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“Cupcake, it’s just babysitting for a night, how bad could it be?”
Vi didn’t really understand why her wife was so anxious with the idea of watching over Jayce and Mel’s kid for an evening, she was almost panicking, and if there was something that Caitlyn Kiramman did do was panicking. The little boy was a tiny little ball of cuddles, extremely agreeable and easy going even with strangers, and for five months olds that was weird in Vi’s extensive experience with children, they really had it easy with Jasper, most of all considering who his parents were.
She watched Caitlyn pace up and down the foyer of their home as she donned her coat. It had snowed the night before and while the streets in Upper Piltover had been thoroughly cleaned, there was still a light breeze bringing a slight chill to the air, it was way too cold for Vi’s signature red jacket. “I’m not good with children, not the same way as you!” she cried.
“Hey, you think I was born this good?!” Vi exclaimed, doing her best to slip all the buttons in their correct holes in the fastest way possible. “It’s a skill you can learn, don’t worry!”
“But what if he doesn’t like me?”
Sighing loudly, Vi grabbed Cait’s hand and made her stop in her tracks, before she dug a trench in the hardwood floor. “Caitlyn, he’s five months old. He doesn’t hate anyone, let alone you. As long as you fulfill his needs, you’ll be just fine. Jasper will love you, you just need to let him get to know you.”
Cait sniffled softly. Damn, she was beyond flustered! “You think so?”
Nodding, Vi hugged her tight, trying to reassure her the best she could. “I’m sure. Don’t worry too much about it. Now, shall we go? You know Mel doesn’t like when people are late.”
When they had got married, about a year after Cait and Vi, Jayce and Mel had purchased a beautiful townhouse not too far from theirs, about ten minutes on foot, on the more sloped side of Upper Piltover, while their home was lower in altitude. With the snow sometimes still packing the sidewalks, the stroll uphill was made a little trickier, and Vi immediately felt reassured about having convinced Cait to wear her snowshoes rather than the sneakers or fancy leather she preferred to wear when off duty, because the streets, while clean of snow, were still slippery and with the temperatures dropping fast as the sun went down, ice was bound to form black invisible sheets on the cobblestones, making them deadly slippery.
By the time they reached their destination, even Caitlyn had commented on the risk of ice forming before they had to make the trip back home. “You were right, Vi. Ice is bound to form tonight.”
“I might have grown up in a place where it was always too warm for snow, but I’ve lived up here for 8 years now, I know a thing or two about snow and Piltover.” Caitlyn knocked on the door. “It’s crazy how much warmer Zaun is, considering that it’s just a few miles south of here.”
“It’s the pollution,” Cait added. “Give it a few more years and maybe even the Undercity will see the snow before it turns into rain.”
Vi’s mind flashed for a moment to one night when Powder was three or four and they were rifling through a picture books her mother had borrowed from a colleague, one that taught little children about a few easy facts of life, like the passing of seasons and such, and how much she had been enamored with the faded illustrations of snowy landscapes, but she managed to shove the bittersweet memory in the back of her head. “Yeah, that would be nice.”
The door opened and Micah, the Medarda-Talis family’s butler, appeared in the doorway. He was ready to go home, already wearing his heavy black coat over his customary back suit. “Madam Kiramman, Madam Kiramman,” he greeted them with rigid formality, with a nod of his head each. “The Masters are waiting for you.”
He moved and let them in, before he excused himself and closed the door behind him, as if he couldn’t wait any more seconds to go home. Caitlyn and Vi exchanged a worried look.
Just as they were taking off their coats and shoes, in exchange for the sets of fuzzy slippers they kept in a small wooden cabinet ready for guests, Jayce appeared in the foyer to greet them. “Oh, you’re here! I’m glad you made it in time. How are the roads?” he asked, hugging Cait and giving her a quick brotherly peck on the cheek. With Vi, he refrained from such confidential behavior and just shook her hand.
“Clean, but careful when you come back from the theater, it’s bound to get icy out there,” Cait replied.
