Chapter Text
If there’s one thing anyone who’s anyone needs to know about Runeterra High, it’s that the Piltovans and the Zaunites have always ruled, and they have never gotten along.
It’s a natural rivalry, really: Piltover and Zaun are disparate sides of a split town, bisected in the middle by a large highway that serves as a hemisphere marker that severs the two halves of their world. It’s not such a huge barrier when you look at it; just a stretch of asphalt, badly maintained by the municipality, with mile markers in faded blue. But to the people who live on either side, it might as well be a mountain. Unclimbable. Uncrossable.
Nobody knows that fact better than Vi. Despite being the leader of one of the two most powerful groups that have ever walked the halls of RH, she has spent her whole life being looked down on. Being lost, scared, not knowing what the next day of her life might bring. Even now, with the new semester having just started a few weeks ago, she has barely gotten her feet under her after the holiday break. She was never the best student, but things get even worse for her after long breaks, and she’s already had two conferences today about her grades. She barely even has any fucking homework, how could she already be behind?
Vi finds herself leaving her Math classroom in a similar state to a prisoner being discharged from jail: grumpy, exhausted, and discombobulated. She stares down at the list of incomplete assignments that the teacher went over with her in an effort to get her back on track before the semester gets too far underway and winces.
She feels an arm sling around her shoulders, and she knows who it is without even looking up. Mylo never did know when to cool it with the cologne. “What’s got you looking like that?”
He tries to poke into her space and look at the paper she holds, but she flicks his forehead, sending him reeling and clutching the center of his eyeballs. She sneers at him, folds the piece of paper unceremoniously, and shoves it into the baggy pocket of her cargo pants. It sits in there along with her dress code notes for the day—Mr. Roth is crazy if he thinks she’s going to change her shirt just because her abs are out, and he’s crazier if he thinks she gives a single shit about getting detention for the length of her t-shirt—and various gum wrappers and half-smoked cigarettes.
“Nothing,” she says. “Just more bullshit. Hey, you seen Senna today?”
“Nah, but I saw Akali. If you’re wondering who’s carpooling with who for the big game, she said both her and Sen’s cars are full.”
“I mean yeah, I was wondering that,” Vi says as they traverse the packed halls of Runeterra High. “But I was mainly gonna grill her for her calc notes. Damn teachers are out for my neck.”
“I get that. I’ll give her a call after school”
People try not to look at them as they pass, but Zaunites tend to draw attention, either based on the way they dress or the boisterous way they act. Vi doesn’t mind at all—why should she care that other people are worried about being loud and out there? She’s not scared of herself one bit, and everyone knows it. She shrugs her varsity jacket around her shoulders and keeps her chin up as she and Mylo pass, just to make sure nobody decides to try her nerves today. She’s not in the mood, and she makes it known.
On paper, Vi has it all. Senior captain of track and field. Awesome siblings. Stellar friends. A pack of Zaunites who would do anything for her, and who she would do anything for in return. Her life, for once, is actually going pretty well, despite the occasional bump here and there.
She’ll be damned if anyone tries to get in the way of that.
“Where’re we headed?” Mylo asks.
Vi huffs out a laugh at her adoptive brother. “Don’t you have, I don’t know a class to get your ass to?”
Mylo shrugs. “I took Home Ec credit. You only gotta show up and bake a loaf of banana bread, like, once every two weeks to get an alright grade. ‘S not like I’m doing the college thing, so what does it matter?”
“Better not let Vander hear you say that,” Vi grunts. “He’ll have your ass.”
“Baked, broiled, roasted, kebabbed,” Mylo sighs dramatically. He looks like he’s going to say something else dismissive, but he spots someone at the other end of the hall and jumps up and down. “Pow! Pow, get your ass over here!”
Vi’s face lights up when she sees her little sister, a freshman at RH and already a menace to general society, at the other end of the hall. She’s carrying some heavy-duty STEM textbooks in her spindly arms, and she’s chatting with her freshly-nabbed boyfriend Ekko, who grins back at her like a complete dork. Vi almost doesn’t want to interrupt their so-incredibly-freshman moment, but she wants to see her sister god damn it.
Powder turns around and waves them over. The Zaunites collect in the corner by the lockers that Powder freshly graffitied with her signature monkeys and neons (even if no one can prove it.) It’s Zaun territory, and it makes Vi proud to see it.
“Hey losers,” Powder says teasingly. “You guys headed to study hall? We’re headed that way.”
