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It had never occurred to Vi, in most of the time she’d spent topside, that not having a last name would be a problem.
Last names just weren’t a thing down there, when law had no bearing and records were remembered by word of mouth. Family was established through not just blood but by bond — and for so many kids who’d been orphaned, heritage and history could only be pieced together from scraps and tied to loose threads made by those who took them in.
The Lanes had no need for last names; people were their actions, represented by a single word weighed by their reputation.
For Vi, all she needed to tell people was that she was Vi, and people knew what that meant down there. She was Vi. The Vi.
She should’ve known better that wouldn’t be enough for topside.
The first time it became an issue was when Caitlyn sent her on an errand to requisition some new equipment for herself, since their last job ended up with a busted, crushed rifle and a massive loss of bullets (funneled and pummeled into a Shimmer tankman, so, worth it, but also the bill definitely made Vi do a double take, because she’d never seen that many zeroes before in her entire life).
Vi journeyed over to Caitlyn’s point of contact in some merchant alley of Piltover, and once she ‘read’ over the excessive amount of paperwork and terms of conditions, the attendant pointed their finger at the line where Vi was meant to sign.
First Name. Last Name.
Naturally, Vi put down ‘Vi,’ and then pointedly put the pen down and looked up at the attendant, waiting for them to hand over the goods.
“Ahem,” the attendant said, clearing their throat and making a look at Vi. “Your last name?”
Vi stared. “Don’t got one. From the Lanes.”
“Oh.” The attendant and Vi just looked at each other. “Right, apologies, um. I usually don’t receive a lot of customers from down there. They usually talk to other people.”
“Figures,” Vi said dryly. “So, can I just get the stuff then and go? My girlfriend’s waiting.”
“Well, the thing is,” the attendant started. “I really must have a last name. For record keeping purposes, it’s just part of the rules up here.”
Fucking topsider rules, of course they’d have some dumbass law that said every person would need to have a last name attached to every piece of toilet paper.
At the look on Vi’s face, the attendant leaned forward on their elbows, glancing left and right before whispering, “Look, just…do you have a patron or something? Anybody up here on topside that can vouch for you? Just use their last name. You know, make it up or something.”
Well, that was a simple no-brainer.
“Fine, whatever.” Vi scraped up the pen, scrawled down Kiramman, and called it a day, whistling all the way home while hauling back Caitlyn’s gear.
—-
This continued over the coming weeks, whenever Caitlyn would send her out to do something or Vi would simply be running errands here and there topside. For any piece of official documentation, she’d grab a pen and write out her name and that prestigious Kiramman last name before moving on. Paperwork just wasn’t something Vi needed to spend time thinking about (who spends time reading all that anyway?).
Signing off shipments at the dock for Viktor? Signed, with a lazy flick of her wrist.
Crossing the bridge to send Ekko a care package? Signed, with a messy scrawl of the pen.
Subscribing to that one fitness magazine? Signed, without a second thought.
It wasn’t until one late afternoon when Vi lounged lazily on the couch in the living room of her and Caitlyn’s apartment did it get brought up between the two of them.
Caitlyn stood by the doorway, idly shuffling through letters from the mail, still in her work gear after she’d finished a day reviewing cases in the office. Vi had seen her do this dozens of times, on so many days; tossing aside spam letters, advertisements, maybe flicking one or two envelopes open from a mutual friend before tossing that aside too.There wasn’t any need for Vi to watch Caitlyn do this menial chore — except maybe to admire and blatantly take in Caitlyn’s amazing legs — so Vi paid her partner no mind as she did her own thing.
Vi had her feet kicked up on the coffee table, one hand flipping through the magazine in her lap, the other arm thrown over the back of the couch. Her eyes were just beginning to skim the beginning of an article when she heard a sharp intake of breath from her partner.
She glanced up, and saw Caitlyn frozen on the spot, one hand gripping an envelope between her fingers like it’d somehow rip itself out of her grip at any second.
“Cait?”
Caitlyn didn’t say anything, just stared at the envelope with wide eyes, lips slightly parted.
“Cupcake?” Vi asked, eyebrow raised. “Is that the bill for the building I punched through last week?”
“Vi…”
“Yeah? Sorry, I promise, I’ll cover my share of the bill,” Vi said. Caitlyn didn’t budge, nor did her expression change, so Vi pulled her feet off the coffee table and instead leaned forward on the couch, elbows on her knees. “Cait? What’s wrong?”
“Vi, um.” Caitlyn seemed to pull herself back to the present with a little, rapid shake of her head. “This letter’s addressed to you.”
