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Her fingertips and palms will be blue for days, but she says she doesn't care. Caitlyn can imagine her in the morning with her blue streaked hands disappearing into that pink nest of air, making sure the mousse sits right, her fingerprints blackened from reapplied eyeshadow. She glances at Vi’s hands again, and shrugs, the curtain of slick hair on her nape shifting from the movement.
“If it suits you.”
“I think it made my nail polish blacker, actually,” Vi says, and Caitlyn examines them, concurring when she sees how the ultramarine has even filled in gaps from where the chipped paint has flaked off. It’ll wash off, but it looks fine.
“Perhaps not the best retouching method, though. I can’t imagine what alternating between dye and nail polish would do to your nail health.”
“Yeah. But it's a nice statement, don't you think? The blue. It kinda looks like an inky bath tattoo. Wait — like a sea dragon's claws.” Vi flexes her hands and starts swiping the air in a terrible demonstration of free will.
“In what scenario is a sea dragon doing whatever that is?” Caitlyn snorts, and resists the urge to scratch the shell of her dye-whipped ear.
“How is it gonna slash its prey open, Cait. You would let the sea dragon choke on its full sized meal? You want it to starve to death because it can't kill its own food?” Vi whistles, an incredibly irritating smile dimpling her face. “That's cold, Crow-girl.”
Rolling her eyes, Caitlyn glances at her phone screen for the time. Fifteen minutes more. “I didn't say it couldn't kill its prey, Cardinal. Why would a dragon be using its stubby arms to kill anything? Obviously it’s going to use its teeth. If it’s a sea dragon, it can probably blow wind vortices out of its maw.”
“Okay, watch this —” and then Vi is combining that godawful air swiping with puffing her cheeks out and blowing cold air in Caitlyn’s face. She wouldn’t tolerate this from anyone else, especially when Vi briefly runs her hands under the faucet and flicks water at her for ‘special effects’ purposes.
“I don’t think you make for a very intimidating sea dragon,” she deadpans, fleeting laugh threatening to burst from her slanted smile.
“Fine. I’ll leave it to you, Miss Expert On All Affairs Maritime & Serpentine.”
“You shall.”
The humid sting of the dye has eclipsed everything in the tiny, poorly ventilated bathroom — the mangy bathtub curtain dying for a refresh, the mirror flecked with toothpaste spray. The slope of Vi’s nose, limned in gauzy overhead light.
There's a tangible sense of comfort in the scent for both of them, with the amount of dye they go through in a year; in the many years Vi has been bleaching her roots and painting them navy.
Vi had run out of gloves and said she'd still do it.
She's not quite sure why she's so fixated on the blue hands. The chemicals will fade away and make room for all the callouses Vi collects lifting at the gym, the ones matching the raw imprints on Caitlyn’s trigger finger. But they’re here now, she thinks, which — sure. Yes, they are. What an insightful thought.
It’s just — Vi, practicing her pen spinning (index to middle to fourth and waver back, two, three, four) when she's supposed to be completing her anatomy tutorial exercises. The flex of her wrist as she flips cheesy eggs in that cast iron saucepan (it's her lucky charm, she says). When they're sitting in Vi’s dorm and the afternoon sun is loving on her and her fingers are plucking an improv tune on the guitar Caitlyn gifted her for Christmas (semi-acoustic, cherry finish, steel strung sweet).
Amplified in ultramarine.
They strip down to their undergarments and get in the bathtub because the sink’s too small to accommodate Caitlyn's head, and Vi rinses the remnants of dye from her strands. She could watch it leach out and coil towards the drain in gashing rivers, but she's too busy closing her eyes, the air still humming. Vi passes a soapy lather over her hairline and massages her crown with heavy hands — just how she likes it.
By the time Vi’s wrapped her head in a towel and nudged her into dry clothes, Caitlyn's suppressing a yawn, eyelashes beaded with stray showerhead drizzle.
“You always get so sleepy after we do this,” Vi teases. “You still up for the movie?”
Caitlyn ponders a nap and tells her to continue watching even if she dozes off. “I know you love the baseball scene.”
“Guilty as charged,” Vi quips.
Even before sleep takes ahold of her, Caitlyn’s attention is solely on the cold teal shades of the film flashing incandescent on Vi’s face.
Overhead, the sun narrows its dulled apricot gaze upon campus. It’s getting colder, the leaves russeting into their translucent skeletons, the winds lacing their slippers up for their seasonal matinees. The university bus stop’s seating has been removed and replaced with those stupid, slanted, ‘leaning rails’, in a modernisation Caitlyn has been protesting for the past few weeks. And by protest she means sending increasingly threatening emails to the dean CCing the university accessibility support services, sprinkling in her last name like pixelised confetti.
This means that Vi and her are sat on the curb, bag straps having long since fallen off their shoulders.
“Ugh.” Vi is losing badly in a game of in-text pool with Jinx, and said sister is spamming her with sticker cutouts of various memes Vi has never seen before — bless her granola soul. Like a semipermanent fixture, Caitlyn's arm is draped around Vi’s neck, fingers brushing against black cotton.
At the junction where Vi’s fuzzy nape meets the inside of Caitlyn’s bicep, a citrus warmth emanates from the short tufts of hair. A breeze rustles their near empty coffee cups. Speaking of granola souls — Vi pulls an oat and raspberry bar from her pocket and offers half to Caitlyn, who declines, opting instead to rest her head on Vi's well-defined shoulder.
It's alien and confidential, the way the audible vibrations of her chewing and jaw working up and down makes Caitlyn want to burrow further in, slip under her skin like a fishscale skimming just beneath the rivertide.
Vi turns her screen brightness up.
Complaining, Cait pokes at it, stiff-fingered. “You can barely see what you're doing through that cracked screen, no wonder you're getting schooled.”
“Eh. It's fine. Claggor says he can fix it soon so I’m not fussed.” She crumples up the oat bar wrapper and shoves it into the coffee cups.
Caitlyn mentally adds a fall-proof phone case to her online shopping cart, which is three quarters full of rare Seraphine merch she's been outbidding other eBay users for.
Watching Vi aim another trifling shot that almost sinks the white ball is torture enough. She pries the phone away with minimal whining and watches Jinx return the play.
> how r U this bad
> r u plauing blind
She angles the cue and sinks two in one go.
> tch. lucky shot.
By the end of the game, in which Jinx fouls her black ball shot after almost reaching victory, Caitlyn is bombarded with copious amounts of keysmashing, middle finger emojis, and gifs of explosions.
