Confessions, Concessions and Cures: Chapter Twelve
Title: Confession, Concessions and Cures
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to SR and ABC. I make no profit from these stories and also? No copy right infringement intended.
Rating:T (Mild warning for the language - a word for 'cat' that doesn't mean a feline creature is used).
Summary:Every scary little thing that rattled inside her mind and heart, that came in the way of her loving Callie with everything she ever was - it was all becoming apparent. It became violent and almost tangible in every electrifying touch she'd shared with Lauren.
There was this all consuming burn Arizona felt in Lauren's presence; she was suddenly younger, everything was momentarily brighter and so she gave into it. It felt like jumping off a high rise; the fall creating a hollow in her stomach, the wind tickling her exposed skin, rushing all over her. It was beautiful and exciting until it wasn't, until the ground became visible. And, then it all came rushing in, who she was; a mother, a wife, brilliant, married to someone who didn't think to question why she loved her, or how she loved her, someone who only knew that she loved Arizona and everything else was inconsequential.
Yes, she was sure. She was sure that it happened - she was sure that she'd just hit the ground, they all had.
"Yes, Callie. It happened."
Pairing: C/A
A/N: Here it is folks, another update. Sorry for having had neglected this Fic for so long, but I have been writing the next. I’ll be updating TMTC soon, as it is with my Beta, Dwarkwlight7. This chapter is un-Beta’d because I just wanted to get it out, ‘cause it’s been so long! So any and all mistakes are mine.
Let me know how you like it, this was hard to write because I have the emotional maturity of a banana leaf. So anyway, yeah, hard to write!
Onward
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“Arizona?”
“Yeah?” she looked up, a little taken aback by that - ‘was that a smirk on Callie’s face?’
“So?” - Callie sounded almost glib and dangerously pleased with herself - “I was right? Right?”
The blonde felt more and more confused. She must have been missing something.
“Right about what, Callie?” she asked suspiciously.
“This was a sex thing!”
“Ugh!” the blonde pushed her - “shut up!”
“Say it! Say it! You want me!” Callie sing-songed in a trill annoying tone - what she ‘thought’ was a girly tone.
“I do.” Arizona answered seriously, and with such sincerity that it brought the light joking atmosphere Callie had established to an end. The air between them changed again.
“Why did you do it then? Cheat?” Callie asked. There was something venomous in that last word, and it was about to poison the air between them.
They were in the thick of it now...
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“I don’t want to talk about it right now…” She whispered.
“You don’t want to talk… I don’t even!” She huffs, takes a deep breath and gathers herself, ‘she could throttle her right now; she should throttle her right now!’ - “what makes you think you get to choose?!”
“Callie…” she breathed out in a desperate sigh. All thought of sleep, and sex and everything else had left them now.
Callie would rarely ever get angry. Sure, she’d crib and growl and whine; she’d do all of that. But, even through all this, this entire last year, she’d really only lost her temper in that heart breaking sort of way three times, and just the once after the Lauren.
“Say something, Arizona!”
The brunette’s pleas were met with silence - dark, heavy, abject, almost interminable silence.
“I beg you! I’m still begging! I’m always the one left begging - even now…”
Arizona looked at her, holding in her tears, biting her lip. She was bursting to talk, ‘she was!’ But they couldn’t have a blowout, they couldn’t afford one right now. They needed a controlled setting.
“This was a mistake…” Callie said dejectedly as she began to get up.
Arizona’s eyes tracked her slow deliberate movements, ‘wait what was happening here?!’
“What… wait! What are you doing?!”
“I’m going back to...” -
Arizona cut her off quickly, “Callie, this is your apartment! It’s past four in the morning! Just, just…”
“What Arizona?” she whispered with a sob, “just what?! You’re effacing me in all this! You don’t wanna talk, well good, "cause guess what?! I don’t want to hear it anymore!”
The blonde moved quickly to block Callie’s lack luster attempt at getting off the couch and out the door -
“No, Callie! Come on, wait…” - she put a hand on the brunette’s shoulder only to be shirked off unceremoniously.
“Why should I? Why should I wait?!” - The Cadence and pitch of her voice, evidence of her mood and control spiraling outward and away from her grasp, pushing her towards a jarring emotional incoherence and ineptitude she had worked so hard to avoid - “this is… its bullshit! I can’t keep doing this with you, Arizona!
