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Caitlyn’s at her desk as usual, the lamp turned down a little too low. Vi sighs quietly but this is a war he doesn’t think he’ll win. Every time he thinks he’s the stubborn one she manages to find a way to surprise him. Funny how that works.
It might be a little early but Vi’s never really been all that great at following doctor’s orders when it comes to not doing things. Besides, it’s not too too early. He’s at least waited til the doc said that he didn’t need to wear those goddamn itchy compression bands all the time anymore. Honestly, those were worse than the binders, worse than the bandages.
He’s so glad that part of the recovery is over. Even though the skin’s a little tight and he can’t feel all that much of it, it at the very least doesn’t hurt the same way anymore, just the low ache like he’s been hit or been hitting things too much. It’s not going to be a problem and he’s well, he’s been a very, very good boi this whole time.
It’s time he gets a little treat.
He wraps his arms gently around her shoulders, buries his cheek in the loose wavy strands of midnight silk.
“I’ll be a mome—” the word cuts off suddenly as Caitlyn’s head turns under him. “Vi? Are you certain this is alright?”
He hums.
“Never been better,” he says. “The bands came off today. It’s been a month, love.”
“Oh,” the sound of wonder is gentle on Caitlyn’s tongue. Her hand reaches over to brush at his forearm, tracing over the ink. Her lips press a soft kiss on his skin that send a little happy dance of shivers up his spine. “That’s right. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the appointment. How are you feeling, love?”
“So fucking good,” Vi grins, knowing she can hear it even though she can’t see his face.
“Is that so?”
It’s the same way he can hear the smile in hers.
“Mmhm,” he nuzzles her again. “Come to bed, Cait.”
Her hands pause, but only for a second.
“Alright,” she says.
He can feel her eye on him from where she’s sat on the bed when he steps out of the bathroom, towel around his waist, toothbrush in his mouth. He can feel the heat of her gaze on his bare skin, on his newly flat chest, loves that she makes no attempt to hide it. Why should she?
“Like what you see?”
It comes out a little less cool than he wants it too, probably because of the toothbrush.
“Yes,” she says, the blue in her eyes so dark. Then a pause and a quirk of her lips. “I do regret introducing you to that seven step night routine.”
“Because it makes my skin glow?”
She huffs a laugh. “Because it means that you find yet more ways to try my patience.”
“Your patience,” says Vi as he deliberately slows each brushstroke. “Be careful what you say, m’lady. One would think you’ve been waiting for something.”
“I’ve been waiting most patiently for my husband and he knows that I’m not wont to wait.”
“He does know.”
“And yet he torments me. How cruel of him, wouldn’t you say?”
When he finally emerges from the bathroom for good Vi is honestly unsurprised to find Caitlyn with her nose in the notebook that she keeps by her bedside table, propped by a couple of the truly ridiculous number of pillows on their bed. He slides in next to her under the blanket, cold toes immediately seeking her warm calves. He chuckles as she sighs, long-suffering.
“Very kind of you to warm up the bed for me.”
“My generosity knows no bounds.” She puts the notebook down, tugging at the blanket and opening her arms. Her smile is warm, cheeky and Vi loves her, he does, he does, he does.
Vi dives right in with a happy groan. He’s gotten really good at this even though it’s been a month or so. “I missed this,” he mutters into her sleep shirt, into the softness of her tummy, wraps his hands around as much of her as he can reach.
“So have I.” Her hand is gentle on his hair, fingers carding through the long strands that he lets loose. “I missed holding you terribly.”
Her fingers trail down his neck, slow and smooth, a confident touch as they dig into his trapezius, searching for the knots that she’s always good at finding. Now too she finds one near his shoulder blade and slowly, methodically works it out.
“I love your tattoos,” she says. “Love your back.”
Vi purrs.
Her hand moves further downwards to the small of his back, the pressure delicious as she teases the muscles in small firm circles, as she presses him back down. He’s fallen asleep to this before, woken up on a soft, breathing pillow.
“Vi,” she says after a glorious few minutes. “Turn over for me.”
