Summary: Let us watch as intern Callie Torres falls for Attending Arizona Robbins. It's gonna be a real slow burner, but we'll still have some fun along the way.
AN: WOW, LAST CHAPTER HAD SO MANY TYPOS, WOW. SORRY. Thank you to everyone who reads and reviews and follows and faves, I really appreciate your support. Yee!
Can't Help Falling
Chapter VIII: The Stupid Shit I Do
a.k.a. Buzz (Lightyear to the rescue!)
I love everything you do.
"Ex-husband?" Meredith's voice was barely audible as she stared between Derek and Addison.
"Addison," Arizona didn't even put up false pretenses. She grabbed the taller woman by the upper arm and all but dragged her outside, a completely bewildered Callie trailing behind them. "What the hell was that?" She demanded to know when the three of them made it outside.
"What are you talking about? I was just saying hi," the redhead said, unprepared for heat she was receiving.
"You…" Arizona began to say, laughing humorlessly as she attempted to calm herself down. "That's not how you greet people, Addison. He hadn't told her he was married yet."
"What? I thought you said it was serious between them," Addison was officially confused.
"It is! But you don't just tell the woman you're getting serious with that your wife left you after discovering that she's a lesbian, Addison," the blonde exclaimed, waving her hands around wildly in frustration. Callie didn't hesitate in grabbing one of her flailing hands, the action soothing her for the moment. "He was getting around to telling her, but you know how hard it was for him to move on after you. If you screw this up for him, I'll have to hurt you."
"Okay, okay," the redhead raised her hands in a placating gesture. "I didn't know. I'll just go explain myself, I guess."
Arizona scoffed. "Don't. You've done enough already."
"Why are you so angry with me?" Addison questioned loudly. She had not anticipated her arrival being taken as badly as it was.
"She's just tired," Callie answered before Arizona could snap again.
"I'm perfectly capable of speaking for myself, Calliope, thank you." Or she just redirected the woman's ire toward herself.
But Callie, having dealt with her friend in various states of exhaustion just let the rudeness roll off her back, feeling just a tickle of amusement. "Yeah, you definitely need to sleep, hon," she murmured softly, trying not to smile as she lightly tugged on the smaller woman's hand. It probably wasn't the best time to find Arizona's tired crankiness endearing, but she couldn't help it.
"Do you have somewhere to stay?" The blonde asked, looking directly at Addison, who just nodded. "And you're probably gonna wanna go comfort Meredith?" She looked at Callie now.
"I got this," Cristina muttered as she and Meredith flew by the three of them, seemingly out of nowhere. The trio watched them disappear toward the familiar Emerald City Bar.
Callie groaned loudly. "I should go. I mean, she's my friend. She's my good friend. So I should go, right?" She wasn't sure who she was asking, but she needed an excuse because she was just so sleepy. But Meredith, right? She should be with her in her time of crisis. But Cristina did say she had it.
"You should eat," Arizona said loftily.
The intern turned to her with the most unreadable expression. "You know what; you just―" she cut herself off because her emotions got weird when she was sleepy, so to keep herself from yelling, she just stopped talking. She couldn't win against the woman's persistence.
"Yeah, I know what I just," Arizona murmured tartly. "Addison, it was good to see you, and hopefully it'll be better tomorrow when it's less dramatic and keeping my eyes open isn't something I have to actively focus on doing."
"It's good to see you, too," Addison drawled, her tone just on the right side of derisive. "Can I at least get a hug? I haven't seen you in months."
At that, Arizona showcased a gentle grin that was stunning in its simplicity. "Of course you can." She stepped away from Callie and wrapped her arms around the taller woman in a tender embrace that they both leaned into. They had been really good friends once and when everything was sorted out, it would be nice to get back to that. "It is really good to see you, Addie," she whispered, looking into green-tinted light blue eyes as the two separated.
Addison didn't say anything for a long moment, her gaze jumping between the blonde's eyes and mouth. "Yeah... you, too, Arizona."
Callie watched them silently for a second and wondered what the history was there because there was definitely something between them. Or did Arizona just have that kind of chemistry with everyone? It was hard to tell. Whatever it was, Callie didn't feel like seeing it when she could be back at her apartment sleeping.
"I'm Callie," she said loudly, trying to move things along. "Callie Torres." She stuck her hand out for the interloper to shake. She didn't know what to make of her: she was Derek's ex-wife, who was apparently a lesbian now, and she was also friends (more than friends?) with Arizona. She'd like to stand against her in solidarity with Meredith, but if this woman was friends with Arizona, she might not be able to do that.
