Thinking about how Vessel would get after a long day of writing—a particularly filthy, achingly angsty song at that—had anticipation coiling low in your stomach. Because when he wrote, he wrote with his whole body, letting emotions fester and build, and once the words were inked onto paper, all that intensity had to go somewhere.
And tonight, it was all towards you.
You are in the kitchen, caught in the slow rhythm of the evening. Swaying absentmindedly to the loud music playing in the background, the scent of sizzling butter and garlic filling the air. Vessel had been gone for hours, and though you’d never admit it outright, you’d been waiting—counting down the minutes—until he walked through that door.
What you didn’t anticipate was how quietly he’d return.
Vessel has a terrible habit of sneaking up on you, not out of mischief but because, despite his height, he moves with the effortless grace of a shadow. And right now, with your back turned, humming lightly to yourself, you were the perfect prey, nimbly sauntering over—about to pounce like a predator.
Before you can react, a sudden grip on your hips—firm, commanding—yanks you flush against Vessel’s familiar embrace. A sharp gasp leaves your lips, nearly dropping the spoon you held. His chest was solid against your back, radiating heat that seeped straight into your skin.
You barely had time to recover before his nose nuzzles the curve of your neck, a warm breath ghosting over your pulse. His lips find the soft spot beneath your ear, a slow, open-mouthed kiss sending a shiver racing down your spine.
“Missed you.”
His voice is rough, frayed at the edges—the kind of raw exhaustion that comes from singing for hours. That comes from thinking about you too much. The thoughts of your supple flesh underneath his slender fingers, how soft your lips felt on him—the feeling of you—like a drug to him. Consuming and addictive.
You let out a breathy laugh, reaching up with one hand to comb your fingers through the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. “It’s only been several hours.”
“Several hours too long, Dove.” His hold on you tightens, his body swaying in sync with yours, effortlessly slotting against you like he belonged there.
The way he says it—like he is starving for you—sent heat licking down your spine.
“How was it?” you ask, trying to keep your voice steady. But then his fingers dip lower, grazing your stomach, his palm splaying possessively over your navel.
“It went well enough,” he murmurs, lips tracing the curve of your jaw, featherlight but devastating. “But…”
You tilt your head, giving him silent permission, feeling the way his mouth hovers, teasing, waiting. “But what?”
His lips drag lower, slow and unhurried, teeth grazing over the delicate skin of your throat.
“Couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
A sharp inhale hitches in your chest as he reached around you, fingers flicking the stove off.
“Ves,” you manage, though it came out far weaker than intended. “I’m cooking.”
“Mm.” He turns you in one swift motion, back pressing against the island.
His eyes—dark, hungry, knowing—lock onto yours, and you swear he could feel every rapid beat of your pulse.
“As much as I love your food,” he sighs, trailing a single finger along your jaw, his lips brushing your cheek as he speaks. “I don’t have an appetite for food.”
You swallow hard, heart thudding. “I-Is that so?”
His breath was warm against your mouth, close enough to steal yours away.
“What do you have an appetite for then?” You knew the answer, but part of you wants—needs—to hear him say it.
A chuckle rumbles in his chest, breathy and low. His hand cups your cheek, thumb stroking lightly over your bottom lip, a tingling sensation lingering from the touch. His other hand slips lower, gripping your hip, kneading the soft skin just above your waistband.
The warmth of his touch burns straight through the fabric, possessive, reverent, aching.
“I think you know.” His voice a husky rasp. “But you just like to hear me grovel for you, don’t you?”
Before you can answer, his mouth crashes onto yours.
It’s molten—searing, all-consuming.
Heat curls deep in your stomach as his fingers tangle in your hair, tilting your head back to take more, to taste more. Your own hands roam his torso before clutching onto his shirt, desperate for something to ground you.
“Only you,” he speaks against your lips, breaking for just a breath. He places a teasing peck at the corner of your mouth before adding, “can satiate me.”
His words sent a sharp pulse straight between your thighs, your knees wobbling as need coils tighter inside you. You tug him back, kissing him with raw hunger, lips parting for him, welcoming him deeper.
He makes a strangled noise into your mouth, his grip tightening as his hips instinctively slot against yours. The movement sends a shiver rolling through you, making you gasp as his hands roam—one sliding up your back, the other wandering lower.
Somewhere in the haze, he fumbles blindly behind you, knocking utensils and a metal bowl off the counter. A bag of produce hit the floor with a dull thud, but neither of you care.
“You couldn’t take this to the bedroom?” you tease, laughing breathlessly through a string of fevered kisses.
“Need you now,” he growls, his hands skimming down the backs of your thighs.
Your breath catches as he hoists you up onto the counter, the cold granite beneath you a sharp contrast to the heat between your bodies.
His fingers dig into your thighs, spreading you open just enough to press himself closer. His mouth returns to yours, claiming, teasing, devouring.
You moan softly as he nips at your bottom lip, the sharp pull sending a delicious jolt through your body. Your hands curl around the back of his neck, pulling him closer, meeting his fervor with your own desperate wanton desire.
His tongue sweeps against yours, slow and deliberate, coaxing, taunting you to do more. Your own swirling around the tip of his, giving into his challenge. Letting you two completely consume one another, tongues entwining and lapping together.
His one hand goes between your bodies, teasing your inner thighs with feather light caresses. Your breath ragged, hitching every time his fingers trace the edge of your tiny shorts. Ghosting over your now quivering aching core, waiting for more friction, but of course Vessel wouldn’t make it that easy.
“Says you need me, but still wants to tease.” You grumble, growing impatient.
He breaks away from your lips, a string of saliva following when he goes to take off your shirts, throwing them behind him. Not caring where those landed with the other things on the floor.
And the grin that spreads on his face is devilish as he peppers hot open mouth kisses down your cheek and neck. His one hand going back to teasing your clothed core, the other massaging your breasts with painfully slow movements, alternating between soft and squeezing firmer. Before lightly pinching your already pert nipples as warning. You know your bratty comment wouldn’t go unnoticed.
“I’m not teasing,” he drawls. “Just taking my time with you.” He makes it seem like he’s going to cup your cunt, but keeps his hand hovering there. You buck your hips towards his hand, willing him to give you the friction you crave, but he keeps pulling it further away, as you continue to egg him on.
“Sure seems like you're playing with your food.”
He halts his movements with a sharper pinch to your nipple, his hand leaving the vicinity of where you need him altogether. Instead grabbing onto your hip with a bruising force, the wave of regret and disappointment that fills you is minimal. His pupils wide, eyes sharpening, leaving you vibrating with excitement.
You are teetering dangerous territory, but the payoff would be well worth it.
“Are you being a brat?” He then grabs your chin.
“N-no.”
His nose is nuzzling against your cheek, that sinister smirk still on his face. It takes all of it in you to keep your composure, him looming over you like a predator catching their prey.
“J-just making an observation.” You squeak out, pathetically.
“So ungrateful,” he scolds, his demeanor changing. “Here, I thought I’d be nice and worship my dove.”
He looks down on you, his hand finding the back of your head, wrapping your hair in his fist. Yanking it, with light force, so your skittering nervous eyes were locked into his. His stormy irises a sliver of a halo from how blown out his pupils were, neck strained looking upwards, gulping, wetting your lips with your tongue. Anticipating what would happen next.
You love sweet, needy, and clingy Vessel—but this side of Vessel?
The rare demeaning cruel side causes your cunt to ache, weeping for his punishment. Wanting to poke and prod, until you had to question if it was all that wise to do so.
“I’ve spent all day not being able to concentrate because of you.” He says it condescendingly.
You blink up at him, hanging on to his words. Your mouth parted waiting.
“Every lyric I wrote today—dedicated to the memory of you beneath me.”
The only touch he gives you is the ball of his fist in your hair, and his free hand skimming across you. Starting at your face, brushing a loose piece of hair behind your ear. He offers a tight lipped smile, his finger dragging down your jaw and neck. The sensation is enough to leave goosebumps in its trail, becoming a searing brand as he traces lower, and continues to speak.
“How pretty you look,” he exhales.
“When my hand is around your throat.”
His hand hovers, before moving downward. “Your beautiful tits, how nice they look when they bounce.” His finger barely skims the curve of the outside the curve of your one breast. Making you jolt at the ticklish sensation. He huffs out some air at your reaction, his knuckles grazing your stomach.
“The marks I’ve left on your pretty delicate skin that no one else can see.”
You whine, feeling your slick dampening your panties as he gets closer to your ear. Words hushed and low, as he continues his torturous ambush of your senses. Clutching at the waistband of your shorts underwear, pulling you towards the edge of the counter more. He’s now nose to nose with you. The fist in your hair loosens up, making your shoulders sag in relief from the lack of tension.
“Your perfect cunt.”
He himself is losing his restraint, patience wearing as thin as yours.
“How it was made for my cock.”
He drops his head to your shoulder, grabbing one of your wrists that had been still wrapped around his neck limp, and placing your hand on his bulge.
“And you choose to be an ungrateful impatient slut.”
It’s hot, heavy, thick in your palm. Squeezing his strained erection through his pants, earning a sharp inhale of pleasure.
“Please,” you breath out.
“It was such a long day of needing you.” He presses a light kiss to your bare shoulder.
