[oh my god this is belated & in a modern AU which is either pre-2020 or on another timeline altogether? vaguely post-series and maybe-vaguely in Boston, inspired by my own search for a funny kitchen timer. and there’s more than six sentences.]

“They say good things come in threes, but we only have one pitcher of martinis,” said Charlotte, as she made quick work of dispensing it around the table – quick, and above all, efficient. Aurelia got the feeling, sometimes, that Char brushed her teeth for exactly 120 seconds, without a timer – a kind of stupid thought, she guessed, but she was already two drinks in, and she’d just repainted a chicken-shaped kitchen timer to look like a T-Rex for Gabriel because he was going through a paleontology period and he’d just lost his first tooth and they were all freaked out by it, and even if he wasn’t going to keep his baby teeth she’d been thinking about good habits and –

Char was giving her A Look, the patented Doctor Charlotte Elizabeth Jenkins Look, the kind that was all promise – sometimes a pep talk, sometimes good trouble. She hoped it was good trouble; and gave her friend a sheepish smile, and clinked her glass and Sam’s against her own.

“So what are the other two?” asked Caleb, coming up behind her. For someone who’d just spent a half hour looking for parking, he didn’t look very rattled; her husband kissed her temple before sling his jacket over a chair and claiming a space at the bar-table.