𝖒 𝖎 𝖓 𝖊!
SLEEPTOBER PROMPTS - DAY 10
🕯️🍂slasher!vessel x reader | word count: ~10k requested - you lock the door -- and hear them on the other side: "baby, that won't stop me." AND "you're mine. you know that, right? say it." notes: filth. filth. filth. filth. absoute filth. i don't know where my mind went to but it got controlled by some outer demon of some kind. PLEASE be warned that this is not for you if you do not like reading this kind of stuff. TW: home invasion, obsessive fixation, stalking, psychological horror, unresolved grief/lust overlap, dating app deception, emotional manipulation, reality distortion, implied threat of violence, restrained predator/prey dynamic, escalating intimacy under duress, gaslighting (coated in tenderness), parasocial romantic intensity, trauma response (freeze), anxiety/panic response, romanticization of danger, ambiguous consent dynamics, locked-door suspense, voice fixation, distorted memory, toxic devotion, intense nonsexual intimacy, horror grounded in the familiar. 18+ ONLY. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. want to request a prompt? find them here.
𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔩𝔦𝔰𝔱 !
It had been a weird fucking week. The kind of week where the air felt wrong, too still, like the whole town had turned its head to listen to something you couldn’t hear. Your phone rang more than usual – unknown numbers, or worse, numbers you recognized but that went silent when you answered. Your neighbors were spooked; Mrs. Glen from two houses down had started locking her gate for the first time in twenty years, and the guy across the street, the one who always grilled shirtless with his headphones in, hadn’t been out since Monday. And then there were the headlines. Sparse at first, only trickling in through hushed rumors on campus and buried local crime blotters: a body found near the woods. Another two outside city limits. No details. No arrests. No statements from the sheriff except for the usual canned nonsense about curfews and “heightened awareness.” You tried to write it off – small towns liked their panic stories, liked to circle wagons and whisper – but deep down, something inside you had started to coil. Not panic. Not yet. But that quiet, animal sense that someone had been walking too close behind you for too many days in a row.
Tonight had been the first time you really let it in. Not in words – God, no, saying it out loud would’ve made it real – but in action. You’d left your friends earlier than planned. Skipped the last drink, turned down the offer to crash on the couch. Your excuse was innocent enough: “early shift,” “migraine,” “I’m just tired.” But you knew why you were leaving. Why you stuck to lit streets, checked over your shoulder every few steps, kept your hand curled tight around the pepper spray in your coat pocket. You didn’t want to say the truth, even to yourself, but it sat heavy in your chest the whole walk home: someone was watching you. Not just today. Not just tonight. But for a while now. You’d been feeling it in your spine like a thread pulled taut – at the bus stop, in the reflection of shop windows, in the too-long pause of a stranger’s gaze. You told yourself it was paranoia. It didn’t help. The feeling didn’t leave. Not even now, standing in front of your apartment door, key in hand, heart beating harder than it had any right to. You glanced over your shoulder once more before sliding the key in, like it would matter. Like if something was there, it hadn’t already decided what came next.
The door shut behind you with a heavy clunk, the sound louder than usual in the hush of your apartment. You stood for a moment just inside the entryway, listening to the silence – too sharp, too absolute, the kind that made the walls feel closer than they were. You weren’t usually this jumpy. You liked living alone. Liked the freedom, the stillness. But lately, the stillness had started pressing back. The overhead light flickered once as you flipped the switch, then came on with a weak, yellow warmth that barely reached the corners of the room. You let your bag slide off your shoulder and kicked off your shoes without looking down, your gaze still fixed on the window across the room, blinds drawn but not tight enough. You crossed quickly to tug them shut, taking in your own reflection in the glass – face pale, pupils wide, lips parted like you were about to say something. But you didn’t. You just stood there a second longer than you needed to, hand against the glass like you were waiting for it to move.
Your apartment didn’t look different. That’s what unnerves you. Same coffee mug on the table. Same hoodie half-draped over the arm of the couch. Same unfinished book by the bedside, spine cracked where you’d left off. It was all in place, exactly as you’d left it – and yet it felt wrong. Too perfect. Like a set piece waiting for the actor to walk back in. You shook it off, rubbed your hands over your face, and exhaled hard, like that could shake off the electricity still prickling at the nape of your neck. You’re fine. You’re home. It’s late. You’re tired. You told yourself that on loop, moved into the kitchen with muscle memory more than will, flicked on the light, and opened the fridge just for something to do. The hum of the motor was too loud in the quiet. You grabbed a can of whatever and shut the door harder than you meant to, the thud echoing down the hallway like a door closing somewhere it shouldn’t. You waited, breath held. Nothing followed. No footstep. No creak. Still, you turned slowly, glancing toward the bedroom like you expected to see something standing there. But there was nothing. Not yet.
You made yourself sit. That was the rule, wasn’t it? You come home, you unwind, you do the normal things in the normal order until your body believes it. So you sank onto the couch, cracked open the drink with a hiss that felt too sharp, and turned the TV on just for sound. The screen flared to life, spilling cold blue light across the room, painting your legs in shifting shapes from some rerun you didn’t care to register. You let it play anyway. It helped mask the quiet. Helped give your heart something to sync to besides its own climbing beat. You tucked your feet beneath you, stared blankly at the screen, and tried to ignore how it felt like the cushions behind your spine were colder than they should be. You didn’t cry. You weren’t that far gone. But your jaw ached from how tight you’d been holding it all day, and the tension behind your eyes pulsed like something begging to be let out. Still, you sat. Still, you tried. Until the TV cut to static.
No buildup. No flicker. Just a sudden shhhhh of white noise swallowing the voices mid-scene, screen sputtering with shifting snow like a storm had rolled through the signal. You blinked, remote still in hand, and hit mute instinctively – but the sound didn’t stop. It kept going, loud and scraping, rising and falling in irregular pulses like breath. Your stomach dropped. You turned the volume all the way down. Nothing changed. It was still there. The noise wasn’t coming from the speakers. It was coming from behind the wall. Not in the apartment next door – no, it was too close, too focused, like someone had put their mouth right up to the drywall and exhaled. You stood slowly, the can of whatever still half-full and forgotten on the table. The TV went black. Not off. Just dark. No buttons pressed. No signal lost. Just…waiting. And then you heard it. Not static. Not breath. A footstep. Inside.
