Prompt: New Year's - midnight. Callie and Arizona kiss for the first time since the amputation.

AN: I AM BACK. Hello everyone, I hope you have survived/are surviving finals week and are preparing for the holiday season or just winter break! This one was fun to write and I've been wanting to write it for a while, I hope the format works for you. -Maisie


December 31st 2012

8:36 pm

Calliope Torres goes day to day pretending that she's living in a healthy relationship with her wife. She get's away with it for the most part, however the bags under her eyes and the haunted look that she comes into work with clue people in. In the beginning, after the crash and the resulting disasters people used to whisper whenever she walked into the room, their voices would drop and she could feel all their questioning eyes on her. She took it, for a while, but after a third sleepless night in Marks bed she let it loose on a group of unsuspecting interns.

However it is New Years Eve, a night where people are practically begging for the night off and it was no surprise to Callie that Owen asked her to take a shift. The eve of the new year always known for bringing in a multitude of grizzly injuries and having the Seattle Grace Mercy West's resident Ortho-God on call would probably save a lot of lives.

And Callie complied, secretly relieved that she would be thrown into the chaos of the ER and the OR. It wasn't that she didn't want to spend New Years Eve with Sofia and Arizona, it was that as of late, as of all the time now actually, spending time with Arizona was getting increasingly difficult. It wasn't for her wife's lack trying and Callie appreciated that. But on a night that was supposed to be spent commemorating and celebrating the past year, Callie didn't see much to celebrate.

It was only when Arizona too took the New Years Eve shift that Callie wondered if maybe she should have turned Owen down and spent the night with her wife and child. Too late for that now however she was prepping for surgery on a twelve year old car crash victim. Even fro her short glance at the patient Callie knew it was going to be a long night, and the age of her patient meant that she would be spending all evening with her wife after all.

10:53 pm

Two and a half hours in and Callie was feeling good, although even she would admit that her glance drifted across the operating table towards where her wife stood more often than she would like. Arizona had caught her once and the soft, knowing smile that she had flashed Callie threw the Latina off for a moment. It wasn't too much was it, that maybe, at midnight-no. Callie didn't dare get her hope up, smiles from Arizona were more than she'd been getting, and as much as she yearned for, down right desired on a daily basis, to just kiss her wife, she tired not to dwell on her needs. At least not too much anyway.

11:16 pm

Callie has to grip the scalpel until she's sure her knuckles are white as Arizona's stance wavers and she, to Callie's shock, requests a chair for a moment. Dark eyes meet lighter ones and there's just weariness across both women's features, and as they focus back on their patient the Latina can't even help but smile as Arizona snaps at the over eager intern who asks if she want's to step outside "I'm not stepping anywhere." She flashed, pushing herself to her feet "Keep the chair in here and keep quiet."

11:55 pm

Callie wants to kiss her wife. That's all she can think about along side the Fibular repair that she is totally rocking right now. She keeps glancing at the clock, watching the minute hand tick closer to midnight, knowing that all she wants seconds into the New Year is a kiss from her wife for the first time since before the god damn plane crash. She just hopes that she isn't getting her hopes up.

11:59.32 pm

Less than thirty seconds and Callie is mostly done with her work, she's stepped back letting some intern close up, keeping one eye on the patient and the other on the clock. She thinks about a lot in the last seconds of 2012. How much Sofia has grown, how her relationship with her father has evolved for the better, the patients she's lost that she thought she could save, the ones who never stood a chance and of course, the plane crash.

The plane crash has defined so much of her recently, from how she interacts with her wife to explaining to a growing Sofia why her momma is in bed all the time and why her dad isn't around any more. And as the clock ticks down 56….57….58… Callie feels someone standing next to her…59….

January 1st 2013

12:00.01 am

Their kissing. Granted it's through scrub masks, but amidst the cheers of Happy New Year and all the other hugs, Arizona's arm has slipped around her wife, pulled her in close and their kissing. Callie isn't sure what to do besides kiss her back and memories the feeling. Memorize the way her blood pressure sky rockets and her stomach drops because she in love with this woman. No matter what happens, or the mistakes they make she's in love, she's married and they're making it with one step at a time. She can feel Arizona's lips curl up into a smile, and Callie just takes it in.

January 1st 2013

6:36 am

Callie collapses into bed. Her bed. The bed that she hasn't slept in in over three months, the bed her wife asked her to sleep in tonight, the bed that she can wrap her arms around her wife's body and hold her close. She's drifting off to sleep almost the moment her head hits the pillows but at the movement of her wife in her arms, Callie opens her eyes. Arizona is looking at her almost sheepishly as she bits her lip and goes in for another kiss "Happy New Year" she whispers and Callie just smiles, whispering a choked up

"I love you." In response.