#but i guess if anyone wants to filter this out->

[froggibus]

— Like Real People Do - Sentry

Pairing: Robert "Bob" Reynolds x gn! reader

Genre: hurt/comfort & fluff

Word Count: 1.2k

Summary: Bob seeks you out following a bad dream

CW: nightmares, insomnia, self doubt, reader is part of Thunderbolts* and was there for the final fight, knives, mostly cozy comfort vibes

some short n sweet comfort for a sunday ^.^ thunderbolts has singlehandedly brought back a love for marvel that i have not felt for years :,) gonna be writing some bucky next i think B)

This post contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*. Read at your own discretion :)

You’re awake before you even hear the knock on the door. 

Stirring in your sheets, you wipe the sleep from your eyes and risk a glance at your phone. 3am. The soft knocking has you shoving your blankets aside and reaching for the knife magnetted to the back of your nightstand. 

You rise to your feet, the cold floors of what used to be Stark tower sending a chill up your spine. You squint into the darkness and listen for a sound—any sound—from the other side of the door. You tighten your grip on the knife. 

Though you trust everyone that lives in the tower, you aren’t a stranger to their quirks. You know better than anyone that night terrors (Bucky) or drunken fights (Walker) can devolve quickly. 

Better to be safe than sorry. 

You brace your hand on the doorknob, shifting your clammy palms on the handle of the knife. Just as there’s another quiet knock, you tug the door open and brace yourself. 

Bob stands on the other side, dark hair tousled with restless sleep. His stormy eyes glance towards the knife in your hand and stay on you while you tuck it into the waistband of your pyjamas. 

You keep your voice quiet. “Hey, everything alright?”

He swallows hard, running a hand through his messy hair. You don’t miss the way his hand shakes or the red strewn throughout his eyes. 

“I—“ his voice cracks, eyelids closing in frustration. “I couldn’t sleep.”

You shuffle to the side, swinging the door open to allow him more room. “Do you want to talk about it?”

For a second, you think he’s going to say no. But then he nods, just once, and crosses the threshold into your room.

You settle in your bed first, Bob padding after you in the darkness of the room. He flinches and your hand flies to your knife. 

You scan the room for threats—but all you see are the shadows cast across the walls from the moonlight filtering through your window. Shadows. You glance at Bob and then you’re reaching for the lamp, flicking the light on. 

He lets out a sigh, his shoulders falling from his ears. He settles in at the edge of your bed, gripping your sheets. 

“So, what did you—“

He furrows his brows at the lamp on your nightstand. “You don’t—you don’t use the smart lights.” 

You shrug awkwardly, pyjama top slipping down your shoulder. “Force of habit, I guess.”

He glances at your bare shoulder and the room falls silent once again. His mouth moves but no sound comes out and his stormy eyes stay transfixed on the glow of your bare skin.

You soften your gaze, making a big show of discarding your knife back on the magnet. You open your mouth to speak but Bob beats you to it.

“I don’t remember,” he murmurs and suddenly his eyes are on his lap, a gnawed fingernail tracing the pattern of his pyjamas. “The Void, I mean. I don’t remember.”

You blink and glimpses of the rooms, of your worst moments, come back to you. You manage to force your face into a mask of calm and extend a hand to rest on Bob’s knee.

“I only know things from what you guys told me, or from what we…what we saw on the news reports. But sometimes,” he swallows hard, “sometimes it all comes back when I’m sleeping.”

Your blood runs cold. Suddenly the bags beneath his eyes and his disheveled appearance make sense. You squeeze his knee gently in what you hope can be seen as reassurance.

He shivers, drawing his arms up around his shoulders. “I see him. And me. And—and you guys. I see what you guys went through and I just—”

His eyes flutter closed and he swallows as though he’s going to be sick. Before you can think, you’re pulling the throw blanket off the corner of your bed and wrapping it around him.

