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Caitlyn can’t say for sure how long she’s been laying here, staring up at the ceiling, eye blinking into half-focus between memories of budgets, staff reports, old case files and daydreams of stabbing the new council members with her letter opener.
Pressed, she’s not sure she could even vaguely guess what time it is, let alone when she got tired of straining in her desk chair and took her musings to the floor.
Sometimes, she swears there must still be some lingering effects from the arcane; manifesting into a kind of temporal distortion around just this room, with the way minutes tick into hours in here, even for the most routine task.
Caitlyn always comes into the study with a plan; fresh home from wherever she was needed that day, declaring she’ll only work for fifteen or so minutes, thirty at the absolute most, just comb through the missives and personal letters, see what needs an immediate response and what needs a second pair of eyes, and which can go straight into the bin. Then she’ll look up, and notice that somehow it’s gotten dark.
It’s just – it’s always something lately. There's always something demanding her attention. Some kind of problem that needs to be solved, then she’ll find another, older issue that’s been buried and forgotten under the stacks of new ones, and every solution seems to generate a whole other batch of complications, that all require her focus specifically. Oh, and look at that someone else wants something now.
Caitlyn remembers the days when she turned her nose up at the mere idea of living behind a desk like this. She thought the boredom would eat her alive, that pushing paper wouldn’t do any good for anyone who actually needed it, and that she would be so much more useful out and actually doing something, rather than having her time and skill wasted on delegating.
She can’t deny that a small part of her still feels that way, especially as the requests sent her way become more and more inane the farther out they get from the war.
Caitlyn’s patience was a thin thing before her life blew up, half a dozen times over, but with the way she’s been spoiled with the immediacy of a bullet to all her problems over the past year, adjusting back to non violent, slow moving solutions has been, in a word, challenging.
But there is a heavy weight to her name, and sometimes throwing the full force of it at a problem with nothing more than her seal or signature carries its own kind of satisfaction. Even if the payoff is far, far from instant.
Anybody would be some kind of annoyed with this amount of waiting, Caitlyn just can’t do anything half-way.
And so, the violent stationary fantasies persist. Even now, stuck on how much force it would take for the blunt edge to pierce skin, when she really should be thinking about the issue with the docks.
Since the closing of the hex gates, Piltover’s status as a global shipping lane has all but crumpled into dust. There are some big picture problems there, which by some mercy, do not fall under Caitlyn's purview. But, recently, because she doesn’t already have enough on her plate, there’s been an issue of persistent and targeted looting with some local shipments topside.
In response, the wrinkled eyes of the Council – sans Sevika – have been directed downwards. Not surprising, but irritating and ultimately unhelpful. And with no long term solution for security or for the loss in revenue or any short term bad guy on whom to place the blame, there have been several blow out fights during meetings on the subject. Some of which Caitlyn has tried to mediate, and more that she has started.
It’s a mess, one that Caitlyn has no idea how to clean up, aside from creating a viable replacement for hex-tech, like yesterday, or finding whoever is responsible for her latest tension headache and throwing them into the Pilt.
Now, Caitlyn’s obviously never opposed to a reason to break out the red string, but she’s not even sure what to string together. The only consistent thing about the robberies are that they're inconsistent and entirely clean of any meaningful evidence.
She could ask Vi for help, she would love to honestly. But Caitlyn doesn't want to bother her until there's something for her to do other than staring at half-clues and pacing a hole in the carpet. And she's not sticking her love behind a desk as long as she can help it. Caitlyn’s already at her wits end with the boredom, Vi may just implode.
But that leaves her with no plan, no help, no starting point, and certainly no short term solution to an ever worsening problem.
So, the floor.
It was very nice for about ten seconds, soothing even, something loud cracking along her spine the moment she laid flat. But that was – well who could say how long ago it was, really – but it’s not now.
Now, there is something, somewhere on her outfit digging into her, rather painfully, making her whole body feel stiff and tingly. It’s probably the waistline of her pants, she has a habit of cinching the belt too tight; it’s a satisfying squeeze when she first puts it on, but after eight straight hours it tends to ache. Or maybe it’s her bra, or her ponytail, they're often the culprits when the belt isn’t to blame.
Though it could be unrelated to her clothes, maybe she’s just sleepy, or too hot, that fire has been going an awful long time, probably. She should put that out, or maybe take her clothes off, or go for a walk, or–
Before she has the chance to dwell on the – itch, maybe? – any further, and very likely send her wherever bees in her skin so clearly want her to go. Scream-crying and hitting herself, most likely. Gloriously, something pink and pretty enters her eyeline and her thoughts sputter to an abrupt stop.
Vi, grinning and pajama clad, is standing above Caitlyn with her hands on her hips. “Evening Cupcake, how goes the war?”
Caitlyn smiles back up at her, her jaw clicking with the sudden stretch. “Hi Vi.”
Her teasing half-smile melts into full, toothy affection. “Watcha doin’?”
Caitlyn shrugs and looks black at the blank ceiling above. “Laying on the floor.”
She hears Vi snort. “No, yeah I got that. I was more curious on the why.”
Caitlyn sighs. “I needed a change in perspective.”
In her periphery, Caitlyn watches Vi as she makes a sneaky glance upward.
“Did you think I had a board up there?”
“Well you can never be too sure.” Vi looks back down at Caitlyn again, leaning forward to catch her eye. “You want some company?"
Caitlyn wordlessly gestures towards the open space on the rug beside her. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what has been scratching her?
Vi immediately lays down with her, she’s a couple deliberate inches away, but Caitlyn can still feel the heat of her, can even smell her body wash – well Caitlyn’s body wash, that she still insists on using – fresh and pungent from a recent shower.
“Can I touch?” Vi asks her softly.
“Mm, I wouldn’t risk it. I think I have a headache.”
Vi curls her arms behind her head, maybe a reminder to keep those hands to herself, maybe just to do it, still keeping her eyes on Caitlyn. “You think?”
Caitlyn purses her lips. “Something’s definitely wrong.”
Vi hums. “Maybe you just need a break.”
“You always say that.”
“That’s because it’s usually true.”
She’s got a point there, but like hell is Caitlyn going to acknowledge it.
They both like to indulge in a bit of hypocrisy when it comes to caring for each other. Always insisting that the other should rest, that they deserve to be taken care of, that they take on too much, all while refusing to put anything down themselves.
They’ve reached something of a stalemate on the issue, stubborn and penitent as they both are, now it’s all a matter of who concedes on the little things first and then they can go take a nap together.
“I want to at least get something done while I'm here.” Caitlyn tells her.
Caitlyn can see a suspicious blue gaze in the corner of her eye. “You’re saying you haven’t done anything? You’ve just been laying here, motionless, for the past, what? Four hours.”
Caitlyn huffs. “Well no, obviously I’ve finished some work.”
Not as much as she would have liked, but she did get through every letter on the stack, and despite the graveyard of torn envelopes and crumbled wax seals, she never truly feels accomplished by the end.
“Our letters from Mel arrived, by the way.” Caitlyn tells her, suddenly remembering the quick thrill she got at seeing that familiar seal on two of the letters.
Vi pops right up, head scanning the room. “They did? Where?”
“Yours is on the coffee table.” Caitlyn smiles and gestures to the spot beside them.
Vi looks so eager, bright eyes sparking with joy when she finds a thick envelope waiting where Caitlyn left it. They’ve both been consistently corresponding with Mel since her return to Noxus, months ago now. Vi with particular enthusiasm, writing pages upon pages every time.
