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“Why did you only buy one roller?” Arizona asked, setting down the last dropcloth and looking up with a pout.
Callie glanced at her, already pouring purple paint from the pot into the tray. “Because I thought we agreed that I would do the big expanses of wall and you can do the little fiddly bits around the baseboards and ceiling.”
“Only because you’re not patient enough for the fiddly bits,” Arizona huffed, straightening back up with a hand on the doorframe.
“No-one likes doing the fiddly bits, but one could argue that they’re the most important,” Callie said sternly. “Plus, I don’t want you to tell me off when I go just slightly out of line.”
“I would never!” Arizona gasped, but one look from Callie had her relenting and saying, “okay, okay, fine. I would. Only because I want it to look nice, though.”
Callie chuckled, then said, “how are we both surgeons if we’re the most impatient people on the planet?”
“Because surgery is interesting,” Arizona answered, like it was obvious. “It’s all blood and vessels and stuff I actually want to spend hours doing. This is just… paint. And walls. And more paint. And, oh, what’s that? Ah, yes. It’s another wall.”
Callie smiled, looking up at Arizona and letting her fondness appear on her face.
“Besides,” Arizona continued, oblivious to the way Callie was watching her like she’d hung the moon. “I’ve got a prosthetic leg; do you really want me on a ladder? Or kneeling on the ground?”
She batted her eyelashes with a pleading look.
Callie stared at her, smile falling only the smallest amount and one eyebrow rising in tandem. “Using that card, are we?”
“Only because you can never deny it,” Arizona said smugly, walking over to Callie and kissing her cheek.
“Why did we decide to do this on our day off,” Callie whispered, mostly to herself, as she bent to kiss Arizona’s neck. The skin was soft and warm and familiar, and Callie hummed approvingly as she finished in a voice that was barely a breath, “when I could do this instead?”
“No,” Arizona said sternly, stepping back and ignoring the tingle where Callie’s lips had been. “We’ve had the paint for months and we really do need to get this done so that we can set up the guest room and my parents can stay. Come on, it’ll be quick once we get going.”
It was not quick once they got going.
Callie was kneeling on the floor and muttering under her breath as she dragged the brush along the line of the baseboards, and Arizona was trying not to laugh while she ran the roller up and down the large, empty pieces of wall.
It ran with a satisfying sound and Callie looked up to check the progress, but she looked up at just the wrong time. Arizona dipped the roller again and lifted it, but she’d overloaded it and a drip of paint fell to hit Callie directly in the middle of her left cheek.
Callie felt it hit her and looked sideways at Arizona with displeased eyes. It ran slowly down her face and to her chin, leaving a stripe of purple in its wake.
“Arizona Lynn Robbins-Torres, is there paint on my face?”
Arizona was staring at her, still trying not to laugh. She stifled a snort with a loud clearing of her throat and said, “only a little bit. Here, let me.”
She bent over and swiped over the drip of paint with her thumb, only there was also paint on her thumb and she made it about twenty times worse.
“Did you get it?” Callie asked, crossing her eyes to try and see the smear on her face. Her eyes flicked to Arizona’s expression after a moment, finding her holding back laughter and a shine in her eyes that only happened when she’d done something slightly reckless.
“I… may have made it just a teeny bit worse,” Arizona said, tilting her head. “You know, it’s hardly noticeable.” She smiled.
An obvious lie that Callie picked up on instantly. She narrowed her eyes and thought it over for a second, until she got an idea for payback. She let her face soften, as if about to reassure that everything was okay, and lifted her own free hand to cup the back of Arizona’s head – as if going to kiss her. She held Arizona’s gaze for a moment before her ulterior motive came to light and she instead held Arizona in place when she lifted her brush and carefully ran it down the bridge of Arizona’s nose.
Arizona gasped, worming her way out of Callie’s hold and wiping her hand down her nose, coming away with a purple smear. “Calliope!”
“What?” Callie smirked, wiping her own face on the back of her hand. “It’s hardly noticeable.”
“You liar,” Arizona huffed, standing back up and grabbing the roller in both hands like it was some kind of spear. “This is war, Calliope Iphigenia Robbins-Torres.”
“Oh?” Callie stood too, wielding her paintbrush like a sword and holding a power stance. “Come at me.”
Arizona did. She lunged forward with the roller and dragged it quickly up the length of Callie’s calf. The roller was saturated and left no patch bare, and it dripped down Callie’s leg and bare foot. It was cold and sticky as Callie hopped back and tried to shake it off, hand tightening on the brush and eyes focused.
Arizona looked back, fighting back a smile and living wholly in the moment with the woman she loved. Callie was beautiful, even with paint on her face and war in her eyes, and Arizona found herself only slightly distracted by the way Callie’s skin shone in the light licking through the blinds.
They were both in old clothes for painting so it didn’t matter if they got messy, which was a good idea on Callie’s part because then she was darting forward and jabbing her brush into Arizona’s stomach like she was stabbing her, leaving a blob of paint behind.
