Chapter Text
It happens again.
The Monday after the Zaun Bash, Vi averts her eyes as she walks through the halls of Runeterra High. Nobody notices, of course, because Vi’s mere presence is enough to instill fear in most underclassmen, but Ekko notices immediately on their way into school from the parking lot. He gives her a look as she pockets her keys and steps through the front door, eyes glued to the floor, but she just shoots him a glare and keeps walking.
The halls are beginning to look a little more festive than they were ahead of the big game, and there are posters all over the place advertising the pep rally and all of the events leading up to it. Vi might be gutter trash all polished up in a varsity jacket, but she sure as hell loves a little bit of friendly competition, and she busies her brain coming up with ways to finally one-up Piltover.
That should keep her mind off things, right?
The first two periods pass by in an exhausted haze, as Vi tries her best to pay attention to the curriculum. Which, on the best of days, is a Herculean feat. Vi doesn’t dislike learning, she just hates doing it with teachers who are constantly expecting her to fail, and for Zaunites that’s very typical. She slogs through sines and cosines, fighting sleep until it’s third period, when she is blissfully granted leave for two periods.
She scoops up her books and makes her way back through the halls, waving to her fellow Zaunites that she sees when she passes on the way to the gymnasium. Her sneakers squeak over the freshly washed linoleum, and as she makes her way down the familiar stretches of hall that she has walked so many times over the course of four years, she thinks of Caitlyn.
She’s been trying hard not to, she really has. Those final words that stretched between them just past midnight at the Zaun Bash—This can never happen again—have echoed in her mind for two days now, just like the echo of Caitlyn’s sighs in her ear, her exhales and her sweet half-stifled moans—
Vi winces. Her nails bite the insides of her palms. She pushes away the memories like they’re intrusive thoughts, things that aren’t welcome in a Zaunite’s mind. It doesn’t matter that that encounter, those few blissful moments of soft skin, parting mouths and desperate hands, made her realize so many things about Caitlyn, namely that a lot of the feelings she’s harbored for the Piltover princess might not have been so angry at all.
That’s almost more embarrassing a thought than anything: the idea that she might have thought Caitlyn Kiramman was hot this entire time. Honestly, she could rationalize it—pretty much everyone at RH thinks Caitlyn is the hottest creature on the planet, and those desires have only been fueled by the fact that she strictly does not date and has made several public refusals since she walked through those doors as a freshman. She’s become a fantasy, an untouchable force of beauty and brains that most others wouldn’t dare to step to. The fact that Vi even challenges her as the leader of Zaun is a miracle of stubbornness, and a testament to Vi’s unbreakable resolve.
But at that moment, wrapped around Vi and gasping her same air, she didn’t look untouchable at all.
She looked reachable. Imperfect.
Human.
It wasn’t just the heated make-out session that made Vi think that, either. It was everything that led up to it: Caitlyn sitting alone on Benzo’s couch looking out of place, the way she snorted when she laughed at Vi’s jokes that she knew weren’t all that funny, the way she stumbled up the stairs half-drunk when Vi led her shushing and giggling to the guest room to get the good alcohol. So many moments. So many sides of Caitlyn that she has never seen. So much hidden behind that cold, beautiful, scary façade that she has known so well in the halls and yet never outside them.
Vi shakes her head as she hears the entrance to the gym, where several students are putting together folding tables. She really has to get it together, or she might convince herself she has a snowball’s chance in hell with the ice queen of Runeterra, who has already decreed that they will never, ever be anything aside from cold rivals living in completely different tax brackets.
The gym isn’t busy when she enters. The whole place has been emptied of equipment so all the various sports and clubs can set up their pep rally tables around the perimeter of the bleachers. There is a huge space in the middle that’s empty for performances and such, as well as an array of chairs for the marching band. Students decorate the walls with more posters and red-and-pink streamers, cardboard-cutout hearts and all that jazz.
Now, Piltover and Zaun aren’t exactly school-sanctioned clubs, but nobody up top really stops them from operating. How can they, when Piltover and Zaun have been established as cliques for generations, going back even further than Vander and his gang? Decades have been put into this feud, and Vi will be dammed if anyone tells them Zaun can’t have a table. She scopes out the empty one that was promised to them, including the bins that Zeri and Powder painstakingly put together to decorate their space with, and she gets to work assembling Zaun’s little slice of the gym.
As she decorates their posters with broken hearts and Powder’s signature graffiti prints, she begins to unwind. She loses herself in the monotony of the action, cutting out hearts then ripping them strategically in half, creating general chaos on the tabletop that looks much more haphazard than any of the tables around it. Zaun was never known for doing things neatly, and she’s certainly not going to start now.
She’s just started forgetting about Caitlyn Kiramman when the girl herself walks in with Jayce at her side, carrying two duffel bags of decorating supplies and a general air of superiority with them.
