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The rhythm of a summer night in Piltover settles over them in slow, building waves. It’s sweltering—they’re not home often enough to justify keeping Caitlyn’s rooms cool, opting to keep the windows open, her purple curtains fluttering when a lucky breeze ripples in. It’s risky, but it’s worth it, the heavy scent of late-blooming lilacs singing them to sleep each night.
It’s the easiest when it’s just the two of them, too exhausted by days and weeks of searching endlessly for their respective ghosts to do anything but lie together, skin to skin, under the guise of keeping cool. Caitlyn sleeps in the nude, a marvel of tanned skin and expensive body creams that she lets Vi massage into her muscles. Vi’s a little less easy in her body, even here, even after everything, too many years of rooms overcrowded with orphans and then cells always under watch to feel comfortable being so vulnerable for so long. More often than not, they wake with Vi rolled over her, forearm braced against the pillows next to her head, like she’s making up for Caitlyn’s nakedness by covering her with herself.
“You know, I am taller than you,” she had said once, laughter and sleep putting gravel in her voice. “You’ll have to stretch a bit more to hide all of me.” And Vi had stood up and pretended she was going to sleep anywhere else that night.
Mornings are easy, fresh and clear and full of the potential that maybe today their fight is over.
Evenings out are harder.
Caitlyn had never had many friends, too laser-focused, always, too obsessed with consistency to be likable. Too perfect, her father had laughed kindly at her.
Then she had become an Enforcer—then a rogue—then a hero, and a grieving daughter. She had to be around people now, whether they liked it or not, though no one really seemed to. Not them, not her.
Vi liked it even less, but people gathered around her like firelights to a flame. She was a charmer, had some mysterious thing Caitlyn had always lacked. It was like magic, watching Vi work a crowd.
Even when Caitlyn could tell she wasn’t doing it on purpose, when Vi chafed as the upper-class topsiders she’d grown up feeling so alien from gawked at her like a circus animal, some part of her was amazed by the magnetic pull she felt every time she swept her bright hair back, every time she used her hands for emphasis (knuckles raw and swollen from hours of sparring), every time she smiled and the whole damn room whipped their heads around to see it.
Eventually, it would feel like her duty to pull her away, to excuse them both so that the tight lines drawn over Vi’s face would ease, so her fists would unclench and Caitlyn could put her lips against her palms. Sometimes this effort was well met, her eyes opening to half-lidded eyes and a soft smile. Sometimes it started new fights (opened old wounds), where Vi snapped that she didn’t need to be handled and Caitlyn told her that she knew she wasn’t rabid, that she should stop acting like it.
It was a coin toss.
Now, Caitlyn grips that coin, rubbing her thumb hard across its engraved gold surface, gritting her teeth against the instinct to flip it high into the air and see how it landed on the bar table.
It’s not one of those nights, where Vi is irresistible by mistake, where she’s overwhelmed by her own power over the people who have lorded theirs over her family for so long. That would be easier. Even with the fighting, the boiling over, the shame when Vi is the first to apologize again. Caitlyn wishes it were.
Tonight it is summer, and the world that’s only known a taste of the violence that turns it is determined to forget. One of the socialites who used to be in Caitlyn’s cohort had invited them out, insisting they needed a break.
They do, but it can’t be gotten like this, pretending they’re the reckless youth rebelling with drink and dance.
The socialite’s man, though, has a sly look around the corners of his mouth and a wink in his eye that piques Vi’s interest. She glances back at Caitlyn, reaches a blind hand for hers, doesn’t break eye contact. They don’t need words to know what that means.
This is where Cait’s comfortable—business. She plays cat and mouse with him, bribes the bartender to ply him with drink, stalks him to the bathrooms. The intel he has is slight, but the glimpse of any thread leading to control leaves her grasping desperately for it. She winds it tight around her finger, pulls it taut—snaps it.
