when you're in a hurricane

I think I can manage being collateral damage

"Duly noted," Ever murmurs, the consonant catching deliberately in his throat, like a promise disguised as phonetics. It’s not his fault his gaze lingers when she smiles like that, nor that the vendor’s scrutiny feels irrelevant in the face of her fingers still grazing his. Wood samples are exchanged, but his attention is elsewhere—filed alphabetically behind her lips, her heat, her cheeky restraint.

Taking the walnut with care, Ever balances it alongside the tiger-striped cedar, the motion precise—an excuse, maybe, to avoid combusting on the spot. "Your confidence is appreciated," he says as she leans in, his voice dipped in something drier than usual, "and I’d be remiss not to mention that, historically, structural response has never been a problem."

But then he glances at her from the corner of his eye, an eyebrow nudging up like a waveform rising, and the smirk beneath it is all restrained voltage. "That said..." he begins, tone slipping toward clinical even as his thumb traces lightly along her spine, "...given the recent changes to the variables relating to my cognitive and emotional recalibration, I think it would be premature to make any definitive claims...prior to rigorous testing." Straightening somewhat, Ever sighs a touch reluctantly. "Only if you're up for it. I feel as though I've asked you for so much lately."

.