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Gen Again - Gravitational Distortions

AO3 is down have chapter 3 of Gravitational Distortions here. [Now it is back up so you can also read on AO3!]

Senku was having fun assembling the gold wire spinning machine. He could have picked something else to start off the cell phone project, but testing this with cotton candy would get people excited. The fight with Hyoga was demoralizing even if it went as well as it could have, at least short of Tsukasa miraculously deciding Senku was right and could have his house back no hard feelings, and they needed a boost. Even if that hadn’t just happened, a big project this complex had to justify itself to the village people. He couldn’t start with something that wasn’t rewarding in the short term, or else a lot of people wouldn’t want to work on the other parts and he’d miss out on a lot of free labor. He had to hook them, to prove he could compensate them for their time, and who didn’t like candy?

It took a couple days to get the parts made and of course he and Suika had to make Ramen while the iron was smelting to feed the people working the bellows. That part wasn’t as fun for Senku, he’d done it enough times that cooking up the bitter noodles was becoming boring. Both he and Gen were out of ideas to improve anything about the recipe and it ate up a lot of his time. Making the molds and watching his designs get turned into real things was awesome, though. Making things from scratch was so much different than buying or commissioning parts and then putting them together. Even if he was sort-of ordering things made from Kaseki, Senku got to be involved in every step and he was learning a lot about manufacturing that would help him with his future designs. He already had some ideas for getting smoother finishes and tighter tolerances on the cast metal.

While Senku assembled the machine, the villagers assembled for a noon meal in the Kingdom of Science. Senku asked everyone to gather for the first step of the cell phone project and while attendance wasn’t mandatory it seemed like most people had come. The bachelors would be camping in the Kingdom of Science for a little while, but when Kokuyo showed up to eat his lunch out here he told Senku the new house for the maids and orphans had already been finished. The girls had been camping on the chief’s islet instead of out here, which was quite a bit colder with the wind off the lake than staying near Chrome’s hut with the fire and the woods according to Suika. When Senku said they could all camp out here the little girl - the innocent child just stating facts who couldn’t know how a modern guy like him would feel hearing such things - had rendered Senku speechless by mentioning that the scent of menstrual blood may attract predators, so Kohaku and Garnet had to sleep in a safer place right now. Kaseki took pity on him by giving the child a task so Senku could pretend very hard that he had never asked, didn’t know, and had never even considered the possibility.

Thinking of the little melon-head, Suika was sitting down with the other small kids near Gen. He was showing off his new book to them. The other man’s gestures weren’t as expressive as usual, the near-constant motion Gen had while talking subdued and restricted by the flexible brace on his right arm. He was moving both arms, and the acetaminophen Senku made was obviously helping, but the gestures were limited and slower than usual. It was still a relief to see him holding his lunch bowl steady on his knee with his right hand, even if eating with his left wasn’t normal. Senku would have to make sure Gen had plenty of soap to keep that hand clean. Toilet paper just wasn’t a thing yet, after all, and the whole point of the brace was to restrict how far he could bend his right arm. A clean-hand dirty-hand custom existed in the village for very good reason.

Senku was glad Gen’s arm was healing well; Senku hadn't heard anyone scream like that before. It would be a few weeks yet before he was back to normal, maybe a bit longer to get back to his full strength, but it was already looking a lot better. The dislocated joint had looked horrible when Senku got to him, misshapen and swollen red. While Senku and Bibi had worked together to put his elbow back into place correctly it had been dislocated for quite a while before they could get to him between fighting the fire and chasing down Hyoga and Suika.

This morning Gen moaned and complained, wishing he had all manner of modern things ranging from the reasonable (specific anti-inflammatory and antioxidant herbal medicine based on Gen’s knowledge of Kampo that Chrome told the other foragers to stock up on) to the impossible (mocha latte and tamagoyaki with a croissant, whipped butter, and yuzu jelly for breakfast. Yuzu had hybridized with imported citrus varieties beyond all recognition, they would need a time machine or to get lucky with a trip to one of the other islands.)

