Fic: The Lambs of Spring (RPF, Nick/Carolyn, PG-13)
It's an experiment. Feel free to read, or skip. I welcome your thoughts, as do the subjects of the fic.
Title: The Lambs of Spring
Author: amand_r
Fandom: RPF
Characters: Nicholas H. Cruentum/Carolyn
Rating: PG-13 for language
Wordcount: 2,980
Author's Notes: This is part of the RPS fictive construct challenge. Some of this stuff is from factual knowledge of the peoples involved based on what they have said or written. Some of it, including this scenario, is completely fictional. LOL. Biography? "Be nice to me or I'll put you in my novel"?
Summary: They see each other so rarely. It shouldn't be this fraught with crap.
The suitcase is a pain in his arse, but he'll be damned if he's going to check it, because the last time they lost it and he had to traipse about in the same fucking clothes for days. So he yanks it and wishes that it were more stylish. Maybe something with shiny sparkles or something. No, no, racing stripes.
It doesn't help that he's got a backpack on, a Starbucks cup in the other hand and is cradling his mobile in the crook of his cheek and shoulder as he races down the causeway. The handle on the roller bag is extra long, and it's still too fucking short.
"Okay," she says, when she picks up. "I'm at baggage. Hit me."
He smiles at some girl in a panda hat and dredges his brain, but it doesn't take long. "Barrowfact," he says, "John was bullied for his accent."
There's a snort. He can hear her eyes rolling, and then she murmurs, "Oh, excuse me, that's mine." Then back into the phone. "I have my bag. Also? That is not a new fact. Are you running out of facts?"
It was easier when he first started. Now he thinks sometimes he sounds like a broken record. Who the fuck cares? It's fun. "Uh, no. Wait." He turns a corner too fast and his roller bag goes over on one wheel. He trips some business class flyer who glares at him in his jeans and coat and mobile and coffee, and of course, he's in a suit this one, and all dolled up, getting on a flight to somewhere very important before Nick had tripped him up by accident with his bag that he wishes was like, much cooler.
John Barrowman doesn't have to take this shit. Man, he wanted a PA. Then he could haul ass to the gate and let his put upon PA take the rear. Flashy. He'd have to upgrade to a Blackberry and leather racing jacket.
"Fact," he says finally after the man has muttered a few things about him and barreled on ahead like some goddamn speedwalker on the people mover. He must be going at the speed of light and Nick pauses for a second to see if he can hear the sonic boom. Nope. Just the sound of tonnes of people trying to get somewhere like, yesterday.
"Fact," he repeats, "John Barrowman got his first dog when he was an adult as a present from Valentino." It's a good one, and he's rewarded when she laughs, warm and jovial on the phone. He's good at reading her on the phone; mostly that's all they have, with half a globe between them. He maps her breaths with his ear instead of her curves with his fingers, her sighs with his heart instead of her lips with his mouth.
Ah, sentiment too early. Get there first, then get mushy.
"No, really?" she asks. "Hey, I'm getting magazines at the stand-thingy. Do you want me to get you the Torchwood magazine? They have the new one right here."
He thinks about it. She must hear his brain working. "John's on the cover, but he's all glossy."
"Yes, please."
"Anyway, why would Valentino get him a dog?" she mumbles, and Nick smiles.
This shit is so easy, it comes so easily, and it would be better if psych came this easily. Maybe someday he can do a study about memory and interest, or something about perception of celebrity. Or maybe he can just get to the gate and get on the plane without being mown down by every rugby player in the whole airport.
"So he went to Valentino's yacht because he thought he was just going to model for him, but it turns out that Valentino just wanted to get into his pants." Nick nods. This is understandable.
"Uh huh," Carolyn says. "I hate these pound coins."
Nick knows that's her signal for, 'continue, please.' "So he leaves, and goes home. A few days later, Penny shows up."
"I bet there was a bow," Carolyn says, and he hears the phone jostle as she tilts it. "Hold on. I have to pay for this stuff."
