Author: Regency

Title: Seven Swans a-Swimming

Alt Title: as long as you love me so

Pairing: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe

Summary: AU. Each facing Christmas gatherings full of judgmental, meddling relatives and devoid of romance, Bernie and Serena hatch a daring plot to appease their families and save themselves a couple of bent ears: They'll pretend to be lovers till New Year's and then go their separate ways. A perfect plan were they not already deeply in love and both too afraid to say it.

Prompt: Seven Swans a-Swimming for Day 7 of the 12 Days (of Berena) Ficfest on Tumblr and Ao3.

Author's Notes: Come flail with me about Berena on Tumblr, at sententiousandbellicose!

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, settings, or stories recognizable as being from Holby City. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

20 DECEMBER 2017

Bernie turned her mobile over to give her full attention to Serena's report of her mother's latest efforts to chivvy her into love. Sadly, not a new topic for their after-hours foray into the depths of Albie's wine list. The holiday season didn't seem to be granting them any reprieves.

"Then, my mother asks me, 'Serena, when are you going to bring that charming Robbie around for Christmas dinner?' Charming, she says. She hated him! She thought he was a lout. I can't have imagined that from whole cloth." She was gesturing so expansively in disbelief she sloshed wine on the back of her hand. Bernie's fixated on the shape of her mouth as she sucked the spill off her thumb. Serena didn't notice.

"He could have been a very charming lout?" Bernie offered, not sounding altogether convinced. She hadn't been a fan of Robbie's in their brief acquaintance. She hadn't examined why.

Serena raised her chin, contempt molding her soft features into stone. "Not all that charming, talking to Jason the way he did."

In retrospect, Bernie remembered perfectly well why she hadn't taken to Robbie Medcalfe. Anybody who mistreated Jason got her back up. Anybody who mistreated Jason and Serena when she defended Jason was unworthy of either Bernie's respect or her consideration. "You could trying telling her that."

Serena rolled her eyes over her glass of wine. Her third, possibly. Bernie wasn't keeping close count. They'd be sharing a taxi home, regardless. Neither were in any state to drive.

"And listen to her shout me down for baffling her? I'd rather have all four of my wisdom teeth removed again without anesthetic. Let her have her delusions about him, but I can't bring him. We're not speaking and certainly aren't an item. I'm not seeing anybody right now." She contemplated her wineglass as if considering the merit of a top-up to drown her sorrows.

Serena's habitual melancholy about her singleton status had grown more pronounced as the holiday season approached. As she'd confessed once, likewise schnockered at the time, she liked someone warm to snuggle up to when it was cold out. Bernie had been on her own in the winters too often to miss it, were she honest. She might have volunteered were the offer open, nonetheless.

"I suppose that presents an entirely new set of problems," Bernie said to keep the conversation moving. Serena needed to talk and Bernie was all too happy to listen.

Serena massaged the furrowed space between her eyebrows. "I'm fifty-three years old and somehow still scheming to avoid my mother's vocal disapproval. I thought I'd grown beyond this."

Bernie grimaced. Her mother was likewise imposing, her father the same though much more quietly. "You never outgrow wanting your parents to be proud of you. My brothers and I are all tiptoeing around the disaster areas of our private lives to avoid disappointing mum and vexing dad."

Serena's expression cleared, her own crisis forgotten. Bernie didn't talk about her family as a matter of practice. Serena had met Bernie's children once or twice in passing and was professionally acquainted with Marcus, but the other Wolfe relations were a mystery Bernie had left unresolved for reasons only she knew. "Are the Wolfes all very stoic?"

"Would you believe I'm the most animated of the bunch?" Bernie knew she could be difficult to read when she decided to be canny and Serena still hadn't entirely decoded her sense of humor, if the uncertainty flitting over her face was any indication.

Serena scanned her expression. "…Reluctantly."

Bernie cracked a smile and let her friend off the hook. "You're right to doubt it. My younger brother is the provocative one, my older brother is the leader, and I'm the reticent peacekeeper caught in the centre. It isn't any wonder I went to war; I knew what I was getting myself into." There were meant to be rules in war, at the very least; family was another matter.

"How have things been since the divorce? You don't talk about any of it much," said Serena, in her infinite wisdom choosing to tread lightly. She couldn't know Bernie was persona non grata in both her extended families. Her former in-laws had nothing to say to her that didn't involve a complete lack of surprise. They hadn't wanted Marcus to marry her in the first place, had said she was too driven by ambition and not enough in love twenty-five years ago.

