A/N - it's getting close, guys, it's getting close, patience. i'd like to think of my story as a passive-aggressive love letter to canon, fixing all the things they did wrong and dealing with the problems they left unsaid before calzona is officially together. which is also why there is a bit more work stuff in this one. i think callie's small monologue at the end of the chapter resumes the way i want their getting-together to feel like.

anyway, trust the journey and enjoy!

IX - ROMANTIC COMEDY

"'No one talks so wonderfully as you do.'

'Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day,' said Lord Henry, smiling, 'All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.'"

— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

APRIL 1, 2013

…

"What the fuck," Arizona whispered softly, and with a lot of emotion.

Glancing around the crowd gathered beneath the staircase, Callie saw the blank looks of somber realisations dawning on everyone else.

Richard continued with his speech nonetheless. "We are taking in a quarter of all Seattle Pres cases for now, due to their grieving staff."

One dead, one in the ICU, and one with an amputated leg, that was what they had heard of. Whisperings of 'I almost took a job there' went around the nurses.

"Lastly," he cleared his throat, "I am officially stepping down from chief of surgery. Doctor Hunt will be taking place as interim chief as we figure out the exact logistics. Thank you everyone, you may go on with your work now."

Another ripple of much louder comments rose from the audience and Callie glanced towards Meredith. She was desperately avoiding eye contact with everyone. She was back in her scrubs, back as a resident.

Not jobless anymore.

It wasn't hard to guess what the chief had done.

Richard motioned slowly with his hands, looking tired.

When Callie stopped looking at Meredith, she met Arizona's stunned gaze. She saw Cristina running off with Meredith before any of the other residents could swarm up around them, so she took Arizona's hand too.

They hustled down the corridor, back to the underground tunnel with crusty gurneys, where plane crashes wouldn't hurt them.

…

The empty tunnel was eerie with dim glows of those flashy neon lights nailed to ceiling corners. Being alive felt so much more prominent when they knew that there were others that weren't.

Arizona fiddled with her watch endlessly, neither of them saying anything.

Callie was glad they were each other's first choice to go to when they were panicked. The plane crash could've happened to Arizona, and Callie knew that she should have felt guilty, but all she felt was relief.

She supposed she wasn't a very good person for thinking that.

Arizona lowered her hand, apparently satisfactory with how her watch was now, and caught Callie's eye. Callie looked away, feeling a lingering heat creep up to her cheeks, like she had been caught red-handed on a crime-scene. She was feeling like her truest self, with the cement of the steps digging into her back. Raw and over-feeling and having left her arrogance somewhere at the ground floor.

"This sucks."

Callie sighed. "It does. Big time."

Arizona kept her gaze pointed in front her, not looking at anywhere but the little corner of a wall. She was never good at talking about her problems anyway.

"Nothing's okay," Callie said, "But we are. We're okay."

"I wish I knew you earlier."

Callie turned to Arizona again, stunned and red-faced. That was completely out of nowhere.

"Me too." She paused. "I hope you are happy to be in my life."

"I am. I'm really happy."

Callie looked at Arizona and Arizona looked back. It was a silent back and forth of things they knew they could not say, and things they were not sure if they were thinking of at the same time.

It had been a month since Callie found George about to kiss Izzie. She didn't stay in touch, although she supposed maybe they could've made good friends, her and George. It was through the rumour mill that she heard that George and Izzie gave a try at their thing, and failed.

She continued to look at Arizona and felt like it didn't really matter.

Callie was lit into flames with the same black lighter Arizona used to light her cigarettes, and her ribs were breaking apart one by one, and then reassembling all at once to fit Arizona into her chest.

Callie swallowed self-consciously, wanting to tear away from this intensity, but not being able to. "What are you thinking about?"

Arizona regarded her for a moment more, and then looked away and rested her head on the wall behind them, next to Callie. "It's a secret."

"What kind of secret?"

Arizona shifted barely noticeably closer to Callie. "I can't say. If I talk about it, I'll get sad. So it's a secret."

"Will you tell me someday?"

