Chapter Text
Kuroo squinted at the bright screen, lids beginning to weigh heavily with creeping exhaustion and lethargy from the many hours spent on yet another last minute assignment. He took a swing from his steaming cup of coffee, black and bitter which served as more of a power through rather than a soul warming drink to comfort him.
The visible tremble in his typing hands was easy to disregard, for himself at least, may it not be the same case for another student within the 24 hour library catching the jitters and shakes from a mile away. Though his mind was racing and buzzing, the helpful focus the Adderall aided him with was a perfect magic shortcut to getting his assignments done at top quality, even when doing them the night before they’re due.
Occasionally there was a twist of guilt and shame in his gut when people asked how he did it.
“How do you always get straight, perfect A’s?”
“Where do you find the time to study so much?”
Not like the stuff was giving him extra brains or anything, just that much needed focus. Focus didn’t come easy to Kuroo, much like many other students where their natural ability laid within professional procrastination. Plenty of people turned to Adderall or something of the sort to help with studying, it wasn’t a big deal.
After all, it was his mother that initiated the idea back in his second year at school due to his easily distracted nature. So it couldn’t have been bad or cheating in a way Kuroo thought in the back of his mind.
Kuroo always had the brains, however only with the attention span of a goldfish when it came to education.
There was a simple, yet strict rule his mother applied to using it however. One at most a day, and only for homework and studying. It wasn’t a hard rule to follow, and Kuroo followed on without a single issue.
Until the exam stress creeped up like a predator waiting to tear it’s prey down.
A few more pills a day couldn’t hurt, it was only during exam period after all. Kuroo couldn’t bare to think about sacrificing a single moment to procrastinate. The disheartening truth was however…
Without it, he couldn’t even motivate himself to push a single limb out of bed.
Just a lazy teen, Kuroo would convince himself, so he needed that boost to be the successful child his parents always wanted.
Working towards perfect grades couldn’t hurt anyone, Kuroo was doing himself good and he knew he’d make his parents proud by the end of it. Adderall was just his handrail up a frighteningly steep staircase where even the slightest weight shift threatened Kuroo to stumble down to the ground floor again.
Being in college now however, that staircase was slowly morphing into an icy slope that couldn’t be made up without some sort of aid.
“Chill on the caffeine a little, idiot,” a voice came, almost lost behind the buzzing and determination to just carry on typing out the paragraph.
Kuroo tore his eyes away from the screen, feline glare landing on his familiar stunted friend sporting short strawberry blond hair. He always held that ever so disapproving scowl towards Kuroo in the approaching AM when the only form of light outside was artificial.
A brief smirk rested on Kuroo lips as his burning mind finally associated the boy beside him with a name. “Yaku, what you doing here?”
“You know it’s almost 1 AM, and Kenma said you haven’t been back to your room all day.”
“Ah and funnily enough here you are at 1 AM to join me!”
“To get your stupid ass to go to bed already! And also forgot to return some textbooks,” he said with a hum, nodding towards the thick books he set out on the table. “Don’t burn yourself out Kuroo, go to bed.”
Anyone who knew Yaku knew there was little to no point whatsoever with arguing with his judgement, and whether Kuroo knew he wouldn’t be going to sleep anyway during his need to finish this assignment, the best he could do was at least make it appear like he’s taking apparently good advice.
He gave a nod and was left alone to pack his belongings and return the textbooks he borrowed to the shelves of the large library.
The cool air of approaching winter latched itself onto Kuroo’s fleeting skin, icy and bitter regardless of his piled on layers of clothing and the beanie doing little to prevent the cold from seeping to his scalp. A scarf might have been a smart idea, as the sharp chill always found ways to crawl over his entire body from finding the tiny spaces his clothes neglected to cover; his neck.
Though this should have been a brief moment of relaxing between the grueling studying, Kuroo couldn’t prevent his mind from craving to do his damn assignment while he was walking. He thought up of multiple paragraphs to type down the moment he got to his room and mentally rearranged them as though he had a notepad to plan effectively. It was almost maddening, but in a way soothed his rising nerves and creeping anxiety at the horrifying thought of not getting those perfect grades.
