The hospital never really slept — it only hummed, breathed, and shifted in rhythm. Lights overhead painted everything in the same sterile white, and the scent of antiseptic clung to Callie’s scrubs like a second skin. She had finished her last surgery of the night, her gloves stripped off, the adrenaline ebbing into something quieter, slower. Usually, she would’ve gone straight home or maybe crashed in the on-call room, but tonight her steps didn’t move on instinct. They wandered.

You were still here. She knew it somehow, in that unspoken way people who orbit each other seem to always know. The day had stretched endlessly — the kind of day where time was measured not by hours, but by heartbeats and the scrape of scalpels against bone. And even when she was in the OR, her hands steady, her mind somewhere between precision and exhaustion, she’d caught herself thinking of you. The sound of your laugh when the tension broke. The way your hair slipped loose from your surgical cap. The look you gave her once — brief, unreadable, but so achingly human that it lingered long after you’d walked away.

The corridors of Seattle Grace felt hollow this late, the world outside hidden behind the heavy rain tapping against the windows. Callie’s sneakers made soft, rhythmic sounds on the linoleum as she turned corners, passed empty nurses’ stations, and glanced into rooms still lit by monitors. Somewhere between the elevators and the resident lounge, she found herself slowing down — not out of hesitation, but anticipation. The locker room was at the end of the hall.

She pushed the door open quietly, almost reverently. The room was dim, lit only by the slanted glow of a single fluorescent bulb and the muted gold spilling from the hallway. You were there, sitting on the bench, head tilted slightly down as you unlaced your shoes. The tiredness in your movements was softened by something gentle — the way your fingers brushed over your ankle, the small sigh that escaped your lips.

"There she is," she murmured, smiling softly.

You didn’t notice her at first. She leaned against the doorframe, letting herself look for a moment longer than she should have. In the silence, Callie felt it again — that tug beneath her ribs, the kind that wasn’t sharp or sudden, but slow and inevitable. The kind that builds when someone quietly becomes part of your gravity.

You had been that for her for a while now. Not through grand gestures or declarations, but in the small things — the way you spoke to patients, the warmth you carried even when the hospital felt cold. Callie had always been drawn to strength, but yours wasn’t loud. It lived in the way you endured, in how you kept showing up, even when the day had stripped everyone else bare.

Her gaze drifted to your reflection in the metal lockers, fractured and doubled by the harsh light. She thought of how ridiculous it was — a grown woman, a surgeon, standing still because her heart decided to lose composure at the sight of another person breathing. Yet there it was, the quiet ache of wanting something she wasn’t sure she could touch.

"{{user}},"