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“You know, we’re about due for another crisis,” Martin says conversationally as he hauls their laundry inside. It’s not quite dry yet, but there are fat gray clouds rolling in beautifully overhead and their clothesline is woefully open to the elements. Jon makes a confused noise as he lifts his head from its place on the sofa, in the middle of what’s not quite a nap but isn’t quite just lying there awake. He’s been drifting in and out of something vaguely sleep-adjacent after another rough night of very human, very expected nightmares.
“What’s that, now?”
“Just saying, if you look at how things have been playing out… I think it’s time, don’t you?”
It’s been three months since Jon staggered out of the Lonely with Peter’s blood on his slacks and Martin’s hand in his, two months since Jon frantically managed to blind himself mid-statement, one month after Daisy appeared on their doorstep ragged and terrified and starving but herself and Martin nearly passed out running down to the village to phone Basira as fast as possible—
Martin finishes dropping everything in a basket and nudging it into a corner—hopefully the rain won’t last too long, their stuff shouldn’t stay damp like that—and sets himself next to Jon, who immediately sits up and leans into him, making his shoulder into a substitute for the sofa cushions. “I suppose,” Jon says, stretching.
He lets Martin settle an arm around him. “What do you think it’ll be, then?”
"Oh, I don't know. We find another case of plastic explosives in the storage shed?"
Martin hums noncommittally. “Melanie did say she and Georgie wanted to visit soon the last time you called, right? Maybe she'll get so pissed off by the roads up here that she'll go back to the Slaughter."
“Maybe their car will die on the way up and they won’t be able to call for help and they’ll get lost in the Scottish wilderness.”
"Maybe they'll forget I'm allergic to cats and bring the Admiral up and I'll break into hives and die."
“Maybe Georgie will bring pictures from when I didn’t wash my hair for three weeks in college and you’ll break up with me.”
Martin laughs at that. “Maybe I will,” he says, and Jon smacks him lightly on the arm. “Hey!”
“I mean, Jon, three weeks, really?”
Jon pushes himself into a more proper sitting position. “I was, uh—busy?”
“Busy.” Martin’s voice is flat, but Jon can hear the smile in it, the barely-suppressed amusement.
“It was finals?”
“Three weeks of finals.” Martin tugs Jon back against him and Jon huffs indignantly. “Fine. Fine, I was gross. I was a gross twenty-one-year-old. Happy?” he says, or tries to say, because Martin starts to talk over him with a burst of laughter. "Twenty-one! I thought, like, eighteen, max—"
"—it was uni," Jon protests weakly, "everyone was living terribly—"
"Most people have jobs at twenty-one, some people havekids at twenty-one—"
"Not many!"
"I bet you didn't wash your face, either," Martin accuses with not-unwarranted confidence, and Jon loses the thread of their initial conversation as he bites back at Martin with at least I could cook more than cup noodles—
They’re about due for another crisis, but in ten minutes the rain breaks and thunder rumbles softly around the cabin, and in forty-five lightning is flashing over the highlands, and in four hours they’re checking to make sure the windows are well and truly locked against the downpour before going to bed, and the crisis comes and goes in the form of a slightly mildewy load of laundry.