Work Text:
Make no mistake, Senku doesn’t want to skip class.
He’s not even really sure how he winded up here, laying in a stiff bed with no covers staring up at the pee colored ceiling that’s not actually yellow; it just looks so due to the lamp in the corner glowing a soft warm tone.
He’s not necessarily missing any new information if he isn’t here for this one physics lecture, he knows how to graph and find velocity. He can even use derivatives to solve for it, he’s not just confined to algebra based physics! But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate school level classes sometimes. Knowing that the velocity of a ball tossed into the air is always decreasing is intuitive for him, but he also appreciates the step by step reasoning that is taught in class.
So his face has a huge frown painted onto it, modeling a parabola reflected over the horizontal axis. His frown deepens when his stomach sends sharp pain signals not unlike the ones he’d receive if he got shot. Not that he has, of course.
When did this whole thing begin? Twenty minutes ago when he had his ass practically hauled down here? An hour ago at lunch? Maybe even yesterday when he already started getting a little dizzy. Better yet, a combination of the above.
Senku had eaten lunch with Yuzuriha and Taiju earlier that day like he usually does. Everything was the same. Monster drink, school lunch, same spot in the quiet stairwell next to the classrooms so it was social enough for the extroverts of the group. Nothing deviated from the norm. What explanatory value changed?
Monster drink, school lunch, same spot at lunch. Monster drink, school lunch, same spot at lunch, same amount of sleep. Monster drink, school lunch, same amount of sleep, stomach ache.
Oh… Senku throws an elbow over his face and groans at the realization. His ass stupidly complained about his common stomach discomfort. It’s nothing new, really. It always happens right around lunch and into physics, but goes away on its own by dinner. It may be accompanied by dizzy moments and a quiet nausea that’s barely there but nonetheless lives in his chest, but again, nothing new. But today, just today Senku made the bad decision of telling people about it.
He didn’t make a big deal about it at all either. His exact words were “Ugh, my stomach hurts.” Nothing more and nothing less, and certainly not enough to warrant concern that gets him forcibly sent to the nurse’s office.
They didn’t even give him medication. Senku’s aware that there are laws and rules in place that prevent school staff from doing so, but they couldn’t bend the rules a little? They couldn’t even give him tums and sent him back to class instead of four saltine crackers, a cup of tap water, and hopes that he feels better after laying down for ten minutes?
Senku starts feeling irritable. It happened so suddenly too. One moment he’s sitting in class dreaming about his rocket CAD and the next the teacher is handing him a pass to the nurse’s office with no further explanation. His friends, he assumes, told his teacher to do that. Senku’s never been upset at his friends before, and he’s not starting to, but he does consider some small harmless payback methods for later.
At least it’s quiet, Senku closes his eyes. The only thing he may not miss about being in class is the noise: gum chewing, pencil scratches, chair squeaks, soft whispers, the click-clack of chalk against the board— it makes it hard to think sometimes. It’s almost dead silent in the infirmary discounting the soft whir of AC when it kicks on every once in a while. It’s nice, peaceful. He knows the nurses are walking and typing and talking outside the door, but the walls are nice and thick to the point he can tune them out with no difficulty at all. The curtain is drawn and there's a skinny vase with purple flowers with cut stems sitting in water. Senku could describe his arrangement as ‘cozy’.
“If I were to throw up, would the toilet be preferable to the trash can?”
“Uh…yes, if you can make it.”
Senku really should have appreciated his quiet time instead of internally complaining the entire time.
The door clicks open and he sees two pairs of feet peek through under the curtain. One of them, he instantly recognizes which confirms the identity of the voice he just heard.
The nurse gets the other kid settled in the bed on the other side of the curtain before opening Senku’s to check up on him.
Thank God, I can go back to class now.
“Hey sweetie, how we doing now?”
“Good, fantastic, I feel great!” All lies, Senku tries not to react to the harsh stabbing sensations in his belly as he frantically starts to get up and onto his feet.
