Chapter Text
Nobody in the science kingdom would ever say Ishigami Senku was an emotional person, but it wasn’t like he didn’t know how it worked. External stimuli meets internal processing and conditioning, yada yada. Sure, Asagiri Gen would have much more to say on the matter, but this isn’t about him.
So in the rare quiet of the night, holed up in his lab with only the hum of idle machinery to keep him company, Senku can’t figure out why his mind, for all its unfathomable worth, keeps drifting back to the man with the heterochromatic hair.
Senku sighs and sets down his pencil, abandoning the blueprints for now. He knew better than to try and stop his thoughts from wandering where it wanted to against his own will.
When was the last time he saw Gen? Ever since they came back from the moon, it had been a steady uphill battle for restoring humanity to what it once was, if not better with Whyman by their side. The exponential growth in population meant nations forming, leaders appointed, international relationships established. It was a hard-earned fact that the science kingdom deserved its seat at the head of the table, yet it still needed a voice for itself. And it was to no one’s surprise when Gen stepped up to the role, albeit rather begrudgingly (his complaints of wanting a nice, long onsen holiday were promptly ignored with a firm slap on the back from Kaseki).
And the mentalist was off, whisked away by Ryusui and Ukyo to tour the established factions, comforted by the exotic cuisines whipped up by Francois and barrelled by diplomatic affairs and Ryusui’s wild desires to re-establish himself as a tycoon. In their occasional and noisy conference calls Senku could notice signs of exhaustion in Gen beginning to show even in the still primitive LCD screens. He acted fine, the attempts to sneak in a break in-between his travels nothing out of the ordinary, yet in the moments Gen didn’t speak, the scientist’s ever perceptive ruby eyes picked up the drop in the corners of his mouth and the tired glaze settling over his unfocused gaze.
Something about that felt annoying.
One year, three months, and fifteen days. 679680 minutes. Not that he was counting.
-
Senku could have easily catalogued it as just a simple night of drifting thoughts had Gen not called him directly the next day.
The landline in his lab rang. It wasn’t usual; Taiju and Chrome came and went as they pleased and Kaseki practically lived amongst his many creations here. Senku pauses Sai’s newest computer simulation and picks up the phone. “Ishigami Senku.”
“He-llo, Senku-chan!”
Senku grunts, last night’s pondering drifting slowly to the forefront of his mind. “Mentalist.”
He could practically hear the man’s superficial pout. “Oh dear, you don’t seem happy to hear me! Were you expecting a call from someone else? A lucky maiden, perhaps?”
That deeply irked Senku for some reason. “Hah? Don’t be absurd. I have no time for that.”
The mentalist hums. “Hmm, if you say so. You never know ~” With only a static crackle on the other end as a response, Gen chuckles. “Anyways, Ryusui wanted to ask about the new plane prototype you guys have been whipping up. It’s obvious he wants a luxury private jet. Think you can do it?”
Senku picks at his other ear. “It’s just a regular old plane with a bunch of useless amenities. I could make those in my sleep.”
“Well, if that’s the case, make sure you add lots~ of those amenities, because-” Gen’s sing-song voice drops, “-I’ll be personally assessing your craftsmanship.”
Senku hopes the long-distance call could hide the hitch in his breath. “You’re coming back?”
Gen seemed to not notice. “Mhm, we’ve managed to establish firm relations with leaders and set up international treaties for production. Chelsea’s going to take over with city planning and plots. Oh, how I miss Japan’s onsens!”
“Good work, mentalist.” Senku mentally goes over the hot spring spots not far from base. “The plane’s already done. It would only take one week to change the interior and stock for a long return flight. But I can ask the crafting team to-”
“You won’t have to worry about the time just yet. Ryusui needs me as a negotiator for the Nanami Group meetings in the Americas. We won’t be back for, say, another month.”
A pause. “Oh.”
The other end of the line went strangely quiet for a moment too. “Well, Senku-chan, just send the plane over whenever it’s ready. Francois will be emailing you a loooong list of things Ryusui wants for the plane. I hope you don’t disappoint me~” And with that, the magician was gone once again.
Senku sets down the receiver, his mood worse than ever.
-
The reality was it took 4 months until Francois gave the OK to send the brand-new jet over to California. Gen hadn’t called Senku’s landline once in that time. Well, naturally he wouldn’t need to, Senku mulls, bent over the array of chemicals spread out on the lab counter, lesser communications could be easily done over email, and diplomatic affairs were of zero interest to him.
Yet every day he’d glance out the window in his lab overlooking the hangar and the smaller, polished jet would stick out like a sore thumb amongst the larger commercial planes, the lilt in Gen’s voice when he hung up still ringing in Senku’s ears louder than the echo of a thunderclap. It pissed him off to no end.
By the fifth week he closed the blinds.
