Chapter Text
As a roommate Vessel was… weird.
You’d been friends with him for years, but only recently decided to move in with each other. You had a shared apartment, two rooms each with its own bathroom. Vessel covered a large part of the rent, he insisted on doing so, explaining that his job was good enough to take care of it.
He had always been more of the observational type, listening and watching rather than partaking in conversations. He had a small friend group, three other guys who occasionally would be invited over to hang out. They were nice, often including me in their friendly debates, game nights and the like.
But even then, Vessel usually would just sit and listen, smiling softly or laughing quietly. He would give his own input every so often, but he was obviously more inclined to people watching or enjoying the moment.
Alone it was much the same. We talked of course, there were countless nights that we’d both be up well into the night talking about life, philosophy, fears, wishes. All over a pot of coffee and quiet music. He was introspective, smart, and always interested in what I had to say.
He worked from home most of the time, the office in our apartment turned into a makeshift music studio. He kept the light dim and ambient, blackout curtains and candles that smelled like incense, rain, and something earthy.
His sleep schedule was odd as well, he was often passed out until early afternoon, usually up until the early hours of the morning, but anytime I had a day off he’d wake up earlier than me to make us both breakfast.
Speaking of breakfast, the man could cook. He’d make soups you’d never heard of, didn’t know what was in them but by god, they were the best thing you’d ever tried.
And he’d always clean up after himself (and you as well). With so much freetime, he liked to keep busy, often scrubbing the floors and counters, sweeping and vacuuming, though usually between the hours of nine at night and one in the morning.
In terms of communication, the two of you talked together much better in person because his texting style largely consisted of one word answers. Not dry, just… specific. He’d leave little notes on the counter, small reminders to himself about groceries we needed, but they were always written like poetry. And when the man was tired? You never knew what kind of things you’d learn about him. You knew he’d had some very rough experiences in life, a horrible breakup, interactions with cults, he’s insisted he’s met monsters. But the overall vulnerability of the way he explained things left you inclined to believe that, at least most of it, was true.
He never enters your room, always knocking soft enough that you barely notice it if he needs your attention for something. He walks quietly, talks in his low, enchanting voice, never loud enough to disturb you. But if you’re upset? He could sense it from three rooms away, materializing at your side with your favorite coffee or treat and a listening ear to rant about whatever is wrong.
He sings when he showers, melodic and heatwrenching, about love and loss and redemption. He plays his guitar or piano for you when you’re studying or working or reading, occasionally stopping to scribble newly thought of lyrics into a notebook. He would run them by you, perfecting the words in an instant and going right back to playing, creating some of the most beautiful songs you’d ever heard.
He keeps the lights off when he’s home, preferring the dark, so most of the time you assume he’s either sleeping or out of the house when he’s simply in the kitchen, making dinner or sipping tea.
On the rare occasion that he’s in “a headspace” (his words), he’ll go a few days without interacting with you in any way. Not avoidance, you know, simply processing life in his own way. Though, you find it funny, considering the two of you live in such close quarters, and you know he’s there, just ever elusive.
All of that being said, you couldn’t imagine a better roommate or friend, even if he was a bit strange sometimes.
There was one evening, early in winter, where the strangeness of him struck you in a way you couldn’t ignore.
The power had flickered twice that day, something that was normal for your old apartment building, though by the time late evening had come, you were shivering.
“You’re cold,” he noted, sitting next to you on the couch, the both of you reading quietly.
You started to say something about the heater being weird, but he was already rising from his place, pulling off his hoodie and handing it to you. You pulled it over yourself, basking in the smell of smoke and bergamot.
“Stay,” he says. “I’ll make tea.”
Before you can protest, he’s already taken a few long strides out of the room and into the kitchen. Silence falls for a moment before you hear the tap running, filling the kettle and the faint clicking of the stove.
Moments later, the sharp whistling fills the air, silenced seconds after, and he returns with two cups of tea with milk and honey, just the way you like yours.
In the dim glow around the two of you, you could see the smudge of fatigue under his eyes. He’d been working on a new song, he’d told you. Trying to figure it out was sapping his energy.
He handed you your cup before taking his place beside you, closer this time, just enough so that you could feel his body heat radiating off of him.