Anyway, she was about to collapse if she didn't get home soon. She could think about it tomorrow.
"Addison Montgomery," the red haired woman introduced herself, smiling beautifully at the brunette. "I'll let you get her home." She paused like she was going to say something, but instead she just wished them a goodnight and walked back inside the hospital.
"What is it with you and redheads?" Callie asked Arizona once Addison was out of earshot.
"What do you mean?"
Callie snorted as they started on their way home. What did she mean? What did Arizona mean what did she mean? "What I mean is what is your deal with attracting redheads? You got some superpower I don't know about?"
"You mean Addie?"
"Well, no shit, Arizona."
But the double board certified surgeon was shaking her head. "No, no, no. Nothing has ever happened between me and Addison. She was married to my best friend for most of the time that I've known her, and I would never… no."
"Just because nothing happened doesn't mean there were never feelings," Callie pointed out, shrugging.
Arizona flinched at her words, but rolled her shoulders in an effort to disguise the reflexive action. "I'm not talking about this."
"Why not?" The future ortho surgeon pushed. "If nothing happened―"
"Callie, I love you and I trust you and you are a great friend, but I will not talk about this with you," Arizona spoke in an even tone, every note of her voice expertly controlled to give nothing away.
There was a buzz, she knew. Not in her ear. No, it was… it was in her chest. Yes, that was it. It was a warm buzz, gently rattling around in her ribcage, coating her heart and lungs, and oh. It was spreading lower. To her stomach and abdomen. It was just the strangest sensation, something Callie was highly unfamiliar with and though the feeling itself was pleasant, its presence wasn't. She had no idea what it was, but it was. It was everywhere.
"You love me?" Was that her voice? That breathless, pitchy sound? That was her? And when had she stopped walking?
It was the change in her voice that Arizona registered immediately that made her turn and walk back to where Callie was standing frozen. She stopped just in front of the darker skinned woman and silently examined her features, feeling her earlier exhaustion fading away as she took her in. She never knew looking at another person could be so peaceful. "Yes," she breathed, feeling unreasonably light. "I love you, Calliope."
And the strength she exerted to stop herself from adding on "as a friend" should have won her some kind of award.
xXx
Arizona loved her.
Arizona loved her.
Arizona freaking Robbins loved her.
Why couldn't she stop thinking that?
She should have been asleep. God, she had been so sleepy, but now she was lying awake in bed thinking about how the woman in her arms loved her. As if it were some kind of life changing event, which it wasn't. It wasn't. But she just could not for the life of her stop thinking about it. Because Arizona loved her. As a friend, obviously, but still. Arizona loved her.
"Ugh," she moaned quietly, unexpectedly feeling the sound morph into a light chuckle. The buzz from before was coming back. Not that it had ever really gone away, but it had receded enough that she could ignore it and now it was back.
"Why are you laughing?" She felt more than heard the question since Arizona's head was tucked sweetly against her chest.
Nothing. Nothing was funny, but she couldn't stop laughing. She was just happy. Because her best friend loved her and that was just… well, it was great. Yeah, that was the word she was settling on. Anything more would have been excessive, right?
Even so, she dragged a slow hand through sunshine colored curls and smiled the feeling of that warm buzz in her chest. "I love you, too," she whispered serenely.
"I requested to have Meredith Grey on my service."
Arizona was a patient person, she was, but even she had her limits. And people doing exactly what she had told them not to do was one surefire way to test those limits. Addison Shepherd― or Montgomery rather, had always been exceptional at that.
"Of course you did," she muttered, scribbling something down on a chart before placing it back on the rack at the nurse's station.
"I just wanted to explain myself, Arizona. Is that so bad?" The neonatal surgeon wanted to know.
"Did it work?" Arizona inquired, blatantly ignoring the question posed to her.
Addison considered that, thinking back to her earlier conversation with her ex-husband's girlfriend. "Well, she seemed to understand and accept what I was telling her, but I don't know if it's helped Derek's case or not."
"Okay," she said simply.
"Okay?" All that fire last night and all Addison got was an 'okay'?
"Okay," she repeated, having nothing to add. She wasn't interested in talking about Meredith and Derek with Addison. Or with anyone if she was really being honest.
"Well then, tell me about your girlfriend," her old friend all but demanded as she followed Arizona from the nurse's station to the stairwell.