“Okay?” Worry now tugged at Vi’s gut and she immediately stood up, tossing the magazine aside as she went straight to her partner. Was it a bomb? Was it poisoned? Was it from—
Heart pounding, Vi stood next to Caitlyn and actually looked at the damn address on the envelope.
Relief came hard and fast. Wiping a bead of sweat from her brow with her forearm, Vi said, “Babe, this is from Ekko’s kids. Probably some letter thanking us for the care package. Look! That’s a drawing of you and me. I think I look hotter though.”
She nonchalantly took the envelope covered in children’s drawings from Caitlyn’s fingers and made to rip it open, no doubt to reveal a makeshift thank you card, but suddenly Caitlyn jerked the letter back — when Vi turned around with raised eyebrows, she saw Caitlyn grasping the envelope to her chest, like it were the world and more.
“Cait? Shit, sorry, I’ll get a letter opener if you care about the drawings—”
“No, Vi,” Caitlyn said, breathless. “Vi, don’t you see who it’s sent to?”
“Yeah? Me?” Vi had no idea where this line of questioning was going. “Caitlyn, what’s up?”
Caitlyn looked at Vi like Vi had turned into a blimp in the middle of their living room. “It. It says Violet Kiramman.”
She said the last two words in a whisper.
“Yeah?” Vi’s brow pinched together, unable to understand just why Caitlyn seemed so hung up on this. Had Vi committed a sin? A felony? A crime? “What, you forget my name or something?”
Still stunned as if hit with one of Vi’s gauntlets, Caitlyn said, “You. It’s. It’s my last name, here. You put Violet Kiramman.”
“I mean, what else was I supposed to do?” Vi said, waving a hand at the glass balcony doors behind them, where Piltover lie. “All the paperwork up here has to be signed with a last name, so I just used yours. Did you…did you not want me to?” Uncertainty had Vi’s words stammer a little at the end. Shit, was Caitlyn gonna get in trouble because—
“O-oh.” A red flush crept up Caitlyn’s face. With her voice an octave higher, Caitlyn asked, “So y-you were just using it for paperwork, then?”
Knowing there was far more to the conversation than Caitlyn was willing to put in, Vi stepped forward, slipping an arm around Caitlyn’s waist and lifting the other to gently take Caitlyn’s chin between her fingers.
Vi searched her partner’s face. “Tell me what this is all about, Cait.”
“It’s just,” Caitlyn said, the blush on her face gaining a deeper shade every second. “I-I forgot our customs, on topside. For my family, especially, to take my last name, Vi, it means, um.”
“It means?” Vi said, not unkindly.
“People probably think we’re married,” Caitlyn blurted, her words tripping over each other in a rush. “I-I thought you were using my last name because, you, um, you wanted to—or you thought already—or that—”
Vi couldn’t help it.
She burst out laughing.
“Wh—! What are you laughing for?!” Caitlyn sputtered as Vi took a step back, bending over a little as she went breathless, hands on her knees. “Vi! This is serious—”
“I know, I know!” Vi said, wiping away a tear of mirth from her eye. “It’s just, I’m sorry, you just looked so funny, you were blushing so hard and you just looked so cute—”
After Caitlyn managed to get over her embarrassment and Vi overcame the wracking bouts of laughter through her chest, the two of them ended up on the couch, Caitlyn in Vi’s lap as she still held the envelope in her hands; the two did need to discuss this, after all.
“Cupcake, I’m sorry. I should’ve asked before I did it. I just didn’t think it’d be that big of a deal, is all.” Vi said, idly tugging at the hem of Caitlyn’s shirt. Oh, she always loved having Caitlyn in her lap; getting to put her arms around her girlfriend never ceased to make her day a little better. “Down in the Lanes, we just don’t really think of last names at all.”
“I understand.” Caitlyn’s delicate, nimble fingers undid the flap of the envelope, pulling out the cute letter inside. “I’m not mad, or anything. It’s just…” She bit her lip. “Seeing your name with mine. I wasn’t expecting it, is all. It caught me off guard.”
“Do you want me to stop doing it? I can use Jayce’s last name—”
“No!” Caitlyn looked at her with alarm. “No, please, don’t. Please use mine. I really, really, really, like seeing,” she swallowed, and her cheeks colored a little. “I like seeing your name like that. Violet Kiramman.”
It pieced itself together, in Vi’s brain then. She should’ve probably figured it out earlier, and knowing Caitlyn as well as she did now, after so much time spent together — she should’ve known.
After spending so many nights in bed with the most finest, most beautiful woman in Piltover, and hearing Caitlyn whisper all hot and heavy in her ear the word ‘mine’ as her fingers marked crescents amongst the ink of Vi’s back.