That was a good sign. He’d been way too quiet the first day after Hyoga's attack, and had given himself work to do. Even if it was just making a baby book it was still something productive and…. Senku wasn’t great at comforting people going through emotional stuff, or expressing the softer and more private things inside himself, but he did notice people’s patterns. The book was one of those long-term plans that Gen cooked up when he was thinking too much about his own mortality, since it would teach someone how to read without anyone who knew how to read having to be there with them. It wouldn’t be so concerning if Gen was going back to the Kingdom of Might, but he wasn’t so there was no reason to prioritize making something like that. He’d been quiet yesterday when Senku saw him in the morning and evening, but Argo said he’d been yapping a lot throughout the day about all sorts of things in contrast to the first day when he’d fallen silent for long stretches of deep thought while Argo studied kana.

When it was all ready and preheated, he called everyone over to watch the first attempt at making cotton candy. Kinro and Ginro pulled a rope back and forth to keep it spinning, and Senku pulled out the first puff of candy. He turned to show the delicate puff-ball off to the crowd, but amid the wondrous looks he saw the mentalist looking critically at the machine like he couldn't quite figure something out. As Senku handed out the third candy puff he saw that look come over Gen's face again. The same one from the day of the Grand Bout, when Gen said he'd figured out some kind of puzzle. Once again Gen chose to look through him while having his epiphany, which felt no less intense than the first time even if it didn’t last for as long or seem as profound. It made Senku’s senses sharpen, expectant, the muscles in his abdomen and shoulders tightening with anticipation as he waited for Gen to come over and say something to him, but then he didn’t.

As Senku gathered up another stick full of cotton candy Gen turned away. All Senku’s expectations flash-boiled into frustration, which was annoying because he didn’t want to feel all pent up and tense when his new machine was working. Gen got Chrome's attention instead, which took a minute because Chrome was locked in focus watching how the rope Ginro and Kinro were pulling made the candy machine spin, then swished back and forth a little while saying something. Gen did a little spin and pointed to his flapping sleeves, then repeated the swish-swish-swish and spin around twice. Chrome grabbed Gen's good arm and pulled him over to Senku.

"What are the six simple machines?" Chrome asked. "Gen said every mechanical thing is made of them."

"Lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw," Senku listed out, signaling Kinro and Ginro to stop. There was clearly something Chrome and Gen had spotted that might be going wrong. "That list is from the renaissance but still shows up on tests, so I had to memorize it. That's not the best way to think of mechanisms like this, though. Engineering is really all about the joints that transfer or alter kinetic energy in some way. There are four types of joints: the hinge joint, sliding joint, cam joint and gear joint, and then there are arms, shafts, cables, and belts to transfer the energy. As a non-exhaustive list, we could be here for a while if I have to explain all that before you tell me what’s up."

"Oh, uh," Chrome hesitated, looking at back Gen, but Gen answered with a lopsided shrug. "That's a lot less self-explanatory than I expected."

"It might have been the wrong way to ask, since those words probably would mean more to both of us with illustrations. I used dance terminology because I don't know anything about engineering. I was really hoping you could help put the idea into different words you already understood to bridge the gap, not to start a lesson on a whole new set of vocabulary neither of us know," Gen said to Chrome.

"How about you say it directly to me?" Senku asked. The words that came out of Gen's mouth in response sounded exotic, and it was only the basic sentence structure and connecting sounds that let Senku know the man was still speaking Japanese at all. Maybe the terminology was borrowed from French, the way a lot of chemical terms were borrowed from English? When all Senku did was blink at him in confusion, Gen probably repeated himself in English. Not that that helped, not that Senku was even sure he was repeating himself. About all he understood was, “Cha-cha, and wafer cookies?”

“Now you know how I felt when you rattled off the chemical process for making that antibiotic faster than I could follow. Pirouette the dance move, not the cream-filled treat. What about a carousel, like on the playground? The machine is doing this,” Gen said, shimmying his hips and twisting his upper body in a way that should have looked haphazard but wasn’t somehow, “when you said you said you wanted it to do this.” Gen lifted up on one leg and spun, his eyes locked onto Senku’s hair before turning around fast as a whipcrack as his body made five graceful smooth turns before dropping back down onto his heels. Both the motion of his head and body were as precise as the mechanisms in a watch. Senku had never seen anyone spin with that kind of control in person before.