"What? You mean Callie?" And then she rolled her eyes at herself because who the hell else would Addison be talking about?
"Yeah, she's really sexy. Where did you find her?"
And then she rolled her eyes again because even though it had been a year since the redhead came out, it was still weird as fuck hearing her talk about women like that. "She's an intern."
"You're dating an intern, too?" Addison knew for a fact that Arizona had always been strongly opposed to dating interns. Hell, she was even hesitant to date residents. "Richard must have picked a wild bunch this year."
"Oh, you have no idea how wild I can be."
"How do you always know where to find me?" Arizona asked Callie as the smiling junior surgeon practically hopped up the stairs to stand on the step below Arizona, bringing them to the same height. "Oh, this is new," she commented impishly, bringing one hand up to rest on Callie's shoulder.
Callie chuckled at her and lifted her own hand to grab onto Arizona's. "Considering I wasn't even looking for you this time, I guess we can just call it fate."
"Mm-hmm," the blonde hummed skeptically. "Addison was just asking me about you."
"About how sexy I am?" Callie focused her smirk on Addison, whose cheeks flushed to nearly the same color as the coral pink scrubs she was wearing. "It's okay. You'd be surprised by how many people tell me that to my face. In fact, I heard it twice a few nights ago."
"Oh, did you?" Arizona queried, keeping her voice purposefully airy as she made eye contact with her best friend.
Callie's expression froze because there were times when Arizona did or said something that made her feel like she actually was Callie's girlfriend and it was always so jarring. Now was one of those times. "We-ell, I always go home with you so it obviously didn't move me."
"Mmm," she hummed again, continuing to fix Callie with that analytical gaze that never failed to stop her in her tracks.
"You better not start making out right now." Addison's declaration sliced right through the tension they'd created.
The laugh that came out of Arizona was somehow simultaneously amused and sardonic. "No, we won't. We only do that at home."
"She doesn't know?" Callie asked, referring to their unique faux relationship arrangement.
"Uh-uh," Arizona shook her head in confirmation.
"So we'll be adding her to the list of everyone else who thinks we're…" in a real romantic relationship. "… yeah," she finished instead.
"Uh-huh," Arizona nodded that time.
"What don't I know?" That was the thing about coming to a new place: being constantly out of the loop.
"I'll tell you later," the peds surgeon promised, quickly weighing the pros and cons of telling her the truth. She really would prefer to keep it between the four people who were directly involved (and Derek, who generally knew about what Mark and Arizona were up to). Then again, Callie might not want another person falsely thinking she was into women.
Callie leaned up to severely minimize the distance between them so she could whisper right into Arizona's ear. "You gonna tell her the truth?"
"If you want me to," she allowed.
Callie leaned back again and shrugged. "I don't care."
"That's entirely unhelpful," Arizona frowned.
"I'll make it up to you," she threw out the offer casually. "I actually have things to do so I gotta go. Will I see you for lunch?"
"If I don't get paged, yeah."
"Ooo, can we do it in an on-call room or your office?" The words were out before she could process the double meaning. And now that she couldn't correct herself, she fought off a blush because wow, okay, it was shit like that that made people think she and Arizona were actually fucking.
The smaller woman was visibly entertained as she replied. "My office. Around one?"
"Perfect," Callie smiled, giving Arizona's hand a squeeze before walking around Addison and continuing on up the stairs. "See you later."
"Alligator," the kid doctor called back automatically.
"You're a loser," her voice carried through the stairwell as she moved further out of sight.
"You love me," Arizona reminded her in that faux-innocent way she tended to adopt when trying to be extra cheeky.
"True."
The grin on her face was a mile wide and she fought valiantly to tamp it down. She had been just on the cusp of sleep again when she heard Callie echo her earlier sentiment last night. Well, that morning, technically, but whatever. She hadn't told Callie that she loved her expecting her to say it back; she had said it in the heat of the moment, but it was true. She felt very deeply about Calliope and their friendship, enough to safely categorize the feeling as love. She loved her best friend in a purely (re: mostly) platonic manner. She had no problem admitting that, but she needed it to stay that way.
She could not, under any circumstances, develop feelings. (And yes, she meant gay feelings.)
Any inkling of feelings would be shut down immediately because no. Just unquestionably no. She loved herself too much to put herself through falling for a straight girl. So, no absolutely fucking not.
No matter how enjoyable it was to kiss Callie.
No gay feelings allowed.
"I don't see you for six months and suddenly you're in love."
