Chapter Text
The fifth time Caitlyn comes is supposed to be the last. She’s exhausted and sweaty and Vi has been drawing each wave out for what feels like hours at a time, changing positions until her sex-addled brain can’t tell floor from ceiling, belly from back.
She thinks she might be on her side. Either that or the oil lamp on Vi’s side table is on its side and Caitlyn really does think she’d notice if the canopy curtains were on fire.
A low moan reverberates through Caitlyn’s body, but she can’t tell if it’s coming from her own throat, or from Vi’s mouth, soldered to her core. Hell, maybe she wouldn’t notice if the whole damned room was ablaze. She can feel Vi’s shoulders lying perpendicular between her knees, can feel a wide, straining bicep wrapped around her thigh, pinning it to the bed and a scorching palm holding her other thigh away and toward her chest. Vi’s molten tongue pressing urgently inside Cait, teeth skirting the edges of her folds, sucking and releasing her clit in an unknowable pattern, like a hidden rite.
This time it was surely Vi moaning. Damn her outrageous lung capacity while Cait panted breathlessly against the pillow.
“Vi,” Caitlyn breathes. She fumbles her hand down the bedclothes to grip at the bit of Vi’s hair she can see.
An emphatic voice responds, “ Shit .” The languorous heat rising in Cait’s belly begins to shift. Creeping into her back and thighs, building and building as she pulls harder on Vi’s hair.
Caitlyn tries to squeeze her thighs together, but those big shoulders twist without warning and Caitlyn is thrown onto her back. Vi pushes Caitlyn’s legs wide and high, hands like manacles behind her knees. It is, to Caitlyn, the most humiliating position, thus she only lasts a handful of moments longer as Vi swivels her head back and forth before she is stuttering out her release.
“I know you’re tired, but I think you can do one more.”
Caitlyn starts to shake her head against the pillow.
Vi offers her hand, gently, keeping it in Caitlyn’s sight before veering course to the scarred left eye. A cupped hand around the side of her neck, a calloused thumb sweeping the unseeing scar.
“My girl’s no quitter, is she?”
Caitlyn could not have molded a better fitting hand from the finest clay; nor could she have begged the gods of her family’s temples for a more perfectly made mouth; nor could she have conceived of a will so equal to her own, mind pressed flush to her mind, pulling and pushing and demanding and unerring.
“No.”
“No.” The shape of Vi’s smile caressing the word.
“Last one—how do you want it?”
“You,” is all Caitlyn can muster, lungs still remembering how to work normally. “Your—”
“Oh, my favorite? Wow,” Vi crows as she rises up to her knees. “She’s beautiful, generous, a little bit of a glutton. That’s gonna be a lot more sensitive for you than for me.”
“Shut up and fuck.”
“Way ahead of you, cupcake.”
“Close?”
Vi grips the back of Caitlyn’s lax elbow, pushes her hand up against the lean muscle of her abdomen, the valleys of which have grown more prominent since they started. The muscles twitch and flex under Caitlyn’s fingertips. Hardened by over decade of relentless training, but tender to the touch from recent overuse. All at once, the muscles of Vi’s lower belly go taut, thighs shaking. She moans into the side of Caitlyn’s neck.
“Once already.”
Caitlyn drags in a calming breath, wondering when she missed it.
A little quirk Vi had discovered about herself as a teenager who spent more time in solitary than with girls her own age.
“The first time it happened, I thought it was like, a reward for breaking my crunch record,” Vi had told her.
“You just…came? Like that? From sit ups?”
Caitlyn remembered the way Vi’s bicep looked slung over her face, sated all the way through her marrow, as she told the story.
“From crunches,” Vi corrected. “Different muscle group. All abdominal. Don’t roll your eye, I can hear you.”
Caitlyn hadn’t, but she did then.
“Anyway, I figured it out after I was back in gen pop and started fooling around for the first time—coming with someone else felt almost the same, but maybe not as intense? Then I was back in solitary for a couple weeks and I just…kept practicing. Crunches, squats, chin ups with my legs straight out as I could keep them,” Vi stretched her toes out like a cat in the sun, relishing. “It made punching rocks in the dark a little more bearable. I was a real model inmate for a solid month after I started getting off more consistently. Fucking ripped, too.”
“Could you show me?”
