Title: A Real Family
Author: A. Windsor
Pairing/Characters: Callie/Arizona
Rating: PG-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 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: None! (What?)
Summary: "We could be a real family." (Post 7x18 speculation, no spoilers.)
Author's Note:So, yeah, you read that right. No series. Completely stand alone. Canon speculation, but I'm 1000% unspoiled. (Hence, the obvious lack of baby name). I needed to challenge myself to avoid getting into a rut, and this came out. It's... I don't even know. I'm gonna go write baby!fic until I feel better.
Beta'd by the wonderful, snarky roughian. Thanks, you weirdy reindeer. And thanks also to cacheese, who talked me through this "fic from hell" like a thousand times over.
He asks her to come over for coffee, and she shows up like their world isn't completely different now, like their world isn't going to be even more different in a few days. He hasn't been drinking, but he feels like he has. Everything since the accident is a blur of months of terror and NICU and confusion.
Their baby, so recently, finally, thankfully released from the hospital, sleeps across the hall under Arizona's watchful eye, and Callie, though still bearing the marks and remnants of her ordeal and the newly acquired lines around her eyes from tireless nights in the NICU, looks happier and healthier and calmer than he's seen her in a long time. She greets him warmly and sits up at the breakfast bar and talks like all is normal and right and wonderful. Because she's getting married in three days and their baby girl is breathing on her own, safely nestled in her nursery.
As she tells him story after story of what miraculous things their daughter has done in the few hours since he saw her last or what flowers whose mother has demanded in what arrangement, he finally snaps and blurts out what's been on his mind:
"Don't do it."
"What?"
"You're not really going to go through with this, right?"
"Go through with marrying my fiancée? Yeah. Yeah, I am, funny enough. Because I love her. What are you talking about?" Callie laughs.
"I know, I get it. And Robbins, y'know, she saved our baby girl's life, and I know she says she loves you. But we, we're great together. We care about each other. We know everything about each other. The sex is great. And we have a beautiful, perfect daughter. We could be together; we could make it work."
"Oh, Mark," she breathes.
He stands, frozen. That hitch in her voice isn't shock or awe or love. It's pity. It guts him. He tries one last time.
"We could be a real family."
The pitying smile disappears, and her face gets hard, her gaze venomous.
"A real family?" she demands. "You mean, Mommy, Daddy, baby? Nothing else is real?"
Mark clears his throat, trying to retreat just a little bit.
"It's, uh, normal. And if we can give that to her, shouldn't we?"
"No. I love Arizona. I am going to marry Arizona, and spend the rest of my life with her. Arizona is as much our little girl's mother as I am. If you can't deal with that and support that, if you're going to teach our kid that she's not normal because of the choices we've made, then maybe we need to rethink this whole thing."
"Rethink?"
"Her father can't tell her that her moms are weird for being gay. Yeah, I don't want that kind of influence in her life."
"You can't keep her from me!" Mark yells, finger harshly jabbing in her direction.
"Then get your head out of your ass and put that finger away."
Mark lets his hand drop, defeated.
"Okay, Mark. What the hell has gotten into you? Who are you? I haven't recognized you since the accident."
"I'm trying to do right by her."
"Well, you're sucking at it."
"C'mon. You can't tell me it would be the worst thing to be married to me."
"In a world without Arizona? Maybe. In a world with Arizona? Never. You don't want to marry me, anyway, Mark; you want to be with Lexie."
He sighs.
"I do. But she doesn't want to be with me."
"So I'm leftovers? Gee, thanks. Hmm, woman I love who loves me back, or baby daddy who feels bad that the condom didn't work and his girlfriend won't take him back? Hmm."
She makes a weighing gesture with her hands, and he feels like an idiot.
"I'm just saying, we could do it. Nobody's forcing you to go down the aisle. We could suck it up and be a family."
"'Suck it up'. Real romantic, Mark. At least Arizona's proposal talked about how much she loves me. Yeah. I'm... I'm gonna go with that one. And what about Arizona, huh? Am I just supposed to tell her 'Sorry, take it back, give me the baby, we're gonna go'?"
He shrugs. "It's our daughter. Yeah, she'll be pissed, but she'll get over it. She can still babysit sometimes."
