Work Text:
There are 24 hours in a day.
8 should be spent sleeping, let’s say 3 are spent eating.
He looked down at his watch, his eyes drilling into the analog face as the seconds hand looped back past 12, pulling along the minutes hand another fraction of an inch closer to the next marker on the watch face. The glare of the fluorescent light fixtures overhead on the glass panel stared back at him as his focus shifted momentarily to the silver rim of the accessory. A shadow loomed over him as a beep resounded, and Kuroo groaned ever so slightly as he shifted his feet in place, giving a pathetic attempt at making room for the person behind him to slip over to the doors to escape from the suffocation of the morning rush.
He took a step back and exhaled as another beep followed soon afterwards, the sound of the automatic doors on the side closing firmly shut with the sound of the hydraulic pumps directing the motion. People had gotten off, the cabin had reshuffled, and there was once again room to breathe — and to simply exist — on the train.
With an impatient sigh, he readjusted his grip on the handle and shifted his footing to switch up the distribution of force on the soles of his feet. His eyes gazed back up to the panel on the roof of the train cabin, golden eyes counting the remaining golden lights lit up on the route.
Ten more stops to go — ten more cycles of contractions and relaxations. It was a bit like cardiac muscle, he had found himself thinking: the seemingly automatic influx and efflux of people as they came and went in preparation for the busy workday ahead. He let out a sigh as he reached up with his free hand to readjust his tie, his thumb hooking underneath the knot and pulling to bring the tip back to center.
Like cardiac muscle indeed — individual units separated by intercalated disks, each filled to the brim with mitochondria to fuel the workings of the vasculature. Mindless and unquestioning, clocking in day in and day out to keep society upright, enduring minutes that bled into hours of tolerance and restriction in tightly packed units of transport during rush hour.
Balancing his weight on the balls of his feet, he released his hand from the handle and dug through his trouser pocket for his phone. The device lit up with the press of the side button, and four faces with the widest of grins painted across their faces stared back at him.
He sighed again as he returned his phone back into his pocket.
Perhaps his mindset was a smidge too cynical: it was a daily occurrence — the journey that he was making.
Bright gold extinguished with the blink of his eyes as his lashes fluttered shut, and he drew in a deep breath.
But you could hardly blame him, really.
After all, there were only 24 hours in a day, and he wasted an hour and a half of it simply getting to work.
There are 24 hours in a day.
8 should be spent sleeping, let’s say 3 are spent eating.
He wastes an hour and a half to get to work each day.
“I thought you were leaving early today, sensei.”
He looked up from his computer monitor to the person by his office door. He slipped off his black-rimmed glasses, resting it upside down with the top rim lying against the desktop.
“I thought so too, but these grants don’t write themselves.” His eyes darted over to the pile of papers to the side of his desk, the corners wrinkled and the stapled edges bent from having been flipped from front to back repeatedly, the fluorescent yellow highlighter he used bleeding from the lines on the page to the next. Kuroo picked up the coffee mug resting to the right of his screen, raising it up to his lips to fuel up on another energy boost.
Grainy and pungent, with a lingering bitterness that failed to dissipate even with time. An aroma void of richness yet wealthy with the scent of chemical additives — the perfect quartet of cheap instant coffee. And yet, what met his tongue was nothing as he had anticipated, and he sighed as he looked down into the contents of the mug.
Empty and hollow, any residual volume left within from earlier evaporated out with the precipitate of the instant coffee solution clinging onto the outer rim of the walls. He had finished his coffee earlier, and rather than the kick of caffeine he had hoped for with a swig of the mug, he was instead met with oxygen and nitrogen — air, to put it simply.
Disappointment compounded by nuisance, a deadline with no clear finish line. He was behind, and yet distractions and disruptions kept coalescing with actual tasks, standing in the way of his fantasized productivity. Literature searches every 5 minutes — Google Scholar giving him everything except what he wanted — scouring through the lore for a single figure in a sea of a billion others.
His student stopped him mid-way as he headed for the door, offering his hand out with a sympathetic smile strewn across his lips.
“I’ll refill your coffee for you, how ‘bout?”
“You can head out, it’s fine. You take the train home, don’t you? Avoid that rush hour traffic while you still can,” Kuroo answered, shaking his head as he waved the trainee off. “Now aren’t you a stubborn one?”
“Let your student help his supervisor out,” he answered, a slight roll of his eyes as he hooked his fingers around the ear of Kuroo’s black mug, pulling at the ceramic to snag it out of the professor’s hand. “You have a grant deadline to meet. Getting reviewers to agree with your proposed research is hard work, and I’ve only done it at smaller scales with scholarships. With the entire lab’s funding riding on your back, I can’t even begin to imagine how stressful it is for you. Let me help you out. It’ll take, like, 5 minutes max.”
With his lips pulled out into a thin line, Kuroo nodded his head in hesitant acceptance at his student’s offer, a quiet “thank you” slipping out as he turned back around and headed for his desk.
He reached over the table top to pull out a research article he had printed out earlier, his middle finger slipping through the pages above as he pulled the stapled sheets with the yellow sticky note stuck off-center on the side out with a pinch of his thumb and index. His student’s words from before echoed in the back of his mind as he flipped through the document, his brows knitted into a deep frown as he mumbled indistinct keywords under his breath.
An operating grant riding on his back — if he failed it would spell uncertain doom for everyone associated with his lab. He had no room for error, and yet luck itself was at play. To produce something that transcended the capabilities of the dealer of fate…
He slipped his glasses back on, pushing the black frames against his nose bridge as he landmarked a line with his finger.
