Title: Thirteen

Author: A. Windsor

Pairing/Characters: Callie/Arizona

Rating: PG (almost 13).

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 two and a half years 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: Thing!verse

Summary: "Do you think it's cursed?" [March 2030]

Author's Note: For those not on tumblr, today is Thingiversary! Two years ago today, I posted Sea-Tac and Thing!verse was born. Here's a story in celebration of that. Beta'd by the lovely [weirdy, reindeer-panda] roughian.

"Happy Anniversary!"

"Hmm?" Arizona asks, looking up from the chart in her hands.

"Happy Anniversary!" her young fellow repeats, just as brightly.

"Oh, um, thanks," Arizona smiles, forced, earning a measuring look from Karev.

"Do you and Dr. Torres have any big plans?" Dr. Sarah Walden asks.

Noticing Arizona's obvious desire to change the subject, Karev orders gruffly:

"Walden, go make sure the residents don't kill any kids, huh? I thought I saw Lin doing something stupid in the Ademayo kid's room."

"Again?!" Walden exclaims with a huff. "I'll go see to that."

"Thanks," Karev calls after her, before leveling his gaze back on Arizona. "Spill."

"Spill what?" Arizona asks, annoyed. "I'm your boss, by the way. Weekly reminder you're not supposed to talk to me that way."

Alex shrugs that off easily.

"Yeah, okay. It is your anniversary, y'know. What's up with the, well, me, act?"

"Nothing," Arizona defends, flipping the chart closed and dropping it back in the rack. "How is this any of your business?"

"Oh, don't pull that. I'm your eleven-year-old's godfather."

"Ah, my eleven-year old. How do you feel about taking her for a while?"

"Well, my shift is late tonight, but I could do dinner tomorrow."

"I mean permanently. Or for a few years, at least," Arizona blows out a frustrated breath, then softens a little. "She'd like a dinner, though. Call the house today?"

"Sure. What's up?" Alex asks. "She causing trouble?"

"Always," Arizona sighs. "Apparently she and Susie Sloan have had an elaborate homework sharing scheme in place since fifth grade started. Well, basically, Susie does seventy-five-percent of the homework, and Caroline copies it."

"Oh. For six months?"

"Don't say it like that," Arizona groans.

"Like what?"

"Like 'wow, I can't believe they didn't notice before now'."

"I didn't say it like that!" Alex defends. "What does that have to do with your anniversary?"

"Callie and I are fighting," she sighs. "Kinda."

"About Caroline?"

"Yeah. About what her punishment should be."

"Torres thinks..."

"No video games for two weeks plus the three weeks of detention from school is enough."

Alex nods. "And you?"

"Death."

Alex chuckles.

"Robbins."

"Exile?"

Alex shakes his head.

"She'll be fine. You'll all be fine."

"Yeah. Yeah. And Callie and I already fought it out. Mostly. I'm just not feeling very romantic right now."

"Did you get her a gift?"

"Of course!"

"Do you have any plans?"

"We're going to dinner tomorrow, I think," Arizona shrugs.

Alex shakes his head, turning his attention to his beeping pager.

"Yeah, okay. Step it up, Robbins," he orders, dropping his coffee on the nurse's station and heading off towards the ER.

"Do you think it's cursed?" Arizona calls after him. He turns around briefly.

"What?"

"Do you think this anniversary is cursed?"

"Why do you say that?"

"It's our thirteenth."

Karev rolls his eyes.

"No excuses, Robbins! Step it up."

"Why are you still here?"

"Uh, cause I'm working?" Callie shrugs as Mark throws himself into the chair in front of her in the attendings lounge.

"It's 4:30 in the afternoon. And a Saturday. And your anniversary. So: why are you still here?"

"We're doing something tomorrow. Or whatever," Callie says, focusing on the paperwork in front of her.

"Wow. That's romantic."

"We're spending our life together, Mark. Not every anniversary has to be straight from a romance novel."

"Well, as much as I wanna hear about the past twelve or so now," Mark waggles his eyebrows. "They also shouldn't be a chore."