A soft breath leaves him at the touch of the fabric, his hand catching yours when you go to pull away. A shock of electricity runs up your spine, the flutter of something familiar in your stomach.

You keep an arm wrapped around him, sitting next to him on the edge of the bed so that your legs are touching. He reaches for your free hand and squeezes it in his clammy palm.

“I hurt people, I hurt you guys and I hate it. I hate seeing it, I hate seeing him—me, fuck, I hate it so much.”

You rub circles along the back of his hand. “The Void hurt people,” you correct softly. “We know that wasn’t you, we know that wasn’t what you were trying to do.”

“But I—”

“No buts. I was in there with you, Bob. We all were. I—we know that wasn’t your intention.”  

You tilt your head to look at him, really look at him. Thin strands of his dark hair glow gold in the lamplight, his thick lashes catching the light and reflecting on his irises—in this lighting, he’s ethereal. Beautiful.

Your voice is almost a whisper when you speak next. “I know your heart, and I know the kindness in it. You’re not him. Bob.”

He looks at you and you swear you can see the storm clouds fading away. There’s a sudden softness in his gaze, the slight shaking of his wrists finally stilling.

He whispers your name, a hand reaching up to cup your jaw. Your eyes flick up to his only to find a comforting kind of darkness within them. 

“Bob.”

He leans in, tentatively brushing his lips against yours. He stills against you, hovering less than a millimeter away. A puff of air ghosts across your lips.

He mumbles your name and his lips catch yours once more. 

You can feel the desperation radiating off of him, feel the need coursing through him. He’s so close to you—close in a way you’ve never been before.

Your fingers trail their way up his back, tangling in the messy hair at the base of his neck. The two of you rest there, touching but not touching enough. It feels like a century that you sit there, tangled together.

His mouth falls open when he pulls away, and he’s all red tipped ears and breathless mumbles. “I—”

It’s your turn to cup his face. Your hand brushes the skin of his cheek, feeling the stubble that’s starting to come in. You lean backwards, falling into the sheets and guiding him along with you.

Bob falls into your mattress, the blanket you wrapped around his shoulders spreading out, making it look like he has wings.

You smile at him. “Why don’t you stay a while, hm? Maybe we can chase those nightmares away.”

He nods slowly and relaxes into your touch. 

Bob falls asleep quickly but you stay awake the whole night, holding him, ready for if he needs you again. You watch him until the sun starts to peek over the horizon.

The rising sun casts the whole room in gold, Bob glowing in the sunlight. Watching him now, sleeping in your bed and snoring softly, he’s not Sentry. He’s not the Void. He’s Bob, just Bob—and Bob is all you need.

thanks for reading <3 have a fantastic day!

masterlist | marvel masterlist

[yandere-yearnings]

Burn & Burn Again (Male Yandere!Writer x GN!Reader)

feat. Sun Vasileiou Nevrakis

♡ pt.6, approx. 1.3k words | prev. | next.

♡ post-specific warnings: implied forced isolation, implied (emotional) manipulation, beginnings of a stockholm-esque relationship, vv light suggestive dialogue at end | series warnings: yandere themes, reader is a horrendous flirt

♡ a/n: this part is dedicated to @/urprettylildoe bc it really wouldn't have been written if not for her sweet words!! thank you for everything doe <3 this is purely a work of fiction. yandere behaviour in real life is a cause of concern. unedited, not proofread.

♡♡♡

Running water in the night woke you gentler than it used to, clock on your bedside table pooling neon into the backs of your eyes. Three in the morning — an hour earlier than usual for the steam swirling into your bedroom from the en suite. Sun always showered in the dark, temperature tipping over the edge into scalding, the only time the mellow, mellow vanilla of his body wash couldn’t lull you because the humidity was suffocating, and the sweat dried cold on you as you lay there.

