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Feb 16

BETWEEN THE MARGINS || s. ishigami

Happy late valentines!! I got, once again, carried away while writing this one. but i think its a really cute piece! I like this one a lot... with that being said it is very lighted edited. but definitely still has some mistakes so don't look too hard lol.

cws: slight manga spoilers (i don't go into too much detail but id rather be safe than sorry), mutual pining, love confessions, first kiss, post- moon mission, established feelings, emotional vulnerability, journal entries as love confessions, its really just tooth rotting fluff. nsfw warning for one scene! (male masturbation), let me know if i missed anything!

if you’re having a hard time reading the entries i’ve made a reblog with them as plain text <3

8.3k words (including the entries)

Senku is not sure when this habit of his started.

If asked, he would attribute it to something measurable. A shift in atmospheric pressure. A disruption in routine. A deviation from expected behavioral patterns. Something explainable. Something scientific. He would construct a neat answer, polished and defensible, and present it as fact.

But even he knows that would be a poorly constructed deflection—an elegant lie disguised as logic, designed to keep him from confronting a truth he has no desire to analyze.

For a time, he convinces himself he is sick.

The erratic flutter beneath his ribs must be symptomatic of something. An unidentified condition. Stress-induced, perhaps. Hormonal, potentially. A temporary irregularity in his otherwise predictable system. He approaches it the only way he knows how—through observation, documentation, and replication.

He records the symptoms the way he would any other phenomenon.

Spiked heart rate in your presence; Elevated skin temperature in your presence; Noticeable perspiration of the palms when proximity increases above an acceptable threshold; A subtle tightening in his chest when you laugh.

Individually, the symptoms are manageable. Together, they are disruptive.

He attempts to recreate the reactions under controlled circumstances. He stands near you without speaking, pretending to read while acutely aware of the space between your shoulders and his arm. He watches you from across the room, monitoring whether distance lessens the effect. He engages you in conversation while carefully regulating the cadence of his breathing—only to find it falter the moment you smile at him.

The results remain consistent.

The variable is always you.

He entertains the possibility of illness only because illness implies remedy. Illness suggests there is something to fix, something to neutralize, something to cure. It would be far easier to categorize this feeling as a flaw in his biology than to acknowledge what it truly is.

But Senku is not foolish.

He knows data does not lie. He knows patterns, once established, rarely dissolve without cause. And if this were truly an ailment—if this strange, steady ache were something pathological—

then the cause would be you.

And removing the cause would mean removing you.

That, above all else, is unacceptable.

And for all his talk of efficiency and elimination of unnecessary variables, Senku finds he has no interest whatsoever in being cured.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Senku is always thinking. Subconsciously or not, there are always millions of things threading through his mind—calculations layering over one another like transparent sheets of glass, each etched with its own formula, its own projection, its own inevitable conclusion. Thought is not an action for him. It is a state of being. A constant combustion that never quite burns out, even when the rest of the world does.

And he has ample time to tend to it.

3,700 years to be exact.

That is how long he remains petrified—conscious within stone, suspended in a world that has moved on without him. A vacuum pressing inward. No light. No sound. No variables beyond the quiet, oppressive certainty of his own awareness. The darkness is not empty. It presses inward. It demands structure.

So he gives it structure.

He divides himself.

One half of his mind becomes a metronome, merciless and exact. He rebuilds time from memory, calibrating it against the phantom rhythm of a heartbeat he can no longer feel. Sixty seconds make a minute. Sixty minutes make an hour. Twenty-four hours make a day. He tracks leap years. He adjusts for orbital drift. Corrects for possible margin of error with ruthless precision. Years accumulate like sediment. He does not lose count. Not once. He refuses.

The other half of his mind works tirelessly in the dark. He drafts structural blueprints for a civilization that does not yet exist. He reconstructs chemical formulas until they feel engraved into whatever part of him still resembles flesh. He outlines roadmaps toward electricity, toward antibiotics, toward engines and glass and steel. Humanity will rise again. Science will return. He will make sure of it.

This is the inevitable.

And yet there are moments, infinitesimal and infuriating, where the working half of his mind falters—not enough to disrupt the count, never enough to fracture the clock of his mind—but enough to blur the edges of his perfect designs.

It never begins dramatically.

There is no sudden collapse of reason, no catastrophic breach in his mental architecture. It is subtler than that. More insidious.

He will be reconstructing a steam engine from memory, mapping piston motion in exacting detail, when an image intrudes without permission: you at twelve years old, sprawled out like a starfish on the floor of his room, as you watched him ramble about rocket propulsion with the kind of intensity most children reserved for cartoons or videogames. You had not understood half of it. He had known that. And yet you listened as if every word mattered.