Vi freezes as soon as she sees her. Her silky dark hair is pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and she’s sporting her varsity jacket as usual. Her jeans are tight and dark, riding boots hugging her shins, and when they drop their supplies at a table across the gym from Zaun’s, Caitlyn laughs at something Jayce says and it makes Vi’s heart squeeze a little bit tighter in her chest.
She looks beautiful. She’s not wearing any makeup today and she’s dressed plainly, unlike how she was at the Zaun Bash, but the sight of her still takes Vi’s breath away.
When the fuck did that start happening?
Vi takes a knee behind the table. Caitlyn hadn’t seen her when she came in, so if she is just incredibly careful and quiet, she might be able to avoid Caitlyn’s attention until she’s finished. She’s almost done, really, she just needs to adjust the poster a little bit and—
Shhhkk.
Vi blinks, pulse jumping as the poster tips over and slides down the length of the table and onto the floor in one smooth motion. The sound isn’t loud, but it’s enough to draw attention. She rounds the end of the table and grabs the poster, sliding it back onto the top of the table, and when she looks back up, Caitlyn is looking right back at her.
The world slows down like it always does when they’re together in the same space. Vi never really had the words to quantify what that meant before, when their exchanges were simply heated looks in the hallway and backhanded comments flung at each other after the final bell of the day. She still doesn’t know exactly what it means, only that now it feels like they’re the only people in this whole gymnasium, and it’s making Vi’s head feel light and fuzzy.
Caitlyn stares for a long moment. Her eyes flick back and forth from their tables, but Vi is too far away to discern much from that look. Jayce says something to Caitlyn and she finally turns away, so Vi returns to her work, cheeks burning.
* * *
Caitlyn can’t concentrate on the task at hand, and for good reason.
Her palms keep getting sweaty whenever she needs to separate pieces of construction paper. She fumbles with scissors and glue sticks as Jayce creates perfect hearts of blush pink and baby blue double-time like the overachiever he is. She even lays out the poster’s contents backward, and she only catches her mistake when Jayce points it out.
The entire time, she can’t help but steal glances at Vi from across the gym. She’s only wearing a white t-shirt tucked into an old pair of jeans with holes in the knees that definitely weren’t there when she got them, but from her messy hair down to her sneakers she looks so effortlessly attractive. Caitlyn was always so awestruck and horrified at how little Vi cared about what others thought of her and her appearance. It’s so contrary to how Caitlyn lives, obsessing over how she looks and acts every second of every day.
She used to think it was disdain. Jealousy, even, for a life lived in freedom.
Eventually, she realized she just liked Vi regardless of what she wore on her face or her body, and she just had to sit and deal with those feelings, because who was she kidding? They could never work. They still won’t ever work.
“What is up with you today, Cait?” Jayce asks, furrowing his thick eyebrows as she hands him a heart that she glued a little arrow to, just to punctuate the conflict that’s roaring in her own chest. “You’re, like, a million miles away. You almost superglued your hand to the table.”
“I did not,” she retorts.
“Well, not exactly, but you got close.”
Caitlyn sighs, and she has to keep herself from glancing over at Vi again. That would just be shameless, at this point, and she doesn’t want Jayce to suspect anything. None of her friends, not even the best of them, have been told what happened. In fact, Caitlyn’s sure she’ll take this information to her grave, the hidden memories of Vi’s strong body holding her so sweetly, the dark of her pupils blown wide as she gasped against Caitlyn, hips bucking—
“I’m just tired today, is all,” Caitlyn says. “I had a late night.”
Not entirely a lie. She spent all last night (and day, shamefully) thinking about what happened at the Zaun Bash, and how she will go the rest of her life never allowing herself that kind of freedom again.
Jayce looks skeptical. He sticks the heart she made onto the poster and says, “I spent all yesterday hungover. I don’t know what the Zaunites put in their drinks, but it knocked me on my ass. I swear I slept thirteen hours last night.”
“Oh, your poor gym schedule,” Caitlyn teases, rolling her eyes.
“My body suffers when I don’t treat it well!” Jayce exclaims. “I can’t help that I have standards for my health!”
“Should have thought about that before you agreed to accompany me to Zaun,” Caitlyn muses. “Perhaps you’ll think twice before taking a walk on the wild side again.”
“Speaking of wild side,” Jayce says, and Caitlyn’s hands freeze where they are. “You were pretty quiet on the car ride home. I know you said you were fine and all, but… Were you fine?”
Caitlyn sighs and presses a hand to her forehead. “What would make you think I wasn’t?”
“Nothing,” he says. “I don’t know. That whole thing was a lot for us and even though we ended up having fun I just want to make sure nobody was mean to you or anything.”
Caitlyn bites her lip and her cheeks heat up. How could she possibly explain to Jayce that not only was nobody mean to her after a certain point, but one particular individual was so welcoming, so open, that Caitlyn in turn opened and opened and opened until she was sure she’d be swallowed whole.
Jayce is almost finished gluing the final heart when she notices movement out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t want to glance up, but her curiosity gets the better of her just in time for her to see Vi, set-up nearly completed, heading towards the hall with the girl’s bathroom.
