Title: Stolen
Author: A. Windsor
Pairing/Characters: Callie/Arizona
Rating: PG
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. My one semester of law school could allow me to legalese this a little more, but it also tells me it’s pretty useless. So please don’t sue; it’s not mine, I’m just playing!
Series:
CANON Summary: Callie and Arizona get ready to go home. Missing scene, 7x19.
Author’s Note: Oh my goodness. It’s canon and it’s fluffy, and Shonda totally gave us twelve weeks to play in. Inspiration from
pandora_007 ’s awesome catch about what Callie was wearing as they left the hospital. Unbeta’d, because it’s one am, but I had to get it up.
***
Callie is torn between staring at the little miracle in her arms and staring at her eternally smiling fiancée, who is puttering around, packing for them to finally go home, as scary as that is.
She’d normally insist on helping, to prove her independence, but after her panic attack at the infant carrier test, she’s feeling especially drained and is content to just sit down in a chair and snuggle Sofia. She refuses to lie in that bed, ever again, so it stays pointedly vacant in the middle of the room.
Arizona helps out her gaze’s dilemma and sidles up beside her, leaning down and brushing a kiss against Sofia’s temple.
“Oh my goodness. You are the cutest baby ever. And I know babies!” Arizona gushes over their daughter. “The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” She looks up and grins flirtatiously at Callie, that special light back in her eyes, like she worried it never would be again. “Well, maybe it’s a tie.”
Arizona then leans in and presses her lips warmly to Callie’s, and when she pulls away, Callie notices how the florescent light catches on a familiar pendant dangling from her neck.
“You’re wearing it,” Callie breathes, keeping her right, strong arm firmly around Sofia and raising her left to gently, if a little clumsily, clasp the heart.
Arizona smiles. “Of course I’m wearing it. My fiancée bought it for me. A long time ago.”
“But you haven’t. We haven’t, since...”
Arizona’s smile turns a little sad, and Callie releases the necklace.
“I picked it up one time when I grabbed us some clothes. It makes me feel like you’re with me, even when I’m working.”
Callie melts a little, but presses on.
“And before?”
Arizona sighs and sits in the second chair beside her daughter and fiancée.
“You weren’t wearing yours, and I didn’t want to jinx it. I thought maybe you didn’t want to wear it for a reason. Or maybe that I had to earn back the right to wear it.”
“Arizona... You earned any rights you want the moment you stayed. When you didn’t book the next flight to Malawi.”
“And miss the chance to meet her?” Arizona deflects, scooping Sofia out of Callie’s arms.
Arizona is the only one Callie’s instincts would allow to do that so unceremoniously. Even with Mark, she has a tough time handing her over. But watching them, Sofia’s dark eyes blinking up at Arizona with what Callie can only describe as love and Arizona beaming back the same, is so wonderful that she rarely objects to having her daughter taken by her other mother.
Now that she’s noticed it, Callie can’t take her eyes off the necklace. Arizona rocks and snuggles Sofia adoringly as Callie bites her lip, thinking hard.
“I don’t know where mine is,” she admits reluctantly.
Arizona looks up.
“Oh. I do.”
She shifts Sofia gently back into Callie’s embrace. The infant fusses a bit at the multiple exchanges.
“Hush, my angel. Look after your mom for me for a sec, okay?” Arizona soothes, warmly squeezing the baby’s tiny, perfect arm.
“Where are you going?”
Arizona kisses Callie quickly and hurries out the door.
“I’ll be right back.”
She kicks onto her Heelies and goes. She’s started wearing those damn shoes again, but she defends against Callie’s complaints by saying they help her see Callie and Sofia more often between patients.
“Where is she going?” Callie asks her baby girl, who stares peacefully up at her. “She’s a little crazy. I guess we have the rest of our lives to figure her out, hm?”
Arizona reappears breathlessly a few minutes later, and Callie grins a little at the pretty flush across the blonde’s cheeks. She wordlessly rejoins her family and opens her closed fist.
“Where was that?” Callie asks, instantly recognizing the twin to Arizona’s necklace.
“My locker.”
“Did you steal my necklace?” Callie asks, mostly teasing.
“Found it!” Arizona objects to the allegation. “After you were awake for a few days and Sofia was stable, Bailey ordered me and Mark home for six hour increments, in shifts if we wanted. She threatened to have Eli physically remove me if I didn’t go.”
Callie smirks at the image.
“So you went home and stole my necklace.”
“Found! I was too wired, and I was getting enough sleep at the hospital.”
Callie remembers drifting in and out of sleep those first weeks and finding her new fiancée at her side every time, just sitting, or charting, or, often, sleeping at a variety of creative and awkward angles.
“So you stole--”
“Found! While I was cleaning out room.”
“Nervous cleaning again?”
“You could eat off most of the surfaces in our apartment right now,” Arizona admits sheepishly.
“Arizona, you were supposed to be resting and relaxing when you went home,” Callie reproaches.
“Relaxing. Right. While my family was stuck here?” Arizona shakes her head. “Anyway. I found it and brought it here.”
Callie really looks at the jewelry in Arizona’s hand, a necklace she once wore every day until it practically became a part of her. She’d taken it off after the disaster in SeaTac because what and who it represented made it feel like the metal was burning against her skin. Even then, she’d felt naked without it.
“Put it on,” she orders gently. “Please.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she reproaches.
Arizona reaches around and quickly fastens the necklace with her nimble surgeon’s fingers, following the pendant down to assure it lays perfectly against Callie’s chest. She pauses in that position, her cheek brushing against Callie’s, lips at her ear.
“I love you so much,” she whispers.
Callie closes her eyes and savors the sensations around her: the feel of Arizona’s warm hand on her shoulder, the weight of Sofia in her arms, the tickle of Arizona’s long, long curls against her neck, the beautiful sound of their daughter finally breathing all on her own, the smell of Arizona and Sofia, her family, mixing together underneath all that hospital antiseptic that lingers on them all.
“Both of you,” Arizona adds as she pulls away.
“We love you, too,” Callie promises.
Arizona grins and moves to kiss her, but Sofia starts to fuss. Arizona manages just a quick peck before taking the baby and standing.
“What’s wrong, Sofia?” Arizona asks adoringly. “Is it because your mom is getting all of my attention?”
Arizona does a practiced check of the little one’s diaper, pulling aside the leg of her onesie.
“Oh, nope. Just wet, huh?”
Arizona turns to find a clean diaper from the bag resting on the bed, Sofia up on her shoulder.
“You’re really good at this.”
Arizona blushes.
“This is the easy part. Diaper changes? A breeze. Just wait until her first date.”
“Not ‘til she’s thirty.”
“Definitely.”
“I still can’t believe you stole my necklace,” Callie says playfully as Arizona deftly snaps open Sofia’s onesie and changes her tiny little diaper with expert speed.
“Found!” Arizona repeats, not even turning from her task.
“No, you stole my heart.”
“Calliope,” Arizona complains with a laugh, lifting Sofia back onto her shoulder, supporting her head. “That was so cheesy.”
Even Sofia, snuggled into her mother’s neck, looks pretty specious of her other mother’s turn of phrase.
“Don’t give me that look, m’ija,” Callie reproaches as Arizona turns around.
“Write that one down; you can put it in your vows,” Arizona teases with that flirty twinkle in her eye again. Her face gets a little serious, then, one hand still holding Sofia in place while she offers the other to Callie. “You ready to go home?”
Callie touches the heart on her chest briefly, before nodding, the dread and panic of earlier returning. The earnestness and warmth that Arizona is sending her way, though, gives her the strength to take that hand and stand.
“Let’s go home.”
***
el fin