Work Text:
You had jolted awake from the sound of glass loudly striking against a hard surface, your eyes reflexively wincing from years of conditioning to jump away from broken glassware in the lab. You sat up, groaning in your grogginess as you reached a blind hand out to pat around for the switch to the lamp on your night stand.
Fighting against the urge to leave your eyelids closed for just a millisecond longer, you blinked through the blinding brightness of the light as you sat up from your spot in bed, looking around the room as you struggled to pull your mind away from the enticement of sleep.
Had one of the twins woken up?
You looked over at the empty uncreased spot to your left, and briefly wondered if Kuroo had already gotten up to check up on your sons. Though when your fingers remained cold to the touch after running your hand over the sheets, you concluded that he must not have gone to bed yet.
Through bleary eyes and wobbly footsteps, you slowly padded your way over to the kitchen with one hand pressed against the wall to guide your each step. You made your way down the long hallway, the soft glow of the kitchen light gently illuminating your path.
With your hand now gripping onto the wooden door frame, you tilted your head to the side as you watched your husband slide a metal tray into the oven, his expression a painting of erratic excitement.
“What are you doing?”
The man turned over to look at you from where he stood hunched over the oven, black frames sitting atop his head in a makeshift headband to pull his hair back, a thin layer of white handprints on the black hoodie he had on.
“Baking,” he answered matter-of-factly, getting back up and pushing the oven door closed in one fluid motion.
“At 5 in the morning?” You paused, turning your head over to glance at the growing pile of highlighted papers on the dining table placed directly in front of the kitchen counter. “I take it you didn’t sleep?”
“T-minus nine hours until the deadline to submit my grant proposal and I still have…” he trailed off to walk over to the dining table, shrugging off his oven mitts against his sweat pants, and bashed at his laptop keyboard, the screen lighting up with the display reflecting off the lenses of his glasses sitting on top of his head.
“Cobwebs,” he stated, his lips pulled into a desperate smile. He pulled the chair out and sank down into the seat, throwing his oven mitts next to him on the table as he buried his head into his arms. “Cobwebs and dust balls,” he groaned into his forearm, his hands running through his mop of black hair. He shot back up, his fingers dragging down against his cheeks before lightly slapping his face. “No one’s got time for shit like sleeping!”
“And yet you’re baking…” you paused to walk over to the oven, bending down as you peered through the black screen, “Pumpkin bread? The heck?”
The black haired man turning around in his seat, propping up an arm to lean against the back of the chair. A hand reached up to his head to push his glasses back onto his nose bridge, and he casted you a questioning glance from where he sat across the room.
“Yeah, what else is there to bake?”
“A yule log or a chocolate cake? Even gingerbread men would’ve been better. The twins would’ve liked that.” Kuroo looked up in thought, his head moving along with his lips in a pout as he agreed with the point you had just made. “You’re like the reverse of people who ask for the Christmas drinks at the coffee store the day Halloween passes,” you sighed, a hand resting on your hip as the other supported your weight on the kitchen counter.
“I’ll have you know that pumpkins are very high in vitamin A! This is a very nutritious snack!” Kuroo defended, his glasses hanging low against his nose. “And eggnog lattes are really good, alright? Let me live,” he added on after with a sniffle. “They should be on the menu year-long if you asked me.”
“That recipe you’re so proud of is also pretty high in sugar though,” you chuckled, leaning back against the kitchen counter as you stared at your husband with your arms crossed in front of your chest. “This much refined sugar isn’t that good for you, you know.”
“The brain uses glucose as its primary energy source, my dear,” he huffed, his hand tapping against his head. “During times of stress, the body increases glucose release into the bloodstream for energy utilization and I,” he pointed at himself, “am engaging in a highly challenging cognitive task, so this is really just fuel.”
“So you admit you’re stress baking?” you asked, an incredulous expression stretched across your face as you walked over to the young professor.
Kuroo’s head moved to follow you, watching as you pulled out a chair beside him from the dining table, and rolled his eyes with a defeated sigh escaping his lips.
“I was thinking I’d offer you a bite of my world famous pumpkin bread when it’s done, but since you’re so anti-pumpkin-in-December, I guess I’ll just have to be the bigger person and finish it all by myself.”
You feigned utter shock, your hand flying up to your mouth as you let out a loud gasp, eliciting a snort from the man in front of you. “I never said that!” you objected while Kuroo’s sly smile stretched wider across his face. His hand reached over to your lap, finding your fingers and entwining them with his own as he leaned forward and gave you a quick peck on the lips.
“I’m very pro-pumpkin-in-December,” you continued with a nod as Kuroo leaned back, nodding though the raised eyebrow suggested that he was unconvinced. “I would very much love a bite of your world famous pumpkin bread. You know I love your recipe.”
You paused, your eyes trailing down to your interlocked hands, and you let out a sigh.
“But I can’t help but be worried that the stress is getting to you,” you finished, looking back up at your husband with a worried smile. “How far along have you gotten?”
He let go of your hand to run his fingers through his hair, readjusting the glasses sitting on his face with the other. He squinted as he peered at the screen, moving two fingers along his trackpad as he swiped through the open document on his computer.