“Really?” The nurse raises her eyebrows. “I’m glad, but that was quite fast…”
“Wait…Senku-chan? Is that you?” The kid asks from across the curtain.
“Yes, hi,” Senku responds before turning the conversation back to getting back to class. “I swear I’m fine.”
“I don’t know…you’re kind of shaking.” The nurse points out.
Senku grabs his wrist with his other hand. “I’m just antsy and excited to get back to class, that’s all.”
“You didn’t look so good when you walked in today, you sure you don’t want to stay here a little while longer?”
“And miss my education?” Senku asks. He doesn’t actually care about ‘education’, but he thinks he might cry if he has to sit in silence knowing that that kid is in the same room.
“Senku-chan, did you have the fish today?” The voice calls out from behind the curtain again.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because I did too, and my stomach is also hurting.”
Also hurting? Senku doesn’t even try to decode the assumption behind that statement, getting simultaneously annoyed that it was ten billion percent accurate.
“Huh…” The nurse considers his words. “I’ll go have a talk with the cafeteria staff.” She turns to Senku and while he knows that she’s not the devil l, he starts to imagine horns on her head. “Sweetie, I think it’s best you stay here for now.”
And the door closes as quickly as it opened. Now, there are two living breathing souls in the room.
Senku flings the curtain open, revealing the Mentalist in all his two toned hair, purple obsessed freak glory.
“What the fuck dude. I was this close to going back to class.” Senku pinches his fingers together and holds it up to Gen’s face.
Gen looks up at Senku with a disbelieving expression. “You know a lot of kids come to the nurse to … skip, right?”
“Yeah, and?”
Gen just looks Senku up and down.
“What,” Senku scoffs. “Are you skipping?”
Gen gasps. “No! Of course not! My stomach does actually hurt thankyouverymuch.” Gen clears his throat. “But I do have a biology quiz happening right now.”
Senku rolls his eyes. “What, you don’t remember levels of organization? Lock in bruh.”
“I’m trying!” Gen whines. “My grades are already screwed though, I put y equals a to the power of x instead of y equals a b to the power of x for my math test. I’m literally going to kill myself.”
Senku can’t help but commiserate. He knows Gen isn’t the best at math— he’s tutored him countless times in middle school to know that— but he knows Gen’s good at pattern recognition and definitely not stupid. But he’s heard about the math teacher for Gen’s grade and her notorious grading. He almost wants to offer a pat on the back, and a “well at least you know what you got wrong”.
But instead he says, “Haha, sucks to suck.”
Gen groans again and Senku pulls up the chair next to his bed to take a seat.
“We should, like, do that thing that twins do.” Gen starts.
“What?”
“Like, I’ll take your literature tests and you can take my STEM tests.”
“We look nothing alike, and we’re in different grades,” Senku says matter of factly.
Gen grumbles, “It was just a suggestion.”
Senku sighs. “How was your day?”
“Are you really that bored, Senku-chan? I thought you despised me for preventing you from getting back to dear old physics.”
“I am,” Senku affirms, leaning forward in his chair to rest his elbows on Gen’s bed. “But what else am I supposed to do? Consider it as revenge for taking away my education and peace and quiet.”
“You could lay in your own bed,” Gen begins. He rolls over and pokes Senku’s elbow half heartedly, jabbing it three times before giving up and resigning to his fate. “Stare at the ceilings, admire the flowers…”
“Oh, yeah. The flowers are nice.” Senku interrupts, moving one of his arms to play with the petals of the purple flowers by the table next to the head of Gen’s bed.
“Thanks, they were my suggestion.”
Senku pauses. “They actually took a student’s opinion on something?”
“Well, I’m here pretty often, it’d be kind of evil of them if they didn’t.” Gen’s smiling but there’s not much mirth in his expression.