“I can cite this in the background,” he murmured, clicking the red ballpoint pen in his hands and hastily circling the section of text in the paragraph that had drawn his interest.
There was no way around it at the end of the day. This was the unavoidable — the corner of the room that he had found himself backed into. He glanced away from the paper and up at the worried smile of his graduate student as the young man placed the coffee mug onto Kuroo’s desk.
White wisps of steam swirled in the air, hopping from molecule to molecule to leave an intricate pattern above the drink. To be free like the liquid evaporating from the heat of his coffee; to be absolved of all responsibilities that seemingly shackled him to his desk — oh how nice life must be in the absence of a looming deadline.
“Good luck, sensei,” his student said as he headed out of his office. “Don’t stay too late!”
Kuroo sent the man off with a small wave behind his desk, and turned around to look out the window, his chin propped up with his hand.
Brilliant blue skies whose intensity only seemed to strengthen the higher up he looked in the atmosphere, the sun shining a stage light down at nature itself to cast it into the limelight. Three in the afternoon, he surmised — around the same time that you must have been making your way over to the daycare to pick up your twin sons.
His eyes wandered back off to the family photo he kept on his desk, and he heaved a heavy sigh, his shoulders slouching inwards in dejection. Leave early? He would be lucky if he got to leave before the sun set and the roads relied on the little light supplied by the street lamps.
He slumped back into his chair, both hands running through his hair, his fingers pulling ever so slightly at the ends as he heaved yet another deep sigh.
Just four more pages to write. Just four more measly pages.
There were only 24 hours in a day, and for eight of it he would spend slaving away at his desk hard at work.
There are 24 hours in a day.
8 should be spent sleeping, let’s say 3 are spent eating.
He spends 3 hours on his commute, and another 8 hours at work.
A drop of water trickled down his nape from his wet hair, and before he could wipe it off with the back of his hand, his vision darkened as a weight pressed against him from above. The fresh scent of aloe washed over his senses as the dampness of his bath towel pressed against his cheek. A tickling sensation traveled down his neck as a pair of small hands wrangled the heavy towel around the man's head in an attempt to dry Kuroo’s hair.
“Hey little guy, what’s up with you?” Kuroo asked, chuckling as his hands reached up, circling over his son’s to help the younger of the twins manage the heavy towel to dry his hair for him.
“Mom said that if you don’t dry your hair within fifteen minutes, you’ll catch a cold and then Uncle Kenjirou will laugh at you!” Yuuma answered, golden eyes narrowing ever so slightly as his frown deepened.
“Oh no, how terrible! Did you know that when Uncle Kenjirou was younger, he lost super miserably to daddy? He’s been super sad since then and has always been jealous of your dad.” Kuroo turned around, coming face-to-face with his carbon copy and picked him up to drop the boy into his lap. “Especially now that my sons have grown up to become so smart and so handsome,” he added on as his hands grabbed at the towel on his head, picking up where Yuuma had left off on drying his hair.
“Did you really beat Uncle Kenjirou? He said he went to the best high school for volleyball!”
“Yes,” Kuroo answered, nodding his head as he struggled to stifle a snort. “He was crying so hard that da—”
“Tetsu, quit lying to your own son.”
Kuroo lifted the edge of the towel away from his face, a wide smile breaking out across his lips as he was met with the sight of your face. You stood with your arms crossed and a single brow raised, your eyes rolling ever so slightly at the elaborate lie he had strung up for his son.
“Well, technically those crows beat them, but we were equally matched—”
“You lost,” you clarified.
“Equally matched before we lost,” he offered. “So technically we win as a proxy, y’know?”
“No, stop lying to your son,” you insisted as you picked up the damp towel off his head. Your fingers brushed through his hair, and you happily hummed as you nodded and headed back in the direction of the kitchen, pushing Yuuma along with your free hand. “Yuuma, go help your brother set the table.”
“You’re just going to leave me here all alone?” Kuroo asked in mock disbelief, leaning over the side of the couch to close the distance between the two of you.
You turned around and pointed at his laptop, your expression deadpan and your movements sharp and exact.
“You have a deadline to meet, so get working. Finish before dinner so you can actually wind down, you big nerd.”
Kuroo shrugged and turned back around, dramatically exhaling a loud sigh as he woke his laptop back up. His fingers drummed across the keyboard as he typed in his password, and after a second of contemplation, he turned his head over in the direction of the bathroom in search for you.
“Shirabu was crying that day, okay? I swear I’m not ly—”
“Kuroo Tetsurou, get to work or I’ll call Shirabu over to watch you work,” you threatened with a smile as you emerged out of the bathroom and headed in the direction of the kitchen.
“Fine,” he sighed as his wrists rested back onto the edge of the laptop, his fingers flying across the letters as he typed out the remaining paragraphs in his grant with renewed vigor.
He peeled his eyes away from his laptop as he punched in the final period, turning his head over to watch as the twins set up the table in preparation for dinner. A small smile creeped up over his features, and a whisper of a laugh escaped from his lips as the twins started arguing between themselves over the most mundane of topics.
Perhaps it wasn’t all bad. Not when he was treated to moments like this after a long day of hard work.
He quickly saved the document and dropped it over to the submission portal before slamming his laptop firmly shut, getting up from floor onto his feet as he did so.
“I’ll help you guys out,” he said, jogging along over to help set the table with the rest of his family. "I've got some time on my hands."
And the remaining 2 hours he spends surrounded by love with his family.