Title: The Five Missing Pieces (That Made Callie Love Erica)
Author: Chelle Storey-Daniel
Rating: R
Pairing: Callie/Erica
Summary: This is the journey that you didn't see on the show. This is what led up to Callie falling hard.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, you would have seen it. :)
Darts.
It took exactly two point five hours for Callie to get intoxicated enough for her dart to go wide. The fact that the business end found Mark Sloan in the ass was pure coincidence ... or sheer luck, depending on who you asked. Callie cupped her hand over her mouth and apologized with her wide eyes as Sloan pulled the dart from his shapely derriere with a grunt. Someone with a laugh so infectious that Callie found herself joining, nudged her on the shoulder and said, "Nice aim."
Callie clanked her shot glass against Erica's. "Anyone else would have said 'nice ass'."
"Yeah, well, I'm immune." Erica threw her last dart and nodded toward the bar. "I'm gonna sit down. You want to join me?"
"Sure." Callie picked up the bottle they had been nursing and flopped down next to her at the bar. The invitation for drinks had come out of left field, but she was damn glad it had. Talking to Erica beat crying on the sofa any day of the week. "So, Dr. Hahn, what's your story?"
"I'm afraid I'm boring by Seattle Grace standards. I have a tendency to come in every morning, do my job with minimal drama, and go home."
"Dude, they're gonna eat you alive here." Callie grinned at her, wrinkling her nose. "Watch your back."
"Who should I watch out for?" Erica asked, clearly amused. "I've already got Pretty and Prettier on my list."
It was Callie's turn to laugh now and she did it readily when her new friend pointed out Derek and Mark. Indicating the second year residents, Callie said, "That entire table. They're crazy. Cristina Yang -"
"I've had the pleasure. You don't have to go into detail there."
"On her left is Meredith Grey. She's the queen bee of drama and the others are her bit players. She's involved with Derek Shepherd, I think. It depends on the day of the week and whether the elevators are in service. Next to her is Alex Karev. He's a hard one to figure out, but he's involved with a patient who had amnesia. Or he was ... who knows. Next to him is Izzie Stevens, the resident beauty queen, who lives to make my life a living hell and next to her ... is my husband, George O'Malley. He had an affair with the beauty queen after he told me I was curvy and she was stacked -"
"He said that to you?!" Scandalized, Erica pinned her blue eyes on the side of O'Malley's head. "You break bones for a living and he's still walking because ...?"
"That's a good question." Callie glanced at her ex for the first time that night. He threw his head back and laughed at something Izzie said and Callie looked away fast, refilling her shot glass.
Hahn openly appraised Stevens and shook her head. "You're prettier than her. And you're better off without him. Is he in a booster seat or what?"
Laughter was good.
It flowed as freely as the liquor until last call.
Divorce.
It was nearly four weeks after drinks at Joe's and Callie and Erica had been greeting one another on a first name basis for a while. It was commonplace to see a meeting of the minds between cardio and ortho as the two doctors spoke over morning coffee or sat together eating their lunch. Topics usually ranged from current cases to Erica's latest attempts at fending off Sloan's advances. Sympathetic to the other woman's plight, Callie patted her on the hand one day. "Did he actually offer you his pickle?"
"I nearly shoved it up his ass, Callie."
"He's pulled that line on everybody. It means he's getting desperate."
Erica shook her head, chewing thoughtfully on a cucumber. "I swear, if I hear another cheesy pickup line I'm going to give him a sucking chest wound."
"Speaking of that," Callie said, pulling a wad of papers from the pocket of her lab coat. "Divorce papers. My lawyer said that they're ready to go."
"Yeah?" Putting her fork down, Erica eyed the menacing stack of papers. Shock registered on her face when she saw how dog eared they were, how splotchy the ink was on the front page. "Have you signed them?"
Looking down, the black haired woman shook her head. The papers were heavy when she clenched them in her fist and gritted her teeth against the tears that were burning her eyes. "This should be the easy part, right? I mean, being left for another woman was the hard part. This is -"
"You were not left." Erica told her, taking the pen from her pocket. "You were freed from a life sentence that would have made you miserable. Take the pen, Torres."
With a shaking hand, Callie did just that. "I shouldn't be this upset. He didn't want me."
"Want yourself enough to sign your release."
"It's humiliating."
"But you are not going to cry. You are going to sit up straight, smile at me, and sign those papers because your ex just walked in and men like that don't deserve any satisfaction."
Callie pulled her shoulders back, biting her bottom lip. "Is he looking?"
Erica smiled at her. "Yep."
Flipping the papers to the last page, she scrawled her name on the highlighted areas and clicked the pen, nodding her head. "I'm not going to cry."