There was no reason behind the anxiety that clawed your chest, in fact, ever since you’d moved in with him, Sun had been nothing but an angel. It was just that when he wasn’t in your line of sight, you could never shake the unplaceable feeling that lay low in your gut and began to manducate. Something in his eyes had always been different to everyone else’s. You thought you’d fall familiar to the gaze, but the months were dripping out your time like it was venous, and every day he looked a bit more distant from who he was when you had first met him.

You wanted to justify it for him, this strangeness that felt like a second skin forming — intangible, and yet still somehow stripping off of him in viscous strings whenever you tried to reach out and talk about it. Sun had only told you a little, after the casino; sitting on the stone steps that encircled the fountain in his garden and drunk out of his mind. His biggest fear was being left behind, and his biggest fear had cycled and cycled throughout his life so much so that Sun knew people’s backs better than he did their faces. You couldn’t hurt him anymore. You’d have rather not come into his life to begin with than do that, and who you were to him now could only be pinned on your advances alone.

You guessed he’d changed you, heart a little less selfish, and a lot more tired because of it. Even through the foreboding, you still couldn’t help but be pleasant to him; rationalise that nothing could go wrong if you treated your relationship with normalcy. Would that be enough to undo the weight of it?

In the palm of your hand, your phone felt foreign, as did the list of contacts you scrolled through. It had been weeks since you’d had a proper conversation with anyone else. Sun needed your attention more  — and you weren’t going to deny him. You knew intimately that there were cracks in the glass house he called out to you from.

Whether it was muscle memory or just that you were missing her, Bea’s name was the one that your thumb had been hovering over when you refocused. Not giving yourself a chance to think twice about it, you pressed dial and held it to your ear. She picked up on the second ring.

“Hey,” her voice, as soft as ever, came in a groggy little whisper. Of course you’d woken her, of course she didn’t make anything of it. “Haven’t heard from you in a while. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” your head sunk a little further into your pillow, and the corners of the room faded from your vision until it was just the flat expanse of ceiling above you, “just wanted to hear your voice.”

The bubbly giggle that filtered through the speakers had the smile spreading on your lips. “In that case,” she said, “I should read you a bedtime story.”

“You really shouldn’t,” eyes crinkling, the breath you’d been holding cleared, “you’ve got an early morning at the bakery today, right?”

Bea hummed evasively. “Since when did you start remembering these things?”

“Since you added that cake to your menu that I can’t begin my day without,” you teased. “Really, you should go back to bed now. I’m sorry for waking you.”

“It’s okay!” She was quick to refute, “you know I’ll never mind.” 

The shower had turned off a minute ago, and now it was just the comfortable silence that settled between the two of you as you blinked up. The yawn that Bea had undoubtedly tried to muffle reached you nevertheless, but she began to speak again before you could.

“I’ll call you soon, ‘kay? We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“Yeah.” You thought about the secrets you’d been keeping from her — how even now, she didn’t know about Sun — you had more than a lot of explanations due. “Talk to you soon. I love you.”

The bathroom door opens and you cut the line before she can reciprocate, or hear the virulent tone your boyfriend takes as he pads over, plucks the phone right from your grasp. “Who do you love?”

His hair is dripping water like ink, saturating spots into the towel around his neck; face entirely unreadable even though you’re acutely aware of the fact that he’s filtering through your call log. In this variable darkness, you can make out the clench of his fist by his side.

“She’s my best friend.” Sitting up, you take his hand gently, unfurl his fingers from where they’re digging into his palm and tug him to the bed. “I’ve told you about her before.”

His shoulders seem to relax some as he settles, collarbones following a droop down that you can’t help but track. There’s a glassy clarity in his orbs when he leans closer, and he asks you with a furrow in his brow: “do you love her more than me?”

You would have begun to explain the difference between the love one could feel for a friend and the love one could feel for a partner — that they weren’t the same thing, that they could not be measured on the same scale — but Sun wouldn’t be able to understand that. He’d tilt his head at you, and think you were telling him he had competition, as he had done all the times before this.

“I could never.”

