Who: Isaac Callahan & Demi Rafferty Where: their apartment What: taking cohabitation to the next level When: September 8, late evening
“--So there I was, 11 years old, asking the House of Representative’s finance committee chair if he was going to keep cutting funding for art programs in schools to support a defense budget that we didn’t need and how was I supposed to learn to play the trumpet if he kept doing that? God, my parents were this equal mix of horrified and proud.”
Isaac shook his head, laughing as he recalled the memory. With an upbringing like that, he really never stood a chance to lead any other kind of life besides one of public service. It was a different route than his lobbyist parents, but he was helping people and that was what mattered.
Running a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up funnily in the back, he tried to hold back a yawn but his sleepiness was getting the best of him. “It’s getting kind of late. I should probably, you know, sleep,” he said, biting back another yawn, “This was nice though.”
Even though he was kind of embarrassed about the whole drunk texting, things had been so much better with Demi since then. Isaac supposed they just needed to break through some kind of barrier before they could start being truly okay with each other and thankfully he’d had some liquid courage to accomplish the job that night.
Everything about the way Isaac had been raised felt foreign to her. Though, in all honesty Demi had to assume that the way she had been raised would seem just as strange to him. While other little girls had been playing with Barbies and fantasizing about their future husbands, she had been learning how to shoot a gun and wondering when the next time was that she’d be able to visit her father in prison.
Still, she found herself laughing at his story and asking. “So, did you ever learn how to play the trumpet?”
Her question was never answered though as Isaac yawn, setting off a chain reaction as Demi joined in the display of tiredness and the late hour. “Don’t do that,” she exclaimed, reaching out and smacking Isaac on the arm. “And is that your polite way of telling me to get the hell out of your bedroom?” Even while she asks this, Demi’s untangling herself from the cross legged position she’d been sitting in on the couch.
Things had been a little awkward the next morning after Isaac’s drunken texts, but, they had also served to break down walls between them. They were talking now, even doing so without fighting and that was something, right? So Demi could ignore the jumbled mess of emotions she felt whenever she thought about him, because at least they weren’t always at odds anymore.
Demi yawning caused Isaac to yawn again, which just proved that yawning really was infectious. It had always amazed him that that was a thing. If they weren’t careful, they’d just be yawning messes until they simply couldn’t yawn anymore. So it was probably for the best that she would be retreating to the bedroom and he would be staying out here on the couch.
Shrugging at her question, and giving her a bit of a grin, he looked at her sheepishly, “Well when you phrase it like that it doesn’t sound polite at all. But I’m glad you’re smart and can pick up on these social cues. Saves me from having to saying it.”
He watched her get up, actually letting his eyes stay on her for more than a few seconds, and smiled up at her once she was standing. “So, goodnight. See you in the morning.”
“Sometimes being polite is overrated,” Demi fired back, stretching her arms up above her head like a cat as she worked out all the kinks that had formed from hours of sitting on the couch just talking with Isaac. “And smiling at me won’t erase the fact that you’re chasing me off into the bedroom without answering my question about your trumpet playing abilities.” There was a smile tugging at the corners of her own mouth as she spoke.
While she waited for Isaac to reply, or dodge the question with another yawn, Demi began moving backwards towards the bedroom, dark eyes fixed on him the whole time. She only stopped moving when her back hit the door, her hand finding the doorknob without looking.
“The couch really can’t be the comfortable,” she remarked, voicing a thought that always filtered through her mind whenever she thought about him sleeping out here. “You...you should just come sleep in the bed.” The words came out rushed, almost as if Demi wasn’t entirely sure of what she was saying. “I mean it’s a king sized bed, I think we could share it.”
What the hell was she doing? The impulse to offer him back a portion of the bed had taken over before Demi truly thought it through. Was she prepared to share a bed with someone again? It was just sleeping, but still, the last time she had shared a bed willingly felt like it was a whole lifetime ago, and the memories of La Quinta stilled danced at the edges of her mind. Her heart was racing and she was fighting the urge to just duck into the room and lock the door behind her, pretending all the while that she had never said a word.
She didn’t do that though, instead she stood frozen as what seemed like minutes ticked by, waiting for Isaac to speak, to break the weird silence that had fallen over them.