“I’ve finished the introduction at least,” he answered, resting both hands back onto the keyboard. “Guess I’ll just crank out the methods section and then eat the cake and go to sleep.”
You hummed in agreement, a quiet “that’s a good plan” slipping out of your lips as you folded your arms and rested them onto the tabletop, using them as a pillow to support your head. You looked over at Kuroo from the side of your eyes, watching silently as he clattered away loudly on his laptop keyboard, pausing momentarily every now and then to flip through the mountains of highlighted papers on his desk. You could feel your heart throbbing against your chest, your circulation working on overtime to support your conscious state in a time when you were supposed to be at rest. Your eyelids drooped down, with each blink lasting longer than the last, and you were soon met by the picturesque landscape of nothingness.
The shrill sound of the oven’s timer going off snapped you back to the present, and you groggily sat back up, stretching your arms over your head as you broke free from the prison of slumber. You looked over at your husband, whose hands had since both found a new home in his messy hair, and got up from your seat.
“I’ll get the pumpkin bread, no worries,” you mumbled, resting your hand against his shoulder to keep the man from getting out of his seat as you walked over to the kitchen space.
Just as you were slipping on the oven mitts, you caught sight of your husband turning around in his chair to look at you from the table, his arm resting against the back of his seat with his expression a painting of exaggerated desperation.
“(f/n), how much do I have to pay you to ghost write for me?”
“No amount of money can buy my skill,” you answered near immediately, turning around and pulling open the oven door to take out the cake. With your grip on the handles of the metal baking tray, you walked over to the other end of the kitchen and placed the cake onto the stovetop to cool, turning on the fan above to speed up the process.
“How about my firstborn son?”
“He’s my firstborn son as well,” you responded, your eyes narrowed and your eyebrow raised.
You walked back over to the table to return back to your seat, and then raised your hands up to his face, your fingers finding their way to slot underneath his jaw as your thumb landmarked themselves onto where his dimples sat hidden. “Half of that genetic material in the kid is mine,” you pointed out with a laugh, pulling at your husband’s cheeks as he puffed out a sigh of defeat.
He turned his head over to the stove, staring longingly at the loaf sitting in its pan, and let out a sigh. The sweet and spicy scent of the nutmeg and cinnamon wove in-between the molecules of the air, dancing alongside the scent of Kuroo’s half-finished mug of cold coffee sitting next to his laptop screen.
“How much have you got left now?” you asked, pulling your husband’s attention back towards the dining table.
Kuroo closed his eyes briefly and let out a sigh, reaching his arms out to you and wrapping them around your waist to pull you in closer to him, his face burying itself into the crook of your neck.
“Just that one concluding sentence,” he murmured tiredly.
Your hand trailed down to meet his, fiddling with the metal band sitting on his left ring finger as you twisted his wedding ring clockwise, then counter-clockwise.
“Want to tell me the real reason that’s distracting you from finishing your proposal?”
Kuroo got back up and peeled away from you, his back now firmly pressed against the cloth material of the dining chair and his arms now folded on top of his abdomen.
“I’m just worried,” he confessed, golden eyes staring straight ahead and lost in deep thought. “I just… really want this grant, I guess. I could cover hiring another graduate student with the money — that’s another up and coming mind I could help introduce to our world. I’ve missed out on the last few by just a few places… I just feel like I’ve been letting the whole lab down.”
“You’re the youngest principal investigator of the department of biochemistry and you’ve also got a whole trophy of awards and recognitions in your office. Tetsu, whatever the results of this call for funding won’t change the fact that you’re one of the best in the field.” Your hand reached out to find his, delivering a tight squeeze around his fingers as the smile on your face widened. “If anyone can carry a lab, it’s you.”
Kuroo’s gaze found its way back onto you, his initial expression of shock mixed with affection soon exchanged for a grateful smile as his hands pushed forwards to clasp his fingers over the gaps of your own.
“You think I’m the best?” he asked after a brief pause, looking back up at your face with a devilish twinkle nestled behind the amber of his irises.
“You’re like, second best compared to me,” you clarified as the man dove back towards you and wrapped you in his arms.
“Sounds like a lie, Pinocchio,” he teased, his breath tickling your ear as he tightened his hold on you with a quick squeeze.
“In your dreams, Banting,” you quipped back. “Just focus on finishing the proposal today. The results of the competition is for the you of the future to worry about.”
“One of these days I’m going to become such a great researcher that you’ll think to say ‘Kuroo’ when you try to tease me with those nicknames,” he murmured, his head now resting against your shoulder. “Future me will make future you very proud.”
Your hand flew up to his shoulder, smoothing out the creases of the hood of his hoodie. “You make me proud every single day already, you know.”
Kuroo paused, his breathing hitching up ever so slightly as his grip on your waist tightened ever so slightly.
“Thanks, (f/n),” he mumbled into your neck.
“You’re still bringing the twins to daycare tomorrow, by the way,” you chuckled, running your hand through his hair. “So you better finish that sentence soon and get your ass to bed.”