Vi had lifted her arm, eyes sliding over to Caitlyn’s wandering hands.
“You don’t like what I’m doing now?” She teased.
“I think that’s very obviously not true, thank you. I just mean—“ Caitlyn sat up and guided one hand down to the coarse pink hair between Vi’s legs, teased at the hood there until Vi opened her legs for it. Two deft fingers found little resistance from her already slick entrance.
“Can you come like this? Without me moving?”
Vi’s other bicep had come to rest over her face, completely obscuring it. She had whined so prettily and Caitlyn felt it in her teeth. She placed her other hand on Vi’s lax belly. Felt it tighten and shift.
“I want to feel you,” Caitlyn had demanded. “I want to see you.”
And Caitlyn had felt and seen. Vi had obediently risen up on her elbows, pulled up her knees, and bore down on Caitlyn’s immobile fingers. She had felt every muscle in that long abdominal plane contract and relax with an exacting rhythm; she had felt every grip of Vi’s inner walls, the way they drew her fingers in with no guidance at all. She had seen Vi’s chin tucked into her wide chest, head bent to the work before her, absolutely focused; she had seen the sweat of effort shimmering on Vi’s entire body, the musculature aglow.
Vi had roared like she was throwing down her heaviest weights.
Caitlyn felt then what she feels now as her fingertips graze that shimmering flesh once more—possessive. Curled up the base of her spine. A consuming, dizzying, thrumming need to have. To take. To possess.
Vi’s body, a marvel in its own right, so finely honed and controlled, so disciplined, so capable. A woman with the unreal ability to get off on her own raw athleticism. All under Caitlyn’s hand. All hers to claim.
The feeling blossoms from her spine and into her veins. Addled senses reawaken, hungry.
Vi leans forward for her mouth. Caitlyn grips the hair at the base of Vi’s skull.
“When?”
Vi’s neck arches. “Oh, shit .”
Those pretty whines begin in earnest when Caitlyn lays her other palm against the curve of Vi’s ass and presses her close. She wants to drink those whines. She wants to kiss and bite and claw until those whines fill every corner of her body, her mind, her soul.
Caitlyn all but screams from the overstimulation as Vi starts to grind her hips down. Unbearable lightning arcing from where their bodies meet and meet and meet. Vi’s pretty noises have become soft, encouraging cooing. Oh, I know, I know, there you go, just a little more. That possessive heat lances through Caitlyn’s middle once more. Vi leans in a second time for Caitlyn’s mouth, but she grips her scalp harder.
“When did you come?” Caitlyn asks again.
“This is supposed to be about you.” Vi presses her hands down flat against Caitlyn’s spread knees. The wider stance gives her better leverage to grind, but Caitlyn notices the way her arms shake with the effort of holding herself up. Her face flushed and glowing and eyes so heavy Caitlyn can barely see the whites.
“Then tell me how good I made you feel. Tell me when you wanted me so bad, you couldn’t help it. Tell me and you can kiss me.”
“Strap,” Vi grits out. “On top—you were on top. You kept…telling me harder. And you said my name.”
Caitlyn’s procedural mind runs backwards through their last hour or so until she finds the moment Vi is talking about. Vi grunting below her like a boxer in the final round. The breath released through her teeth on every measured push like…like hip thrusts in the training room. Oh. Oh, Vi will never be allowed to work that particular weight in a public facility ever again. Caitlyn plays the sounds in her mind again and again until she is sure she won’t make the mistake of missing it next time. She’ll give Vi anything she wants just to hear it again.
“Harder.” Caitlyn says. “Violet, harder.”
“Cait, please—”
Vi, desperately trying to capture Caitlyn’s mouth, desperate for contact. All that strength, all that virility, and her favorite thing by her own admission was to rut against Caitlyn and be kissed until she came.
She dutifully, gratefully claims Vi’s mouth.
And screams into it as Vi obliges, grinding harder against Caitlyn’s oversensitive clit. She bucks, arching so hard against Vi’s chest that she might have unseated her had Vi not dug her blunt fingernails into that soft skin.
Caitlyn does claw now. She bites at Vi’s lips and tugs at the tattooed expanse of her back and bucks and claims and mine, mine, mine. The creeping feeling of release, so torturously familiar this night, squeezes at Caitlyn until that possessive tension in her spine snaps all at once. Some kind of animal howls in the distance.
