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Cait isn’t sure precisely when she started thinking differently about the duties of the head of Kiramman house. So many small, different things could have triggered it, or perhaps it was one of those bolt-out-of-the-blue ideas and nothing at all had triggered it. But when she really contemplates it, she thinks what started it all was that one bad morning. One morning right before Snowdown where she overslept, and stumbled out their front door groggy and annoyed, too late for breakfast, and knowing she’d be too busy to break for lunch.
Caitlyn has been the sheriff for six months, she takes her job seriously, she enjoys it, she’s professional, dedicated, and thorough. And right now she’s on her lunch break with her teeth dug into the meat of her girlfriend’s shoulder trying to keep from letting the whole floor know exactly how good Piltover’s sheriff gets fucked.
Not that they don’t know she does, at least in the abstract. Cait had let that poro out of the bag in rather spectacular fashion when Ekko had led a stumbling, wounded Vi into the medical tent they’d been triaging her in. Cait had lunged up off her temporary hospital cot, ripping out two IVs and spraining a doctor’s wrist to kiss Vi on the mouth in front of everyone. She’d paid for it in fresh agony and immediately passed out after, but it was the only course of action she possibly could have taken on seeing Vi was alive.
But knowing Piltover’s sheriff and Zaun’s prodigal daughter were an item was one thing. Hearing an on-the-clock Cait pant for more over the squelch of Vi’s fingers in her cunt was quite another, even if Vi has been very sweet and brought Cait lunch. The containers are still sitting on the edge of the desk, unopened, unlike Cait. Her shirt is pushed up to her armpits, her breasts spit wet and Vi is between her legs with one of Cait’s thighs wrapped around her waist, spreading herself open. Both of Vi’s hands are between Cait’s legs. Cait’s barely keeping her balance on the edge of her desk, clutching at Vi’s shoulders and back as she mauls the bare shoulder exposed by Vi’s tank top.
Vi fucks into her deep and sweet, two fingers stroking her swollen clit with its own hood and Cait has to jerk her mouth away from Vi’s shoulder with a choked off moan before she draws blood. Instead she pants at the ceiling as Vi’s mouth works softly against her neck, sending little shivers down her spine.
Cait hadn’t planned to end up spread out wet and needy in her office, but Vi was so thoughtful, knocking at Cait’s door before slipping inside, the cold outside clinging to her, with warm takeout containers in her hands and a fond little smile on her face. The thank-you kiss Cait gave her had gotten out of hand immediately, her hands on Vi’s face, tongue in her mouth. Vi’s strong hands on her hips had dipped to catch the backs of her thighs as Cait clutched at her shoulders and Vi lifted Caitlyn onto the edge of her own desk like she was taking Caitlyn as her due, and it had thrilled Cait beyond reason.
“Did you need anything else from me?” Vi asked, low and amused, and kissed her cheek as Cait wrapped her legs around Vi’s hips.
Cait always did. Never in her life had Cait wanted anyone like she wanted Vi - constantly, shamelessly. It made her reckless and stupid and giddy, helpless to what her body wanted in a way that would have been frightening if she’d trusted Vi any less. Cait’s belt was already undone, her hands already under Vi’s shirt, as she clutched at the valley of her lower back, groped her tits.
“Yes,” Cait said, and pressed soft, clinging kisses up the strong column of Vi’s neck, cradled the heat and softness of her breast in her palm, “always, please.”
Vi groaned, and her fingers slipped under the waist of Cait’s pants to slide them off her hips. They shouldn’t have done this here, especially when Cait wasn’t sure someone walking in on them would actually stop her. The sweet rush of arousal and power had been too much to resist, though. Vi was always too much for her to resist.
It’s that feeling that had Cait bring Vi’s middle and ring fingers to her mouth, onto the velvet cradle of her tongue. The sharp salt of her skin made spit well up under Cait’s tongue and she hadn’t been able take Vi’s fingers as deep as she felt she wanted to, but Vi still looked at her with wonder and hunger and it was nice to know she wasn’t alone in this terrible need that lurked constantly just under her skin.
“You are so beautiful,” Vi said softly, and Cait had swallowed her fingers as deep as she could without risking ruining her eye makeup before pulling off.
“Put them in me now,” Cait had said, voice thick, and kissed her as Vi’s breathing had stuttered.
“There you go. Come on, give it up for me,” Vi says now. She crowds against her own hands, her hips pushing against her wrist to slide her fingers a little deeper, knuckles testing the strained rim of Cait’s cunt, and pleasure cramps sharply through Cait’s belly.
Cait makes a strangled hiccuping noise and manages to sink her teeth into the strap of Vi’s tank top rather than flesh this time. She can feel sweat trickling down her temple, her thighs quaking, and she locks her arm around Vi’s neck, hissing and arching fully up off the desk as the orgasm that feels like it’s been building in her for ages crests. Vi fucks her through it, draws it out, murmuring a blur of praise into Cait’s ear until Cait’s shivers turn into overstimulated convulsions. Vi doesn’t pull out right away, her palm cupped over the wet mess of Cait’s pussy while she comes down. Cait rolls her hips gently into Vi’s palm as her heart settles, but she’s still too sensitive, flinching away as much as she leans into it, tucked into Vi’s shoulder.
Cait slowly relaxes her chokehold on Vi and unlocks her teeth from her shirt. Her breathing is coming out in fast shaky huffs as she untangles her fingers from Vi’s hair and smooths her hand over her broad shoulders. She’s left teeth marks, distinct halfmoons with a couple individual impressions already blueing into bruises on the dip of Vi’s trapezius. Cait stares at them, panting, until Vi pulls her fingers out and Cait has to drop her forehead to Vi’s shoulder again with a low unh.
She’s gotten spoiled in the idleness of her recovery; knowing she’s only got time for one orgasm makes her feel half-finished and sulky. It’s an effort not to grab Vi’s wrist and push those fingers right back where Cait wants them. Vi murmurs an apology and Cait cannot yet manage the words to tell her it’s not necessary, that Cait is just greedy, so she presses a handful of kisses to Vi’s skin instead.
“Sweetheart,” Vi murmurs against her hair.
Cait hums and says “I love your hands,” her body still fizzing sweetly, the morning’s burgeoning tension headache a distant memory. “I didn’t mean to leave bite marks,” she adds, pressing kisses into Vi’s neck, and feels the line of her jaw press into her cheek as Vi cranes her head to look at her own shoulder.
“Wha- fuck, that’s hot. Do whatever you want with me forever.” Vi kisses the side of her head as Cait tries and fails to absorb do whatever you want with me forever - she still has to work today; she needs to get Vi off immediately.
