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Walking isn’t something Vi’s used to much anymore. Pacing is. Running, ducking, dodging — those are movements she’s used and honed for the better part of a decade in the stone walls of Stillwater. But the walking, this slow steady pace, that’s newer. Her muscles aren’t as fine tuned to this, are starting to protest the long exertion.
But she doesn’t stop walking.
She won’t stop walking.
Caitlyn’s leaning against Vi’s shoulder, her weight distributed unevenly from her own injuries and the height difference and that’s making it harder. There’s an ache in Vi’s knee on that side from the awkward angle of the support, a bit too much pressure on already sore joints. But Vi keeps walking.
The air is thicker with smoke and chemicals, there are sirens in the air and shouts and what might be terrifyingly more destruction, the red of the moon is washing out shadows and the billowing smoke is making them darker and everything is making it hard to breath, hard to hear, hard to see. She hopes to hell they’re going in the right direction.
She keeps walking.
It’s all she can do.
They take shelter under an overpass, hidden in shadow and stinking of piss. Vi’s head is still throbbing from the events of the past couple of hours and she can’t imagine Caitlyn’s doing any better.
The topsider’s quiet, has been quiet all this time, staring at the shadows playing on the dirt at their feet. Vi hesitates, wants to say something but all the words get caught in her chest. She steps away, paces back until she can see the sky a bit more clearly - the red moon, the scattering of stars, the giant plume of thick black smoke. Her heart feels like a brick at the sight and she swallows nervously. She feels like the kid staring down the burning warehouse with the weight of the stones on her back, like the kid standing on the bridge with the smoke filling lungs.
Why does it always end with fire and smoke.
She tears her gaze away and looks back at Caitlyn who hasn’t moved. She’s not crying or even breathing hard, not reacting at all, and it scares Vi so much to not know what the other woman is thinking. She moves forward again to approach her.
Caitlyn finally looks up then and Vi stops in her tracks.
She wants to say she’s sorry. She is sorry, sorry to the depths of her soul, the marrow of her bones, she wants to fall on her knees and sob about how she wished she had stayed, has protected her, or better yet that this has never started, she had left Vi in that cold cell to suffer alone.
But all she can do is stand there.
Caitlyn just stares back at her, disbelief and anger twisting her features up into something pained, ferocious and hauntingly still beautiful.
Finally Vi’s shoulders sag and she shakes her head and a hoarse “I’m so sorry” escapes her. She doesn’t know if she even managed to say it loud enough for Caitlyn to hear, but the other woman reacts just slightly enough for Vi to know that she did. Inhaling slightly and dropping her gaze back to the ground, clenching her jaw.
“I could have stopped her,” Caitlyn says.
“I know—“
“I didn’t.”
The words are snapped out, sharp and biting and Vi actually flinches, cut by the tone and by the glare in Caitlyn’s eyes when she looks up again. Vi grimaces, contorting her face to try and hold back the threatening tears and she nods. “I know,” she says softly, trying to de-escalate. “I’m sorry.”
It goes unsaid. Neither of them have to bring it up. Caitlyn could have and she didn’t, because Vi asked her to. Vi couldn’t stop her, still tied, but she had asked. Caitlyn had listened.
Then this.
She wants to step forward and draw Caitlyn into a hug, comfort her, give her a shoulder to cry on but she’s responsible for this in the first place. And Vi can’t give comfort selflessly, not when she craves it this badly. So she hugs her arms around herself and wordlessly stares up at the decaying concrete of the overpass around them.
Caitlyn’s sharp gaze drops back to the ground and she shakes her head, her hair swaying slightly with the motion. “I should’ve,” she mutters.
Vi doesn’t answer.
Her other thought is to leave, again. Like she meant to before, before Jinx forced them back together. But she left then because she thought Caitlyn would be safer, would be okay, and then everything happened and Vi can’t help but think about the fact that leaving is why. She’s sure Caitlyn thinks it, though they haven’t talked about it. Vi has no idea what happened, just that she left and the next day she woke up tied to a chair with the threat of Caitlyn’s head on a platter and a gun in her hand. Caitlyn wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for her.
