the wood.
Only then did she reverently unfold the paper again to take in every tiny detail. The swift pencil lines, the careful hatching and shading in just the right places, how life-like it was without being a photograph. She might have thought it was an edited picture of not for the fact that she was so...pretty.
This version of her had long eyelashes, and high cheekbones, attributes that belonged on the cover of some fashion magazine. Caitlyn looked down at herself. Her robe had been an antique hand-me down from her grandmother, all ancient lace and silk. One of the pockets had a hole that constantly allowed for the escape of pens. Dark, thick rimmed glasses hung from the collar of her sleep shirt and her slippers had tiny plush rabbit heads stitched to the toes. Factoring in the bird's nest of hair piled on top of her head, Caitlyn did not consider herself pretty. At all.
“Cait?” Mel's voice floated up the stairs, unsure, “are you all right?”
Shit. It was prime Morning Coffee Time for Mel and Caitlyn had sprinted past her like a madwoman.
“Yes! All perfectly well!” she shouted through the door. Whatever this drawing was, she did not want to endure Mel's teasing as she figured it out.
“If you're sure. I'm headed out for class but you can always text me if you need to talk!”
Another moment and the front door rattled the pre-colonial house as it closed. Caitlyn sighed in relief and slid down to the floor, the drawing pulling her focus back. It was wild, she thought, that someone would take the time out of their day to not only draw her, but deliver it. Only people with capital F, Feelings did that and there was no way anyone had feelings for her. How could they? All she did was go to class—
Class!
Caitlyn scrambled to her feet and rushed through her morning routine. Her morning class was the same time as Mel's but the drawing had distracted her in a big way. She slowed down just long enough to place the drawing carefully on her bedside table before she sprinted out of the house.
The professor, an older woman with a full head of shock white hair and the sternest glare Caitlyn had ever seen outside of her own family home, tapped her foot impatiently as she stared down her wristwatch, her attention clearly on the door as Caitlyn slipped through it at 8:59 and some seconds. It was the latest she'd ever been for a class and she offered the teacher an apologetic smile in the hopes that it would ease her near tardiness. It didn't. The professor simply glared deeper.
Right, shake it off, unimportant.
She stepped toward her usual seat and froze when she realized it was taken. In fact, all of the seats were taken. The only vacant spots were the two on either side of a person with pink hair. Slumped in their seat as they were, it was difficult to make out any details besides the lazy way their pencil traveled across the notebook in front of them. Mercifully, one of the seats was at the end of the row. She could dart out at the end of class and never interact with the person again. Easy.
A slam of the door and Caitlyn rushed up to the empty seat. The professor wasted no time and dove into her lesson before Caitlyn even had her ass in the chair. She tried to make little noise or movement as she pulled out her laptop and notebook, but she still made enough rusting noise to earn looks from a boy in the row in front of her. Whatever, he could choke.
The girl with pink hair - and it was obvious now that they were a girl with those lovely eyes - watched her with failed subtlety. Caitlyn caught averted gazes and quick looks every few minutes, the nervous tapping of the girl’s pencil acting as an emotional telegraph. It began to make Caitlyn self conscious. Did she have something in her teeth? Was something exposed that shouldn't be? Had something happened during her flight out the door?
As she fought to control the warmth crawling over her face, the professor droned on about business law. Eventually, Caitlyn managed to refocus on the lesson and block out her curious neighbor. Her notes were thorough and detailed and she made sure to cross reference the lecture with the reading from the night before.
“And now for the project—” the room exploded into agonized groans as the professor wrestled for control. “Yes, yes, I'm well aware of the sentiment, however you will have to work with people you don't like in real life. You may as well start practicing now. The rubric is on my desk and online. I strongly recommend having a hard copy as you begin your work. Your partners are the people sitting next to you—”
Caitlyn blanked out anything more. Project? Partner? Next to her? The pink-haired girl looked just as bewildered as Caitlyn felt and she straightened in her seat when Caitlyn turned towards her.
“Hi, I'm Caitlyn.” She held out her hand for a handshake. It was the polite thing to do even if her whole body was crawling with discomfort. The pretty eyes looked from Caitlyn's face to her hand and back again. Hesitantly, she took it.
