Sweet
Vi didn’t know what a teacake was. She didn’t have a fucking clue.
It didn’t stop her from taking a trip to the on-base shop to at least try to look for them. A needle in a haystack, except she’d never been in the haystack and she had no idea what the needle looked like. She could have searched for an image online, of course. But like everything else Vi did in her life, going in blind made the experience much more fun.
The intention was to buy a pack for Caitlyn and present it as some sort of peace offering to the captain. Although she wasn’t really sure why or what she was making peace for. Maybe for being a little shit, maybe for nearly taking her head off at the beach rugby game a few days ago, or maybe because she wanted an excuse to spend more time with her. The latter Vi refused to admit to herself.
The automatic doors swept aside for her with a dull ding as she stepped inside the shop. A chilled blast of air conditioning hit her in the face, and the scent of ammonia and other cleaning materials hung heavily in the air.
The store was stocked full of everything a hungry pilot could need: candy, chocolate, aviation magazines, jerky, a refrigerator wall full of energy drinks, and a luminous display case filled with multicoloured circular nicotine pouch packets. Vi wondered if there was anything natural for sale at all, but that was a fish to fry another day.
She strolled to the counter, sticking her hands in her pockets as she spoke to the attendant. “Hey, man,” she greeted dryly.
The attendant’s bored gaze flickered up from the magazine he had laid out in front of him. Dirty blond locks of hair fell into dull grey eyes which grazed over Vi. “Don’t call me ‘man’, I’m a sergeant,” he gruffed, straightening up and tapping his rankslide.
Vi caught a glimpse of the magazine title as he shut the pages. Bullets and Babes. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “And I’m an officer, asshole,” she shot back. “If you really want to pull rank.”
The attendant’s eyes fell on the squadron T-shirt Vi had tucked into her denim jeans, scoffing as he recognised her country’s flag. “Yeah, an officer from Zaun,” he drawled.
“An officer from Zaun who has a very important meeting with one of your captains shortly. Where the fuck are your teacakes, sergeant?”
At the word of “captain”, the sergeant straightened up instantly, gulping as he fussed out an apology. He floundered around the side of the till and gestured to the left corner of the store, before returning with his head hanging low.
Vi nodded a thanks and headed off to where he’d pointed. Nestled behind a tub of expired cookies, hidden from sight, was what the lieutenant had come in for: a bright yellow box with a clear film revealing its content of small red foil-wrapped morsels.
Grinning to herself, she plucked up the box and a 6-pack of Budweisers before making her way back to the counter. She set the goods down with a thud and fished around in her pocket for some change.
“On the house,” the sergeant muttered, offering a weak smile as he bagged up the items for Vi.
“Thanks,” the officer said reluctantly, cocking an eyebrow as she took the bag from him. “Speak to an officer like that again and I’ll cut off your tongue. Read that filth again in uniform-“ she added, pointing to the vulgar magazine the sergeant still had on the counter- “I’ll cut off your- well, you get the idea, sergeant.”
As she left the store, Vi hid the smirk creeping on her lips.
***
Finding Caitlyn’s room number had been easier than Vi had thought it would be. All it took was a few lilted words to the blushing admin girl at the front desk, a promise of a date (a vow Vi would never act upon even if there was a loaded gun to her head), and she was given the captain’s room number. All under the guise of needing to discuss “battle plans” with her.
With her bag full of treats and a big stupid grin on her face, Vi rapped her knuckles loudly against the door and swung backwards and forwards on her heels.
Caitlyn’s face appeared in the doorway a moment later. Her expression twisted from shock, to confusion, to anger, all in the space of a few seconds, like she’d just experienced every stage of grief at once. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she hissed furiously, grabbing Vi by the wrist and pulling her into her quarters.
The lieutenant stumbled in and laughed airily to herself, taking the opportunity to look around Caitlyn’s room. “Duty of care,” she echoed, mimicking the excuse the captain had been using in their past few encounters. She set her plastic bag on the surface of the kitchenette and continued to glance around.
At least the captain had made some effort to decorate. Like Vi, she’d placed a few picture frames on her bedside table (a bed which Vi noted was significantly larger than the one she’d been given), as well as a couple houseplants scattered across the windowsill. Caitlyn had even brought a small monitor with her, which was hooked up to her laptop and was paused on a black-and-white documentary.
Vi carried on scanning the room until her gaze settled on what was on Caitlyn’s desk. She smirked again.
Small pots of paint in various dull shades of grey were lined up in a neat row. A red paintbrush stuck out from a cup filled with murky water, and there were small plastic parts attached to a larger sprue in the process of being painted.
It was a model kit.