“It spins around a bunch of times, but when either Kinro or Ginro get to the end of their rope and reverse, it swishes. Won’t that swishy motion slosh and splash the molten sugar into a mess instead of making smooth streams?” Chrome asked.

“Maybe.” Senku shrugged and held up the last puff of candy he made. “That’s what we’re checking for.”

“Then before we use up more sugar, let’s check our work,” Gen said. He held his right hand out. Senku pulled a piece of cotton candy off the puff for him, and another bit for Chrome. Ginro and Kinro stepped up close, so he pulled off smaller bits for them, and of course Kohaku wanted some, and then Senku opened wide to have a big bite of the third of a puff he had left. It was sweet and a wonderful treat for his sugar-hungry brain, but the texture on his tongue confirmed what his fingers had felt as he pulled the puff apart to share.

“Oh, that’s so bad!” Chrome said.

“So sweet and fluffy,” Ginro crooned.

“Grainy,” Gen said, dismissively. “A bit of fluff, but after that the quality is sub-par.”

“How can you criticize this? It is delicious,” Kinro said.

“It’s so good!” Kohaku said, chomping down on the rest after an initial, dainty nibble. “You are just too hard to please, Gen.”

“The fibers are inconsistent,” Senku said, picking into the puff and finding little lumps. He doused the fire with sand so the sugar wouldn’t burn, then handed the last of the candy to Gen so he could pull out his iron knife. “You two are right, it is slowing down and sloshing the molten sugar out in blobs every time the spin changes direction.”

“Why is that bad?” Ginro asked. “This has to be good enough, right?

“What if Kinro and Ginro go faster?” Kohaku asked.

“That would only make the problem worse,” Gen said. “It’s like shaking your hips when you dance, the faster you go the harder your clothing flaps around. We can’t have the gold filaments come out all lumpy. Making wire isn’t that different from making ropes and cords, which I know all of you are familiar with. Imagine if the rope fibers have thorns or bulges and you are trying to make really delicate looking thin ropes.”

“Aaaah, so we need to make little baby cords out of the fibers once we melt the gold,” Ginro said, and the mentalist really was good at that. Even the little kids watching them seemed to get why the candy wasn’t right. Senku had left out the details of the next step, not wanting to startle anyone with how huge the wire-spinning job would be until after they had the sugary treat, but Gen managed to explain without prompting anyone to ask how much wire Senku would need.

“What we need is a gear,” Senku said, starting to carve one from some scrap they had off to the side.

The work was so easy his mind was able to drift a bit off-topic. This kind of handcraft used to take him ages, but his hands were stronger than they used to be, so much so that he could see the difference at a glance. If he met himself from 2019 he wouldn’t recognize his own hands. Hell, if he crossed paths with his old self in an onsen the old him might think he was some long-lost cousin and not simply the same person but older. His soft, wimpy body had changed a lot. The muscles and tendons in his hands were so much stronger, and he had abs and biceps - actual muscle definition and not just a healthy weight augmented with baby fat and wishful thinking - even if he was still scrawny by fifty-eighth century standards. He was still the weakest ‘adult’ around, with minimal stamina and fewer combat skills than even the effeminate pampered twink of a mentalist he’d collected, but compared to how he looked on his fifteenth birthday Senku had made significant gains even if he’d burnt through nearly every gram of his fat stores before Taiju woke up. There was no way he could have carved wood so quickly or accurately a year ago, he simply wouldn’t have the strength to both keep things steady and cut into the wood at the same time. Flexibility was about the only physical stat he had deliberately put points into prior to petrification, so he was sure to stretch every day. Use it or lose it, and it would be all too easy to let his body get stiff and tight with how often he had to push his strength to the limits and the steady muscle growth all that work induced.

He had a brief, terror-inducing vision of how insufferable Valentine’s day, white day, and festivals would be if he’d somehow been in school while looking like this. It had been bad enough just with the girls who saw him as an attractive brainy type destined to get a great job and earn a huge pile of money. If he’d started attracting the ones looking for athletic or gear-head types too he might have accepted one of the offers to start university early just to escape it all despite his dad’s wish that he only skip one year of school to socialize with his peers more. He’d then used that skipped year on the trip to Africa and some other self-study projects so he would start high school the same time as Taiju, and that had clearly been the right choice. All that hands-on practical experience was paying off now.

