Work Text:
Vi isn’t a delinquent, no matter what the prissy, stuck up, goody two-shoes idiots at her school whisper furiously in the hallways whenever they see her strolling up to school in her leather jacket and improper leather boots.
If anyone bothered to look it up, they’d find that with the effort of half a yawn, Vi easily ranks somewhere in the top twenty students on any given exam, across the board.
Vi just isn’t interested in kowtowing to the mindless procedures of institutionalized academia, is all.
She’s unmotivated, not stupid (rather the opposite, given that her brain tends to work faster than most of her peers’), and just because she drives a motorcycle to school, it doesn’t suddenly make her some kind of lawless heathen.
And yeah, perhaps she occasionally lets bullies catch her hands in the corridors; and maybe she’s known to dish out her gaming console by the back wall of the school as she unashamedly skips classes, but that’s only because class is so vapid it could put a rock to sleep, and she gets good grades anyway so who really gave a shit?
Vi just doesn’t care to wear the proper blazer, it’s frumpy and ugly and she’d rather eat dirt than suck up to the teachers like every other kid in her class.
She couldn’t care less what Mr Talis thinks of her attire, or her hair, or her piercings, or her general demeanor.
She cares least of all what those elitist, snobby model students think of her.
Her own class president has been harping on her back for months now, droning on and on about what a bad example she’s setting for the younger students.
Vi only rolls her eyes at Claggor’s incessant berating, and shoves past him with a rough knock to the shoulder.
Students like Claggor—shoes shined and tie perfectly fitted against his neck, notes pristine and reputation even more so—make Vi want to puke.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
One week, Vi’s beloved motorcycle has to go into the shop for maintenance and repairs.
It means she’s stuck taking the train, which generally, she loathes, given that there’s just too many people crammed into too small a place.
So Vi’s sitting grumpily, shoved into a seat one morning, with her arms crossed and broody and in an altogether unpleasant mood, when she sees her.
Sitting across from her to the left, knees pressed neatly together to prop up a heavy textbook, collar ironed and pressed, and the perfect mold of the kinds of students Vi hates, except.
The girl is... pretty.
Alabaster skin warmed by the sunlight, deep indigo hair tucked behind one dainty ear, and wide, cerulean eyes tucked safely behind a pair of glasses drooping low on her tapered nose.
Vi watches as the glasses slip lower, and—fuck—the girl wrinkles her nose to push it back up, and mother of everything holy, Vi swears her heart nearly burst right out of her chest.
Vi stares.
Jaw slack, lips parted, eyes anything but bored for the first time in years, she drinks in the sight of this girl and her magical, wiggling little nose.
The girl’s lips move as she reads quietly aloud to herself, finger sliding along the rows of text in her book.
Vi watches, transfixed, as a lock of hair falls from behind the girl’s ear and into her face, and never has she felt such a pressing urge as this sudden desire to go and tuck the girl’s hair behind her ear for her.
Vi isn’t sure what she’s bewildered by more: the fact that this girl exists, or the fact that she’s so inexplicably fascinated by her, or the fact that Vi’s so enamored with, of all things, a nose.
Vi’s so caught up watching the girl read and wrinkle her nose and generally, exist, that she nearly misses her stop.
In fact, the only reason that she remembers to get off, is because the girl gets off on the stop, too, and Vi’s attention is momentarily startled.
And someone out there must be looking out for Vi today, because lo and behold: the girl seems to be a student at Vi’s school.
Vi isn’t following her, she swears, it’s just that the girl just happens to be walking a few paces in front of her for the entire way.
They’re very nearly at the school gates, when Vi’s personal nightmare and demon incarnate ruins everything:
Claggor, bounding up to the pretty girl and throwing a cheerful arm around her shoulders, with a far too chirpy “Caitlyn!”
Fuck.
Of course Claggor is friends with her.
Of fucking course.
(But then, Vi isn’t all mad, considering she now knows the name of the beautiful girl from the train.)
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
Vi continues to take the train for the rest of the week.
Each morning when she boards the train, she finds Caitlyn there, propped daintily in her customary seat with some form of schoolwork open on her lap.
And Vi goes and takes her seat, across from her.
And against the backdrop of the faint murmurs of the passengers, the rhythmic clatter of the train against the tracks, and the flashes of sunlight slipping through the windows interspersed with scenery, Vi steals little glances at the girl with ironed cuffs and shined shoes.
And once they’re at their stop, Vi will stroll lazily behind Caitlyn, hands tucked into her pockets as she watches the way Caitlyn walks the path to school, sometimes reading a book, and sometimes deep in thought, but always tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
The walk between the train station and their school is a thousand steps.