Isaac was in fact mid-yawn when Demi made her suggestion that he come sleep in the bed with her and he somehow managed to choke on his own tongue, which set off a coughing fit that was super cute.
It took a minute for him to regain his composure and when he did, he knew he needed to say something but he didn’t know what to say. Was this a good idea? Were they ready for this? Was this going to screw everything up? All these doubts plagued him but he also recalled Piper telling him that he needed to grab life by the balls and just go for it.
He was pretty sure it was going to be awkward as hell but they’d certainly dealt with worse. “You sure?” He finally asked, once he’d found his words again.
Smothering a laugh by covering her mouth with her hand, Demi couldn’t deny the fact that seeing Isaac flustered like this gave her a distinct sense of power. For so many months while locked away in La Quinta she had felt powerless, subject to whatever whim or fancy struck the warden and his guards that day. Regaining some of that power, even if it was simply calling the shots in whatever this thing was with Isaac, well, it gave her back some of the confidence that being imprisoned had snatched away from her.
“Yes, I’m sure. Truthfully, I’m fucking tired of listening to you toss and turn out here on the couch.” Demi fired back, her words only half true. She hadn’t thought about it at all, the words had simply tumbled out of her mouth. But, now that they were said, she was running with it and going to swear to high heaven that this had been a conscious decision on her part. After all, every lie had a grain of truth in it, right?
“How do you know I’m not just going to toss and turn next to you all night?” Isaac asked, his brows furrowed together in confusion. Though in his defense, he thought he’d been doing better in the sleep department. What kept him up most nights was the bad blood between him and Demi and things were getting better lately. Sure, the couch wasn’t the comfiest, but it didn’t affect his sleep all that much. The real thing that mattered was the fighting and he hadn’t been quite as stressed out about simply being in the same space as Demi so he’d slept a bit better the past couple nights.
"I don't," Demi replied simply. "But at least I'll feel less guilty about it if you're tossing and turning in your own bed." Maybe it was selfish to want to alleviate some of her own guilt, remove some of the crushing weight of imposing on Isaac like this. "And anyway, it wouldn't be the worst thing I've had to deal with while trying to sleep."
Her fingers were still clasped around the doorknob to the bedroom and dark eyes were trained on him, boring holes into Isaac while she waited for his answer. “This offer isn’t going to last forever,” she said, tone edging towards impatient. “So are you sleeping with me or not?”
Not seeing any other option -- and honestly, not wanting to say no to her -- Isaac stood up, grabbed his pillow then walked over to her by the door. Her gaze on him was intense and made him feel a little weird (but not necessarily in a bad way) but despite the nerves and the instincts telling him to run back to the couch and forget this whole thing, he gestured towards the bedroom and said, “Shall we?”
When he finally rose from the couch and moved towards her, Demi stubbornly ignored the butterflies on a kamikaze mission in her stomach. Everything about her posture, about the set of her shoulders and the look in her eyes oozed confidence in this matter, meanwhile her insides were waging a war against her. It was too late to back down now though, especially after she'd all but given him an ultimatum.
"What side of the bed do you sleep on?" She asked while easing the door to the bedroom open and stepping through. Absentmindedly Demi began to pick up some of the items she had strewn around the room, articles of clothing and books, mostly. For months this has been her space, Isaac only coming and going to retrieve his clothing, so a part of her felt the loss of giving that up, even if the space wasn't truly hers in the first place.
Isaac’s insides were doing barrel rolls with nerves as he walked into the bedroom. He came in here every day to get his clothes but it felt completely different this time since he was here to sleep. In the bed. With Demi. “Doesn’t matter which side, really. Compared to the couch, I don’t think right or left is really going to make a difference.”
He perched himself on the end of the bed right in the middle so it didn’t make it seem like he was picking a side (which was the right side, for the record) and looked over at Demi. “So you go where you normally do.”
Pausing in her attempt to tidy up the room, Demi turned and cast a look in Isaac’s direction. “Don’t you dare give me that ‘it doesn’t make a difference’ bullshit,” she began. “Everyone has a side of the bed they prefer to sleep on, especially if they’re accustom to sharing a bed.” In her short twenty seven years, Demi had yet to come across a man who didn’t have a preference as to where he laid his head down. Humans were after all creatures of habit, and she was damn sure that Isaac was not an exception to this rule.
