A/N: I needed a mini-hiatus from VVL (like really mini: a new ch. of that should be up on Thursday), so I wrote this instead. This is basically my version of how Callie and Arizona would have met had Arizona not bombarded Callie in a dirty bar bathroom. Some of the dialogue and situations are the same, but the circumstance is different. I hope you guys enjoy it!
P.S. This really, REALLY is a one-shot.
Worth the Risk
Callie Torres sighed heavily as she pinched the bridge of her nose. She trudged up the stairs wearily and shoved the door open, blinking rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the rare Seattle sun. Blindly wandering to her normal spot, she didn't notice that she wasn't alone on the roof of Seattle Grace Hospital. When she finally saw the blonde woman leaning against the wall, staring aimlessly over the parking lot, she let out a small groan of frustration and turned on her heels to head back down the stairs. Unfortunately for Callie, the mysterious blonde had heard her and called out.
"Hey!"
Callie turned slowly and plastered a tight smile on her face. "Hey."
"I'm sorry…did you want to be alone? I can go," the blonde smiled brightly.
Callie shrugged. "I just come up here sometimes to get away from the chaos." She took a few steps forward so that she was leaning against the same wall the blonde occupied.
The blonde nodded her head in understanding. "Yeah, that's why I'm up here, too. I figured no one came up here. I guess I was wrong," she smiled ruefully. "Seriously, though, I'm the new one here. I can find a new spot."
Callie shrugged once again, still staring across the distance instead of looking at the smaller woman. "We can share."
"Super! I'm Arizona Robbins, Peds." She held out her hand expectantly. Callie turned and lifted herself off the railing to free a hand to take Arizona's outstretched one.
"I'm Callie. Callie Torres." Arizona's eyes widened slightly in recognition before smiling widely.
"Ortho, right?"
"Right." Callie nodded. She cocked her head and unsubtly appraised the blonde in front of her. She couldn't deny that she was already intrigued by this Arizona Robbins character. Callie snorted quietly to herself when she realized that maybe she had a type: blondes.
Arizona raised one impeccably groomed eyebrow, not privy to Callie's inner dialogue. For a brief moment the two stared each other down, both appreciating their respective views, but both trying desperately not to let the other know. A shrill beep rang out and broke their staring contest. Arizona groaned at the offending item on her hip.
"I guess you'll get your alone time after all," Arizona said, disappointment evident in her voice. "I'll see you around, Calliope," she continued, while heading to the door to the hospital.
"Wait! How do you…"
The door closed swiftly behind Arizona's retreating form.
"…know my real name?" Callie asked softly to no one.
o0o0o
"Calliope, hi! I was hoping I'd see you up here."
Callie watched as a harried Arizona pushed open the roof door, balancing a sandwich, a cup of coffee, some files, a cup of yogurt, and an apple. She knew she probably should have gotten up to help, but she was already sitting down against the wall and Arizona was being pretty adorably clumsy.
"Oh, please don't get up," Arizona muttered sarcastically, when she had finally gotten through the door and closed it with an exasperated kick. She huffed her way to a grinning Callie and slumped against the wall next to the brunette.
"You just looked like you had it under control."
"Ha ha, very funny. What a good friend you are!" At the sight of Callie's raised eyebrow, Arizona explained, "Oh, we share the same get away place. We're friends."
"Friends, huh? I could use a friend," Callie said, a small, wistful smile on her face.
"Super! I'm an awesome friend!" Callie shook her head at her new friend's overwhelming exuberance. They couldn't be more different if they tried.
"People talk," Arizona said out of nowhere after a few moments of comfortable silence. "Where we work, they talk. A lot. So, since you're my new friend and for the sake of being honest, I think I should tell you that I know things about you, because people talk," she added, as if it were an adequate explanation.
Callie looked at her in confusion until she understood what exactly these people were talking about. Her face fell instantly. "Oh." She sighed. "You mean…"
Arizona nodded happily.
"Terrific," she said sarcastically, slumping down the wall impossibly further.