Gen’s always been a little messed up, Senku remembers. He doesn’t mean it in a derogatory way or anything, but he knows Gen’s a medical anomaly. Situs inversus totalis, Senku recalls. The condition itself isn’t detrimental to health, but Gen had the misfortune of having a weaker immune system than most. Senku thinks back to the fear he felt when he once forcibly hooked Gen up to one of his medical inventions. He seriously thought he made an error when the heartbeat was coming from the right. The relief he felt when Gen revealed that’s just how he is was unmatched.
“Oh,” Senku says kind of lamely.
Gen offers a smile, but replaces it with his usual theatrics.
“But anyways, I’m good, how about you?” Senku nearly forgot what the original question was.
“Same.”
“Even with that stomach?”
Senku remembers he’s upset with Gen. “No, actually. I’m not fine because someone stopped me from returning to class.”
Gen sighs. “Please, Senku-chan. It doesn’t take a Mentalist to see you fighting for your life trying to keep your face straight right now.”
Senku grumbles. “I’m fine.”
Gen looks at him but doesn’t say anything. Silence envelops the room briefly. Gen lays on his back and Senku stares at the flowers.
“How’s third year treating you? You still busy as ever?” Gen breaks the silence. It's a question Senku gets a lot, but it feels different coming from Gen. It's not coming from an adult looking for a better way to say "how are you?". It's looking for reconnection; a little longing for the days they used to know.
“Okay. Most classes are easy. Most of my busyness is self induced.” Senku scratches his ear. “How’s your last year?”
“Fine as well,” Gen sits up in bed. “But the courses aren’t as easy for me I’m afraid.”
Senku raises a brow. “How so?”
“You don’t even know, I’m actually kind of having an awful day. There was a pop quiz in English today. I mean my English is fine but I wasn’t prepared, and I did eriously-say bad. Then, of course, food poisoning.” Gen slides his hands in his hair, messing it up. “I’m literally going to jump.”
Senku knows it’s a joke, but the image of Gen sitting alone in the nurse’s office overtakes his brain. It feels too real.
“Don’t.” Is all that comes out.
Gen’s hands stop and he slowly takes them out of his hair. “I wasn’t going to actually do it. It was a joke.”
Senku shrugs. ”Don’t joke about real things.” He tries to say it casually but he unwillingly quivers a little. Must be the food poisoning catching up to him. He feels his mouth start to fill with saliva.
Gen huffs and smooths back the hair he just made messy. “Yeah, well, less than a year left. Then…” He pauses dramatically, turning to Senku in the process.
“Freedom,” he whispers. Jazz hands accompany the statement.
Senku nods. He opens his mouth to say something but suddenly lurches forward in his seat. His abdomen pushes inward, and his hand flies to his mouth.
“Oh no, are you good?” Gen asks concerned.
Senku doesn’t answer and instead dashes to the bathroom. Thankfully he makes it, and his vomit makes it into the toilet successfully.
Puke is so weird and gross, he thinks as he flushes the toilet, watching the chunks swirl. But if he really wanted to break it down it’s just molecules, everything is just molecules. Maybe that’s why he ate dirt as a kid, because when everything is taken to a large enough scale it’s not so different from eating ramen.
He lightly splashes his face with water and finally catches a glimpse in the mirror.
Oh. It’s no wonder he got sent to the nurse’s, and it’s no wonder the nurse wouldn’t let him go back to class either.
His face is pale except for around his eyes which look like excessive blush was applied. He looks gaunt, and Senku can’t even believe the one in the mirror is himself. He really didn’t deviate from his normal schedule that much, did the fish seriously do all this?
Senku hobbles back into the room feeling empty. Instead of going back to Gen’s side, he goes to his bed to just lay down, each step feeling way way farther than they should have.
“You hadn’t thrown up yet?” Gen asks.
“No,” Senku croaks, surprised at his own voice. Does stomach acid mess up the vocal chords this much? “You?”
“Yeah, vomited before I came here.”
“Yikes.”