So Vi stays to help Caitlyn limp her way home, walking with her no matter how it hurts. Caitlyn’s hand squeezes Vi’s waist, for balance only not comfort, and Vi thinks about silk sheets and missed opportunities.
The guilt that follows that thought feels like another weight.
They worry about blockades and searches and arrest on the bridge, just slightly before Caitlyn readons that the enforcers should have better things to do right now. She seems to be right, and they cross by abandoned checkpoints in the night like shadows. They keep walking through the city, past the people looking out their windows, standing on the streets, staring and pointing and gossiping about the smoke while sirens screech out in the night air.
“We should,” Caitlyn starts. Vi shakes her head. They’re in no condition to, limping and beaten. Caitlyn looks out to the streets and then back to Vi and seems to understand, bowing her head.
As they get closer to her home, Caitlyn’s steps slowly get more sure, she leans her weight on Vi less. She’s still limping, unsteady, but by the time they’re in familiar territory she’s pulled away from Vi entirely.
When they approach the front steps Vi stays back by a couple, letting Caitlyn finish the walk on her own. She reaches the door and leans against it, looking exhausted. She knocks, knuckles hard against the wood and only just manages to step back when the door opens, reveals her father.
“Oh,” he says, sounding pained. He raises a hand to his daughter’s cheek, and Caitlyn collapses into him, finally shaking with silent sobs.
He hugs her, stroking at her hair in a soothing, fatherly manner, speaking too quietly to hear.
Vi doesn’t move, her arms shoved back into her pockets. She should leave but the last time she did this happened, but she should leave because thanks to her this happened. She doesn’t know what to do. No matter what, she’s responsible.
Caitlyn’s father looks up to her, and with kindness in his eyes (which is only there because he doesn’t know, it wouldn’t be there if he did). Vi wants to croak out an apology, flexes her hands in her pockets with the indecision before he interrupt her thoughts with a nod and motions to her to follow.
He takes Caitlyn inside, the door slowly swinging to almost shut behind them. In the space that it’s still open, bright, warm light spills out into the blues of the night, a yellow line that draws on the ground right to Vi’s feet. She stares at the door, thinks about leaving, thinks about staying, thinks about the distant sirens and the smoke in the sky, and she follows the light to head inside.
Caitlyn’s father leads her to the nearest seat, some sort of couch arrangement in the front hall that Vi barely saw the first time she was here. Caitlyn collapses into it, fatigue and pain finally defeating her stubbornness and Vi watches as the older man checks his daughter’s pulse, the paint on her cheeks, asks her some quiet questions about injuries. Caitlyn mumbles replies, looking exhausted and frail.
Vi stays standing back, watching, not sure how to act or even how to feel. She can feel how tired she is, like if she just closed her eyes she’d collapse right there. Her skin feels clammy and her bones ache and the hole in her gums where’d she lost a tooth fighting Sevika is pulsing with raw pain.
If Caitlyn’s father tries to ask her though, she’ll say she’s fine.
He comes up to her after a minute or an hour, Vi’s legs and back screaming, her head heavy. He looks her over but doesn’t ask.
“Help her to bed?” He requests instead, still softly, kindly. “You could both use some rest, nothing we can do until the morning. And I think she would prefer if you stayed close by.”
Doubt it, Vi wants to say.
She nods.
When she helps Caitlyn upstairs it’s quietly, without a word between them. Caitlyn tugs Vi to direct her to the right door in the ornate hallway, pulls away to push open the handle and step inside, to that giant bedroom that feels like a lifetime ago. The window is open, the cool night air billowing the curtains and Caitlyn freezes at the movement. She stares at the window like a rabbit, like she sees a ghost.
