dat icon. x_x
The sharp intake of breath jumped Evan just slightly, and he turned his head, just in time to see Leah rolling over to face him. He smiled a little bit at her and then laughed when she spoke up. "I wasn't aware that we'd already decided," he said, his voice quiet, so not to wake the little girl sleeping on the other side of the room.
As far as he was concerned, what to name the child was more Leah's decision than his. 'No uterus, no opinion,' he'd always used to joke when they'd talked about this in the past. But she seemed to like the idea of naming her Julia as much as he did. It was nice, but he didn't want her chained to a name she didn't want for the rest of the child's life.
Thoughts like this, happy things that seemed so few and far between nowadays, made it easier not to think about the paranoia ping that he was still fighting in the back of his mind. Nothing can go wrong here. This is a safe area. This room, this bed, being with Leah and Mari... nothing would happen to them here, now. It was safe. It's safe, he reiterated to the feeling in his head.
It occurred to him that it was odd, her being awake at this hour, and he tilted his head as he set the book down, lifting his arm for her to move closer and lean her head against him.
"Did I wake you?" he asked her. He'd tried to be quiet, but sometimes, when you were sleeping, even the slightest noise or light woke you. Especially if you were only in alpha sleep. The past few insomniatic nights, Evan had been reading about sleep. He'd laughed with Leah about the irony a couple of nights ago, reading about sleep unable to sleep, and he'd insisted that it was motivating his mind in a torturous way, but really, he was researching ways to combat insomnia.
"It seemed like you jumped to attention there," he added. "Did something scare you?"