“Ah yes, we’re ready for that. Has the cab already arrived?”
“Not when we were outside, but your butler ran away as if he had a Shimmer-fuelled fire under his ass!” Vi exclaimed.
Drawing a long breath, Jayce shook his head. “Micah had a long day and he couldn’t wait to get out of here, I understand. Jasper was a little fussy today, and even the nanny has given up on him today, that’s why we had to call you.”
In the corner of her vision, Vi noticed Caitlyn’s shoulder sag forward. Her worst nightmare was just unfurling. “Crying spells?”
He nodded. “He’s been inconsolable all day. Nothing would appease him, Mel just managed to put him down half an hour ago. If you’re lucky, he’ll sleep through the evening and you won’t hear of him, he was exhausted.” He sighed. “And so are we.”
“Are you sure you have to go? It’s just an opera, you don’t have to go!” Caitlyn asked, trying for a last minute change of plans.
“Unfortunately, we do,” he answered, shaking his head. “We funded the new opera, and it’s opening night. If we don’t go, people will get angry. You’re our only hope to make it there on time, without a crying child in tow.”
For a moment, Vi wanted to punch him in his perfect square jaw. It’s still your kid, you idiot… If there was something she hated about the people in Piltover, among the many, it was how quickly they were easy on dumping their kids to nannies or third party child care services because they couldn’t take them to events. In Zaun all major events were open to children of all ages, babysitters weren’t a thing unless older siblings were put in charge of the younger ones and it wasn’t uncommon to see whole families at public celebrations having a good time together. A child in Piltover was seen as a dead weight, and Vi couldn’t stand that.
So instead of acting before thinking, she let Cait do the talking. Soon Jayce was joined by Mel in all her stunning Noxian beauty and dressed up to the nines in a white, flowy robes that complimented her body that she had worked so hard to get back to her pre-pregnancy shape. Even that was something that Vi couldn’t understand really, this idea that a woman had to return to her weight and shape before she had a child. It was stupid and vain in her opinion.
In any case, they showed them around, all the kid’s stuff such as diapers and the baby formula and bottle they would need in case he woke up hungry. He was sleeping in his cot, a bright yellow onesie embroidered with beautiful Noxian motives wrapped around his chubby body that made his darker complexion stand out more against the stark white bed sheets covering the mattress, so they did their best not to disturb him. Mel had requested the housekeeping staff to prepare a meal for them, and their cook had left a large tin of something in the low oven to keep warm. By the scent wafting off the kitchen, Vi could bet it was some kind of meat casserole, probably a fancier version of shepherd’s pie. Her mouth salivated at the thought.
When the cab arrived, Mel and Jayce left with the recommendation to contact them at the theater in case they needed to without hesitation, and Cait and Vi were left to their own devices. With Jasper still sound asleep in the nursery just down the corridor, they ate their meal, indeed a fancier variation of shepherd’s pie with broiled cheese on top, then washed the dishes in the sink and tied the kitchen up. The leftovers were transferred in a smaller container, covered with tin foil and placed in the fridge.
They had just finished drying the dishes and putting them back in their cupboard when Jasper decided it was time to make himself heard with a loud wailing scream that broke the almost perfect silence of the house. Vi frowned in surprise for how suddenly the kid had woken up and decided it was time to push some air out of his lungs, but Caitlyn froze in her tracks, terrified. She was really hoping beyond hope that he would sleep until his parents came home, but it was really impossible for a kid that young to sleep for so long, most of all if he didn’t feel well.
“Go get him, I’ll prepare the bottle,” Vi said, immediately getting the box with the dehydrated milk and a spoon from a drawer.
“You think he’s hungry?”
“Oh, he’s definitely hungry. I’ve heard that kind of scream for a good year when Powder was born! He’s hungry, and we need to get some food into his stomach. Come on, go! By the time you’re back I should be almost ready.”