Well, maybe if they hadn’t been petrified and Taiju had confessed as planned, then started talking about doing stuff with Yuzuriha the way guys were expected to, Senku would have realized why his reaction to girls sharing sweets with him was the way it was. He might not be sure of what he wanted, or even if he wanted romance at all, but he was ten billion percent sure that girls were not his thing after listening to Ginro and Chrome talk about straight sex for a while. If he shared that around as a rumor he might have made sure he didn’t get too much of that uncomfortable and unwanted attention, but then he might have had guys after him instead and… and he just didn’t know how he would feel about that. His aversion to girls had been tested conclusively across multiple experiments, not that he’d been thinking of it that way at the time until Gen prompted him to pick a category to describe why Kohaku flirting with him gave him the ick and Senku performed a sort of systematic analysis of the existing data sets.

Oh crap, he’d given his cotton candy to Gen right in front of the guys. Gen, who was openly gay. The guys, who knew Senku was something other than straight. The cotton candy he’d had his mouth on.

Which Gen was still holding and not eating while he was talking about whatever with the others, as if he was simply waiting for Senku to come and take it back once his hands weren’t too busy inventing. It was probably fine. He shared some with each of them, and that hadn’t meant anything. Why was he even worried about indirect kisses at a time like this? He handed it to Gen because Gen doesn’t share food for health reasons. Obviously, if he gave it to Chrome or Ginro or even Kinro they would have eaten it all. Senku just wanted to finish his treat, and his mind was wandering because carving the gear parts didn’t take much brainpower. Senku focused on what his hands were doing and tried to think of how to quickly make a larger drive gear, so the little one in his hand would spin faster.

Kohaku offered up her shield when Senku asked for it, her pragmatism outweighing any sentimentality over the brightly painted wooden shield. It made the machine look more like the kind of thing you’d find at a festival with such a bright pattern spinning over the main bowl. Ginro liked spinning it with only his hands and Kinro pointed out that his brother merely enjoyed the idea of taking turns. Senku stirred up the flames and got the cooled sugar back up to temperature. Chrome and Kaseki took the first two puffs of candy this time, and Gen immediately started praising the perfect texture when he got the third one. Senku wanted to ask what the rest of the craft team thought, but Chrome and Kaseki had disappeared before Senku had finished handing out the candy to everyone else.

“Chrome said he had a totally bad idea and needed to go do something, and rushed off with Kaseki in high iritsspay to who knows where,” Gen said when he noticed Senku hunting through the gathered villagers. “They were both very excited about whatever it was, but didn’t want to say anything specific about it.”

“Oh. I had an idea about the candy,” Senku said, a bit disappointed he was being left out of something. “I was going to slap together a little festival-type stand to keep rain and whatever off it and leave one for Homura.”

“That absolutely isn’t enough to ipflay her allegiance, she’s completely in love with Hyoga and admires him greatly for multiple reasons. That does appear to be one sided, though, how unfortunate for her,” Gen said thoughtfully. He put the stick in his mouth to suck off the last of the sugar, his gaze wandering off into the distance where Homura was out there somewhere, watching. Senku wasn’t sure of the logistics of how she was being fed, but her pink clothing had been spotted by the hunters with a frequency that suggested she never left the area.

“You think it would be a waste,” Senku said, a bit disappointed in the pessimism.

“If there is enough, I won’t tell you not to do it. I’m just making an observation based on my expertise so you can set your expectations accordingly,” Gen replied, his voice going soft. “You should do what you think is right, I just don’t want you to be too disappointed when other people fail to meet your high standards for what makes a good person. Not everyone can be bought with a cola.” Something fizzed up Senku’s spine at that comparison.