It’s then that Caitlyn enters the juncture of a crossroads, one that she never thought she would be standing at ever again. She sees a clear path, one filled with even cobblestones that are well taken care of, pristine. The lights illuminate her way, and the path is straight. To her other side is another path, gnarled and winding, with no footmarks to show where she should step. She might even see a little light up ahead, like a bonfire, and voices. Joyful voices rising, rising.
This is no time for metaphors, her mind supplies, but it’s too late for speculation on that little mental image because she’s already halfway across the gymnasium, having whispered some halfhearted “excuse me” to her best friend.
She hears the squeaks of her leather boots over the newly waxed wood. Nobody even looks at her twice as she passes into the hallway, because nobody could possibly know what she is about to do—even herself. She doesn’t even know what she should say to Vi when she sees her, if she sees her. She doesn’t know what her intentions are, just that she’s pulled towards that bathroom in some inexplicable way.
She pushes through the door without hesitation, and when she enters she immediately thinks that, huh, maybe she should have hesitated a little.
The bathroom itself is very standard for a public high school. White porcelain sinks that smell like generic cleaner, gray-hued stalls, classic tile flooring that looks like it hasn’t been regrouted in a decade. There are no other feet under the stalls, nor any sounds indicating that there is anyone else in here but them.
Vi stands in front of those sinks, head ducked, hands cupped under the running faucet. She collects the water and splashes it into her face quickly, pressing her wet fingers to her eyelids as if to rub away sleep, or something even more tenacious. The water sticks to the tips of her hair, and when she reached her fingers up and through her scalp, it dampens all the hair at the top.
Caitlyn shrinks back against the wall beside the door. She watches the tips of her hair go from magenta to deep burgundy, and she sighs just about the longest sigh Caitlyn has ever heard. Suddenly she feels like she’s intruding, and she debates how quietly she can make her exit.
Before she can Vi takes a deep breath, bracing her hands against the sides of the sink, and looks up at herself in the mirror. It takes her eyes a moment to find Caitlyn, but when they do, Caitlyn watches her pupils dilate, lips parting softly.
It’s a short-lived moment of softness, though, because her mouth immediately snaps into a hard line and she turns to look Caitlyn in the eye, expression tumultuous, conflicted. She spits out a firm, “What?”
Caitlyn recoils. “Nothing.”
“It’s something,” Vi sighs, running a hand through her hair, further dampening her locks. “Did you follow me?”
Caitlyn scrambles for a response. Seeing Vi like this, undone, standing resolute in front of her with her stupidly adorable varsity jacket and wet hair, is almost enough to remove Caitlyn’s faculties altogether. She didn’t think Vi would still have this effect on her, not after she so firmly told her that this was over—not just over, but nothing, it was never anything to begin with—but she was wrong. She was so, so wrong because Vi was able to drag her here with her mere presence, the mere idea that Caitlyn might be able to get her alone again. Caitlyn could feel its pull across a whole gymnasium.
Still, somehow she manages to say, arms crossed defensively: “A girl can’t go to the bathroom in her own school?”
Vi is not satisfied with that answer; Caitlyn can see it written all over her face. She watches her gaze rake over her body. Caitlyn is completely covered from head to toe, not a lick of skin showing but her hands and face, but she feels a shiver down her spine knowing that Vi knows what most of her skin looks like. Knows how it feels.
And Caitlyn knows how her skin feels, too.
“Look,” Vi sighs, wiping a palm over her temple. “I know you might feel the need to, like, talk about what happened or whatever, or you might think I want to talk about it, but we really don’t need to. It happened. We can just leave it at that.”
Caitlyn watches a drop of water travel from the side of Vi’s face down her neck, tracing the thick line of the tendon in her neck. She watches it collect even lower, in the hollow of her collarbone just above the neck of her white t-shirt, and she feels the last of her resolve leave her in one fluid motion.
Her logical mind knows this is a terrible idea. She and Vi can’t be anything, could never be anything. There is nothing at the end of that path but heartbreak and disappointment.
Her raucous heart has her reach behind her and lock the outer door.
The sound echoes through the bathroom like a gunshot. Vi’s eyes flicker down to the lock then back up to her, and they stay there as Caitlyn steps forward off the wall. She watches Vi’s expression darken as she approaches, still cautious but no less sure, and seeks out any sign that she’ll say no, in her body or with her words. In fact, Caitlyn expects her to.
Caitlyn can feel her breath on her face. Vi looks up slightly to Caitlyn; if Caitlyn was braver, she’d take her chin in her hand and make her look up, but truth be told Caitlyn still expects Vi to shove her away and agree with her earlier statement made after their rendezvous at the Zaun Bash. She wants Vi to hold her to that.
Caitlyn brushes her lips over Vi’s, a ghost, a test. She feels Vi breathe in, the sound wrecked and choked off, and she feels her plush lips part.