“I need some grub first,” Vi says. “Was planning to grab a snack from the machines. If you hit it hard enough, you can get two bags of Doritos for a dollar fifty. Want to come with?”
“You know I love Doritos,” Powder says. “Ekko? You game?”
“Of course I’m fucking game, I’m bored out of my mind,” he groans, slinging his arm around Powder’s waist. “Anything is better than what Heimerdinger has us doing in Intro to Engineering. Child’s play, I swear.”
“Okay, smarty pants,” Vi rolls her eyes and Mylo laughs beside her. “Let’s blow this joint. I gotta find Akali at some point before the end of the day to talk logistics for the game and the Zaun Bash.”
“Fuck,” Ekko sighs, ruffling his white locs. “I completely forgot that was a thing.”
“Babe,” Powder deadpans. “It happens every year.”
“Yeah, well, the start of the semester sucks. I lose track of everything.”
“Speaking of which,” Powder turns to Vi. “I have the best idea for the Piltover Prank this year. It’s time sensitive so I have to run it by you, but I think you’re going to love it. Totally makes up for that shit they pulled with the slime last year under the bleachers!”
“Okay, but remind me or I’ll forget,” Vi says. “Ekko, you know a guy for alcohol right?”
They’re lost in the buzz after that. The Zaunites busy themselves with talking about plans for the game and for the Bash, all the while the halls of Runeterra bustle around them, a cacophony of teenage angst and drama. Vi knows everyone at this school, and everyone knows her, for better and for worse. This is her stomping ground, has been for so many years, and she feels nothing but comfort and pride walking these halls. There aren’t a whole lot of situations where Vi feels big in this hard, hard world, but here at RH, she feels like with her friends at her side, she could take on the whole world.
“Oh jeez,” Powder mutters. “Here comes trouble.”
Vi’s eyes snap up and fuck, she spoke too soon.
The Piltovans gather at the end of the hall. They stand with an air of superiority, which just grates at Vi, their group tight like the unified ranks of an army. They sport a variety of varsity jackets not unlike Vi’s, but much more put-together. Their hair is sleek, their style highbrow, and as soon as they see the Zaunites appear in the hall with them, they immediately turn their disdainful stares toward them.
Mylo puffs up his chest. Ekko tucks Powder closer to his side. Vi sticks her hands in her varsity jacket, tucking her chin so she can look all the more menacing as she locks eyes with each and every Piltovan, using her best “don’t fuck with us” stare.
Then her eyes lock with baby blues, and Vi’s heart jumps in her chest.
Caitlyn Kiramman stands in the center of the pack. Captain of the cheer squad and the rifle team, she sports a varsity jacket with a variety of pins showing her impressive rank. Her hair, silky and black, cascades down her shoulders in perfectly styled uniformity. Her pleated skirt swishes around her long, long legs, and Vi can’t help but stare. Caitlyn must catch the slow flicker of her eyes because her lips part in something that would have looked like awe if Vi didn’t know any better.
But she does know better. She knows Caitlyn Kiramman, de facto leader of the Piltovans and resident Runeterra royalty, would never look at her with any expression other than disgust.
She watches Caitlyn’s eyebrows draw together. Ahri whispers something to her, but Caitlyn doesn’t take her eyes off Vi. The look between them is intense, charged with all the things the Piltovans hate about the Zaunites, and all the things the Zaunites hate about the Piltovans.
Time freezes between them, as it often does.
Something in Vi’s stomach burns hot as the sun, as it often does.
And Caitlyn flicks her perfect hair and turns away from Vi first, as she always does.
Reality snaps back, and the Zaunites move past the Piltovans with Vi still at the head. She tucks her hands even deeper into her pockets as the Zaunites talk shit around her, grumbling about the Piltovans and their pretty, privileged lives. As they talk she barely listens, because all of a sudden there’s nothing but blue eyes and dark hair in her mind, coupled with the fire that has not—and will not—quit burning inside of her.
Because nobody at Runeterra High has ever been able to get under Vi’s skin like Caitlyn.
* * *
The days come and pass in a flurry of make-up assignments and party plans. Vi teams up with Akali and Zeri to make carpool plans to the big game that’s coming up in just a few weeks, as well as for the Valentine’s Day Pep Rally that falls right before it. It’s the first home game against their bitter rival, Noxus High, and every year the school goes all-out. This year is no different, especially since the game just so happens to coincide with a holiday.
