Title: Count on It
Author: DianeB
Rating: T
Pairing: Hahn/Torres
Summary: Doctor Erica Hahn is a smart, strong, mature, capable, sexy woman. Why, then, is she having such trouble connecting with Callie on a more intimate level?
Starting at the S4 finale kisses and taking into account the initial events of the S5 premiere, "Dream A Little Dream," this story assumes something happened after those S4 kisses that didn't involve Callie and Erica immediately falling into bed (much as we've loved to imagine that very thing, in spite of the juvenile way Callie and Erica were acting at the start of S5).
Author's Note: This story was started prior to my learning about the dumping of Brooke Smith, then revised and finished after my heartbreak was complete and Smith was long gone. Wearing my trusty "hindsight glasses," I've constructed a story just to make myself happy. Let's call this "scenes we didn't see."
Thanks also to my Mighty Editor Goddess Brenda S., and to Jules68. Started in October and completed in December, 2008. This is my eleventh Grey's Anatomy story.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of Grey's Anatomy, because if I did, Brooke Smith would still be on the show. Caution, this is femslash (lite) and there is some minor taking of the Lord's name in vain. Do not read it if these sorts of things bother you.
Standing in the damp Seattle air, her mind occupied with what might have happened to her keys, Erica had definitely not seen the kiss coming, and in brief retrospect felt it was probably fair payback for the way she'd ambushed Callie in the elevator.
But when Callie pulled back with an endearing little smile, and then leaned forward again, Erica knew the next kiss would not be defined as anything anywhere close to payback.
However, Erica being a staunch person of logic, her brain fought to override her heart, which was pounding away, and her hands, which were caressing either side of Callie's face.
Her brain wasn't having much luck.
Elevators aside, kissing someone with passion and intent was not something Erica had been doing much of in her very recent past – or even in her very distant past – but her intellect likened the activity to that of riding a bike, in that once one has learned, one never forgets.
And while, comparatively speaking, this kiss felt like kisses she had received from men (in her very, very distant past), it was again astonishingly different, much more tender, and – in fact – quite something for the record books.
At exactly that point, Erica realized that while her gray matter was busy trying to come up with clever descriptions of what her mouth was currently experiencing, her lungs were busy begging for air. Breaking the kiss, she inhaled deeply and leaned back only far enough to rest her forehead against Callie's, transferring her hands from the sides of Callie's face to her shoulders. "Oh my God, Callie."
Callie, who had moved her hands to Erica's waist, sighed heavily. "You know, it's like I told Lola."
The non-sequitor threw her. "Excuse me?"
"Lola, Andrew's friend?"
"Oh, right."
"Yeah, I told Lola it was better to be honest. So I'm being honest. To say I've been thinking about you all day would be an incredible understatement. I've been filled with you all day. I swear, if Andrew hadn't been such a mess, I might have jumped you right there in the trauma room. Honestly."
"Honestly, indeed," Erica snickered. Their conversation, she realized, was inane and just a bit surreal, given their public locale, their positions against one another, and the fact that the last kiss had stirred deeply-rooted feelings in Erica that both frightened and excited her. But Callie was being honest, and Erica figured she should be, too. Lifting her head, she faced Callie squarely.
"I'm not so sure about this, Callie. I'm not—I've never—" She shook her head to clear the fuzz created by Callie's luminous dark eyes and started again, striving for the honesty that threatened to overwhelm her with its sheer truthfulness. She was wise enough to know it wouldn't do to simply blurt out that Callie's nearness was turning her to putty, but she knew she had to say something. "What I'm trying to say is, I've never kissed a woman before. Hell, I've barely kissed many men, but kissing you feels more right to me than kissing a man ever did. Callie, you've made my knees weak – and my knees are never weak." There. On a scale of one to ten for honesty, she figured she'd hit an eleven.
Callie, bless her, had waited patiently during Erica's little speech, her eyes never losing their focus, her endearing smile enduring. "I've made your knees weak? Seriously? That's very nice. I'm pretty sure I've never made anyone's knees weak before." Callie reached out and lightly stroked Erica's cheek with the back of her hand.