“I’m looking at you right now and…” - her voice tapered off as her anger gave way to a molten and soft, momentary silence, traversing the length between resentment and anguish.
“And what?” - The blonde whispered, uncertain if she really, actually wanted the answer.
“And I wish I felt nothing…” - Callie sobbed the words out as she threw herself back onto the couch, her hand on her forehead, the palm jutting onto her eyes as she tried to hide her tears.
“Don’t” - the blonde whispered - softly, lovingly, with concern etched on her face as she gently pried Callie’s hand off of her eyes. She was afraid her wife would push her hand away again, and afraid she wouldn’t. Callie’s lack of resistance became harder to read - ‘could her Calliope be pushed into being apathetic? Callie felt everything, sometimes all at once, she always had.’
“Don’t hide, Calliope, please.”
“I’m not the one who’s been hiding, Arizona.”
They were quieter now, the both of them; they felt drained of energy and fight, but this they needed to do. They understood that much.
“I know” -
- “You don’t wanna talk?!” - the brunette cut her off quickly, suddenly feeling the need to give meaning and a voice to whatever it was that was stirring inside her - “Fine! Then I will!”
“Callie, please just…” -
- “No, no! You know what?! No! You’ve been lying to me for nearly a year now, Arizona! I feel… I feel, God! When you started to come around? Bailey’s wedding day? I thought, there she is! Right there! She’s been waiting to… wanting to come back to me. My wife! It was all a lie… it’s all been one big lie!” - She was crying now, controlled, suppressed, heavy, silent, broken cries; her fear, rage, heartache all distilled in the tears that she could no longer hold in.
“No!” - The blonde shook her head - “don’t… don’t say that!”
“It’s true though!” - Rationality that Arizona so feared had made its way into Callie’s voice - “no matter what you say, and how you… I feel…it’s true. You’ve been lying this whole time! The truth is… some days you can’t bear looking at me” -
“No!” - Arizona cut her off with a confidence that surprised the both of them - “that’s not… maybe in the beginning…” - she whispered - “but not now. Not in a long while! I… I love looking at you!” - She said fervidly - “sometimes, it’s all I want to do. Just look at you.”
“Spare me the post-post-coital guilt goggles Arizona! You screwed that… that… walking swear-word of a person…” - she shocked them both with the lack of impropriety in this whole thing, Sofia was right there, separated from them by a thin door - “and you did it to feel… I don’t know what!!! But, you didn’t come to me before it happened. I was walking around for months, happy like an idiot, thinking things were better; that we would… I don’t know? That we would make it? That you loved me” -
- “I do! I do love you!” - The blonde implored, a hand beating at her chest, as if to emphasise the depth of her love for her wife.
“This…” - Callie waved her hands between them - “this… it feels like a lot of things, but it doesn’t feel like love to me, Arizona! Maybe we should just” -
“Stop! Just… for the love of Pete, just stop, Callie! Stop before you say something you don’t actually mean… that we won’t be able to take back!”
There was a sudden lull between them as they both fidgeted with their hands, looking at the floor or around the room, avoiding each other’s eyes.
Callie spoke first as she wiped at her cheeks, the palms of her hands rubbing hard against her face - “I need you to talk about it…” - she said tiredly, her breath coming slower now as she began to regain her calm - “I need to talk about it, Arizona! I feel like I’m going insane! Like ‘m going to explode!”
“It’s my recovery…” - Arizona replied softly, the edges of the words outlined by a muted anger.
“I’m sorry… what?!”
“I said…” - the blonde’s voice became bolder, laced with an anger that was now more apparent and puzzling to the woman in front of her - “it’s my goddamn recovery! Not… not everything is about you!”
The change in Arizona’s demeanour gave the brunette emotional whiplash. She couldn’t really say a thing or present a counter point.
“I know that, I know it’s your” -
“Do you ?! Do You really?! Because you’ve been so involved, and I… it’s been… stifling” -
“God! Nothing’s changed! It’s been a year, and nothing’s changed. We’re going to circle back to it, aren’t we?! I’m the… the butcher that hacked off your leg!” - Arizona visibly shrunk at the words her wife hurled at her - “you always talked about it like I enjoyed it! Like I wanted to amputate! You aren’t the only one this affects; you aren’t the only one living with that decision!”
