#explosionfic

And she fucking nails him.

The dense metal fist slams into the guy, knocking him off his feet, even as the rifle goes off. Vi feels her stomach lurch sickeningly into her chest, but she hears the shattering of glass that tells her the shot went wide.

Caitlyn’s been futilely grappling with some juiced up shimmer freak in the courtyard, unaware of the threat from above, but the gunshot distracts them both. Vi watches as both of them hesitate, Caitlyn glancing up, piercing blue eye analyzing the scene in a moment; flicking from the broken window, to the terrace where the gunman Vi had hit is still flattened, to Vi’s stricken face on the opposite ledge.

“Cait!” Vi screams, warning her, because the hulking goon looming over her has recovered himself, is charging again, trying to close the distance between them, trying to break Vi’s life into shards with his big ugly hands and Vi is too useless, too far away, to do anything but scream.

And then Caitlyn is pivoting on her heel, using the momentum to launch herself backwards, lining up a shot while the shimmer freak runs her down, barreling straight into the path of the bullet she sinks between his eyes. The crack of the rifle, even from this far away, rattles in Vi’s chest. She watches with horror as the freak keeps coming, even with half of his skull a pulpy spray steaming on the pavement behind him. But he only makes it two steps, three, four before he collapses forward, slumping into a twisted heap at Caitlyn’s feet.

Those were the last two. Vi’s on the move even before the body’s done twitching, vaulting over the ledge she’d been stuck on, leaping and scrambling up the side of the terrace where the gunman had been, needing to make sure he was really out of the fight. One glance at the dent in his skull, his unnaturally splayed legs, the smear of gore on her battered gauntlet is all Vi needs to confirm that he’s not going to be a threat to anyone ever again. She doesn’t even pause to retrieve her weapon, just turns, plants her heel on the edge of the balcony and springboards off of it, landing in a rolling crouch that sends a dull shock of pain across her shoulders, through her ribs. She’s pretty sure she cracked one, earlier in the initial ambush, or else bruised it pretty bad. She knows she’ll feel it later, but for now, the adrenaline pumping through her body is doing its job, keeping her alive, keeping her going, getting her to Caitlyn.

“Cait!” Vi calls again, closing the distance between them in great, desperate bounds. “Cait!”

“Vi,” Caitlyn’s voice is a ragged wheeze. Up close, Vi can see the livid red finger marks across her beautiful throat and she thinks if Caitlyn hadn’t already blown the brains out of the back of that animal’s skull, she would have liked to do it herself. “Vi,” Caitlyn’s voice, a little stronger now, brings her back to herself, “are you hurt?”

Here she is, windpipe bruised to shit, knuckles scraped and bleeding, a trickle of blood running down her cheek from a cut at her hairline, eye blinking furiously at the stinging sweat dripping down into it from her exertion, and all of Caitlyn’s considerable focus is singularly locked on Vi, her gaze flicking over Vi’s face, down her body, searching for wounds, for problems she can solve.

Vi lets her remaining gauntlet drop to the ground with a metallic clank, right hand sweaty and aching from the tight grip she’d had her fists clenched into. She crosses the last distance between them, sees Caitlyn’s eye flash wide in surprise for a moment before Vi takes Caitlyn’s face in between her hands and pulls her down for a kiss.

Caitlyn’s mouth tastes like blood. She parts her lips for Vi easily, pliantly, not resisting even a little when Vi surges up and uses her grip on Caitlyn’s face to tip her head, flicking her tongue out, gliding over Caitlyn’s teeth — all there, none missing. No trips to the emergency dentist after this, at least. The blood seems to be coming from the inside of Caitlyn’s cheek, cut on her own teeth when she’d taken a blow to the face, or bitten when she’d been choked or—or something. It’s minor. Vi lets herself relax, parting their lips just enough to draw in a sip of breath, to swallow briefly — saliva, hers and Caitlyn’s. Blood — Caitlyn’s.