Caitlyn Kiramman, the big bad wolf of the Royal Piltovian Air Force, who’d earned her callsign because of how deadly she was in the skies, spent her free time painting model aeroplanes.
“Didn’t realise you were into arts and crafts, Cap,” Vi teased without any bite, walking over to the desk and trying to tell exactly what it was she was building.
“I’m not,” Caitlyn grunted, folding her arms over her chest in a huff. “I like to build what I’ve flown before, though. And anyway, what-“ she paused, jabbing a finger at the bag Vi had brought with her and carefully changing the conversation’s direction, “-is that?”
“Oh!” Vi grinned and strode over to the bag, pulling out the box of teacakes and holding it up for Caitlyn to see. “Is this what you were talking about? The other day?”
The captain’s face lit up like a firework. She beamed massively and plucked the box out of Vi’s hands, rotating it between her fingers like it was made of porcelain. “Where the Hell did you get them?” she squealed.
“Friends in high places,” Vi said with a wink. She nodded to the box of confectionery and took two bottles of brown beer out of the bag. “Go on, I’ll let you do the honours.”
“Thank you.” Caitlyn exhaled contently and slid her finger under the crease of the box, opening it neatly. She took out one wrapped teacake and passed it to Vi before taking one for herself and setting the package back down on the counter. “You’ll want to sit down for this, though; it’ll rock your world.”
Biting back a crude remark or a that’s what she said joke, Vi followed the captain to her couch and sunk back onto it. God, even her sofa felt comfier than the one the lieutenant had been given.
Vi watched Caitlyn peel back the red foil wrapper and did the same. She hesitated slightly before opening her mouth and taking a small bite.
It was like nothing Vi had ever tasted before. The chocolate casing was perfectly thin, and her front teeth sunk straight into a dollop of soft marshmallow, before crunching through strawberry jelly and a chocolate cookie right at the bottom.
“Oh my God,” she practically moaned in ecstasy. “You Pilties-“ she pointed to the mallow centre, “-you Pilties have been gatekeeping this. God damn.”
“They don’t have teacakes in Zaun?” Caitlyn raised one of her eyebrows as she tucked into her own treat.
“No we don’t. We get chocolate covered rats if we’re good, though.”
The captain burst out into a light laughter, a sound as sweet as the treat she held in her fingers. Vi smiled with her and took the opportunity to really look at Caitlyn’s facial features. The way the creases around her eyes folded when she smiled, the tiniest little gap between her two front teeth, the slight hook of her nose, her perfectly plush lips.
Lips Vi couldn’t get out of her mind.
Lips Vi imagined against her own, and against other areas of her body.
At the fear of yet another blush staining her cheeks at the courtesy of Caitlyn Kiramman, Vi turned her attention to finishing off the rest of her teacake.
When they were both done, Vi crunched up her wrapped and Caitlyn dropped them both into the small trash can by her fridge. The lieutenant exhaled. “They should’ve called you Teacake Kiramman, Cap.”
“Is that so?” Caitlyn smiled thinly and dropped back onto the sofa.
“Mm-hmm. I don’t know if you’re as sweet as those bad boys, though.”
“Violet?”
“Yeah?”
“Is your entire mind filled with constant sexual innuendos?”
“No. I think about dinosaurs and motorbikes sometimes too.” She jutted her chin in the direction of Caitlyn’s model kit. “What plane are you building?”
The captain exhaled. “Another F35,” she said airily as Vi popped the two metal caps off their beers with her teeth.
She handed a bottle to Caitlyn, who nodded a thanks before Vi asked further, “Another one, you say?”
“Yes. My father keeps sending me the same bloody plane. Different scales, different manufacturers, but all F35s.”
“Huh.” Vi took a swig of her beer, the cold hoppy liquid washing away the remnants of the teacake, the flavours oddly complimentary to each other. She set her bottle down on the table and knitted her fingers together, leaning forward on her elbows. “I did have another question to ask you, Caitlyn.” Her voice had dropped ever so slightly.
Caitlyn took a small sip of her drink and nodded. “Ask away.”
“Why did you come back?”
The liquid caught in Caitlyn’s throat as she heard the words pass Vi’s lips.
She did mental gymnastics as she debated with herself over whether or not to explain to Vi, to really open up to her. Caitlyn was a guarded person by nature; she rarely dropped her shutters for anyone.
But this was Violet Vanderson. The same girl who had been playing on her mind for weeks, the same girl who could catch Caitlyn’s attention from across a crowded room, the same girl who seemed to have an actual interest in what Caitlyn thought and who she was, beyond just trying to get in her pants.
The captain made her decision as quickly as the debate started.