Callie stands, rolling her eyes grandly at him, and stalks towards the door. She pauses, hand on the doorknob. She whirls back on him.
"You're an ass, you know that? A manwhore that treats women like crap because he's too fucking... broken to be a real person."
He almost visibly staggers at her words. She should feel bad, but she actually kind of feels great at landing her little shot, and she yanks the door open, stomping across the hall.
Mark recovers a moment later and is right behind her.
"This is me, storming out. Go away."
"I have to go to work, and I'm gonna see my daughter first."
He pushes past her and is actually first into the apartment. In the kitchen washing bottles, Arizona startles to see him, but he nods to the nursery and she nods right back as he slides into the half-open door. Callie stands in the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest, glaring at Mark the whole time. He glares right back as he exits the apartment. He does, however, take care not to slam the front door on his way out.
"Soo..." Arizona blows out a breath, pushing hair out of her eyes with her wrist, the sponge, despite her best efforts, leaving a trail of bubbles high on her cheek. "Wanna tell me what that was about?"
"He said what?" Arizona demands. Her voice has all the intonation of a yell, but, mindful of the baby asleep in the other room, it's barely above a whisper.
"I know, right? He's such a piece of..."
Callie goes off on a Spanish rant, and Arizona drops the sponge and rinses her hands, taking a second to hold tight to the kitchen counter so the effort transfers just a bit of her rage away from her. Callie trails off, and Arizona feels her eyes on her.
"I said no. I pretty much said 'no, fuck off'. You know that, right?"
Arizona nods, still fighting down the rage.
"Arizona," Callie says insistently, taking her by the shoulders, forcing her to look her in the eyes. "I'm marrying you in three days, and that makes me so, so... so happy that sometimes I'm afraid I'm still stuck in that coma hallucinating all of this. He's a friend and, and a co-parent, and right now, I really don't want him to be either."
"He's her daddy," Arizona shakes her head. "That doesn't change because he's an ass." She sighs. "I just thought we'd made so much progress. How could he-?"
"I don't know. I just..."
She goes off on another rant, this time mostly in English, and Arizona just watches her, brow still wrinkled. Midway through, Arizona dries her hands and the counter, and then wanders back into the nursery, where their little miracle sleeps on, unperturbed by her other mother's angry ramblings. Arizona feels the familiar catch of her own breath as she waits for one to fill and lift her daughter's tiny chest, all on its own. She lets out a sigh and a prayer as the baby exhales. She stands over the crib for a few moments, regaining her balance.
When she reemerges from the nursery, Callie has calmed just a little and is giving her a curious look.
"Why aren't you pissed?"
"Well of course I'm pissed, Calliope. But like you said. You're marrying me."
Callie softens a little, remembering it's not Arizona she's angry with.
"Yeah. I am," she confirms.
"You are," Arizona smiles.
"How is she?"
"Still sacked. It took her awhile to settle down after you left," Arizona sighs. "Mark's not mean. He's... weak. And I don't know which is worse. But he loves our baby girl and would do anything for her. So, we're stuck with him, right?"
"We could run away to Spain," Callie teases, crossing to her and looping her arms around her neck.
"He'd track us down; our little girl is addictive," Arizona points out, hands sliding around Callie's waist, rubbing gentle circles at the small of her back. "Want to tell me why you're so angry?"
"Um, I told you."
"Well, yeah, but you could've laughed at him and walked away. He's Mark. He's done worse before. He'll probably do it again. And you of all people have infinite patience with him."
Callie opens her mouth to deny, but Arizona cuts her off with a warm kiss, first to the corner of her mouth, then to increasingly pliant lips. Arizona feels her fiancée's muscles begin to relax just a little bit as she kneads up her spine.
Callie pulls away minutes later, studying Arizona, her calm smile, the measured tone of her voice. She's been an absolute rock for the last five months, like a raspy "Yes" had been all it took to catapult her back into the confident, assured, take-charge woman Callie had always known her to be. After the accident, she'd gone into full-on mama bear mode, taking care of her family with single-minded determination that is beyond hot and just makes Callie fall even more in love with her.
"Talk to me," Arizona prods gently. "And let's do it sitting down."