He’d still get regular updates from Francois in those months though, notifications of new maritime trade routes set up and Ryusui’s new preposterous requests. Seriously, a portable jacuzzi?
Once, to his surprise, Ryusui and Chelsea called him together to discuss diamond mining in Canada (Ryusui never mentioned it outright, but Senku gathered it was for a wedding ring), and he’d get their throwaway mentions of Gen here and there mixed in with the practical federal territory issues they had to tackle first.
In Senku’s defence, he wasn’t that upset over it. Gen was a busy person with a crucial role, himself no less, but there was always that nagging sense in the back of his mind that he knew would just annoy him to no end if he decided to poke at it.
It wasn’t like him to set aside a problem he couldn’t solve, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t have the answer to it soon anyways.
So by the third month he’d buried himself in work with abstract equations and the occasional explosions of failed experiments. The voices simply had no place to be.
-
Dreams, as Senku would very quickly come to learn, could also present itself as slideshows of memories locked behind walls of fronts he’d put up in instances when he quietly learned vulnerability was becoming a burden.
A woman’s voice singing a lullaby. Swaddled in a blanket of maternal love threaded through cotton. Byakuya’s hearty laughter, hand holding a box with a crumpled ribbon, each wrinkle a proof of the manifold of attempts it took just to get the knots right. Feeling wonder bloom inside of him watching his first ever science documentary.
And then he was older, yet none the wiser, walking down school corridors as whispers of his unkempt hair and lonely afternoons spent in the library spread and latched themselves onto his shadow. Scarfing down sandwiches as fast as a 9 year-old’s mouth would allow just so he could lock himself in the school science labs for the remainder of lunch. A rare tear blurring fresh paint on a crudely made Mother’s Day card with no one to give it to.
Despair delivered on the tip of a spear, mere inches away from his chest. Crimson blood, coursing through him mere moments ago, staining the floorboards dark. A green glow flashing behind his eyelids, doubt eating at away at him with the possibility that he may never open his eyes again.
All lived and true moments, yet nothing short of a nightmare.
But something changes. Taiju’s booming voice filling up empty rooms, Yuzuriha’s polite self-introduction, a trio of cheers echoing across the field as their knitted figurines drift forever across space. The warmth spreading in his heart as he realises they’re even happier about it than he is.
A layout of primitive huts so familiar he could navigate them with his eyes closed, the comforting and bittersweet scent of dried clay and seawater keeping him company through dark nights lit only by a singular candle.
Senku, heart drumming loud and burning to the rhythm of a symphony of starlight, tearing his longing gaze away from the rudimentary telescope, finding the same wonder reflected in Gen’s eyes, then realising the mentalist had never actually been staring at the universe at all.
The dream immediately loses its structure and comes crashing down on him, waves upon waves of small moments he had never gave a second thought to. The sensation of shoulders brushing, sitting by campfires with thighs a little too close, long talks into the night about nothing, the empty seat next to Senku always saved for him. Instances that felt as natural as breathing, all gently tucked away into his own Pandora’s box yet to be opened.
-
Senku woke up with a weird sensation in the pits of his stomach writhing like a squashed bug that refused to die. For all he was, Senku was still human. Dreams were a completely normal part of REM sleep, a biological occurrence with no fault nor bias. It was even believed they were a window into the subconscious mind. Now he could easily ring up someone good at psychology and have them discuss what exactly that dream meant, but…
Senku sits up from the sofa where he’d so unceremoniously passed out on. Someone good at psychology, huh.
The person who would be best for the job is the last person he wants to talk to about. Go figure.
Like the rest of his emotions, Senku files it away in the ‘Do not engage’ folder, and promptly ignores his own sour mood and the light blush beginning to fade from the tips of his ears.
And if for a moment Senku thought he’d have the answer to his strange temperament once he’d received the news of their return, he would be a hundred billion percent wrong.
Because he found himself checking and double-checking Francois’ last email detailing their departure time from America, running the math for their estimated flight time in his head, on paper, on the computer, looking up the news, anything. They were 4 hours late from when they were supposed to land. There was no way he did the math wrong. Senku even thought about contacting Xeno, but the image of Stanley sneering was enough for him to put the phone down. He paced the lab, even peeking out the blinds he’d kept shut for over 3 months. Nothing. The little eyesore of a plane was nowhere to be seen.
He felt himself growing more agitated by the minute. Flashes of last night’s dream danced across his thoughts, and he tried not to associate them with his ever worsening impatience. Of course he’d be worried. Anything could happen. His satellites and computers weren’t advanced enough yet for weather predictions. Should he have prioritised it instead now that air travel was beginning to bloom? And even with Ryusui’s navigational skills, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t run into freak weather accidents. And if-
There was an all too familiar whirring outside his window. Senku practically tripped over himself running to throw open the blinds. He’d made sure there weren’t any other flights coming into this port today.
Gen was back.