Woso FanFics

K.McCabe: Insomnia

You still remembered the excitement you had when you pushed the submit button on your university application.

The nights out, nights in with your new flatmates, the cheap student union drinks—you wanted it all.

But no one had warned you about this year. The final year.

Perhaps you should've known what lay ahead when you were given your timetable. The usual four-hour lectures were gone, and instead you had pretty much nothing but free time. That's what the optimistic part of your brain had told you, but now you wish you'd listened to the pessimistic part of your brain that had told you it seemed too good to be true.

Finding yourself battling to complete your assignments on time had come pretty early into the year. The library had become your second home, and time spent with your girlfriend had become a luxury that you weren't afforded very often.

It didn't help that she was Katie McCabe.

The two of you had been together for just over two years, having been in the same room six times before fate brought you together in a completely different environment. Or, at least, that's what you let her believe. The reality was that it had taken her a while to notice you, but you'd been besotted with her from the first time you set eyes on her.

It had been a class you'd considered ditching until you were told there was a special guest, someone from Ireland, and for a second, you let yourself believe it might've been Dermot Kennedy coming in to sing you a few ballads. Of course, being a sports student, the suspicion that it might've been him was completely ridiculous; you weren't sure why you were surprised by that. 

You were enticed first by her physical attributes—her perfectly straight hair and figure-hugging top—that left little to the imagination. Expecting to spend the entirety of her talk zoned out and drooling, you were pleased to find that you actually found her words interesting.

She was funny, charming, and cheeky. When the presenter would attempt to outsmart her, you noticed how she could always seem to be prepared for anything that was thrown her way.

You weren't like that at all.

That's why, when it came to introductions at the end of the talk, you slinked out the fire exit door in a hurry. You knew you'd only say something silly to her, or worse yet, not be able to say anything at all.

For each of the six weeks that Katie was booked to come into the lecture, you would ogle and wonder but never, ever, would you attempt to make conversation with her at the end of class.

Fate would do what fate does best, though.

With your student loan not matching rising rent costs, you'd taken a job at a local nightclub, trying to make ends meet without having to put pressure on your parents. It was a popular attraction for people wanting to enjoy the clubbing experience without the drunken students clogging up the toilets to vomit like most of the other places in your area.

That particular night, you'd been doing your best to get through a busy bar of customers. Men were batting their £20 notes in your face, women were shouting babe, babe across the bar to you, and you were doing everything you could to avoid eye contact with all of them.

You had a system going, memorising the tops of the people who had been waiting longest and trying to work your way through them as best you could. Of course, you were used to the little shouts of fuck sake from customers who weren't next on your list every time you served someone who wasn't them. You experienced this every Saturday night, getting used to not taking it personally.