You stood in the middle of the living room for what felt like an hour, waiting for the noise to return. The television stayed dark, the air conditioner kicked on once and then died again, leaving the apartment in that awful, humming silence that amplifies every small sound your body makes. Your heartbeat became the rhythm of the room. You turned toward the hall, toward the darker half of the apartment where your bedroom door waited open, and something about that open doorway pulled at you. You should have gone for the front door; you should have gone outside and called someone. Instead, you moved the other way, slow, careful, each step sinking into the old carpet with a muffled sigh. The hallway smelled faintly of detergent and rain from the jacket you’d hung there earlier. When you passed the mirror above the console table, you caught your reflection—eyes wide, face washed pale. You pressed a hand to your throat, felt your pulse hammering. “It’s fine,” you whispered, just to hear a voice.
And then something answered.
It came not from the hall, not from outside, but from the kitchen. A man’s voice—low, familiar—threaded through the quiet like it had always belonged there.
“Hey,” The voice said, too familiar, too casual, like a friend easing back into a conversation they hadn’t finished. You knew that voice. Not in the vague, I’ve-heard-this-voice-before kind of way that leaves you guessing, but in that unmistakable, blood-deep knowledge that comes when something familiar turns inside out. You’d heard it three weeks ago in the corner booth of a coffee shop downtown, where the light had fallen soft across his hands as he stirred his drink and smiled at you. His name had been Rory – at least on the app – and the match had felt like a fluke, the kind you don’t expect to go anywhere. The app photo had been grainy, almost too ordinary to trust, but the charm in person had been disarming. He was clever. Careful. The kind of charming that didn’t announce itself. You liked the way he listened more than he talked, how his texts had been just a little too observant, like he’d already started memorizing you before you met. You’d gone on one date. Just one. But it had stayed with you in that low-simmering way that good things sometimes do. You remembered how his voice dipped when he said your name, how warm his hand was when it pressed against the small of your back, how he didn’t try to kiss you until you were already leaning in. He’d laughed in the right places. Asked about the book in your bag. Offered to walk you home when it got late. And you’d let him. Because there had been something about him—self‑contained, almost shy—that felt safe.
You remembered that walk now with painful clarity: the quiet stretch of sidewalk, the cool wind off the river, his shoulder brushing yours in a way that didn’t feel accidental. When you’d reached your building, he’d lingered just long enough to say, “I had a good time,” and you’d said it back, meaning it. Then he’d leaned in, not quite close enough to kiss you, and murmured something that stuck for days after: “I like when you look at me like that.” He’d pulled back with a faint, self-conscious smile and added, “My name’s not actually Rory, by the way. It’s Vessel.” You’d thought it was a joke – a musician’s stage name or an artist’s alias – and laughed, told him it suited him. But when you checked your phone the next day, his profile was gone. Unmatched. Vanished. No message. No explanation. Just silence. You told yourself not to overthink it. You deleted the app. You moved on. And still – when you lay awake at night, there were times you imagined what you might’ve said if he’d texted. If he came back.
Now he had.
You didn’t call his name. You didn’t ask how he got in. Your body moved on its own, instinct overriding thought. The moment the sound of his voice touched your spine, you backed down the hallway and turned into your room, heart hammering against the cage of your ribs. You didn’t slam the door. You closed it. Quietly. Quickly. As if slamming would’ve made it worse, would’ve acknowledged him too directly. Your fingers found the lock and turned it in a single sharp click, and only then did you allow yourself to breathe. The bedroom was small but familiar: laundry basket in the corner, candle burnt halfway on the desk, the blanket on your bed slightly crooked from the night before. Still your sanctuary. Still your control. You didn’t move at first. The lock clicked into place beneath your palm, but your hand stayed there, like if you let go, the barrier might fail. Your breath was coming hard now — not frantic, but shallow, tight, as though your lungs were shrinking with the space. The room felt smaller than it had five minutes ago, the walls pressing inward, every sound heightened, every shadow too still. You backed away slowly, eyes locked on the door as if it were a living thing. And in a way, it was. Because he was behind it. Somewhere out there. The space beyond the bedroom had become unknowable, unsafe — and you could feel it, like the atmosphere had thickened with his presence. You took another step back until the back of your thigh bumped the edge of your bed. The frame creaked softly, a harmless sound, but it still made you flinch. You didn’t sit down. You didn’t dare. Your body was caught between two instincts — hide or flee — but both had already been cut off.
And then, from the other side of the door – not close, not loud, but unmistakable – you heard him speak.
“Baby, do you really think that’s going to keep me out?” A pause, before: “You shouldn’t have run.”
He said it through the door, like it wasn’t a barrier but a boundary he was gently correcting. Not angry. Not cruel. Almost…disappointed. Like you’d let him down. Like this was all just some misunderstanding you could still clear up if you’d just open the door to talk to him. His voice curled through the air with that same quiet patience he’d shown on the date – the one that made you feel like you were the only person in the world. “You made me wait so long.” You bit down had on the inside of your cheek to keep from answering. He didn’t knock. Didn’t try the handle. Just stood there – breathing, waiting, letting the silence gather weight around his words. “I was good, wasn’t I?” He asked, quieter now. “You said you liked how patient I was.” You remembered saying that. The exact moment, the way he’d smiled without teeth and looked down at his hands like the compliment embarrassed him. That was the trap, wasn’t it? He’d never come on strong. He made you lean in first. Made you feel like it was your idea. And now – now he was using that same warmth like a rope to drag you in. “I didn’t want to scare you,” He added, and it almost sounded genuine. “But you started pulling away. You stopped looking for me. I had to do something.”
