Work Text:
“Ah ah, I said keep that mouth wide open”, Senku gently reprimanded, making a mental note to up his pace. Every few moments, Suika squirmed quite a bit. Given the pain she was in from the improvised interdental brush cutting open the inbetween of her teeth, Senku had full understanding if she were to clench her jaw a bit tighter occasionally.
It had been difficult for Suika to admit that she was suffering from such profound pain at first, especially with her incapability of clearly naming her issue. Yet Senku still remained patient as he worked with her to figure out what the problem was, eventually concluding that the source of her pain had simply been the lack of modern dental hygiene standards.
With the equipment present on the Perseus, it actually wasn't that big of a deal to throw together a somewhat decent set of dental hygiene products for her, but the real issue lied in her eye-hand coordination.
Already from the early days in the village, Senku had taken note of the peculiar manner in which Suika would get to certain tasks. While most of her coordination issues had seemingly been fixed by her glasses, some of her problems clearly went deeper than her poor eyesight.
So, with no solution to make her life easier at hand at the current moment, Senku found himself in his current position; taking care of Suika’s teeth in her stead.
He noticed already a couple of minutes ago that Suika's mood appeared a bit down today. Usually, Senku’d be among the first people she'd tell if something was up, and yet…
“Is something up with you, Suika?” he asked as his hands ceased their work and withdrew from her mouth.
“I’m sorry for causing so much trouble, Senku…” Suika began, pulling at the fabric of her clothes. Senku’s eyebrows furrowed at her words. His eyes drifted up to meet hers.
“Nah, you didn't cause a single millimeter of trouble”, he stated plainly, “it was really just a matter of time until someone's mouth became ragged enough to finally move my ass to work.”
Senku only then realized his own choice of words and coughed exaggeratedly into his unoccupied fist.
“My butt, I mean,” he corrected himself.
Despite his attempt at reassurance, Suika's eyes remained a bit gloomy.
“Then I'm sorry for being so useless, for not being able to do this on my own.”
“Don’t say that Suika”, he responded. That simple sentence tugged at his heart strings, and yet, it was too difficult to get anything halfway reassuring out of that bold mouth of his. If he was honest with himself, he was exhausted down to the bone.
“Some people just need help with different things. That's fine. Even I struggle with things that may seem easy to you”, he added after a moment of hesitation. That seemed to tear Suika out of her thoughts at last. She glared at him with wide eyes.
“Really?”
“Really, Suika. You're already so independent at your age, so your skills make up for those confused hands”, he began, taking care to choose his words carefully. “And maybe you think that I'm only all strengths and zero percent weaknesses, but that isn't true.”
He took a short breath. This emotional stuff proved to be much more burdening than he recalled.
“Like you have confused hands, I have a confused mouth. I cannot speak as quickly or diligently as other people, because my tongue isn't very good at making the sounds I need”, he tried to explain. Obviously, this was oversimplifying it by ten billion percent, but he supposed that this is the closest she could get to understanding his issues.
Suika looked at him with more admiration than shame now.
“So, you're saying”, she's fidgeting again now, but it doesn't seem as nervous as before. “That even with my confused hands, I can still be useful?”
“I’m ten billion percent sure of it, Suika”, he gave her a gentle smile, taking her hand in his. “Everyone here has some problems that might not be obvious when you only see the surface level, and you shouldn't let yours discourage you”, he concluded.
That finally made Suika tear up, and, much against Senku's will, she hugged him tightly.
And just for today, he let her.