Vi immediately marches forward and slams the frame down shut, locking the little latch at the bottom. She turns back to Caitlyn who’s staring at her.
Caitlyn opens her mouth, then closes it again and shuts the door behind her. It’s quiet again, Vi wonders if this is what it’s always going to be like between them, and Caitlyn clears her throat. She stares down at the floor, and then to the small doorway just off to the side of her room where the bathroom is.
“I need to shower”
She doesn’t move after saying it.
Vi waits, forever it feels like, but Caitlyn doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, just stares at the doorway. Vi slowly looks around the room, sees the mess at Caitlyn’s closet, the signs of dried water stains on the hardwood, the once opened window. She pieces it together.
“Do you need me—“
“Please.”
Vi nods and follows Caitlyn to the room. She stares at her feet as the woman undresses, desperate to ask and even more desperate to run and forget this happened.
The sound of the water running brings back flashes of Stillwater and she winces. But she stays, dutifully, as Caitlyn washes off the nightmare of the day.
There’s a smudge of blue paint on the floor and Vi stares at it as the shower runs. She grabs a hand cloth and drops it to the floor, wipes the paint up with her boot.
She doesn’t want to think about it.
Vi wakes up to Caitlyn crying out in her sleep, thrashing, whimpering. She rolls off the chaise lounge she was sleeping on to run to Caitlyn’s side, crawls onto that huge bed. Caitlyn’s curled into a ball and wakes up with gasping sobs when Vi touches her shoulder, her eyes wide and hair wild. She reaches for Vi and pulls her close, wraps herself around her. And for a twisted minute it feels like something else, like the domestic bliss of two lovers curled in each other’s arms, breathing each other thing, heartbeat matching heartbeat.
In a better world, maybe, they could have had something.
Maybe if they could have avoided this.
Maybe if Vi had stayed.
When Caitlyn finally relaxes back asleep from Vi’s soothing, Vi doesn’t leave the bed. She looks down at Caitlyn beside her, the exhaustion melted off her features, soft in sleep. Vi longs to touch her, brush her fingers against her cheek, her hair, but she resists. She barely deserves to be here, she certainly doesn’t deserve more.
Vi wakes again in the morning to Caitlyn already up, pacing in the bedroom with coffee, newspapers and maps spread out on the table.
She doesn’t look up at Vi when she sits up; she begins to rant politics and clean up efforts and war, but doesn’t mention last night.
A chime rings through the air and Caitlyn stiffens, looks to the bedroom door. She stands and motions to Vi to stay before leaving. Vi sits, waits until she hears a voice cry out, a wail, a sound she really shouldn’t be so good at recognizing, echo from downstairs.
Getting up, she leaves the room quietly, edges close to the top of the stairs. Hiding close to the corner she peers down to the front entrance hall, where she can just barely see Caitlyn and her father holding each other, hugging tightly in grief.
At the open front door is two Enforcers, their hats held to their chest and apologetic looks on their faces. They don’t see Vi, don’t look up, but Vi backs up anyway.
She leaves, returns to the bedroom and sits on the bed to drop her head in her hands.
She doesn’t cry. She’s too tired.
When Caitlyn comes upstairs the only evidence of her crying is red eyes and some wetness on her cheeks. The rest of her is anger, wrath, clenched sneer and glaring expression as she storms into the room and paces up to the map and stops dead in front of it, staring down at it like it’s the one at fault for everything.
“Hey, uh—“
“The council’s dead,” Caitlyn spits out. “All of them. Your sister…” she trails, and a sound like a sob cracks in her chest and she shakes her head. “Jinx has no idea what she’s just done.” She’s breathing heavily. “My mother…”
She can’t seem to form the words and Vi watches her struggle with trying to make sense of the grief, upper lip curled. She’s oddly beautiful, twisted up like this, and Vi wants to take her up, kiss that sneer and soften it, sooth the anger. Apologize again and again until Caitlyn’s satisfied, until she’s used up all that’s left of her.
