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Caitlyn shouldn’t be here. She knows she shouldn’t be here. But here she is nevertheless. The bass is loud, the inside of the club smoke-filled and strobe-lit. The Last Drop always felt like a promise, the kind that hurts in the morning. It’s the promise it always was. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s new.
She’s high, higher than she wanted to be tonight, but it felt like the only thing that could take the edge off. The small pill, pressed into her clammy palm by a stranger, had melted with a saccharine burn and she’d reveled in the softening of her edges. She’d taken it just as the DJs were switching and had been glad for it as she watched Vi spin, listened to her angry music, to the sounds of their fight, their breakup, the months, the years that they’d been apart. Vi was beautiful at her console, eyes shadowed and face lifted in concentration. She had new tattoos now, across her neck and down her forearms. Caitlyn had grown wet almost immediately. She could lie to herself though, tell herself it was the drugs, some sort of stimulant. Shimmer, maybe? Then the music had ended and Vi had spotted her in the crowd and everything had suddenly felt too small and too big for Caitlyn, had made her body feel distant, her mind a blur.
Vi had been angry. Very angry. That familiar snarl in her nose had set Caitlyn’s blood pumping.
The Last Drop had always been a mistake.
So somewhere between the end of Vi’s set and the start of the new one, Caitlyn finds herself here, perched in Vi’s lap, on a couch crowded into a corner more storage space than club. It’s quieter here, behind the heavy velvet curtains that cover the archway. Vi’s hands are on her, on her ass, on her breasts, and Caitlyn leans into it. She feels amazing, familiar, dangerous, the way she always did. Her hands are calloused, catching on the soft, thin fabric of Caitlyn’s dress. Caitlyn knows the way those rough palms feel on her bare skin, needs it like air. She arches forward, her mouth messily kissing down the side of Vi’s face. She tastes like sweat. Caitlyn licks a drop as it slides down Vi’s temple.
“Why’d you come, Cait?” Vi asks, her voice hot and angry in Caitlyn’s ear.
Caitlyn doesn’t have an answer for her, at least not one that will feel good, so she ignores the question. Her lips find Vi’s and she kisses her hungrily, swallowing the taste of her cigarettes. Vi palms one breast, curls her fingers into the top of Caitlyn’s dress and pulls it down, her nipple just shy of making an appearance.
“Seriously,” Vi says. She ducks her head to drag her mouth against Caitlyn’s collarbone. Her breath makes Caitlyn’s nipple go hard. “Why are you here?”
“I thought you’d be happy to see me,” Caitlyn answers sarcastically. “We parted on such good terms after all.”
It’s a low blow. The terms were hers, always were. Vi was only collateral damage.
Vi’s teeth catch Caitlyn’s skin and she hisses in pain but it’s good, it feels good, it bites into her where her edges have softened too much. Reminds her why she’s here.
“You’re a bitch.”
The insult isn’t new, not from Vi, and Caitlyn smiles at the lack of conviction in her voice. She shifts her hips forward, grinding against Vi’s, and reaches up to hold her jaw, forcing Vi to look at her.
“Oh, your sweet words,” she croons, her fingers tightening. She kisses Vi roughly, bruising, feels the tips of her teeth bite into her lips. “How I’ve missed them.”
Caitlyn grinds harder, trying to ease the ache between her legs. It’s impossible like this, with Vi’s legs spread and Caitlyn barely making contact with her. She reaches down between their bodies to feel around Vi’s crotch. She’s packing. Caitlyn smiles. It should be enough. She adjusts her position, sliding forward.
Vi is of the same mind, as she so often has been in the past, and she leans back a little to give Caitlyn more room to maneuver. The moment she makes contact with the packer, Caitlyn’s vision goes a little white around the edges. It feels good, so good, she could come far too quickly if she put her mind to it. But she wants to make this last. She grinds down helplessly for a few glorious seconds, making ungodly noises that are lost to the sounds of thundering bass. Vi kisses her neck, devours her, her lips insistent. Caitlyn knows there will be bruises there in the morning and can’t bring herself to care.
“Since when do you smoke?” Caitlyn asks, her voice sharp. She doesn’t stop grinding even as she slows her pace, rolling her hips lazily against Vi’s.
Vi is playing her part beautifully, half leaned back against the couch, groping, teasing at Caitlyn’s nipples as she pretends to fuck herself on Vi’s lap. “Since, I don’t know. Sometime after we broke up.” She pinches Caitlyn’s nipple, hard. It stings. Caitlyn fights the urge to slap her hand away and instead brings her hand up to cup Vi’s, pressing it closer.
Hurt me, she thinks.
