queen-of—the-ashes gave me this lovely idea. So here is a new longfic:

Chapter 1

John Smith turned around the corner and parked his van in the driveway of his new home. As he got out, his fingers smoothed the writing on the door that said "The Doctor – Home Repair & Plumbing Service". After starting his own business a few months ago he had chosen the cheapest stickers for his car and he was now starting to regret that decision as he realized they would soon need replacing. He slammed it shut and made his way towards the house. The lock clicked as he turned his key in the front door and John stepped into the spacious corridor. His new home was so much bigger than his sister's house in Glasgow where he had been staying for the past six months, and he had been suffering from nightmares every single night during his stay. It would get better, John told himself, this house in London was a new beginning, a new chapter of his life and he desperately needed to put the past 25 years behind him.

Everything would turn out fine. After all, he was off to a very lucky start. Under normal circumstances he wouldn't have been able to afford a house in this area, not while he was working as a handyman and plumber, but this kind of work was all he had been doing for the past two and a half decades and John had become very good at it. As it so happened, when this particular house had gone on sale, it soon turned out to be in a rather bad state and no other potential buyer had been willing to invest a big amount of money into the repairs. John had known that he would be able to fix most of it by himself, so he hadn't hesitated. And now he was standing in the large and still empty living room, overlooking his front yard – with a clear view on the house across the street.

John had been lucky indeed to find a house right across the street from the reason he had decided to move to London. There it was. Big, made out of red bricks, white framed windows and flowers in the front yard. The house his son was living in.

John had never seen Alexander in the 30 years of his life. He had been dating a young woman named Sarah Jane back then in Glasgow, who had been torn between him and another man whose name he couldn't even remember now. When she had found out about the pregnancy, Sarah Jane had informed John about her decision to raise her child with the other man, as she had found John to be too unreliable. She had been right and at first John hadn't minded too much, young and stupid as he had been back then. He had told himself that there would be other chances, other women, that there was still time to settle down and become a family man – but life had played the cruellest of jokes on him and now everything had changed.

The young man living across the street was his only chance at having his own family and John wanted to get to know him. Slowly. Carefully. Befriend him before springing the truth on him. John knew nothing about him at all other than his name and his address and it would take time. Just like John would need time to settle into his new life.

Making his way back to the car to unload the few things he had brought from Glasgow, his eyes suddenly wandered back to the house and through the window he spotted a young woman – and she was in trouble. She was fighting a fountain that came shooting out of her kitchen sink and obviously cursing bitterly. Without thinking John crossed the road and rang the doorbell before he could stop himself.

"Bad timing! Very, very bad!" he heard the woman shouting from inside the house, followed by some words she surely wouldn't use if there were children in the house as well.

"I'm a plumber, if it's any help!" John called back, raising his voice so she could hear him.

Only seconds later the door opened and a very flustered, soaking wet, young woman appeared in front of him.

"Gosh, you must be heaven sent!" she panted, sounding slightly relieved, "Kitchen. Water everywhere!"

John let her lead the way and sure enough, she hadn't lied when she had said that there was water everywhere. He quickly knelt down and opened the cupboard under the sink, turning off the water flow to the tap before it did any more damage. It stopped instantly.

John sat back up again, realizing that his trousers were already soaked. Only now he looked back at the woman, who must surely be his son's girlfriend and he immediately determined that his son was a very, very lucky man. She was in her late 20s, 30 at most and looked beautiful, with innocent, big eyes and a shy smile.

"Sorry," John said after a moment, "I didn't mean to impose on you. I was just about to unload my car when I saw you through the window and you looked like you could need some help."

"Oh, no!" the woman said immediately, "No, you didn't impose at all. I really, really needed some help. I'd have called a plumbing service and I think my kitchen would have been completely flooded by the time they would have gotten here. So, thank you. Really, thank you!"

John granted her a smile. "Well, in that case – happy to help. Listen, I'm gonna run across the street, change my clothes and get my toolbox, okay? This is just a temporary fix and you won't have any water here until it's been taken care of properly."

The woman's eyes widened. "Oh, you're the new neighbour? The one who bought Sam and Betsy's house?"

He nodded in reply and he extended his hand for a proper introduction. "Yep, that's me. John Smith."

The woman shook his hand, smiling broadly at him. "I'm Clara Oswald. My boyfriend and I just moved here about a year ago. Boring area, really."

So his assumption had been right. Clara really was his son's girlfriend and John liked her immediately. She seemed friendly and bright and had this twinkling in her eyes that told him she was probably very feisty, too, if she needed to be.