“Don’t!” - The blonde barked at her - “don’t you dare! You were supposed to keep it; you were supposed to save it! I’ve seen you hand out miracles to perfect strangers! But, me?! You cut it off! You took it! You broke us!” - The room was engulfed in a rotting silence. It held within it the veritable quiet of a graveyard where the sweet smells of the wet grass and the wild flowers hid the stench of stale lifeless forms, breaking down and decomposing. And suddenly, they could both feel it… that thing between them… it was dying, gasping for breath, and life and light, and failing.
“How can you say those things and still say you love me?! What are we doing Arizona?” - The brunette lent forward, an intense insistence coloured her voice - “We should just… let’s stop.”
Arizona looked up at her, her chest and stomach in knots - “stop what?”
“Us.”
“No! No, we… I can’t… I won’t do that” -
“Why do you want to be with me? After everything, why?”
“Because…” - The blonde huffed her frustration - “because this will pass” - she made sure to maintain eye contact as she spoke again - “it will. Because, I don’t feel like this all the time, and you do that too.”
“What?” - Callie looked at her questioningly, prompting the blonde to explain further.
“What I mean is” - Arizona ventured a tight smile, trying to give her wife some semblance of reassurance - “I know what ‘m doing! With therapy, I’m learning what I’m doing… ‘m blaming you, because it’s easier, because you’ll” - she gulped, trying to control the lump that was beginning to form in her throat as her eyes stung again with the promise of tears - “you’ll take it. You always do, always have. But, I also… I… it’s you I want to get better for… you and Sofia” -
Callie shook her head as if to say no - “you need to do it for yourself, Arizona, not for” -
“And I do!” - The blonde cut her off mid-sentence with a fervid insistence - “but, I have bad days, and you have to know that, and still stick around!”
“I want to” - Callie replied - “Arizona, you have no idea how much I want you” - she said quietly as she traced soft, shy patterns on the back of Arizona’s hand, a gesture to make her feel safe - “but, you don’t want me here! You” -
“I do!” - Arizona shrieked. The brunette replied with an arched eyebrow as if to say ‘really?!’
“I mean, not always. Sometimes… sometimes I need space, I need to” -
“Run?” - The brunette asked - “you always run…”
“No, it’s not running… I won’t…it’s just” -
“What?”
“It’s clarity, it’s peace, it’s silence… most days I feel overwhelmed. You want to know why I slept with her?”
“To get away from me?” - Callie asked with a baffling smirk on her face. ‘She was picking now to inject humour? Here?!’
“It was a rhetorical question, Callie!” - said the blonde, sporting a smirk of her own. Then a heaviness overtook them - “We joked, and we laughed” -
“I… don’t want to hear anymore!” - the brunette said hurriedly, as she sprang up and walked a little ways away, putting some distance between herself and her wife.
Arizona sighed - “yes you do. You need to… we need to do this!” - She waited for Callie to say something, but was answered only with a silent and tentative nod.
“She was like me. Devil may care bad-ass surgeon, with no one to answer to. She had nothing to do with this, all this!” - She flailed her hand around for emphasis - “The plane crash, Mark, the law suit, my leg; she was outside of it and I thought if I… if she and I… then I could forget too, for a while…” - her voice fell into a silence as they both absorbed what the blonde had admitted.
“So, what?” - The brunette asked, her indignation shining through her voice - “What are you trying to say to me? That… that it had nothing to do with me? That it wasn’t even about the sex?!”
“No! I mean… yes, I mean yes and no! I… Callie it’s complicated!”
“Well, freaking simplify it! Are you still in love with me?”
“Indubitably”
Hearing Arizona’s answer was causing the brunette to quickly lose steam -“then, I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“I did it, and I’m still figuring it out, Callie. It’s only been” -
- “I know how long it’s been since you were with her, Arizona! Trust me, I can’t forget…”
“Right…” - The blonde sighed - “yes, of course, I didn’t mean… I only meant…” -
- “What? What? Just spit it out!” - The brunette asked, terse and harsh.
“I only meant that I just started getting help, you know?” - Hedged the blonde - “real psychiatric help, and the doctor said” - she paused the next part was indelicate and bound to rile up her wife - “the doctor said that PTSD can lead to acting out like I did, with…” -
- “with sex!” - The brunette scoffed - “that’s your defence?! That you did it because your” -
- “Callie” - the blonde sighed, cutting her wife off before they went off topic - “I’m not defending what I did.”