Nick angles for the last hallway towards his gate and checks his watch with his coffee hand, which makes the latte spill out of the cup slit and onto the carpet. He presses on. Hopefully no one saw that classy move. He's got forty minutes until boarding. He's the time fucking master.
"I bet it was all sparkly and he seriously reconsidered banging Valentino," he muses. "Oh no wait, he's all old and crusty, right?"
"Watch it, mister," Carolyn murmurs and then he hears her thank the shopkeep and there's a rustle of bags and he knows she's on the move again. In his head he matches her slower stride, as if they're already on the same ground, in the same country, in the same airport, instead of suspended through satellites. Love through tin can phones.
"What is the name of our hotel again?" Carolyn asks. "If it's close I might check in and come back for you. This bag is heavy. People sent me things for you. It's the one by the cemetery, right?"
He avoids a runaway child and rolls his eyes. He would tell her, but he's already told her all this, and she has it printed and in her itinerary book; they both have one so that if one of them gets lost the other will have a copy. His book is tucked into his backpack, along with the lightest text he could manage to fit in there and still feel like he would be able to study for exams without slacking off. "I don't know. You'll have to look."
"You're supposed to know this stuff," she says lightly, because she's more amused that he doesn't have everything memorised. He almost did last time. That he doesn't this time must mean that he's lightening up. Four trips to Cardiff in less than a year. Something is lighter, and it rides in his back pocket. Of course, there are immeasurable things that have lightened too, and they make it worth it.
As he gets closer and closer to the gate it starts to become obvious that something is wrong. There are way too many people at the ticket counter, and the noise is escalating, as if they are all watching a football match and rooting for the losing team.
His stomach does a flip that has nothing to do with the fact that this is his first latte of the day, his first anything of the day. "Shit," he murmurs.
"What is it?" she says into the phone. Her voice has that 'There's trouble, isn't there?' tone and he can't disagree with it, not when he sees the massive piles of angry people at the ticket counters and he wonders what could have possibly gone wrong in the fifteen minutes since he had checked his flight at the board when he'd got in.
He turns his head to look at the board, where slowly every single British Airways flight status is scrolling to "GESTRICHEN". People are watching with dumbfounded faces, and Nick realises that the moment he purchased the ticket in February, he had sealed the fate of British Airways and their impending strike. If he had gone Lufthansa, none of this would be happening.
Oh come now, that's the kind of thinking reserved for sci-fi shows and magical thinkers. You're none of those.
"Nick?" she says, "what's going on?
Oh Jesus. Right now he can hear Sam and Amanda in his head: "Just spend the extra Euros, Nick." "Don't be a hater, Nick.". The Lufthansa flights wink on merrily, mocking him. Fuckers.
"Problem."
***
The thing about yelling at the people behind the ticket booth is that they can't do anything. Nick shakes his head and does the one thing he can do: he runs for the Lufthansa counters at full tilt, impressive because he manages to slam dunk his coffee in a bin that might be for garbage (it might have been for plastics, whoops) and his bag has officially taken flight behind him, lifting off, unlike every British Airways plane for what he figures will be the next week or so.
The people at the Lufthansa desks must have been ready for him, and the hundred other people who run for them like a stampede. Everyone has places to go, and only those who have no money for another ticket bother to stay at the BA desk, bitching and complaining about things that are just part of the human condition. Nick thinks that he doesn't mind that BA workers want to be paid fair wages, he just wishes they could have made that statement two weeks from now.
They put him on standby for three flights to Heathrow, he'll pay when he gets on one, they say, standard thing for times like this, and he settles in for a wait. Calls Carolyn back, now that he's all morose and there's nothing else he can do. Carolyn is in her taxi, but she's fading in and out, and when she cuts off in mid-sentence, he decides there's nothing he can do but wait. Wait for her, wait for the planes, wait for the whole fucking vacation to roll by while he's glued to the carpet at the airport with fifty million other irate travellers.
He sits on the floor, his feet on the suitcase as a way to lay claim to it and flips through the pages of the psych book. Human sexuality. Right now he's more interested in whom he has to blow to get on a plane.