Zaun always goes all-out, and they can’t be upstaged by Piltover again this year, they simply cannot.
Vi is stressed with all the planning she’s had to do to prepare for all of the events—both school sanctioned and not—that her group is involved in. She’s running on empty, and it doesn’t help that Powder has been buzzing around her like a fly for almost a week now, pestering her about the Piltover Prank.
“Vi,” she’d said about a thousand times. “I really need to talk to you—”
“We have to do this before the pep rally—”
“Won’t have time before the Zaun Bash—”
“Viktor already got all the paper—”
“Still not sure who to use for it—”
"She never dates so it'll be perfect to get under her skin—"
“Logistics of picking locks—”
“Can’t wait to see the look on her face when she—”
Eventually, she went from giving noncommittal answers to just ignoring her sister entirely, as there is so much to do and such little time to do it. It was bad enough that most of Vi’s afternoons are taken up by practice for her chosen sport, but now she has to worry about getting her grades back up, and Vander has been on her ass about applying to graduate, and every time she turns a corner these days she’s seen Caitlyn Kiramman’s stupid perfect lips sneering at her, and… and…
“Hello?” her sister snaps her fingers in front of her face. “Earth to Vi? This prank isn’t going to plan itself—”
“Fuck, Powder!” Vi explodes, hands tightening into white-knuckled fists against her pants. “Just do whatever, okay? I don’t fucking care right now!”
Her sister blinks at her, expression slack. The Zaunites are all sitting on the bleachers, watching the kids below practice shot-put, and Powder isn’t the only person who’s staring at her. Mylo, Claggor, Senna, and Viktor all look at her like she just grew a second head, and that head just did all the exploding.
A whistle sounds below, and the athletes begin to run laps. Everything smells like fresh-cut grass, and it’s overwhelming Vi’s senses. She needs a god damn nap.
Powder’s face falls, expression flattening into something hard, reserved. She grabs her bag in a huff. “Fine, okay. I guess I know what I’m gonna do now. Thanks or whatever.”
Vi feels her chest deflate. She presses a hand to her forehead, pushing her bangs up and out of her face, and says, “Powder, wait, I didn’t mean—”
It’s too late, though. Powder is gone, and the whistle has been blown again.
“Dude,” Claggor says. “What gives?”
Vi watches her sister’s blue braids swing as she hustles down the stairs, making a beeline towards the entrance back into the school, and sighs. “Just my hot fucking head again.”
* * *
Vi feels like shit for the next two days. Powder isn’t exactly giving her the cold shoulder—they’re sisters and best friends, it’s kind of difficult—but she hasn’t let Vi forget about her slight either. Vi manages to keep her mind off it by finalizing the plans for the Zaun Bash and the Pep Rally, excited to finally show those stuffy Piltovans who’s boss, but she’s been seeing members of the rival group everywhere she looks, probably making plans of their own.
She sees Caitlyn, too—enough times to make her physically uncomfortable. They don’t share any classes, because Little Miss Know-It-All is in all AP and Vi is lucky to not be in remedial something-or-other, but they do share a lunch hour which means that she gets to stare at the back of her perfect head, watch her sit in those perfect little skirts of hers, and watch her eat tiny, polite bites like a fucking chickadee for longer than she’d ever care to normally. The Piltovans and Zaunites eat on the opposite sides of the cafeteria, but it’s a small enough space that their eyes catch on occasion, and Vi is always first to turn hers to the ground.
It's no different today. Vi eats the last of her burger quickly as the Zaunites laugh, yell, and joke around her, making the most noise out of anyone in the whole cafeteria. She stares at the back of Caitlyn’s head as she turns, face coming into perfect profile, and the harsh light in the room seems to frame the straight line of her nose impeccably. She points with her fork, twirling it like she’s telling a story, and her best friend Jayce laughs so hard he almost spews milk out his nose. The Piltovans hang on her every word, mesmerized by the beauty in front of them. It’s enough to make Vi gag.
“See something you like?”
Vi snaps back to attention, and it’s Ekko who spoke to her. Clearly they don’t know where she was looking, or he wouldn’t have made the joke knowing it was a Piltovan she was staring at, but her cheeks burn even so. The other Zaunites giggle.
“Shut the fuck up, Little Man,” she says, and the rest of the table ooh and ahh between them, but Ekko only grins wider and remarks about messing with her.
