Chapter Text
They meet here every year. It never gets easier.
Caitlyn scans the horizon as she waits, drumming her fingers against the porch rail and turning her head toward the faint northern wind whistling in through the trees that make up the thin excuse for woods that border the property around her home.
Vi’s late. She’s always late.
Caitlyn resists the urge to pace the porch Vi built three years ago, instead digging her nails into the rail and sending up a prayer to whatever god is still alive that she shows up. She’s likely running behind because she hates coming home empty-handed , Caitlyn tells herself. She’s fine. She’s just stopped to get something for you, the same as she has every other year. She’s going to come.
Because that’s always the danger she can’t allow herself to fully contemplate: Vi could simply not come. And Caitlyn would never know why.
The sound of tires crunching on gravel makes her jump and reach for the rifle propped near her right elbow, more on reflex than anything else. She’s about three seconds away from lifting it to her shoulder when she realizes the car is Vi’s and that she likely has nothing to fear…so long as Vi didn’t bring any pursuers along with her.
“I’m alone!” is the first thing Vi shouts the second she emerges from the ancient red car she calls her own. Caitlyn lets her hand fall from the gun, too busy taking in Vi’s hunched shoulders and bandaged neck to pay attention to much else.
“What happened?” Caitlyn asks, trying to keep the breathless panic from her voice as Vi climbs the rickety porch stairs. The moment Vi is within reach, Caitlyn presses a hand to the bandage at her throat, fingers searching and seeking for the seam of the dirty fabric. “Vi, did-”
“It’s clean, Cait.” Her voice sounds like gravel, the roughness of it catching on all of Caitlyn’s frayed nerves. "I'm fine."
They stare at one another for a long time. There was a time when Caitlyn would have cupped Vi's cheek, run her thumb along the scars near Vi's lips and jaw, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. But that time has long since passed. It always feels like this, every damn time Vi comes home: like she’s missing a vital piece of herself that’s been found, and like the jagged edges can’t ever connect the way they’re meant to.
“The bandages are neither clean nor fine, Vi." She's proud of how steady her voice is. Her hands are, too; when she reaches to unwind the bandage from Vi’s neck, her fingers barely tremble.
But Vi shifts away. “And patching me up on the porch, where we’re both exposed to the elements, is a smart idea because…?”
Caitlyn freezes, good sense catching up to her worry. “Right. Sorry. Come in.”
It feels strange to invite Vi into the home that was once hers too, but she ducks inside like a stranger and stands in the middle of the kitchen in much the same way, turning her head obediently as Caitlyn unwraps, then rewraps the nasty gash.
“What happened?” Caitlyn asks softly, pressing tender fingers to the spot where Vi’s pulse beats.
“A fight. The other guy had a knife.”
Caitlyn knows Vi expects her to ask did you win? but she doesn’t. In Vi’s world, winning is everything. In Caitlyn’s world, winning simply means coming home alive. That’s part of why Vi always leaves and why Caitlyn always remains.
“How long are you staying this time?” she asks, feet scuffing too loudly on the damaged wooden floor as she busies herself tidying things up. This way, she doesn’t have to look at Vi too closely.
Vi drops her backpack on the floor, rummages around, and produces a small tin of candied almonds. Caitlyn’s favorite. She takes them with a grateful smile that feels more like something given to a stranger, not a…whatever Vi is to her now, and Vi looks away – but not before Caitlyn sees how her lips quiver.
“I…I don’t know.” Vi’s voice trembles. When Caitlyn looks at her, Vi looks back, then away again, though not quickly enough for Caitlyn to see the tears in her eyes. “I lost her. Two days before…” She touches her finger to the new wrappings on her neck.
Caitlyn longs to wrap her arms around Vi’s torso and press her forehead to Vi’s as she used to. To offer the physical comfort that Vi so often denies herself. To kiss her like they aren’t on two different paths anymore…
But instead, she merely reaches out a hand and rests it between Vi’s shoulder blades. “I’m sorry, darling.”