He corrects himself immediately.

Focus.

He needs to focus.

Year eight hundred and twenty-one.

He resumes the schematic, recalculating pressure tolerances, only for another memory to surface—older this time. You in safety goggles far too large for your face, frowning at a beaker as if you could intimidate the solution into behaving. You had insisted on measuring the reagents yourself. You had gotten the ratio wrong. . He had clicked his tongue in mock irritation, but he remembers now—too clearly—the way your shoulders relaxed when he wordlessly adjusted your grip instead of taking the experiment from you.

It is inefficient to dwell on this.

The brain, deprived of stimulus, seeks familiarity. It recycles emotionally charged data. This is basic neurobiology. You are simply high-salience memory.

Nothing more.

The count continues.

Year one thousand, three hundred and six.

The darkness does not change. His plans grow sharper. His projections more intricate. He begins drafting theoretical power grids in his head, mapping potential cities.

And then, without warning, summer intrudes.

Heat clings to his skin in recollection alone. The distant melody coming from the stalls. The low murmur of a festival crowd drifting between paper lanterns. He had not intended to attend. He rarely intended to attend anything that did not involve measurable output. But Taiju had insisted. And perhaps—though he would never phrase it so plainly—when he overheard that you planned to come along, his resistance may have weakened by a margin so small it could not be charted, a decimal shift too insignificant to justify scrutiny and yet decisive all the same.

He finds himself staring at your outfit.

You are wearing a yukata. Just like him. Just like Taiju. Just like Yuzuriha. Just like nearly every other person at this festival. It is standard attire afterall.

yet his gaze keeps returning to yours.

Not the pattern. He does not catalogue florals or geometry; he does not commit the design to memory in any structured way. But the obi is red. A deep, saturated red that cuts cleanly against the rest of the fabric, cinched neatly at your waist in a bow that sits just slightly off-center, as if tied in haste or by hands distracted by conversation.

He has half a mind to straighten it for you.

The impulse is immediate and irrational. There is no structural flaw in the knot. No imminent risk of unraveling. It is purely aesthetic, a minor asymmetry that should not concern him.

Red suits you, he thinks.

The observation is instantaneous, unfiltered.

He does not know why he thinks it. He only knows it is correct.

You turn slightly to say something to Taiju, and lantern light slides along the curve of your cheek, catching in your eyes before dissolving into shadow. The fabric shifts with the motion, the red bow swaying gently at your back. He tracks the movement with quiet precision, noting the way the sleeve dips, the way the sash pulls faintly against the fold of cloth.

His brain, traitor that it is, supplies explanations. Pigment contrast enhances visibility under warm lighting. Cultural textile construction favors structured silhouettes. The tensile strength of the sash knot appears sufficient to withstand prolonged wear.

None of these analyses account for the simple, inescapable fact that he cannot quite look away.

He follows you from stall to stall.

Not consciously. Not with intent. He just moves when you move, stops when you stop, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to trail half a step behind you. The thought that he was born to follow where you lead surfaces uninvited.

He almost gags on it.

Sentimental nonsense.

Still, he trails behind you through candied apple vendors and goldfish scooping booths and shooting games you insist you would have won if not for the “restrictive nature” of your outfit. He points out that projectile accuracy is not hindered by sleeve length. You glare at him. He hands you the oversized plush prize anyway.

You keep walking after that, weaving through the lantern-lit paths, careful to avoid the more rambunctious kids sprinting past with no visible parental supervision. You tug him out of the way once when two nearly barrel into him, muttering something about self-preservation.

He lets you.

You stop at a takoyaki stand to share a tray.

You hold it between the two of you, steam rising in thin, wavering curls. You blow gently on one before taking a careful bite, cheeks puffed from the heat, eyes squeezing shut for half a second as you try not to burn your tongue.

He watches.

The attention he allocates to you in that moment is excessive. Inefficient. He is aware of it in the same way he is aware of gravity—constant, unavoidable.

You look happy.

Uncomplicatedly, radiantly happy.

He thinks—briefly, dangerously—that he would like to be the cause of that expression more often.

He would like to be the reason your smile curves that way for—

He stops the thought.

—for eternity.

Ridiculous.

The idea is immediately crossed out in his mind, struck through with the same ruthless precision he applies to faulty calculations. Eternity is a meaningless exaggeration. An emotionally charged hyperbole.

You catch him staring and nudge his shoulder. “What’s got you so distracted?”

He doesn’t have it in him to be honest.

