A/N - it feels good to be back :)
i won't say too much about this one-shot except that there are easter eggs in the flashbacks, and i hope someone finds them ! (also, stream fearless taylor's version cause that was, like, the only good thing that happened to me last month )
SAYONARA
A shiny reflection shone off of the aluminum papers as they tinkled, sliding into the oven with pizza. A big window covered the far wall of apartment five-o-two, late afternoon sunlight dropping onto the carpeted floors, warm and welcoming. The television blared in the background, strict and pouring out news about sports neither understood like any other weekend afternoon.
A bird chirped somewhere outside and Arizona hummed an old love song as she closed the oven doors. A speck of light from the windows caught the golden chain resting on the kitchen counter, sending a sharp spark out, as if boasting all it's carried.
"You want something to drink?"
"God, yes," Callie said, nodding gratefully.
Arizona reached into the fridge and pulled out a jug of orange juice, knowing exactly what Callie would crave in this moment. She smiled as Callie hopped off her stool to get the glasses, knowing exactly where they were even after all this time.
She could swear that it was true that she still loved Callie, with all these years in between their first kitchen-pizza-orange-juice encounter. With a car crash, a plane crash, and one less of a leg.
Dust particles floated in the air, only clear to see from the golden sunlight pouring into the room, a gloriously forlorn picture where Callie moved around the kitchen in great familiarity and Arizona watched her. She laughed when a panicked expression crossed Callie's face as she found that there wasn't much juice left in the big carton box.
A full, solid, laugh, not the tired chuckles they used to exchange since the plane crash.
Callie scowled.
"You shouldn't look so panicked over orange juice, it's kinda ridiculous."
Callie scowled again. "Orange juice is important to me."
Shaking her head disapprovingly, Arizona muttered something about 'first coffee, now orange juice', but still opened the fridge again to search for the second carton they always kept. Callie giggled and Arizona raised an eyebrow to herself. Callie didn't pay attention, instead she changed the channel on the television, leaving the 'outstanding' playout of some Montreal hockey league for a quieter music channel.
She lowered the sound and sat back, leaving the love song to fill the loud silences.
Callie protested playfully while squinting against the bright sunset, retorting that they just simply get old too fast. Arizona replied that it was like shedding skin, cemetery gates opened and closed, and they metamorphosed into different and familiar strangers.
Callie shrugged, but grinned when Arizona filled up her glass.
"It's nice that we've finally reached this place in our relationship, isn't it?"
Arizona sighed, plopping down across from her. "Yeah, it was about time. We've come such a long way from where we began."
…
In a room reeking of sex, Arizona rolled off of Callie with a smirk, sweaty and arms slightly too sore. Callie giggled as she came around, inching closer, curling into Arizona's side in slow and careful movements.
Little bits of magic. Out of everything that exists, it's so cool that we got to have bodies.
On an orgasm-high still, Arizona frowned at dopey Callie with an amused grin.
Very so, she agreed, confused but amused, chuckling. Did I fuck you too hard?
Easily tickled too, in the haze, Callie laughed lightly as well, warm breath washing over Arizona's shoulder. Arizona wanted to pin her right back onto the crumpled sheets.
Yes. We smell like sex and the pizza's gone cold. I'm made of gold flakes and you're melting into childhood rainboots, happily jumping in puddles.
Oh. Well. The pizza's getting very cold, Calliope.
Unfit to move any part of her body yet, Callie shrugged weakly.
So be it. Cold pizza is worth it if it's after sex. Especially after Owen almost strangling Cristina and everything… We're the only things that are okay right now.
Of course it's worth it. It always is, Arizona said as she pulled Callie closer, their lips meeting again.
…
The oven beeped cheerily, leaving Callie to wonder about the past alone as Arizona moved to get the mittens.
They were a very great love story, being left with little regret and lots of memories.
As two slices of pizza were slid onto plates, hot air swarmed around the kitchen. Callie never thought they would be the people to come to the border and frontier of something so imposing.
"Alex found Jo," Arizona said, tapping her foot to the beat of the happier song that was playing now. "Derek found Meredith. Cristina found her shoe."
"It feels like only yesterday I was sleeping in the basements and the interns were squabbling over the latest appy."