The absolutely ridiculous wholesale fabrication that Gen’s loyalty was based on a promise of reinventing cola was one Gen clung to, Senku didn’t understand why when nobody who knew the details even pretended to believe him, but the broader idea that Gen supported Senku because he could provide an easier and more luxurious life full of treats like ramen and pretty things like glass had somehow overshadowed the whole hanahaki thing. Senku was not sure if Gen could ever beat those allegations when he’d coughed up flower petals in front of the entire village, but Senku wouldn’t complain about it becoming old news sooner rather than later. Perhaps the ridiculously obvious lie that his loyalty and contentment was bought with a single fizzy drink somehow tricked people into considering what Senku provided as a whole? Senku had a decent understanding psychology, and his eidetic memory meant he could probably recite Gen’s book with fair accuracy if he really wanted to, but Gen himself was on another level entirely.

Kokuyo cornered Senku after he, Kinro, and Ginro cleaned up the candy machine and left the last portion of spun sugar near where Homura was currently posted up to watch them. The former chief was one person who clearly hadn’t been distracted from the hanahaki issue and took the incident very seriously. He wanted to make sure Senku wasn’t going to string Gen or Ruri along unnecessarily, mostly because Senku was young and the man thought he could use some relationship advice given how bluntly he’d spoken to Ruri. Also, if Gen felt mistreated he might change loyalties, which was a simple enough idea. Senku had already been aware of that ten billion percent, and not just for Gen but for everyone, but the older man added a lot of nuance that came from experience in keeping a partner happy. People could feel mistreated romantically over the silliest shit, which Senku knew but only in a theoretical way.

It felt wrong to be learning this stuff from Kokuyo, even if the examples he used taught him more about the people in the village, but Byakuya hadn’t had much luck dating and he’d never had a relationship last more than a year even before he adopted Senku. It was something Byakuya worried about, that Senku would get lonely as he got older and that he wasn’t being a good father since he was only showing Senku a thousand ways to get rejected. It really had taken the end of the world for Dad to get a girlfriend. So Senku endured the talk instead of shutting it down immediately and tried to convince himself that this was Byakuya’s relative. This was part of that wisdom and community passed down through generations for his benefit according to the tales, but it was still really fucking uncomfortable.

A growing part of Senku wanted to say it was all a trick and Gen didn’t really love him to escape the conversation, but he was worried that the villager’s trust in the both of them would take a big hit if he admitted that hanahaki disease was a sham in any way. It was Argo that came to Senku’s rescue, on his way home after walking Gen back to the Kingdom of Science from what would likely be the last recreational swim in the lake before the weather got too cold for it. The way Argo cut in was helpful, not only to soothe Kokuyo’s worry but also for Senku by clearing up how Gen was framing the whole thing when he talked about it.

“Chief, um, and former chief,” Argo said, visibly shuffling which one of the two of them he meant with the first address mid-sentence, “I don’t think you have to worry about Gen’s heart. Gen wasn’t lovesick over Senku, exactly, it is just that Senku was able to show him enough care and respect to provide a cure. Hanahaki is caused by toxic love that is held out of reach instead of being returned or properly denied. Gen was in love with someone before the ancients were turned to stone, we talked about it before briefly, but that other guy was a horrible asshole. That is how his hanahaki began. It reminds me of the whole thing with Ruby and I last year, except what she did was a misunderstanding and just a month and this was… Gen didn’t say very much, but it sounded like it went on for a long time and was intentional. Gen latched onto Senku, but I don’t think they need help sorting that all out.”

“Gen and I have talked about his ex and that whole thing,” Senku said carefully. He didn’t want to gossip about anything Gen said in private, but he felt comfortable confirming that they had talked about it in general. Gen was rather open about the broad strokes for most things even if he kept a lot of the specifics closer to the chest. That was a reliable pattern: a lot of vague honesty, but he hated parting with any specific details and didn’t like people prying into his business. “There is no miscommunication. I’ve told him I’m not interested in any romance when I need to focus on the fight against Tsukasa. There isn’t anything ambiguous about that.”

“You are both so young, you don’t see the trap that you have laid with your words. In the short term, what you say is true,” Kokuyo said, pitching his voice to sound more authoritative. “However, saying that the war is the only reason you are not accepting his or Ruri’s affection implies that once the war is over you intend to have one of them, or at least that you will give them a chance to win your affection once we are at peace. That is what you need to be prepared for.”