“Vi,” she said, her hands and voice rough in equal measures. Caitlyn found immediately that she liked both more than she had any right to. She cleared her throat, hoping to dislodge the sudden lump that had formed.
“Pleasure. When are you available?”
Vi rattled off her schedule and Caitlyn opened up her own calendar to mark in the days. She tapped the point of her pen to a Monday afternoon.
“Does this work for you?” she asked.
Vi leaned over the long desk and nodded.
“Yeah that's fine. The library?”
Caitlyn returned the nod and scribbled 'meeting with Vi (business law)' under the scheduled class. The red pen under the black ink of her classes was always a nice contrast.
“Do you mind if I ask,” she began, aware that she wouldn’t be asking if Vi didn't have eyes like those, “are you a business major? I don't think I've seen you before.”
Vi shook her head and began closing the notebook splayed out in front of her. Caitlyn hadn’t bothered to sneak a peek until that moment, but the pages were covered in absent minded doodles moreso than actual notes. Ah. A slacker.
“Art major. This is just a Gen Ed I have to take. My little sister is the smart one,” she smiled disparagingly and Caitlyn decided she needed to leave or those laugh lines across Vi’s face were going to encourage. Perfect timing too, if the mass of students heading towards the door was anything to go by.
“Right, good to know. I’ll see you on Monday!” She offered a polite smile and shoveled her things into her bag, not bothering to close it or even check that everything was secure before darting to the door with the crowd.
Her heart beat erratically through her next class and through the journey home. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what had gotten her so wound up. Was it the drawing? Had the drawing turned her head so topsy-turvy that it was all she could think about? No, that would be absurd. She’d been mostly fine during her first class. Had she missed a clue during class?
Pointless. She was going to think herself into a circle that would only send her spiraling even more.
She decided to put the feeling out of her mind. There was homework to do and a social life to maintain. If there was a secret artist out there somewhere, then it was just A Nice Thing That Happened Once. Her night went as expected, full of Jayce and Mel complaining about their own classes as they all sat in the living room and worked through school assignments. Dinner was eaten and a movie was watched and Caitlyn only thought about the drawing on her nightstand or the nice eyes of the art major every few minutes. Not constantly.
The next morning went normally. She had breakfast with Jayce (they shared a class for the first time in their four years as friends) and she scowled her way through the morning crossword. He disappeared up the stairs to start getting dressed and she shuffled out in her usual robe, glasses, and slipper combo to get the mail.
Bill for Mell, bill for Jayce, letter for Caitlyn from her mother, a folded sheet of sketchbook paper with Caitlyn’s name on it, and an ad for Mel.
Hang on.
Caitlyn flipped aggressively back to the folded paper and unfolded it. Breath-taking was never a word she would have used to describe herself, but Caitlyn stared down at the new drawing in quiet awe. Her hair looked silky smooth and her skin flawless. The shirt she wore was perfectly immaculate and even though she was mid-word, the gap in her teeth looked comely and not the blight she had grown up thinking it was. Just like the last one, the rendering was spot on with the shading and detail. Her outfit was even recognizable as the one she’d worn yesterday.
The realization gave her pause. The artist had seen her yesterday. The artist had seen her yesterday. Caitlyn snapped to attention and raced inside. She had learned her lesson the day before watching the professor scowl at her with disapproval, so she folded both drawings in between the pages of her notebook and gave herself the proper amount of time to get ready.
Of course, once she was in the lecture hall, all bets were off. She carefully held the cover of her notebook to block Jayce’s view as casually as she could manage as she quietly compared the two drawings for more information. As far as she could tell, the papers came from the same notebook. Their thickness, color, texture, and dimensions were comparable, as was the type of pencil used.
The only difference from the first one was her name scrawled across the blank side in a near-indecipherable chicken scratch. Why not put her name on the first one? Did they not want her to recognize handwriting? No. Caitlyn didn’t know a single person who could draw. Not a single person except—
She went rigid in her chair. Art major Vi.
Before yesterday, Vi hadn’t known her name. It would have been impossible to address a note in that situation. How could she know where Caitlyn lived?
“Hey,” Jayce’s elbow dug into her side as he whispered, “can you stop tapping?”
