chronic fish enjoyer

You smiled slightly in victory.

That expression ruined the rest of his evening immediately.

Afterward, the nights began stacking together slowly enough that neither of you noticed the accumulation until it was already far too late to pretend otherwise.

Vil would arrive after filming or interviews or rehearsals and the worst part, Vil eventually decided, was how naturally your apartment learned him.

The place adapted around his existence slowly enough that he only noticed once the transformation had already rooted itself into every room.

His preferred tea appeared stocked in your cabinets without discussion. The couch permanently carried the faint scent of his perfume soaked into the fabric from too many exhausted late nights collapsed sideways against the cushions. Your bathroom mirror became crowded with expensive skincare products arranged in neat gleaming rows beside your chaotic collection of half-empty bottles.

Even the lighting changed.

You started leaving lamps on instead of overhead lights because Vil complained once that bright lighting after midnight made him like he was still under the spotlight and afterward your apartment remained permanently dipped in warm gold and shadow.

It made everything softer.

The edges of furniture blurred slightly at night. Steam from the shower drifted lazily through hallways glowing amber beneath low lighting. Reflections stretched across windows after rainstorms while synth-heavy playlists hummed endlessly somewhere in the background, all slow basslines and dreamy melodies that wrapped around conversations until the nights themselves started feeling suspended outside ordinary time.

Vil became addicted to that feeling almost immediately.

He arrived one evening long after midnight to find you sitting on the kitchen counter eating strawberries directly from the carton while staring blankly into space.

“You look haunted,” he informed you after stepping inside.

You blinked slowly.

“You ever get so tired your bones feel microwaved?”

“What a deeply upsetting sentence.”

You held a strawberry toward him without looking.

Vil accepted it automatically.

Everything between you had become automatic; especially touch.

At some point during the past few months, both of you had stopped noticing the constant small collisions drawing you together throughout every night. Knees pressed together beneath blankets. Fingers brushing absentmindedly during conversations. Your ankle hooked lazily over his foot while sitting beside each other on the couch.

Vil found himself reaching for you unconsciously now.

A hand against your waist while passing behind you in the kitchen. Fingers smoothing your damp hair away from your face after showers. His thumb tracing idle circles against your wrist while neither of you paid direct attention to it.

The intimacy accumulated slowly until the apartment itself felt thick with it.

One night the two of you ended up in the bathtub again sometime around three in the morning after Vil complained his muscles hurt from rehearsals.

Your building’s hot water system was criminally inconsistent, meaning the bath had already begun cooling by the time you climbed in beside him.

Steam fogged the mirrors completely. Music drifted softly from your phone speaker across the room, muffled slightly beneath the sound of water shifting around both of you.

Vil leaned back against the tub with his eyes closed while you traced meaningless patterns through condensation gathered along the tile wall beside his head.

“What are you drawing,” he murmured sleepily.

“Nothing.”

“I'm calling it, it'll be a cat.”

“It’s abstract.”

Vil opened one eye just enough to look at you.

Your hair is damp, strands sticking lazily against your neck ans forehead while warm light from the lamps painted gold across your skin. You look relaxed and that has softened your entire expression. You looked loose around the edges somehow, comfortable in a way Vil rarely allowed himself to become around other people.

Then your finger drifted downward absentmindedly through the fogged tile until you drew a tiny heart directly beside his shoulder.

You stared at it afterward as if surprised by your own hand.

Vil’s chest tightened painfully.

The silence afterward stretched warm and heavy.

“Your hair is falling out of the clip,” you mumbled eventually.

“You say that every time I attempt to relax.”

“Because every time you attempt to relax you start unraveling physically.”

“You make me sound defective.”

Then your head drifted sideways against his shoulder naturally enough that he doubted you even consciously chose to do it.

The movement nearly stopped his heart anyway.

There were moments now where the closeness between you became almost overwhelming in its density. Nights where the apartment felt too warm despite open windows. Too quiet despite music playing softly in the background. Too full of unspoken affection pressing invisibly against every room.

Vil had never experienced emotional intimacy this prolonged before.

Passion, yes. Attraction, endlessly. Admiration from afar practically followed him professionally.

But this?

This slow drowning sensation of becoming intertwined with another person piece by piece until even solitude started feeling incorrect? That was new.

The nights grew stranger after that.

Sometimes the two of you would fall asleep halfway through conversations without meaning to. Vil sprawled across your bed still wearing reading glasses while you rambled softly beside him about absolutely nothing. One moment he would still be listening to your voice through heavy exhaustion, and the next he’d wake hours later to find your face pressed sleepily into his chest while dim blue morning light leaked through the curtains.

Other times neither of you slept at all.

The city would stretch endlessly outside your windows while music looped quietly through the apartment and both of you drifted through rooms half awake, sharing fruit directly from the fridge at four in the morning or brushing teeth side by side while Vil lectured you.

“You use entirely too many products,” you informed him one night while leaning against the bathroom counter.

“You use entirely too few.”

“My skin survives.”

“Barely.”

“You looked at my face and said barely.”

“I say many truthful things.”

“You’re evil.”

“And yet you continue allowing me into your home.”

You stared at him through the mirror for several long seconds before dissolving into helpless laughter again.

Vil watched your reflection quietly while smoothing moisturizer across his skin.

Then slowly, without fully thinking about it, you wandered toward him and rested your forehead against his shoulder.

Vil immediately wrapped an arm around your waist.

Your sigh against him sounded so soft it almost disappeared beneath the music.

That sound haunted him for days afterward.

The closeness became greedy over time and then increasingly impossible to ignore.

Vil started lingering after kisses instead of pulling away immediately. He started touching your face absentmindedly during conversations. He was staring too long whenever sleepiness made your expression go soft around the edges.

And every single night ended the same way.

With Vil wanting one more hour.

One more song. One more conversation. One more moment stretched beneath dim apartment lighting while the outside world remained mercifully distant.

Because inside your apartment, surrounded by low music and warm shadows and the unbearable sweetness of your presence wrapped around every room, Vil sometimes felt frighteningly close to happiness so complete it bordered on unreality.

A fantasy.

One he increasingly feared waking from.