"It is, actually! The talk. People really like you here. They respect you and they're concerned and interested. They really like you! Some of them really like you," she said with a big smile. 'Oh my god, Arizona, get to the point!' she thought to herself as she continued to laugh nervously. "You just…you look upset. And, and I thought that you should know that the talk is good. And when you're not upset, when you're over being upset, there will be people lining up for you."
Arizona nodded reassuringly as Callie just stared in disbelief at the strange blonde woman next to her. All of a sudden she let out a peal of laughter. Arizona was so clearly new.
"You wanna give me some names?" Callie asked, knowing it was an impossible task.
'Kiss her. Kiss her now.' Unable to stifle the voice in her head, Arizona leaned in ever, so slightly, eyes trained unwaveringly on the full lips of the Latina in front of her.
'No, no, no. That's way to rash. You would need at least two shots in you first.' In what seemed like an instant, Arizona had returned to her spot.
"I think you'll know," she murmured. She couldn't decide if she was angrier at herself for her cowardice or her recklessness.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Callie returned with a self-deprecating laugh.
The two fell into an uneasy silence for a while, both lost in their thoughts. Callie was trying to figure out how her life had become such shit in such a short period of time, and she was desperately trying to ignore thoughts of a different blonde woman, the one who had left Callie in a parking lot and who was apparently starring alongside her in the latest episode of hospital gossip. Arizona was internally kicking herself for putting her foot in her mouth and desperately trying to conjure up ways to see a smile grace the beautiful brunette's lips. She picked at her sandwich mindlessly, every once in a while chancing glances at the perplexing woman next to her.
"You know, I really don't like sandwiches," Arizona said finally after a particularly messy bite. "I do this every day. I always buy a different one thinking I might like it with different ingredients, but at the end of the day, it's always just random crap in between two dry pieces of bread."
Callie turned her head slowly to look at the chipper blonde next to her, unable to fathom that someone would actually try to use sandwiches as a conversation starter. When she had finally turned enough to see the blonde's profile, she immediately burst out laughing. Arizona was battling several pieces of lettuce and a soggy tomato, and whatever sticky substance was in the sandwich (well now, there was more outside the sandwich) was coating the corner of her mouth.
"What?" Her question came out as a barely comprehendible noise as her mouth was still full. One arm still held the sandwich and as she spoke, more sticky lettuce dropped on her lap, causing Callie to laugh even harder. She even went so far as to slap her own knee in the hilarity of the moment.
After swallowing and depositing the rest of the offending sandwich back in its wrapper, Arizona crossed her arms and pouted. "It's not as easy as it seems!"
Still laughing, Callie managed to get out, "This is why I never eat sandwiches. The cafeteria always makes the messiest, grossest ones."
"Now you tell me!" Callie grinned cheekily at the blonde before leaning in closer. Arizona inhaled quickly, her nostrils flaring. She couldn't believe that anything she had done in the past few minutes had been remotely attractive, but she swore Callie was about to kiss her. Arizona braced herself and found her eyes fluttering closed instinctively, when she felt a thumb swipe painfully slowly across her bottom lip. Opening her eyes wide, she watched as Callie sat back, satisfied.
"You had mayonnaise on your lip," Callie said with a shrug, as if she normally went around being a human napkin. She giggled at Arizona's expression, causing the blonde woman to flush a bright red. Despite being extremely mortified, Arizona couldn't help be relieved that somehow she had made her new compatriot laugh.
Ice sufficiently broken, the two women began to regale each other with their surgery stories of the day, both loving the way the other's eyes lit up with passion for their job and for their patients.
"You care like crazy," Arizona said at the end of a particularly touching story. "I love that."
Callie smiled, genuinely happy for the first time in ages. "It's not just about cutting, you know?"
"Oh, I know. It's about the joy," Arizona replied with her own bright smile.
"Crap!" Callie exclaimed, having glanced at her watch for the first time since Arizona joined her on the roof. "I have to go prep for a hip replacement."