> I KNOW TGAT WAS YIU CAITLYN VI CAN'T PLAY FOR SHIT
> BOOO U CHEATER
> FYCK OFFFFDDDFFREFF
What can I say, I’m a natural. <
> GIVE PHONE BACK TO VI
She hands it back, poorly concealing her smug win with a nonplussed expression. Vi continues texting Jinx until the bus, so late that it has evolved to being on time, finally pulls up at its insultingly leisurely pace.
The bus doors fold open, frog-leap-bent, and a faint gust shudders across their backs.
Caitlyn's always liked how sweaters drape over Vi’s frame.
And they're on the bed, duvet bundled to the side, Old Maid game abandoned in a fit of spluttered indignance when Caitlyn finally finds the stack of tossed cards hidden inside the pillow sleeve. Vi, dodging the spray of mismatched aces and numbers, laughing, saying, “Took you long enough.”
There's a crop of skin where Vi’s tank has ridden up, soft with amber breath, and Caitlyn follows it up to her outstretched neck, the jut of her chin a cliff to cling to for fond eyes. She twiddles with the edge of the sheets, folding it between her index and her middle finger. Picks off a waylaid strand of pink hair.
“I need to wash my sheets,” she announces, and they both don't get up. Vi grabs a fistful of her duvet covers and takes an audible inhale, which is flustering and stupid and so very Vi to do. “Smells alright to me. Well — I kinda like how you smell, anyways. It's nice. Homey.”
“Right,” Caitlyn replies, hovering over the delete button for this newly acquired piece of information before grudgingly filing it away for further rumination. “You're a biased party. Of course it smells familiar.”
“Mylo’s ratty ass sweatbands are a familiar smell. Doesn’t mean it’s homey.” Vi turns her head to face Caitlyn head on, and she’s never been one to shy away from eye contact, so she’s not going to start today. There’s a fading freckle below Vi’s left eye, Polaris prone. It’ll come back next year.
Instead of addressing it, she takes the alternative route: “You know what you smell like?”
“Hmm?”
It's not even an answer she needs to improvise.
“You smell like that time I finally convinced my parents to do some proper camping and our families went together, years back.” Caitlyn could point the calendar dates out blindfolded. It's an overcorrection of vagueness — standing so close to the memory that the lines atomise, fade, leaving only the hasty remedy of blanket terms thrown over the shape of it when scrutiny comes.
Vi nods, elbow sunk into the mattress as her palm props her chin up, listening.
“We went birdwatching and got lost because of that broken compass. When we thought we were heading east, we found a field of asters and goldenrod. Do you remember —”
“— Oh my god, I just said you smell like home and you're comparing my scent to goldenrod?!”
Caitlyn resists throwing a pillow at Vi, just barely.
“I'm not talking about the smell of it, which, I know,” she peers at Vi’s raised brow, “ironic. Do you remember? The field was so full of light. Like everything was saturated with this suntanned film. The goldenrod looked like the aftermath of fireworks in that basin of deep purple asters.”
Above, a mild breeze ruffles the tops of their heads. They’ve forgotten about reapplying insect repellant.
The king single mattress has flown off to those teenaged September dusks, cicada crowned.
“Of course I remember,” Vi says now, softly, so soft yet convicted enough that they can still hear the warbling of songfinches Caitlyn hasn’t managed to tick off.
“That’s what you smell like, to me.”
Caitlyn exhales. She’s realising, in latent idiocy, that the alternative route she’s taken is far rockier.
She watches for Vi’s reaction, whose body seems very still, except for her accelerating heartrate, which Caitlyn greedily tracks with the quickening rise and fall of her toned stomach.
Vi turns and falls on her back, angled strangely with the lumps of sheets beneath her. Twice, her mouth opens, then shuts. “That answer is like, a million times better than mine. What the fuck? I said you smelt homey and thought it was nice and you just — holy shit, Crow-girl.” She’s staring at the low dorm ceiling, and Caitlyn’s staring at her.
“I had to outdo you somehow,” she shrugs, and Vi lets out a groan bordering on pained.
Grumbling, but clearly pleased by the twinkle in her eye, Vi gets up, hauling the duvet over her shoulder. “Come on, let's get your sheets washed.”
Caitlyn sits up and tugs the hem of her shirt down, snaps the band of her underwear against her hip. “I thought you liked how I smelt?”
“You drive me insane. Pass me the pillowcases.”
So Caitlyn strips the pillows of their pale covers and tosses the flimsy pieces over — but not before checking if any stray cards have been left behind.
Inhale, hold, hold, hold, exhale, two, three, four, inhale, hold, hold, chest up, exhale, two, three, four, inhale, hold, ignore sweat on brow, herd drifting thoughts, exhale, two, three four, inhale, hold, last one!, hold, hold on, down, two, three, four, done.
Caitlyn hastily exits the lunge and puts the weight on the gym mat with palpable relief, easily chugging at least a third of her water at the completion of her last rep.
Her watch beeps, warning of the incoming rush of office workers if she doesn’t get up off the floor and into cooldown within the next hour.
Blood pumps its veiny, headlong, beat in her body as she lays there supine, palms momentarily staining the mat dark. Vi should be about finished too, depending on how ambitious she’s being. Reaching up to dig into her traps, she groans, the thin edge of ache and relief blurring. A massage would do immense things for her stress, maybe Vi could — she recalls the neargone blue teeth of the dye still sunk into those palms, and then thinks about having them on her. Perhaps she’ll invest in a massage gun instead.
She racks her weights and finds Vi straining against her added discs, her spotter soundly encouraging her.
“Hi, Gert,” she waves, and Gert briefly waves back before refocusing on Vi's attempt. There's always been a careful stability that Caitlyn admires about her, how serious she takes Vi's safety, in the small odds and ends on music making Vi sometimes shares with Caitlyn.
She stands back as Gert tells Vi to keep pushing.
It's too much for her, so they put the bar back up as Vi recovers, chest heaving, panting half-gashed as her red face practically glows against the bench.
“Hey Legs,” Gert greets. “Cooldown stretches? I’d join, but I only just got here.”
From the bench, Vi protests: “I saw you in the change rooms flirting with that girl! Only got here my fucking ass.”
“Yeah, and I've spent half that time spotting you when I could've been talking to her — be grateful.”
Caitlyn tilts her head. “Is it the girl with the bleached streak? Short-ish hair, wearing a mint green set.”
They may not be able to see the abrupt blush overtaking Gert’s face, but her awkward switching of legs all but confirms it. How awful it is, to exist with such a diagnosable type. How vulnerable you are to attacks from all sides.