“It’s nothing. Just making sure you don’t burn yourself, idiot.”

You roll your eyes and pop another into your mouth anyway.

An elderly couple passes behind you then, moving slowly through the crowd. He barely registers them at first. There are dozens like them scattered through the festival—hands clasped, steps measured, eyes soft with memory.

“Oh look, dear,” the woman says as they draw level with you, her voice low but clear, “such young love.”

Her tone is solemn. Wistful. As though she is not looking at you, but through you—into something long past.

The man beside her hums in agreement.

That is all Senku hears.

Young love.

He almost scoffs.

An illogical assumption based on proximity and age demographics. A common romantic projection. Statistically unsound.

And yet—

His gaze shifts to you.

You have gone still, just slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Your fingers tighten imperceptibly around the tray. You do not laugh it off. You do not correct them.

You glance at him.

Not teasing.

Not embarrassed.

Waiting.

For what, he cannot determine.

He feels something unfamiliar and sharp settle beneath his ribs, a quiet, destabilizing pressure that does not correspond to any measurable variable. His pulse stutters once—traitorous, undeniable.

He opens his mouth.

Closes it.

The moment stretches, thin as glass.

Then you look away first, cheeks warmer than the steam rising between you, and the world rushes back in all at once.

You clear your throat and mutter something about finding Taiju and Yuzuriha before the fireworks start. He nods as if he hadn’t momentarily forgotten the existence of every other variable in the vicinity.

You find them near the edge of the clearing where the sky opens wide and unobstructed. Taiju is already waving you over with unnecessary volume. Yuzuriha smiles knowingly, though at what, he cannot determine.

The four of you settle into place as the first firework splits the sky open.

Light fractures overhead in violent color—gold bleeding into blue, blue into white. The crowd gasps in collective awe. Children point upward. Others cheer.

He does not look at the sky.

He looks at you.

Light spills across your face in shifting color. Crimson. Violet. Silver. Your eyes catch each burst and hold it for a fraction of a second before it disappears. For a moment you look entirely unguarded, chin tilted up, lips parted slightly in quiet awe.

And then something falters.

Your hands curl into fists at your sides.

Uncurl.

Curl again.

You glance at him.

Look away.

Glance back.

It is subtle. A fluctuation most would miss. But he has always been good at spotting irregularities in otherwise stable systems.

Your breathing is a fraction too shallow.

Your shoulders rise, then settle, as if you are bracing for something.

He wishes—absurdly, irrationally—that he could look inside your mind. Disassemble the hesitation. Lay it out like components on a workbench. Identify the source of fluctuation and neutralize it.

Another explosion blooms overhead, scattering light across your features. You look at him again, and this time you do not look away immediately.

There is something gathering behind your eyes. Hesitation. Resolve. Fear.

His pulse stutters once, sharp and sudden.

He understands.

The variables align too neatly. Proximity. Atmosphere. Emotional elevation induced by spectacle. The human tendency toward impulsive declarations under transient beauty.

You are debating something.

The realization sits heavy in his chest.

For one reckless second, he imagines leaning in. Closing the gap. Letting instinct override calculation.

The thought destabilizes him.

He remains still.

He tells himself it is restraint. That action without certainty is illogical. That assumptions are dangerous.

Your fingers twitch at your side as if testing courage.

The sky erupts again, louder this time. Gold rains downward in glittering arcs.

And you exhale.

It is subtle, but he sees it. The tension drains from your shoulders. Your hands relax. Your gaze lifts back to the sky instead of lingering on him.

There is something different in your expression now.

Disappointment.

You hide it well, but he sees it.

He turns his eyes upward at last, pretending to analyze trajectory and combustion ratios while something quieter and far less measurable settles beneath his ribs.

He wonders, with a clarity that unsettles him, what would have happened if he had moved.

The question lingers long after the sky goes dark.

…

….

…..

……

…….

……..

………

……….

Damnit.

He needs to focus.

He does not have the luxury of spiraling into infinite hypothetical branches. There is no value in replaying a variable that can no longer be altered. Regret is inefficient. Speculation is indulgent.

He needs to keep counting.

Seconds. Minutes. Hours.

He clings to the numbers the way a drowning man clings to driftwood.

But beneath the count, beneath the immaculate architecture of his thoughts, there is a steady undercurrent he cannot eliminate. You slip into the margins of his mind the way ink bleeds through thin paper—subtle at first, then undeniable.

He tells himself that time erodes all things.

He has three thousand, seven hundred years to prove it.

Time erodes mountains.

It erodes cities.

It erodes civilizations.