Addison's awed grumble broke her out of her introspection and made her face screw up in distaste because she literally just outlawed her gay feelings in regards to Callie.
"Ugh, don't say that," she groused as she led them down the staircase.
"What? Why not? I think it's great. You're hot, she's hot, and you two are hot together. And it's obvious she's ass over tits in love with you."
Oh, god. Oh, NO.
OH.
NO.
There would be none of that.
"Please, stop saying things. That's not even‒ mmm, no," Arizona spluttered because Addison needed to not. "My relationship with Callie is not something I want to discuss with you." Not now and not ever.
"Arizona, come on. I know things with us got a little weird and it got all fucked when Derek and I split up, but I thought we were friends." Addison was completely thrown by the blonde's behavior towards her. The younger woman was acting like she had done something wrong and she couldn't figure out why.
The fair haired woman sighed. Her feelings concerning Addison had always been somewhat tumultuous and they probably always would be. Trying to reconcile a woman who had been her best friend's wife: someone she had formed a bond with and someone who was explicitly and utterly off limits to her, with this new, lady-loving, smoldering-stare-at-her-lips creature inevitably gave her a headache when she thought about it too hard. She wasn't deliberately being an ass, she was just uncharacteristically out of her depth with the situation.
"We are friends, Addison. I just…" she heaved another sigh. "I don't talk to anyone about my relationship with Callie, except for Callie. I don't mind talking about her, but I don't…" she shook her head as an uncomfortable feeling twisted around her spine, causing her to squirm in place. "I really don't feel okay with discussing our feelings toward and for each other with other people."
"Okay, I can understand that," Addison said because she got it. Arizona had always been a fairly private person, although it like there was more to it than that.
"Thank you," Arizona smiled.
"Why are you still here?"
The question was spat to Addison when the pair walked out of the staircase onto the first floor of the surgical wing.
"I'm only here temporarily, Derek," she briefly placated him. "Unless of course, I decide I wanna stay."
"You don't," he said tersely. "And you have some nerve forcing Meredith to be on your service."
"I was trying to help you!" She shouted, fed up with being the bad guy. She was not the fucking bad guy; she was just gay and sarcastic.
"If you two are going to fight, you might wanna wait to do it in private," Arizona advised them as people began to stare.
"I don't wanna fight," Addison stated quietly. "I'm sorry that Meredith is mad at you, Derek, but it's not my fault that you didn't disclose important personal information about yourself to your girlfriend. And maybe if you or Mark or Arizona would have bothered to still be my friends after the divorce like all of you promised right before you and Mark left me in New York, I might have known that she didn't know and kept my mouth shut. Now if you'll excuse me." And with that, the double board certified neonatal surgeon walked away from both blue eyed surgeons.
xXx
Callie was having the strangest day. She felt fucking great for no discernable reason. She hadn't even done anything overly interesting at all, just suturing people in the ER and avoiding being sneezed on for the most part. But she just felt so good. And now she was sitting in her best friend's office eating lunch and she somehow felt even better. It was amazing.
"Why are you smiling so much?"
Arizona's question only made her smile wider. "I'm happy."
"Oh, that's good. Any particular reason?" She inquired interestedly, spearing a head of broccoli on her fork.
"You know," Callie chuckled. "There's no reason I can think of; I'm just happy. It's really been getting on Meredith's nerves."
"I can imagine it would." Arizona almost asked how the other intern was doing, but she stopped herself at the last second.
"If I asked you to do me personal favor, would you do it?"
Now, the thing that Arizona had learned about Callie Torres was that she always had a lead up to something if she thought Arizona wouldn't like it. No matter what the lead up was, she took on this peculiar tone that caused an unsettling tension in the blonde's back. In the earlier days of their friendship, it used to make her uncomfortable, but now she found a quiet enjoyment in it because didn't Callie know Arizona would do pretty much anything for her?
"That depends on the personal favor," she replied, tilting her head in curiosity.
"Can you make Karev stop talking to me?" And yes, Callie knew she was being petty, but oh the fuck well.
The peds surgeon, having expected something more serious, burst out in loud peels of laughter, silently thanking goodness she didn't have any food in her mouth to choke on. "Does this have anything to do with the fact that you slept together?"
"He told you that?!" The intern was appalled and began to mentally plan out the disappearance of Alex Karev. "I'm actually going to kill him."
"No. I figured it out," Arizona chortled at her friend's furious expression.
