"Darren! Darren"

Issey's screams echoed through the house.

Darren took the stairs two at a time trying to get to her quickly. He called out letting her know he was on his way but she didn't stop yelling.

He stopped short at the bed. She was fast asleep, Walker still laid along her side but looking up at him with worried eyes.

He cupped her face in his hands to stop the thrashing and asked her to wake up.

She clutched his arm as she surfaced from sleep.

"Shh, it's okay, it's okay, I'm right here." He tried to soothe her but her wild eyes scared him.

When she was able to focus she felt the full force of the fear, but with no memory of what had put it there. "Probably best not to try and remember." He told her.

"I'm sorry I scared you." Walker nudged her and kissed her hand. "Did I scare you too sweet boy? I'm sorry."

"As loud as you yelled he never left your side. Who's a good boy?"

Walker settled down with a single tail thump and returned to sleep.

"What time is it?"

"5:30, you hungry?

"Not really. What were you doing?"

"Learning lines, I hate to say it but I have to go back to set tomorrow."

"I'm going to go in before chemo tomorrow, I have to get some stuff done with Lea, and actually later tonight you and I should do a little something about your Imagine Dragons song."

"Please do not push yourself. This is a time for rest little Mama Bear."

She snuggled deeper into her pillow but kept the hold on his arm. "I promise I won't. Would you go get your script though and learn them up here? I want to go back to sleep but I wanna be selfish and keep you close."

He kissed her cheek, "Come here, I'll look at it later."

She wanted to tell him it was fine, that he could work as long as he stayed close but instead curled to her opposite side and pulled his arm around her as she went.

It soothed her, he'd noticed lately, to scratch at the hair on his arms as she fell asleep.

Walker got up, looked pointedly at Darren and went downstairs. His meaning could not have been more clear. "You're watch, don't screw it up."

Two hours later they had dinner outside.

"Can we talk about you taking on a new client right now?" Darren took a large gulp of his milk.

"What's to talk about? It's my job."

"You have a job, Glee is a full time gig and you have so much else going on right now, do you really need to add to it? It's not like we need the money."

"This job has never been about the money for me Darren. Look I know you're worried about me exhausting myself but try to look at it this way, I'm used to being extremely busy and feeling normal is more important to me now than ever. I'd like to keep myself as involved as I can as long as I can."

"I guess I can dig that but as much as I want you to feel good I don't want you to jeopardize your health for it."

"Babe I did my chemo and came home and slept all day, I'm eating right, doing my yoga every day. I'm being smart about doing all the doctors ask of me and not one of them asked me to slow down my work schedule."

"Do they KNOW your schedule?"

"No. If it makes you feel better though I will call tomorrow and ask how many hours a week is best."

"Thank you."

Joey showed up after dinner to take Walker out to "play on the beach". Darren peeked out the deck and saw a leggy blond walking her own dog along the surf.

"It's gonna take more than the dog, man."

With Walker out on recon with Joe Issey decided it would be a good time to go down to the studio and work on Darren's song.

"Keep the verse straight, don't play with it, then just before the chorus give a little punch in the v in never."

Her phone buzzed with an email, normally she'd ignore it while she was working but she was waiting for Jim to send her the files for Adam's music.

"Great."

"What's up?"

"Ryan killed the song. He couldn't get permission for it, you're doing It's Not Unusual."

"Like the Tom Jones song?"

"Apparently."

"So we can't really work on it now until we get the arrangement."

"Nope. You're dismissed."

"Want to go to a movie?"

She laughed, "You are off the hook, I still have work to do. Grab Joey and go, he must be feeling a little left out lately anyway."

"You don't mind?"

"I have to get ready for Lea plus I'll probably get Adam's stuff any minute. I'm going to work while I feel good."

"Do you?"

"Feel good? Yes. Very."

"Sure you don't mind if we go out for awhile?"

"Good grief get out."

They spent the rest of the next two weeks working and seeing each other primarily at work or in bed where one or the other was usually asleep when the other came home.

"I can't believe you're making me do this."

He laughed "No you don't, this was your idea."

"No, MY idea was to let People come interview YOU here about the wedding and the house. MY plan was to be anywhere but here for it."

"So you're plan was to throw me to the wolves?"

She patted his back, "Now you're getting it."

She fussed around cleaning.

"Stop. The house is immaculate. How are you nervous about this you've been through thousands if interviews."

"I've coached my clients through thousands of interviews. This is different now I'm the enemy."

"In what universe are you the enemy?"

The doorbell rang and he went to let the camera crew in that would take photographs. The writer assigned to interview them was just pulling in the driveway.

She was amazed that he could be so self aware and yet so completely blind to how his fans perceived her.

The photographer assessed the house and found the areas they wanted to get pics of. She and Darren had given them permission to snap the main floor, the downstairs rec room and studio. They could photograph the yard in the back but the front yard and upstairs bedrooms were off limits.

Darren was filming now so he was neatly shaved and his hair cut short. She wished they had done the interview earlier because he looked so much younger this way and she felt like a cradle robber. One more thing for people to talk about.

They decided to do the interview out on the patio. The writer was a pretty girl by normal standards but in LA she would be considered too heavy, too ethnic. She fanned herself as they settled and twisted a pencil into her thick dark curls to make a bun. They offered to move inside to the air conditioning but she insisted she was fine and enjoyed the ocean view.