Granting you minimal reprieve by running his finger up your damp clothed slit in an agonizingly slow manner. Deliberate and calculated.
“Please Vessel,” you beg again. “I’ll be so good for you, promise.”
You feel the smirk against your shoulder. “Will you actually?” He brushes your core. “Or do I still need to remind you how to be patient?”
He then squeezes your puffy lips through the fabric. Then dull pain only further the desire coiling inside you.
You writh beneath his touch, your thighs instinctively twitching around his hand, but he held you fast—one hand fisted in your hair, the other keeping a bruising grip on your needy cunt, as if he were anchoring you there. Claiming you. Reminding you.
“I asked you something.” His voice, low and lethal, sent a pulse through your chest like a dropped stone.
“I—I’ll be good,” you stammer, hips twitching again as he gives you one more cruel squeeze.
“Actually good?” he murmurs mockingly, dragging the damp fabric aside at last.
Your breath hitches. The air hits your slick folds and makes you shudder.
“Or just saying what I want to hear so I’ll give you what you’re fucking begging for?”
You whimper, too far gone to form anything coherent, and that only seems to please him. He let go of your hair at last, cradling your jaw instead, fingers rough but cradling, a twisted imitation of tenderness.
“That’s what I thought,” he whispers. “All pretty and pliant once I’ve got my hands on you.”
Then his fingers were on you—truly on you—sliding through your folds, collecting the slick that had been gathering there for far too long. He drags it up slowly, deliberately, to your swollen clit, circling it with a maddening, featherlight touch.
The moan that escapes you was helpless—your head falling back, back arching, every nerve in your body lighting up like a flare.
“Fuck, look at you,” he breathes, almost reverent now. “So wet I could drown in it. All for me.”
One finger—two—pushes into you without warning, and you gasped, legs spreading wider on instinct. He curls them just so, finding that spot that made your thighs jerk, your breath catch, your cunt clamp down in desperate rhythm.
He groaned like he felt it in his spine. “That’s it. There she is. My perfect fucking girl.”
You claw at his shoulders, anchoring yourself to his body as he fucks you with his fingers, slow and purposeful, like he was memorizing the way your body flutters and clenches for him. Your eyes fluttered shut, overwhelmed.
“Eyes on me,” he growls low, suddenly curling his fingers harder. “Want to see you fall apart.”
Your eyes snap open, wide and glassy, and he kisses you then—not sweet, not soft, but hard and hungry, his tongue claiming your mouth again like it was just another part of you he owned.
He pulls back only to press his forehead to yours, panting with restraint. “You close already, Dove?”
You nodded desperately.
He smiles deviously, pulling his fingers out of you with a slick pop, stepping back just enough to undo his belt. The metal clinks, sharp, ringing through the music playing in the kitchen, and your breath hitches all over again.
Vessel’s eyes were nearly black with lust now, pupils blown so wide they swallow the grey. He works his cock free, the thick, flushed length springing up against his abdomen, leaking, angry, needy.
“Turn around,” he said. “Bend over the island. Now.”
You didn’t hesitate—your body moves before your mind could catch up. Palms flat against the counter, cheek pressing to the cool marble, you arch your back for him like it was instinct, like it was prayer.
Like you were waiting all day for this too. Maybe you were.
He drags your shorts and panties down in one swift motion, baring your soaked folds to the cool air and the heat of his stare.
You could hear him behind you, cursing under his breath. And then—his hands were on your hips, thumbs digging in, kneading the flesh there as he stepped forward.
“Look at this greedy little pussy,” he hisses. “Swollen and dripping for me. Bet I could come just from watching it twitch like this.”
You whine, shifting your weight back into him—searching for him. Begging without words.
But Vessel wasn’t feeling merciful tonight.
He grabs your ass and gives it a sharp slap—just once, enough to sting and make you yelp. Then he leans over you, voice in your ear, tender and venomous all at once.
“Next time you mouth off when I’m trying to savor you,” he murmurs, “I won’t be this nice.”
You whimper, nodding, anything, anything if it meant he’d just—
And finally, finally, he slides the thick head of his cock through your folds, dragging it along your entrance, your clit, letting it catch and glide and drive you half-insane.
“Ves—please—”
“I know, Dove,” he mutters, jaw clenching. “I know.”
And then he thrusts into you in one, brutal, perfect stroke.
You cry out, your fingers scrabbling for purchase as he bottoms out inside you, filling you to the hilt. The stretch was exquisite, overwhelming—too much and not enough all at once.
He moans like a man starved, still bent over you, kissing your spine as he pulls out slowly, then slams back in with force that steals your breath.
“Fucking made for me,” he hisses, over and over, setting a pace that was relentless and devastating and everything you needed. Feeling your pussy grip him.
“Say it,” he snarls into your neck, one hand slipping beneath you to toy with your clit again. “Say who you belong to.”
“You,” you gasp. “You, Vessel—only you.”
“That’s right,” he sighs. “My cunt. My mess. My song.”
You are already unraveling—but he wasn’t done yet.
Each thrust drives the words deeper into your bones, your mind going soft and blank with the rhythm of it—his hips slamming against your ass, his fingers rubbing tight, relentless circles against your clit, his breath in your ear like scripture.
Your legs were trembling. Your arms barely held you up anymore. But Vessel held you steady, one arm wrapped around your waist now, anchoring you to him, the other still working your clit as if his life depends on it.
And maybe it did. Maybe this was his holy thing. His prayer answered in the shape of you, soaked and stuffed full and unraveling just for him.
You were close. So close it aches. Your thighs shake with it, your breath hitching into stuttered whines. He can feel it—he always did—and he drops his mouth to your shoulder, teeth grazing the skin.
“Let go,” he whispers. “Come for me, Dove. Let me feel you.”
The coil in your belly snaps with a force that leaves you choking on a scream. Your body clamps down around him like a vice, waves of pleasure crashing through you so violently your knees buckle.
But he catches you. Of course he does.
He stays buried inside you, grinding through your orgasm with deep, punishing strokes, milking every aftershock from your sensitive body, until you were gasping, sobbing his name like a benediction.
“Fuck—just like that,” he groans, voice wrecked. “So fucking tight, I can’t—”
With a final thrust, he spills inside you with a low, guttural moan, his hips stuttering against your ass as he empties himself into you, cock twitching with each pulse.
You feel it—every drop—warm and deep, marking you from the inside out.
His weight collapses against your back, chest heaving, forehead pressed to the crook of your neck. For a moment, the only sound in the kitchen was the ragged symphony of your breathing, the faint hum of the fridge, and the music still echoing.
You both stay like that—entwined, fucked-out, trembling—until Vessel finally stirs, brushing a kiss over your spine before gently pulling out. You whimper at the loss, legs nearly giving out, gripping the counter and he catches you again.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, voice hoarse but gentle now, cradling you like something sacred when he brings you into his arms. “Always got you.”
You cling to him, burying your face in his shoulder, your body still boneless and blissfully sore. Gripping your thighs to lift you up into his arms, making sure your ankles wrap around his waist. He carries you down the hall without a word, kicking open the bathroom door and setting you down on the edge of the vanity.
“Dinner can wait,” he says softly, brushing the damp hair from your face.
A/n: my peace offering for being on hiatus for months 🥲 smut is not my strong suit so please be gentle. But also going through my drafts and saw this and thought why I hadn’t posted this. I hope you enjoyeddddd 👹
🕯️🍂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.
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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.
You wake in a world of dead gods, with no name and no past. You are pulled into a family not bound by blood, but by devotion. They are vessels of Sleep and they see something in you that keeps you alive. As you are kept within their crumbling world of rituals and whispers, their strange affection begins to warp you. What starts as fear turns into obsession, each of them pulling at something different inside you. The lines between love, worship, and possession blur. Their hands become your home, their violence your doctrine. And as each bond frays the edges of your mind, you start to forget you were ever anything but theirs.
01. The Family We Are Fed To
02. Born To Be Kept
03. The Taste Of Surrender
04. The Room Below
05. Gaps In A Strange Dream
06. Cross My Heart And Hope To Die
07. A Sacred Guardian
08. The Perfect Enemy
09. The Mouth Of The Wolf
10. The Eyes Of The Lamb
11. Solace Of Regret
12. Canines Of The Saviour
13. Putting Down The Roses
14. Picking Up The Sword
15. Make The Most Of The Turning Tide
16. Et In Arcadia Ego
17. The Proof Is In The Pudding
18. The Summoning
19. Missing Limbs
20. Branches In A Flood
21. The God Of The Gaps
22. Bite Back In Anger
23. Eden’s Vices
24. Fate Of The Fallen
25. Blue Blossom Days
26. Perfect Start To A Perfect War
27. When The Oceans Recede
28. Walking With Gods
29. The Garden Of Gardens
30. Bonus Chapter: Blood Sport
The sequel is Look To Windward
↳ Playlist & Moodboard
↳ Art by @juniorcrone @hollowmik
soft dom vessel is a biiiig fan of grabbing ur chin gently to make you look at him and nobody will convince me otherwise
“Focus on me, baby.” His voice is a soft purr calling you back as slender fingers cup beneath your chin, tilting your head just enough to make your hooded gaze meet his, a lustful haze falling over you. “I’m not finished with you yet.”