As he settled on the end of the bed, right in the middle, Demi couldn’t hide the faint smile that played on her lips. “If I go where I normally would I’ll be sleeping in the middle of the bed and you’ll have whatever space is left over on either side,” she remarked as amusement danced in her dark eyes.
Maybe this whole bed sharing thing was a bad idea but he was already in there and Demi was stubborn enough that if he tried to leave she probably wouldn’t let him go. Well. “Fine. I sleep on the right,” he said, pushing himself off the end of the bed, walking around to that side and sitting down again. She’d told him to pick a side and so he had, and now Demi was stuck with the left whether she liked it or not.
Moving more onto the bed until he was leaning against the headboard, he looked over at her and asked, “Do you kick in your sleep?”
As Isaac moved, a triumphant little smile appeared as Demi went about finishing up the last little bit of straightening up that she thought the room required. "See, now was that so hard?" She asked, setting a final book in place on the dressing that sat against the north wall. "And you're in luck because I've always preferred the left side." Demi added while sliding one of the drawers open to retrieve an oversized t-shirt and leggings. In a normal situation she would have foregone with wearing leggings to bed, but, this wasn't a normal situation.
With clothing in hand she stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack so that Isaac could still hear her as she replied. "Not that I've been made aware of," she took a pause before adding. "I do talk in my sleep, though." A fact that had always made her nervous when sharing space with others, because God knows what she might say in her sleep.
"Do you snore?" Demi asked as she stepped out of the bathroom, tank top and cropped shorts exchanged for the t-shirt and leggings she intended to sleep in. Truthfully, she only asked out of curiosity, not because it would at all hinder her ability to sleep.
“I don’t think I snore. Unless I have a cold,” Isaac said. He’d already changed into his pajama pants and t-shirt earlier in the night, assuming he would be stuck out in the living room that night, so he waited as Demi changed (or at least, he assumed that was what she was doing since she’d went in there with clothes), trying not to get too used to how comfortable the mattress was in comparison to the couch. This whole thing was probably going to turn out to be a flop so there was no point in acclimating.
He gave a small smile to her as she exited the bathroom then asked, “So what do you talk about in your sleep? I don’t think I talk in my sleep for the record.”
There was a spark of something when Isaac's smile combined with the sight of him already comfortably at home on the bed. Demi couldn't put her finger on what it was, or maybe she just didn't want to look to closely, but it was there and it had her heart beating a little faster as she folded her clothing and set it on top of the dresser. Killing time, that's what she was doing. The longer she took to prepare for sleep, the further out climbing into the bed with Isaac was.
Turning around to face the bed once her clothes were folded, Demi leaned back against the dresser while she replied. "I don't know," this was accompanied by a laugh. "Most of the time people have just told me I was talking in my sleep, but they never elaborate." Demi pulls a face at that fact. "So for all I know I could be revealing my deepest and darkest secrets." Which was a terrifying thought.
Isaac chuckled softly at Demi's words, looking at her as she lingered around the dresser. He had a guess that this was her attempt at stalling, and he didn't mind since he was pretty damn nervous about this as well. "Maybe these other people were too tired and couldn't remember what you said in the night, but just remembered that it happened," He shrugged. It happened to him sometimes where he couldn't recall details but knew the general picture of what happened. "I'll let you know if you say anything tonight."
“Or they didn’t want to embarrass me,” Demi countered with a little laugh, though it was kind of strained, the first real outward sign that she wasn’t as at ease as she wanted Isaac to believe.
Time was ticking away and she knew her stalling tactics would only work for so long, so with an inward sigh, Demi found herself counting to ten to steady her nerves before pushing off of the dresser. "Well, it's getting late..." She trailed off, moving over to the light switch, she turned the overhead light off before gingerly making her way over to the bed and climbing onto the side that was now officially designated as hers.
In the pitch black room it felt to Demi like her racing heart could be heard echoing off the walls, and that the whirring of her thoughts were no doubt being broadcast into the darkness as well. She was not a woman who backed down, her time in La Quinta was proof enough of that. In this moment though, she wished that she wasn't such a stubborn creature, afraid to admit defeat and tell Isaac that she was afraid she might have a stroke from the anxiety of sharing the bed, and could he please go back to the couch.
