The flat was small. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that couldn't decide if it was a galley or a corridor. They'd looked at twelve places before this one, and by the time they signed the lease, they were so tired of estate agents that the flat's questionable plumbing felt like a minor detail.
The first week was honeymoon territory. They cooked together, cleaned together, fell asleep on the sofa watching things neither of them would have chosen alone. It felt like playing house, except the house was real and so was the Council Tax.
By the second week, they'd discovered the blanket war. Shirly was a blanket hog, not intentionally, but in the way that sleep reveals your truest self, and her truest self wanted all the covers. Derek ran cold. He'd wake at 3am in a state of mild hypothermia, reaching for fabric that had migrated entirely to her side of the bed.
He mentioned it casually. She apologised. Nothing changed. He mentioned it again, this time with the slightly forced casualness of someone who'd been rehearsing the sentence in the shower. She laughed. He didn't. And just like that, their first domestic argument wasn't about dishes or money or whose turn it was to take out the bin. It was about a blanket.
What they didn't realise yet was that the blanket war was never about the blanket. It was about whether Shirly's comfort automatically came first, and whether Derek would keep quiet about his needs to keep the peace. It was about the invisible negotiations that happen when two people share a bed, who gives, who takes, who notices, and who pretends not to.