The AC kicks on and the boys fall quiet again. It’s the same peace Senku had before Gen walked in, but it might be even nicer with the soft sounds of breathing coming from the other side of the room. His mind wanders, back to when he and Gen used to see each other daily: outside the apartment meandering about, in the field by the river with Taiju and Yuzuirha with whatever new invention he has, by the bus stop exchanging jabs while also waiting for the screech of halting wheels and exhaust blowing their face. Senku realizes just how much he relies on hitching a car with someone to school now than actually riding the bus. Does Gen also still ride the bus, or has he moved on to bigger and better things, too?
The nurse comes back ten minutes into the silence. “The cafeteria checked their records and said they only sold two lunches containing fish today.”
Senku groans. “There’s no way.”
“Do we get compensated?” Gen pipes up.
The nurse chuckles. “I’m afraid not, sweetie.”
She slides the curtains to Senku’s side of the room open and steps in. “You still up to go back to class?”
“He threw up like ten minutes ago.” Gen calls out.
“Quit speaking for me—” Senku retorts.
“Aw, honey. Rest up, okay? Try eating some of those saltine crackers for me, okay?” And she leaves the room before Senku can get another word out.
Senku considers stomping over to Gen’s side again, but the nutrition getting pulled from his body hurt him more than he had expected. So he lays there pathetically, staring up at the not-yellow yellow ceiling once more, enveloped in quiet.
But that doesn’t last long because this time Gen’s the one opening the curtains. His crackers are in hand and he pulls up a chair next to Senku’s bed similar to how Senku did when he went over there.
“Well, Senku-chan? You heard her, let’s feast.”
Senku shoots Gen a side-eye. “Saltine crackers and tap water, real nice spread we have here.”
Gen takes one and pops it into his mouth. “They’re lowkey fire though.”
“That’s the hunger talking.”
“It’ll speak for you too, then.”
Senku hates how the logic sorta tracks. With great effort, he heaves himself back to a sitting up position and bites down on a cracker. It’s plain and salty. Simple, and exactly what he needs right now.
“Yum,” he says sarcastically.
“Oh stop it with that tone, I know you love them.” Gen takes another bite and hums appreciatively. “I’m gonna miss this.”
”You’re awfully sappy today.”
Gen slaps his arm lightly, Senku barely feels it. “I’m serious! The stress sucks but I know it only gets worse as we age, and the nurses here were so nice! Sure, they can’t do anything, but they’re sweet and that’s what really counts, don’t you think?”
Senku nibbles a cracker slowly, letting the corner get soggy before throwing it into his mouth. “Dunno, first time I’ve been to the nurse’s.”
“I see.”
Now it’s quiet plus chewing noises. Being around Gen makes Senku think a lot, not that he doesn’t already, but about different things. Usually he doesn’t shut up about science and whatnot. He’s almost tempted to yap about what’s happening to them as their bodies try to purge themselves of whatever was in the fish, but he doesn’t. He talks to Taiju and Yuzuriha about his projects, and it’s not like Gen won’t understand as much as them, but Gen’s just different. It annoys Senku that he can’t really figure out why, but maybe it’s because he’s older, more stressed. He can almost drive and doesn’t have time for childish nonsense. He’s going to college soon, or straight into the industry he already has a foot in. Maybe there are less fun things to talk about the older one gets.
“Do you have any audition results?”
Gen puts a finger up and swallows. “Kind of. Some callbacks, but I haven’t heard back from the callbacks. My agent keeps finding new things though, it’s exciting.”
“You forgoing college then?”
“I guess,” Gen laughs. “What kind of star is even educated, anyways?”
“Good point. Can’t believe you’re willingly becoming one of them.” Senku fakes a look of disgust.
“Just you wait, Senku-chan. You’ll be sorry when I’m driving around in my Ferrari and Lamborghini! And I’ll ask you what color your Bugatti is and you’ll be speechless! Muahahaha!”