The second kiss is slower, less desperate. Vi doesn’t register that she’s melted forward into Caitlyn until she suddenly realizes she’s got both feet planted flat on the ground again, that Caitlyn’s arms are wound around her, one splayed between her shoulderblades pressing them tighter together, the other snared in the sweaty hair at the back of Vi’s head, holding just tight enough to sting a little. Her own arms have become encircled around Caitlyn’s neck, locking her in place.

The power has shifted, too — less Caitlyn reassuring her, indulging her by placidly yielding to Vi’s anxious, demanding attention more of the intoxicating push-and-pull that’s always throbbed at the core of this thing between them. Caitlyn hums into the kiss just softly, she licks her own blood from the roof of Vi’s mouth, she nips at Vi’s lips, and she does it all so slowly, so methodically, so deliberately Vi thinks she might sink to the floor if Caitlyn wasn’t holding her so tightly upright.

Vi kisses her and kisses her, slanting their mouths together, rolling her body into Caitlyn’s, keening low in her own throat as she feels Caitlyn’s chest heave, sucking the breath out of Caitlyn’s mouth and down her own throat. Vi digs her blunt nails into the skin at the back of Caitlyn’s neck, scrapes hard enough to feel her breath hitch, to make Caitlyn gasp into the kiss and she thinks she’s alive, oh thank fuck, she’s alive, she’s alive.

Finally, lungs aching, lips swollen, Vi drags her mouth away from Caitlyn’s, burying her face in the side of her tender, bruised neck instead. She feels Caitlyn pant into her hair for a moment, before a shower of quick, hungry kisses falls across the side of her head, then her face. “You’re not hurt,” Caitlyn says again, less a question now than when she’d first uttered the words. “You’re okay.”

Still, Vi nods against her, knowing without having to be told that Caitlyn needs to hear her say it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Me too,” Caitlyn offers, a little dumbly, a little unnecessarily and Vi can’t help the sputter of laughter it elicits in her — knowing her piltie had stayed sharp going who knows how many rounds with a bulked out shimmer-boosted maniac trying to cave her skull in and kept her head through all of it, but had let herself get kissed stupid by Vi in two minutes flat. “What?” she rasps, probably about as dignified as one can sound half breathless and with a slightly crushed windpipe — which is to say, not very, but Vi loves her for trying.

Vi just shakes her head, tilting her face to press a tender, gentle kiss to Caitlyn’s bruised throat, wondering if she can feel Vi’s smile there against her skin. “Don’t worry about it.”

“‘Don’t worry about it’ means you’re taking the piss,” Caitlyn grumbles good-naturedly. “You know, I— wait.”

“What is it?” Vi asks, moving to step back, stopped by Caitlyn’s hand pressed into the small of her back, holding her close.

Despite this, Caitlyn leans back a little to catch Vi’s gaze. “What happened to your other gauntlet?”

“Oh, that,” Vi says, grinning. “It’s, uh, up there.”

Caitlyn’s gaze drags from Vi’s right gauntlet a few feet behind them, to the raised terrace Vi gestures at. She raises one eyebrow, exasperation and fondness clinging to her voice as she asks, “And how exactly did that happen?”

“Crazy story, actually,” Vi says, because really, it is. Now that it’s all over, she still can’t believe she’d made that shot. She shifts in place, wrapping an arm around Caitlyn’s waist — it’s instant, the way Caitlyn’s arm drapes over her shoulders in response, shifting her weight to lean into Vi. “Let’s go get ‘em back and I’ll tell you all about the effortlessly cool way I saved your life on the way back to the station, Cupcake.”

“”Effortlessly cool?’” Caitlyn quotes dubiously, pausing to stow her rifle behind her back. 

“Yeah,” Vi nods, hip-checking her lightly. “You know how I am in a crisis.”

Caitlyn laughs so hard it makes her gag, sagging into Vi’s shoulder and sputtering out a few weak coughs. She rubs her throat gingerly and says, “Ah, don’t make me do that. My throat is killing me.”

