Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

London tastes like cigarette smoke and electricity in the summer of 1977.

Camden Market is a glitter-spilled kingdom at dusk — velvet coats, silver platform heels, eyeliner so sharp it could commit a crime. Every alley hums with the rebellion of young musicians who want to make something beautiful or blow something up. Sometimes both.

And in the middle of this hedonistic, glittering, slightly dangerous city lives the woman everyone whispers about:

Arizona Robbins frontwoman of the glam-rock band STARDUST EULOGY.

She is a phenomenon, and she knows it.

Tall white boots. A crown of gold curls. A jacket embroidered with constellations. Lipstick that stains like poison. A voice that splits open every person in the audience.

A killer queen in platform heels.

If David Bowie had a daughter with the Queen of England, she’d look something like Arizona Robbins.

She’s the type who struts onstage like the world is hers, tosses her hair like it’s choreography, and sings like she’s both seducing and threatening the crowd.

People fall in love with her every night.

Arizona falls in love with no one.

Or at least, she didn’t — until the night Callie Torres walked into the backstage chaos of the Hammersmith Apollo.

Callie isn’t supposed to stay backstage after her performance.
She’s just the guitarist of an emerging indie-rock band that opened for the Stardust Eulogy that night. She stayed because Mark, her manager and casually also Arizona’s manager, promised her a quick tour and maybe a chance to stand in the wings for the last song.

She’s not prepared for… this.

The backstage hall smells like hairspray, sweat, champagne, and the hot metallic pulse of amplifiers. Techs run past with tangled cables; someone yells about missing glitter; two backup dancers are rehearsing a dramatic fall that might actually break something.

Callie is adjusting the strap of her guitar when the crowd parts around her like fate has reached down and pressed two fingers against the pulse of the universe.

Arizona Robbins steps into the hall.

She’s wearing a burgundy leather jacket with sharp shoulders and gold details, black flared trousers, and thick eyeliner that could start a revolution. She moves like a woman who has spent her entire life being adored and has learned long ago how to weaponize it.

She doesn’t notice Callie — not at first.
She’s too focused on warming up her voice, humming low and dangerous.

Then Callie laughs at something the tech says — a warm, soft, unforced sound — and Arizona’s head snaps toward it.

Dark eyes gleam. Curious. Amused.
Predatory in a mild, glittering way.

She walks toward Callie with the lazy prowl of someone used to people moving out of her way.

“You’re new,” she says, voice smooth as champagne poured over crushed velvet.

Callie swallows. Hard. “Uh — yeah. First time I’ve opened for someone important. Actually first time I’ve ever been in the backstage of a famous band. Or in London. Or—”

Arizona bites back a smile. “Adorable.”

Callie’s cheeks go pink.

Arizona tilts her chin. “Name?”

“Callie Torres.”

“Hmm.” Arizona drags the syllables out like she’s tasting something expensive. “Calliope. Interesting name.”

Callie feels that humming warmth beneath her ribs — the one she gets from music, from romance, from the quiet belief that the world contains beautiful things waiting to be found.

Arizona leans just close enough that Callie can smell her perfume — vanilla, citrus, danger.
“So what are you?” she asks. “A groupie? A runaway? A summer fling?”

Callie steadies her voice. “I’m… not that kind of girl.”

Arizona’s grin sharpens. “Neither am I, sweetheart.”

Which is a lie.
A beautiful, extravagant lie.

Callie’s outfit is simple: high-waisted flared jeans, leather black jacket, hair in soft curls. But she carries herself with an earnest confidence that doesn’t belong to the glam-rock chaos around her.

Arizona circles her once — slow, catlike, taking her in.

“You’re trouble,” she decides.

Callie raises an eyebrow. “I think that’s your job.”

Arizona laughs — a bright, delighted sound.
Nobody talks back to her like that. Nobody.

“Are you flirting with me?” Arizona asks.

“I don’t know,” Callie answers honestly. “Are you flammable?”

“Extremely.”

“Then maybe I shouldn’t.”

Arizona steps closer until their boots nearly touch.
“That’s the best reason to flirt.”

Callie feels the world tilt slightly, like she’s been caught in the pull of a star she didn’t realize she was orbiting.

Someone yells, “Robbins! Onstage in two minutes!” and Arizona doesn’t move.
She just watches Callie, eyes gleaming like she’s making an entirely new plan.

Callie shifts, nervous. “You’re gonna be late.”

“Let them wait.”
Arizona leans in. “I haven’t decided what to do with you yet.”

Callie flushes. “Maybe you don’t need to do anything with me.”