“You remember that night?” He asked, like this was a conversation between two people on opposite ends of a phone, not a door. His voice drifted lower, threatening, not even urgent – just close. “You let me walk you home. You smiled when I touched your wrist. You didn’t want me to leave. I know you didn’t.” You stared at the knob, the lock, the thin brass barrier that suddenly felt like paper, flinching away from its surface and instead reaching for the solidity of the dresser behind you. Your nails bit into the wood. It didn’t make you feel any safer. “So why are you acting like I’m a stranger?” He murmured. And God – the thing that unmoored you wasn’t the question. It was how honestly he asked it. Like this hurt him. Like he couldn’t understand why you’d hide from someone who had only ever tried to be exactly what you said you wanted.
You hadn’t realized you were backing up again until your hip bumped the corner of the nightstand. You caught yourself, half-turning to brace your hand against the wall, your palm flat against the plaster like it might let you feel if he was still there. But you didn’t need to feel him. You knew. He was there – not just in the hallway, not just outside the door, but pressed into the shape of every memory you’d let yourself keep. His voice had never left you. It echoed in your dreams for weeks, in that empty space between waking and sleep where he’d say your name like it was already his.
“You don’t have to pretend you don’t feel it,” He said now, softer, like the words were something tender. “It was real for me too. I never wanted anyone like I wanted you.” That tone – low and unshaken, wrapped in velvet guilt – didn’t belong on the other side of a locked door. It belonged in a lover’s mouth, tangled in your sheets, whispered against your neck. But here, now, it made your pulse spike with something worse than fear. It made your breath catch with grief. Because part of you had wanted him. And he knew it.
“Say it,” He murmured. Not a command. Not a demand. Just…gentle. Almost reverent. Two syllables, cradled in velvet, like the beginning of a confession you hadn’t meant to hear. “Say it,” He said again, a little firmer this time – not louder, but deeper, the way someone speaks when they’re no longer asking for a truth, but retrieving it. “You’re mine.”
The silence after stretched taut across the room like a wire pulled between two open windows, humming with tension. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t move. He just waited, and somehow that was the worst part – because you knew he would keep waiting. You could feel him on the other side of the wood, head tilted to listen, mouth parted like he could already hear your answer in the way your breath stuttered. And fuck, your breath was stuttering. You pressed both hands to your mouth, trying to slow it down, trying to stop the way your throat tightened with something that wasn’t a sob but wasn’t not one either. The worst part was, it wasn’t the word itself that terrified you. It was how easy it would be to say it. To let it fall from your mouth like a secret you’d never wanted to keep. He said it like it was inevitable. Like it had always been yours, you just hadn’t used it yet.
You didn’t answer. You couldn’t. Your lips were parted, yes, but the shape of the word stayed caught somewhere between your tongue and and your throat, thick and sticky as blood. You didn’t want to give it to him – not because it wasn’t true, but because it was, and that made it worse. That made it real. Your whole body sat clenched like a held breath, heart rabbiting behind your ribs, fingers clawed into the weave of your blanket where you’d sunk halfway to the floor, knees bent against the bed frame. You felt like a wire pulled tight between denial and something older, something deeper than fear. Because fear didn’t hum like this. Fear didn’t make your skin feel electric. Fear didn’t make you press your thighs together or remember the weight of his hand at the small of your back that night, the way he’d leaned in just close enough to feel the air move when he whispered your name.
The silence between you rang like a bell. And he heard it. Of course he did. That was his whole thing, wasn’t it? Not force. Not chaos. Listening. Vessel had always known how to take what you didn’t say and make it gospel. You hadn’t said yes, but he didn’t need you to. Your silence had teeth. Your silence trembled.
“You don’t have to say it,” He said softly – a smile in it now, almost tender, like he was proud of you for being so loud without speaking. “You’re saying it anyway.” You closed your eyes, a soft, shuddering breath slipped between your fingers as you pressed both palms harder to your face. Shame curled through you in slow, smoking tendrils – not just for wanting, not just for remembering the heat of his palm through your coat – but for this. For sitting on the floor of your own bedroom, shaking like a girl who’d never been kissed, while the man who’d vanished from your life broke reality down one careful world at a time.
Then came the touch. Not sudden. Not violent. Just a shift – the faintest brush of weight against the other side of the door, so subtle you might have missed it if you weren’t already tuned to the pressure of every molecule in the room. You didn’t hear his footsteps. Just…felt him arrive. Like the hallway exhaled, and he filled the absence. It was the smallest thing – the door didn’t creak, didn’t rattle – but the air changed. Your breath caught as you heard the weight settle, a palm pressing flat to the wood like he was holding it in place just to feel the warmth of you through it. You didn’t move. Couldn’t. The sound was heartbreakingly gentle, a kind of intimacy no lock was made to hold out.
"I know what this is,” He said – so low you barely caught it, like the words were meant for the wood, not for you. “I don’t blame you for being scared. You were always so careful. So sweet.” You could hear the grin forming, slow and crooked. “You always wanted to be good.”
You swallowed hard, throat working against something thick and rising. A part of you wanted to scream. To throw the dresser against the door, open the window, do something. But another part – the quieter one, the one that still remembered how he smelled like clove smoke and cedar when he leaned in too close – stayed. Rooted. Listening. He tapped the door once. Just once. A soft, deliberate sound like a signal, like a rhythm he wanted to teach your heartbeat. “Say it,” He whispered, almost plaintive now. “Say it so I don’t have to prove it to you.” That was the worst part – he didn’t sound threatening. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded desperate. Like the only thing keeping him on the other side of the door was the hope that you’d let him in because you wanted to. Because some part of you already had.
