Title: Living metronome
Pairing: Callie/Erica
Disclaimer: Nothing's mine
Notes: My first fic. No idea where it's going, if anywhere. Comments appreciated!
Erica woke to the unfamiliar sound of another person breathing in bed beside her. Warmth, quite apart from that emanating from the motionless body to her left, coursed through her veins. She was afraid, she would admit that. And it wasn't often that Erica Hahn admitted fear, never to anyone else and seldom even to herself. The steady inhalation, exhalation, inhalation, exhalation seemed, however, to calm her anxieties. She had woken with another person in her bed. A colleague, a friend, a woman; but the living metronome of the reality lying inches away was like a pacemaker to her emotions. Erica likened things to medicine a great deal, and specifically to cardiothoracic surgery. To rationalize things that made her mind haze in a context where she was at her sharpest eased her perpetual inability to process things of which she was not solely and completely in control.
Callie stirred beside her causing Erica to hold her own breath. She shifted a little but did not wake. Her dark curls, unruly after sleep, grazed Erica's nose. On allowing herself to breathe again her head filled with the sleepy, warm scent of Callie. She was moved by this to embrace the soft form beside her, slipping her arm up Callie's chest resting her fingers lightly on her slightly protruding clavicle. She brushed her nose against the soft skin of her shoulder and felt Callie lean back into the light kisses she peppered on the caramel skin of her back.
"Morning" croaked Callie through a stifled yawn.
"Morning" came Erica's tentative reply.
The silence wasn't uneasy. Neither woman felt the need to speak, to justify. Not right now. They were both happy for Callie to lace her fingers with those lying at her neck, pulling Erica into a deeper embrace which meant the whole length of their bodies now touched, Erica's front to Callie's back. They remained that way for perhaps an hour, perhaps more. Each drifted in and out of sleep punctuated by dreams and reality of the other.
Callie eventually broke this happy status quo, deftly rotating her body to face Erica in one swift move. Their eyes met for the first time since exhaustion had overcome them both only hours before. They held each other's gaze unabashedly for a while, foreheads lightly touching, before their lips seemed to meet without intention.