Cait stands carefully. The floor is cold under her one bare foot, and she has to make sure not to stand on her pants, crumpled around her one remaining boot. She looks ridiculous, she knows. She catches Vi’s eye when she looks up and then they’re both laughing at the undignified aftermath of desire.
“You made a mess of me,” Cait says fondly, stroking her fingers over Vi’s flushed cheek, her other hand dragging down Vi’s chest. Vi’s breasts are bare under her shirt, unwrapped just like her knuckles, no longer expecting that her body will have to take or throw a punch any minute. Cait loves it; it lights up something hot and pleased and savage under her ribs, that Vi feels safe, feels that Cait is up to the task of keeping her safe.
“Hey, your break’s half gone already,” Vi says, catching Cait’s hand at her belt bringing it up to kiss the knuckles and Cait blinks, looking up at the clock - has it really been half an hour? “I’m trying to take care of you here, so no eating your lunch cold while you do paperwork.”
“You can ‘take care of me’ by letting me take care of you,” Cait says, unable to help the sulk in her tone, chin lifting as she scowls.
“You can have whatever you want from me later,” Vi says, catching her chin and tilting it down for a kiss. “Don’t pout because you can’t have me for lunch, Cait.”
Cait scoffs and tugs her in, arms sliding around her shoulders, tucking her nose against Vi’s hair to breathe her in. If Vi insists. She does have work to do, but maybe she’ll be lucky and anticipation will make the day go faster.
“I don’t pout,” she says.
“Sure, of course not,” Vi agrees.
Vi uses one of Cait’s handkerchiefs to clean Cait’s thighs, her own hands, the floor under them where Cait had dripped off Vi’s knuckles in her enthusiasm. She tugs Cait’s pants back up, and pulls her boot back on, then pauses while pulling Cait’s pants up her thighs, eyeing her still damp cunt with a familiar greed. Vi leans in and Cait catches her sharply by the fringe.
“If I don’t get to make you come you definitely don’t get a taste,” Cait says, then off of Vi’s expression, “oh now who’s pouting?” Vi scrunches her nose at her and Cait smiles, raising her eyebrows and brushing Vi’s fringe back into place.
Put back together, Cait takes a seat at her desk. She opens her lunch and breathes deep in pleasure, the rich smell of brown curry filling her office, then pauses. There were a few lunch options between home and here.
“Did you deliberately pick something with a strong smell?”
Vi sprawls in one of her spare chairs looking pleased, one boot up on Cait’s desk.
“You’ve been stressed. And this morning you were grinding your teeth before you even got out the door. I figured you might need to blow off some steam.”
“You sweet thing.”
Vi’s smug look softens into something more genuine.
Cait takes a bite with a pleased noise. She chews, swallows, feels the mild spice kick up on the back of her tongue and wonders if Vi will let her play with her tits for a bit before she leaves. Across from her Vi squints suspiciously, crosses her arms, then points at Cait, “Stop that. Eat your food.”
After, when the lunch containers have been packed away and Vi has been sent stumbling out of her office, smiling dopily and trying not to flinch from the scrape of her shirt over abused nipples, Cait considers things as she slogs through the dull, basic bones of of running the enforcers. She does not like paperwork, but she remembers Jayce’s outraged ranting at the deliberate sloppiness of Council paperwork, the back alley deals and sly alliances, and she is determined to create as few holes in her organization as she can manage. Expense reports do not require the lion’s share of her attention, however - that stays on Vi.
She can’t stop thinking about what Vi said - not ‘do whatever you want with me forever’ because she’ll truly get nothing done if she thinks about that - but rather ‘I’m trying to take care of you’.
Vi is a contracted worker directly under Cait, a necessary technicality since Vi simply wasn’t going to let Cait out of her sight for very long, and that included at crime scenes. Vi had happily referred to herself as a trophy wife ever since she’d done it once as a joke and made Cait turn the worst shade of red. Cait knew it was temporary, that Vi wouldn’t be content with idleness forever, but she was also determined that Vi would get as much of it as she needed. Vi had seven years stolen from her - she deserved to take the time to relearn herself.
Cait has been trying to help with that, but what has she really done lately? She certainly hasn’t neglected Vi, but her physical recovery had taken quite a bit longer than Vi’s, and then there were both the cities to shore up and patch back together - a task she’d started on before she even left her sickbed - and her new appointment, and, well, things got away from her.
What was the significant thing she’d treated Vi to? There was the massage, Cait thinks. They’d both been a mess in the aftermath of healing, and the weeks Cait spent with a cane had tied her back into knots. So Cait had dragged Vi to the practice she’d first started visiting regularly as an older teen, when her body would simply not stop growing, stretchmarks streaking across her hips and thighs and shoulders and her muscles and joints in constant, aching complaint. The proprietor - who was very passionate about her field - took a minute to prod at an uncertain Vi’s shoulders and back, then soundly berated Caitlyn about not bringing her girl to her business years ago, how this was no way to be keeping a body formed by such dedication.
Caitlyn could only agree, and Vi had been mostly amused by the whole thing until they’d stripped down and the proprietor unleashed a pretty middle aged blonde with arms and shoulders to rival Vi’s onto her unsuspecting body. When she was done, Vi’s face was bright red and she was completely limp. The blonde had given her a hearty pat on the thigh and told her to come back any time she needed a tune up, and Vi had just grunted weakly into the table - Cait had answered for her and then sat next to her on the table and stroked her hair until Vi figured out how her arms and legs worked again.
“I don’t think I’ve heard you make noises like that before,” she’d said, and Vi had groaned, laughed, and rolled her head until it rested against Cait’s thigh. Cait had been content to sit there with Vi, enjoying the warmth and quiet, the smooth way Vi’s muscles moved under her skin, and the marvel of no longer feeling like she was fighting her own spine just to sit up straight until she noticed Vi watching her from under her lashes as she flexed.
Vi’s skin had been warm and damp when Cait brushed her hair aside to press an open mouth kiss to the root of her tattoo.
“Is this even a private room?” Vi had gasped, several minutes later.
A bit late to be concerned about that, Cait thought, kneeling across Vi’s thighs, modesty towel crumpled on the floor and two fingers buried the the scorching wetness of Vi’s cunt.
“No usually, no,” she said absently. She’d been distracted by her own grip on Vi’s wrist, held down to the table by her hip. The cast had been off for a few months by that point and Vi had been building the muscle in it back up, Cait’s fingers don’t meet where they’re wrapped around it. She leans more of her weight on the trapped limb and Vi groans and hides her face on the table.
“With me in here it is, though,” she’d continued, and Vi had laughed, startled and breathless, hunching back on Cait’s fingers eagerly.