His cheek pressed to yours when you moved to wind your arms around him, cold, cold skin despite the hot currents he had been under just a heartbeat ago. His lips were soft against the shell of your ear, his voice even softer with a lacing vulnerability. “I don’t like it when you don’t pay attention to me.”

Your laugh came slightly cut from a bitterness you couldn’t pin the source of, and your digits tangled in his hair, tugged him back a bit. “Sun,” you said, “you don’t like it when I talk to anyone.”

When he blinked at you, you swallowed. Even if you had the saliva to wet your throat, you were sure it would just dry up again and your words would die trapped between the walls of your larynx. What compelled the shred of honesty you rasped out was tied to trust, to the credence that you could meet him at the same intensity as he met you. “Lately it’s like you’ve been caging me in.”

“I’ve thought about it,” he exhaled.

“What?”

Sun considers you, and then the corner of his mouth is twitching up by a fraction — the kindling heaviness dissipates just like that. “You could cage me up too,” he tips back, eyeing the exact spot up ahead that you had been focused on before, “we can make it a kink thing.”

Your brow raises. “Is it a kink thing?”

“No.” His smile drops, and then he turns away from you to shuffle through his side drawer; takes out a pen and a small notebook. “Still, you wouldn’t want otherwise,” he scribbles something down and you’re unable to catch it before the cover closes, “believe me.”

[thevoicefromanotherworld]

"I THINK I..."

I WROTE ANOTHER FIC WITH BOB

I hope you like it! 💚☝😊

WARNING: THIS FIC CONTAINS THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILERS

Bob had found himself looking at you more than usual.

Ever since you had saved him from being burned to death in one of Valentina's facilities, you had formed a special bond that left no doubt he had feelings for you.

At first, you didn't think it was possible, but over time, you began to notice certain things.

Like how every time you went to reload your guns, he'd leave the necessary bullets on the table, or how when you were too tense, an ice cream of your favorite flavor would magically appear on your nightstand.

Bob wasn't used to anyone caring about his well-being, which was the same thing that happened to you.

That's why you felt somewhat close.

One day, you decided to talk to him.

Alexei and Yelena had gone to spend the day together, sort of like having father-daughter time.

John had gone home to try to fix things with his wife, and Bucky had some business to manage as a congressman, which meant you had the base to yourselves.

You found him pretending to read a book in front of the large windows through which the afternoon sun filtered.

He held the book in one hand while the other held a strawberry milkshake.

You watched his Adam's apple move as he swallowed, making your toes curl inside your shoes.

"Bob," you called. He turned his head toward you, his eyes widening at the sight.

"H-hey," he greeted shyly, setting his book aside. "I didn't expect to see you here. I… I thought you'd left too."

"I didn't want to leave you here alone," you murmured, gesturing to the empty spot next to him. "Can I sit down?"

"Sure," he agreed, gesturing for you to do so. "What happened?" Is everything okay?

"Everything's fine," you reassured him. "I just wanted to… talk to you."

"Okay," he murmured, staring at you intently. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Of course not," you whispered making him focus all his attention on you. "It's just that I've noticed you've been… looking at me a lot lately. Not in a weird way or anything… but I'd like to know why."

Bob swallowed hard, his gaze shifting to a fixed point in front of him. You could smell the strong scent of his tension flowing through the air.

“I don’t know, I…” he mumbled. “I think…” He shook his head from side to side, unsure whether he should say what he was about to say. “I think I like you,” he blurted out, making you look at him with wide eyes. “This has never happened to me with anyone before, and I don’t know… I don’t know how I’m supposed to act or what I’m supposed to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything, Bob,” you replied, giving a reassuring smile. “I’m glad you told me.”

He pressed his lips into a tense line before looking at you again.

“Do you…? Do I…?” He took a deep breath for a moment. “Do you… like me?”

You took in his shy expression, the curls of his hair falling on either side of his face, and the way he was looking at you, and in the end, you had to confess the obvious.

