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"Listen. Just…listen to me." The words escaped the prison she'd kept them in for years. "I've tried to tell you over and over. I hate it when you treat me so passively, it just feels like you don't understand me anymore, not like you used to. We aren't us anymore, it drains me to face you every single day. I need you to understand that. Won't you?"

She heaved, cradling her arms with her back facing the man in the chair. It was colder than she'd thought it would be down here, yet there wasn't a single draft. Just the thick, damp air that hung high enough to feel mildly claustrophobic.

Taking light strides forward, she reached for the glass of water she'd brought down for him, set on the stool where she'd left it. He was bound to have gotten thirsty, she thought. Then, turning around, she walked to the chair and held the glass out for him to take.

A hand did not come forward. There wasn't the slightest movement.

"Goodness, why are you being so dramatic? I know you're awake, Seb."

The silence persisted. Long enough that she kept her ears alert for the chair to creak, or for that impatient, sharp sigh she expected from him. Her eyes fixed a little heavier on his face, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly, something between a smile and a scoff. "All of that, and you still don't listen. How much more do I have to do?"

Her free hand reached up to touch his cheek. The skin was cold. Her fingers retracted before she'd decided to move them, a small, swift withdrawal, gone before she'd finished the thought that prompted it. "No," she whispered, sharp under her breath. "You always make me feel guilty." His cheek could only hold her touch for a couple of seconds before something in her simply wouldn't allow more. Her hand went to his shoulder instead, pressing lightly, urging his back further into the chair, as though better posture might be the thing standing between them and an answer.

"Sebastian." She shook him. His head only tipped further to the left.

"Sebastian." Her grip tightened. The thud of her own pulse filled her ears, insistent, almost rude in how loudly it insisted on being alive when nothing under her hand was matching it. But why couldn't she feel his? She was certain she'd felt it before; on another day, in another room, her hand flat against his shoulder while they danced at their wedding, the thrum of his heart faint but real against her palm, the two of them moving slow circles under the lights, past the bouquets of roses and peonies she'd chosen herself. He'd stepped on the hem of her dress more than once that night, apologizing each time, and each time she'd laughed it off, telling him all he owed her was another dance. The song had been hers before it was theirs; something he'd claimed to find distasteful, right up until she caught him humming it before she did, that very night, as if he'd decided somewhere in the middle of the song that he didn't mind it after all. If she had known that was the happiest she'd ever be, she'd have let it play over and over.

Her hand slipped lower, to his chest, hesitant. She thought, for a moment, that she felt something there, faint, uncertain, before realizing it was only her own pulse, transmitted back to her through her fingertips, mistaken for his. She narrowed her eyes and held her breath, listening for any disturbance at all. Nothing came. "Stop faking, Seb." Her voice didn't waver saying it, though something underneath it had already begun to.

She lifted two fingers and held them beneath his nose, waiting to feel the warmth of his breath against them. But the chill of the basement air had already taken her fingers colder than his skin, and there was nothing to tell the two apart.

She stayed like that a while, fingers hovering, not quite willing to take them away and not quite willing to press them closer. Somewhere above her, through the floor, the house made its small settling sounds: a pipe, a joist, nothing. She found herself listening to it the way she used to listen for his key in the door, out of habit more than hope.

"You're impossible," she said, finally, straightening. She picked the water glass back up from where she'd set it on her knee. "Fine. I'll come back down when you're ready to be reasonable."

She climbed the stairs without looking back at him, the water glass still full, condensation gathering at the base of it and dampening her palm the whole way up. At the top, she paused with her hand on the light switch, the basement dark beneath her, and for a moment, only a moment, she considered going back down.

She didn't.

She turned off the light instead, the way she did every night, as though he were only sitting up too late again, as though this were only that, and went to bed without brushing her teeth, telling herself she'd remember to in the morning.