For Shannon, the week had been a mixture of excitement and nervousness. Butterflies in his stomach. He was a bit wary of entering that space in his head again where he had no agency, no worries and everything was in Eli's hands. When he was there, it was perfect. When he was out of it, he wasn't sure how he could possibly do all that again without something as extreme as Eli pulled before. Shannon got the feeling that wasn't the norm of how to make this work, so what were they going to do this time? He truly was a stubborn asshole and despite wanting to make this work, there was an instinctive part of him that fought the idea of losing his hard-won control even to Eli. It was a matter of survival over a matter of trust.

The chatting was nice. Catching up on relatively meaningless gossip and work shenanigans was part of the routine, soothing and regular. Shannon could feel the thrum of something underneath Eli's demeanor, and simply laughed aloud when he launched into their actual reason for getting together that day. Beating around the bush must have been killing him.

"Thought you said I wouldn't get to if I didn't behave," Shannon said while quirking a brow. After their scene had ended, he'd gotten the distinct feeling that it not going all that properly counted as not behaving. "Or was that just something to get me to settle down at the time?"