unlike my pattern of angst and pain, i wrote something fluffy. like really fluffy. and i'm ignoring conflict. there is no conflict in this fluff piece.

and okay, look, i know that enemy is a bop - but our love is heavily underrated and it's literally my favorite out of that sick arcane soundtrack like honey give me that motown vibes

now, read, ponder, and enjoy!


There's a girl in town and word's gone around she's just fine,

So I don't worry my head 'cause I know her heart is tied to mine.

-Curtis Harding (feat. Jazmine Sullivan), Our Love


There would never be true cordiality between Piltover and Zaun. Distrust and resent built over centuries and decades and years couldn't be wiped out like that just because an overzealous sheriff and her trusted partner wanted it to be.

What there was, though, was a tentative truce. Stroked out between Jayce and Ekko, facilitated by Caitlyn and Vi. History books would write about the councilor and the leader of the Firelights, and almost nothing about Caitlyn and Vi, just the way they liked it.

Piltovans and Zaunites would always cast each other suspicious looks. They would hesitate over any agreement that came across their table, studying each alphabet to ensure they weren't cheated. One would always be wary and the other would always be skeptical.

But at least – at least – enforcers were now wardens. No more underhanded arrests or unfair accusations without basis. Violence was the last resort, and both territories would not interfere in each other's business unless they had to.

And Caitlyn Kiramman, alongside Vi, could finally explore each other's homes without fear of being spat on or cursed at.

"Has anyone ever told you that your girl is exceptionally breathtaking?"

Vi looked up from the drink she was mixing for Babette, who found spare time to visit The Last Drop between her tasks of kicking out unruly customers and ensuring the courtesans were always safe. The Yordle had no hint of lust in her eyes, simply a studious expression.

A smirk tugged at the edge of her mouth and she placed a tumbler in front of her customer. "I don't need anyone to tell me," she offered with a shrug.

Babette hummed appreciatively. "If she's mine, I'd make her the face of my establishment."

"Oh, but she's not," Vi remarked, not a hint of jealousy in her voice, simply pride.

"She's not yours either," Babette replied knowingly.

Vi wasn't the smartest person in Zaun, let alone Piltover. She mostly thought with her fists and could mix a fair array of drinks because she'd been watching Vander do it for years before his tragic demise.

But she could appreciate how lucky she was that Caitlyn had chosen her, a lowly undercity brawler, over anyone else befitting her station in Piltover. Hell, she'd been admiring Caitlyn the moment she saw her, despite their unconventional meeting.

She made a noise of acknowledgement without confirming anything, because Babette was right. Caitlyn wasn't hers; Caitlyn wasn't anyone's. If anything, Vi was Caitlyn's, and her past notwithstanding, she was oddly okay with that.


It was something indescribable with words. All the dictionaries across the continent wouldn't be able to find the correct vocabulary for the way Caitlyn Kiramman could capture a room's attention just by standing in it – and Vi stood firmly by that observation.

She saw it every day, when Caitlyn would visit after performing her duties as sheriff.

She would have already shed her sheriff uniform and put on something casual to fit in, and the whole room would still. One could hear a coin drop whenever she walked into the place. Or anywhere, really. There was a magnetism that couldn't be explained.

And yet, despite all the attention on her, Caitlyn seemingly didn't notice. Or she pretended not to – Vi had never thought to ask. Rather, she would just sigh in relief and her expression would light up a touch when she spotted Vi in the bar. And then she would use those long legs to make her way over to the pink-haired woman, as if she didn't have her fill of options anywhere else.

"Hey, Cupcake," Vi greeted, sitting at a table tonight and leaving the bartending to the staff.

Caitlyn hummed and leaned down to peck the top of Vi's head. "Got a seat for me?"

In the periphery of her vision, Ekko was rolling his eyes and Jinx was scoffing, but Vi didn't care for them much at this moment. Right now, she was just enjoying Caitlyn's attention on her and the obvious jealousy emanating from the other occupants of the bar.

This wasn't exactly new. Like she said, she saw it happen every day, but it didn't mean she didn't revel in it. Of all the gin joints in all the world, or something or other, Caitlyn chose to come into hers and come to her. This was something she would always be in awe with.

One hand patted her lap and the other gently gripped Caitlyn's fingers, pulling her until the woman was firmly seated on her lap. Of course, with only three people occupying the table, there was extra space for Caitlyn, but why waste a good space?

"You want something to drink?" she asked softly into Caitlyn's shoulder.