But that had been months ago, and duties had piled up on Caitlyn. Vi hadn’t complained at all - she’s been proud, helpful, a wonderful partner.
Cait has certainly been remiss in her own duties, though.
Duties her mother had been quite clear on. Duties she had not been at all keen on as an eighteen-year-old who had just wanted something that was all her own, unconnected to legacy or responsibility. Cait had thought her mother had objected morally to her catting around, and she had, not because Cait was having sex but because Cassandra had thought Caitlyn wasn’t treating those girls properly. There had been a lot of directives on how a Kiramman should treat her suitors and spouse, far too much of it starting with ‘when I was courting your father’ and Cait, too teenaged to absorb it properly, would have dived out the window to escape it if she thought it would have saved her. Cait wishes she could tell her mom that she understands it now.
Cait hasn’t been utterly remiss. She’s been learning about Vi’s preferences - she knows Vi loves adventure novels and detective serials, that she likes to cook and she’s good at it, that she can’t miss more than one workout day in a row without getting grouchy, and that she’ll eat all the fresh fruit in the house before anything else and prefers single malt scotches for sipping. She’s silent when she sleeps, even her nightmares usually only expressed with whimpers and twitches, and she tends to curl herself into a ball, but she’ll relax if Cait cuddles up behind her.
Cait has learned that her own body is capable of a lot more orgasms in a single session that she’d previously believed, all because Vi looked up at her from between Cait’s legs, eyes glazed, mouth soft, cheeks glossy with Cait’s slick and ask if she could keep going, if Cait could give her just one more, and there really wasn’t anything Cait could do other than push Vi’s face back down between her shaking legs.
Her mother, thank every little god, hadn’t given any advice on what to do about that. She would, however, certainly agree that Caitlyn has been slacking in her duties. Probably with some story about how she had sat on the council and commissioned Zaun’s ventilation while pregnant with Caitlyn and all without neglecting her spouse.
Cait smiles, unseeing, at her paperwork, pen hanging in the air. Vi was right, of course - the hole never does get filled, but it gets smaller and the edges of grief get dulled with use. She can think of her mother and smile. She can consider her advice, her wisdom, her exacting standards without overwhelming regret. Cait sighs and puts pen to paper again, letting ideas percolate in the back of her mind as she proofreads and signs, scans for discrepancy, and signs more. A Kiramman may have certain duties, but - in these circumstances - Caitlyn is the one who gets to decide what those are.
Later that evening, having washed off the day, Caitlyn stands in front of her bathroom mirror longer than usual. It’s partially in defiance of the useless twinge of her nerves and partly in genuine contemplation. The nerves melt away when Vi appears behind her, looking at her naked body in open appreciation, something that never fails to pull Cait’s shoulders back and lift her chest. Cait leans back into Vi’s solid warmth when she comes up and wraps her arms around her, propping her chin on Cait’s shoulder, eyebrow quirked in a silent inquiry.
“I’m finally putting weight back on,” Caitlyn says, laying her hands over Vi’s on her stomach; the parallel lines of her abs are soft and newly redefined, and interrupted by the shiny pink of her scar, but there.
The most frustrating part of her recovery had been the weakness. Her body had never liked to put on weight or muscle even before, and she had been eating and sleeping very poorly for months before the war on top of the stress and extra combat training. Add to that the severity of her injuries, the long bedrest and severely limited diet…she’d been gaunt, and going up the stairs in her own home had winded her.
“I noticed that.” Vi’s fingers are splaying over the new muscle of Caitlyn’s torso but her eyes are distinctly higher.
“Did you now,” Cait says, amused and pleased.
She puts her hands over Vi’s and draws them slowly up her ribs until Vi is holding the weight of her breasts in her hands. Vi kisses behind her ear with an appreciative sigh and Caitlyn watches them in the mirror. She’s not the only one putting on weight - the breadth of Vi’s shoulders dwarf hers, and Caitlyn can’t feel the jab of collarbones into her back anymore when Vi presses against her, just smooth muscle and the softness of her breasts.
Cait’s breathing catches both from arousal and sheer gratitude for both of them here now, alive and whole and healthy. She reaches up to slide her fingers into Vi’s hair.
“I believe I was promised I could ‘have whatever I wanted from you later’?” she says, and Vi smiles, wide and delighted.
After, she drags Vi up out of bed and sends a message ahead of them to her favorite Ionian restaurant. Her family’s table is waiting for them when they arrive, and Cait breathes in the familiar smell of wood polish and charcoal and practically drags Vi to the private alcove with the chef waiting for them behind the warming teppanyaki grill. She’s been cooking here since before Caitlyn’s parents started bringing her with them, when she was young enough to need a booster seat, and still looks exactly the same, smooth brown cheeks and a fine net of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Caitlyn still doesn’t know her name - when asked the woman just laughs and says she’s the chef.
“This your young woman?” Chef says to Cait as they sit, setting aside the arrangement of her knives and spatulas to take Cait’s hand, then Vi’s between both of her’s briefly.
Cait confirms - still a thrill to do publicly, even if only to a woman who had seen her spill rice down her front as a child, learning to use chopsticks.
Chef offers Vi a fork, and Cait has to turn away quickly to stifle her laughter at the outrage on her face.
She sips her sweet plum wine and eats cold somen with caviar and watches with pleasure as Chef prepares to get into what she can only describe as a culinary game of chicken. Chef had done the same the first time Cait brought Jayce here. Cait’s mother referred to it as ‘what will the newcomer eat’, Cait is pretty sure Chef just likes showing off. And flirting. Chef doesn’t use the servers in her private rooms. She’d once passed Cait’s mother a plate of deep maroon tuna belly and said she liked to feed certain patrons from her own hands, with no intermediary, then winked, her mother had blushed, and teenage Cait had been scandalized.
Vi was game for both the flirting and the food, she tries it all. Uni on rice in a neat little nori packet. Fat white scallops seared and served with garlic shoots and pumpkin puree, monkfish liver with vinegar jelly. Prawns served in a rich brown drizzle made from their own head organs. The rest of the prawn heads, bright pink with their little black eyes, grilled in butter, nestled against their own deep fried legs. Soft steamed egg with black fungus. Flame seared beef with its lacey marbling, pink all the way through, topped with crispy bits of fried fat and tendon and served with beetroot and lotus and a raw egg yolk for dipping. Chef winks at Cait before she flicks her lighter and draws a showy arc with the liquor bottle, sending flames several feet above their heads, Vi grins and asks if that’s the best she can do..
