It started as a minor irritation. A spring beneath his left shoulder blade, pressing up through whatever was left of the padding like a finger prodding him in the back. He’d shifted. The spring followed. He’d shifted again, and a second spring introduced itself to the base of his spine as the bedframe let out a loud creak.
Diwa held perfectly still. Colin had a full day of work scheduled the next day, and he didn’t want to risk breaking his sleep. He counted to sixty, twice, and tried a micro-adjustment of his hips to the left.
The bed frame groaned like it was dying. Colin shifted onto his other side with a grunt, and the entire mattress cratered towards the centre, rolling Diwa into his omega’s back. Colin weighed nine stone, and yet the bed still reacted as though a rhino were performing calisthenics on it.
By three in the morning, he had mapped every spring in the mattress with his spine. There were at least nine that he could identify by position and temperament, and the one directly beneath his right hip had developed a personal vendetta against him.
Diwa picked up his mobile from the floor, where he’d left it beside his folded jeans, and shielded the screen against his chest. He opened his messages, found his house manager’s thread, and began typing with his thumb.
Diwa:Hi Patricia. I need a mattress and bed frame delivered to an address in Barking tomorrow. Best you can source. Emperor or super king, whatever fits the room. I’llsend measurements in the morning. And I need the old one taken away and disposed of. You should absolutely torch the mattress. Can you make this happen?
Patricia, who managed two of his properties across three time zones and had once sourced a high-altitude espresso machine for Diwa’s Denver apartment on two hours’ notice, replied in under a minute.
Patricia:Of course. Budget?
Diwa:None.
Patricia:Noted. I’ll have options for you by 7am your time. Re: the mattress — I have a contact at London Zoo. They have access to a crematorium.
Diwa:Patricia. It’s a mattress, not a dead giraffe.
Patricia:You said torch it. I’m giving you options.
He locked the screen, set the mobile face-down on the floor, and looked at Colin. Even in sleep, Colin’s face held a set quality, his brow not quite smooth, some part of him remaining on alert.
Diwa opened a podcast about mangrove restoration, putting on just one earbud and keeping the volume low enough that he could still hear Colin breathing. He got through two episodes and the first twenty minutes of a third before his attention drifted to his email, where Ezra had sent a thread about a sustainability conference in Copenhagen.
At half six, the sky through the window turned from black to grey. Colin’s alarm went off, and his hand shot out to silence it. He sat up, rubbed his face, and looked at Diwa, who was lying beside him with both eyes open and his mobile on his chest.
“Have you slept?”
“Loads.”
Colin’s gaze dropped to the phone, the earbud, and the dark circles that Diwa could feel sitting heavy under his eyes. His mouth flattened, but he didn’t push it. He swung his legs off the bed and padded off to the bathroom.
Diwa got up, went to the kitchen, and began opening cupboards. The fridge held eggs, milk, half a block of cheddar. By the time Colin came out in his work clothes, Diwa had scrambled eggs with the cheddar and made toast for the two of them. Colin ate everything set in front of him.
“I’ll drive you to work,” Diwa offered.
“No.”
“It’s on my way.”
“You don’t even know where I’m going, Diwa.”
“I know it’s somewhere in London, Colin. Notting Hill is very central, that’s why I bought there. It’s on the way to heaps of places.”
Colin pressed his mouth into a line. He rinsed his plate, stacked it in the drying rack, and picked up his bag before following Diwa out of the flat.
Colin sat in the passenger seat of the Range Rover with his holdall between his feet and his elbow on the armrest, watching the terraced houses of Barking slide past through tinted windows. He didn’t say much until they got three streets away from the job. Then Colin put his hand on the dash. “Pull over here.”
“We’re not there yet.”
“Pull over, Diwa.”
Colin unclipped his seatbelt as the car drew to a stop, then leaned across the centre console, and kissed him once, closed-mouthed, his calloused hand resting on the back of Diwa’s neck. “Thank you.” He grabbed his holdall from the footwell.
Diwa sat in the warm glow of that kiss. His omega, fed and safely driven. Kissed, and now heading off to work with food that Diwa had made for him in his belly. The alpha in his chest was practically roaring with accomplishment.
