what ever happened to miss independent {callie}
Title: What Ever Happened To Miss Independent
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Callie, Lexie. Implied Callie/Arizona, and Mark/Lexie. Squint and you're going to find some other subtext-y pairings.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,594
Prompt: #4 - Confessions for 5drunkfics
Author's Note: I don't know what to call this. Let's go for "what I wrote after BSG on Friday and finished at 1am this morning". Also, I don't have a Callie icon. Fail.
Summary: Post 5.14. Callie's having one of those nights where everything's turned upside down.
Callie’s having one of those nights where everything seems to have turned completely upside down. She goes from lonely, celibate, crying in a bathroom girl to having not one, but two people more or less come on to her. It’s nice, initially, this reminder that maybe she isn’t as bad off as she feels like sometimes. But on the other hand, it’s a little too much too fast after a rather extensive dry spell, only made bearable by Mark’s repetitive reassurances that this too shall pass (it’s not like he really should be giving advice - he’s one step away from dumping the girl who not only loves him, but who he loves, and that’s not really footsteps she wants to follow in with any sort of immediacy) and Sadie’s flirty smiles from across the room, ideas made clear but never acted upon.
Because first there’s Arizona, who granted she’s seen a few times but never really…worked with or had anything to do with. Peds and ortho don’t really share a whole lot of face time, and it’s not like she goes out of her way to meet everyone who works here, new or old or in between. But Arizona seems to know her, somehow, enough so that she insists two things via two very different methods. The first, that the talk is good, that people like her, which is fine, good actually, people liking you is good, but there’s a difference between respect and admiration as a surgeon and, you know, the kind that she’s looking for, the kind that doesn’t go away when she tugs on her coat and walks out the doors of Seattle Grace at the end of the day. The second, that people will be lining up after she works through her assorted issues, specifically Arizona, if the way she doesn’t even hesitate to press her lips to Callie’s with absolutely no warning is any indication. And she’s fairly sure it really, really is.
Callie spends another five minutes standing in front of the bathroom mirror after Arizona’s gone, wondering just how many shots the other woman’s done (the taste still lingers, just a little), and why she can’t be like that girl anymore. When she lost this fearless, bold person that feels like nothing but a memory of a long-lost friend. And then she walks out, calm and collected, runny mascara and eyeliner fixed, and tries very hard not to look at Arizona when she passes by her on the way back to the bar.
She doesn’t really entertain the idea of occupying the seat she’d just vacated, figuring that if Mark had half a brain he would already be there, with Lexie, and they’d be doing couple-y things, like that flirty banter that they do, and she loves Mark, in that sort of way that falls somewhere between a brother and a best friend, but that is just something she doesn’t want to deal with today.
Except Mark isn’t there. Lexie still is, drink in front of her, playing with the edges of a napkin and alternating between watching the clock and Joe with some sort of nervous fear in her eyes. The door opens and closes twice in the next forty seconds or so, and every time that little bell rings above the door Lexie does a half turn to look, snapping back around as soon as she’s determined that it’s not Mark. If he tells Derek, he’s supposed to come here afterwards; that’s the supposed plan. It’s a sense of desperation that Callie can identify with, sympathize with, and she looks from the empty table that seems to be just waiting for her, back to Lexie who is definitely waiting for something, be it Mark or just something to occupy her.
And because Callie’s been feeling a lot like that lately, both waiting for something to walk through the door and looking for something to occupy herself, she gives up on the empty table and instead sets her sights on Lexie, moving toward the younger woman and settling back in her old seat.
“Hey,” Lexie exhales, the word coming out all in one giant, shaky rush of air. “Are you - “
“I’m fine.” Callie answers, before she can get asked if she’s okay one more time because she just doesn’t quite know that answer tonight. The jury is still out. “He’ll come.”
Lexie gets that overly hopeful look on her face, and Callie almost regrets saying that because now if she’s wrong there will probably be hell to pay, but she’s going to choose to believe that she knows Mark well enough that she can make these sort of calls regarding his judgment with some sort of accuracy. “You think? I mean, did he say anything earlier?”
“No.” He did say something earlier, but that was mostly along the lines of how he was going to have to break up with her (all because of Derek and Meredith or whatever, and if you ask her that whole thing is just stupid and juvenile and they’re all adults here, you know, let’s act like them), and there is no way she’s repeating any of that conversation to Lexie, so she’ll just stick with half-truths and beating around the bush. “But I know him. He’ll come.”
Which is about when Lexie goes and not only does something stupid but completely switches the tone of this night again when she says, “Sometimes I think I would be better off forgetting men all together.”
Callie starts to worry about how much Lexie’s had to drink and how much of that sentence was the alcohol talking, adding into that just how much was frustration. She highly doubts Lexie’s all that inclined to start batting for the other team of her own accord, but Callie also didn’t realize she herself was either, so clearly she isn’t the best judge. “I know firsthand how well that goes. Trust me; you don’t want to do it by choice.”
