Tristan stepped cautiously out of his room, listening intently for any sounds of bizarre music or tapdancing. The first time had been more than enough; his erstwhile guardian might be mostly trustworthy, but that didn't prevent him from being mostly crazy, too.

The house was silent, but that didn't mean anything; Dee could be meditating upside down from a ceiling fan for all he knew. Tristan took a few more cautious steps down the hall, past Carly's room. She'd slept through the tapdancing or step dancing or whatever the fuck Dee called his morning wake up ritual, but she slept through everything, including that one time the building they were living in was being demolished. It was a good thing the city council didn't gas squatters anymore, or he'd be out a sister.

The living room was empty and quiet, though Tris still didn't believe Dee when he said the creepy masks on the wall weren't staring at him. There were three of them, sprouting black feathers and wisps of silky hair over their striped faces, and the shadows in the eyeholes followed him as he crept across the room. Dee's mammoth entertainment system brooded quietly along the far wall, humming faintly with electric potential.

The kitchen was empty, too, and that was the extent of the little house- their three rooms nestled to one side, and a room that was remarkably lived in even with the staring masks on the walls, and the kitchen with its shiny new coffee pot and ancient, battered tea kettle. Somewhere, a staircase was hidden that led to an attic of sorts, and that was where Dee slept now. Carly had the master bedroom, because she was the girl, Dee had said, and because her clothes took up more space, and because eventually they'd move out and he wanted his room back in one piece, which he'd never get if he gave it to Tristan.

There was a piece of paper tucked under the coffee pot, with a few lines of Dee's elegant, professional caligraphy. "Gone to church, back by noon, call Teia if you need anything." Tristan rolled his eyes as he turned on the coffee pot.

Dee wasn't used to having them around, and once Jim got out of the hospital, he'd probably get worse. He always moved as though he were walking on glass, as though he would somehow, impossibly, break them with a harsh word or a misplaced gesture. He couldn't leave them alone for more than a few hours without calling, endearingly anxious in a way no one had ever bothered to be before.

But despite all of the obsessive, solicitous care, Dee never touched them. Sometimes Tristan would Dee's hands out of the corner of his eye and see the way they drifted closer and closer as Dee used them to talk in one of his more expressive moods- and then he would catch himself and fold up his limbs like a bird and continue talking about books, or movies, or the price of mangos in Guatemala, whatever bizarre tangent he'd gone off on...and he would be distant and proper, and Tristan always pretended he didn't see the way Dee's eyes flickered, nervous and horrified, whenever his hands drifted.

"Are you making coffee?" Carly stared at him blearily from the doorway.

"Yeah. You're up early." It was before two on a weekend.

"House is too quiet."

"Mm." They waited in silence for the coffee, and Tristan wondered what would happen if he set off the smoke alarm: would Dee get there before the fire department, or would Teia beat him to it?

"Dee's at church," he said at last, realizing that Carly was right about the quiet. Sometimes he felt like the sterile white walls were going to collapse on him. The coffee finished with a hiss, and he set two mugs on the countertop. "He left a note, said to call Teia if we started dying or something. Guess he doesn't want his cell phone going off in the middle of a prayer or something."

"He doesn't stop getting weirder, does he?" Carly accepted the coffee with a grateful smile and began pouring sugar into it. "He sings opera in the shower."

"His porn collection is alphabetized," Tris offered.

Carly giggled into her coffee. "He has exactly three pairs of matching socks. I keep pulling them out of the laundry."

Tristan took a long swallow of coffee and grimaced when it burned his tongue. "You think the masks are staring at you too, don't you?"

She nodded. "I have nightmares about the "art" on the walls...and there's a dead squirrel in the closet."

"A squirrel?" He poured himself some more coffee.

"Yeah. In pieces. Like, the ribs and arms and legs are all separate, but the skull is still attached to the rest of the skin and the tail...just sitting in the corner of the closet." Carly stared at her coffee, and then at the coffee maker that Dee had bought for them.

Tristan leaned against the counter, and tried not to think about the color of the walls.
--

(Old habits die hard.)