Work Text:
It starts with a loose sketch. Fleeting lines arranged from memory. Shapes, stark and small, tucked in the corner of the page like a secret.
A profile. A sharp curtain of hair. Keen eyes.
The image rushes off the end of her pencil. Urgent. Insistent. Nearly abstract. It whispers as it forms, the charcoal between her fingers shushing across the paper. Bold strokes at first. Soft and wavering by the end.
Because her hand is shaking.
Her face warms and her heart stutters under her ribs. She glances away and back. Places a few more lines. Doesn't stop to see it finished because—
She flips to a clean sheet, ears burning.
—because she can't stand to look at it. The likeness is too close, and not nearly close enough. Not by far. Embarrassing. An insult.
She doesn't draw people. Never has.
Machines. Maps. Schematics and geometry. Those, she was good for. Those, she could do. But people?
...her?
Vi's gaze darts again. She can feel the sketch. It makes the pad heavier, somehow, makes the whole thing feel more alive, even though she can't see it.
Too close.
Not nearly close enough.
Swallowing back nerves, she starts on something else. Something safe. Mindless. Calming.
A labyrinth. Just a maze. Cait likes them, enjoys the challenge. Vi keeps making them harder, but Cait keeps solving them in minutes. Always scans the whole puzzle first before tracing her way through with blue ink. She rarely ever hits dead ends. Too easy.
Her triumphant smile is always genuine, though, flashing like a razor. And on Good Days, Vi lets herself recognize the warmth that dances in her eyes.
Still, she always slides away determined to draw Cait something that's truly worth her time.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Caitlyn is in the room the next time it happens. The next time the urge takes over. She's at her desk, face furrowed in concentration, tapping her pencil, forehead in hand.
Vi is on the broad windowsill, tucked behind her knees, her sketchpad open against her legs. The breeze from outside is easy, the daylight soft and just right. Its angle cuts across the floor and hits Cait as it should. As if she's the reason the sun rose that morning.
Vi’s hand tightens around her charcoal. Again, it begins to move.
This time, it's worse. Because it's better. Closer. Still not all the way there, though, and that's the real crime because why? Why do it if she can't do it right?
But she can't help but try.
Her eyes cut away from the paper, over the edge of the pad, and back down. She gets to a place where she could stop, call it done, run from it. But she can't because the light is just...
And she's just—
Pulling her knees toward her chest, she begins to shade. She leaves gaps in the black to show the sheen of her hair. Rolls extra strokes along her outer edge to carve out her figure against the background.
Lithe. Poised. Focused.
A face so beautifully chiseled it would put the world's finest sculptors to shame.
Caitlyn cuts the silhouette of a weapon and somehow Vi has never felt safer looking at anyone else. Not for a long, long time.
She's framing out the desk when a swallow dips by the window, startling her. When she looks back down, the picture is suddenly too vivid. Too real. She flips the pad closed and slips off the sill, heart throbbing.
Cait looks up. "You alright?"
Vi stops, caught. "Uh, yup. Why?"
Blue eyes study her for a moment, moving gently over her face. Cait tilts her head.
"You're all red. Bit long in the sun, maybe."
Relief.
"Yeah. Maybe."
With a sheepish smirk and a sideways swagger, Vi manages to escape the room, sketches tucked safely beneath her arm.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
It takes another few iterations, but it happens.
Caitlyn sees.
It's an accident. A stupid one. Totally avoidable if she had even an ounce of self-control.
But she doesn't. Not when it comes to this.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She shouldn't be drawing in bed. Not so late. Not with Cait there, warm and lax and breathing evenly beside her. But there are shadows this time, so many, so soft, their edges tapering into golden lamplight.
Stunning.
With an ache in her throat, Vi pulls her sketchpad off the nightstand, unclips her graphite pencil, and begins to draw.
But she's tired. Her is body muted, her mind already fading as she lays down the first lines. She moves but there's drift, in her eyes, in her hand. Her head falls forward. Her shoulders unwind.
Twice, she blinks awake to find her pencil hanging from slack fingers.
Twice, she keeps sketching.
The third time—
The third time she slips under, she's awoken by warmth on her neck and her name in her ear.
"Vi."
She makes a drowsy sound, barely an acknowledgment. Her eyes flutter open and they're immediately filled with blue. The color is dusky in the dim light. Caitlyn is half in front of her, her hand settled against her throat, her thumb curving along a tattoo, light and warm.
Her other hand is nestled in Vi's own—
Along with the graphite pencil.
Vi's heart trips in her chest. She doesn't dare look down. She can feel Caitlyn weaving their fingers together over the pages of her open sketchbook and knows she must have seen.
Heat rises in her face. Scalds her ears. The expression in Caitlyn's eyes is nearly unbearable in what it says—in what it makes her feel. But she can't look away.
A tender smile, slightly sad, softens Cait's lips. Her gaze roams. Ever merciful, she says nothing. Doesn't really need to. Instead, she squeezes Vi's hand and disentangles them, taking hold of the sketchbook and lifting it away.
A slow moment later, she takes its place.
Vi's blood loses its sense of direction as Cait lowers into her lap, her body cool and warm and strong and soft in all the ways it presses and leans. The hand on her throat drifts up into her hair. Fingers curl, tugging.
Vi relaxes into pliancy, letting herself be guided backward. She loses track of the room until hears her name again, Caitlyn whispering it to her in a voice that says everything, heavy with heat and the lack of unneeded words.
The kiss starts there.
It wanders. Her body goes phosphorescent as touch and air, teeth and silk sear a gentle path to her mouth. Caitlyn's other hand is cool as it tips her chin. Vi's breath softens and shallows, her vision shivering apart as distance disappears into sensation.
It lasts. Caitlyn makes sure. Doesn't try to turn it into anything else, just lets it be what it is. Vi holds her, hands weightless, moving in patterns, unable to stop despite pen and paper being so far out of reach.
When they finally part to breathe, Vi and admits against her lips:
"It's just practice."
They're so close she can feel the smile Cait gives her. There's a moment of pause, of eyelashes brushing her cheek as Caitlyn considers.
Then:
"Shh."
It's all she says.
The hushed command fogs Vi's thoughts.
As Caitlyn gathers her into another kiss, she yields, letting weight and warmth and reassurance blend all that practice into perfection.