The sound you let out falls somewhere between a whine and a moan, knowing he’s prepared to pull more from you, because he loves having you completely undone. “You’ve got this, baby. Just one more.” but one more for him could also mean making you wait, edging you as he buries his fingers back inside—first one, then two, the curling drag of them filling you as he searches for that sensitive spot, the one he’s tormented you with while working you through orgasm after orgasm.
His grip on your chin never falters, keeping your eyes locked on his, keeping you close enough to kiss, and he does, each moan you give spilling into his mouth. Your hands clutch at him, desperate, tugging at his hair as you muffle pleas against his lips. Your thighs tremble with the slow build, the drag toward another peak.
“That’s it, you’re doing so good for me. Just a little more.”
Your head tips back, moans spilling free this time, and his mouth trails down to your throat, leaving soft, lingering, claiming kisses. “You can be louder for me, right? I know you can.” His fingers stroke that perfect spot again, and a tremor rips through you, dragging a deeper sound from your chest, followed by more, because of course you can. For him, you always can. He plays you like a finely tuned instrument, has you singing for him the second you fall apart around his fingers alone, because fuck, he’s masterful like that.
Warnings: smut, MDNI, Oral (f receiving), PiV, telepathic connection. Does... does this count as monsterfucking...?
Notes: Continuing with the suggestions from this ask: first time with inhuman!Vessel. It's soft, because that's who i am as a person.
It takes a considerable amount of time for the two of you to progress past kissing. Vessel has been around a very long time, so he's not clueless by any stretch of the imagination, but he doesn't want to overstep his bounds or make you feel disrespected.
He has experience, but not much since he was turned into... whatever he is now. He had more as a human, but being an inhuman vessel to an eldritch deity comes with certain differences that he hasn't had much chance to fully explore yet.
Vessel wants to do things right, though. He wants to treat you right.
So, things are slow. He waits for you to take the lead to start, even going so far as to pull away more than once when things get a little too heated.
It takes you flat out asking him if something's wrong for him to explain. It's not that he doesn't want you - quite the opposite, really - it's that he wants you to be sure it's what you want. Of course, the mental connection between the two of you more than confirms it, but he needs to hear you say it out loud.
You'll have to reassure him that you're okay with this. That you're not afraid of him. Because, deep down, that's where his fears lie: the idea of him scaring you away.
It's the same fear he had when he first removed the mask for you. It's the same fear he had when he confessed his feelings. It's the fear of you truly seeing him for the first time and not liking what you find.
Even once the two of you have that conversation, it'll take a little while longer for Vessel to come around. Things progress past your usual heated kissing sessions one late morning, when the two of you wake up together in Vessel's bed. One kiss turns into two, which turns into so many you don't bother keeping track. He tastes into you, and you do the same in return.
You feel him against your abdomen, his length twitching as you pull a low groan from his mouth. It's now, just like several times before, that he pulls back.
But this time, something changes.
"Are you certain you want this, my heart?" Vessel breathes into the space between you, all six pupils blown with desire.
A soft yes is all he needs in this moment.
He shifts you onto your back, slotting himself between your legs. Both of you still fully clothed, he allows himself to take his time. To savor the sensation of his body grinding against yours.
It isn't until a soft "please" escapes you that he returns to himself.
"Tell me what you want," he says. "Anything you wish, and it's yours."
Your answer is quiet. So quiet he nearly misses it.
"Want you."
The simple phrase hits him like a crashing wave.
And suddenly things aren't quite as slow anymore.
His sharp canines nip at your pulse, his tongue darting out to soothe your skin when you whine in response. One of your hands finds his hair, tangling itself there as you tug. Pitch black hands slide up the shirt you slept in, groping at your chest before helping you remove the garment.
Vessel sleeps in only loose pants, so it takes little time and effort for him to discard those, as well as the rest of your own clothes.
"Please, let me taste you, beloved," he says against your lips. "Let me drown in you."
Well, how can you say no to that when he asks so sweetly?
There's something about Vessel that you hadn't noticed until this moment, and it's a hell of a time to realize it: his tongue is longer than a regular human's. He must have held it back all those times you'd drawn your own tongue against it.
He alternates between circling your clit and thrusting his tongue into you, his eyes rolling back in their sockets. Low, almost pained groans leave him, and you begin to notice his mental walls slipping away. His thoughts, normally so well-guarded, are projected straight to you, as if he's talking without needing to move his mouth away from you. They're disjointed and sporadic, a far cry from how eloquent Vessel typically is.
Good. So good. Smell good. Taste good. Feel good. I need more. Need it all. Never have enough. Won't stop until you come. Won't stop until you tell me to.
Between his enthusiasm and his own pleasure bleeding into yours through your mind, you feel yourself cresting far sooner than you'd anticipated.
"Ves-" you warn, "Ves, gonna-"
Come, he projects to you, his middle set of eyes opening to stare up into yours. Come for me. Give it to me. Let me drink you in.
Almost on command, your orgasm washes over you, your back arching as you grip the bedding beneath you in tight fists.
Yes, yes. That's it. You're so good. So beautiful like this.
You fully expect Vessel to ease you down slowly, but that's not quite what happens. Instead, he continues lazily thrusting his tongue into you, as if he's trying to savor every last drop of you.
Again, he begs. Please. I need more, my heart. I need another.
To his credit, he notices how much your hips buck when he tries to circle your clit too soon. He allows you to recover without fully coming down, avoiding any sting of overstimulation.
Your next orgasm is faster, but it doesn't find you as explosively. Instead, it's softer, as if a gentle cover of warmth is slowly pulled over your body. All the while, Vessel's soft words greet you in the ether.
He slowly kisses up your body when he's finished, your slick still coating his face. His eyes are lidded, almost as if he's in as much of a daze as you are.
"Thank you," he murmurs aloud as he kisses your lips softly. "Thank you for indulging me, sweet girl. Do you still want more? Or do you wish to rest?"
"More," you respond quietly. You want all of him.
He's quick to oblige you.
Vessel hitches one of your legs over his thigh, staring intently at your facial expressions as he guides his cock into you.
Once again, the world slows. Your brows knit together, and Vessel leans in to press a tender kiss to your forehead.
Is it too much? he asks through his thoughts.
Though your thoughts are more general feelings than coherent sentences in the moment, he's in tune with you enough to know that it's simply the stretch taking a bit of getting used to. You're more than wet enough from two orgasms, so there is no pain or sting.
Once he's buried to the hilt, he rests. His pelvis notched against yours, both of you breathing into each other. Several slow kisses are exchanged, as are silent and softly spoken words.
A subtle shift of your hips tells Vessel that you're ready to continue.
His lips find their place on yours as he begins the slow roll of his hips, the two of you only separating with quiet gasps of pleasure.
It's... strange, almost, experiencing this through the lens of your telepathic connection. Vessel can't really remember any of his previous post-transformation encounters ever feeling like this. Sure, the physical sensations are largely the same, but the emotional and mental ones are vastly different.
As he loses himself more in you and increases his pace, he finds himself unable to tell where his mind ends and yours begins. Your pleasure is his pleasure, and vice versa. The atmosphere between the two of you is one neither of you can properly articulate. All Vessel can really comprehend in this moment is that this feels good. You feel good. An undercurrent of love an affection runs deep beneath it all, bolstering the pleasure and raising it further.
He loses any track of time he had, completely unaware of the world around the two of you.
It isn't until he begins to feel the familiar coil tightening in his core that he knows this can't last forever.
"Close," he breathes against your mouth. The only sign he receives that you heard him is a brief nod before you're pulling him to you again.
You latch onto him as his pace stutters, and as he tips over his own edge, he finds himself clinging to you as well. His muscles tense as he spills into your warmth, an almost pained groan leaving his lips as he comes. His eyes glow, and somewhere nearby, he vaguely registers a sharp pop, but it is quickly forgotten.
As the heat slowly dissipates and Vessel returns to himself, the air is still aside from your combined breaths. He props himself up just enough to look down at you, and both of you break into grins, then soft laughter at the same time.
"Are you alright, my love?" Vessel asks softly as he kisses you.
"Yeah," you whisper back. "Are you?"
"Very much so."
He rolls onto his side, pulling you with him as he does. It's a slow, almost torturous shift as he pulls out of you, and he soothes your soft whine with a kiss to your forehead.
It's several more minutes spent lying together in the afterglow before Vessel notices a glint of light coming from the nightstand. When he turns to inspect it further, he notices several shards of glass there.
"By the way," you say, a grin audible in your tone, "you busted the lightbulb."
Ah. That must have been that strange sound he'd heard earlier. Looks like his powers aren't quite as under control as he thought.
Pairing: Vessel x reader
CW: sad wet cat vessel, loneliness, vessel is really in love, yearning.
Summary: The tour is going well, everything is fine, but for Vessel there is something missing.
Lying on his hotel bed, he stares at the ceiling wondering if he’ll ever sleep again.
Word Count: 1.2k
a/n: I've been listening to 5sos a lot these days so this is inspired by their song I'm Scared I'll Never Sleep Again. I also love men who yearn so here we gooo
I hope its not too much (lowkey felt like it is but like its written so might as well post it)
Hopefully you guys enjoy it!!
