I’ve been thinking about Martin and Jon’s relationship in season 2, and came across an aspect I hadn’t previously considered.

When Micheal stabs Jon it’s just them, meaning after Micheal slipped away he left Jon alone in his office. The cut was bad, obviously, bad enough to need stitches, but after a shock like that there’s no way Jon took himself to A&E.

He lies that he cut himself with a bread knife, but this lie makes no sense if he was in his office. What I think happened, is upon realising the seriousness of his injury, Jon went to find the nearest first aid kit, most often found in kitchen areas of course.

When Martin comes into the kitchen he finds Jon bleeding all over himself, struggling to open a cheap first aid kit, very stressed, and obviously in a lot of pain. You’d be surprised, but even the most willing people are often incredibly opposed to the idea of hospitalisation for anything less than life threatening, and Jon is NOT the type of person to take a hospital trip lightly.

So, after extensive argument (only ended by Jon becoming too lightheaded to argue his case), they’d go down to A&E, and sit awkwardly together for the hours it takes to finally get seen. There’s something so bonding about sitting with someone in their moment of need, even if you’re not doing much else but being there.

When you’re physically vulnerable like that you also tend to be more emotionally vulnerable; it’s easy to blurt out something profound when you’re more focused on handling pain and bleeding then you are on censoring yourself.

This experience, especially so soon after Prentiss’s attack and all that ensued, opens up that raw connection you can only really ever have in crisis, it may be a trauma bond, as I’m certain they have one, but I think it’s also more than that. It’s seeing eachother at rock bottom and realising just how important they are to you, and just how awful it’d be to lose them.

It’s so early on in their journey, but I think this relatively small event changed the course of their relationship. Martin knew Jon was having a hard time, he complained with Tim, it was clearly distressing, but he still kept an eye on Jon, looked after him. Even in the depths of his distrust this surely broke through Jon’s armour, no matter how little he seemed to show it at the time.

The shared crisis of Jon’s injury gave Martin an excuse to hang around Jon when he needed it the most and didn’t even see it himself.