She’s not sure if it’s the touch or the words that make Vi shudder, but either way, the shivers under her palm make Caitlyn’s blood run hot and hungry in her veins.
This is the fourth year they’ve met here, at this house. Four long and lonely years since Caitlyn decided to maintain her role of sheriff even as the world began crumbling. Four long and terrifying years since Vi had fled town in search of her sister, abandoning safety for danger through a series of contentious fights that had almost cost Caitlyn and Vi each other.
Instead, Caitlyn barely has her at all. But she has her. Once a year. For a few days.
Maybe this time, Caitlyn thinks selfishly as she watches Vi sleep in the dawn light, she can keep her here for longer.
Between bites of dinner at the scarred kitchen table that was once both of theirs, Vi had told Caitlyn there was no sign anywhere of her lost sister anymore, not even the vague tales of explosions and burnt-out buildings that had once kept Vi’s search alive.
While Caitlyn would never allow herself to hope for someone else’s death – and certainly not Vi’s sister, who has become Caitlyn's family too – she does dare to wish that maybe Vi would stay a while longer. Just this once.
It hurts so much to watch her leave.
“You’re staring,” the other woman murmurs without opening her eyes. Caitlyn briefly worries that it’s a sign of failure, her being so lost in the peace of the moment that she failed to recognize the hitch of breath and shift of body that has always indicated Vi’s transition from sleep to waking. It had taken two years for her to unlearn the instinct of jerking awake in a blind panic, but Caitlyn knows damn well Vi will likely always be a light sleeper. If the end of the world hadn’t taught her that skill, Stillwater still would have.
“Sorry,” Caitlyn whispers back, resisting the urge to lean forward and press a kiss to Vi’s tattooed shoulder.
“Don’t be.” Brilliant, exhausted blue-gray eyes flutter open, meeting Caitlyn’s with an incalculable expression. “You okay?”
I missed you. I wish you would stay. I wish I didn’t hate it so much when you leave.
“I’m fine.”
“Mmhmm.” Vi stretches her arms over her head, wincing when her back and neck crack in tandem. Caitlyn sees the faint glimmer of a tarnished silver chain around Vi’s neck in the moments before Vi rolls onto her side to face her. “What’s the plan for today?”
“It’s supposed to rain tonight.” Caitlyn can feel it: the press of damp air heavy throughout the house, the static in the air. “We need to set up for rainwater collection.”
Vi nods slowly, then reaches out one hand to wrap it around Caitlyn’s wrist, just above the leather-strapped watch Caitlyn took from her father’s study the day before the house collapsed. “Can we do that in the daylight?”
Caitlyn doesn’t catch Vi’s meaning until Vi pulls her down and into her chest, wrapping those strong arms around her. “Come on, sheriff,” Vi murmurs into her hair, “I think you can sleep in a bit more.”
“I’m already awake, Vi,” Caitlyn half-laughs even as she sinks into Vi’s hold.
“Don’t care,” Vi says, arms tightening around her. “Missed you.”
Caitlyn waits until Vi dozes off to let the tears in her eyes fall.
At least Caitlyn can touch Vi when she has a nightmare.
She wakes up crying out, a wordless keen of fear and desperation, and Caitlyn jerks awake with one hand on the knife under her pillow until she realizes it’s Vi. She tosses the blade aside in favor of rising up on her knees and pulling Vi into a tight hug, running her hands through Vi’s messy, overgrown hair in a feeble attempt to soothe her.
“I’m sorry,” Vi gasps desperately – to Caitlyn or Powder or someone else from her dream, Caitlyn doesn't know. It breaks her heart anyway. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-”
“Shh, love,” Caitlyn murmurs, pressing a kiss to Vi’s temple and a careful hand to her wounded neck. “Shh, you’re alright. You’re safe.”
