DISCLAIMER: If I owned Grey's Anatomy, you'd see dirty stuff on TV. And I would drink mojitos on the beach, every day.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I can't wait any longer for episode 4. This is where my head went - how about yours? Special thanks to R.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
POV: Told while looking over Erica Hahn's shoulder.
Undone
By SyrenSoul_Red
Erica Hahn was coming undone.
It was that voice – husky, mellifluous tones that made even the most mundane topics sound… dirty. It unravelled her, the raw sexuality that radiated from Callie's every move, every look; that burned its way into Erica's chest, and stomach and brain, rendering her incapable of thought, but for the sway of hips and the smell of shampoo.
The fall of Erica had begun months ago, with a smile, a flash of white against Callie's honeyed skin. Now she came undone at every breath, every look, every touch.
Across the table, Callie pursed her lips and slipped a straw between them. Condensation rolled down the glass and slid over her fingers.
A rush of blood filled Erica's head with the roar of the ocean, the scream of a tempest, and drowned out the sounds of Joe's; the bad music and the laughter of doctors at play. Beneath the roar, a medical anomaly in Erica's auditory canal; silence fell suddenly, and she could hear the ice clinking in Callie's glass, the flick of the straw against her teeth, her throat constricting as she swallowed.
Callie smiled at her, her mouth curving in slow motion. Another sound drummed into Erica's head, and she recognised her own heartbeat, arrhythmic in her chest. Callie reached out for her, her long fingers curved and strong. Erica felt her heart skip, and the surgeon deep within her noted vaguely that she should be worried, but she was frozen, immobile before Callie's hands.
Callie clicked her fingers and the world rushed back.
"Earth to Erica – hello…"
Erica pressed two fingers to her carotid artery, checking the skipped beat was just a flight of fancy. Callie frowned.
"You OK?"
Hahn smiled sheepishly and nodded, tucking her hands under the table. "Descending into madness. I'm sorry – what were you saying?"
Callie raised an eyebrow at her. "Many interesting things, Erica. Many interesting things just fell from my lips, and you didn't hear any of them, did you?"
Chagrin scrunched the side of Erica's mouth. "I'm afraid not. I was… distracted."
"Really." Callie smiled in that way she had, like something delicious was gliding across her mouth. Her teeth shone, and the smile turned fierce, dangerous. She leaned across the table, sliding toward Erica, her glass leaving wet trails on the wood tabletop. "Erica, do you find me distracting?"
She swallowed forcefully, but would not let herself move away or back down. She had started this, with her comment about Sloan, and jealousy, and Callie being naked, and she couldn't turn tail and run now. And she was a world-class cardio-thoracic surgeon; a strong, intelligent, capable woman who was comfortable with herself and comfortable with her sexuality… in any situation other than this. This was new. But she couldn't let that stop her – she wouldn't let that stop her. So she didn't lean away. And though her eyes may have widened slightly with a touch of nerves, she told herself it was imperceptible.
"I heard you say you could 'fix' that."
It caught Callie by surprise, she could tell. And suddenly she felt more comfortable, knowing she wasn't the only one floundering. She leaned forward an inch, enough to put her elbows on the table and reclaim the distance Callie had put between them when she had inched back.
"When I said I was jealous because Sloan had seen you naked, you said you could 'fix' that. And since I know you can't undo what Sloan has seen, I can only presume you were offering to show me." Erica stretched across the table, her face as close to Callie's as she could get. The orthopaedic surgeon's breath was hot and sweet on her face, and her cheeks were flushed pink. "And yes, I find that very distracting."
Callie cleared her throat and stared back, chocolate eyes searching blue, until finally she looked away. With one fingertip, she made meaningless patterns in the trail of water on the table. Erica watched her face, unable to look away, knowing whatever came next would change everything.
Callie finally looked up at her, her chin jutting proudly, her resolve set. And then she smiled. "Are you ready to go?"
And Erica was undone.
Both hands on the steering wheel and Hahn felt in control. She had rules to follow, laws that would guarantee she got them safely home. Laws, rules, guidelines - they made her comfortable, secure. With her hands on the steering wheel, she could ignore the fact that her night may end up slamming into the guardrail, brakes screeching and tires squealing and a crumpled mess of flailing body parts and blood.
Lights along the highway flashed and blurred. She stared into the rear-view mirror, where a letterbox slot of brightness coloured her eyes Atlantic blue, iceberg pale. She watched the TV movie of a half-empty road unfolding behind her, to avoid looking to her right, at the woman stiff and fidgeting in the passenger seat.
There had always been these moments that they'd had together, she and Callie - moments of pure clarity where everything fell into place and nothing could go wrong.
And then there were those times in between, where they had no idea what they were doing. Where, while between them they had nearly 30-years of advanced medical training, they had barely an eye's blink of real-world knowledge. They were lost, flailing, arms and legs akimbo; tumbling from the sky without a parachute.
Erica's heart took the impossible leap from her breast into her throat at the thought of free-falling. Her knuckles turned white against the steering wheel and she inhaled deeply, silently, but she exhaled with noise. Then there was a moment of silence.
"That made me feel… so much better." Callie smiled, and Erica took her eyes off the road for just a second.
"Me breathing made you feel better?" Erica caught Callie's nod in her peripheral vision. She concentrated on the road as she changed lanes, not because she needed to, but because she appreciated the time.
"Yeah." Callie stared straight out the windscreen, a direct line on the highway to nothing, as though her life depended on it. "I…" She jolted, as though ready to angle her body toward Erica, but returned to her original position. A beat, then she moved again. "I need to know right now that you're thinking things you can't say out loud," Callie confessed, twisting under her seatbelt until her legs were tucked beneath her chest and angled toward Erica's seat. "I need to know I'm not the only one feeling out of place."