You sipped your tea in silence, both of you simply listening to the other person breathing.
Your book was turned face down over your leg, his guitar leaned against the couch, always near in case inspiration struck.
Finally, he spoke.
“I don’t say things the right way,” he started softly, staring at the candlelight on the coffee table before us. “Not always. People misunderstand me, or maybe I misunderstand them.”
You glanced at him, confused but patient, waiting for him to continue.
His voice lowered, softer than the glow around you.
“But you don’t try to rewrite me. You see me as I am.”
It felt like he’d handed you something fragile, something that could break if you handled it the wrong way.
You swallow, unsure of how to handle the sincerity he offered so rarely.
“I see you,” you whisper back, your voice an echo in the cold room.
For a moment he didn’t move, seemed to not even breathe.
Then he exhales, slowly.
He looked down at his hands, long fingers coiled around the ceramic of his own mug.
“You don’t… recoil,” he murmured, almost to himself. “The way most people do when I’m honest.” A faint, humorless laugh left him. “I try not to be for that reason.”
You frown, shifting slightly towards him. “I don’t see anything to recoil from.”
He huffed out a breath, not quite a laugh or disbelief, but something softer. More relieved. Then he leaned back against the couch, posture unspooling, like your words released tension he didn’t know he was holding.
“It’s maddening," he says, glancing at the guitar at his knee. “I’ve been trying to write, but everything feels half-formed. Like I’m reaching for a thread that keeps slipping through my fingers.”
“Maybe a break would help? Give you time to get your mind off of it just long enough for inspiration to strike,” you suggest, nudging his shoulder with yours.
He turns his head towards yours, meeting your eyes.
His gaze lingered, longer than it should have, longer than he usually allowed himself. Vessel regarded eye contact like something sacred and heavy, something he allowed only in small doses.
But now?
He looked at you fully, like the mere sight of you quieted the noise in his head.
“Maybe,” he murmured. “But breaks feel… dangerous.”
You blinked, “Dangerous how?”
He hesitated, just for a second, as if he was weighing how much of himself to place into your hands. Then he inhaled through his nose, slow and deliberate.
“When I stop moving,” he speaks softly, slowly. “I start thinking. And when I start thinking, I go to odd places.”
He said it like an apology or a confession. Like he expected you to push away.
You didn’t.
Instead, you leaned you head against his shoulder, letting your arm press against his, grounding him.
“Everyone goes to odd places sometimes,” you tell him softly. “Yours are simply more poetic.”
A quiet, surprised laugh escaped him.
“You don’t make this easy,” he breathes.
“Make what easy?”
His eyes dipped to your mouth for the briefest moment. Barely a flicker, but just enough to make your pulse trip. You told yourself you had imagined it.
He clears his throat, pretending to adjust the blanket over his lap.
“Not feeling like a burden,” he admits softly. “Feeling like… too much.”
Your heart clenched in your chest.
“You’re not too much,” you say, immediate and insistent. “You’re just-”
You stopped, suddenly aware of the warmth between you, his thigh pressed against yours, the way the candlelight carved soft gold into the edges of his profile.
He waited, patient and attentive, like he always was with you.
“-You,” you finished quietly, realization dawning on you. “And that’s never too much for me,” you whisper.
Vessel didn’t respond right away. Instead he leaned his head back against the couch and closed his eyes, allowing your words to settle into him like heat.
“Would you…” his voice was fragile in a way you’d never heard before. “Would you listen, even if it was unfinished?”
It took you a moment to realize he was talking about the song. But when you realized, you blinked, nodding slowly. “Of course, always.”
He opened his eyes, and something in them had shifted. Less guarded, more tender and raw.
Without another word, he reached for the guitar, fingers hovering over the string hesitating for just a heartbeat.
And then he began to play.
The melody was soft, broken in places, aching and beautiful in the way only something vulnerable could be. You felt it more than you heard it. The questions, longing and uncertainty.
“This part,” he whispers, fingers faltering over a phrase, “never fits.”
He played a few variations, and let out a breath, quietly frustrated.
On instinct you reached out and touched his forearm.
He stilled.
“That one,” you murmured. “The second one, it feels right.”
Vessel’s eyes snapped to yours, sharp and startled as if you’d unlocked something he’d been guarding.
