"Ahaha. Yes, about this whole shirtless thing…"
Cherion's laugh came out wrong, thin, shaky, and a little too loud in the silence. It was awkward, painfully so. The sound bounced off the damp, weeping walls of the cave, mocking the sudden, heavy tension that had settled between them. Zarius had asked about the clothes, or the lack thereof, and the question seemed to have short-circuited Cherion's usually nimble brain.
His response came fast. Too fast. It was defensive in that specific way a person gets when they've spent the last three hours rehearsing a lie they don't actually believe. Cherion faltered for a fraction of a second, a tiny hitch in his breathing, before launching into a breathless, high-speed lecture on thermodynamics. He spoke about heat retention, the conductive properties of skin-to-skin contact, and the sheer, cold-blooded logic of survival in sub-zero altitudes.