He lifts his head, catching a glimpse of the way her blue eye burns.
“I want to see you,” she says and he knows what she means so as much as he’s enjoying this back massage, he pushes himself to his knees and scoots higher up on their bed.
Caitlyn shifts too, sitting on her haunches as they swap positions, Vi leaning back on the pillow throne that he’s so glad is no longer strictly necessary for his recovery—that had been a pretty rough first night, not gonna lie. He watches as she reaches to the bedside table, throat drying as that one hairtie they keep in there for moments just like this shows itself.
In the low light of their bedroom her smile is wicked as she watches him watch her shake her hair back then tie those wavy locks up and out of the way. Her hair is getting so long it goes down almost to her waist and he loves knowing how it feels like he can run his fingers through it forever.
She settles between his legs and closes the distance between them. This too he’s missed, the slow, easy way they kiss, skin close to skin, the warmth of her body on his, the way her hands close over his cheek, over his jaw, the way she cradles him like he’s something precious. He steals her air, groans at the flick of her tongue over his, the nip of her teeth, the tug on his lower lip promising more.
She pulls back into small peppered kisses, small smiles he can feel as they trail to the edges of his lips, trail down to his jaw, a nibble to the soft underside of the angled bone, the rake of teeth there the word ‘mine’ breathed onto his skin. He winds a hand into her ponytail and she lets him like she always does.
The kisses trail lower, the bite a little harder on his collarbone, her teeth more insistent on the flat just under. She works a mark into his skin that he can’t yet see but can feel.
Another kiss follows, a little lower, onto skin that’s surprisingly sensitive even though it’d been untouched. It tingles but not in an unwelcome way. He shivers at the new old sensation and Caitlyn pauses immediately, her eye looking for his.
“It’s good,” he says, pre-empting the question that he can read. “Doesn’t hurt.”
She holds his gaze.
“I’ll tell you if it does.”
She keeps holding his gaze.
“Promise,” he says.
She smiles even as her head dips back down. Another kiss to his chest but this time she watches him as she goes, as she trails lower and lower, each brush of her lips somehow more fiery than the next. He’s honestly never been much of a breast person (well, on him anyway, which yes, is kind of why they’re gone for good) but now that her lips work on his skin and draw ever closer to his nipple, he knows he’s starting to get the appeal.
He’s starting to get the appeal of the edge of the pressure, of the tingling that shoots through him when she takes one nipple into her mouth, laves her tongue over the healed skin still soft. She’s so gentle with him, so careful, that one blue eye fixed on him. He doesn’t know what she sees, doesn’t know what his eyes say back to her but he knows he bites his lip and his heart aches, aches so sweet when she sucks a little harder, when frisson dances through his body, waltzes up into his ribcage and dives into the spaces around his heart, waves crashing against the shore.
She releases him with another soft kiss, moves further downwards. For a moment he thinks he knows where she goes but then her tongue flicks over the raised part of his scar, tender and painfully, painfully delicate. When her mouth moves across the pink line under his pecs it’s like she’s takes his beating heart in her teeth, swallows the pieces of his soul that dangle loose, tucks them into her open chest.
She’s still watching him but there’s a light in her eye, a hunger, a desire that he knows is mirrored on his face and even though her lips are pressed so close to his skin she could sink her teeth in and hollow him out, he yearns for her with a fire so fierce it scares him.
It scares him how much he wants all of her, wants all of the ways she fixes her gaze on him, how she knows him almost better than he knows himself, held his hand as they’d walked up the stairs to their bedroom, helped him across the carpet, tucked pillows around him, changed his dressings, rocked him to sleep when he couldn’t get there on his own. How she’s the one there when he closes his eyes and how it’d been her hand in his that he’d woken up to.
He’d cried on her shoulder when he saw himself in the mirror for the first fucking time after it all and she’d cried on his in joy, fingers wiping his tears from his cheek, lips kissing the salt away and now as those lips trace out the scars of the new beginning of his life he knows, he knows, he knows he will want for nothing more.
Nothing more.