DISCLAIMER: I don't own them, and make no money from them. If I did, I wouldn't be doing what I do now.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was written for ralst's 72-hour challenge from last fall, after I read the recaps of this episode. I hadn't seen it yet (so please forgive any errors in dialogue from the show), but I didn't particularly like what I read of the ending, and this kept running through my head. I missed the deadline though, and I was in the process of typing this up when I saw the news that Brooke had been fired. Needless to say I was stunned, and almost couldn't finish typing this up, but here it is, as originally written. Thanks to rysler and pdt_bear the beta.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
SPOILERS: There is No 'I' in Team
Good Things Don't Last
By atsammy
It had been a good day. Yeah, she'd woken up alone, but she understood the whole surgeon thing and the whole resident thing, sometimes you got called away early. It would have been nice to wake up with her, but there would be other mornings. Work wasn't bad either, a fairly light day. Only one prescheduled surgery and one emergency, which left her plenty of time to think, and remember the night before.
It wasn't the best sex ever in the history of mankind. It was good, but not great. Erica loved it anyway. It was new; they were new to it. They would learn together. Erica remembered the moment she realized just how attracted she was really was. Just how turned on she was by Callie and Callie's body and Callie… just Callie. Even with all the kissing and the touching leading up to that night, she'd been worried that when it came down to the sex, she wouldn't be able to do it. She'd never been so happy to be wrong. The memories were good.
It was in that mindset that she walked into the x-ray room, suppressing a grin when she saw Callie already standing there. "Hey," she said, sliding her film up onto the light with one hand, the other gently resting on the small of Callie's back.
"Hi," Callie responded, tensing under her hand.
Erica felt her pull away slightly, but ignored it. She'd been waiting to see Callie all morning, and she rambled for a moment before asking if Callie would join her for dinner that night. The last thing she expected was to hear Callie say she hadn't liked it, to say that it hadn't been good for her. Slowly dropping her hand, her face paler than normal as she bit her lip, Erica barely remembered her x-ray film as she walked numbly away. So much for good memories.
"Take your pants off."
Erica made it through the day, avoiding Callie as much as she could, which was harder than she'd expected. After her final rounds, she'd gone up to an attendings' on-call room she knew was rarely used for a few minutes of quiet before going home. The last thing she wanted was to be interrupted by anyone. By her.
She turned tired eyes to look behind her. "Excuse me?" She allowed herself to briefly enjoy the sight of Callie pulling off her scrub top before focusing again on her face. She was human, after all.
Callie tossed the shirt down on the ground. "I said, take your pants off." She took a step forward, coming within arm's reach and tucked one finger into Erica's waistband. "We're going to do this."
Erica stepped back, out of the way. She leaned down to pick up the shirt, and handed it back to Callie, who slowly took it from her. "No. We're not." She walked to the door, but stopped before opening it. "It wasn't the best sex in the world, Callie. But it was good, because it was you, and it was us. It might have taken some time, but we could've figured it out together." She looked away, down at her fingers, then up again, and took a breath. "I'm sorry it wasn't good for you. I hope whatever you did with Sloan today was better."
Callie's shirt fell from her numb fingers. "Erica…" she whispered.
"Goodbye, Callie."
The End