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“Can we hold hands?” Shouyou asks.
He is buzzing with excitement. His eyes shine, his orange hair catches the sunlight drawing a faux halo above his head. It’s too much, too cute, a totally unfair and most probably premeditated attack against Kenma’s senses. Shouyou is way too dangerous, and his cuteness is almost indecent for a grown up man.
Kenma stifles a sigh. “Must we?”
The reaction is immediate. Shouyou visibly deflates, head and shoulders dropping, eyes staring down the sidewalk, steps coming to a halt.
“It’s not like we must,” he says so very quietly that Kenma barely hears. “I just… wanted to.”
Guilt settles deep in Kenma’s bones, causing him aches he shouldn’t have at his age. He looks at the crown of Shouyou’s head, glowing in the sun, hair dancing in the wind. It only takes a split second for Shouyou to collect himself, and this fact alone makes Kenma’s pain all the graver.
He’s known Shouyou for almost ten years now. Enough time to know that even if Shouyou gets hurt, he scarcely shows it.
Like when he didn’t get selected for that training camp, and had been made a ball boy as punishment for sneaking in – he had still called Kenma with a sing-song in his voice, and said it was a good learning experience.
Or when he was left out of the U-19 roster, even though he was the undisputed no.1 ace of the country – and he managed to laugh it off, in front of everyone in his second year of summer camp.
Or that other time when, according to Yamaguchi, he got rejected by his longtime crush and Kenma had had no idea even though they had spent an entire weekend together – because Shouyou had been constantly smiling, playing the role of the host perfectly.
Shouyou never let anything drag him down for long. But it never changed the fact that he had been hurt. Kenma sneaks a glance at Shouyou from the corner of his eyes. Shouyou smiles at him brightly and falls back into rhythm, walking with a skip in his step towards the train station. Only, his head continues to hang a little low, his shoulders turned in on himself a bit more than usual.
Kenma suppresses another sigh.
“My hands… are clammy,” he says, embarrassment tinting his ears red.
Shouyou shoots his head up at Kenma’s voice, turning his undivided attention to his boyfriend.
“Yes?”
“It… might be unpleasant to touch,” Kenma says, holding his hand out.
A second barely passes, and he finds a pair of warm, dry hands around his own.
“Never worry about that!” Shouyou says with a renewed sparkle in his eyes. The air around him vibrates as an elated smile spreads across his face. “Your hands… they feel perfect!”
“Hn,” Kenma replies, looking at their interlinked hands. “It will be hard to walk like this though.”
At this, Shouyou chuckles. He lets go of Kenma’s hand with one of his own, but twines their fingers together with the other.
“Here,” he says, lifting their hands up like a proud artist presenting a masterpiece. “Done!”
Kenma stares at it for a while, opening and closing his fingers in Shouyou’s. As if they have always belonged, he feels no strain or strangeness.
It really feels perfect.