Kuroo rummaged absentmindedly through his coat pockets to draw out the carton of cigarettes, tapping one out to place between his gradually chapping lips under the wintry breeze. He slowed his pace enough for the spark of the lighter to burn the end of the stick, picking up pace again while exhaling the initial milky cloud.
There was a voice heard in the distance, likely nothing concerning Kuroo so he didn’t bother turning down the static noise upstairs, until the voice repeated itself and drew closer.
“ …aper please?”
Shit. What did he say? Kuroo felt too sheepish to ask him to repeat himself, again, and alongside attempting to mentally backtrack and catch what he said, Kuroo was totally captivated by that incredibly unique hair.
He stared and then blinked a couple of times at the student stood before him. Kuroo raised a brow at the strands of silver contrasting against the dark roots laced within. Looked like a damn horned-owl or something, which was quite the amusing thought for someone almost completely tweaked off their senses.
Eventually, he gave up and pushed himself to smile apologetically. “Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Kuroo admitted, struggling to divert his intrigued gaze away from the man’s hair, and those almost golden eyes. Almost, but close enough. Owl for sure.
“No problem! Just askin’ if you got any spare paper I can borrow? I left my notepad back in the dorm but I can’t be bothered to run back and I was suppose to write some notes down in the library and… yeah.” He spoke quickly, though his tone held a kind of confidence that felt natural.
Kuroo was tempted to mentioned he could easily get paper from the library but sparing a few pages of his own couldn’t hurt. He nodded with a smile and shouldered off the bag onto the ground, pulling out his notepad and tearing out a generous amount of pages carefully and handed it over to the owlish student.
“Oh god, thanks so much man!” He clasped a strong hand over Kuroo’s back and jogged off with a wave. “See you later!”
Kuroo hesitated for a moment, sparing a glance towards the back of the stranger gradually shifting to a blur in the distance. He huffed a brief chuckle to himself and turned away, continuing to tread back home.
However, he didn’t feel the golden gaze that landed on his retreating back shortly after turning away.
It would have been a painful lie to attempt to convince himself that he wasn’t even the slightest bit interested in the mystery stranger from the other night, though Kuroo’s chances in running into him again were edging closer to low.
He didn’t get the highest quality look at him under the dim street lamps, but those eyes and certainly that hair stuck to his mind like gum would stick to his bed head. Was he balancing on the dangerous tightrope of a crush? Bullshit, he didn’t even know his name.
Kuroo’s emotions ran high in a lot of situations, and catching feeling was one of the many curses he had to endure. Cute guy, probably straight and probably never going to enter his life ever again? Of course Kuroo couldn’t stop thinking about him, that was just fucking perfect.
Hold on, Kuroo halted his thoughts abruptly in distressed realization. He was thinking about a guy he met for 2 seconds more than studying? What kind of sorcery—
“What is it, Kuro?”
With Kenma being his roommate, Kuroo was almost starting to believe in mind reading. It was either that or he was saying his thoughts out loud, but he was 99% convinced he wasn’t. “What’s what?” He asked, putting up his sweetest smile that didn’t even graze the surface of Kenma’s persistence.
“You’re being too quiet, why aren’t you annoying me?”
“I mean, would you like me to annoy you?”
That silenced Kenma for a few seconds at least, before he rebounded. “You being quiet is more annoying, what are you thinking about?”
“An owl that’s pretty cute,” he said honestly, but not enough to convince Kenma enough to draw his stern glare away from him. “Or more specifically, a cute guy that looks a little like an owl that I’ll probably never see again?”
There it was, the eye roll and the unpausing of his PSP game. “Oh.”
Never the one to be bothered about silly crushes and love lives, at least not until it begins to hurt.