“Yes, I like you too,” you replied. The smile that formed on his face was priceless.

“So what do we do now?” —he asked, making you let out a nervous chuckle

“I don’t know,” you confessed. “I guess we’re dating now?” You shook your head. “I haven’t done this before either.”

“It’s a relief to know we’re both newbies,” he smiled. “I’ve been the newbie in everything and everywhere for years.”

“Me too,” you smiled before standing up. “Well, I… I have to go… do some things,” you announced. “But we can meet up later, if you want.”

“Sure,” he murmured, flashing a shy smile.

You started walking, but before you could leave, his voice stopped you.

“Y/N,” he mumbled. You turned to look at him out of the corner of your eye. “Thank you.”

“Why?” you whispered, your heart in your mouth.

“For making me see that I’m not alone,” he smiled before letting you go.

[sirellas]

It's the Seven book anon. Now I understand why you don't want to finish it. Seven is definitely smarter than just to get it with a newly met woman, even if she felt some attraction to her it would only make sense if it was a slow burn romance. I always assumed that evil lady spied on the rangers under the guise of aiding them, and did so for an extensive amount of time for Seven to even pay her any mind. And those lines you showed as an example of how ooc that was written. "She would not fucking say that TM". Seven is concise and precise with her words, random slogan words are meaningless to her and if she was experimenting with that, she wouldn't be overusing those words. She's rather careful with putting thoughts into words. And again, the way that scene was described, with run on sentences, just meh. Like you said, the author doesn't get Seven. And from what I can see, this writing style is just not from me. So thank you for explaining. Now I'll be less likely to read it (mostly to preserve the version of Seven's time between voy and pic my brain created).

Exactly! The whole thing just seemed very lazy and underwhelming to me.

There's a big change in Seven between voyager and picard, and back when s1 came out I was hesitant. But Jeri Ryan really sold it and I was on board with this new Seven who swore and drank and got revenge. BUT there's still a gap to bridge there too. She didn't step off voyager and suddenly talk like a noir detective. And in my mind, even picard-era Seven would still think like voyager-era Seven. She's still the same person after all and really, not much time has passed from voyager to the start of events in this novel. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it was so opposite from what I would guess picard/ranger era Seven to be. She could be this person who thinks and talks like this at this point (maybe...) but it would need to be explained A LOT more than it was. She adapted to the more common speech patterns and started thinking more like an average alpha quadrant individual, but why and how and when? Still not answered. This is especially jarring since in the novel's exposition she was only talking about how she's an outcast in the AQ.

Anyway. I will also be holding onto my own visions of Seven's time between voyager and picard lol 🫡 I think that's the healthiest thing we can do right now.

[ai-the-broccoli]

enemies to lovers / but you'll never own my heart

@luzon-dove happy birthday, Quinn!! As a present, I decided to draw a piece fanart of your "blood in the walls of the yagami house" AU fic series, since I found it very well-written and full of super interesting ideas and concepts. I hope you like it!

[sodafrog13]

i think some people have too much audacity on this website, is all i'll say

[eruukat]

hi i got home from the er at like 3am.. i am okay, mostly just really disoriented and tired. im not sure what to do next because they didnt really know how to help, so i have some numbers to call tomorrow when the phone lines open back up. im not all too sure what to say but thank you for checking in on me ;_; it means a lot

[neverendingford]

.