“Worked for you.” Lexie replies, after a moment, and Callie really wants to know how the hell she thinks finding out that she liked both men and women was beneficial to her at all. She got dumped. After less than a month. Everything else has been some sick downward spiral since then, like she broke a mirror and wound up with seven years of bad luck. That’s what it feels like anyways. She got wounded and then punished for it. “Maybe I could learn a lesson or two from you, instead of him.”
There’s nothing she can do but smile at the other woman, at the ridiculousness of what she just said. Yes, she knows that Lexie’s method of seduction included the words ‘teach me’ and that’s what she’s playing off of; she just doesn’t know that Callie knows. “You’re so not going to remember this conversation in the morning.”
“Am I going to remember being dumped in the morning?” Lexie asks, and maybe it was supposed to be funny, at least it first, but there’s a sigh that follows it that’s full of disappointment and longing, and Callie understands that too.
She puts a cautious hand on the other woman’s arm and, not surprisingly, because Lexie seems like the kind of person who likes hugs and contact in general, Lexie doesn’t move away. It strikes her as odd, because they’re not friends, not really, she just kind of got involved in this by accident, and Lexie keeps saying she’s the only person she can talk to about her and Mark, and Callie’s fairly sure that someday she’s going to need someone to talk to who both won’t judge her and also happens to be a woman, and that’s when she’s going to be glad she sat here and listened to Lexie. “You’re not going to be dumped. And if you are, you’ll get through it. It’ll suck, but you’ll get through it. And then there will be someone else.”
It’s a little dose of optimism that they both could use right now, and Lexie’s hand comes to slide over Callie’s and they stay like that for awhile, with Joe keeping their drinks refilled, ignoring the ring of the bell, even when it becomes less and less frequent, a sign that the night is in fact winding down and time is running out.
Mark comes, exactly an hour before last call, and she sees him before Lexie does, silently slipping out of her seat and giving Mark a look that promised to hurt him if he screwed this up. It’s only when he whispers something to Lexie, when she smiles and seems to breathe again, that she turns to leave, deciding that she’s had more than enough of the night and she’s not going to get anything more out of it.
And then she notices Arizona’s still there, more importantly she appears to be looking at Callie as subtly as one can while still having it be deliberate to the person they’re currently focused on. It’s not that Callie doesn’t want to pursue this - because she kind of really, really does - but at the moment, she’s kind of feeling like maybe she’s got to learn to be okay again on her own first, and she isn’t going to figure out how to do that by tapping Arizona on the shoulder and signaling her to follow her out to her car.
So she doesn’t. She walks out of the bar, alone, just like she entered it, except for her confidence she seems to have found once more.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Callie, Lexie. Implied Callie/Arizona, and Mark/Lexie. Squint and you're going to find some other subtext-y pairings.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,594
Prompt: #4 - Confessions for 5drunkfics
Author's Note: I don't know what to call this. Let's go for "what I wrote after BSG on Friday and finished at 1am this morning". Also, I don't have a Callie icon. Fail.
Summary: Post 5.14. Callie's having one of those nights where everything's turned upside down.
Callie’s having one of those nights where everything seems to have turned completely upside down. She goes from lonely, celibate, crying in a bathroom girl to having not one, but two people more or less come on to her. It’s nice, initially, this reminder that maybe she isn’t as bad off as she feels like sometimes. But on the other hand, it’s a little too much too fast after a rather extensive dry spell, only made bearable by Mark’s repetitive reassurances that this too shall pass (it’s not like he really should be giving advice - he’s one step away from dumping the girl who not only loves him, but who he loves, and that’s not really footsteps she wants to follow in with any sort of immediacy) and Sadie’s flirty smiles from across the room, ideas made clear but never acted upon.
Because first there’s Arizona, who granted she’s seen a few times but never really…worked with or had anything to do with. Peds and ortho don’t really share a whole lot of face time, and it’s not like she goes out of her way to meet everyone who works here, new or old or in between. But Arizona seems to know her, somehow, enough so that she insists two things via two very different methods. The first, that the talk is good, that people like her, which is fine, good actually, people liking you is good, but there’s a difference between respect and admiration as a surgeon and, you know, the kind that she’s looking for, the kind that doesn’t go away when she tugs on her coat and walks out the doors of Seattle Grace at the end of the day. The second, that people will be lining up after she works through her assorted issues, specifically Arizona, if the way she doesn’t even hesitate to press her lips to Callie’s with absolutely no warning is any indication. And she’s fairly sure it really, really is.
Callie spends another five minutes standing in front of the bathroom mirror after Arizona’s gone, wondering just how many shots the other woman’s done (the taste still lingers, just a little), and why she can’t be like that girl anymore. When she lost this fearless, bold person that feels like nothing but a memory of a long-lost friend. And then she walks out, calm and collected, runny mascara and eyeliner fixed, and tries very hard not to look at Arizona when she passes by her on the way back to the bar.
She doesn’t really entertain the idea of occupying the seat she’d just vacated, figuring that if Mark had half a brain he would already be there, with Lexie, and they’d be doing couple-y things, like that flirty banter that they do, and she loves Mark, in that sort of way that falls somewhere between a brother and a best friend, but that is just something she doesn’t want to deal with today.
