Work Text:
Before it ever starts to snow, Vi has already hunkered down in her workshop.
It’s a charmingly unkempt little space, very Vi from the little glimpses Caitlyn has caught of it—blueprints crinkled messily on a desk, early gauntlet prototypes piled in a corner, half-eaten sandwiches that Caitlyn whipped up sitting on delicate plates. It’s the only area of their home that’s Vi’s alone, established soon after the war when it became clear she needed a space of her own.
It’s almost a bit of a shame, the unspoken rule that the two of them don’t enter each other’s work spaces unless explicitly invited in—with all her personal effects around, being in Vi’s workshop feels almost like receiving a warm hug from the woman herself.
And Caitlyn hasn’t been invited in in quite a while now. It had started just over a month ago, when the browning leaves outside had begun to shrivel up and desert the trees that had given them life, that telltale sign of winter encroaching on the streets of Piltover like a silent army. Vi would come home from the market still bundled up for the cold weather, arms clutching bags of freshly-bought materials, then strip herself of her scarf and jacket and let Caitlyn press one quick kiss to a pretty, pink cheek before locking herself in her study and leaving only a cacophony of clanging noises to feed her imagination.
And every night, Vi would come to bed exhausted, usually after sleep had already claimed Caitlyn, sometimes before. On the rare before occasions, Caitlyn would be drinking one last cup of tea on the couch or trying to force her brain to comprehend the words of a book when her sluggish partner would come trudging in, too exhausted to grace Caitlyn with the gift of her raspy voice beyond a short but earnest, “Night, baby.”
One night, Caitlyn cuddles up to her from behind, trailing her lips over her neck, kissing the gear inked into her skin. Energy or no energy, it doesn’t take much to make Vi shiver.
“Someone’s been hard at work.”
Vi’s long hair, uncut since the war, tickles Caitlyn’s nose as she twists her head back just enough to catch her eye. Perhaps she’s expecting a scolding for overworking herself, neglecting her needs, relying on Caitlyn or her disgruntled father to bring her a plate of cut up fruit or a glass of water or a quick reminder—Hey. I love you.
She huffs. “Barely. Feels like it’s been ages since I left this place for anything important.” Caitlyn scoffs, restraining herself from reminding Vi that her doctor had given her a few more weeks of rest and she isn’t in any position to be straining her body just yet, thank you very much.
Not that Caitlyn has been cleared for work either—though she feels fine. Fine, she’d answer her father when he’d ask how her day had been. Fine, she’d tell her surgeon when probed on how her recovery was going. Fine, fine, fine, until it didn’t even sound like a word anymore.
She knows well that it’s a consequence of her own stubbornness, but she badly wants to prove to all of these people that she isn’t some helpless invalid, that she could use their confidence rather than their pity. Though, frustratingly, the biggest roadblock hasn’t been her own body but rather the thought of putting on that uniform, of once more carrying the burden of that role that had sat on her shoulders with a weight so cumbersome and so destructive. Ever since her mother had trusted her with a gun in her hands, holding one had brought a weight, a stability, like the embrace of an old friend. Now, whenever she tries carrying that weight, it feels heavy and unwieldy, like a hazard.
There will come a time, later on, when she must ponder the implications of duty. Right now, her duty is to her partner.
“This is important.” Caitlyn strokes a thumb across Vi’s tattooed arm. “I want you to be able to do things like this. For yourself.”
Vi goes silent at that, staring out at the wall, like something in Caitlyn’s words has given her pause. She hums noncommittally.
“Once you’re ready to tell me what this is, I’d love to hear about it. I’d love to see it,” Caitlyn continues. She loves anything Vi builds, anything bearing the mark of her craftsmanship, the imprint of her hands.
“Sorry, not taking questions about it at this time, cupcake.” Vi buries her face in her pillow.
Caitlyn frowns. “I didn’t mean to pry.” As if prying hadn’t gotten her into this whole mess in the first place.
“Yeah, I know, Cait.” Vi’s tone is distant all of a sudden, like she’s back there in that workshop, going over blueprints and schematics in her mind—or somewhere else, locked in some other memory. “I want you to see it. But it’s not ready yet.”
