As Glacius closes the door, Carlisle makes his way to the couch, moving the pillows aside to make room for his bulky partner before he pulls his right hand free of the glove covering it. Though he prepares himself to mend Glacius' physical injuries, it's not until he looks back and finds the alien still at the threshold of the apartment, his look far more wounded than his body, that the clergyman realizes not all is well.

He meets Glacius' eyes as the alien starts, but his guilt eventually weighs his head down; he fidgets with his tabard, as though it might help him weather the icy tension that seeps into the air, as frosty as the gusty breaths from the alien's gills. It takes Carlisle a second to find his voice this time; it is small when he does.

"I did not reach out to you not from the fear of disappointment," Carlisle begins, "but from the fear of what I would do were I to find you gone from my communicator."

That's an honest answer, but he feels it isn't enough. "I intended to tell you once I'd seen to your health. I- I tried to tell you already, when I thought you were perhaps in your room, buried in your sorrow when I hadn't come to your side as soon as I discovered someone who meant such a great deal to us both was gone. It was only when you did not answer that I realized you were not here."

His eyes fall for another moment, but he forces himself to look back to Glacius, the fear he spoke of contained within them, jailed by the determination woven into his brow. "I caved to my vices in a moment of weakness brought upon by a day of stewing in woes that could have been resolved with but a call. I feared you would be upset with me, yes... but that fear is nothing compared to what terror I felt when I thought you might be gone."