Erica smiled into the mirror, and the empty highway answered her more safely than Callie's face ever could. She knew if she looked sideways, even for a moment, the vulnerability that seemed out of place with Callie would be back again; that nakedness of emotion that had settled in Callie's eyes when she'd begged her in the bar not to ask her to give up pieces of herself, as she'd had to with George O'Malley.
"You're not the only one," Erica said quietly. "I don't know where any of my places are right now." She pressed her foot more heavily into the accelerator pedal. She angled her car toward home.
The driveway; the last point of call. As Erica pulled up in front of her driveway, and the house she was pleased to call her own, she hesitated. She let her car idle on what seemed like the edge of the world - that small corner where tar met concrete and her public life became personal.
Her mind meandered and she remembered as a teenager, so long ago, feeling the fear and promise of the driveway. The driveway was a place of parking, of necking before your parents turned on the porch light. It was where your boyfriend pressed the horn to call you to the prom. It was the barrier between civilisation and freedom.
To Erica's surprise, here she was with the symbolic driveway looming over her a lifetime later. With Callie tucked in beside her, restless and half-hiding beneath her seatbelt, Erica realised it was again a driveway that could make or break her night, only this time it was bigger than a jock passing her a corsage on the way to a post-pubescent rite of passage. She cleared her throat and gripped the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles were candy-striped, thea round piece of metal and leather the last thing anchoring her control.
Her throat was smooth and ready to speak, but her mind wasn't. Muddled and twisting like a flag in the wind, Erica stared into nothingness and wished she knew what came next.
"So…" Callie's voice was strained, yet still held the dulcet tone that hummed into Erica's chest. She smiled helplessly and let the car edge forward ever so slightly.
"So…" she mimicked, staring at her knuckles.
A moment passed, strained and whining like a violin strung too tightly. And then, just as Erica feared all the air had escaped the vehicle, something forced her lungs to gulp down oxygen like morphine.
It wasn't a slight touch; not faint or imperceptible. It was forceful, invasive; a palm on the thickest part of her thigh and fingertips in the pit of her hip, and when she gasped involuntarily and turned in its direction, Callie's other hand cupped her jaw, her thumb sliding over her lower lip, and her face was pulled forward in a fierce grip.
Her mouth, just inches from Callie's, in such a way as they hadn't been since that first night in front of the hospital, quivered, shuddered with her breath, the shiver that danced on the back of her neck. She forced her eyes to look up, away from shiny lipstick and the faint scent of cola, knowing the deep seal brown would be her downfall, but needing desperately to understand what Callie was doing.
Their eyes met, and she sank into warmth and fire, and a heartbeat later she could see nothing but light exploding behind her eyelids as Callie's mouth crashed against hers. There was no brushing, no tentative exploration, just pressure and then wet silk as Callie's tongue stroked, urged its way inside. Erica parted her lips and their tongues danced, fought, battled for space and pressure and possession.
Erica Hahn came undone.
Her hand snaked into thick brown curls; the pad of her thumb rubbed against Callie's cheekbone and her fingertips grasped the back of her skull. She pulled Callie in, devoured her, rhythmic and calculated until she felt Callie's other hand slide in from her hip to the juncture of her thighs, fingertips playing across her pubic bone and threatening a coup on the last ounce of control she desperately clutched at. Erica pulled back abruptly, gasped for air.
"What? Did I…"
"No," Erica interrupted, before Callie could voice any regrets, open any doors the more timid parts of herself might try to slip through. "You did nothing… you did everything right. But if you keep doing everything right," she said breathlessly, "my foot will slip off the brake and we'll be doing this on my neighbour's front lawn."
Callie chuckled, sighed, and combed her hair with a shaky hand, which Erica found satisfying, as her own body vibrated like a tightly drawn bow.
"So…"
"So…" Erica repeated.
They swapped smiles, and Erica put her hands back on the wheel, steadying herself. She drew in a deep breath and eased her foot off the brake, directing her car into the driveway as the garage door rolled open. She killed the ignition and they sat in silence while the engine ticked, counting the seconds that slipped by. The garage door slid shut, plunging them into a darkness broken only by faint gauge lights on the dashboard.
Erica reached for the door, depressing the handle just enough to avoid activating the overhead light. "Are you ready for this?"
Callie laughed sharply, swiftly; a bark cut short by a murmur of discontent. "No. No no no - not ready. Far from ready. More like nervous, and panicked, and I feel kind of sick."
"Oh." Erica's heart sunk into her stomach, and her stomach sunk to her feet. "Well, we don't have to…"
"Are you crazy?" Callie stared at her pointedly, her eyes flashing in the orange glow of the dashboard. "Erica…" Her voice was soft and when she slipped her fingers into blonde hair, brushed the pad of her thumb against her chin, Erica closed her eyes and instinctively turned her face into the calloused palm, her teeth scraping against her skin. Callie's breath hitched and she leaned in again, her answer in a kiss, in the urgency of her tongue on Erica's, in the way her breasts pressed into Erica's side.
Erica broke away again and pulled up on the door handle. Light flooded the car and proved her right, that Callie was more spectacular dishevelled, with her make-up smeared and her mouth bruised, than any other time she'd taken her breath away. "I want…" She trailed off, not knowing what to say, how to articulate a feeling so new and raw and repressed for so long. "I don't know what I want. But I'd like to find out, upstairs…"
Callie twisted and pulled her own door handle, and Erica's fear was overwhelmed by the heat that radiated from Callie's final glance, the whisper of a smile touching her lips. "Take me there."