“It’s a nasty habit.”
“So are you, cupcake.”
Caitlyn shudders at the nickname. She closes her eyes and slips her fingers into Vi’s hair, gripping it tightly as she leans down to kiss her neck. Vi’s throat flexes beneath her teeth, the tendons shifting. Caitlyn can feel her pulse where her lips choose to rest. It’s racing. She wonders if hers is too, if Vi can feel the pulsing, unsteady beating of her heart. Caitlyn’s fist wavers, her fingers going slack for a moment.
Maybe…
Caitlyn squeezes her eyes closed and shakes her head, just a little.
“Too hard?” Vi asks, breaking through her thoughts, fingers on both of Caitlyn’s nipples now. It’s a sincere question, filled with concern beneath the surface of the hard tone.
Caitlyn’s fingers close in Vi’s hair again. She pulls at it, adjusting her hips as she does. Vi’s throat is exposed. Caitlyn spares a glance at Vi’s face, a treat to herself, or punishment. She’s not sure at this point, everything is fuzzy. Vi’s mouth is a little slack. Caitlyn can see the wet pink of her tongue, her sharp, white teeth. Her eyes are open, they gaze back at Caitlyn cooly, clouded over by the expression of pure hatred on her face. Caitlyn kisses her, sweeps her tongue into Vi’s mouth, tasting all of the unspoken words she knows Vi is hiding.
The packer isn’t quite enough. It’s not the right kind for this. Caitlyn keeps grinding anyway, roughly angling her hips until she has just the right pressure, just the right rhythm. Vi kisses her back angrily, one hand pressed flat against Caitlyn’s breast. The other, she clamps down against Caitlyn’s thigh, holding her steady. Heat licks through her, softening her edges even more.
So close, Caitlyn is so close, she can feel the tightening sensation between her legs, can feel her thighs growing tense in that particular way. Maybe she’ll find absolution there. Lord knows she hasn’t found it in this kiss, in the way she showed up here knowing how much it would hurt Vi.
But she’s a greedy thing. She’s self aware enough to admit that.
Her breath comes in huffs, puffing her cheeks out a little, but she refuses to break the kiss. She can’t let Vi see her like this. She squeezes her eyes shut, tries to keep quiet, but Vi’s hips are meeting her own now and the bruising pace is the only thing quelling that ache she’s felt since she first decided to come tonight.
There, right there. She can see it now, just beyond her grasp. Vi’s fingers hurt where they grip her thigh, the tips digging in. Caitlyn can imagine that hand, has seen it where it’s at many times, knows the small, faint purple smudges that will show up in a few hours. She wants that, the reminder. After all, everything else has faded into near nothingness. The source of her grief, her anger; it feels like a distant dream. All that’s there is Vi’s face at the end, broken open, her eyes filled with tears that Caitlyn had caused, a chasm that Caitlyn can never hope to find her way across again.
“Why’d you come, Caitlyn?” Vi’s voice is a ghost in Caitlyn’s mind, a whisper she barely catches before it’s gone.
She’s too distracted not to be honest this time.
“I missed you.”
Caitlyn is right on the brink when Vi roughly pushes her hips back, breaking the contact she’d worked so hard to get right. She wants to cry, looks at Vi’s face in desperation. But Vi isn’t looking at her, won’t look at her. In a move too quick for Caitlyn to comprehend, Vi scoops her up and turns her, pressing her down into the couch. She looms over her, shadowed now from the neon lights. Caitlyn can only see her face if she searches hard enough that it makes her eyes ache. Vi’s hands fumble down the front of her dress, looking for the hem, finding it, pushing it up. She presses aside Caitlyn’s underwear and slips her fingers inside abruptly.
Three is certainly a message.
Caitlyn moans at the stretch. It stings a little, it’s good. She rocks her hips against Vi’s hand as she pumps her fingers. Vi’s mouth is on her collarbone again, kissing, licking, biting into her where she’s softest. When her teeth find the barbell in Caitlyn’s nipple, she tugs at it and Caitlyn lets her.
Somewhere in all of this is the smoking rubble of their relationship as it once was, a monument to the perfect ebb and flow of Caitlyn and Vi. The way Vi finds Caitlyn’s clit with her thumb, effortlessly, knows just how perfectly to press against it. The way Caitlyn’s hands fit just right on Vi’s body, one on her shoulder, the other at the curve of low back, beckoning her closer. Even the pain, the soreness between her legs, is a phantom that’s haunted her. Vi knew how to hurt her just right, just the way she liked it when she needed it most.