Demi stared up at the ceiling, fearful that if she closed her eyes flashbacks of her time in prison might flood her thoughts. Those men hadn't shared her bed, at least not for long. They took what they wanted and left her on the sorry excuse for what passed as a bed inside those walls, yet, she feared if she let her eyes drift closed she would feel their hands on her again and know again the panic she had felt each night.
With Demi in the bed next to him, Isaac could feel himself tense slightly. It had been a long time since he had shared a bed with someone, and it had been even longer since his bed partner hadn't been his wife. It was all wrong and different and weird, but he was stubborn and laid there as still as possible so he wouldn't disturb her.
After several minutes it was pretty obvious that Demi's breathing hadn't relaxed into a gentle rhythm that indicated sleep so that meant she was still wide awake as well.
"So how did you start dancing?" He asked, his voice echoing through the room despite the quiet tone he used.
With Isaac trying to do his best impression of a corpse while laying in the bed next to her, Demi’s own anxiety only rose. How were either one of them going to get any sleep if they were so wound up? Her own body was ramrod straight, every muscle tense to the point of snapping and at this rate she was positive morning would before she ever got even a moment of shut eye.
There’s nearly an audible ‘whoosh’ of air when she lets out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding just then, relieved with the opportunity to think about something other than her time behind bars. “This might come as a shock to you, but I was a hyper child,” Demi began, laughing softly. “My mother wanted, no, she needed something to keep my busy and dance seemed like the best option. At least it was better than what I had been doing, which was racing around my dad’s welding shop and driving him and his men nuts.” At least that had always been the way her mother had phrased it, though she had it on good authority that her daddy and his men hadn’t minded one bit.
Isaac’s tension began to unravel as well once Demi started talking. Talking was definitely counterproductive to sleeping, but it was also a better option compared to stubbornly lying there side by side and not getting any shuteye.
He laughed as well, all too easily able to imagine what kind of kid Demi would’ve been. Even if things had been rough for them since she came to stay with him, through all the fighting and snapping at each other, he could tell that there was a lot of energy in her. She was just a fish out of water in the Capitol so of course she didn’t let her true colors show. Hearing about a time that had been kinder to her, though, was nice. They’d never talked about something like this before and he could detect the change in her voice when she spoke of dance and her parents.
“They needed to find a way to keep you out of trouble? You don’t say,” he teased, shifting slightly so that he could look over at her, despite the darkness of the room. “So are we talking ballet here? I don’t actually know anything about dance.”
It's not hard to miss the way the bed shifts, and although Demi can't seem him she's almost positive that Isaac is look at her now. "Very funny," she deadpanned. "I'll have you know I was an angel of a child," Dem could feel the way talking about her childhood was tugging on her heartstrings, that ever present ache for her family back home intensifying as she thinks about them now. "My dad was the troublemaker of the family, actually." Which was mostly true, after all up until eleven months ago he had been the only person bearing the Rafferty name who had seen the inside of a prison.
The conversation slipped back towards dance and Demi found herself shifting, rolling over on her side to face Isaac as she propped herself up on her elbow. "Ballet," she answered with a bit of a wistful smile. "I've done some contemporary as well, but ballet has always been my true love." There are times she lets the 'what ifs' rise up as to what her life might have looked like had she gone after a position with a company instead of settling down with Seth. "So tell me, what was your one true love growing up?"
Talking about the life that used to be was never easy. It was hard to think about family and loved ones they would never get to see again. Isaac knew that all too well and he’d done his best to avoid those thoughts at all cost. He’d never heard Demi talk about any of this before, but if she’s anything like him, he knew it couldn’t be easy for her.
Thankfully they didn’t linger on that topic long, and when Demi moved onto talking about dance again, he didn’t stop the conversation from going in that direction.
He could see the outline of her in the darkness as his eyes grew more adjusted, but it was really her voice that helped him make out her expression. She lit up in a different way than he’d ever witnessed before. “Still want to see you dance. Shit has been kind of crazy lately…” he said, disappointment obvious in his voice. “But soon.”