She leaves him slumped against the wall, unlikely to know what he had given up in the morning. Another reason Caitlyn doesn’t drink, not when she sees blue flashes in every shadow, hears rasping laughter echoing in empty rooms. Playing the Piltovian political game has never been less appealing and more necessary.
She’s eager to get back, swinging her hips as she saunters down the hallway. They have what they came for—they can go home, where things are quiet, safe.
She rounds the corner into the main room, split into three by pillars lined with gleaming, colorful bottles that would explode with the first lick of a flame. It’s crowded, swaying bodies forming a thick wall that breaks apart and reforms in random patterns. She pushes through, to the center of the largest, middle section. The bar is underlit with red, an homage meant to evoke Noxos’ deserts, a tropical destination. The War Room, the club is called. Caitlyn snorts. How could they end up partying anywhere else?
Anyone with pale, short hair reflects confusingly magenta in the light. She nearly walks into two different people before she locates Vi. A little sigh escapes her, something in her chest unlocking at the sight.
Vi is doing what seems to come to brilliantly naturally to her, animatedly recounting something to three people. She walks two fingers along the bar, miming a casual strut, and Caitlyn smothers a laugh, knowing exactly which story she’s telling.
As she draws closer, she notices that the three are all women; the socialite who’d invited her and two strangers, one of whom has a hand on Vi’s shoulder. It’s hard not to sneer instinctively at her, to write her off with a glance at her bouncing hair and formfitting dress, but she takes in a deep breath and tries to be rational. Vi isn’t an animal, she isn’t hers to keep; and Caitlyn doesn’t need to compare herself to a grasping tart.
“It’s done,” she shoulders her way into the circle, breaking Vi off midsentence. The redhead looks up at her so quick it’s almost an eyeroll, the right side of her upper lip ready to pull up like it does when she’s about to sneer something that will dig them a deeper joint grave. She’s leaned back in her chair, has been since Caitlyn appeared out of the crowd again, her thighs spread wide. There’s a sense that she’s taking up all the air in the room, a quieter but quicker beat thrumming through the space close to her.
“Okay,” Vi drawls. “So you want to go?”
“Oh, please,” says the woman, her hand drifting down Vi’s shoulder toward her biceps. The lighting is dim, but Caitlyn’s gaze narrows in on the movement with the precision of her riflescope. A manicured finger drifts down, just beneath the sleeve of the chopped-up shirt Vi’s wearing, and three things happen in quick succession, decidedly out of Caitlyn’s control.
First: Vi shrugs hard and her hand comes up to wrap around the woman’s forearm, wrenching her away.
Second: Caitlyn steps forward, into Vi’s space, her hands clamping over where the other’s had been a moment later. Vi’s skin is warm under her.
Third: They stand like that for a breath, Caitlyn glaring hard at the woman, who is holding her wrist close to her chest, having snatched it back from Vi’s grasp. When she redirects her attention to Vi, she gets a short glimpse of blue eyes sparking with something she doesn’t recognize before she’s hauled down, twisting so she doesn’t fall chest-first into her, ending up somehow neatly manhandled into Vi’s lap.
Vi laughs, and she can feel it, spinning through her mind like she’d just taken a shot.
“Vi wants to stay,” suggests the socialite, “let her stay.”
“I don’t let Vi do anything,” Caitlyn says, but the sting of the words must be reduced by her perch on Vi’s left thigh, feet tucked behind her right ankle for leverage, because the remaining two just laugh.
“You don’t,” Vi murmurs into her ear. Caitlyn wonders if the strands of hair she’s let down tonight are getting into her mouth. “Strict.”
“The emphasis was on the let,” Caitlyn starts, then huffs, slumping back, Vi’s shoulder solidly holding her up. “I want what you want, then. Let’s stay.”
She still doesn’t drink, though Vi does, a frothy mug that can’t actually intoxicate someone of her bodyweight but makes Cait wrinkle up her nose when she’s offered a sip.