Blue eyes snap up to glare at Vi, stare her down. “What are you going to do?” She bites out sharply, sharp enough to make Vi flinch. “I’m going into the city to help with relief efforts. Are you going to leave again?”
Vi looks out the window, the smoke still curling in the early light of day, grey and black against the white clouds. She swallows, can smell it, can feel it choking her.
Her fault.
“I’ll stay,” she promises.
Caitlyn takes a slow breath, closing her eyes and looking like she’s trying hard to ground herself. Her face calms, a strand of loose hair drifting across her cheek that she reaches up to tuck behind her ear.
She nods.
Then she looks back down at the map, her nose bunching up again as she fights some emotion. “I should’ve,” she mutters.
Something changes in Caitlyn after that. Not the bratty enforcer in over her head, or the naive and kind woman who tried to change things. She becomes cold, determined; focused on finding Jinx with an obsession familiar to Vi in a concerning way.
Caitlyn barely eats, paces and looks through papers, piles them around her bedroom until it’s a chaotic mess. Her bedroom becomes a makeshift office with barely enough room to walk for the paperwork strewn about; notes are scribbled everywhere, sightings and testimonies collected. Vi becomes used to the sound of Caitlyn muttering to herself while they force themselves to stay awake - Caitlyn for her research, Vi for her promise.
She flinches at ghosts, shadows, at anything the colour blue. She’s always had a calculating way of looking around her, but now it’s sharper, like a startled bird. Dark bags form under her eyes from the exhaustion, her hair constantly up in a tight bun that brings the gauntness of her cheekbones into sharp relief.
She sits on her bed with a box of her mother’s jewelry and stares at them silently, tears on her cheeks.
She hovers close to VI for the day, touching her only enough to drag her along, talks about her (about the undercity, about Stillwater, about Jinx) but not to her. She looks for Vi constantly, glancing beside and behind her, nervous but trying not to be, but never looks at her. Never meets her gaze but needs her presence. Rants to her but never talks with. It doesn’t feel like a punishment, but it feels deserved.
They eat dinner at the Kiramman house that night in silence; Caitlyn’s father asking a couple of questions and mentioning arrangements. Caitlyn with a journal in front of her, food nearly untouched as she tries to scramble out notes. Vi just eats, savouring the food.
She begins to feel like a ghost, drifting after Caitlyn like they’re tethered. She finds purpose in the relief efforts but never strays far and finds herself standing in Caitlyn’s shadow as the other woman gets more and more embroiled in the legacy of her mother, her city, Vi’s mistakes.
Vi stays, like a debt owed.
Night too, Vi has her purpose. The second night as they went to Caitlyn’s bedroom Vi starts to arrange the blankets on the chaise like she did last night, comfortable enough, out of the way.
“You’re not sleeping there,” Caitlyn says.
Vi pauses, a blanket still in her hand, looking to Caitlyn. Caitlyn just nods to the bed.
And then it becomes routine. Days of silence, the barest acknowledgement. Nights of going to sleep back to back, Caitlyn waking Vi up with whimpers and muffled sobs, and Vi rolling over to whisper soothing words into her hair. Caitlyn pressing her back flush to Vi’s front, pulling her arm around to rest across Caitlyn’s waist and letting out soft, pleased sighs when Vi starts to drift her fingers down and circle them softly on Caitlyn’s hips.
Vi aches to go lower, to kiss Caitlyn on the cheek, on the mouth, to make this into what it should have been, but she never dares. She only holds Caitlyn softly, brushing her fingers over skin, and breathing her in until they’ve both drifted off.
They never speak of it in the day, and each morning Vi wakes up alone.
Vi has her own nightmares of course, she’s just grown up used to hiding them. Powder’s screams in Jinx’s mouth, Caitlyn’s head on a platter, her mother’s lifeless eyes.