Vi is quick to add: “Girl is cutthroat at the Stairmaster. The other day I used it after her and her settings are no joke. Steep as hell incline.”
In the way that all useless information becomes Midas-touched when referring to a crush, Gert closes her eyes and feigns indifference. She announces her leave and quickly gathers her phone and water bottle to escape.
“Get her number!” Vi whistles, and Gert throws her a non-covert middle finger, before directing a last statement over the shoulder.
“Hey, bring Legs with you. It'll be fun,” she says, before heading off, no doubt in the direction of Stairmaster girl.
“Bring me to what?”
Sliding off the bench and leaving a torso shaped sweat stain, Vi guzzles down her water and resists pouring the other half over her head. With a jerk of her chin towards the discs, they slide them off and wipe down the equipment to boot.
Sitting on the edge of the mat, they go into their stretches.
“It's a gig her band's playing at. Place called Cherry Bomb, in the Kettle. You heard of it?”
Child’s pose, seal, back to child's pose.
“I feel like we've well established the places I don't know.”
Cat, cow, cat, cow. Lunge variants.
“Heh. Well, I've never been either. Anyways, it's on a Friday, so the place will be packed. If you don't want to go, s’cool too.”
Sitting butterfly, forehead brought to the ankles.
“I’ll go. I’ll bring earplugs, if need be.”
Straddle sit, leaning towards each kneecap like bent flower stems. The splits. Vi’s yet to master those, but she also seems in no rush to perfect them either. Still, there's that pleasant pride whenever she settles into it — happiness at her maintenance of flexibility, sure, but also in Vi’s blink-and-miss-it glassy eyed wanderings.
Desire is an easy bleed in the Venn-diagrammed plane between two people who have known each for very long, and Vi has always evaded the meticulous boxes of Caitlyn's mind. Leaning is inevitable and hardly newspaper worthy. Caitlyn has been secreting these kernels of leanings for years, storing them in urns and pillowcases and inside the stitches of shirts which have slowly trophied the roles of sleepwear. In the same way that a bedroom is private but not shameful, these thoughts have slept with her for years.
Rarely do they keep her up. How does Vi deal with her leanings? They're all so loud for her, and she can't turn the radio down.
She has a dream, a balmy dream. Someone puts their fingers on her eyelids, and the weight of them leaves uneven gaps of glowing orange. She can taste them, smell the chemical siren of navy blue layered on them.
“Guess who it is.”
Before she can answer, her body, clockwork tuned, wakes.
Caitlyn peruses her upcoming schedule, and phones Grayson for another gunpowdered venture to the estate grounds.
She’s thinking of microscopes and dating slides and cleaning her lab goggles when a sharp, distinctive, whistle pierces through the lake of her thoughts.
“Yo, Crow-girl.”
Darting her eyes up, she’s pleased to find Vi’s silhouette leant against the white panelling of the laboratory corridors, all casual rogue in that studded leather jacket of hers. Hair mussed by the wind, a hand dug into her jeans pocket. The point at which her pearly smirk starts, unzipping a smile disarming enough to have Caitlyn clutch at her university tote.
“What do you want to eat? — I think that place that was definitely a mafia front closed down before we got to try it, but we could get burritos at the shop down the strip? I think I’ve got a coupon for that somewhere…”
“Burritos sound good, Cardinal. I want their sweet potato fries. And, I don’t believe it was a mafia front. I think they just converted to an illegal gambling ring during the night time.”
Through the wide double doors of the science faculty, they bicker in rhythm, hands flying animatedly, eyebrows readied for their disbelieving twinges at the other’s argument. Eventually, they compromise on the matter, saying it could have been a gambling ring under mafia direction, though they both internally agree that their own stance is the correct one. The sky has grown plum ripe, fig tree dark in its earned twilight.
Vi inquires about her lab work, which prompts a long-winded sigh.
“I don’t know. I’m overcomplicating it, overthinking everything.”
“Overthink everything out loud to me, then.”
“Permission to go full-speed?”
Bringing two fingers to her temples in a salute that dwindles in mockery the more she performs it, Vi pleads allegiance to Caitlyn’s motor mouth. “Scout’s Honour,” she declares.
Grinning, Caitlyn launches into a ramble that branches alveoli thin, breathing between issues like blood sample work and wound identification like an experienced switchblade. She never strays from specific terminology, or the gore of the practice, knowing that Vi will ask for terms she’s confused on, and that she’s never flinched from even the worst of Caitlyn’s cases — except for the one with maggots. Occasionally, Vi will deal insight on things she’s turned a blind-eye on, acting as the matching lung of a respiring body, in, out, in, out: this is how debriefs have worked for the better part of their friendship, in tandem, in sincerity.
They amble down the strip, which is peppered with the buzz of rushing cars. Streetlights poke their lit fingers through Vi’s nodding portrait, her nose ring half-shadowed, half-silvered, her brows furrowed in rapt absorption.
At the burrito joint register, she halts to let Vi order their dinner, meal discounted with a scrounged up voucher she did in fact find in her inner jacket pocket. Caitlyn has an inkling they were always meant to end up here, and inhales the curling waft of salt and grilled meat. They haven’t fixed the dimmed menu board on the right in all the time they’ve patroned here.
Vi bumps her shoulder to unpause her rant. “You were saying about cataloguing sharp force injuries?”
“Yes.” She blinks. “I mean, imaging them is interesting, and we’re investigating new techniques for it, but the sheer amount of samples, combined with my lab partner’s uselessness — the other day, he asked me what a kerf mark was! I don’t know how he’s managed to scrape by, and I suspect the lecturer lumped me with the cretin so I could free tutor him to a passing grade — which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that I didn’t agree to it! It’s so bloody ridiculous.”
“Bloody, you say?”
Caitlyn huffs a distracted laugh and thanks Vi for taking their tray to the booth. Tearing into the corner of her warm tortillaed wrap, she exhales, shoulders dropping in relief in all her laid out words.
Vi pushes the carton of fried, sweet potato goodness to her corner, and she relishes in stuffing her mouth, eyes fluttering shut at the rounding fullness of the hour, each second a molecule of satisfaction.
“I think I’ve got it all out now. Did anything happen today for you?”
Shrugging, Vi smears the remains of cheesy sauce from her mouth onto the back of her hand, sheepishly accepting the napkin Caitlyn dangles in front of her.