Caitlyn blinked at him and dropped her pen like it’d burned her. She hadn’t even noticed what she was doing.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, and turned back to the drawings.
If it was Vi, what would her course of action be? What did it mean? What did Caitlyn want it to mean?
The professor in the front loudly dropped his chalkboard eraser and half the class jumped from their daze, including Caitlyn. She shook her head and frowned. It was Thursday. She would have another class with Vi Friday morning and then they would meet for their project Monday afternoon. Plenty of time to try and answer any or all of those questions.
The next morning, Caitlyn woke up ready to choose violence.
The power had disconnected in the night, and her delicately balanced routine was shot to hell from the start. Her oatmeal breakfast was lukewarm and her room was dark as she pulled on clothes. But Caitlyn was Caitlyn, and a dysfunctional morning wouldn’t prevent her from exacting the plan she thought of as she fell asleep the night before.
There was a scarf her mother had given her as a gift only months before and Caitlyn found it tacky and impractical and only ever remembered it existed when her mother was around. It was the perfect thing for her plan. The scarf was covered in large chunky shapes that didn’t mean anything to anyone and the neon green and purples clashed horribly.
Colors were less important in black and white, she recognized, but it would serve well as a litmus test. She slid into the seat she’d occupied two days before (and nearly ten minutes earlier than last time), scarf on. On her journey to her next class, she would quickly untie it and stuff it into a pocket. The drawing she would find in the mailbox would either confirm or rule out Vi as a potential suspect.
She watched the classroom door with bated breath that she only released when Vi sauntered through. The art major turned on instinct to march up the aisle but froze mid-step, her foot hovering in the air, when her eyes landed on Caitlyn out of her usual seat. Her big beautiful eyes widened and it almost looked like she was about to break down in a panic when Caitlyn offered her a shy smile and wave.
“Good morning,” she managed as she edged behind Caitlyn to take her own seat.
“Morning. I hope you don’t mind that I sit here. I think I’d rather be out of Professor Chensia Finitom’s line of vision for the next week or two after my near-tardiness last class.”
Vi huffed a laugh and ducked her head.
“Yeah I wouldn't peg her as the forgiving type. I don’t mind, everyone usually tries to stay away from me like I’m scary. So,” she shrugged, “this is nice.” Her eyes sparkled like a character from one of those anime shows Jayce liked and Caitlyn forced herself to look away.
“Thank you.”
Most of class passed in an awkward blur. She kept wanting to turn and take in the shape of Vi’s mouth and nose and the strong line of her brow, but she was paying for the class and she needed the credit. She did manage to get a good look at Vi’s notebook. Among the cartoony doodles and odd shapes, her mishmash of class notes looked identical, if a little messier, to the the scrawl of Caitlyn’s name on the back of the second drawing. Her theory was strengthened.
What if it was Vi? What would she do about it? The drawings made her feel good about herself for the first time since Dylan. Her ex was vindictive, nitpicky, and spiteful when she had no reason to be and Caitlyn often took the brunt of her displeasure. Even months after their breakup, she couldn't look herself in the mirror and see someone worth desiring. The drawings changed that. If it was Vi, and Vi did feel something, should Caitlyn pursue that?
Periodically, she self-consciously played with the scarf, eager for it to catch Vi’s eye and to commit the design to memory. The art major never whipped out a sketchbook or opened a new clean page to take down Caitlyn’s likeness, full image or pieces (she loved the slope of her hands in those drawings, the way they constantly looked like they were about to shift with the words half out of her mouth). Vi was still.
Even once the class came to a tidy end, Vi didn’t really move. She closed her notebooks and slid them into a nice stack, but she didn’t reach for her waiting backpack and didn’t move to race out of the room.
“Have a nice day,” Vi said instead as Caitlyn swung her backpack over her shoulder. She froze, staring at Vi’s somewhat hesitant expression and forced a too enthusiastic smile.
“Thank you, you as well!” She didn’t wait after that.
The day crawled along at an agonizing pace, inch by inch, second by second. Caitlyn whipped the scarf off the moment she was out of Vi’s line of sight and stuffed it into her bag on the way to her next one. No one sent obvious glances at her over their shoulders and no one approached her with offers for her hand in marriage.
Obviously.
