Author Note: To make up for not being ready to post more of Fine Line and needing some light relief from uni this started out as innocent fluff then ended up as this.
Serena Campbell sat at her computer desk in her office, alone as Sacha Levy who she currently shared with was on a course in a different hospital. Taking a sip from a glass of water she scrunched her eyes shut as another wave of a headache passed through her. She was not paying attention to where she was going to place the glass down so she did not realise until it happened that her hand was positioned too low so came into contact with the edge of her desk. The glass slid out of her hand and broke into hundreds of varying sized pieces on the soft carpet beneath. Glaring at the shards she carefully dropped them in to the metal bin by her feet.
An hour later she knew Ric was due to finish shortly after so she called him to her office to discuss a patient who had been causing a disruption on his ward that morning. It was what she had spent quite a bit of time writing an incident report over and she was tiring of it, although seeing this particular colleague was a high point of the day.
Needing him to approve the facts she had typed up he stood behind her, his forearms resting on the back of her chair as his head almost touched her shoulder.
She massaged her temple and Ric glanced down at her, "Are you okay?"
Not daring to bring on the nausea by twisting her neck she muttered a reply, "I've just been looking at this stupid screen for too long, my brain is fighting back." She could not tell how close he was to her but she could feel his hand at the side of her cheek when she tilted her head back which was affecting her a little more than she would have liked.
After having run out of desk space earlier she had resorted to putting some files on the ground so he decided to find the one they wanted. She heard him make a pained noise and watched as he pulled a glass shard out of his palm where blood was beginning to seep from. "I am so sorry! I thought I had cleared it all." Continuing her apologies she handed him a bundle of tissue paper from the box on her table.
"Serena, it's nothing." The tissues were soaked with blood quickly so she could tell he was downplaying both the pain and the severity of his hand.
"Ric, it looks pretty deep, you need to get it seen to."
"It is not that bad, just a cut." Ric sat back down opposite her and stopped himself looking at injury.
He reached out for the folder on her desk but she halted him with a quick shout, "Do not bleed on my work!" In the grand scheme of things he did not think her comments were justified but he sighed and gave in.
"You won't let this drop, will you?"
"No, because you need stitches."
"Fine, but only if you are the one to do it as the hilarious comments I would get would be never ending if word got out I cut myself outside of theatre."
She raised an eyebrow in response, "And you think I will let this be forgotten any time soon?" With a smal wink she turned and found the first aid box that was in one of the cabinets in the room as he brought the two chairs on wheels into the centre of the floor.
"It seems like an eternity since we were on Keller together yet in an odd way I miss the constant bickering."
"I am not taking you off AAU yet, you are managing to cope remarkably well." For once she refrained from mentioning his age.
"I was not looking for a transfer back, I was merely stating the fact that I think although we disagreed on many things we ran a good ship down there."
She cleaned the coagulating blood before beginning to close the flesh; it was not as bad as she initially thought and she was convinced there was no further damage. To detract from what she was doing she asked about his jobs prior to Holby and he was grateful for the questions as not only did it dull the stitching but it also allowed him to return the questions to learn a little more about Serena.
"Do you want me to kiss it better for you, I am a doctor after all?" She asked as the last stitch was completed. Serena would be first to agree that she flirted her way through interactions but she had no idea where that question came from.
"Are you sure you are still one under all the supreme leader nonsense?"
"Instead of making this better I could make it a whole lot worse." She pressed down a little harsher than necessary which made him flinch outwardly before she continued to keep gentle contact between their flesh.
He could see her fingers were trembling ever so slightly as they traced over the edges of the wound and he smiled, without realising his response, at the effect he was seeming to have on the woman in front of him. The flirting they shared had calmed in recent weeks but it was still something which he secretly enjoyed yet the last thing he expected was Serena to carry out her offer and raised his palm to her lips.
He watched as her eyelids fluttered shut during the touch and stayed closed for a second after stopping it. When they opened again she avoided looking at his face and tried to laugh it off until the realisation of her actions hit her. She was still holding on to his hand but felt him pull it away and knew instantly she had stepped far beyond the unspoken line they had. Her legs would not move to allow her escape from the room; the only thing she could do was find a spot to stare at on the wall to her right and wait for the inevitable breakdown of their friendship.
What she did not expect was to feel a hand on her leg just above her knee, she was about to look down at it but then she felt fingertips softly brushing away a few strands of hair that had fell across her cheek. For some reason this did not make it seem as though he was angry and she couldn't understand. Finally she chose to look straight ahead at him and was stunned to see the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. When she got to his dark eyes she found him staring right back and they stayed like that for a minute as he moved nearer to her by the smallest of margins which she then copied, one of her hands finding the arm on her leg and squeezed gently. The one on her face slowly moved to the back of her head as they continued to shift forward in their chairs until he leaned in and pressed his mouth against hers hesitantly. She responded instantly, more sure of it than he had begun the kiss as.
As they broke apart he asked,"How's your head?"
