Page 136 of Claim

Together.

Claim it as ours.

Epilogue

Richie

One year later

I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to waking with an alarm.

I’d never been much of an early riser. When you’re a drug dealer, most of the work comes at night. There’s no reason to see dawn unless you’re still up counting cash, eyes burning, hands stinking of metal and smoke and money.

Even before that, before all the shit keeping me wandering Hackney streets well into darkness, I’d never been one for mornings. No alarm in our flat growing up. Mum worked nights, so she’d be dead to the world by morning. Dad, when he’d been around, didn’t really have much of a work ethic to learn from. Not sure he even had worked. And school was something I drifted in and out of when it suited me. I barely made it in for first lesson most days, only to fuck off by lunch. No one gave a toss to stop me.

Things change, though.

People change.

But when the alarm shrilled through the bedroom I was currently sleeping in, my heart kicked hard against my ribs before my head caught up. It was that hard split second where my body thought I was back where I had no control. Back in a box where time didn’t belong to me. Someone else deciding when I woke, when I moved, when I ate.

Okay yeah…technically, someone else was still deciding when the alarm went off. When the day started. When we got up and moved and showed up where we were meant to be. Only this time, I’d chosen it. Wanted it.

Turned out, I liked it that way.

Giving my life over to Tristan wasn’t half bad.

The low, steady hum of London outside the window and the warmth of his body pressed along mine, soft sheets twisting around our legs, was something I’d very much got used to waking up to. We had a proper mattress, too. One of those memory foam ones that had long since taken the shape of us and refused to let go. So I was very much settled here for the long haul.

Tristan, half-asleep, lifted his arm out from under the duvet to silence the alarm. Long fingers, familiar movement, wrist brushing my chest as he fumbled for his phone. The sound cut off, replaced by quiet again, and I reached for him, curled my arm around his waist and dragged him back against me, burying my face between his shoulder blades. He made a small, protesting noise meaning absolutely nothing and settled anyway.

“Five more minutes then,” he muttered, voice rough with sleep.

“Dangerous talk,” I said into his skin, low and lazy.

He huffed a laugh, breath puffing out warm, and covered my hand with his. No rush to pull away. No flinch. Fingers lacing, easy as breathing.

That was still the strangest thing.

Not us…but the ease of us.

The flat itself felt like that too. Lived-in, softened around the edges. Not the show-home perfection it had been when he first bought it, all clean lines and unused rooms. Now there were my boots by the door instead of hidden away. A spare mug that had become my mug because he hated the chip in the rim. My hoodie permanently slung over the back of the chair because he kept stealing it and I’d given up pretending to mind.

It was still his flat, though. Couldn’t pretend otherwise. His name on the mortgage. Angel, Islington. Third floor in a converted block with stairs always smelling faintly of polish and someone else’s dinner. I’d helped him choose it six months back, when I was still rattling around in that piss-hole bedsit south of the river. We’d been going back and forth for months. Me staying here, him tolerating mine for a night at most, and neither of us pretending it wasn’t obvious which place felt safer.

Giving mine up was a risk though. Once you handed a place like that back to the council, you don’t get another one if things went sideways. Not with my history. My record. So I clung onto it while we…figured out whether we could even work out of the shadows. And it didn’t happen all at once. But, eventually, I just started staying longer. A night became two. Two became most of the week. Then one morning I realised I had a side of the wardrobe. I told myself it was practical. Easier to get to the gym from here. Closer to the youth centre. Lies that barely deserved the name.

We both knew what it was.

Us.

Settling. Becoming something that stayed.

That forever we both branded about.

So a month ago, I handed the keys to my bedsit back and moved in properly. Gave up my lie-ins. Took on alarms. Chose this life, mornings and all.

Tristan slipped out of my arms and left me drifting in the warmth he’d left behind. I hovered there for a minute, half-asleep, until I heard the shower kick on down the hall. Then I dragged myself up. Didn’t want him thinking I was some layabout sprawled in his bed all day. Not when he was out there doing real things. I shoved on some boxers and went through to the kitchen, flicked the kettle on, set his coffee and toast going. Because that was the bloke I was now. Domesticated. Reliable. Someone who made breakfast instead of excuses.