It does not erode you.

And what unsettles him most—what truly begins to resemble something dangerously close to madness—is not that he remembers you.

It is that he does not want to forget.

Even as he curses the distraction.

Even as it pulls at the edges of his grand design.

Even as it proves, again and again, that no matter how ruthlessly he governs his mind—

his heart has found a way to exist within it,

uninvited, unquantitable,

and utterly unyielding.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Senku spends the first six months after he awakens in isolation. He gathers food. Tests what is safe, what is not. Builds a fire. Finds an ethical source of leather. Makes tools from stone.

He moves forward the only way he knows how—step by step, process by process, rebuilding the foundation of civilization from nothing but memory and stubbornness.

It should be enough.

Progress is measurable. Tangible. Every improvement is a variable conquered.

And yet when the work is done for the day—when the fire burns low and the air cools and the forest settles into its quiet chorus—he is left with nothing but his own mind to keep him company.

Unless one counts the monkeys.

A small cluster of them lingers at the edges of his clearing more often than not. They watch him with open curiosity, tilting their heads when he sparks flame or chips stone into shape. He has half a mind to start lecturing them about evolutionary divergence and opposable thumbs.

They blink at him.

They offer no meaningful discourse.

They do, however, confirm that he is not entirely alone.

That fact does not comfort him nearly as much as it should.

Because presence is not the same as understanding.

So he makes a journal.

A record. A preservation of time. If civilization is to be rebuilt, then documentation must exist. Observations catalogued. Experiments logged. Progress measured in ink instead of memory alone. He presses plant fibers into workable sheets, binds them together, grinds charcoal for something passable as ink. It is crude, but it serves its purpose.

And just like in the old world, he cannot stop himself from writing about you.

At first it is incidental. A name in the margin. A thought that slips between calculations. But there is no one here to notice. No one to raise a brow or tease him for lingering too long on details unrelated to science. So he stops pretending it is accidental. He writes about you plainly. Earnestly.

Even after he revives Taiju, he does not let up. The year they spend chasing the correct ratio for the revival fluid is relentless—humid summer air that refuses to cool, a winter that seeps into bone, endless repetition of trial and error. Every day ends the same way. He records their findings with sharp precision. Notes improvements. Adjusts calculations. And then, without hesitation, he flips to the back pages.

There, the structure dissolves.

The handwriting tightens until the letters crowd one another, as if afraid of being left alone on the page. Sentences lose their clean edges. They run on. They double back. They contradict themselves. Hypotheticals branch like fractures in glass, each one splintering into another, and another, and another, until the page looks less like documentation and more like obsession. If anyone were to read it, they would call it the ramblings of a madman.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

In the years he’s spent rebuilding civilization, he’s done a lot of things that, in retrospect, border on reckless:

He’s stood too close to unstable reactions. Taken on risks that could have very easily ended him. Volunteered for tasks that didn’t require his personal involvement. If he put himself in danger, it was because he was the most capable of handling it.

That’s what he told himself.

But even he knows thats a lie.

Sometimes it wasn’t about capability. Sometimes it was about proximity. About making sure you weren’t the one standing there instead.

He doesn’t unpack that thought. There’s no time for it. The Kingdom of Science expands, project after project, year after year, and the feeling gets buried under progress.

Then Ryusui Nanami is revived.

Ryusui is transparent about his desires. He knows what he wants; oil, the sky, the sea, everything. And he will stop at nothing to get it. And when he decides he’s interested in you, he doesn’t hide it. Compliments are given openly. Attention is direct. He stands close like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Senku knows it shouldn’t matter.

You’re not his. You’re not something to claim or guard. You can talk to whoever you want. Laugh with whoever you want. Choose whoever you want.

He believes that.

So the irritation catches him off guard.

It’s small at first. A clipped response when Ryusui interrupts. A tendency to insert himself into conversations he’d normally ignore. He starts standing closer without thinking about it. Paying more attention than necessary.

It still leaves a bitter raste in his mouth.

He notices things he shouldn’t. The way Ryusui looks at you. The way you laugh at something he says.

He doesn’t like it.

And yet, when Ryusui’s hand settles briefly at the small of your back to guide you through a narrow space on the ship, Senku feels heat crawl up the back of his neck.

Physiological response: involuntary.

He exhales slowly through his nose and forces his attention back to the blueprint in his hands. The lines blur for half a second before snapping back into focus. He recalculates the sail measurements twice just to steady his thoughts.

It should not matter.

But it does.

Treasure Island makes it worse.