You didn’t speak. Not because you didn’t want to – you weren’t sure of that anymore – but because everything inside of you was too full. The fear, yes, thick and wet and clinging, but tangled now with heat, with memory, with the unbearable knowledge of how it had felt to be seen the way he saw you. Like you were something sacred. Like you were the only thing that had ever made sense to him. Your body hadn’t moved in minutes, but you were shaking now, trembling so finely it felt like the whole room might be vibrating with you. You pressed your back harder into the wall, legs bent, knees pulled close, but the cold of the floor didn’t ground you. Nothing did. All of it – the light, the door, your own skin – felt secondary to the sound of his breath, just inches away on the other side. Not ragged. Not frantic. Just…steady. Devoted. Listening.
“You don’t have to hide anymore,” He said. The words so quiet they almost dissolved, but not quite. “I’m right here. You’ve got me. You’ve always had me.”
And that was the second the door exhaled.
Not a rattle. Not a jolt. Just a shift. A slow, creeping sigh of weight as the wood bowed slightly inward, not enough to open, just enough to yield. The sound of it was delicate – the sound of something considering whether to break. Your breath hitched. You stared at the handle, and you swore you could see it twitch. The lock didn’t move. But the pressure on the other side had changed again – heavier now. Not violent, not even forceful. But sure. Certain. Like his body had committed to the lean. Like he could feel the answer in your silence and was letting the door learn it too.
“You know what I’ll do,” He said. And fuck – his voice wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. It was a lullaby. “If you say it now, I’ll be soft. I’ll take my time. I’ll be exactly what you asked for that night.” A pause. You knew the words before he said them. “You remember that, don’t you? How your hips shifted toward me. How you looked up through your lashes like you were already mine. I saw it. I felt it. You said it without words.”
Then, as if he’d been waiting for the exact moment your silence twisted into surrender – not full, not spoken, but soft around the edges – he said your name. Just that. Nothing else. Not with bite, not with a grin. It came slow, shaped with care, laced with something so gentle it knocked the breath clean from your chest. He said it like it was something fragile he’d kept hidden in his mouth this whole time, something he’d only just now unwrapped.
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” He murmured, the consonants softened, vowels hushed. “I was trying to be good. I waited. I watched. I let you go.” You could hear the breath he took – deep, shaky, honest. “But you didn’t forget me. You couldn’t. And that means you know. This was always going to happen. You were always going to come back to me.”
You were still on the floor, but something in you tilted forward. Just slightly. Barely an inch – not even a full shift of weight – but it changed everything. Your body stopped bracing. Your spine relaxed by a fraction. You didn’t crawl to the door. You didn’t speak. But your breath moved like a tide toward him. And he felt it. Of course he did. That damn silence again – he fed off it like oxygen. And that’s when the handle moved. Smooth. Precise. Like he wasn’t testing resistance anymore, just meeting you there. You flinched – not from the sound, but from certainty. That soft turn of brass, that click of teeth giving way – it was a sound you’d always known would come. He didn’t kick the door open. Didn’t rush. He just waited, hand on the knob, pressure steady. Waiting for the last thing.
“Say it,” He said again. But this time, it wasn’t a whisper.
It was a promise.
The door opened like it wanted to – like it had been waiting for the excuse. No creak, no sudden burst, just a low shhh of wood against frame as the pressure gave and the latch clicked out of place. A draft swept in first, carrying with it something warm, something him – like the scent of clove and salt and worn leather had been bottled in the dark and just got uncorked. He didn’t move into the room. He didn’t need to. He simply filled the doorway, one shoulder leaning against it like he’d been there all night. His coat hung open, black as ink, and beneath it, a plain fitted shirt, dark jeans, gloves – nothing overtly threatening, nothing you could point to and scream. But it was him. That same quiet coiled presence you’d felt that day at the coffee shop when he’d first leaned over the table, asked your opinion on that book you hadn’t expected anyone to know. He looked like someone who knew exactly how much room he took up – and how to make you want him to take more.
You didn’t move. You couldn’t. But your eyes found his without meaning to. And there they were – dark and bottomless and burning with something that looked an awful lot like longing. He didn’t smile. Not at first. Just looked at you with that steady, slow-focus kind of gaze that made it impossible to lie. Not to him. Not to yourself. Your breath stuttered, chest rising too fast, and he saw it. Watched it. Drank it in. And then, finally, he smiled – not wide, not smug, but deep. Like it came from somewhere in his ribs.
“There you are,” He said, and you hated the way your stomach turned molten at the sound of it. “I missed you.” He stepped forward once. Just once. One boot over the threshold, and suddenly, the room felt smaller. Warmer. Like he’d brought a storm in with him and set it down at your feet.
He didn’t reach for you. That would have been too easy, too fast. He just stood there, a single step inside your bedroom, one hand still resting on the doorframe like he was reluctant to let it go. Like the frame itself might try to keep him tethered, to hold him back from coming closer. But his eyes never left you. Not once. They drank in every inch of you, knees pulled up defensively, fingers clenched into the hem of your shirt, eyes wide and rimmed in a sheen you hadn’t meant to let show. He tilted his head slightly, like he was studying a painting that had changed while he wasn’t looking.
“You’re scared,” He said – not cruel, not mocking, just…noting it. Accepting it. “But not enough to run.” His gaze dropped lower, slow and deliberate. “Not enough to scream.”
The floorboards beneath his second step didn’t creak, but they felt like they should have. It was that kind of movement – quiet, smooth, inevitable. He closed the door behind him without looking, a hand sliding up to guide it back into place with the soft click of the latch. You flinched. He noticed. His lips parted like he was going to apologize, but instead, he exhaled through his nose, long and quiet, like your reaction hurt him just a little. He stood there, three feet from you, and crouched to your level slowly, lowering himself like he was afraid you might spook. His knees cracked faintly. His gloves creaked. And still, he said nothing. Just knelt across from you on the worn bedroom carpet, and looked at you like you were something holy he didn’t know how to touch without breaking.
Up close, he looked…softer than you expected. Not gentle, not safe, but softened – like something bladed left too long in the rain. The sharpness still there, of course, beneath the calm, beneath the stillness in his posture and the unnervingly delicate way he crouched before you like a worshipper, like a penitent, like someone who didn’t want to be forgiven but wanted you to know he was sorry anyway. His eyes searched your face the way he had on the date – like he couldn’t stop cataloging you, couldn’t help reading you the way someone studies a prayer they’ve rewritten a thousand times but never dared say aloud.