Days pass and the cold begins to set in, the citizens of Piltover waiting with bated, cloudy breaths for the first snowflake of the year. When Caitlyn rises one morning to find Vi already out in the yard, tasting the falling snow on her tongue, her puffy jacket and thick scarf suddenly feel futile and unnecessary met with the steadily spreading warmth in her chest.
“Your aim is fucking scary, Cait,” Vi shivers after the two of them have become speckled with white powder, Vi having provoked her with a snowball to the shoulder only to be repaid with three perfect shots to the chest and one to the face. Laughing and holding each other’s gloved hands, they’d spilled inside, feeling like unruly teenagers when Caitlyn’s father shook his head at their antics while carrying two steaming mugs of tea for the both of them. “If you’d thrown those any harder, I’d be in a coma right now.” Vi’s smile could melt the frost coating their front door.
“I was going easy on you, darling.” A lie as white as snow and as see-through as ice, but Vi graciously lets it slide. Caitlyn lays her head on her shoulder, lounging on the couch. “Was this your first snowball fight?”
Looking up she could swear the cold-induced flush on Vi’s freckled face grows just a shade deeper. “We didn’t really get snow in the Undercity—in Zaun. Only slush.” She blows on her tea to cool it down, making the billowing steam curl into wild, amorphous patterns. “It was all mixed with factory runoff. I’ve never gotten to enjoy it like this.”
Caitlyn hums as she leans her head against her partner’s. Her eye is fixed on the scene outside the window, the seemingly endless flakes falling into a blanket of white. That white blanket covers up everything, like a sheet over casualties of war, burying scattered memories deep down with the frozen ground.
She imagines lifting up that sheet as she looks out at their snowy estate, can almost picture those winter mornings from her early years when her mother would bundle her up and send her out to play in the snow with her father. He’d always let her win at snowball fights, giving little Caitlyn her moment of glory as he fell to the ground in pretend anguish. Afterward, her mother would run her a warm bath and tell her that with her aim she’d be the best sharpshooter Piltover had seen in decades.
Taking a sip of her earl gray, she turns to Vi. “Did the snow live up to your expectations?”
Vi exhales, hazy blue eyes tracking the snowflakes the way Caitlyn’s had moments before. “Yes and no. When I used to picture a snow day with my family…” She takes a thoughtful sip of her tea. “Well, I never pictured my family looking like this.”
It’s true for Caitlyn as well, to some extent. In those brief little vignettes she would let herself have, all the way back in those moments when Vi’s presence in her life had first started to feel like an inevitability, flashes of a different, distant future for her family would flicker in her mind’s eye. Four figures sat around a table, maybe five, laughing and talking and eating and living. When the three of them sit together as a family now, she can barely look that darkness in the eye, those gaping voids where her mother and Jayce should be.
Vi has voids of her own, so many that Caitlyn knows she sees them around every corner, chases them away in her nightmares, reaches for them when she awakens. The hole gets smaller, Vi had told her. But what if the hole, no matter how deep or how yawning, is the only remnant you have of the person who once was? Where do you store all your love when it’s gone?
“I didn’t either,” Caitlyn says simply, because it’s the truth. Nothing had turned out the way she had hoped or expected or even imagined. But her path, no matter how cold and lonely and brambled, had led her to here, holding Vi’s warm, calloused hand, looking out at the same old sunrise through the haze of falling snow.
The same sunrise she had seen hundreds of times, and yet—as Vi’s thumb runs gently over the back of her hand—not the same.
Several sunrises come and go, the remaining patches of Piltover slowly being covered up by a sheet of fresh, quiet snow. The din of busy Piltovan life begins to die down just slightly and with it fades the constant noise from Vi’s study, as if whatever is being built in there is receiving its finishing touches. Mechanically, Caitlyn goes about her days like always, the waking and the sighing and the light exercise and the painful glimpses of herself in the mirror, the is it just me or are my cheeks hollower than they were last month? When did these bags form under my eyes? When was the last time I ate? More than once she daydreams about what it would be like to shatter that truthful glass with a blade, or a bullet.