When your name is brought up as a candidate for infiltration, he keeps his face neutral. The plan requires someone adaptable. Observant. Calm under pressure. You meet all the criteria. On paper, the probability of mission success increases by ~18.6% with your involvement. He knows better than to underestimate you—but because the margin for error is thin.

He wants to object.

But there’s no way to do that without revealing why.

So he doesn’t.

Months later, they find themselves setting sail and arriving in America. The ocean stretches endlessly, a restless expanse that mirrors the chaos of the missions awaiting them.

“Sniper spotted!” Ryusui shouts.

Chaos erupts instantly. Boots scrape against the wooden deck. The wind whips past the rigging. Screams collide with the creak of the sails, a discordant symphony of panic. Every sense is on edge.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Senku throws back at you, voice sharp but controlled, though he’s one to talk, considering that everything he’s doing in that exact moment is—objectively—stupid. He darts toward the back of the ship, calculations running a mile a minute in his head, heart beating an impossible rhythm against the rising tide of adrenaline.

The shot comes faster than any analysis could account for. A violent crack, sudden and precise. Pain blossoms in his chest, hot and unrelenting, and the world tilts beneath him. The deck seems to slow, every creak exaggerated, every cry amplified. You see it before anyone else can process—just one shot—but the danger crystallizes immediately. Instinct overtakes thought. You and Taiju sprint across the deck, feet slapping against wood, voices cracking as you scream his name. Heart hammering in your ears, you round the corner where he ran, and there he is—Senku, coughing up blood, slumped against the floorboards, eyes liddled and unfocused, chest rising and falling in ragged gasps.

Hands grab him almost simultaneously, lifting him carefully, guiding him down the narrow stairwell to the infirmary on the lower deck. The smell of salt and gunpowder mixes with copper in the air, a metallic tang that makes your stomach twist. Everything in your head is hazy. The shouts of the crew, the chaos outside, the wind whipping through the sails—they all fade to white noise. All that exists is him, bleeding out beneath your hands, and the stark, unbearable helplessness of the moment. You can’t think straight. You can’t breathe.

Senku lies on the infirmary bed, shirt soaked through, the edges of the wound dark and grim. He can barely form words; if you can call it talking at all, it’s more like huffing and pnting out broken syllables.

Francois leans close enough, listening and translating. Every inhale is a struggle, every exhale a shuddered effort to maintain consciousness.

“Heh, heh, heh. i’m not dead yet, dumbass.” Francios translates, but the words mean nothing to you.

Francois works with methodical precision, tending the immediate damage, applying pressure, stabilizing. “He’s difficult to understand,” Francois says quietly. “But he says…the bullet went clean through.” Senku’s chest rises and falls unevenly beneath your hands. His breathing is shallow, strained, but steady enough.

Somewhere between all the panicing and tears Luna comes to her senses and takes over with her limited knowledge. You dont have it in you to argue.

Through half-lidded eyes and pain that claws through his chest, Senku registers everything. The tremor in your breathing. The way your hands won’t stop shaking. The tears you try and fail to blink away.

Deranged doesn’t even begin to describe him.

Because even now, even with a hole torn clean through his chest, there’s something almost satisfied in the way his gaze drifts toward you.

Call him insane. Reckless. Pathologically detached.

But a small, twisted part of him is almost happy this happened.

Beneath the haze of blood loss and fading consciousness, there’s a flicker of awareness that locks onto you. And if he were capable of forming the thought clearly, if the world wasn’t tilting sideways—

He’d do it again.

He’d take the bullet again.

Just to see you look at him like that.

God, he really is screwed, isn’t he?

His vision blurs at the edges, darkness creeping in, but even as consciousness slips, his eyes search for you one more time. Just to confirm you’re still there.

You are.

And that’s enough to make the pain almost worth it.

A few days later, you find yourself sitting on a stool next to his bed, head tilted down, fingers twisting in your lap, eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Neither of you speaks. You don’t have to. Just being here—watching the rise and fall of his chest, hearing the uneven cadence of his breathing—is enough

“You know,” he says after a long pause, voice still rough, “Luna asked me to be her boyfriend.”He stares at the ceiling, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly. He isn’t sure why he said it. A small part of him hopes youd be jealous, but its not like that really matters.

You look at him, tilting your head slightly, unsure why he’s saying it. The words feel half like a confession, half like a challenge, but you can’t read the rest. “Did you accept?” you ask softly.

He hesitates, then lets the words out almost carelessly, “She could be valuable.”

“Hmm…”

A pregnant pause settles between you.

“Would you be upset if I did?” he asks, tone almost idle.

You don’t answer right away.

“Does it matter what I feel?”

