Dan leans back just a little, so that he can press their foreheads together.

"Makes perfect sense," he answers, letting some of the tension in his tone bleed into the muted whispers of the kind of talk that happens late at night. "And I want them all to feel that too. IF what Neil, what any of them would need, is safe harbor here, they have it."

He exhales slowly, the quiet wrapping around him again, soothing. "It's the other thing, the jab of what feels like some of the worst shit, here. Always going to be hard for me. It's why I lived in what amounted to a fucking tower for so long."