"Well, I don't mind doing step two if you don't mind steps one, three, and four," says Daniel, now eating in earnest. "Though that, um, does seem a bit disproportionate." And also weird. He's talking like this is a regular thing, which it isn't. It's Daniel making dinner for a friend out of some ridiculous sense of guilt or responsibility or however he chooses to define it, except that it's technically lunch if one takes the whole "noon" factor into account.

Yep, more coffee. That's good. Definitely more coffee.