He boots up Gwennie and shells out the five Euros for internet service, because Jesus, he could be here forever. Someone online would be able to tell him what level of hell he is currently residing in. Anya, maybe. He sends a few emails.
'so BA is on strike and c is in london and i'm stuck here in germany. i hate germans in airports. Fucking british airways.
awwww, man, I should have paid for lufthansa.'
In five minutes he is rewarded with things like, "Oh, suck. Is there anything we can do?" and, "Offer your body for a plane seat" and the very unhelpful, "Maybe you can get a seat on a Lufthansa flight?" He eyes the counters, now coiled with living snakes of people and queues (hey don't have that natural instinct for lining up, he'd have to mention it later in an email or three) and shuts Gwennie's lid and his textbook, sets them in his lap, and wills the phone to ring.
***
Carolyn calls three hours later and he confesses that he's still waiting. Has been waiting forever. The window may close for them. Her SIM card had been malfunctioning and she had to buy a new disposable phone.
"I had dinner at some African place," Carolyn tells him. "Everything was spicy."
"I ate a stale cookie. I think it was in my bag from when I went to panto."
She sighs. "I didn't like eating alone," and he feels guilty. He's a cheap shit, and he'd known this was going to happen. From the moment he'd clicked 'purchase' (gepurchase, ha ha funny), it had sat in his belly like one of those crap pasties Mander tried to get him to eat when they went to Cardiff in October.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles and he wonders if she'll feel better if he sings her a song, maybe something from the new album (yeah, it's been out for a month and he has all the songs memorised. What of it?), but all he can think of is something from Music Music Music and for some god awful reason, all the words to 'Shitpool', which doesn't help and is not in any way shape or form romantic unless you're from Newport, maybe.
"I ate one of the vegan cupcakes I brought for you from Blue," she says conspiratorially, and he's unsure whether or not to tell her that she should punish him and eat all of his vegan cupcakes. He's not interested in red velvet unless Scott Gill is draped naked in a bed of it.
His name booms over the loudspeaker and for one second he realises that God doesn't need a loudspeaker, and also, he doesn't believe in god, but that anyone would be calling his name-oh. He scrambles to his feet, promises, yeah yeah, I love you, oh my god this might be it. I'll call you as soon as I can yes, and then he's over to the counter, bags, books, coat, everything in his arms like he's a refugee fleeing the city.
Which of course he is.
It's a whirlwind and he had thought for a second somewhere they he was going to have to slip cash to someone, or possibly smuggle a baby into the UK in his suitcase in order to get a seat, but they say something about an extra fee, and the pays it with his temporary plastic card, now immensely relieved that he'd just thrown all the money on it instead of parceling it out like last time. His mother had said, "Oh, it's not like you can't find ways to spend it. Cash, card, it'll all spend eventually," and she'd been right, and he would call her to tell her that except that she'd say, "Why did you book on British Airways? Didn't you know they were going to strike?" and he'd have to facepalm, and he doesn't have a free hand.
He calls Carolyn from his seat, which is a very real seat and not an optical illusion or a crate tied onto a bucket with twine, and they say more in the vein of, "oh my god, I can't believe it this is shit luck oh my god, thank goodness" until he has to turn off the phone.
He's too amped up to study and there's no point in getting the laptop out for thirty minutes of worktime, and anyway, all the things he could work on without a wireless connection are things he'd need at least twenty minutes reading and thinking about before he could even begin to type out anything, so instead he pulls out a small notebook and stares out the window.
The leg room blows.
He pulls out the maps that they have set up, the reservations for London and of course Ty Rosa in Cardiff, and he runs his fingers down the roads they'll take in the rental car. He thinks about the C roads and how he'll 'accidentally' take them on them, and how she'll shriek and blame him. Someone told him that there are lambs everywhere right now.