It’s nice to see Vi so excited about something. Something new and entirely positive.
Caitlyn is equally pleased to hear from Mel, of course, but it’s much harder for her to just talk. She tends to stick to business and unobtrusive inquiries into her well being now that she’s back in the vipers nest. Always afraid of treading on a topic she shouldn’t, hurting her, offending her, or god forbid, boring her.
The look on Vi’s face glimmers between longing and sheepish, as she gazes back and forth between Caitlyn and the letter, the letter, Caitlyn.
Caitlyn puts the poor thing out of her misery, returning her focus to the plain green paint overhead. “Go open it darling, as you can see I’m quite wrapt up at the moment.”
“No, no, it’s cool.” Vi says resolutely, shaking her head. “My response will take a full month to get to Noxus whether I read it now or in the morning.”
Caitlyn frowns and reaches out to Vi with no plan to touch, just sort of hovering near her bicep. “Don’t wait for my sake, I know how much you were looking forward to it.”
“And I will continue to, until I can give it my full attention. We can even open them together, maybe during breakfast or something. But for now–” Vi lays back down on her side, leaning her head onto her hand. “Tell me what’s got your head aching.”
Caitlyn hesitates, face pinching as she thinks of how best to phrase her predicament. Despite not wanting proper help, Vi still has a grasp on the bare minimums of the issue, just from pure osmosis, not enough to do anything with, besides nod and hum at her with proper sympathy.
“There’s a problem…and I don’t know how to solve it.” She lands on.
“Is that all?”
Caitlyn cuts a look to her. “It’s a big problem.”
“The robberies?” Vi guesses.
Caitlyn nods.
“Still no leads?”
Caitlyn sighs. “There’s still no anything. Unless the culprit is invisible, fingerless, and aimless.”
Vi chuckles at her grumbling, far too fondly. “Maybe you’ve just been at it for too long. The answer is probably staring you right in the face, you’re just looking too hard to notice.” She boops the air above Caitlyn’s nose. “That’s why you should take a break. Come back tomorrow with fresh eyes.”
“Eyes?” Caitlyn fires back with a mischievous pull of her lips.
“Cait.”
Caitlyn giggles and turns her head to see Vi’s half-hearted frown. Vi is the only person that has ever drawn such a silly, girlish sound out of her. And she has to press a hand to her mouth to stop it. “Sorry, you’re probably right.”
“It’s funny how that keeps happening, huh?”
Caitlyn makes a sound that could be agreement or a dismissal and returns her focus towards the ceiling.
“Is there anything I can do? Ease that maybe-headache just a tad?”
Caitlyn wordlessly hums again, and rolls her head to the side to face her, prompting Vi to elaborate.
“Something to unwind you before bed?” Vi offers. “A bath, a snack, an orgasm? All three, maybe?” She mimes suggestively nudging Caitlyn with her elbow, but still doesn’t actually make contact.
Caitlyn shakes her head, smiling weakly.
“Something to eat may be nice.”
“You’re hungry?” Vi asks, sounding pleased.
Caitlyn snorts, humorlessly. “Hardly, I’m just not sure if what Father brought me earlier was lunch or dinner.”
“If it was that tomato beef soup thing, it was probably dinner, I also got a bowl.” Vi tells her, a little less excited.
“Well that’s three meals for me today then, I’m on a roll.”
Vi sits up, peering down with a mischievous look on her pretty face. “What about dessert?”
Caitlyn raises a silent, critical eyebrow.
Vi rolls her eyes. “I meant actual dessert, you perv.”
Caitlyn chuckles, her amusement swims through her strangely aching body, gently tugging her even further back from whatever edge she was approaching.
“Tell you what, you go change into something more comfortable, the looser the better, then meet me in the kitchen, I’ll make us something sweet.” Vi’s sitting up on her knees now, half-lit by the fire beside them and looking down at Caitlyn with an easy smile, and those sweet, pale eyes, glowing with warm light and affection.
Not for the first time, Caitlyn desperately wishes she could take a photo of them in color. Not that it would mean all that much, she can barely get a decent one in the normal shades of sepia, all coming out blurry with movement or obscured by Vi’s palm.
For some reason Vi always gets so squirmy and embarrassed when Caitlyn brings out the camera, scowling and ducking her head out of frame.
She's managed to snap a couple when Vi wasn't looking, staring out the window or reading a book or eating, but none that properly capture her eyes. Maybe Caitlyn could commission a painting; that blue needs to be preserved.
Funnily enough Vi’s old enforcer identification card is the best picture she has, but it initially had her eyes listed as grey, Caitlyn didn’t notice until after their…parting.
Vi must have not cared to look, or if she did just never thought it worth mentioning, but Caitlyn nearly had a fit when she saw it. She went through the whole process of getting it changed, filled out the paperwork, forged the signature, had it sent to her and kept it in her desk. All without any idea that she’d ever see Vi again.
It’s still there.
Caitlyn pushes herself up onto her elbows and nods. “Alright, pajamas and sweets.”
...
Caitlyn softly pads through the halls on her way to the kitchen, each socked step, silent against the marble floor. She passes one of the walls made of large windows, letting in the faint twinkling lights from the city and sky. She tries to savor these kinds of things, the small moments in between all her endless days, the dim lighting and the gentle quiet of the rest of the house that’s starting to wind down for the evening.
Especially when her body is not searing with discomfort.
She freed herself of all her tightest confines, her turtleneck and high waisted trousers, let her hair down from its ponytail, unfastened her eyepatch and deposited her bra in the hamper, and somewhere in the process, the rapidly mounting tension in her head all but vanished.
She then selected – with, perhaps, the smallest amount of smug amusement – a onesie with thin black and grey horizontal stripes with cuffs that sit tight around the ankles and wrists and a long seam of bottoms down the front. Easy access, Vi calls it, each and every time she’s rolled on top of her and pulled the thing open to join her inside.
It’s easily one of her least attractive ensembles, unflattering in its distinct shapelessness, that she’s always kind of felt that it makes her look a bit like an old man and a baby all at once. But Vi requested comfortable.
Vi always requests comfortable.
Caitlyn can already feel something like mirth bubbling in her throat, and that oh so familiar flutter of excitement in her stomach, just at the simple thought. Of Vi, and that Caitlyn is about to see her and that Vi is about to see Caitlyn, so soon, and that she will have already made her pleased.
Self-reflection may not be a preferred practice for Caitlyn but she can and does recognize the ridiculousness in how easily Vi has turned her into some kind of blushing teenager. So genuinely thrilled just to see her, to have her attention, as though they don’t see each other everyday and share the same bed at the beginning and end of all of them.
And now Caitlyn, even with all her iron tight composure, just barely manages to rein herself in from skipping around the last corner towards her destination. Because she is an adult who walks, even when the most beautiful woman in the world is in just the next room, loving her, living with her, making her sweets.
Honestly, for all the practice she has in getting what she wants, whatever it takes, she can’t imagine how she got so lucky.
Their meeting, their ensuing connection – Vi, ever the romantic, likes to call it fate – but Caitlyn – a recent pragmatist – can’t help but see it for the comedy of errors that it was.
It actually makes Caitlyn feel sick sometimes to think about it, stomach swooping like she’s still wobbling on the precipice of all the little things that needed to line up for them to come face to face between the bars of that cell. How they very nearly didn’t. How in every other version of their story they wouldn’t.