Senku grins. “Sure. And when I find the cure to cancer or the way to escape this solar system, you’re going to be the last person to know because you’ll have forgotten how to read.”
“Last person?” Gen echoes. “Bold of you to assume I’ll even know. Given that I forgot how to read.”
Senku sips some of his water. “I’d tell you eventually.”
Gen stops chewing but doesn’t answer. He gets up wordlessly and walks through the curtains to get to his side of the room. The curtain closes behind him and Senku can’t see him. It can’t incite panic if Senku knows full well he’s right there a thin layer of fabric away, but he feels a tickle in his chest anyways. Food poisoning, he reasons.
“Ahem.” Gen clears his throat. “Ladies, gentlemen, and a certain leek.” His voice holds an authority to it. Senku’s lips curl.
“Live here for you tonight in Hirosue High School, I present.” He swings the curtains open dramatically. They flair and catch the air before drifting down elegantly, swinging back and forth till they stop— harmonic oscillator. “Asagiri Gen!”
Gen gives himself little claps and cheers.
“Thank you, thank you all. Really, it’s an honor to be here for you all tonight.” Gen sheepishly waves to the wall behind Senku.
“If you’re gonna do all this, at least look at me.” Senku snorts.
Gen smiles. “I need to look at all my audience members equally.”
“I’m the only one here, Mentalist. You can’t gaslight me into thinking otherwise.”
“Oh? But there’s a molecule here, and there!” Gen points to the air beside Senku. “They all deserve a little love, don’t you think?”
Senku grins. “So? I’m made of molecules too.”
“So what makes you any different?”
A pause.
And then Senku cackles.
Several magic tricks and card games later, both of them are feeling much better. The room isn’t quiet anymore: cards shuffle, silly remarks are made, and there’s laughter, so much laughter. Senku’s not sure what medical centers are usually like, but he assumes they’re quiet. He certainly guesses so because Gen looks like he’s having too much fun for if it was really common.
Just as Senku’s about to call Gen out in BS, the chimes of Big Ben interrupt them. Eight long notes.
“That was the bell,” Senku mutters.
“Yeah, are you going to go back to class?”
“Well…I feel better but…”
“But?”
“Last class of the day is P.E.”
Gen stifles a chortle, causing Senku to look up at him irritatedly. “What?”
“It’s just… that’s so like you!” Gen hides his laugh behind his palm.
Senku grumbles. Before he can properly declare his decision on staying in the nurse’s till school ends, Gen takes his elbow and drags him off the bed.
“Come on, I’ll walk you.”
Senku drags his feet the entire way. The squeaks of shoes against the gym floor are too loud and sudden, he’d much rather listen to Gen’s gentler voice guiding him through a magic trick.
“Why are you acting like you’re heavier than before you threw up?” Gen chastises.
“Maybe I am. Because, you know, science.”
“I may not be a freaky nerd like you, but even I know that’s BS,” Gen hums.
“Oh, speaking of which, BS!”
Gen looks at him confused.
“You did not have one king.”
It’s Gen’s turn to laugh.
They make it to the gym, eventually. Senku waves bye to Gen.
“You’re going back to class?” Senku asks. It’s time for them to go their separate ways. Senku can’t help but linger in front of the gym door just a little longer though.
Gen shrugs. “Who knows, I might wander a bit.”
Senku nods. “Well, see you when I see you.”
Gen nods back. “Let’s hang out whenever you’re not so busy.”
They nod one last time before Senku opens the gym door. His first thought is that it’s loud. He spots his friends in the corner and instinctively starts to go towards them before remembering he needs to check in with the teacher first.
Let’s hang out whenever you’re not so busy. An invitation to hang out, Senku fights the smile growing on his face. The teacher catches his eye and beckons him over.
And a basketball collides with his temple.
The gymnasium door swings open and hits the wall next to it, causing Gen to jump out of his skin.
“I might have gotten a concussion, Mentalist. Back to the Nurse’s office we go.”