He likes the idea of all the lambs, fresh and young and (if one can ignore that most of them will end up on a dinner plate) all innocent and frolicky. Seasonal, and new. He can't wait to see the roll of green hillside and the rock fences and even the occasional industrial waste yard (they had vowed to stay away from Newport, but come on, Gaz is from there, man.). And Sully. Mustn't forget Sully.
He doesn't know how long he just looks at the lines of the maps until they wiggle in his vision. He can't sleep on planes, so he just taps out rhythms with his pencil, calculates distances because mileage problems are fun: A train leaves Munich at three-fifty p.m. A bus leaves Dallas at nine thirty am. How many months until you can see your girlfriend again?
Of course they'll visit Trafalgar Square and she'll want to see the lions and then the National Gallery. They'll bop about on the Underground and do little dances in the lights at the Eye, and he'll let her take a smirky picture of him next to something poignant so they can mail it to friends.
She hasn't seen him with the short hair yet, not in person, not for real, and he reaches up to touch the spikes of it. Still holding.
Eventually they'll go back to their hotel rooms and there will be privacy, no tin cans, no string, and paper maps in his fingers will become skin, and her sighs and breathing will be next to the flesh of his ear and cheek, and limbs will meet limbs and there will be nothing, not mileage or geography or whatever euphemism he could call it for 'long distance relationship'.
In the morning he won't have to call her on the phone because he can dial her number by heart right on her chest, and she won't have to pick up because she can just open her eyes. It will be like magic.
The plane lands and everyone moves as if they are painted in syrup, peanut butter, molasses. Heathrow is a nightmare even when people aren't looking to kill someone to get on a plane. He wades through wandering packs of people, eyes drifting, then darting, looking for a dark cap of hair, but there are so many people and who knows where she is and how he'll find her eventually, even in the mess. It occurs to him that this is why they have mobiles, for moments like this, and he dials her number, waiting.
There's a trilling from behind him the same time Carolyn's voice says over his shoulder. "Barrowfact: John likes Marmite."
And then he can turn and hit end at the same time, but it's not the end, it's the beginning, the end of something shitty so that this can begin, and when she wraps her arms around him in the crowded press of an airport full of irate humans, it's all ready to start. And his mouth on hers is "play".
END
Title: The Lambs of Spring
Author: amand_r
Fandom: RPF
Characters: Nicholas H. Cruentum/Carolyn
Rating: PG-13 for language
Wordcount: 2,980
Author's Notes: This is part of the RPS fictive construct challenge. Some of this stuff is from factual knowledge of the peoples involved based on what they have said or written. Some of it, including this scenario, is completely fictional. LOL. Biography? "Be nice to me or I'll put you in my novel"?
Summary: They see each other so rarely. It shouldn't be this fraught with crap.
The suitcase is a pain in his arse, but he'll be damned if he's going to check it, because the last time they lost it and he had to traipse about in the same fucking clothes for days. So he yanks it and wishes that it were more stylish. Maybe something with shiny sparkles or something. No, no, racing stripes.
It doesn't help that he's got a backpack on, a Starbucks cup in the other hand and is cradling his mobile in the crook of his cheek and shoulder as he races down the causeway. The handle on the roller bag is extra long, and it's still too fucking short.
"Okay," she says, when she picks up. "I'm at baggage. Hit me."
He smiles at some girl in a panda hat and dredges his brain, but it doesn't take long. "Barrowfact," he says, "John was bullied for his accent."
There's a snort. He can hear her eyes rolling, and then she murmurs, "Oh, excuse me, that's mine." Then back into the phone. "I have my bag. Also? That is not a new fact. Are you running out of facts?"
It was easier when he first started. Now he thinks sometimes he sounds like a broken record. Who the fuck cares? It's fun. "Uh, no. Wait." He turns a corner too fast and his roller bag goes over on one wheel. He trips some business class flyer who glares at him in his jeans and coat and mobile and coffee, and of course, he's in a suit this one, and all dolled up, getting on a flight to somewhere very important before Nick had tripped him up by accident with his bag that he wishes was like, much cooler.