Cait is happy to let Chef focus on Vi and enjoy the show, and to steal some of her particular favorites off Vi’s plate when she’s too distracted to stop her. By the time they get to the finisher of soup and fried rice, topped with tiny dried shrimps and green onion, Caitlyn is starting to feel like her chopstick rest - a fat little poro pup, belly up and beatific - and she’s glad to walk the indulgence off after, Piltover glittering with Snowdown readiness in the cold night air.
At home, Vi collapses into their bed with a groan.
“I think I have to marry that woman,” she says, one grey eye gleaming up at Cait from the depths of her pillow.
“Chef is too much woman for you, and you know it,” Cait says, settling next to her, cheek on Vi’s arm, fingers tracing over her shoulders.
Vi huffs but doesn’t respond, watching Cait for a long beat before asking, “That was a place your parents took you, wasn’t it?”
Cait nods, and Vi smiles, eyes crinkling.
“I’m glad you brought me there, cupcake.”
Cait tucks her face into the strong curve of Vi’s shoulder, her heart full and light.
The fight happens like this: there’s an invitation to a gala, something Caitlyn would usually respond to with the polite version of ‘I’d rather die, thanks,’ but her father intercepts it before she can. It’s a casual affair, for a gala, and several colleagues of his will be in attendance, and the Kiramman dowager hasn’t seen them in a while. Caitlyn, happy to see any sign of life in her father, agrees to attend. She even thinks it might be fun - medical talk does tend to go right over her head but her father’s colleagues are a colorful bunch, and she’s fond of them.
When she checks the plus one arrangement, she wonders out loud if Vi might like to come, and her father blindsides her. With an awful, thoughtless sort of casualness he suggests she take a proper date, and not -
The phrase he uses is, frankly, one of the more polite ones assholes will use when a topsider takes up with someone from undercity - but it’s still ugly, shocking, and Caitlyn still has too much of the woman Ambessa wanted to make of her inside herself.
“You will not speak of her like that in my home,” she snarls at him. She is suddenly and shockingly - to both of them - no longer his daughter, but the matriarch of house Kiramman. And it is her house. The main mansion in the city was not a part of his dower.
The silence after echoes like a gunshot. There is a moment where Cait knows she can take it back. Whatever excuse she could provide would be hollow but her father would accept it, because he has never been a bold man. But she does not. Shock and rage are still reverberating in her chest and along her limbs.
“You stand here in a free city, with your daughter alive in front of you, because of Vi and you degrade her? You degrade me?” she continues.
Tobias jerks, aborting his gesture of reaching for her when Cait’s eyes flick contemptuously down to his hand then back up. His expression is a sort of limp shock, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that referring to Cait’s lover as some kind of sexual pet also implied some quite terrible things about his daughter.
“You’ll speak of my partner with respect or you will leave our home,” Cait says, the words feeling as if they’re coming out of the great cold hollow that has taken residence in her chest.
Cait regrets it even as she says it, but she’s aware that she’s regretting it in a way that is incorrect, a way that is different than she might have regretted it before. It’s not that she regrets what she said, what she regrets is that her father said something that made her speak to him like this. Cait has so much love in her for the man who bragged to his friends about his daughter’s accomplishments, tried to bake cookies with her when she was young, bandaged her childhood scrapes. But under that love, buried in an increasingly shallow grave, is the exhausted resentment of over a year of dealing with his limp and bitter grief, of the times in the beginning, before Ambessa’s hooks were fully set, when she had reached out to him, desperately needing her parent, needing anything, and gotten nothing but resentful silence. Cait has so little left that actually matters to her, and she will not allow Violet to feel unwelcome in her house
Tobias retreats from the confrontation, hurt and confused, and that makes it worse, that he not only said it but thought - what? That Caitlyn would laugh along? Agree? Gods below every single spirit of her ancestors must be rolling. Her father had been courted by and married to a woman who’d been outraged that Cait might not be treating her one night stands with proper respect and he thought he could speak about their daughter’s partner like that? Cait may love her father, but she doesn’t know the man who would say that to her and consider it acceptable.
The heels of her boots ring on the floors of her mansion, driving her onward until she finds Violet in the third floor drawing room, reading.
Vi looks up when she enters the room, coming halfway up off the couch before the concern on her lovely face turns to delighted surprise when Cait slings a leg over her and rides her back down flat on to the cushions. She slips a hair tie from her wrist, twists her hair back into a loose bun, and takes Vi's book from her hands. She marks the page and puts it aside, then Cait leans down and kisses her.
Cait’s throat is too tight and cold to manage explanations right now; she sticks to basic questions - can I - and feedback - like that, yes, good girl - as she strips the shirt and pants off Vi, sinking her fingertips into the dense muscle of her shoulders, her arms, her thighs. Cait kisses Vi’s mouth, her throat, and loves how big Vi’s hands feel squeezing her waist when she sucks bruises into the gears on her neck. Vi writhes when Cait rakes her fingers down her ribs and kisses little red marks onto her collarbones and the muscle of her chest. Cait mouths more kisses into the beautiful curves of Vi’s breasts, fills her mouth with them and presses Vi’s nipples to the roof of her mouth as she sucks them, then kisses the teeth marks she leaves behind. Cait feels starved, worshipful; every time they do this she’s so grateful that Vi allows her to.
Vi is soaked when Cait presses her face into the heat of her cunt, open and soft when Cait slides two fingers into her. Cait winds her up slowly, paying Vi’s clit only passing attention as she licks and sucks her cunt, and instead angles her fingers to stroke the roots of that organ from the inside. Vi’s thighs jerk on either side of her head and her moans get higher and sweeter as Cait presses open-mouthed kisses to her pussy. She strings Vi out until Vi’s increasingly frantic moans break into whimpers. The noise of Cait’s fingers in her cunt get wetter, nearly a slosh every time she drives in and Cait sucks in a sharp, hungry breath, her focus tightening as Vi writhes under her, panting.
When it happens Vi nearly bucks them both off the couch, grinding her head back into the cushions with her ribs snapping up and down and her whimpers blurring together. Her thighs try to close against Cait’s shoulders and she chokes out a ‘fuck, what- fuck’ and gushes down Cait’s arm, splashing her chin, her shirt, whining and moaning, her hips arching so hard Cait has to brace her forearm across them. Cait keeps her mouth on Vi’s clit, keeps working her flooded cunt with her fingers until she feels the shake in the thighs clutching her, the greedy clench as her cunt milks Caitlyn’s fingers. Cait loses track of herself a little in the hungry delight of making Vi come, of making her come like this, and Vi has to push her head back and squeeze her shaking thighs shut to get Cait to stop.
“So are you going to tell me why you stormed in here looking pissed off to make me squirt on the couch?” Vi’s sprawled bonelessly on Cait, her voice is muffled by Cait’s tits, where she’s been resting for the past ten minutes. Caitlyn’s shirt was sacrificed to try and save the couch. “Congratulations by the way - first time someone’s made me do that.”