“That isn’t what I said,” Senku argued.

“It kind of is,” Argo said with a shrug. “I still don’t think you need help sorting it out, and it’s probably a good idea to set distractions aside for now, but in the end, you’ve only said that it’s a bad time. You’re handsome and smart, anyone who is into guys is going to think about it.”

“Yes, exactly.” Kokuyo’s tone became urgent. “He’s had closure, and you helped him grieve, but while he has gotten past what held him back from living a full life in the here and now, you have a challenge of your own to overcome. That is only fair, even if it didn’t involve a threat to the village. You have a personal grievance with this Tsukasa that needs to be laid to rest or it will prevent you from moving on with your life.”

Senku thought the whole thing was just the villagers’ culture and how they lived faster than what he was used to. Still, that last point Kokuyo made stuck with him as he used the latrine and washed up for the night. Tsukasa was a challenge Senku had to get past in order to live his life freely. He hadn’t really thought of it as hitting the pause button on his personal wants and needs, but Kokuyo had a point. If it came up again, he’d be sure to phrase it more carefully. Not interested in women, not interested in gooey romance. No qualifiers or time frames when he was sure he didn’t need those things in his life.

It was bad enough… Tsukasa and he had… Well, they hadn’t kissed or anything, but Taiju would go out gathering sometimes and Tsukasa said a lot of private stuff about his sister and his life whenever it was just the two of them. Senku had talked about himself a bit, how it had been a little lonely as an orphan and a prodigy with just the one close friend for most of his life, though he hadn’t said much about Byakuya or anything really personal. That had been too raw, still. They weren’t dates, they’d been out gathering and would sometimes stop for a rest. He taught Tsukasa how to make concrete and set snares because it was useful to know, and the snares were free calories instead of having Tsukasa burn energy chasing food every time.

It had been… intimate. Almost too much, at times, and Tsukasa wasn’t big on covering up his body when he felt even the slightest bit warm. As much as Senku missed proper boxers he’d always kept himself modest even when he just had a kilt. Now he had a fundoshi thanks to the village elders taking an inventory of his and Gen’s possessions for the purpose of filling all the gaps before the snow started. The cooler breezes starting to come down the mountains made him glad of it, and they promised they would make warm winter clothing for him and Gen soon enough, but Tsukasa had been the opposite of shy even on cooler nights. Especially when it was just the two of them. There were moments when Senku almost thought… but that was ridiculous. Who would make that a priority in such a dire survival situation? Why would…? Just why? For all of it, for the entire situation.

Why would he talk so much to Senku about so many private things, and maybe even flirt with him, and then kill him in cold blood? Was it because Senku hadn’t reacted the way he wanted, both about the blatant murder of older petrified people and to the sight of Tsukasa stripping down all the time? Was Senku’s insistence on sleeping on the other side of Taiju or keeping a significant gap of personal space such a terrible thing? They barely knew each other, and sure Tsukasa was putting a lot of effort in trying to fix that, but it was just a few weeks. How could he expect Senku to open up to him so much in less than a month?

It wasn’t like… like how he had been living with Chrome for months, and now it didn’t bother him so much if Chrome had to touch his back when squeezing past him or sometimes rolled over annoyingly close while they were both asleep. He’d known Taiju for more days he’d been breathing than he hadn’t, and even Taiju gave him his space. It wasn’t like Senku was unique in wanting personal space, either. Gen kept a respectful and proper distance. Even if he often flapped his hands in other people’s faces or tapped them on the arm when talking to direct their attention he still demanded his own space with his posture and attitude. Unless Senku touched Gen first, the mentalist would lean out of the way or step back to accommodate their excitable hand gestures. It felt weird at first to be read so easily, doubly so when he noticed how despite Gen maintaining a personal bubble he wasn’t nearly as fussy about touching others, but after a while it was just nice. Gen saw how Senku didn’t let other people into his space, and so Gen didn’t try to get into Senku’s space until Senku invited him in, and he didn’t take an invitation in one instance as blanket permission for all the time. Why couldn’t more people just do that?