Vi would have stayed in Stillwater likely until she died, while Caitlyn would have run back off to catch her crook, equally likely through a solo journey into Zaun and almost certainly would have been killed the moment her boots touched the ground. The world would have kept turning and they never would have known what they’d just missed.
But this Caitlyn, in all her missteps and misdeeds, managed to get it right. She saw those soft eyes peer over a powerful shoulder in that horrible little cell and with absolutely no idea what they would come to mean to her, or how hard she would work to keep them, thought yeah, this is absolutely the person I should break out of prison.
She wishes that past-Caitlyn would have had the foresight to better commit that moment to memory. Or at least brought her camera.
Caitlyn walks into the kitchen to see Vi is fiddling about the small area towards the back wall, searching through cabinets and placing her tools and ingredients along the island with no obvious thought. She’s lit by the glow of the gentle, yellow-ish light above the stove instead of the harsh ones overhead.
Caitlyn smiles and leans against the doorway to take a purposeful moment or however many she can steal before she’s caught, just to admire the view.
She takes in the angles and shadows of her girlfriend's body as she moves around, carefully appreciates her well defined arms and shoulders, savors the sloping curve of her waist that goes into her hips, and down to the prominent swell of her ass in her cozy sleep shorts. Then Caitlyn’s eyes trail back up again to find the black of her tattoos standing stark against the pale skin on her perpetually exposed lower back.
Vi got her belly button pierced last month and hasn’t worn a whole shirt since. She may never again at this rate. Caitlyn is passively concerned about this little habit for when the temperature drops. She can already envision Vi cutting the midriff off all her new winter coats and stubbornly shivering in the snow.
Vi turns to face her then, somehow always knowing when she’s being watched. She tries to force a frown at Caitlyn’s creeping, but something very obviously pleased instantly takes over as she does a similar, if far more efficient once over of Caitlyn’s form.
“Yeah, that’s the ticket.” Vi says, with a nod.
She then gestures eagerly with one hand. “Come here, we’re making cookies.”
“Not cupcakes?” Caitlyn asks, a teasing smile of her own pulling at her lips as she pushes off of the doorframe.
“No, not cupcakes.” Vi clicks her tongue. “What have I done to make you think I’m so corny?”
“Who could say?” Caitlyn responds, indulgently.
Vi rounds the messy counter, slowly inching closer, with her hands still on her hips, a silent question in her eyes.
Caitlyn keeps on smiling at her because she’s so lovely and she’s right here.
“I think you can touch now.” Caitlyn tells her like it’s a secret.
“Always thinking.” Vi says, still a few careful steps away. “But I’m gonna need something a little more certain than that this time.”
Caitlyn shakes her head and wordlessly reaches across the space between them to grab that sweet face in her hands and pull her in. And all of Vi’s thoughtful hesitancy vanishes, soothed by Caitlyn’s eager affection, arms instinctively looping around Caitlyn’s midsection, but her touch stays easy and loose.
It’s a fairly chaste kiss by their standards, a soft, quick press that only just melts into something more lingering as their lips touch. Both sharing a content little exhale in their lack of space. Vi’s arms start to squeeze her the tiniest bit, pulling them taut, and Caitlyn lets the pads of her fingers skate across the back of Vi’s neck.
Vi rubs their noses together when they separate, a grin on her face, pleased and pretty.
Then Vi’s grip on Caitlyn’s waist falls down to catch her under her thighs, easily hoisting her up into air, and then turning to place her onto the counter top beside them. Caitlyn aids the process with a little hop. It’s hardly necessary, Vi is fully capable of maneuvering her without assistance, but why put undue strain on her arms when Cait is more than happy to go wherever Vi wants her.
Vi smiles and gives her one last swift kiss before she twirls around and steps out of reach, heading back to the space between the opposite counter and the stove, among all her assembled ingredients.
“Okay, let’s see if I remember how to do this.” Vi says, clapping her hands together, and then hastily turning around to grab the ridiculous novelty apron she bought for Father off the hook beside the pantry door.
This particular one, is made to mimic the look of a shiny and medical grade material, like the ones used for surgery. It doesn't feel like it though, it’s actually made of this horrifying scratchy fabric that caught on Caitlyn’s callouses when she first picked it up. But Vi didn’t seem to mind, she insisted upon it, in fact.
It didn’t take Caitlyn long to concede either. Birthdays and the like had fallen by the wayside in the wake of – everything. They’ve got quite the backlog of missed celebrations and Vi just wanted to do something nice, make Father laugh, even if it was just a little gag gift.
And laugh he did, for so hard and so long, he’d had real tears in his eyes by the end. And he does the very same every time he or Vi puts it on. It really shouldn't have been surprising that humor, or arguably the lack thereof, was the thing that brought them together.
Caitlyn, pulled from her thoughts as she watches Vi tie on that nonsense apron from nearly half a room away, is suddenly getting the impression that in direct spite of that “we’re,” this was not intended to truly be a team activity.
“Am I just here to watch?” Caitlyn asks.
“Yup.”
“You don’t want my help?”
“Nope.” Vi responds, not even looking at her, picking out a soft silicone spatula from the holder beside the stove. “I want your company. And the visual.” She says gesturing to Caitlyn with her selected tool.
“I think you just want my attention.”
Vi frowns. “You’re one to talk, wearing that. I mean, I know I asked for it, but god Cait, what if someone walks in?”
She makes a playfully scandalized face, practically tsk-ing at Caitlyn’s inappropriately tempting jammies.
Caitlyn rolls her eye.
It is cute how deep Vi’s affections run, how she looks at Caitlyn, in all the sharp edges and awkwardly jutting angles that make up her brain and personality and so earnestly sees something sweet. Desiring her beyond the gentler curves of her body. And perhaps most amusingly, how she is completely incapable of understanding how others might not feel the same.
Caitlyn watches Vi start to dig around another drawer, pulling out yet more measuring equipment.
“I’m afraid you may be the only one who finds my attire alluring.” Caitlyn tells her, letting her long legs swing from the high counter tops.
Vi makes a face. “That’s literally not possible.”
“I have twenty three years of evidence to prove it is.”
“Well I have anecdotal and personal evidence to prove it isn’t.”
“Like what?” Caitlyn pauses then, already hearing her mistake, playful frown dropping and eye narrowing towards Vi. “And anything from my father doesn't count, he is both a liar and a biased party.”
Vi looks up from the drawer and grins at her, eyebrows climbing on her forehead. “Oh yeah? Like what he’s told me about your girls, for instance?”
Caitlyn’s mouth snaps shut.
All right, well, that is certainly – hmm.
There are a handful of things that “her girls” could be referring to, none of them particularly scandalous, but not necessarily flattering either. Why father, and now Vi apparently, seem to find them so entertaining is beyond her.
And past the baseline startled annoyance, it – like so many other things lately – also sends an unexpected twinge of something through Caitlyn’s chest, a faint squeeze that has her pressing the base of her palms hard onto the counter’s edge, like she’s in danger of falling off.
It’s such an innocuous little comment, just like all the rest, but it seems like every other day, Caitlyn finds another way that she is the mirror image of her mother. All these little facets of herself, hidden in plain sight, that she’d just never cared to see, echoing through all the little spaces in her life. Everything that always kept them at odds, given new life, new meaning in her absence.
Each one soothes her about as much as it aches, but she’s not quite sure what to do with them, now that she can’t put them away. It’s inescapable, all their small habits and glaring flaws, their tastes, their affections; like them both seemingly haven fallen ass over tea kettle for a pair of mouthy little gossip mongers.
