Why? What? 1/1

[neolithicdream]

Title:  Why? What?

Author:  Neolithicdream 

Pairing/Character: 
Callie/Arizona
Rating: PG-13

Summary: Wishful thinking but this is what could have been the aftermath  of Ep. 9.22  / the antidote to my last depressing one shot
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
A/N: sitting beside a loved ones sickbed can be somewhat inspirational, or maybe I was just bored.
"Hey, is she asleep already?" Arizona had practically bounded into their bedroom moments before.
Callie peered out from behind her reading glasses, a bemused frown adorning her face, "Already? It's after ten?" She smiled at the inevitable pout that followed her answer - her wife hated missing those last few minutes of Sofia's day, those half - cranky, half sweet moments as their daughter battled tiredness while coming up with ever increasingly more ingenious excuses as to why it was "too early for bedtime yet, Mommies."
"Oh, I...." Arizona stuttered, she'd been on such a high after the elevator she had gone to Joes for a glass of wine, smiling broadly to Joe as she sipped a fresh Pinot Grigio.
*****
" Good day, Dr. Robbins?" the affable bartender had asked; she had simply nodded with a smile. It had been, a really good day. One of those unexpected gems like a really sunny day in a month of Seattle Greys.
"Is Dr. Torres joining you? I have nice bottle of Merlot I can keep aside?" she and Callie didn't spend that much time at the Bar but when they did they  always had long chats with him about their Sofia and his boys.
"No, no...she's at home with Sofia." They so seldom went anywhere anymore together, she tried to think of the last time they were out together just to have a nice time. Bailey's wedding, she supposed. She sighed, a little sadness seeping in to her hitherto good mood. She loved their daughter, loved motherhood more than she would ever have thought possible but...it took everything, changed everything. She hadn't been lying all those years ago when she told Callie she liked her life just the way it was. There was a freedom about being childless that was, in its own way, exulting, exhilarating. The freedom to go anywhere without planning, without thinking, to do anything.
Like those early days with Callie, those days when she saw Callie as almost beyond perfection, miraculous even. The days when she simply loved her, a simple love that had not yet been verbalized. It was hard not to miss those days. And looking through the lens of time the memories seemed enhanced,glowing  like those sepia toned old photos of yore.
Yeah she missed those days, days when she would catch Callie looking at her the way she looked at Callie. Admiration, anticipation; love, lust.
It's not that Callie didn't love her anymore, she did. God, after everything she'd put her through in the aftermath of the crash love was the only fathomable reason to stay. Maybe with a hint of obligation too but love was the prime reason. And it's not like the lust was gone either. Callie had made that abundantly clear in the months after she had gotten back on her feet ( both real and prosthetic).
It was just...different now. There was nothing they didn't know about each other, there were no surprises. They had dealt with all the bodily fluids at this point, from cleaning up each others projectile vomiting, both stress, virally and self induced to, Arizona colored at the thought, her urine from the bathroom floor. It wasn't so much magic  as much as mundane. And that was great, it was, really. There was something so very...satisfying about the routine of  domesticity.
Just...it was different now.
And since the crash and the loss of her leg and all the harsh words spoken it wasn't realistic to expect the butterflies, they were a  married couple, against the odds,  happily so.
These days when Callie gave her the raised eyebrows look it was less likely to mean 'come hither to my bed'  as 'seriously,you want to reason with a toddler about tights?' And when Callie didn't listen to her ( which was frequent) it was probably because she was thinking about cartilage or Board voting strategy rather than because she was thinking up fifty ways to make her scream.
That was marriage though, and motherhood. And after the last year she should just be grateful Callie was still there at all. And she was...grateful.
That's why it had been so surprising, today, to feel the butterflies again. It was...exciting; a beautiful woman subtly flirting with her, a stranger. It was nice, it felt like the old days when she could confidently declare that there would be women lining up for her. It was nice too cause it had been so unexpected.
Embarrassing too, momentarily, when the stranger turned out to be the much vaunted cranio-facial specialist Dr. Boswell. Then the excitement returned cause she flirted again. Just because she was an old married woman with a baby and a disability didn't mean she was blind.  Not to the woman's beauty or charisma or her Rockstar status in the surgical word. In a way she had reminded her of herself, a few years ago before love intervened and knocked her upwardly soaring career trajectory into a standstill.