A thread caught, pulled, and slowly, Erica Hahn was coming undone, her pieces unravelling as she closed the garage door, crossed the kitchen, Callie on her heels like a storm cloud in the desert, chasing her down with the promise of rain. She faltered at the base of the stairs, and then Callie was pressed against her back, breasts against her spine, hot breath at the base of her neck, ruffling through her hair. Her eyes slid shut and she reached out for the handrail, braced herself as she swayed, poised for the final ascent, blood hot and rushing in her ears, pounding through her veins.
"Oh God," she murmured, her voice low and deep and unfamiliar. Callie laughed into her hair, and then she felt her move impossibly closer, and a hand slipped around her waist, fingernails scraped across her stomach, gathering the material of her dress. Another hand trailed over her shoulder and down the bare skin of her outstretched arm, and when it reached the back of her hand, clenched and white-knuckled on the banister, she hazily noted Callie's nails were short and buffed, and the way her clear varnish caught the light at the base of the stairs. And Erica laughed, short and sharp, a sound that bordered a cry, as she fell apart, came undone, teetered on the edge of crazy where Callie's manicure suddenly seemed to matter.
Callie nuzzled into her neck, and her lips burned on Erica's skin, cooled by the wet mark of her tongue, and Erica placed her free hand over Callie's, squeezed their entwined fingers into her stomach and held on for dear life. She put her foot onto the stairs and rose above.
The first step, the second, and Erica felt ulcers bloom and perforate and bleed into her stomach, and a myocardial infarction spasmed in her chest, and an aneurysm ruptured in her brain and she haemorrhaged and knew she would die, her pieces flayed and spilling down the stairs. And then Callie squeezed her hand again, and her smoky voice snaked up the stairs and curled around Erica's body.
"I want to do this, Erica. I want to do this with you."
Everything rushed back and she was on fire, burning and alive. She rose - a phoenix, wings wide and triumphant - and she was Erica Hahn, undone but whole, strong and passionate; a surgeon, a woman, who let nothing stand in her way. She spun around to face Callie halfway up the stairs. Erica slammed her backward against the banister, her breasts pushed into Callie's and their hips were grinding together.
Her tongue was in Callie's mouth and she devoured her, grabbed a handful of Callie's hair and yanked her head back, her mouth burning against the skin of Callie's throat, the taste of perfume and soap on her tongue.
"I want you," she growled, teeth scraping Callie's larynx. "I want you now."
Callie moaned and crushed Erica's mouth against her throat, blonde hair twisting in her fingers. Erica knew she would leave marks, but didn't care. She bit, tasted; her free hand grabbed Callie's hip and pulled her forward. Her knee hit the banister, and she ground her thigh between Callie's legs.
When Callie called for God, Erica knew it was her, drunk on lust and power as she rocked back and forth between Callie's thighs, her fingers digging into the flesh of Callie's ass, keeping her rhythm, maintaining pressure.
"Erica…"
Callie's voice was warm asphalt flowing down Erica's spine. She moaned, her foot braced against the posts of the stair rail, her leg grinding into the heat of Callie's groin, and her dress rode up her legs, twisted in the darkness of Callie's jeans.
"Erica, stop…"
She couldn't hear her, not over the roaring in her head, the moans that filled the staircase with primal reverberation.
"Erica…"
And then she was being pushed backward, and she stumbled, and gasped as the wall knocked the breath from her lungs. And Callie was pressed against her, swallowing her confusion with her wet mouth. Callie's hand fumbled with the tie of her dress, ran across her hips and over her stomach, her breasts were crushed into Callie's palms, and she cried out, her hands grasped for any part of the woman's body she could hold onto, pulling Callie's weight against her, her nails digging into a black-satin shoulder and stretch-denim ass.
Callie pulled back, her face inches from Erica's mouth. Her dark chocolate eyes dragged Erica back to herself, back to the stairs, and she struggled to still her groping hands. When a thumb traced across her lips, her tongue slipped forward, tasted it, drew it into her mouth where it swirled along her tongue, her teeth scraping. Callie shuddered, her eyes slid shut, and she hissed breath, her hair fluttering across her face.
"Stop it. I can't think when you do that."
Erica smiled and released the digit. Callie trailed it across her lower lip. Their chests rose and fell together as they breathed each other's air, and then Callie's smile flashed in the dimness. "I'm not an ambulance chaser, you know?"
Erica paused, her mind too overwhelmed to catch Callie's train of thought. "Excuse me?"
"I don't need to create work for myself. I don't need us to fall down the stairs so I have something to do tonight. I already have plans." Her voice, dark, sultry, plucked at the ligaments in Erica's knees. "So if you have a bed, I suggest you take me there. Now."
Erica twisted away and led her up the stairs, two at a time. At the door to her bedroom, she turned, and Callie was already there to pull her into her arms, her mouth open and wanting against her tongue, and they tumbled through the door, wrapped in each other. Hands tugged at pieces of clothing trapped between their bodies, desperate and needy for skin. Around and around in circles they turned, waltzed to the bed, a fight for the upper hand; equally matched in ferocity, in passion.
The backs of Callie's knees pressed against the mattress and she fell, Erica bent over her with handfuls of her hair. She grabbed the hem of Erica's dress and pulled it up her thighs, over her hips; her nails scraped Erica's ribs, the sides of her breasts, her arms forced up and out of the fabric. Callie tossed the dress away, abhorring its blue and white-flowered barrier, and then her hands roamed free across Erica's skin; pale flushed with pink, warm and smooth and devastating. Erica twisted the pool of black satin from Callie's hips and yanked it up, over her breasts, desperate for the same freedom.