Vi had counted it, once, when she noticed Caitlyn doing the same. Eyes concentrated on her shined shoes, brow furrowed in concentration, lips mouthing along numbers as she takes each step.
And on this walk for the rest of the week, each time Caitlyn pauses to delicately tuck her hair behind her ear, or looks up to smile at a chirping bird in a tree, or, once, when the wind blows and weaves stray petals into her shining hair, Vi falls a little in love.
It’s like this, that in the thousand steps it takes to reach the school from the train station, Vi learns to fall in love with the beautiful girl with deep indigo hair and starry eyes.
All it takes, is a thousand steps.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
When the week is up and her motorcycle is back from the shop, Vi doesn’t stop taking the train.
She leaves her motorcycle at home and continues to make her way to the train station, and continues to steal little secret glances at the girl sitting across from her.
Caitlyn has her head down and nose stuck in a book, as per usual on her morning rides on the train to school.
For the past year, her mornings have been routine and identical, consisting of quiet, soothing train rides spent doing schoolwork.
But in the past month, something has changed.
Something new has started to happen.
Caitlyn sneaks a glance upwards from her book, at the pink-haired girl sprawled sleepily on the seat across from her, long limbs draped haphazardly across the leather and dark eyes peering out the window. She is unmissable.
And then the girl shifts, and Caitlyn hurries to look back down at her book, heart thumping wildly in her chest.
She keeps her eyes fixed on the open book for a few seconds more while her heart calms down, and when she’s feeling brave, she glances up again.
Their eyes meet.
Both of theirs widen, before darting away quickly.
Caitlyn feels a flush rise on her cheeks, fingers curling tightly around the edges of her book. She swallows.
She peeks up again, and this time, the girl isn’t looking back at her but out the window instead, her elbow propped on the seat and face tucked into a hand that conceals the lower half of it.
But Caitlyn can see the furious red coloring her freckled cheeks, and fights a smile.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
Another week passes, and this time, it’s become a little game of sorts, of who can sneak a glance when the other isn’t looking, and who can maintain a straight face while doing it.
Vi is losing. Terribly.
She doesn’t know what’s happening, just that occasionally she’ll look up for her usual stolen glance at the pretty girl, only to find a pair of bright, glowing doe eyes fixed back on her in a way that makes her heart seize.
And Vi will hurriedly look away, embarrassed.
She glances up now, out of the corner of her eyes, and finds Caitlyn looking down at the book in her lap, a lock of hair slipping from behind her ear to cover her eyes.
And as Caitlyn tucks it back, her eyes travel upwards—
—and lock with Vi’s.
Caitlyn’s gaze darts away first, as the girl turns her face and pretends to look out the window.
But as Vi watches, awed and disbelieving, Caitlyn bites her lip on a smile that threatens to bloom, even as her eyes remain fixed on the passing scenery.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
One morning, Caitlyn gets up to get off at the appropriate stop, when she notices that the other girl is still sprawled across the seat.
She’s asleep.
And Caitlyn can’t help but to venture closer, eyes mapping the face she’s been sneaking glances at for a month.
Full eyebrows frame her face perfectly, freckled cheeks pulling at the ends with a load of baby fat, a scar decorating her pretty, pouty lips.
The girl is beautiful.
She’s in a different section at her own school, Caitlyn is rather sure, as she’s seen the girl occasionally around campus.
Up close like this, Caitlyn can finally read the small print on the name tag of her uniform.
“Violet,” she breathes quietly, mouthing the word.
She likes the way the word feels on her tongue.
Violet.
Caitlyn reaches over, and gives her shoulder a gentle shake to wake her up. And then, again, when Vi remains asleep.
Vi jerks awake with a splutter and a dazed, confused expression that grows wide-eyed and stupefied when she takes in the sight of Caitlyn standing over her.
Caitlyn, heart thudding and cheeks feeling warm, gives her a tiny, amused smile, before hurrying out the train.
Vi stares after her with her jaw hanging open.
And then, she scrambles out after her.
She doesn’t look where she’s going, simply running in a frantic dash to try to catch up to the girl, so she’s completely unprepared for when Caitlyn abruptly stops.
Vi goes stumbling into her, their shoulders colliding and Caitlyn catching herself a couple of steps forward.
Vi coughs, mortified, cheeks burning.
Caitlyn, similarly blushing a furious red, sneaks a glance at her, before looking quickly away.
And like that, walking with an awkward space in between them, each stealing little sideways peeks whenever they can manage with cherry red cheeks, the two of them make it to school.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
The next week, Vi falls asleep on the train again.