“Nothing much, I guess. We're gonna start student consults next year and I have to email a bunch of professors for recommendations and then figure out who I want to shadow, if they'll even take me.”
A familiar prick of blood red skitters through Caitlyn at Vi’s self-deprecation, before the edges of her eyes soften, noticing the pattering tap of Vi's pinkie against the foil of her demolished burrito.
“Of course they'll take you. They'd be stupid not to — you're outstanding at what you do, and all the patients will be in the best of hands. Cross my heart.”
Reluctantly, but adamant on answering Caitlyn's invoking of a silly childhood tradition, Vi raises a hand to sign over her own chest, oily index finger dragging across muscle-teed sternum. Caitlyn eyes the waning blue on her finger joints, the fidgeting adjustment of her anodised rings gleaming muted chrome, and continues tracking the return of Vi's normal skin with an uncanny diligence she has yet to let go of.
“Seriously,” she continues, unrelenting.
“Anyone would be extraordinarily lucky to have you —” the high points of Vi’s cheekbones are mildly coral, “and I don't just mean the clients. Do you remember that dreadful spinal scare my mother had? She had a tremendously helpful physio; would you like me to pass her contact details on?”
Vi coughs on her bite and sneaks a couple fries to her side. “Thanks, Cait, but I wanna do my own research first. I’ll see,” she nods belatedly, and Caitlyn makes a note to check back in with that. She's still ruddy on the tips of her exposed ear, decked out in a gallery of stainless steel piercings.
There’s an abrupt thought that skewers Caitlyn's inner forested foray, spearing the ice sideways in its veracity. I like that.
Then, more specifically, needle sharp and mordant: I like my colours on her. She thinks about it the entire bus ride home, shared wired earphones plugged into Vi’s weekly playlist.
Every sense is occupied with Vi — her sight, which keeps straying to the cerulean-cursed hand gripping the metal pole, thumb tapping out the beat of the songs, her ears, battling a full frontal attack with the crooning notes of Vi’s careful selections, her nose, which could probably follow that sandalwood cologne into a dark maze, her touch, her taste. It's inescapable.
I like my colours on her.
What exactly constitutes her colours? She has as much ownership over the visible light spectrum as anybody else — say she elects her patent misty blue and pinions it to the skinsunken creases of Vi’s blueprint. It's not the being there that pleases her; she’s certain that if she peered through the eyehole of her own watery design, a curtain of magenta would be fixed to the windows, sending all the light warm.
It's the deliberate opacity of it, the direct vector from Vi’s hands to her hair. Look what she does to me. Look what I do to her.
Strangers could return them to each other in scenarios lost and parted.
Caitlyn makes hasty eye contact with a balding man mid-yawn, and contemplates, ironically, how visible the voracity looks on her.
Can everybody see the sheen of it? On the bluedark roads, cars shuddering in their swallow-hum-tarred cadences, if the drivers were to peer out their windows, could they see it glowing through the bus panes? Can Vi see it?
Not just the blue of her hair, but really, that ruthless pursuit she has when she spots the appled skin Vi sports. When she's embarrassed (head down, hood raised), happy (pursed smile pushed to the back of the crowd, hidden valley sweet), shocked (eyes roving sideways, shining crisply), that rare second mode of unabashed happiness.
Like a bruise in want of pressing. Those colours — they're Caitlyn's too.
She blinks and they've arrived at her building. Vi's making small talk with the security guard and then they're in the elevator, button already lit up. At her door, with that crooked number she hasn't bothered to level, she doesn't even raise her key to turn the handle.
Vi makes a short quip, asking if she also needs that opened, slit eyebrow raised in jest despite her already reaching inside her jeans pocket.
“No — I’m good,” she blurts out, and races to open it before Vi manages to fish out her keychained copy.
It creaks noisily, and Caitlyn resists a wince. Belatedly, “Thanks. I’ll see you… tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I'll be in the library from three, I think. Maybe two.”
Half-open door. Caitlyn salvages the strand before she veers off and does something incalculably bird-brained. Like press on the bruise.
“Table next to the CD stands?”
“Wouldn't sit anywhere else.”
“I might be there from four-thirty. I’ve, um, a drop-by meeting with one of my professors.”
“Cool.”
“Mhmm.” Nodding through an incoming yawn, Caitlyn steps backwards, on the cusp of bleary-eyed. A thumb jolts her; she snaps her lashes unstuck from the wet eyeline. Shock stripes a cartwheel of nerves behind her ears.
Lodestar hot, just below the corner of her eye, Vi tsks, her thumb dutifully gathering Caitlyn’s stray tear. Wetness drags warmly from her eyelid to her temple, and then, with another sweep, it’s gone. It's a caesura stretched fractal long, the movement, and it suspends Caitlyn's breath at the apex of her throat. Even though the gesture has already ended, delayed instinct tells her to grab Vi’s wrist and push away, to hold close and fall into it for a thousand open-doored hallways. She does not catch the end of Vi’s words.
Caitlyn’s voice is strung thin as a feather. “Get home safe, Cardinal.”
She watches as Vi disappears behind the security of the elevator doors, and then unglues herself, shutting the door with the force of restraining something growing larger than the apartment, burgeoning tendril thick and threatening to leach out through the hinges. Perhaps it’s the reverse — in the fisheye, pressing herself against the wood to see, a familiar guest named leaning raps their knuckles against the door, and waits.
“You should not be able to do that,” Vi complains, and lobs her dart at the board. It lands itself in plastered exile, a million kilometres away from any points, and joins the ranks of her other poor yet overpowered shots.
Caitlyn squints at the attempt, having to think to blink manually, and turns her fists down.
“What's that supposed to be?” Vi finishes the last of her juice, and tosses it into the bin. At least her aim isn't entirely forsaken.
“Thumbs down?” Caitlyn looks at her hands, furrowing her brows. There's something off about them, but she can't tell what.
“Wait.” Squatting down to inspect them, Vi turns the music down to clear her vision. Now they're both looking at her fists.
With ample wisdom, Vi feels the clarity of a lightning strike anoint her head. “Dude, you're missing your thumbs. They're gone. Where'd they go?”
“Hmmm…”
Pawing diligently at her hands, Vi counts the individual knuckles out loud, which Caitlyn appreciates. They get to the fourth one and trail off into concerned silence.
“Cait. Where's your last knuckle. Cait. Holy shit. We gotta like — like, do something.”
To Caitlyn, this is not as large a dilemma, thoughts drifting into a pleasant buzz with the gift of Vi’s hands in close vision. The remnant blueberried stains on her digits are few and far, rain dilute. Caitlyn unwraps her fists to reverse the inspection, gazing intently at the patterns of fingerprints. Blink. The whorl on Vi's left index is particularly swirly. Blink.