Through the garment, Callie husked, "There's a zipper. It's…"
"I don't care." Hahn heard it tear, and pulled upward without regret, her necklace tangled, a single steel circle, and threw it all into a dark corner. Her mouth crushed against Callie's and she searched for moans, coaxed them forward with her tongue and tasted them. Her hands slammed against Callie's bare shoulders, knocked her back onto the bed, and she fumbled, found, and twisted a brass button free of its denim trap. A zipper, and Callie's jeans fell open, and she was undone.
Erica breathed, smiled dangerously, tucked her long fingers into the tight denim and pulled. Callie obliged, lifted her hips, and the jeans rolled down her mocha thighs, over her knees, and onto the floor. Propped up on her elbows, her hair tussled and tangled across her face, Callie's eyes promised things Erica was sure she'd never read in books or seen in movies.
Callie was still wrapped in black satin, but now it cupped her breasts, guarded the inside of her thighs, protected places Erica wanted to be. Her eyes grazed over Callie's skin, and she knew she was also being viewed and explored and tested, and the flexors clenched in her forearms, and the detached, public part of her urged that she cover herself, create a protective barrier of limbs across her body. Callie, on the other hand, stretched deeply into the mattress, her legs long, crossed at the ankles, her heels swinging against the floor. Biceps pushed her breasts together, offered to Erica like a Grecian platter, and muscles danced beneath her skin.
"Are you just gonna watch me?" Callie asked, and the timbre of her voice derailed Erica's train of thought; toppled it into bloodied disaster.
"I was thinking about it," she said, and crossed her arms over her breasts; not in defence, but defiance. Her smile was feral, untamed, undone. Her jaw jutted, blonde hair tumbled over her bare shoulders and she was a woman determined, decided, powerful. "But I am a very hands-on person."
Callie smirked, smiled; her nostrils flared and one eyebrow arched into her hair. "I guessed that about you."
Erica was hypnotised by Callie's fingertips and the patterns she traced across the caramel skin of her stomach. When her hands slid up and over her satin-covered breasts, she was lost.
"Erica, don't make me start without you."
It was a warning, a dare, and Erica came undone; her resolve, her control, her reservations. Hands, long and thin, smoothed the sheets on either side of Callie's body as Erica slid over her, her lips catching on pieces of honeyed skin, sweet and salty and warm.
"Nothing starts without me," Erica murmured, and Callie swallowed the arrogance, rolled it over her tongue and tasted the woman beneath.
Erica moaned into her mouth as mocha legs wrapped around her latte hips, a heel tucked into her coccyx. The pressure drove her groin into Callie's, grinding just above where she needed to be. She pulled her face away and her arms shook as she balanced her weight against the mattress, her back bowed. She stared down at Callie; a predator, hungry and primal.
And then her face softened, and she smiled, and brushed Callie's lips with her own. "You are… unbearably beautiful," she said, bared and vulnerable, and her blue eyes begged, pleaded for Callie to accept this, to not attack her soft underbelly.
A smile; a smile so warm and bright Erica thought she may have fallen into the sun. Callie's hand twisted through her arms; a fingertip danced across her cheek bone, the bridge of her nose, over her eyebrow.
"I can't breathe, when I'm around you," Callie said, that vulnerability returned, but also strength, and truth. "I can't breathe, and I can't think, and I feel like I'm this… big, clumsy thing, stomping around, waiting to embarrass myself."
It was all Erica needed, a brief interlude to kick-start her heart. She crushed her mouth against Callie's, one hand pressed against her shoulder; Erica forced her into the mattress as she possessed her body. She slid sideways, leaned her weight on one knee between Callie's thighs, and her blunt nails scraped Callie's side. She tattooed white trails on caramel skin, curled up to black satin and cupped it in her ivory hand.
Teeth on skin, Erica traced the bruises on her neck, the jut of her clavicle, tested its strength and dimensions. As she reached beneath Callie, searching her back for a clasp, the animal beneath her rose up, bucked and fought, and then she was flipped over, pinned beneath Callie, dark hair splayed across her face and shoulders.
Callie smiled down at her; a vixen, a goddess, with dirty in her eyes. "Too slow," she breathed. "Much too slow." She bent her arm behind her back and with a flick her bra slipped down her arms. She sat back, her full weight on Erica's hips, and tossed the satin aside. Breasts full and free, her hand plunged beneath Erica's body, and as her forearm flexed, twisted, Erica felt release, and then Callie's nails scraped her sternum, and lace was pulled away.
Heat and fire; burnt umber rolled across her skin and her nipples, pale and erect, pinched as though fingers held them, tight and painful. Lips descended, a tongue pink and moist with promises, and then liquid fire across her breasts, a trail of napalm across her war-ravaged body, her senses assaulted, nerves rubbed raw.
Callie's hands, bone-breakers, curved beneath her scapulae, over her shoulders, her thumbs pressed into the pit of her throat, suspending Erica just above the mattress. Her breast thrust into Callie's mouth, and greedily it was devoured; the pressure of teeth on her areola dragged a moan up her spine and through her teeth, and then it was her other breast; the curve, the weight, the fold, and she shattered, came undone, fell across the bed in fragments of sound and fire.
Callie bent at the waist, the curvature of her spine extreme, and she gripped Erica's hips with her knees; a force that made her buck, a bronco barely controlled. Palms compressed her ribs, and wet saliva glistened on her diaphragm, her abdominal muscles, and still Callie was moving downward.
