Disclaimer: All characters belong to ABC & SR. I make no profits & no copyright infringement intended.
A/N: The following is a short story written in a few part (I suspect, no more than four) as part of the Lj Secret Santa event. Happy tidings good readers! & whatever you do this holiday season, please do not drink and drive.
Thanks & hope you enjoy this short fic. Take a moment to let me know what you think.
Title: Jesus in the Mall With Diamonds
Chapter I
Somewhere Around Christmas, 2016
They stood there, the two of them in the door-way. Watching. Mesmerised. Completely taken; enamoured by the life they had built for themselves. Arizona squeezed Callie's hand, the overwhelming joy and serenity that was her life, it all poured over in that gesture. Sometimes she's find herself just looking at Sofia while the kid was thinking really hard at something (no doubt concocting some mischief), her tiny tongue poking out to the side and forehead scrunched up in thought; she looked so much like her Callie, it was the most astonishing, amazing, true and simple source of the Arizona's happiness. Sometimes she'd look at their daughter and all that joy would turn into worry and dread…it roiled between these two polemical emotions – the emotional wheelhouse of every parent seems to begin and end with these.
And to think, all this was all so messed up, that they were all just so messed up three years ago.
Somewhere Around Christmas, 2013
"Callie, com'on! Stop it!" She wasn't above begging and pleading, she really wasn't. "It's our first Christmas since the Lauren fiasco" – A pause, some reconsideration and a mental face palm punctuated that particular thought - "I mean...since we got back together."
"Yes, well...I" - packing a hard suitcase, she suddenly noticed all her (once) packed clothes on the floor - "Arizona! Really?"
"What?" - the nonchalant shrug of her shoulders and the freshly dried hair that looked like a halo, it was almost enough to make the brunette stay home...almost.
"What do you mean what?! You'v been unpacking my" - she moved her hands around emphatically at he luggage on their bed - "packing!"
To answer the brunette, her very mature, also a surgeon wife blew her a raspberry - "you can't pack! I always pack your bags when we go somewhere...you throw things in haphazardly and smile at me like Sof when she gets all her toys her toy chest!"
Callie felt affronted - "Yes, well" - she could tell her voice and temper were climbing, the absurdity of this whole conversation was definitely on her radar but for some reason she gave into the 'fight' - "you are a packing snob...and...and...you re-do it anyway!"
"A packing snob?!" - God! Were they actually doing this?! They must sound super-light-in-the-head right now - "I'm not a...there's a system! If you'd ever had to do anything on your own as a kid, you'd know that..." - Arizona managed to come to a grinding halt the moment she saw Callie. Her wife looked like she'd been struck and the thought that she'd caused this whole weird mess of relay-insult-regurgitation thing and let it escalate...it immediately pushed her to a place of guilt and regret.
She moved forward to soothe the woman in front of her - "Callie, I..." - god it was that 'hurt puppy look,' the one that Sofia inherited and perfected and the one that would forever be her undoing - "I'm sorry, Hun...I don't know what came over me." Taking heart that her wife did not at least move away from her touch, she soldiered on - "I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry, okay?"
Moments passed, registering their presence in their bedroom; the soft light igniting the sweet sorrow and gentle affection that floats along in the air when lovers quarrel. Every moment whispered in the light staccato of the clock beside the bed. There was poetry in the moment and pure love when Callie leaned into Arizona's gentle caress and stole a kiss.
Arizona sighed into it. A kiss was such a simple thing, the easiest thing in the world when you went to bed and woke up with the one you were always meant to be kissing. She could kiss Callie forever.
"What was that for?" - the blonde sighed into a half smile, unable to pull her eyes away from Callie's.
The brunette shrugged her shoulders as she pulled back, fingers lightly trailing the length of her lover's arm - "you just looked really beautiful right then" - a wicked smirk made it's way to her lips - "and I just...wanted to kiss you...real bad." There and just like that Callie Torres won that round.
"But...but..." - the blonde sputtered as she watched her wife casually go back to packing her suitcase - "I was mean to you."
The look on Arizona's face was pitiful, her eyes tracked Callie's every move as the brunette continued to put her things 'in order'. Moments like these did the brunette in, she would just continue to love this brilliant-fool with a sort of resigned love sometimes. "Yes, you were...but, I choose to forgive you."
"But, you're still going to this stupid event, this stupid, butt faced" -
- "Yes, I am" - Callie chuckled.
"But, it's our first Christmas since we're...a 'we' again!"
"Arizona" - she stopped for a bit, the bags could wait and her wife was beginning to sound like a stubborn kid - "I'll be back by Christmas morning" - she sighed - "you know that."
Arizona nodded. She did know, but it didn't settle well with her. They were back together and they were better now. Being away from each-other so close to Christmas felt wrong, and bad and Sofia would be so disappointed.