She jumped up and collected her trash before walking briskly to the exit. Hand on the door handle, Callie turned around. "You're welcome to come watch. I mean, if you have nothing better to be doing. I'm sure you have something else to do. Like, surgery. You're a surgeon, so you probably have surgery, too…"
Arizona could have easily cut off the rambling brunette much earlier, but she found this side of Callie entirely endearing. And she also might have wanted to get a bit of payback for the mortifying sandwich experience.
"I'd love to."
o0o0o
They continued this routine for weeks, which eventually turned into months. They met on the roof whenever they had a mutual lunch or dinner break, or occasionally just for a quick coffee break, much preferring each other's company than the chaos inside the hospital cafeteria. They both were more than comfortable getting away from the hospital gossip and the insanity if even just for a few minutes. They found that they were both very down-to-earth caring people and if they were honest, they were both coming to depend on their new companion.
They shared their surgery stories, their med school adventures, their dating woes. When Callie learned that Arizona was, in fact, a lesbian she quirked an eyebrow in intrigue rather than judgment. She never once acted on this information, however, despite the fact that her heart sped up every time she caught a glance of that blonde hair and the fact that her skin tingled for minutes long after Arizona had stopped touching her.
Callie was in the middle of telling Arizona the infamous Erica Hahn disappearing act story, when Arizona suddenly made some weird strangled noise in the back of her throat.
"What?"
"Erica and you…she was your first?"
"First woman, yes."
"Oh, okay." Arizona's demeanor had noticeably shifted, causing Callie to roll her eyebrows.
"What?"
"I just thought you had more experience, that's all," Arizona said with a shrug.
"Oh, I have plenty of experience," Callie smirked. "And besides I have life experience. As you know, I was married. And I did the Peace Corps. Botswana. And I have recently discovered the joy of cooking. I make an excellent chicken piccata." Callie could not, for the life of her, understand why she was defending herself to this woman. She pretended to herself that it was because they were friends, but really she wanted to impress her.
"You don't have to defend yourself to me, Calliope. I already think you're very impressive," Arizona said with a wink. Callie blushed slightly. Damn it. Can she read my mind already?
Arizona sat back and sighed. She didn't date newborns. She had been an experiment to one too many women, and she wasn't sure her heart could handle it again. Especially not with this particular woman. In the short time she'd known Callie, she could tell that the fierce Latina was capable of breaking her heart, so Arizona was newly determined not to give her the chance.
o0o0o
Arizona held the cigarette between her forefinger and middle finger as she inhaled a large puff of smoke. She groaned in satisfaction as the tar coated her lungs with delightful pain. Just after two inhalations, she could feel her muscles relax and her mental anguish subside. Surrounded by the cool Seattle mist, Arizona wrapped one hand around her body, the other still resting close to her mouth. She groaned as she heard the door swing open. She wished she had checked Callie's surgery schedule to make sure she would be otherwise occupied. This time, Arizona actually wanted to be alone.
"Hey," Callie said softly.
"Hey," Arizona croaked back, her voice already growing hoarse from the cigarette.
"You smoke?" To her credit, Callie tried really hard not to infuse any judgment in her surprised question, but it was still implicit.
"Yeah, I know, I know, but I only smoke on very rare occasions."
"So, what's the occasion?"
"I have this patient. Wallace. He's been here longer than any other kid on the wing. His parents are donating 25 million dollars. And I just can't. I can't. They want me to perform a surgery. He's not strong enough. But you can get anything with that amount of money."
Instead of saying anything Callie took the cigarette from Arizona's fingers and threw it to the ground, before twisting her shoe against it.
"Hey! If you didn't like the smoke, you could have just left."
"No, as your friend, I'm going to help you kick this habit."
Arizona smiled despite the overwhelming sadness and anxiety she felt. "You can't just pull the friend card to get your way all the time. You know that's my weakness."