Except Mark isn’t there. Lexie still is, drink in front of her, playing with the edges of a napkin and alternating between watching the clock and Joe with some sort of nervous fear in her eyes. The door opens and closes twice in the next forty seconds or so, and every time that little bell rings above the door Lexie does a half turn to look, snapping back around as soon as she’s determined that it’s not Mark. If he tells Derek, he’s supposed to come here afterwards; that’s the supposed plan. It’s a sense of desperation that Callie can identify with, sympathize with, and she looks from the empty table that seems to be just waiting for her, back to Lexie who is definitely waiting for something, be it Mark or just something to occupy her.
And because Callie’s been feeling a lot like that lately, both waiting for something to walk through the door and looking for something to occupy herself, she gives up on the empty table and instead sets her sights on Lexie, moving toward the younger woman and settling back in her old seat.
“Hey,” Lexie exhales, the word coming out all in one giant, shaky rush of air. “Are you - “
“I’m fine.” Callie answers, before she can get asked if she’s okay one more time because she just doesn’t quite know that answer tonight. The jury is still out. “He’ll come.”
Lexie gets that overly hopeful look on her face, and Callie almost regrets saying that because now if she’s wrong there will probably be hell to pay, but she’s going to choose to believe that she knows Mark well enough that she can make these sort of calls regarding his judgment with some sort of accuracy. “You think? I mean, did he say anything earlier?”
“No.” He did say something earlier, but that was mostly along the lines of how he was going to have to break up with her (all because of Derek and Meredith or whatever, and if you ask her that whole thing is just stupid and juvenile and they’re all adults here, you know, let’s act like them), and there is no way she’s repeating any of that conversation to Lexie, so she’ll just stick with half-truths and beating around the bush. “But I know him. He’ll come.”
Which is about when Lexie goes and not only does something stupid but completely switches the tone of this night again when she says, “Sometimes I think I would be better off forgetting men all together.”
Callie starts to worry about how much Lexie’s had to drink and how much of that sentence was the alcohol talking, adding into that just how much was frustration. She highly doubts Lexie’s all that inclined to start batting for the other team of her own accord, but Callie also didn’t realize she herself was either, so clearly she isn’t the best judge. “I know firsthand how well that goes. Trust me; you don’t want to do it by choice.”
“Worked for you.” Lexie replies, after a moment, and Callie really wants to know how the hell she thinks finding out that she liked both men and women was beneficial to her at all. She got dumped. After less than a month. Everything else has been some sick downward spiral since then, like she broke a mirror and wound up with seven years of bad luck. That’s what it feels like anyways. She got wounded and then punished for it. “Maybe I could learn a lesson or two from you, instead of him.”
There’s nothing she can do but smile at the other woman, at the ridiculousness of what she just said. Yes, she knows that Lexie’s method of seduction included the words ‘teach me’ and that’s what she’s playing off of; she just doesn’t know that Callie knows. “You’re so not going to remember this conversation in the morning.”
“Am I going to remember being dumped in the morning?” Lexie asks, and maybe it was supposed to be funny, at least it first, but there’s a sigh that follows it that’s full of disappointment and longing, and Callie understands that too.
She puts a cautious hand on the other woman’s arm and, not surprisingly, because Lexie seems like the kind of person who likes hugs and contact in general, Lexie doesn’t move away. It strikes her as odd, because they’re not friends, not really, she just kind of got involved in this by accident, and Lexie keeps saying she’s the only person she can talk to about her and Mark, and Callie’s fairly sure that someday she’s going to need someone to talk to who both won’t judge her and also happens to be a woman, and that’s when she’s going to be glad she sat here and listened to Lexie. “You’re not going to be dumped. And if you are, you’ll get through it. It’ll suck, but you’ll get through it. And then there will be someone else.”
It’s a little dose of optimism that they both could use right now, and Lexie’s hand comes to slide over Callie’s and they stay like that for awhile, with Joe keeping their drinks refilled, ignoring the ring of the bell, even when it becomes less and less frequent, a sign that the night is in fact winding down and time is running out.
Mark comes, exactly an hour before last call, and she sees him before Lexie does, silently slipping out of her seat and giving Mark a look that promised to hurt him if he screwed this up. It’s only when he whispers something to Lexie, when she smiles and seems to breathe again, that she turns to leave, deciding that she’s had more than enough of the night and she’s not going to get anything more out of it.
And then she notices Arizona’s still there, more importantly she appears to be looking at Callie as subtly as one can while still having it be deliberate to the person they’re currently focused on. It’s not that Callie doesn’t want to pursue this - because she kind of really, really does - but at the moment, she’s kind of feeling like maybe she’s got to learn to be okay again on her own first, and she isn’t going to figure out how to do that by tapping Arizona on the shoulder and signaling her to follow her out to her car.
So she doesn’t. She walks out of the bar, alone, just like she entered it, except for her confidence she seems to have found once more.