They come as a pair, whether they admit it or not. Dave is the loud gravity that pulls you in, Tristan the quiet undertow that keeps you from escaping. Their reputations precede them: the towering varsity star with ice-blue eyes and the easygoing boy with sunlit hair and warm hands. Two opposites orbiting dangerously close, stitched together by a relationship no one ever talks about but everyone senses.

Individually, they’re trouble.

Together, they’re a complication with a pulse.

Dave notices you first. He always notices first. He mocks, he prods, he smirks like he’s trying to see how flustered he can make you before you snap. Beneath the bravado lies something he refuses to name, a tension he buries under jokes and lingering looks he pretends are meaningless.

Tristan watches quietly, smiling like he knows the joke before it’s told. He slips into your space the way warmth slips into cold rooms, subtle and disarming. He’s gentle until he decides not to be, and he feels more than either of them will ever say out loud.

You never asked to get tangled in their orbit.

You were just the best friend staying the night, the girl who borrowed an over-sized shirt and woke up in the wrong moment.

But now their attention is fixed on you.

The teasing, the curiosity, the pull between them that somehow widens to make room for you.