"Exactly why I used it." Callie laughed, hoping Arizona would join in. When she didn't, Callie tilted her head so she could peer into Arizona's downtrodden eyes. She placed one finger under her chin and delicately lifted the blonde's head. "Hey, why don't you talk out the surgery to me? I find that if I say all the steps I'm going to take out loud, when I get in the OR, it's not as intimidating."
If anyone else had made this suggestion to Arizona, she would have gone from pouty to haughty in about 10 seconds, wondering how anyone dared even insinuate that she was not a perfect surgeon. Now, though, sitting in front of Callie, knowing there was no judging bone in her body, it didn't seem like a horrible idea. She still had her reservations, though.
"Callie…"
"Just because I'm an ortho nerd, doesn't mean I can't help you through this surgery," Callie said, capturing a perfect "no nonsense" attitude.
"Okay," Arizona sighed and began to go through each step of her future surgery, along with any possible complications that may arise and her subsequent contingency plan. Callie couldn't help but watch the extremely talented surgeon in awe. When she heard Arizona falter near the end of her lengthy surgery speech, Callie stepped in front of her and placed one hand on each shoulder.
"You are great, Arizona. You. Are. Great." The sincerity of Callie's words not only made Arizona feel as if she could actually do this surgery, but also almost made her want to kiss Callie. She swayed into Callie instinctually, her lips dangerously close to the plush, inviting ones in front of hers. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, before pushing off the taller woman and nodding her head.
"Thank you," she said resolutely, before marching off to perform the surgery beautifully.
o0o0o
Since the almost kiss moment, Arizona had been admittedly avoiding Callie. She had had numerous breaks but hadn't ventured up to the roof. She just couldn't let herself get involved. As the days passed, however, she also found that she couldn't stay away for too long.
Callie paced over the helicopter landing space on the roof, and as she did, she cursed the blonde for making her relaxation spot anything but relaxing. She had never done this before; she had never wanted to do this before. She cursed Arizona again for making her want things she thought she didn't. Callie was hopeful the blonde would arrive soon, because this pacing was giving her headache. She had written a note and put in Arizona's locker, hoping she would actually come up to the roof after her shift. Callie planned to ramble as eloquently as possible and somewhere along the lines ask her out on a date. Callie hoped that she was endearing enough for the blonde to say yes.
Callie was pulled out of her thoughts when the door squeaked open and the subject of her thoughts walked through it. And just like that, she had forgotten her plan to ramble eloquently and endearingly.
"Hey," she squeaked out. This was the first time she'd seen Arizona in street clothing, and she had to admit, she was enjoying it.
"Calliope, hi! I'm sorry I haven't been around here much. I've been really busy with surgeries and I was moving from my temporary apartment into my permanent one, so that's been a pain in the ass. Oh, and I've gone on a couple dates this week. I've just been super busy…" Arizona trailed off and her eyes went wide as she realized what she had just said. She so did not mean to tell Callie about her dating life. Of course, a friend would tell another friend about her love life, but ever since their almost kiss, Arizona wasn't entirely sure what category they fit.
"Sooo, how were your dates?" Callie asked in the most interested tone she could muster. Inside, she was panicking, trying to decide whether or not to go through with her plan, but on the outside, she was calm and pretending to be the model friend.
Arizona shrugged. "They were okay. I thought my date with Julie had potential but it was just…" Arizona scrunched her face to show how she felt about the date.
Callie cocked an eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"
"She had this weird widow's peak."
"Geez, wouldn't want to date you!" Callie said, only slightly under her breath.
"I'm sorry. What was that?" Arizona whipped her head up to meet Callie's uncharacteristic gaze.
"You really didn't like this woman because she had a widow's peak? Are you that shallow?"
Arizona balked at the accusation. "Uh, no, I'm not shallow, but physical attraction is important, Calliope." Arizona said Callie's full name as if she were talking to a child instead of the grown woman now practically seething in front of her.
"Yes, I know that, Arizona," Callie said, mimicking Arizona's tone of voice. "It just seems like this woman never stood a chance with the perfect Arizona Robbins!"
"Oh wow. What the hell is your problem? Were you there on that date? No, you weren't."
