xp_logs | Nathan and Jean-Paul, Monday morning

The morning after, Nathan takes stock, and decides that there is some travel in his future.

It was still snowing out when Jean-Paul woke up. Nathan was still in the same position he had been when the speedster had woken an hour ago and first seen the heavy flakes piling up at the windows. He slipped out of bed, heading for the half-bath at the back of the cabin. Nate had slept like the dead, gotten through the night without bad dreams for the first time in weeks. It was a hopeful sign, at the least, not to mention that Jean-Paul had needed a rest himself after the last few weeks.

He headed to the kitchen after, not entirely surprised to find himself faced with a non-electric percolator first thing the morning. He supposed he should count himself lucky that it wasn't a wood-burning stove.

He was still attempting to gain the percolator's cooperation when he heard movement, and a minute or two later, Nathan appeared in the kitchen, looking groggy and somewhat uncertain of where he actually was.

"Coffee?"

"In the works." Jean-Paul hadn't used one of the things in years, but he was reasonably certain that everything was in place by the time he got it on the stove. "How's the hip?"

"Sore." Which was actually putting it mildly, but he still didn't regret the climbing. There was a small kitchen table, just big enough for two people, and Nathan went over and sank into one of the chairs. His gaze strayed towards the window. "Huh. More snow. What time is it?"

Jean-Paul glanced out of the small window over the sink, but the sky overhead was slate grey and overcast.

"It is some time this morning. Did you have someplace to be?" The pot on the stove gurgled comfortingly, promising eventual caffeine. "How's everything other than the hip?"

A pause. "... all right, I suppose." He didn't sound convinced, but the small smile he gave Jean-Paul did have at least a hint of weary humor in it. "Note I didn't use the word 'fine'."

Jean-Paul snorted quietly. "Now would have been a good time for it, too. I'm still not awake enough to do much except glare." He turned to look out at the snow again. "When we do head out, are we both headed back to the school?"

"I actually thought I'd run away to Timbuktu." Feeble, but still a joke. "Ever been to Timbuktu? Really, it's quite the tourist spot. There are mosques. Made of mud."

"For pleasure? The furthest I've been is France." Jean-Paul mused over this. "Hardly fits my image, but I suppose I've never needed to travel for excitement in my life. But I thought you might be getting in touch with civilization to arrange a ticket to a freezing, waterlogged rock off the Scottish coast. It might be better for you than returning to the same house and furniture you've been rearranging for the last few weeks."

Nathan shrugged, the faint smile coming back. "I'll call her when we get in," he said quietly. "Maybe she'll take pity on me and send the plane back. Last thing I need at this point is to go crazy on a commercial flight." He paused. "Crazier."

"I'd say frayed and in severe need of downtime and distance, but not mad." Though that was a wonder, considering all that Nate had been put through. Jean-Paul suppressed a shudder and turned his attention back to the coffee. "Black?"

"I'm sorry, did you just suggest that that there was any possibility I would want you to profane my coffee?" Nathan smoothed down his hair, which was doing a very good job of standing on end.

"Don't give me ideas about what to do to your coffee, Dayspring." Jean-Paul raided the fridge for milk, prepped two mugs, and headed over to the table. Nate's coffee was unaltered out of the pot; Jean-Paul's coffee was only a shade darker than his skin.

"See, that's all kinds of wrong. I need to talk to a couple of people before I go," Nathan said, almost distractedly, as he sipped at his coffee. "Make some arrangements. The office isn't going to stop, just because I need a time out..."

"There is a thing called e-mail now," the speedster remarked dryly. "But I am glad you're going. As you said, you need some room to breathe. You can sit in your rocker, kiss your wife and eat haggis until you're ready to come back."

"I'm going to have to come back before too long." Level, weary gray eyes met Jean-Paul's over the rim of the coffee cup. "My therapist doesn't make house calls to Scotland. And I have a sense I'm going to be seeing him on a regular basis for a while if I don't want this to turn into a full-blown PTSD relapse."

"Probably a good idea to keep it open long enough to drain, even if it scars." When it came to coping, therapists didn't factor in for Jean-Paul. He'd never been to one without an ultimatum prior and resented every moment of it until he got his 'not a danger to self or to others' sign-off. Still, it seemed to work for other people. "And then there are friends for when you've had enough of talking reasonably."

"I wouldn't want to become tedious," Nathan said, not quite lightly. "Ranting and venting and all that jazz is tolerable in small doses. Whining not at all." He sipped at his coffee, his eyes straying away from Jean-Paul's for a moment. "You're... uh, feeling all right this morning? No headache or anything? I'm not deft under the best of circumstances..."

"That's when we go climbing again. Or break things. Breaking things is fun too." Jean-Paul considered trotting out the much reviled 'fine', but dismissed the idea. There really wasn't any point to it after last night. "Some distinctly odd dreams, but no headaches that survived a hot shower. I still...don't quite have my head around all that I saw. Last night was very much feel and react. I'm not sure how much I'm going to retain."

"I hope not too much." Nathan's hands were white-knuckled around his cup, briefly. He forced himself to take a deep breath and continue in a more normal tone. "You were in my head, rather than me being in yours, so nothing should really stick, so to speak."

"Even if I keep it all, I do not regret the choice. Don't pick up one more thing to kick yourself over. Please." Jean-Paul considered the stove again. He was fully awake and starving.

Nathan opened his mouth and then closed it again. Really, not the time for a flippant comment or an argument. He eyed Jean-Paul for a long moment, then ventured a subject change. "I... should talk to Charles, too. When SHIELD debriefed me, I wasn't... I was having trouble focusing," he said, stumbling a little over the words. "There are probably things I remember that I didn't tell them. And after what happened, I owe it to Fury."

Several biting comments about Fury leapt to mind and vied against each other to be the first one out of his mouth, but he swallowed them back at the memory of the three men who'd died in Nate's cell and the others who hadn't even made it through the initial attack. "That's understandable," he managed, softly. "Do you think you could eat?"

"I should." Nathan mustered another small smile. "'Food is fuel'," he said, the quote marks audible. "I learned that a long time ago. Odd how many times I've forgotten that, in the years since..."

"Food is fuel and someone feeding you is better." Jean-Paul rose to his feet, on his way to investigate the cupboards again. "It helps guard against the forgetting bit."

"I've never had much in the way of self-preservation." A joke, but also so, so true.