She doesn’t know who touches who when, only that she feels Vi’s hands slowly wrap around her waist, fingers warm circles into the material of her jacket. Caitlyn presses their lips together more firmly, feeling the moment when Vi decides to let go.
It’s a slow unraveling that happens between moments. Caitlyn threads her hands through her hair, pulling at the short locks there and she watches Vi’s eyes flutter shut. She sighs into her mouth, the sound wholly unintentional and uncontrollable, and Vi sighs too. She feels Vi become pliant in her hands just as she did the night of the Zaun Bash, and fuck, she never wants to let this feeling go.
She didn’t know how much she missed Vi’s touch. She thought it was something that, once she had it, she could learn to live without. She always knew that Vi was the kind of girl that could get under her skin, and she was so terrified to let that little part of her see the light of day, the part of her that pines for the bad girl like they’re some horrific rom-com trope.
Now, it has sunlight. Now, it can bloom.
And it blooms. It blooms between them like a tiny sun, a gathering of warmth in Caitlyn’s gut as they clamor around each other like, well, teenagers. Caitlyn’s hands clutch at her hair, her cheeks, nails scratching the back of her neck and shoulder as their kisses grow more heated, more desperate. Vi grabs at her back, slipping over the fabric of her jacket, and they’re so close now that Caitlyn can’t tell when Vi ends and she begins. She feels her back being gently pressed against the bathroom wall, the tile cold against the back of her head as she leans back, gasping for air as Vi unzips her jacket and attacks her neck, sucking at her thrumming pulse in just the perfect place to hide with her collar.
Caitlyn feels lightheaded. She feels like she’s on some drug, and she fears she’s getting hooked. She gasps as Vi presses her to the wall, running her lips across whatever skin she can bare, and feels her chuckle.
Caitlyn asks, breathless: “What is it?”
Vi snorts again, louder this time. Caitlyn can feel the vibration of it all across her chest, and bashfully wishes Vi would dip her head just the slightest bit lower. “Nothing.”
Caitlyn frowns at the ceiling, feeling her eyelids flutter as she feels Vi’s leg slot between hers, settling right where she needs it most. Fuck. “I’m sure you think I’m—ah—eating my words right now.”
“I definitely want to eat something,” Vi says, her voice a warm growl against her, and a blush blooms across her cheeks.
“Crude.”
“You literally started it.”
Caitlyn sighs again, the sound a bit agitated this time as Vi works over a particularly tender spot, lurching as she catches the oversensitive skin between her teeth. Caitlyn pulls her hair and she lets up immediately, a tidbit of information Caitlyn tucks away for later—
Later? Who is she kidding?
“I did mean it,” she says, and Vi pauses. Vi looks up, eyes adorably wide and, more importantly, absolutely unconvinced. Her eyebrow quirks as if to say, “Oh yeah?” Caitlyn’s heart just about leaps out of her chest. “This is really the last time.”
She expects Vi to agree with her. To pull away like she had that night at the Zaun Bash, fix her jacket, unlock the door, and leave right then and there.
Instead, she just bursts out laughing. Full-out belly laughs, right there in the middle of the bathroom.
Caitlyn’s face burns. “I’m not joking, Vi!”
“I know you aren’t, that’s what makes it even funnier,” Vi says between gasping breaths. She still has not freed Caitlyn from her place pinned against the wall, and Caitlyn is flip-flopping between uncomfortably turned on and aggravated. Vi’s leg is still pressing against her, and it’s taking all her wherewithal not to press down against it.
When Vi looks back up at her, her eyes are full of mischief, and Caitlyn knows she’s fucked.
“You’re lying to yourself, princess,” she hums, lips dipping low to ghost against the line of Caitlyn’s jaw. “You want this.”
“I—” Caitlyn can’t even get the words out. She bites her lip and squeezes her eyes shut as Vi does what Caitlyn couldn’t bring herself to: she presses her knee up against her, eliciting a breathy groan from Caitlyn. “Shit, Vi, would you please quit it? We are not fucking in a school bathroom.”
“Give me your number and we can fuck other places,” Vi says.
“No,” Caitlyn repeats, hiding her blush as she tries to conceal the fact that she’s never actually fucked anyone, though she doubts Vi has either. But then again, who knows? She really knows nothing about her strangely irresistible Zaunite. “This is the last time.”
“Whatever you say,” Vi says, capturing her lips once again.
Caitlyn has no choice but to melt into her warmth. No matter how hard she tries, Vi just has a way of dragging her back to her. It’s been like that for the entire time Caitlyn has known the Zaunite, even during those years when her attraction felt a little more like hatred. In fact, she thinks if Vi keeps this up, she might never be able to say no to her again.
“But,” Vi hums against her skin, “you can still give me your number right?”
* * *
Despite Caitlyn’s best (worst) efforts, every time they meet that week seems to not be the last time.
* * *
“This is the last time,” Caitlyn says as Vi pulls her under the bleachers after track practice, as if she didn’t text Vi an hour earlier and wait for her in the stands like some kind of idiot. She felt so out of place, and she could feel eyes on her as she tries to avert her gaze from Vi, who sprinted across the track like a bullet and hardly broke a sweat. Eventually, she couldn’t even look away.