“Sure!”
“I’m not!” - Arizona insisted - “you wanted to understand… I‘m explaining it. I’m trying to understand it too…
I” -
“It made you forget…” - Callie stated in a quiet and thoughtful tone. Callie certainly understood the impulse; she’d done it herself, several times, especially with Mark. But, with one crucial difference - ‘she wasn’t in love and freaking married to someone else when they screwed!’
“Hmmm?”
“The sex, with that woman…” - Callie sputtered, avoiding having to say Lauren Boswell’s name - “you said sex with her made you forget about… about everything.”
“Yes.” - Came the blonde’s meek, almost muted reply as she felt a deep and all engulfing shame swallow her whole.
“What about with me?”
“What do you… what do you mean?” - Arizona asked, her question laden with a hesitance that gave away her fear. She had a strong suspicion she wouldn’t like where Callie was going with this.
“Sex with me? Were you…” - Callie’s voice grew smaller as she moved ahead - “were you disgusted the whole time we were… we were making love? Were you thinking about how I took away your leg or that you were feeling less than… just… just less than yourself, and I did that! And you still had to touch me? Were you? Disgusted?”
Arizona was completely taken aback by the look of utter devastation on Callie’s face. She could tell Callie was beginning to believe it… all this stuff about her being disgusted.
“Huh!” - Arizona laughed a dry laugh to herself, but stopped when she realised Callie was beginning to read her reaction incorrectly as panic flashed across the brunette’s face.
“No! Callie, come on! God no! Sex with you was… it was” - she went red, her reaction eliciting a smile from her partner - “…yeah. If anything, I didn’t know how after everything I’d said, you could…” -
“Okay” - the brunette whispered, nodding her understanding - “okay” - she sighed.
“But was she… was she better than” -
“We are not doing that, now!” - Arizona hissed, feeling a little sick - “we aren’t doing that ever! I made a mistake… it was a mistake… with her” -
Callie scoffed, rolling her eyes at the blonde.
- “I know!” - Arizona spoke, insistence in her voice - “I know it sounds trite… that it’s not a big enough word for what I did… I… I know that, but… that is what it was. I want you! Callie? Please look at me!” - She insisted.
The brunette refused to look up.
“Please.” - Arizona sighed.
“What?” - The brunette asked her in a low murmur as she finally looked into her eyes.
Arizona smiled tentatively - “you are intelligent, and beautiful, and annoying, and bat-shit crazy” - Callie quirked an eyebrow, slightly amused, even though tears flowed freely from her eyes - “and you are brave… So brave, it’s stupid” -
- “I thought you were trying to make a case for yourself” - the brunette cut her off - “you are terrible at this!” - She babbled - “the Robbins speechifying is a little rust-mmmmm!” - Her words quickly turned into a delicate and surprised moan of satisfaction as Arizona cut her off with a slow, languid kiss.
When Arizona withdrew, they both sighed as they wore matching grins on their faces.
Callie spoke first - “you” - she huffed, trying to catch her breath, she put her fingers on her lips, still feeling the warmth of Arizona’s lips on hers - “you shouldn’t have done that.”
“Yeah, well…” - the blonde smirked - “some things work better with a demonstration.”
“Yeah?” - Callie asked; a playful lilt in her voice.
“Mmmhmmm… that was an excellent teaching moment for me… I think!”
“Rigth!” - A long but comfortable silence followed as the two thought about all that had gone on between them.
Callie was the first to break the silence again - “this doesn’t mean…” -
- “I know…” - Arizona nodded, an earnest smile on her face - “but you have to know that… that I love you!” - She cried, though that tentative and slow smile never left her face.
“I know… I do!” - The brunette insisted - “but I…” -
“I’ll keep saying it… I will, till you get bored of it!” - Arizona promised.
“That’s your sales pitch?!” - Callie laughed a wet laugh - “You’ll bore me with love!”
“No one will ever bore you more than me!” - Arizona smiled.
“Arizona?”
“Yeah?”
“I bore you too.”
“I know. I’m easy to bore!” - The blonde smirked.
“Yeah…” - Callie laughed - “on most days.” - She sighed as the two held one another’s gaze.
