𝔤𝔥𝔬𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔢

𝐕𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐋

𝐈𝐈

𝐈𝐈𝐈

𝐈𝐕

The apartment is quiet in that specific way it only gets past midnight, when the city outside has finally stopped pretending it ever sleeps and settled into something closer to a low, distant hum. The lamp in the corner is on -- the warm one, the one with the amber-toned bulb he picked out because the overhead light was too harsh, he'd said, too clinical for a space that was supposed to feel like somewhere you could breathe. You're on the couch. You've been on the couch for a while now, legs tucked underneath you, a blanket pulled up to your ribs that you don't really need because the room is warm enough, but having it there feels like something. Like a small, manageable weight. Your phone is face-down on the cushion beside you. You turned it over a while ago when the job listings started blurring together, when every opened tab started to feel less like possibility and more like a quiet indictment of everything you haven't figured out yet. Vessel is in the kitchen. You can hear him -- the soft clink of a mug being set down, the low sound of the kettle, the particular kind of unhurried movement that belongs entirely to him, like he has never once rushed through a room in his life.

You don't mean to spiral. You never mean to. It tends to happen in the quiet, in the spaces where there's nothing loud enough to pull your attention somewhere else, where your brain is left alone long enough to start turning things over. And tonight it's turning over everything. The email you got three days ago that you still haven't told him about -- the one that used words like restructuring and effectively immediately and sat in your inbox like something you could ignore if you just didn't open it again. The conversation you had with your mother when you were seventeen where she said you don't have the luxury of dreaming, you have to be practical and you nodded because what else were you supposed to do, because rent existed and groceries existed and survival had a way of making ambition feel like something that belonged to other people. People with safety nets. People with a clear idea of where they were headed. You think about all the times you've sat across from someone at a dinner or a gathering and they've asked so what do you do, what are you working toward, where do you see yourself and you've smiled and pivoted and changed the subject so smoothly that most people never even noticed. But you noticed. You always notice. And tonight, with the city humming outside and the lamp burning amber and Vessel doing something as simple and domestic as making tea in the next room, it hits differently. It hits like a question you've been outrunning for years and your legs have finally gotten tired.

You hear him before you see him -- the soft sound of socked feet on hardwood, unhurried, familiar. He rounds the corner with two mugs and he doesn't announce himself, doesn't say here or I made you tea like it's something that requires acknowledgement. He just sets one down on the small table beside the couch within easy reach of you, the way he always does, like taking care of you in the smallest ways is something that happens automatically, something that doesn't quite require thought or performance. He settles at the other end of the couch, close enough that you could reach him if you wanted to, and he pulls your feet into his lap without asking -- just lifts them gently, repositions, rests one warm hand across your ankles like that's simply where his hand belongs. He picks up his own mug. Takes a slow sip. Doesn't turn on the tv. Doesn't reach for his phone. Just sits there in the quiet with you like the quiet is enough, like he has nowhere else to be and no part of him is straining toward anything other than this exact moment, this exact couch, you. And that's almost what breaks you a little. Not in a sharp way. In a slow, pressurized way, like something behind your sternum has been wound too tight for too long and his simple, unbothered presence is the first thing all night that has felt like it could loosen it. You look at him. At the line of his jaw, the way the amber light catches the angle of his face, the faint evidence of years lived in the places he doesn't think about anymore but you notice -- you always notice. And you think, not for the first time, what are you doing here with me.

It starts as a thought, the way it always does. Small. Tucked into the back of your mind like something you can manage, something you can fold up and put away before it takes up too much space. But the problem with quiet rooms and warm light and someone sitting beside you who makes you feel so inexplicably safe is that your defenses come down whether you want them to or not. And when your defenses come down, the thoughts don't stay small. He has a career, you think. He has a trajectory, a body of work, a sense of purpose that he carries in his bones like something earned through years of figuring himself out. He knows what he loves. He knows what he's building. He wakes up in the morning with direction in a way that has always seemed to you like a language you were never taught to speak. And you -- you have a closed laptop on the kitchen table with seventeen tabs open that all lead nowhere, an inbox with an email you can't bring yourself to reread, and a history of spending so much energy on simply getting through each day that the concept of what do you actually want has always felt faintly laughable. Like a question designed for people who had the privilege of stillness. People who weren't too busy keeping their heads above water to look up and consider the horizon. You didn't get to have dreams at seventeen. You got to have rent. You got to have responsibility and survival and the particular exhaustion of being young and already worn down by the weight of a life that didn't leave much room for wondering. And now you're here. Older. Supposedly freer. And you still don't know what you want to be when you grow up, and sitting next to someone who has lived and built and become something makes that feel like a wound that never quite closed.

You don't say anything. You're good at that -- at keeping it behind your eyes, at arranging your expression into something neutral enough that most people never think to look closer. It's a skill you developed early, somewhere between learning that falling apart was a luxury and understanding that being the one who held it together was simply the role that had been assigned to you. So you don't say anything. You look down at your mug instead, wrap both hands around it, let the warmth seep into your palms and focus on that -- just that, the heat against your skin, just the small manageable reality of ceramic and chamomile and the sound of him breathing slowly beside you. It works, for a moment. And then he shifts. It's subtle -- just a small adjustment of weight, the hand resting across your ankles moving slightly, and you feel his gaze before you see it. That's another thing about him, something you noticed early and have never quite gotten used to. The way he looks at you isn't passive. It isn't the kind of looking that happens simply because you're in the room and his eyes need somewhere to land. It's attentive in a way that feels almost old-fashioned, deliberate, like you are something worth the full allocation of his attention and he has decided, quietly and without needing to announce it, to give it to you. You feel it on the side of your face like something with a temperature. Warm and steady and patient. And you know, even before he says a single word, that whatever you have been trying to keep folded up and out of sight tonight has already been seen.