“Serves you right,” Vi mutters, grinning when Caitlyn’s hand sneaks out to pinch her side in retort. They’ve made it to the first gauntlet. Vi leans down to slip her hand into it, powering it on. “Right.” They keep walking, Caitlyn shortening her stride to match Vi. “So, there you were: totally and completely helpless—”

“I think I’d argue with ‘totally’. And ‘completely.’”

“You’d argue with a brick wall. And, anyway, who’s telling this story, me or you?”

“Right. Of course. Go on.”

“Thank you. So, like I said, you were basically a sitting duck…”

It’s a long walk back to Topside and before she knows it, Vi’s whole body feels like one big bruise.

"I think you know. You were the one with the view last night. And the cane," Vi mutters back, a sharp, breathy ah slipping helplessly past her parted lips as Caitlyn kneads her ass harder in retaliation. "Fuck, Cait..."

"So much for the tough, untouchable brawler," Caitlyn presses in close, utilizing her height to loom over Vi, speaking hotly into the shell of her ear, pressing forward just enough to force Vi's hips into the edge of the table, loving the desperate little grunt this punches out of Vi's throat, the way she presses her ass back into Caitlyn's hands despite the pain. "I watched you squirm and wince through that entire dinner. Right in front of all of our friends. Weren't you embarrassed?"

Vi's only response is another sharp intake of breath, the sound of her palms slapping the tabletop as she braces herself, leaned forward, still pressing her ass back into Caitlyn's palms as she squeezes her bruised flesh, imagining how the sharp red lines the cane left on Vi's flesh last night will have shifted colors by now. Caitlyn loves Vi in Kiramman house colors - the purple hue suits her so well.

For a moment, Caitlyn indulges in the insane fantasy of bending Vi further over the table, taking her there in the open when any of their guests could waltz back into the room. It might actually be doable - Vi is no doubt soaking her boxers at the moment - it would take hardly any effort to bring her off.

She uses her free hand to grip the back of Vi's neck, pushes very slightly just for the pleasure of feeling Vi shiver in her grip and buckle immediately, bending over the table pliantly.

She is so perfect Caitlyn could weep. She wants to devour Vi, to ruin her, to give her everything she could ever want for the entire rest of her life and more still besides.

"Would you really let me fuck you here right over the table? When anyone could walk back in, see you bent over and whimpering for me?" Caitlyn breathes, leaning over Vi's broad, muscled back, shoving her knee between Vi's legs to force them wider. "Are you that much of a slut?"

"F-for you," Vi whispers, and Caitlyn hears what's unspoken - I want you. I trust you.

Caitlyn lingers for a moment, leaning into Vi, relishing the strength of her, the warmth and the closeness, her crackling nerves and unchecked submission. The anticipation makes Caitlyn's heart hammer in her chest, her cunt aching with need, nipples hardening under the cups of her bra as she rolls her hips teasingly against Vi and thinks, I could have you right now.

She could.

But...

"Not yet," Caitlyn says with a dismissive hum, pulling away quickly to hide her own burning frustration. She suddenly wants nothing more than to sweep into the next room and announce the end of their gathering, send everyone home without so much as an explanation. She straightens and watches as Vi takes several deep breaths to collect herself before pushing herself off the table.

"Tease," Vi huffs, smiling lopsidedly, as Caitlyn steps in close again to straighten the collar of her shirt, unable to stop herself from pressing a quick kiss to the corner of Vi's mouth. Caitlyn gives her some credit - the slight tremble clinging to the edge of her voice is nearly undetectable.

"Yes," Caitlyn agrees readily and swats Vi's ass swiftly as they turn to leave the room, laughing shamelessly at her bitten-off yelp, the petulant glare she shoots Caitlyn over her shoulder.

She’s so much more aware of how fragile her eye is, how difficult to injure, how impossible to repair, past a certain point of damage. It’s hard, especially with the kind of mind she has, obsessive by nature, not to get lost in the possibilities. What if major damage had occurred? Her vision had been blurred after the hit — not uncommon between the swelling and the pain and the irritation. And Vi had looked at it before Caitlyn had begun icing it, had assured her there was no visible blood pooling, but what if it had started after Caitlyn covered it? She has to grit her teeth hard to fight back the urge to pull the towel down and demand Vi check again, even though she had checked at Caitlyn’s insistence not five minutes before.