This sideways compliment, coupled with the intimate touch, stoked a fresh burn of desire in Erica's belly. If her knees had been weak before, there was even less support to them now, and she pivoted quickly to sit on the bench before her knees gave up the ghost entirely.
Unfortunately, her movement gave her eyes a chance to sweep the front of the hospital, and there she saw Mark Sloan, standing in the shadows, watching them. Her eyes had passed too quickly to make contact, and she couldn't have seen his expression from this distance, but she had a sneaking suspicion that whatever he was thinking involved his precious threesome and was probably not much fun for she and Callie. Recalling her thinly-veiled challenge to him in the elevator, she knew she had no one to blame but herself for this.
These thoughts and Sloan's presence effectively vanquished Erica's desire, replacing it with outright fear. Strength returned to her knees and she stood just as swiftly as she had sat, clearly startling Callie, who stepped back abruptly and threw her arms out for balance.
"Whoa!"
Erica knew her body language reflected a sudden change of heart, and she struggled to get a word out over the anger and frustration closing her throat. "Sloan. Over there." She jerked her chin toward the front of the hospital, and as Callie turned to look, Erica took the opportunity to engage the flight response that was waving a red flag in her sensible brain.
She couldn't stop herself. She left Callie standing there without another word.
oOo oOo oOo
In the days that followed what Erica was calling a personal best in relationship-busting, Erica avoided Callie with a precision heretofore known only to her surgical abilities.
She had successfully managed not to even lay eyes on the orthopedic surgeon, right up until the moment she'd turned from her unproductive conversation on the bridge with Richard Webber in time to see Callie looking at her from behind a folded-up newspaper on her way out of the elevator. Erica badly but successfully faked a page, spun on her heels, and walked back in the direction she had come, more willing to risk speaking to Webber again than to Callie.
Erica was not quite so lucky later in the day, and she blamed that on the energy it was taking to actually maintain avoidance. Even in a hospital the size of Seattle Grace, and with such disparate surgical careers, time spent not running into Callie was taking its toll.
She came unexpectedly upon Callie at a corridor crossroads, too close to enact a believable fake page. After bucking up and saying hello, and without pausing in her stride toward the nurse's station, Erica started right in with lame excuses about being busy with research and patients, which Callie matched almost word for word. Bailey was at the nurse's station, griping about charting, so they were both able to use her as an excuse to stop talking to one another. After a moment of this, Callie turned and walked away, much to Erica's intense relief.
Unfortunately, in her effort to become a better teacher and improve the hospital's rating, Erica tarried a minute too long with Bailey to avoid Sloan, and ended up having to endure a perfectly slimy description of his "guru" teaching methods before finally gathering the wherewithal to move on. It took all her willpower not to grill him about what he may have seen outside the hospital.
Thinking she was in the clear for Callie, Erica of course ended up running smack into her as Callie was leaving the third-floor elevator, the chart Callie was holding clattering to the floor in the process. This time there was nowhere to run, and it was clear Callie wasn't having any of it, anyway. As Callie rose from retrieving her chart, she took Erica's elbow a little too firmly and steered her towards the on-call room.
"Please join me, Doctor Hahn. I need a consult." The blind could have seen that consulting was too polite a term for what Callie had in mind.
As the door snicked closed, Erica didn't give Callie a chance to start. Instead she yanked her arm from Callie's grip and turned all her surgeon's ire on the young woman. "Doctor Torres, do you mind? I've got surgery scheduled in less than half an—"
"Oh, no you don't, Doctor Hahn," Callie spit back, tossing the chart on a nearby chair. "You wanna give me some clue as to why you just walked away from me the other night? Jesus, where did you go? Why did you leave me there? You couldn't find your keys; how did you get home? I didn't even see Mark, but when I turned back, you were gone, too! God, what are you trying to do, kill me? Do you know how many times I picked up the phone to call you that night, to make sure you'd gotten home safely? Now you won't even look at me, and you've made me think I made a huge mistake. What is wrong with you?"
