"I—" John starts, getting halfway through 'I know' before the rest of us mere mortals registers, and then he stops, as abruptly as if a hand had closed around his throat, and presses his lips together into a tight frown. Setting aside the fact that he'd sooner characterize normal as atypical as opposed to bad, it's impossible not to feel hurt by the implication that... what, that he's beyond it? That it isn't for him anymore, anyway? That he's forgotten what it means, that he doesn't at least intellectually understand that it's a good thing?

Maybe he's overthinking it. But then, he's slowly losing whatever knack for lying he ever possessed, and that includes lying to himself. All of those implications might be unintended or unkind, but that doesn't make them strictly untrue, does it?

"And what would I know about mortal concerns," he volleys back in an almost rhetorical undertone, though there's a pained edge to his customary dry humor.