“I didn’t have a choice in coming back,” she finally admitted. When I was at Top Gun, the instructors were… different. They were soft. Too soft. Wanted to wrap us up in cotton wool like we were kids, not trained killers flying multi-million cog jets. They weren’t harsh enough in their feedback, or in the standards of the programme. And it didn’t work out.”
Taking a shaky breath, Caitlyn sipped from her beer again before continuing. “I was assigned a wingman on the first day. They used to shake things up before; pilots and weapons operators were paired up at random. I always wondered whose arse he had to kiss to get onto the programme, he didn’t have two braincells to rub together,” she commented with a dry chuckle.
“Parachute jumping was part of the curriculum. During the training session on jumps, he didn’t fold his pack correctly, and it failed to deploy when we were hopping from 30-feet scaffolding. Instead of making him run it again, or shouting him into the ground, the staff just told him to ‘get it right next time’.”
Vi gulped. She knew where the story was headed, but she still listened patiently.
“The ‘next time’ in question was when we had complete engine failure. We both had to bail out. My chute deployed, but his didn’t. He got all tangled up and turned into red mist three thousand feet below where we ejected.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Cait,” Vi murmured softly. She rotated her beer bottle between her palms, appetite suddenly gone.
“Indeed. I’m not a bitch because I want to be, Violet. I’m a bitch because dogfights don’t give second chances. Compliments breed complacency. Complacency leads to carelessness. It’s unfortunate that I had to learn that firsthand.”
Vi swallowed a hard lump forming in her throat. She placed her beer bottle on the table and, without thinking, leant over to interlock her fingers with Caitlyn’s.
The contact burnt like hot embers against her skin. The captain tensed up at first but gradually eased into the touch, giving Vi’s hand a light squeeze while ignoring the backflips her stomach was doing.
“Do you regret coming back?” Vi asked, her voice barely an octave above a whisper.
The captain shook her head firmly. “Not anymore.”
“Why?”
“I don’t need to spell ‘why’ out for you, do I, Vi?”
Caitlyn gave her a crooked smile and turned to face her again. Only this time she wasn’t looking into Vi’s eyes.
She was staring straight at her lips.
Vi took the invitation without hesitation. She pulled Caitlyn in by the hand and their lips met with the force of a crashing pilot.
***
Kissing Vi had been miles better than Caitlyn had ever imagined. And she’d imagined it plenty.
Her lips were soft and supple against her own, nothing but smooth skin bar the tiniest flash of a scar on her left upper lip. She tasted admittedly of beer and teacakes, but there was something underlying it. Something that made Caitlyn’s brain scream moremoremore.
And she was gentle, oh so gentle, in her embrace. For a woman so headstrong, so burly, so macho, she loved so timidly and almost shyly.
An experimental tongue swiped over Caitlyn’s bottom lip and she welcomed Vi into her mouth, sliding over each other in a warm frenzy. Teeth clacked and hands wandered, Vi’s sneaking from holding Caitlyn’s to squeezing the inside of her thigh.
Caitlyn moaned softly into her mouth at the contact. She edged closer to Vi on the couch and forked her fingers through the other woman’s hair, giving a light tug just as her teeth clamped gently onto Vi’s bottom lip.
Vi responded by creeping her hand further up Caitlyn’s thigh. A familiar warmth pooled between her legs, a churn every fibre in her body was crying out for her to satiate, to give in and let herself unravel between those steady hands and stormy grey eyes.
But she couldn’t.
No matter how badly she wanted it.
Vi was her inferior. And Caitlyn was her superior.
God, if Grayson could see them right now, she wouldn’t just lose her job as a Top Gun instructor: she’d lose her wings and probably her whole career, too.
“Vi,” Caitlyn mumbled between rushed kisses.
“Mm?” Vi murmured atop her lips.
“Vi, we shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I know.” Their lips met again. “But I don’t want to stop. I want you, Cait.”
Caitlyn pulled away with a gasp, her hands shrinking from touching Vi anywhere and running smoothly over her own thighs.
She watched Vi’s heart drop from her chest as she spoke her next words.
“This was a mistake,” she rushed, bolting up from her place on the couch and beginning to pace furiously. She rubbed her index finger and thumb together so hard she could have started a friction fire. “This shouldn’t have happened. This can’t happen again.”
“Oh.” Vi frowned, her eyes softening from being blown with lust to full of a deep dark hurt. She licked her lips and nodded shyly. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry, but I think you should leave.”
“Yeah. I’m going.” The lieutenant sniffed and stood up abruptly, eyes boring into the floor as she did so. Doing everything in her power to avoid the captain’s prying gaze.
Before Caitlyn could apologise, or take back everything she’d just said, Vi was already gone, leaving the bag of beer and teacakes on the side as a painful reminder of the sin they’d committed.