"Ugh, it was a bad decision," Callie told her quickly, not want Arizona to think less of her. "And now he always looks at me like he's seen me naked and it makes my skin crawl. And I'm sure he knows it."
The shorter woman was still giggling when she spoke again. "Oh, come on, Callie. You slept together once and now he's being Alex about it. Just ignore him when he's being an ass."
"Which is all the damn time," Callie muttered.
"And isn't he interested in Stevens now?" Arizona didn't actually know, but she thought she'd seen the two interns flirting a few days ago.
"So?" Karev being interested in a woman didn't stop him from leering at every other attractive woman in his vicinity, and they both knew it. "You know, he gave George syphilis."
Arizona sputtered comically at that little nugget of information. "Wh‒ what? Karev and O'Malley slept together?!" Her mind was officially blown.
"What? What?! No, they didn't‒ ew! EW. Arizona, don't be gross." If only brain bleach existed. "Karev slept with Olivia, that nurse who looks like a Keebler elf, and then Olivia slept with George."
"Oh. That makes much more sense." Much, much more sense.
"Uh, yeah. You gave me some visuals I never ever needed," Callie shuddered, shooting the blonde an irked look.
"I'm sorry," she said sheepishly because she really was. No one ever needed to picture that union. "So Karev gave O'Malley syphilis, which explains the black eye. He wouldn't tell me where it was from."
"Well, it was from George," the brunette confirmed. "And he deserved it."
"Calliope," Arizona admonished, her brow furrowed in displeasure.
Callie would have murmured some kind of protest, she really would have if it weren't for that damn buzzing. It was back again, only this time it was concentrated to her belly. It was the weirdest fucking thing and she could not figure out how to get over it.
"What are you thinking about?" Arizona watched Callie's eyebrows dip down in the middle and her mouth settle into a pensive frown, signaling that she was preoccupied in her own head.
The brown eyed woman didn't answer right away, though she did take a smaller, ivory hand in her own in a gesture of acknowledgement. The move made the buzz spread from her fingertips to the top of her head, down her neck, to corral in her thoracic cavity. Her gaze instantly shot up to Arizona's in astonishment. What the fucking fuck was happening to her? She searched endless cerulean pools for any indication that Arizona felt was she was feeling, but all she saw was mix of bemusement and tender patience.
"I miss the beach," was her next sentence.
"We have beaches here," Arizona let her know, but she suspected that Callie hadn't really been thinking about beaches.
"I mean hot beaches, where the sand is too hot to step on in the summer and you can get a tan in like, ten minutes, and the water isn't negative ten degrees at all times of the year," Callie elaborated because now that she thought about it, she really did miss the beach. And not even just Miami beaches; her favorite beach spot that she'd ever been to was in Turks and Caicos. Nothing would ever compare to that beach.
"I like the beach. I had my first kiss on a beach in Italy actually," Arizona said, recalling those two weeks with Giuliana. It felt like a lifetime ago, but the memories were still fresh in her mind.
"Oh, really?" Callie loved hearing about Arizona's past, especially since such stories were so far and few between.
"Mm-hmm. I was fifteen and we were visiting some of my mother's family there. My older cousin Mariella had this friend named Giuliana. She was seventeen with these big, gorgeous brown eyes, long, thick light brown hair, and legs to die for, so of course my little gay self was smitten right away. I spent the entire two weeks I was there trying to find ways to spend time with her. It was a little pathetic, but I think teenage years are meant to be a little pathetic, you know? As a learning experience. So anyway, the last day I was there, we were on the beach, just the two of us. I was babbling on about something when she cupped my cheeks with her hands and kissed me."
"That's so sweet," Callie cooed, smiling.
"Yeah, I remember‒ you know when you're on a rollercoaster and there's a sudden drop and it feels like your stomach is kind of flying? Well, now I know it's just adrenaline, but I remember feeling like my stomach was going to float away in the wind when she kissed me. I was later told that it was butterflies in my tummy."
Callie's world had never stopped before.
But it sure as shit was stopping now.
Because butterflies?
Fucking butterflies?
The persistent buzzing in her stomach? The buzzing so clearly caused by Arizona? It was fucking butterflies?
Not even in her dizziest daydreams could she have ever… And she told Arizona, she told her there was nothing to worry about.
And now she had butterflies.
"Oh, shit."
When you call me fuckin dumb for the stupid shit I do.
Help me get over the butterflies?
Chapter title and lyrics: Training Wheels by Melanie Martinez
Review, per favore.
~Elphaba C. Snow Thropp