It’s easier to relax when Vi has a hand on her, like it’s a dampener between her and the faceless crowd. She does some decent politicking—her mother’d be proud, watching her extract liaison promises from someone not on the same chess board—she even does some chatting without a clear goal. When she laughs so hard she doubles over, Vi wraps an arm around her waist, pulls her hard back into her. She wiggles slightly, and feels her seat straighten up a little.
She twists around, swinging her hair over her left shoulder. She finds Vi looking out of the corner of her eye at the bar’s top shelf, studiously avoiding her gaze.
“That’s the game, then,” her tone isn’t questioning but final, decisive. Lightly mocking.
Vi’s gaze flickers around the room, like she can escape the woman sitting on top of her.
“I’m not playing games,” she says, but her mouth is close to Caitlyn’s ear, the quick pace of her heartbeat when she lets her pick up her wrist and press her thumbnail into the pulse point obvious.
“Alright,” Caitlyn says, dropping the limp limb and sliding a hand up Vi’s back, resting it underneath the loose tank, just above the waistband of her pants. “I’m sure you know what you want.”
They go another half hour like this, though their host has gotten bored and abandoned them to dance. She seems to have forgotten her partner, but maybe that’s for the best. Caitlyn will debate the merits of warning her of the snakes in the nest later.
For now, she keeps that hand where it is: proprietary, familiar. When Vi shifts, she moves with her. When Vi reaches for her, she dodges and fixes her in place with a light nudge. She doesn’t take it away and she certainly doesn’t give her more.
Caitlyn has not been in the mood to indulge brats recently.
She’s not sure what the tipping point is—maybe when she sweeps her hair back again and Vi visibly swallows at the exposure of her neck, maybe when she licks the rim of Vi’s cup, dragging her tongue slow through the sour residue, maybe when she pretends to balance herself with the hand not stroking Vi’s spine and squeezes her thigh hard. She’d like to know, so she can repeat it and break the handsome woman’s resolve a thousand times before they die.
“I lied,” Vi says, pulling her back to talk to her in the quiet register that means she’s shy. “You win, cupcake, let’s go home.”
“Oh, no,” Caitlyn says, her eyes widening. “I’m having a lovely time. Don’t feel like we have to cut the night short on my account.”
“We’re just sitting here.” She’s more frustrated than she’d realized; it’s hard not to laugh at her distress. Vi’s tone turns softer, changing her angle. Subtle as running into a brick wall. “We can do the same thing at your house, I can do more there.”
“Like what?” Caitlyn feigns innocence. This is a strategy that has never really worked for her. It doesn’t this time, either.
“You think you’re really funny, huh?” The arm locked around her waist loosens. She lets her hold her hip, start rocking her back and forth on her thigh like they’re following the beat of the music. “Way I see it, this is lose-lose for both of us.”
“Not at all,” Caitlyn lets her hair slide over her shoulders so only Vi can see her face, the pleased pink opening of her mouth when Vi tenses her leg muscles, her rectus femoris flexing. “The way I see it, this is a learning opportunity.” She braces herself with the left hand on her shoulder and presses up in a fluid motion, positioned just right so her knee grinds up, relishing the punched-out noise Vi makes, “And you need to learn some patience.”
She hovers for a moment to drive in her point, then drops back down, fixing Vi with a look that stops her dead when she tries to resume their former rhythm.
“Cait,” Vi says, a low, drawn-out whine, and Caitlyn knows she has her where she wants her. “Come on.”
“Mm,” Caitlyn says. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you know what you want.”
“I do,” Vi says, and her voice turns pleading for a moment before she gets a grip on her hardass, tough persona. A persona it’s easy enough for Caitlyn to peel away, but one she insists on holding up as long as she can, even to her own detriment. “I said I was wrong, what more do you want? Why are you being so—oh.” Caitlyn does not like that knowing oh. “You’re angry because other girls want me, too. You know, if you’re not gonna fuck me tonight, I bet one of them would want to.”