She had no regrets, she had given up Africa literally for love; exchanged her freedom for fidelity, but every now and then there was a nostalgic type of wistfulness. That's what she put the attraction down to, nostalgia. She had once been the player, the hotshot surgeon who would bat her eyes and see the effect on her hapless victim. She was the one who would set the bait, cast the rod and then reel 'em in.
However that was her past, Calliope and Sofia was her present and her future. No regrets.
Still as the day had progressed she suddenly felt like she was the hapless fish being reeled in, temptingly slowly, by the luminous Lauren Boswell. It had bothered her, it wasn't right, but God that woman was...
She wasn't a cheater, not back when she was having a series of monogamist meaningless relationships and certainly not now. Not even with everything that had changed in her life, she might not be who she once was, physically or spiritually but she was still who she was raised to be.
...and she was glad the woman would be gone in two days. It was one thing resisting temptation, but better if the temptation was removed entirely. She felt like she was cheating on her wife already. She didn't notice women anymore, not in that way, not since Calliope, and certainly not since the plane.
But Lauren Boswell was no ordinary woman. Her heart had sank when the elevator doors had opened revealing the sexy woman who had filled her thoughts since morning. She did not have a good track record of resistance in the elevators of Seattle Grace; she closed her eyes and prayed that the elevators of  Grey-Sloan Memorial had lesser powers.
Boswell was an incorrigible flirt, that had to be it. She was probably one of those women who flirted indiscriminately with anything with boobs. Arizona knew it wasn't meant personally.
And she had made it clear, crystal , that she was married. Happily. Happily married. To a beautiful woman with sexy eyes. The sexiest eyes. She had listed it all, reminding herself too. She was happily married to a beautiful woman.
Full stop.
Not that Lauren Boswell was interested in her, not really.
That's when it became magical. She told her the ultimate truth. She was disabled, she was a married disabled...freak. Really not worthy of flirting, certainly not of the flirting of a shining star like Lauren Boswell. But.. She knew already....she had known and still flirted, and the way she looked at her as she exited the elevator? Arizona recognized that look. A look of hunger, of want, of lust.
A beautiful Rockstar surgeon with a killer smile found her...irresistable....and that was simply intoxicating. Something that she thought was in her past, could no longer be part of her life, was in fact a possibility.
Not that she would, she wouldn't, couldn't, but it was nice to fantasize.
Sitting in Joes, sipping her glass of wine,she felt like the Arizona of old. Carefree, sexy, attractive.
*****
"Oh? I didn't realize it was so late...I..."
"Did you get caught up in surgery? Thought you were finished about seven?"
"Uhm, yeah I was but then..."
"Wait till I tell you what happened with my cartilage submission today, I got a call from Chicago, Dr..." And Callie was off.  Arizona sighed loudly. Maybe because for a while Callie had to do everything, for Sofia, for herself, hell for Arizona too, maybe that was why now, sometimes Callie didn't notice that there were two of them in this marriage again. Two of them. Two great Doctors, two people with careers, with ideas, with viewpoints. Two of them with interesting things to tell at the end of the day.
Two, not one. Two.
" Shut up, just shut up, for once just shut up about your cartilage and about you and your ideas and your plans a-and ..just listen, listen to me for once."
Arizona's outburst had shocked herself into silence. The exhilaration she'd been feeling since the elevator somehow turning into aggravation at her wife, at them, at their life.
Callie just stared , open - mouthed. Since the early months after the crash she hadn't heard Arizona as much as raise her voice, and certainly not to her. After the anger had dissipated, after rehabilitation had started in earnest, Arizona had just settled into a kind of contented passiveness. Which, right now, for the first time, she realized was kind of strange. Her wife was a passionate woman, passionate about her work, her 'kids', her Department. She didn't quite have Callie's fiery temper but a passion burned within Arizona Robbins all the same.  And yet it had been absent recently,and only now did she notice.
"What?" Callie finally spluttered, her own temper rousing itself, "I listen to you all the..."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry....I ,I'm just going to cleanup and crawl into..I'm sorry."
"No!Hey, I'm sorry too...." Callie's voice softened considerably. Realization dawning suddenly now. Her wife had bounded into their bedroom with a supermagic smile only minutes ago only for her mood to change to anger and then meekness in two blinks of an eye. "Come here..." Maybe she grabbed Arizona's wrist too robustly or just caught her off balance but next thing they new Arizona was practically straddling her wife in bed, nothing but clothes and a comforter.