It weighs down on her, restless sleep and stress heavy exhaustion. Vi withdraws into herself, the days beginning to blur as she stands beside, behind, Caitlyn and watches her world slowly crumble around her and wonders when to expect the next night of fire and smoke.
She has other dreams too, of long fingers in her hair, a warm weight on her hips, lips on her own. Hearing that accented voice saying Vi’s name in a tone she may not even be capable of anymore.
Dreams that should be satisfying, fulfilling a need she can’t express.
But she wakes up from them the same way she does the nightmares, heart pounding and anxious, tears in her eyes, hands clenched into fists. Sometimes Caitlyn will sigh in her sleep and press up closer against her.
Vi will turn away, face hot with guilt.
It happens after two weeks.
Two weeks of Caitlyn burying her room in notes, sitting at the makeshift council, cold fury and calculating strategy trying to calm the rumbles of civil war and Noxian military pressure.
Two weeks of treating Vi like a shadow, like an afterthought despite clinging to Vi’s shirt and crying herself back to sleep in the middle of the night. Refusing to look her in the eye and yet holding her close.
It happens when Caitlyn wakes up in the middle of the night not with a whimper but with a scream, bolting up and startling Vi wide awake. Vi almost falls out of bed, shouting in surprise herself before she realizes what’s going on and rushes to Caitlyn’s side.
She takes Caitlyn’s cheeks in her hands, feeling they’re already wet with tears, tries to get her attention. Caitlyn’s awake, wide-eyed, gasping in between sobs that wrench out from her chest and she grasps unseeing at Vi’s hands, her arms, clings like a drowning woman. Vi pulls her into her lap and wraps herself around Caitlyn to try and calm her as Caitlyn’s body shivers, shakes with each ragged inhale.
“It’s okay,” Vi murmurs, stroking her hair. Caitlyn tucks her face into the crook of Vi’s neck, still sobbing uncontrollably.
One of her hands blindly grasps at Vi’s head, buries in the longer side of her hair to grip like a lifeline. The other clings to Vi’s back, nails scratching through the thin fabric of Vi’s shirt as Caitlyn’s hand flexes over and over in anxious motion.
They stay like that for some time, Vi rocking and running her hands up and down Caitlyn’s back to help calm whatever terror haunted her this time. Caitlyn shakes in her arms but doesn’t otherwise say anything, the only sounds from her the gasps as she tries to calm down.
Vi’s legs are starting to cramp by the time Caitlyn’s sobs have all but faded, leaving her with quiet tremors as she catches her breath. Vi can feel it hot on her throat from where Caitlyn is still curled into her, feel the coolness of Caitlyn’s tears on the shoulder of her sleep shirt.
“I got you,” Vi says, swears, her oath, her debt. She runs her fingers through Caitlyn’s hair again and again, soothing herself almost as much as the other woman. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
A shudder goes through Caitlyn and Vi can feel her swallow. Then she feels something ticklish but unmistakable; a kiss pressed to her throat.
The kiss lasts only a second, long enough to ignite every frayed nerve in Vi’s system, and then Caitlyn pulls away just a little before she’s kissing Vi’s neck again, a bit harder and more deliberately like she’s testing the boundary.
Vi’s breath catches and Caitlyn sits back a bit, adjusts herself until they’re face to face, noses brushing. Vi can feel Caitlyn’s breath hot on her cheek, still shaky and uneven.
Vi leans in.
It’s a tentative kiss, questioning, barely brushing before Vi pulls away again. Just enough that it can be ignored. But Vi can hear the hitch in Caitlyn’s breathing before the other woman chases after her to reconnect them.
This kiss is sloppy almost instantly, Caitlyn’s mouth open and wanting. She tastes of tear salt and stale toothpaste, and kisses Vi like a starved woman. The hand gripping Vi’s hair splays out and pushes Vi’s head forward, the other hand gripping at the back of Vi’s shirt like she’s trying to tear it off.
