The Get-Go [Ashton Irwin]

05: Get Used to It

     Brent's sitting in the desk beside mine when I stumble into Criminology right as the bell rings on Monday. He's clearly avoiding sitting in his usually spot, on a diagonal in front of me, and beside Thalia, who's definitely caught the flu bug that seems to be going around. Her tanned nose is bright red, she's not wearing her usual picture-perfect makeup, and there's a two-liter bottle of orange juice on the desk in front of her.

     "Wynny!" Brent sing-songs as I sit down.

     "'Morning," I mumble sleepily, taking my laptop out of my bag. As I wait for it to flip on, Brent picks up my travel mug from the corner of my desk and hands it to me.

     "Drink. You look like you need it."

     Normally, I'd bitch him out for touching my cup, but he's right; I do fucking need it. He watches me earnestly as I take a massive gulp of still-burning-hot espresso - obviously a huge mistake, but I swallow it anyways. After all, why would I waste perfectly good coffee on spitting it out because of a few first-degree burns in my mouth?

     "Better?"

     "Yeah, a little bit. I didn't get any sleep last night."

     He rolls his eyes, tone dripping with sarcasm. "Yeah, I figured. Why? Doin' the do with your boyfriend?"

     Brent is one of the few people that's vaguely aware of the fact that I do actually have a boyfriend, but the knowledge stops there. For months, it's been his new project (now that he's accepted that my phone's passcode is probably not going to be cracked) to try and figure out just what my boyfriend is like. It would be annoying, but it's Brent, he's always annoying, and for fuck's sake, we both know that I'm not dating a mob boss or that barista at the Starbucks we hit at lunch, but it's still funny to hear it.

     Plus Ash was quite enamoured with the last theory of Brent's that he'd heard: that he was some kind of early-days Peter Parker, fighting crime by night, and solving algebra by day.

    He's already sent me an entire frigging photo stream of him in various superhero poses, including about a hundred shots of him and the boys as their Don't Stop superhero alter-egos. It's stupidly adorable, to be honest, and highly entertaining.

     "Shut up, B." I roll my eyes, and turn back to my laptop. As I type in the password, though, there's a weight resting on my right shoulder that wasn't there before, and the scent of hair product is definitely stronger than before.

     You know when you're a kid, and if some other kid is ticking you off, your parents just go 'Ignore them, they'll stop if you don't give them a reaction'? It's a lie when you're six, and your best friend's older brother is poking you in the ribs, and it's a lie when you're seventeen and your dumbass buddy is using your shoulder as a pillow.

     So I mean, naturally the only thing I can do is follow my personal favourite idiom - 'It's not weird unless you make it weird' - and make it weird. I shift my own head so that it's resting on top of his, and make that weird noise in the back of my throat that he hates. It kind of sounds like the noise an animal might make if it were dying, or trying to eat you or something.

     He shifts underneath me, and I think he's about to sit up, but instead, in true Brent fashion, he pulls out his phone and snaps a selfie. "You look half-dead. And you sound like it, too."

     "Shut up." I laugh, giving up on the mind games, and simply shrugging him off my shoulder. He looks slightly put out, but doesn't respond as he uploads the photo to Instagram. "Don't tag me in that."