Arizona didn't answer for a few seconds, and Callie had to glance to her right to check if Arizona was okay. Her blonde hair rested in a pretty mess around her face, and she was still staring at the grimy ceiling. "Maybe. I would like to think so," she said eventually, "and I certainly hope so."

"This is already feeling kinda sad."

"Everything's kinda sad these days."

"Yeah. I guess."

"We sound so fucking pretentious right now."

Callie laughed, and inhaled sharply as her hand brushed against Arizona's. "Yeah, well," she said in a small voice, "everyone always does too."

A bout of silence followed the everlasting comfort, and it was nice. Callie wasn't ever one to feel this peacefulness in silence, and she never searched for it. But she found this little moment of comfortable silence, and she loved it so much.

She left her hand just barely brushing Arizona's, and her heartbeat was thumping in her ears and throwing itself against her ribcage. Arizona was right beside her, sharing the same damp air in her lungs, but it felt like Callie couldn't reach her at all.

And it was killing her.

So she kept sitting there in silence until she felt a little better.

And somewhere along the way, she found herself holding Arizona's hand. It was comforting. Tying her down to the present. Like an escape these dramatic tragedies.

Which was kind of stupid when Callie thought about it again because they weren't their dramatic tragedies anyway. Seattle Pres was suffering so much more.

And if it led to her hand in Arizona's, then maybe it isn't really that tragic anyway.

…

The sun spilled in neat lines down to the floorboards and the cold wall was hurting their backs.

Faint conversations sounded through the thin walls and the smell of cleaning alcohol brooded over everything. Callie's hand was soft and warm.

In this moment, at least in this moment, Arizona would have liked to be someone without any ambitions or dreams.

Arizona would have been happy sitting there uncomfortably until they were both old and wrinkly.

The faint conversations kept speaking, and the world kept turning.

And Arizona was okay even if Callie wouldn't ever love her back.

…

Out of nowhere, Callie sneezed.

And then she sneezed again. She lifted a hand and felt her own forehead.

Arizona raised an eyebrow.

"I think I have a cold. Or a fever. Or something."

"I think you do too."

…

"Okay, now, raise your hands above your head."

It was confirmed, Callie somehow caught a cold and ran around with a light fever for the rest of the day. She guessed it was because she went out on her balcony in the middle of the night to stare at the sky again.

It was one of things she had thought she'd gotten rid of when she was nailing that whole 'adult' thing, but oh well. The only inconvenience was the occasional sneeze and runny nose.

Arizona worrying and wanting to show up to her apartment with an entire drug store in her car right after her shift certainly counted as a slight inconvenience, but it was one that made Callie feel warm all over. Still, she was scolded by Arizona to not have taken a day off (she was a resident and no way in hell was she going to miss a single day and let Cristina take the lead).

In the end, she convinced Arizona to just come over with soup and no banana bags or excessive cough syrup after their shifts.

Callie raised her outstretched fingers above her head as Arizona told her to. Her nose itched from the light cold.

"Straighten your arms."

Callie giggled and Arizona grinned wider. She liked it when Callie giggled. Because Callie never giggled. It was something private that only she got to have.

"I look stupid," she said, mock-glaring at Arizona.

"Oh, shut up and keep doing my thing," Arizona retorted, "Fist your hands now."

Callie grumbled out a last complaint, but did as she was told.

"Okay, fist your hands."

"I already did that."

"Now open your hands again."

Callie did so.

"Now close them again."

Callie followed skeptically.

"Now open them again."

Callie did as she was told.

Arizona threw her head back and laughed. "Congratulations," she said, chuckling, smiling so much that her eyes were only small cracks. "You just set off two fireworks for yourself, above your own head."

"Oh my god, that was the super-secret recipe you used to cure sick kids?"

Still laughing, Arizona lifted her eyebrows at her. "Well, it made you feel better, didn't it?"

Callie rolled her eyes, unable to stop her own chuckles either. Her nose did feel less blocked after that.

It was a sunny afternoon and Callie usually hated days that were too clear.