Caitlyn takes a moment to seethe, rolling the image of a manicured hand, not calloused with long hours of target practice, brushing along Vi’s pale skin, over in her mind.
“I suggest you take that back,” she says, voice soft but leaning in close, sliding forward slightly so she’s no longer on Vi’s lap but standing between her spread thighs. “Or else I may decide you’re in need of an attitude adjustment.”
“Attitude adjustment?” Laughs Vi, bitter, mocking. “We’ll see how well adjusted you are after I—”
Caitlyn steps away from her, swinging her hair, pretending not to listen to the stream of filth coming from her girl’s mouth.
“You’ll follow me to the back entrance. If you don’t—and if I come back to find you with some other slag hanging over you—I will not hesitate to put you over my knee in front of everyone here,” she orders, the same businesslike tone she uses for strike operations, except for the word slag, where her cool facade nearly breaks and her voice turns animalistic.
“Okay,” Vi breathes, just barely audible over the music. Caitlyn keeps walking, letting a smug smile overtake her face where she can’t see it.
Vi follows, stumbling over her own feet, the crowd thickening so she leads with her shoulder, shoving through without care for the faceless bodies around her. She feels suddenly discombobulated. When had power changed hands, and so quickly? The lights gleam too bright in her eyes for a moment, her sole beacon a dark void of black hair getting away. She wants to wrap her fist in it and yank it back.
Caitlyn glances back at her, her eyebrows scrunched together just slightly, her cruel mouth tilted up. Vi’s heart stutters in her chest and she lengthens her stride, reaching out for her.
Her target opens a door Vi hadn’t even noticed that’s just before the hall to the bathrooms. A blast of cool air from the outside attracts sweaty dancers, tossing their hair and shooting Vi grateful looks before she follows Caitlyn into the night. Caitlyn stops short as it slams shut behind them, Vi has to twist hard right to avoid bumping into her.
Caitlyn takes the opportunity to put her hands on Vi’s shoulder and back her up right into the wall, a hand coming up to put a layer between the wall and her skull just before she slams her lips against hers.
Vi scrabbles at the wall for a second, processing everything just a little too slow, her eyes shocked open before she gets herself together and grabs onto Cait. Her hands are everywhere, dipping under Vi’s loose tank, scraping her nails lightly over her skin, making her shiver and moan quietly into her mouth.
Caitlyn’s body is firm beneath her, a far cry from the delicate waif she’d looked like the first time she peered into Vi’s cell in Stillwater. Her hipbones are still sharp as Vi strokes her thumbs over them, skimming over her waist to the place where her shirt, almost laughably modest for a club setting and scandalously revealing for Caitlyn, is tucked into her pants. They swap roles in public, Caitlyn’s comfortable nudity traded in for limitless high-necked shirts and immaculately pressed pants and Vi’s shyness hidden behind the display of her arms, her knees, gaps of skin revealed through distressed clothing. The number Caitlyn’s donned tonight is silky, a deep purple matching the bruise on her collarbone. It’s been making Vi insane all night.
Caitlyn rolls herself against her and Vi gets lost in the slide of lips against each other, shutting her eyes and mumbling desperately into Caitlyn’s mouth in a plea for the press of her leg between her. Caitlyn gives it to her, a thigh well-padded with muscle up against Vi, and she busies herself sloppily kissing Caitlyn’s neck to stop from sobbing at the feeling.
They both hate dancing, Caitlyn too stiff and Vi unfamiliar with it.
There wasn’t much dancing in Stillwater. This is as close as they get, rhythmic grinding, moving in perfect harmony to the music of Vi’s rough breath, Caitlyn’s pleased humming.
Vi bites down too hard on a particularly strong thrust and Caitlyn yanks her head back by the hair, another dark mark forming where her teeth closed over her pale skin. Vi lifts the corner of her lip, hips still moving, the fabric of her shirt chafing. She’s too hot, uncomfortably hot, sure her cheeks are blotched in strawberry shades.