It was still painful but not something she was bothered about at that precise moment. "I don't care, do that again," he obliged and this time it was deeper as he felt her tongue asking for entrance to her mouth which he granted.
"Have you got any more work or do you want to..."
"I would have been leaving because of the headache soon."
"Let me go and get my things and I will meet you in the car park," he mumbled against her mouth. It took them longer to break apart but they managed to do so before they removed any of the other's clothing thankfully.
Somehow they composed themselves enough to make it to his car and she only distracted him a few times on the drive to her house - it was the quicker of the two houses to get to and Eleanor had moved to university halls of residence two months before. They tried not to be too overt with their actions so attempted to have casual conversation but the innuendos started to slip in to her speech which made it so much harder for him to concentrate.
"Now, I know what you are like but please can we just skip the asking if I want a drink?"
"Could not have put it better myself," already moving them in the direction of the stairs.
Her coat ended up somewhere on the floor of the hallway before they stumbled to his bedroom where the door was shut and led to them taking a moment to use that as a support while they continued to drop kisses to the other's mouth, neck and collarbone. Eventually he reached behind her and opened the door as they got rid of any futile clothing such as shoes, his jacket and her top layer of shirts and necklace before they found their partner again.
As she lay back on the bed he could not resist taking a moment to simply look at the woman below him and couldn't stop telling himself, and her, how beautiful she was. He lifted the vest top over her head and his lips started to kiss down the now bare skin. As he continued his exploration of her body he found a scar just below her left breast from where she had managed to burn herself with the edge of a frying pan a few years previous, and his tongue softly brushed along the stretchmarks on her hips and stomach from her pregnancy with Eleanor.
Serena had never been with a man who had taken so much time to make her happy before and she was immensely thrilled at the turn of events. The attraction she had felt for Ric from their first introduction had grown over the two years to how she now felt as he unbuttoned the trousers she was wearing. All by themselves her hands moved to his chest and took his shirt off for him, closing the gap between their mouths and passionately kissed him, loving how his mouth seemed to know exactly how her own wanted to work as they were perfectly synchronised. Without parting she pushed her lower half up from the bed to help him take the garment off, it didn't help that in doing this she brushed against certain parts of his anatomy. He gently bit down on her bottom lip in response, making her smile as she ran her hands down his body.
Ric kept forgetting that he had a bandage on his hand until he pressed a little too hard on somewhere like her hip or the bed to the side of her head. She could see whenever he did so - the first couple she paused to make sure he was okay but then she started to press her lips against the nearest part of his skin to take his mind off it just as he had earlier with the pain in her forehead.
"This should feel weird but-" his fingers found their way to her inner thigh and momentarily stopped her from continuing the speech, "it really doesn't." If anybody were to know what they were doing they would claim that Serena had simply not been wanting to go home to
"Are you sure about this?"
She placed a hand on either side of his face bringing him down to her level, "Mr Griffin, if you dare stop now you will need more stitches than you can ever imagine. Not to mention that I would not be able to look at you in the same way knowing you've seen me half-naked while you are only shirtless," she teased, reaching for his belt buckle. He could not quite believe this was happening even at this point but he decided to play along with it because she was like nothing he had ever met before. As he entered her they knew that this was where they had been destined to end up since being put on the same ward at the hospital. They would still deny they had been seriously attracted to the other back then but deep down it was fact.
After they had both reached their climax they stayed awake longer to get to know how the other mind worked since they were starting to know how to elicit pleasure from their partner's body. His hand rested on her waist, his thumb continuously rubbing the soft skin there while she touched anywhere she could fund. If anyone had asked Serena how she and Ric would have ended up in bed together this would never have crossed her head - there was no wine or arguments or regrets, just pure lust and amusement.
Serena groaned as she heard the bedside radio start playing as her alarm. She felt arms around her waist tighten and she smiled, remembering the previous evening. He trailed sleepy kisses along her shoulderblade before she turned around to face him.
She ran her hand along his arm as he began to speak about the radio station she had it programmed to, "And you made out you disapproved of classical music in our office - you still manage to surprise me."
"I never said I didn't like it; timing is the issue as in most things concerning you."
"You had no qualms last night I seem to recall."
"See, the old age memory problem is starting to catch on," she joked, tapping a finger to his forehead.
"Who are you again?"
"Women are also a problem with you after all those wives." He jokingly glared at her as she giggled against his neck.
"People will think I am sleeping with the boss to advance in my career."
Serena could not stop herself from laughing again, "I hate to break it to you but nobody will think that. You're too set in your ways to move beyond consultant these days, and I am not losing my role to you."
"I would never take your job." Before the previous evening he would have fought against her for any job, mainly because he still did not believe her intentions were right for the patients, but if they fell out at some time in the future she would use their relationship - if that was was they were now in - against him.
"So you like me being your boss then?" She challenged with a flirtatious smirk.
"In certain circumstances." He smiled before capturing her lips once again, telling himself to live in the moment instead of worrying about a future that may never happen.