“Mhm,” Vi hums, the sound choked off as Caitlyn drags her into the roughest, most desperate kiss of her life.
* * *
“I mean it,” Caitlyn gasps as Vi presses her into the grassy ground, trees surrounding them at all angles. They’re in the forest behind Runeterra High, where all the kids go to drink and smoke on the weekends but remain largely deserted during the day. Vi sticks her hands in her shirt, rucking it up, and she whines as her lips press wetly, sweetly, against the underside of her breast. “Last time.”
“Of course,” Vi sighs, unconvinced.
* * *
Vi’s breath hitches as Caitlyn holds her in her lap in the driver’s seat of her car, parking lot empty by this hour, pressing down as Caitlyn undoes the button of her jeans, not even quite sure as to what to do once it’s open. She lets her lips blaze a trail up the strong column of her neck, and revels in the noise she feels buzzing against her tongue when she groans.
“Let me guess,” Vi murmurs, cheeks and neck red as Caitlyn memorizes the way her jaw feels under her tongue. “Last time?”
“Last time,” Caitlyn agrees, eyes wide, tracing her finger reverently over the line of her exposed underwear.
* * *
“Last—ah—” Caitlyn stares at the ceiling of her bedroom, through the gauzy canopy of her bed, sweat sticking her baby hairs to her forehead. Vi groans between her legs, kissing the naked flesh on the inside of her thighs as her fingers work inside her, burning her inside and out. She brings a hand to cover her mouth as Vi crooks her finger, touching her someplace nobody has ever touched her before. “Fuck, last time Vi, I mean it, I mean it—”
Vi doesn’t make a move to respond, but her hands say everything her mouth doesn’t.
They call her bluff, and they call it hard.
* * *
And thus, the pep rally arrives.
It almost feels anticlimactic, given the tense typhoon of conflict and emotions Vi has found herself swept up in over the past week. The morning of she almost forgot the costumes and props for the Zaunites in her car and just walked into school empty-handed, but thankfully her sister whipped some sense into her at the last second.
She’s been in a daze for the past day and a half, ever since she spent the afternoon at Caitlyn’s house, hours spent losing themselves in each other in ways Vi never thought she could. In fact, she’s been in a fog all week, only surfacing when she’s in the arms of a certain Piltovan, the very girl who has managed to take her whole senior year and turn it on its head. The girl who, frustratedly, has not texted her since they had sex in her bed.
Vi doesn’t know what happened. One minute, she knows exactly who she is, what her place is in this town, this school. The next, she’s lost in a girl she never should have let herself indulge in, wondering if next time really will be the last time (as Caitlyn Kiramman keeps so firmly stating.) One day, Vi knows Caitlyn just won’t come back. She won’t text her. She won’t give her that meaningful look in the hallway. She’ll go off to some posh university and leave Vi, the sumprat she is, behind.
Why should Vi bother putting off the inevitable?
Trouble is, she still can’t stop thinking about Caitlyn. The Piltovan has wormed her way into Vi’s every waking thought since the Zaun Bash, maybe even before then. She thinks about Caitlyn’s silky hair in math class. She traces the same lines in her desk that she traced over Caitlyn’s thighs absentmindedly in English. Hell, she can barely make it through PE without having to stop in her tracks and melt into a puddle on the soccer field as she thinks about the way Caitlyn said her name in her bedroom, like a prayer, like she’s never felt anything like that before with another person—
“Hello?” Powder says, snapping her fingers in front of Vi’s face. “Earth to Vi?”
Vi snaps to attention as someone places something on her head from behind that feels like a headband. She adjusts it, still half in a daze. “Huh? Oh sorry, Pow, what’d you say?”
Powder groans, all decked out in graffitied hearts and bright neon colors. They’re in the first-floor bathroom, the biggest one they could find, the Zaunites all getting changed into their pep rally costumes. It’s a whirlwind of activity as everyone helps each other with their makeup, their costume pieces, their props. Vi is facing one of the long bathroom mirrors, dressed in thigh-high fishnets, red biker shorts, a torn white crop top, and various studded apparatuses slung across her head, her waist, and her arms. Her regular tattoos are on display, but Powder added a few more stylized, Valentines-y ones in addition to those, “For theme!” she said.
She tugs at the shirt and fishnets uncomfortably. Normally she wouldn’t be caught dead in an outfit like this, but she has to admit, she looks hot as shit. Not to mention the school would never let outfits like this fly on a regular basis, as evidenced by all of her visits to the principal’s office because her usual athletic crop tops violate dress code, so everyone is eager to go all-out.
“I said,” Powder sighs, “you should be the one to go out first. Y’know, lead the pack.”
“I thought that was Ekko’s job.”
“Ekko isn’t our leader,” Powder grunts, smudging more eyeshadow onto Vi’s eyes despite her protests. “Besides, you’re the most popular Zaunite. It makes the most sense.”
