This cuts him, which is fair: it's better than the distant, floaty way she'd stared at nothing. John settles under her scorn like a creature reacclimating to pressure, like he thinks he can learn to breathe it as air. It plainly hurts going down.

For a moment he says nothing, his hands stilled in the silence she's dropped them into. Then he resumes, insistently gentle, clearing away the grime of a world he'd not been meant to see. She looks more herself, clean of it and under his hands. He can more easily forget the thing she'd unraveled into when he can feel the warm rhythm of her heartbeat in her skin.

"I don't make it easy," he admits. "Neither do our gracious hosts. They love to throw curveballs, here."

They love to bait him. Like clockwork, he always rises to it.

"Never a dull moment, sorry to say."