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Vi looks up from her book to find Cait’s fingers tapping softly on the blanket thrown over their laps, her eye focused out into the distance as the wind tousles the strands of hair that have escaped her messy ponytail. Vi knows this look so she shuts her book.
“Hey,” she says.
Caitlyn’s eye flicks right to her.
“It’s pretty nice out here.”
Caitlyn raises her eyebrows in question. They’ve been together enough that Vi knows this is the ‘yes, and?’ question, not the ‘what are you on?’ question.
“You’re done with your reading?”
Caitlyn’s gaze goes to the closed book on the small table by her side, to the bookmark tucked in it, then back to Vi. She’s smart, Vi’s partner, so she understands immediately and takes a long, slow breath, almost steeling herself, before she smiles, almost rueful at being caught.
“You’re still thinking about it,” says Vi.
A shrug.
“You know me,” Caitlyn says.
Vi reaches a hand over, squeezes hers. “How’s your back?”
A twist of those lips, a brief sour look flashing across her face.
“Healing,” she says. “And your shoulder?”
“Been better.”
A soft exhalation. Caitlyn begins to turn away but Vi reaches a hand up to gently catch her chin.
“Hey, hey,” she says. “We did that. Together. We made that choice. You agreed, but I was there too, so it’s not your fault, it’s ours. But really, it wasn’t a fault kinda thing. Shit happens. You know shit always happens.”
Caitlyn’s glare has no heat behind it though it is mildly baleful for a blink before it melts into that look of concern that she wears so, so easily, so, so often.
“You shouldn’t have been hurt,” she murmurs, her touch to Vi’s shoulder soft.
“And neither should you,” Vi ripostes right away. “So don’t even get me started.”
Caitlyn holds her gaze.
Vi stares right back.
Some bird chirps faintly in the distance, the early morning breeze sweeping through the bamboo grove, rustling like a light rain.
Caitlyn sighs.
“It is kinda nice to get days off,” Vi says.
That blue eye is right back on her, ready to grow into a glower.
“And even better to be away,” she presses on. “You’ve been saying that you haven’t been here in a long time.”
“Not since—” Caitlyn’s expression grows briefly distant which is answer enough.
Vi squeezes her hand again. “For what it’s worth I think it’s beautiful.”
A breath of light through the window of the Kiramman’s Ionian estate.
“Yes,” says Caitlyn. “It’s always been beautiful. Quiet. We don’t keep a large staff so it can be a little hard to catch someone but the chef’ll be in the kitchens if we really need something.”
A pause, a slight tilt of her head.
“Are you hungry?”
“You know me.”
Now the wisp of a smile is warm and familiar.
“Shall we?”
Vi grins around a mouthful of fried dough.
“Damn,” she says. “This stuff is real good.”
Caitlyn’s cheeks are puffed up too, full of savory pancakes that are light and fluffy. Vi eyes her plate too but Caitlyn has gotten pretty goddamn good at guarding her own food for an only child raised real fucking rich. Guess they have been together for quite some time huh.
“Chef makes a mean yàuh ja gwái,” Caitlyn says, attempting but failing to surreptitiously pull her plate further away. Failing, because it’s not as subtle as she’d like to make it seem. “But I’m sure she’ll like to know how much you appreciate it.”
Vi grins.
A finger reaches out to the edge of Vi’s mouth, a crumb swept away almost without thinking before Caitlyn returns to her own plate. Vi’s honestly not sure Caitlyn even noticed that she did that, with that faraway look back in her eye again, this one familiar.
“Cait,” she says.
Caitlyn blinks twice, hands paused in the air where they clutch the paper-wrapped pancake.
“It went well,” Vi says.
“I know.”
“We can figure out how to do it better when we’re back.”
Caitlyn’s lips purse into half a pout.
“You know Steb’s probably already written up a perfect report with at least three recommendations for improvements and two reprimands, probably for us.”
The pout deepens though her eyes relax into resignation.
“He’s very good at his work.”
“Which is why we left him in charge while we’re recuperating,” Vi says. “Cait, you fell out of a window. We’re lucky you’re alive.”
“That certainly wasn’t part of the plan,” Caitlyn grumbles. “And you almost fell out of that same window after me so don’t you start.”
“We’ll figure out the ‘no falling out of windows next time’ plan when we’re back home,” says Vi. “Honestly, can’t be that—”
There’s a look in Caitlyn’s eye that she doesn’t recognize, a glint that’s almost a crumb of awe, a tinge of something a little wet, a look that Vi’s not sure she’s seen all that much and most certainly doesn’t understand what could have prompted it.
“Cait?” She frowns immediately. “Is your back hurting you?”
Caitlyn looks at her for moment longer.
“No,” she says. “Well, not more than it was before. No, I—” a pause, a gentle smile “—you just—” she shrugs.
Now it’s Vi’s turn to be bamboozled. Caitlyn, lost for words? Sure as hell doesn’t happen often.
“I don’t think a ‘no falling out of windows next time’ plan is quite so radical,” says Vi.
Caitlyn’s lips curl up further into that smile that Vi loves the most.
“Not that part,” she says. A brief flick of her gaze away, down, then back up. “You said home.”
Vi looks back at her.
“I guess I did.”