She starts seeing Vi more, which must be a good thing. It’s always a good thing. She doesn’t ask Vi anything but rather forces herself to be patient, to wait for the right moment. And finally, in the dead of winter, on the coldest and darkest night of the year, the two of them are enjoying a game of chess in the foyer when Vi addresses the elephant in the room.
“I wanna show you something.” Keeping their game going, Vi walks her king up to a more secure position.
Caitlyn considers Vi’s words for a moment, then considers her pieces. She places a tentative hand on her rook and slides it forward in a risky move, taking out one of Vi’s bishops and landing the piece in the sights of her queen in the process. “Would this have anything to do with what you’ve been building in your workshop?” She manages to keep her tone even, though her heartbeat is picking up speed and the tips of her fingers tremble with anxious anticipation as they drum on the table.
A nervous sound rumbles through Vi’s chest, face screwed in endearing apprehension. Caitlyn looks down at the board—Vi had been playing a defensive game as black, never making the first move, never letting herself be pushed into a sacrifice. Caitlyn, though, had been patient and open, playing a game of attrition, a push to Vi’s pull. The strategy was working in Caitlyn’s favor, an array of black pieces beginning to collect on her side of the table—it’s no wonder Vi had decided to call it quits early.
Vi slides her queen over to take Caitlyn’s rook, then stands up. “Come with me.”
She gestures with her head for Caitlyn to follow, and follow she does, rising to her feet and leaving their game unfinished. She tries not to fidget as she traces Vi’s steps through that familiar path to the workshop.
They pause outside the door. Vi chews on her lip, eyes fixed on the knob as if waiting for it to turn itself.
There’s a look that Vi gets on her face when she’s baring something vulnerable to Caitlyn, like she’s cut her own heart out of her chest and is presenting it to her, begging her to accept it. Caitlyn had seen that look before, had even spurned it when Vi had most desperately needed the security of her acceptance, back when Caitlyn’s grief had grown teeth and claws that ripped up her insides and lashed out at those who deserved it least. Seeing that look on her partner’s face now, as they stand outside the door to Vi’s workshop, there’s nothing she wants more than to hold her close and tell her—
“Whatever you’ve made, Vi,” Caitlyn says gently, taking that beautiful face in her hands and watching those blue eyes crinkle lovingly, “I’ll cherish it. I’ll cherish it because it’s you.”
Vi chuckles, something assuaged in that always-thinking head of hers. “If you hate it, that’s fine, really. I can take it.” Most certainly a lie, but it doesn’t matter because—
“I won’t, love,” Caitlyn says with finality, lightly scratching a hand through the shaved side of Vi’s head before pulling away. She turns to the door. “Now. If you’re ready?”
Vi’s hand hesitates on the doorknob, and when it finally turns, Caitlyn is met with that old but familiar space, that room that emanates Vi in every corner. It looks just like she remembers it, save a smattering of spare parts strewn about and the large, oblong shape covered in cloth on Vi’s workbench.
Perhaps a part of her always knew what Vi had been building. She didn’t want to think about the implications, though, about what she’d have to face in herself when it was done and sitting before her, the first rifle to well and truly belong to her since that last one that had helped form so many of her deepest regrets before being torn apart before her very eyes.
Shaky, scarred hands lift the cloth off the gun, letting the fabric fall unceremoniously to the floor. It has a similar make to the one she traded in for Vi’s medicine lifetimes ago back in Zaun. Sleek, silver-trimmed walnut stock with checkering at the wrist, emblazoned with the Kiramman family crest and fitted with an adjustable scope. A hinge—it’s foldable, even.
Vi is silent beside her as she examines the rifle, the product of all of her hard work over the past month, the toil and the sweat and the time she had spent, all for Caitlyn’s sake. An offering. Her heart held out in her hands.
“It—It’s beautiful. How did you…?” Caitlyn starts, because it doesn’t make sense. How did she acquire these schematics, the family crest, the blueprints for such a uniquely Kiramman weapon—?
There’s a small grin threatening to break on Vi’s face, visible in the corner of Caitlyn’s eye. “I had a little help.”
Caitlyn sighs. Of course—“My father.” His growing affection for Vi is starting to challenge Caitlyn’s authority as the supposed head of this household—though that’s a charge she has never taken very literally.