Vessel lies on his hotel bed, staring at the ceiling.
The tour is going well, better than he expected. There have been almost no technical difficulties, the crew members are all getting along well, and, most importantly, the fans are loving it. He’s seen some comments praising him and the rest of the band, which warms his heart.
Despite it all, he doesn’t feel fulfilled. He can’t feel fulfilled. Not without you around.
The previous tour had been rewarding, even with all the issues they faced. The multiple technical issues and conflicts between crew members never demotivated him. But the lack of your presence does.
He thought he had gotten used to being on tour, away from home, sleeping in beds that were rock hard, eating terrible food. And, in a way, he did. He learned to not mind it as it was the only way to achieve his dream. Those are all small sacrifices that he didn’t mind doing during their last tour, and, for the most part, still doesn’t mind. Except for one thing.
Over the past few months, you and Vessel have grown closer, to a point where you don’t spend time away from each other unless it's necessary. Despite not living together yet, you two are always sleeping in the same bed. Most of the time yours, as Vessel claimed that it is “much more comfortable” (and because it smells like you which comforts him, but he’d never admit that to your face). He has gotten used to coming home to you, to share a bed with you. It quickly became the highlight of his day.
And now there’s no one waiting for him in bed. Every time he gets in his bunk, he takes a deep breath hoping to smell your perfume on his sheet. Every time he opens the door of a hotel room, his shoulders slump forward as he doesn’t see you, curled up beneath the blankets. And every time he’s disappointed. He tried to convince himself that he would be fine and that his tour routine would fall back into place, making him forget the empty space beside him, but it has yet to happen.
Instead, the only thing he can think about is you. He wants your body curled up against his, your breath tickling his neck as you tell him about your day, his fingers running through your hair. He wonders if you’re doing well, if you’re eating well, if you’re sleeping well. He wonders if you too have a hard time falling asleep.
He lies in the middle of the crinkly sheets, alone, and the weight of his hand on his chest reminds him of you. Your head on his chest, his arm around your shoulders, yours around his waist, your soft skin beneath his finger tips, both of your heartbeats syncing together. He looks next to him, only to be met with the streetlight creeping through the shades illuminating the empty space.
He picks up his phone from the pillow next to his, which he put for you out of habit. The bright light of the screen blinds him while the time stares back at him. 10:37 pm. It’s the first time since the tour began that he could go to bed this early, yet he can’t seem to fall asleep. Every time he closes his eyes he sees your face, your beautiful smile and the way your eyes shine when you look at him.
Vessel
I hope you had a good day
Well now I hope you have a good day since its 3am for you
I missed you, darling
I wish you could’ve come with me, this bed is too big for only one person…
I hope my messages don’t wake you up
He closes his phone and puts it on the other pillow, screen up. He texts you almost everyday, and you answer most of the time. Rarely do you have long conversations due to the time difference and how busy you both are, but you both try your hardest to be there for each other.
His eyes find the ceiling once more, but this time it's blurry. His throat closes up while his breathing speeds up and chest feels heavy. He does want you to enjoy your life, but he wants to be there to enjoy it with you. He knows you would like to be there with him too, and that should be enough for him. He should be happy. He gets to be in amazing places, to see many different cities, to meet plenty of talented people in his field, but he keeps thinking back to you. There are too many people, and none of them are you.
As tears roll down his cheeks, a buzzing sound gets him out of his head. He blinks rapidly, chasing away the tears, and he picks up his phone. He rushes to unlock it, hands shaking slightly.
II
There’s a 24/7 shop if you want food
Idk if you ate today, didnt see you do
His eyes scan the messages over and over again, only for disappointment to wash over him. He throws his phone on the pillow beside him, closes his eyes and bites his lower lip. For a second he thought you were awake and answering him. The heaviness in his chest settles back in. He flips over to be on his side, his long limbs spreading over the empty, cold space. He holds his own hand and rubs the back of it while closing his eyes, imagining your soft hands in his.
Despite his best effort, he cannot fall asleep. He knows that he has an important meeting in the morning, followed by a show before getting back on the roads, and that he has to get all the rest that he can, but he just tosses and turns, the sheets tangling with his limbs. He takes a pillow and holds it in his arms, searching for the same warm feeling that fills his chest when you’re there. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to sleep alone for long periods of time, if he’ll ever get used to how cold the bed is without your body in it.
His phone turns on, illuminating the room. He reluctantly lets go of his own hand to pick it up. As it closes he gets a glimpse of the notification and his breathing accelerates. He saw the picture he put for your contact. He unlocks his phone in a hurry and he opens the message app.
My Darling
My day’s been good, there was my favourite ice cream at the store!
I miss you too
I can’t wait for you to come back
Your sweatshirt doesn’t smell like your cologne anymore :(
I hope the tour’s going well, I saw some videos and you look really good ;)
As he reads your messages over and over again, a wide smile appears on his face. You might not be there with him, but he’s aware that you think about him, too. He should be able to sleep tonight, knowing that you’re waiting for him and that he’ll be back home with you soon. His hotel bed is still cold, but his heart has warmed up.
Synopsis: In the quiet hours after sunset, you belong to him, and the night is the only place where you are whole. Desire, comfort, and silence intertwine in a bond that only exists in the dark. But dawn is always waiting.
Word Count: 5,6k
Warnings: A little bit of angst, a bit of fluffy, but mostly smut: Oral sex with male and female receiving, unprotected penetrative sex, descriptions of cum eating, choking, squirting.
A/N: English is not my first language, so my work may contain some grammar mistakes. If so, I hope it doesn't ruin your experience. Okay, so this is my first Vessel fanfic, and I’m still learning how to write him, but I genuinely liked the way I approached him here. It’s smut first and foremost, but I wanted it to be emotional as well and I think I got it right. I really hope you enjoy it, and maybe I’ll come back for a part two ;) Have a nice reading!
Read the Prologue HERE Read part 2 HERE
SERIES MASTERLIST
He welcomed you in silence. It was something you didn't want to understand, only to feel. Not only was his face denied to you, but also his words. Unless he sang them, Vessel gave you no words, only love and comfort.
That late afternoon when you entered the dark room, he was there. He wasn't covered in paint, of course not, he was clean, his white skin contrasting with the black fabric of his pants. But the mask was on, as were the tunic and the hood. He was wearing two slender golden chains on his neck. One had a stone pendant, not precious, but beautiful. The other had a golden butterfly charm at the end. You didn't know why, but you liked that one. On his fingers he wore a number of rings, one of them, your favorite, had the sleep token symbol.
You took a few minutes to undress, the shoes first, then the jeans that seemed to cling to your body, and then the blouse, leaving you only in your underwear. You couldn't see Vessel's eyes, but you could feel them burning against your skin, and the sensation was powerful. You removed the rings you were wearing, the necklace, and then tied your long hair into a comfortable ponytail, and before you could think of doing anything else, Vessel reached out, gesturing for you to join him on the bed, and there was nothing in the world you wanted more than to do that.
"I need two minutes, and I promise I'll be all yours afterward," you said, going into the bathroom and closing the door. You peed, washed your hands, and found yourself looking in the mirror.
You looked tired. Very tired. There were dark circles under your eyes from sleepless nights of overthinking, your skin wasn't good, your hair looked dull and lifeless. You were unwell. Physically and psychologically unwell, and nothing in the world seemed to make you feel better, except him.
He was the one your body craved, the one your soul craved. Vessel was the only one who could make your body relax, silence your mind, and it was only with him by your side that you could sleep well.
Acknowledging this made your face turn red, not from shame, but from sadness. There was something very strange about the relationship you had—if you could even call it a relationship. You had been in it for months and you hadn't seen any other man besides him, but you knew Vessel must have other women. How could he not when they all seemed to throw themselves into his arms?
But the truth is that none of that mattered. You didn't need exclusivity, you just needed him. The mere idea that one day he might get tired of you, get bored of this game and simply not show up anymore when you texted him asking to meet in that room after sunset, was killing you inside. You couldn't imagine yourself without it anymore. Without him.
You took one last look at your tired reflection in the mirror and turned, opening the door and going back to the bedroom. He was typing on his cell phone, but he turned it off and immediately put it away when he saw you approaching. You climbed onto the bed and crawled to him, letting yourself be enveloped in his arms, but you needed more than just his arms, and your mouth sought his mouth with an indescribable hunger, and he returned the kiss with the exact intensity you needed.
Tongue, teeth, saliva. In those moments with him, you never wanted to be delicate, and he didn't demand delicacy from you either. Vessel only asked for passion, for reciprocity, for truth.
"Fuck, I needed that." You said when you had to break the kiss to breathe. Your hand rested on his face, your fingers feeling each golden adornment of the mask you loved so much. Yes, you couldn't deny it, you loved the fact that you couldn't see what was underneath. It didn't matter. For you, Vessel was just Vessel, and that was more than enough. He was beautiful, the mask only added to your desire, and the mystery was like fuel for your fire.
He hummed positively, taking your lips in his again, and his hands went to your bra, but before he could open it, you gently pulled away.
"I want to touch you first, tonight." You spoke softly as if you were afraid to say what you wanted, but Vessel was always ready to give you exactly what you asked.
