"Personally, I think 'interesting' is the understatement of the century with her." Birkin sort of wondered if Stein found him interesting but he held his tongue, not sure if he wanted to actually hear the answer no matter which one it was.

He frowned. "I'm sure you took precautions, but precautions aren't always enough. Nothing happened, obviously, but..." With a sigh, Birkin released his hold on the other man's shoulders and stared hard at the floor. "If you ever think about doing that to yourself again, call me instead. I'd rather you experimented on me than run the risk of damaging yourself beyond repair... I don't have many friends and losing any one of them is devastating." He snickered to himself for a few seconds. "I'm going to regret saying that one day, aren't I?"