"Oomph!" Arizona gasped, then with a nervous giggle, "If you wanted me on top of you, you just needed to ask..." and with a small, smile she leant down capturing  her wife's lips in a sweet kiss.  Callie's tongue responding by instinct to sweep across Arizona's lips equally gently; kissing always trumped talking. Always.
"Hey, have you been drinking?" The sweet taste of Arizona's favorite tipple was unmistakeable.
"Oh, yeah, I was in Joe's, I ..."
"Who were you drinking with? Why were you...."
"No-one, I just wanted a... Something happened to day and I just felt like a drink to..."
Immediately, Callie went into full on Mama bear mode, "oh my god, what happened? did you fall? Di-did one of the brats say something about your...is the phantom pain back again, what do you need m....."
"Damn it Callie, why do you always do that..."
This time there was no mistaking her wife's fury, even as she struggled to a standing position, "W-what? Arizona  I , what...?"
But the only response was the bathroom door slamming shut.
*****
Hot tears rolled down her face as she sat on her specially adapted shower chair just as the hot water rolled down her body in rivulets.
The excitement from earlier just a cruel illusion, a bitter reminder of the past long lost. This was her life now.  She had one leg; she was, to be politically correct, differently abled. You could dress it up however politely but she was disabled. A creature to be pitied not admired. Needing help. Not inspiring need.
She could daydream about hot women wanting her all day long but the reality was that the hot woman she shared her bed with didn't see her that way, not anymore. She was a burden, a source of worry. A few steps further up the rung than Sofia but  not an equal, not a wife.
Sure Callie still slept with her but was she really what Callie wanted? Or was she just stuck with her, because this was her life now too.
*****
A year ago she'd have followed her wife into the bathroom to find out what the hell her problem was...except a year ago Arizona wouldn't have stormed away.  A year so they were disgustingly happy. A year ago before everything changed on a dime. A year ago. Or 11 months,1 week and three days ago to be precise. Now sometimes she wasn't sure what they were. They were married. And she loved her wife and she knew Arizona loved her too. Just...it was different, and sometimes she  wished they could just go back, to the days before broken legs and broken promises, before the anger and despair.
And she was tired. Tired of tiptoeing around her wife, tiptoeing around the issues. Maybe Arizona was right, maybe she didn't listen to her  but how could she when Arizona never talked.
*****
She'd hoped Callie would simply have switched the lights off and they could just ignore it. It wasn't important, it was nothing. But the lights were on and Callie's glasses were off. The JAMA issue featuring her TED speech thrown aside, a sheepish grin on her face, wringing her hands nervously.
"Callie...can we just..."         "No, we can't..."
Arizona sighed loudly.
"You can't just storm off and then  not tell  me what I did wrong? If I don't know I'll just keep doing it, if we don't talk we..." Arizona had just hobbled the last few feet, leaving her crutch beside the bed, her other leg still in the bathroom. Like before Callie threw aside the covers then grabbed her hands but deliberately this time, and with no awkward prosthesis in the way this time Arizona landed square on top of her with another "Oomph, Callie!"
Callie laughed apologetically then with a smile, "Now I have you just where I want you" and she pulled her in even closer.
Arizona raised her eyes to heaven and shook her head then leaned in for a conversation ending kiss. Except this time Callie didn't take the bait.
"Talk to me!"
Arizona shook her head again, "It's nothing, I was just...." But Callie dodged her second attempt at a kiss too.
"It's not nothing, it's not nothing when you come home happy and I say or do something and boom, good mood gone...talk to me, please?"
"You dont... You make me happy ok?"  She didn't want to get into this, into any of it, not now. Callie had stayed and she couldn't lose her, she just couldn't and so what if sometimes...it didn't matter, what mattered was she was still here, that's all that really mattered.
She could see it, wondered if it was just tonight or was it always there and she just hadn't just noticed. Fear. Etched on her beautiful wife's face. It was hidden, subtle, just a glimpse shining through behind a smile covering her mouth and a gleam in her eyes that suddenly seemed little to do with said smile and more to do with unshed tears.
"I'm not going anywhere,Honey, no matter what, don't you know that? We can fight, we can argue, you can shout and be mad,ok? Hey I can even shout back but I'm not going anywhere, not now, not ever."
And she knew the truth in her lovers words, knew Callie wouldn't leave; she just wished she could be certain it was for the right reasons, not because of a promise made, not because of a different promise broken. And yet she knew now she needed to speak, to say something, because the silence hurt too much.
"I'm your wife, not someone you have to look after, I'm supposed to be your wife."
It was too cryptic for Callie who just looked at her in confusion.