Oh, Vi understood it now. She knew the woman underneath all the finery and manners of topside, knew and recognized that flash of something deeper in Caitlyn’s lightning bolt gaze, could recognize when Caitlyn asked for more.
“You like that, huh?” Vi said, soft and quiet, as she slipped her fingers underneath Caitlyn’s shirt, just barely brushing the bare skin of her partner’s hip. “Why don’t you say my name again, cupcake?”
Caitlyn, halfway through flipping unfolding the letter in her hands, immediately stopped; they’d played this game before, danced this tune many times.
It was the tilt of her head, the subtle difference in her eyes, the way they darted down to Vi’s lips, then back up again.
“Violet Kiramman,” Caitlyn said in a low tone, like she was tasting the way the words sounded on her lips, her tongue.
“Yeah?” Vi said with a lazy grin. “What?”
“Violet. Kiramman.” Shifting in Vi’s lap, Caitlyn slipped the letter onto the coffee table, one hand reaching up to cup Vi’s face, the other already moving to slide Vi’s jacket off her shoulders.
“That’s me, babe.” Rolling her shoulders back so the jacket fell away behind her, Vi then immediately put her hands back on her girlfriend, sliding both of her hands up underneath Caitlyn’s shirt, her palms brushing up her girlfriend’s curves, thumbs just tantalizingly stroking the bottom edge of Caitlyn’s bra.
“Violet Kiramman,” Caitlyn whispered; she had one palm splayed against the column of Vi’s throat, where the tips of her fingers skimmed the line of Vi’s jawline, while her other still cupped Vi’s cheek, holding her in place. “Now just what are you doing?”
“You tell me,” Vi murmured. “Caitlyn Kiramman.”
With her lips brushing Vi’s, Caitlyn whispered, “I think you’re very inefficiently teasing me.”
They didn’t say anything more to each other after that, too busy sharing kisses, hands undoing familiar clasps and buckles, fingers threading through the other’s hair. All the while, as she always did, Caitlyn breathed Vi’s name with unconditional love,as if wanting to mark forever between them both just what it meant to be together.
Violet Kiramman.
Violet.
Vi.
—-
“We didn’t talk about us being married though,” Vi said with a long, relaxed sigh. “You okay with that?”
The two cuddled naked on the couch, clothes tossed haphazardly on the floor, fresh hickeys on each other’s skin. With an arm around Caitlyn’s waist, Vi absentmindedly tapped her fingers against the slope of Caitlyn’s hip, eyes closed as Caitlyn pressed kisses to her cheeks, her brow, her nose.
The aftesex cuddles often times were just as good as the sex itself. Really, if Vi thought on it, she was just a sucker for the soft times shared with her girlfriend. Caitlyn was happiness, joy, to her. To be able to tenderly hold her world in her arms just so? Nothing could compare.
“Do you want to talk about it now?” Caitlyn murmured, her lips pressing against the one scar on Vi’s brow.
“I mean, are you okay with people thinking we’re married?” Vi asked; she opened her eyes, reaching her free hand up to gently brush Caitlyn’s cheek with her thumb. “I didn’t wanna fuck up proposing to you or anything, so I hope this doesn’t—”
“It doesn’t,” Caitlyn chuckled, the corners of her eyes creasing just a little with humor. “I have no qualms with people assuming things about us. If the whole world calls you Violet Kiramman, I won’t stop it.”
“Mm.” Vi slipped her hand up, tucking strands of navy hair behind Caitlyn’s ear. “So, does that mean you’d be okay with marrying me?”
“If this is you proposing to me, Vi, I have to admit, it’s a little less grandiose than I thought.” Caitlyn’s tone was teasing, so Vi knew she understood her question.
“You know what I mean, babe.”
“I’d be more than okay, Vi,” Caitlyn said softly. With one hand, she reached a finger up, tracing the little scar on Vi’s lip. “You know I love you, more than anything. Marrying you would only be an affirmation of that.”
With a lazy smile spreading across her lips, Vi closed her eyes once more, breathing easy. “We’re on the same page then, cupcake. I promise you, I have a really great proposal idea in mind.”
“Mm, you might have to rethink that, my love,” Caitlyn whispered, her fingers now gliding across Vi’s jaw. “What makes you think I won’t propose to you first?”
Cracking an eye open, Vi saw Caitlyn grinning at her, teeth biting her bottom lip to stop herself from laughing.
God. Vi loved this woman to hell and back, to heaven and back, to the stars and back. To be hers, here, now, and forever…That’s all Vi could ever ask of her partner, her soulmate.
“Then if you do,” Vi said, leaning her head forward just a bit so her lips might brush Caitlyn’s. “You know already that I’d say yes.”