Mine.
“Almost, Cait, almost, I promise, I’m so close, I’m—“
Mine .
“Wanna put a baby in you,” Caitlyn slurs.
Vi wails as she comes.
It is becoming painfully obvious to Caitlyn that Vi is avoiding the brambleback in the room as she cleans her up.
Cait sits on the edge of the marble bench in their shower and Vi rests on one knee between her legs. This time, though, it is a warm cloth Vi touches her with instead of her mouth. Caitlyn winces all the same. Vi grins a sympathetic smile with her head down and pats her knee gently. She dips the cloth into a bowl full of soapy water on the marble floor and wrings it out again. Steam from the running shower curls the hair at her temples. Flushes the skin beneath her freckles.
Vi lifts Caitlyn’s leg to wipe beneath her thigh down to her ankle. Repeats it a few times before switching to the other leg. Caitlyn can’t help how those sore muscles make her groan. Vi smiles again, more than a little smug.
Caitlyn bumps Vi’s shoulder with her knee. She doesn’t look up.
“I’m not upset, Caity. I’m just thinking.”
Her smallest small name. Like a salve to her heart.
“‘Kay.”
Vi pats her knee again before she stands up and finally looks at her. The lights glow softly behind her, gilding her like a living god. Like a hero in old stories. A rough hand appears on Caitlyn’s blind side and she leans her cheek into it.
When does the wanting ease?
“I’m gonna go soap off and then I’ll come take you back to bed, alright?”
Caitlyn is so grateful to see those stormy eyes she would agree to anything.
“Take your time.”
“Don’t fall asleep on me.” Vi’s fingers tickle her chin as she walks away, just a few feet to the shower head but it may as well be a light year.
There are many moments in Caitlyn’s life she wishes she could do over again. Files upon files in a great cabinet in her brain. Sometimes she needs to creep into that cabinet and flip through its pages just to live one of those tortured moments again—to see if she could have done anything different, been anyone different. More often than not the answer is no. It stings, that double-edged blade of hope: maybe this time when she looks, she’ll find some new version of herself.
She could have been more understanding of her mother’s dreams and expectations for her life, but she wouldn’t have been. She could have taken the shot that would have saved her mother, but she wouldn’t have. She could have spared Vi the pain of disappointed promises, of abandonment in the pursuit of misguided justice, but she knows she wouldn’t have. She could have…she could have kept that seedling, burgeoning fantasy to herself, even if just for a better time. But she wouldn’t have.
The stretch of Vi’s back as she rakes fingers through her hair. Long strokes of black ink, wisps of cloudy grey, deep lines of muscle. The pensive line of her shoulders, the tilt of her hips.
No, she wouldn’t have.
The wanting would never ease.
After, when Vi has carried her back to bed and laid Caitlyn down on her broad, familiar chest she asks.
“So how long has that been going on?”
Caitlyn sighs. “You wouldn’t believe me if I said it was just an in-the-heat-of-passion thing?”
“Mm, I’ve had sex with you long enough to know it makes you honest, not impulsive.” It’s not unkind, but Caitlyn pouts anyway.
“I told you I’m not upset,” a soft kiss to the top of Caitlyn’s head, an easy hand rubbing up and down her back. “I just want to know what’s been going on in that head.”
She sighs again.
“You know that I’m…protective of you.”
Vi huffs out a stunned laugh. “Cait, you’re jealous.”
“I’m protective!” She sits up on her elbow and looks down into Vi’s smiling face. The cheek.
“You’re possessive.”
“Yes, well, alright. For good reason. You’re always running around getting yourself hurt—”
“I’m sorry, is this the part where you tell me why you want to knock me up, or—”
“—but when we went to see Ekko a few months ago to discuss the new council position, Scar’s daughter was there, and gods she’s so big now she must be almost four, but she just—she slept in your arms the whole time we sat at the table. And you held her and rocked her and kissed her head when she fussed.”
Vi’s hand is on her shoulder again, tracing light patterns, listening.
“I’ve seen you with children so many times. In Zaun and in Piltover. It doesn’t matter where—they love you. How could they not? But that time, it was different. I felt…”
“Protective?” Vi offers without a hint of teasing.