Again, Caitlyn is earnestly thrilled that they’re bonding but at what cost?
Still, that line of thinking doesn’t quite save her, and perhaps just intensifies the way her cheeks start to pickle with a panicked, flustering heat. But because she is her mother’s daughter, Caitlyn manages to keep her countenance otherwise impassive. Looking at Vi head on, taking her hands off the counter to carefully fold them in her lap.
“My what now?”
Vi gives her a short look then, that Caitlyn isn’t sure how to interpret, and then her grin comes back in full force. Every bit the cat with the cream. “It was nothing bad.” She says. “It’s not like I couldn’t have guessed I wasn’t the first pretty young thing you’ve ever snuck home.”
Caitlyn splutters, scandalized – nay offended. “Okay, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but you have certainly gotten the wrong idea.”
It’s not only false, it’s ludicrous, Caitlyn walked all of her dates through the door, thank you. Vi and the window was an extremely extenuating circumstance.
“I may have had my share of…dalliances, sure, but I was hardly a heartbreaker.”
“Hey, you said it, not me.” Vi says, putting her hands up in surrender, still looking far too pleased with herself.
It’s a good look on her, one Caitlyn is always happy to see, but she’d love it far more if it didn’t so often come at her expense.
Honestly, Caitlyn would be amazed if she managed to so much as hurt someone’s feelings, during her time of…wooing the other young women of upper Piltover society. There was quite a bit of mutual detachment between Caitlyn and her very reasonable number of flings.
It is exceptionally strange looking back on, though. They hardly even feel like her memories anymore. How that had ever been her life, let alone a routine in it.
Caitlyn’s had enough of thinking about it and just puts her head in her hands, rubbing at her eyes with her fingers, letting the working side of her vision sparkle and swirl with the pressure.
“Wasn’t this supposed to be a way to get me to relax, because I’m currently feeling quite the opposite."
“Alright, I’m sorry, I’ll stop teasing, but…” Vi trails off, carefully turning one of the nobs on the oven.
“But?” Caitlyn prompts, muffled against her palms.
Vi keeps her eyes down, moving to absently run a finger along the stove’s edge. “I really don’t think it’s bad or…embarrassing, or whatever problem you have with it. I like thinking about you doing that kind of thing.”
Caitlyn peers at her around her fingers. “Sleeping around?”
Vi lets out a startled laugh and she shakes her head. “No – I guess sort of – but I mean, living life, having experiences, doing all the things that being young and hot and rich allow you to. I just – well, you may not know this, cause I’m so cool and aloof, but I really like you.”
Vi says it with unabashed affection, her soft voice husky in her throat and Caitlyn now feels in very real danger of melting right onto the floor.
“I wanna know things about you.” Vi goes on with a shrug. “And you never talk about anything from before we met.”
“There’s not much to say.” Caitlyn defends, softly, almost wincing. It sounds like a cop-out even to her own ears, but she does mean it.
Even including the occasional tryst, her day to day life really was not that interesting pre-Vi. Just your typical gilded cage banality and the general setbacks from her being an overachieving, abrasive weirdo that often made all her “young, hot, richness” feel more ill-fitting than a true asset.
Though she very well might still have been trying to get to the bottom of the mystery robberies.
“Well I wanna hear it anyway.” Vi says, leaning onto the counter, placing her chin on her locked fingers, grinning and fluttering her long lashes in that silly way that she does when she really wants something but can’t bring herself to admit it. “Come on, tell me about yourself.”
Caitlyn has to bite down a grin, before crossing her arms over her chest. “This is feeling a bit one sided, you aren't exactly forthcoming about your past either. Don’t you think I might also like to know you a little better?”
Vi pauses and then nods at her genuinely considering it. “And that’s sweet, Cupcake, and I don’t mind telling you, but my stories are not really conducive to the fun, sexy atmosphere I’m trying to create here.”
Vi raises up out of her slouch and pulls a large bowl out from her assembled tools and into the open space she’s made amongst her mess.
Caitlyn gives her a look at that blatant side-step, especially since it’s a near perfect copy to what she literally just said.
Hypocrites, both of them.
Caitlyn is well aware that Vi’s life has been hard, it’s sort of impossible not to get that, even with just seeing the shrapnel, or in her case, have it tear through her life and end up lodged in her thigh. But that doesn’t mean it was all tragedy all the time. Someone at some point must have taken the time to teach her how to make cookies, which means there were likely even more somethings that shaped her to be as sweet as she’s become.
Vi takes her silicone spatula and buries it into a large tub of some kind of viscous substance. It looks white and vaguely shiny and it comes out like butter as she scoops and then scrapes it into a measuring cup.
Caitlyn must be making some kind of face, because Vi goes on. “No, I’m serious. You think you don’t have much to talk about? You’d be amazed by how boring prison is. It’s a lot of just waiting around.” Vi tells her, as she packs the goop down into the cup. “Though we got lucky in Stillwater, not everybody gets the shit beat out of them by the guards every few days, it keeps the novelty alive.”
Mmm.
It’s a joke, Caitlyn can tell, she is getting quite familiar with Vi’s sense of humor and the certain lilt her voice takes on when she’s amusing herself. But it wasn't very funny, and she'd be willing to bet it’s not really meant to be, at least not to anyone except Vi. Which is good because Caitlyn is terrible at laughing when she doesn't want to.
So she sits, silently, as the faint warm, oily smell of an empty oven heating up slowly begins to fill the room and Vi laughs at her own joke while peering at the ticks on the side of the cup.
“And I just get nothing in return then?” Caitlyn says eventually, watching as Vi scoops all the goop right back out of the measuring device and into her large bowl, landing at the bottom with a wet plop. She’s a bit baffled by the process, but far too embarrassed to ask what she’s doing.
“Uh, you get a batch of homemade cookies lovingly crafted and hand fed to you by your hot girlfriend.” Vi points her sticky spatula at Caitlyn. “I’d offer to do this fully shirtless if I wasn’t serious about someone walking in.”
That is tempting but Caitlyn won’t be distracted and would argue she gets some clothed version of this semi-regulularly as is, and more to the point, she simply can’t stand knowing she doesn’t know something. Caitlyn just looks at her, waiting.
Vi looks back for a second, two, and then groans. “Okay fine, if it’s so important, how about next time I'll tell some stories and you can make me some of your delicious burnt toast.”
“It’s not burnt.”
“Mmhmm.” Vi says skeptically, accompanied with a mocking half eye-roll.
Which, again, Caitlyn will not be taking the bait from. They’ve had this argument half a dozen times already and it never leads them anywhere but in circles. Caitlyn just likes things a little crispier, and that is not a crime. Vi liking bread just past the edge of raw, however is – it’s not important.
“Or, I know a handful of Ionian dishes you may enjoy.” Caitlyn offers instead, with a small huff. “I'm not sure how well I could recreate them, but I'm sure we could figure it out.”
That may end up being a colossal understatement. She’s watched her father cook enough times to have a fairly decent grasp of the necessary ingredients and the steps to combine them; she just doesn't have much practical experience in actually applying them.
It may turn out to be a pretty poor vessel for storytelling.
Caitlyn’s ever active mind immediately flashes to the two of them trying to puzzle out the recipes of her childhood and bickering endlessly over what to make, and how much, and how Vi will insist she can handle any spice level even though she definitely can't – all while current Vi is looking up at her with an expression that is, in Caitlyn’s opinion, a little too stunned at that revelation.