A notification from her phone jolts her — Jayce has some bougie leftover pizza from a catering double up with his date with Mel and Viktor.
Cool. <
> Want me to bring some rn? Still warm.
Vi, jsyce has pozza. Do you want any <
> ??? I’m Jayce?
> Ah, I see. Will drop by Vi's dorm instead. Stay safe Sprout!
Thanjd. Can you turn down the radio plesse. It'serather loud. <
> Sure thing 😂
Jayce does not fulfil his promise in turning down the radio, which has since moved onto discussing metal thumb prosthetics and how the host needs to contact Powder for parameters. Wow — she knew surveillance technology was rife, but she did not expect them to casually namedrop her best friend's sister, let alone use her deadname. She should lodge a complaint.
“Vi,” she starts, which, for unknown reasons, stops the radio audio. They're catching on quick.
Someone knocks on the door. Gasping, Vi stands up. “Oh my god, they're here.”
“Who?”
“Your thumbs!”
Well, she supposes it would be rude for her to not welcome her own thumbs in.
They must have ding-dong-ditched, Caitlyn thinks, or perhaps they're hiding in the delicious smelling pizza boxes Jayce and Mel are holding.
Smiling warmly, Jayce opens one of them — no thumbs, but, oh!
“Olives,” Jayce says, proudly. “I knew you'd like it. And wow, our timing was great — I bet you guys are starving,” he adds, with a suspicious smile on his face. What does he know? Maybe he's conspiring with the person on the radio, and that's why he wouldn't turn their volume down.
Nonetheless, Caitlyn stops thinking the moment a slice marries her tastebuds. Food is awesome. More people should invest in food. She should tell Mel about this idea. Mel apologises for Viktor’s absence, says he needed to rest his overworked leg and back, but that he's on board for the accessibility meeting she scheduled with the dean. It's a lot of words. She blinks again, and Mel squeezes her shoulder, twinkling laughter very far away. “I’ll put it in a text,” she says.
Okay. Cool, she thinks. Whatever that means. Then they both leave, and Vi is laying on the ground with her. Both their bodies are too much body to be doing any kind of standing right now. Vi has a lamp the shape of a Minecraft grass block, and the soft light of it blurs the shadows of unidentifiable objects into the walls. How can a room be so dim and lit at the same time?
Caitlyn reaches up to further smudge the minor residue of Vi's eyeshadow into her never-fading eyeliner.
“Oh, hey. Found your thumb,” Vi says reassuringly, breath rushing over the underside of her raised wrist. Of course she found it. Vi's always been a finder, Caitlyn thinks.
“You should keep it,” Caitlyn mutters.
“What?”
“I like them that way. They're — they look good. The blue.”
When inquired to clarify, Caitlyn makes a series of nonsensical gestures, sighs, and lifts the nearest of Vi's arms. She laces their hands together, presses them fingerprint to warm fingerprint — arch, arch, whorl, double whorl, radial loop. She didn't get to confirm the other hand, but she'll do that later.
Vi hums, the sound a physicality more than anything, and engages Caitlyn in a competition to push against each other's palms as hard as they can.
“Sea dragon blue. Your blue,” Vi says, after declaring herself the impromptu winner.
“Yes.”
This time, they're both looking at Vi's hands as she twists them in the air, puppeteering slow pirouettes, the lamp glazing the backs of them whiskey washed.
“Huh,” offers Vi, and that's that.
Cherry Bomb has a line out the door and that faux 80s look going for it, all LED neon replicas and sticker decaled toilet stalls, complete with Sharpied solicitations. Caitlyn touches up on some lip gloss before heading off to the crowded bar, sending Vi a quick snapshot of the artisanal beers they have on tap. Usually, they get ready together, but Vi had to drop Jinx and Ekko off at an out-of-ways engineering seminar their teacher nominated them for.
> The one second to the left
> Dead mans mirror brewery
I’ll get a pint of it when you're near the front of the line. <
Don't want it to get warm. <
> Good call 👍
> Venue look cool?
It's as loud as I thought it'd be. Has the usual gay bar aesthetic, but a tad classier. They've got a few pinball machines in the back. <
> I hear that challenge loud and clear crowgirl
> Get ready to get demolished
Sure, if you can even get here on time. <
> Parkings always nonexistent in the kettle istg
> Maps says 7 minutes walking
So, 3 minutes tops. <
> Yup. Cya in 5
Don't forget the line wait! <
> Dw I know the guy on security
Right, of course you do. <
I didn't mean that sarcastically. <
> All g cait, didnt read it that way :)
Caitlyn likes the message and then tucks her phone away, eyeing the cocktails on the board with great interest.
The beer Vi chose has a lambic edge that Caitlyn cringes at, licking at her teeth to get the rest of it out. Laughing, Vi sculls a quarter down, and comments on the bartender's less than decent pull.
Under the warm venue lights, Caitlyn eyes the wet shape of her reddened mouth, pitted plum, and drags her pupils to the angled grip on the beer glass. Poor decision — all the dye might have finally faded into its deathbed, but even with the roving snake of beamed lights, she can tell Vi's nails are not their usual pitch black. They're Mariana Trench blue.
Her breath, like a phantom caught mid-haunt, evaporates. The suction in her mouth sucks the spit behind her teeth. She checks her watch instead — there’s enough time for a brief game of pinball, but she doesn’t even want to take her chances.
Vi doesn’t own dark blue nail polish, so she knows she must have borrowed it from her sister to do this. Or — purchased it by herself, perused the nail section at the pharmacy and compared shades. It’s so innocuously insane, so geared to drive her mad.
And not to say that she has ever been at a dearth of people not giving her what she wants, because the granular truth of her material abundance precedes her, not to say she has asked for things and been outlandishly denied or never fought target after restless target to bullseye her aspirations, but not to ask — not to outright ask, at least, and still Vi comes with her wordless grit, brandishing those nails silently after a less than sober remark. Why would Vi give that to her? Doesn't she know?
“Did you find something to drink?” Vi licks her lips, and Caitlyn could scream. Her mouth is already shiny from the beer, why does she need to —
“No. I looked at some of the cocktails, but,” she shrugs. Technically, it’s not that she’s not in a drinking mood, with all of her hurricaned thoughts whirling turbulent, but there’s too many people. She should have stayed home to raid her father’s sake cabinet, laid starfished on the plush rug to stare at the woodgrain. But she’d already been committed to attending. Figures.