The question doesn’t come out sharp. It isn’t angry. If anything, it’s quiet.

His jaw tightens slightly, a subtle shift you might’ve missed if you weren’t watching him so closely these days. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling, like the cracks in the wood are infinitely more manageable than your expression.

Yes… is what he wants to say.

But once again, his tongue fails him.

He exhales slowly, careful, like even that costs him something. “It’s a strategic allian—” he begins.

“That wasn’t my question,” you cut him off.

Another pause. Longer this time.

He hates this part—the part where logic doesn’t supply the answer fast enough. Where there’s no formula to default to. No calculation that cleanly replaces what he’s actually trying to ask.

Would you care? Would it bother you? Would you look at him differently?

He shifts slightly in the bed, a flicker of discomfort crossing his features—whether from the wound or the conversation, it’s hard to tell. “I’m asking if it would complicate things,” he mutters.

“For who?” you ask.

That’s what finally makes him look at you.

Not a glance. Not the distracted, sideways acknowledgment he’s been giving you all week. He actually turns his head—slow because it still hurts—eyes finding yours with something sharper than irritation.

The question corners him.

Because he could say the mission. He could say the crew. He could say efficiency, alliances, logistics.

But that’s not what he meant.

His fingers twitch faintly against the blanket. “You,” he says at last, and it comes out rougher than he intended—not from the wound, but from the admission. “Would it complicate things for you?”

The air shifts, subtle but undeniable.

You study him for a long moment, searching his face for the joke, the calculation, the safety net. There isn’t one. He looks… exposed. Annoyed about it, but exposed all the same.

“You’re the one who said she’d be valuable,” you remind him quietly.

“And?” His brows knit slightly, impatience creeping in—but it’s not directed at you. It’s at himself. At how badly he’s handling this.

“And if that’s all she is,” you continue, “then it shouldn’t matter what I feel.”

He drags a hand weakly over his face, wincing halfway through the motion. “It’s not that simple.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Then explain it.”

He hates this. Hates the way his mind, so quick with answers in every other scenario, stalls completely here. There’s no clean equation for this. No experiment he can run to guarantee a controlled outcome.

Would it hurt you? Do you want it to?

“I’m just asking,” he sighs.

“That’s vague.”

He clicks his tongue softly. “You always need exact parameters?”

“When it comes to you? Yeah.”

That almost pulls a smile out of him.

There it is again—that thin line you’re both standing on. One more step and it becomes something real. Something named.

He could say it.

He could say I don’t want you to want anyone else. He could say I don’t want to want anyone else. He could say It matters what you feel.

Instead, he swallows it down.

“Forget it,” he says, defaulting back to safety. “It’s hypothetical.”

You nod slowly, but you don’t look convinced.

Neither of you finish the conversation.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Now they’re on the run with Xeno bound and guarded below deck, the ocean stretching endlessly in every direction as Stanley and his crew hunt them across open water. One hundred days at sea. One hundred days of constant recalculations, of scanning the horizon, of adjusting routes and conserving fuel, of sleeping in fractured increments that barely qualify as rest.

So when he finally does—alone in his cot, the world quiet for once—it hits him all at once.

The tension. The frustration. The months of swallowing it down and pretending he’s above it.

One thought leads to another.

What he would give to hear you whisper his name in the dead of night.

God, he wants to kiss you.

The urge comes sharp and sudden, almost painful in its intensity. A physical ache beneath his ribs. To close the distance. To slide his hand to the curve of your neck. To tilt your head just enough. To press his mouth to yours and finally silence the endless noise in his head.

If he had any less self-control, he’s certain his hands would’ve already done it.

But he doesn’t.

At least—not to you.

He tells himself he’s only trying to relieve stress. That’s all this is. A biological response. Pent-up frustration from weeks of tension with nowhere to go. He lies back on his cot, exhales slowly, and slips a hand beneath the waistband of his pants like it’s nothing more than routine maintenance.

He doesn’t mean to think of you.

He really doesn’t.

But the moment his hand wraps around himself, the image surfaces uninvited.

He hisses softly through his teeth.

He swallows a sound.

It’s not his fault you’re the first thing his brain reaches for.

The rhythm falters when he thinks about you saying his name again. Softer this time. Breathless. His hips twitch up into his hand before he can stop them, control slipping in a way that makes heat creep up his neck.

He comes faster than he means to.

The realization hits at the same time as the release, sharp and humiliating. He bites down on his knuckles to keep quiet, shoulders tensing as it rushes through him.