[futurewife]

would y'all be mad if i f/o a.drian from p.eacemaker. I think im committing to the bit and watching it. Is anyone going to be mad? I just want him so bad. there are guys that are so dream girl to me

[derrypubliclibrary]

“unlike my name which is tulip & is perfectly normal”

[toytulini]

no more Poasting i have so much shit to do and its already past noon

[purplelightningworms]

okay yes this too shall pass, I know, but what do I do in the meantime I got shit to dooooooooo

[unproduciblesmackdown]

one thing i can intermittently remember re: lackadaisy is that way back when, would've been around '08 to '10, i mentioned it to someone in person w/whomst like informal Media Recs Trading was established & i think mentioned wanting recs for checking out webcomics specifically? & i was like ooh lackadaisy Gotta be lackadaisy (i read like, a few others at the time but was immediately huge on that one specifically due to [the ways it pwned were obvious to me first reading it in '07 and Now alike]) and like. in the realm of Left Field Responses I Got After Ventures Of Someone W/o The Confidence I Have Now Thanks To Grinding For It In The Entire Interim i eventually followed up like did you check it out, what do you think, b/c my enthusiasm was stronger than my reluctance to bring shit up unprompted. and i think they were sort of evasive a moment but then were like nah b/c.......why are they cats....like lmfaoooo was Not ready for that like yeah idk what to tell you if that was that significant a factor. except that if you know that much it's too late the furry police are en route

not long afterwards perhaps truly more unexpected. i managed to finagle going to the first convention marble hornets was at, relatively short notice, and this is thanks to by that point having Enthusiasm behind it again, of course. afterwards to the relatively small tumblr mh ether i Ventured Forth again like is there interest in my talking about it, livestream q&a possibilities style even? and then i got an anon telling me not now b/c hοmestuck had updated. omicron just to not risk it plus i think even now i'd filter my own post. like divide this into four sections the way i'm truly at a loss. didn't have that much to talk about but looking back like fr you're neurononconforming in online fanbase Posting same as in the [random discord servers Hate them! non normative verbal communication happens in scores / hundreds of words if it happens at all] like and yet it gets to you to the con. and to the "i don't need other people to like media 'with' me i didn't talk about lackadaisy at all till the pilot dropping & my [first full reread in a Minute] got me all fired up posting style & 'hey wait. my special little guy. all this fresh Mystery Plot Everything appreciation. whoa'" moment. plus nowadays it's only like Lol Lmao whereas back then it was like :( :/ but also still funny b/c this person was running away throwing chairs & tables behind them like i'm not a furry i'm not and an anon was like didn't ask don't care oppa homestuck style. standing there palms open like. furious theorizing is there for me

[werebear-butch]

[skelliecrow]

I have a writing blog, but I feel like if I want to talk about my ocs, I should do it here, because this is where I post them. I already made a post to my writing blog about how I'm unsure how to maintain it while writing scripts rather than prose, but I also don't want talking about my writing here to make it seem like all art I post is related to my comic wips because it isn't.

I don't know. Like where am I supposed to post that I'm considering making Kari a florist rather than a botanist because I don't know enough about plant science to write her as the latter. I guess I'm posting it here.

[purinfelix]

constellation - n. riki ✶⋆.˚

summary: a late night, sleepy half-formed thoughts and quiet touches ──────── Niki x reader (established relationship) || sfw, super duper fluffy and wholesome idk im in my feels || w/c: 1k

a/n: GUESS WHOS BACK (no one remembers me) ... anyways i was rewatching the colour analysis enoclock ep and heeseung mentioned Ni-ki's seven moles on his back and i just thought it was such an endearing feature i wanted to write smth about it !!!

"You've got a lot of moles on your back."

You're not even sure why you say it, and it's only once the words leave your mouth that you realise it's a bit of an odd thing to point out. To be fair, though, it's starting to become one of those nights when you're so sleepy that you can't bother filtering your thoughts. Niki turns to look at you, halfway through pulling on a shirt, and even though his brows are raised, you can tell he isn't entirely surprised by your words.

"Oh, yeah," he says calmly, "you've never noticed before?"

"Hm, I've seen them but," you hum, lazily letting your head fall back onto the bed where you're lying, watching him, "it just never occurred to me how many you have."

He laughs softly, pulling his shirt over his head, and soon you feel the mattress dip beside you as he sinks into it. You instinctively shuffle over to make room for him, but Niki, always wanting to be closer to you, finds his way right up against you - his arm brushing up against yours.