When the lights dim and everyone has packed themselves in sardine-dense, Vi presses in arm to arm, the thick spike of her wristed leather cuffs both grounding and eliminating. Worse, Caitlyn's hip brushes into the jut of Vi's waist.
They've seen each other naked, and somehow this is what stands Caitlyn’s hairs on its ends, just the sleeveless nature of Vi’s muscle tee leaving unearthed skin for Caitlyn to graze against. The peripheral glimpse of her tattooed neck tilted to see over the gaps of the crowd.
Three quarters through the opener’s set, Caitlyn has, with the highest degree of charitability, heard five and a half whole words.
It doesn’t get better with the second one either — unashamedly, in the brief moments where her consciousness allows her to narrow in on the music instead of getting drunk on skin contact, she thinks, Vi can play better than this.
It’s not entirely that Vi is unconcerned with these kinds of criticisms either. She’ll dance the night away, stray light bands flexing off her metal toe plates as she taps to the beat. When she sways, head nodding, Caitlyn will move in unison, dominoed. But after her cheeks are flushed, barely tipsy after they sidle into the car home, she’ll turn to Caitlyn and tell her about every performer’s pitch and timbre, every inexorable detail laid out for Caitlyn to draw in.
Caitlyn hasn't turned her head in the entire right direction for fear of seeing those neat blue nails clutching an empty beer glass. It's good that she's never been known for her overt dance ability, singular.
She digs her nails into her palms. It's not even halfway through the night and she's accumulated an abacus of strained indents. If she doesn't, she’ll pry Vi’s hands into her own. Cup them like buzzing firelights in her hold. Caitlyn doesn't even think Vi would mind.
There's the normal commotion of the lights darkening, instruments being set up behind the curtain. When Gert and her band burst onto stage to the detonation of foot stamping, as is custom, a flood of sapphire and magenta unleashes.
Gert fusses with the mic, grinning, face paint CMYK approved. “This is Geriatric Ghoulz, and you're about to get your shit rocked!’
Vi whistles loudly, yelling in approval.
As the notes of the drum heavy song ring out, she finds she owes it to Gert and her dignity to tune in. She tentatively loosens her tunnel vision, enjoying the scratchy rasp of the lyrics. The melody lino-prints its groove against the medium of the swarming crowd, pulsing, driving over textured screams as crunchy steamroll.
It's nowhere close to moshing, but the way everyone's limbs are swimming, Vi and her bar-grown-body sprouting gills in the push and pull — Gert shredding something effortlessly nasty on the electric guitar. So many careless minutes of Vi rambling about music practiced in real time. Though she looks out of place, Vi's brought her to enough gigs for her to understand the basics. A proxy-love. She knows people look at her at these nights out and implicitly know she's with someone.
It can get incredibly claustrophobic. When Vi taps her on the waist and points to her lobes to make her reveal her working earplugs, misidentifying the issue and casually extending a draped arm to rub gentle circles at her shoulder, it takes her whole brain to soldier on.
Inhale, hold, listen, hold, exhale, two, three, four. Inhale, hold, thump, thump, exhale, two, three, four.
The bass slows down, sonorous and molasses thick, heavy enough to wade in. Less headbanging.
Vi leans in something dangerous, says something ignitible.
“I want to show you something, now that it's safe.”
“What? What do you mean by —” she shouts, but when she finally swivels to face her, Vi’s disappeared. A hot hand at her elbow anchors her, drags her down till her vision is dark, stocking-sifted.
They're squatting on the floor, and it's definitely sticky. Caitlyn adjusts her miniskirt. A cocoon of legs to surround them; to stabilise her, Vi keeps her grip knuckled. Her grey eyes are stereo sung. Their knees knock. The buzz of the sonic frequencies hums up her boots.
“You can feel it down here better, right? The bass. The heavyweight speakers are on the floor, that's why.”
If there are legs hammering at her back, she could not care less. Lightning striking her is Vi’s incessant touch, dragging roughly up her arm, ascending over the slope of her shoulder iron white. Grounding and eliminating.
“Close your eyes.”
Resonating in and off and around her body, the stallion thunder of it all, notes stack and rattle, building into towers, then tumbling, tide-torn. In old growth forests, mother trees extend their roots to communicate nourishment to the whole underground network. The song crawls inside her, overlapping Vi and her, bursts shrapnelled bloom as Vi slides that fucking hand around her dipped clavicle and then up her hummingbird throat. She won't open her eyes. She swallows around her star-fraught dizziness.
Through the hold and into her flickering column of neck, the bass rings in like a gong magnified, her wishing well pulse reverberating coins back up her dry mouth.
Vi doesn't squeeze, but Caitlyn's pulse still stutters staccato sibilant, inadvertently leaning in, and knowing Vi can feel her throat contract — this is not the hand Caitlyn memorised stoned, but it doesn’t matter — the fingerprints will be burned there anyway. Her painted index finger stroking Caitlyn's trembling jaw.
“Can you feel it?”
In that humid dream, Caitlyn raises her own hands to hold onto the wrists draped over her head. Clefs stretch their braided filaments over them, beats cracking yolk-like over sizzling riffs.
“Guess who it is.”
Her answer rumbles against Vi’s heady palm.
“You're my best friend.”
Unable to withstand it, Caitlyn tears the hands off her face, and all of it is her colour. Vi is her colour, sea dragon washed, her eyes stricken, leaning.
And in that meniscus of fragrant noise, she can feel it, she can, and does, and does.
Over the weekend, Vi travels out of state to accompany Jinx and Ekko for an interstate competition they qualified for, post successful engineering conference.
She takes pictures of the long roads. Jinx snoring in the back, Ekko tending to his Animal Crossing island on the switch.
Gas station prices blinking astigmatic, a terrible selfie half-squinted in the dense sun, clouds that prompt brief arguments on alleged shapework.
Piping hot pies devoured at roadside eateries, the steam siphoning upwards.
Caitlyn stays glued to her phone. Unspoken yet agreed between them, the call button remains untouched.
The main pathway to the dean’s office is strewn with some of the crunchiest specimens of leaf in the city. A groundskeeper revs his leaf vacuum and continues exiling the lawns of their dying foliage. She texts Viktor for his ETA, and receives an image of the ancient elevator inside the heritage grade building with no elaboration.
The support worker from the accessibility services has already been waiting patiently beside the office doors when Caitlyn makes it upstairs, folder in hand with all the relevant codes, notes, and emails. She's not completely fluent in sign language, but Steb reminds her of his lip reading skills as well. Viktor isn't too far behind, steadfast with his cane.
