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“So, you want to get one, right?” Arlo asked while Bren put his bedhead back in order.

“Sounds like good craic.”

Arlo glowed so brightly that Bren had a hard time not leaning in for a kiss.

“Alright, lovebirds. I’ve gotta go sew for credit,” Nat said. “Don’t do anything I’d do.”

Bren caught the frown that flickered across Arlo’s face as they went to the ground floor, but he shook his head and a smile appeared in its place.

“You wanna get a start on that homework?”

“No,” Bren said, cracking open a Red Bull and breathing in the smell of taurine like it might be enough to carry him through the next few weeks. “But that’s what I’m gonna do.”

The can was toast by the time they sat in the lunchroom. The place was always a ghost town during second period.

It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes scribbling equations for his head to droop.

“Ready for the semester to be over?”

“Two weeks without maths makes Bren a happy boy,” he mumbled.

“Sorry I’ve been zero help with this stuff,” Arlo said, frowning at his own notebook. “Hey, maybe I can talk Mr. Greene into letting you take music 30 next semester.”

Bren smiled despite the fifty kilos of maths weighing his brain down.

“Not if I wanna pass the Certs later.”

Arlo’s face fell as he stared at the 61 on the front page of his test. “I wish I could help you with this stuff.”

Bren scooped up Arlo’s hand and pressed it to his lips before Arlo could worry about who might be watching.

“You help me plenty, lad,” he said, only dropping his boyfriend’s hand in favour of a pencil because of how much was riding on it. “But if you could be a little less cute right now, that’d be grand. I need my blood in my head, like.”

It looked like Arlo was struggling between being called cute and the idea that his presence might have been a distraction as Bren went back to his numbers. In the end, he shook his head and got back to it himself.

He was going to ace his finals. Ace the finals, charge back up over the holiday so he could do it all over again, and struggle out enough passes on the Certs to get on with his life with the lad he loved.

He wasn’t taking calls from other realities just now.

“Bren?”

“Hm?” He looked up. The clock opposite them said the period was half over. Wasn’t time only supposed to fly when you were having fun? Maybe it was because Arlo was there.

“We’ve got this.”

Full smile. Eyes lit up like he was staring at something breathtaking instead of a sleep-deprived ginger with a maths-migraine.

Their hands linked and the fire that crackled in Bren’s chest flared through his whole body.

“Fuck yeah we do.”

33

“Come on, Little Prince. Hurry up and find your legs already!” Dustin laughed.

Bren brushed the flakes of ice from his shoulders when Dustin towered over him, face cleaved in two by his shit-eating grin.

“You better hope I don't!”