“Look at you,” she says, tone victorious even though her girl is the one with the upper hand. “So pretty.” “Flattery will get you nowhere,” says Caitlyn, her teeth tugging at her lower lip in an easy tell. “Tell me, do you want it here or at home?”
“Like you’d actually do anything out here.”
“Isn’t this something?”
“Not anything worthy of the papers, princess,” Vi knows she should shut her big mouth when Caitlyn’s movements still abruptly, her hands clamping down to stop her, too.
“Princess,” snorts Cait. “My, we are feeling bratty tonight.”
“I prefer sassy.”
“I’d prefer it if you stopped talking back to me,” She seems close to snapping, whatever that looks like. Vi wants to take it all in, but her eyes flutter as a hand comes up to her throat, not choking her, just threatening it.
“That’s a shame,” Vi says, her words coming out in a whisper even though there’s no pressure on her windpipe whatsoever. “‘Cause I’m definitely not gonna do that.”
“Here, then.”
Caitlyn fumbles trying to unbutton her pants, a testament to the steady erosion of her beloved control, something that makes Vi laugh until she’s swiping her fingers through the slickness beneath them, cutting the laugh into a choppy, sawing breath. It’s a rough, careless movement intended only to get her wet before she’s fucking into Vi steadily, working her wrist with mechanical precision and animal strength.
Vi gasps, her head thrown back against the wall, one hand curling into Cait’s shirt, pulling the fabric out of place, the other frantically seeking the back of her neck. It’s damp with sweat under all that dark hair, soft against Vi’s own moist palm.
“Mm, no,” she says with some effort, and then cries out as Caitlyn twists her hand so she can pass her fingers in figure-eights over her clit as she finger-fucks her. “Cait, I can’t—I can’t—“ “I can’t,” mocks Caitlyn softly. “You can, honey, you’re going to.”
“Not, no, not what I meant,” she moans. “I can’t stay quiet, uh, you know that.”
Vi has… issues with volume control.
She’s an expressive person, never biting down on her grunts when she fights, never good at holding her tongue. Of course it extends to the bedroom, no matter what they fill her mouth with. Caitlyn has no desire to ask her to be quiet, except when she wants Vi to break the rules.
She tries everything. She hides her face in Caitlyn’s neck, she bites down on her own palm when cruel Cait won’t let her suck on her skin, she chokes on her own moans when she comes, messy, still fully clothed but she can feel it, all over Caitlyn’s hand.
“Are you sure another one of the women in there could do that for you?” Caitlyn asks. It’s a test. An opportunity for Vi to earn forgiveness, grace, easy pussy.
“Do what, piss me off?” Vi asks.
It’s the wrong answer, but it feels so, so right.
“Does that feel good?” Cait asks, pushing down on Vi’s back. Normally, the pressure she exerts on Vi is useless; nobody moves Vi unless Vi wants to move like that. Now, though, pushed to the edge and pulled back coming on three times, Vi is pliant beneath her, her muscles slack and back arched up high. Caitlyn tilts her hips forward, pushing into her slowly, in and out, dragging the strokes out until Vi is sobbing into the pillow beneath her.
“Uh—yes, but go faster,” she says, voice raspy, back muscles jumping as she fists the sheets. Here, she can be as loud as Caitlyn wants her to be—and Caitlyn wants her very, very loud. “Oh, fu-uuuck,” she whines, and clenches hard like it’ll keep her from—
Her hips slow and then stop, her steadily working fingers moving from Vi’s sore, swollen clit to stroke over her hip, leaving shiny wet marks as she comforts Vi through the recession of her orgasm. Vi tries to buck back on the strap splitting her wide, but Caitlyn snarls no and she halts.
“Please,” Vi says, barely audible.
“What was that?” Cait says. “I can’t hear you when your face is in the pillow.”