He repeated the phrase, softer this time.
And there it was.
The missing piece.
A slow, almost disbelieving smile curved at the corner of his mouth. Small and delicate, but real.
“Yes,” he breathed. “That’s it.”
His shoulders eased as if the tension you’d seen in him was unwound like a spool of thread.
He played the melody again, now complete and whole. And when he finished, he didn’t put the guitar down.
He didn’t move away.
Instead, quietly, almost shyly he shifted just a fraction closer, his knee brushing against yours.
“Thank you,” he murmured, not for the song, not entirely.
But you understood.
And maybe that’s why, when a sudden draft blew through the room causing the candles to flicker and the room dipped momentarily darker, he didn’t flinch away.
He leaned into you.
Barely. Softly. But unmistakable.
Your breath caught, the world narrowing into the warmth of him, the weight of his shoulder brushing yours.
Vessel didn’t move, didn’t rush, didn’t assume. He simply rested there, waiting to see if you would pull away.
You didn’t.
Instead, you let your head tilt just enough that your temple touched his. The constant was feather-light, but you felt him shudder faintly, like the closeness stuck something deep inside him.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke. You could hear his breaths, soft and steady, could feel the quiet tremor in his exhale against your cheek.
“...You shouldn’t do that,” he whispered, voice thin and frayed at the edges.
“Do what?” you asked, barely above a murmur.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Make me feel like this.”
Your heart lurched. “Like what?”
He hesitated and you felt him turn his head slightly, just enough that if you shifted an inch, your lips would graze his cheek.
“Like I’m wanted,” he breathed.
You froze.
He didn’t say it like a man fishing for comfort. He said it like a confession he’d buried under thousands of unspoken words.
Slowly, you sat up just enough to see his face. His gaze stayed low, fixed on the curve of his mug as if he can't look at you without breaking something open. Candlelight carved shadows under his lashes, made him look softer, younger, achingly vulnerable.
“Vessel,” you whispered. “You are wanted.”
His eyes finally lifted and you felt the air leave your lungs. There was no shield tonight, no mask. Just raw, unguarded feeling.
He shook his head once, barely. “Not like this.”
“Yes,” you breathe. “Exactly like this.”
For a second, he looked almost painted. “You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Then explain it to me.”
His jaw flexed. His fingers tightened around the guitar neck before he gently set it aside on the couch, like he needed both hands free to steady himself.
“When I care for someone,” he said slowly, each word deliberate, “it is not… quiet. It’s not small. It bleeds, consumes. And I don’t know how to be anything less than that.”
You stared at him, stunned not by intensity, but by honesty.
You lifted your hand and rested it lightly over his.
“I’m not asking you to be less.”
His breath hitched, audible and sharp. He stared at your hand covering his, as if he wasn't sure he was allowed to hold it.
Then with infinite gentleness, he turned his palm upward beneath yours, fingers brushing against your skin, testing or asking.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered.
You didn’t.
Instead, you leaned forward, letting your forehead touch his, soft as a vow.
“I won’t,” you murmured. “Not unless you want me to.”
A fragile sound slipped from him, something like relief. Or surrender.
His hand slip up, cupping your cheek with a reverence that made your chest ache. His touch wasn’t confident or practiced; it trembled, as if he wasn’t sure this moment was real.
“Please,” he breathed. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” you whispered, lips inches from his.
“Like you care.”
“I do.”
His breath stuttered, and that was what finally broke him.
Vessel closed the last inch between you.
The kiss wasn’t urgent or wild.
It was cautious at first, soft and tentative, a question asked in the language of lips and breath and trembling hands.
But when you kissed him back gently pressing closer, something inside him melted. A quiet helpless sound escaped against your mouth and his hand moved to the back of your neck, drawing you in with aching tenderness.
He kissed you like a man who’d never been kissed gently before.
Like he didn’t know he was allowed to want this.
When he finally pulled back, barely an inch, his nose brushed yours.
“...Tell me this isn’t a dream.”
You smiled, thumb brushing his cheek.
“It’s not.”
He closed his eyes, leaning into your touch, exhaling shakily.
“Then stay,” he whispered. “Just… stay with me.”
And you did.