Her father scarcely had two words for her. Not because her lover was a woman, not obviously, to his credit, rather because she hadn't kept her word, hadn't honored her vows of holy matrimony. She had dishonored her marriage and so dishonored herself and the name she bore; she had disappointed him. When she thought she had cried all the tears there were to cry, his censure had ensured there was a deluge on reserve.

Bernie drank deeply and considered switching from white wine to whiskey before giving her answer. "Things are improving." Her children were even speaking to her from time to time.

"Is that Bernie Wolfe for lousy, but you're going to repress your feelings on the matter till you burst?"

Bernie's fingers twitched along the stem of her glass while her opposite hand clenched on her thigh. What she wouldn't give for a smoke. "I'm not repressed."

"Sure, you aren't." From anybody else, Bernie might have taken the teasing to heart. Serena patted her arm, her expression gentle and fond, so she didn't.

"My parents were just very disappointed is all. They liked Marcus." Everyone had liked Marcus throughout their marriage. He was funny and unpretentious. He was the life of any party they attended while was Bernie cast as his quieter shadow. Hence his keeping all their friends and acquaintances as spoils in the divorce. Bernie had got away with her half and her shirt and not much else.

"I'm sure your parents like you more."

Bernie tipped her head noncommittally. "I wouldn't say that. What was it my mother said? 'Love the sinner, hate the sin.'" She pushed her wine to the side; it tasted of ash now anyhow. Her eyes were beginning to throb from the twinkling light strung about the pub.

"Ouch." Serena's expression tightened, wide eyes dark and sorrowful on her behalf.

Bernie shrugged; it was water off her back, down the drain, and under the bridge. For the most part. "It was confirmation of something I feared growing up." She cleared the rather emotive frog from her throat. "I'm fifty-three and wishing I'd held it together a few years longer, just so they wouldn't look at me like a stranger." Gentle though her ejection from the house had been, it had nonetheless been a request for her absence, and she had remained absent since.

"You aren't a stranger, you're their daughter."

"In that instant, that isn't how it felt." Marcus had told them everything ahead of her arrival. For some reason she hadn't thought he'd want their dirty laundry splashed around. She'd been mistaken.

"Bernie."

She smiled. It felt wrong, performative. Transparent. "It's all right, they've come around this year." She'd only had to wait nineteen months for them to have a kind word for her again, and it wasn't as though she'd been doing much reaching out herself. If she kept coming up with excuses, she wouldn't have to concern herself with how much their silence hurt. "My mother said they hope to meet my 'young woman' at the holidays. That's what she called Alex when they confronted me about what Marcus told them. My 'young woman'. My 'mistress' and wasn't that a novelty? Never once called her by her name." Bernie had become Berenice, an unruly, disobedient child who needed talking to and not listening to. She had departed feeling chastened, abandoned. A year and a half had worn none of the bitterness from those emotions.

Her name was Alex. She didn't intend to harp on the matter, only her mind wouldn't let it alone. They had spoken of Alex as though she was the worst sort of deceiver, less than nothing and not someone Bernie had loved. She supposed her own silence was owed to that more than how they had treated her.

"Names make people real and it's easier to vilify someone who isn't real," Serena consoled her once she determined Bernie had sulked enough. "Alex was a woman you fell in love with; she must have been quite something if you loved her, but they weren't ready to see that. I don't doubt they meant well underneath the shock."

Bernie had no such faith in her parents. They were old school. Divorce was frowned upon. Partners who mated, mated for life. Anything else was unheard of.

"They wanted me to keep my family together the way they always have. Through war and peace, and affairs, and misery, they've kept it together." Bernie wondered for whose sake that had been. The Wolfe scion were no less catastrophic for being the product of a united home.

"For better or worse isn't the life for everyone." Not for either of them, anyway. Bernie wondered if she was alone in not regretting the loss.

"My father would say we don't know what love is anymore, because it's too easy to leave." He had said that in her vicinity. Not to her directly, but she'd gotten the message.

"What do you say?"

"I say sometimes love is leaving, when you know you aren't enough."

"That's where I disagree. I don't give a damn what they say, you're enough. You found out something about yourself that changed your life and you acted on it as countless people have throughout human history. You were unlucky enough to fall in star-crossed love. You can't be faulted for doing all you could to make it right."