She maneuvers Vi up, stroking her hands over Vi’s neck, her bony sternum, her thighs. Now Caitlyn is beneath her, Vi’s legs on either side of her hips, hovering just above her strap. Her poor girl is shaking, so she braces her, lets her rest her forehead against hers as she heaves for breath.
“Please,” Vi says. “Let me come.”
“I don’t know,” Caitlyn says, tilting her head so her eyelashes flutter against Vi’s cheek, so she can feel her lips part at even that slight touch. “You were awfully rude tonight.”
“Was I?” Vi says, rousing slightly, never one to give up until total defeat is ensured.
“Not rude,” Cait amends. “But you wanted to make me angry.”
“Never wanna make you angry,” she argues, but she pinches Caitlyn’s waist as she says it, defeating her own argument.
“You spent all night peacocking.”
“Not to make you angry,” Vi says. “Just to get fucked.”
“Well, you’re not doing much of that just hovering,” Cait says. Faux-sympathetically, “Aren’t you tired?”
“So tired. Sorry, baby,” she says. “Don’t want it, though, I need it. Need it from you, just you.”
Vi should be feeling defeated, ashamed, low right now. Instead she just feels triumphant, if dreamy and languid, sliding up against the strap, letting her hands drift through Cait’s hair, touching her ribs lightly and watching her breasts bounce as she jumps, knowing that her fingertips have sweat cooling on them, knowing she’s just as hot off this as she is.
She’s not a jealous person, doesn’t give a fuck about the people who stare after Caitlyn as she stalks down the street, oblivious, even likes watching them think they can do more than look at what’s hers. Caitlyn’s beautiful, her collarbones prominent next to the inky river of her hair, her belly drawn tight even though she’s not the one bracing herself for what’s in her lap. Vi likes that she gets jealous, though, that she can sense when Caitlyn wants to roll her up in a rug and take her to a room where no woman can ever look at her again. She likes the look she gets, like a hunter about to close in on its prey. No one’s ever been able to make Vi feel delicate before.
“I win,” Cait sing-songs, pushing her chest up into Vi’s hand. Ridiculous.
In Caitlyn’s lap, Vi is only ever winning. Regardless, Cait preens, taking the hand mindlessly groping at her and lifting it up to her mouth, kissing the bruised knuckles, dipping her tongue into the grooves where they’ve split. She does it with the other, too, her right hand on Vi’s thigh and waiting for her to start trembling. She has a talent for pushing people just to the breaking point, waiting to give grace until she has them down on their knees.
This point is further proved when Vi guides the tip back, into her, and Caitlyn slams up so that she doesn’t have to do any of the work except push down hard on her shoulders and thumb across her brown nipples and stare wide-eyed at her while she fucks her like there’s salvation on the other side.
“Can I, can I,” Vi says, and Caitlyn is digging her nails into her skin and sliding her fingers up so close it feels almost like she’s rubbing her raw and saying yes, love, yes, give it to me. “If this is a trick and you’re gonna take it away again, I’m gonna kill you,” she says, and Caitlyn bites down on her neck, just under the jaw and over the jugular, where it could kill her, and she comes all over her thighs and the already-ruined sheets.
When she comes back, there’s ice water on the nightstand and a soft hand passing over her shoulders, her front. Caitlyn murmurs something to her that she can’t quite hear with her ears but understands with her heart, and she squeezes what she can reach—her hip, she thinks—in acknowledgement.
Nights in Piltover are hot, hard to sleep in. Vi dresses in shorts and a tank and lies on top of the comforter, the windows open because no one can hear her for miles. She melts an ice cube on her tongue and licks Caitlyn’s throat, winding her hand in her hair to move it aside so she can do so. She just looks at her fondly and kisses her cheek, not even her lips, and Vi wonders if the sun could burn as hot as this.
Somehow, still, they fall asleep with Caitlyn’s front pressed to Vi’s back, an arm extending to an itchy trigger finger tight around her, a leg threaded through both of hers like she can be Vi’s bomb shelter. It’s easy, easy as living.