He doesn't quite flinch. His stance stiffens, the muscles in his jaw tightening imperceptibly. Johnny's like something coiled and caged, his justifications a thin drape over something seething and volatile and painful to witness, like a magnesium flare. Something Daniel doesn't want to look at. Something he willingly chooses to look at regardless. This isn't him. This isn't Johnny. He's - he's relatively sure of that.

"I'm not," he says finally, the words aching like a lie.

There's no reason Johnny should believe him.

He plows on, resolute.

"I'm just - I'm just saying." A thin trickle of self-reproach runs down his spine, twitching his shoulders. "You don't have to comply with anything the Rift tells you to do, implicit or otherwise. You - you're better than that."

Immediately, he regrets his choice in lexicon.