His instinct is to be like no, I'm fine, I don't need help, don't pay attention, but that's. Demonstrably false. People who are fine don't freak out at the prospect of being looked at. Still, it takes him a while — too long of a while, but what is in reality minutes feels like a couple agonizing hours to him right now — to talk himself down from that. He's not fine and feeling guilty over that isn't actually helping either way.

He still won't raise his head because he's pretty sure if he does, it's about to get all Exorcist in here. And then Penelope will actually murder him.

"Okay."