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It had happened out of nowhere.
He couldn’t quite remember what had happened before, but he knew that a sense of awareness had suddenly rippled into his headspace, turning on the lights in the inner workings of his mind. His thoughts regained the ability to string together meaningful words into coherent sentences, and his sense of proprioception was suddenly thrusted back into his hold —the position of his arms relative to his legs now as clear to him as the summer sky.
Kuroo wasn’t quite sure what had brought about this change, but he knew one thing for certain: his eyes were closed, but his mind was, unfortunately, awake.
He gave it two —or maybe three if he was lucky— hours since he had fallen asleep, with the fervent activity of his mind blocking his descent into the deepest layers of slumber. He turned around once more, squeezing his eyes tight with his covers huddled around him in a desperate bid to return back into the empty void that his dreams had become as of late.
Or so he had tried, because in spite of having shifted positions eight, or perhaps nine, times within the span of fifteen minutes, Kuroo’s mind remained soundly awake. With a heavy sigh, he peaked his head out from under the covers and grudgingly opened his eyes to stare into the abyss of the night.
His hand reached over to the lamp on his nightstand, flipping the switch clumsily as he sat up against the bed frame. The buzzing of the light contrasting the eerie silence of the night did little to mitigate the grogginess fogging up his mind. He reached a hand up to his head, running it through his disheveled black hair, as he blinked away the stinging from brightness of the light in an effort to readjust to the wakened state.
Kuroo turned around, resting his forearm against the edge of the bed, as he squinted to make out the numbers on his clock. 5:03 AM, it read —that would make it exactly two hours since he first attempted to go to sleep. He turned back over to lean against the wall, crossing his arms against his chest as he looked over out the window and into the stillness of the night.
This would make it the fourth night in a row —the fourth that he’s found himself rudely awakened by the loudness of his conscious mind, robbing him of the precious sleep that he so deeply desired. He let out a controlled exhale; if he went to bed now, he could probably squeeze in another three hours of sleep. Five hours in total should suffice in helping him through the experiments he’d have to perform throughout the day.
He licked his lips, perturbed by the irritating tingling at the edges of his mouth. Five hours of sleep sounded nice, but that was all reliant on the fact that he would be able to fall asleep within the next five minutes.
He let out a loud sigh, breaking the seal of silence that had been pulled over his bedroom since he first headed off to bed. He knew with near certainty that falling asleep in five minutes would be an impossible task. If things ever worked out as he planned, he wouldn’t have even needed to go into the lab in the first place —his data wouldn’t have all turned up insignificant, his cell lines wouldn’t have decided to just die on him, he would’ve been able to finish up his thesis a year ago…
He swallowed back a gulp at the last thought. There was no use thinking of the past.
His eyes darted over to the desk in the corner of his room, landing on the white photo frame sitting at the edge. A wistful expression crossed his face as he stared at the photo of the two of you with your cheeks squished against one another, your smiles wider than the ocean’s horizon. You had held out your hand to the camera, showing off the diamond ring that sat proudly on your finger.
“(f/n)…” he whispered, his voice still raspy and drunk on the illusion of sleep.
His hand blindly fumbled for the knob on the side of the dresser to pull it open, and he felt around the wooden drawer for the envelope that laid neatly at the corner —his eyes never leaving the photograph as he did so.
Kuroo readjusted in his spot as his hand swiftly picked up the letter, bringing the envelope —its corners dented from its trek across the globe— into his lap. He drew in a shaky breath as he cautiously untucked the flap of the envelope and pulled out the papers neatly folded inside.
Hey Tetsu,
It’s probably gotten cooler there by now. Have you dug out your winter coats yet? Just cause you live in California doesn’t mean you’re immune to the cold, so you better be bundled up, Einstein!
The edges of his lips perked up as he imagined you nagging him in his mind —how the creases in your forehead would deepen into a frown as worry dripped from each word that rolled off your tongue. He missed it; he missed the incessant reminders to “put on something warmer or you’ll catch a cold!” and the death glares you’d shoot at him whenever he opted for a cold drink in the middle of winter. He missed the bottomless trove of reactions you always supplied to everything that he did —everything felt so incomplete without you there to finish it.
His gaze wandered off to the end of the sentence, and he let out a low hum. “I’d actually prefer—”
I’m kidding. You’d probably prefer to be called Neuberg.
He chuckled quietly with a shake of his head, his hair tousling into a further state of disarray from the motion. You always were able to figure out exactly what was on his mind —he shouldn’t have expected any less even when the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean separated the two of you.
His smile faltered at the thought. Five thousand, three hundred and fifty-five miles separated Tokyo from California. Five thousand, three hundred and fifty-five miles kept him from wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his chin atop your head —from experiencing the radiance and warmth that was your smile in person. He missed it; he missed being able to physically weave his fingers through yours, interlocking your hands in a clasp that he never wanted to let go from.
His middle finger slipped underneath the next page as his index rested against the sheet in front. He quietly let out an exhale as his eyes skimmed through the written script, his lips silently mouthing along to each word in the sentence.