As Caitlyn jogged out of the kitchen, Vi gave a cursory read at the instruction to prepare the formula and found out they hadn’t changed much since Powder was born and she had helped her mom around with her, so she just followed muscle memory and in a couple of minutes with the help of hextech oven, she had the bottle ready and warm. But there was no sign of Cait. The screaming had subsided to a whiny wailing, but her wife and the kid were missing.
“What the fuck…” she muttered, grabbing the bottle and heading to the nursery.
There, in the dim light of a small table lamp, Vi found her wife frozen beside the crib, slightly bent over it with her hands hidden behind the side of the bassinet as if she had stopped moving right as she tried to pick him up, her blue eyes wide open with the glazed look of pure terror that pervaded her as she looked down at the squirming child laying there. As she walked closer, Vi saw that Jasper had one of Cait’s fingers tightly grasped in his chubbly little hands and the tip of said finger was currently lodged in his mouth, happily suckling on it as he waited for his meal to be delivered to him.
Vi tried very hard not to laugh, it was almost impossible given the absurdity of the scene displayed in front of her so she hid her mouth behind her palm and snorted, keeping her outburst as quick and as silent as she could, but despite her efforts, Cait heard her and was snapped out of her reverie. “What is he doing?!” She sounded extremely alarmed by Jasper’s behavior, and Vi didn’t really understand why.
“Told ya, he’s hungry,” Vi said walking closer to the bassinet with the warm bottle at the ready. “Come on Cupcake, pick him up! We’ll be more comfortable in the living room!”
“I…” Caitlyn gasped as the baby looked up at her, a lopsided smile twisting his lips still wrapped around the tip of her pointer finger, now slobbered with thick saliva up to the first knuckle. “I don’t know how! I tried and cried really hard and I was scared to hurt him, then he grabbed my finger and started sucking on it!”
“Yeah that’s not strange, kids do that sometimes. Powder used to suck on my middle and ring finger all the time when she was his age, like this.” She pressed the two mentioned fingers together while the pointer and pinky were separated and shoved the tips in her mouth for a second as demonstration. “Helps them calm down, that’s why they invented dummies, to keep these little suckers quiet for a moment longer before mommy can get her tits out!”
“Do you always need to be so crass?” Cait mumbled, pulling her fingers gently out of Jasper’s mouth. He scrunched his little face in an angry frown and let out a drawled wail, before she let him have her finger back.
“What, did I say something wrong? That’s how they eat before they can get solid food, nothing crass about it. Why? Is it something forbidden for you Pilties? Children feeding at their mother’s breasts?”
“No, it’s just…” Cait shrugged. “We don’t talk about it. Just that.”
“Well get used to it, Cupcake, because this is exactly what we’re gonna do now. Minus the tits out part, that’s for later and without him around. Come on, hold this.” Vi handed her the bottle and leaned down towards the baby, sliding her left hand behind his head and neck and the right beneath his diapered butt. He squirmed a little when she picked him up from the bassinet and let go of Cait’s finger, his eyes now stuck on Vi’s. “Now let’s all calm down so we can get some milk inside your stomach, how about that, Little Pooper?”
Caitlyn looked at her as if she had said the most outrageous thing in the world. “Don’t let Mel hear you calling him that!”
“Oh I’ll call him that and then some more, who cares about what Mel says. He’s little, and he poops a lot, so… Little Pooper fits him very well. You’ll see after we’ve fed him.”
She carefully maneuvered the kid until his head was resting against the crook of her right elbow and his body lay over her arm, snuggling tight against her chest as she walked down the hallway to the living room. There, Jayce had left a set of various napkins, cloths of various forms and dimensions and other things useful to feed a baby, including a specifically shaped pillow to support Jasper’s weight. Knowing this, Vi quickly set herself up for the task, sitting in the corner of the sofa and using a couple of the provided soft pieces of cloth to cover the front of Jasper’s onesie and her hoodie, so in case any of the formula was spilled, it wouldn’t soak her clothes or his, since both were clean. “Come on buddy, time to eat your fill.” She extended her free hand at her side and with her eyes still glued to his, she grabbed the bottle Cait was handing her. The moment she rubbed the warm rubber teat on his lower lip, he opened his mouth wide and drew the device in, then he started suckling to his heart's content.