Caitlyn made a noise of exhaustion and leaned into Vi's embrace, shifting to better situate herself in the pink-haired woman's arms. "No, thank you. I'm knackered," she mumbled, loud enough for the other two to hear.

"I thought the sheriff thrives on enforcing the law," Jinx snarked.

The navy-haired woman stiffened, but only slightly. Vi threw a warning look at her sister, quietly prompting her to keep her mouth shut.

It had taken a lot of chasing and talking down. The fact that Cassandra Kiramman did not perish in that explosion probably helped. Jinx eventually agreed to see a psychiatrist and stop her reign of terror over the undercity. Caitlyn eventually agreed to keep the past in the past.

But the two of them would never truly get along, the actual epitome of the current relationship between Piltovans and Zaunites. Vi did her best to wrangle her sister, but Jinx was still Jinx – Powder was unrecoverable.

"You wanna go home?" she asked as her fingers played with Caitlyn's strands.

"Can we?"

"Sure thing, Cupcake."

"You're the best."

Vi coaxed Caitlyn to stand upright, saluted her companions goodnight, and slowly guided the sheriff out of The Last Drop, unaware of the Zaunites watching them retreat with a mixture of envy and wonder.


"When are you gonna marry her?"

"I – excuse me?"

Ekko rolled his eyes and tinkered with his hoverboard. Vi leaned against the wall next to him, hands in her pockets, watching Caitlyn play with the children by the tree. Even though there was relative peace in Zaun now, the Firelights were determined to stay in this little haven of theirs, not that Vi could blame them.

"It's been, what? Five years?" he pointed out, tongue sticking out as he dealt with a particularly tricky part. "How long are you gonna keep her waiting?"

She raised an arm in assurance when Caitlyn shot her a glance amidst the kids vying for her attention, probably able to sense that Vi wasn't exactly the most comfortable right now. That was a thing she did. A superpower, in a sense, where she could somehow feel what Vi was feeling almost as well as she could aim a bullet.

Caitlyn, obviously, still wasn't reassured much, as there was a palpable frown on her face, almost as if she was ready to punch out whoever was making Vi uncomfortable. In this case, Ekko, the damn kid. Still, Vi wouldn't want to deprive the kids of Caitlyn's valuable attention, so she just nodded with a supportive smile.

Ekko was just a little man, and Vi had spent enough time to know how to wrangle him. Nothing to be worried about. When the navy-haired woman decided that Vi's silent language of comfort was sufficient, the pink-haired woman pushed away from the wall to face Ekko.

"She's not – we're together!"

"You do know that half of the Firelights are, like, in love with Caitlyn, right?"

Vi blinked at Ekko's unabashed announcement. "Does that include you?" When he blushed, she had to fight between jealousy and amusement. "Oh my god, are you serious?"

"I mean, I'm not in love with her!" he exclaimed, refusing to meet her gaze. "But she's like the nicest Piltovan I've ever met and she does that thing with her face."

"What thing?"

"Just having that face!"

She snorted, but couldn't really argue with her friend. "Yeah, I guess," she muttered, still having a little trouble with the fact that her very young friend had a crush on the love of her life when several years ago, he would have kept her blindfolded if she hadn't convinced him that Caitlyn was trustworthy.

"I'm just saying: if you don't put a ring on it or something, someone else might snatch her up. She's a hot commodity, even in the undercity."

"She won't do that." In that, at least, she could trust.

"You can't keep her waiting forever," Ekko chastised softly, losing the edge from earlier.

Vi wanted to argue, but stopped short at the sound of a lilting laughter, a sound that could make her day better no matter what. God, she had become so soft.

Shuffling her feet to turn around, she caught sight of Caitlyn on the dirty ground, with sums of kids piling on top of her. Unmindful of the state of her clothes, the sheriff didn't seem to be aware that she had become, once again, the focal point of this little town that Ekko had built.

The woman was simply enjoying the naivete of children, unblemished by the cruel world that she was trying her very best to cleanse one-handed. Forgetful of the outside that was waiting for her to tweak still.

For a moment, she wondered if she should be honest with Ekko. With everyone else.

Vi and Caitlyn had been keeping this little secret for two years, a couple of months after they rediscovered Jinx and talked her down from wreaking havoc again. Well, it wasn't exactly little, but it was between the two of them.

Something they felt that should just be for the two of them. Still, there was no ring, and if there wasn't a ring, did it mean anything?

Vi softened and sighed, bowing her head in defeat. "Yeah, I hear you, little man," she whispered.

"You better," he scoffed.

