Caitlyn cuts the meat on your plate, the ridges of the knife scraping the china in a shrill rhythm. She does this for you before you thought to ask. It was an automatic thing, done with the same precision she applied to every other task in her life. quick, neat, efficient. By the time you noticed, she had already switched gears, smoothing her napkin across her lap as if she hadn’t just treated you like someone half your age.

Vi, settled comfortably beside you, looks up from her thoroughly picked apart steak. Her eyes are trying to probe Caitlyn’s expression like she can’t understand why she’s hovering so close. Vi normally understands every aspect of her wife’s thought process so this was a particularly offputting feeling. “You know she’s got hands, right?”

Caitlyn lets out a long breath, desire to have an argument at the dinner table less than zero “I also know she hasn’t eaten much today.” a common occurrence in winter months, when the kid retreats more inside themselves and starts neglecting simple things like eating and sleeping. Caitlyn, in turn, compensates by becoming even more overbearing. Or, no maybe that’s not the word to use, maybe it’s just doting? Vi hummed, nudging her plate a little closer to herself as if withdrawing her complaint for now “Fair enough.” She wasn’t arguing, not really. Vi doesn’t argue with her wife. she trusts cait knows what the kid needs; Trusts cait with anything. Maybe to a fault