“When we get back, I’m starting a formal review of the state of our safehouses around Piltover and Zaun,” Caitlyn says darkly, shifting the towel against her eye gingerly. “The lack of readily accessible medical supplies is honestly appalling. A safe house with frozen fruits, but no proper ice packs. What kind of operation are we running, exactly? With the amount of funding dumped into this program. This is unacceptable. Utterly unacceptable.”

There’s real anger in her voice. She can feel more than see Vi cringe to hear it and hates herself for it even more. It’s not the damned peaches or the overall sorry state of the safehouse it’s— it’s Caitlyn. Caitlyn’s distraction, Caitlyn’s sloppiness that had landed them here. She had been overconfident, trusting that the quick reconnaissance she’d done on the suspected shimmer den they’d been raiding was thorough enough, that she’d accounted for each of the hostiles present, that she had accurately assessed and accounted for all possible threats. That oversight had put them both in danger, had allowed one of the slumped over shimmer fiends in the corner that Caitlyn had written-off as too incapacitated to be a threat to slink away in the chaos, to spread the alarm, to bring another pack of thugs down on them, turning the odds against them despite their better equipment, better training. 

Vi had been following her lead, at Caitlyn’s insistence. She’d taken a nasty blow to the stomach, had crumpled in half and Caitlyn had panicked, utterly, failed her training, utterly, and rushed to her without thinking, leaving herself open for the elbow strike that had nearly taken her out of the fight. She barely remembers how they got away, just the feeling of Vi’s shoulders steadying her, Vi’s arm around her waist, a vague memory of mumbling directions to the safehouse to her as they slunk down a maze of alleyways and tunnels.

“Sorry, Cupcake. Best I could do,” Vi says, tensely. Caitlyn has enough sense about her to realize that going on like this is making everything worse. “Hold still.”

The world is dark and silent, but for Vi’s quiet breathing, the faint metallic snick of a pair of scissors. Caitlyn’s eye throbs. The side of her face is numb with cold. She thinks of what her life would look like without any vision at all and has to swallow back a sob.

“Hey,” Vi’s voice, terrified and breathless, her hands on Caitlyn’s shoulders. “Hey, what’s happening? What are you feeling?”

“I,” Caitlyn takes in a shuddering breath, as Vi pulls the towel away from her face. Frozen peaches shift in place inside bag under the cloth, slowly thawing from the heat of Caitlyn’s face. She feels shame and frustration welling up inside her, intensifying further at the look of abject fear and pain on Vi’s face as she peers down at Caitlyn. “I suppose I’m a bit overwhelmed. It’s okay. Keep going.”

“How’s the pain?” Vi asks.

“It’s not bad,” Caitlyn says, which might be true. The aching of her face is nothing, it’s the sick feeling in her stomach she can’t shake. 

“I’m almost done,” Vi says quietly and gestures to the mirror. 

Caitlyn takes a deep breath, looking over her shoulder. She has to blink to clear her vision but once she does, her own image comes into focus. Good eye swollen and bruised, uniform disheveled, streaked with filth, blood staining her collar. Vi had cleaned most of it up off the side of her face, from where a rampaging shimmer addict had torn free a bloody hank of Caitlyn’s hair.

I can fix that, Vi had said, wiping the blood off of Caitlyn’s scalp, her neck, carefully pulling free the strands of broken and torn hair as Caitlyn had first pressed the makeshift ice pack into her eye and clenched her jaw as hard as she could. Numbly, Caitlyn had nodded, agreeing to let Vi tidy up her hair. It had hardly made sense to Caitlyn in the moment — she would have agreed to nearly anything Vi suggested. Vi had produced a pair of scissors from a drawer in the kitchen and then guided Caitlyn to the dank, cramped bathroom of the safehouse unit, pushed Caitlyn down onto the closed toilet seat lid, and started speaking: I used to cut my own hair all the time, she’d said. Caitlyn had already known this. I did it for—for my— for Powder and the boys, sometimes, too. Even gave Vander a trim once, when he broke his hand breaking up that bad fight in the bar over Snowdown. 