She ignored the vaguely worried looks of her roommates during the evening and tossed and turned in bed until she couldn’t stay awake. At sunrise, she ripped the covers from her body and thundered down the stairs, stopping only for her slippers and ignoring her bathrobe entirely to rip the mail from the box. There it was.
A third piece of sketch paper, her name scribbled over the top. Before opening it, she took a slow breath of anticipation, preparing herself for what she was about to see. And she did see it. A scarf. Her ugly scarf tied around her neck and captured in all its hideous glory. But somehow, it didn't look ugly in the drawing. The artist had made it a feature, but not the main focus since in this drawing Caitlyn's face was turned fully out, radiant smile on her face directed at the helpless artist as her eyes sapped all the attention from anywhere else. Caitlyn’s own eyes kept her locked in place, completely taken in by the drawing.
She grabbed the rest of the mail in a daze and stiffly made her way inside. It was a Saturday, so she had no classes to race off to or distractions to take her away from the three drawings laid out on her bed. They were arranged beside each other over her hastily straightened comforter as her gaze flicked from one to the other, unable to settle as her heart and head raced in competition to see who would give out first. An unexplainable feeling welled up from her stomach and made her hands shake and her brain was taken over by pink hair, nice eyes, and rough hands.
Her day passed in an imaginary library at an imaginary table, thinking and rethinking what she might say about the drawings that had flipped the last week of her life up on its head to the person who had most likely been responsible. Her sentences would be sharp and direct and Vi would crumble under Caitlyn’s deductive skills, shocked to have been found out at all, much less with such swift dedication. She would be impressed and swoon at Caitlyn’s intellect and—
“Caitlyn?” Mel’s voice was accompanied by a soft knock on her door that startled her out of her triumphant interrogation. “Are you going to come down for dinner? Jayce ordered those noodles you like.”
Shame flooded her body in a flash. She’d ignored her friends all day for something that would probably shatter the moment she put words to it.
“Yes, sorry. I’ll be down in a moment!” she called back.
The drawings were folded up (carefully, so carefully) and tucked into her Monday morning notebook and she was determined not to think about them until then. A woman of her word, Caitlyn was mostly successful. She only spaced out a handful of times and never for longer than a full minute. Mel and Jayce didn’t even comment on it. The rest of the weekend was all for Fun, Good Friend Caitlyn.
It was all good, right up until the point where she took her new usual seat Monday morning and Vi smiled at her. Caitlyn was a hair’s breadth from collapsing on the ground in a fit of uncontrolled attraction. There was no use hiding it anymore. Vi was hot. Vi was beautiful. If she was the one doing her drawings, she was kind and thoughtful and romantic and there was nothing Caitlyn could do to guard against someone like that.
She spent the entire class with a red face, her hair carefully arranged to hide the blush and the fact that her pen didn’t make a single mark in her notebook. Even once the other students began to stand up and pack their things away, she stayed mostly still, only going so far as to close her notebook with a slap. Vi hesitated in her seat, her stuffed backpack resting on her thighs.
“Hey, uh. We’re still on for this afternoon, right?” she asked, voice teetering on unsure. Caitlyn sucked in a ragged breath and nodded. If she was doomed, it may as well be obvious. She leaned into it and smiled.
“Yes, of course. Wouldn’t miss it!”
She watched Vi’s face go slack, then pink, and then pinch as she tried to school her own features. Caitlyn felt incredibly validated.
“Awesome. I’ll try and grab a private room,” Vi mumbled as she stood and swung her backpack around.
“See you then,” Caitlyn waved as Vi moved towards the door. Vi offered her own little half wave, and ducked through the door in a blink.
The following class was just as unproductive for Caitlyn. Her notebook remained blank and with no real-life art major to her left to distract her, she spent the entire time thinking about that last look. Vi’s sudden flush and the way it nearly matched her hair despite her vain effort to control it swam in her vision like an apparition, a Ghost of Crushes Present that snagged every part of her and locked her in place. The end of the class came and she still didn’t move. Not until the professor began loudly cleaning up his own workspace at the front of the empty room.