“He let me see some of the blueprints. Some of Jayce’s designs, too. But the final design’s my own.”
“You two conspiring under my nose once again, I see.” Caitlyn clicks her tongue.
When she tears her eye away from the immaculately crafted weapon, Vi still isn’t meeting her gaze. She wants Caitlyn’s approval, craves her reassurance that this wasn’t some big mistake. How anything from Vi’s heart could ever be a mistake Caitlyn doesn’t know, but she wraps her arms tightly around her neck anyway, running a hand through dark pink locks. She buries her face in the corner of her neck and lets out a deep breath into a strong shoulder. And those hands don’t waste a second burying themselves in the fabric of Caitlyn’s shirt, pulling her close like a life preserver drifting in a lonely ocean.
They would have drifted away together, but Caitlyn pulls back after some time has passed. She watches as Vi gathers herself, rubs the heel of her palm against the corner of her eye, then carefully takes the rifle in her hands and holds it out to Caitlyn, not pressing it into her arms but offering.
“I’m not gonna force this on you. But whenever you want it, it’s here,” Vi says lightly, watching her expression.
What Vi’s handing her isn’t just a weapon. She may as well be holding out a piece of Caitlyn’s broken spirit, the closest she could possibly get to physically offering Caitlyn her trust, her confidence, the opportunity to relearn how to love something that she had once held as dearly as a friend.
“You’re ready for this, Cait.” Vi’s voice is gentle, but it doesn’t waver, not anymore. “Do you wanna hold it?”
Caitlyn was never going to be able to say no. Delicately she takes it, as if the wrong touch might cause the rifle—or Caitlyn herself—to fall apart.
When she holds the thing, placing her left hand on the front grip and her right on the trigger, she’s suddenly overwhelmed by just how familiar it feels, like an old flame. Memories buried under feet of snow are uncovered in her mind and for a moment she’s fourteen years old again, sprinting through wintry woods, clutching that gun not like a burden but like a gift.
And isn’t that exactly what this is? A gift made using blueprints passed down through generations in her family, assembled by Vi’s hands, each component containing a little piece of everyone she has ever loved. She’ll never be that bright-eyed, fourteen-year-old girl again, but she carries her memories and her passion and her love.
Caitlyn thought she had been looking for Vi’s forgiveness, for the cities’ forgiveness, to try again. But Vi had forgiven her a long time ago, and there was little objection to her taking up the role of Sheriff, topside or bottom. The only forgiveness she had been waiting on was her own.
“How does it feel?” Vi’s words draw her back to reality.
Caitlyn runs her hand along the finely crafted barrel. She swallows, turning the question around in her head and landing on—“Like coming home, I suppose.”
Vi’s proud eyes are glued to her, watching every little move of her fingers. “You’re a goddamn vision like this, you know that?” she says appreciatively, encouragingly, making Caitlyn huff a laugh at the obvious interest in her eyes as they swoop down, taking in her whole look. It makes her feel wanted in a particular way—intimidatingly beautiful.
A deep breath, in and out, before Caitlyn sets the gun delicately on the workbench, the beginnings of a new, tentative fire being kindled in her chest.
A different fire, lower in her stomach, begins to bloom as she turns and takes in Vi’s adoring expression, her pride and her devotion that don’t even try to hide themselves. Vi’s emotions were always too grand to be kept inside her chest, her heart too big and full not to spill out into the hands of those she loved. Caitlyn gathers her in her arms, twines them around her and holds her close, presses their foreheads together so that they’re breathing the same air.
Caitlyn exhales. “Thank you.”
The words feel trite and inadequate. What do you even say to the person who has constantly supplied you with the thread needed to stitch your life back together? How do you thank someone for their very existence?
Caitlyn tries the only way she knows how, leaning in to press her lips to Vi’s. And then Vi is kissing her back twice as hard, firm movements of her warm lips against Caitlyn’s cold, trembling ones sending heat all through her body, melting the frigid tension inside her.
When Vi pulls back, it’s with a breathless gasp of air. “So what’s next?”