“I guess.”
Powder draws her brush away from Vi’s face and frowns at her sister. “Okay, what the hell has been up with you?”
“What?”
“You’ve been weird all week!” Powder exclaims, startling Akali who is trying to wrestle her hair into low pigtails with heart-studded hair ties. “Ever since all that junk happened with Kiramman and the Zaun Bash it’s like you’ve been on another planet. We really need you on, like, actual Earth today, so get it together.”
Vi blinks up at Powder, who quirks an eyebrow expectantly, and just sighs. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’ve kind of been dealing with some stuff this week.”
Powder’s expression softens. “Want to talk about it?”
Hell no, Vi thinks, and just the thought of Powder knowing that she and the leader of Piltover have been lowkey fucking is enough to snap her back to reality. “N—No, it’s fine. Just senior stuff or whatever.”
“Well, I’m here if you need me,” Powder says, packing up her makeup supplies. “Always. But for now, we’ve got to get situated.”
“Right,” Vi says, adjusting her armband as she stands and cups her hands around her mouth. “Okay everyone, listen up! You’ve got three more minutes to get your shit on, then we’re all heading down to the lower gym! Got it?”
Everyone yells back their understanding, and Vi makes her way out into the hall. So many other clubs decked out in Valentine’s Day garb hustle around the space, flyers and props in their hands. Every organization’s theme is a little different, but everyone has kept the Valentine’s Day spirit.
She can hear the cheers of the students of RH within the gymnasium, various top 100 hits blaring through the industrial speakers within. Vi can hear the teachers making announcements about other upcoming school events. As the Zaunites cluster outside and Vi gets them in place outside the gym doors, she finds her gaze traveling over the other students, looking for the Piltovans.
Or, more specifically, one Piltovan.
When the clubs begin to file in, whooping and cheering as they are announced, it’s pure chaos. The Zaunites start to get hype, and when the Zaunites get excited, there’s no undoing it. She’s elated seeing her friends—her family—so excited for this, but she still seeks out Caitlyn in the raucous crowd.
She looks and looks until the Zaunites are called out, and she leads them into the Runeterra gym.
The gym is packed wall to wall with students sitting in bleachers. The marching band plays in the back of the room and the teachers chill on a makeshift stage built by the theater crew. The music is loud but the Zaunites are louder, led by the proudest leader on the planet. Vi waves her hands, egging her people on, and the level of crazy in the room hits a record high. The students of Runeterra High are eating their heartache costumes up, and Vi can’t get enough of the attention. It isn’t often that Zaun is looked at positively, but they sure know how to get a party started. This whole school knows it.
The other clubs line either side of the gym, flanking each set of indoor bleachers. Zaun is ushered to the empty spot in front of the table Vi set up at the beginning of the week as the last few clubs come out, and Vi slaps high fives all down the line of her group. They look great, they feel great—nothing can derail this moment for Vi.
That is until she looks across the gymnasium and sees Caitlyn, and Caitlyn sees her.
Time slows. The screams of the students in the bleachers and her fellow Zaunites fade into mere background noise as she and Caitlyn lock eyes. She watches Caitlyn’s eyes, those baby blues, widen until they're perfect doe-like circles, and Vi’s resolve crumbles right there in the middle of the gym.
Vi’s eyes wander. The Piltovans have a much more refined look, all pastels and purples in direct contrast to Zaun’s red, white, and black. She’s wearing a knitted pink crop top that hugs her chest like a glove. She has a small purple jacket and a purple hat, neck adorned with jewelry so gaudy it looks like candy. Her heels are tall and purple, ending just below a fucking purple miniskirt, the pleats settling perfectly around her hips and the tops of her thighs.
If that wasn’t enough to strike Vi down on the spot, the next and most massive arrow that enters Vi’s chest, pinning her where she stands, is the excruciatingly indisputable fact that Caitlyn Kiramman is blonde.
It’s a wig. Vi knows it’s a wig, mainly because her eyebrows are still dark, but it still does something to Vi that cannot be undone. The locks hang silky and slightly wavy, the color barely touched by strawberry. It perfectly complements the color palette of her outfit, and it makes her eyes look bluer than ever.
They stare at each other. It’s like they’re the only people in this whole gymnasium, and after a long moment of staring, of longing, Caitlyn’s lips form over the smallest word, the tiniest, most delicate, breathless hi Vi could fathom.
It’s then that Vi realizes that she wants Caitlyn. She wants Caitlyn in a deeper way than just heated glances in the hallway, than just hookups, than just the constant promise that every moment spent together will be the last.
She doesn’t want to let Caitlyn go.
* * *
The pep rally goes off without a hitch. The clubs and organizations all participate in games and friendly competitions—dizzy bats, three-legged races, freeze dance, octopus tag. Everyone has a fucking ball, and the Zaunites get to flex their competitive side.