There were another few hours to kill before the fated meeting with Vi, but Caitlyn couldn’t bring herself to wait. She marched across campus with the determination of a woman with her mind made clear and snatched up the first open private study room, checking the little window in the door first to see if anyone lingered. The extra time and the four blank white walls gave her space to do nothing but dwell on her evidence and pray she was right.
Being right was the only option. She couldn’t be wrong. Vi would never talk to her again. They would get a terrible grade on their project because they couldn’t communicate. It would be a disaster. She would have to move to the other side of the lecture hall. She would have to pay more attention to the class instead of a girl. Such a tragedy could not be beheld.
The door swung open to Vi’s tight face and Caitlyn had to look at her watch. The time had flown and she hadn’t even noticed. It was a whole half hour early. It was impossible to tell if Vi knew that, but at the sight of Caitlyn, her eyes softened and she smiled brightly and Caitlyn decided there was no need to tell her.
“Hey,” Vi greeted, dropping her bag onto the table and pulling out her notebook. “I grabbed a copy of the rubric. I have a couple ideas for what we could do, but I’m totally open to your thoughts.” Her eyes landed on Caitlyn and stayed there, gentle and expectant.
Caitlyn didn’t have a single idea. Not a one. She had barely spared a thought for the project outside of the fact that she was doing it with Vi. She had never written down the assignment or even looked over the rubric like she normally did. In fact, usually by this point on a project, she’d have done the whole thing by herself.
An uncomfortable silence stretched. Vi didn’t press and Caitlyn couldn’t bring herself to look away. Where to go from there? Of course, her mouth chose to answer that for her brain.
“Do you draw me?”
Vi’s body jolted like she’d touched a live wire.
“Do I what?” she asked shakily.
“Draw me. I’ve been getting these-” Caitlyn reached into her bag and pulled out the sketches. She carefully unfolded them and laid them out so Vi could see with no obstructions. “These showed up in my mailbox after we’ve had classes together. You did them, right?”
Vi stared down at the drawings and incrementally her expression morphed. Caitlyn watched as it shifted from slack-jawed shock to outright horror.
“Um, yeah. I did these. I just um, I don’t know where you live.”
The admission hung in the air and Caitlyn struggled to grasp it, to take control.
“Then how are they getting into my mailbox?” she breathed. “Did you show these to someone?” She felt her face grow hot. A thought seemed to occur to Vi and she groaned suddenly.
“I think I know what happened.”
“Oh?” Caitlyn was champing at the bit to get any kind of something here.
“I was uh, talking to my sister about you.” Vi’s face flushed deeper, embarrassment obvious. “She’s a technowizard and always hacking into stuff. I guess she got sick of me, uh talking and looked you up. Always going for the most dramatic angle,” she grumbled.
Mortified didn’t quite encapsulate what Caitlyn felt. Vi wasn’t angling for her attention, she wasn’t building up to some dramatic reveal, she wasn’t hoping to date. It was just a crush. Caitlyn shot up from her chair. She had to leave. This was just going to get worse. Next Vi would ask her to leave, something nice like—
“Stay, please.” The gentle hand on her wrist pinned her down with its warmth and not its force.
“I don’t want to make you even more uncomfortable—” Why did her voice sound teary? She could not cry, that would surely be the last straw. Dylan was right.
“You’re not. I’m not uncomfortable.” Vi was half out of her chair and contorted awkwardly so she was a little bit in Caitlyn’s way. “Look, I won’t lie, this was not how I planned any of this.” She scratched a hand over her buzzed side cut and Caitlyn focused on a singular word.
“Planned?” she breathed.
“Yeah,” Vi laughed, “I’ve had the biggest crush on you for months. I was going to find you after class one day and ask you to model for a drawing and I was going to woo you.”
Caitlyn let out an involuntary laugh and twisted her hand in Vi’s hold so that strong fingers tangled with her own.
“I would love to know how you planned to woo me,” she giggled, the ridiculous nature of the conversation catching up with her and taking over.
“Maybe I still can. What are you doing for dinner?”
Vi’s voice was smooth and those damn eyes were going to get Caitlyn every time. But, she had to admit, they were the same eyes that looked at her like she was something worth keeping, eyes that saw her as beautiful, eyes she could look at for days on end and still find new details.
In what world was Caitlyn not going to get dinner with the pretty art major?