Archive of Our Own ^beta

Caitlyn doesn’t know what stirs her awake, but she groans softly as she comes to wakefulness. She doesn’t want to wake Vi up, but she wants to make sure she’s fine too. She doesn’t have the energy to open her eyes yet – eye, she’s still not used to it – so she reaches over with her hand, trying to feel for Vi.  

The bed is big, there’s enough space for the both of them to lay on it and not be able to reach each other even if they extended their arms toward the middle of it. Except, it seems like Vi always gravitates toward her, even in her sleep. When they share this bed Vi is always cuddled up to her, or if she’s not, Caitlyn wouldn’t have to move more than a couple of inches to be able to touch her.  

She can’t find her even when she extends her arm out. Caitlyn sighs, finally cracking open her eye to confirm her suspicion that Vi is gone. The sheets are left rumpled where she has slept, the covers haphazardly pushed toward Caitlyn’s body.  

Caitlyn really doesn’t want to get up, she’s exhausted and she’d much rather wrap herself up in the woman she loves and go back to sleep. She gives Vi the benefit of the doubt and waits a few minutes in case she has went to relieve herself.  

This is not the first time she has woken up to find Vi gone and she hopes she’s not doing the same thing she had been all the other times.  

When Vi doesn’t come back in her allocated time Caitlyn sits up, throwing her legs over the edge of the bed. She puts on her slippers, standing up and walking toward the hook where she keeps her robe. She quickly puts it on, tying it off around her waist and walks out of the bedroom.  

She’s caught Vi out of their bed in the middle of the night for the forth time now. The first two, Caitlyn had found her in the living room, the third she had been in the kitchen. Those are the first two places Caitlyn looks for her but to no avail.  

She checks some more rooms before she eventually finds Vi in Caitlyn’s office. Caitlyn must open the door very quietly because at first Vi doesn’t seem to notice.  

Caitlyn’s heart still hurts at the sight of Vi even if she knew exactly what she'd find.  

Vi’s sitting on the floor, back propped against Caitlyn’s desk. In one hand she holds her enforcer badge and in the other she holds a bottle of cheap liquor.  

Vi lifts the bottle up to her lips and takes a swig. She winces as the liquor slides down her throat and then she chokes on it as she notices Caitlyn standing in the doorway.   

Her lips move and she exhales something that Caitlyn thinks might be ‘fuck’. She places both the bottle and her badge on the floor before she pushes herself upright.  

She’s in front of Caitlyn in no more than a couple of seconds. “Cait, I-“  

“How long have you been here?” Caitlyn interrupts, she clenches her jaw, wills herself to keep calm and collected. “It’s cold, you could’ve at least put something on.”  

And it is cold, they had both fallen asleep bare. Vi has put on a pair of underwear and a short tank top that reaches her mid waist. She must still be cold, they don’t keep the heating on during the night in the entire house.  

“Cait,” she tries again, her hand reaches out to touch Caitlyn’s forearm but she must see something on Caitlyn’s face that makes her drop her hand right back. “I was just about to come back to bed. Can we go?”  

Caitlyn glances behind Vi , at the bottle that sits next to her desk. She sighs, she knows that Vi is lying to her, that she would probably sit here on the floor, alone and freezing and drink herself to a blackout, climb back into bed and fall asleep.  

“We can,” Caitlyn says, and then she adds, she doesn’t mean for it to come out cruel but it still does, “You should go close your bottle first. You don’t want it to expire for tomorrow.”  

Vi grabs at her own forearm instead, to have something to do with it or to calm herself. “It’s not like that,” she whispers, staring at the floor next to Caitlyn’s feet.  

“It’s not like what?” Caitlyn asks. “It’s not like you’re going behind my back to buy any liquor you can find? It’s not like you’re hiding it around the house and sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to drink?”  

Vi sighs, finally looking up at Caitlyn through her hair. “I just need something to take off the edge and help me sleep.”  

“Why are you hiding then?” Caitlyn asks.  

“I- I don’t know,” Vi whispers defeated. She steps closer and Caitlyn is immediately hit with the strong smell of cheap liquor on her breath. “I keep doing the wrong thing, no matter what I try. I leave and I fuck up, I stay and I fuck up worse. Powder is gone because of me and now I’m doing this too.”  

She gestures between the two of them, her movements are a little awkward and there’s the barest slur of her vowels.  

She’s drunk.  

“I’ll lose you too,” Vi says.  

Caitlyn exhales, she lets the bitterness toward VI of what she’s doing behind her back leave along with her breath. It’s not doing Caitlyn any good and it’s definitely not doing Vi any good.  