“I…” Caitlyn pauses, mind already running through possible futures, good and bad and beautiful and terrifying. She centers her mind on the here and now, the day by day. “We’ll go to the range tomorrow, and I’ll… I don’t know how it will feel, but I’ll try.” For you.
Caitlyn wonders if the sun ever feels envious of Vi’s toothy smile, or of the burning warmth that erupts inside Caitlyn when she says, “That’s my girl.”
The smile proves contagious, though when it tries to blossom on Caitlyn’s face it’s weighed down by a deep, leaden longing she can’t name. She reaches out to stroke a soft cheek with her thumb.
“Everything about my life has changed, Violet, and it’s still changing—so fast.” Somehow Vi, the true catalyst at the center of all that change, is the only thing which always seems to stay constant—like the eye of a hurricane. “I used to yearn so badly for change, and now it’s finally here and it’s nothing like I expected. There are so many steps, so many things I have to learn and relearn just to feel like I’m not… not…” Her traitorous voice trembles on that last word.
“Letting everyone down?” Vi snorts, then sighs sympathetically. “We’re in the same fucking boat, then.”
Somehow an incredulous laugh finds its way out of Caitlyn’s throat, tears of something prickling at the corners of both her sockets, threatening to stain her eyepatch. Oh, how well Vi has come to know her. “How are we going to do this?”
“Well—together, I’d hope. Beyond that, hell if I know.” Vi shakes her head, and her smile is earnest and genuine but there is so much exhaustion there.
“Together.” She has never deigned to imagine a future where she has to go through all this without Vi by her side; the mere suggestion makes her have to suppress a shudder. “As if I could’ve gotten this far without you. Gods, I love you, Vi.”
She doesn’t let Vi say it back just yet, afraid those words in that voice at this moment will take her apart piece by piece just when she was finally managing to put herself back together again. She dives in and kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her, until her back is against the door and strong fingers tangle in long navy hair. Vi’s little moans stoke the flames of her desire dangerously high.
“Take me to bed,” Caitlyn gasps against her lips when the ache inside her has grown into something nearly unbearable. “Please.”
Vi reaches behind herself, fumbling for the doorknob. She makes a shushing motion over her lips, giggling silently. The two of them aren’t all that silent in their rush to their bedroom door, but Caitlyn can’t be bothered to care when Vi is using Caitlyn’s back to shut it, groaning into her mouth as warm fingers untuck her shirt. Caitlyn lets Vi kiss her slowly, work her up to where she wants her to be before she slips those hands underneath Caitlyn’s shirt, gratefully obliging when Caitlyn motions to let her take it off.
She’s not given much time to stare before Caitlyn is grabbing her wrist and leading the two of them to the bed, stealing a few kisses and giggles on the short journey there. Vi pulls her down on top of her, quickly discarding her own top and giving Caitlyn the full view of a flushed chest that matches her pretty, flushed face.
From here, Caitlyn can run her hands across Vi’s tight abdomen and up to her nipples, brush her thumbs against cool, glinting metal and feel the shiver her touch elicits. She can lean down to taste Vi’s neck, feel two hands on her ass and the whisper of breath on the shell of her ear as she groans, “I missed you in that room all day, you know.” Something primal alights in Vi’s throaty words. “I fucking missed you.”
“You have me now,” Caitlyn says, sinking down onto a clothed thigh and rocking rhythmically. “Show me how much you missed me, Violet.”
“Take these off.” Vi pulls at one of her belt loops, and Caitlyn scrambles to tear her pants off, leaving her in nothing but her underwear. There’s more friction now as she grinds down, Vi pulling her against her thigh with every downward motion. Caitlyn’s deep groans and Vi’s heavy breaths mingle in the air between them, close enough to lean in and—
“Kiss me,” Vi begs, “ple—“
Her plea is muffled by Caitlyn’s lips, which move with a rhythm almost as desperate as that of her hips. She’s not even trying to drag this out, to beat around the metaphorical bush, she needs to be as close to Vi as possible. She needs to come apart in her arms, to hear her soothing whispers of worship as they catch a glimpse of something like heaven.