“Yes,” Caitlyn breathes. “I hadn’t—I had never thought of that for myself. I suppose I thought I didn’t want it at all. But when I saw you holding her, like she was a part of you, I just wanted.”
Caitlyn’s fingers find their way to Vi’s belly of their own accord. That smooth skin, soft in relaxation, imagines it softer.
“Fuck, you’re really serious, aren’t you? You’ve been so into my stomach lately. I thought it was just the ab thing, you little freak.”
Caitlyn smiles and continues her ministrations as the tension in her chest relaxes.
“You came when I said it.”
“I did.” Vi’s hand is a loose manacle around Caitlyn’s wrist. Not gripping, not stopping, just connecting.
“Family is the most important thing to you.”
“You are my family. That will always be enough.”
“That’s not what I meant. You want to be a mother.” It wasn’t a question.
“I— I do.”
It’s quiet for a few minutes. Gentle breathing and thumbs over knuckles as Caitlyn waits for Vi to gather the thoughts she’d been collecting in the shower. It’s never really hard to know what Vi is thinking—her expressions play over her face like a film reel, flickers of honesty that her words sometimes couldn’t match.
“I never imagined I could have something like this when I was a kid in lock up. I wasn’t…like I am now. Y’know. The whole ‘punch first, ask questions while punching’ way I had to be. Like when you first knew me. The harder I hit, the safer I felt. Like no one would fuck with me if I could throw the hardest punch the fastest. But fighting for you is…more.”
Vi closes her hand.
“It was like that before too. When Jinx was Powder, and my brothers were alive, it was my job to take care of them. Fighting for them meant more .” She says it with a conviction that makes Caitlyn’s heart ache. She can’t look anywhere but slate gray eyes, shimmering.
“I knew how to make my hands soft after. How to hold and not claw ,” Vi’s hand like a vice around Caitlyn’s wrist. “Raising Powder—loving her, teaching her, it was the best part of me. And then I lost it.”
Caitlyn can think of a thousand ways that that isn’t true. That it was taken from Vi; that Vi could never lose something so vital as her heart; that Caitlyn could always feel the gentle in her strength, it was never ever lost. It is as plain to her as the water sliding down into Vi’s ear.
“But the more I love you,” Vi pushes through the thickness in her throat, “the more I feel it coming back to me. I want that with you, Cait. I just didn’t know if you wanted it too.”
“You’d just want in silence for the rest of our lives if I never wanted children?”
Vi looks up at her with a horribly readable expression. What a stupid question. Vi would want in an eternity of silence for things Caitlyn could never understand. It was never about what she wanted, it was about what she thought she deserved. And Vi would never believe she deserved much.
Caitlyn would give all the blood in her veins to change that.
She smooths her bound hand up Vi’s heart to cup her face, pressing when Vi nuzzles in. Caitlyn kisses her furrowed brow.
“You must know it’s all for you, Violet. Everything we’ve built. Whatever you want, I would do.” Vi opens her mouth, but Caitlyn can hear the protest before it even starts.
“It’s not some heroic selflessness,” Caitlyn corrects sternly. “I’m not putting aside my own wants to accommodate yours. Your wants are mine. Your needs are mine. Your heart is mine.”
Caitlyn kisses a soft, aching sound from Vi’s mouth. A needy hand grasps at her back. She waits until Vi finally looks at her.
“You are mine,” she swears. “To provide for and to cherish. I will make you that vow before the temple gods tomorrow at first light if that would make you happy.”
Vi’s laugh is wet.
“I don’t think it’s natural to me—not like it is to you—but I’m no quitter, Violet. I’ll learn. If you want to be a mother, I want to make you one.”
Caitlyn is not at all surprised by how true those words ring inside her chest. If the love of Caitlyn has made Vi feel soft again, then the love of Vi has given her a true purpose that her duty-bound heart can’t help but honor. It’s as right and real as anything she’s ever felt.
“Why don’t we sleep for a little bit,” Vi offers after a minute or two of trading gentle kisses. “I wanna talk some more about these ‘vows before the temple gods’ when you’re not all sexed out.”
“I think this time I will roll my eye if that’s alright with you.”
“Whatever you want,” Vi mimics, an infuriatingly charming mixture of sincerity and cheek.
Caitlyn does sleep well that night, wrapped up in the strong, gentle arms of her heart’s purpose. Together they dream happier dreams than they ever could apart.