Vi shudders through her tears, letting them fall the way Caitlyn has never been quite brave enough to, and steadies her breathing against Caitlyn’s skin. When her hand falls away from where it clutched at Caitlyn’s arm, she once again sees the glimmer of that tarnished chain. But before she can seek it out with her fingers, Vi is asleep, half-upright and cradled by Caitlyn, and it’s all Caitlyn can do to situate them both safely against the pillows before her back gives out.
Vi sleeps restlessly against Caitlyn the rest of the night, tossing and turning and mumbling, hands reaching out against the sheets for something to hold onto. Caitlyn doesn’t know what – a hand, maybe, or a weapon? – but it’s only when she reaches down to twine her fingers loosely in Vi’s that the other woman settles.
“You’re alright, darling,” Caitlyn whispers in her ear, soothing her fingers through the overgrown, once-shaven side of Vi’s head. “You’re safe. I have you.”
She feels Vi’s arm muscles strain as she squeezes Caitlyn’s hand, still trapped in slumber. Caitlyn’s chest aches where Vi’s head rests.
As Caitlyn buzzes the hair on the side of Vi’s head, she dreads asking for a simple errand.
They need propane and water filters, and both of those things are at a depot 50 miles away, but Caitlyn can’t comfortably abandon her radio for that long. She may technically be on leave, but her duties as sheriff still weigh heavily on her mind.
But if I ask Vi to go, she may not come back.
Caitlyn shakes off the unwelcome thought as she brushes the hair from Vi’s neck. “All done,” she murmurs, resisting the urge to press a kiss to Vi’s hair. She might have done that once, in better times. Now it feels wrong, somehow.
Vi runs her hands through her hair and Caitlyn swallows against the sight of her flexing shoulders and arms. “Feels nice. Thanks, Cait.” When she turns on the rickety kitchen stool, Caitlyn tries to school her features…
But she must fail because Vi asks “What’s wrong?” so softly that Caitlyn wants to either push her into a wall and kiss her senseless or wrap her in her arms and never let go.
“I- It’s silly. It’s nothing.”
When Vi stands and steps forward to take the clippers from Caitlyn’s hand, Caitlyn barely represses a shiver at the contact. Stop it, she scolds herself, this is not the time to want her. “Come on,” Vi says. “Spill.”
“We need propane and water filters.”
Vi’s brows knit together. “From the depot?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well, I can go get them.”
Caitlyn feels her heart constrict. “Vi-”
“Cait. I’ll come back.”
Gods damn Vi for always knowing what Caitlyn is thinking before she speaks. “I… I know.”
Vi’s eyes are impossibly sad when she looks down at Caitlyn’s hands, then back up at her face. “You don’t. That’s okay. Not like I’ve done much to earn it.” A sad smile crosses her face as she steps back, shaking her hair out. “Let me rinse off real quick and then I’ll go, okay?”
“Vi-”
“It’s okay.” She smiles, that beautiful crooked smile, and Caitlyn falls in love all over again. “You need to stay here. Just in case. I’ll be back before night at this rate.”
Caitlyn watches with a dry mouth and racing heart as Vi pulls her shirt up and over her head, shaking it out so the bits of pink hair fall on the floor before ducking her head under the kitchen faucet. The broad expanse of that beautifully tattooed back makes heat pool in her lower belly as she remembers how it felt to sink her nails into the skin there, kiss over the inked lines-
Stop that.
Vi catches Caitlyn staring when she turns around, using a discarded kitchen towel to dry her hair. “What?” she asks, smirking all the while.
“Oh shut up.” Caitlyn goes to get the broom, waving when Vi steps out the door with a call of, “I’ll be back with dinner too!”
She can’t watch Vi go. It hurts too much every time.
But when Vi leaves, after the kitchen is cleaned up and the broom and dustpan are put away, Caitlyn sits on the edge of the couch and contemplates doing something about the warmth between her thighs and in the pit of her stomach.
She tries. She tries to work herself up with the heel of her hand pressed between her legs, hips rocking lazily up into the touch…but she can’t. It’s all wrong; she wants Vi here, kissing her, holding her close. She wants…
Well, she just wants Vi.