Once upon a time, sex with Callie was easy. They were so young, Callie gliding through her last year of university and Sarah scrabbling through her own manipulations in search of an easy score. Graham was sweet and idealistic, a bleeding heart environmental science student with an eye for business and a twin sister who could write code in her sleep. Sex with him had been sweet but marred by the machinations of her own goals; sex with her, though, had been a mistake, a rockslide that Sarah skidded down once, twice, a dozen times because even when they were wrapped up in Callie's guilt and Sarah's lies, it was too easy to stop.
Once upon a time, it was easy. Now, even in the moments after she talked Sarah into staying, it's a fight. Callie's edge in height pins Sarah against the wall with eight years and a stolen car, ten grand and a lost brother, crushed in between them and informing the bite marks on Sarah's throat and the bruises blooming on her wrists. It hurts- not the sex, because even at her harshest Callie has kindness built into her bones- but the cynicism brimming in her eyes and her utilitarian movements, the miles of difference from how she used to touch Sarah. It had been easy once, even when guilt shadowed Callie's eyes, but this is something else.
They make it into the bedroom, Callie walking Sarah backwards through the door and shutting it, quietly enough that it wouldn't wake an exhausted eight year old but loud enough to be definitive, before she manhandles Sarah onto the bed and tugs her jeans the rest of the way off. Sarah reaches for her, time and again, but Callie shoves her hands away, pinning them to the bed or the headboard, over and over.
Callie uses her up, and Sarah lets her- because she deserves it, because she wants it, because she had betrayed Graham and Callie both but even after Kira it was never Graham who made it so hard to finish the job- and God, with how many people and governments and organizations there are chasing the right to her body she should take some exception to how overwhelmingly Callie has claimed it, but she's too tired and the sex feels too good, pleasure roaring up her spine, for her to muster any indignation.
Eventually, finally, sometime in the early morning when the forest outside is waking up even if that sky isn't, they stop. Sarah sprawls on the bed, sweaty and sensitive and exhausted, half-suffocating through the pillow under face but too worn to care. Callie's hand sits, tired and heavy and possessive, on Sarah's spine, sweaty sticky fingers pressing between the vertebrae and following a nonsensical pattern up and down her back, up and down, up and down. Outside the bedroom window, rabbits rustle through the scraggly bushes that Graham had planted and tended to once upon a time.
"Everything back then," Callie says after a long while, her voice quiet but still too loud for the room. "All of it was a con, right?"
Sarah rolls her head to the side just enough to where she can see Callie past the pillow.
"Not all of it." The words scratch her throat and taste foreign on her tongue, as if her body's forgotten how to speak.
"What was and what wasn't?"
Sarah closes her eyes as her stomach twists around itself. "Callie, don't-"
"Tell me. Don't pretend like you don't know you owe me at least that much."
Sarah rolls onto her back, wincing when the bruising bitemark over one shoulder presses into the sheets. "He was a mark," she says. She measures her words, slow and careful, and keeps her eyes on the ceiling. "He was a perfect mark. Smart and kind and young and naive, with a great idea and enough money to be worth the time but not enough to be on the lookout for a con.
"He was a mark," she says again, and looks over to the wary- not sleepy, not angry, not desperate, but worn- expression on Callie's face. "He was my mark, but you were my mistake."
Callie doesn't say anything, rolling instead to mimic Sarah's posture.
"I've never- when I was on a mark, I've never even looked at anyone else, much less slept with them," Sarah says. "Not before you and not since you. You were a wrench in my plan."
"I'm terribly sorry," Callie says flatly. "And I don't believe you."
"I'm not lying to you, Cal. Believe what you want, but that's the truth. I would have stuck it out with Graham, I was going to take him for everything and I could have, but you- you were a complication, and I couldn't be around you and take everything from your brother. So I took enough to stay on my feet and I left."
"But you did," Callie says. "You took everything. You broke him, you know that? He wouldn't look at other girls for months, years. He wouldn't even speak to me for six months. He lost his business and his girlfriend and half his savings and his car, all in one day, and I couldn't even help him- Jesus."
Sarah reaches out, hesitant and slow, and slides her hand over where Callie's clenches at the bedsheets.
"Don't," Callie says, but there's no venom, no anger to give her voice an edge; she shoves ineffectually at Sarah's hand, but Sarah holds on anyways.
"I'm sorry," Sarah says eventually.
"Don't," Callie says again. She shoves away what's left of the blankets and pulls her hand free from Sarah's, climbing to her feet. "Just don't." She kicks her way through the mess of discarded clothes and blankets on the floor, making her way to the dresser and banging through the drawers.
"You used to be shy." Sarah props herself up on her elbows and watches as Callie dresses.
"Yeah, well." She tugs a t-shirt on, cotton covering the fingernail marks on her shoulders and arms from when the sheets hadn't been enough for Sarah to hold onto. "I used to be a lot of things."
She walks out, shutting the door behind her and leaving Sarah to flop back gracelessly onto the bed. The door to the back deck clangs open and shut, and Sarah sighs to the ceiling, counting steps as Callie clomps out to the workshop.
Later, when she's found the energy to pull herself out of bed and into the shower, she catches sight of the marks on her back. An archipelago of bruises and bitemarks parades up her back, the pattern Callie was tracing so repetitively earlier.
The hot water draws Sarah back into her exhaustion after not sleeping all night, and it's barely past sunrise when she emerges from the shower, so she halfway remakes the bed and curls back under the blankets. She sleeps fitfully, but at least she sleeps, the hour of rest better than nothing.
There's coffee brewing when she wakes up again, the scent drifting through the small house. She fiddles halfheartedly with her hair as she dresses, trying to cover the livid bruise on her neck, but she gives up after only a few tries. There are people hunting them down; Kira can deal with Sarah having a hickey.
Then again, maybe not. She grabs the bulky sweater Callie had been wearing the night before and slides into it, tugging at the collar.
She pulls up to an abrupt stop in the doorway to the kitchen, because Callie is at the stove, coffee mug in one hand and the other steadying Kira as she stands on a kitchen chair, poking a spatula under a half-cooked pancake.
"Careful, okay, you don't want it to- there you go," Callie says, smiling into her coffee as Kira successfully flips the pancake over. "Look at you, Iron Chef, good job."
"Morning," Sarah says, leaning against the door.
"Hi!" Kira says excitedly. "Look, we made breakfast!"
"You sure did," Sarah says. "This is great, yeah, now you can make breakfast every morning, right?"
Kira shoots her a look that's pure Felix, incredulous and offended, and Callie laughs outright.
"That's right, don't take any of her crap," she says with a wink at Kira, holding her hand out for a high five. She drains the last of the coffee and pours herself another mug, then points back at the stove. "Eye on the prize, kiddo, don't let it burn."
"Is there any more coffee?" Sarah asks, tugging at the cuffs on her sweater.
"Kira drank it all," Callie says with a smirk. She takes a slow sip and pats Kira on the head when she protests the accusation.
"Right," Sarah says quietly.
Callie rolls her eyes and holds her mug out to Sarah. "Sugar's in the cabinet," she says, jerking her head over towards the other side of the kitchen. "Still black with sugar, right?"
The lingering distrust, the or was that a lie, too? hangs in the air.
"Not everything changes," Sarah says.
"Mhm." Callie's attention is already back on Kira, steadying her as she pours out batter for more pancakes. Sarah settles at the table, sipping on her coffee to watch Kira make the pancakes. One of Callie's hands remains at Kira's back, steadying her, the whole time.