They win as much as they lose. Powder and Vi kill the three-legged race, but Zaun didn’t stand a chance in dizzy bats thanks to their combined lack of coordination. Ekko helps the teachers emcee for a stint but then returns laughing to their group, slinging an arm around his girlfriend and planting a firm kiss on her cheek. Powder blushes like a beet.
The entire time, Vi steals glances at the Piltovans, and Caitlyn is always looking back at her. Vi feels a jolt rocket down her spine each time, but she also gets to see Caitlyn in the middle of her laughter, high-fiving Mel and the other Piltovans, just as elated as Vi. She looks so beautiful when she’s happy, and fuck, all Vi wants to do is keep her happy.
When the pep rally ends and the Zaunites busy themselves with handing out paper Valentines to students in the crowd, Vi slides her phone out of her pocket, looks around, then types out a text:
Vi:
meet me in the locker room after this
please
Vi puts the phone back in her pocket and pauses. When she turns to find Caitlyn in the crowd, she’s standing with Mel, Jayce, and Evelynn, talking and laughing. She watches and hopes to God nobody sees her doing so, until Caitlyn reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone.
She stares at the screen. Vi tries to see if her expression changes, but she’s just too far away. The resulting moment of contemplation is made even more painstaking because of that, but eventually, Caitlyn looks up, and after a moment of searching the Zaunites she finds Vi.
She stares. Vi waits, heart stalled.
And then, almost imperceptibly, Caitlyn nods.
* * *
The girl’s locker room is quiet. Vi can hear the sounds of cheering and teenage joking outside, but nobody needs to be in the locker room today, so nobody ends up in the locker room today. Plain and simple. This leaves Vi plenty of time to pace and brood while she waits for Caitlyn, biting her lip hard enough to mark.
She can’t stop thinking about how Caitlyn looked, head-thrown-back laughing, having the time of her life during the pep rally surrounded by her family. Because really, Piltover is Caitlyn’s family just as much as Zaun is Vi’s. They are the same, in that respect.
In fact, there are so many ways that Vi and Caitlyn are the same, things that Vi constantly overlooked over the years as she convinced herself and convinced herself that their worlds were separate. They both care about their groups. They treat their friends like their family. Their lives have been dictated by their image, and they both have less freedom than they ever thought they did. They put themselves into these little boxes, compounded by the stresses and pressures of high school, and the only time they have let go of those labels that others have shoved onto them—that they have shoved onto themselves—is when they’re together.
Vi doesn’t know how she didn’t see it before. She was so blind.
She hears the door open. Vi snaps to attention, but her heart sinks when she just sees Zeri and Akali come through the doors, waving to her. She gives a halfhearted wave back.
“Hey Vi, we were looking for you,” Zeri says. “Powder said she saw you come in here. We’re all going for food before the game and were wondering where you’d like to hit.”
Vi takes a deep breath and rakes a hand through her hair. “Just Jericho’s is fine. Listen, can you guys just give me like five minutes? I have something I need to take care of, then we can go.”
Akali looks her up and down, examining her stressed body language. She purses her lips. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Vi says. “I am.”
Zeri and Akali exchange a strange look, but they nod and leave the way they came. Vi waits for the door to close completely, the sound echoing through the empty space, before she lets out yet another long sigh. Seems like she’s full of nothing but sighs these days.
“Vi?”
Vi freezes. She takes a deep breath to compose herself, bracing for impact, then slowly turns to face the familiar voice.
Caitlyn stands there in the middle of the locker room, flanked by rows of lockers and benches. The lights are off but the windows let in natural light, giving everything a sky-blue tinge. Everything seems bluer around Caitlyn, really.
She’s still wearing her goofy pep rally outfit, as is Vi. She holds her hands in front of her stomach demurely, and she can barely lift her eyes to meet Vi’s. Her hair is a little disheveled from the games, but she still looks so incredible. Vi doesn’t even know what to do with herself.
But most of all, Caitlyn looks nervous. She looks more nervous than Vi has ever seen her.
Vi doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing for a long, tense moment. Her eyes flicker up from Caitlyn’s body to her eyes, glinting and blue, and she says, “Hey, Cupcake.”
Caitlyn shifts from foot to foot, the leather of her thigh-high boots squeaking against the freshly cleaned linoleum. “You look great.”
Vi feels the corners of her mouth quirk up. “Back ‘atcha. Whose idea was that?”
She gestures to the wig and Caitlyn blushes, bringing a hand to clutch at the ends of her hair. “Ahri’s. She wanted to match.”
Vi snorts. “Figures.”
Another long moment of silence follows. Even though Vi is the one who asked Caitlyn to meet her here, she still feels like she doesn’t quite know what to say to her. And what could she say that would convince her that this isn’t the biggest mistake either of them will ever make? That taking a chance on this, even if it’s a brief chance, is better than never trying at all?
“Cait,” Vi starts. “I—”
“Wait, Vi,” Caitlyn says striding forward until they’re so close Vi can’t help but blush. Caitlyn blushes too, twice as hard. “I… I don’t need you to say anything.”