Clearing his throat, he continued, “I grew up going to rallies and protests and my parents always pushed me into doing the right thing. So I always knew I wanted to be involved in that. Law school seemed like the best way to do that.”
“I know,” Demi replied gently, “When your department settles down I fully intend on making you take me to Butler,” She couldn’t remember the last time she had had an honest to goodness audience, or the last time she had performed an actual routine of any sort. “Or even if it doesn’t I might just make you play hooky one day and take me.” After all if he could skip out to see the Fox Grove jailbait, surely he could duck out for half a day to make good on his promise to her.
“It’s a deal,” Isaac said, smiling at the thought of them doing something normal and uncomplicated outside the walls of the Capitol.
While she could only see the outline of him in the darkened room, it was obvious in the way he spoke about his childhood that he truly did believe in doing what’s best for the greater good, upholding the law and all that jazz. Demi was struck again by just how different they were, how different their lives had been growing up and even how different their mindsets were to this day. “If they had to push you does that mean you were tempted to do the wrong thing?” Demi asked, a note of curiosity in her voice. “and is college where you met Callie?” She hoped she wasn’t pushing it by asking him that, but again she was a bit like a cat with her curiosity and a part of her wanted to know more about the man she was living -- and currently sharing a bed with.
Chuckling he shook his head a bit. “They never swayed me one way or the other or made me do anything. They just gave me the tools and encouragement to make my own decisions about what was right. I mean, they raised me on a certain set of values but if I came to a different conclusion than them, so long as I could back it up, they supported me having my own beliefs.” His parents had been pretty cool like that.
It was easier to talk about his parents but after taking a deep breath, he nodded in the darkness to Demi’s second question. “Yeah,” he added out loud after a moment. “Not until I was in Law School. She was getting her Masters in Education. We met in the library when we were studying for finals.”
"So your parents weren't hellbent on turning you into a Boy Scout, then?" Demi asked, a tiny smile appearing at the idea that while they had both been raised on a value system -- the ones Demi has been brought up on we're obviously a little skewed. "I can't say my parents encouraged pushing the envelope when it came to right or wrong, but they didn't discourage it either." How could they? Her parents had never known anything but they life they had been living before she had been dropped into their laps, and so they never saw a problem raising Demi up in that lifestyle.
“Are you kidding me? My parents didn’t support the Boy Scouts because they were super homophobic,” Isaac said with a humorless laugh.
Her expression slips into a more somber one as Isaac tells her how he and his wife had met. "Did she 'shush' you for being loud? Is that how the two or you struck up a conversation?" Demi asked, trying to keep things light, even though she knew just how hard it was to talk about a lost love.
Ironic as it was, rather than feel sad while thinking about Callie, he actually had a bit of a smile on his face recalling the night they met. They’d both been stressed as hell and cramming before their exams, just like every other college student did. Apparently even when you’re training to become lawyers and teachers, you weren’t completely responsible.
“Har har har. No, she did not shush me,” Isaac replied, rolling his eyes. “We stayed there all night studying. Well she was writing a paper and I was trying to read this really boring case. Anyway, we were there all night and then in the morning we went to breakfast and I kissed her and then I didn’t see her for like three weeks. Kinda thought that was it. Or maybe she was some figment of my imagination because I was so strung out during finals week. But then I ran into her and I guess we just knew.”
God. He hadn’t told anyone that story in a long time. Definitely not anyone at the Capitol. It felt good, though.
Isaac’s story is sweet, normal and sounds almost like a ‘meet-cute’ from a movie. It’s obvious in the way that he speaks of Callie that he loved her dearly, it would seem from the very moment they met, actually. Demi ignores the way a little voice creeps up on her, questioning if she’d ever be able to compare to that? She doesn’t even know what she wants from Isaac yet, if she wants anything at all, so she has no right to be allowing worries and concerns like this to take hold of her. “So you can make the first move,” she teased, the smirk that she wore evident in the tone of her voice.
“Yes, I know how to make the first move,” Isaac replied, amusement creeping into his voice. After a relationship and marriage that lasted for so long, he was definitely out of practice with the whole ‘wooing a lady’ thing. Was this Demi’s way of saying she wanted him to make a move?