He smirked. A beautiful smirk, and threw himself back onto the pillows, surrendering himself to you to do whatever you wanted with him. You could see the outline of his dick under the fabric of his pants, and that made you instinctively bite your lower lip. Everyone could always see it. It was indecent even when you knew he wasn't doing it on purpose, but that night the bulge was enormous because, unlike what happened at the concerts, he was hard. Vessel was hard for you.
You unbuckled his belt and eagerly opened his pants, and as you did, you felt him throbbing in his confines, so you put your hand inside his underwear and pulled him out. He was big. Not in the way women talk about their man. Vessel was massive. Long, thick, with a large head and beautiful veins. Just looking at him made you salivate.
Before you could touch him, you positioned yourself on your knees between his legs and then finally took him in your hand, and it wasn't an exaggeration to say that it wasn't possible to close your fingers around him, just as you couldn't take much of him in your mouth, but you tried and he liked watching you try.
You spat in your hand and then on his head and spread the saliva all over him slowly. Your hand slid slowly up and down his length a few times and you felt him squirming, trying to hold himself in place as you tortured him with such subtle and light touches.
Unable to contain yourself, you gave him a light kiss on the head, looking directly at him to tease him, and he bit his lower lip, waiting patiently, but you just continued with those little kisses, going down his entire length and then back up.
When you started using your tongue, he let out a sweet little moan and you felt one of his hands in your hair. He just put it there, but you knew it wouldn't be long before he started pushing. Vessel was like that. He let you take control, but he liked to keep a hand on the wheel the whole time.
You licked from base to tip and from tip to base a few times to get him nice and wet the way you wanted, and then finally took it in your mouth, feeling the grip of his fingers in your hair tighten.
You couldn't take much more than the head, but you made up for it using your hands along its length, twisting and jerking him slowly, but using a little more force than you should, and he loved that. It wasn't long before he was moaning, and you loved that sound. You loved how noisy he was during sex, even without uttering a single word.
When you realized it, he was already controlling the whole thing. One of his hands was in your hair, guiding the speed and how much of him you took, and the other was holding his cock at the base, pushing you further down until you inevitably gagged and he let go of you, caressing your cheek affectionately as if to say 'good girl'.
There was nothing you wanted more than to be Vessel's good girl. It was what saved you from your reality, what pulled you out of hell and threw you into paradise. Those nights belonged to him.
His cock was pulsing hard and you knew that if you continued he would come, but that was exactly what you wanted and you weren't worried because you knew he would have more. He always had so much more. It might be cliché to say that, but Vessel was indeed a provider. He provided sex, comfort, safety, and affection. So much affection. It was something capable of healing, and you needed healing. God, you needed it more than anything.
He directed his cock back into your mouth and you devoted yourself to sucking it as he deserved, working your tongue around him, emptying your cheeks with sucking movements that had his legs trembling beneath you, and it wasn't long before his grip on your hair became stronger, as did his breathing, which became louder and more labored. The moans were uncontrollable and beautiful.
He didn't warn you when he reached his limit. He never warned you, and the surprise always made you gag on his cum, and you were sure as hell he loved seeing it. There was so much cum. Every time he came to you, he was always so full of it that you wondered, perhaps in a hopeful part of your mind, if he might be saving it for you. Maybe there was no one else.
The surprise and the quantity never allowed you to contain it all in your mouth, and consequently, a lot ended up spilling down his length, but you liked that mess. You always swallowed it all and came back for more, and this time was no different. When you realized it, you were licking and sucking every drop, and he continued to be hard and throbbing.
"You're so insatiable, Ves." You found yourself praising him, and he took your hand and placed it back around him, moving it the way he wanted you to, and you continued as he asked, gradually increasing the rhythm and strength of the grip, then loosening a little and then squeezing again without ever stopping. And your eyes were all on him while you did it. On the way his jaw was rigid and his mouth slightly parted in pleasure, on the way his whole body seemed to tremble with pleasure, but also with overstimulation, and when he was close again he simply bit his lip hard and groaned.
You didn't stop for a single instant until you had him spilling into your hand. The amount was significantly less now, but it was still enough to have you sucking, licking, and swallowing it all again. When you finished he patted your head affectionately and you threw yourself into his arms.
He let you snuggle against his chest. His breath still ragged, and he was sweaty, but smelled of soap and perfume - neroli lingering in his skin, bright as citrus peel and soft as sun-warmed blossoms.
You found yourself rubbing your face in his chest, inhaling his scent and basking in his presence, and a wave of silent tears washed over you.
The day had been awful, in fact, it had been weeks—months—that all your days had been awful, and the only relief you had were those hours in his arms. You found yourself wishing he would never leave, that the daylight would never come.
Vessel didn't ask questions. Never. He just held you. He gave you exactly what you needed: comfort, affection, sex—good, hard, dirty, delicious, perfect sex—without judgment, without asking for anything in return that wasn't what you were willing to give him. But you were willing to give him everything.
You remained silent for what seemed like several long minutes. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioner and your sobs, and then the sniffling of your nose as you tried to calm down. All the while you felt his firm arm holding you and his hand gently caressing your hair, and eventually you found yourself chuckling through the tears.
"I'm ruining the fucking night. I'm sorry." You said, bringing your hand to his face, and he shook his head and kissed you softly as if to say, 'I'm here for whatever you need.'
"You're so beautiful." You found yourself saying as you traced the outline of his jaw with your fingertip, and he smiled at you. A beautiful, open smile that filled your heart with affection and love.
Love. You were terrified of ending up in love and hurt. And that's exactly how you were now, completely in love, and getting hurt seemed to be just a matter of time. After all, how long would it take for him to get tired of you? Until the tour started again? Who could say? You simply didn't want to think about it.
Gently, he pulled away enough to pick something up from the bedside table and handed it to you. It was a square, black velvet box, and your heart skipped a beat when you saw it.
"For me? Are we giving each other gifts now?" You said, sitting up in bed, and he sat up too, seeming to watch you carefully—it wasn't exactly possible to tell, but again, you could always feel when his eyes were on you.
You stroked the box with your fingertips, watching the small silver ribbon before pulling it open. It was a gold slender chain with a circular charm engraved with the sleep token symbol. It was very similar to the butterfly one he was wearing. Simple and beautiful.
"I loved it," you said, feeling your eyes welling up with tears again. You weren't prepared for this. The mere idea that he had thought of you at some point when he had that little gift made for you was something unimaginable.
He hummed contentedly, but gently took the charm from your hands, turning it so you could see the other side of the object, and that's when your mouth fell open. The piece had been engraved with a single word. A word that for anyone else could be seen just as a cute pet name,but you were a Sleep Token fan first and foremost. The word was Sugar. And the word meant more when the lyrics of the song immediately played in your head: Sugar, I've developed a taste for you now.
"Vessel..." That's all you could manage to say. His name in an almost inaudible whisper. But in that whisper was a silent request: Don’t give me hope.
The implications of that little gift could be devastating for your mental health, and you knew it. The whole time since you started whatever it was you were doing, you always told yourself there was no love involved on his part, that it was just a game for him - the mask, the clothes, the refusal of talking. Everything seemed like a game to you. But now your stupid brain was starting to wonder if he could possibly be falling in love with you the same way you were in love with him.
It was absurd. This kind of thing didn't happen to you. People didn't usually develop a taste for you when they met you, quite the opposite.
But then why?
He took the gift from your hand and gently placed it on you, and when he did, he placed a little kiss on the nape of your neck, another on the side of your neck, and another on your shoulder, making your body tingle. He hummed contentedly probably noticing the physical reaction he caused in you.
"Ves... it's beautiful and I loved it, but what does it mean?"
You didn't know what you expected him to answer, but he just smiled at you, cupping your cheek and guiding you back to his lips.
He kissed you slowly, but something about that kiss was different. It wasn't soft and calm like a welcome or goodnight kiss. Nor was it hard and full of lust like the kisses you exchanged when you had sex; it was something comfortable that sat right in between.
His tongue played inside your mouth unhurriedly, his teeth nibbled your lower lip provocatively, and he breathed into your mouth so that it wouldn't be necessary to break the kiss. It was intimate. Very intimate. And you found yourself wondering if there was any answer to your question in that kiss.
But Vessel didn't give you time to think. When he finally got tired of playing with your lips, he gently laid you down on the mattress and began to kiss you all over. His lips trailed down your breast, his teeth gently nibbling at the lace of your bra, and continued down your stomach, where he made sure to trace the line of your abdomen with the tip of his tongue before continuing down.
His hands busied themselves with the waistband of your panties, and you lifted your hips for him to take them off before he even asked, and after doing so, he simply picked them up and put them in his tunic pocket like a trophy.
Vessel positioned himself between your legs, and before you could say or even think anything, he dove between your them and began to eat you out. That was the first time he was giving you oral. You had never asked, part of you thought it wouldn't be possible with the mask on, and of course he wasn't going to take it off to do it—and you didn't want him to either.
But there he was between your legs, mask on, and he was divine indeed. Vessel was divine in everything, but there was no denying that there was something diabolical in the way he worked his tongue on you. He seemed to know exactly how you liked it, even though he never asked. He licked slowly, sucked your clit delicately, but intensely at the same time, and to add to your pleasure he used his fingers to tease your entrance, penetrating you just a little and making you writhe in his hand begging for more.