"You assumed it was something bad, cause that's how you see me now, the person that bad stuff happens too, the person you have to pick up off the ground when they fall...a person you need to take care of...."
No, hon..."
"Yes! and I have a mother, a great one and I don't need you as a second one, I need you as my wife. Not my mother, not my nurse, not my Doctor, MY WIFE!" Her voice had risen incrementally to quite a crescendo but not in anger, just frustration,maybe in relief too at finally releasing it.
"Good things can happen to me too, I don't just want to be about the negative, I want you to be proud of me, and bask in my successes and listen to my ideas and...believe in me again, the way I believe in you."
"Arizona, I am, I do, I..I'm so proud of how you've dealt with this and your progress with your prosthetic and..."
"NO!" The yell was loud enough to cause both to pause, waiting for any sign that Sofia's cries were about to be added to the mix but she was her Mami's daughter and could sleep through the most super of storms. The pause was enough to calm Arizona down several notches too.
"I don't want you  to be proud of that, I mean not just that...I don't want it to just be about my... I'm more than my prosthesis,ok?"
Really Callie wasn't at all sure what Arizona was on about but she quickly nodded in agreement all the same.
"I'm a surgeon... A good one, I used to be a great one and I want to be that again...
"You are a great..."
Arizona shook her head "no...but I will be again and I'm a Mama and I need you not to be scared that I'm going to drop her or that I'll fall in the Park and not get up....and I need you listen to my ideas and my plans and not just dismiss them cause you're so used to having to make all the decisions . I'm here Callie, I'm back and I want to be your wife again , not just in the bedroom, I need to be your partner, your equal, I need you to trust me again."
Exhausted she fell into silence and almost immediately  the fear returned. Enough to cause her to avert her eyes from Callie's
"Okay." Callie said so quietly.
Arizona looked at her and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
"What? That's it? Okay!" she shook her head, "... You have nothing else to say, just Okay." Arizona couldn't help but be a little annoyed, she'd poured her guts out and that was it?
She felt Callie's tremors before anything else...then heard the low rumble begin, that became a total bellyaching laugh in nano seconds. Callie's arms tightened around her, pulling her into a tight embrace, while her laughing slowly subsided to a chuckle.
Arizona tried to speak but this time it was Callie who prevented conversation, pulling her into a passionate open mouthed tongue exploring kiss, a kiss so deep, so all consuming that by its end both were gasping for air and or more.
"You're back." Callie beamed
"Uhm, yeah?" A still flushed and perplexed Arizona.
And now it was tears, streaming down her Calliopes face, she thought happy ones as she was still,smiling but she wasn't sure.
"I thought you were dead, for four days...they said from the very start that it was unlikely and...
"Callie...I..." She wasn't sure she was ready for that talk.
"....I'm not comparing it with what you... With the mountain but.... I thought you were gone and the pain was...it felt like someone had scooped my heart out with a spoon and.."
"Calliope..." She hadn't really thought about it much since waking up in that Rescue chopper but on the mountain it had hurt nearly as much as her leg, the thought of leaving Callie, of Callie bereft and alone. It too had felt like her heart was being scooped out with a spoon.
"... And when you came back you were so broken...and so...and your leg , the sepsis was so advanced, the first time I saw it when you were still sedated, I threw up. What kind of Ortho throws up at the sight of a mangled bone?"
"Callie..." Arizona spoke softly, hearing the still raw pain in her wife's voice tore her up, even with the knowledge that it was all in the past.
" I knew it couldn't be saved, not in a way that would allow you to ever bear weight on it properly again but.... You were so broken and... So angry and bitter...and I told myself that if I saved it I could fix you...."
"I'm sorry...I'm so.."
"No, don't be, you went through some kind of hell out there that I can't even imagine and..."
"So did you." Maybe for the first time Arizona realized that too.
"After the surgery, I sat by your bed, waiting for you to wake up and part of me just wanted you to sleep cause I knew when you woke up you'd never look at me like that again."
"What?"
"Like I was perfect, some kind of miraculous.... I know it's stupid but sometimes I would catch you looking at me and...wow."
" Callie, I..."
It's ok, Arizona....I'm not miraculous or perfect and... Neither are you; we can both be hurtful and mean and... But we' re together we're  here, you and me and...  now you're back." Callie finished off with another beaming smile.
Arizona's raised brow revealed her confusion more than any words.
" I was so afraid you would never be you again, my kind sparkling wife....but after all the anger you got back to being you... But.. I...was so happy you didn't hate me any more, so happy too when you let me make love to you again  that I didn't even notice..."