Fingers trailing down to her wrist and then linking their fingers, Arizona leads Callie to the couch. Her face is open and sympathetic, but reveals nothing of her own emotions.
"He- He said we weren't a real family. And did his macho man crap. And I just imagined our baby girl hearing all of that from her dad."
Arizona nods, and Callie continues.
"And he said you could still babysit, like it didn't matter, like it wouldn't be awful to take her from you. Like you're, I don't know, nothing."
Callie catches the flinch that Arizona tries to fight at the word and just squeezes her fiancée's hand tighter.
"I just... I thought he was okay with this. And what if he really isn't?"
Arizona takes a deep breath, imagining Mark's answer to their daughter's inevitable questions about her parents' relationships. "Well, Daddy tried to give you a real family but your mom was selfish." She fights her urge to get a brick.
"I know he's an ass, Arizona, but he's my best friend. He's always loved and supported me and I don't-"
Callie breaks off with a sob, and Arizona undoes their fingers so that she can pull her into her arms. She presses a kiss to her head and holds on tight.
"We'll figure it out."
"You're moping," Miranda Bailey sighs, entering the room to find Mark Sloan slumped on the couch. She just wanted a little peace. "You wanna tell me why you're in my attendings lounge with that pitiful face, bringing all the bad juju, and moping."
"Moping?"
"Moping," she confirms. "Look, I spent too much time and energy and prayer putting Torres and that beautiful baby girl back together to see all of you being miserable now. So, just this once, I'm gonna get involved. What happened?"
"Callie said I treat women like crap."
"Huh. Well, you do. But I guess, a lot of those women also let you treat them like crap, too, so there's that. All those women and their daddy issues and-"
He flinches when she says 'daddy issues'.
"Oh, okay. That's it. You've got a little girl. You're daddy to a daughter."
"I'm gonna fuck it up. Sorry," he tacks on the end, a little ashamed to drop the f-bomb around Miranda Bailey.
"Alright. I see your problem, so I'm gonna lay it out. A little girl's relationship with her father can color all of her future relationships with men. Romantic or otherwise. For the first sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years, if not more, you are going to be the most important man in her life. You've gotta be gentle, but firm. Devoted to her, interested in her, without spoiling or indulging her. You've gotta tell her she's the smartest, prettiest, funniest girl in your entire world, and you've gotta mean it, every single time. But it's not just how you treat her; it's also how you treat all the other women in her life. Her mother...s. Her teachers, babysitters, friends' moms, women on the street."
"Huh."
"Think about that little girl. Do you think there's anything in the world she can't do? Can't be?"
"No."
"Do you want her to grow up and be dependant on a man for her safety and happiness and fulfillment?"
He shakes his head no, but he's sort of confused, and she thinks she might've gone a little over his head.
"Do you want your daughter to be defined by what man she has in her life? Or to spend her time with men like you are reputed to be?"
He shakes his head no, more emphatically.
"Alright. You want her to be respected. So you gotta respect her, you gotta respect her moms, and you gotta respect women, in general."
"What if I can't? What if I don't know how to do that?"
"You do. You respect Torres, right? And Robbins, when you two aren't at each other's throats."
He nods, hesitantly, pondering.
"You respect me, don't you, Dr. Sloan?"
"Of course!" Sloan exclaims, though it sounds more like fear than respect.
"So, what happened?"
"I told Callie not to marry Robbins."
"You what?"
"I told her we could be together and be a real family."
"You used the words 'real family'?"
He nods.
She smacks him upside the head.
"Ow! Bailey!"
"You told a very happily engaged bride-to-be, three days before her wedding, to give all that up just 'cause you're a man? No wonder you were moping. I'm surprised you're still alive. Are you stupid? No, wait, I already know the answer to that question. Are you blind?"
"Blind?"
"Torres loves Robbins. Robbins loves Torres. That's not gonna go away just because you have some misguided idea about what it means to be a man. What exactly did you expect her to say?"
"I—I don't know."
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Bailey shakes her head. "You need to clean up your mess and act like a father. Focus on that little girl."
"Okay," Sloan huffs, standing.
"Now, you go on and stop moping. You're gonna be okay at this, I think. You better be. If I'm gonna marry my Tuck off to your sweet baby girl some day, gotta make sure her daddy has been good to her."