When breasts rested against her thighs, Erica jolted, electrified, aflame. A moan creaked from her mouth, crawled from muscles stiff with disuse. One of her hands tangled in her own hair, the other in Callie's, and she pushed-pulled the woman against her pubic gristle, denying and releasing, struggling against the delicate surgery executed on her body.
"Erica… Erica, let me go."
Callie's words caressed Erica's skin; murmured desperation, a demand, and her eyes flickered at the ceiling. She saw nothing, even as she lifted her hips and knew that last barrier had disappeared, and she was naked, undone, unravelled beneath Callie's hands. Just a strip of hair, and the rest cutis anserina, her flesh puckered as Callie breathed into her.
"You are…" A pause, a moment of uncertainty, and then; "You're so beautiful." Relief, sweet and satisfying, and Erica's hand threaded back into Callie's hair, massaging her neck with gentle encouragement.
That first kiss, the tentative press of lips, and Erica gasped, cried out, her heart rupturing as tears threatened to rise; but the emotion was secondary to the feeling, pure and raw, of Callie's mouth against her, wet on wet, her back arched, her body reeling. Tongue on her labia, stroking; majora, and then movement, pushing, and finally minora, inside, rough and insistent against her opening, and then something she had never felt before, exquisite and heartbreaking; a woman's tongue pushing inside her, into her body, reaching for her core, the essence that made her all she claimed to be.
Erica felt her foundations crumble. All she had known, everything she had based her life on, came undone, and she was distilled into laboured breaths, a pounding heart, and the tongue within her.
Too brief a time, too short, and Callie pulled out, pulled back, and the pink muscle curled over her lips, tasting Erica there. And then she laughed, a genuine expulsion of joy, tinged with something else; her next breath strangled and shaking.
Erica understood, felt the same mix of unbearable happiness, hysteria, and she put a delicate hand on Callie's cheek. She drew her up, searched her eyes, and then arched her back, begging the woman to kiss her.
Lips on lips, she tasted herself with the spice of Callie's tongue, moaned into her mouth and rocked, forced Callie sideways, pulled her frame fully against her body, breasts to breasts, knees to knees, and then a little further, and she was on top again, triumphant.
She kissed Callie's breasts, full and dusky, her nipples dark and erect. Her mouth opened, took a nipple in, rolled it over her tongue, felt it pebble against her lips. Her hand tested the weight of Callie's other breast, heavy and dense, enticing, overpowering. She sucked and bit, teased and devoured, and then switched; a different hand, a different nipple. Then the underside of her breast, the crest of her ribcage; the dip of her stomach and pit of her navel, Erica worked her way down Callie's exquisite body, and stopped momentarily to worship the apex of her hipbone, the crevice beside. Callie moaned, murmured her name, things unintelligible, and urged her closer.
Erica swelled, rose above, filled with an intoxicating surge of power. She was a woman who repaired hearts for a living; by necessity delicate but decisive, restrained and repressed, calculating. Callie was heavy-handed, powerful; a breaker of bones, a twister of joints and cartilage, forceful and wild. Yet Erica, once awkward and abrasive, now drove sounds from Callie's mouth that were dirtier than porn; passionate and raw. Erica was heady with Callie's loss of control, how easily she had become helpless beneath her hands.
"Stop thinking," Callie growled, and then Erica's legs were pushed apart, and she lost the upper hand, fingers driving into her; two, and a thumb pressed against her clitoris. And she moaned, and Callie's name spilled from her mouth.
Blonde hair cascaded across Callie's breasts as Erica's head fell forward, her body arched and curved onto Callie's fingers; and on her knees, her white calves milk on honey, her hands splayed and braced on broad shoulders, Erica thrust her hips, rode the fingers inside her.
"That's it," Callie growled into her ear, breath hot, tongue flicking across her earlobe. "That's what I want."
Erica threw her head back, hair tangled on her face, her lips parted and eyes wide but fluttering shut. And she moaned, and breathed, and whimpered as Callie's mouth closed around her breast, and her wrist turned in circles, and her thumb ground into that spot that fragmented Erica, built pressure in her hips and thighs, her chest, and then a wave crashed over her, and every muscle in her body exploded with kinetic energy.
Sound wrenched from her throat, raw and guttural, and she half collapsed onto Callie's body, slick with sweat, hot and flushed; her thighs damp with the overflow from Callie's hand. She shuddered and trembled, the muscles within her body clamped tightly around Callie's fingers; external muscles weak and wasted.
"Oh God," she murmured into Callie's skin, and from above her came a laugh, deep and warm and happy.
"Yes I am." Callie's reply was mostly humour, with an edge of pride. "I am God. God-like."
Erica had just enough strength to open one eye, and she used it to glare at Callie. "You, are a false idol," she accused.
Callie barked her amusement, swift and firm. "Oh yeah? Move your arms."
Erica tried, failed; weak and spent. "Can't."
"A De-i-ty."
Fingers stroked her hair and Erica drifted above the world, pressed against the ceiling, undone. She kissed the side of Callie's breast; once, twice. And then the world tumbled, twisted, and she was on her back, air forced from her lungs, and there was Callie, wild and naked above her.
Erica smiled, her blood surged, and the tide turned, crashed over her again. She tugged Callie's mouth to her lips and thrust her tongue inside. Her hips bucked as Callie straddled her, and she reached down, fingers desperate as they clawed against wet satin.
She pulled down as Callie rose, and panties disappeared into the darkness. Wetness hit her pelvis and she moaned, grabbed Callie's hips and thrust against her. Callie murmured epithets, whispered and urged, and then she slid away, and Erica cried out at the loss of her skin.
