Shannon stopped trying to remove the jacket, but now his hand was trailing over the exposed skin of Eli's neck, made its way up to his face and cupped his jaw. It was a worried, protective motion coming from a distracted and fuzzy sub. He wanted to feel settled, but he wasn't anywhere near that and needed the reassurance that the boogey man was not going to pop out of the woodwork and drag them back under.

He settled his head down, thumb rhythmically rubbing back and forth against Eli's cheek in a small motion. "Hard to tell when someone's cold," he allowed. Maybe he read the signals wrong. If Eli said he didn't need to worry about it, then he wanted to and would believe that. If he could fall back into that point, his head would clear up once everything else was out of the way. Right?