Why did Tsukasa have to give him that sad look every time Senku flinched away from his touch? The man killed a lion with his bare hands, being uncomfortable when those hands suddenly and unexpectedly touched his half-starved body was logical! Before Taiju, Senku had been negative on his calorie output to input calculation for way too long, and he’d only been able to start recovering the muscle his body had cannibalized when Tsukasa started providing so much meat. He was skinny and cold and scared all the time even if he was doing his best not to show it, and if Tsukasa wanted something particular in return he wouldn’t have been able to stop him from taking it. Not that Tsukasa ever tried, or even suggested it beyond a gesture or a loaded look, but it was possible and that possibility kept his hair standing on end straighter than usual some days. They had only just barely met, Senku couldn’t know that it was safe to—

“Senku, do you need anything?” Gen asked, startling Senku out of his thoughts. Senku was still standing on the path just outside the clearing, and realized he’d been hugging himself. He’d been halfway to sending himself into an autistic shutdown, which he hadn’t had since he was twelve so long as he didn’t count the two he’d had before Taiju woke up. Those had been necessary to handle his stress levels in an extreme situation where he was slowly starving. This was just wallowing.

“Company, if you’re up for a little stargazing,” Senku said, walking out into the clearing as casually as he could manage. Gen tilted his head and blatantly assessed Senku. His blue eyes roved over him, collecting whatever evidence there was of Senku’s little pity party.

“Company is exactly what I came looking for you for, though I was thinking of going to sleep sooner rather than later,” Gen said. The mentalist didn’t fake a smile or force his voice into sing-song silliness, he just spoke normally. Senku could practically feel the stress drain from him as he listened to the calm, matter of fact words in Gen’s natural tenor. “I don’t think Chrome or Kaseki will be back soon. They looked a little rabid, to be honest, but whatever idea they cooked up is sure to be impressive. We can focus on planning and getting the wire machine up to temperature to melt gold tomorrow and it won’t set our progress back any if they don’t turn up right away.”

“Kokuyo wound me up a bit,” Senku admitted, the words tumbling out without his full permission as he walked. “He wasn’t trying to, but I couldn’t sleep if my life depended on it right now.”

“Alright, but we both know you can’t carry me to bed if I fall asleep in the grass, and fair warning, since this hasn’t come up before, I do tend to wake up swinging if you startle me out of deep sleep,” Gen said, looking away for a moment. “Not every time, only if I’m quite worn out, so don’t let me lay there attracting snails long enough to earn yourself a black eye.”

“Half an hour or so of looking for shifted stars sound fair?” Senku asked.

“If that’s enough it should be fine,” Gen said. “I just can’t promise to stay awake for much longer than that, Bibi gave me a blended licorice root tea to help with the inflammation. On the far side of the lake there is a bed of chamomile flowers, can you believe it? They aren’t native to Japan, or I should probably say they are as native to Japan as lions since they grow here in thick beds now. I had one cup while I waited for you, and I can already feel myself crashing.”

“Is there some chamomile left?” Senku asked.

“The pot holds about a third of a liter, so yes, but fair warning that it is very bitter. It was more than I needed with how sleepy I already was, so help yourself to what is left,” Gen pointed toward the banked fire pit, where a small pot and two cups sat. “You can sip while we stargaze, but I’m serious about sending me to bed if I start to nod off on you.” Senku nodded as he walked over to claim his cup of tea. Some sleepy tea and the stars sounded perfect.

“Don’t worry, I won’t leave you in the dirt for the snails to claim,” Senku promised. He sat down close to Gen and touched the man’s uninjured shoulder briefly with his right hand. After a moment, Gen shifted a bit to lean close enough their shoulders touched. Just the place Senku had touched Gen, pressed up against Senku’s own shoulder and nothing more. Senku took a deep breath as nothing at all happened after that. No pressure, no clinging, no expectation, no suggestions, no attention drawn to it, just a steady presence and murmured discussion of the stars.

When half an hour passed Senku shifted and pat Gen on the back to rouse him. He wasn’t asleep, but he was drowsy enough to accept a hand up off the ground. Both of their beds were ready and waiting; Gen must have done that before he went looking for Senku. He murmured thanks as he settled, but Gen was likely asleep the moment he touched his pillow.

#ace panic

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#ace panic