John is quiet for a little while, looking through the box and giving Martin's smile time to fade. Beneath all that excitement and relief there's a note of sadness, utterly selfish at its heart, as it sinks in that this means John will no longer need his little stories. At first he'd been a bit bewildered that essentially just nattering about the full mundanity of his own life was a functional stopgap, and sometimes it had been a struggle to come up with anecdotes, and to allow himself to tell them truthfully without undue fretting. But that had been short-lived. The way it always visibly helped John was more than enough comfort, and over the past few weeks he's really grown to enjoy it, not just for John but for himself. He's never really had anyone who wanted to hear all the little things about him before, and... even if it was for a purpose such as this, it was nice to have that. It was nice that John seemed genuinely interested.

If he wants to go on babbling about himself, he supposes he just can, but there's an unavoidable fragment of fear that John no longer wants that, that he'll be relieved to return to a sort of status quo, whether because he simply wants to allow Martin that space or because, as Martin suspects, his own life grows rapidly rather less interesting with time.

So when John suggests that perhaps they ought to carry on with all that, bringing up the natural point that no matter how much is packed into that box, it won't last forever, Martin looks up with an expression that is only briefly startled before he breaks back into a sheepish grin.

"Y-yeah," he says. "Of course. I mean, it's a finite resource. So..." He shrugs, caught between warmth blooming in his chest and a sort of fidgety unrest over an unnamed tension. "Whatever you need."