"Oh my... this feels so good." You moaned, clutching the pillows and bringing one up to your face to muffle the uncontrollable moans.
But Vessel didn't like that. He stopped what he was doing, took the pillow from you, threw it on the floor, and shook his head, showing his displeasure. He liked listening to you. He liked it when you got noisy. When you screamed his name amidst the moans.
"Sorry," you found yourself apologizing, and he returned to his task, licking, sucking, fucking you slowly with his fingers. Playing with your body the same way he was playing with your heart. Without mercy.
It didn't take long for your body to start showing signs that it was nearing its limit. The orgasm that was once an almost impossible task for you came easily in Vessel's skillful hands. Whether with his fingers or with his cock - now with his tongue - he simply knew how to get you there, and it was never just once.
"Ves... I'm gonna cum." You warned him, but that only spurred him on to continue. His mouth moved on you with almost superhuman dexterity, the tip of his tongue licking your clit and alternating with strong, rhythmic sucks while his fingers went in and out of you making an obscene squelching sound. You were so wet you could feel it dripping from you.
And he didn't stop. Not until your whole body started shaking and you let out a moan so loud that anyone a mile away could hear it. The orgasm, as always, intense and cathartic, but this time there was something more to the way it made you feel. It made you feel worshiped.
When he emerged from between your legs, the visible part of his face was wet and red, but there was also a beautiful, satisfied smile there.
Before you could even think of asking for it, he crawled over you and kissed you hard while his hands quickly took off your bra. He threw it on the floor and took a nipple between his lips, sucking gently before letting go and doing the same with the other.
Eventually when he got tired of it, he came back to your lips and kissed you gently. Your scent and taste, ingrained in him, were like a drug that only left you wanting more, and before you knew it, you were moving beneath him, lifting your hips and searching for him, trying to create some friction by rubbing your core against his already hard cock.
He liked that. He liked having you completely surrendered to him and seeing all the physical reactions he elicited from you. He hummed and let out a soft chuckle, breaking the kiss and positioning himself on his knees between your legs. He made sure to spread them even wider for him and teased you using his fingers, penetrating you with shallow thrusts that made you whimper for more.
"No, Ves, please don't tease. Need you. Need you so badly."
But he shook his head stead as if to say 'don't be impatient' and just continued with his teasing, and you found yourself moving your hips against his hand and moaning pornographically loudly as you gave in to the desire for him and let it dominate you. He continued his game for what seemed like a torturous eternity, but finally gave in.
He gave himself a couple of jerks first and then let a strand of saliva fall from his lips onto the head of his cock and finally, finally entered you with a groan.
There was a part of you that would never get used to having Vessel inside you. Not just because he was huge and fucked wonderfully well, basically rearranging your insides, but because it was him and because you had been doing this for a while now. In your head, it was hard to understand why he keeps coming back to you when you knew very well that he could have any woman he wanted.
Sex with Vessel was always hard. Not in a rough and emotionless way, quite the opposite, you both always seemed to have a lot of pent-up feeling and energy, and when you met it was like a collision of bodies desperately seeking to satisfy each other. That night was no different.
His hands were everywhere as he thrust against you with strong, rhythmic moves that made the bed creak and the headboard bang against the wall. Your hands also searched for him with a certain desperation, groping and scratching every part of his body you could reach. His arms were always the victims of your nails, and his pale skin always ended up covered in red welts.
You moved rhythmically beneath him, searching for him, begging for more. Somehow nothing seemed enough; you wanted him completely inside you.
"S-shit." You found yourself cursing as he moved just right so he could hit that delicious part inside you. - With a cock like that, it wasn't really a hard thing to do.
"You feel so good, Ves. Fucking me so good." You whispered, and he moaned contentedly as he gripped your thigh and fitted your leg onto his hip, moving so he could go even deeper.
"Oh, yes. Right there." You almost screamed, and he took your lips in his, kissing you passionately as he continued thrusting without ever stopping, without ever losing rhythm, and right there beneath him, with his tongue in your mouth, all you could think was that you loved him. Stupid, ridiculous woman you were. You were not only completely in love, but you knew that the passion had evolved into something much bigger, and that filled you with fear, but at that moment, it also turned you on even more.
Vessel broke the kiss and pulled away, and you didn't wait for him to say what he wanted. You quickly positioned yourself on all fours, your hips high for him, your chest pressed against the mattress, both hands clasped behind your back for him to hold. A complete submission.
He entered you again and held your hands firmly in one of his, and with the other he held your shoulder and began to thrust again, but this time he was merciless and you found yourself biting the sheet to muffle your screams. It was too good. Every woman should be fucked like that at least once in her life, but you were lucky enough to have it a couple of times in a month. And still it was never enough.
"F-fuck yes, Ves. Just fuck me... so fucking hard. Please, please, please..." You didn't even know what you were begging for, but he did. Ves seemed to understand your body much better than you did yourself. He brought both hands to your waist and increased the force of his thrusts and you screamed, feeling the coil in your stomach tighten.
"Yes, yes, gonna make me cum so fucking hard for you, Ves... please, don't stop." And he didn't stop, but took one of his hands to your ponytail and pulled hard, making you stand up.
Your back pressed against his chest and he slid his free hand over your breasts, squeezing hard and going down until he cupped your pussy, using his fingers on your clit and making you tremble all over with that touch, and at no point did he stop thrusting, but you could feel his movements becoming more irregular as your walls contracted around him and he pulsed inside you. Both of you reaching the limit of what you could bear and still holding on because you didn't want it to end.
He buried his face in the crook of your neck and his irregular breathing made your skin prickle.
Vessel hummed contentedly and placed a little kiss there before sliding his hand down your neck and starting to choke you. It wasn't strong enough to keep you from breathing completely, but it was strong enough to hurt - the good way of hurting, and fuck, it made you even hornier for him, made your legs begin to tremble with the arrival of an orgasm that you simply couldn't hold back anymore.
You didn't say anything, you couldn't say anything. You couldn't even think straight. Suddenly there was only him. His fingers circling your clit, his hand choking you, his lips kissing, licking, biting your neck and your ear while he fucked you senseless.
Vessel knew very well what he wanted with that, he wanted to see you melt at his touch. He wanted to see his power exerted over you and in that he was having absolute success. At that point you couldn't speak, so when all the sensations became too strong to contain, you literally started whimpering, real tears streaming down your face as the coil broke and you came. Without warnings, without declarations of devotion, just grunts and tears as your whole body trembled and you squirted. You. Fucking. Squirted.
Vessel let go of you and your body collapsed onto the mattress, but he wasn't done with you yet. He came behind you and entered you again, fucking you nice and hard, but his breathing became slightly more difficult, his thrusts erratic, and a minute later he buried his face in the nape of your neck and came hard inside you with a loud and delicious groan. When he finished, he rolled to the side and settled back on the pillows.
You stood there. Face down the mattress, waiting for your soul to come back to your body. You felt his hand in your hair, gently caressing it a minute later. You were destroyed enough to sleep like that, but feeling his touch, you slowly moved to snuggle into his arms.
A quick glance at him revealed a satisfied smile on his lips. He seemed as destroyed as you were, all sweaty, his tunic crumpled, his face marked where the edges of the mask had pinched. A silly part of your brain made you wonder what magic he used to keep the hood of his tunic in place after a sex session like that, but it didn't really matter, you just liked it. It would be a lie to say you weren't turned on by him dressed like that. Everyone was. And he knew it. And he liked it.
You both remained silent for what seemed like quite a long time. It wasn't a bad silence, quite the opposite. One of the things you appreciated about Vessel was his ability to not demand that you fill the silence with words. You never demanded that he speak to you, and he simply reciprocated. The sound of the air conditioning and your breathing, which was gradually returning to normal, were the only things you could hear while Vessel stroked your arm with his fingertips.
Eventually, you ended up addressing the elephant in the room. It was too wet and uncomfortable not to be mentioned.
"I made a mess," you confessed, looking at the huge dark gray stain on the sheets. "I'd never done this before. I didn't even know I could do it."
Vessel smirked, visibly proud, and squeezed you in his arms in a kind of hug, and to your surprise, he placed a kiss on your forehead. It was affectionate in a different way, and your heart leaped in your chest in a new and utterly ridiculous way. You needed to stop it, interrupt that feeling before it became bigger, but something told you it was already too late.
His phone buzzed, breaking the almost magical aura of the moment, and he kissed you gently before pulling away and getting out of bed. He pulled up his pants and buckled his belt again, grabbed his phone, and locked himself in the bathroom. You waited for some sound, but apparently he was just texting, and you took the opportunity to let your mind wander. The only problem was that it always wandered to the worst possible scenarios, and in those scenarios, Vessel always left, leaving you alone to deal with your damn life.
You found yourself imagining getting up, getting dressed, and leaving without saying anything. You imagined yourself being the first to cut off that situationship once and for all to avoid the rejection that would eventually come, to try to protect yourself mentally, but the idea was too painful, and you simply couldn't get your body out of that bed.
So you waited, and with each passing second you spent alone in that room waiting, your heart seemed to grow heavier, your mouth went dry, your hands grew cold and trembling. Anxiety spiraled toward a panic attack, and you couldn't even say why you were feeling that way, but suddenly the silence of all the unspoken words seemed to suffocate you.
