heart-shaped space || kuroken

how to lose

hello!!

i asked for an au to work on before i did anything else for the street racer au, so this served as a little break in between!! i hope this is okay and what was expected, and thank you for leaving this suggestion in my cc!! c:

i didn't want to have a lot of metaphors or flowery language in this one and wanted to make it really short but failed miserably on both ends. please enjoy regardless :D

p.s. pls look at my profile if you wanna read more stuff like this!! <33

...

Kuroo Tetsurou always really liked the sea.

He especially liked the beach near his house, with the blue water that seemed next to ethereal in the way it looked at a certain hour of the day. A striking cerulean dazzled with sun glitters, tawny shores speckled with seashells, a calming ripple of a current that was no less gentle than the blow of breeze through a daisy field.

It was quiet and barely there, but Kuroo would always try his best to catch the ripple when he could.

He would go there with his parents and sister, and he would run along the shoreline, looking for crabs and jellyfish had they washed up onshore.

He knew a lot about the ocean, and a lot about seahorses, specifically. There was something about them that always made Kuroo happy, seeing how they acted a lot like humans, despite their lack of brain space.

And that was okay. The similar diversity was not lost on him.

He didn't end up studying marine life in college, and instead opted for astronomy, but visiting science museums where the ocean life was tenfold was one of his favorite pastimes to date. Osaka had one of the best he's ever seen, keeping a crochet seahorse on his keychain to remember it.

He was probably the only nineteen-year-old who had a special love for seahorses and science museums.

He didn't really mind.

There was a science museum back in his old town, where he was planning to visit with his childhood best friend once he got down here from Osaka.

He remembers there being a dark underground section that showed all the species the museum had collected, the orange jellyfish and red seahorses still vivid in his memories. He remembers the shark statues and snakes.

He remembers the boy.

He wonders if they were still there.

~ꕥ~

The day was dewy and warm, the air thin as a breeze slipped through his clothes and beneath his hat, playing with the messy fringe of dark hair over his eye.

The sky is fragile, bullfinches calling to one another in the jade mosaic of tree leaves above him, hiding away in the shadows with their voices being the only trace of their presence this morning.

Kuroo was buzzing as he stood outside with his best friend, his mind floating with starfish and sharks, hoping to see some today. He'd read up in his animal books last night, and wanted to see if any of it was true.

He would probably die if he could see a shark, though.

"Kuroo! You wanna sit in the back?"

Kuroo could barely see Bokuto's face through the bill of his big baseball cap. He knew he was smiling, his eyebrows probably raised in emphasis like arched silver hills, his golden eyes gleaming like the setting sun peeking beneath them.

Kuroo turns to face him anyway, nodding enthusiastically.

"Yeah!"

Kuroo had a hand holding the strap of his backpack, honestly thinking about what his mom had packed him for lunch as he stood in line with Bokuto over anything else. He was antsy, wanting to get on the bus and get to the museum as soon as possible.