Author: Regency

Title: women are like celestial bodies

Pairing: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe

Summary: Bernie and Serena are women of a certain age with all the lines, wrinkles, and sagging that entails. They're also vivacious, flirtatious, brilliant, and positively bonkers for each other. Love is love at any age; go figure.

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.

Women are like celestial bodies, they shine for who they love.

-A.A. Roses

Serena set aside her back issue of the Lancet to watch Bernie brush her hair before bed.

"You're staring."

Serena rolled her eyes. "I'm gazing lovingly at my girlfriend, so sue me."

Bernie wrinkled her nose. "I thought we agreed on 'partner'."

"Sounds very businesslike."

"We're partners at work."

"We're co-leads at work, Bernie. At home, we're more than that." They'd been more than that since Bernie had returned from Kiev. Serena doubted the novelty would ever wear off.

"More than friends..."

"More than lovers?" Neither of them were sold on the title, but there was no denying they were lovers. They had the love bites to show for it.

Bernie softened. She put down her hair brush—which was actually Serena's hairbrush, not that Bernie noticed the difference. "I've never had a partner before, somebody to share everything with. I had a husband, but he wasn't a partner for me. You are."

It wasn't often Bernie mentioned her marriage to Marcus anymore, or any part of her life before Kiev, save for the kids, so when she did Serena sat up and took notice. She also occasionally flushed. Bernie chose the oddest moments to come over romantic.

"All right, partner it is." She fluffed her pillow behind her and settled down to wait for Bernie to join her in bed. "I'll still be thinking of you as my girlfriend, though. I never got to have one of those."

Bernie smiled at her in the mirror. "Me neither."

"You are a catch, though."

Bernie shot her a teasing smile. "Pot, kettle!"

Serena combed her fingers through her hair. "I know I am. But I don't know that you know you are. I just like telling you to see your neck turn red."

"Thanks for that!"

"I'm serious. You've always looked so youthful and energetic. You could run circles around half the F1s on AAU."

"Don't exaggerate." Bernie's neck was as red as her cheeks as she applied a nighttime moisturizer to her face. Serena had got her into the habit and she'd reluctantly confessed she enjoyed how soft it made her skin feel.

"I'm serious! You're all gorgeously made and maintained. I'm not complaining, I love it all. I just wonder how you do it. Must be that army conditioning."

"Insomnia mostly. Until recently I didn't really sleep. It didn't matter, I functioned without it, had to, but when I'm awake and not working I'm usually exercising. Running, boxing, swimming, calisthenics."

Serena groaned and pulled the covers up to her chin. How she had fallen in love with the Energizer Bunny in human form was anybody's guess. "Were that I only had the time."

"When you haven't really got anybody outside work, you find you have a lot of free time." Bernie rubbed hand cream into the back of her hands, up her forearms, and around her elbows. Another recent addition to her bedtime regimen. Another way to make herself softer, Serena knew.

"You have people." She didn't say, 'You have me,' because it went without saying. But that hadn't always been the case.

"I have some. Most are connected to the hospital. I have old friends discharged from the army, but it never quite feels right getting together often. We lead entirely separately lives now, what would we talk about?"

"Your entirely separate lives, perchance?"

Bernie shrugged, put on more hand cream. "It never felt right."

"Because you aren't happy with your life or you worry they won't be happy for you?"

"Because as much as I miss it, you couldn't pay me to go back."

"I for one am glad I get you to myself."

"It would be hard for you to ravish me from another continent."

"Don't knock it, I'd probably try it. You haven't seen how good I am at writing love notes."

"If your love notes are anything like your dirty talk, I might go UA to get home and put those promises into action."

"I'd welcome you with open arms, among other things." She winked. Bernie snorted and shook her head. She returned her scrutinizing her reflection. Serena saw what she saw; the difference was she loved every bit. Sunspots, freckles, stray grey hairs, and frown lines. Thought neither of them was overly given to vanity, it wasn't easy blocking out a culture swearing it was all downhill from here. Not when there was so much they'd yet to do.

"I used to think the army would make it easier. Keep the uniform in good nick. Square away the hair. Polish the boots. Who cares about makeup when you're doing it all right? Turns out, men notice dark circles even under a beret. I started wearing foundation and concealer more regularly when they kept asking me why I looked 'ill'."

Serena grunted, "Not that old chestnut."