The bell rings and the Zaunites file out amongst the rest of the students, shoving each other playfully like puppies in a pen. They gather in the hallway near the cafeteria which holds many of the senior lockers—prime real estate, if you ask Vi—and a good amount of foot traffic coming from various places in the school. People of all years from freshman up to senior hurry through this hall, moving from one place to another like blood cells in a huge artery. It’s shocking just how orderly this chaos can feel, and somehow everyone always ends up where they need to go.
“We’ve got liquor and beer for the Bash,” Ekko reports mischievously. “Zeri was even saying she might be able to get her hands on one of her dad’s kegs, but no promises on that.”
“Excellent.” Vi’s grin is just as wicked. “And you’re sure Benzo won’t mind if we host it at yours?”
“Hell no, Benzo can hang,” Ekko assures her, arm glued to Powder like it has been for weeks. “He’ll make sure no one gives us trouble. He might make us listen to a bunch of stories about ‘the good ol’ days’ when he and Vander went here and tore the whole place up, but other than that—”
“Ahh!”
A yelp cuts through the hallway, followed by the clatter of a locker door flung against another locker. A huge sound shares the space with the exclamation, like a hundred loose pieces of paper sliding off a desk in the middle of class, and everyone in the hall looks around for where it came from.
There’s a loose circle of Piltovans gathered around a section of lockers, and Vi cranes her neck to see what they’re looking at. A few students part, clearing her line of sight, and what she sees she almost can’t believe.
Caitlyn is standing in front of a locker, presumably her own, hunched over with the door flung wide. Her eyes are blown wide as she stares in shock and horror at what sits below. And above. And adjacent to her frozen form. And… well, just about everywhere.
Vi barely registers that the flood of things that have just dropped out of her locker like a sack of bricks are individually cut-out hearts, some more hastily done than others. Some of them have words on them, some of them have photos or drawings on them. The only thing that seems to join them together stylistically is that they are all, in fact, shaped like valentines.
Lux immediately drops down and begins to help pick them up, ever the good Samaritan. Everyone in the hall is turned to look at her now, and there are clearly too many valentines strewn on the ground to get rid of in any quick fashion. It even looks like some of them are taped up in her locker or suspended by string from the top. Those’ll be a bitch to get off, for sure. In the midst of the silence, Caitlyn reaches down and, with shaking hands, picks up a single large heart off the floor.
And when Vi sees what is written on that card, her whole soul leaves her body.
Be Mine?
<3 Vi
Vi’s mouth drops open, and so do her eyes, and suddenly she sees her own face in a variety of embarrassing poses, both attractive and jokingly hideous, and she realizes exactly what kind of prank Powder wanted to pull on the Piltovans.
Zeri is the first to start laughing. She doubles over and squeals, “Oh my gosh, Kiramman, your face!”
The rest of Zaun is quick to pick it up, and soon the rest of the hallway is either gasping, laughing, or whispering in a strange combination of horror and mirth.
“You’ve got an admirer, Kiramman, what’cha gonna do about it?” Ekko teases.
“The undatable princess has a date, go figure.”
“Oh God, look at her—"
“Is someone going to help—”
“Piltover rattled by Zaun, never thought I’d see it—”
Vi turns to her sister, who is laughing and clapping her hands together like she’s watching a performance at the circus. When their eyes catch, Powder looks like the cat that ate the canary.
“I told you it would be epic,” she squeals in a half-whisper. “I just needed someone to give me a little inspiration, hope you don’t mind.”
Vi doesn’t really know what to do right now. All of Zaun is around her, laughing at the Piltovans as they scramble around Caitlyn, asking her if she’s okay, trying to cover the spectacle, but it’s only making the whole scene worse.
Vi hates the Piltovans. She does. She’s never held any love for any of them, much less their stuck-up leader. She should be laughing along with her comrades, ecstatic at one of the most successful Piltover Pranks they’ve ever pulled.
One look at Caitlyn’s face, however, and the frozen, mortified horror that stretches across it, is enough to sour her stomach.
Caitlyn’s eyes flicker up to hers, eyes wide like a deer in headlights, and it does something to Vi. Powder slings an arm around her shoulders and makes a face back at her as all of Zaun laughs in her face. Vi’s shoes feel glued to the floor.
I could get lost in those, she thinks like an absolute madwoman among the carnage, trapped by the bluest eyes in the whole world.
She’s trapped, still, when those eyes begin to water.