"Exactly."
"No, I mean really. I'm not going to cry." Callie looked amazed. "I'm fine."
"Yeah." Erica's eyes moved over her face. "You are."
Both women delivered the papers to George, where he sat flipping through his iPod.
He didn't look up.
If he had, he would have seen that Erica's hand was on Callie's back, holding her upright ... keeping her strong
Dealing.
No matter how much Callie said that she was okay ... she could feel herself falling apart as another three weeks moved past. The tears that she had not cried sat bubbling below her tough exterior and the levee that she had slowly and meticulously built began to crack. Losing was a bitter pill to swallow. She had lost Addison to California. She had lost George to Izzie. And she had lost the Chief Resident position to Bailey. Callie was, for lack of a better word, a loser. As luck would have it, the levee broke after a particularly hard day at work so she sat in the parking garage with her head against the steering wheel as she cried enough to make her nose run, her stomach roll, and her throat ache hard enough to rival her heart. She was in the middle of telling herself how stupid she was when the driver's door opened and Erica said, "Move over."
Callie obliged, sliding into the passenger seat of her truck. Erica started the engine and turned the air conditioner on, pointing it at Callie's face. When it didn't cool the tiny cab fast enough, Erica hit the open road and rolled the windows down. She purposely found something cheerful and decidedly empowering on the radio and turned it up so loud that it sounded a little more static filled than bass filled, but it helped. An hour after the meltdown, Callie dug her toes into the sand on the beach and flopped down, not caring that the ground was wet. Erica joined her, dropping her shoes as she sat close enough to wrap an arm around Callie's shoulder. "I'm sorry," she told the bone crusher. "This ... sucks. You married somebody and you made a mistake. I look at hearts every day and I know that when you give yours away too soon ... it can hurt like a mofo when you take it back because it doesn't fit the right way anymore."
Callie regarded her closely. "Did you just say 'mofo'?"
"Shut up." Erica grinned at her. "I know it's trite to say it, but you're better off without him. A woman like you ... you should be with someone who values you as a friend, a lover, a partner. When that person comes along ... they're going to repair every bit of the damage he caused, Cal, and you're going to look back at this as the best thing that ever happened to you."
"That person needs to come along right now."
Clearing her throat, Erica shook her head. "Nah. Not just yet. You're not ready. You need to think about you for a while. Tell me three things that make you happy."
"My job. Wine." Callie met her eyes. "And you. I'm glad we met. I don't know what I would've done without you. I felt like I was a stranger to everyone ... even myself."
"You would have gotten familiar with yourself again eventually. I'm just glad that I'm here to help the new you meet the world."
Erica gave her a one armed hug. Callie closed her eyes and accepted the comfort, the warmth. They sat together for almost an hour, then they climbed back into Callie's truck. They bought a bottle of wine in the name of independence and headed back to the apartment that was technically Yang's. She crashed their party halfway through and for a split second it was awkward, but Yang went to bed and Callie watched the sun rise behind Erica, who decided that they should dance their cares away from that point on.
Delirious.
Finding a best friend to dance with, drink with it, and be with was euphoric. Callie wasn't exactly in a position to judge Erica's friendship skills because Addison had been the closest thing to a friend she'd ever had, but Callie had no complaints. There had been no more tears since her breakdown in the parking deck. She spent all of her spare time going on hikes with her buddy and embracing yoga with enough intensity to earn a coveted invitation to the sunrise sessions. She invited Erica to tag along after fourteen days. Even though the blond had teased her mercilessly about what she perceived to be a lightweight exercise, she was winded and out of breath when they retired to the showers. Never one for modesty, Callie stripped off as she always did and carried her zip lock bag of supplies into the shower. "Erica?"
"I'm coming."
Callie glanced up when the other woman joined her, then looked away fast. She hadn't expected such a ... muscular frame. Of course, she had felt the strength the other woman possessed, but she was shocked to see the definition. Erica wasn't thin by any stretch of the imagination, but she was toned and pale. Glancing down at her own body, Callie noted the changes in herself. She had lost exactly thirty three pounds since her divorce. An unfortunate side effect was the loss of a cup size, but she figured the rest of her new body more than made up for it. She had walked countless miles, jogged so few that she could count it, and stopped stress eating. There was actually no stress to be found and that was so foreign, so absolutely unexpected, that she gasped at the feeling.
"If you have picked right now to start getting familiar with yourself, I'm going to drown you," Erica said wryly, soaping her arms.
"Shut up, pervert." Callie reached out and flipped the hot water off on Erica's side, causing her to screech her fury. "I fight dirty."