"Alright, Dr. Bailey. As long as your kid keeps his hands to himself until she's thirty."
Bailey chuckles as he starts to walk away, and she sighs, weighing whether or not to say anything more. She decides someone has to.
"Mark Sloan," she calls after him. He pauses, turning back to face her. "Your biggest flaw isn't that you're a hussy. That's just the easiest one to point out."
"Okay..."
"You lash out. When you're scared, you lash out. You make the wrong choice. Being a parent is scary. Don't lash out at the people that can make it easier."
Mark knocks on the door to the apartment hesitantly. All he really wants to do is go to bed and hope Callie's forgotten all of this by the morning. But, Bailey's admonishments and advice ring in his ears, and he has to make this right before the wedding.
Arizona opens the door, and Mark has to keep his feet firmly planted and fight his first instinct to run for the hills. Her face is terrifyingly inscrutable, and she calls back over her shoulder:
"Callie?"
The baby is awake and surprisingly alert, laying in her mother's arms and flailing as she tries, and fails, to catch the soft, brightly colored toy Callie waves at her. Callie looks up, and the love and adoration she'd been shining at their daughter disappears, quickly replaced by a stony glare.
"I'll be right there," Callie says. She lays their little girl into her bouncy chair and straps her in, grinning a little as those tiny little feet playfully kick at her confinement. She leans over and whispers something to the baby.
Arizona stands in the doorway, not-so-subtly blocking his entrance, arms crossed over her chest. She's not exactly warm and cuddly towards him, but she hasn't yet murdered him, so he takes that as a good sign. The glare that is in full force seems to warn him that he better not piss her Calliope off again.
"Can I, uh, come in?"
"Nope," Callie answers, appearing beside her fiancée. She rubs a warm hand on Arizona's upper arm. "I should be back soon, but just in case, she'll probably want a bottle in-"
"The next ten minutes," Arizona finishes for her with a brief smile. "Yeah, I know. Hurry back. Your girls are waiting for you."
Robbins's smile is gone as quickly as it appears, though, as Callie brushes past her and she returns her attention to Mark.
Mark stands, dumb-founded, as Callie crosses the hall and enters his apartment. Arizona gives him a little shooing gesture.
"No bad karma around the baby. Go."
"But-"
"Make it better. Or, y'know, she'll kill you. That's not my favorite option, but it's definitely not my least favorite."
"Robbins, it's not about you, it's just-"
Her jaw tightens. "Would you try to steal another man's fiancée and expect not to get hit for it?"
He slumps.
"Don't push your luck, Mark."
Mark narrows his eyes but doesn't push it. He turns around as Robbins quickly shuts the door. He hears her playfully lilt "Your Daddy's in trou-ble" to his little girl as she moves away from the door. Despite it all, he smiles before steeling himself for the firing squad.
"You wanna tell me what the hell that was earlier?" Callie demands as soon as he enters.
"Okay, yeah. I suck. Sorry."
She crosses her arms and stares him down, and even he knows that's a shitty apology.
"Really? That's it?"
"I just want what's best for her."
"Our baby girl is going to grow up with three parents who love her. And she's going to see what real love is like, not two people playing house when they really want other people. And I want Arizona, more than anything. I'm going to wear the white dress, and say my vows, and Arizona is going to be the one standing across from me."
"If you marry Robbins, I'm the outsider. You're the family, and I'm the extra."
"Mark," she softens. It's pity again. "Not to her. You're her dad, no matter what."
"I thought I could finally get it right. That I could have it all. But I don't. You do. And that leaves me on the outside. I mean, she's Arizona freaking Robbins. What kid isn't gonna love her more than her lame old dad who's always screwing stuff up? And you'll be your little family, and she'll call me Daddy, but how else will I be different from a fun uncle? And I want to be the dad."
"So you rant and rave about your caveman crap and what? What do you think that's going to do?"
"I don't know, Cal. I just want to be a part of my daughter's life. I don't want you and Robbins all wrapped up in your little married world and keeping my baby girl from me."
"I don't want that either," she assures him. "But I also don't want this. I'm serious about this, Mark. Is all this crap because we're gay? Because you never seemed to have a problem before, but that, that's a big problem."