Staring at her with her goo-covered utensil limp in her hand, that Vi then uses once more to point at Caitlyn emphatically. “See! I didn’t know you could do that, I feel like I don't know anything.”
In true Vi fashion, her assessment is just as dramatic as it is pouty.
Caitlyn attempts a playful imitation of her sad face.
Really though, considering both their schedule and temperament, they know each other fine. They may not have much in favorite colors and first crushes, but they have everything that matters. They know their worst. They’ve been up close and personal with each other at absolute rock bottom, bitter and hurt and vice-ridden – snapping at anything too close.
After that, it’s all too easy to forget that they haven’t even been in each other’s lives for a consecutive year, or just how new they still are to…all of this.
Grown women, one ex-con, one ex-military commander, and two incidental war heroes they may be, but at the end of the day they’re still both of each other’s first real girlfriend.
Who are more than happy to throw themselves in front of a bullet or to spend hours between each other’s legs, but Caitlyn had to work up the courage for a full week to ask Vi on a date, and Vi still gets all blushy when Cait reaches for her hand in public like she can't believe what's happening.
Caitlyn’s thoughts are halted then, with the sudden sharp jolt of realization – that maybe, just like her – Vi's been reduced to an embarrassing pink-faced teenager in her own right. Getting all giddy and giggly whenever the topic of her comes up, at any chance to see her. Maybe she crops all those tops not just to show off her piercing, or to play with all her new money and thus endless access to accessories, but specifically because she wants Caitlyn to see it.
Hmm, well – that’s probably a thought best for later.
After a handful of moments, Vi speaks up, voice playful and a little sultry – pulling Caitlyn right out of her head. “Are you gonna make me beg? Cause you know I will.”
Caitlyn smiles and shakes her head. As tempting as that is, she was never truly going to deny her.
“What do you wanna know?”
Vi grins wide as she opens the big jar of sugar with a pop.
As Caitlyn probably could have guessed, Vi wants to know everything. And while she is sure Vi would be happy to spend the next week in this kitchen baking cookies and listening to every gory detail, for both of their sakes, Caitlyn settles on a highlight reel.
She starts, as generously as Vi’s pour of sugar, with her first kiss.
It’s hardly thrilling, but it’s the quickest memory to come to her. Her eyes fall towards the window over the sink, to the ever glowing lights of Piltover beyond it and the story spills out of her without any true effort.
It was Progress Day, a cold one, spring hiding somewhere under the fresh dusting of snow. Caitlyn herself, was a few weeks past thirteen and she happened to run into a girl from school. She hadn’t known her all that well, but seeing her sitting alone watching a magician pulling item after item out of a too small hat, she couldn’t help but feel that the girl looked as lonely as Caitlyn generally felt. So she approached her and they spent a few hours playing carnival games together.
She tells Vi how after a while, they had wound up sitting on a bench a bit outside of the festival-proper, eating the taffy they had just won. She tells her about the girl abruptly leaning forward and then how sweet the girl’s mouth had tasted when she had pressed their lips together, about how Caitlyn had been staring stunned and bug eyed when the girl pulled away and then how when they came back together and clumsily tried to deepen it, their teeth clacked.
Vi looks smitten, just holding a large scoop of brown sugar now aimlessly in the air as she listens.
It’s really quite heartbreaking to watch her soft expression drop into a pout at the next bit.
The girl had run off back to her real friends almost as soon as they separated. It was a little disappointing at the time, but she hadn’t spread some sort of heinous rumor about Caitlyn trying to bite her tongue off, or something, when they went back to school. So, Caitlyn still considers it a win.
“That seems like a low bar.” Vi says, huffing as she opens the fridge.
Despite Vi’s simmering indignation at that girl, and her sharp focus on egg cracking, she still listens dutifully to the next story of Caitlyn's first broken bone.
It was the usual affair, though perhaps late by most people’s standards. She’d been about fifteen, competing in day two of a weekend long shooting competition. She’d only just made it to the third checkmark, when her foot caught on a root sticking awkwardly out of the dirt and took a sharp and immediate tumble into a drop up ahead.
“It probably wouldn’t have been too bad had I not had a large gun in my hands.” Caitlyn says, amused at her younger self’s poor reflexes.
When she hit the dirt, her left arm made a rather disgusting cracking sound between the rifle, the ground and the full weight of her body.
Vi hisses sharply and presses a slightly eggy fist to her mouth as she listens.
Caitlyn waves off her reaction. “Oh honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I was more upset about placing third than anything. Third, me, can you believe that?”
Though considering the amount of time she spent on the ground and the rest of the course firing with only one working arm, that really says a lot more about her competition than her.
“I can't believe you kept going at all.”
“Of course I did, it’s not like it was life threatening, it wasn’t even my dominant arm.”
“Cupcake.” Vi says, shaking her head incredulously.
“I’m sorry, should we start listing off all the times you’ve done something far dumber, while being far more injured. Because I think I can recall a time you attempted to parkour down a cliff after being stabbed.”
“We aren’t talking about me right now.” Vi fires back, and starts picking out little pieces of egg shell she let drop into her mixture.
Caitlyn rolls her eye but moves them along, now telling her about a handful of little incidents from her time at school, ranging anywhere from hilarious to infuriating and how she was somehow always called a disrespectful loudmouth by the teachers all while still being considered a prissy brown noser by the students.
“They were jealous babe, I’m telling you.” Vi says, getting eagerly heavy handed with the vanilla, spilling well over double what was intended for that tiny spoon held in her fingers, right into the bowl and then dumping the rest of the spoon in any way.
Caitlyn stares, curious, but goes on. “Jealousy is pointless, I can’t help that I was born a Kiramman any more than they can’t, and if they wanted to be like me so bad, they should have worked harder.”
Vi grins, adding yet another quick splash of vanilla before peering up at Caitlyn. “No amount of work could compare to you.”
“Flirt.”
They reach something of a lull, while Vi huffily tries to find the baking soda because: “None of these jars are fucking labeled!”
Caitlyn watches her, trying very hard not to laugh at her plight, throwing out story suggestions for her as she thinks of them. “How about my first time taking down a buck?”
Vi wrinkles her nose at that and says nothing.
“Oh, come on. I know it’s a little gruesome, but my mum was quite impressed with me. I was only nine.”
“That makes it so much worse.” Vi grumbles, opening another jar of nondescript white powder. Caitlyn can tell they have a winner when Vi turns her smile on her, wide and bright as she rubs the substance between her fingers.
Caitlyn offers a few more choices she already knew were rather on the dull side – playing war room with her stuffies, deciding to re-organize the entire library when she could hardly spell – and then takes a moment or two just to observe Vi work, half enjoying the view, half waiting to catch her off guard before suggesting her first time, casually as anything.
Vi gives her a small frown, digging her cup into the big tub of flour. “You just listed off like four firsts, you gotta be more specific.”
Caitlyn smiles at her grumbling and focused face. “Sex, darling.”
Vi’s steady hand jerks on the handle flinging a small splash of flour up across her cheek and nose.
Caitlyn cackles and ends up nearly sliding right off the counter watching that nervous little thing try to wipe the powder off her flushed face.
“Yeah, yeah, you got me – just tell me your story already.”
Caitlyn presses her continued giggles into her hand. “Are you sure you can handle it?”
“It just surprised me.” Vi mutters.
“It shouldn't, it's really not that exciting."
“Oh? Bummer.”
Caitlyn snorts. “Not like that, it was very…nice. And that’s pretty much all it was.”