But this time, she doesn’t wake up to Caitlyn waking her up, but rather the blare of the PA system, announcing the wrong station.
Vi sits up with a jerk, eyes wide.
She looks across the seat where Caitlyn usually is, and the other girl is gone.
Shit.
She’d missed her stop.
Fuck.
Vi hurries to stand, the notebook she had resting on her lap falling haphazardly to the ground.
With a curse, she bends down to pick it up, and freezes when she sees a little scrap of paper sticking out.
She picks both up together, turning the little scrap over—
And gaping, eyes wide, at the little note scrawled inside.
“Hi.
I’m Caitlyn, the one you sit across from on the train. I’m not certain if this is really weird, but if it isn’t…would you like to have lunch with me today? Under the big tree, behind the greenhouse.
Sincerely,
Caitlyn.”
Vi gapes at it for so long, and in such shock, (and in such adoration at the way she’s signed a little note with ‘Sincerely’), that she misses it when the train pulls out of the station, and begins rattling towards the next one.
Shit.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
It takes Vi hours to make it to school.
She ends up nearly three stops past where she ought to be, and just barely manages to make it to school in time for lunch. (In fact, if she hadn’t received this note, she’d have likely just skipped school altogether that day).
It’s already ten minutes into lunch by the time she arrives on campus, and she dashes like a madman right through the gates and directly to the big tree behind the greenhouse.
She sees Caitlyn sitting there in the shade, a sandwich in one hand and a book in the other.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
Caitlyn looks up just as someone skids to a wild, frantic stop right in front of her, startled and confused.
The confusion melts away into something like amusement and a bit of thrill, then, when she sees who it is.
It’s Vi.
She bites down on a growing smile, lowering her book.
Vi is bent over, hands braced on her knees, trying to catch her breath. Caitlyn fights down a giggle.
Vi looks up, then, cheeks flushed from the run and the heat and something else, and—
“You didn’t wake me up.”
Caitlyn laughs, her blush mirroring Vi’s own, the sound brighter than anything Vi’s ever heard.
Vi’s lips stretch into a breathless grin.
｡𖦹°‧ ᯓ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
Vi fell in love in a thousand steps.
She’d seen the way Caitlyn’s eyes sparkled under the morning sun like something ethereal and enchanting and precious, like someone who saw loveliness in every mundane aspect of the world, in those thousand steps.
It’s in those same thousand steps, that Vi stays in love, and falls deeper into it, each and every day.
Vi learns, in those thousand steps, that the art of learning how to love someone is an experience even better than the falling, for you get to do it with them.
In those thousand steps, now, Vi gets to hold Caitlyn’s hand and watch those sparkling eyes look at her, with the same delight they’d looked at the world that had made Vi fall in love to begin with.
She gets to talk to Caitlyn, and hear the way the girl rambles on and on about nothing and everything. She could be chattering about the most inane, senseless things, and Vi would drink in every word like the most fascinating thought in the world.
She gets to press her thumb against the tip of the magical, wiggling nose, and has the privilege of watching as it wrinkles in response just for her, as Caitlyn’s lips tug into a too-wide smile that pulls one on her own lips in response.
And at times, she gets to watch Caitlyn walk ahead the way she’d done for months, except now, Caitlyn will stop and wait for her every few feet, turning around to throw her a bright smile that steals Vi’s breath away, and call her name in a way that makes Vi run up.
She gets to learn every inch of that mysterious mind of the girl who had caught her staring on the train and had turned away with a bitten smile, of the mind that stuns Vi with its depth and thoughtfulness and is as beautiful as the girl herself.
She gets to fit herself along Caitlyn’s back and wrap her in her arms, and learn the way her heartbeat feels when Vi presses her hand right against her chest, and learn the way that Caitlyn likes to be held best—just like that, her head tucked in under Vi’s chin.
But the best thing of all, is that she gets to watch Caitlyn fall in love with her, right back, in those same thousand steps.
Watches, as Caitlyn takes one step, and another, and turns to look at her with a growing affection and wonder in her eyes, just like Vi’s.
Watches, as Caitlyn learns to reach for Vi’s hand and lean in to kiss her with bright red cheeks, and to fit herself in Vi’s arms first, as though she belongs there (she does).
That, she gets to feel the privileged luxury of Caitlyn smiling at her with all the love Vi feels for her in her own chest, of Caitlyn laughing at her in a way she never laughs for anyone else, of Caitlyn making Vi a better person just by being.
In a thousand steps, Vi met a girl, and she fell in love.
In the same thousand steps, the girl falls in love with her right back.
And in those same thousand steps, they learn how to love each other, together.