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💙 cupcake 🧁👅👅 [1:03pm]
I’m in study room C today. Let yourself in, the door is unlocked.
vi [1:05pm]
awww like C for cupcake
that’s so sweet
💙 cupcake 🧁👅👅 [1:05pm]
Please just hurry.
The University library should be scarcer this time of year- syllabus week doesn’t exactly call for a rigorous brain bootcamp- but, like both years prior, the space is filled.
Freshmen, if she had to guess. They love the uni life, love to take over quiet spaces with old highschool gossip, pretend like they’ll be here every week- and shit, maybe Vi’s way too jaded for a junior. But they stand between the bookshelves reading the spines like it's any fun, and she has to weave through them without grunting to reach the study rooms at the back of the library.
Door’s unlocked, just as she was told, and- she doesn’t quite burst in, because she’s not that desperate, but she doesn’t exactly stroll in either.
Because when capital K Kiramman tells you to please just hurry, you bust your ass to bend to her whim, because she either wants your tongue down her throat, or she’s bleeding out in some dark corner.
The situation reveals itself in the light of the study room, and the navy head blotted dark against the empty whiteboard in high contrast. Vi slams the door shut with the kind of instant regret that makes her feel like she’s static shocked herself, because in a second those uncanny blue eyes turn to glare at her.
“Sorry,” she winces, then, “You okay?”
Rather than softening her gaze, Cait looks like she’s gone from hearing about warships on the horizon, to readying the cannons. “I need your help.”
The way she says it is sharp, serious, but not in the bleeding out way. Not seductive at all, either, and trust, Vi knows the difference intimately.
So, no inappropriate makeout sessions in the school library (figures, not really Cait’s style) and no need for an emergency ambulance. Vi’s brain comes up empty for any kind of possible in between scenario.
Vi looks around the room- empty, unsettlingly so, the round table pristine and the whiteboard clean. A single pad of lined paper is laid out in front of Cait, covered in so many scribbles it may as well have come in dark blue to start with, completely illegible as usual. Next to it, her crazy thin laptop. On the chair- Cait’s backpack, complete with a UOP’s mascot keychain- a poro in a white and blue jersey, swaying next to a heart-shaped lesbian pride badge. Next to that- dozens, actual dozens of rifle pins. Anyone she’d clock in the face with the outer side of her bag would need to get stitches.
As for the girl herself, a nice beige sweater drapes on her shoulders, falls to her thighs over dark brown pants, tight as always. Her hair is up- a sure sign she’s overwhelmed, the need to keep it off her neck proof of that.
“What could you possibly need my help for?” she asks, not accusatory, only curious.
A deep breath.
Then: Cait steps forward to spin her laptop around. On the screen: a Wikipedia page for professional team cheers, sorted alphabetically.
“The Gears want me to come up with a new cheer.”
She says it with all the solemnity of a soldier doomed for death. It takes every ounce of patience Vi has accumulated as the older sister to four-and-a-half siblings to keep a smile from cracking across her face with the absurdity.
Vi looks between her girlfriend and the open tab, and wonders how something so niche could possibly have a page dedicated to it- until, with a barely contained giggle, she lands on the distinct possibility it was written by Cait herself.
“What’s wrong with the old one?” she asks.
“That’s just it-” Caitlyn sighs, “There is no old one.”
Vi’s response comes out halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “What?”
“We kind of just,” Cait waves her hand around, “Did whatever. Everyone yelled something different.”
Said out loud, it does make sense. Soccer games are always just noise- wind and whistles blowing, jumbles of cheers that can’t be picked apart for any actual meaning, a lot of yelling. No one would notice an unintelligible heap getting added to the pile. But the idea is so absurd that Vi can only stare.
“Uh huh,” she nods, slowly, “Camille not big on team spirit?”
“No,” Caitlyn visibly shudders, suddenly cold with the memory of her previous captain, “Very much not.”