“Oh, but I want to.” Arizona lifts Callie’s hand and studies it like she’s reading a palm. “You have lover’s hands.”

Callie sputters. “What—?”

Arizona smirks. “Soft. Gentle. Dangerous in the right ways.”

Callie can’t breathe.

Arizona’s thumb brushes her knuckles — a touch so light it could be an accident if it weren’t so deliberate.
Then, with a sudden twist of her smile, Arizona releases her.

“Come watch the show,” she murmurs, backing away. “Front of the wings. I want you where I can see you.”

Callie doesn’t answer — she can’t.
She just nods.

Arizona turns, hair bouncing, boots clicking, confidence trailing behind her like gold dust.

And Callie thinks — with zero irony, zero distance — that she has just met the most dangerous woman in London.

From the side of the stage, Callie watches Arizona Robbins step into the spotlight and transform.

The music crashes.
The lights explode.
The crowd roars.

Arizona throws back her head and sings — voice raw and powerful, the kind that cracks open the sky.

She is imperial.
Untouchable.
A deity wrapped in glitter and leather.

But then —
in the middle of the second verse —
her gaze slides to the wings.

Finds Callie.

Holds.

Callie’s breath catches in her throat.
Arizona smiles — slow, wicked, unmistakably intimate — and then she belts the next line straight at Callie like a promise.

For the rest of the show, Arizona keeps looking back.
Not at the drummer.
Not at the crowd.
At her.

Callie Torres, who came to London for a summer and accidentally caught the eye of a rock-and-roll queen.

Chapter Text

The narrow backstage hallway hummed with leftover electricity — the kind that clings to the air after a performance so alive it refuses to fade. The walls, draped with peeling star-shaped stickers and gold spray-paint signatures of bands long gone, pulsed with the faint echo of the crowd still stomping their boots on the theatre floor. “ENCORE! ENCORE!” drifted like a phantom chant through the cracks.

Callie, with her pulse still thundering in her ears, slipped behind the blue velvet curtain that cordoned off the shadows from the stage lights. Her satin shirt clung to her shoulders, damp with heat and adrenaline. She smelled like rosewater cologne and guitar strings, like the blurred line between shyness and wildness — the essence of her “good old-fashioned lover boy” charm: warmth, softness, courtship written in every gesture.

Arizona, the dazzling storm wrapped in black and red, the “killer queen” herself, appeared only a few beats later.
She didn’t walk. She prowled.
Heels clicking, sequins glinting, she held her chin with that effortless confidence that seemed carved from stardust. She smelled faintly of champagne and cherry lip stain, both expensive and dangerous, both uniquely hers.

Callie felt the air tilt, as though the theatre itself leaned in.

Arizona tugged the velvet curtain closed behind her with a single, sharp movement, the sound slicing through the dim like the flick of a match.

“You,” Arizona murmured, voice velvet and razor blades, “were magnificent.”

Callie almost laughed, because Arizona said it like a dare, like she fully expected Callie to crumble under the weight of her praise, or under her gaze.

But Callie didn’t crumble.
She glowed.

“I was just looking. And you made it easy” Callie replied, her voice gentle but teasing, the way she always is when she wants someone to feel safe and desired. “You light up the stage. I just… followed the spark.”

Arizona’s smile curled in the low light, slow and sinful, like a secret slipping free.
“Careful, darling. Keep saying things like that and people might think you’re trying to seduce me.”

Callie’s cheeks flushed, not with embarrassment but with a kind of determined sweetness. She stepped closer, just enough that her boots brushed Arizona’s.
“And what if I am?”

For the first time tonight, Arizona faltered.

Only a flicker, a blink, but it was real: the queen startled by the lover girl’s courage.

The air tightened, thick as honey.

Callie’s voice softened, dipped lower.
“You think I’m harmless,” she whispered, “but maybe you’re not the only one who can play with fire.”

Arizona’s breath hitched, the sound small and sharp, utterly unfit for a woman who conquered every room she entered.

She recovered quickly — of course she did — tilting her head, letting her golden hair spill in waves across her shoulder as she stepped even closer. Their sequins brushed. Their colognes tangled. Their shadows merged into one.

“Show me,” Arizona dared, a challenge wrapped in silk.

Callie didn’t move at first. She let the quiet cradle them, let the anticipation build until it thrummed in her bones.
Then, with deliberate slowness, she lifted her hand and grazed Arizona’s cheek with the back of her fingers. A touch so soft it felt like a promise.

Arizona froze. No. Not froze. Melted.

Her eyes fluttered. Her lips parted.

Callie smiled small, tender, devastating in its sincerity.