“You might need to prove that some day,” she remarks, her words laced with a teasing tone. Although just as quickly as that teasing tone creeps up it’s gone again, replaced with a serious air of things again, realizing her earlier words were harsher than she intended them to be. Her teasing born out of a that part of her that never liked feeling out of control, and Isaac made her feel out of control a little too often. “You know I remember that feeling of just knowing,” Demi murmured, a wistful sort of tone in her voice. Some people might have called it a high school crush, the way she had fallen so hard and so fast for Seth. But, the people that knew her well, they knew it was something more than that. She had known the moment Seth had come walking into the clubhouse, a newly minted patch on his cut, that he was it. He was going to be hers, no matter what she did.
“Yeah?” He asked, shifting a bit again and his arm moving under his pillow as he got more comfortable on his side. “I told you my story so what was yours?”
A long moment of silence follows Isaac’s request. Demi doesn’t talk about Seth often, and she’s only told this story to two people who reside in Austin. It’s something she’s always kept close to her chest, much too selfish to share the memories of her first love. But, he did tell her about how he met Callie, so it’s only fair she reciprocate and tell him about her own ‘love at first sight’ story.
“I was fifteen, and before you make any comments, I wasn’t one of those teenage girls who fell in love with any guy that paid an ounce of attention to me,” Demi began, “Anyway, I was fifteen and sitting in my dad’s welding shop when one of the guys who just started prospecting with his motorcycle club came into the shop. Now, my dad was locked up at the time and every tuesday I would go visit him, usually making one of his guys take me. Well, the guys in the crew decided it was about time the new prospect was subjected to the president’s daughter,” she had to pause to laugh at the memory. “Turns out Seth was made of tougher stuff than they thought, not intimidated at all by the president’s bossy and mouthy daughter. After that day he refused to let anyone else take me to the prison, and well, you could say the rest was history.”
Hearing this story suddenly clicks a whole lot of pieces of information together and he was starting to finally see a more complete picture of who Demi was. Her dad was in a motorcycle club so of course she would have been drawn to the Hellhounds. She’d been the leader’s daughter so of course she carried herself above the rest and didn’t take anyone’s bullshit. What was so foreign to Isaac was literally in Demi’s blood.
“Would never accuse you of that, sweetheart,” he replied, smirking a little. Demi certainly liked attention but that didn’t mean she liked you. Seth must’ve been something special to get past her defenses. “Thanks for telling me,” he added, his voice softer than before. They were quite a pair, talking about those they’d loved and lost while lying in a bed together, unsure of what was going on between them. At least it was all out in the open now. They both had baggage and maybe the only way the two of them could ever work was to have an even playing field.
"You told me about Callie, it really was only fair for me to tell you about Seth," Demi answered, a part of her battling to ignore all the memories that pressed into the forefront of her mind. She might have been willing to talk about one memory of Seth, but she wasn't prepared to allow herself to walk down memory lane for the rest of the evening. There were too many emotions involved, too much she had fought for too long to press into tidy little boxes at the back of her mind.
A quiet moment followed their shared stories, Demi finding herself back in that uncomfortable realm of 'what now?' Sleeping seemed like the most obvious answer, even if her body still refused to admit to being even a little tired.
Isaac could feel the silence growing between them, though unlike Demi, he didn’t view it as an uncomfortable one. They’d both loved and lost and shared their stories and that was that. Isaac actually felt pretty at peace after the whole exchange. Most of the tension he’d first felt when he came into the bedroom was gone and he was actually feeling tired.
"I never thanked you for sharing, so thank you," she broke the silence again. "I'm sure it can't be easy talking about her." Demi shifted back to laying down, eyes trained on the ceiling -- even if all she was met with was the pitch darkness of the room.
“Mmmm,” he hummed out, agreeing with her words. It wasn’t easy to talk about but it was getting easier. Moving so he was lying on his back once more, a hand moved back to tuck behind his head as he yawned. “We should sleep.”
Sleep. Right. her body was still buzzing, humming with nerves and the ever present fact that for the first time in months she was willingly going to share a bed with a man. Demi was fighting back the anxiety that still wanted to overwhelm her, refusing to be held captive by the terrifying memories that she so often shoved to the back of her mind.