At the start of the interview they thought perhaps she hadn't done much research. She asked how they met, who else Issey had worked with, what Darren thought of being made a regular on the show.

These were the softball questions, meant to relax them and take them off the defensive and though Issey had trained countless clients to not fall for it she did, hook, line and sinker.

Darren required no training, he possessed a natural ease with people that let him charm his way around anything he'd rather not discuss.

"Isabelle, talk to me about the night you met. Was it one of those fairytale moments where you look at him and you just know, or did he grow on you over time?"

"Well it wasn't a cartoon where my eyes popped out into heart shapes or anything but it definitely felt special. I'll tell you how it felt, how it still feels to be around him."

Darren turned in to her, anxious to see how she would try to put into words something neither of them had been able to do so far.

"Have you ever spent the day outside in the snow? Building a snowman, sledding, skiing, whatever, and you know that your cold but it feels sort of refreshing. Then when you come inside and you strip off your clothes and you're completely shivering and you step into a warm shower. You stand there and feel the tingle all over your body as all the places that were icy become warm and pliant. You realize all of the muscles that were contracted against the cold begin to relax and loosen and you finally exhale the breath you weren't aware you were holding. There's a feeling of being back at home in your skin, safe and cozy. That's what meeting Darren, being around him, that's what it feels like for me."

Darren grinned and squeezed her hand. Her way with metaphors and descriptions was one of the things that drew him to her and she had this one spot on.

"Sounds lovely. Can I ask then why you chose to cheat on him with his cast mate Chris Colfer?"

It was the slap in the face Issey should have seen coming but didn't. Darren, not even blinking an eye stepped in.

"Is never cheated on me, you've got the story wrong there. It was me who was involved with someone else, we had an open relationship but I never told Issey until I had to. If anything I was the one who was cheating. She broke up with me before she and Chris started seeing each other."

Issey found her voice. "When I met Darren it turned my world upside down. Things I thought I knew about myself, that I liked being on my own, love wasn't for me, I was a work machine, they were all melting away and I suddenly only wanted him. It was overwhelming so at the first opportunity I ran. We both knew I'd be back."

"But you chose to run to the guy who plays the lover of the man you're running from, who is notoriously gay. That seems a little like you were going out of your way to hurt Darren. Do you want to clear that perception up?"

Another old trick, make them feel like you're here to give them the rare opportunity to clear their name even though social media now gives a platform for anyone to say anything 24 hours a day.

"Notorious is such a negative word, though I imagine Chris was famously gay, yes. On a tour you become very close to the people around you. I didn't make a choice to be with Chris, he's someone I love and will always love."

"How does hearing that make you feel Darren?"

"Like we are very lucky to have so many people we love in our lives. Both of our ex's were at our wedding, I'm still close to Chris, Is has become very close to my ex."

"We both have good taste in the people we love, why shouldn't we want to keep those people close"

"It all sounds very progressive."

"It's just life, man, every step either if us has taken in the past has led us to where we are now, which is an incredible place. I don't know why so many people regret things they've done, they were the choice you made, for whatever reason, and they're a part of you. Hating your past is like hating yourself, there will always be plenty of people to do that for you, don't waste your life being one of them."

It was Issey's turn to smile, she adored the way he could put people in their place while being kind.

Joey had Walker at the guest house but before they knew it he was running toward them, Joey trying to catch him and failing. "Sorry" he stopped to catch his breath, "Sorry, he saw everyone coming in and lost it. Went right through the screen."

Walker positioned himself between Issey and the interviewer and sat up straight, watching her.

"It's fine Joe, we'll keep him here. Call someone to repair the screen?"

Darren rolled his eyes. "Run to the store and get the stuff, we'll do it when I'm through here."

"You know how to do that?" Issey forgot the interview for a moment.

"It's not that hard, I'm not re roofing the house."

She made a 'how about that' face and turned her attention back to the task at hand.

"Cute dog."

"Darren gave him to me as a wedding present. He's a good boy, I've been taking him to chemo with me, everyone there brightens up when Walker comes in."

This got them on the subject of her cancer and how it felt to find out she was pregnant at the same time.

Issey tried to be honest while finding the positive, but it was hard to be positive about cancer.

"I've never been so terrified in my life. Losing her is just not an option for me. Everything just stopped when she was diagnosed."

"You weren't together at that time though were you?"

Walker had laid down but the insincerity in her voice made him sit back up. He looked to Issey to gauge her response but it was Darren who answered.

"What difference does it make, if it were a friend, a lover, a family member, if you care about someone and their life is in jeopardy it affects you."

"It really became a non issue, both guys stepped up in a huge way and supported me. It wasn't a time for pushing away anyone who cared."

She was clearly not getting under their skin and so moved back to the easier questions about the wedding and the house.

They took enough photos to fill 3 albums, Walker starring in most since he patently refused to leave Issey's side as long as the house was full of strangers.

Adam arrived for a session while they were finishing up.

"I thought you were napping after the interview." Darren tried to cover the irritation in his voice but Issey saw the author's ears perk up.

"This went longer than I thought."

"Can you reschedule?"

"He's here, I don't want to send him away."

"I'm canceling tonight. You spent all morning working, then the interview and now more work? You've got to rest."

"Go to the premiere without me, I hate those things anyway."