Stories of Violyn (CaitVi)

Dinner with Dad

Author's Note: Writing Vi in this one was an interesting task. We rarely see her as such a fish out of water, so keeping true to her characterization was kind of a challenge. Tell me how I did.

***

"Your dad invited us to dinner?"

"Yes, he did."

"You. And me. To dinner."

"Yes..." Caitlyn, sitting behind her desk, raised her eyebrows in expectation. The pen in her hand was lingering over a half-finished sentence. She asked Vi in her office just after her shift had ended to pass on the invitation. She wasn't expecting such a pushback, though; Vi was pacing around the room like a wounded animal.

"Is that going to be a problem?" She continued, after she was positive there was no answer coming from her girlfriend. "It's only sitting around a table, eating, having a bit of small talk..."

"Small talk?" Vi stopped in her tracks.

"I'm running out of ways to say this, Vi. He simply invited us to dinner. Merely a dinner." The woman standing in front of her genuinely looked like someone who didn't know what to make of that information.

"Why? Do you think he wants to poison me?"

"Vi!"

"What? Seriously. Can't you just go alone like you always do?"

"Father specifically asked for you this time. I suppose he wants to get to know you better."

"Meaning, he wants to see if I'm good enough for his daughter," Vi interpreted. "Is he going to try to intimidate me?"

"Intimidate you?" Caitlyn was taken aback but also slightly amused by her suggestion. "Please. My father couldn't be further from anything intimidating. No. He wants to see who her daughter chose. Not the same thing."

This seemed to have put Vi's mind at ease somewhat. She turned one of the chairs waiting in front of the desk around and sat down in it backwards, with her legs parted and her forearms resting on the back.

"But why now? I've spent more than one evening in that castle; he never cared to eat with me then."

"I suspect he is starting to see that this is serious." Caitlyn pointed between the two of them with her pen.

"What? This?" Vi replicated the gesture. "And what's that?" she teased.

Caitlyn's eyebrows raised again. "Something serious, I'm hoping."

"You're damn right," Vi said, leaning forward with the chair across the desk and pulling Caitlyn in for a kiss. The Kiramman officer didn't object for a second, even though Vi held her by her collar and crumpled the papers laid out on her desk. In fact, she leaned into it, savoring every moment of that kiss, until Vi decided to let her go and sit back in her chair.

"However, our home is not a castle..." Caitlyn said, as she tried her best to straighten out the papers again.

"It looks a lot like a castle to me," Vi interjected.

"Don't call it a castle in front of Father."

"Oh, here we go. Anything else I shouldn't do in front of your dad? Should I call him Dad?"

"Absolutely not."

Vi took a short pause, possibly taking a mental note. "Can I kiss you in front of him?"

"Of course," Caitlyn replied without hesitation again. "Although... it would probably serve us right if we kept that to a minimum during the visit. Just don't do anything inappropriate."