John Barrowman doesn't have to take this shit. Man, he wanted a PA. Then he could haul ass to the gate and let his put upon PA take the rear. Flashy. He'd have to upgrade to a Blackberry and leather racing jacket.
"Fact," he says finally after the man has muttered a few things about him and barreled on ahead like some goddamn speedwalker on the people mover. He must be going at the speed of light and Nick pauses for a second to see if he can hear the sonic boom. Nope. Just the sound of tonnes of people trying to get somewhere like, yesterday.
"Fact," he repeats, "John Barrowman got his first dog when he was an adult as a present from Valentino." It's a good one, and he's rewarded when she laughs, warm and jovial on the phone. He's good at reading her on the phone; mostly that's all they have, with half a globe between them. He maps her breaths with his ear instead of her curves with his fingers, her sighs with his heart instead of her lips with his mouth.
Ah, sentiment too early. Get there first, then get mushy.
"No, really?" she asks. "Hey, I'm getting magazines at the stand-thingy. Do you want me to get you the Torchwood magazine? They have the new one right here."
He thinks about it. She must hear his brain working. "John's on the cover, but he's all glossy."
"Yes, please."
"Anyway, why would Valentino get him a dog?" she mumbles, and Nick smiles.
This shit is so easy, it comes so easily, and it would be better if psych came this easily. Maybe someday he can do a study about memory and interest, or something about perception of celebrity. Or maybe he can just get to the gate and get on the plane without being mown down by every rugby player in the whole airport.
"So he went to Valentino's yacht because he thought he was just going to model for him, but it turns out that Valentino just wanted to get into his pants." Nick nods. This is understandable.
"Uh huh," Carolyn says. "I hate these pound coins."
Nick knows that's her signal for, 'continue, please.' "So he leaves, and goes home. A few days later, Penny shows up."
"I bet there was a bow," Carolyn says, and he hears the phone jostle as she tilts it. "Hold on. I have to pay for this stuff."
Nick angles for the last hallway towards his gate and checks his watch with his coffee hand, which makes the latte spill out of the cup slit and onto the carpet. He presses on. Hopefully no one saw that classy move. He's got forty minutes until boarding. He's the time fucking master.
"I bet it was all sparkly and he seriously reconsidered banging Valentino," he muses. "Oh no wait, he's all old and crusty, right?"
"Watch it, mister," Carolyn murmurs and then he hears her thank the shopkeep and there's a rustle of bags and he knows she's on the move again. In his head he matches her slower stride, as if they're already on the same ground, in the same country, in the same airport, instead of suspended through satellites. Love through tin can phones.
"What is the name of our hotel again?" Carolyn asks. "If it's close I might check in and come back for you. This bag is heavy. People sent me things for you. It's the one by the cemetery, right?"
He avoids a runaway child and rolls his eyes. He would tell her, but he's already told her all this, and she has it printed and in her itinerary book; they both have one so that if one of them gets lost the other will have a copy. His book is tucked into his backpack, along with the lightest text he could manage to fit in there and still feel like he would be able to study for exams without slacking off. "I don't know. You'll have to look."
"You're supposed to know this stuff," she says lightly, because she's more amused that he doesn't have everything memorised. He almost did last time. That he doesn't this time must mean that he's lightening up. Four trips to Cardiff in less than a year. Something is lighter, and it rides in his back pocket. Of course, there are immeasurable things that have lightened too, and they make it worth it.
As he gets closer and closer to the gate it starts to become obvious that something is wrong. There are way too many people at the ticket counter, and the noise is escalating, as if they are all watching a football match and rooting for the losing team.
His stomach does a flip that has nothing to do with the fact that this is his first latte of the day, his first anything of the day. "Shit," he murmurs.
"What is it?" she says into the phone. Her voice has that 'There's trouble, isn't there?' tone and he can't disagree with it, not when he sees the massive piles of angry people at the ticket counters and he wonders what could have possibly gone wrong in the fifteen minutes since he had checked his flight at the board when he'd got in.