It won’t take long now, what with the desperate rutting and the way Vi is clinging to Caitlyn like she’s her last possession, kissing her hard with a hand fisted in her hair. Every sense feels heightened tenfold—the pungent smell of the sweat they’re already working up; the heady and slightly salty taste of Vi’s lips and spit as she licks into Caitlyn’s mouth; the feel of five blunt nails digging into supple hips, five carding through her hair; the hot noises of effort every time Vi matches her grinds with a motion upward; the beautifully flushed face that greets Caitlyn when she opens her eyes, screwed in its focus on squeezing out every drop of her pleasure.
Vi curses when Caitlyn breaks off to bury her head in the crook of her neck, moaning her release into her bare skin as shudders rack her body.
“You’re so wet, baby. Felt it through my pants. You drive so me fucking crazy, how do you—” Vi’s words are like honey, soaking deep into her bones and soothing something rough and animal inside her as her climax tapers out. “You’re so sweet. So fucking good.”
There was never a chance they’d be done already. Caitlyn only gives her a second to hold her close and kiss her jaw before she’s crawling down her torso, laying messy kisses on those abs that seem to have been put in this world specifically to tempt her. Vi jumps under the first kiss, then laughs at her own sensitivity there, and Caitlyn laughs too as she unties the string of Vi’s waistband.
“I haven’t tasted you in too long,” Caitlyn hums greedily as she practically rips Vi’s sweats and underwear down. Over the past month, intimacy with Vi had been limited to quickies in the shower and lazy grinding in the mornings. There’s nothing wrong with a quick fuck, but it can hardly curb her craving for Vi, and it can’t touch that burning desire eating away at the timber of her being, the need to look her in the eyes while the two of them submit to the throes of pleasure over and over again.
When Caitlyn buries her face between Vi’s thighs, the sound that rips from her throat is enough to fuel her ministrations for hours, though it won’t take that long, she knows.
“Oh fuck,” breathes Vi, and for one delirious moment Caitlyn thinks that she never wants to leave. She doesn’t want to imagine doing anything else but this, using her mouth to worship Vi’s body and Vi’s pleasure and draw those sounds of ecstasy from her lips.
“Oh, just like that, Cait, mm—“
Caitlyn is precise and methodical even when she fucks and Vi’s noises reward her efforts well, travelling straight to her brain like something heady and potent. Nothing has ever affected her like this. No one has ever made her head literally spin with longing, even with her tongue pressed up against wet heat and her own hand snaking down to soothe the burning ache between her thighs.
“I need to see you, Caitlyn—ah—look at me when I come.” Caitlyn opens her eye and Vi is propped up on a single, shaky arm, dilated pupils fixed on her with an intensity that can only be described as animalistic. She’d been holding on by a thread, waiting for their gazes to meet to finally let out that great, trembling groan, a hand coming down to grasp at Caitlyn’s hair as her pleasure crests and she throws her head back, chanting, “Yes, yes, yes.”
Somewhere in the comedown, Caitlyn reaches her peak, too, and when she pulls her mouth away from Vi’s folds she can’t help the whining and whimpering that punctuates each deep gasp for air.
Caitlyn has hardly crawled back up her body before Vi is flipping their positions, bending down to lick and suck herself off Caitlyn’s lips. She can feel that familiar wetness coat her thigh as Vi presses down, then shifts their limbs, hefting one of Caitlyn’s long legs over her shoulder to slot their thighs together, their most sensitive areas rubbing up—
“Oh, fuck me.”
“Holy shit, Vi.”
She can only buck up into those rhythmic grinding motions, each time searching for a way to maximize the stimulation, the closeness. Every time they gasp and moan in sync, Caitlyn feels that closeness deepen. She reaches out to Vi, and Vi reaches out to her, and it’s perfect and it’s not enough.
She wants to tell Vi how perfect she’s doing, how badly she’s needed this, but somewhere between her brain and her mouth the words get lost and she can only ramble, “That’s it, fuck me, oh you make me feel so good, Vi, just like that.”