"I'm not sure I made it right or just made it harder." Bernie cast her eyes toward the tinsel and garlands suspended from Albie's ceiling. All this Christmas spirit yet Bernie felt lonely, cast adrift despite all her bonds. "It was for nothing. I blew up my less than perfect family for what amounted to a fling. This is what that looks like. I was too cowardly to leave and then too cowardly to fight. I missed my window with her."

Serena tugged her pendant along its chain. "How do you know? I know she came to see you last year…"

"The entire hospital knows she came to see me. We weren't very discreet." One week with Alex and Bernie had lost her head, to her detriment.

"Bernie, what happened?" Of her civilian friends Serena and Dom stood the best chance of getting her to fess up to painful home truths. She hadn't been able to confide in either about this. Confessing made it real. Permanent.

"I went to her last year and told her I still loved her."

Serena leaned in, expectant. "And?"

"And she told me she still loved me."

"That's wonderful!" Only because she didn't know how it ended.

"We, um, we tried for a couple of months, being a couple, a real couple." It was a novelty, getting to hold Alex's hand in public. Some noticed, regarding them with instant kinship that Bernie could see now she knew to look for it and others observed with studied indifference that could only be disapproval. All in all, they mostly got on with being out together, undisturbed. There were dazzling moments—but then there were the rest.

"And?" prompted Serena when Bernie had once more sunk into a fretful mood.

"It was weird trying to build something after years of wanting the freedom to build it."

"Fantasy clashing with reality." She was beginning to get it.

"When you're dreaming up a life with someone, everything has its place. Me and her and my kids. The army. A dog. She wanted a dog."

"When would you have time for a dog?"

Bernie raised a hand in utter bewilderment. "I like dogs, but a dog needs more attention than we could possibly give with our work schedules. It wouldn't be fair." Bernie picked at a chipped nail. "That was our relationship. Chipping away at what we always wanted to what was really there." Bernie had been aware of Alex's feelings for her well before she knew them to be mutual. They'd had years to think about it.

"And what did you find?" Serena rubbed Bernie's wrist in solidarity, the weight of her hand grounding Bernie in the present.

"Not as much as we hoped. Relationships constructed on what might have been in another life aren't real. They're just dreams that can't hold their own weight." She crossed her arms, disengaging Serena's hand. "I couldn't see my way clear to a future with her that wasn't built on the rubble of my family. I couldn't envision discussing her with my kids or taking her to meet my parents. The thought made nauseous. It still makes me nauseous and they still want to meet her, give a look-over. I know what for: they want to judge for themselves if she was worth it." She scoffed at herself. Why did she care?

"Oh, Bernie. Don't do this to yourself."

"It's the first time they've reached out to me since the court case concluded. They're getting up there. It's not something I like to think about, but I want them to, to care about me again. I want to see my father again. I miss my mother. I have to go."

"Not if it's a misery. Don't go just to torture yourself."

"I'm not. I swear I'm not."

Serena's silence was as eloquently condemning as the eyebrow she raised.

"I'm not," Bernie reiterated, on the off-chance repetition moved the needle with Serena. It didn't.

"You make your own decisions. Don't go. Don't subject yourself to judgment from people who don't understand. Spend Christmas with Jason and me."

Bernie cupped her glass in both hands, fingertips pressed to the warm globe to give cause to the warmth suffusing her limbs. There was Serena again, opening her home to Bernie as she'd opened her ward, her family, her heart. Her heart.

"I doubt Ellie would like that." Elinor and Bernie had a distinctly chilly relationship, owing to Elinor perceiving Bernie as taking 'her' seat at the Campbell family dinner table.

"It's unlikely Ellie will make anything more substantial than a supply stop at mine on her way to the Seychelles with Edward and Liberty." Serena still spoke Edward's third wife's name as though it were an obscure food item she hadn't decided on yet. Did she hate it or tolerate it? Signs pointed to distant loathing. "Come over. There'll be too much food if you don't and you know I hate packing away leftovers."

"Not once the Fletchings get their helpings in."

"All the more reason for you to come over early and help me wrap up their last minute gifts. Evie is sure to go snooping."

"As tempting as that sounds, don't you have dinner with your mother to think about?"

Serena poured herself another generous glass of red, finishing off their second bottle with a glum grunt. Bernie waited for her to gulp down a fourth of it before putting her head in the lion's mouth.

"Seeking your own Dutch courage?"