She had kept rambling. Caitlyn had hardly retained any of it, nodding along dimly. Now she feels a brief flush of shame for having blinded herself to the anxiety in Vi’s voice, the desperation. She’s been terrified, you fool.

This sobers Caitlyn. As does the sight in the mirror. The bloodied, uneven mess that she'd glimpsed as Vi had ushered her into the bathroom was gone, replaced with an altogether shorter cut — a little asymmetrical by necessity, but passable. Stylish, even. Not exactly common to Piltovan sensibilities, but not dissimilar to some of the more daring hairstyles Caitlyn had seen young women and men in Zaun sporting.

Vi has a real talent for this, she thinks absently. And then, of course. Because there were so many things Vi did and did well. So many skills—both the extravagant and the practical. So many things Caitlyn had never had to consider doing — mending her own clothes, cutting her own hair — Vi knew how to do them, accomplished them with the same quiet competency she brought to so much else.

When Caitlyn first noticed the uniform coat with the torn cuff that she’d intended to have fixed appear back in her closet— mended with bright, golden thread— she’d been taken aback, but she had known it could only be Vi’s doing right away. None of her staff would have chosen to make the repair so noticeable. Vi hadn’t pointed it out to her, hadn’t sought praise or attention. This was a softer gesture, something almost shy. A glimpse of the domesticity that Vi had grown up steeped in, a casual down-to-earth caretaking that Caitlyn found both alien and indescribably precious.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, throat tight with emotion, reaching up a hand to brush her fingers through the trimmed edges of her hair.

“I know you like to keep it longer,” Vi says. “And I’m no professional. We can go get it touched up as soon as we get back topside — after the doctor clears you, anyway. But I knew you probably wouldn’t want to show up at the station looking so—”

“Bloody awful,” Caitlyn fills in wryly. She still looks awful — there’s no fixing that. Her eye, a swollen and split bottom lip, the state of her uniform, the haggard expression she can’t seem to shake. She truly does look terrible. All except for her hair — carefully tended to by Vi’s hands, because she wanted to fix what she could. Because she had anticipated what Caitlyn needed before she had the wherewithal to think of it for herself. Because Vi took care of the people she loved, and Caitlyn was lucky enough to count herself among them.

“Well, I was going to say ‘unkempt’,” Vi offers a hesitant grin. “So you don’t hate it?”

“No. It’s nice,” Caitlyn says and it’s true, though it feels surreal to be having this conversation now when just moments ago she’d been on the verge of a panic attack. It’s at this point she realizes she’s calmed down considerably. Her breathing is more even, her eye, though swollen and a little teary, is unbloodied in the mirror and focuses easily. “I suppose you could add ‘new haircut’ to the list of things I didn’t see coming today.”

It’s a weak joke, but Vi laughs heartily, relief and real pleasure rippling across her beautiful face. She reaches for Caitlyn carefully, brushing her fingertips gently over the still-smarting skin of Caitlyn’s scalp. “When this heals, you should let me shave down the side. I think you’d look good.”

Caitlyn wrinkles her nose, staring at her reflection in the mirror, trying to imagine it. “You think so?”

“Totally. Kinda badass, y’know?”

Badass. “That seems more your style,” Caitlyn points out. “I’m not sure I could pull it off.”

“Well, not with that attitude,” Vi says, then shrugs. “Sleep on it. Maybe you’ll come around.”

“Thank you, Violet,” Caitlyn says, reaching up to tangle her fingers with Vi’s. She brings Vi’s knuckles, bruised and still hot from her gloves up to her lips, kisses them softly. Then she winces when her smile becomes too wide, sending a fresh wave of pain shooting through her eye socket. “Ow.”

“Okay, Sheriff,” Vi says, taking Caitlyn’s wrist and guiding the frozen peaches back to her face. “Keep icing.”