Vi shrugs, the casualness of the movement a tad undercut by her ears still burning as pink as her hair. “I’m still happy to hear it.”
Vi starts pouring a little of the scooped flour into the bowl filled with all the earlier ingredients, stirring, then adding a bit more and then stirring that too. Caitlyn unintentionally loses herself to the rhythm of it for a minute or so.
Then suddenly she perks up with another idea. “I have a better story, actually. How about my last time?”
Vi pauses her steady mixing to look up at her, confusion tugging at her eyebrows. “This morning? Pretty sure I was there for that.” Swiftly, her puzzlement morphs into something sly. “Unless you got a little something on the side I don’t know about.”
Caitlyn scoffs. “Oh hush, I obviously meant my last time before you.”
Vi giggles, resuming her stirring. “Lay it on me.”
It had started in much the same way most of her flings had, a boring party and a big enough crowd that no one would miss her. But this time, with the additional factor of a low-cut top, unfortunately.
“Yours?” Vi asks, baffled, like the idea of her in anything less than a turtleneck is unimaginable.
“No, not mine.” Caitlyn assures her with a soft chuckle.
Caitlyn normally likes to think of herself as a bit more discerning in her partners.
“More of an ass woman.” Vi interjects, cocky, grinning.
Cailtyn just peers at her disapprovingly and goes on.
Actually, it had just been a long night, and a longer week before that. So, shallow though it may have been, all it took was a nice pair of breasts to have Caitlyn approaching the woman and inviting her back to her room barely ten minutes before her mom was supposed to give an address.
“It was here? And wait – did you miss your mom’s speech?” Vi asks, incredulous and enraptured, her bowl of dough fully abandoned on the counter.
“Yes and yes, but that’s not even the interesting part.”
The interesting part is how when they had gotten to Caitlyn’s room, and on the way to her bed had run into Caitlyn’s massive muder board, focused on the attacks plaguing Zaun at the time, splayed out across the floor.
“No.” Vi says, thrilled.
“Oh yes.”
She had asked Caitlyn what it was, Caitlyn had tried to brush it off and get back to what they were doing, fingers pulling at the buttons on the back of her dress. But the woman had been very sweetly curious, so Caitlyn, feeling confident, started explaining and explaining…and explaining.
By the time she finally got done – at least twenty minutes later – the woman, still kind, but far less eager for Caitlyn to be tugging at her clothes, had told her that they should probably start heading back, before anyone notices they’ve gone, the speech probably being long concluded and all.
“It wasn’t all that eventful in the end, she hardly even had to touch up her lipstick before leaving. But I was too embarrassed to go back to the party, just put on my pajamas and hid in my room the rest of the night.”
Now that she says it outloud, that wasn’t her last time after all. It was more of her last humiliating social faux pas before meeting the girl who found it all cute enough to stay.
Vi has returned to her stirring, lips pursed, looking thoughtful.
“So, that was like, right before we met huh?”
Caitlyn takes a second before she nods, a little thrown off by the question. “Oh, I suppose it was. Only a few weeks, if memory serves.”
“Hmm.” Vi says, opening a jar of chocolate chips and scooping several large cupfuls into her dough. “Well, I don’t know about her, but I personally find your murder boards extremely erotic.”
“Vi.” Caitlyn scolds without any real heat behind it, trying to bite down a laugh.
She’s stirring in the chips now, bicep flexing temptingly with the movement. “No seriously, I can’t even go into your office without getting soaked.”
There’s another tally mark on the reasons Caitlyn is holding off on requesting Vi’s help on the robbery case. Given the evidence, the two may actually prove incapable of getting anything done together.
“Great way to get yourself banned.” Caitlyn says.
Mixing finally concluded, Vi has started scooping and shaping the dough in her hands and placing the little sphere globs onto baking sheets in three neat rows. And Caitlyn has sent them deep onto another story, an after school game gone awry.
The teacher, despite never once having cared before, forced them to let Caitlyn play rather than doing the kind thing and just letting them ignore her and so she could sit quietly on the bench until it was time to go.
“Naturally, I was far too friendless for that to end well.” Caitlyn snorts at the all too familiar mental image of herself standing uselessly in that field while everyone ran around her as though she wasn’t there until someone “accidentally” hit her in the head or knocked her down.
Vi makes a sympathetic face at her.
Had anyone wanted her there, she’d have been thrilled to play, but she’d learned the long and hard way it was best to just be left alone. Though Jayce had come along eventually even if he was more of a boardgames kind of guy. Had they been anywhere close in age, she would have already tried to tug him onto the court long before the teacher felt the need to get involved.
But now even he – well.
“Some things never change, I suppose.” Caitlyn says. Gaze catching somewhere beyond Vi’s shoulder.
Vi shrugs as she continues rolling dough between her palms, her voice tender and low. “I guess, but you’ve got me now at least. I might not be making you any more popular, but you’re always the first on my team. We’d kick those twelve year olds asses.”
Caitlyn laughs, a chuckle bursting right out of her, startlingly genuine. So warmed by her declaration.
“Oh certainly, but even still, I think my point stands.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we’re not exactly friends, are we?” Caitlyn teases, tilting her head to the side as she looks back properly at Vi.
But she doesn’t find Vi laughing or shrugging or nodding her conceit, like she expects. Instead, her head snaps up sharply to meet Caitlyn’s eye, the steady rolling motion of her hands halting in place, and she frowns.
It’s not anything spectacular or even noticeable to most people, but that tiny purse of her lips has Caitlyn instantly feeling terribly wrong footed, glancing around to maybe see what she’s so clearly missed.
“I just mean, that we’re girlfriends...” Caitlyn hedges, unsure how to elaborate on such a simple and objective truth, or how her playful remark possibly could have been misconstrued.
Vi continues to just frown at her quietly. It still doesn't look angry, but it also doesn’t look pleased.
“Dating is different than...friendship.” Caitlyn finishes lamely.
“You’re not my friend?” Vi’s voice goes thick as she speaks and her brow pinches into an expression Caitlyn also doesn't understand but definitely hates, and her tone is so small and sad and Caitlyn feels blind panic grip her tight around the throat – and then – it’s gone.
Vi’s face smooths out and her head tips back and she lets out the most tragically put upon sigh Caitlyn has ever heard.
Oh, this is a joke. Right. No, right, of course.
Caitlyn just stares at her, heart pounding. The realization that Vi is kidding actually, simply hamming up her distress to startle and tease, slowly taking shape. But the surging tension in her head and chest just sort of sits there, nowhere to go and no way to settle.
Vi keeps going though, sniffling woefully and clutching a sticky hand to her chest like she’s been stabbed straight through the heart and even pretends to stumble back a step.
“Vi.” Caitlyn says, a little desperately.
“No, no I get it.” Vi says, all choked up, her bottom lip actually trembling. “I should have known you only wanted me for my body.”
Caitlyn’s hands and face are tingling with residual terror, her tongue feeling weirdly heavy in her mouth as she tries to speak, maybe even console her. “Violet please, your body isn't even in the top five of my favorite things about you.”
“It's not in the top five?” Vi wines, turning the full force of those big sad eyes on her again.
Caitlyn closes her own eye now, and shakes her head vigorously, unable to look at her any longer. She takes a breath. “Need I remind you, this is the second time your fun and sexy atmosphere has turned into my torture for your amusement.”
She then shakes her hands out as well trying to force all the built up energy anywhere but her body.
“See how you like it when your best friend says she’s friendless.” Vi grumbles, and the mixing bowl rattles lightly against the counter like she grabbed it with a bit too much force.