And Vi doesn’t seem much more coherent, Caitlyn’s name tumbling out of her mouth over and over again like a heartbeat as she speeds up her movements. That soft hair hangs messy and mussed above her, and that pretty, scarred lip is beaded with sweat as it forms the ruined words, “Baby. I need to come, need to make you, god I’m so—“
“Please,” Caitlyn breathes, the last word that leaves her mouth before her nails dig into Vi’s skin and a gasp leaves her throat. She doesn’t know who gets there first; all she knows is the press of hands on skin, two rough cries of release, two hearts racing with adrenaline and bliss.
For one endless moment Caitlyn’s world is nothing but warmth—heat and skin and shelter from the freezing winds outside. When the blaze of heat subsides to a mild glow, their breathings stabilizing and limbs aching, two lips press tenderly to her forehead and rasp, “I love you.”
They take their time with each other in the afterglow, Caitlyn bringing them both glasses of water and wet, fluffy towels. Vi grabs Caitlyn’s favorite silken robe and hands it to her, probably just trying to make herself useful in some way. Still, Caitlyn slips into it gratefully, and Vi pulls on a pair of boxers after cleaning herself up.
Once they’re both taken care of, Caitlyn’s head rests on Vi’s bare chest, one strong hand wrapped around her back and the other running through long navy hair, longer now than it had ever been before. Lamplight illuminates their room, neither one of them willing to let the moment end, even as sleep beckons.
“You’re not.” Vi’s voice carves out a little nook in the easy silence between them. “Letting everyone down, I mean.”
Caitlyn stirs, their conversation in the workshop coming back to her in pieces. “Hmm?” She responds intelligently.
“I wanted to tell you earlier, but, uh—I got distracted by something. You understand.”
Sleep stalks away from Caitlyn in defeat, closing its hungry maw, and she yawns. “Neither are you,” Caitlyn says, back to her original statement. “And I know you didn’t mean it that way.”
“Yeah.”
A lull in the conversation. That spot on Caitlyn’s abdomen twinges.
A thought enters her mind, something that's been nagging at her ever since the workshop door opened, though it was all but drowned out by overwhelming affection then. She tries to broach the subject gently, lightheartedly, but with tact.
“I’m quite cross with you, you know.”
Vi’s fingers come to a stop in her hair. “Oh?” She can practically hear the eyebrow raise.
“This whole time I thought you were making something nice for yourself,” Caitlyn murmurs into Vi’s chest, wincing as the words come out more disapproving and less playful than she means them. “It turns out it was all for my sake.”
Vi laughs loud enough that Caitlyn can feel it in her chest. “Of course you’d say that. Of course. Cupcake, you do enough for me already, but this wasn’t just for you.”
Caitlyn feels like she’s swallowed lead. “Wasn’t it?” She lifts herself up on an elbow to look Vi in the eyes, finding a frustratingly familiar expression there. Like walls coming up.
Vi sighs, long and deep and heavy, throwing one hand over her forehead. “It was driving me crazy, seeing you so fucking—sad, sometimes. Not doing the things you used to love. I felt so helpless. I wanted so badly to do something about it, so I didn’t have to see you like that anymore. I have my tinkering and shit, but what do you have?”
Reading, maybe? Brooding, or whatever it is Vi keeps accusing her of? She mentally scolds herself because now she sounds ungrateful, and the absolute last thing she wants is for Vi to think she’s somehow not doing enough for her. “Vi… Vi, you don’t have to worry about me all of the time.”
Vi sits up as suddenly as if a bed of spikes had just burst out of her pillow, then glares at Caitlyn. “Well I’m going to, alright? I’m fucking going to until you’re sick of me.”
And there it is.
“I came so close to losing you.” Vi’s hunched shoulders loosen and her fingers relinquish their death grip on the sheets. The thin veneer of hostility gives way to a shuddering exhale, a desperate plea for understanding. It doesn’t matter whether she means a Noxian warlord’s blade to the gut or a ladder out of a dark, wet sewer. Either way, there were a thousand different ways the world could have ripped the two of them apart and now here they are. “I know I fuck things up sometimes, and I choose wrong, and I don’t always know how to—to love people the way they need me to. But please,” she says. “Let me try.”
