Work Text:
Snow never reached the bottom of the Lanes. Not intact, not untainted. Even during the coldest of winter storms in Vi’s childhood memory, any remnants of the once clean, crystalline powder that survived the descent through the industrial smog were undeserving of the original name. Brown and gray with factory fumes and soot collected along the way before merging with the dirt on their landing, destined for the sewers.
That substance was unrecognizable, irreconcilable with the blinding white sheen that Vi had only ever glimpsed on the Piltovan skyline from across the river. But even then, she hadn’t known its true nature. Not until now.
Snow. Real, pure, perfect snow. The refreshing taste on her tongue. The soft crunch of it beneath her feet. The icy, tickling sting of each flake that melted on contact with warm skin. The rest an endless flurry through the air like confetti until it swallowed up the grounds of the Kiramman estate and Piltover alike.
And some, clinging for just a few final moments of life onto the black woolen coat and ink-blue locks of the woman that walked beside Vi, decorating her like diamonds on velvet.
Vi couldn’t believe the beautiful things she had right at her fingertips these days.
After stealing one too many glances at her most favorite of those beautiful things, fearing the impending notice and following tease, she broke the comfortable silence with an idle thought.
“Snow sure is a lot fucking colder than it looks.” Vi burrowed her ungloved hands further into the pockets of her jacket as she and Caitlyn strolled through the snow-covered, fenced in back garden.
“I tried to warn you,” Caitlyn managed to tease anyway, a smug twinkle in her eye despite keeping her gaze on the path before them. With her right arm hooked tightly around Vi’s left, she tugged her in closer, giggling as they bumped hips clumsily mid-walk.
Now a number of months since the loss of half her vision, Caitlyn seemed to favor having Vi in her periphery over her blind spot more often than not when they were out and about—a change in habit of which Vi had become very aware.
A change in confidence, of which she was even more proud.
“Yeah, well,” Vi grumbled with poorly reined affection, “you’re the one that wanted to go for a walk out in this stuff. I wasn’t about to let you suffer alone.”
“Oh, come on, now,” Caitlyn rolled her eye before shooting a pointed look at the slightly shorter woman at her side, “It’s your own fault for telling me you’d never been out in the snow. And we only get so much a year here, so I simply couldn’t let you miss it.”
“Sure, whatever. But I don’t see why we have to get all up close and personal with it when we could just be, you know, inside—” Vi pulled her arm from her pocket to snake around the small of Caitlyn’s back. “—watching from the window all warm and cozy, getting up close and personal with—”
“That part’s for later, darling,” Caitlyn interrupted in a thickly sweet, low tone. The kind that, coupled with that damn pet name, so easily twisted Vi’s stomach into knots, no less the thousandth time than the first. “First, you’ll have to work for it.”
“Work for it!?” Vi lamented, half a sigh, half an adolescent whine that didn’t faze Caitlyn in the slightest.
“Do you know how to make a snowman, Violet?” she asked without skipping a beat.
Vi squinted, then quirked a brow up at her. “A what?”
Then she heard Caitlyn hum, her next words markedly softer. “Silly question, I suppose.”
A moment of unreadable quiet settled on Caitlyn’s features before Vi said, “You wanna elaborate for me, Cupcake?” tickling at the woman’s waist and eliciting a stunning, giggling grin from her lips as she buckled at the touch. “Feeling a little out of the loop over here,” she joked after, not offended in the least.
“Sorry,” Caitlyn murmured once she collected herself, finally stopping their idle stroll to press a smiling kiss to Vi’s temple. Vi melted into it for a single moment of bliss, mourning the loss when Caitlyn pulled away to say, “I was debating whether or not to describe in detail, but I think you’ll have more fun in the moment. Learning hands-on, as they say.”
Vi tilted her head curiously, a smirk creeping across her features, before slowly stepping around to face Caitlyn, gripping and kneading at the slender woman’s hips as she pulled her in close.
“Hands on who, now?” Vi uttered at Caitlyn’s ear, lips hovering at the hollow below while she savored how it made the flush of her cheeks burn deeper than the cold could ever hope to achieve.
A gentle hand pushed at Vi’s sternum, and the only other response that came, a single word, was so breathless it sounded more like prayer than advice.
“Patience.”