She breathes in and tries to devise a plan of how she can fix this.  

“You won’t,” Caitlyn promises. “You can’t get rid of me either. What is it you said? The dirt under your nails?” Caitlyn tries to lighten the mood, gives Vi a smile. It doesn’t seem to accomplish anything, only makes it so Vi’s eyes fill up with tears.  

Their relationship is not as new now as it used to be and Caitlyn has come to know that if there’s one thing that can sooth Vi down it’s physical touch.  

Her hands find their place on top of Vi’s shoulders and she brings her in, leaves a kiss on top of her head before she pulls Vi fully into a hug. Vi’s hands wrap around her middle automatically as she hugs her back hard. Her breath is warm and wet against Caitlyn’s neck.  

“I’m so sorry, Cait,” Vi says, sniffling into Caitlyn’s neck. Her grip on Caitlyn becomes even tighter as she pulls her in as close as humanly possible. “I can’t do anything right.”  

“That’s not true.” Caitlyn’s fingers trace the places between the straps of Vi’s tank top and sure enough her skin is cold, Caitlyn feels her shiver at the touch. “Come on, let’s go back to bed and we can talk there, okay?”  

“I don’t know what to do. I always make the wrong choice. Please, Cait, tell me what to do,” Vi is begging now, her fingers digging into the soft material of Caitlyn’s robe.  

“Let’s start with you coming to bed,” Caitlyn says, she smooths her hands down Vi’s back as she waits for a response.  

Vi nods against her shoulder and for a moment Caitlyn thinks that she won’t let go of their embrace. Vi does let go eventually, fingers tracing down Caitlyn’s arm as if she’s trying to procrastinate the moment she has to let go.  

Caitlyn catches her hand just as it slides down the back of Caitlyn’s own and gives Vi a small smile. They make their way out of the office hand in hand, they climb up the stairs to the second floor and enter the bedroom all in a quiet sort of understanding that they’ll speak when they’re safely in bed.  

Caitlyn sits on her side of the bed, kicking of her slippers. On the other side Vi has crawled to the middle and has started undressing herself again. It doesn’t take her long as she’s only wearing her underclothes. She tosses them off the side of the bed and crawls closer to Caitlyn to untie and push away her robe.  

It’s nothing sexual - Caitlyn knows that - Vi just likes to be as close to Caitlyn as she can and Caitlyn has come to understand that the feeling of Caitlyn’s bare skin against Vi’s sooths her. Still, that understanding does nothing to stop warmth from stirring low in Caitlyn’s belly when Vi’s touch lingers on her bare shoulder.  

Caitlyn swings her legs up on the bed, her hand wrapping around the back of Vi’s neck to give her a quick and reassuring kiss. Vi hums against Caitlyn’s lips. Her mouth tastes strongly of cheap whiskey so Caitlyn keeps the kiss short, caressing the side of Vi’s face softly as she pulls back.  

“Talk to me, Vi,” she whispers in the dark.  

Vi’s hands find her body, one rests on the top of her thigh, the other at her hip. “After you and I parted ways, I lost the last person I had. The only thing that kept me company was the bottle in my hand.”  

Vi’s thumb swipes at Caitlyn’s hip, her gaze intently locked in on the motion. Caitlyn stays quiet, waits for Vi to finish voicing her thoughts.  

“I have you back now. I know that I’m not alone. I should stop drinking, but every time I close my eyes and try to go to sleep all I see is my little sister holding onto my hand, all I see is her falling down into the nothingness along with our dad.” Vi inhales shakily, she sniffles again and continues. “I couldn’t save them. I can never do the right thing.”  

“Ever thought that there was no right choice, no perfect something you can do that will magically fix everything,” Caitlyn says. “Believe me I’ve tried going down that path.”  

Vi gives her a small, sad smile. “That’s the only path I’ve ever known how to go down on.”  

“You still want me to tell you what to do?” Caitlyn asks.  

“Yes.”  

“Every time you want to drink you come to me, understand?” Caitlyn says. “Every time you can’t sleep you wake me up instead of sneaking off to drink.”  

“So I keep you awake too? I don’t want to torture you with my problems. You have enough on your plate as it is.”  

“You’ll come to me if you can’t sleep,” Caitlyn says very slowly, steel in her voice, the same tone she uses when she’s giving orders to her enforcers. “Do you understand?”  

“Aye, aye, Commander,” Vi says, a little humor returning to her voice. Her hand raising up to her forehead in a mock salute.  