Kuroo snickered quietly and let himself fall backwards onto his bed, staring blankly at the bland ceiling above. His eyes stung, his skin burned beneath the surface vaguely, and his mind felt like there was bugs crawling and eating away at the edges. The answer being he was tired was clear, but the excesses of caffeine and Adderall still lingered and clung desperately to him. Although the crash was approaching, his speeding mind refused to settle down for even the slightest moment enough for him to blink at the very least.
The ache started in his temples, growing and clutching in his eye sockets, fatigue wearing away at his sluggish bones. Usually at this point he’d take another pill, maybe even two, but that would only look incredibly dodgy seeing as he’s suppose to be going to sleep. There wasn’t a single thing that could be done right under Kenma’s nose, his senses nearing demonic.
Not like he needed it, it was whatever.
Kuroo attempted to sleep through the nuisance, but only resulted in excessive tossing and turning and bordering between unconsciousness and maddening alertness. Alongside of it all, he couldn’t bring himself give a shit about anything other than just taking more Adderall to quench that clawing and growing irritability and anxiety. So what if Kenma says something, it’s not illegal, not like it’s meth or whatever.
He forced himself to await the softened breathing from the other student across the room before he reached in his bedside drawer for the bottle of Adderall— it was just to calm down a little. Nothing more. Not like there was a problem, and maybe with this time he could cram in a little more studying for the upcoming test he had in a couple of days, it’s all fine.
In the end, the closest to sleep he got was several blinks in a space of a few seconds. Kuroo only had himself to blame for that, what moron takes Adderall before going to sleep? Though he could confidently say now he’s memorized an entire chapter of the textbook ahead of his next class in the morning, so it wasn’t too much of a futile sacrifice after all.
Kuroo shifted around under the covers restlessly until the clock hit 6 AM, knowing at least then if anyone saw him out of bed it was a relatively acceptable time to be awake— for early birds at least.
He headed out the room to the bathroom to brush his teeth, padding carefully to not disturb Kenma sleeping soundly, when he heard distant voices in the kitchen but couldn’t quite pinpoint them to faces right away. Kuroo finished up with a pathetic attempt to flatten his bedhead even a tiny bit and made his way down to the kitchen, spotting Daichi conversing with what sounded like— and confirmed to be with a quick glance as Sugawara over FaceTime. Those two were always the usual early birds so Kuroo wasn’t too surprised to run into Daichi.
“Moorning,” Kuroo drawled lazily, reaching the handle of the fridge to yank it open.
Daichi took a double take at Kuroo and knitted his brows together. Kuroo could only guess the odd look was because he was normally never up and around at this time unless he pulled an all nighter studying— which come to think of it was a lot of times. “Morning, sleep well?”
“Well enough, I guess,” Kuroo lied, the lethargy slowly catching up on with him.
He hummed with a nod, directing his attention back towards the sandwich he was making for himself. “Would you like one?”
“Nah it’s okay, I’ll wait ‘till the hunger hits me at full blast so I can scoff my face.”
A snort came from Daichi when Sugawara questioned who he was speaking to. “Just that annoying cat in my dorm—”
“Excuse you,” Kuroo snarked with a smirk softening his tone.
The three spoke for a while longer, mainly about stressing over upcoming tests and regretting their decision to take on college. The subject of drowning all their sorrows with alcohol came into play and that honestly sounded like a perfect idea to Kuroo for a moment, because when was the last time he got shit faced drunk?
Oh, not too long ago come to think of it, but long enough for his personal fun meter to be down in the red zone. He needed a drink, almost desperately, but should he really be wasting a good 8 hours on blacking out rather than securing that desirable A?
“Don’t think about backing out Kuroo, all you do is study!” Daichi sliced Kuroo’s running thoughts with a figurative knife. “Take a break for once before you burst something upstairs.”
Kuroo chuckled quietly and nodded a few times. “Yeah whatever, let’s go for drinks later then.”
“And I better be invited because I sure as hell need a drink too.”
The two turned towards the additional voice sourcing from the bottom of the staircase, and Kuroo’s eyes widened only just briefly at his moment of recognition.
Damn owl hair.