Callie's voice broke her out of her reverie - "Hey, com'on! Don't look like that. Please?" - she settled between Arizona's legs, now kneeling on the floor, and took the woman's chin in her hand, gently coaxing the blonde to look up at her.
"Don't look so sad, babe?" - she whispered the term of endearment, almost, shyly; these were always used very, very rarely and often with underlying mock playfulness. They weren't one of those couples that infantalised one another or made up shorter-cutesy names. In any case, they'd both agreed that their names when played around with, sounded like star-fleet command ships in bad syfy flicks with recycled plots.
Arizona looked up with a slight smile, huffing at herself for getting so freaking emotional about this; they were doctors, they were surgeons at the top of their games, this stuff was important so she had to suck it up.
"I'll call Owen, tell him I'm sick or something" - Callie scurried to get up only to be yanked back into facing her wife.
"No. No. Don't do that, you made a commitment to schmooze those suckers into opening their wallets, and I get it. The hospital needs the big bucks..." - she nodded.
"I know..." - Callie looked on doubtfully - "but you're upset, and I" -
- "and nothing!" - the blonde quickly cut her off with a sly smile - "You'll go there and schmooze them" - she nodded, but added - "but not too sexily!" - with almost a sense of alarm.
The brunette pushed off, playfully, with a warm laugh - "You're nuts!"
"You love it!" - Came a quick playful reply.
Callie looked at her, it was that look, the one that said everything in the bat of an eye and lit her insides aflame with love and lust and everything in between - "I do. I do love it...I love you" - she happily sighed - "All of you...and bus/b."
A short silence followed as Arizona balefully watched Callie pack, her face sometimes twitching in mild disgust at how her wife threw things in with so little regard for space-management. Sometimes being an army brat married to an emo-artist-(sometimes)sexy-tomboy meant swallowing her - 'everything in it's place and a place for everything' - pride.
"I didn't do it to be away from you, you know?" - a forlorn admission, abandoned in their cosy little haven.
"I know" - Arizona'd started fiddling with a loose thread from the bed-sheet.
"Do you? I mean, like, you know, really know? In the bottom of your soul, or whatever other soupy love crap?" - Arizona's eyebrows shot up.
The blonde looked up at her with a half smile - "eloquent, Calliope."
The brunette couldn't help but smile at the way her name rolled off her wife's tongue; she shook her head to focus on things present, instead of thoughts of the blonde and her tongue - "I just...I don't want you to feel like I'm bailing on you! On...us!" - she added emphatically; she'd say it a million different ways to make Arizona get it.
"I know" - Arizona hesitated some - "I mean, I do know? But, it just feels like you're..." - she fished for the word...the one that wouldn't hurt Callie.
"Leaving?" - Callie whispered, the word pregnant with a kind of pain that resonated in Arizona too. Sometimes it confused the blonde how they could feel one another's joy and pain so acutely without sharing the same body.
"Yes." - she hesitated again - "I mean, no? I mean, not exactly, but yes."
Callie mulled over that admission for a while before snapping her suitcase shut and huffing loudly, sending her bangs aflutter as she visibly deflated - "I'm an idiot!" - she said as she threw herself on to the bed, her arms draping the bulbous 'case.
"Callie, no!" - the placation was automatic - "you aren't! I mean, you're doing a good thing for everyone...right?"
"I guess..." - the brunette mumbled, her words muffled by the mattress. She half turned, an elbow now resting on the bed, all thought of packing forgotten as she faced Arizona - "I said yes to this when things were...things between us were...they were" -
- "Ugly." - Arizona filled in, unable to continue to watch the hurt in the brunette's eyes.
"Yes" - Callie nodded - "and then we got back together" - she smiled as her hand travelled up from Arizona's waist to her side, her thumb almost absent-mindedly stroking the warm skin separated from her's through a flimsy night-shirt. The move elicited a satisfied groan of approval from Arizona.
The blonde swooped down, touching their foreheads before taking Callie's lips in a slow, scintillating kiss. The angle and the ache of a long day at work made it a little awkward, more teeth than tongue, instigating a change in how they were positioned. Callie guided the woman on top of her, both her hands travelling to the blonde's hip, a slight tug inviting her to be impossibly closer.
Arizona broke away, a brilliant smile on her face...their bedroom acrobatics had her brain reeling for some oxygen - "we were talking, Cal!" - she shivered as Callie's hand inched higher.
"I like this so much better though" - Callie said in a heavy sigh, her breath short, body charged with anticipation.
Arizona leaned down again, this time, placing a chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth and dislodging their bodies. A frustrated groan made it's way deep from Callie's chest making the other woman roll her eyes whilst a secretly satisfying flutter of being wanted, still, by the person she wanted the most, made it's way through her stomach.