“Frozen fruit,” Caitlyn mutters sourly. “Not a single proper ice pack. I suppose I should count myself lucky we hadn’t stocked the place with ice lollies and sorbet.”

“Can we add that to the budget?” Vi asks, the steady snick of the scissors resuming as she works on the finishing touches. “Might be good for cheering up certain grumpy officers of the law when they wind up here after a rough job.”

“Shut up,” Caitlyn says, smiling hard enough to hurt again. “This is why you’re not on the budget committee, you know.”

"No. I'm glad you're here," Caitlyn sighs, reaching out blindly behind her towards Vi, who catches her hand immediately, squeezes and then moves in close to wrap her arms around Caitlyn's waist, forehead pressing into Caitlyn's shoulderblade, warm and a solid and steady when Caitlyn pushes off from the wall to lean back into her. "The first day was nice - he seemed happy to be back. I thought we were past this."

She can't stop replaying the words they'd exchanged over dinner in her mind. Her father's disappointment hanging over them like a thick, heavy storm cloud until it finally broke, unleashing a merciless downpour. Your mother would be so disappointed.

She had left, wordlessly - stormed away like a child, hurt and petulant, feeling like with every step she took away she was proving him right. Walking away was never how her mother had solved problems.

Vi doesn't speak, merely tightens her hold around Caitlyn's waist, listening.

"Sometimes I don't think he'll ever be able to forgive me," Caitlyn says quietly, so grateful for Vi's face tucked into her back, for the comfort of that closeness and the way it saves her from having to look Vi in the face as she continues, "for not saving her. For not knowing how to be her."

"I didn't know her well," Vi begins, haltingly and Caitlyn feels her stomach twist. There's always been this tension when the topic of family arises - a sore spot for them both, particularly where Cassandra is concerned. It hurts to hear Vi's normally steadfast confidence waver in the face of this. Caitlyn wishes Vi knew she didn't have to be so careful. "But I know that your mom loved you, Cait. And it wasn't about how like or unlike her you were - it was because of who you are. And..."

"And what?" Caitlyn prompts gently, stroking her thumb across the back of Vi's knuckles, enjoying the way her clasped hands over Caitlyn's abdomen haven't loosened in the slightest.

"Nevermind," Vi mumbles into Caitlyn's back sourly.

"None of that," Caitlyn chides her lightly, charmed utterly by this perfect woman, her sweetness and her protectiveness and her sudden peevish reluctance. "Out with it."

"And it was a bitch move," Vi huffs and Caitlyn can feel her shrug belligerently against her back, "bringing your mom up like that. If anything about tonight was going to disappoint her I think that would be it."

It nearly bowls Caitlyn over how good it feels to hear someone else - to hear Vi - say it for her. That stinging sense of outrage, that small, furious woundedness had hung over Caitlyn all night, wreathed with a thick haze of guilt that Vi's forthrightness had a way of cutting right through. Her father hadn't been fair. He had been out of line. He had been wrong.

And if he'd been wrong to say that, driven by hurt and grief and the same small, human meanness Caitlyn herself had given way to so many times before, then maybe he was wrong about all of it. He hadn't been forced to make the choices she had. He didn't have to live with the consequences. Perhaps it wasn't his right to judge her so harshly.

"Sorry," Vi says after a beat, carefully unwinding her arms from Caitlyn and stepping back, away, taking her warmth with her.

Caitlyn realizes at once that Vi has misinterpreted her silence for disapproval.

"No," Caitlyn interrupts, turning around, catching Vi by the wrist before she can retreat further and drawing her back in with a gentle tug, a beckoning glance. "You were right that was..."

At this, Vi leans in conspiratorially, fixing Caitlyn with a smug grin that makes her heart clench tight in her chest. "Say it."

"That was a bitch move," Caitlyn agrees, unable to stop the edge of laughter creeping into her voice despite the sudden tears clinging to her lashes. It's unreal, the way Vi can do this to her world - pull her back from the edge of despair, make her laugh, ease her heart.