Oh, now that’s interesting. That was quite pissy. Perhaps that little show wasn’t all show, after all. Caitlyn thinks, still behind the pleasant darkness of her one working eyelid.
You know, maybe that was what was giving her so much trouble in the study earlier, all that pesky vision. She might need to look into wearing two eye-patches, or possibly a blind-fold.
Caitlyn takes another slow breath in and then out, organizing her thoughts.
She looks back towards Vi again. “Sweet girl, you are my everything, you know that. All I meant, is that of all the words to describe us, I truly don’t think ‘friends’ has, at any point, been the one to capture what was happening here.”
Vi’s halts her exaggerated sulking and her brows furrow as she turns that over in her head. “Well, what would you have called me before?”
Caitlyn blinks. “Before what?”
“Like, before we kissed.” Vi tips her head to the side and adds. “The first time.”
Caitlyn would argue that that kiss, while holding a tender and special place in her heart, didn’t ultimately make much of a difference for them. They didn’t really get to be anything to each other after that, let alone anything new, not for a long while, at least. They were just…clinging.
“My partner.” Caitlyn answers easily.
Which for some reason seems to startle Vi into silence, and she goes back to looking at the scoop of dough between her palms.
Caitlyn, once again, doesn’t understand the shock, she’s quite sure that is what she called Vi when trying to get her enlisted.
“Well whatever.” Vi says at last. “I still would've teamed up with you.”
They lapse into an easy silence for a minute, Caitlyn lost once more to the smooth motions of Vi’s hands.
“Would you like another story?” She asks eventually.
Another small sniffle. “Yeah, I think that would be good.”
Caitlyn smiles. “What do you want to hear?
Not too long later, the cookies are in the oven, timer set, a little brass ladybug that looks more like a standard beetle when you aren’t looking too close. Caitlyn just finished a story about a trip to the beach when she was four, where she had refused to touch, much less walk on the sand and her mother and father had to take turns carrying her all day.
Vi takes off the apron with that horrid material, now smeared with flour and sticky dough, from all the times she had absently wiped her hands between tasks.
She then proceeds to properly clean herself up, still giggling softly at the image of a younger, fussier Caitlyn and finally crosses back across the room. Back to Caitlyn, standing between her legs, with freshly clean hands, extra warm from the water, and settling them on her waist.
Caitlyn puts her own hands on Vi’s forearms, gently running them along her skin. Taking in the lovely sight and feel of her, so close after so long. From this distance, Caitlyn can see the shape of her breasts through the thin, soft fabric of her little shirt. And she moves her hands down to drag the back of her fingers across the muscled lines of Vi’s stomach, around her sides, and finally rests her palms on the small of her back.
Vi leans in like she wants a kiss, but stops a few centimeters away, one of her sharp canines peeking out of her tiny grin and she asks, “What’s your favorite memory?”
Caitlyn smiles back at her, eye finding the tiniest smudge of flour still smeared on her cheekbone. She doesn’t wipe it off.
She instantly recalls the moment and smiles. “You’ll like this one, It's about one of my girls.”
Vi’s grin widens. “Another? You’ll spoil me.”
“That’s how you should be.” Caitlyn murmurs.
She pulls Vi a little closer by her hips, and starts to speak, laying out the vague foundation of the situation, voice so quiet in the small space between them. “I’d met her through work, initially, only knew her for a couple of days, but I was so, so taken with her.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yes.” Caitlyn says, lifting a hand to stroke a thumb across her cheek, finally dusting away the flour, on that amused, unaware face. “Beautiful, charming, sweet, and actually took me seriously.”
“Mmm, that’ll do it.”
Caitlyn trails her other hand all the way up Vi’s back, over her neck and into her hair. Pulling her head closer. She leans forward then herself, letting the tip of her nose rub into Vi’s cheek, and then speaking into her ear. “I eventually brought her home.”
“Manage to keep this one away from your crazed ramblings?” Vi asks, with a certain shake to her voice.
Caitlyn tries to bite down on her smile. “Didn’t have the chance, unfortunately, but she liked them.”
The gears start visibly turning in Vi’s mind, as she pulls back, just a hair, to look curiously, suspiciously at Caitlyn.
“It’s funny, I had no idea how tired I was until we got back. The both of us practically collapsed on my bed, we didn’t kiss, didn’t even cuddle.” Caitlyn closes her eye, and for the smallest moment she’s there again, curled up in the opposite direction and staring at Vi’s face, open with sadness and exhaustion, while she had told a story of her own.
“All I did was hold her hand as she fell asleep.”
“Cait–”
“It was so wonderful just being there, being the thing that she held onto, keeping her safe, getting to watch her relax properly for the first time since I’d known her.”
And she was still so full of hope back then, a kind of surety she’ll never really get back. Her parents sitting safe and sound and together in the drawing room, surely talking about them, exasperated and relieved in equal measure, that Caitlyn had come home, even though she’d brought a ‘stray’ along with her.
Everything was still ahead of them. For just those few hours, it all felt like it was going to work out.
Caitlyn doesn’t say that part outloud, of course, she wouldn’t risk making Vi feel bad right now, but it’s still a nice part of the memory for her, in a weird way.
Vi looks a little skeptical and even more embarrassed, trying to hide away in Caitlyn’s shoulder.
Caitlyn presses some more kisses to her temple, trailing down to her face. Seeking out each one of her freckles to give them all a kiss of their own.
Vi grumbles at her a bit, but doesn’t even pretend to push her away.
“That's really your favorite?” She asks.
Caitlyn hums, still with her lips pressed to VI’s cheek. “Either that or the winter solstice in Ionia when I was ten.”
“Oh shut up.” Vi says, jerking her head just slightly out of reach, giving her a shy little grin. “You know, it's one of my favorites too.”
“One of?”
Vi’s soft smile starts to morph into something a little more playful, eyebrow twitching with amusement. “Nice try Kiramman, no stories until I get some of your cooking.”
Caitlyn shakes her head slightly. “You make it sound so special.”
“Funny that.”
Vi leans up for a proper kiss now. And Caitlyn is more than happy to indulge her, but their mouths just barely manage to touch before Caitlyn notices something amiss. She puts a hand to Vi’s chest to push her back, eyeing her carefully.
“Have you been eating the cookie dough?”
Vi splutters briefly, mouth opening just to close again. “You’re like a fucking bloodhound.”
“Only for you, sweet thing.” Caitlyn snorts. “But you really shouldn’t be ingesting raw eggs.”
“Oh please Cait, that’s not even in the top twenty of the worst things I’ve eaten.”
Caitlyn scrunches up her face. “I can’t believe I willingly kiss you.”
“Yeah, it’s such a burden you bear.” Vi says, teasingily, leaning in to recapture her lips.
They stay like that for a long while, mouths and bodies pressed together. Caitlyn can feel hands running along the sides of her thighs, coming up to play with the buttons on her onesie like they want to undo them, but they don’t. Caitlyn runs her own fingers through the soft fuzz of a side-shave. And she can taste sugar and chocolate on Vi’s tongue, but she mostly just tastes Vi.
Their kisses are as indulgent as they are plentiful. No matter how often they end up like this, whether it’s wasting valuable minutes before crawling out of bed or out the door, it never loses its novelty. Each one as powerfully electric as that one in the tunnel, or as heartswelling and startling that one in the bunker, or as reassuring as the constant ones following the days after the war, both of them bruised and bedridden and still couldn’t seem to get enough.
