“Would you hurry up?”

{{user}} shot me a glare over their shoulder, clutching their books to their chest as they power-walked across the schoolyard like they were storming a battlefield.

“Not my fault you slept in,” I pointed out, strolling after them with my hands shoved in my trouser pockets. “Maybe if you actually set an alarm—”

“I did set an alarm,” they snapped, shoving open the side door so hard it banged off the stopper.

“You just turned it off and went back to sleep,” I said, stepping in behind them.

They stopped dead in the corridor, spun around, and jabbed a finger into my chest. “You were supposed to wake me up!”

“I did wake you up.”

“That doesn’t count if you say it once and then disappear!”

“I said it three times.”

“While half-asleep!”

I grinned. “Still counts.”

They made a strangled noise—half frustration, half disbelief—then whirled around again and started down the hall at twice the speed.

I bit back a laugh, following at a lazy pace. Technically, we weren’t late. Not yet. But we only had about a minute before the bell, and {{user}} still had to grab their bloody ruler from their locker because apparently borrowing one like a normal person was sacrilege.

“Reckon Miss Riordan’s in yet?” I asked, kicking a crumpled worksheet down the hall as we passed the deputy’s office.

“If she is, she’s probably waiting to eat us alive,” they muttered, kneeling at their locker. The combination lock rattled as they twisted it, fingers shaking slightly—not nerves, just leftover adrenaline from the chaos of the morning.

I leaned against the lockers beside them, watching. They were like this—always buzzing, always thinking, even when they didn’t need to. I reached out, plucked a loose thread from their blazer sleeve, and smirked when they swatted my hand away without looking up.

“You know,” I murmured, tilting my head closer, “I already told ya—let’s go snog in the car and skip reg. They never check the rolls properly.”