Deep down, she comprehended that Caitlyn chose her and wouldn't choose anyone else, regardless of the choices that she undoubtedly had.

Vi may not believe in a lot of things – heck, there was still a part of her that was fearful that Jinx would forget about the fragile peace that they'd reach and decide to blow up another building – but she believed in Caitlyn Kiramman. With all her heart. All the humanity she could muster amidst the roughness that prison had pummeled into her. Literally.

But Ekko wasn't wrong.

It had been five years of them choosing each other. And Caitlyn wouldn't ask anything more of her that she couldn't give, because Caitlyn was just that good of a person. And yet, Vi found herself willing to give this.


No amount of therapy could return them to the way they were. Vi would always love her baby sister, but she understood that Powder was a changed person now. Powder was no more, and here was Jinx, with all her eccentricities and occasional tendency to go wild just because her head wasn't in the right place.

As such, they always had to step over egg shells around the girl, never sure whether it was the right time to interrupt her zone. These egg shells were scattered around years of trauma and abandonment, and Vi would always regret the slap that had landed them here.

"Hey," Vi greeted quietly at the door, uncertain of whether she should step into the workshop.

Jinx hummed along to the music, as if she couldn't Vi. The woman waited as her sister tinkered with another one of her – hopefully – harmless explosives. When the song ended, Jinx stopped tinkering and slowly spun around in her stool, tugging off the goggles over her eyes.

They stared at one another for a long while – Vi with apprehension and Jinx with…well, it was unreadable, at this rate. How did one read a sister who had become someone completely unrecognizable?

"You love her, right?" Jinx asked.

Warily, Vi inclined her head. "Madly."

"Good." And Jinx turned back around on her stool.

"That's it?"

She watched as Jinx's shoulder lifted and fell heavily, a resounding sigh echoing across the dark workshop with neon paint and streaks of drawings all over the walls. Colors dimmed by darkness – all too fitting.

"She had the chance to throw me in Stillwater and not give another shit about me, but she didn't," Jinx observed. "I like her."

"Well, you don't show it."

"I almost killed her mother."

Vi winced at the memory. A breaking point that would have broken entirely if Vi had chosen to go the other way and leave Caitlyn as a result. Until today, she would always be grateful that she hadn't been brave enough to do that again.

"That sheriff thing was meant to be a compliment, by the way," Jinx explained, spinning in her stool to face her older sister again. "It's – I admire that she's so determined to fix things, even though we both know things can't be fixed within this decade. Hell, maybe even century, who knows? She's a nice person – great, even – but I don't know how to respond to a nice person."

Vi studied her sister, who, for the first time, seemed not at all like the obnoxious Jinx who just loved annoying the fuck out of her peers. She wasn't Powder – never again would she be Powder. But sitting on that stool was…a girl who hadn't grasped the idea of people not asking things of her.

For the first time, Vi felt like she was seeing the actual Jinx, hidden underneath layers upon layers of defensiveness built up over being raised by a crime lord and working for a drug empire. She had a feeling that those layers were Jinx's own choice, and Silco – much as she hated him – had attempted to peel away those layers.

In his words, she was perfect. Vi couldn't discredit him where he was due.

"If you ask me, I want you to get along. You and Caitlyn are the most important people in the world to me," Vi offered with a shrug and a helpless smile.

"I almost killed her mother," Jinx repeated with a grimace.

"What I want doesn't mean I'll get it."

"I do like her, you know."

"Well, I know that now." Vi sighed and tentatively approached Jinx. "Maybe just stop being mean to her?"

"I told you it was meant to be a compliment."

"Okay, but maybe say it in a nicer way?" Vi pleaded.

Jinx huffed and rolled her eyes. "No promises."

"That's all I ask for." She gulped and tilted her head. "You know I love you, right?"

"You came back for me, so yeah, I know," Jinx replied, nodding her head.

"Just to be clear, this is your stamp of approval, right?"

With a scoff, Jinx rolled her eyes again. "Yes, you have my permission to keep her."

Vi chuckled, finally feeling like she was on the same page with her sister after years of tiptoeing on eggshells. Tomorrow could be a different story. For now, though, she would take what she could get.

"I'm gonna hug you now, okay?" she requested.

"Okay."


Three years of living in Piltover and Vi was done with it as soon as she understood that she was no longer needed strictly to enforce the law. She had trained enough wardens to believe in them well enough to uphold the values that she and Caitlyn had wanted to instill the moment the navy-haired woman had taken over the department.