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A/N: I wonder if this is a good place to end? Or if I should continue…
Write in with your opinions. Although, I could definitely keep going, but I like the whole open-ended-ness.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to SR and ABC. I make no profit from these stories and also? No copy right infringement intended.
Rating:T (Mild warning for the language - a word for 'cat' that doesn't mean a feline creature is used).
Summary:Every scary little thing that rattled inside her mind and heart, that came in the way of her loving Callie with everything she ever was - it was all becoming apparent. It became violent and almost tangible in every electrifying touch she'd shared with Lauren.
There was this all consuming burn Arizona felt in Lauren's presence; she was suddenly younger, everything was momentarily brighter and so she gave into it. It felt like jumping off a high rise; the fall creating a hollow in her stomach, the wind tickling her exposed skin, rushing all over her. It was beautiful and exciting until it wasn't, until the ground became visible. And, then it all came rushing in, who she was; a mother, a wife, brilliant, married to someone who didn't think to question why she loved her, or how she loved her, someone who only knew that she loved Arizona and everything else was inconsequential.
Yes, she was sure. She was sure that it happened - she was sure that she'd just hit the ground, they all had.
"Yes, Callie. It happened."
Pairing: C/A
A/N: Here it is folks, another update. Sorry for having had neglected this Fic for so long, but I have been writing the next. I’ll be updating TMTC soon, as it is with my Beta, Dwarkwlight7. This chapter is un-Beta’d because I just wanted to get it out, ‘cause it’s been so long! So any and all mistakes are mine.
Let me know how you like it, this was hard to write because I have the emotional maturity of a banana leaf. So anyway, yeah, hard to write!
Onward
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“Arizona?”
“Yeah?” she looked up, a little taken aback by that - ‘was that a smirk on Callie’s face?’
“So?” - Callie sounded almost glib and dangerously pleased with herself - “I was right? Right?”
The blonde felt more and more confused. She must have been missing something.
“Right about what, Callie?” she asked suspiciously.
“This was a sex thing!”
“Ugh!” the blonde pushed her - “shut up!”
“Say it! Say it! You want me!” Callie sing-songed in a trill annoying tone - what she ‘thought’ was a girly tone.
“I do.” Arizona answered seriously, and with such sincerity that it brought the light joking atmosphere Callie had established to an end. The air between them changed again.
“Why did you do it then? Cheat?” Callie asked. There was something venomous in that last word, and it was about to poison the air between them.
They were in the thick of it now...
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“I don’t want to talk about it right now…” She whispered.
“You don’t want to talk… I don’t even!” She huffs, takes a deep breath and gathers herself, ‘she could throttle her right now; she should throttle her right now!’ - “what makes you think you get to choose?!”
“Callie…” she breathed out in a desperate sigh. All thought of sleep, and sex and everything else had left them now.
Callie would rarely ever get angry. Sure, she’d crib and growl and whine; she’d do all of that. But, even through all this, this entire last year, she’d really only lost her temper in that heart breaking sort of way three times, and just the once after the Lauren.
“Say something, Arizona!”
The brunette’s pleas were met with silence - dark, heavy, abject, almost interminable silence.
“I beg you! I’m still begging! I’m always the one left begging - even now…”
Arizona looked at her, holding in her tears, biting her lip. She was bursting to talk, ‘she was!’ But they couldn’t have a blowout, they couldn’t afford one right now. They needed a controlled setting.
“This was a mistake…” Callie said dejectedly as she began to get up.
Arizona’s eyes tracked her slow deliberate movements, ‘wait what was happening here?!’
“What… wait! What are you doing?!”
“I’m going back to...” -
Arizona cut her off quickly, “Callie, this is your apartment! It’s past four in the morning! Just, just…”
“What Arizona?” she whispered with a sob, “just what?! You’re effacing me in all this! You don’t wanna talk, well good, "cause guess what?! I don’t want to hear it anymore!”
The blonde moved quickly to block Callie’s lack luster attempt at getting off the couch and out the door -
“No, Callie! Come on, wait…” - she put a hand on the brunette’s shoulder only to be shirked off unceremoniously.
“Why should I? Why should I wait?!” - The Cadence and pitch of her voice, evidence of her mood and control spiraling outward and away from her grasp, pushing her towards a jarring emotional incoherence and ineptitude she had worked so hard to avoid - “this is… its bullshit! I can’t keep doing this with you, Arizona!