Cait feels a brief spike of disdain for Vi’s former lovers.
She hums thoughtfully, stroking Vi’s hair, her strong shoulders, soaking in the heat of her. She loves Vi’s weight on her, the way it makes her feel safe, and she’s loathe to ruin this warm bubble. She also generally tries not to bring up her parents while they’re naked.
“My father said something that upset me,” she settles on.
“You’re sheriff, people say things that upset you all day.” Vi’s hands cup her shoulders warmly, thumbs smoothing over her collarbones. “I don’t usually get fucked blind about it, so what happened this time?”
Horribly, a wet knot of emotion forms in Cait’s throat. The initial shock and rage had passed and left her hollow and sad. Never in her life had she seen any sign that her father thought those things, or could ever imagine that he would say them to his own daughter. It feels like such betrayal.
“He said -” her voice breaks, because she cannot repeat that to Vi. She won’t, not here, in their home with Vi naked and relaxed with her, having just offered herself up to Caitlyn so beautifully. Vi started to sit up with a concerned hey and Caitlyn pressed her fingertip lightly to Vi’s shoulders, asking her to stay, to let Cait soak up the comfort of her body a little longer. She clears her throat to continue.
“It was a - an ugly little bit of slang for people from Zaun who take up with people from Piltover. I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out for you,” Cait’s voice sounds just terrible and she angrily sniffs back her tears, and smooths down Vi’s hair from where her hand had clenched in it, “He’s never before -”
Wonderful, sweet Vi slides up her body, hands smoothing back Cait’s messy hair and cradling her face. “Oh, sweetheart,” she says, and Cait crumbles, and sobs out all her sorrow and betrayal and grief on Vi’s bare shoulder.
Her father left the next week, no word, just a stiffly formal note. And now, another note, a letter from her father on the sideboard with the rest of her correspondence when she comes home, buzzing with eagerness to see Vi. She stares at it for a long minute, unbuttoning her jacket, taking down her hair. Cait deliberately releases the tension from her jaw, then drops the papers she brought home from work on top of the letter and turns away. Maybe it’s childish cowardice on her part but she was looking forward to coming home, to seeing Vi. Cait has no desire to spend her night worrying over the envelope like a dog with a bone. Her father can wait.
Vi is sprawled on their bed watching Cait move around her room, checking the jewelry she never wears, squinting accusingly at her wardrobe. The last party big enough to call a gala she’d attended had been a betrothal for some great aunt’s daughter right after she’d graduated from enforcer training. She’d worn the navy suit, and without Jayce there to distract her, nearly fallen asleep on her feet from boredom.
Her hands find the slick black fabric of a dress she bought in, well, a tantrum, if she's being honest. She’d been clashing with her mother and just out of a short, irritating relationship; the garment is a good deal more daring than her usual style. Cait rubs the fabric between her fingers absently. In the two years since the single time she’d worn this, she’s put on muscle, lost it and more, and then regained it plus some. She’s going to have to get something tailored regardless, and a dress is a faster job than a full suit. Cait sighs a little, already feeling exhausted by an event more than a month away.
“So this is a serious party?”
“You would not believe how seriously the upper class take parties. And that’s not a compliment,” Cait says dryly, looking over to Vi’s boneless sprawl on their bed.
She still feels like it’s all posturing nonsense, a waste of her time, but Shoola is right. She should make an appearance. Cait does not grind her teeth. It’s a terrible habit she’s trying to break, and it really isn’t Shoola’s fault. She’s a good woman, and her advice was meant well; it’s not her fault Cait would rather do anything else, even paperwork.
“Shoolah didn’t used to be such a damn busybody, though. Sevika is a terrible influence.”
Vi grins toothily. “How is Sevika? Still slinking away with her tail between her legs whenever she sees you?”
Cait snorts, “We’re perfectly civil now that she’s aware that while I’m willing to take my lumps for my part in the Noxian events, I am not willing to take them from Silco’s right hand woman. And she keeps your name out of her mouth now, at least.”
Vi chuckles, low and sweet and Cait glances over in time to catch the almost bashful look on her face, that expression whenever Cait does something unremarkable like defend her.
She sighs. “Making an appearance is the right decision. I’ve just taken the Sheriff nomination, and people will want reassurances that I won’t make things worse. And I’ll need to take all the backbiting about how I’m slumming it.”
Vi rolls lazily onto her back. “Sheriff of the whole city is slumming it? You run this town, Cait.”
“Flatterer,” Cait says, pleased, “and yes. Anything other than sitting in my family's council seat is slumming it, no matter how ill-suited I am for that job. Sheriff is several rungs down the ladder.” She scoffs and brushes her hair back over her shoulders. “Civil service? How gauche.”
Her eyes land back on Vi and she smiles. “And of course, they’ll have heard by now that I’m ‘slumming it’ in more ways than one,” she says, dragging her fingertips from Vi’s knee to her shoulder as she walks past her.
Violet purses her lips in a wicked little oooh then grins. “Am I your dirty little secret? Your forbidden paramour? Your scandalous lover?”
Cait laughs and musses Violet’s hair. “Forbidden paramor? Have you gotten into the romance novels again?”
“You’ll never pin the crime on me, Sheriff. There was pirate in the title. I thought it was an adventure.”
Cait smiles and leans down to brush a kiss over Vi’s upside down mouth. “I don’t know, I hear I run this town, maybe I have ways to make you talk.”
“Do you now? Gonna cuff me? Take me somewhere private?”
There’s a little hitch in Vi’s voice on ‘cuff’ and on impulse Cait puts her hand around Vi’s neck. Lightly, gently, just the weight of her palm and fingertips pressing in ever so slightly. Vi’s throat works wildly against her palm and pink stans her cheeks. Well then. Cait lets go, stroking her knuckles under Vi’s chin, and Vi’s head falls back further, open, vulnerable.
“Hmm. If you’re lucky.”
Several minutes later, when Cait is still staring grimly at dresses - the black is tempting, and she looks amazing in it, but it’s a daring piece, and feels silly to wear when she’s not wearing it for or against anyone - Vi speaks up.
“Is this one of those plus one events? It’d be pretty shitty of me to leave you to the wolves. I’ll come be your arm candy if you like. I’m not wearing a dress though.”
Cait blinks, staring blankly into the closet. She’d forgotten, the catalyst for the whole thing with her father, and she’d forgotten. Warmth blooms in her chest - thank goodness for Vi.