But she was laughing hard with Arizona on her couch, and she liked it.

Callie didn't know what this fragile thing was between her and Arizona, but she never was as slow as they believed her to be. She knew this was something new, something silly and light and good between them, and it took her some time, but now she saw it.

Maybe they were only kids disguised as adults, afraid to love and to give. And for the moment, seemingly, it was enough.

She loved the way Arizona's thin, spidery, cursive looked next to her own loopy handwriting that never went in straight lines unless there were lines on the paper. She loved the way Arizona could play the guitar, even if she used cheats to remember the chords, but couldn't sing for crap. She loved the way Arizona would push her hair back from her face when she cut it to chin length again. She loved the way Arizona brought band-aids everywhere she'd go, as though she knew how clumsy Callie was since before they had even met.

She even loved the way she absolutely hated Arizona cracking her knuckles, and sticking her hand out for Callie to crack them just to annoy her. And she was okay with it. Callie was pretty okay with a lot of things these days, and she enjoyed a lot more things than she used to. She was happy now. At least, as happy as she believed she could be.

In a slightly nasally voice, Callie proposed, "You want dinner?"

She got another glare from Arizona. "I didn't bring over soup for nothing. I'm making dinner. You eat your soup."

Grumbling, Callie reached over to the coffee table and ate her soup.

…

The next week, Callie finally got back to the hospital with a spring in her step and looking happier than she did in a long time.

She found that once someone started paying attention to all her emotions and needless whining, those emotions came out so much easier.

After all, being on the receiving end of favouritism was always the best thing in any kind of relationship.

Smiling, she walked to her ER bed and sat down beside the worried looking old lady chatting into a phone. "Hello," Callie greeted, glancing down at her chart, "Miss…Donahue! I'm Doctor Torres, and I'll be tending to your broken arm today."

"Oh!" The lady smiled with a little quiver to her lips, putting down her cellphone, "Thank god. My son was just starting to worry about—hey, you know what, here," she said as she pushed her phone at Callie, "would you explain to my son that it's nothing to worry about, please?"

Callie chuckled, leaning closer to the pixelated screen. "Hello? Hi, um, your mom has some broken bones in her forearm, but uh, we're gonna put some small metal plates in, and then she'll be discharged tomorrow."

The lady's grey-white hair bobbed up and down as she leaned back, continuing to chatter through the phone. Callie went back to the forearm under her care and hummed a little song to herself as she worked.

…

"Henry Stamm," Owen said, fiddling with the instrument in his hands, "Seventy-five, fell down a flight of stairs on a cruise ship before it left the dock." Handing the instrument off to Cristina, he continued, "He has a couple of broken ribs and we're waiting for the abdominal C.T. results."

Cristina skimmed over the paper she had in her hands, and cut in, "I don't think he fell as much as passed out."

"That bad, doc?"

"You have what's called a sick sinus syn—"

The old balding man cut her off before she could go any further, staring off into the distance, completely unaware of the medical jargon Cristina continued to say. "Doctor…"

Cristina stopped, frowning a bit annoyingly.

"Doctor…I think you might have to check my head too."

"Does it still hurt?"

His voice trembled even more than usual as he opened his mouth again. "I-I…I think I'm seeing a ghost."

Cristina frowned even harder, looking up at Owen only to see him giving her a little shrug, nodding towards the gurney passing by a few feet away.

Simultaneously turning their heads around, Cristina caught sight of the old lady looking as pale as Henry just as he called out, "Betty?"

Callie looked up from writing in the chart in her hands when the lady in her gurney suddenly sat up.

"Betty! It's Henry! Henry Stamm!"

"Henry?" The old lady sat up from her pillows, a surprised look hovering over her features, holding out her hand to stop her gurney. Callie looked from Betty to Henry and then to Cristina, who looked as lost as she was. "Henry Stamm? Oh my god!"

"Betty Flynn!" The old man looked almost although he was about to giggle, his eyes disappearing in a cloud of delighted wrinkles.