“Okay,” she nods. “Let's get our seats back.”
To translate for Steb, they have a coworker from the accessibility services stand behind the desk besides the dean.
Dryly, Viktor jokes to Caitlyn in a voice loud enough for the whole room to hear: “Amazing. They cannot afford enough chairs in the office, too.”
The dean turns to Portia and pointedly asks if she would like to sit, to which she awkwardly and profusely asserts her own comfort.
The rest of the half hour continues in a similarly excruciating manner.
> [image.png. Blurred, the halfline dividing the cotton grey sky and a half balding plain. A lone cow, head bent low to chew at the grass, tail twitching.]
> Cow :)
Cow! <
(“Not all of us have high enough salaries to afford chauffeurs, Mr. Wells.”
“Staff and students are welcome to drive their own cars. We have two carparks for that sole purpose, and —”
“Are you expecting me to illegally man a vehicle? What about Steb? We cannot obtain our licenses, as you must have forgotten.” If there is a way to tap a metal kneebrace sarcastically, Viktor has mastered it. “Because we are disabled.”)
> [image.png. Condensation crowding the plastic of four tall slushies, blue raspberry, lime, watermelon swirled. A sneaking hand reaching for them as they sit on the car roof.]
> They had a bogo deal and there were three of us
Jinx is passed out from the sugar now, isn't she? <
> No
> Still up singing bohemian rhapsody all parts
> Including instruments
> Pls send help
Unfortunately, I can't hear you over her soulful rendition. Did you say something? <
> Freddie mercury would never treat me like this
Well, yes. Because he's dead, darling. <
(“Ah, Ms. Kiramman. Do send my regards to Cassandra for her support on the Folger-Chelsea restoration project. There are a few points of discussion to iron out, but her contributions and experience have been stellar.”
“As soon as you restore seating to the campus bus stops,” she nods, raising her brow. No room for placid smiles in her dictionary.
“I'm sure she'd love to hear about the project from her own daughter.”
“Are you? I’m certain my mother wouldn't take kindly to using me as a delivery mouthpiece when you could directly contact her.”
It's quite irritating, really, how smothered his smile grows.)
> [image.png. Feet kicked up on the dashboard, two laureled pins, Latin inscription woven between the leaves. Rain, a thin, muggy, drizzle on the windshield.]
> Qualified for finals :)
Well deserved. Did Ekko’s quick change latch work out? <
> Yess thank god
> Down to the wire before presentation
When are the finals? <
> Fancy trip to the national centre in early winter
> Sponsored ofc
I’ll congratulate them personally soon <
> Dont spoil em too much
Hmm. <
(Steb brings up the previous seating. What was wrong with those? They fixed a problem that didn't require any solution.
“Our university must reflect its image by updating our state of the arts equipment.”
“What image? An ableist image?”
How is a ‘leaning rail’ state of the arts?
“A rail at pelvic height is not a seat!”
“These were very expensive, ergonomic, instalments, we must understand —”
“The students in my lab could weld you a better bench with scrap materials, for free. I know how much that word means to the university budget.”
Could you provide a definition for ergonomic? One that doesn't exclude disabilities, that is.
“I think we're all getting a little heated, so please, let's remain cordial —”
“Answer Steb’s question, Mr. Wells.”)
Laying on the couch, her head cushioned on the armrests, Caitlyn rubs at her eyes until that sweet sunburst scratchiness dies away. She’d kill for some ice-cold eyedrops. Before she can say anything, Vi collapses on her, the fresh wash of her hair radiating across Caitlyn's chest.
“Long weekend?” She cards her fingers through Vi’s silken strands, free of its usual products. Scratches at the shaved edge of the undercut to a sugar-edged hum.
“Long day?” Vi asks back, laughing when Caitlyn dips into a frustrated groan. Her arm lays across Caitlyn's rippling torso, hand coming round to cradle her side.
“I’m going to murder him. Him and the whole committee, I swear.”
“That bad?”
“It’s just —” she reaches up to pinch her nose, remembering his intrusively glib face, “it's such a small ask. And it's buried under so much bureaucracy and empty equivalent gestures that won't actually fix the issue.”
“How many campus bus stops can there possibly be?”
“Five, around the whole circuit. It's not a hard number! You can count it on your hand!”
Vi adjusts their legs, distributing her weight so it evenly curtains Caitlyn's body — the pressure easing Caitlyn into a less aggrieved sigh. Adjacent to a mole just above the loose neckline of Caitlyn's singlet, Vi’s nose finds its resting place, nose ring nudging a faint shiver through her.
Her words bubble sideways. “So I’m guessing we're stuck with these bullshit leaning rails until further notice, huh?”
To Vi's dissatisfaction, Caitlyn stops carding her hands through Vi’s hair to contemplate the project's current direction. She gently headbutts Caitlyn's knuckles to restart the motion.
“I think we made considerable headway, all things considered. We even brought up Braille maps and timetables, and if it's not the benches, they'll at least have to grant us that. It doesn't solve it, but… Viktor’s considered rallying a small student team to just… uproot the rails and replace them, no committee required.”
Clicking her tongue, Vi closes her eyes, lured into sleepiness with acres of warm skin and laundered sweats, the hours spent behind the wheel still announcing their aches in her posture. “Sounds appealing.”
“Honestly, if this isn't wrapped up by the end of the semester, I’ll personally stamp my family crest into the student-made benches and say it's a collaborative donation.”
“Mmm. Bet they'll have a hard time removing them then.”
“Mhmm.” Caitlyn yawns, and the drowsy call of their woven bodies, the splendid late afternoon slump that nets them in its golden catch; it makes her forget the legitimate reason she invited Vi over. Almost.
Her thumb comes to rest in the scarred divot of Vi's eyebrow.
The size of a tadpole, her voice darts nervously through the air.
“Vi?”
“Mmm?”
There’s a pacific lake of pause where Caitlyn falters, hesitation pinning her syllables back.
“...your nails. They're blue.”
Slowly lifting her head from her comfortable stoop, Vi blinks, eyes shyly bewildered.
“Uh. Yes? Did you — do you like them?”
Caitlyn grasps Vi’s hand and lifts it to her face, cold immediately flooding the side where the hand once lay. Under lamps that are not club-grade, the velvet blue of them is so stark it frightens her, delights her.
“God, Vi. You painted them blue for me. How could I not like them?”
