//------------------------------//
// Coming Home 
// Story: Fanfic Snips 
// by RangerBeef 
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I sat along the wall, on a bench that had no business being where it was, and watched people as they passed.  Everyone seemed to be in such a hurry.  I was happy to not be among them today.  Bustling this way and that was never really my style.

I sat idly and played with the tic tac in my mouth and lamented the flavor.  Wintergreen.  Terrible.  The airport gift shop had apparently just run out of my usual orange.  But I never bought them for the flavor.  They were a habit that formed early in childhood and never left me.

As if anyone ever wanted to have orange flavored breath.  We all knew they were candy.  We all didn't care, either.  Rainbow always told me they made my mouth taste terrible.  I suppose she was right but it was a harmless habit and she didn't really mind.

Rainbow.  The unruly woman I had somehow tied my life to.  To this day, I still don't know how we ever got together.  Let alone how we stayed together.  Probably the one mystery I would never solve.  We made it work though.

And here I was.  Sitting in an airport on Christmas Eve, waiting for her to fly in so we could go home and do nothing until the new year.  It's really the only time we ever see each other for any real length of time.  Ten days.  That's the longest we see each other all year and somehow we're both okay with it.  It's all we need.

Time enough to run out of competing stories for crazy.  Time enough to eat all the great holiday food we miss out on all year long and enjoy the associated food coma.  Time to get just comfortable enough with home life before it all gets ripped away by our respective careers.

Don't let that last one fool you.  We wouldn't trade what we've got for the world.

Besides, something would be different this year.  This year, I was hanging up my hat and magnifying glass and retiring from the detective business.

So there I sat.  Staring out the plate glass window.  Watching the snow fall in puffy white flakes.  Much as I hated the cold, I always loved to just stand outside when it was snowing gently like this.  The world always seemed quieter.  More serene.

As I stared at the snow absentmindedly, I began to wonder if I had made the right decision.  My mind wandered to all my old cases.  All the lives saved or changed by my actions.  All the aches and pains that carried me from place to place.  All the barroom brawls.  All the running.  God, so much running.

There's an old saying my pop used to tell me.  "Never pick a fight with an old man.  Because if he's too old to fight, he'll just kill you."  It was funny as a kid.  It was funny as an adult.  Now that I'm an old man, it's less funny.  I think about it a lot whenever I feel a fight coming now.  Will this be the time I just kill this guy without caring?  It's not really a pleasant thought.

It didn't matter anymore.  I'd made my choice.  I chose my family.

I looked up suddenly on instinct.  There she was.  Just as beautiful as the first time I saw her in school.  Her hair was beginning to fade from her natural rainbow colors, to a subtle gray.  She didn't like it.  I told her it would better match mine and she felt a little better about it.

She smiled when she spotted me across the busy airport.  She wasted no time in pushing her way through the crowd as I stood to embrace her.  She kissed me quickly and paused afterward.

"Minty."

I stuck my tongue out with the tic tac on it.  "Decided to switch."

She smiled and shook her head at me.  "Don't tell me that's the big surprise change you have for me."

"I suppose I could come up with another.  Let's go home before we get snowed in here."  We started walking hand in hand to the exit and out into the cold but quiet night.  The first night that would become the rest of our lives completely together.