"Don't roll your eyes at me!" - Callie admonished as she got back up in a sitting position, facing her wife - "I was really enjoying that!"
"Callie!" - Arizona swatted her playfully, though the fact that they had to have it all out before Callie left in the morning was blatantly obvious to them both - "sober up, soldier! We have to talk about this."
"I know." - the brunette declared with a little more seriousness - "I'm not leaving. I mean you, I'm not leaving you! It's a few days away from home. Not. Leaving. You." - she emphasised for good measure.
"It feels like you are though" - Callie sighed with frustration, she was about to jump to her own defence when the blonde continued - "objectively, Callie? I know you aren't. But, I can't help it! It's...it's just how I feel."
A dangerous thought wormed it's way into Callie's mind - "do you feel like that right now? Or...is that how you feel all the time?" The solemnity with which the question was asked was evident in her voice.
Arizona looked up, a deer caught in the headlights - "I...I...Callie, I" -
Callie withdrew from the warm bubble they'd built between them - "no...no" - Arizona noticed quickly enough, her wife sounded resigned,defeated...not angry - "Arizona, I'm doing something wrong, I'm failing you...I keep" - her voice broke as she hid her face in behind her cascading dark tresses - "I keep failing you."
A sense of horror, almost dread crept up her spine at the note of hurt that had made it's way into Callie's voice. Her body moving of it's own volition, she had to be closer to Callie - "oh Callie, no! It's not that at all...I just..." -
- "I only said yes back then" - Callie said through breathy sobs, her voice tearing at her wife's heart - "and then I forgot to tell him no when we got back together, I thought you could have Sof for Christmas" - she looked up her blotchy, beautiful eyes meeting Arizona's - "I swear!" - she pleaded.
"I know...I know" - Arizona said again and again as she moved in to give Callie a hug, her hand rubbing her back like she often did to soothe Sofia, categorically unsurprised at her wife's generosity with giving up Christmas morning with their daughter - "I'm sorry...I know you're here...I just, it's my hang up."
She pulled back, her hands holding Callie's face, making sure to catch her eyes - "it's my hang up because I screwed up big time" - she sensed that Callie was about to speak, shaking her head at the brunette, she continued - "no..Callie, don't...you've been...you are amazing, a goddess!" - She laughed and sniffled all at once, realising that she too at some point had begun to cry.
"And sometimes...I can't believe that I'm not all alone; that I got to have you and Sofia" -
- "Arizona, I would never take Sof" -
- "I know, Calliope" - she cut in - "I know...I just think, it's a miracle and yes, I get that you forgot!" - she winked at the brunette, now letting go of her face, her hands travelled down Callie's arms finally bringing their hands together - "you suck at this stuff...the scheduling and" -
- "I didn't go to med school to become a pencil pusher!" - Callie huffed indignantly while she brought up her elbow to wipe at her face, all the while not letting go of Arizona's hands. The childlike gesture made Arizona smile.
"Yes, but now you won't be here for three whole days before Christmas day!" - she lightly admonished.
"I said I'm sorry!" - Callie insisted.
Arizona's smile turned distinctly seductive - "hmmm" - she huffed as she pushed Callie towards the bed, arm flinging out at the suitcase. The loud thud of it hitting the floor quickly had them freezing mid motion as they prayed that Sofia would sleep through it.
Minutes passed.
"I think we're in the clear" - Arizona whispered as she went back to the task at hand.
Callie stopped her - "you believe me right? That I wouldn't leave you...that I'm sorry I suck at this dates and times crap?"
"You could say you're sorry all you want" - the blonde pushed her all the way down, now straddling her hips - "but actions speak louder than words."
"But, what about my suitcase?!" - Callie asked with some difficulty, her breath hitching at the prospect of what all this was leading to.
"I'll have to pack it for you anyway."
Callie's now devilish grin had Arizona a little bewildered, but all became clear as the brunette flipped her in one swift motion. She started kissing down Arizona's body, breathing the words against the skin peaking out from below her shirt - "you say the sexiest things."
Arizona looked down feeling her pants being tugged at - "Callie! I was going to have MY way with YOU!" - she giggled.
Callie looked up at her, mildly annoyed at the interruption - "this is me. Saying sorry."
"Okayyyy..." - Arizona sighed as Callie stopped to place a wet kiss at her hip, only to look up once again whist she placed her hands and squeezed at the blondes hips - "and you can say thank you later."
A/N: I sincerely hope you enjoyed the first chapter. To all those out there who regularly read and follow my stuff, my apologies on being lazed on the writing front. I had a lot going on, things have settled down some, so I hope to write more and finish my pending fic.