"What? That I'm not the same. Hell Callie I know I'm not the..." Really? What inadequacy was Callie going to point out now?
But Callie was smiling, laughing even. "That!"
"Huh?"
"I missed my feisty fearless wife who wasn't afraid to call me on my crap, or tackle Bailey or make brave decisions or just argue."
"You missed the arguing?"
"...eleven months, one week and three days....but you're back."
Arizona smiled, then catching a glimpse of her leg, frowned, "Different though, not just the..."
"...leg, I know. I think we're both...it changed me too, changed us, but I love you so much, changes and all. And..."
"Me too, me too."
A passionate kiss threatened  much more and then, Callie stopped. " Wait, what had you in such good mood when you came in, anyway?"
Arizona smiled, mischievously " oh, nothing just a beautiful woman came on to me today."
Callie froze beneath her, as her wife smirked.
"What? Why? I mean, not why, WHO?"
" Lauren." Arizona said nonchalantly.
"Lauren who?" There was no Lauren, but the name sounded....the coffee cup! "She,she bought you a cup of coffee? You had coffee with her?"
It was fun watching jealous Callie, discovering  she could still make her jealous, that for all the changes that was the same.
"well, she can't do that, whoever she s, she can't buy you coffee this Lauren person,I..."
"Well technically I stole hers, then she stole mine...nice way to start the day... A hot woman  letting you know she wanted to see you again.
"No!  You can't, you can't see slutty Lauren again!"
"...oops Callie , I already have, several times, and I'm seeing her tomorrow too... And she's not slutty..she's lovely, and very... competent and...hot, did I mention the hotness?"
"Why would you see her again?" An agitated Callie was sitting up straight now, jealousy and anger vieing for space on her visage, "... You shot her down right? Told her you weren't interested, because ..."
"Yes, Callie, I told her I had only one leg..."
"What's that got to do with any....You told her you were married, to me and that... Right?"
As gratifying ,as exhilarating as it had been to be hit on by a hot stranger, this here right now, seeing her wife driven to the edge with jealousy. her hot, hot, gorgeous wife, now that was a thrill, that was , that was something else.
" Hmmm... She told me I had beautiful eyes, and she knew all about me, leg and all. It was...nice.. Hearing, seeing all of  that, a hot woman wanting, interested. Tomorrow should be interesting."
"Tomorrow?  You've arranged to.... see her again, NO! Oh my God, was that who you were with in Joe's? Are you interested in....no,NO! You are my wife, and... "
She'd pushed it too far, as a tear hovered on the brink of falling from her panicking wife, "Calliope...come on, you know I would never....could never...."
"I know...just..." Callie sniffed loudly as Ariona lifted her chin up to look straight at her, "...the last year....it's been so hard and we haven't exactly been....us...and I know I annoy you sometimes and.... You seem really happy that some stranger flirted with ..."
" hey, it was flattering, a woman who knows about my leg and still wants me...? And she could have anyone, I mean she's a hot Rockstar surgeon and...
"She's a surgeon!" Callie's voice shot up several decibels.
"Yeah, I told you Lauren, Lauren Boswell..." She really hadn't expected Callie to be this possessive, it was hot.
"No! You have surgery with her tomorrow, a long hard surgery, you'll be spendng all day with...you can't do that, get Karev to do the surgery..."
"It's a once in a lifetime surgery, no way is Alex getting his hands on it and..."
"I don't want you hanging around with that home wrecking slut...especially when you like her and think she's hot and..."
"Callie, shes not a...,shes a nice person and you even liked her, you said that...
"I was misinformed... She's a home wrecking slut who wants to bed my wife and..."
"... but your wife doesn't want to..." Arizona stifled her smile at Callie's choice of language" "... 'bed' her, okay?"
"You sure?" The insecurity was loud and clear.
Arizona just smiled, somewhere in the middle of assuring her wife, the truth dawned on her, as great as it felt to be flirted at by Dr. Lauren Boswell, Rockstar surgeon and her 'hotness', coming home to her even  'hotter' wife, her Rockstar surgeon wife, her now extremely jealous  hot rockstar wife was far better, far more of an ego boost.
"As a member of the Board I want a veto on all hot visiting surgeons from now on..." Callie announced, only half joking.
Arizona guffawed loudly before leaning down and kissing her  wife,long and hard.
It had been a good day, a great day and the night promised to be even better.
.