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Raf took the stairs two at a time, his heart racing. He needed to get out of there, get out of the situation, get somewhere—anywhere—else. He had gotten so close to making a huge mistake. Only minutes prior he had been standing at the nurse’s station on AAU chatting with Fletch. Fletch had stood close as he looked over the plans Raf had made for the kids’ Easter break. He had booked a trip to the Legoland resort and was showing it to Fletch at work because he wanted it to be a surprise and there was frankly never a moment of reliable solitude at home.
“If you’re trying to usurp me as favourite parent, mate,” Fletch had said, shoving his shoulder against Raf’s chest playfully, “you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”
They had been so close, and Fletch had referred to Raf as a parent to their—to Fletch’s kids. Raf had turned his head and looked over at Fletch’s teasing grin, had very nearly leaned forward and brushed his lips against Fletch’s (which would have been a daft idea no matter when he did it, but in the middle of the ward in front of all their colleagues would have been complete idiocy). When he had realised what he’d been about to do, he had pulled back immediately, mumbled some excuse, and then he ran.
Which brought him back to the then and there, bolting up the stairs of Holby City Hospital like his life depended on it. He stumbled out onto the roof, wheezing, half-doubled over. He was so busy trying to catch his breath that he didn’t notice he wasn’t alone on the rooftop at first. When he eventually looked up he found Bernie and Dom sitting nearby watching him with some interest.
“Raf!” Bernie greeted him first. “Care to join us?”
“Hi Bernie, Dom,” he gave them both a little wave before sinking to the ground beside them.
“Welcome.” Dom smiled over at him. “Care to talk about it?”
“Oh,” Raf wanted to, had been wanting to spill the beans about his momentous secret for months now but had never found the right person or the right time. At the very least maybe telling someone else would decrease the chance of accidentally letting loose about it all to Fletch. “I shouldn’t…” He dithered.
“The rooftop is a place of sanctuary and no judgement,” Bernie said encouragingly, “by the look of it you’ve come to the right place.”
“What do you do when you’re foolish enough to have fallen in love with your best friend?” Raf asked, letting his head thud back on the wall they were all leaned up against as he spoke.
“Isn’t your best friend Nurse Fletcher?” Dom asked in reply.
Raf nodded wordlessly and was shocked as Bernie let out a bark of laughter.
“I say, you really have come to the right place!”
“Sorry?” Raf furrowed his brow and looked over at Bernie, not following the cause of her mirth.
“What she means to say,” Dom picked up the thread of conversation as Bernie was still too busy laughing to speak, “is welcome to the unofficial meeting of the Holby City Hospital Gay Disasters Club.”
“We meet bi weekly,” Bernie jumped in, still chuckling slightly, “or as often as one of us has royally cocked something up in our relationships. Which on a good month happens to be about every second week.”
“In the aftermath of such disasters as Valentine Gate it can be a lot more frequent,” Dom grinned snarkily at Bernie as he said it and she raised a finger in objection immediately.
“I didn’t forget about it! I just got confused about the dates!”
“Sure. Of course.”
“And how was I supposed to know Serena would care so much anyway? It’s just a day like any other, really.”
Raf got the sense that this was an old argument and he couldn’t help but smile at their easy antics.
“Anyway,” Dom continued, turning his attention back to Raf, “welcome.”
“Thanks. Any insightful gay wisdom as to how to solve my predicament?” He looked at them both a little too hopefully, perhaps, as he waited for a response.
Bernie squinted, grimaced,
“Snog him gay and then run off to a post-Soviet state for a couple of months?” She offered with a shrug.
“It’s a thought!” Raf admitted with a chuckle, “it didn’t work out too badly for you, in the end.”
“Mmmm, true. Only because Serena is just about the most forgiving woman in the entire world though, and even then I’m fairly certain I’ll still be grovelling for that one well into the late 2030s.”
“Reasonable people would probably tell you to just talk to him,” Dom said.
“That’s true,” Bernie agreed.
“We’re not so much on the reasonable, however. We tend to lean more towards sympathetic enabling.” Raf couldn’t help but laugh at Dom’s words.
“You could sabotage his credit score!” Bernie said with a snap of her fingers, “make it so he’ll never ever pass a credit check for his own place so he has to stay with you forever!”
“That’s a good one,” Dom agreed with a nod.
“I’m beginning to see how Ukraine came about,” Raf said with a dry chuckle, “if this is the kind of advice you go for.”
“You’re a good looking man,” Dom piped up, “why not this. Seduce Nurse Fletcher, sexually, and continue to live with him and raise his children and just lie to yourself and pretend that you really are together, only letting the harsh reality of how much you’re missing out on and how much better your life would be if he loved you back crash down around you while lying awake in his arms in the wee hours of the morning.”
“That’s… A tad morose, don’t you think?” Raf did not think that was the way to go, he was starting to get a little worried about Dom though.
“Oh! I know!” Bernie grinned, “forge Fletch a Canadian birth certificate and steal his British one, then call immigration and get him almost deported. Marry him for citizenship so he can stay in the country and bob’s your uncle!”
Raf couldn’t do anything but laugh and shake his head at that.
“The two of you are a better case for just talking it out than you could possibly anticipate,” he told them solemnly. Bernie and Dom shared a grin and a shrug as if to say ‘imagine that’.
“So is it men?” Dom asked, bluntly changing tracks, “or just him?”
“I don’t know, really. I haven’t confronted it very much. I just,” Raf looked down at his hands, “I guess I looked over at him one day and there it was. I was in love. With him, with the kids, with this… Life we’d built together. And then his gender didn’t matter. He’s an attractive man, I’d have to have been blind not to notice that. And love is love, I guess. As trite as it sounds.”
“People do make a much bigger deal out of the whole gender thing than they need to,” Dom said, “doesn’t really matter does it? Though obviously being gay is much cooler than the alternative.”
“Of course,” Raf grinned at him. It felt… Nice. Refreshing. To be so open about his feelings, and to feel almost bolstered by this strange supportive queer rooftop society.
“Though as I’ve never been with a woman, I can’t really give you any sense as to the comparison between the two,” Dom continued, “Bernie?”
“Men are, um… Rougher. Less soft, less smooth,” Bernie said, scrunching her nose in distaste. “No, no!” She raised her hands defensively at the looks both men leveled her way and laughed, “de gustibus non disputandum est and all that. I’m just stating a fact.”
“Coloured by your own biases,” Dom shot back, “I mean if I were choosing between Marcus and Serena I’d be straight as an arrow in a second. That’s a good woman you’ve bagged yourself there, Wolfe.”
“Yeah,” Raf thought it was adorable how Bernie couldn’t seem to keep the foolish grin off her face, “she is pretty great.”
“Did Serena tell you, Bernie,” Raf asked suddenly, “about she and I, in her office, while you were away?” He said it playfully, was unprepared for the tight lipped glare shot in his direction in reply. “Oh. God. No. Nothing happened. We, um, got a little tipsy and almost kissed. Before realising we were both far too gay for it, that is.”
Bernie grinned then, and Raf smiled back ruefully as he realised Bernie had been winding him up.
“Yes, I know. She told me all about it. Though knowing how Serena gets with the better part of a bottle of Shiraz in her I’m amazed all it was was an almost kiss.”
They all laughed at that, before halting at the thundering sound of the door to the roof flinging open. In the doorway stood Zosia: hair mussed, lipstick a little smeared, eyes wide and panicked.
“I think I just snogged Jac Naylor in a supply closet,” the words tumbled out of her mouth as though she could barely believe she was saying them. Bernie raised her water bottle in a mock salute.
“Have a seat.”