Vi kisses back just as desperate, night after night of ‘not enough’ spilling over, day after day of no acknowledgment igniting. Before she even knows it she has Caitlyn pressed against the mattress, a thigh between her legs and kissing at her throat. Caitlyn moans and Vi mouths at the curve, trying desperately to fight the urge to dig in her teeth.
She knows, Vi knows, that this is a pretty fucking terrible idea. Another mistake in her history of screwing up. But Caitlyn’s not stopping her and damned if Vi’s not strong enough to stop herself.
In fact Caitlyn’s groaning out ‘yes, god’ when Vi palms at her hips and drags fingers up her bare thigh, arching her hips up to push into Vi, demanding more.
And how can Vi deny her?
Caitlyn’s hands slide under Vi’s shirt and drag down her back, nails stinging and Vi’s nerves feel like matches. Vi moves her own hand down to press between thighs at the crease of Caitlyn’s sleep shorts and Caitlyn instantly lets out a deep, hoarse groan that’s almost enough to tip Vi over the edge.
She has to kiss Caitlyn, swallow the rest of the sound and muffle her own moan when she starts to move her fingers, circling slowly.
Caitlyn runs her hands up and around Vi’s body under her shirt, groping at Vi’s breasts, the sides of her ribs, her back, like she’s looking for a handhold as Vi’s fingers keep up their movement. She pulls away from the kiss, gasping, and Vi tucks into the crook of Caitlyn’s neck again to mouth at Caitlyn’s skin, with just a little bit of teeth this time.
Caitlyn whines and pushes Vi’s head against her skin. Vi bites down a little harder and Caitlyn cries out a sound that’s clear pleasure. She digs her nails into Vi’s scalp, and then she’s pushing Vi away, tugging at her shirt.
“Off,” Caitlyn orders, panting. “All of it. Off now.”
Vi jumps to her feet and pulls her shirt over her head, sliding out of her shorts as she watches Caitlyn lift her hips to shove off her own. She kicks the shorts off the bed and sits up to remove her shirt, and Vi’s back on her before she’s even finished.
Caitlyn’s skin isn’t scarred like Vi’s, pockmarked and hardened from a life she didn’t deserve and Vi deliriously wants to worship every inch of it. She takes a breast in her mouth as Caitlyn toys with one of hers, their hips connect and grind against each other in a friction of soft skin and hair and Vi’s guilty mess of arousal. She angles her hips to give Caitlyn the brunt of the friction and is rewarded with more nails digging down her back.
They’re all over each other, wordlessly, touching and kissing and gasping. Caitlyn slides a hand between Vi’s thighs and Vi can’t stop the noise she makes, kissing Caitlyn to muffle it. She shifts and moves her own hand down, runs two fingers over Caitlyn’s clit, rewarded with a whine and a sigh.
And then Vi sinks her fingers in completely and Caitlyn’s head falls back with a loud groan.
Vi starts to move her arm, bracing her thigh behind for extra leverage and Caitlyn scratches down her back. Vi has to press her body down onto Caitlyn’s to keep up the pace, avoid tiring her muscles, and Caitlyn actually presses down on Vi’s shoulders like she’s demanding more weight. She hooks a leg around Vi’s waist, holds her close so tightly Vi can barely move to adjust her arm.
It’s all jerky, indelicate movement, Vi stumbling through exhaustion and inexperience but she pushes through. Like she can’t stop, like she’ll die without this inertia, this decadent and addictive feeling of Caitlyn’s skin and softness and every part of her that Vi’s been craving for too long.
“Vi,” Caitlyn gasps out, burying her hand in Vi’s hair again and tugging her face up. “Vi, look at me.”
Vi obeys, meeting Caitlyn’s gaze and watching as her blue eyes widen, as she gasps faster and faster, as her peak crests. Caitlyn’s eyes slam shut and she curls up into Vi, her hands scratching grooves into her as she clings to her back like she might be torn away from her at any second.
