The house is quiet in a way that she, perhaps, could find uneasy, if she didn't always feel more at home in abandoned spaces. When no one is around, she's not thinking about how her shoulders slope at different angles or how her belly rises and falls with every breath. She just stands; she just breathes.

Silence is also an invitation for her to fill it, and she hums, maybe loud enough for him to hear, maybe not. The door to his room looms, just out of sight, down the end of the sunlit hall. Now her breath rises in her chest, heart quickening and nerves alighting.

Eager feet take her forward while her mind is pulling back. She's not sure what she's going to see; what he's going to say; what they're ready for. There's a familiar taste in the back of her throat, like a bitter medicine from childhood. No matter how hard she swallows it's stained there.

The hall dims suddenly; a rain shower had been predicted this morning and was obviously on its way. A great time to get stuck in this house, she things, before her hand — of its own volition — taps on the door to Sterling's room.

A moment passes. She thinks to turn away and try again tomorrow. But then a croaking — and then a creaking — plodding footsteps and a turning door handle and they're standing face to face.

The invitation to enter is silent. It's like everything can remain unsaid and yet understood. But she knows, like a plant, to survive, their thoughts need light and air.

And so does Sterling, she thinks. Her brow knits together as she takes him in: pale, hollow, clammy, on his way to decomposing. He returns to sit on the edge of his bed, and she follows, hand again moving without permission.

The back of it presses against his forehead, soft skin met with a sheen of sweat and flush of heat. The furrow deepens as does her frown, all without a sense of knowing. Sterling's eyes remain downcast.

"I look like shit, don't I?" he finally broaches in a voice so unlike his own. Slowly, as if he's going to skitter off, her hand moves from forehead to hairline and brushes the damp red locks back. His hair has always been so soft.

Some invisible veil has been lifted for this moment, between them; Sterling crumples forward into her standing form. Arms wrap tightly around her waist. She can feel him start to breath in time with that rising and falling, as he hides his face in her chest. She just strokes his hair gently, cheek resting atop it.

It could all remain unsaid, she thinks, but if they bury it they suffocate this, too.

"You do look awful," she admits, finally, and he's shook out of a half-asleep state by the rumble of her voice in her chest. Cavernous, like an angel speaking to him, and like the shepherds watching their flocks he too is afraid.

"The doctor says it's just part of the process," the words really form themselves. He mind is busy: it wonders what will be too much and make her pull apart from his warm body. "Which, yeah. The first time was worse, even."

She stiffens, then softens. Emotions aflutter. A soft response: "You didn't think it got this bad, did you?"

"No, no. Absolutely not... I was just taking the edge off," then, correctly: "I just meant to be taking... To be making it a little easier."

"And now look at you." It's said so plainly, so plaintively, that he feels the heartbreak behind it and not the pinprick of the words.

"Look at me."

She does. For all the thoughts swirling, it's amazing how they can't quite form them, the clay of their minds too slick.