"I've been trying not to think about it." She propped her chin on her hand, exuding a distinct air of disgruntlement Bernie had come to associate with Serena's terminally difficult mother. "I offered to let her host dinner at my house, but she insists that we eat at hers. I told her I had colleagues from the hospital relying on me to provide dinner and festivities and she informed me that I'd simply have to host the dinners back to back."

"Thus the date change."

"Thus the ruddy, bloody ridiculous, wholly inconvenient date change to an event that's been on the books for the better part of a year. My mother, I swear." Serena drank lest she say something unforgivable from one daughter to another. Bernie would forgive her for it.

"She's probably looking forward to being healthy enough to cook for the family. That wasn't assured a couple of years ago." Adrienne had come through her stroke frail and in need of much rehabilitation. This was the first year she'd been recuperated enough to live on her own, much less prepare a family meal for the holidays.

"It isn't that I don't understand her excitement. I'm overjoyed to have my mother, I'm not sure how I would have coped had I lost her to the stroke and subsequent complications. I only wish it would have made her easier to live with. She can be so…" Serena groped for a word to describe the tenacious, opinionated, deeply critical creature that was her mother.

"Overpowering?" suggested Bernie. Adrienne McKinnie was a live wire and perhaps one of the only living souls with a personality to outshine Serena's. Therein lay the problem.

"She's a Zamboni in human form and I'm the damned unsuspecting ice. I can't ever refuse her because she simply won't be refused! Every one of my objections falls on deaf ears." Serena sighed, the creases of wear deepening beside her eyes, her mouth. "Sometimes I think I'll never get to really be myself so long as she's hovering over me."

"What do you mean?"

Her fledgling smile faltered. "I wish I knew."

Bernie returned from the ladies room toward the end of the evening to find Serena agitated, phone clutched in hand, visibly fuming.

"What's happened? Is it Jason? Elinor?"

Serena looked up from her mobile to see Bernie hovering. "Oh no, much more tedious. My mother."

"Ah." Bernie dropped heavily into her chair, forcing her muscles to step down from their innate stress response group by group. That Serena's distress could trigger Bernie's fight, flight, or freeze instincts was a matter for another night and a cheaper brand of hooch. "What's she done?"

"She's been planning and she wants to know if Robbie has any allergies or food aversions. She wants him to feel welcome."

"She's really sold on Robbie." Bernie found it hard to believe anybody could have a strong opinion on the man other than 'put off.'

"I'm beginning to be curious about that myself. I may need to give him a call." Bernie's gut roiled. Some part of her worried that Robbie might show up any day to sweep Serena off her feet again. That Serena might be lonely enough to allow it despite her reservations.

"You think he's using Adrienne to get back in your good books?"

"I think I've been subject to sneakier ploys for romance, usually courtesy of my ex-husband." The one of Serena's suitors Bernie loathed above Robbie. She hadn't believed her opinion of a man could be lower till she met Edward Campbell.

"That's Robbie running 0-2."

"He's about to strike out."

Serena tried calling Robbie to no avail. Either he was avoiding her or he was busy. Serena tossed her mobile into her purse, disgusted. Bernie weighed the comfort of a third bottle against the hangover Serena would have to contend with during the Christmas party she was throwing at her house tomorrow night. Serena would be miserable and that much worse off.

"Am I making too much of this? It's just dinner, isn't it? What the worst that can happen?"

Bernie counted off worst case scenarios she had cooked up since this conversation started. "He'll think he's in with a chance. He'll follow you home. You'll sleep with him."

"Thank you for that sterling assessment of my judgment."

"That wasn't a criticism. I just think…maybe you aren't as opposed to another tumble with Robbie as you say you are."

"Bite your tongue."

"It's perfectly natural. You were lovers, he was apparently satisfactory in the sack; it makes sense you'd want him to, um, keep you warm. I've heard his quiff is more than adequate to the task."

"I regret ever saying that."

"Your romps were tickety-boo, if my sources are to be believed."

"Never again. I am never discussing my sex life in the workplace again."

"That knocks out most workplace conversation."

"Fair does." Serena swirled the dregs of her wine. "I just don't think it's him I want anymore. There was a time, obviously, I felt different, back when I thought he had the patience for Jason or the tolerance for me. I don't want to be alone, Bernie, and it's beginning to look like that's what my golden years have in store."

"Don't be ridiculous, you can still find someone."