Hands on her legs, pushing and pulling, and then she felt it, fingers against her spent sex, urging her lips apart, and then exquisite heat and wetness. Callie angled her body between Erica's thighs, used her fingers to ease them onto each other, her clitoris against Erica's, wetness sliding against wetness. Her knee pressed into the outside of Erica's hip, the other into her ass, and she lifted Erica's leg until her thigh hooked over her hip and her knee dug into Callie's rib cage.
Erica felt Callie's fingertips pressed into the outer flesh of her thigh, and then her slick body fell forward, all her weight on the hand beside Erica's head and against her groin, and she moaned, Callie moaned, and their mouths met.
Callie rocked, thrust her hips against Erica's body, riding her with languid strokes, gasping, moaning as her speed increased, and Erica could feel her muscles strain with exertion. It was her body, her wetness, that caused Callie's sighs, her moans, her desperate need and she was stunned, awed. Erica reached up, crushed her palm into Callie's breast, heavy and perfect, and supported her body in wide-eyed wonder as Callie moaned, swore, thrust into her, and she felt the wave rising again, and she begged Callie not to stop, to let her see everything.
Callie threw back her head, a tangled mess of black locks, and she bared her teeth, hissed, and then, "Right there… oh God…"
Release. Callie cried out, Erica's name on her lips, and her body convulsed, shuddered between Erica's thighs, and she fell forward, her muscles wasted, her body spent.
Erica breathed; her alveoli flexed and filtered a fine sheen of sweat from her body. Her arms slid, legs glided, superficial muscles quivered and convulsed, twitched. A North Atlantic current flowed down her spine and she was a singular, liquid mass.
Callie's body rolled away like the tide and crashed against the mattress, a sticky wave on cool sheets. Erica stared, at nothing, at sunbursts and trails as she moved her head, at phosphene patterns that danced against the ceiling. Silence descended, drifted, and a cool breeze folded around the staccato of her breath, and muscles, and blood.
Adrenaline spent and gone, fight over, flightless, something profound and shattering pervaded Erica's consciousness, seeped and trickled and pooled in her brain. She was adrift, and she reached out, clutched for a swatch of mocha skin, sure and strong, and held on, white-knuckled, for dear life.
"Erica?"
Callie's voice ruffled through Erica's hair like a breeze.
"Ok, Erica?… This thing that you're doing here, where you're squeezing my arm and not talking to me, is… kinda creeping me out."
Doctor Erica Hahn was good at many things. She was a world-class surgeon, a pioneer; a contender for the Harper Avery award. Strong, intelligent, decisive, she could repair a torn heart valve, replace an aorta, literally hold a human heart in the palm of her hand. Because Dr Erica Hahn was very, very good. But Erica Hahn, Erica the woman, was letting the team down. Her steady hands shook as she released Callie.
The mattress moved; Callie rolled onto her side, hand tucked under her cheek, and a curtain of hair tumbled onto the sheets.
"Erica…"
"If this is the part…" A false start, Erica cleared her throat. "If this is the part where we get all… pink, and fluffy, and talk about our feelings, then I just have to say… I don't do that. I don't do that. I'm not… I don't do girly. I don't braid hair, and I don't talk about lip gloss, and I'm not going to sit here all night and ask you how you feel, about things." Erica took a breath, tried to steel the quaver in her voice. "And I know I was upset that you talked to Mark, but… I'm awkward, and I'm not good at this, and I don't… know how…" She trailed off and clutched for a sheet, pulling it over her breasts like armour.
In her peripheral vision, a smile curved, white and strong between bruised, swollen lips, and Callie's vocal folds creaked, and she spoke. "Oh… Oh wow."
"What?" Her reverence was not what Erica had expected.
"Oh wow, you're… you're terrified…" And then, Callie laughed.
"Callie! Jesus." Erica pulled away, arms crossed over her dented armour.
"I'm sorry. It's just… you seem so scared, and…"
"And that's funny to you."
"No! I mean, yeah, I'm laughing, but… there's an edge of hysteria here. I… it's hysteria. And… I think I'm gonna puke..."
Erica paused, turned her head, her whole body, and there she was; a car crash, a trauma. Callie's eyes glistened, wide with fear, her laughter strained and uncontrolled. Her vulnerability, so raw before, bled like an open wound, trickled from her body onto the sheets. And Erica was undone. The stiff surgical voice in her head barked a reprimand, because for an intelligent woman, she was an idiot. She watched as Callie struggled to regain control of herself, studied her; an exotic creature that seemed so different, so wild and strong, an Amazon in orthopaedic scrubs, who had come apart at the seams.
Callie huffed air, Lamaze breathing, and wiped her eyes. "Whew - that was close, huh?" A white smile. "Almost got a little… weird, there, with the talking."
Erica continued to watch, silent, and then she reached out and traced one fingertip across Callie's clenched jaw. Dark bedroom eyes slid shut and her breath faltered, her lips parted, and her shiver rolled over Erica like the rumble of thunder, a tempest approaching, and she was swept away.
"Listen, Erica…" Callie's gravel voice, thick and round and warm. "I'm not… good, at this part either. The sex… the sex I can do. The sex I'm good at. Very, very good at."
"Yes you are," Erica's low voice teased.
Callie smiled, looked up through hooded eyes. "But the rest..." She exhaled. "I was with a man-whore, Erica; a dirty dirty man-whore with dirty dirty sex that I didn't have to think about. And George… George was a boy. George, was a man-child. And yes, I process things out loud, and I've been talking to Mark about us, but only the shallow stuff. Only the… little things. The other stuff, the big, scary stuff… I don't… I don't know how to do that either. I don't …"
Erica smiled; breathed. "So we don't." She felt like the unlikely hero, swooping in as Callie - strong, wild, a bone-breaker - floundered. "We don't… have to do this now. Maybe later. But there's… no need to rush?"
