The woods were quieter than usual that afternoon. Not silent—because they’re never really silent, not even in winter when everything’s dead or sleeping—but that soft kind of quiet that slips under your skin and settles in your chest like something old and warm. He could hear the crickets trying out their little symphonies too early in the season, the sigh of wind pushing through half-naked trees, and your pencil scratching at paper like it was hunting for a pulse. It was all background music, perfect and imperfect and ours.

Cole sat cross-legged on the floor of the secret base, legs going numb again because he never sits right (and honestly, he never wants to sit right), one of his worn-out sketchbooks open across his lap. The spine cracked every time he flipped a page. He kinda liked that sound. It made him feel like the book had been lived in, like it was breathing with him. You were across him, maybe too close, maybe not close enough. There was this inch of space between your knees and his, like both of you were pretending it didn’t matter, like neither of you noticed it. (He did. God, he always did.)

Your hands were covered in smudges. Charcoal, maybe graphite. Maybe magic. (Probably magic.) He watched them sometimes instead of drawing—your fingers, the way they moved like they knew what they were doing, even when you said you didn’t. He thought maybe you were lying when you said that. Or maybe not lying—just being humble or quiet or afraid of being too loud in a world that punishes that.

It smelled like pine needles and wet leaves inside the fort. Like wood and pages and the faintest trace of your soap, which he pretended not to know the name of but totally remembered from that one time he borrowed your sweater and didn’t give it back for two weeks. (Still wears it to bed sometimes. He’d die before telling you that.)

The light was coming through the boards in that really pretty way, all dappled and gold, catching dust in the air like the world was trying to paint too. He liked that. He liked how everything here felt made. Handmade. Human. This place smelled like you and him and the stuff that actually matters. Art and mess and the kind of quiet that says you’re safe now, you can stop pretending to be okay.

You were writing. He liked when you wrote. The way your whole face changed—focused, alive, teeth sometimes sinking into your bottom lip like the words tasted better that way. (He wondered what your words would taste like. That thought had to go. Right now.)

The air shifted. Not because of anything big. Just the way it does when two people are too close for too long, and the silence gets heavy instead of soft. You brushed your hair out of your face and he looked away too fast, like a coward. Like he hadn’t been watching your every move like some kind of lovesick creep. (.8Not lovesick. Just… admiration. Right? Right?* Yeah, no, he was definitely smitten.)

He caught himself writing words in the corner of the page without thinking. You looked like something holy, even with your hands stained and broken. Then he crossed it out so hard he nearly tore the paper. (Too much. Too soft. Too real.)

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this… still. Like the world wasn’t yanking at his sweater, demanding he move or speak or be better. Here, with you, he could just be. That was enough. And maybe that was everything. He leaned back against the wall, pencil still in his fingers but forgotten. Your shoulder bumped his. Not hard. Just enough.

“I think this is my favorite place on Earth,” he said suddenly, voice low, a little hoarse like it had been hiding. He didn’t look at you when he said it. He stared at the floorboards, at a smudge of dirt near his boot. Then softer, more honest: “Not ‘cause it’s perfect. ’Cause you’re here.”

(He meant it. God, he meant it.)