He turns his head to look at the board, where slowly every single British Airways flight status is scrolling to "GESTRICHEN". People are watching with dumbfounded faces, and Nick realises that the moment he purchased the ticket in February, he had sealed the fate of British Airways and their impending strike. If he had gone Lufthansa, none of this would be happening.
Oh come now, that's the kind of thinking reserved for sci-fi shows and magical thinkers. You're none of those.
"Nick?" she says, "what's going on?
Oh Jesus. Right now he can hear Sam and Amanda in his head: "Just spend the extra Euros, Nick." "Don't be a hater, Nick.". The Lufthansa flights wink on merrily, mocking him. Fuckers.
"Problem."
***
The thing about yelling at the people behind the ticket booth is that they can't do anything. Nick shakes his head and does the one thing he can do: he runs for the Lufthansa counters at full tilt, impressive because he manages to slam dunk his coffee in a bin that might be for garbage (it might have been for plastics, whoops) and his bag has officially taken flight behind him, lifting off, unlike every British Airways plane for what he figures will be the next week or so.
The people at the Lufthansa desks must have been ready for him, and the hundred other people who run for them like a stampede. Everyone has places to go, and only those who have no money for another ticket bother to stay at the BA desk, bitching and complaining about things that are just part of the human condition. Nick thinks that he doesn't mind that BA workers want to be paid fair wages, he just wishes they could have made that statement two weeks from now.
They put him on standby for three flights to Heathrow, he'll pay when he gets on one, they say, standard thing for times like this, and he settles in for a wait. Calls Carolyn back, now that he's all morose and there's nothing else he can do. Carolyn is in her taxi, but she's fading in and out, and when she cuts off in mid-sentence, he decides there's nothing he can do but wait. Wait for her, wait for the planes, wait for the whole fucking vacation to roll by while he's glued to the carpet at the airport with fifty million other irate travellers.
He sits on the floor, his feet on the suitcase as a way to lay claim to it and flips through the pages of the psych book. Human sexuality. Right now he's more interested in whom he has to blow to get on a plane.
He boots up Gwennie and shells out the five Euros for internet service, because Jesus, he could be here forever. Someone online would be able to tell him what level of hell he is currently residing in. Anya, maybe. He sends a few emails.
'so BA is on strike and c is in london and i'm stuck here in germany. i hate germans in airports. Fucking british airways.
awwww, man, I should have paid for lufthansa.'
In five minutes he is rewarded with things like, "Oh, suck. Is there anything we can do?" and, "Offer your body for a plane seat" and the very unhelpful, "Maybe you can get a seat on a Lufthansa flight?" He eyes the counters, now coiled with living snakes of people and queues (hey don't have that natural instinct for lining up, he'd have to mention it later in an email or three) and shuts Gwennie's lid and his textbook, sets them in his lap, and wills the phone to ring.
***
Carolyn calls three hours later and he confesses that he's still waiting. Has been waiting forever. The window may close for them. Her SIM card had been malfunctioning and she had to buy a new disposable phone.
"I had dinner at some African place," Carolyn tells him. "Everything was spicy."
"I ate a stale cookie. I think it was in my bag from when I went to panto."
She sighs. "I didn't like eating alone," and he feels guilty. He's a cheap shit, and he'd known this was going to happen. From the moment he'd clicked 'purchase' (gepurchase, ha ha funny), it had sat in his belly like one of those crap pasties Mander tried to get him to eat when they went to Cardiff in October.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles and he wonders if she'll feel better if he sings her a song, maybe something from the new album (yeah, it's been out for a month and he has all the songs memorised. What of it?), but all he can think of is something from Music Music Music and for some god awful reason, all the words to 'Shitpool', which doesn't help and is not in any way shape or form romantic unless you're from Newport, maybe.
"I ate one of the vegan cupcakes I brought for you from Blue," she says conspiratorially, and he's unsure whether or not to tell her that she should punish him and eat all of his vegan cupcakes. He's not interested in red velvet unless Scott Gill is draped naked in a bed of it.