It's funny, how Vi is trying to avoid eye contact now, how Caitlyn wants to steer her face back, show her just how confronting it is to have even the splinters of her desire acknowledged.
Rocketing through her like a thin, quivering, wire, desperation shows its needled face. Her eyebrows furrow, frantic, her grip pinched a dosage tighter. Bright with desolate devotion, Caitlyn’s eyes are pleading.
Her voice takes a gambit, rough-throated. “You do so many things, you know? And they all — you drive me crazy, and — it's almost as if —”
If it weren't for the stillness of Vi's breath, she could have passed it as absent-minded, reaching up to brush hair off Caitlyn's forehead in one slow motion, staring at that derailed mouth, tooth gap opalescent. Then, propping herself up by the elbows and heaving herself above Caitlyn, her back curving like an arching mountain, into the narrow basined dip at the end of her spine, she narrows her gaze, now assuredly half-lidded. Her body weight is a generous mantle, anchoring.
“Do you want me to stop?” It’s a despicable question, worsened by the deepening resonance of Vi’s voice.
She is so certain — any bodily movement of hers, conscious or otherwise — a slow blink, a breath, a swallow, the hollow drum of her heartbeat — will cause an equal reaction she is woefully unprepared for. When Caitlyn shoots, she never misses. Famously, her expertise lies in long range.
“You're doing this on purpose.”
“Yes. I am. But —
With all the haggard conviction Caitlyn can muster: “How can you do all of these things, and still,” — the jut of her chin raises, persistent in its skyward leaning towards Vi’s mouth, the brilliantly uneven slope of her upper lip interrupted by that delicious groove — “still not kiss me?”
In a secondary attempt to even the score, Caitlyn lurches a scant twinkle forward, unable to hide the amusement smarting her lips as Vi instinctively zero-ins. Magnets. Her heart like a battering machine, chest, up, down —
Vi, that satisfying glitch quavering across her body, a shudder raking coals across her flank, roots transmitting notes into Caitlyn’s cerebral anthem. It takes all of her not to gasp, but then — the hand Caitlyn has been gripping abandons its obedient laxness, surging forward to cup her cheek, driving the fat against her lower lashline — it releases that open-hearted gasp like a sledgehammered monument. Vi’s hand, the goddamn edge of her palm, warmly junctioning Caitlyn’s mouth, ajar.
Above her and unsteady with the stammering heave of her breath, Vi’s neck spasms with the strength to hold herself up — it’s a losing battle. She’s about to say something else, but Caitlyn won’t allow her — can’t, actually.
With an indignant jerk to the scalp, Caitlyn drags her down, and noisily slots their mouths together. It’s impossible not to hum into it, not to dig her hands into Vi’s tousled mane, not to press her whole face into it like she’s renegotiating the boundaries of her side profile.
In the lava of that red hot seam, Caitlyn inhales audibly, grunting out grazed words between her emphatic lips. “Give me,” a slurred peck, “your,” wet pull to that full, bottom, lip, “kiss.”
And what can Vi do but reciprocate? But simply do, as has always been her prerogative.
Vi drags an insistent arm up Caitlyn’s long back, other hand still cradling her undulating jaw. Knee knelt in the cushioned gap of the couch, whatever remains of her voice curls high whined as the rucked hems of their tops plasters their midriffs together.
In the same melodic key, Caitlyn is slow with her journeyed arms, scratching blunt nails down Vi's back, every tiny jolt and puckered bow received as registered triumphs in payback for the concert. It's habitual to look through the keyhole — it's downright addicting to have the laden key in hand, to twist it, cogs whirring, doors opening. The moment Caitlyn's fingertips slip under Vi's shirt to toy with her bare back, skimming over plateaus of ink, it excavates a shuddery groan that has Caitlyn responding with a burning bite.
Caitlyn takes Vi under the blue, and Vi swallows the depths greedily, tongue tracing foolish notes, their noses bruising against each other. Exhales hiss fervent in the confined crevices.
For the most part, it's a graceless thing, the way they key each other up — pushing, pushing, humid, the way only a good makeout can inspire. Sat up in Vi's hold, back still braced with her arm so the fabric bone of the couch cannot dig in, Caitlyn sighs, nuzzling forward in the midst of her erratic pant, boneless.
Vi trails a sequence of heat down her chin, abseiling round the underside of her jaw. Whatever noise escaping her is doubly received as vibration, Vi grinning as she punctures a kitten lick to her throat.
“You know,” Caitlyn's voice wobbles, tensing through the unrelenting ministrations, uncontrollable bodily twitch. “You're unfairly obsessed with my neck.”
Laving tight circles over the mole near her quivering hollow, Vi darts her eyes upwards, but Caitlyn has her eyes shut, sensation-stiff. “Would you prefer me not to be?” Her voice has gone all husky. She doesn't wait for a spoken answer. Surges upwards to fix her wet mouth to Caitlyn's, already hearing it loud and clear.
And they have to come up for air sometime. As Caitlyn dislodges her fruit red mouth from Vi's philanthropic grasp, opening her eyes to that pouting lean-in, she can't help but laugh, lungs already fighting for their fair share of breath.
Soon, foreheads pressed together, brow-bone to brow-bone, they set off each other's giggles. Caitlyn threatens consequences if she develops the hiccups, and Vi, terribly giddy in the prospect of such events, snickers louder. Her mouth, that glorious red. Her lashes, butterfly ticklish against the proximity of Caitlyn's face.
“Is this,” — Vi has to clear her throat to parse her words, “is this what you wanted?”
Caitlyn's eyes are crinkled, beaming. “Yes. And more importantly — it's what you want.”
Not an inch of Vi’s body dispels the claim. And not to kiss again — okay — maybe, a little kissing again — Vi fully nudges the side of her face into Caitlyn's, almost ear to ear, a two-headed entity. To be ascloseaspossible, but still distinct.
She tightens her grip around Vi’s waist, nails tapping out an unwritten song on her skin.
Quiet as a dandelioned wish, Vi admits she was scared. She elaborates: “I think — I'm still scared.”
“You think I'm not?”
Vi melts into every Caitlyn-shaped nook and cranny she can find. Their diaphragms, evenly matched.
“I can hear your heart,” Vi huffs a laugh. “I guess the relief is just that much stronger.”
Caitlyn could ask how long or could we have gone on leaning forever or can you keep your nails blue or even what do you want for dinner?
Really, she wants to keep on laughing, and she wants Vi laughing, joking, languid. Sighing, Caitlyn closes her eyes, and turns the radio up.