Arizona looked down with a snort and goaded, “is that all you’ve got?”
Callie’s eyebrows arched in that delicious way that always made Arizona melt. She said softly, “absolutely not.”
She dipped her brush into the pot of paint again and then straightened up with it dripping.
Arizona stepped back, hands out and mild alarm in her eyes, and it was practically an invitation. Callie started toward her and Arizona backed away, so Callie chased her for a hilarious lap around the room before she caught her, giggling and laughing, with an arm around her middle. Callie swiped her brush over Arizona’s arm, hand, chest, stomach, any part of her she could reach, all while holding her against her and laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
The paint was tacky and cold as it dried, but Arizona was still giggling as she threw her head back against Callie’s shoulder and wiped some of the paint off her skin. She reached behind her to wipe it on Callie’s side, making them both as purple as the other, and jammed the roller behind her until she met Callie’s foot and painted it entirely purple.
Callie gasped, paint between her toes, and grabbed the roller on both hands to repeatedly run it up and down Arizona’s right leg – thigh to ankle.
In all the mess, a rogue foot caught the tin of paint and knocked it over.
They immediately broke apart with various curses on either side and dropped to the floor.
“Shit!” Callie said, grabbing the tin and immediately starting to scoop the paint up from the floor before it soaked through to the carpet. She could feel the paint drying and flaking on her skin, and it was freezing cold under her fingernails.
Arizona paused for a moment, wondering what she could do and leaning her weight to her right side so that her left thigh didn’t ache under the sudden change in her weight distribution. She felt intensely purple, eyes wide and slightly frantic smile fixed on her face while she watched Callie’s hands work on the paint and her muscular arms flex with each new scoop.
“Honestly,” Callie said on a chuckle, throwing handfuls of paint both back into the tin and into the tray, shaking her head and still on the high of earlier laughter. “See what you did?”
“Me?” Arizona asked, finally realising that she should do something and shoving more dropcloths underneath the first one to soak up any that leaked. “Mine was an accident!”
Callie snorted, the paint making a wet, slopping sound with every new handful. “You goaded me into paint wars.”
“You painted my face!”
Callie looked up, then, and burst into more laughter at the indignant look on Arizona’s paint stained face. She looked completely unimpressed, purple on her nose and speckles on her cheeks and forehead, but then the façade cracked and Arizona was laughing too.
Callie didn’t think Arizona had ever looked more beautiful. Covered in paint, old clothes and no makeup, Arizona Robbins was gorgeous because of the radiant smile that had taken up residence on her face. That smile was Callie’s favourite of the Robbins smiles, and the one she had nicknamed the ‘super magic smile’ year and years before.
The giggles didn’t stop for a long time. Neither of them were doing even anything productive anymore, just crouched on the floor and fighting for air through one of the funniest situations either had ever been in. Every time one of them looked up and caught sight of the other’s face, it all started again.
Until Arizona managed to say, “okay, I, uh, we need more cloths. I’m going to fetch those ugly ass towels that your friend Kate got us for the wedding.”
Callie let out another laugh – Arizona was right about the towels, and neither would miss them. “Good plan.”
She was still grinning, even when Arizona stood up and bent over to give her a quick, paint-y kiss.
“Love you.”
“Love you too,” Arizona answered with a dimpled smile, straightening up again.
Just before Arizona made her way past Callie and out the room, Callie lifted a hand and lightly smacked her ass – just enough to leave an entire handprint behind on her old, grey sweats.
Arizona jumped and looked back at her laughing wife, gasping, “Calliope! What if our daughter comes home?”
Callie waved a purple hand, impossibly pleased to see her handprint on her wife’s behind. She grinned and said, “she knows mama and mommy love each other. She’ll be fine.”
“She will not be fine,” Arizona said sternly. “I’m going to have to change! Ugh, and shower.”
“I’ll join you in the shower,” Callie said with a smug smile. “You’ve got just a little something on your face.”
Arizona stuck her tongue out and left the room, shaking her head and giggling quietly to herself the whole way.
Callie was still laughing, even as she wiped her hands off on another towel. She heard the doorbell ring and only laughed harder when she heard Arizona shout up the stairs, “I am not answering that!”
“What if it’s important?” Callie shouted back, unable to breathe past the laughter fighting free from her chest. She was laying on her back now, looking up at the ceiling with tears in her eyes, having given up on trying to scoop the paint from the floor.
“It’s not!” Arizona yelled firmly. “Nothing is important enough right now, Calliope Torres! If you want to answer it, be my guest.”
“Oh, oh hell no,” Callie wheezed, shaking her head and just imagining Arizona’s face. When her wife reappeared, she was so far lost into the hilarity that tears were running down her cheeks.
Arizona rolled her eyes, then joined in once again.
That room stayed half painted for three more months before they managed to get it finished, but not without just one more small paint war to commemorate the occasion.