“You’re even prettier like this,” He said quietly, voice soaked in something like awe. “I thought maybe I remembered it wrong. I thought maybe I made it better in my head. But no. You’re worse. You’re better. I don’t know what to do with you.”
His hand moved – just a fraction. Not toward you. Not yet. He just shifted it on his thigh, palm up, fingers relaxed. Offered. Not a command. Not a grab. Just a presence. A question. The gloved tips hovered inches from your knee, and even that tiny gap between your bodies buzzed like it was charged with static. You hadn’t moved. You couldn’t. But God, your body wanted to. Every nerve ending in you was screaming with the wrongness of sitting still when someone was looking at you like that.
“Can I?” He asked finally – barely more than breath, voice dipping into something hoarse and fraying. “Not to scare you. I just…I just want to remember how you felt.” His voice cracked at the edges of the word remember, and something in your chest squeezed hard enough to hurt.
You didn’t say yes. You didn’t nod. But your knee twitched forward by half an inch – a betrayal of stillness so small it might’ve been an accident, if not for the way his eyes lit up the moment it happened. He didn’t pounce. Didn’t press. He just…moved. Slowly. Like he was touching an animal he’d coaxed out of the woods. Like he was scared you’d bolt. His gloved fingers found your knee first, resting just behind the curve, barely enough pressure to register. And then he shifted his hand lower, palm warm even through the leather, until it settled over yours where you were still clutched at your shirt hem. He didn’t squeeze. Didn’t pry. Just laid his palm there like a weighted stone, anchoring you with contact so deliberate it felt like it rewrote the way your body understood gravity.
“You feel that?” He asked, so softly it could’ve been the wind. “That’s real. I’m real.” His eyes searched your face again, and this time, something cracked through the calm – something that looked achingly like relief. “I don’t have to imagine anymore.” He said. “I don’t have to watch you from behind glass. You’re right here.” His thumb brushed the ridge of your knuckles, slow and delicate, like he thought your hands might vanish if he held too tightly. “Do you know what that means for me?” His breath trembled as he exhaled, like the answer scared him. “It means I get to earn it now. All of it. Everything I’ve waited to show you.”
“Vessel,” You breathed. It wasn’t a question. Wasn’t even a plea. It was something older than either – like a name carved into the underside of a desk, found years later with your fingers. Your voice broke around it, not from fear but from pressure, from the sheer weight of saying it aloud again after all this time, after all that silence. His reaction was instant. Not dramatic, not dangerous – just profound. His lips parted, eyes widening with something raw and nearly ruined, like the sound of his name in your voice undid him more completely than a scream ever could. His hand tightened over yours, not harsh but firm, grounding you both with the first note of something real, something mutual.
“That’s the first time,” He whispered, almost to himself. “The first time you’ve ever said it like that.” The look in his eyes shifted – still reverent, still burning, but now laced with something hungrier. Something that pulsed beneath the skin like heat. “Not Rory. Not the fake thing I made up to get close. Me.” His thumb ghosted over your pulse, tracing the beat like he was trying to memorize its rhythm. “Say it again,” He murmured, and you could feel the need rising off him like steam – not for violence, not even for sex yet. Just for that sound. That single syllable, shaped in your mouth like a gift you didn’t know he’d been dying to open.
“Vessel.” The name landed different this time – not whispered in panic, not curled in the back of your throat like it might cut you. It came smooth. Steady. And worse: warm. Like your body was finally catching up to what your heart already knew, like saying it again made it yours too. His shoulders dropped – not in relief, exactly, but in something heavier. A letting-go. A deep exhale from somewhere buried. He leaned in, not to cage you, not to crowd you, just to close the space his body couldn’t bear anymore.
“That’s it,” He murmured, the words almost lost in the space between your faces. “That’s you. That’s mine.” His hand slid from yours, a reluctant lift, and dropped instead to your thigh – high, warm, gloved, deliberate.
His palm molded to your skin like it had missed you. Like it had ached for the place it used to rest. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t drag, didn’t spread your legs open – not yet. He just let it sit there, fingers curled slightly, thumb brushing the outer line where denim met warmth. Your breath caught. And his did too. “You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?” He said, not asking, not accusing. Just knowing. “The way I’d feel. How deep I’d go. How slow I’d fuck you the first time I got to really touch you.” His thumb swept up, grazing under the hem of your shirt where it had ridden high over your hip. “Tell me you thought about it,” He urged, voice gone velvet-thick with hunger, with restraint. “I need to hear it. Just once.”
You opened your mouth to answer, some messy tangle of need and memory and yes rising in your throat – but the words didn’t come. Not the right ones. Not his words. And he saw it. He felt the hesitation like a heartbeat under your skin, pulsing against his palm where he held you steady. His grip flexed – not cruel, just enough to remind you what your silence cost.
“There it is,” He murmured, almost tender. “That pause. That space where my words should’ve been.” He shifted closer, knees bracketing yours, one hand still spread low on your thigh, the other slipping forward to brace beside your hip. “I told you, sweetheart. I gave you the chance. You say it – you’re mine – and I’d come in soft. Gentle.” His breath kissed your cheek, but the heat behind it had sharpened. “But you didn’t. This is twice, now, that you haven’t done as you’re told.”
The way he looked at you was almost heartbreaking – not rage, not resentment, but something worse. A kind of aching that sat behind his eyes like hurt pride. “You made me beg,” He said quietly, gloved thumb stroking the inside seam of your jeans with a touch so slow it bordered on cruel. “I was out there, aching for you. Listening to the way your breath broke. Letting you feel me through the door.” His hand cupped you fully now, no more teasing, the leather warm and relentless against the damp heat between your thighs. “And still you didn’t say it.” His voice dropped lower, thick with something deeper than lust. “So now you’re going to feel what you earned. Not what I would’ve given. Not the softness.” He leaned in, lips grazing your ear, and whispered like a promise: “You’ll still come. But you’ll know who it belongs to.”