“No, of course not. I can’t actually picture you in one,” Cait says, bemused, then shakes her head sharply, considering. Vi likes clothing in a way Cait never has managed to, and, never having had to attend this sort of party out of obligation, likes them in a way Cait doesn’t. “Of course I’d like you to come. I’ll take you with me when I take my outfit into the tailors and we’ll get you an appropriate suit.”
Vi snorts. “Good, keep it that way. And are you sure it's no trouble?”
“Well I won’t be the one making it, Vi.” Cait says dryly.
“Oh, she’s got jokes.”
Cait laughs. “It’s no trouble, really. It’s not until next month. My mother’s asked for faster turnarounds before, and they’ll be well paid and tipped for the effort.”
Vi opens her mouth, then her face twists up wryly. Cait lifts her eyebrows.
“I was going to ask about the cost, then I remembered who my girl is,” Vi says, dry and amused. Cait can’t help her slow, pleased smile, coming up to Vi’s knees where she’s still spread across Cait’s bed, smoothing her hands up the strong spread of Vi’s thighs.
“We could get you some jewelry too, just so you don’t forget it,” she says, and Vi’s smile gets wider.
“Oh? Were the earrings not enough?”
They’d been at the Firelights base just last week, making sure the earmarked supplies were received, exchanging news and gossip. Vi had been glowing in the sun down there, healthy, well-kept, standing tall and easy and keeping Cait’s hand in hers.
Ekko’s eyes had kept drifting to Vi’s ear. A few days before Vi had been poking through Cait’s belongings, asking why she had earrings when her ears weren’t even pierced. Some were heirlooms, most sentimental. The particular ones Vi had indicated had been passed down from a grandmother Cait had been too fond of to let the gift go, even if she hadn’t worn them. And now Vi was standing in the Firelight base with thick loops of platinum and inset sapphire in her ear instead of hammered steel.
He’d stared at Cait in open disbelief when Vi was distracted, and Cait had just raised a mild eyebrow at him, as if to ask why he was making a fuss over nothing.
Vi sits up and slides her arms around Cait’s waist.
“I’m sure you’ve got a big old ring around somewhere with the family crest on it. You guys put that on everything.”
“Not on everything,” Cait protests, stroking her palms over Vi’s shoulder.
“It’s on my briefs, Cait,” Vi says, and Cait rolls her eyes and gently shoves Vi back onto the bed, turning back to her closets. She hears Vi get off the bed behind her and then -
“Oh,” Vi says, an odd, strained tone in her voice and Cait turns to see what Vi could have possibly trigger that tone to see Vi standing in front of a smaller closet and - oh.
It’s her jacket, the red one she’d stolen while Caitlyn was trying not to break her neck on Zaun's rooftops. Cait hadn’t been able to bear to get rid of it. She’d tried, taken it out once, furious with hurt, intending to get rid of every trace of Vi in her life - and impossible task anyway - and ended up sobbing on her floor, face buried in the collar where the cloth still smelled like Vi. Caitlyn had cried herself dry and feverish, her heart carved in two and her body hot and eager, nauseated by the contrast.
Cait smiles at Vi, and presses against her side, reaching out to touch the slick leather.
“I forgot about this, in everything that happened,” she says.
“You kept it,” Vi says.
Cait nudges her gently. “You kept the badge,” she says, chewing on her lip for a moment. “Try it on?” Vi gives her a look and Cait grins, lip still caught in her teeth. “You looked good in it.”
“Oh yeah?” Vi says, smug, already stepping back to shrug the jacket on.
The sleeves don’t even make it over her biceps, the new breadth of her shoulders obviously too much for the garment. Vi laughs, twisting to unstick herself while Cait just stares at the way her arms and the muscles of her shoulders and chest flex.
“Enjoying yourself?” Vi asks, and Cait’s eyes jerk up from the bounce of her tits as she shrugs herself out of the jacket.
“Yes,” she says, stepping closer. Vi pauses, the jacket dangling from her wrists, before stepping back. Cait, hands still reaching for Vi’s waist, pouts. Vi dangles the jacket in front of her, grinning.
“You put it on,” she says, “I want to see.”
Caitlyn considers it, considers the edge of Vi’s grin, then strips her shirt off, tossing it aside and shrugging the jacket on over her bare skin. The lining is nubbly and soft, and Vi’s face is a study.
“What do you think?” she asks, feeling giddy, sexy, the leather cool and slick against her arms, the bite of the zipper cold against her collarbone. Cait slips her hands into the pockets and tucks her chin to look at Vi through her lashes.
Vi looks her up and down, a slow, wicked smile growing on her face, then closes the distance to Cait and tosses her onto the bed.
“So what, exactly do you do at these things?” Vi asks, spinning the stem of a champagne glass between her fingers, looking out of the crowd of gala attendees curiously. Caitlyn magages to tear her own gaze away from the cut of Vi’s suit jacket from shoulder to waist long enough to answer her.
“It depends on your age and who you are. When I was young enough to be charming but not have difficult opinions yet, I went around with my mother to get introduced. After that they mostly foisted me off on Jayce. We would find a corner, eat far too many little cakes and talk about whatever he was working on, or his complaints about politics, my training with the enforcers. Sometimes we’d just be very judgemental about the other guests.” Cait’s chest aches a little, unhappily familiar. This is the second time she’s had to mourn Jayce.
Vi’s fingers slide between hers. There's a heavy ring with the Kiramman seal that had belonged to a beloved aunt on her right ring finger. Cait likes the warm slick of the metal; it feels indulgent. Her lovely girl, wearing the seal of Cait’s family house.
“Sorry about your brother, Cait.”
Cait tugs her closer by their joined hands, resting her head against Vi’s and closing her eyes just for a moment before they step into the public.
Later that night when they stumble through their front door, already kissing, Cait strips Vi’s tie off and winds it around her wrists - ‘keep those there’ she says in Vi’s ear - before pressing her back on the couch and stripping the pants off her. She takes a moment to admire the view, the fancy shirt and vest, the jacket collar askew, her strong thighs and wet cunt, the expression of shell shocked arousal on her face. Then Cait straddles her, drapes one of Vi’s legs over her shoulder, hikes her dress up to her waist and slides her bare cunt against Vi’s with a little sigh of relief.
Vi chokes on air. “Fuck, Cait. All night?”
Cait tilts her head, smiles and kisses Vi’s bare leg, and rolls her hips. There is enough alcohol in her that everything feels loose and lovely, the slick glide of her clit against Vi’s just on the edge of too much. Vi had been so wonderful all night, polite, charming, attentive, she’d turned a chore of a night into a pleasure. Cait had truly had a good night moving through the crowds with her arm tucked through Vi’s, showing her off, hand low on the small of Vi’s back. They’d even danced towards the end of the night. She thinks, hopes Vi enjoyed herself too; she deserves to be shown off.