Before Vi can say something, anything, Caitlyn lets the fake valentine drop out of her hands. She looks around at the people staring her way, and when she takes a step back she stumbles on the pile of heart-shaped paper. She covers her mouth with both hands and runs for the stairwell, disappearing in a crowd of people.
“Caitlyn!” Mel shouts after her as Lux and Evelynn try their best to shove the papers back into her locker and close it with any kind of urgency.
Seething, Mel turns her attention to the laughing Zaunites and marches up, staring at Vi with all the bitterness in the world. Vi almost shrinks under the withering gaze. Mel’s finger meets the center of her chest.
“You’re a real jackass, Vi, you know that?” she hisses between her clenched teeth. Vi opens her mouth to reply but she’s gone, running in the direction Caitlyn went.
Vi is left reeling as the Piltovans clean up their mess and the Zaunites all stick around to watch the fruits of their labors, ripe for the picking. She feels Powder jostle her, arm still slung around her shoulders.
“That was gold, wasn’t it?” she says, brushing a tear from her eye. Tears. Tears, fuck, Caitlyn was crying. “We’ve gotta tell Vander. He’s gonna be so happy we stuck it to those—”
Vi shakes her arm off, and Powder stops.
“Vi?” she whispers. “What—”
“I…” Vi says, clutching her chest. She feels like if she doesn’t her heart might just leap right out of it, and she might bleed out on the floor all over those fucking valentines. She backs up one, step, two, and suddenly the stairwell Caitlyn disappeared down is all she can think about, all she can see.
Her body knows what she needs before her mind does. Her feet carry her, bolting in the direction Caitlyn disappeared in, leaving Zaun behind her.
* * *
Vi doesn’t even know where to look, or why.
She doesn’t see Mel at all, so this must be some new, unsearched direction. Not that she wanted to be on the receiving end of Medarda’s anger again, anyway, but something in her feels like she deserves it.
She doesn’t even know why she feels so bad. It was this time last year that Vi showed up under the bleachers after receiving a text from “Senna” only to arrive and get a whole tub of red-tinted slime poured on her head from above courtesy of the Piltovans, and if you’ve ever tried to get slime out of hair, you know it’s bitch and a half. She was pissed as all hell about it.
The year before that, Zaun slashed all of the tires of the seniors, and cut the wires to the cameras so nobody could see it was them. Three tires on each car, the dirty way.
The year before that, Piltover tied all the freshman with clear packing tape and dangled them by the feet over the pool and filmed it.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Always.
What’s so bad about that?
She runs down the back stairwell, the one closest to the teacher’s lounges, a stairwell no student in their right mind would be caught in because the teachers come and go so often. Vi is late for class, but she doesn’t give a fuck. Her footsteps are the only sound she can hear for a while.
Then, a whimper. Small. Soft.
Vi pauses at the landing, and there she is, below: Caitlyn, arms wrapped around her knees, curled up in a tiny ball against the wall with a curtain of dark hair hiding her shaking form. She heard Vi’s footsteps, and as soon as Vi stops, Caitlyn looks up.
Her face is puffy. There is red at the tip of her nose, below her eyes, at her cheekbones. Her chest heaves, half-angry, half-upset. She looks broken. Embarrassed.
She looks like a force of nature.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands, venomous and exhausted.
Vi pauses, because fuck, what is she doing here?
Instead of coming up with answers, she tromps down the stairs. She stands above Caitlyn for a moment, judging the extent of her anger, and when her back hits the wall and she slides down to sit beside her, legs spaying and crooking beside her curled form, she doesn’t make a move to get away from her. She looks too tired for that.
The silence is deafening. It’s class time, which means there’s no one to come interrupt them, and suddenly that fact seems all the more terrifying to Vi.
“That was low,” Vi finds herself whispering. “Sorry.”
Caitlyn doesn’t move, but the sniffling stops. She raises her head, but she keeps her gaze in front of her, eyes softly closed.
“I don’t need your pity,” she says.
“Oh I pity you, Kiramman,” Vi barks out a laugh. “I think a thousand things about you every day, and most of them aren’t that great. But I don’t pity you for this.”
Caitlyn’s head ticks in her direction, just a fraction. Her eyes open, and she looks at Vi quizzically. Vi sighs, scratching her head until her hair is surely a tangled, worried mess.
“We crossed a line,” she says simply. “We don’t fuck with feelings, period. Not my style.”
“I believe your friends would beg to differ,” Caitlyn snarls. “And there are no feelings involved.”