“You’re not as untouchable as you pretend,” she murmured.

Arizona whispered back, breath brushing Callie’s mouth,
“And you’re not as innocent as you look.”

Silence again.
Different now.
Charged, breathless, vibrating with the inevitability of collision.

Callie leaned in first.

Not fast. Not hungry.
But with an old-fashioned romantic’s sense of ceremony, like she was stepping into a dance she’d waited her whole life to learn.

Her lips brushed Arizona’s, soft as a sigh.

Arizona gasped, an involuntary, helpless sound that cracked the final layer of her armor. Her hands flew to Callie’s waist, pulling her in with a sudden, fierce urgency that belied her cool exterior.

Then the kiss deepened.

Velvet on fire.
Softness meeting spark.
Callie’s tender devotion colliding with Arizona’s decadent hunger.

Arizona kissed like a woman starved for something real, something honest, something that cost her more than glitter and applause. Callie kissed like someone who loved the soul behind the spectacle, someone who knew that beneath the sequins and swagger there was a heart beating far too fast.

When they finally parted, their foreheads were touching, their breaths were tangled.

“What are you doing to me?” Arizona whispered, almost accusingly.

“Something good. Something true.” Callie’s thumb stroked her cheek as she whispered back.

Arizona let out a small, tremulous laugh — the sound of a queen unthroned by tenderness.

“Damn you,” she murmured, but her fingers curled into Callie’s shirt like she never wanted to let go.

Callie smiled, brushing her lips over Arizona’s once more, softer this time, reverent.
“Damn me later,” she whispered. “Kiss me again now.”

And under the velvet curtain, hidden from the roar of the crowd but wrapped in their own private blue velvet universe, Arizona did.

The killer queen surrendered.
The lover girl claimed her.
And the Stardust Theatre held its breath, knowing something legendary had just begun.

She wore blue velvet
Bluer than velvet was the night
Softer than satin was the light
From the stars.

Chapter Text

London had learned how to keep secrets.

Or maybe Callie had.

Camden in late autumn smelled like damp brick and cigarettes, like the river breathing somewhere beneath the streets. Callie’s flat sat above a closed tailor’s shop, the sign still hanging crooked—MORRIS & SON, BESPOKE SUITS—letters fading like a promise nobody quite kept anymore. The stairs up were narrow and uneven, wood worn smooth by decades of careful feet. She climbed them every night with the same thought in her chest: This is where the world ends. This is where it begins again.

Arizona learned the steps by heart.

She never arrived loudly. That was the strangest part. Onstage, she was thunder—platform boots striking sparks from the floor, lips painted blood-dark, hair catching the light like it had been born for it. Killer Queen. Champagne venom. A razor wrapped in velvet.

But at Callie’s door, she knocked softly. Three taps. Always three.

Callie would open it with her heart already running.

Arizona came in wrapped in coats that smelled like cold air and perfume and something electric Callie couldn’t name. She’d shrug them off with careless grace, drape them over the back of a chair, and suddenly she was just a woman in Callie’s quiet rooms. Just Arizona. Freckles. A faint scar near her collarbone Callie traced once with reverent fingers, like reading Braille.

They didn’t speak at first.

They never needed to.

The flat was small but warm, lit by a single lamp in the corner that turned everything honey-gold. Records leaned in stacks against the wall—Queen, Bowie, Elton John, the Beatles worn thin. The turntable was temperamental; Callie coaxed it like a lover. Tonight, she set the needle down carefully, breath held.

Arizona loved it immediately.

She never said so outright. Arizona Robbins was not a woman who offered obvious declarations unless she was onstage, unless she was lit from below by footlights and daring the world to stare back. But the way she slipped off her coat here, the way she kicked her boots under the table instead of leaving them by the door, the way she leaned into Callie’s space as if the flat were an extension of Callie herself—that was confession enough.

There’s a starman waiting in the sky…

Arizona froze.

Callie watched her from the kitchenette, heart thudding. “Too much?” she asked softly.

Arizona turned, eyes bright, unreadable. Then she smiled—that slow, devastating smile she never gave anyone else. “No,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

They moved toward each other like gravity was finally being honest.

Arizona leaned back against the wall, all theatrical languor, arms folded loosely as Callie stepped into her space. The contrast between them always felt like a song resolving—Arizona sharp and glittering, dangerous in the way stars are dangerous; Callie steady, warm, hands built to hold.

Callie kissed her first this time.

It wasn’t urgent. It was deliberate. A good old-fashioned lover’s kiss—mouth soft, hands sure, like she was saying I am here. I am not afraid. I choose you. Arizona melted into it with a quiet sound she would have killed anyone else for hearing.