“I’m looking at you right now and…” - her voice tapered off as her anger gave way to a molten and soft, momentary silence, traversing the length between resentment and anguish.
“And what?” - The blonde whispered, uncertain if she really, actually wanted the answer.
“And I wish I felt nothing…” - Callie sobbed the words out as she threw herself back onto the couch, her hand on her forehead, the palm jutting onto her eyes as she tried to hide her tears.
“Don’t” - the blonde whispered - softly, lovingly, with concern etched on her face as she gently pried Callie’s hand off of her eyes. She was afraid her wife would push her hand away again, and afraid she wouldn’t. Callie’s lack of resistance became harder to read - ‘could her Calliope be pushed into being apathetic? Callie felt everything, sometimes all at once, she always had.’
“Don’t hide, Calliope, please.”
“I’m not the one who’s been hiding, Arizona.”
They were quieter now, the both of them; they felt drained of energy and fight, but this they needed to do. They understood that much.
“I know” -
- “You don’t wanna talk?!” - the brunette cut her off quickly, suddenly feeling the need to give meaning and a voice to whatever it was that was stirring inside her - “Fine! Then I will!”
“Callie, please just…” -
- “No, no! You know what?! No! You’ve been lying to me for nearly a year now, Arizona! I feel… I feel, God! When you started to come around? Bailey’s wedding day? I thought, there she is! Right there! She’s been waiting to… wanting to come back to me. My wife! It was all a lie… it’s all been one big lie!” - She was crying now, controlled, suppressed, heavy, silent, broken cries; her fear, rage, heartache all distilled in the tears that she could no longer hold in.
“No!” - The blonde shook her head - “don’t… don’t say that!”
“It’s true though!” - Rationality that Arizona so feared had made its way into Callie’s voice - “no matter what you say, and how you… I feel…it’s true. You’ve been lying this whole time! The truth is… some days you can’t bear looking at me” -
“No!” - Arizona cut her off with a confidence that surprised the both of them - “that’s not… maybe in the beginning…” - she whispered - “but not now. Not in a long while! I… I love looking at you!” - She said fervidly - “sometimes, it’s all I want to do. Just look at you.”
“Spare me the post-post-coital guilt goggles Arizona! You screwed that… that… walking swear-word of a person…” - she shocked them both with the lack of impropriety in this whole thing, Sofia was right there, separated from them by a thin door - “and you did it to feel… I don’t know what!!! But, you didn’t come to me before it happened. I was walking around for months, happy like an idiot, thinking things were better; that we would… I don’t know? That we would make it? That you loved me” -
- “I do! I do love you!” - The blonde implored, a hand beating at her chest, as if to emphasise the depth of her love for her wife.
“This…” - Callie waved her hands between them - “this… it feels like a lot of things, but it doesn’t feel like love to me, Arizona! Maybe we should just” -
“Stop! Just… for the love of Pete, just stop, Callie! Stop before you say something you don’t actually mean… that we won’t be able to take back!”
There was a sudden lull between them as they both fidgeted with their hands, looking at the floor or around the room, avoiding each other’s eyes.
Callie spoke first as she wiped at her cheeks, the palms of her hands rubbing hard against her face - “I need you to talk about it…” - she said tiredly, her breath coming slower now as she began to regain her calm - “I need to talk about it, Arizona! I feel like I’m going insane! Like ‘m going to explode!”
“It’s my recovery…” - Arizona replied softly, the edges of the words outlined by a muted anger.
“I’m sorry… what?!”
“I said…” - the blonde’s voice became bolder, laced with an anger that was now more apparent and puzzling to the woman in front of her - “it’s my goddamn recovery! Not… not everything is about you!”
The change in Arizona’s demeanour gave the brunette emotional whiplash. She couldn’t really say a thing or present a counter point.
“I know that, I know it’s your” -
“Do you ?! Do You really?! Because you’ve been so involved, and I… it’s been… stifling” -
“God! Nothing’s changed! It’s been a year, and nothing’s changed. We’re going to circle back to it, aren’t we?! I’m the… the butcher that hacked off your leg!” - Arizona visibly shrunk at the words her wife hurled at her - “you always talked about it like I enjoyed it! Like I wanted to amputate! You aren’t the only one this affects; you aren’t the only one living with that decision!”