Cait is only one week into her captaincy, one week into their third year, and still standing on shaky legs about it. Greyson had dangled the vacancy over her head all summer, which turned what was supposed to be a summer break for the books into a rigorous five hours a day, four days a week self-conducted soccer training camp and 2am rambling voice messages.
More than once, Vi has had to call her father (he’s chill) for any hint of where the fuck her girlfriend even was, scores of text messages going unanswered in her single-minded masochistic solo soccer practices. Annoyingly, it all paid off- not because she wasn’t rooting for Caitlyn every step of the way (they celebrated, long and hard and very sweaty when she made captain), but because the win only reinforced that kind of behaviour.
Already was impossible to keep Caitlyn from doing something she’s set her mind on. Now she knows breaking her back gets her results .
“And what did you choose to yell?” Vi asks with a raised eyebrow.
Now Cait’s blushing. It colours her peach and pretty, across the bridge of her nose and threatening to dip past her jawline, but stubbornly stays contained to her cheeks.
“Uh,” she pretends to think, but it comes out like a stammer, “An… approximation, of whatever the person next to me would yell.”
All the laughter Vi has valiantly kept under lock and key comes pouring out in an almost painful gasp of amusement, and she only narrowly avoids being sent sprawling backwards by the dip of the awful library chairs. Cait is scowling a wild thing, the kind of ire that made her terrifying in highschool debates and mildly intimidating to anyone who knows her, but get it enough times, you build an immunity- it skids off Vi’s skin like a skateboard off a ramp.
You’re so cute, she almost says.
“Ok, well, hit me,” she goes for instead, tipping her head back, “Whatcha got so far?”
Caitlyn shakes her head. “I want to hear your suggestions first.”
It’s something she’s really good at doing- including Vi in anything, everything. Call it true interest, call it a need to have her close, call it a way to make her feel seen, but always call it sweet, and this time, call it a useless venture.
“What the hell do I know about team cheers?” she makes a vague gesture she hopes conveys… whatever she means to convey, “You’ve literally been playing soccer since you popped out your mom’s womb.”
Vi wouldn’t be surprised if her golden baby crib mobile had a soccer ball dancing around in it. Her first word was probably goal, squished around her squishy aristocratic baby cheeks.
“You can’t use literally like that,” Cait frowns, never above taking offense to affronts on the Common language, “And I am begging you never to mention my mother’s womb ever again.”
“What, me and Mrs. K aren’t chill like that?”
“Violet.”
Ah, that’s her are you done voice, complete with government name. If she pushes hard enough she can get a Vanderson to go along with it, but it might get her the richgirl silent treatment in retaliation, and that had been utterly brutal last time.
So she relents. She looks at the open tab, finds that most of the listed cheers are crowd cheers- team name spellings, taunts, whole songs that every fan somehow knows the lyrics to.
It’s a whole world she’s learning to live in, hoping to love just as much as her girlfriend does- and she’s not utterly clueless. What she lacks in soccer lingo know-how, she more than makes up for with enough cheese to fill a charcuterie board.
Puns- those, she can work with.
“Okay, okay, how about,” she holds her hands out like she’s about to pull the drape off a new fancy car, “Grind them down?”
She gets a dead blue stare for that and absolutely nothing else.
“You know, like,” Vi coughs, “On three- one, two, three, grind them down!”
Very blue. Very dead. A sparrow chirps outside- she knows it’s a sparrow because Claggor’s got a bird app and he is religious about updating it. It’s easier to focus on bird identification than meet Cait’s eyes head on right now, the absolute bullets they are.
When she does get a sound out of her, it’s not even a laugh. Just a small, almost horrified murmur. “That’s crass.”
“What-” the glare sharpens, and she groans, “Oh, come on, not like that!”
Cait puts her fist over her mouth, and she has a 50/50 chance at guessing whether she’s biting her thumb knuckle in contemplation of her choice in a partner, or valiantly stuffing down a laugh that would only further feed Vi’s ego.
“It sounds like we’re about to dry hump our way to victory,” Cait says, and yeah, it’s the latter.
