stopover.

Final stopover (out of, what, three) is in Madrid-Barajas International Airport, the only stop where he doesn’t have to run from one terminal to another, because there’s actually a wait of an hour before his flight home to London is due. So he buys a cheap crime novel at the bookstore and finds a row of benches to seat himself on, trying to get time to pass a little quicker, please, because he’s got a boyfriend at home, probably shooting holes in the wall from boredom right at this very moment. A very much wall-killing boyfriend whom he rather misses, as a matter of fact. Believe it or not.

Twenty pages into the novel, though, he gives up. Mostly because the plot is utterly transparent (mind you, he used to read crime novels by the dozen, before he met Sherlock and was well entertained, but living with that man sort of kills all murder mysteries for you, because nothing measures up to real life), but also because he simply can’t concentrate, his mind wandering constantly, already 90 minutes ahead. Heathrow, Heathrow, Heathrow. Arrival hall. Reunion. Sex on the sofa and if they don’t make it that far, sex in the far corner of some closed-off lounge in one of the domestic terminals they’re going to pass on their way out. Sherlock did promise he’d be activated immediately upon his return to British soil, after all.

“It’s never twins,” he mutters under his breath and tosses the book at the nearest bin, “except when it is and it’s boring.”

“Just spoil it for the rest of us,” a female voice speaks up from a couple of seats away and he looks to the side, finding a rather pretty young woman with red hair (making him think of Wilson from Sherlock’s latest case, though the woman here is neither obese nor cursed with a comb over, actually, her hair is very thick and curly) raising an eyebrow at him, cradling the very same novel in her hands, open at the beginning. John makes a face.

“Sorry.”

“No, that’s all right, it wasn’t a very promising novel anyway, was it?”

“Can’t really say it was, no.”

“I’m Isabella,” the woman introduces herself, smiling before looking quickly to the side, leaning away and reaching down with one slim hand to calm a grizzling baby girl (judging by all the pink) in a pram at the end of the row of benches. John follows her movements with his eyes, smiles as the girl’s crying turns into happy babbling instead. Isabella notices the direction of his gaze and puts the novel away next to her, before lifting the baby up, seating her on her lap. “And this is Caroline.”

“John,” he tells her, coos a bit when the baby notices him, wide-eyed and mouth open. “She’s very sweet.”

“I take it you don’t have children of your own, John, or you’d know they’re a living nightmare at this age,” Isabella jokes while kissing Caroline’s round, rose-coloured cheek. He wonders, very briefly, very much in passing, what it would be like, raising a child with someone like Sherlock, an existence that would on one hand never leave the baby understimulated, true, but on the other, might potentially get it kidnapped or killed (if not drugged, once Sherlock had to prove what sort of chemical compound most easily dissolved in ready-made avocado and banana mash). The face he makes isn’t wholly voluntary, as he shelves the thought quickly.

“I work in a field where I can fortunately always turn them over to their parents when they don’t think I’m fun anymore,” he replies. At her questioning look, he elaborates: “I’m a doctor.”

She looks surprised and this time, it’s his turn to raise an eyebrow. Questioningly.

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” she admits. Caroline has both hands buried in her hair at this point, tugging at it vehemently. It must be the definition of motherly love, the way Isabella doesn’t even flinch, he thinks, smiling slightly.

“And what would you have guessed?”

“I don’t know, something less -- academic, less orderly?”

John laughs. She watches him for a moment, then starts laughing, too.

“Am I wrong?”

“Well, apparently I also, from time to time, serve as biographer for this private detective and we solve crimes which I then blog about, does that sound more along the vein you’d imagined?”

“Maybe not quite so specifically, but yes. Much more like it.”

“I’m not sure what to think about being so transparent,” he confesses, still chuckling somewhat. Isabella moves Caroline from her right arm to her left, so she can lift the book they were both reading just a moment ago.

“You and the novel, John.”

They smile at each other.

A new flight is called over the loudspeakers and Isabella frowns, turning to tug the baby away in the pram again. Leaning back in his seat, John lets his eyes follow the panorama windows on his left, with a view of the runways outside, thinking that she might be on her way now and feeling rather impatient that there’s still thirty bloody minutes until it’s his turn to board. To return. To come home.

To someone, this time.

Then, there’s the sound of paper tearing and he looks back in Isabella’s direction just in time to see her rip a page out of the horrible murder mystery that any of his blog entries could honestly outdo, writing something onto the edge of it with a pen and meeting his eyes for a second, before holding it out. He takes it, mostly as a reflex, automatics.

“My number,” she explains and he can’t really control the way both his eyebrows go on the rise, “I’ll be in Istanbul all of next week, but after that I usually drop by London one or twice a month, if you’d like to meet up. Thank you for the talk.”

And like that, she’s fled with her borrowed tram and her baby and her pretty, red curls. John stares after her, the paper crumbling between his fingers, until he makes an exasperated noise and just curls it up in his hand, throwing it the same way the novel went first. Why was dating never this easy before Sherlock came along, seriously?

Maybe it was, maybe that’s why he was always so incredibly bored, yes?

These days, he’s only ever bored when he has to wait half an hour for his flight that’ll take an additional hour to get him back to where he actually, honest to God wants to be.