Hey there, I loved your touch starved Arthur headcanons, may I request the same prompt for Kieran Duffy?
Thank you! Admittedly never got into Kieran so I hope you like my characterization :) Drew a lot from my own experience so this is probably autism coded.
Kieran assumes at first, and still, that you're playing some kind of long-con. He still has the street-urchin distrust from his youth fully intact and constantly re-affirmed by the men around him. You may gotten past his final barriers to letting you in, but it's a no-man's land between that and actual belief.
He's distrusting, but he wants it. He really would like to believe you're sweet on him, he would. It takes weeks to prove to him, mostly, that you aren't going to whip out a knife.
Once you work past that, it takes months for a hypersensitive Kieran to unlink your touch from hurt. It's usually a trauma reaction that makes him recoil in pain. Still, he's dumbly hopeful, and you've worked hard to make yourself safe. He grins and bares the discomfort silently to not drive you away.
By the time you've made yourself a safe space, he's smitten enough to want to fight the ingrained aversion. You can still see the flicker of fear on his face if your hands near his vitalities, throat or groin; the paths you take around triggering that soften him further. Kieran won't outright realize it, but he'll internalize the respect and care.
Anything gentle will break him in half. If his eyes sting around you, he's going to start bawling. And they will sting if your fingers comb through his hair; your nails scratch lightly over the veins in his hands and arms, idly or just while studying his features (he can barely breathe); if you make yourself known before you hug him from behind, just to not scare him. He struggles every time to choke down that you're touching him to make him feel something nice, or even harder to believe: for no reason at all, for a whim.
Once, you took the time to mend Kieran's clothes because his own hands shake too much anymore. When you run your hand over the freshly patched spot at the side seam, it feels warm and sturdy on his side, doesn't feel like it scrapes - he, for once, initiates an interaction, kissing at your knuckles as if kissing a ring.
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