Caitlyn's pretty good at that - at noticing things about Vi, at trying to anticipate her needs, give her what she doesn't or can't ask for. She's good at reading Vi.

But Vi's pretty good at this herself, honestly. She might not be as freakishly analytical as Caitlyn, but she's observant, intuitive. In the year and change they've been together since the end of the war, she's learned Caitlyn's habits, her rhythms and patterns, inside out, like a song playing in her head, a tune she could hum in her sleep.

The light in her office window Vi could see from her approach means Caitlyn is in for the night, but probably still working. The spread on the table is half ploy, half apology - she's counting on Vi being tired enough and hungry enough to do what comes easy: sit down at the table, tuck into her favorite meal, get herself nice and full and sleepy - primed to accept Cait's earnestly regretful brush-off when Vi seeks her out after dinner, ready to head off to bed early on her own with a goodnight kiss and a promise to make it up to her tomorrow.

Subtle enough. Tactfully manipulative the way Caitlyn sometimes is, but not nefarious.

Doesn't mean it's gonna work though.

Cait's warmed up to Zaunite cuisine since they've been together, but it's never really her first choice. And when she's overworked and stressed, her stomach's way too delicate to handle a meal like this anyway. She must have skipped her own dinner.

Tried to, anyway.

Vi's whole body feels heavy from exhaustion and her stomach grumbles longingly when she settles the lid back over her bowl of noodles, having indulged in only a single, desperate mouthful before she drifts back to the kitchen.

There's no need to get elaborate - Vi knows well enough by now that Caitlyn's not going to enjoy a meal tonight. What she mostly needs is the calories. What she mostly needs is someone not on her payroll who can't be dismissed with that cordial but tense shake of her head that's polite rich person for stop wasting my fucking time already. What she mostly needs is someone who can take care of her when she's in one of these moods, hell-bent on stiff-upper-lipping her way into an ulcer and a stress migraine and an gnawing, empty stomach.

It's a simple dish, the kind of thing Vi threw together for herself and her siblings whenever she could scrape together the necessary ingredients. The Kiramman kitchen is always stocked full so she doesn't have to get as creative as she did when she was 14 - chicken from the night before, a chopped up head of broccoli with onions and garlic. Vi sautees it all in a pan, serves it over some rice from earlier in the day, takes a bite to make sure Cait will be able to handle it.

A little bland for Vi's tastes, but probably exactly what Caitlyn needs tonight.

She grabs a few beers out of the cooler too, holding the bottles by the necks and careful not to let the glass clank together too harshly. With her palm spread wise to cup her own bowl of noodles in one hand and Caitlyn's plate braced along her forearm, she carefully ascends the stairs, feet aching from a long day of tramping around in Zaun running errands for the Firelights but steady and sure as she treads the familiar route to the office.

It wouldn't do to ambush her - Caitlyn will be feeling frustrated and guilty anyway, for bringing so much work home on a night they were supposed to spend together and Vi's not looking to send her into a sulk or pick a fight. She sets the food down on a slim running table in the hall and slips into the study empty-handed.

Caitlyn's hunched over her desk, head hanging low, fountain pen poised between her elegant fingers as she squints down at the pages spread in front of her. At the sound of Vi's entrance she raises her head and Vi watches a wince flash across her face as the motion stretches her neck.

"Hello, darling," Caitlyn says tiredly, shooting Vi a cautious smile as she swivels her chair enough to address her.

"Hey," Vi says, stepping in close, leaning in to kiss her. It's nice, getting to be the one who bends down for this, nicer still to cup the back of Caitlyn's neck, to knead gently until she feels Caitlyn sigh into her mouth, tension flowing out of body as good as if Vi had pulled the stopper on a drain and flushed it all out of her system.

When they part, Caitlyn leans back into Vi's grip, eye fluttering shut as she hums, "Thank you, love. That feels good."

Pride swells up in Vi, warm and buoyant. She can't help pressing another quick, pleased kiss to Caitlyn's face, over the scar on her brow.