“See?” she murmured, rubbing tiny circles with her right thumb over his thigh. “They’re easy creatures, once you learn how to read them and listen to what they have to say. I bet this little boy had some gas in his tummy all day and was fussy because of that. The moment he managed to fart it out, he fell asleep because he was exhausted, missed a feeding, and now he’s really… really hungry! Look at him go! Slow down Poopy, or you’re gonna be sick!”
In the corner of her vision, Vi saw Cait sit down on the opposite side of the sofa, ditching the slippers and gathering her legs towards her chest. “How do you do that?”
“Experience, Caitlyn. I was the older of my siblings, but after the Rebellions at the Bridge there were a lot of orphans to take care of. I was a kid, but I had a little experience about taking care of newborns and toddlers, since I helped my mama out with Powder. I’ve babysat and taken care of a lot of kids from a very young age, I guess it all stuck with me, and I can’t forget it.”
“It must be a very useful skill set…”
Vi shrugged, but she picked up the strange, almost longing tone of Caitlyn’s voice. As if she had just realized that among her very vast array of skills, missing this one meant way more than what it did in reality. “It is, if you come from a place like the Undercity. Childcare is scarce down there, so we help each other out. Up here it’s easy to find someone to help you with your crotch goblins, if you want to get out of the house without them for a night and have some fun. Until the nanny bails on you because your kid is being an insufferable farty tot!”
Jasper didn’t really care he was being insulted, he was just happy his stomach was finally getting filled.
“No I mean… in life in general. Had I been alone, I would have never managed.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a different kind of skill set, but like any skill, it can be learned. You just need to be around kids a little more!” Vi removed the bottle from Jasper's mouth for a moment, letting him breathe freely and gulp the last mouthful of formula easier. He was really eating fast, she needed to help him pace himself better if she didn’t want him to throw up in the middle of the night. Just like she had done countless times when helping mama by feeding Powder her bottle, while mama cooked dinner.
“You think I can learn?” Cait asked, her voice full of doubt. “I mean, I…”
“Cait, relax. We’re just babysitting, it’s not like we’re having a kid of our own!” Vi exclaimed.
“But would you want one?”
The question came out like a bolt out of the blue, completely blindsiding Vi and freezing her in position, eyes darting everywhere until she was startled by Jasper’s tiny whine. She gently gave him the bottle again and when he latched and started suckling she turned towards Caitlyn. “Is that what you’re worried about? That I want a child?”
“I’m not worried, just curious. We never talked about it, but… you know… I saw how good you are with kids and I don’t mean just now with Jasper! Remember that time we had that case of uxoricide and you spent the whole day with the daughter of the victim? She grabbed onto you when you found her in the closet and never let you go, for hours, and you were so good with her, so patient… I think I fell in love with you even more that day and now seeing you like this… Jasper seems really at ease with you just like any other child we’ve encountered since we’ve known each other and it got me thinking.”
“You’re thinking that I want a kid of our own? Because if that’s your idea… I’m not opposed to it but there are some logistics to think about.”
Caitlyn frowned. “Like what?”
“Uh, neither of us has a dick, for instance.” Cait rolled her eyes, and Vi was sure she was spared a pillow thrown to her face just because she had a child in her arms.
“There are workarounds for that Vi, and I’m not talking about just adoptions. Hextech has found applications even in reproductive health, or at least that’s what Jayce said,” she explained. “But you know, we could always adopt! You said it yourself, there are a lot of orphans that need a family, and maybe we could provide one to a child in need.”