"Oh, but I'm Betty Donahue now," she replied, a crinkled smile spreading across her face as well, although a little sadly.

"You married Mike Donahue?"

"Oh yes, may he rest in peace."

"And you?" She asked, eyes sparkling as they continued their conversation across the floor, not caring for the confused doctors around at all. "Oh, h-how is Irene?"

"She died. Ten years ago this august."

"Oh I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

Henry chuckled, absentmindedly swatting away the hand that Cristina was reaching out to examine his ribs again. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Just a little fall."

Cristina gave a light scowl and waved her hand. "Shouldn't we, um, shouldn't we keep this area clear for emergencies?"

"Ah, but we haven't seen each other in half a century, miss!"

"Oh, then even more reason for you to wait a little longer for your catch up!"

Owen gave her a reprimanding look. "Yang."

"She'll be in room thirty-one-twenty-eight," Callie cut through, smiling, "Okay?"

As they rolled Betty away, vaguely, Callie could hear the old man chuckling and muttering to himself behind her. "Betty Flynn!" he exclaimed, to Cristina's dismay, "O-Oh my god…Betty Flynn! Who would've thought!"

…

Arizona stared at the little girl tied to the small bed and passed a hand over her eyes. By her side, Alex Karev had his arms crossed around his chest, an unreadable expression on his face. Faintly, she could still hear the girl whispering to herself, "I'm not crazy…I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy…"

"Good job back there Karev," she finally said, lifting her head and giving him an approving nod. "You saved her life."

He grunted, tightening his hold on the syringe in his hands and glancing towards the parents that stood a few feet away, whispering among themselves.

Arizona cleared her throat and stood up straighter. "Page Shepherd, tell him to run some tests." Walking away with Alex still on her tail, she murmurs to herself, "gosh, I'll never understand how parents deal with sick kids."

"Um, you're a pediatric surgeon."

Her hands still in her pockets, Arizona spun around at her office door. "Yes, but being the doctor of a kid and being the parent of a kid is different."

They stared at each other for a short moment, not used to getting this personal, until Arizona briskly turned around. "Let's get those X-rays for Haley"

…

"He was such a great young man," Betty sighed, propped up by a couple of pillows and wearing a faraway look. "I was his wife's roommate, her-her best friend. I was supposed to be her maid of honour, to stand up at their wedding."

Callie sat by her bedside, flipping idly through her charts and listening intently.

"But how do I tell her, 'I couldn't stand up at your wedding because I fell in love with your fiancé?'" The old woman sighed again, a sad little smile perpetually stuck on her face as she talked about her old lover and the young and crazy life she once led. "It was a party. The sky was so clear. And I was outside when I saw him coming outside to look at the stars. There were so many stars, dear, way more then what you children see these days…"

Callie urged her on, intrigued. "And then?"

"It just…happened." Betty shook her head, looking a bit shy. "I felt terrible. And it was wonderful. He…was my first."

"Wow."

"Indeed, dear. He wanted to tell Irene, I was sure of it, he wanted to call off the engagement. Would've been a terrible scandal," she chuckled. "But I left. I went to grad school across the country and he…he married Irene." Betty shrugged. "As life goes. You rarely end up with the love of your life."

"Love of your life?" Callie asked, "Wow. That's a, uh, that's a big statement."

"It is. But I told myself that there would be plenty of other Henry's in my life."

"And?" Callie held her breath, not knowing what to think, "Were there?"

She smiled. "My husband was a good man. But he was no Henry."

Callie's shoulders slumped.

Betty smiled. "There was never another Henry."

…

The machine beeped, scans emerging on the screens in front of the three doctors. Derek sat up to the computers.

"There's nothing in the frontal lobe."

Arizona leaned closer too. "Or the temporal parietal region. Occipital lobe clean too."

"Crap."

"Told you," she shrugged, "Crazy."

Derek was already starting to stand up, dusting off his already perfect lab coat. "Well, we tried, Karev. All the tests are negative. Let's inform the parents and turf her up to psych-"

"No," Alex said a bit too loudly, shooting up, "Look, this isn't right. I know crazy. I-I grew up with crazy. I dated crazy. And I don't think this girl is crazy."