"Hey," you mumble, turning to watch as he lifts his face from the pillow, "let me see them again." The way you ask is almost childish, but even through your half-lidded eyes, you can see how he's a little taken aback by your request.

"The moles?"

"What else, dummy?" you scoff, stifling a yawn. Despite your jab he does as you say, tugging the hem of his shirt up so that you can see his back again.

Even though the room is dim, you can make them out just clear enough - small and dark against the pale skin of his back. There's something so quietly beautiful about them and the fact that not many other people would get to see them up close the way you are right now.

Maybe it's that realisation of how vulnerable he's letting himself be around you that pushes your hand out to press a gentle finger to the one highest on his back, just above his shoulder blade. He tenses slightly, clearly not expecting your touch, but soon calms.

"They're like stars," you say, barely above a whisper.

Normally, and if it were with anyone else, Niki probably would've protested, laughed and told them that they were overthinking things. But in this low light, in this bed with you and with the feeling of sleep pulling at his eyelids, he can't find the heart, or energy, to say anything to spoil this moment.

"I guess so," he hums back, but once he feels your finger begin to move, tracing a shape on his back, he can't help but let out a quiet laugh. "What are you doing now?"

"Making a constellation," you say, in such a matter-of-fact tone that Niki finds himself unable to say anything more - he just resigns himself to feeling the sensation of your finger against his back, slow and steady, almost soothing.

"They're pretty," you say once you've finished your path, satisfying your curiosity and gently pulling his shirt back down. You flop back onto the bed next to him, watching as he turns to face you, cheeks flushed the slightest shade of pink.

"You know they say that your moles are where your past lover kissed you the most," you hum, and he just laughs softly.

"You really believe that kind of stuff?"

You make an effort to shrug, as if to say why not? Silently, you pull your hands out from under the covers and cradle his face gently, tracing your thumb over his features like you have so many times. You stop a couple of times - at the mole on his chin, under his eyes, on his cheek.

"You must've been really loved in your past life," you whisper, and like everything you've said that night you're not sure why you say it. Still, you can feel his gaze on you, soft and with an endearment you know he reserves only for you.

"You think so?" he says, finally breaking the silence.

You nod ever so slightly, fingers still resting on his cheekbone. "You must've been lucky."

He brings his hand up to grab yours, intertwining his fingers with yours in a motion that feels so familiar now that it almost feels instinctive. With his other hand, he pulls you closer, pressing his forehead to you - the entire time his eyes never failing to meet yours despite the vulnerability in his expression.

"I think," he whispers, "I still am."

It's your turn to scoff at his somewhat cheesy response, but the sound is quickly swallowed up by his lips meeting yours - soft and sure, like he's been waiting the entire night for this moment and now that it's here, he clearly has no intentions of rushing it. Your fingers tighten in his as you sigh into the kiss, even after months of being together you're not sure if you'll ever get used to the feeling of him taking your breath away.

When you finally pull apart, you only do so enough to catch your breath, which you're sure Niki can feel on his face.

"You're so weird sometimes," he finally says, a lazy smile hanging off of his lips.

"You love it," you whisper back, pressing your nose to his as you let out a soft giggle.

He only chuckles in response, though it's enough for you. Silently, and still with his hand tightly gripping yours, he pulls you in closer so that your head is tucked under his chin, the blankets wrapped around the two of you. Gently, his thumb brushes over the stretch of your hand with a steady rhythm that lulls you to sleep and before you realise it, your eyes are half closed.

You shuffle, pressing your face further into his neck. The last thing you hear before drifting of is his voice again, though with how quiet he says it you're not sure if he's talking to you, himself, or the universe.

"I’m glad it’s you."

And even if he feels you smile against his chest in response, he doesn't say anything — just holds you tighter, like he never plans to let go.

taglist (for niki fics! <3) @miniw0nz @microwvdstrawb3rri3s