His hand moved without ceremony, without pause. Just unfastened your jeans with quick, practiced ease – a single flick, a drag of a zipper, and then his fingers were inside. Gloved still, the leather dragging smooth and obscene between folds that were already soaked for him, the kind of wet that shamed you to feel. The kind that told him everything. He groaned – quiet, choked, the sound of a man denied softness and still starving to love you anyway.
“Jesus, look at you,” He breathed, forehead leaning in to rest against yours like he couldn’t bear the distance anymore. “You’d have let me go my whole life without knowing how this felt, wouldn’t you?” His fingers pressed harder now, not to hurt but to remind – rubbing slow and relentless against your clit through the leather, pushing slick heat over every inch of your most helpless part. “You were going to walk away. Pretend I wasn’t yours. After all that.” His mouth curled into something too reverent to be cruel. “But your body never lied.”
You gasped – you couldn’t help it – as one finger slid just barely lower, grazing your entrance, teasing, circling, but not pushing in. Not yet. His other hand caught your jaw, tilting your face up, holding you in place like he was making sure you watched every syllable that passed his lips. “You could’ve had this bare,” He said, tone almost dreamy with imagined softness. “Skin to skin. My hand under your shirt. My mouth on your cunt. All of it.” He let his lips hover near your cheek, breath fanning warm. “But no. You didn’t say it. So now I keep these on – and you take it.” He pushed two fingers inside, sudden and deep, slow only in that he wanted to feel every inch of resistance stretch around the shape of his glove. “You feel that?” He asked, voice low and hungry. “That’s mine now. That’s what you gave me instead of the answer I was looking for.”
The leather shouldn’t feel this good. It should’ve been too much – too foreign, too smooth, too unrelenting – but it was perfect. Slick from your own heat, impossibly deep, and his. He pressed in slow, then pulled back just as slow, letting you catch the seam at the base of his knuckles, the stretch of your walls trying to keep him, the loss of it every time he slipped out. Then he pushed back again, steady and full, his wrist rolling at the end to make the angle impossible – to make you jerk, gasp, choke back a moan like it might save you. It wouldn’t. Not now. His hand on your jaw shifted, thumb brushing your cheekbone with the gentleness his fingers below denied. “This is what it takes,” He murmured, watching your eyes flicker, your mouth fall open. “You don’t want to say it? Fine. I’ll fuck it out of you.”
Your back hit the wall harder than you meant, hips canting forward to meet his thrust like your body couldn’t stand to be good anymore. And God, he saw it. He loved it. “There she is,” He breathed, mouth dragging against your jaw, not kissing – drinking. “You think I don’t know what that silence meant? You didn’t want gentle. You wanted this. You wanted to be ruined for it. For me.” His fingers fucked into you faster now, not punishing exactly – not brutal – but intentional. A pace you couldn’t squirm from, couldn’t talk over, couldn’t pretend you weren’t already clenching around. “You were already mine,” He whispered against your neck, his breath hot and shuddering as he worked you open. “You just didn’t want to admit it until I was wrist-deep in your cunt.”
His fingers didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow. Each slick thrust stretched you more, made your hips chase the motion like you couldn’t help it – like he couldn’t help it either. The glove made everything worse in the best way – the frictionless drag, the slick heat soaked into leather, the way it sounded, filthy and constant, echoing off the walls as he filled you again and again. Your head tipped back against the drywall, eyes fluttering shut, but his voice yanked them open. “No, no,” He cooed, low and rough, chest brushing yours with every breath. “Eyes on me. I want to see you break.” His free hand tipped your chin back toward him, fingers splayed warm across your jaw. “You don’t get to go all quiet now. Not when you’ve got something to say.”
You couldn’t speak. Not yet. Your mouth was open, lips trembling, breath coming out in ragged gasps as your body climbed higher, tightening around his hand like it could hold him in place forever. But he wouldn’t let you come like this. Not until you gave him what he asked for. “Say it,” He growled, and the softness was gone now – stripped down to something bone-deep and needy, but still in control. Always in control. “Say you’re mine. Say it while I’m inside you, or I’ll make this last all fucking night.” His fingers curled just right – that devastating crook that made your body seize, made your moan crack into something ruined. “Say it,” He said again, voice breaking like he’d waited too long to hear it. “Say it. Now.”
“I’m yours,” You gasped – not pretty, not poetic, just real. Desperate. Raw. It cracked out of you in a voice you barely recognized, and the second it did, everything changed. His whole body shuddered – not a flinch, not surprise, but relief. Like he’d been holding something in for weeks, for years, and the sound of your voice shattered the last wall between what he wanted and let himself take.
“That’s it,” He said, almost hoarse, his hand moving faster now, brutal in rhythm but precise in aim. “Say it again.”
He didn’t need to tell you – it was already spilling out of you like a prayer. “I’m yours – yours – Vessel, I’m yours –” And your voice cracked as he fucked his fingers into you like he could brand the shape of them into your walls forever.
Something broke in him. You felt it before you saw it – the stutter in his breath, the way he leaned in so hard his body was almost shaking, how his mouth caught your cheek like he was afraid of kissing you too soon, like it would ruin you faster than he meant to. “That’s all I needed,” He growled against your skin, voice gone low, ragged. “You could’ve had it easy. Could’ve had it soft. But you waited. You made me–” He didn’t finish. Couldn’t. He pushed in deeper, somehow, hand fully soaked, wrist against your cunt now, pace merciless, and still – still – it wasn’t enough for him. Not when he had you like this. Not when your head tipped back and your thighs shook and your moans came out broken and wet and completely his.