Vessel eventually returned and put his phone back on the bedside table. He picked up the comforter you had dropped on the floor, folded it in half, and gestured for you to get up. You obeyed without question and watched him spread the fabric over the wet part of the mattress. He smiled, satisfied with his work, and threw himself back onto the bed, extending his hand for you to join him.
You should leave, but instead you went back to him, snuggling into his arms and letting yourself be guided to his lips. He kissed you softly, his fingers tracing down your jawline and then to your neck, where he took the small gold pendant between his fingers and played with it.
When he broke the kiss, you were completely breathless, and in a moment of surprising courage, you began to speak about what was troubling you. Suddenly, everything seemed so clear. You knew exactly why you were feeling that way, and you couldn't stay silent any longer, or you would suffocate.
"Ves, I love you," you confessed. "I think I've loved you for a while now, and I was trying to hide it from myself, but now this feeling is growing stronger, and I'm choking on these words, and I just need you to know..." You felt your eyes fill with tears and your voice falter, but you took a deep breath and continued speaking. "I'm not asking you to love me too, Ves. I'm not asking for you to change whatever this is. I'm not even asking you to love me, Ves. I just need you to know that for me it's not like it was when we started. It changed, evolved into something very big and very strong, something I can barely understand, but that's breaking me." You sighed, holding back tears.
"I don't want anything you can't give me, Ves. I just needed you to know... that I love you and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for ruining this..."
Vessel interrupted you, gently placing his index finger on your lips and shaking his head.
You gave in to the tears and sobbing and let yourself collapse into him, his arms enveloping you in a hug that emanated comfort and safety, and to your surprise, he shushed you over and over.
You stayed like that long enough for the tears to dry on your face. You found yourself lying on his chest, his hand caressing your arm with up-and-down movements while his fingers traced invisible circles on his abdomen. It was intimate and comfortable. Comfortable enough that your eyelids felt heavy. Tiredness and sleep were finally overcoming you, even though you didn't want to sleep because you knew he would leave as soon as daylight came, but you couldn't help it. Just like everything else.
"I was so tired. You're the only one who can make me feel better." You murmured. "I wish you wouldn't go. I am so stupid, Ves..."
You felt the grip of his arms around you getting stronger and let yourself be swallowed into unconsciousness.
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Idiots very much in love. How an accidental hickey and an argument gets way out of hand. Mdni!
A/N: This has been collecting dust in my drafts and I’ve decided to admit that I lost the motivation to work on it any further. So have this mini angsty fic of our beloved Vessel <3
You’ve always been quite cheeky with your antics, especially when it came to Vessel. One time, you even swore that you just couldn’t help it; he was irresistible, after all.
Oftentimes he’d fix you with a look that said he was unimpressed, but you knew better. Vessel believed that you must’ve hung the moon, so his adoration could never falter. His mind behaved differently whenever you were involved.
This time was different, though. You really hadn’t meant to leave such a distinct mark on him, certainly not one that was so plainly visible. Never in a million years would you have imagined he would be so worked up about it. And really, you hadn’t even noticed it before he so urgently brought it to your attention.
Which was where you found yourself now, sandwiched between him and the wall of the venue he’d perform in tonight. His presence had never been intimidating, not before this moment. But he was acting so unlike himself you couldn’t help but to back up a bit.
“So you didn’t think it was necessary to tell me before we left the room?”
You’d never seen him angry before. Frustrated, maybe. But not angry, and certainly never towards you. “I didn’t notice, Ves. Obviously, or I would’ve-”
“How could you not notice? I seem to be drawing every eye in the room,” he shot back. His attitude begged the question of why a hickey had him so bent out of shape, but you knew him well enough not to bite back at this moment. It couldn’t have anything to do with the ever-present company you two were among whilst on the road– your relationship was no secret. It was hard to keep it completely private given the circumstances, but this was the first time that you felt like that was a problem. He certainly had never bothered to keep his affections to himself where you were concerned. So where on earth was this attitude coming from?
You resisted the urge to bite back at him, knowing it would do very little to ease the tension between the two of you. “You’re drawing eyes right now because you’ve backed me into a corner and are speaking to me rather unkindly.” Sure, you didn’t want to escalate whatever was going on here, but no way were you just going to roll over and take it.
At this, he straightened up his posture, like he became aware that you were still in a hallway full of people. People you’d be seeing on a daily basis for another month, at that. “Maybe consider some self-control from time to time,” he huffed. “No need for us to act like animals.”
Oh, he was lucky you were painfully aware of your surroundings. All thoughts of attempting to be the bigger person went right down the drain. There was a string of endless curses you could have choked on when attempting to swallow them down.
But you knew Vessel. Loved him more than your own heart could fathom. This was not him, and you were no stranger to the idea that there was something else going on inside his head. There was no telling what, though, seeing as he decided to snap at you over a hickey instead of just telling you what was up.
His words took straight to your heart though, and you let them settle. If he didn’t want you leaving your trace on him, of course you would respect that. He meant the world to you, after all– you’d do anything he asked of you. Horrible efforts at communication aside.
You must have let on that you were done with the conversation, because he turned and stalked off towards the dressing room. It was for the best that you let eachother be for a while, you figured. Neither one of you seemed keen to argue back and forth. Maybe after the show he will have blown off enough of the steam that he was simmering in to have an actual conversation with you. Meanwhile you could be left alone to wallow in the sudden embarrassment that this situation had left you in.
You exhaled a shaky breath then. There was plenty of time for a talk back in the privacy of your shared hotel room. Or an argument, whatever it came to. Such matters should be handled in privacy, after all.
-
Whatever remained of the argument never came, though. And neither did any acknowledgement of the topic. You’d gotten back to the hotel room that night, continuing about as though the earlier part of your day never happened. You opted not to bring it up. There was a much more familiar Vessel sleeping next to you now, and that felt like enough.
Sweeping feelings under the rug is never a good idea, and you knew that. But it felt okay in the moment– and it certainly was the easier option.
It was easy until you had to put thought into how you were to handle your boyfriend going forward. Vessel had expressed a boundary to you, and you ached to be respectful of it. It was new and a little unnatural, but after a few days you fell into habits of giving him space until he initiated contact.
You realized that it had been a full week since your guys’ little hiccup, therefore a week since you’d had sex. It wasn’t intentional, not really. You craved Vessel like he was air, like he was an actual requirement to your survival– but the both of you were adults and perfectly capable of keeping it in your pants. You began to notice an aching in your heart whenever you were longing for him. You’d sat with your own thoughts long enough to convince your mind that the safest bet in your relationship was to just let Vessel take any initiatives.
This didn’t allow for much opportunity, though. He really did pour every part of himself out on stage, he rarely was left with much energy afterwards. He’d argued long ago that he could never be too deprived of energy when it came to you. ‘You light a fire within me, darling’ he’d cooed.
But your mind was not kind to you amidst these new feelings. The thought of trying to express your need to him and being rejected made your stomach churn. Pairing this with the fact that he’d made no effort towards you either was eating away at you.
Just as long as it’s not me who pushes too far again. You told yourself. Over and over and over again.
-
Vessel was in a particularly good mood tonight following the show. He was always pretty rambunctious with his guys, but the energy was definitely higher amongst the four of them right now.
Seeing him so lively brought a pang to your chest, right where your heart resided. It actually upset you how happy he seemed right now. And for what reason? You could have asked yourself that, if you weren’t already grossly aware of the answer. You’d been festering on hurt feelings for a week now. Whether it was still about the unresolved conflict, you weren’t sure. Maybe it was that you noticed his severe lack of attention towards you since you’d been advised to control yourself around him.
Maybe it was that you were beginning to feel angry. Upset at him, not just upset. This distance was destroying you, could he seriously not feel it? Did it not eat away at him that the closest you’d gotten to each other all week was a goodnight kiss? It felt like each hotel room you found yourselves in, the less comfortable you felt in his presence. His presence was like home to you, but you were beginning to feel unwelcome.
This newfound insecurity of yours was proving increasingly difficult to ignore when Vessel laid over top of you for the first time in what felt like ages. He curled his back over top of you in his kneeled position between your knees, hands wandering lightly up and down your clothed sides. You were trying to focus on him, how much you missed him, how thankful you were that he was here with you and finally present in the moment, but your thoughts shattered the moment his lips met the juncture of your neck and shoulder.
It felt like an instinct when your head nudged him away.
You felt him falter, but only momentarily. His hands persisted, now moving to take hold of your waist lightly. A hum of satisfaction slipped past your lips just before you felt those lips again, this time sucking lightly just below your ear. That might’ve been your undoing, if you didn’t find yourself pushing his head away again.
He did pause this time. “Darling?”
Your hum of acknowledgement must’ve satiated his curiosity, because he did not speak further. Instead he slipped his hand beneath the fabric of your shirt, hands finding purchase on your soft skin. His head dipped and captured your lips with eager force. Your nails trailing up his arms and moving to thread between the hairs at the nape of his neck must’ve read to him as an invitation, because his head descended once more. You didn’t let him get far though before you were tugging his head back up, and this finally brought him out of the moment.
He sat back on his knees, peering down at you in confusion. “Why aren’t you letting me kiss you?”