"I could. I might. It shouldn't matter. It's not like I know what I'd like in a partner anymore. The old standbys don't seem to fit."

"No more Mr. Rugged Policeman?"

"Not as such."

"No more Charming Locum Anesthetist?"

"I could ask you the same thing. No more damsel registrars?"

Bernie squirmed at the allusion to Keeley on their ward. "That obvious?"

"I sensed some undercurrents."

Bernie squirmed all the more. "Nothing happened between us. We were friends, colleagues who happened to share a roof." With her husband and her two teenage children. An odd set-up in retrospect. "I might have become overinvested in her progress."

"It's all right to say you had feelings for her."

"I don't want you to think I go falling for every beautiful woman I work with."

"So long as you treated them well, I can think of worse penchants than having an eye for beauty."

"I don't want you to think-"

"Whatever it is, I can assure you I haven't thought it. I trust you. I hope the feeling's mutual."

Bernie searched her expression and found it genuine. She swallowed down a welling of gratitude or relief. She'd given up naming emotions. "It very much is."

"Good. Now let's speak no more about it."

"I'll drink to that."

They clinked glasses and sank into merry oblivion, the Christmas music piping through the speakers washing over them along with the murmur of their colleagues from the hospital. It wasn't a bad way to spend an evening, having only each other for company.

"You know, you could ring Edward and have him to solve your Adrienne problem."

"Ring his neck, I hope you mean."

"Having Edward and Liberty over for Christmas dinner would distract Adrienne."

"It would not distract her from cuffing me about the head for inviting him to darken her doorway once more. My ears are still burning from the tongue lashing I got last time he wormed his way into my bed. Away from me is where I like him. He and his youthful bride can trip the light fantastic to Mars for all I care. No, no, I'll just have to brave my mother's recommendations for improving my life without a partner, unless…"

Bernie's occipital tingled at the scheming light entering Serena's eyes. "Unless what?"

"Unless you agree to be my date."

"You've lost me." Bernie wished she didn't know what was going through Serena's mind, but after a year of friendship, she feared she knew very well.

Serena traced the rim of her wineglass. "I have an idea. We'll just be each other's dates. I'll be your new partner for your parents and you can distract my mother with your roguish military wit to keep her off the subject of Robbie and my dreadful taste in men."

"I don't know how my parents are going to take that, me moving on to something serious this quickly."

"It's been well over a year since the divorce; they have to assume you'd move on someday. Lesbians aren't eunuchs, nor should you have to eschew all companionship to win their approval." Serena's indignance on her behalf carried the duple weight of being affecting and ingratiating. Serena knew just how to sway Bernie to her way of thinking, she also had the damnable ability to startle Bernie with unsolicited gestures of affection. For all that the first was pure cunning charisma, the second was nothing less than sincere. Bernie found it difficult not to like a woman capable of both.

"My family has acquaintances all over. If you come along and someone mistakes you for my partner, it will make the rumor mill by Valentine's Day." By New Year's, realistically.

"The rumor mill already thinks I'm a power hungry, Machiavellian, social-climbing lesbian. At least this will be on-script."

"You've only dated men publically…"

Serena swept her rebuttal aside. "Don't ask for logic; that isn't what the rumor mill's about."

"I guess it isn't."

"You can say no."

"I should say no."

"You're hesitating because?"

"It's just my parents. My family. They aren't bigots, precisely. I'm not saying they are. They're…"

"Traditional?" Serena offered when Bernie failed to produce a fitting description. "Conservative?" She clicked her tongue. "Old-fashioned?"

"All tried and true euphemisms for them being enormous bigots, but I don't think so. That isn't to say my family doesn't have its fair share. The military vein runs deep in us; we're stoic and prone to secrecy and we can be unforgiving of those who aren't so secretive about themselves."

"'Why do they have to flaunt it' traditionalists?"

"Sometimes. The kids and grandkids are better. I have small grandnieces and they don't care at all who kisses who in their fairytale games. Princesses as knights and damsels both, princes be hanged. They have no idea that to some it still matters."

"It doesn't matter to you, does it?"

"I would be a hypocrite if it mattered to me. I quite like being a knight."

"That settles it. We'll go and give them something to look forward to. This way they'll see that the knight gets to kiss the princess, or the consultant, in real life and in fairytales."

"It's a nice idea." Tempting to Bernie for myriad reasons. The opportunity to kiss Serena alone might have had her leaping at such a chance in other circumstances, but she couldn't lead her friend into the lion's den without giving her fair warning. "I couldn't ask you to pretend, Serena. Being out isn't always easy."