Also, a friendly reminder that if you drink too much tea during the day, you’ll have trouble sleeping at night. (And don’t give me that crap about your liver enzymes being upregulated)
His mind drifted off to the countless of coffee shop “dates” that the two of you had shared throughout both your undergraduate and graduate careers. Perhaps unconventional, but the arrangement worked well for the two of you —time was scarce in your fields, and at the end of the day, he was content enough from just being in your presence. He was, admittedly, so hopelessly in love with the way you would get up abruptly out of your chair with a clatter after every second hour, walk over to the cash register to order yet another coffee —a dark roast taken black— and pay with the wallet you always conveniently shoved in your back pocket. He loved the way you would always roll your eyes and give the most bitter of laughs as you snapped at him to “put a sock in it” whenever he asked to sequence your genes when you tried to justify your coffee intake by claiming to be a fast metabolizer of caffeine. He wanted more than anything to be able to trade snarky quips with you again in person, the two of you trying to one-up the other each time while secretly holding back the smile that threatened to step into light.
Work has been busy lately, but I’m getting enough sleep if that’s what you’re wondering. Have your experiments been going well? Do you need me to beat up some cells for you?
He couldn’t help but laugh at the last sentence in the paragraph. If anyone knew about his struggles with cells, it was you. Sporadic calls from anywhere between the early hours of the morning to the dead of the night (where he would moan and groan about his failed cell cultures) were a recurring trend in your lives before you had finished your degree and left to go back to Japan for your fellowship. You had always joked about how you, a chemist with little training in cell line maintenance, would “throw hands” at his cells —never failing to elicit a laugh out of him while picking his spirits back up to try once again.
But the days where you would amuse him in his supposed grief were but figments of a past life. The timezones were one thing, but it was your training, your job —your dream— that you were working towards now. He couldn’t afford to distract you from your goal. His jaw clenched tightly in silent frustration as his grip on the letter tightened. If only he hadn’t taken so long with his experiments —if only he was just a little bit faster, a little bit better. Then he could’ve graduated with you and gone back with you.
Then he could’ve been with you.
He let out another controlled exhale, though this time his breath faltered, shaking and quivering within the anger broiling in his chest.
And I know you’re still beating yourself up about “taking too long” or whatever, but like you said, nothing’s a given in our field. We work hard to make the most out of what we have, and Tetsu, you’ve taken a single branch and turned it into an entire forest.
It was a bit like graphite, he thought —the situation that had become of your relationship. An allotrope of diamond, graphite too contained the incredibly strong covalent bonds between the carbon atoms in its lattice structure. Though the difference between the two was that graphite consisted of sheets of graphene weakly held together by electrostatic forces that could be broken apart by as little as a push of a pencil.
It was similar because in the end, the pursuit of your collective dreams overrode his desire to be there next to you, pushing the two of you across the globe such that the sun rose for one as it set for the other. And while his conscious mind knew with absolute conviction that this was the right thing to do, that this was what simply had to be done, he couldn’t help but find himself wallowing in regret regardless. He chewed on his bottom lip as his lower lashes desperately clung onto the tears that threatened to spill out.
But you were right. Sacrifices had to be made to match his ambitions of one one day being able to make a difference in the world —to one day be able to connect the branches of science to arm humanity with the power of knowledge. He reached out a hand and stared blankly at the tips of his fingers, a bitter smile and a forlorn glaze in his eyes as he reminisced over the discoveries he had made in the short five years of his degree.
He knew what had to be done, and he knew that he couldn’t just give it all up.
But it didn’t change the fact that he wanted more than anything to drop it all and risk everything to be by your side again either.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m so incredibly proud of you. Always have, always will.
Most amazingly,
(f/n)
A stray tear found its way traversing across the length of his cheek as his breath hitched in his throat. He raised a hand up to his eyes and quickly rubbed the tears obscuring his vision to the side with his palm. He smiled, rereading the last sentence once more —you always knew just what to say to pick him back up, didn’t you?
He rested the back of his head against the bed frame as a soft smile settled across his face when his eyes landed on the final line of the letter. He reached his other hand up to the page and brushed at the smudged pencil atop your dotted “i”s.
P.S. I miss you.
“I miss you too,” he murmured softly, a ghost of a chuckle escaping just moments after.
Yes, your relationship was quite like graphite indeed, for forces beyond your control were easily able to separate the layers of the lattice. Though in spite of that, the words on the page reminded him just how little had changed in your relationship: you were still the voice of reason in his mind —the one that was able to soothe the storms of self-doubt and curb the frustrations at bay.
Kuroo glanced back over out the window, staring at the waning moon nestled within the cradle of stars in the clear night sky. The forces existing between the gaps of graphite may be weak and the layers could easily be forced apart, but the bonds within each singular sheet were tremendously strong —even stronger than the diamonds that were so often touted as the hardest substance in the world.
He may have gifted you a diamond ring as proof of the strength of his love for you, but he knew that the smudged words scribbled onto the page in graphite pencil were the true testaments of the unbreakable bond that existed between the two of you.
How silly he was for forgetting that.
He picked up the receiver of the landline on his bedside table, dialing into the keypad the “81” of the area code followed by the string of digits succeeding it that he had committed to memory since his days in college.
“Hello?” you answered, your voice bright and alert, filled with both surprise yet tenderness.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Trouble sleeping again?” He could hear the bells of your laughter from the other end.
He chuckled, reaching over to the nightstand next to his bed to hit the lamp switch with a practiced hand. There really was no rhyme or reason as to how your voice alone was able to bathe him in warmth even in the chill of the night, but for once, he decided that he’d let it remain a mystery.
He rubbed his eyes as a smile carved onto his face.
“Not anymore. I just wanted to hear your voice.”