Callie smiled, moonlight on a glacier. "There's always tomorrow."
"There's always tomorrow," Erica agreed, and deep inside her chest, something sprouted, grew, and she couldn't be sure, and the dry surgeon in her head scoffed, but she thought it might be hope. Erica reached out, trailed the backs of her fingernails across Callie's cheek.
They were propped against the mattress, two faces inches apart, bodies angled toward each other, legs tangled, entwined. Erica leaned forward and Callie's mouth opened beneath the pressure of her lips. Liquid fire raced under her skin; acid rain on her vertebrae, black hair in her fingers, unkempt and tangled, and then a caramel knee slid across her ivory thigh, hooked over her hip, and her pelvis was pulled, dragged into Callie's body, hot and wet and strong.
Callie leaned into her and then Erica was on her back, warm skin draped over her hips. Calluses slid across her ribs, over her breasts, her thoracic cage. She hissed through clenched teeth as the pink tip of a tongue trailed up her carotid artery, blue and thick beneath pale skin. A moan, pulled from her diaphragm, and Callie's fingers were in her hair. Hot breath fluttered against her auricle, mouthed the cartilage of her ear, and Callie's low moan vibrated through her pharynx, danced down her vertebrae and flooded the pink flesh of her cervix.
White teeth scraped her neck, the sensitive flesh beside her jaw, and Erica's spine curved, flexed, hips pressed against the bed by Callie's knee. Helpless, Callie's tongue parted her lips, invaded her, and she moaned into her mouth, and then a dull ache as Callie pulled away. Caramel skin, moist and smooth, a warm rain in the desert, slid between Erica's thighs, slick and wet, and fingers pushed deep inside her; into the hot, tight part of her that made her moan, and flail, and her head turn and her eyes close and her mouth fall open.
Callie thrust, not just from her wrist, but with her whole body, her thigh driving her fingers deeper, and Erica's tension fell to pieces, and she was unravelled, undone. Her fingertips dug into Callie's shoulders, her nails scraping and leaving marks, and the sheet tangled and pulled beneath her, tugged at her threads, pulled her apart.
Fingers, deep and slick, curled against Erica's inner walls, over her ridges. Erica leaned her face into the hand that pulled her blonde hair, and then blue eyes were forced to look down her own body, naked and flushed, into the endless depths of dark chocolate, and to full, bruised lips, curved in a wicked smile. Erica's jaw stuttered; she tried to speak, stunned as she teetered on the edge of losing herself, and Callie's fingers played her insides like a fine instrument.
Fingertips rolled, curved, made whirlpools that took her breath away. Pressure; constant, insistent pressure, crushed her, and Erica's knees fell against the bed. Her hips rose, and she gripped the back of Callie's neck, pulled her face up, drove her lips against her mouth, let her tongue swallow cries as two fingers slid further, arched against her spine; circled, pushed.
Erica's mind flipped through the pages of anatomy textbooks, sketches, to that empty space on a diagram; rarely marked, rarely named, trying to pinpoint the place Callie clawed. Again she pressed into her, and Erica moaned, cried out, begged her not to stop. She wrapped her long, pale fingers around a strong forearm and squeezed; helped or hindered, she didn't care. Callie pressed and pushed, twisted her wrist, and then Erica was arching; her neck, her shoulders, her back, pulling away from the bed, her hips driving up, pulling her deeper, deeper. Release; a cry expelled from her lungs, dark and raw and primal.
Erica collapsed against the mattress, Callie's arm clenched in her fist, desperate to stop her, to still the action that brought death, gasping and sweaty, to meet her. Her body glistened, the sheet twisted beneath her hips, and Erica felt dark unconsciousness pulling at her unravelled fibres. She fought, battled; her mind, honed and sharp as a scalpel, sliced away the darkness, and she opened her eyes to Callie, sweaty and spent and breathing heavily on her shoulder.
"That…" Callie chuckled, her eyes still dirty but her mouth curved and free, "… is so much better than talking."
Erica smiled, an uncontrollable twitch of her mouth. "Yes it is."
They breathed together, slowly, and Erica's fingers made their way into dark hair, and Callie's wrist draped limply across Erica's bare hip. She combed thick curls, stroked and massaged, and felt Callie's body relax under the rhythm of her hand. Silence stretched out, filled with heartbeats and breaths, and Erica smiled into the dimness, safe in the knowledge that she was hidden from Callie's probing eyes, her nose buried in her throat.
"You know," Erica murmured, "It occurs to me, that I haven't…"
The rousing of Callie's interest, delicate, like spray from a waterfall, trickled across Erica's skin.
"I haven't… had the chance, to…"
Erica reached down, grasped Callie's wrist, and stroked her pulse with the pad of her thumb. She readied herself, then Erica moved, a flurry of limbs, and Callie was pinned beneath her hips, wrists pressed into the mattress. She held Callie down, and tendons rolled beneath her hands as the lioness flexed beneath her, all honeyed limbs and muscle. Erica could feel her, barely contained, and heeded the warning not to think, not to hesitate. She curved her spine, leaned in and pressed her mouth against the lips that had become her drug, her addiction.
Erica kissed her, thoroughly, and then frantically; tongues duelled, battled, fought for possession of Callie's mouth. She withdrew, satisfied when Callie whimpered, and moved to the square of her jaw, her larynx, her clavicle; drew the tip of her tongue between Callie's full breasts, over one nipple. Her teeth worried, teased the areola that pebbled under her tongue; Callie's moan a benediction on her flesh. Erica descended, across ribs and diaphragm, muscles and sinew, skin and navel; the dip and curve of her belly.