“I have my ways to help sleep find you,” Caitlyn says, her voice taking on a more seductive note, hoping it will change the mood. Her hand finds Vi’s side to caress it in a suggestive manner. “Do you want me to demonstrate?”  

Vi smiles at her sweetly if not a little sadly. “You know I’ll never say no to you, but you really don’t have to. I know you’re tired and I don’t want you to have to deal with me too any more than you already have.”  

“I’ll pretend that I only heard the first part,” Caitlyn says, her hand trailing lower down Vi’s bare body.   

Her hand slips between her mostly closed legs, pushing between her lips to find warm, soft skin. Unsurprisingly Vi isn’t wet yet, except when Caitlyn pushes her fingers lower, she feels the faintest hint of arousal coat her fingertips. As she extracts her hand from in between Vi’s legs she makes sure to flick her clit just to hear Vi’s surprised, sharp inhale.  

“Cait,” Vi whispers and Caitlyn has learned that Vi sometimes just likes to mumble her name when they do this, to feel the way her mouth shapes around the vowels and consonants of Caitlyn’s name even if she doesn’t have anything to say.   

Caitlyn doesn’t question her, if she wants to say more, she will. She only pushes Vi to lay down on the bed. She kisses her briefly as she settles on top of her. Vi still tastes horribly of liquor so Caitlyn moves her lips down Vi’s jaw and neck, kissing the skin there instead.  

She pulls away fully, looking down at Vi, bare and waiting and trusting. Caitlyn caresses her face, brushes her hair away from it. “I’ve got you, Violet,” Caitlyn promises. “I’ve got you.”  

“I know,” Vi says, her voice is soft and low in the quiet of the room. “I love you, Cait.”  

Caitlyn smiles down at her softly, leaning down to kiss her again despite the lingering taste on her lips. “I love you too.”  

Caitlyn breaks the kiss again, she brings her fingers up to her own mouth and slides two of them inside, tasting the barely there hint of Vi’s arousal on the tips of her fingers. She sucks her fingers into her mouth, coating them in her saliva as Vi watches her with rapt attention, her lips parted as she sucks in uneven breaths.  

Caitlyn pulls the fingers out of her mouth, letting more spit drip onto them. She brings her hand back between Vi’s parted thighs, smearing her saliva over her folds, she dips her finger low again, pleased to find thick arousal dripping from Vi’s hole.  

She presses two fingers lightly into Vi. “Are you ready, Violet?”   

Vi’s eyes soften and she nods. “Always ready for you.”  

Caitlyn pushes two fingers confidently inside, it’s a tighter fit than usual and Vi whimpers under her. Caitlyn kisses the side of her face, her forehead, her fingers stopping only when they can’t go any further.  

Vi’s hands find her back, holding on to her as Caitlyn coaxes pleasure out of Vi slow and sure with curling fingers and slow thrusts that have Vi’s muscles spasming. She has come to know Vi’s body as good as she knows her own, knows what makes her toes curl, what makes her cry out in pleasure.  

Caitlyn usually likes to take her time with Vi, drag out her pleasure, make her feel good and loved. Tonight, she pushes Vi over the edge in only a couple of minutes, doesn’t stop until Vi is coming again.  

Her hands leave Caitlyn’s back to fist in the sheets, always making sure she doesn’t hurt her even in the throes of passion. Her body spasms around Caitlyn’s fingers, head thrown back in pleasure.  

Caitlyn lowers her lips down her chest, tasting the sweat that has beaded across the skin. She makes her way lower, kissing Vi’s toned stomach, her hip. She settles between her legs before Vi can recover from her second orgasm.  

“Cait,” Vi says, her fingers tangle in Cait’s hair, gently carding through the strands. “You’re wrecking me here.”  

Caitlyn smiles, pulls a thigh over her shoulder. “That’s the point, don’t you think?” she says pressing her lips into the inner part of Vi’s other thigh.  

It doesn’t take her long to bring Vi to her third orgasm. When she climbs up her body, Vi can barely keep her eyes open, she’s flushed a pretty pink color but she still has the energy to banter, “You really did a number on me, Cupcake.”  

“Did I now?” Caitlyn pulls the covers over both of them, tangling their bare legs and pulling Vi close to her.  

“Give me five minutes and I’ll -”  

“Shh,” Caitlyn says. “Tomorrow. Now sleep.”  

“But, Cait-”  

“You wanted me to tell you what to do. Is that no longer what you want?”  

“It is. What I want.”  

“Then sleep.”  

Vi grumbles a little more, but she gives up. It doesn’t take long for her breathing to even out as she falls asleep.  

Caitlyn holds her a little closer, a little harder.  

“I have you, Vi. Always.”