Talk about your honesty. Erica was stupefied by Callie's outburst, which rendered her speechless but did, she noticed, effectively diffuse her own anger. Struggling to remember how to talk again, she blinked like an idiot at the dark-haired fury before her.
Thank God she must have been able to transmit a message to Callie through her eye blinks, because Callie's demeanor reversed just as suddenly as hers had that night in front of the hospital.
"Oh, man, listen to me." Callie took a step back, puffed her cheeks and blew air. "I'm sorry. "How 'bout I make it easier and ask one question at a time? Why'd you leave me?"
While this method might have been easier for Callie, it was not so much for Erica. The question deserved an answer, but Erica hardly knew where to start. Then it dawned on her to start right there. "Do you want the whole list, or just the top ten?"
Callie's warm chuckle filled Erica with hope that she had not screwed up the best friendship she'd ever had. And besides, now there was no reason not to tell. The adrenaline-spike of fear had long dissipated, though fear was still the operative word. Mark Sloan still had to be dealt with, but for now, confession ruled. "I'm scared. Here I am, a grown woman, a cardiothoracic surgeon for God's sake, not entirely without intimacy experience, shaking in my shoes over you. Why is that, do you suppose?"
Callie fluttered her eyelashes and smiled wickedly. "Because I'm so ravishing?"
Erica deadpanned. "Yes, that must be it." They shared an easy laugh, and Erica could feel the tension ease along her shoulder blades, but she didn't want the moment to pass without being sure Callie understood. "There's so much at stake here, Cal. You know this damn hospital is like a fish bowl, everyone sees everything, and if Mark Sloan saw something the other night, it won't be long before everyone knows.
"If we're gonna go forward with this…this, whatever this is between us, then it can't be something we do haphazardly or in, say, the third-floor on-call room. For me, it has to be something more."
Callie nodded her head in agreement. "Great! That's…that's great, that's perfect. That's what I want, too."
"You do?"
"Of course I do. What'd you think?"
"I don't know, Callie! At first I just thought you were getting back at me for kissing you in the elevator. And now I don't know what to think! But one thing I do know is I don't want people talking about us while we're trying to figure out if there's even an 'us' for them to talk about. Does that make any sense?"
"Yeah, it does, but let's be real. You just said it yourself, this place is an aquarium. I mean, I can talk to Mark about keeping his mouth shut, but we can't let it get to us if word gets out. You know the less we let it bother us, the faster the talk will stop."
That was, of course, exactly the way it worked with gossip, yet Erica couldn't hold back her comment, looking down at the floor and murmuring more to herself than to Callie, "This is why I don't get involved with co-workers."
Callie put her fingertips on Erica's chin and brought her face up. "Oh, great. Now I'm just a co-worker, huh? Man, that's harsh." But her warm smile took the sting from her words. She waited a beat before adding, "So we're good, Doctor Hahn?"
Erica smiled into that stunningly beautiful face. "We're good, Doctor Torres." A moment passed with only the steady buzz of a faulty fluorescent to indicate time hadn't frozen. "Callie?"
"Yeah?"
"I have to get to work."
Callie blinked and Erica was amused to see Callie's cheeks flush crimson. "Oh, yeah, right. Me, too." Callie waved her hand in a vague "I'm leaving now" gesture and reached for the door. "I'll see you later."
Without allowing herself time to analyze the action, Erica Hahn made the very first romantic advance of her life. Quickly closing the distance between them, Erica placed her lips firmly against Callie's and lingered there long enough for Callie to moan softly and return pressure. Pulling back before Callie could shift closer and deepen the kiss, Erica completed the task of opening the door and said on her way out in her best gravelly voice, "Count on it."
End.
oOo oOo oOo
All paths lead to you,
You are the evening star
At the end of day.
-- From the poem, "All Paths Lead to You," by Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff