Prose: "sheer crazy"

She says to him, "This is boring."

He doesn't look up from where he's reading a tech magazine. "What's boring?"

"This. Expectations. All this bullshit. It's boring."

"Hm." Non-commital. He turns a page. His face always seems curiously and clearly beautiful when he's concentrating on something, like a crystal with a ray of white sunlight beaming through it. Her mouth burns, her fingers itch. She's suddenly furious.

"I'm just a cog in their machine! I have to follow their rules!" She stands up, quivering with indignant anger. "I hate it!"

He looks up from his magazine, then, half-amused at the dramatics, half-alarmed. "Who says you have to?"

"...what?"

"Who says you have to be a cog in their machine?" His eyes glint, attractive, dangerous, powerful. "Make your own machine."

"Without cogs," she blurts out.

He smiles, touches her tangled hair. "Run it on sheer crazy."

She grins.