Erica retaliated by squirting her with soap and they dissolved into giggles when the yoga instruction came in and announced that her classes had been known to make people delirious. They rode the delirium to the hospital where Callie got the news that Addison was coming to visit and then she began to fill Erica in on all the juicy gossip surrounding Addison. She didn't tell everything, because some things were never meant to be shared, but she told her enough to ensure that Erica would love Montgomery as much as Callie did.
There was instant chemistry between all three women, but when Addison suggested that there was something ... more ... to Callie and Erica besides friendship ... Callie did the only thing she could think to do. She went to Mark's hotel room where she let him drive her crazy multiple times. Lying in his arms, she listened to his heart beat and concentrated on her own.
Unless Callie was much mistaken ... Erica Hahn's prediction had come true. Someone had come along and healed Callie's heart ... Callie was just stunned to realize that Erica had been suturing the wound all along. Hahn had repaired the damage so quietly that it took a nudge from Addison to hear it at all.
"You want to spend the night?" Mark asked, breaking through her thoughts.
"No."
"Oh, come on. When's the last time you had a good breakfast? I seem to recall that you love the crepes."
"I should go." She sat up, trying to locate her jeans in the room.
"Is something on your mind, Callie?"
"I'm tired."
"Sex is a great sedative. Stay. I'll knock you out."
Callie stayed.
And dreamed about blonde hair whispering through her fingers and a pale, muscular body sliding against her own.
Destiny.
It didn't matter how many times Callie had sex with Mark ... her brain refused to join him in the act. Her body was with him one hundred percent, but her mind was firmly elsewhere. It certainly didn't help that Erica teasingly kissed Callie in front of Mark to prove that he couldn't handle a threesome. No, that made it worse. And Callie underestimated Mark because it only took him a few days to put the pieces together. He saw what Addison had seen between Callie and Erica and wasn't shy about openly stroking Callie's fantasies for her. The fact that Erica wasn't technically in the loop didn't matter because Mark told Callie in vivid detail exactly what the blond would do to her when she was between Callie's thighs. Orgasms never felt better than they did when Callie was actually encouraged to say her name as she crested over the peaks of pleasure.
Callie was NOT gay. She truly believed in her soul that you were born one way or the other, but as she found herself googling 'lesbian' and watching more than one clip of girl on girl action ... she knew that she COULD be.
Maybe she even WANTED to be.
It wasn't that men scared her. After all, Mark did anything but scare. Sure, George had broken her heart and she was definitely gun shy about throwing it around, but if she had to throw it anywhere ... the person who had mended it would probably take better care of it than anyone else. That's what she was thinking when she watched Erica operate on the boy who had been encased in cement and that's what Mark interrupted when he made it clear, in his own way, that it was perfectly fine to want the other woman in a dirty, groin filled way.
After grappling for hours with bone weary exhaustion and weighing how heavy the gossip would undoubtedly be if she chose to pursue something with Erica ... Callie decided not to go there. She couldn't be the subject of controversy again and it was easier to let people mock her for sleeping with Sloan than pity her for falling in love again. So, she asked Mark if he wanted sex and he had pointed out Erica, who was tearing her purse apart in a frantic search.
It made sense then.
Giving in to the ever present lure and taking a deep breath, Callie walked forward and spoke to her "friend".
What she was thinking ... was that she had been in cement, too. It had been slowly pulling her to the bottom of the ocean and Erica had jumped in the water and chipped it away. Erica had cracked into her chest and massaged her heart until it could beat without skipping and pound with aching. What she was thinking, as Erica rambled about her car keys, was that you wait your whole life for a that one perfect kiss and she wanted it. She wanted to free Erica from her cement. So she kissed her and held her breath, hoping to convey everything without speaking at all.
And Erica shook off the shackles around her wrists and kissed her back, cupping her face, tasting her lips.
When Callie pulled back, she was terrified. "Erica-"
"It's about damn time."
"What?"
"Hello? I've only been waiting forever."
"You have not!" Callie's eyes widened and her mouth dropped into an 'o' then. "Have you?"
Erica grinned at her. "No, Callie, I've been talking about 'Sapphic salads' and buying you The L Word DVD's for the hell of it."
"Surely to GOD you didn't think showing me how dysfunctional lesbians are would make this easy for me."
The smile on Erica's face faded. "Hmm. I didn't think about that part."
"What are you thinking right now?" Callie nervously chewed her bottom lip.
"I'm wondering how much attention you paid to the ... other details ... on the show."
"The sex?"
"Possibly."
"Why don't you quiz me?"
Erica did.
And Callie passed with flying colors.