"No, I definitely was not. Please, tell me more about unfortunate Julie's shortcomings, why don't you?" Callie waited for a pregnant pause to elapse before she brushed past Arizona brusquely. "Actually, no, I can't do this. This is ridiculous." And within seconds she was out the door.
"She wasn't you," Arizona said softly in answer to Callie's rhetorical question.
o0o0o
After their "tiff", neither Callie nor Arizona had decided to venture up to the roof in the coming days, and except for one joint surgery through which neither surgeon spoke of anything besides medicine, they managed to avoid each other fairly well.
Arizona was absolutely fine with the avoidance, figuring that it was better than the alternative: ask Callie out on a date, fall in love with her, learn Callie was going back to men, have her heart broken. She was absolutely fine with it until Mark had taken her into an on-call room, entirely ignoring Arizona's protests of "you know I'm gay, right?" Mark had rolled his eyes and forced her to sit on the bed while he stood in front of her, not-so-gently telling her all the things she was doing wrong, explaining what she was missing, and why Callie would essentially be the best girlfriend ever. She had to admit that Mark did have some good reasons.
So now, Arizona was standing once again on their roof, waiting for Callie to (hopefully) accept her haphazard apology and request that had been scrawled on a prescription note and shoved in her locker. She glanced at her watch and sighed; Callie was almost half an hour late. She wasn't coming. Arizona slumped down in one of the chairs that she had carried up to the roof and rested her elbow on the table. Placing her head on her hand, she used her other hand to trace a finger along the lone long-stemmed rose in the middle of the table. This is why she didn't do romantic gestures, this is why she didn't take risks, and this is certainly why she didn't fall for girls who didn't understand their sexuality. She always got burned.
Callie opened the door so quietly that Arizona, consumed by her pitiful thoughts, didn't even notice her presence. The sight before her nearly broke Callie's heart.
"Hey," she said softly.
"You came," Arizona said, her eyes and mouth wide in wonder.
"I turned around three times on the steps on the way up here."
Arizona nodded in understanding, but remained silently staring at the brunette in awe.
"So are you going to tell me what all this is about?" Callie asked gently.
"Oh! Oh, right! This is…um…I was just wondering…would you like to go on a date with me? Right now?" Callie struggled to hold back a grin. She wanted to tease the babbling blonde just a little bit. She walked purposefully forward until she was just a couple feet from Arizona.
"You know I have a widow's peak, right?" Callie asked, encroaching on Arizona's personal bubble. Arizona jokingly stepped backwards, before stepping forward again, and running her hand through Callie's hair.
"That's okay, your bangs cover it." She ruffled Callie's hair while shooting her her widest, most dimple-filled grin.
"If you weren't so damn cute, I would be so mad at you for doing that."
"You think I'm cute. Does that mean you're saying yes to this date?" Arizona asked, batting her eyelashes dramatically.
"I think I can do one better," Callie said, before pulling Arizona's body flush against hers. She cupped the smaller woman's cheek and jawbone and slowly brought them closer together until finally their lips met for the first time. Arizona moaned in satisfaction and immediately snaked her arms around Callie's neck to deepen the kiss.
When they finally separated, Arizona stepped back, her eyes still closed and a satisfied smile adorning her face. "Mmm even better than I imagined it."
"And how long exactly have you been imagining that?"
"Pretty much since the second this gorgeous Latina invaded my quiet get away spot."
"Hey, I was there first!"
"Nuh-uh, I was totally there first that day!" Arizona retorted, unable to stop herself from sticking out her tongue playfully. Callie leaned in immediately, catching Arizona's tongue in between her lips and successfully turning Arizona's childish antics into a much more adult moment.
Callie pulled away and leaned her forehead against the breathless blonde. "What took you so long?" she asked.
"I was scared."
"So what changed?"
"Nothing changed. I'm still scared," Arizona answered softly. Sensing Callie's renewed tension, she gave her a gentle peck on the lips. "But I realized you were worth the risk."