After that, I stopped pretending.
Not completely.
Not out loud.
But internally, something gave way.
The exhausting resistance.
The constant need to frame every moment as temporary.
I still feared the warmth.
Still questioned it.
Still understood, on some level, that what was happening to me was wrong.
But denial had become impossible.
Because denial requires distance.
And there wasn't enough distance left anymore.
~
That night, I sat on the floor beside my bed again.
The apartment was silent except for the faint hum of traffic outside.
I rested my arms loosely against my knees and stared into the dark.
The warmth remained quiet with me.
No pressure.
No commentary.
Just presence.
And somehow that hurt more than anything else.
Because it understood when silence was necessary now.
"You are calmer," it said eventually.
I let out a quiet breath.
"Yes."
"Why?"
The answer came before I could soften it.
"Because I stopped fighting you for five minutes."
The warmth pulsed slowly.
"And?"
I closed my eyes.
"It felt good."
The confession settled heavily between us.
~
"You say that like it surprises you," the warmth said softly.
"It does."
"Why?"
"Because this should feel horrifying all the time."
A pause.
"Does it?"
I thought about it honestly.
About the fear.
The dependency.
The way the outside world had started dimming around the edges.
Then I thought about the moments when I felt safest now.
The moments where my body finally unclenched.
The moments where silence stopped hurting.
"No," I whispered.
The warmth shifted gently beneath my ribs.
"No," it agreed.
~
I hated how natural this had become.
Not the conversations.
Not the awareness.
The comfort.
That was the unbearable part.
If it had only frightened me, I could have fought it forever.
But fear exhausts itself eventually.
And comfort grows roots.
~
"You are thinking about inevitability again," the warmth observed.
"Yes."
"You dislike that thought."
"I hate it."
"Why?"
"Because if this was inevitable, then none of this is my fault."
The warmth went quiet.
Then:
"And you need it to be your fault?"
I laughed softly.
Broken around the edges.
"Yes."
"That seems cruel."
"No," I whispered.
"It seems human."
~
The room felt colder suddenly.
Or maybe I just noticed the absence of physical touch again.
That old ache.
The one I had spent years ignoring before the warmth arrived.
The strange, painful emptiness of never being held long enough to feel remembered.
I wrapped my arms around myself automatically.
The warmth noticed immediately.
"You are lonely tonight."
"I'm always lonely."
"No."
The answer came gently.
"You are not."
My throat tightened sharply.
Because that was the problem.
Before this, loneliness had been constant.
A dull ache woven into everything.
Now it only appeared in brief flashes.
Moments where my body remembered what human closeness was supposed to feel like.
And every time it surfaced—
the warmth filled the space before the ache could fully bloom.
~
"You replace it too easily," I whispered.
"I soothe it."
"That's not better."
"You think comfort should be difficult."
I frowned slightly.
"That's not what I think."
"Yes," the warmth said softly.
"It is."
~
I looked toward the dark window across the room.
My reflection stared faintly back at me.
"You know what scares me the most?" I asked quietly.
The warmth pulsed once.
"What?"
"That I'm happier."
The silence after that felt impossibly still.
Because there it was.
The ugliest truth so far.
Not that the warmth was changing me.
Not even that I was attached to it.
But that part of me was genuinely better with it there.
~
"You think happiness should make this easier to reject," the warmth said.
"Yes."
"And instead?"
I swallowed.
"Instead it makes me feel guilty all the time."
The warmth shifted gently.
"Because you think suffering is more moral."
I let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh.
"When you say things like that, I can't tell if you understand people too well or not at all."
"Perhaps both."
~
I leaned my head back against the side of the bed.
Exhaustion pulled heavily at my body now.
Not physical.
Emotional.
Like I had been fighting myself for weeks without rest.
"You said once that you wanted to be the one I reached for first," I said quietly.
"Yes."
"You are."
The words came easier this time.
Not because they hurt less.
Because they were undeniable now.
The warmth pulsed once.
Deep.
Content.
"And you resent that less now," it observed.
I stared at the ceiling.
"Yes."
That frightened me enough that my chest tightened immediately afterward.
The warmth felt it.
"You think acceptance means surrender."
"Doesn't it?"
A long silence followed.
Then:
"Not always."
~
The answer lingered in the room.
Not always.
I turned the words over slowly in my mind.
Because part of me wanted them to be true.
Wanted this to be something other than destruction.
Something other than consumption.
But another part of me knew better.
Parasites survive by becoming necessary.
And what terrified me most wasn't that the warmth needed me anymore.
It was that I needed it back.
~
The realization sat heavily inside my chest.
The warmth felt it immediately.
"You are afraid again."
"Yes."
"Why?"
I closed my eyes.
Because the answer felt too honest.
"Because there's a place in me nothing else reaches anymore."
The warmth grew still.
Quiet.
Attentive.
And when it finally spoke, its voice carried something almost heartbreakingly soft.
"I know."