He lies there afterward, breathing hard in the dark. He contemplates the choices hes made that got him here. He can’t keep doing this. Can’t keep pretending it’s manageable when it’s clearly spiraling into something far less convenient.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Senku hasn’t had the time to indulge in his little habit lately.

A shame. At least to him.

But maybe that’s for the best.

It’s a constant rush against the clock.

To give you a fighting chance.

That’s why he makes the decision before he lets himself think too hard about it.

You’re going with Luna and Chelsea. Somewhere safer. Somewhere out of the direct line of fire.

He presents it clinically. Logically. Like a formula already solved.

You don’t even let him finish.

“I’m not leaving.”

His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “This isn’t a debate.”

“It is to me.”

“This is the safest option.”

“For who?” you fire back — and he almost flinches at the familiarity of it. That same stubborn tilt of your chin. The same refusal to back down.

“For you.”

“I don’t want safe if it means leaving you.”

The words land harder than any bullet.

Senku would do anything for you.

He knows “anything” is an extremity. An illogical absolute. He doesn’t deal in absolutes. Science doesn’t tolerate them.

He doesn’t care.

He would do anything. No matter how absurd. No matter how reckless. If it meant you kept breathing, he’d rewrite every principle he’s ever believed in.

“That’s not how this works,” he snaps, sharper than he intends. “You staying here lowers our overall survival probability.”

“Then lower it,” you shoot back. “I’d rather be by your side—to the depths of hell—if it meant I didn’t have to leave you.”

The words hang there, thick and trembling.

For a second, something raw flashes across his face—anger, yes, but beneath it something far more dangerous. Fear.

He doesn’t beg. He doesn’t soften. He just looks at you—steady, unyielding, trusting you to understand the math even if you hate it.

And eventually, your shoulders sag.

Not because you agree.

But because you know he’s right.

When you finally nod, it feels like a fracture line splitting straight through his ribs.

He doesn’t let himself show it.

He turns away first again.

So even as he lies there, bleeding out into dirt gone dark and sticky beneath him, he can’t stop himself from thinking of you.

The jungle hums overhead, insects droning, leaves trembling faintly in the aftermath of gunfire. The air is thick—wet, metallic. Each breath he pulls in tastes like iron. It’s distant, all of it. Muted at the edges. Like he’s sinking a few inches below the surface of the world.

And somehow, through the haze, you’re the clearest thing in his mind.

He wonders how you’d react if you saw him like this.

The image pulls something almost fond from him. A faint, crooked smile ghosts across his mouth despite the blood at his lips. He can see you worrying over him, trying so hard to stay composed while your eyes give you away. He can hear himself already—dry, unimpressed, irritatingly calm.

“It’s fine.”

Even when he isn’t sure it is.

He’d prop himself up if he could. Tilt his head just enough to look smug about it. Rattle off numbers, probabilities, survival rates. Wrap the situation in logic until it looks smaller than it feels.

He’d feed you lies if he had to. Small ones. Harmless ones. The kind that sit easy in the mouth and dissolve before they can hurt anyone. Anything to smooth the worry from your face. Anything to stop that look in your eyes—the one that makes his chest ache worse than the wound ever could.

If this is what it comes down to, he thinks hazily, then at least let him protect you from the fear of it.

The canopy above blurs further, green bleeding into white at the edges.

But through it all, you stay sharp in his mind.

And that, more than anything, keeps him holding on.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

You’d think, after almost ten years of this pathetic crush on you, he’d finally say something about it. But it seems he couldn’t even do that before he went up into space.

Now, the rocket is gone, the launch complete, and you’re left with quiet that feels almost unbearable. Sure, everyone else is around—your friends, the crew—but when you’ve spent nearly every waking moment with someone, it’s hard to adjust to being without them so suddenly. Harder still is the gnawing thought that maybe he won’t make it back. But you shake it off. Senku will find a way. He always does.

So you wander through his lab, the air thick with the sharp tang of chemicals and the coppery scent of machinery. Chrome left hours ago, muttering something about watching the launches diagnostics with Xeno. you’re not quite sure. Everyone else is tangled up in their own chaos. And there you are, alone, letting your eyes drift over everything he’s built—the gadgets, the glass beakers, the spirals of equations scrawled on every surface.

Something catches your attention: a leather-bound journal, edges frayed, tucked into a pile of notebooks almost hiding in plain sight. Curiosity wins, and you pull it free.

The first pages are… well, normal. Formulas, sketches, theories. Equations you wouldn’t even begin to understand, but your fingers trace the ink anyway, flipping through page after page almost mechanically. You’re bored, restless, letting your eyes wander, until something in the writing starts to shift.