Callie shrugs and makes a few more notes.

"We have a lot of anniversaries, anyway. This one's just-"

"Don't even finish that sentence," Mark orders. "I was there; it's important. Why are you so grumpy?"

"I'm not grumpy!"

Mark just gives her a look, and Callie sighs.

"How long is Susie being grounded?"

"Ah. You mean from when your kid led mind into a life of white collar crime?" Mark teases.

"Shut up."

"Two weeks? Lexie figured anything past that would be overkill. The school's punishing them anyway," Mark dutifully repeats. "Plus, I think they were both pretty mortified by the headmaster's office and us getting called in. That counts for a lot. I mean, Robbins's face alone," Mark chuckles, and Callie grimaces. "What about Care Bear?"

"Same, about," Callie answers. "But Arizona wanted, I dunno, more. A month or something. We were fighting a lot about it."

"But you won," Mark points out.

"Yeah, but I guess I'm still annoyed."

"Robbins had a military upbringing, and she turned out great. I'm sure her instincts were telling her to bring the book down harder. You talked about it. And you won."

"She's just so hard on them sometimes."

"And you're such a pushover sometimes."

"Hey!"

"Me too," Mark holds his hands up defensively. "You don't want them to grow up scared of you like you were of your dad."

Callie narrows her eyes at him.

"How'd you know that?"

"You drunkenly told me that at a New Year's Eve party a few years ago, after Asa broke his new e-reader three days after Christmas. You had the same fight. You though breaking it was punishment enough; Robbins wanted to ground him a bit."

"That's cheating."

"You're whiny when you drink," Mark shrugs. "What does that have to do with your anniversary anyway?"

"We've just been off ever since."

"Oh. Okay," Mark says thoughtfully. "Suck it up, Torres. It only comes once a year."

"That's your advice?"

Mark nods.

"Suck it up," he declares, pounding on the table as he stands to leave. "Suck it up, Torres!"

"I wanna help," almost-eight-year-old Teo complains for the third time in as many minutes. He bounces on his toes, looking plaintively at his sister while she cooks, and running a hand over his close-shaved head.

"Asa," Lena sighs, looking over her shoulder briefly, still stirring whatever is crackling on the stove top.

Asa lifts his little brother onto the high stool at the breakfast bar and pulls the tablet over from its place next to the fruit basket.

"Here," the sixteen-year-old says gently. "We need a playlist still, yeah?"

"Romantic, but not too slow. And not so much with the bass, huh, Teíto?" Lena suggests, shaking a stray curl out of her eyes. It's escaped from the messy ponytail she's pulled her blonde hair into to keep it out of the way. Her Seattle Seahawks apron is wrapped around her, and her bare feet step on the ends of her too-long jeans. The fourteen-year-old's small stature in no way stops her from running this kitchen like a good Marine drill sergeant.

"¿Lo tienes, hermanito?" [Got it, little brother?] Asa asks.

Teo grins and nods, fingers already flying across the screen and head bouncing to his own beat.

"I think cake woulda been a better dessert," Caroline pipes up from her sous chef position, chopping veggies for a side salad. Her long dark hair is braided neatly, neater than when she usually does it herself, which means Lena must've helped.

"They'll love my flan," Lena defends. "And you've done enough damage, so keep it down and chop."

"Hey," Asa intervenes with his often bickering sisters. "Déjala, Lena-nena. She payed the price; she didn't make them fight."

"She kinda did," Lena says, not looking up from flipping the chicken.

Caroline sticks out her tongue and continues cutting. Asa eyes her closely, moving around the island back into the kitchen.

"Do you want me to take over-?" he starts, worried.

"Está bien. She's doing great. She's a big girl," Lena says quickly, shooing him with her spatula. [She's fine.]

Asa shakes his head and backs off, a little whiplashed as usual from his sisters' quick changes between rivalry and protectiveness.

"How's the dining room coming?" Lena then asks her big brother.

