Piece of Cake | Ashton Irwin [au]

Sixteen

Ashton’s POV

I purposely pound my fist against the wooden door, knowing full-well that Michael most likely has a hangover resulting from last night, and I want to make him suffer in as many ways possible after he acted so childish at dinner. Granted, I was just as bad, but Michael has nothing to complain about seeing that he got to sit next to Ruth all evening while I sat across from them, silently conjuring up a torture plan for him.

When I hear heavy footsteps fumbling towards the door, I take that as my cue to stop knocking and use the spare key to unlock the door and barge inside.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” I shout at the drowsy boy who looks like he’s been to Hell and back.

His eyes are squinted shut—not just because of the volume of my voice, but rather because everything around him, even the slightest head movement, feels like a jackhammer splitting his head in two. His hair is flat on one side while the other has strands flying in every direction, and those bags under his eyes could make a depressed person even more depressed by how dark they are.

Ah, the wonders of alcohol.

“Dude, can you like bring down to a four—maybe even a one?” Michael pleads, cradling his head in his hands as he goes to sit on the cream couch in the living room.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I say, slamming his front door shut and keeping my voice as strong as I can without disturbing his neighbors. “What the fuck was your problem last night?” I ask rather calmly.

Michael just sits there groaning in pain before playing dumb. “What are you talking about?”

“Do you really want to go there?” I warn and Michael darts his eyes around the room, weighting out his decisions. “Need I remind you that you’re in your most vulnerable state right now and I had many hours last night to come up with ways of making your hangover the worst one in history to the point where you will never touch a beer bottle again because you’ll only be reminded of how I tortured and scarred you for life.”

Fear. Literal fear quickly takes over Michael’s already pained expression and he fixed his posture to sit up straight. “What do you want to know?” he asks, defeated by my small threat.

I plop onto the loveseat adjacent to him and resting my chin on my clasped hands as I stare intently at the miserable looking boy in front of me. “Why didn’t you tell me about the dinner? I figured you would have told me about your little dinner plan with Ruth, but instead you hid it from me—why?”

“Don’t make such a big deal about it,” he mumbles.

“I’ll stop making a big deal about it when you tell me why the hell you hide the ‘welcoming dinner’ or whatever the hell last night was from me.” My jealousy is at its highest peak right now and all I want is answers; not for him to beat around the bush.

“Dude, like I said earlier—bring it down to a four.”

I glower at him and he holds his hands up in defense.

He sighs. “I just wanted to hang out with Ruth alone, but she didn’t pick up on that and decided to invite everyone, making last night a ‘group’ dinner,” he reveals. “I wanted to catch up with her. I haven’t seen her as much as you and I wanted to change that, so chill. It’s not like I was trying to steal her from you even though she’s not really yours to begin with,” he mumbles the last bit.

“And you had to hide that from me?” I ask with raised brows.

“Yes.”

“Why?”