"Well, I'm reading, aren't I?" Martin answers, a little too quickly to conceal the tension in his voice. He continues to stare fixedly at the page, though the words practically blur before his eyes. Each time he gets a start on a sentence it just disappears into a jumble in his head.

"I'm fine," he says again, softer, hoping that'll be enough to convince John to just... let it be, just this once.