It sounded like an innocent question leaving him, but it stirred those unresolved feelings of yours. Evidently allowing a week to pass by did you no favors in deciding to be adults about this situation. You felt your own pettiness clawing to come out.
“You literally just did.” Of course you knew what he meant, but you had to feign confusion. Suddenly you felt ready to play with fire. He only huffed in response. “Is that not what you just did?”
“You keep pulling me away,” he overlooked your attempt to be smart-mouthed. “Since when do you not like me kissing your neck?”
There was a very fleeting moment that you almost felt bad for what you were inevitably about to put him through. Still, you furrowed your brow. A confused pout might do you well, too. “Just didn’t want you to get carried away.. I thought we were trying not to leave marks.”
He made an obvious attempt not to scoff. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin then. “You’re upset about that? It wasn’t really that big of a deal, was it?”
It was obvious now more than ever that he hadn’t paid your argument any mind since the moment that it had happened. You weren’t entirely sure what to do with that. You’ve been turning yourself in circles for days over it, and he might as well have forgotten about it altogether.
You hoped he would have begun to apologize with how upset you so clearly were, but his silence remained deafening. You fixed a glare on him instead. He sure made it seem like a huge deal in the hallway of that venue, so what changed? “It’s not a big deal,” you offered easily, although it was a lie. “But you seem to be having some self-control issues on your end.”
More silence. His face betrayed no sign of what was turning the gears in his head, but you knew they had to be in overdrive right now.
“That’s different, though,” he said helplessly– pathetically, even. This brought an incredulous laugh from where you still lay on the bed. How he managed to act so small while he was still knelt above you.
“In what way is it different, Vessel? You can do it to me but don’t want me to do it to you?”
You knew he didn’t actually have an argument for this matter. Not a good one, at least. But of course he persisted. “There are thousands of people that I stand in front of every night that would run rampant with conspiracy if they noticed something like that.”
You wanted to laugh again, but you rolled your eyes and moved out from under him instead. “You are covered in black paint on stage, Vessel,” you spit. “Do not try to act like that was the problem, you and I both know that whatever was wrong with you had nothing to do with me.”
You didn’t see him run a hand down his face or the cringe of remembrance of how he had treated you. You continued before he could come up with anything to say.
“But you know what? It doesn’t matter now what was up with you, because you decided to take it out on me. You chose to humiliate me in front of your entire crew.”
You heard him call your name, but you continued to work yourself under the already unmade covers, trying like hell to put space between the two of you. This was already a mess. You really should’ve insisted you talked about it after it happened. Or maybe brought it up some other way. No matter, because now you were even more upset and fighting tears while the man you loved only just now realized how upset you’d been.
You needed to sleep. The can was open, but now you were too upset to talk about it the way you knew you needed to. There was no doubt in your mind that it would only get worse if you continued now.
“Baby..” he crawled over to you, running his knuckles along your back.
“I don’t think it’s going to happen tonight, Vessel. I’m not really in the mood.”
You knew he didn’t like it when you said his name like that. If it wasn’t Ves, it was always a pet name. Normally you’d only do so to tease him, to get him to fake his annoyance and “punish” you in return.
He slithered down now, placing his chest close to your back, his hand coming to lay a featherlight touch against your hip. “Please don’t go to bed upset.”
Vessel usually wasn’t one to just let stuff go, and bless him, sometimes he did need to be told twice. Your silence gave him the nerve to curl his arm around your stomach, moving just a little bit closer. It must have finally clicked just how upset you were, so his lips descended to press against the back of your neck, the way he knew you loved.
“Get off of me,”
He stiffened behind you but made no effort to move. You knew how wrecked your voice must have sounded. Your throat was on fire, and it felt like it was going to close any minute. He was about to crack your resolve without even trying. “Vessel, move.”
“No.”
“No?” you questioned. You didn’t make an attempt to move from his grasp, but you turned just enough to address him. “So you tell me to control myself around you, and I oblige.. But I tell you to get off of me and all I get is ‘no’?” You couldn’t actually meet his stare to give him a proper glare in this position, but you damn well were going to try. “Got it. You’re a hypocrite.”
“I don’t want you to go to bed upset,” he whispered.
“I’ve been going to be upset for a week now, I think I can survive another night.” You felt his sigh against your skin, but he relented and pulled his arm from around you. That was as far as he went, though, and he offered no response. “You can sleep on the other side of the bed so we can talk about this in the morning.”
“Don’t sleep alone,” his voice was soft, pleading. It cracked you a little bit, but not enough for him to notice.
“Move away from me unless you’d prefer that I sleep on the couch.”
It was with obvious reluctance when he finally moved away from you. He didn’t go far enough that his body heat didn’t still radiate over to you. You knew it would be torture for him though. Not that it didn’t tear you apart inside as well, but you really believed that this would do you both well to sleep before sorting this out. His stubbornness to leave you alone was admittedly endearing, and you silently cursed him for it.
It was silent for a moment before you heard his soft call again. “You won’t really sleep on the sofa, will you?”
“As long as you think you can stay over there.”
Well of course he wouldn’t be able to do that. It was natural the way his body longed for you. You were meant to fit together. It felt wrong to have this much space between you.
Oh, how you wanted him to hold you. You’d never be able to sleep like this, not with him right next to you. Your stubbornness persisted, though. You had to talk this through, and you figured caving into your need for him and choosing to ignore it for another night would do no good.
He sighed loud enough that you heard him- felt him, even. It took every fibre of your being not to roll over to face him. Instead you opted to close your eyes and try to steady your breathing. Sleep would find you eventually.
-
It did find you eventually, but not for very long. There was no way to tell how long you’d been asleep, but the fatigue in your body led you to guess an hour at most. You lifted your head trying to adjust your position, but you caught your boyfriend looking at you.. From the floor.
Immediately, you frowned. “What are you doing?”
His head lowered, like he was guilty. “Couldn’t sleep”
“Did you even try?”
“No.”
You fought the urge to roll your eyes and sighed. He’s lucky you think he’s cute, “Get in bed and go to sleep,” all he could do was stare back at you. He made no effort to move. “You have to perform tomorrow. You’ll never make it through if you don’t sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep without you.” He whispered. His long fingers were absentmindedly tracing the seam of the mattress, where he had his head only a moment ago. “I can sleep right here. I can be closer without being too close.”
“No, you can’t. You’ll fuck your neck and your back up.” This whole ordeal had brought upon a new level of stubbornness you didn’t even know existed in him. You didn’t want to admit that his persistence made your tummy flutter, even though you felt bad that he’d been sitting on the floor watching you sleep.
“I can lay down,”
“Vessel,” you groaned. God, he made it so hard to be mad at him. You weren’t going to let the entire thing go, not so easily. But you loved him and under no circumstance would you ever fail to take care of him when he needed you to. “I am asking you to get into bed. Please. You cannot stay on the floor.”
“Can I hold you?” He had tears pooling, just waiting to spill over. Oh, your sweet (albeit oblivious) boy.
“Ves, baby,” you called to him so softly. Not unlike the gentle grip you coaxed his head into. You tugged gently until he took the hint to stand and crawl into the bed right beside you. You scooted back to accommodate his form. He’d only just settled down, his face so close to yours when you took the opportunity to kiss away one of the tears that had fallen. Your thumbs caught the ones your lips didn’t.
With much hesitation his hands finally gripped your hips, the way they’d been itching to all night. His eyes closed while he breathed you in, fighting back a sob that choked in his throat.
“Shh, don’t wreck your voice by crying,” he nodded so you knew he heard you. “We’re going to be okay, you know that. We’re just gonna have to work this one out. I promise it’ll take a lot more than one argument to tear me from you.”
He nuzzled his face at the base of your throat and made an effort to settle his breathing. Even after all of this, you're still here looking after him. But he nodded his understanding and gripped you tighter. “I don’t think I deserve you,”
“Ves,” you warned. He knew how you felt when he talked poorly of himself, no matter the anger you held for him not too long ago. “We’ll talk and apologize in the morning. Right now you need to rest.”
You smoothed your hand over the back of his head, waiting until you felt his body loosen a bit. A few kisses were placed on his head, and he finally spoke.
“I love you,” he managed. “I am not one to overlook my blessings– so I need you to know that you are my greatest one.”
“You know that I love you– I’ll love you through everything.”
You lay in silence for a minute or two, your fingers absentmindedly combing through his hair. He’d been so still you figured he had finally fallen asleep. Of course, you really should’ve known better– this was Ves, after all.
“I used to wander around, trying to wrap my head around the idea that you’d actually allow me to kiss you,” his voice sounded muffled with the way he had his face pressed into your chest. “And that you wanted to kiss me back,” his head shook like he was trying to convey genuine disbelief. “And now I’ve made you think I don’t want your affections. Please know that I do. I don’t think I could ever make it if I had to go on without you to love me.”
You did manage to breathe out the smallest laugh then. “I would take a bite out of you if I could, Ves. Don’t ever think I don’t want to be all over you.” You could feel his smile then. “We’re fine, baby. You just go to sleep and I’ll be here ready to make up with you in the morning.”
He squeezed your waist one last time before he finally relaxed and allowed you to hold him. You might’ve laughed at how this came from him wanting to hold you, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.