His name booms over the loudspeaker and for one second he realises that God doesn't need a loudspeaker, and also, he doesn't believe in god, but that anyone would be calling his name-oh. He scrambles to his feet, promises, yeah yeah, I love you, oh my god this might be it. I'll call you as soon as I can yes, and then he's over to the counter, bags, books, coat, everything in his arms like he's a refugee fleeing the city.
Which of course he is.
It's a whirlwind and he had thought for a second somewhere they he was going to have to slip cash to someone, or possibly smuggle a baby into the UK in his suitcase in order to get a seat, but they say something about an extra fee, and the pays it with his temporary plastic card, now immensely relieved that he'd just thrown all the money on it instead of parceling it out like last time. His mother had said, "Oh, it's not like you can't find ways to spend it. Cash, card, it'll all spend eventually," and she'd been right, and he would call her to tell her that except that she'd say, "Why did you book on British Airways? Didn't you know they were going to strike?" and he'd have to facepalm, and he doesn't have a free hand.
He calls Carolyn from his seat, which is a very real seat and not an optical illusion or a crate tied onto a bucket with twine, and they say more in the vein of, "oh my god, I can't believe it this is shit luck oh my god, thank goodness" until he has to turn off the phone.
He's too amped up to study and there's no point in getting the laptop out for thirty minutes of worktime, and anyway, all the things he could work on without a wireless connection are things he'd need at least twenty minutes reading and thinking about before he could even begin to type out anything, so instead he pulls out a small notebook and stares out the window.
The leg room blows.
He pulls out the maps that they have set up, the reservations for London and of course Ty Rosa in Cardiff, and he runs his fingers down the roads they'll take in the rental car. He thinks about the C roads and how he'll 'accidentally' take them on them, and how she'll shriek and blame him. Someone told him that there are lambs everywhere right now.
He likes the idea of all the lambs, fresh and young and (if one can ignore that most of them will end up on a dinner plate) all innocent and frolicky. Seasonal, and new. He can't wait to see the roll of green hillside and the rock fences and even the occasional industrial waste yard (they had vowed to stay away from Newport, but come on, Gaz is from there, man.). And Sully. Mustn't forget Sully.
He doesn't know how long he just looks at the lines of the maps until they wiggle in his vision. He can't sleep on planes, so he just taps out rhythms with his pencil, calculates distances because mileage problems are fun: A train leaves Munich at three-fifty p.m. A bus leaves Dallas at nine thirty am. How many months until you can see your girlfriend again?
Of course they'll visit Trafalgar Square and she'll want to see the lions and then the National Gallery. They'll bop about on the Underground and do little dances in the lights at the Eye, and he'll let her take a smirky picture of him next to something poignant so they can mail it to friends.
She hasn't seen him with the short hair yet, not in person, not for real, and he reaches up to touch the spikes of it. Still holding.
Eventually they'll go back to their hotel rooms and there will be privacy, no tin cans, no string, and paper maps in his fingers will become skin, and her sighs and breathing will be next to the flesh of his ear and cheek, and limbs will meet limbs and there will be nothing, not mileage or geography or whatever euphemism he could call it for 'long distance relationship'.
In the morning he won't have to call her on the phone because he can dial her number by heart right on her chest, and she won't have to pick up because she can just open her eyes. It will be like magic.
The plane lands and everyone moves as if they are painted in syrup, peanut butter, molasses. Heathrow is a nightmare even when people aren't looking to kill someone to get on a plane. He wades through wandering packs of people, eyes drifting, then darting, looking for a dark cap of hair, but there are so many people and who knows where she is and how he'll find her eventually, even in the mess. It occurs to him that this is why they have mobiles, for moments like this, and he dials her number, waiting.
There's a trilling from behind him the same time Carolyn's voice says over his shoulder. "Barrowfact: John likes Marmite."
And then he can turn and hit end at the same time, but it's not the end, it's the beginning, the end of something shitty so that this can begin, and when she wraps her arms around him in the crowded press of an airport full of irate humans, it's all ready to start. And his mouth on hers is "play".
END