Tucking her free hand behind Caitlyn’s back Vi holds her close and wraps herself around best she can as she moves her fingers to help draw out the end, feeling Caitlyn shudder it against her. Pulling her hand free Vi wipes her fingers on her thigh, ignores the wanting ache of her own body.
Neither of them speak, wrapped up in each other. Then, slowly, Vi realizes Caitlyn isn’t just shaking in the aftermath; she’s crying again, not the wrenching sobs, but quiet sniffles and little hiccups, fresh tears on Vi’s skin and Caitlyn trying to muffle herself in Vi’s shoulder.
The crying gets progressively stronger, a whole new dam apparently broken over and tears spilling out as they embrace, naked, in what should be blissful aftermath. But of course Vi couldn’t give her that. The cause of all of Caitlyn’s problems can only bring her so much comfort.
She can only hold Caitlyn tightly, give her the shoulder to cry on, feel her heart thudding where their chests press together and feel like a monster for how much she enjoys this closeness.
Vi stares at the papers scattered all around the room, the maps and notes of Caitlyn preparing for war. The gun leaning against the foot of the bed. Vi looks out window across from the bed, outside beyond it where she can see the clear night sky.
She can’t imagine how much longer Caitlyn will want her around. Need her. How much longer before Vi’s presence is a burden, before she overstays, before something else happens because she didn’t do the right thing.
She can imagine the smoke.
Still running her fingers through Caitlyn’s hair, Vi rests her cheek against the other woman’s head and holds back her own tears, breathing as slow and deep as possible to try and control herself. Caitlyn’s own breathing has almost evened out, broken by the odd sniffle.
“Please don’t leave me again,” she says quietly.
Vi feels her own tear run down her cheek and she presses a kiss to Caitlyn’s hair as the guilt wraps around her heart and threatens to choke her.
The bed is empty when Vi wakes up the next morning again, Caitlyn crouched over open books in her robe. Her hair is loose over her shoulders but Vi can see a red mark against the skin of her throat.
“What do you know about this?” Caitlyn asks, businesslike.
She’s pointing to some symbols, graffiti down Zaun. Vi groans as she pulls herself up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She blinks the sleep from her eyes and leans down, squinting at the photos and scrawls beside them.
The night before goes unmentioned, save the one red mark Caitlyn covers under her uniform’s neck frill. She acts the same, determined and calculated, investigating, arguing, problem solving.
Vi stands at her side and watches her hands as Caitlyn gestures while talking. She follows the shape of her lips as she speaks, is distracted every time Caitlyn shifts in her seat, crosses her legs. She barely manages to eat, to distracted by watching Caitlyn across the table.
Then night comes again and Vi fidgets with collar of her sleep shirt as Caitlyn works at her desk, feeling nervous like when she anticipates a fight. But she waits, like she always did the other nights, until Caitlyn turns off her lamp light and comes to bed. Back to back, just like before, not a word between them until Vi’s needed.
“Vi,” Caitlyn asks quietly after a minute. It’s off routine and she’s sounding unsure. “Could you..?”
Vi understands; she rolls over and wraps her arm around Caitlyn, tucks her in close. Caitlyn almost immediately relaxes, sinking back against Vi with a sigh. Vi hugs around her waist, burying her nose in Caitlyn’s hair to drown in the scent of her shampoo, remnants of her perfume, every part of her.
Caitlyn wiggles back slightly, pressing herself fully flush against Vi’s front. Vi brings her hand up to start to rub small circles against Caitlyn’s stomach, earning another sigh.
Tentatively, Vi kisses at the crook of Caitlyn’s neck, and Caitlyn lets out the softest little hum. She stretches her neck slightly, giving Vi more access and Vi takes the hint. She kisses at Caitlyn’s throat with a more open mouth, a bit of teeth, and Caitlyn lets out an encouraging groan.
Vi slips her hand down.
It’s all she can do.