“I’m afraid all my usual pairs would show under the fabric.”
“Oh bullshit,” Vi gasps and a giggle bubbles out of Cait, Vi looks so offended.
“Fuck, I already couldn’t stop looking at you all night,” Vi says, shifting on her bound hands, her eyes bright and hungry as they roam Cait’s body. “I never would have made it through the whole event if I knew you were underdressed.”
The admission knocks the breath right out of Cait. No other woman’s hands on her have ever affected her half as much as Vi wanting her.
“Good, you were supposed to,” she replies, trailing her hands from Vi’s shoulders down the lapels of her suit jacket with a little sigh. Cait isn’t unaware of her own looks. She likes her body just fine and she’s aware that she is - in the general way of things - attractive. That, however, is completely meaningless in the specific. She cares that Violet likes her body, wants it, is attracted to it. It’s still a rush to wear or do something that pulls Vi’s attention, makes her hands and her mouth greedy and appreciative. And the more Cait gets her attention, her desire, the more she wants it.
“I picked this outfit because of the neckline. I wanted you to look at my breasts all night,” Cait says, breathing stuttering a little as she rocks against Vi.
Vi had, and every time Cait had caught that open stare she’d run her palm over Vi’s hip or up the back of her neck to scratch her nails over the tender skin of her hairline in appreciation.
Cait pushed the jacket open, still rolling her hips lazily, rubbing Vi’s shoulders then sliding down to grope her through the vest.
“I said yes to this cut of vest because it makes your shoulders look broad and your tits look great. I picked those pants because of how they made your ass look.” Vi makes a little noise under her, staring up at Cait sweet and delighted. Cait leans over her to cup her jaw and drag her thumb through the lipstick stain their kissing had left there, smudging it across her cheek. Vi’s mouth chases her fingers when she pulls back.
“I wore lipstick so I could leave it all over you.”
“Cait.”
“What, handsome?”
“Anything, anything you want. Fuck, you could do anything to me, please.”
Vi is twisting and arching under her, muscle flexing all over, but her hands stay behind her. Cait wonders if she’s gripping the silk of her tie, keeping herself bound. She’s clearly getting something out of her faux helplessness, and Cait is, frankly, getting a lot out of the flex of her shoulders and chest, the hunger in her eyes, the willingness of her submission.
Cait cradles Vi’s jaw, then slides her hands down, feeling the tendons of her neck working with Vi's fast breathing. She undoes her vest, the shirt, and spreads them open, pushing them off Vi’s shoulder’s enough to bare her breasts, and trap her arms a little more. Cait takes a long minute just to admire her all spread out on rich fabrics, just for Cait. She traces her fingertips over the lines of Vi’s abs, flattening her tits against her pectorals with her palms and rubbing her stiff nipples. Cait pinches one and rides out the jolt of Vi’s body under hers. She leans down again, hand braced on the couch to suck her nipple, releasing it with a pop and inspecting the ring of lip stain around it before applying the same treatment to the other. She moves her hips in tight little hitches, her balance trembling whenever their clits kiss together in the wet heat between them.
Vi is panting under her. “Can you come from this?”
Cait nods rapidly, hands braced on Vi’s ribs, focussed on chasing the shivery sensation of Vi’s clit on hers.
“I want you to come on me,” Vi says.
Cait moans and leans back over her, braces an arm on the couch over Vi and tugs at the neckline of her dress - which barely needs the help and Vi is arching up, deep grooves in her abdomen as she mouths at Cait’s fingers until Cait pulls them away to tangle in her hair, holding Vi’s head to her chest as she groans and fills her mouth with Cait’s breast.
Her muscle control falters when Cait comes, grinding frantically against her and clutching the back of the couch to stay upright. Vi falls back panting, her mouth and cheeks wet with spit. Cait’s nipples throbbing in the cold air, and her cheeks sting with wanting, offended by the loss of Vi’s mouth in the middle of her orgasm until Vi, panting, says “I can feel it, you’re so wet.”
Cait gasps, wobbles on her knees on the couch, giggling, Vi grinning at her fondly as she rebalances. As soon as her shaking thighs let her, Cait slips out from between Vi’s legs, shoves her thighs apart and buries her face between them, her moans mixing with Vi’s as she laps up the combined flavor of them.
Later in their bed, both of them sweaty and cooling, Vi cuddles back into her, wedging her head under Cait’s chin.
“We should do galas more often - that was a pretty good time. And I mean more than just the end.”
It really was, Cait thinks. She banked some good will and soothed some high-strung nerves and danced with her partner. And the bar wasn’t even that bad. This had not been the sort of event full of backbiting and gossip, at least not the kind that rose to high enough to bother a Kiramman. The crowd had mostly been those families of high enough status not to be obsessed with social climbing, only a handful of politicians, and enough noblesse oblige in the room that Cait always had someone to speak to about her plans for reform.
Cait had mostly steered clear of her father’s colleagues aside from pleasantries, both to avoid any awkwardness and because, as the night wore on, their conversations about their recent cases got less and less circumspect. Caitlyn had heard enough stories about who had needed what object extracted from which orifice to last a lifetime
Also the fact that every ancient matriarch in the building had seen it necessary to squeeze Vi’s biceps and call her a ‘nice young woman’ had been hilarious.
“I agree,” she says, a smile spreading across her face, “I had a good time too,” and she sees the curve of Vi’s cheek push up with her smile.
After a long enough pause that Cait assumes Vi is drifting off, she speaks again.
“I saw the letter,” Vi says, and Cait feels a prickle of irritation at her neutrality, then sighs it out.
“I’m avoiding it,” she says, hiding her attitude in the warm back of Vi’s neck.
“Yeah, I could tell by how it was buried under all the other mail and your sheriff paperwork.”
Cait bites her, gently.
“Just hear what he has to say, Cait.” Vi squeezes her hand where it’s draped over her stomach. “Trust me when I say letting family stuff fester won’t do you any good.”
Cait sighs heavily. “I know, I do, but - I’m afraid. I’m afraid he won’t apologize. I’m afraid he will and I won’t be able to accept it.” She clutches her girlfriend a little closer. “I’m upset, because I won’t ever be able to go back to before he said those things.”
Vi rolls over in her arms and Cait clings to her and sniffles back a few angry tears. Vi holds her until Cait manages to relax her grip, until her breathing evens out.
“I’ll never be able to look at my sister without thinking about that night. I still haven’t figured out how to live with that.”
Cait sucks in a breath and her hands tighten to the point that Vi winces. She immediately softens her grip and smooths her fingers over the abused skin.