"Hey." His voice is low, unhurried, shaped around your name in that specific way he has -- not sharp, not urgent, just quiet enough that it lands somewhere underneath your ribs instead of on the surface of your skin. You keep your eyes on your mug for a half second longer. A last small act of self-preservation. Then you look up, and you find him already watching you with that expression you have never quite been able to name -- not concern exactly, not worry, something more patient than either of those things. Something that looks like he has all the time in the world and he intends to spend as much of it as necessary right here, right now, one arm resting along the back of the couch, his body angled in a way that makes the space between you feel smaller and more deliberate. His mug is on the table now. He isn't distracted. He isn't half-present the way people sometimes are when they ask how you're doing and mean it as a formality rather than a question. His eyes move over your face slowly, reading something there that you thought you had kept hidden, and you watch him find it -- watch the moment his expression settles into something even more careful, even more gentle, in a way that makes your throat tighten almost immediately. "Where did you go just now?" He asks. Softly. No pressure in it. Just an open door, held wide, waiting to see if you'll walk through it.

to start, i've always wanted to write one of those cliche "he spots her in the crowd", but with some kind of dark/sad twist. it would start with our main character meeting vessel BEFORE he's the man we know. he's right on the cusp of creating THE sleep token, right before the well known st. pancras church ritual (maybe like a month before). they're both with other people at the time, on a double date to a metal show, and they kind of just like, click. really fucking well. but of course they go back to their own significant others and simply never see each other again.

UNTIL!

our main character, three years later, finds herself as a single mom, diagnosed with a very harsh type of cancer, with absolutely nothing good to look back on and a very sad list of things she has yet to do in life. so? she sells all of her things and takes her daughter and moves to the uk for a brand new life - a life where, for once, she actually chooses herself (and her daughter of course).

𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐩!𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐥 who wakes up before you and just...stays there for a minute. not staring dramatically. just watching you come back to life slowly. the way your eyebrows twitch before you open your eyes. the way you instinctively curl a little closer to him even when you're still half asleep. he brushes his thumb along your cheek to wake you gently instead of shaking you or talking too loud. when you finally blink up at him, confused and soft, he smiles in that small, private way and leans down to kiss you.

it's not heated. not pushing boundaries.

just his mouth resting against yours, slow and warm, like he's checking in.

he doesn't deepen it. doesn't move his hands anywhere else. one stays at your waist, the other still cradling your face. he lingers just long enough that you have time to respond. and when you do -- when you kiss him back lazily, sleep-heavy an unguarded -- he exhales quietly against your lips.

there's no rush in him. no expectation.

he pulls back, forehead resting against yours, and just says, "hi."

and you can feel it -- this quiet relief in him. like he's still not used to the fact that you're here. that you stayed the night. that you want him in the morning when there's no music, no tension, no buildup. just real life.

he kisses you again, softer this time.

not because he's trying to get somewhere.

you're at dinner with him, nothing fancy. he's explaining something to the waiter -- calm, articulate, effortless -- and you're just watching him. the way he holds himself. the way he doesn't rush. the way he doesn't need to fill silence.

and the thought just slips in, uninvited.

he could have anyone.

it catches you off guard. you don't even know where it came from.

you smile. you nod. you reach for his hand under the table like nothing happened. and it passes.

but then it happens again.

you're in his apartment on a sunday morning, wearing one of his shirts, and he's making coffee like he's done it a thousand times. like he's built a life already. like he knows exactly who he is.

and you feel it again.

this fits him so naturally. do i?

you don't spiral. not yet. you just tuck it away.

meanwhile, he's doing the same thing in reverse.

you're telling him about a place you want to travel to. some wild plan. something impulsive and bright. your eyes light up when you talk about it. he loves that look. he really does.

but there's a small, quiet ache in his chest.

what if she realizes she wants more than this? more than me?

he doesn't say it either.

so it builds. slowly.

until one night you're both in bed. lights off. the room quiet except for the sound of his breathing. his arm draped over your waist, warm and familiar.

and the thought comes again.

only this time it doesn't pass.

it lingers.

you swallow.

"can i ask you something?" you say, barely above a whisper.

he hums. "yeah."

there's a long pause. long enough that you almost back out.

"do you ever think," you start, staring at the dark, "that you'd be better off with someone more...settled?"

the silence that follows isn't sharp. it's stunned.

his arm tightens slowly around you, grounding you against his steadiness.

he shifts, rolls onto his side so he can see your face even in the dim light.

"i was going to ask if you ever think you'll realize you want someone your own age," he says quietly.

and it hits you like cold water.

because the whole time you’ve been worrying you’re not enough yet —

he’s been worrying he’s already too much.

there’s no dramatic speech after that.

just you both lying there, a little exposed.

his thumb brushes slow circles against your hip.

“i’m not looking for more mature,” he murmurs. “i’m looking for you.”

and for the first time it doesn’t feel like reassurance for the sake of it.