The music’s rhythm pulses through his veins like a breath of aconite. He wants to go home. He wants to go home. He wants –
Kuroo is in the crowd. He’s carrying drinks, one for himself, something else for Kenma, and everyone moves along him like a court bowing for their king. Majesty, come through, let the music roar to your glory. He doesn’t even know it, Kenma thinks and bites at his own lip until it tastes bad and red. They adore him. Everyone does, he’s too nice, kind underneath all that snark and grinning, with hands that frame Kenma’s face like a masterpiece when Kuroo kisses him.
A girl. She smiles, oh she’s beautiful, Kenma looks down on the floor. His jeans are torn, shoes dirty. Why Kuroo took him here, he doesn’t know, something about having fun, about Kenma liking to dance with him? He does. It’s true.
The girl’s fingers touch Kuroo’s arm. Her nails are half-moons, rose-thorns, and Kuroo looks at her with a flip of his head.
Please, Kenma thinks. His fingers dig into the fabric of his jeans. He’s still out of breath from dancing, remembers Kuroo’s hands by his hips, their bodies together. It had been like living through a starburst, moving along with Kuroo, knowing everyone envied Kenma, looking at them.
But please, don’t, Kenma begs across the room with wordless eyes, don’t take him. Don’t touch him. Don’t take him away, even if you could. Let him be.
Kuroo shakes his head.
A shudder rakes down Kenma’s spine. He stands, bottom lip between teeth, staring at Kuroo as he comes over. One day, he’s going to lose him, to someone with grace and feather-light laughter and without cracked ugliness scattered across their past.
“Let’s go home.” Kuroo pushes the drink into his hand, lips tracing a kiss along Kenma’s temple. “You’re zoning out. Take my hand?”
“Okay.”
When they’re outside, drinks finished and jackets around their shoulders, Kenma pulls him down. He kisses Kuroo until their lungs ache, until Kuroo’s fingers burn in his neck and at his hip, until Kenma feels like they melt together again.
Kuroo kisses him, his nose, lips, the bow over his mouth that’s named after love’s god, until Kenma allows himself to cry. It’s silent between them. There are no words on the way home. Kenma’s hand is in Kuroo’s. He thinks back to the girl, but then they’re through the door and Kuroo nuzzles his hair once more before starting to talk about hot cocoa, about going to bed afterwards.
Kenma leans against the wall of the corridor and closes his eyes.
The girl’s face is in his mind, soft, overwhelmingly unbroken.
Not today, he thinks. And if I can do anything, everything, never.
Then Kuroo calls his name. “I’m here,” Kenma says, and moments later, Kuroo’s by his side again, pushing a mug into his hand, finding him in the corridor without turning on the light. “Let’s sleep in a few, yeah?”
Kenma smiles around the edge of the mug. The cocoa is sweet. Outside the window, the sun rises. “Yeah.”
Moami 