Arizona raised an eyebrow, glancing towards Derek who looked mildly irritated.

"Look," he said, lowering his voice, "Just give me some time."

"She's suicidal, Alex." Arizona couldn't shake off the parent's panicked expressions from her own mind. She couldn't get how parents could deal with possibilities of kids turning out like this and still have children. "What you did in the ER, it saved her life but her parents have been through hell."

Derek exchanged another look with Arizona. The residents nowadays were growing wilder and wilder. Finally, he pursed his lips and waved a hand. "You have until I finish my paperwork of the day. Four hours."

He pointed towards Alex. "Go dig."

…

Richard had allowed Henry to be wheeled into Betty's room after his surgery, and now Callie had worn the same little smile as she listened to them catch up while hooking up fluids.

That was, until, she heard Henry asking her patient to move in with him. She looked up in surprise, and Lexie, who had been scribbling in the chart, met her with an equally stunned look.

"We-We barely know each other."

He gave a low chuckle, still a bit hoarse from the surgery. "Oh, we know each other."

Betty shook her head, but her smile only grew wider.

"We missed our chance once, Betty," he continued, "I'd hate to make the same mistake again."

…

"Sound or pressure induced vertigo…" Alex whispered under his breath. Lexipedia came into use at the best of times. And the test he had run was positive.

Arizona almost snickered behind him at the way he was almost skipping back to the patient's room.

"It's called superior canal dehiscence syndrome," Derek told the parents with his usual confident demeanor, but he looked a little empty behind the eyes. Arizona supposed it was everything that was going on with Grey and him. She decided she would ask Callie later.

"It's means that there's a small hole in her inner ears that are extra sensitive to sound, "Alex said, after looking to Arizona for reassurance. "It's rare, and extremely hard to diagnose. The condition wasn't even written up until nineteen-ninety-eight."

The parents stared, wide-eyed at him.

"The noise, all that fuss, it was because Haley could hear everything going on inside her body, and every sound outside was magnified." Alex allowed a small proud smile to take over his usually hard features. "She's not schizophrenic."

A muffled thanks barely made it out of the mother's mouth before the father pulled her into a bone-crushing hug, choked laughter escaping from their embrace.

Arizona gave Alex a smile and turned her gaze back to the parents.

Almost as soon as they started hugging, they ended, and they moved in union towards their daughter, into the room.

Outside of the glass doors, Arizona saw them lower their voices and talk to Haley with grins so wide it was surely going to split their faces in half.

They looked so happy, and Arizona couldn't help her smile from growing wider either.

…

The day came and then went away quickly, as days tended to do. They were getting overloads of surgery and Meredith was going batshit crazy with the amount of work Derek had, tending to recovering doctors over at Seattle Pres and now a fake-schizophrenic kid.

From what Callie had understood from her rambles to her and Cristina, she hadn't led a proper conversation with Derek for two weeks.

Callie dragged her feet out of the on-call room. Forcing herself to get out of that bed and fling back into work was always especially hard right after a day off.

It was the bed's fault. That bed looked beautiful.

Beautiful…endearing…adorable…and warm…

Callie shook her head and made a beeline for the coffee cart.

Next week's salary looked pretty adorable too.

Sighing, she squinted against the bright sunlight bouncing off the glass of the catwalk and chatted with the girl behind the counter.

Callie squinted harder. Around the other side of the coffee cart, Derek Shepherd looked equally tired. He definitely did not have his usually overly arrogant grin or his supposedly dreamy look.

He looked…dreary.

McDreary, Callie thought to herself, and almost chuckled. She would've, if she wasn't mourning over that warm adorable bed that she had left behind.

Thinking about the drunk Meredith she had to peel off of her floor last week, she paid for her coffee, and strolled towards him. Getting closer, she noticed a strand of hair sticking out on the side of his head and almost gasped.

His hair wasn't even disgustingly perfect.

It must be really bad.

"Hey, Derek."