“I feel like I need to,” Vi says, breathless now that she’s so close to Caitlyn once again. Her heart feels like it’s about to leap out of its chest just from the smell of her, clean like her shampoo.
“No, you don’t,” she repeats, insistent. “Vi, I know I have been a bit... apprehensive about our arrangement, but—”
“It’s okay,” Vi says, feeling that familiar pang in her chest. So this is how it is. “I get it. I didn’t think you’d want anything serious to come of this in the first place, and I didn’t either. I never saw you coming like that, and it’s crazy that any of this between us even happened in the first place… I don’t even know what I’m saying right now, fuck.”
Vi rakes her hands through her hair, but she can’t bring herself to look away from Caitlyn, who listens with rapt attention. “If you just want this to end here, before things get dicey, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I would understand. I just have to let you know that I think that would suck. A lot. Because I’m really into you.”
It’s clumsy. Vi knows this, but the words just tumble out of her mouth, crude execution and all. Part of her wants to keep her newfound feelings for Caitlyn to herself, but who is she kidding? She’s seen Caitlyn naked. She’s seen Caitlyn in so many ways, bad and good; there’s no keeping it in now.
So, when Caitlyn blurts out, “I’m really into you, too,” Vi can hardly believe it.
Dumbfounded, Vi says, “What?”
“I’m really into you,” Caitlyn repeats, as if she can barely believe her words either. “I’ve been into you for so long, I just didn’t know what to do with all of that. I thought we could never work, and I still think we can’t, but I don’t know if I can stand being apart from you any longer.”
Vi gapes like a fish. She wipes a hand over her mouth, still baffled, and asks, “Even if it’s a terrible idea?”
Caitlyn nods, and there isn’t a hint of doubt in her expression. She reaches forward and takes Vi’s face in her hands, and the gesture is so gentle Vi almost sighs. She feels her delicate, deft thumb brush over her cheeks, and she lets herself be cradled, be seen.
“Even if it’s the most terrible idea,” she says, and she kisses Vi.
Vi melts. She clutches Caitlyn’s arms like they are the safety bars on the edges of the roof of a tall building. She feels Caitlyn shaking with nervousness, but soon she feels Caitlyn fall against her, melting in that same glorious way, and there’s nothing to be nervous about anymore.
It all just feels so… perfect. Vi never thought she would ever use that word to describe any kind of relationship she might have with Caitlyn Kiramman, platonic or otherwise, but she can’t imagine another label now.
She always thought Caitlyn was beautiful from afar, even if she never realized it until she saw those Valentines tumble out of her locker. She was an ethereal beauty, a girl she could never hope to stand near or begin to shape up to. When compared to Caitlyn, she felt like nothing. Like gutter trash. The teachers thought it. The student of Runeterra High thought it. Hell, even Vi thought it sometimes, on her worst days.
It was only when she saw the real Caitlyn, and Caitlyn saw the real Vi, that she began to see just how wrong she was. How wrong they were.
Vi parts her lips, letting Caitlyn’s tongue pass near her teeth, tracing the seam of her lips until she’s gasping, tilting her head to get close to the other girl. She’ll never get enough of this feeling, this softness that comes with undoing Caitlyn. She wraps her arms around her waist, losing herself in the soft curve of her waist.
She loses herself so much, in fact, that when the door slams open, she barely hears it.
It’s only when Caitlyn jumps and her lips release Vi’s with a soft pop that Vi is able to see the startled look on her face. Vi turns her head, and her stomach drops out of her ass.
Powder is standing in the doorway, hand splayed across the front of the locker room door as if she stalled halfway into entering. Ekko is behind her, mouth agape, and Powder’s face is frozen in an expression of shock and absolute disbelief.
Behind them, most of Zaun stares inside at Caitlyn and Vi.
Powder’s eyes flicker between Vi and Caitlyn, who are so frozen that they haven’t even thought to untangle themselves from each other. And why should they? Cat’s out of the bag now, no shoving it back in. Still, however, Vi’s lips search for an explanation, something to say to her group who is looking on at the two of them like aliens freshly landed on Earth, but all that escapes her lips is a series of “uh’s” clumsy enough to have come out of the mouth of a toddler.
It's a long, tense moment before Powder, mouth still agape, manages to say, “Uh, sorry, I’ll just—fuck, I’ll just wait—yeah—”
She stiffly stands straight, turns heel, and marches like a newly animated statue back into the hall until the locker room door falls back into place lightly behind her, the sound echoing like cannon fire.
Vi’s heart races. She feels Caitlyn’s nails clutching at her shoulders. There is no silence like the silence of being found out, and that quiet weighs between them like a heavy confession. An inevitability.
Until, finally, Caitlyn snorts, the sound beautiful and awkward.
“Shit,” she says.
When Vi finally looks back at her, a smile is shaking its way onto her face, like she’s trying as hard as she can to shove it down. It’s nothing at all like perfect.
“Shit,” Vi grins.
It’s even better than perfect.