"Did you enjoy your dinner?" Caitlyn asks at length, gently pulling away from Vi's hands and sitting up straight in her chair. The way the seat swivels slightly betrays how badly she's itching to turn back to her reports.

"Did you?" Vi challenges, eyebrow raised.

Caitlyn, to her credit, doesn't try to lie. Her gaze flickers guiltily towards a half-drunk mug of milky tea on the edge of her desk, long-cooled, and a small plate of those awful, dry little cookies she loves. "I wasn't feeling particularly hungry after my lunch at work. Decided on just a snack tonight."

Vi casts a dubious look at the paltry excuse for a snack. "Yeah, right. That's not gonna cut it tonight, Cupcake, you know that, right? You need some real food, not tea and those little," Vi reaches out, taps one of the brittle little cookies against the lip of the plate until it cracks in half, "intestine biscuits or whatever."

A look of naked, unaffected disgust ripples across Caitlyn's features as she swats Vi's hand away from her plate and picks up the bigger piece of the broken cookie. "Digestive biscuits," she corrects, nibbling on it defiantly. "Digestive biscuits, Vi. And they go very nicely with tea."

"Still not a meal," Vi points out, reluctantly parting her lips when Caitlyn presses the remainder of her cookie to Vi's mouth. It's not bad, it's just not particularly good. It's mostly dry.

Still, Vi dutifully chews and swallows. A gesture of goodwill. Gotta give to get, right?

"See?" Caitlyn smiles. "Not so bad, hmm?"

Vi shrugs, "Sure. You can have as many as you want after."

"After what?" Caitlyn asks, suspicion setting in as she leans back in her chair again, eyeing Vi cautiously.

"After you eat an actual meal," Vi says. Caitlyn opens her mouth to protest and Vi interrupts her again, "Yeah, you're not hungry, I know, I know."

Vi backs out of the room before Caitlyn can make some other excuse, ducking back into the hall to retrieve the food and beer she'd left outside.

"Eat this for me anyway," Vi proposes. "And then I'll set a timer and you can spend another hour up here wrapping things up while I pretend I'm not falling asleep in the other chair. And then we'll go to bed."

Vi's prepared to keep going - to needle and cajole a little longer until Caitlyn gives in. She's not looking forward to it, but she's prepared to do it.

So it's a relief when Caitlyn instead asks, cheekily, "And what exactly do I get out of this arrangement?"

"What a hot meal and the pleasure of my company not enough for you, Sheriff?" Vi challenges, the pleasure of their teasing, the satisfaction of getting Caitlyn to do what Vi wanted, the sunbeam-warm flush of pride at taking good care of her all rushing through Vi at once.

"I'm terribly greedy, my love, what can I say?" Caitlyn's voice is low and velvet, full of promise Vi's not sure either of their bodies are gonna be able to keep after the long day they've both had. But it's fun to play along.

"Spoiled more like," Vi tosses back as Caitlyn stretches out a hand to accept the plate Vi offers.

"That too. You see to that, don't you, Violet? Taking such good care of me," Caitlyn agrees, and, Vi feels herself flush again with pride. And, okay, yeah, it turns her on a little too - she's not made of stone. Before she can get too distracted in the feeling, Caitlyn speaks again, just as softly, but with a familiar hint of demand creeping into the edges of her voice, "Stop dodging the question."

Vi rolls her eyes and drags the chair across the room closer to Caitlyn, angling it so they can face each other. Caitlyn eats with her plate perched on the corner of her desk, knees pressed together and turned slightly sideways. Vi hunches over with her own still-warm bowl in her hands and eats one-handed.

"Well," she offers through a mouthful of noodles, "what do you want?"

Caitlyn frowns at Vi's poor display of table manners but manages not to throw off their back and forth with a digression to etiquette that would only end with Vi making fun of her for the number of forks she can name anyway. "Never start a negotiation by asking what the other party wants, Vi, darling. It starts you at a disadvantage. Someone could exploit that."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Vi grins, tossing in a wink and nodding at Caitlyn's already half-cleared plate. "You did what I wanted. Think you've earned the right to exploit me a little for your troubles."