He looked up from staring soullessly at his black coffee and managed to nod his head in greeting. They were friends, just not as close as Callie and Mark, or Callie and Cristina. But they were friends. They went out for drinks and Callie insulted his hair and he kept being his over-confident, arrogant self.

They were friends.

"So…"

Derek shook his head, his eyes drooping. "Everything is a mess. The trial's the FDA's business now. And I can't bring myself to look her in the eye."

"Derek…" Callie sighed. "You guys are like, the great love story of this hospital. You…"

He sighed again. "I-I know. I'm just…I'm just so mad at her."

"So you're giving it time?"

"I know I'm not straying anywhere away from her," he said, still staring at his coffee with droopy tired eyes, "But yes. I'm giving it time. We've spent so long running in circles around each other. I love her. I just can't yet accept the fact that she did this to me."

Callie nodded, sipping her coffee. "Mhm."

"Is she doing okay?"

"Ah well," Callie shrugged, "she says she is. Cristina and her are joined at the hip as emotional support."

"Do you believe her? That she's okay?"

"No. Not really."

Derek brought his free hand up and rubbed his eyes. "Okay. Yeah. I…I need to go and build a dream house in woods and think about this."

Callie frowned, not quite understanding what this all had to do with a house. "Ah-sure." She squeezed his arm quickly. "You just…you don't want fifty years of your life pass by and realise that you let the love of your life get away, okay?"

"I know, I know, Callie, I know," he muttered, "And you? How about you?"

…

Two weeks later, on a day off for the both of them, they sat on Callie's apartment's staircase, Arizona was the only person she didn't get tired of.

Arizona propped herself up with her elbow on the stair behind them and gazed off into space. This moment felt so casually beautiful, even if the stairs were dirty and the way they sat hurt their backs.

This was becoming a cult-like ritual, silent days and short conversations at Callie's apartment.

She sighed and it was as if it was the first time she had breathed for years. It was a painfully sunny day, and she hated those painfully sunny days.

But when she sighed, she knew that she didn't hate these painfully sunny days just because they were so painfully cheery.

Callie hated painfully sunny days because she rarely had anyone beside her when the sky was so clear and happy and all-around cheery.

When Arizona was beside her, spinning a cigarette around her thumb but not lighting it, it wasn't so painfully sunny anymore.

It was…adequately clear.

They didn't talk much, they left each other to do their own thing.

Arizona had told her about the girl Alex had diagnosed two weeks ago with a pride she would never admit to, and Callie told her about Henry and Betty, about how stupid they were to let each other go in the first place.

And then they quieted down again and settled into a comfortable silence.

Callie had brought her old journal out for the first time in months and she felt comfortable writing in it with Arizona by her side.

May 11, 2013. Adequately clear.

She peaked from the corner of her eye when Arizona fumbled at her cigarette and caught it at the last minute before it fell down the flight of stairs. They eyes met over the stair they were sitting on, and Arizona smiled sheepishly, shrugging.

Callie grinned back and then lowered her head to keep writing.

The beauty in spilt blood and bruised knuckles are all bullshit.

The tales that poets and writers tell are never completely accurate. They lie to make sucky things pretty. No one comes to save people when their planes crash on the way to Boise and no one picks up the pieces of you after you've broken up with a boyfriend. No light comes into your life to love you when you're crying in bed, alone and silent.

Broken is not beauty. Broken is a lot of things, but it is never a way of being beautiful.

The bad things make for good diary entries, but they never make for good lives.

So from now on, you and I, we're going to write a story that romanticizes the right things.

We are not going to spill our love onto someone wrong just because it will make an interesting plotline. We are not going to get drunk and sleep with hot people just because that's what they do in movies. We are going to write about friends and kindness and picking up litter. We are going to write about reading novels and learning the history of the ground we stand on.

I'm sitting here with Arizona.

Arizona feels like a love letter the world forgot to write for me...no, Arizona is a terribly good friend. She is the gentlest and kindest anyone has ever been to me.

This is a weird new feeling.

But it's a good weird.