He excused himself and went back home, kicking off his soaked jeans and grabbing a clean pair from the only box that was labelled "clothes", before picking up his toolbox and went back to help Clara. He had thought that befriending his son wouldn't be easy, that it might take months – but Clara's misfortune with the kitchen sink actually proved to be his luck.

John stepped back into the kitchen when was Clara was just mopping up the rest of the water and he realized that she, too, had changed into dry clothes.

"What is wrong with the tap?" she asked as he bent over the sink.

"It's old and leaking. I'll replace it, I've always got a spare in my toolbox for emergencies like this. Don't worry, it'll only take ten minutes or so."

John rummaged through the box and noticed that Clara still wasn't leaving his side, so he looked up to her.

"Is there anything else?"

Clara bit her lip. "It's not gonna cost me an arm and a leg, is it?"

For a moment John was confused until he had registered that she expected him to want to get paid for his services. He chuckled. "Oh, no, don't worry. First emergency is free," he said, setting down a few tools on the counter, "But I would appreciate some recommendations around the neighbourhood. To promote my business."

"Consider it done," Clara replied with a smile and turned around to where the kettle was standing, "I'm making tea. Do you want some while you're here?"

John accepted thankfully and continued to work on the tap. A short while later Clara received a phone call, which he couldn't help but overhear and obviously his son was on the other end of the line, informing a not so amused Clara that he'd be home late. Some part of him was disappointed to have missed a chance of meeting him today, but John kept telling himself that there was still time. He would get to know his son eventually.

"There, as good as new," John announced after Clara had set the phone aside. He turned on the tap to demonstrate that it was working and she applauded him cheerfully.

"Thank you so much! You're a lifesaver!" she said gratefully and suddenly something seemed to cross her mind, "Hey, do you like chocolate soufflé?"

John shrugged. "I've never tried it."

He watched her glance towards the oven. "Would you like some with your tea?" she asked him, "I made two, but Alex is working late again and it's not really good unless it's still hot."

"Oh, no," John shook his head, "I can't steal your boyfriend's dinner."

Clara rolled her eyes. "He's having Chinese take-out with colleagues, he won't want it anyway. It's either you or the waste bin."

He considered it for a moment.

"Please," Clara added, "If you're not gonna let me pay for fixing the tap, at least accept the soufflé."

"Alright," John eventually agreed and Clara offered him a seat at the kitchen table while bringing him a cup of tea and retrieving the steaming soufflé from the oven. He had to admit that it really smelled delicious, though, after 25 years of prison food, the same could be said about McDonald's burgers and fries. A couple of minutes later Clara took the seat across the table.

"So, Mr Smith," Clara began, "Did you move hear from Scotland?"

John laughed. "What gave me away? Surely not the accent? And please, call me John. I'm from a Glaswegian neighbourhood that has kind of a familiar atmosphere and being formal with my neighbours seems really foreign to me."

"Glasgow, huh? I've heard that city is supposed to be very bleak. My boyfriend Alex is from there, but his family moved to London when he was five. He hated it there."

John absorbed the information about his son as he took a spoonful of soufflé in his mouth – to his surprise, it tasted better than he had expected.

"Do you like it?" Clara asked hopefully, "I used my mother's recipe, but I can never quite get it to taste the way I remember it."

John swallowed. "You have nothing to worry about. This is delicious."

He watched Clara's cheek blush a little. "You're a lot nicer than the last neighbours. And they had terribly noisy children, the worst I have ever seen. You don't have young children, do you?"

"No," John replied, "No young children. Why? Don't you like kids?"

"Oh, I do. I wouldn't have become a teacher if I didn't. But those kids that used to live in your house – playground terrorists," she rolled her eyes.

He continued on his soufflé, unsure of what to reply to that, when Clara suddenly spoke again.

"Hey, listen, Alex and I have invited some friends for a barbecue on Friday, before the season is over. Why don't you and your wife come over as well? It'll be nice and you can get to know a few people from the neighbourhood," she suggested.

"I, uhm," he spluttered, "I don't have a wife."

"Come on your own then," Clara said cheerfully.

A barbecue. At his son's house. Where he would be meeting him, probably for the first time. Suddenly John felt very insecure and wasn't sure if coming here had been the right decision after all. He would probably have to answer a lot of questions – people were always curious about the new neighbour – and he wasn't really keen on telling everyone about his past right away. But it was a chance to get to know his son.

"Should I bring something?" John found himself asking, agreeing before his brain had even made a decision.

"Bring whatever you like, or nothing at all. We're not picky."

John smiled at the young woman in front of him. Clara was absolutely lovely and she was making it easy for him to feel welcome. And if she liked him, chances were that his son would grow to like him as well.