Chapter Text
After the words left Vi’s mouth, Caitlyn’s eyes were frozen, wide and staring, still tracing the syllables that had shaped on her lips and tongue. The party noise faded out to a faint, pulsing beat, the rhythm of bodies dancing crashing against the air around them, waves on a shoreline - dragging sand back out to sea. She felt hollow and empty, the phrase murmured having scooped out her insides and tossed them at her feet in a wet splat of feeling and anger and want , want for this woman who saw right through her to her darkest places - kept quiet and out of the daylight, spaces that were hers to tread and hers alone, tucked inside herself, secret.
The time - the place - was awful for this, crushed together in the midst of one of Jayce and Viktor’s infamous parties, bodies pushing and spilling all around them as the music blared. Caitlyn’s jeans and t-shirt were damp with spilled beer from earlier in the night - Vi’s ripped sleeve sweatshirt and faded black jeans fared little better.
“You don’t mean it,” Caitlyn replied, and Vi’s expression changed from - she didn’t know what. She was too drunk, and too woozy, and too filled with feeling to unpack or process or do anything but react. Vi’s face contorted from something into confusion, hesitation.
“I don’t?” Vi asked, and it was the right thing to say, because it allowed Caitlyn to cling onto her devices and push her narrative. It was the wrong thing to say, because it slowly crushed the hope that had built in Caitlyn’s chest.
“You don’t,” Caitlyn continued, “Vi, you can’t .”
Now, Vi’s face was contorting from something to confused to angry , and Caitlyn saw it before she had time to fully come to terms with it, immediately feeling as though she should back up, take stock. Her entire last fifteen seconds felt like reacting to an avalanche, a sudden exploding noise of panic and vastness that rolled down her calm snowy hill, and she had no idea where the fuck these thoughts kept coming from except that she’d always been a writer, deep down. She’d always found a way to push a narrative.
“Why not?” Vi asked, and got closer - her body pushing towards Caitlyn’s, another figure in the crowd that furthered the avalanche’s spill, pressing and swirling snow drifts that Caitlyn could see from her spot in the valley. She could start running, but that would make it worse - she wouldn’t be able to watch it go.
“Because-” Caitlyn began, halting as Vi’s hand rose slowly, hesitantly, fingers brushing against her cheek as she swallowed something hard , something that felt like guilt and hope and an eon of friendship because this was Vi touching her face . This was the same girl who had sat on the swingset outside of their school when they were twelve, the same girl who had lifted her up after the championship game at high school, the same girl who had held her art project steady and painted a sculpture for her final, her breath tickling Caitlyn’s arm and making Caitlyn feel things and have thoughts. This was the same girl who had declared them friends, always friends.
This was the same girl who had stood at Caitlyn’s back for forever, promised that friends stayed.
“Because,” Caitlyn whispered, and trembled, and was afraid, “you can’t.”
She put steel in her words, eyes narrowing, and she puffed up her chest and faced down the avalanche, willed herself, for once, to be brave .
Vi froze, her fingertips against Caitlyn’s cheek, a gaze that skated across Caitlyn’s eyebrows to nose to cheek, slowly framing her face, and Caitlyn was frowning, confused - it felt like a memorization, it felt like eating when Vi was starving, it felt like-
“Yeah,” Vi whispered, soft, sad, “yeah, I was afraid you’d say that.”
Caitlyn reeled backwards, frowned. Vi leaned away, made a space between them that was filled slightly with the crush of bodies from the house party - Jayce and Viktor around here somewhere, their shit strewn all across the house, travelling with the throng of bodies. Vi seemed more distant, face hardened, eyes sad.
“Something’s happening,” Caitlyn accused, pointing a finger - shit - around her red solo cup, liquid sloshing against the sides inside it. God, the alcohol buzz wouldn’t stop swimming around her, wouldn’t let her think for two seconds - two seconds so she could process what was said, how it was said, why it was said. It helped to think of it in the abstract - the it instead of the words.
“Yeah,” Vi admitted, and shrugged her shoulders, “doesn’t matter now.”
“What doesn’t matter ,” Caitlyn bit out.
“Nothing, I guess. I thought - but I was wrong. Unless I wasn’t?” Vi shot her a look, frowning, taking in her features - studying her again. Caitlyn felt like a raw nerve in her jeans and hooded sweatshirt, like she was exposed and open to Vi’s spotlight search.
“Vi,” Caitlyn tried again, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, why you’re - tell me what’s changed. Tell me something, please.”
“Was I wrong?” Vi asked again, and it was like a dream sequence, or a David Lynch movie - nothing was making sense. Vi had - she wasn’t sober, clearly, and Caitlyn was far past sober, steamrolling towards tanked.
“Wrong about what? You’re making no sense ,” Caitlyn whispered sharply, and Vi was pressing forwards, and-
Vi was kissing her.
It was clumsy and quick, and lasted no longer than a moment - a clash of teeth and tongue. It left a lasting impression - one of heat and wet and a baseline sensation of want pooling in her gut, making her knees weak with it. She hadn’t been totally conscious - okay, she’d definitely been conscious of wanting to know what Vi tasted like, have that scarred lip pressed tight in the space where her top and bottom met, felt the pressure of what the ice-eyed goddess could do to her.
When Vi pulled back, Caitlyn scowled , finding her hands gripping the lapels of Vi’s checkered shirt, Vi’s hands braced around her shoulders. The bodies around them kept thrumming to the music, the speakers the music played through lacking bass, just a faint hum on every note that reverberated in her back teeth. Without the bass, she couldn’t mistake the avalanche rolling thunderously down towards her, too close to run, too far away to make out any details.
“Vi,” Caitlyn spoke into the mountain of snow that bore down upon her, but Vi was already pulling back, shaking her pink head. She stepped to the side and vanished into the crush of bodies, leaving Caitlyn with her hands posed forwards like a tyrannosaurus, staring after her as she went.
All she could think of was where did that come from? Was that always there? How had she not seen it?
But, of course, with the chilling clarity of the avalanche nearly upon her, the snow whipped around her brain, and she started to remember little moments when she felt the earth shift, the unstable snowy peaks swaying with every errant sound. Caitlyn could see the blast zones that would’ve started it, would’ve buried her beneath the ice and snow and shoved her to an end that she couldn’t see or predict.
If Caitlyn thought hard enough, through her alcohol-hazed memories, she could see the blast points that brought them here.
The avalanche of
I’m in love with you
.