It had been a long conversation, scattered with some arguments that honestly made Vi think that it would be the end of their relationship. The two of them were just too strong-willed to ever come to a compromise with one conversation.

But eventually, after one drunken confession of 'You saved my life and you saved me and I really do love you and I'm pretty sure you're it for me, Cupcake, but this place makes me sick to the stomach', they managed to reach a compromise anyway. Look at them go.

A cottage near the bridge, by the shore of the river with its poisoned waters that Heimerdinger was doing his best to clean up. Convenient for Caitlyn to go to work every morning. Easy for Vi to look at Piltover and not feel that familiar ache in her chest at the mistreatment her people had suffered in those Piltovan hands.

Two years of cohabiting in this cottage, and it had gone pretty well. Sure, Vi still left out socks on the floor despite Caitlyn's constant nagging. Sure, Caitlyn still couldn't cook to save her own life – or Vi's, for that matter. But at the end of the day, they went home to each other.

What more could she ask for?

"You've got another love letter," Vi said with a chuckle as she sorted through the mail.

Caitlyn had collapsed on the couch, worn out from playing with the kids and tiptoeing around Zaunites, in spite of Vi and Ekko's reassurances that she was the most liked Piltovan in this city. "Another?"

"Always the tone of surprise," Vi intoned. "You're lucky I'm not a jealous person."

"You can't be jealous. They should be jealous of you," Caitlyn commented with a tone of mischief, smirking from the couch. When Vi joined her, Caitlyn automatically tucked herself into the woman's arms and buried her face in her shoulder. "I married you."

"Yes, you did."

Married for two years, and Vi still couldn't help the shudder that ran through her nerves at the reminder. This woman in her arms was her wife. Out of every man and woman that had fought for even a glimpse of her attention, Caitlyn chose a lowly bruiser with a criminal record.

How the fuck did she get so lucky?

To show her appreciation in this dark night, where the moon loomed and another day would await them, Vi tightened her arms around Caitlyn and placed a kiss on top of her head. Her wife's head. They were lucky that Cassandra hadn't fainted at the news of their elopement.

"Ekko asked me when I'm gonna marry you this afternoon," she muttered into Caitlyn's soft locks.

"Oh?" The sheriff's fingers paused in their ministrations of massaging Vi's hip. "What did you say?" she asked tentatively.

"I didn't want to say anything without talking to you first."

A moment of pause stretched out between them. Caitlyn had gone tense in her arms, and Vi was frankly a little afraid this would descend into another argument that had similar theme.

"You know I just want to protect you, right?" she said before it could get worse.

"I know," Caitlyn sighed.

It was Vi's idea to hide their marriage. To not wear any rings and only allow only a single piece of paper to prove their bond. Truthfully, they didn't even need a paper. Or the vows or the officiant. But Caitlyn wanted it, so Vi gave it to her.

But she had drawn the line at publicizing their marriage, because Vi had enemies. And seven years in solitary prison were enough to hammer into her head the determination that all the bad things that happened to everyone she loved were rooted with her. The harbinger of disaster, she used to call herself.

Even with the tentative truce and the increasing welcome of her retaking ownership of The Last Drop, there were still nights when Vi would wake up gasping for air. Haunted by visions of Caitlyn bleeding out on the ground or Jinx finally getting done in by vengeful enforcers.

"I'm not a jealous person," Vi reiterated.

"No, you're not."

Vi unclenched her fist on her knee and closed her eyes, breathing in Caitlyn's shampoo. "But it would be nice to have people look at you and know that you're my wife," she muttered.

"Are you – Vi, I would never ask you to do something you're not ready for," Caitlyn stammered as she disengaged herself from Vi's embrace to look her in the eyes.

"I know, and I love you for that," Vi whispered, shifting to prop her forearm on the back of the couch, one hand reaching out to brush away stray navy strands. "But in the words of the sheriff of Piltover, I can't hide in my past forever."

"She sounds like a wise person."

"The wisest," Vi offered with all the sincerity she could muster. "We don't have to tell everyone at once. Like put out a notice in the newspaper or something."

"My mother would love that."

"And you don't do anything according to your mother's demands."

"Wouldn't that be a change for once?"

Vi chuckled softly and leaned her forehead against her wife's. "I'm gonna buy you a ring tomorrow. I'm gonna put it on your finger. And whoever sees that ring –"

"– will know that I belong to only you."

No, no, Caitlyn wasn't hers. She was Caitlyn's, but she didn't say that. She just smiled wider and murmured, "Aren't I the luckiest person in the world?"


i tried

please like me and like this fic