They kissed like this because they had to.

Outside, the world was not kind to women like them. Not to women who loved women with no apology. Arizona wore her queerness like a blade under silk—visible enough to be provocative, hidden enough not to let the press know the truth. Callie wore hers like a ring she couldn’t show, but never took off.

Inside the flat, though, those versions of themselves softened and rearranged.

Inside these walls, they could be honest.

They ended up on the sofa, knees tangled, Bowie crooning about the stars and the children listening. Arizona lay half-sprawled across Callie’s lap, head tipped back, eyes on the ceiling. Callie carded her fingers through Arizona’s hair, slow and reverent, grounding herself in the simple miracle of being allowed to do this.

Later, they lay tangled in blankets, the radiator knocking out an uneven rhythm. Arizona traced idle patterns on Callie’s arm, her rings cool against warm skin while Bowie’s record filling the silence.

“There’s a starman waiting in the sky,” Arizona murmured along with the lyric, voice low, thoughtful. “He’d like to come and meet us, but he thinks he’d blow our minds.”

Callie smiled. “You’re the starman,” she said, gently, like it wasn’t a challenge but a truth. “You come down from somewhere bright and loud and then disappear again.”

Arizona turned her head, one eyebrow arching. “Is that what I do?”

“You vanish,” Callie said. “Every time I think I understand you, you change shape.”

Arizona laughed softly, rolling onto her side. “That’s rich, coming from you. You hide in plain sight.”

Callie considered that. She set the mug down, steam fogging the air between them. “I don’t think I’m hiding,” she said. “I think I’m… staying.”

Arizona pushed herself up on one elbow, suddenly serious. The song carried on behind them, Bowie’s voice distant and yearning, like a broadcast from somewhere unreachable.

“A starman isn’t meant to stay,” Arizona said. “He’s meant to pass through. A sign. A disruption.”

Callie reached out then, resting her hand over Arizona’s wrist. Warm. Solid. Real. “Maybe that’s the lie,” she said. “Maybe the miracle isn’t the descent. Maybe it’s choosing not to leave.”

Arizona’s breath caught—not sharply, not dramatically, but in the subtle way of someone unprepared for gentleness. For all her theatrical bravado, tenderness still surprised her.

Outside, Arizona was adored at a distance. Inside, she was seen.

They didn’t kiss right away. That, too, had become part of their quiet ritual—learning not to rush what the world already denied them. Instead, Arizona sat up and leaned back against the sofa, pulling Callie with her until Callie’s shoulder fit perfectly beneath Arizona’s chin.

The song shifted to its second verse.

“He told us not to blow it, ’cause he knows it’s all worthwhile…”

Callie closed her eyes. She imagined the starman not as a savior descending in glitter and flame, but as something smaller, braver: a secret signal passed hand to hand. A voice on the radio late at night saying, You’re not alone. A woman choosing another woman, again and again, even when no one was watching.

“You know,” Arizona said, voice thoughtful, “onstage I feel like I’m playing a part. Like I’ve stepped into a costume and the world claps because it’s easy. They understand Killer Queen. She doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Callie turned onto her side, propped on one elbow, looking at her like the answer to every question she’d never asked. “And here?”

Arizona met her gaze, unguarded. “Here, I belong to myself.” A beat. “And a little to you.”

Callie smiled, slow and tender. “Good,” she said. “Because I belong to you in all the boring ways. Tea in the morning. Fixing the record player. Remembering how you take your eggs.”

Arizona laughed, delighted. “God,” she murmured, pulling Callie closer. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I know,” Callie said, kissing her gently. “I’m in love.”

Arizona went very still.

“You can stay,” she said, not as a plea, but as an offering.

Arizona smiled, small and unguarded, the Killer Queen temporarily unarmed.

The words were simple. They were everything.

“I know,” she said. And for once, she meant forever in the only way that counted: tonight, here, in Camden, where even stars learned how to whisper.

Then she kissed Callie like the world might end tomorrow. Like this small Camden flat was the only place worth saving. Like love—quiet, hidden, defiant—was the most dangerous thing of all.

Outside, London kept turning. The stars kept burning. And somewhere between Bowie’s fading chorus and the hush of shared breath, two women loved each other fiercely, secretly, and without regret.
Arizona pressed a kiss into Callie’s hair, barely there. Reverent.

In this version of the story, the starman didn’t take them away.

He stayed long enough to teach them how to see the dark not as emptiness, but as cover. How to make constellations out of stolen hours. How to love without witnesses and still believe it mattered.

The record crackled to its end. Silence followed, thick and kind.