Arizona did a little dance to the beat of the song as she brought the pizza over, twirling and wiggling her shoulders. Callie couldn't recognize the strange and unfamiliar moves but she laughed as she took her plate. Arizona was comfortable in her skin and had smeared a glittery perk around herself, covering the dark edges again.
"We all feel the same way."
"The days don't wait for anyone."
"Shame," Arizona sighed peacefully, "We never know we're making memories. We were only just living before it all turned into nostalgia."
…
Intertwining their fingers, Callie swung their hands between them.
Let me do this with you! Just one dance, Arizona.
Of course she crumbled under Callie's pouty stare that only she got to see. Still, Arizona pretended to think hard about it, tapping her finger against Callie's, revering in the bright little hopeful look she got.
Vaguely, a grin played on her lips and she knew Callie had seen through her little act as soon as she glared playfully and turned the radio louder.
Even in the middle of the night, life felt bright under the flickering kitchen lights. Three dates in, and they danced around each other, occasionally poking fun at certain moves and giggling excessively at the dumbest things.
You can't do that, that's against the rules!
Only once Callie moved away with swollen lips and a happy smile did Arizona finally get that out. Standing in the middle of the floor, stupidly turned on, she forced a half-decent annoyed look on her face and tried to forget how Callie tasted on her tongue.
Using sexual favours to stop me from outdancing you is cheating!
So be it, Callie replied cheekily, are you complaining?
Of course not, Arizona quipped, come back here. If you're going to cheat, at least go through with it.
…
Callie rested her chin on her hand, propping her head up lazily as the sun set further and bright golden light no longer poked aggressively through the blinds. "I hated how my life was like when I was twenty-eight. But these days I think I'd give anything to be twenty-eight again."
"We always complained about how our twenties were wasted in med school."
"It wasn't that bad," Callie said, a strange pondering look on her face. "Nothing's ever that bad when we think of it in the past-tense."
"Guess so."
"I remember spilling orange juice all over my scrubs in the cafeteria a couple months into being a new attending and Mark and you both laughing at me."
Arizona laughed. "I remember that. Your face was priceless when Mark dipped his finger into a puddle of it on the table and licked it."
Callie laughed too. Lightly, unworriedly, not nervous or cautious around Arizona anymore. "You lent me clean scrubs and Mark poked fun at me for the rest of the day. We had take-out on your couch that night, watching a really bad cartoon that was airing at two in the morning."
"That take-out tasted like old tape," Arizona chuckled, leaning on her elbow.
"I remember knowing that I had everything I wanted and that I couldn't have ever gotten happier then that moment."
"Did you, then?" Arizona asked, "Were you right? Did you really never get happier than back when we were still new attendings and never remembered to do the laundry?"
Callie opened her mouth to answer, but she cut herself off with a big and telling grin. "Our pizza's gone cold again."
…
By the hazy light, Arizona's turned back was all that Callie could see.
Under the effects of alcohol, Callie didn't cry or feel sad for once. She stumbled down the hallway, plopping down on the couch.
The nights spent in different rooms were weighing down on her like rocks of guilt, time after time.
Probably, most probably, they will be as good as new as soon as they finished buying this hospital. They had to be.
Endings were never this bleak and silent, they shouldn't be. Right?
On the lone coffee table, their wedding pictures lay, face down from where Callie slammed it down in a flash of anger three weeks ago. The entire apartment was suffocating sometimes, the silent that she used to love were weighing and deafening these days. She couldn't look at them. Not when all she was reminded of were the vows that were broken.
Pink butterflies adorned the wall she could just barely see from her place, tucked away in Sofia's nursery. Somedays, she would rock Sofia to sleep and close her eyes and clasp her hands, praying that her baby would always stay this simple.
Loving, grinning at every person she passed...Sofia was still so perfectly untouched, her laughter still so light and effortless.
Evenings like these, Callie didn't flinch at them anymore.
"Calliope..."
Her voice so soft, Callie wouldn't even have heard it if she was any further away. But she flopped around, uncoordinated, blinking her eyes and Arizona's silhouette at the doorway.
"Arizona?"