And oh, how badly Caitlyn wants to take Vi by the shoulders and shake all of that guilt and self-doubt out of her until she can look inside herself and see what Caitlyn sees, gazing deeply into those gray eyes that have witnessed so much death and violence only to soften slowly at Caitlyn as she lays a comforting hand on her arm. “I’m guilty of all of those things too, Vi. Despite what some would have you believe, no one was born with some—some guide or handbook on how best to love people. But we have the rest of our lives to figure it out. And I’m not going anywhere.”
And then Vi falls forward, falls against her shoulder like a soldier home from war, and maybe Caitlyn has always been a creature of pure longing because the only thing she can do, that she can ever do, is hold Vi against her bones knowing that this, here, is the compass that will always lead her home.
“Promise me,” Caitlyn says, caught off guard by the intensity of her own yearning, “you’ll let me take care of you.”
Vi groans. “I want to want that.” Her words are punctuated by a sniffle and the drip of something warm and liquid onto her collarbone. “You make it so easy to want it.”
It’s not enough to wipe her tears. If Caitlyn could, she would reach back far into the past and stop those tears from ever falling, nudge Vi’s course away from Stillwater and away from all that loss and pain in the first place—but she can’t. She cannot. “I’ll show you how to,” she says instead, more sure of this than perhaps anything else in this moment. “I will.”
There’s a whole life ahead of them, after all.
After they wake up the next morning, they cut their hair for the first time since the end of the war. Caitlyn had wanted a change from her usual look, and so she sat in front of their bathroom mirror as Vi worked a pair of scissors through that deep blue curtain, long, streaming strands falling away from her head like leaves from a tree in winter. Slowly, a new shape began to emerge, one that ended at the neck. Vi, being Vi, couldn’t help whistling and making a wildly inappropriate comment seeing her new look, prompting Caitlyn to roll her eye, though she didn’t even attempt to hide her smile.
Caitlyn had insisted on returning the favor herself. Vi agreed warily only when Caitlyn reminded her how skilled her hands were—another cog in the dirty joke jar. Once a truly impressive clump of red hair lay defeated on the floor, Vi’s new haircut greeted them proudly in the mirror—a little shorter than when they’d first met, Caitlyn thought, but no less handsome.
“Hey, Cait. Look.”
Caitlyn is pulling her shoes on in the foyer when Vi beckons her to the window. Outside, the snow has ceased falling and patches of grass have come into view, wet and glistening under the sun.
“Snow’s melting. Just in time for our little outing.”
Vi’s freckles seem brighter where the streaming sunlight hits them. Has she always had those little flecks of brown in her eyes?
“Yes,” Caitlyn breathes. “It’s beautiful.”
After a quick goodbye to Caitlyn’s father, Vi pulls on a light winter coat—Vander’s, she says, and it looks almost comically oversized even on her considerable frame—while Caitlyn tugs on her shooting gloves, adjusting to the distantly familiar sensation of soft black leather hugging her skin.
The range awaits them now. “Ready to go?” Vi hesitates at the front door. Her eyes move to the rifle—Caitlyn’s rifle, still sitting on the table.
Caitlyn picks it up gently, admiring the craftsmanship, and is suddenly struck by a thought. “That rifle—the one you modeled this after. Did you know my mother gave it to me?”
A thoughtful softening of Vi’s eyes, and a smile. “No. I didn’t.”
Caitlyn nods, seized by nostalgia. “For my nineteenth birthday. I was utterly overjoyed.” The memory visits her fondly, and she cherishes it before letting it pass gently on its way.
Vi hums, eyes tracking Caitlyn as she walks over to the door. “I guess these things have a weird way of coming back around to us.”
For one fleeting, blissful moment, every ache and pain seems to melt away under the strange beauty of being understood so well. How odd to think it wasn’t even a year ago that Caitlyn had thought there to be a dark, empty chamber in the space where her heart should be, had believed the only warmth she’d ever know was that from the pyres of her enemies.
Caitlyn holsters the gun on her back, its weight grounding her, lending her gravity. When she nods to Vi, the door opens and her eye adjusts to the glare of morning light. She feels as though she has stepped into a little pocket of time, not before or after but in between, the moment when a thrown object meets its peak, buzzing with potential energy. The world widens before her, centered on the firm pressure of Vi’s hand clasped tight in her own as they head out into the daylight.