Liam's flat was home, just less for him than all and sundry. He'd built it into a harbor of safety where needy people could dock, a corner of London still on the beaten path but warm and comfortable and just outside the danger zone of life as everyone knew it. The flat was home, then, yet Liam visited it only occasionally, breezing into the place only every few days: tall and scruffy man with his worn clothes and his good coat, his smile the real thing which kept the cold at bay. With Christmas again far behind him and Valentine's successfully elbowed past, it was back to business as usual. No more helter skelter behavior from he the self-proclaimed caretaker. No more wallowing about in past mistakes or neglected familial obligation.
The future was out there, after all, and the present as well. These were what Liam focused on, the things just outside fingertips' reach which sat ephemeral, tantalizingly close, promises of what could be if only one were brazen enough to make a grab. (Bad habits gleefully encouraged and polished to a shine by a now-dead partner in literal crime, habits now put to somewhat better use with just Liam leading up the crew, the gang, the louts; call them what you would.) There was a job coming up, a con requiring research and planning and a few late nights of work before a proper set of not-soldiers could be chosen for accompaniment, and so Liam circled back to the flat from a week's worth of couch-surfing through friends' and acquaintances' lives. He pounded up the many stairs leading to the studio with its brick walls and beaten mismatched furniture, the lock missing from the front door and moved to his unused bedroom, so that it was sealed tight as a drum. At his side the ever-present bag slapped against his hipbone, step-left-step-right reminder of notes and laptop and the spare toothbrush which went everywhere he did, of a transient life.
When he nudged through the scarred doorway (painted blue this time; it was green, last he'd been home), it was with confident step and too-broad smile and a boomed-out "hello, the flat". This was the place with foot traffic equatable to a tube station, a constant flow of people coming and going, but even if he didn't live there particularly often it was all to apparent who the master of the metaphorical house was when Liam finally did make his appearance.