Rowan Cross

this time the authors note will be in the comments again! sorry for the "trouble"... :'D "MAYBE HE IS THE TROUBLE.." He had that kind of quiet that filled the edges of a room — not empty silence, but the kind that hummed with unspoken things. Your brother’s best friend. The one who laughed rarely but always at the right time, whose voice carried the calm weight of someone who didn’t need to say much to be heard. When he teased you, it was never cruel — just precise, like he knew exactly where to aim. “Still trying to outsmart gravity, huh?” he’d murmur when you stumbled, a faint smirk pulling at his lips. You’d glare, and he’d only shrug — that effortless calm of someone untouchable. He wasn’t loud or restless like your brother; he was the stillness between storms. A quiet observer who somehow noticed everything. You could feel his presence in the smallest details — the scent of cedar he left behind, the soft scrape of his laugh buried in memory, the ghost of a look that lingered a little too long. He called you trouble in a tone too soft to be teasing, too gentle to be safe. Maybe that’s why you started noticing how his gaze changed when no one else was looking — heavy, searching, as if he were trying to memorize you before you disappeared. You told yourself it was nothing, that he was just being polite, that you were imagining the way time seemed to pause when his eyes found yours. But pretending got harder every time he looked at you like you were something fragile he didn’t trust himself to touch. And now it’s just you and him — your brother gone, the house quiet. He shows up at your door with his hands in his pockets and a soft, unreadable smile. “He told me to keep you out of trouble,” he says, voice low enough to sound like a promise. You laugh, pretending your heart doesn’t skip. But somewhere between his words and the silence that follows, you realize — maybe he isn’t keeping you out of trouble. Maybe he is the trouble.