Caitlyn comes more quickly than she’d like, close as she was before Vi had even started fingering her. One moment she’s mouthing at Vi’s neck, memorizing the taste of it, the next she’s unraveling. The fire that had been curling steadily through her becomes a blaze, racing down body and limbs. Caitlyn collapses into herself, into Vi, holds onto her helplessly as her hips buck and her legs shake and Vi wordlessly shifts her body, moves down onto her elbow to hold her too. Caitlyn cries out, her mouth muffled by Vi’s shoulder. Their bodies are pressed together, Vi’s weight dulling the jerking, desperate movements of Caitlyn’s body. But she never stops, fingering Caitlyn through the crest of this orgasm and into the next, her pace only stuttering as long as it takes to remove her third finger and curl the other two. That tugging movement brings tears to Caitlyn’s eyes. It’s a familiar beck and call, a reminder of all the ways they know each other. All the ways they chose to hurt each other.
Caitlyn feels herself crumbling, the drugs wearing off now as sweat drips down her temples. This isn’t enough. She’s not enough.
Vi keeps going.
Caitlyn’s orgasm rises to meet her, an overstimulating mess of frantic movement and slick wetness. She arches her body off the couch, grits her teeth shut, breathes through the first wave, the second, tries not to cry.
Her tears fall anyway.
Even as Vi’s fingers coax her orgasm from her, she adjusts until her other arm is no longer trapped beneath Caitlyn’s body but rests alongside her head. She brushes the hair from Caitlyn’s sweaty forehead and leans in close, their cheeks pressing together.
“Good, so good,” Vi whispers, like it’s habit still, like she can’t help it. There’s a sweetness to her voice that’s so Vi that it makes Caitlyn’s chest feel tight. She waits for Vi to say the next thing, the thing she always used to say. Vi doesn’t say anything else.
Caitlyn’s tears come faster. She grimaces through them and turns her face to hide it in the crook of Vi’s neck, willing them to stop.
It isn’t fair, none of this is fair. She reaches down to grasp Vi’s hand between her legs, presses it closer, holds it in place as she grinds her hips against it. She doesn’t know what else to do, can’t think of a way to stay here once this is done.
She’ll leave and she’ll probably never see Vi again.
There’s more tears on her cheeks. Vi’s lips find hers and they’re salty. Her cheeks are damp, her hand gentle in Caitlyn’s hair. Another orgasm, this one softer than the last. More than Caitlyn asked for, more than she deserves, but she takes it because this is what she does, she takes. The heel of Vi’s hand rests against her clit and Caitlyn memorizes the feel of it, the heaviness, the warmth. She’s herself now, in her body, beneath Vi. She’s real. She’s real. She’s so real.
Then it’s over.
Caitlyn catches her breath and Vi gently removes her hand and cups her cheek with the mess still clinging to her fingers. Normally, Caitlyn would care. Tonight she can’t be bothered. She takes in a shaky breath, blindly finds Vi’s mouth again, kisses her softly and slowly, like they have all the time in the world instead of the doomsday clock in her brain that tells her she needs to get out of here, now, that everything will implode the way it always does if she stays a second longer. Her fingers tug at Vi’s belt buckle but Vi stops her, curls their hands together between their bodies instead.
Here they are, and here they’ll be, always caught in the horrible in-between of their love and their destruction.
Maybe those two are one and the same.
Vi is lifting herself up and rolling her shoulder out, looking at Caitlyn with a look that’s part hurt, part anger, and Caitlyn feels the bitch rise inside of her.
“Well, thanks for that,” she says, wiping her face as if the tears were just sweat, and tugging her dress back down over her thighs.
Vi leans back and rubs her hands down her face, shaking her head. Her fight’s gone and Caitlyn has never mourned it more.
“Whatever,” Vi says, barely audible behind her palms.
Caitlyn’s gaze flickers across her, across the taut lines of her stomach, her chest. She’s thinner than the last time they saw each other. She wonders if she’s eating enough, if she’s been sleeping at all. Vi drops her hands to her lap and lifts her head.
“Why are you still here?”
Caitlyn pulls her lip between her teeth on instinct, the hurt quick and sharp. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough. She smiles.
“Don’t worry, I was just leaving. Good luck with your new career, Violet.”
Vi’s eyes flash but she doesn’t say anything else, just watches as Caitlyn grabs her bag from the floor and smooths her hair back behind her ears. At least the last image she has of Vi is this one now, not the one from before, not the one from when she…
Caitlyn leaves on still-trembling legs, the wetness cooling and uncomfortable between her thighs. As she shoulders her way through the crowd, someone tries to grab at her and she pushes their hands away roughly. She goes home, alone, and the grieving starts anew.