“We should,” she agreed, hoping her voice sounded steadier to Isaac’s ears than it had hers. “Goodnight, Isaac.” With that Demi rolled over, turning her back to him and forcing her eyes closed.
Demi couldn’t tell you when she finally drifted off into sleep, but she must have because the next thing she remembered was waking up with the heat from someone else’s body warming her back and a heavy weight across her waist.
“Isaac?” His name was whispered as she opened her eyes slowly, heart thumping in her chest as she tried to fight back the involuntary panic that danced at the edges of her mind.
He was vaguely aware of the sound of Demi’s voice but he buried his face deeper into her hair, letting out a sleepy noise. His arm tightened around her waist, momentarily pressing their bodies closer together. It was the brush of his feet against hers that really broke him out of his half-dazed state but once it shattered, he stiffened and hastily pulled his arm away, rolling onto his back, away from Demi. He didn’t remember moving that close to her in the night or wrapping her in his arms like that but it had definitely happened and now… Well, he didn’t really know what to do next except say, “Sorry.”
His initial reaction is not at all what Demi had expected. Her heart is still pounding like a drum in her chest, but as he pulls her closer for the briefest of moments, she doesn’t fight it. Somewhere buried underneath all that anxiety and baggage that she seemed to carry with her now, was a part of her that missed this. Missed being held, missed sleepy moments like this when she was made to feel like the only important thing in the world. Just as quickly as his hold tightened, he lets go, rolling away from her and apologizing for his actions.
“For what? Holding me?” Demi asked, masking her own awkwardness with her usual brand of rough bluntness. “My god, how dare you.” Rolling over, she propped herself up on one arm, gaze trained on Isaac as she fought back her own nerves, again refusing to display any kind of skittishness or unease with what just happened.
“Yeah. That wasn’t really part of the plan when you asked me to come sleep here, so,” he shrugged before pushing himself into a seated position. He grabbed his watch off the bedside table and put it on before checking the time, eyebrows raising as the watch read nearly 8 o’clock. That was much later than he usually slept, so he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood.
Lingering by the bed a moment, he reached his arms up to stretch, before glancing back over at Demi. “I gotta go get ready for work. You gonna go back to sleep?”
Logically she couldn’t really blame Isaac for having held onto her in his sleep. Some things were just force of habit, things ingrained in a person after years spent married to someone. So, the fact that he had moved towards the warm body next to him in her mind was more an unconscious habit and not any kind of attempt to make a move on her. In many ways, Demi could only assume that if he hadn’t moved towards her, she likely would have moved towards him, waking up to find her head pillowed on his chest as was her habit.
“No, it wasn’t,” Demi finally answered. “But I can’t really blame you. Some habits are just hard to break.” As he climbed out of bed, she shifted to a sitting position, mouth quirked up in a half smile. “Is that what you believe I do all day?” she asked, tone teasing as she watched him begin to move about the room, gathering items to get ready for his day. “I’m awake now, so I’ll probably just finish my reread of Pride and Prejudice and then clean up the apartment some.” The former would be done while still in bed, but Demi didn’t feel she needed to tell Isaac that little bit of information.
"If I were you it is what I would do all day," Isaac responded, side-stepping her question. He actually didn't care that she didn't technically have a job. He envied her, certainly, but he never saw blinding green about the situation.
He'd managed to work his way into his dress pants, changed his undershirt and had buttoned up a light blue shirt before he turned back to face Demi. Working on tying a navy blue tie around his neck, he gave her a smile. "Enjoy your book. I'll see you tonight," he said before grabbing his jacket and stepping towards the door.
“Trust me, you would start to go stir crazy eventually,” Demi replied as Isaac began to change. This, much like sharing a bed, was a new development between them. More often than not she made herself scarce while Isaac got ready for the morning, but now she found herself sitting on the bed, stealing glances at him -- she was only human after all. When he turned back around to face her, his smile was met with one of her own. “I always do, sweetheart. Don’t work too hard.” she remarked while she reached for her book on the bedside table, settling into the mass of pillows and blankets as she prepared to lose herself in the pages of the familiar book for a few hours.