Work Text:
Barry stared at the maddening array of messy handwriting and tip-ex stains on the piece of paper in front of him, the words morphing into a mockery of illegible scribbles the harder he tried to focus, his head spinning. He looked at the time on his phone, 3:37am.
He tossed the pen onto the table in defeat and leaned back in his chair, stretching, he was aching all over, his joints popping like firecrackers, and his thoughts felt like they were in 144p, incomprehensible pixels floating around in his skull, binging around like a windows screensaver.
He looked back at the paper, and picked up the pen again, sighing, this essay needed to be done by tomorrow, and he had no idea what he was doing.
Normally he wouldn't bother with homework, the worst that could happen is he gets detention, which isn't all that bad really, or the school phone his mum, who doesn't really care if he'd done it or not, but this time he was being threatened with having to move down a class, which wouldn't be that bad if not for Oisín. Whereas Oisín was always pretty good at English (the creative writing side of English anyway, he was just decent at everything else) it was not Barry's best subject, it would have been his worst if math wasn't a thing. Their S2 English teacher, Ms Quinn, thought she was doing Barry a favour by putting him in top English for third year, and in a way she was, since Oisín was gonna be in top as well, and most subjects would be insufferable without Oisín there for a bit of craic, but this also meant that Barry had been fated to fail English since the beginning of third year, and he was pretty much screwed for S4, since the only subjects he a decent chance of passing were Irish, history, and maybe computing if he got lucky.
He had to do this essay. He didn't even remember anything that happened in the book, he tried looking up a summary on Wikipedia or something, but somehow they missed out everything he was meant to be writing about.
"Ughhhn," Barry muttered, rubbing his eyes, "im so fucked,"
Why was he even in this class? Everyone, including him, knew he was too dumb for it.
He wallowed in pity for a few seconds before deciding the better of it, he had to write, no matter what it was, he had to have something written down. He placed his pen on the freshly tip-exed paper and just began to write whatever, a stream of consciousness being hastily scribbled onto the page in writing that even he himself couldn't read.
4:39am
Barry yawned so hard he was pretty sure he dislocated his jaw for a second, he was finally done the bare minimum, 3 paragraphs about god knows what, now for a conclusion.
A few minutes of Barry just staring at the page pass. He was concentrating with a childlike, barely lucid ferocity, trying to form any words at all to write down.
Another few minutes pass before he decides the better of it and throws his pen onto the table, standing up so suddenly he nearly fainted,
"Fuck this," he mumbled, stuffing the paper into his English jotter and throwing it onto the coffee table, he'd just have to write the conclusion tomorrow at break.
He stumbled up the stairs, careful not to wake his mother, and collapsed into his bed as soon as he came in the room. He was so tired, surely he'd fall asleep quickly.
5:20am
Barry was still lying there with his eyes closed, he physically could not sleep, no matter how exhausted he thought he was, his brain was not letting him sleep, and it was torture, no matter what way he faced what he did or didn't think, he could not sleep.
7:00am
Barry's eyes shot open as he heard the sound of his alarm, he immediately closed them again and groaned, he didn't get even a minute of sleep. He reached over and grabbed his phone from off the floor, turning off the alarm and setting a new one at 8:00, Mrs Flanagan was giving him a lift, so he could attempt to sleep for another hour.
Of course, sleep never came, he just lay there with his eyes shut for another hour untill the alarm went off.
After a few seconds of stewing in dread, Barry finally got up and turned his alarm off, staring at himself through the mirror propped up opposite his bed.
He smoothed out the school clothes he'd fallen asleep in, sprayed himself with deodorant untill the fumes nearly killed him, and grabbed his bag, which he dumped at the foot of the bed, staggering downstairs and immediately out the door, not bothering to wake his mother, she wasn't working today anyway. Mrs Flanagan was meant to pick him up at 8:00, it was 8:06, which wasn't bad considering yesterday he came down at 8:20, and they barely got to school on time. As he closed the door behind him, he looked out into the grey haziness of the morning, head spinning, to look for the headlights of Mrs Flanagan's car, but he was met with only fog. He took out his phone to call Oisín, or at least text him to ask what was going on (since Mrs F was never late for anything), but Oisín had already texted him,
"My mums going to work early so we have to take the bus"
He replied with a simple "alr" and started to make his way to the bus stop. After two minutes of biting cold wind and nearly falling down the stairs, Barry and Oisín were standing at the bus stop together, the shattered glass not doing much to protect them from the cold,
"Dyou want a cereal bar, my dad's bought these frosties ones they're pretty good,"
"Oh ye, cheers,"
Despite the hunger that was squeezing his insides like a hundred rubber bands, the presence of food in his stomach made him feel more nauseous than he already was. He glanced at the bus timetable, the faded screen flickering on and off for a few seconds at a time,
1 7 - 2 m i n
5 9 - 7 m i n
E r r. A v e. 0 7 : 5 8
Ah the perpetually broken bus stop sign, no matter what time it really was, here it was 7:58. The bus times were decently accurate though.
2 minutes. He could survive that.
"Hey you ok? You seem out of it," Oisín asked after a few moments of silence, grimacing as the wind blew strands of his short, spiky hair into his face. Barry nodded, "ye, didn't sleep,"
Oisín was about to ask why, but he spotted the bus turning the corner and they both moved to get on, praying that the driver would stop (don't get me wrong it wasn't overly foggy or anything this particular driver was just an arsehole).
Once settled at the back of the bus, feet and bags propped up on the seats opposite, Oisín turned to Barry
"So why didn't you sleep? You look like shit,"
"Awh yeah thanks," he quipped,
"No but genuinely," Oisín said, the smile fading back to the 2nd most unbothererd expression (1st place goes to Barry)
"You know that essay in English,"
"The one due today?"
"Ye, stayed up untill like 4 doing it, couldn't sleep after either,"
"Aw man. My mum made me write it as soon as I got home, on the day it was assigned," he huffed, "she's like north Korea sometimes,"
Barry snickered, "heh, yeah... Rember that time you got grounded for joining a club without telling her and I came over and threw mud at the windows untill she let you out?"
"Shit yeah, that was ages ago, we were like 12 then."
They sat in silence, the smell of deodorant, rain and dread enough to keep them awake, untill the bus got to their stop, and, as per daily, they trudged their way towards the hellhole that was their school.