Vi drew a long breath, looking down at Jasper, now nearly comatose as he worked for the last few drops of formula before letting go of the teat, sighing and snuggling into Vi’s chest even more if possible. “I… don’t think it’s a good idea Cait. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to, but a child with our line of work? What if Jinx gets wind of it? You know how obsessed she’s with you, she tried to murder you three times already if she realizes that we’re trying to build a family she would probably go feral.”
“We’re talking hypothetically now, Vi,” Cait said then. “And it’s just that, talking! We never even broached the matter in eight years, bringing it up doesn’t mean we have to do it right away! And if you wonder, I’m not opposed to the idea either!”
That surprised Vi. Caitlyn was very career driven, her rapid ascension through ranks was the testament of her drive to succeed, something she shared with her mother, a child would be a hindrance to that career. But, Caitlyn was also an adult that had known loneliness in her childhood, growing up under a glass dome her parents set up on her given the tragic circumstances that preceded her miraculous birth. It could be an unconscious way to remedy her own solitude, by breaking the cycle the Kiramman name brought to their heirs, bringing a Kiramman child into the family and teaching them a different set of values than those that had been imposed to her and that she had to rebel against multiple times to achieve her dreams.
“If we’re discussing in theory then, yes. I would love to have a child with you. More, if you’re up to it!”
Her wife chuckled. “Let’s start with thinking about just one, then we’ll see how we work things out in theory before we start practicing.”
“Deal. Now, this tot needs to be changed. Want to help me out with that? It’s gonna be a doozy!”
Caitlyn took it as a challenge. With Vi’s supervision, she changed Jasper’s diaper, the whole shebang of washing, patting dry, powdering and then putting on the clean nappy, on her own. She even managed to avoid the classic pee spray all little boys did when they were changed. Vi hadn’t even needed to warn her, she just knew by instinct.
“I think I heard my aunt say something like this about my cousin,” she had said as she kept the loosened diaper between herself and the unwanted flood. Jasper had seemed to warm up to her the more she handled him, gently and always careful, but more and more confident that she wouldn’t break him if she touched him. She even managed to make him fall asleep, which surprised Vi because in her experience, that was the hardest part of caring for a kid that age, getting them to quiet down and sleep. She found a comfortable pace slowly walking around the spacious living room, with Jasper happily cradled against her chest, with his head laying on her shoulder and his chubby cheek squished against her collarbone, drool freely flowing from his slack mouth into a thick piece of fabric to protect Cait’s clothing as he phased in and out of sleep for a while. On Vi’s suggestion, who at the moment was more than happy enough of slacking on the couch, doing her customary evening reading time to keep up with her dyslexia, Caitlyn tried talking to him and when she ran out of kid suitable subject, she decided that he was too young to understand what she was saying so she just started talking about the proper maintenance of a rifle, how the different parts worked and could be disassembled to be cleaned, the best way to do it and how often it was required to perform maintenance to keep a weapon in good working order.
It was working, because Jasper’s eyes kept drooping more and more often, his laments and cries lowered in intensity and became pitiful whimpers around his dummy that kept falling off the more he relaxed, until he quieted completely and his eyes remained shut for good.
“I think he’s asleep…” Cait whispered, daring to stop her calm pacing.
“Cool! Good job Cupcake!” Vi exclaimed softly, looking up from her book. “Come on, let’s put the pooper down and wait for his parents to come home, so we can go ourselves.”
“Do we have to?” Cait asked, sitting down on the couch. “I mean, put him down. He looks so comfortable here, what if he wakes up and starts crying?”
“Cupcake, with a rack like yours, of course he’s comfortable, I can vouch for that! Are you though?”
She looked down at Jasper, now quietly dozing off with his small hands wrapped in her gray jumper, legs curled up towards his chest as she held a hand beneath his butt and the other over his back and neck, to support his head. “I guess I am…”
Shaking her head, Vi put a piece of scrap paper between the pages of her book as a mark, then closed it and set it on the coffee table in front of them. “Look at you, four hours ago you were scared to death, and now you don’t want to put him down. Are you sure you didn’t ask me if I wanted kids because you wanted kids but you were too afraid to broach the subject?”