“Oh my god, please let me make you saying dry hump my ringtone.”
“You’re not gonna make me look Greyson in the eye with a straight face and suggest we put the word grind into our cheer.”
“It’s a gear pun-”
“Yes, I’m aware.”
“Hey, you want my help?” Vi says, pointedly crossing her arms, “This is what my ideas are gonna look like. Can’t get the cob without the corn.”
Caitlyn looks very torn between walking a straight line right out the door or shoving her tongue down her throat. The result of that mental debate is an eyeroll of acquiescence, a gesture of her hand that doesn’t exactly scream, go ahead, but more, I’ve no choice but to unleash you.
So they set to work. Vi has to pace the length of the study room, boots stomping the grey carpet into submission as she thinks, and thinks, and thinks, vetting every idea that comes through her head in fear one will be the last, vulgar straw. Cait turns her expensive fountain pen over between her fingers with impressive dexterity, and Vi wishes she’d send this line of thinking right to hell so they could spend this time kissing behind the whiteboard instead.
Or doing anything else, really.
“We are Gears, this is our…” Vi finishes this latest suggestion with a tight smile, “Cheer…s.”
“Vi, seriously?”
“I’m on a rhyming website, shut up,” Vi runs her thumb down her phone screen into the bowels that are the five-syllable rhyme section, “And you’re not helping either!”
Cait has done nothing but whisper into her closed fist, either tasting the shape of her ideas with every mutter, or starting some summoning chant to expand her creativity and, hopefully, her sense of humour along with it.
“I have an idea,” she repeats, “But I want to hear yours.”
Vi stares at her blankly. Then, with all the enthusiasm of Powder on laundromat day: “Have no fear, Gears are here.”
This is so stupid.
“Hmm,” Caitlyn pretends- no, wait, it’s genuine interest gleaming in her eyes, “That’s... not bad.”
Vi kind of wants to cry. “If you think that’s good, I’m terrified for what you’ve already come up with.”
Cait crosses her arms, huffs, and she looks like such a silver spoon sucker with that kind of uppity nose posture. “You can’t get worse than what Jayce suggested this morning.”
“You asked Jayce?”
Jayce can write code and sketch schematics and can’t brew a cup of coffee without his demonic coffee machine. Everybody loves him and nobody’s certain why, because his charming personality and roadside puppy demeanor might both be totally accidental- his words. He likes soccer because Cait has always liked soccer and he only learned why penalty kicks occur a year into Cait’s first varsity team when it took Vi a month.
“I mentioned it to him,” Caitlyn already looks like she’s dreading having to repeat it, “He said, I quote, we’re the Gears, for cog’s sake!”
Huh. Not bad, pretty boy. “Cog, I get it,”
A grimace, like she’s eaten seafood slop. “Please don’t say that to his face. You’ll make him think he’s creative.”
“Hey, at least your team name makes it easier,” Vi says, “Those poor traitors.”
“You mean the Traders.”
“That’s what I said.”
She gets an affectionate eyeroll for that before the contemplative silence takes them again.
It suits them both- while Cait’s posture goes still as a statue when she’s lost in thought, Vi prefers to work things out in motion when she’s stuck on something. The fountain pen whirrs with every circular motion it makes between Cait’s fingers, a visual metaphor for the factory of her head.
Vi still paces the study room, careful not to be too loud, knowing she could be getting a headstart on her Physical Growth coursework, but despite all her griping, she’d still much rather be here with Cait, doing this.
Even if it’s starting to make her feel a little bit crazy.
Is ‘rear’ too vulgar for a team cheer? ‘Cheer’ doesn’t even feel like a real word anymore. Cheer, cheer, cheer. Sphere? Soccer balls are spheres. ‘We’re the Gears, kicking spheres’-
“I’m just going to let Zeri do it. The team likes her better, anyway.”
Vi’s head whips up from her phone screen.
That’s not a tone of voice she enjoys hearing. It’s not a posture she’s fond of, either- one leg bent, one hand up to her mouth to bite the pad of her thumb, the other tight on the nub of her elbow. First thing she learned in Caitlyn Kiramman 101- that’s her overthinking pose.
