Elmer was marking. It was late and he was still marking. And what was the point of all this?, he wondered as he added another cross to one of his pupils work. It was always the same thing, night in, night out. They had it better than most human-world teachers, Elmer knew. The fact that the toons only slept for a few hours [4 at max] meant they had 20 hours to dedicate to other things.

School still went on for 8 hours. [8AM-4PM in their case] which meant they had 12 hours of free time. Of which at least two needed to dedicated to marking.

Elmer sighed and moved onto the next student.

He heard the door close and a soft voice ask. "Late night? Ya know it's nearly 11 right?"

"I know." The human-toon said, mechanically. "I'm nearly finished."

"Eh...ya said that an hour ago."

Elmer rubbed his eyes and gave a tired look at the rabbit.

Bugs gave him a concerned look back and sat on the sofa. Elmer sighed and buried his head in his hands.

"Well, dere's a reaction." Bugs sounded irritated. Again. "Is it a crime for me ta wan' ta sit next to my husband of a evening?"

"Of course not." Elmer snapped. He carried on marking and Bugs sat there, seemingly waiting for something. After about five minutes Elmer put his pen down and gave Bugs an silently furious look. "What are you waiting for!?" He asked. "You staring at me is NOT going to make me mark any faster!"

"Ya know." Bugs said, lazily. "Ya could've done this earlier in the evenin'?"

"I was hewping Ewmyra with her homework. Not for my cwass, obviously, for Speedy's." he gave a sigh. "Hew and Spanish don't get on."

"No, foreign languages is not her strong suit." Bugs commented. "Ya could do this in the morning? Get some sleep? Or Oi could help ya now?"

"I don't need help. I can do it. It's only marking."

"It's a lot of marking-"

"-Which YOU manage to do easily!" Elmer snapped. "Everyone else does it easily! It's just me!" There was a silence, then Elmer whispered. "It's always me."

A few seconds pause, then Bugs asked if Elmer would like a cup of tea.

Elmer nodded.

When Bugs came back into the room he was pleased to see Elmer was no longer marking and had set aside the papers. True he still looked on guard, but Bugs would take that over being steadily-ignored.

"It's not just you." Bugs began. "We're all struggling wit' this. It's new. We've never been teachers before. We've never been parents before. Both of them on their own are hard and we're now combinin' de two. It's inevitable that we'll feel stressed and useless. You say I do it easily, the fact is I don't. I check everything at least twice, if not three times. I have this theory that one of dese days Oi'm gonna slip up an' one of de kids are gonna notice oi've marked something wrong. An' dat'll look bad cos I'm the teacher. I start my marking at lunchtime once I've eaten and I carry it on as soon as I get back. The result is that it's always done by evening, but dat's not because I'm findin' it easy and getting ahead. It's cos I'm...scared. I'm scared if I leave it until later in the evenin' Oi'll have somehow forgotten the answers. Ridiculous Oi know. I've got a degree in the subject I'm teachin', Oi've got de answers in front of me! It's impossible to get wrong, but Oi'm still scared Oi'll manage it. Are you de same?"

Elmer looked at Bugs and seemed to be debating whether to talk or not. After a few seconds he nodded. "The-the words blur." He said, haltingly. "After a whiwe. And I can't concentwate. And then I get annoyed because I should be able to concentrate. So I try to make myself concentwate which makes the words blur even more and-" His breath hitched and he took a small gasp.

Bugs put his arm round the older toon and gave him a hug. "It's not just you." He muttered. "It's not jus' you..."