They don’t talk about that night. They’ve talked about the other things, the big things, the bombs, her mother, the councilors, the Noxians, but never the tea party, not even the night it happened, even after Cait had stopped screaming, after Vi had stopped trying to apologize and vomit at the same time.
Vi kisses the top of her head, and Cait realizes she’s curled up, hiding herself against Vi’s body.
“I know it’s not the same, and if you don’t want to talk to him again that’s for you to choose. I just don’t want you to regret anything on my account.”
The unspoken thing sits in the air; that neither of them have much family left, Caitlyn’s scattering of distant aunts notwithstanding.
“I’ll read it tomorrow,” Cait says. She’d known she would have to, eventually. Apparently she’s not too old to sulk about fights with her parents yet. She turns her head and kisses the underside of Vi’s jaw. “Be with me when I do?”
“Of course.”
“If you don’t stop thinking so loud I’m going to throw this book at your head,” Cait says fondly, then lifts her arm just in time for Vi’s head to come down in her lap. Cait dog-ears a page and sets the book aside, sinking a hand into Vi’s hair.
“I’m trying to figure out how to ask something inoffensively.”
“When has that ever been a concern of yours?”
“Some things are important,” Vi reaches up, brushes her knuckles along Cait’s cheek, then says, “Why do you buy me all these nice things? I’m not ungrateful or worried about money, I’m well aware I couldn't spend the money your family has in a dozen lifetimes, but - I don’t need them? I guess I just feel like I should say, out loud, that you don’t need to buy me things. I’m already locked in, cupcake.”
Cait is only surprised it took this long to come up. She has not been subtle; she has not seen any reason to be subtle. Violet came back to her with, quite literally, nothing. Rubble had hit her squalid little cell of an apartment, so a handful of cogs, a couple glasses from her father’s place, her pants, boots, and a leather wrist cuff were the sum total of her earthly possessions.
Cait considers it, still rubbing her fingers through Vi’s hair.
“You deserve it,” she says, then “ah, I’m not finished,” when Vi opens her mouth. “You deserve the very best I can provide for you, and earning it or needing it or paying it back are not relevant because I’m not a bank, I’m yours, and I’m doing it because I love you. It’s my privilege to do so, and my pleasure.”
Violet is looking mildly shell shocked, but in all fairness she started it.
“I don’t have anyone to pay your dowry to, so I at least need to make it clear to everyone that I can provide for you properly. Can’t assume Jinx isn’t watching to make sure I’m treating you well,” Cait adds, managing to make that dry and not bitter. She hopes wherever Jinx is she’s learning how to care for her remaining family rather than dig her nails into all their wounds to make herself feel justified. “And I can’t have Ekko thinking I'm not caring for you right either,”
Cait drags her hand deeply through Vi’s hair and Vi softens to the tug. “I won’t deny there’s a certain aesthetic appreciation, too,” she says, brushing a finger over the shell of Vi’s ear, the platinum and sapphires in the rings there, “but that’s why.”
Vi’s cheeks are pink and she tangles their fingers together loosely, twisting them together.
“We don’t do that. I’m not sure anyone’s ever paid a dowry in Zaun,” she says, voice soft.
“Do you find the concept offputting?” Cait asks, slightly distracted from the conversation by her own genuine curiosity. “Some of the arranged marriages of the high political or mercantile families are quite transactional but I always thought the practice was a little romantic.”
Cait remembers one celebration where part of the dowry had involved the groom-to-be personally presenting a tiny be-ribboned poro pup to his future husband’s ten year old little sister. There had been tears, and it was all quite sweet. Cait remembered how the two families had mingled less like a bunch of mostly-strangers and more like long lost relations, joined again at last. It was one of the first things that actually made Cait consider marriage as something that could be quite lovely, rather than just one more dull adult ritual.
The tendons in Vi’s neck move with her swallow and she looks uncertain, maybe a little ashamed. “At first I thought it was something I wouldn’t like, maybe something I should be offended by, because that’s the way everyone I knew talked about stuff like that as a kid. But I didn’t, I wasn't, and I told myself I just didn’t have the energy for it. But that wasn’t it. I like it. Makes me feel nice. Cared for. Someone buying their girlfriend something nice wasn’t what sunk under city, and me refusing to let you do nice things for me won’t raise it, it would just hurt us.” Vi is very pink cheeked, and she shifts restlessly in Caitlyn’s lap. “I never could manage to make getting mad about it make sense.”
“Mmm. I’d have given a prince’s price in dowry to Vander for you and called it a bargain,” Cait says, and Vi gives her a shy, breathless look, and, gods, Cait wants to eat her alive. “Providing for you is expected, but it’s also a genuine pleasure to me,” she continues, twisting her fingers through the longer strands of Vi’s hair. “If i kept you -” and she stutters over that, of course, “- below my means, in castoffs, if I half assed it, people would assume things about our relationship.”
“You don’t give a single shit what people think about you.”
“No more than I have to for my job, but I care what they think about you, Vi. I care that they know that I love you and value you. That you want for nothing, that you’re protected.”
Vi is blinking rapidly, and Caitlyn briefly worries if that was a little too much, but Vi just takes her hand and brings it up to kiss the back.
“All I have to give you is me,” she says - not apologetically, just a statement.
Cait cards the full length of her fingers into Vi’s hair, and thinks yes, and she could never, in all the riches of her bloodline, pay back that grace. She thinks that Vi is her grace, hope, and comfort, that sometimes she thinks Vi is all the goodness left in her heart. All those awkward, too-big, too-much feelings that make her chest feel heavy and wet, that she often thinks and doesn’t say.
Instead she tugs lightly at Vi’s hair until she looks at Cait, then lifts an eyebrow and just says, “Yes,” before leaning down and kissing Vi.
They separate slowly, by degrees, and even when they part fully and she sits up, Cait keeps a hand in Vi’s hair and at the base of her throat.
Vi opens her mouth, pauses, then says, “The woman who did my tattoos got sprung from Stillwater in your reforms. She’s got a little place near the bridge.”
Cait blinks at the non sequitur. “I’m glad to hear that.”
The corner of Vi’s mouth kicks up and she gazes fondly up at Cait. “I was thinking of paying her a visit.”
“More gears in the machine?” Cait asks, waiting to see where this is headed, tapping a finger against the largest one on her neck.
“No, I was thinking something different,” Vi said and drops her hands to her fly, popping the button and pushing them open enough to display her briefs - deep purple today - and then taps her fingers on the Kiramman crest stitched in gold on the hip.
”Violet.”
“Haven’t wanted to be anything but yours in a long time, cupcake.”
Caitlyn lets out a wet, shaky breath. “Marry me,” she says, and Vi smiles, wide and sweet.
“Buy me a ring.”