Chapter Text
This might be the day Kenma kills someone. He and Kuroo are sitting on their normal train, on a normal day, on their way to their normal school, when Kenma hears it.
Pick. Pick. Pick.
Kenma’s quick to locate the sound, his eyes landing on the hands of some teenager sitting two seats away from him, picking his nails like his life depends on it. Kenma wishes he could reach over and break his fingers. Broken fingers can’t pick their nails.
He hates himself for thinking like that.
Pick. P i c k . P i c k .
Kenma wants to rip his hair out. He sighs heavily through his nose instead and moves his bag, reaching in blindly for the headphones that he knows are in there.
When he realizes his headphones are indeed, not, in his bag, he feels like crying.
Kenma immediately knows where they are; at home, in his room, sitting on the corner of his desk with the audio jack hanging off the edge. Rather than putting them in his bag when he got home like he always did, he left them on his desk when his mother called him and pulled him out of his routine.
He has no idea how he’s going to get through the day without his headphones. It’s going to be a long day, that much he’s sure of.
He knows he keeps glaring at the teenager’s hands, as if that’ll make him stop picking his nails, but every time he hears the pick of his nails Kenma feels his muscles tightening. His hands are laced together in his lap; fingers white from the pressure he’s putting on them because he’s squeezing his hands for dear life.
He feels like crying. He might just.
This is hell.
A pair of hands rest over Kenma’s and tug them free from each other before the owner of said hands, Kuroo, stands. “Let’s move so people can sit, Kenma.” he says, waiting for Kenma to stand up with his bag before shuffling between people until they’re standing in front of a set of doors. Those hands reach up, cupping Kenma’s cheeks before sliding further and covering his ears. Kenma breathes in his scent, rich with cologne and body wash, slowly calming down as the world outside is muted by Kuroo’s hands. Kuroo, who is rubbing right behind his ears to help mask other sounds, only smiles as Kenma’s arms wrap around his middle.
Kenma thanks whatever God that’s in the sky for gifting him Kuroo.
Kenma tells himself he doesn’t deserve Kuroo for what he puts him through. He doesn’t deserve that he gets to tuck his head under Kuroo’s chin while the elder male covers his ears for him. He doesn’t deserve the Kuroo that spent hours talking to him about whatever it is that he has, trying to understand, and then even longer coaxing out Kenma’s list of triggers. The Kuroo that’s changed his own ways because he doesn’t want to trigger Kenma.
Kenma voiced his concerns once, in a tired haze late at night when he mental filter couldn’t catch up with the words leaving his mouth. In turn, Kuroo told him it was worth it, because he never wants to see the pained look on Kenma’s face when something triggers him.
Kenma is so unbelievably in love with him, and will forever be thankful that Kuroo loves him back. Life is slightly easier living because of Kuroo.
Neither of them have a name for whatever it is that happens in Kenma’s ears, but Kuroo remembers to put an extra pair of earbuds in his bag in case Kenma forgets his headphones again.
The next time nails trigger him, he has headphones on and doesn’t hear anything. He doesn’t think it’ll bother him when he spots someone picking at the skin – that doesn’t make noise – around their nails. And yet he can’t stop staring. He can already feel the coil of whatever it is in his stomach. He doesn’t have a word to identify it. The closest thing he can compare it to is dread. Dread, and unwarranted anger.
Pick, stop. As one finger’s nail presses too hard into the target finger and doesn’t move. Pick, slip. As the attacking nail doesn’t press hard enough and slips past the target. Pick, pull, brush. As finally, the attacking nail finds it’s target piece of skin and pulls, before brushing away the defeated skin. He thinks that’s the end of it before, to Kenma’s horror, the male moves on to another finger.
Kenma wants to break fingers again.
He settles for digging his PSP out of his bag and distracting himself. It doesn’t do a good job of distracting him, he can’t stop from glancing at those fingers to see if the owner has stopped and he hasn’t. Kenma dies in his game, and he wants to share the same fate.
The only relief Kenma gets is when Kuroo pulls him off the train at their stop, leaving those fingers and their owner behind.