"I know that." Serena reached out for Bernie, then seemed to think better of it. Bernie missed the aborted touch as though she'd felt it. "Is somebody in particular troubling you? If they're being inappropriate, we can take it to Hanssen. He won't tolerate that behavior. I won't tolerate that behavior." Holby City Hospital enforced a strict zero tolerance policy toward discrimination. If Bernie named names someone would be dismissed, end of. The military had been slower in catching up to the times that way, and instinctively it was the army's rules Bernie was compelled to follow.

"No one I can't handle on my own. I don't think you should have to deal with their bollocks, too." Bernie's patience for shit talk and name calling would vanish the instant Serena became its recipient.

"You're my friend, your bollocks is mine."

"It can be difficult."

"I've thought about that."

"Before or after the wine bender."

"Hush, you!"

Bernie wheezed at Serena's badly feigned outrage. She was the living embodiment of a wine mum. Serena could expect an extension of her Wine of the Month membership for Christmas for this very reason. Serena deserved her little indulgence, Bernie could give her that.

Bernie sobered, regarding Serena's pretty flush as some might any other beautiful sight. And Serena can't know. "I just don't want you pretending for my sake. It's a stupid family get-together; three days and then we won't see each other again for twelve months. I can handle it."

"I wouldn't need to pretend."

"Serena…"

Serena shot her a look of firm resolve. "I'll explain if you promise not to mock me."

Bernie looked at her meaningfully. "I wouldn't."

"You probably wouldn't. You're too noble." She rolled her eyes, but her hand found Bernie's over the table, regardless. Serena the tactile one, Serena who reached out to give reassurance sought it in return. Bernie held on and held her breath. "I've been interested in women before. I've had crushes or infatuations. I didn't really think anything of it because my relationships have all been with men. But…" Serena shifted. Their legs brushed. A charge passed between their fingers Bernie had taught herself to disregard. "I haven't only ever wanted men. There have also been women who fascinated me to the point of—I don't know. Like a craving you can't nail down." Serena nibbled on her thumbnail. "I foolishly assumed desire was part of the process of learning oneself. I didn't enquire further for years. The funniest part is I've had friends who are gay and friends who are lesbians, and until I met you, it never occurred to me that I could feel this way about women myself. The pieces never came together." Serena laughed at her own folly. Bernie found nothing about it laughable. "So when I say I don't have to pretend, I'm serious."

Serena's ballistic gaze finally landed on the table top, to the left of their joined hands. Bernie waited for her to look up. She didn't. Serena was waiting for the letdown.

"Congratulations on figuring yourself out."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"I would. You get to celebrate this."

"I don't think my mother will agree, nor will Elinor. God, I don't dare think what the porters will say." Her hand flexed restlessly under Bernie's. If budget cuts drove Serena's blood pressure to record highs, gossip was death by a thousand papercuts. "The joke about me being a power hungry lesbian wasn't a joke. It was a rumor. I can't say…." She wet her lips. She still wouldn't look at Bernie while Bernie only had eyes for her. "I might have been more receptive to Edward because I had something to prove."

"I know I was more receptive to my ex-husband because I did." Bernie had allowed guilt to rule her when she agreed to resign her commission in favor of a life in Holby City. She had given up a thriving career in the dim hope of resuscitating a marriage she no longer wanted, out of some misplaced sense of responsibility for everyone else's happiness. "That's pressure for you. We revert to what we know just to keep going."

Serena raised her eyes. Her happy tipple had left her soft and blurry round the edges, glowing ruddy at the cheeks. Anxiety had stolen the light from her eyes. "So that's that."

"It is. Thank you for telling me."

"I've never told anyone."

"You can tell me anything. I mean that."

Serena shrugged a shoulder, growing sheepish under Bernie's intent stare. "It goes both ways."

"I never doubted that." Not for long. "Serena, this is so new. You know I can't ask you to out yourself for nothing."

Serena's anxiety was immediately supplanted by sheer nerve. "You aren't asking, I'm offering, and it wouldn't be for nothing, it would be for you. I can live with that." Bernie let herself yield to Serena's steadfastness. Serena clasped her hands around Bernie's, capturing it lest Bernie pull away.

"If you can, so can I. So about your mum, when's dinner?"

As easily as linking hands, they had a deal.