At the ridge of her hipbone, the crevice beneath, Erica breathed deeply and the spice and tang of Callie filled her nostrils. Across her mons; café latte, a strip of hair for show, Erica looked up, over the planes of Callie's body. Her head was thrown back, her tongue glided across her lips, and teeth bit at moans. Erica lowered her head.
Fingers twisted into her blonde hair and she was crushed into the slick wetness of Callie; her tongue laving, languorous, languid. Decades of training, of surgery, of study and trial and error, and none of Erica's experiences had prepared her for this. Softness where she expected hard; dips and ridges, and a sweet taste, not salty or musty, but fresh and tart. Erica drove her tongue deeper, parted folds, found an entrance, welcoming and warm. Her hands slid on a breast, under a thigh, over a hip, as Callie's body rose and arched beneath her.
She trailed the tip of her tongue out of the darkness, gathered moisture, and then that place, that place where every breath, every word, every move Callie made seemed to come from; her clitoris, hard beneath her tongue. Erica moaned, Callie moaned, and the fingers in her hair tugged and twisted her scalp. Strained, unintelligible words from Callie's mouth as Erica stroked with her tongue, circled; searched for the rhythm that matched Callie's movements, made her cry "right there", before she disappeared again into rambling sound.
A wave, hanging high above the ocean, ominous and fierce, as Erica curled two fingers into Callie's body and pushed and thrust and stroked her. Strong hips bucked and Erica's mouth slid away, and she rested her tired jaw on Callie's hip, and let her hand take over.
Callie pulled at her hair, drew her up, and Erica painted the way with kisses, syncopated to the thrusts of her hand. Her face in Callie's neck, she could hear words spill between her moans; directions for her fingers, harder, deeper, her name, like a mantra.
"Oh God, Erica… right there, that's… please, don't move, don't stop… Jesus… Erica…"
She could feel Callie at the edge, on the precipice, tipping, holding back, holding on.
"Erica, don't… I don't want… don't… stop… "
"Callie - Callie, just… let go."
And she did. Dark hair flew back across the bed, her skull crushed against the pillow; Erica watched as Callie's eyes fluttered, and the sound of primal, guttural release tore from her mouth, raced across pale skin, and unravelled every nerve and sinew in Erica's body.
Erica Hahn was undone.
Strong, bone-breaking hands had reached into her warp and weft, and carefully, expertly unravelled her, strand by strand. And now she lay there, in tatters, as dark wisps and tendrils of Callie's hair fanned across the pillow and tickled her cheek. In her mouth, the sweetness of sex, and not a stale cup of coffee or patient file in sight.
The fall of Erica was complete; her fabric torn asunder, her pieces all over the floor.
A snort, a grumble, and Callie turned in Erica's arms, buried her face in her neck; an arm thrown over her naked body and a long caramel leg curled over her hips. Her breath faltered, and her heart skipped; an anomaly, a danger sign, a million other things that Doctor Erica Hahn, the surgeon, would have been concerned about. But Erica Hahn, a woman undone, didn't care. Because in her mouth was the sweetness of sex, and there was not a stale cup of coffee or patient file in sight.
It was two in the morning, or maybe three, and soon enough Dr Hahn would return. Her pieces would weave back into place, an intricate tapestry of aloofness that kept the world at bay. And she would brush her teeth, and drink coffee, and command attention in sterile rooms, and cut people open and put their hearts back together. And she was very, very good at what she did.
Erica had never been inclined to let the strands of her life tangle together. And she'd never put any credence in the well-pedalled proverb, physician, heal thyself. As a surgeon, she was a healer of other people's hearts. She had no time for her own. In sterile rooms, she was Dr Erica Hahn. Outside of those rooms, she had never been sure what she was. She didn't necessarily believe the two could be synonymous; the woman and the surgeon. She may have been shaped like a woman, but to be a part of the boys' club, you had to act like a man.
With one long finger, she traced patterns on Callie's warm mocha skin, and speculated this was perhaps further than she'd needed to go to be one of the boys. But this wasn't about that. Being with Callie was about fire, and heat, and touching the sun. Being with Callie was only about being with Callie.
And Erica Hahn was undone.
It was the sway of Callie's hips, and the smell of her shampoo, and the sweetness of her sex in Erica's mouth. Her voice, raw and gravelled, when she laughed, or worked, or moaned Erica's name as her fingers drove inside her. Her smile, moonlight on a glacier, between the fullness of her lips. The honey-coffee-caramel of her skin, and the sinewy way it moved when she repaired broken limbs, or held the elevator door for her, or pressed against her thigh in the darkness. It was all things Callie. It was her downfall.
In her head, demanding to be heard, a surgical voice was resolute. A cold clinician, it warned that she was drunk on the taste of sex in her mouth, and under no circumstances should she repeat anything to the woman sleeping next to her. Or to anyone else. Or at all. And that her thoughts were the sign of a tumour, in her limbic lobe, and she should move immediately to an MRI without passing Go.
Erica ran a fingertip over Callie's naked hip and down her thigh. When it came to figuring things out, Callie had said there was always tomorrow, and she knew logically that was right. It was unlikely the sun would fail to rise, unlikely the world would drop off its axis, just because she'd had sex Callie Torres, who, along with many other things, was quite clearly a woman. Logically, Erica knew she was right, and there would always be a tomorrow. And everything could wait until then.
And for now, laying on cool sheets, the weight of Callie holding her down, Erica Hahn was undone, but whole; and complete.
The End