Vi’s heart melted a little when Cait gently kissed the top of Jasper’s head. “Who knows… maybe? It’s been on my mind for a while, but I didn’t really know how to start the conversation.”
With a sigh, Vi stood up. “You Pilties and all your damn restraints… if you want to talk about something, just do it! Want some tea?”
“Yeah, that would be nice.”
Vi wasn’t sure how it happened, but Cait fell asleep on the sofa. After they had some tea, she slid down on the cushions until she was resting with her back against the side of the couch, her long legs splayed a head with her calves resting in Vi’s lap, getting herself more comfortable and still holding onto Jasper just as much as he kept holding onto her. They looked like they were made for one another, Vi thought at some point, when she started calling him Little Pooper too. The moment she had noticed that her wife had dozed off, Vi had grabbed a folded blanket she had noticed in an ornate wicker basket beside the couch and as gently as she could, covered them both. Cait didn’t seem to notice, but Jasper made her worry for a moment that he would wake up when he opened his eyes to a slit, enough that Vi could see his eyes darting around.
“Don’t worry little guy,” she whispered to him, running the back of her fingers on his arm and up his shoulder in a calming motion. “Sleep some more, Mom and Dad will be home soon.”
It did the trick and he fell asleep once more, with a long sigh of happiness, allowing Vi to go back to her book to wait until Mel and Jayce would arrive home so they could be relieved of babysitting duty.
That happened around midnight. On her way to fall asleep herself, Vi jolted on the couch when she heard the lock of the front door nearby being opened. Blinking quickly to get the sleep out of her eyes, she stretched her neck and looked down at her wife, smiling as she noticed that she had started drooling a little as her jaw had gone slack in her sleep. With a quick, gentle touch beneath her chin, Vi made her close her mouth then wiped the little trickle of saliva from her face, before Jayce appeared in the doorway, behind them. “How was the opera?” she asked, softly.
“It wasn’t bad… not my type of entertainment, but Mel enjoyed it. I see Jasper has worked his charm on Caitlyn too!” he replied, looking down at his childhood friend now curled up on his couch, cradling his son to her chest in her sleep.
“He’s easy to love,” Vi replied. “And once he ate, he was really well behaved.”
Jayce took a long breath. “He wasn’t, today. I have no idea what happened, he just started wailing and there was no way to console him.”
Vi chuckled. “Probably just some gas. Have you tried doing the bicycle trick when you changed his nappy?”
He frowned. “What is it?”
“Basically, every time you change his nappy you take his legs and move them as if he was going on a bicycle, and every ten seconds or so you push his legs towards his tummy. If he has some gas, he’ll fart it out. Helps prevent colics.”
“Oh, I had no idea!” he replied. “I’m not even sure I’ve seen the nanny do it.”
With a gentle shake of her head, Vi stood and faced him. “You should start. It should avoid hellish days like this. We did it when we changed him, he let out a couple of small farts and he seemed relieved, he probably had some more gas he managed to push out before it started hurting him.”
“That’s… amazing!” For once, Jayce was showing some true respect for her, Vi could red it on his face and body language. “I had no idea you knew so much about children, I’m surprised!”
Chuckling, Vi bent down and picked Jasper out of Cait’s hands then handed him to his father. “Pretty Boy, you’ve always underestimated me. You'd be surprised by how many skill sets you pick up growing up an orphan in the Undercity.”
He smiled, bitterly. She had touched a sore spot, mentioning her upbringing in the Undercity and how many things Zaunites had to do in order to survive. It clearly reminded him of is now lost colleague, Viktor, who had disappeared shortly after the little recovery he had managed at the hospital when the Council Tower had been bombed.
“Yes, I guess so. Thank you Vi, for everything.”
She stroked her thumb over Jasper’s spiky black hair, long enough that now it was showing signs of being curly like her mother’s. “For this Little Pooper? Don’t even mention it.”