"Fine! You're very bossy and controlling, you know," he says, grabbing a few plates and going back to preparing the table for a romantic dinner for two.

"And you wanna be a Marine, so quit whining and learn how to take orders," Lena calls after him.

"And call Uncle Mark again, would you?" Lena asks, looking over her shoulder at the microwave clock. "We only have twenty minutes before they're home."

"Teo, cuando Cari termina, I need you to ayudarle, ¿no? With the salad."[Teo, when Cari finishes, I need you to help her, okay?]

Teo gives a sloppy salute and returns to his current duty.

"Uncle Mark's five minutes out," Asa calls from the dining room. "He said he'd help finish up and take us over there."

Lena checks by the front door, where an odd assortment of backpacks and favorite pillows shows that they're all ready for a Saturday night sleepover with the Sloan family.

"Alright, everyone, let's get a move on it!"

Callie makes more of an effort when she meets up with Arizona at the car, but she's still pretty exhausted from her day. She vows to make tomorrow, the day they're actually celebrating, more romantic.

"Happy Anniversary," she says genuinely, kissing her cheek.

Arizona smiles warmly and returns the sentiment.

So they talk more easily about their days as Arizona drives home and both joke about what state the house will be in after a full day of Asa and Lena running the show. They usually stagger their off days or even their schedules so that they don't have to make the older two babysit that much, but it has been nice now that Asa can drive in an emergency.

They return home and find it strangely silent, which is usually pretty terrifying. Callie can see her wife begin to panic, but immediately sees the tablet set up on the kitchen counter with a bunch of Post-its around it that say "Watch me! Watch me!" in Caroline's messy print. She hits play on the video already cued up.

"Hi!" Teo's giant face comes up right at the camera, backing away.

"Teo," Lena complains, grabbing his collar and pulling him back.

"Hey, moms," Asa calls over the din as all four of them settle down.

"Happy Anniversary, Mami! Happy Anniversary, Momma!" Teo pops up before Lena pulls him back into her lap as they crowd around the tablet's camera.

Callie and Arizona share a laugh at their rambunctious youngest.

"What he said," Caroline rolls her eyes, though the corners of her mouth are turning up.

"This is a pretty special day," Asa says, "And I say that as the only one of us who has any memory of it."

"You just remember the food."

"And the dancing," Asa defends.

"I can't believe I missed the dancing," Teo says dejectedly, and Lena laughs.

"Tiny Dancer, you and Cari weren't even born yet!"

"Still!"

"Anyway," Lena pushes on. "We know things have a little crazy recently."

Caroline looks a little sheepish.

"But we wanted you to have a nice dinner."

"Without us bugging you," Cari pipes up.

"So Lena mad an amazing dinner that's on the dining room table," Asa grins.

"Caroline helped!" Lena interjects.

"And Asa lit the candles!" Teo adds.

"And Teo made an awesome playlist, so you should play the one called Moms! from start to finish," Caroline suggests.

"And we're sleeping at the Sloans' tonight," Asa finishes, "So enjoy! We love you!"

"¡Les queremos!" the other three chorus. "Happy Anniversary!"

They all wave goofily as Asa leans forward to switch the camera off.

"They're pretty awesome," Arizona sighs.

"They are," Callie agrees, squeezing her shoulder. "And way more romantic than we are."

Arizona snorts.

"I was going to be romantic tomorrow."

"But we got married thirteen years ago, today," Callie says. "And I'm still really glad we did."

Arizona beams. "Me too."

Callie kisses her then, and it feels more wonderful and natural than it has for the last few grumpy days. Arizona pulls her closer, and Callie takes the opportunity to pin her against the counter.

After a few minutes, Arizona pulls away and says:

"I love you, and I wanna do a whole lot of that again later, but I am starving, and our daughters are amazing cooks, and I can smell it from here."

Callie laughs and removes her hands from her wife's ass.

"Okay. Let's eat."

Arizona grins brightly and hurries down the hall to the dining room.

Callie shakes her head and smiles, calling after her:

"I love you, too!"

el fin

Happy Thingiversary!