She watches him as he considers it.
"No. No." He shakes his head emphatically. "God, Callie, no. I don't... I don't think so."
Callie frowns.
"I didn't think so either, Mark. I mean, you were so supportive when I was going through the whole Erica thing. And you used to like Arizona. So, what the hell is going on here?"
"My head says no. My head knows that you two, you're great good together. Hell, most of the time I'm jealous of what you have. When she got back, sure, I was putting her through the wringer, but I was rooting for the two of you. But now? Now it feels like she's taking what's mine, and she didn't even want it."
"Mark, I'm not yours. And our baby? She's ours, all three of ours. Arizona's not taking anything from you."
He purses his lips and wrinkles his brow.
"We're her family, all of us."
"Look, I said I was sorry. What else do you want from me?"
"Just step up and be the man I know you can be."
"I'm trying to be the man here!" he exclaims, clearly frustrated.
"Ugh. No." She sighs and sees him now, scared little boy in daddy's shoes and hat, beating his chest and hollering until everyone recognizes that he's all grown up.
"What? I don't know what I'm supposed to do, Cal. Tell me what to do."
"No," she says simply.
"No?"
"No." She shakes her head. "I can't do that. I'm not your wife or your mom or anything really. I'm getting married, Mark, and you're supposed to be my best friend. You're supposed to be excited and making jokes about strippers and bachelorette parties and maybe, maybe we're past all that..." She trails off thoughtfully, like this is the first time this occurs to her. "Yeah, maybe we're past that, but then maybe we're past this." She motions between the two of them. "I'm getting married, and as my friend, you're at least supposed to be happy for me. Not begging me to marry you instead. That was never who we were. We were best friends who had great sex. I mean, it used to be great. This last time, it was mostly just sad. And now I'm a mom and, very soon, a wife. And you're a dad. So. If you can't be my friend, then..." She shrugs. "Then you're just the father of my child, and that changes things."
She ignores his stunned silence and presses on with her stream of consciousness epiphany.
"We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. You're not in this 'cause of your magical sperm; you're in this because I gave you something you say no one else ever has: a chance. I gave you a chance, and you were doing okay, and you're great with her so far, you are, but right now? Blowing your chance. I want this to work, Mark, I do. I really, really do. But Arizona is not the fucking babysitter."
"Callie, I-"
"Can't you just be happy for me? Did you really think I would say yes?"
"No," Mark admits, surprising even himself. "Do you want a stripper? I could get you a stripper."
"I don't want a stripper," Callie groans, allowing a little laugh. "I want my best friend to be excited about my wedding. I want my daughter's father to not be a sexist pig. I want my two fellow co-parents to keep being friendly. We were making so much progress."
"I don't know what else I can do besides saying sorry," Mark says pitifully.
The fight drains out of Callie.
"It's a good first step. Just, try better?"
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Congrats on your wedding," he offers diplomatically after a few minutes of silence have passed.
"Thanks," she smiles wanly. "Doing it right this time so it'll stick."
"It'll stick," Mark promises honestly. That was what has been driving his panic all along; he knows that the moment Callie walks down that aisle, she's with Arizona Robbins for the rest of her life. "You two are solid. Can I come see her?"
"Arizona or our little bundle of joy?"
Mark cracks a bit of a grin. "I guess both. I should apologize to Robbins, too, and I've been baby-free for ten hours."
"Hmm. Well, give us an hour? Our sleep schedules are all out of whack, so come over then, and we'll have a late dinner and talk a little, and then you can start your baby shift?"
"Sounds perfect. Wait, are you cooking or Robbins?"
Callie laughs. "Arizona is making her famous order-in Chinese."
"Oh, well, in that case, yes. Sounds perfect."
She manages another smile for him as she heads to the door. So many things have been said, things that can never really be taken back, and she's so not used to fighting with Mark like this. But they all love that little girl, and she hopes that will one day be enough. She glances at her watch. Midnight. It's now officially two days before she gets married.
"Hey, Mark?" she asks, hand on the doorknob.
"Yeah?"
"You gonna try and catch my bouquet?"
"Hell yeah. Not gonna let Karev have all the fun."
el fin