She hopes they never do.
They kiss until the timer goes off, the shrill ring startling them enough to separate.
Only then does Caitlyn finally notice the sugary smell coming from the oven
Vi smiles at Caitlyn and turns out of her grasp once more. Caitlyn sits there and presses her fingers into her lips, tingling and very faintly damp.
Vi comes back to her soon enough, grinning of course, with a couple of cookies held in a napkin.
Caitlyn picks one as soon as she’s in reach and takes a swift, hearty bite. Vi won't stand a delicate nibble. And she hums delightedly around the piece. It's warm from the oven, soft and gooey and sweet, tempered with the bitter edge of the dark chocolate and the slightest tinge of salt.
She chews, happy and satisfied. There’s probably a smattering of crumbs on her lips.
Now Vi is just standing there, still holding the other cookie and looking up at her with those big pale blue eyes, pleading, waiting.
She does this sometimes. Only when she knows she’s done something that pleases, but can’t seem to fathom that she’s done it right. Like when she’s showing Cait her new projects, or the rough sketches of the next tattoos she wants, or when finally lifting her head up from between Caitlyn’s thighs, chin and mouth and the bridge of her nose, more often than not, dripping with her efforts.
And she’ll look at her so terribly, inexplicably nervous. Caitlyn is never exactly sure what kind of reaction she’s looking for with that; praise, questions, complaints, a score out of ten?
Caitlyn swallows her bite.
“You have got to stop giving me that look.” She says.
Vi’s head tips to one side, earnest, innocent confusion taking over her features. That one especially unruly strand of hair that’s always dangling in her face, falling away. “What look?”
Caitlyn breathes a small laugh through her nose, shaking her head and she places her cookie down on her lap before moving to grab that squishy face in her hands. She pulls Vi closer and gives her curious brow a kiss.
“They’re perfect. Thank you.”
Vi’s face lights up, shining and pink with her own swell of satisfaction. Just as she’s meant to be.
Caitlyn pulls her into a hug then, firmly wrapping her arms around Vi’s shoulders.
Vi moves to hold her back around the waist, still holding the other cookie, pressing her cheek into Caitlyn’s chest, nuzzling softly, contentedly.
Caitlyn lays her head against the top of Vi’s, squeezing her that much tighter.
Caitlyn never feels more special than in moments like this, getting to be the focus of this girl’s love, to give it in return, to be the soft place she falls into whenever she may need it.
And Vi has the nerve to act like she’s the spoiled one.
Anyone who gets to be on the receiving end of Vi’s affection is singularly lucky. A heart that big, that unwavering in devotion is such a rare thing, and rarer still that Caitlyn manages to feel deserving of it.
And maybe because they know each other the way they do, Caitlyn can make herself settle into it – she has seen the ways Vi can and will destroy herself for the people she cares about – especially when they haven’t earned it. But she’s also seen the way Vi falters, obsesses over the wrong thing, and Caitlyn has gladly beared her temperament, and taken her blame hard on the chin.
Despite their best efforts – to be reasonable, patient – they’ve both been so horribly cruel to each other at some point or another, but even with her blistered and bloodied hands, Vi has never once touched Caitlyn anything but softly.
So, as uncomfortable as it is to shelve the self-flagilation, it’s not about deserving, it’s just wanting. Wanting to be together, to try that little bit everyday, to be better and do better, and just be there for each other.
Because the only other option is to stop and the mere idea of no more nights like this is too horrible to bear.
But they want it and they get it. Caitlyn gets to spend every day with her girl, her partner, who soothes her when she's hurt or stressed or stuck. And Caitlyn who keeps her in all things, presents and orgasms and amusements, but safe more than anything. Both of them, always there, watching each other’s backs when they inevitably forget.
“Violet.” Caitlyn says, punctuated with another kiss to the crown of Vi’s head.
“Mmm.” Vi answers, fingers fiddling with Caitlyn’s buttons again.
“You remember the robbery case we talked about?”
Vi hums once more in agreement.
“Could you…maybe poke around a bit, see if anyone knows anything?” She wants her words to sound casual, but they come out stiff and fretfully resigned.
There’s a pause, Vi taking her sweet time to drag her face away from Caitlyn’s chest.
“I could.” Vi says at last, picking her head up and laying a quick kiss on Caitlyn’s cheek. “For a friend.”
Caitlyn leans back a bit and frowns. “A friend you have sex and live with?”
Vi grins. “Best friend, then.”
“Vi.”
Vi tilts her head and grabs the cookie off Caitlyn’s lap to take a quick bite, giving her a smug smile as she chews. “I’m not hearing a yes.”
Unbelievable.
Caitlyn lets out a long sigh, letting her head and body fall back onto the cabinets behind her. “Fine, yes we can be best friends.”
Vi’s lower lip juts out, forming a petulant little frown. “Well don’t sound so excited about it.”
Caitlyn snatches back her cookie and narrows her eye towards Vi. “Do you play these sorts of games with Mel? I can’t imagine how she puts up with it.”
Vi’s smile, inexplicably, softens a bit at that. “Not really. She won’t take the bait.”
Caitlyn snorts softly through her nose. “But I do?”
“Every time.” Vi says it with reverence in her eyes, like it’s wonderful and Caitlyn is wonderful for responding to teasing like it’s a personal challenge that she can win, even if she almost never does.
Caitlyn tries so very hard to wrestle her own grin into submission, but she can feel the edges of her mouth twitching as they stare each other down.
She takes a breath through her nose. “I would truly be honored to be your best friend. I’ll even get us a pair of those half heart necklaces to commemorate it. Happy?”
“Thrilled.” Vi tells her, smiling in self-satisfaction. “I don’t think we confuse people nearly enough. The gossip has been really dry lately. I’m one dull afternoon away from stuffing a pillow under my shirt and telling everyone you got me pregnant.”
Caitlyn squints at her, not really sure how to take that. “Wealth has done strange things to you.”
“Ugh, you have no idea.” Vi laughs softly at herself and shakes her head. “You know I had my soup in the bath earlier.”
A startled huffing laugh bursts out of Caitlyn, imagining Vi sprawled out in steaming water slurping down an equally hot bowl of tomato broth and mushrooms and beef. “Why?”
“I don’t know, cause I could." Vi shrugs a little exasperated by her own actions.
Caitlyn just has to kiss her again and she can feel Vi smiling into it.
After a few more vital pecks, Caitlyn manages to pry herself off of Vi long enough to ask, “Well, in fear of you becoming even more idle, does your best friend get to help you clean up at all?”
Vi snorts and takes the cookie from her just to shove the rest of it unceremoniously into Caitlyn’s mouth. Then she tries to turn away and towards her mess on the opposite counters.
Caitlyn grabs her swiftly by the bicep, tugging her back between her open legs and then squeezes the muscle under her fingers, just a bit, since it’s there and all.
Vi gives her a look somewhere between startled and playfully exasperated but goes where she is yanked without complaint.
“Stay for another minute.” Caitlyn says, offering Vi the other still untouched cookie clutched in the napkin. “It’s not going anywhere.”
Caitlyn can already tell tonight is going to be another treasure in her memory, just like all the others that played out exactly like this one. Every perfect night they spend together, exceeding and replacing the last, ugly pajamas and spiraling arguments about nothing – and this is only the beginning.
It’s all so, so new and there’s so much still to come.
There’s that flutter in Caitlyn’s stomach again, as Vi flops against her, back to her chest, crunching away at her cookie.
She’s so excited to see them.