“Hey,” Vi sets her phone down on the table like it’s junk mail, standing to meet her, “Are we still joking around here?”
Caitlyn can’t quite meet her eyes, and for someone who loves to stare so much, that’s a problem.
“I don’t know if I’m cut out for captaincy,” she admits with a low tone, the confession deserving no volume, “I can play, but what do I know about keeping the team afloat? You know me- I’m not a… person person.”
Not a people person, Vi wants to correct, then wants to kick herself, because she’d been five years younger when she’d called her that in the first place.
“Fuck that,” Vi immediately blurts out, “Or, in a language you understand- what utter nonsense.”
That gets her a little huff of amusement. Good start.
“They chose you for a reason,” Vi puts a hand on her shoulder, “And don’t say you don’t know how to be a leader. You run group projects like a squadron. You’re plenty capable, Cupcake- whatever doesn’t fit just yet, you’ll grow into.”
It’s the kind of comfort she’s honed over years of being a big sister, knowing just how to shape her words to bandage a scraped knee or seal a broken heart. It makes her feel light as a feather, whenever it works- especially when it takes the tension right out of those tight shoulders.
“Thank you,” Caitlyn sighs, a gentle smile on her face before it thins into something uneasy, “I… still don’t have a team cheer, though.”
“Well, you said you had something, right?” Vi presses, and hopes she comes off as accommodating, “Kinda exhausted all my options here. Hit me with it.”
Caitlyn seems to steel herself, which is a little funny looking. With all the forced bravery of a traitor off to the gallows, she steps up to the blank whiteboard.
Then, in perfect black sharpie script, blocky and flawless, she writes:
GO GEARS
Vi blinks. And blinks again. She waits for the stopped marker to keep going- it doesn’t. Caitlyn hovers it at the tail of the S like she’s too afraid to lower it, like stepping away would make it final. But no other letters come.
She drags her eyes away from the marker- and, there she sees it. Pink ears. An unmistakable flush that Vi has had much time to get acquainted with.
Embarrassment.
Vi bites her lip, because if she doesn’t, she’s bound to make this worse. “Are you serious?”
Quietly, sheepishly, “This is all I could think of.”
Cait always comes here after her Friday morning class. Today was no different. She’s been in here since then, so… “And when did your last class end?”
“Vi.”
That single syllable is so full of defeat and shame and annoyance that all of Vi’s effort to remain supportive goes spinning down the drain in what feels like a sharp knee to the ribs.
She can only guffaw, double over, and kiss her cheek, and roil with endearment over the idea of Caitlyn Fucking Kiramman taking three hours to put two letters in front of her team name.
“Don’t forget,” Caitlyn says between measured breaths, “Their 9 likes a volley, so watch your knees.”
“Aye aye, captain,” Maggs giggles, as if the joke hasn’t already been worn into the ground two weeks into her captaincy.
Caitlyn smiles back anyway, because she should- and, shockingly, she finds she doesn’t have to force it.
The Gears crowd in on Greyson, pre-match warmup concluded. It’s a breezy day, a few into fall, pollen on the wind and leaves graciously swept off the pitch in preparation for the game. The Targon Bolors eye them from their side of the field, and Zoe attempts to trade a wink with her- Caitlyn only returns it as a sharp nod, eyes twinkling with challenge.
Greyson does her usual preamble, stoic as always, riding the pride of the previous week’s win. Her energy seeps into them all, rich and warm, but not like a bath to put you to sleep- rather, the warmth of a kettle before it comes to a boil.
“Make it a good one, girls,” Greyson nods as the Bolors flood the field once more, and the coach shoots Caitlyn a sharp look.
She swallows. Sets her nerves- then, shifts into gamemode.
“Alright, on three-” she says as they gather into a circle, hands meeting in the middle, “One, two, three-”
“Go Gears!”
Somewhere on the home stands, a certain redhead bursts into laughter.