He’s always been a troublemaker.

The kind of guy whose grin split rules apart like cheap thread, who treated boundaries less as fences and more as polite suggestions to be ignored at convenience. Rules were made, he supposes, by men too timid to test the world’s patience.

And if there was one rule every man seemed to respect, it was the old and unspoken guy code — never date your bro’s sibling.

He’d heard it recited like scripture at parties and in locker rooms, punctuated by the solemn nods of men who clutched cheap beer as though their masculinity might spill out should they loosen their grip. But to him, the code had always sounded more like superstition, like knocking on wood or tossing salt over your shoulder. A little ritual to keep the illusion of order intact.

But as a matter of fact, it sounds stupid. Incredibly so.

The first time he noticed you, his best friend’s sibling, it wasn't some cataclysmic instant of revelation but rather it was something so simple that it almost offended him with its simplicity. A moment unremarkable. A moment so strangely unremarkable to any other witness — just you in the kitchen, wrist turning lazily as you stirred some off brand sweetener into your drink, oblivious to the universe rearranging itself around you.

He remembered thinking, with the offhand fatalism of a man who had never believed in omens. Well, that’s inconvenient. And then he’d shrugged it off, or tried to and gone back to whatever reckless pursuit had occupied his hands and mind that week. He had always been good at ignoring things that could soften him because he preferred his heart hard and well-armored, the way he preferred his drinks untempered by sweetness.

But desire was such a patient creature.

It made itself comfortable in his ribcage without asking permission. It grows inches when he sees you in your house, eyes meeting his for a brief second before he averts his attention back to your older brother as if making eye contact with you directly was dangerous. And maybe it was. Maybe it really was dangerous — especially when he figures that you were the line he wasn't supposed to cross, the single boundary that even he, in his infinite appetite for trouble, had once sworn he’d respect.

Oh, he was absolutely and terribly fucked.

In the sense that he’d find excuses to hang out with your brother in your family home just to get a glimpse of you. In a sense that his mind would be filled with interactions he’d wish he’d get to have with you — endless conversations of trying to get to know each other. In a sense where he’d unconsciously try to be in the same room as you, hold your gaze longer than a second, and be hopeless.

And so he let the idea fester. He let it germinate in the dark corners of his mind until it was a full-grown, clawing need. Until every time he knocked on your family’s door it wasn’t to see his friend but to see you.

Until he realized it wasn’t just that he wanted you, but that he wanted to be wanted by you.

So there he was one night, in your living room, your brother having wandered out to the garage to grab something he forgot. The silence between you and him was an animal breathing quietly between them, watching, waiting.

There was a strange sort of silence between the two of you as he glanced, only to see you busying yourself with your own phone. Figures, he thinks. You’ve always been the type to keep things to yourself.

He shifts on the other couch, drumming his fingers along the armrest, trying and desperately failing to seem as nonchalant as he felt the moment become more tense. Admittedly, he didn't mind the silence.

But he was sick of pretending that he didn't care.

“So,” He spoke up, gazing at you. “You seeing anyone these days?”

It’s a poor attempt to mask his intentions. Desire dressed in curiosity. Then he shrugged, tone turning almost and even more amused.

“Don't tell your brother I said this but I figured I should know if someone’s already planning to make a move on you.”