“Vi! You did not— I’m gone for one minute and you—”
Returning from her task of rolling up a head-sized ball of snow, Caitlyn stopped in her tracks as she caught sight of their once wholesome work-in-progress and her mouth fell agape, unable to finish a single sentence as her face made a journey through disbelief, annoyance, and amusement all in a matter of seconds.
Because on the front of the otherwise spherical mid-section of the snowman, there were now two… generous lumps of packed snow positioned between its tree-branch arms.
“What? Did I do something wrong?” Vi asked, her expression a caricature of innocence.
Oh, but she knew exactly what she’d done in Caitlyn’s absence, still brushing the icy moisture from her palms as she knelt beside her handiwork, rather blatantly admiring it no less.
And yet she dared play dumb with Caitlyn Kiramman.
“Really, Vi?” Caitlyn crossed her arms, more flustered than frustrated as she stared at the other woman.
Vi was really going to make her say it out loud, wasn’t she?
“… You had to give it boobs!?”
Vi threw up her hands in defense, a restrained smirk slipping through despite her best efforts. “Hey, you told me to be creative! Can’t help it if I had a little stroke of inspiration.”
The guilty artist gave the air around her fingers two quick pretend-squeezes, following up with a wink to punctuate the lewd joke… which Caitlyn absolutely refused to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging in any manner.
Instead, she simply countered, “I meant creative with the decorations,” gesturing toward the pile of stones, twigs, and fallen leaves they’d collected earlier.
Vi opened her mouth as if to argue, but no sound came out when suddenly her eyes went wide and she quickly reached for the pile.
Then Caitlyn watched as—gods help her—the love of her life picked up two tiny rocks and pressed one into the center of each frozen mound.
“There,” Vi exhaled, far too pleased with herself.
Caitlyn shook her head, the corner of her mouth tugging up against her will. “Well that’s just crude.”
“Whoa now, hold your judgment. This is art! And she’s still not done.” Vi made a beckoning motion toward the forgotten ball of snow at Caitlyn’s feet. “Now roll that sucker over here.”
With no more than a narrowed eye and a soft, suspicious hum, Caitlyn chose to wordlessly oblige.
As Vi settled the final third of the snowperson firmly in place, Caitlyn knelt to join her on the ground on her left side, accepting whatever fate awaited Vi’s project—Caitlyn couldn’t claim ownership at this point—and just happy to watch her indulge her imagination.
First, Vi picked out a flat, oblong rock from the pile, nestling the long side upright into the center of the head.
A nose.
Then she grabbed a thin twig, snapping it at several points to curve it into a crescent shape and place below the rock.
A smile.
Finally, she grabbed the roundest stone she could find and adorned the face with a right eye, and then mirrored it on the other side with…
A leaf.
An eye patch.
Caitlyn’s chest tightened.
“See, Cupcake?” Vi said proudly, warmly, meeting her gaze. “Told you I was inspired.”
“By my tits, evidently,” Caitlyn teased away the sting behind her eye, turning her head and shying from the eye contact only for a gentle, calloused hand to cup her jaw and guide her right back.
“No, Cait. By you. All of you, all the time.” Vi’s thumb caressed her cheek, brushing across the bottom edge of the eye patch. “You are so beautiful, you don’t even know.”
Caitlyn let her eye fall shut, leaning into the touch, biting her bottom lip to stop it from trembling. It was more than a bit humiliating getting emotional over some silly (topless!) snow-version of herself. Nevertheless, there she was. And she couldn’t help but utter the name of its creator—this goofy, stubborn, at times even a bit infuriating, yet impossibly kind and loving woman that stole Caitlyn’s heart countless times over.
“Vi…”
“Not that you don’t have amazing tits,” Vi blurted out, sudden enough to startle, “but I’ll admit, that was just me trying to make you laugh. Though I’m not so sure it worked—”
“Oh shut up.”
Fresh out of patience, Caitlyn gripped at the collar of Vi’s jacket and pulled her into a fervid kiss, free hand clawing itself into the longer pink hair at the nape of her neck. Vi didn’t hesitate to sink into it, reciprocating with greedy arms around her back and wandering lips across her mouth, her jaw, her neck…
When they finally broke apart some moments later, breathless and flushed and foreheads still pressed together, Vi was the first to speak the thought on both their minds.
“Does this mean we can go inside now and start that ‘for later’ part?”
“Yes. It absolutely does.”