Your orgasm hit like a crash of something too big to name – not a wave, not a fall, something louder, heavier, more final. Your back arched off the wall, hands scrabbling for purchase – his shoulders, the edge of his coat, the hair at the nape of his neck – anything that would anchor you as your body clenched around his fingers and held. You heard yourself cry out his name, not Rory, not the mask, but Vessel, and that sound seemed to detonate inside him. He moaned – real, deep, like it hurt – and surged forward to catch your face in his hand. His gloved palm cradled your jaw, not to hurt, not to control, but to hold you there, to witness you.
“That’s it,” He breathed, pressing his forehead to yours, fingers still working you through every tremor. “That’s my girl. That’s what I wanted. Just like that. Let it happen. Let it fucking happen.”
You were shaking – legs too weak to hold you, breath hiccuping in your throat, tears hot at the corners of your eyes and no idea when they’d started – but still he didn’t let go. His fingers slowed finally, easing back from where they’d stretched you so deep, now just circling, coaxing, like he was sculpting your aftershocks with care. His other hand slid up, fingers wrapping gently around the side of your neck, not squeezing, just holding. Anchoring. His thumb brushed your jaw, tilting your face toward him as he looked down at you with something deeper than triumph. Worship.
“Look at you,” he whispered, awed. “God, you’re beautiful like this. Ruined for me. Marked.” His lips brushed your cheekbone, feather-light, reverent, like you were still some fragile thing in the aftermath — but the shake in his breath said otherwise. That kiss, too soft for the man currently trembling with restraint above you, landed like a lit match against paper. “You’ll never come like that for anyone else,” he murmured, voice low enough to graze your bones. “You know that, don’t you?” And you did. You fucking did. It bloomed inside you — not shame, not even pride, but something headier. A raw, sweet ache that crawled under your skin and whispered that this moment had always been inevitable. From the first look. The first touch. The first time he said your name like it already belonged to him.
And then – the shift.
It was subtle. Not in his hands – they were gentle, still trailing soft across your trembling thighs – but in the stillness that followed. The silence that filled up behind your answer. His body was too still. As if he were waiting. Measuring. Breathing slow and hard through his nose like he’d just passed the point of no return. His hand curled around your hip, not stroking now but holding – firm, possessive – like he was grounding himself with the weight of you. “You could’ve had it soft,” He said at last, voice cracked open. “You could’ve had me take my time. Make it last. Make it perfect.” His thumb dragged slow across the curve of your waist, and you felt it shake. “But you didn’t say it. Not when I told you to.” Another pause. Another breath. Then, with a finality that made your heart seize – “And now I can’t stop.”
He sat back on his heels like he needed the space just to look at you. His eyes trailed down your body — flushed, heaving, open — and something in his expression fractured. Not cold. Not angry. Worshipful. But it didn’t soften him. He reached for his gloves first, fingers slipping under the edges, and peeled them off one at a time like he wanted to feel what he’d done to you. The sound was faint, barely a whisper of leather tugging free, but it carried in the quiet like a gunshot. One glove hit the floor. Then the other. His hands — long-fingered, veined, shaking just slightly — hovered over your hips again, skin bare now, and for a moment he just held you. Let himself feel you. Then his hands moved up, slow and heavy, and he reached for the coat. Shrugged it off in a smooth roll of muscle, the collar slipping down his back until it fell behind him with a dull thud. He looked leaner like this. More real. Less nightmare, more hunger. The black shirt underneath clung to his chest with sweat, dark at the collar, sleeves pushed high enough to bare the hard line of his forearms. His breath came slow and shallow, eyes fixed between your legs, his expression torn between reverence and a need he’d tried so hard to bury.
His belt came next, the quiet snick of leather sliding through loops a death knell for whatever mercy might have been left between you. He didn’t unbuckle it fast – he didn’t need to. He watched you the whole time, jaw locked tight, like it was taking every ounce of self-control not to tear through the last barriers with his hands. The metal clasp clinked once against his palm as he loosened it, then let the belt fall in a slow spiral to the floor, where it coiled like something waiting to strike. Then his fly – one button, then the next, each undone with steady fingers, the kind of unhurried confidence that came from knowing the moment was already his. Not pending. Not requested. Taken. You felt it in your bones before he even pushed his pants down: the shift in him. The tremble barely masked by discipline. The way his breathing changed when he freed himself and you saw the thick, flushed length of him at last, already dripping, already aching, already fucking furious from being kept waiting this long.
“You think I’ve been patient?” He rasped, voice thick with something unnameable as he gripped your wrist and hauled you upright, breath leaving your lungs in a startled gasp. He didn’t give you time to find your balance – didn’t want you steady – just manhandled you onto the bed like a weightless thing, body folding, twisting under his hold until he had you exactly where he wanted you. Face down, ass up, spine arched hard with your knees barely catching against the mattress edge. His hand pressed firm between your shoulder blades, forcing you lower, grinding your cheek to the sheets. The other curled tight around the meat of your hip, fingers bruising as he angled you up, tilting you open like a prize being displayed. You heard his breath – ragged, ecstatic – as he knelt behind you, the heat of his bare thighs pinning yours apart. “This,” He growled, cock dragging heavy between your folds, slick already painting your skin, “is mine now.”
And then – with a single, brutal snap of his hips – he buried himself to the hilt in one savage thrust that cracked a sob from your throat and dragged a curse from his. “You didn’t say it,” He snarled, pulling back only to drive deeper, harder. “So now I’ll make sure you never fucking forget.”
He didn’t stop to savor it. Didn’t pause to let you adjust, didn’t lean down to kiss your neck and whisper sweet things to make it easier. That was the version of him you could’ve had. The one who would’ve pressed his lips to your ear and fucked you slow, deep, adoring – if you’d just said it. But you hadn’t. And this was the aftermath. He fucked you like it was punishment, like your silence had gotten under his skin and stayed there, rotting into obsession. Each thrust slammed your hips into the mattress with enough force to creak the frame, his grip iron-clad around your waist as he hauled you back onto his cock again and again, using the slick mess between your legs like it owed him. And it did.