No other words were exchanged for a moment. But slowly, Arizona nudged the creaky door wider with her crutch, smiling a little, tentatively, but it was there. The opened door creaked and Callie's eyes burned. "You know…" Arizona said, pursing her lips, tentatively smiling, "Before, when you were drunk, you'd dress up for me."
Getting past the door, Arizona limped to the couch, where Callie was still groggily staring at her. She hesitated for a moment, then sat down by Callie's head.
Everything stood still and Callie blinked slowly, craning her neck to look at Arizona. She almost cried at the look in Arizona's eyes, still looking at her the way they used to, just as concentrated and concerned.
…
"Pretty mature of us to be able to sit and be just like we were, eh?"
Callie shrugged. "Maybe not exactly as we were."
"Oh yeah, yeah," Arizona waved her hand, sitting down next to her chewing on her slice of pizza. "We've changed, but I meant, like," she gestured between them with a finger, "this us thing. We're still here."
Dust particles lit up by the bright sunlight floated around behind Callie's head.
The moment Callie turned her head away, the world fell silent, just like it always did when Arizona thought of Callie these days.
...
A beam of light shone down like some holy saber, and Callie almost snickered at the things writers could have compared that to.
Not blinking, Arizona stared into Callie's face. She didn't know when Callie started having creases along her forehead and light wrinkles at the corner of her eyes.
Did you, for a moment, ever think we were over?
Past Arizona's furrowed brows, her question echoed.
Eager, but not too eager, she shrugged. Callie supposed that every couple had already thought of that a million times, after each argument and difficulty. I think it is and will be always real as long as we once were, she replied.
Or to put it another way, Callie continued, a picture, a video, a memory, those are already enough to prove that we are real, even if one day we are not anymore.
Pursing her lips, Arizona stared at Callie deeply, taking in her aging face and tired smile.
Like story books and movies and shows people obsess over...
Endings are choices. Callie made a face. I, for one, don't believe in endings.
Life isn't in black and white, the way it isn't all scientific and absolute. There are always things we cannot explain, even as we are surgeons. Things don't have to be concrete and unalterable for us to stick the label of realness on them.
Empty promises were always around, but you do know, she said, that there aren't many good things around either. There's the thrill of an incoming trauma...the smell of coffee on a weekend morning...and you, smiling the way you did when we were twenty-six.
And we were good, we were on top of the world once. She tilted her head, shrugging again. You, who told me once in a dirty basement that I would be your wife as soon as we have enough money for a big wedding...that will always be you. That version of you is still there, ten years ago, telling that version of me the same things.
Very quietly Callie said again, And no matter if we are forty, fifty, or sixty...no matter if we are separated, together, or in a plane crash...
Eight years later from when everything went crumbling down at our feet...I've already married you in the big wedding of our dreams that night, when you looked me in the eye and told me I was the only thing better than donuts and surgery.
…
Callie watched the bedroom door swing slowly shut with the light breeze that blew through the open windows.
Strange lover, strange feelings…
She tilted her head and stared hard into Arizona's eyes. She could swear Arizona still had the exact feelings she did, looking at her the exact way she did when they were in that bar bathroom.
A shiny reflection shone off of the aluminum papers as they tinkled, looking empty and greasy as they finished the pizza. A big window covered the far wall of apartment five-o-two, late afternoon sunlight dropping onto the carpeted floors bright and unforgiving. The television blared in the background, strict and pouring out news about sports neither understood like any other weekend afternoon.
They had reached the edge of their love long ago.
"It's six," Arizona finally breathed, "I should go pick up Sofia from soccer practice." She put down her glass and brought their things to the kitchen sink. "And you should get going too. Don't want Penny to get worried that you're spending too much time in your ex-wife's apartment."
Callie shifted her eyes down to her hands, then up again, a sad smile on her face. "Yeah. Yeah, yeah, of course. Don't you have that date tonight too?"
"Nah," she said, shrugging, "I called it off. Didn't feel like going."
"Oh well," Callie said, picking up her purse, "You'll find someone, don't you worry."
Arizona's hands stilled for a moment, covered in dish soap. She smiled a tight smile at the dirty dishes. "Yeah," she whispered, "I will."
...
Summer is ending and so are we.
Goodbye for now, if this is the way it is.
So be it.