“Don’t!” - The blonde barked at her - “don’t you dare! You were supposed to keep it; you were supposed to save it! I’ve seen you hand out miracles to perfect strangers! But, me?! You cut it off! You took it! You broke us!” - The room was engulfed in a rotting silence. It held within it the veritable quiet of a graveyard where the sweet smells of the wet grass and the wild flowers hid the stench of stale lifeless forms, breaking down and decomposing. And suddenly, they could both feel it… that thing between them… it was dying, gasping for breath, and life and light, and failing.
“How can you say those things and still say you love me?! What are we doing Arizona?” - The brunette lent forward, an intense insistence coloured her voice - “We should just… let’s stop.”
Arizona looked up at her, her chest and stomach in knots - “stop what?”
“Us.”
“No! No, we… I can’t… I won’t do that” -
“Why do you want to be with me? After everything, why?”
“Because…” - The blonde huffed her frustration - “because this will pass” - she made sure to maintain eye contact as she spoke again - “it will. Because, I don’t feel like this all the time, and you do that too.”
“What?” - Callie looked at her questioningly, prompting the blonde to explain further.
“What I mean is” - Arizona ventured a tight smile, trying to give her wife some semblance of reassurance - “I know what ‘m doing! With therapy, I’m learning what I’m doing… ‘m blaming you, because it’s easier, because you’ll” - she gulped, trying to control the lump that was beginning to form in her throat as her eyes stung again with the promise of tears - “you’ll take it. You always do, always have. But, I also… I… it’s you I want to get better for… you and Sofia” -
Callie shook her head as if to say no - “you need to do it for yourself, Arizona, not for” -
“And I do!” - The blonde cut her off mid-sentence with a fervid insistence - “but, I have bad days, and you have to know that, and still stick around!”
“I want to” - Callie replied - “Arizona, you have no idea how much I want you” - she said quietly as she traced soft, shy patterns on the back of Arizona’s hand, a gesture to make her feel safe - “but, you don’t want me here! You” -
“I do!” - Arizona shrieked. The brunette replied with an arched eyebrow as if to say ‘really?!’
“I mean, not always. Sometimes… sometimes I need space, I need to” -
“Run?” - The brunette asked - “you always run…”
“No, it’s not running… I won’t…it’s just” -
“What?”
“It’s clarity, it’s peace, it’s silence… most days I feel overwhelmed. You want to know why I slept with her?”
“To get away from me?” - Callie asked with a baffling smirk on her face. ‘She was picking now to inject humour? Here?!’
“It was a rhetorical question, Callie!” - said the blonde, sporting a smirk of her own. Then a heaviness overtook them - “We joked, and we laughed” -
“I… don’t want to hear anymore!” - the brunette said hurriedly, as she sprang up and walked a little ways away, putting some distance between herself and her wife.
Arizona sighed - “yes you do. You need to… we need to do this!” - She waited for Callie to say something, but was answered only with a silent and tentative nod.
“She was like me. Devil may care bad-ass surgeon, with no one to answer to. She had nothing to do with this, all this!” - She flailed her hand around for emphasis - “The plane crash, Mark, the law suit, my leg; she was outside of it and I thought if I… if she and I… then I could forget too, for a while…” - her voice fell into a silence as they both absorbed what the blonde had admitted.
“So, what?” - The brunette asked, her indignation shining through her voice - “What are you trying to say to me? That… that it had nothing to do with me? That it wasn’t even about the sex?!”
“No! I mean… yes, I mean yes and no! I… Callie it’s complicated!”
“Well, freaking simplify it! Are you still in love with me?”
“Indubitably”
Hearing Arizona’s answer was causing the brunette to quickly lose steam -“then, I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“I did it, and I’m still figuring it out, Callie. It’s only been” -
- “I know how long it’s been since you were with her, Arizona! Trust me, I can’t forget…”
“Right…” - The blonde sighed - “yes, of course, I didn’t mean… I only meant…” -
- “What? What? Just spit it out!” - The brunette asked, terse and harsh.
“I only meant that I just started getting help, you know?” - Hedged the blonde - “real psychiatric help, and the doctor said” - she paused the next part was indelicate and bound to rile up her wife - “the doctor said that PTSD can lead to acting out like I did, with…” -
- “with sex!” - The brunette scoffed - “that’s your defence?! That you did it because your” -
- “Callie” - the blonde sighed, cutting her wife off before they went off topic - “I’m not defending what I did.”