“Ditto, princess,” Vi says. “Wasn’t up for debate. But that doesn’t make what happened cool. I might think you’re an uppity bitch, but public humiliation is a little harsh.”
“Some leader you are, then,” Caitlyn whispers, and her comment hits Vi right in the gut.
“Alright, you’re really mad, I get it,” she sighs. “I deserve that at least.”
Caitlyn doesn’t even deign to respond. She and Vi just look at each other until it’s too uncomfortable to do so anymore, and Vi turns away, digging down deep for ideas on what to say.
“I mean, I was pissed last year, too,” she says. “Y’know, with the slime thing. Had to cut that shit right off my head. Gotta hand it to you—that was sick.”
Caitlyn blinks at Vi. “You… what?”
“You heard me.”
Caitlyn pauses, pursing her plush lips, red from worrying them between her teeth. “I didn’t know that.”
“What, did you think I just decided to shave half my hair off for fun?”
Caitlyn pauses, pondering. To Vi’s utter shock, something that might be a smile plays at the corner of her mouth. “Seemed like something you would do.”
A laugh escapes Vi’s throat before she can hold it back, and Caitlyn’s shoulders relax. “Are you saying you think you know me, Caitlyn Kiramman?”
Caitlyn sits up a little straighter and loosens her death grip on her knees, letting them fall slightly. Her skirt has ridden up, showing her shorts underneath that are there for modesty purposes. Her long legs stretch out beside Vi’s, and Vi feels suddenly like she’s about to combust for some odd reason.
She looks way prettier when she’s relaxed, Vi thinks, and she wants to slap herself for it. This is Caitlyn they’re talking about. Caitlyn Kiramman.
“No, Vi,” she says finally. “I don’t know you.”
It’s then that Vi’s heart and her brain diverge completely. Everything housed in her head begs her to close off this conversation, to shy away from all of the neurons that fire every time she lays eyes on Caitlyn, on her hair, her skin, her lips, her legs, her eyes. She said her apology, shouldn’t that be enough? Can’t that be enough?
No, her heart screams. It’s not enough.
“Then I’ll give you the chance to,” Vi says without thinking.
Caitlyn freezes. Color rises into her cheeks again, and that in turn makes Vi blush. “What?”
“I—I mean,” Vi says, mind scrambling to catch up to her mouth. “Look, the Zaun Bash is this weekend. Consider it an apology for all that shit, and an olive branch to Piltover. Bring whoever you want and come see Zaun for yourself.”
Caitlyn searches her face. She examines Vi’s whole expression like she’s a puzzle that Caitlyn can’t quite figure out, or worse, a bomb she can’t quite figure out how to diffuse. Vi has never been so thoroughly searched. She feels raw. Untethered.
“Is this another trick?” she asks, voice dipping back into a whisper. Vi hates how hurt she still sounds.
“If it is,” Vi says, “you can feel free to retaliate however you want. Hit me, cover me in paint, egg my house, run me over with your car. All I can do is promise you it’s not. Believe me or don’t.”
Caitlyn decides. Vi watches her decide, sees the gears grinding against each other in her mind, eyes still unable to tear themselves from Vi. Everything in Vi’s body wants to reach over, to fix her hair, to rub the red out of her cheekbones. It takes a thousand reminders of this is Caitlyn, this is Caitlyn, this is Caitlyn to keep her from learning just how soft the Piltover princess’ skin really is.
“Okay,” she says.
Vi lifts her eyebrows in shock. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Caitlyn nods. “Okay. But if this is a ruse, I promise you that Zaun will never recover. I will unleash hell on your head like you have never experienced.”
Vi doesn’t know why, but the smile that stretches across her face is as big as the sun, and something like excitement blooms in her chest. Caitlyn’s tears are gone, and she’s looking at Vi with the ghost of trust, eyes soft and blue.
Vi’s not sure what she’s aiming to get out of this. She certainly doesn’t think she and Caitlyn will ever be friends—hell, she’s shocked they’re even getting along right now, if she’s being totally honest—but there is a warmth that blooms within her whenever Caitlyn looks her way, and that’s not a warmth that her body can deny. If she can bask in it for even a moment without shame, then going out on a limb would be worth it. This vulnerability, this uncertainty—it’ll be worth it.
This would be worth it.
“Okay, princess,” she chuckles, the sound echoing like bubbles through the stairwell. “It’s a date.”