"It's okay," Ben responded easily. And it was. Now that they were here, now that Ben knew Art was going through something but he was alive and coming through it, and he was willing to talk to Ben (or at least to meet him in a pub, which was a step towards talking), it was all okay. The first letter that Art had ignored, and the second that he'd barely replied to, and the cagey responses. It was all alright, or at least: it was inconsequential, at this point.

"You've been going through stuff," Ben said with a shrug, taking a sip of his drink. That was probably a mild way of putting it, based on the way Art looked, but that was all Ben needed to say to convey the message: I get it, I know. Sometimes you just can't write, and that's fine. They were here now, so he was coming through it. Things were going to be alright again.