It starts with a dream.
At the beginning of the dream, Callie is in the locker room with Erica, which makes sense because that happens all the time. Their college soccer team practices every day except Sundays, plus they have games just about every week during the season.
But also - they've been practicing together on their own time, recently. Erica is the starting goalkeeper and Callie is one of their star forwards, so it just makes sense for them to spend an hour here and there working on new techniques together. Erica asked her first, and then Callie asked another time, and now it's a routine.
They've been teammates for a few years, but now they're kind of friends, too. Callie feels sort of lucky because Erica isn't exactly friendly - on the field she's tough as hell and her face is always hard and set, and she barks more than she talks. But these days they talk about things that aren't soccer, so Callie gets to hear her real voice more, and Erica smiles and even laughs around her now too. They still haven't hung out outside of practice, but Callie has been planning on asking her to do something non-soccer-related soon. Even if it's, like, homework.
Anyway. In the dream, they're in the locker room, talking, and then they go towards the showers - and Erica takes off her shirt and shorts so that she's in just a sports bra and boxer briefs - looks back at Callie, smirks, then pulls her bra off -
And then suddenly they're in Callie's room, they're on Callie's bed, and Erica is underneath her and they're kissing - and then Callie cups her breasts, and Erica moans her name -
And Callie wakes up with her lips tingling and her underwear soaked through from how hard they were kissing, how much she wanted it. How good Erica felt beneath her.
"God," she says out loud. "Like, what the fuck?"
She has no idea where that came from. To be honest, she sort of blames it on Erica. They've been spending a lot of time together recently, and everyone knows she's gay - a lot of the team is - and Callie must just be curious about what that's like, that's all.
Callie likes guys. She likes guys so much. One weird dream doesn't mean anything.
Obviously Callie has to go to practice like always. She arrives a little late, and the whole time she's getting ready she tells herself she feels normal.
When she sees Erica on the field, though, she stops stupidly. Cristina almost crashes into her, but instead steals the jersey dangling from her hand and says, "Move it or lose it, Torres," before running off. And that just about snaps her out of her weird funk and into work mode, because chasing Cristina reminds her of chasing her sister around their yard, back when soccer was easy; and so she turns her brain off and starts running.
Practice is fine, or whatever. She holds it together for most of the drills, but keeps fucking up during scrimmaging because Erica's on the other team and every time she gets close to the goal she thinks about that smirk and Erica's boobs in her hands and literally trips over her own feet.
She can't figure out why she can't shake it off, either. Maybe she feels so weird about it because they're friends - and 'cause she's not into girls, obviously. Erica is, but she likes guys.
Which doesn't really explain why she keeps thinking about how soft Erica's lips might be.
Finally, finally she remembers how to kick the ball and makes some decent shots on goal, one of which even gets past Erica, which means she's not benched for the next game, which means she's fine! Everything is fine. And normal.
In celebration of everything being fine and normal, she even goes up to Erica when the coach finally blows the whistle that releases them to the locker room.
Erica scowls at her, snarls "Torres" in greeting, but at this point Callie can tell that she doesn't really mean it. It's just that Erica remembers every goal that gets past her, just like Callie remembers every goal she should've made but didn't.
"Hahn," Callie returns, and they fall into step as they make their way off the field. "What are you doing tonight?"
"Studying."
"Boooooring," Callie sing-songs, and Erica gives her a little grin. "Want to go to Joe's instead?"
So they go to the bar and get kind of drunk, and then they go to a club and get really drunk and dance a lot, and then they go to a diner and eat fries and talk about their favorite cartoons, and Callie is laughing harder than she has in years, and Erica is laughing too.
When they're on the way home on the subway, somehow still upright, Callie sways into her and says, "Wanna study together tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow tomorrow or today tomorrow?" Erica asks.
"Um…" Callie has to take a moment to remember what day it is. "Today."
"Yeah, okay," Erica says.
Callie smiles.