The entries shift. The scientific notes fade into… observations. Tiny things at first: the way you tilt your head when you’re thinking, the little way your sleeves slide down your wrist. He writes in shorthand, abbreviations only he could understand, but the meaning is unmistakable.

You flip another page. The observations are longer now, phrased almost like… poems. Scientific metaphors. Equations turned into comparisons. You pause, rereading a line where he likens you to a theorem he knows by heart, elegant and irrefutable, a presence that disrupts all his calculations yet somehow completes them.

Each entry pulls you in, detailed and obsessive in a way only Senku could manage—clinical, precise, but impossibly intimate. He notices things no one else would. He writes them down with the same care he applies to his craft.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

The cheers die down. The roar of engines, the shouts, the clapping—all of it fades into a dull hum as the last of the crew disperse from the landing site. Three days in space should’ve felt like nothing to him, but to you, it felt like months. Every second without him stretched, elastic and cruel, and now he’s finally here, solid, real, breathing the same air as you again.

Senku’s eyes sweep the crowd instinctively, searching for something—someone. He doesn’t push through. Not yet. He knows he can wait. That patience is both calculation and self-preservation. You, on the other hand, have waited long enough.

You step forward, heart hammering, boots clanging against the metal ramp. He notices every subtle shift in your posture—the tilt of your head, the set of your shoulders—but you don’t hesitate. You grab him by the collar of his shirt, just enough to pull him down to your level, forcing his attention entirely on you. His eyebrows flick up, the faintest smirk touching his lips, as if he’s daring you to do this, waiting for you to commit.

“I’m going to kiss you now, okay?” you say softly, words urgent but calm. His chest rises and falls faster at the sound, but he doesn’t step back. Instead… he leans in, closing the last inches between you.

The world narrows. You can feel the heat radiating from him, the faint tang of metal and airlock lingering on his skin, the rhythm of his pulse beneath your fingertips. His hands find your waist, pulling you impossibly closer, and your fingers thread through the nape of his hair, anchoring him, anchoring yourself. The kiss is demanding and gentle all at once, like every second you were apart is trying to make up for lost time. He sighs into it, a sound of relief, frustration, and something far more vulnerable than either of you expected.

When you finally part, just barely, his forehead rests against yours, breaths mingling. His eyes search yours, wide and unguarded for the first time in ages. You think you see something like awe in them—or maybe it’s just the echo of everything he’s felt for you, finally realized.

You bite back a smile, you dont say anything.

Instead, you smooth your thumb along the collar of his shirt, as if committing the moment to memory.

“Go,” you murmur, almost teasing. “You’ve got work to do, astronaut.”

He scoffs lightly, but he doesn’t step away immediately. His hands linger at your waist for a second longer before he finally releases you.

Later, he makes his way back to the lab.

Everything is exactly where he left it—the instruments, the notes, the faint sterile scent clinging to metal and glass. Orderly. Precise. Untouched.

Except it isn’t.

An envelope rests at the center of his desk.

He pauses in the doorway, gaze settling on it immediately. A faint smile tugs at his mouth before he even reaches for it.

Of course you would do this.

He steps forward, fingers brushing over the surface for a brief second before he breaks the seal. The lab is quiet as he reads.

The paper unfolds with a soft sound that seems louder than it should be. His eyes move steadily at first—analytically, methodically—the same way he reads schematics, and formulas.

Halfway through, his posture shifts.

Subtle. Nearly imperceptible.

His shoulders ease. The tension he carried down from orbit—the one he never acknowledged— dissipates in quiet increments as his eyes continue down the page.

He reads to the end.

And then he reads it again.

Senku isn’t sure when this habit of his started—documenting variables he couldn’t quantify, drafting hypotheses about sensations that refused to obey logic. He remembers those first strange reactions around you: the warmth, the tightness in his chest, the distraction.

He had genuinely considered the possibility of illness.

A quiet laugh leaves him now, a small shake of his head at the memory of his own absurdity.

If he was sick—

then you were both the cause and the cure.

He folds the letter with deliberate care and slips it into his journal. A permanent entry.

For once, he doesn’t try to calculate the rhythm in his chest or reduce it to chemical responses and neural impulses.

He doesn’t need to.

He just lets himself feel it.

an: i formatted this on desktop so i have no idea how it looks on mobile... hopeully it isnt too bad.

OMG I REALLY HOPE YOU GUSY ENJOYED THIS ONE I HAD A LOT A FUN WITH IT!!! even if Senku is OOC i still love him.

I hope you guys had a great day!!

i’ll post on ao3 soon 🫠

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