"The very same. Drove me barmy. I wore cover-up just to avoid the 'concerned' questions. Charlotte got me interested in the rest of it. It's relatively straightforward when you've got the time. Certainly easier than fielding irritating questions from my subordinates."

"They didn't dare!"

"Oh, they did, and too often at that."

"You'd look good without any of it. You've got a good face, good cheekbones." Serena had been enchanted by Bernie's cheekbones and then her smile and then all the rest of her. There was no turning back.

Bernie looked over her shoulder. "Me? You're the one who looks like a femme fatale first thing in the morning."

Serena threw back the covers to join her at the vanity. "Now I know you're gazing through the eyes of love. I look a fright at 6 am."

Bernie shrugged. "Not to me."

Serena dropped a kiss on her crown and hugged her from behind. "Where have you been all my life?"

"In the closet, in Iraq, in Afghanistan…"

"Don't be facetious."

Bernie squeezed her arm. "I think we found each other when we were supposed to and that's what counts."

Serena returned the gesture. "I know you're right. Though if you'd seen me in a velvet mini-skirt and thigh high patent leather boots in the 90s, you might re-think that."

"Oh." Bernie exhaled slowly, her eyes growing dark at the thought. Serena was going to explain those interesting photographs one of these days, but the promise of them was far and way more tempting than the truth. She nibbled the shell of Bernie's ear just to feel her shift, tugged between two points of arousal, Serena's lips and whatever illicit fantasy was flying through her mind. She gulped. "I…Campbell, we are going to revisit that anecdote another night. We very much are. But I need to tell my partner that I find her irresistible in her nightdress, swanning about the bedroom, right now."

Serena inched down Bernie's jaw, trailing kisses wherever she liked. Nuzzled the space behind her ear. "Hardly swanning."

"Everything you do is swanning when I can't stop looking at you."

"Not in this old thing." She flapped toward the old nightdress she'd thrown on after dinner. It was cool enough for the unseasonable heat, if anything but flattering. Good enough for something she meant to cast off as needed.

"Don't get me wrong, I like all the frills and the lace and frippery—you wear them quite well, Ms. Campbell—but I like this, too."

"Not very sexy."

"You don't need to wear anything special to turn my head." Bernie shifted, pulling Serena between her knees. "I catch a peek of you in the shower and I can't think straight. Clothes are just gift wrapping for what I really want." She traced the back of Serena's knees, up under the hem of her nightdress.

Serena braced herself on Bernie's shoulders while Bernie's hands wandered. "What do you really want?"

Bernie swept her hands up and down Serena's sides, around her back to latch onto her waist. "You."

"With all the lines and the lumps and bumps?" She knew the answer already, really, yet there was always a voice in back of her mind that wasn't quite sure, that almost didn't believe how Bernie looked at her in moments like this.

Bernie pointed to herself. "With all the freckles and sagging and scars?"

"I love all of you," Serena said. A body was a body and Serena adored Bernie's.

"And I love all of you. Funny how that works."

Serena rubbed a thumb over Bernie's brow and followed it with her lips. She'd been in love before, though never like this.

"Did we just have a moment?" she asked when something painfully saccharine threatened to erupt from her, like never leave or marry me.

"We did." Bernie pulled her down into her lap for an appreciative kiss. "I love you."

Serena hummed, content, and curled her toes into the rug beneath the vanity, happy to go on with Bernie's lips on hers despite the kink developing in her neck. "Now who's getting soppy?"

For her answer, Bernie drew Serena into a second kiss, her short, blunt nails scraping gently at the base of Serena's spine while she held her securely by the hips. Serena broke away before her neck complained too loudly and she lost all coherent thought. Her plans for Bernie did not begin and end at the vanity.

"On that distracting note, can we please go to bed? I have an early morning and I'd like to get started on making my girlfriend—ah, partner—scream before I turn in for the night." With a cheeky tap to the nose, she disentangled herself from Bernie to crawl back under the covers.

Bernie stared after her, the high points of her cheeks stained red as her lips. "I don't scream," she protested weakly. Which was true, she didn't. But her voice was almost certainly going to crack before Serena was done with her.

"Not yet, but you haven't seen the new toy I got in the post yesterday."

As quickly as that, Bernie was finished with her nighttime routine. Moisturizer and hand cream were far less interesting than whatever Serena had in mind.

Just as she'd planned.