“Sure!”
“I’m not!” - Arizona insisted - “you wanted to understand… I‘m explaining it. I’m trying to understand it too…
I” -
“It made you forget…” - Callie stated in a quiet and thoughtful tone. Callie certainly understood the impulse; she’d done it herself, several times, especially with Mark. But, with one crucial difference - ‘she wasn’t in love and freaking married to someone else when they screwed!’
“Hmmm?”
“The sex, with that woman…” - Callie sputtered, avoiding having to say Lauren Boswell’s name - “you said sex with her made you forget about… about everything.”
“Yes.” - Came the blonde’s meek, almost muted reply as she felt a deep and all engulfing shame swallow her whole.
“What about with me?”
“What do you… what do you mean?” - Arizona asked, her question laden with a hesitance that gave away her fear. She had a strong suspicion she wouldn’t like where Callie was going with this.
“Sex with me? Were you…” - Callie’s voice grew smaller as she moved ahead - “were you disgusted the whole time we were… we were making love? Were you thinking about how I took away your leg or that you were feeling less than… just… just less than yourself, and I did that! And you still had to touch me? Were you? Disgusted?”
Arizona was completely taken aback by the look of utter devastation on Callie’s face. She could tell Callie was beginning to believe it… all this stuff about her being disgusted.
“Huh!” - Arizona laughed a dry laugh to herself, but stopped when she realised Callie was beginning to read her reaction incorrectly as panic flashed across the brunette’s face.
“No! Callie, come on! God no! Sex with you was… it was” - she went red, her reaction eliciting a smile from her partner - “…yeah. If anything, I didn’t know how after everything I’d said, you could…” -
“Okay” - the brunette whispered, nodding her understanding - “okay” - she sighed.
“But was she… was she better than” -
“We are not doing that, now!” - Arizona hissed, feeling a little sick - “we aren’t doing that ever! I made a mistake… it was a mistake… with her” -
Callie scoffed, rolling her eyes at the blonde.
- “I know!” - Arizona spoke, insistence in her voice - “I know it sounds trite… that it’s not a big enough word for what I did… I… I know that, but… that is what it was. I want you! Callie? Please look at me!” - She insisted.
The brunette refused to look up.
“Please.” - Arizona sighed.
“What?” - The brunette asked her in a low murmur as she finally looked into her eyes.
Arizona smiled tentatively - “you are intelligent, and beautiful, and annoying, and bat-shit crazy” - Callie quirked an eyebrow, slightly amused, even though tears flowed freely from her eyes - “and you are brave… So brave, it’s stupid” -
- “I thought you were trying to make a case for yourself” - the brunette cut her off - “you are terrible at this!” - She babbled - “the Robbins speechifying is a little rust-mmmmm!” - Her words quickly turned into a delicate and surprised moan of satisfaction as Arizona cut her off with a slow, languid kiss.
When Arizona withdrew, they both sighed as they wore matching grins on their faces.
Callie spoke first - “you” - she huffed, trying to catch her breath, she put her fingers on her lips, still feeling the warmth of Arizona’s lips on hers - “you shouldn’t have done that.”
“Yeah, well…” - the blonde smirked - “some things work better with a demonstration.”
“Yeah?” - Callie asked; a playful lilt in her voice.
“Mmmhmmm… that was an excellent teaching moment for me… I think!”
“Rigth!” - A long but comfortable silence followed as the two thought about all that had gone on between them.
Callie was the first to break the silence again - “this doesn’t mean…” -
- “I know…” - Arizona nodded, an earnest smile on her face - “but you have to know that… that I love you!” - She cried, though that tentative and slow smile never left her face.
“I know… I do!” - The brunette insisted - “but I…” -
“I’ll keep saying it… I will, till you get bored of it!” - Arizona promised.
“That’s your sales pitch?!” - Callie laughed a wet laugh - “You’ll bore me with love!”
“No one will ever bore you more than me!” - Arizona smiled.
“Arizona?”
“Yeah?”
“I bore you too.”
“I know. I’m easy to bore!” - The blonde smirked.
“Yeah…” - Callie laughed - “on most days.” - She sighed as the two held one another’s gaze.
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A/N: I wonder if this is a good place to end? Or if I should continue…
Write in with your opinions. Although, I could definitely keep going, but I like the whole open-ended-ness.