“Fucking tight,” He snarled, sweat dripping down his jaw as he rutted into you like he was chasing something – not release, not even pleasure, but possession. “You hear that?” He growled, punctuating the words with another snap of his hips that made the whole bed jolt against the wall. “That sound you make when I stretch you open? That’s mine now too.”
His hand fisted in your hair then, yanking your head back enough to arch your spine like a bow, to hear you cry out when he bottomed out so deep it felt like he was splitting you in two. “Thought about this every night,” He panted against your ear, hips pistoning like he’d lost any concept of rhythm – just need, just drive, just ownership. “Thought about how good you looked on that fucking sidewalk, smiling like you weren’t already mine.” His hand moved from your hip to your ass, slapping down with a crack loud enough to echo, then gripping hard enough to bruise. “Should’ve said it. Could’ve had my fingers inside you all soft, slow, sweet.” Another punishing thrust, your breath ragged now, tears pricking the corners of your eyes from how deep he hit. “But you didn’t. And now I’m gonna fuck it into you.” He leaned down, mouth open against your shoulder, voice gone low and mean. “Gonna ruin this pretty little cunt until it can’t forget who it belongs to.”
He fucked like he’d snapped something – restraint, reason, whatever thread had been holding back the full weight of his obsession. You were just a body to him now, a shape molded to take him, to keep him, and every time his cock slammed home, it was with that same single-minded ferocity: like he was carving his name into the deepest parts of you. Your arms buckled beneath you, legs shaking, forehead pressed to the mattress where the sheets had gone damp with sweat and tears and drool. But he didn’t ease up. If anything, the sounds you made – broken, strangled, wrecked – only spurred him on. He growled something filthy under his breath, grabbed your hips in both hands, and pulled you back to meet his next thrust, your spine screaming with how hard he used you.
“That’s it,” He hissed. “Take it. You fucking take what you ask for.” Another brutal slam. Another sob ripped from your lungs. “You didn’t say you were mine, so now you get used like this. Ruined. Owned. Used.”
One hand left your hip, fingers ghosting over your lower back like they might soften — but they didn’t. They moved higher, sliding up your spine until they closed around the back of your neck, holding you down, in place, right where he wanted you. “You’re not getting away again,” he said, voice lower now, not shouting but still vicious, reverent in the way worship turns dangerous. “You’re not going to walk out of here and forget me. Not this time.” His cock punched deeper with that promise, thick and unrelenting, and you felt it in your fucking soul — every inch, every snap of his hips, every breathless growl in your ear. “You made me do this, sweetheart. You could’ve had love. Now you’re gonna get everything else instead.” His pace turned ragged, brutal, hips slamming forward with wild rhythm, chasing his own high like he couldn’t even stop himself now if he tried. “I’ll fill you up so deep they’ll hear it in your voice,” he panted, each thrust stealing air from your lungs. “You’ll walk different. Speak different. Breathe different. And when they ask what happened to you, you’ll remember —” another slam, this one so deep your vision whited out — “you’ll remember who fucking owns you.”
He was unraveling — not in fury, not in punishment anymore, but in something messier, more desperate. The rhythm faltered for a breath, just long enough for a sob to punch out of him — not yours, his — low and guttural, like the weight of what he felt had finally cracked him open from the inside. “You—fuck, you—” he choked, fingers biting into your hips like he was holding onto the last solid thing in his world. “You made me—made me like this,” he gasped, voice warping into something half-broken, half-ecstatic. “I was good. I was fucking good, I waited, I was soft with you, I was gentle—” He slammed in again, and this time the sound he made was damn near a whimper, thick and wrecked with need. “And you—you made me this.”
He bent low over your back, chest heaving against your spine, mouth open against your shoulder like he couldn’t breathe without tasting you. His voice caught in his throat, cracked around the edges as he thrust deep, desperate, frantic. “God—God, it’s so good, it’s so fucking good—” The words spilled from him like prayer, like pleading, like awe. “I can’t stop, I can’t, you don’t understand—this is heaven, you’re heaven—” He was crying now, you realized. Silent tears tracking down his face where they soaked into your skin. “You made me like this,” he whispered again, lips trembling. “You made me lose everything, and I’d do it again. I’d do it a thousand times. Just—just let me stay. Let me—fuck, let me come inside, I need to—please—”
He didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Every thrust now came like a plea, deep and messy and needy, the kind of fucking that no longer had precision, only hunger. “God, I’m so close—fuck, I’m right there,” he moaned, forehead pressing into the sweaty line of your spine, voice shaking with every ragged breath. “But I can’t—not yet—not ‘til you do. Not ‘til you break for me again.” His hand moved around your waist, frantically, blindly, fingers finding your clit like he’d been searching for it in the dark his whole life. He circled it fast and tight, moaning when your hips jolted. “Come on,” he begged, voice cracking with how badly he needed it, needed you. “I need to feel you fall apart. Need to feel you take it. You owe me this.”
You sobbed as he fucked you harder, hand relentless where it worked you, his cock drilling into the same bruised spot over and over until your whole body clenched tight like a fist. “Please,” he choked, right against your ear now, hot and shivering. “Please, I can’t—I can’t hold it. I want to, I have to. I need you to come, baby, need you to let go, need to feel it—need to feel it again.” The sound he made then was obscene, a wrecked little cry torn from his throat as your walls fluttered around him and your breath hitched high, and he felt it, felt your release build and crest and crash.
The moment you came, everything inside you tightening, pulsing, grinding back against him like you were trying to bury him even deeper—that was when he broke. “Yes,” he gasped, a shudder exploding through him, hips stuttering as he buried himself to the root and finally, finally let go. His whole body locked up, his breath punched out of him in a sob, and he held you so tight it hurt. “That’s it—fuck, that’s it—I’m yours, I’m fucking yours—” The last thrusts were erratic, desperate, his voice a raw mix of worship and grief and relief as he spilled inside you, deep and hard and endless.
And even as he came, he kissed your shoulder, your neck, your spine—trembling, whispering broken nothings like thank you, I love you, I missed you, I missed you, I missed you—and didn’t stop until the shaking did.
