persistent
feat. senku ishigami synopsis: in which Senku got to know the girl by his side and wanted it to stay that way. tags: fluff, oneshot, fem!artist!reader, possessive!senku, pre-petrification! wc: 1616 a/n: cross-posted from ao3! edited slightly... 'tis an old one, but still good ^^
Surprisingly, it started around when they first met. The gusts of air blowing onto the plants and the mechanical whirring that emitted from the contraption captured the attention of a young girl nearby, tucking her sketchbook under her arm to further inspect the sounds.
"Woah, what is that?" The seven-year-old boy sighed at the unfamiliar voice, ready to defend his experiment once again from the foolish onlookers if he absolutely had to.
"It's an injector." Senku answered curtly, hands deftly moving while not even sparing a glance at the newcomer.
"Oh, is it?" He could sense them standing a few feet away from him, the sound of their humming filling the silence. "What're you using it for?"
"Building a rocket."
"A rocket? Like a bottle one?" The boy deadpanned, finally turning around to look at the person interrupting his work. She seemed to be around his age, tilting her head to the side and framing his experiment with her fingers. "Seems a bit too complicated for that... or heavy."
"No, it's for a real rocket. Are you done asking questions now?"
"Harsh. Can a girl not be curious about a wild machine in the middle of the park, with a boy around her age testing it?" She pouted, squatting down to look Senku directly in the eyes. He flinched and inched backwards a bit from her abrupt gesture, making the girl laugh.
"I'm [Name]!" She introduced, sticking her hand out towards the boy. "Currently working to be either a graphic designer or an animator. Hope you don't mind me helping you build that rocket of yours, 'cause it sounds plenty interesting!"
"...Senku." He responded, shaking her hand with a small smirk on his face. "Currently working to go to space. Good to have you on the team, [Name]."
For the next few years, [Name] continued to help Senku with his work as best as they could, even though the girl was immensely confused at the vast amount of knowledge he had learned.
"Wait... so, this connects to this?" She held up two wires in the mess of mechanical parts he had laying on the ground. "It's the same color, so..."
"No, stupid, how are two wires going to connect without something to hold them together? Here, just give me that..."
"Oh! That makes sense. Geez, you're too smart for your own good, Senku!"
He paused, then waved off her bright smile and went back to building his experiment. "Yeah, whatever."
The encouragement wasn't uncommon to hear, especially after continuously having people compliment him time after time, but... this seemed ever-so-slightly different to the boy.
"So, what can you do?" Senku asked, crossing his arms. "I'm gonna need to know your skill set to see how you can help with the rocket, otherwise there's no point to any of this."
"Okay, I get it, don't kick me out when I just joined!" [Name] sheepishly laughed, raising her hands in defense. "I don't really have enough money to buy any state-of-the-art equipment, so... I sort of make do with what I can see already. I, uh, draw environmental sketches and stuff around me to get a better understanding of the world."
"In that sketchbook of yours, right?"
"Yep!" She nodded, flipping a few pages to show him her work. His eyebrows slightly raised at the sketches she had drawn out, from multiple portrayals of day-to-day life to whole illustrations with detailed images full of sunsets and skylines.
Compared to his diagrams, his was more technical, but hers was as if the pictures were taken from a camera lens—no, maybe even straight out of the human eye; like looking through someone else's point of view. They were just so detailed that it had Senku scrutinizing every little mark to get the entirety of the picture in his head.
"Wait, what's this—?"
"Ah, hey—!" [Name] snapped out of her daze (was she looking at him?) and noticed him flipping through more pages in her sketchbook, snapping it shut with one hand. "I showed you the ones I wanted you to see, don't just go snooping through the rest of it!"
"...Sorry, sorry." He averted his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck.
For a second, he thought he saw a sketch of himself working on one of his older experiments in one of the pages, but he must have been wrong. Senku could feel a slight flush on his cheeks beginning to work up to his ears, pinching his arm slightly to focus on something else.
"...Anyways, I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of work you put into your art, so you're totally welcome to join the team. As of now, it's just us two."
"Nice!" She cheered, pumping a fist in the air. "I'll do my best to help however I can!"
She wasn't very good at science, he noted with a dumbfounded expression as he watched the girl get confused over balancing chemical equations, but [Name] was definitely one of the more determined ones he's met. After Taiju joined their makeshift group, work was done at a faster and more sufficient rate than before, but all eventually came to the conclusion that they were stuck with not enough information to work on the rocket by themselves.
"Then why don't you ask the actual pros for help?" Ten-year-old [Name] tapped her fist on her palm, pointing at Senku with a broad grin. "You know, like NASA? Since they're the ones with rockets and all."
"NASA?!" Taiju's eyes widened at her suggestion. "Do you even think anyone there would bother taking a bunch of kids seriously...?"
"Hehehe... that's a wild proposal I've heard in a while from you, [Name]." Senku cracked his knuckles and pulled out the dictionary he had, facing his computer screen with a smirk. "It won't hurt to try contacting them, and there's bound to be someone out there interested enough to share some advice with a couple of curious kids."
Her ideas were fascinating in their own way, and they continued to support Senku's never-ending curiosity for possible inventions and perspectives on how the world worked. She gave new questions to ask and solutions to reach, filling his mind with the satisfying need for continuous challenges.
Yet, to be able to further grow his curiosity, he would need her by his side, right?
"Ah, sorry Senku, could you repeat your explanation again? I swear I was listening to a good portion of it, but I dazed out halfway through, ahaha..."
He tilted his head, glancing between her sketchbook laid out on the table filled with drawings of someone he didn't know and the sheepish look on her face.
"How come you've been so distracted lately?"
"Oh, nothing really, it's just this guy that's in my art class has been needing some help with the work to catch up on. He recently transferred here, so I volunteered to help him out." She explained, twirling a pencil between her fingers. "We were talking about that one really cool anime that's about a group of kids making an anime and how they went into depth of animation and stuff the last time I saw him, so I'm wondering if he caught up with the latest episodes yet."
"You're too nice for your own good."
"Geez, what's that supposed to mean?" [Name] snickered, standing up to gather her belongings. "Anyways, I gotta go now since it should be around the time we're supposed to meet up. See you later in the next club meeting, Senku!"
He lifted a hand in response to her wave, watching her exit the science lab with an unknown emotion building up within his chest. His hand slowly fell once he could tell she was out of the vicinity, and he let out a long, drawn-out sigh.
"Alone in the room again, huh..."
Senku didn't exactly crave for companionship, and he definitely didn't want to force her to stay with him, but working on his experiments by himself as the days went on without someone to comment on his actions made the effort feel more... tedious. His head would instinctively glance in the space she'd made for herself by his side, not hovering too close but still enough for him to note her presence.
"Don't think a bit of research would do any harm..." He muttered, powering on his laptop with firm resolve. "Let's see who this guy is, hm...?"
── ࣪˖ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──
"...Hey, you're back." Senku spoke out upon watching the girl enter the club room, closing the door behind her and immediately pulling out her sketchbook. "Not as busy anymore?"
"Seems so... the dude I was talking about got a tutor and is steadily catching up to everyone else, so I'm not needed anymore, ahaha." [Name] forced out a laugh. "Wonder where he found one after he was saying how it's hard to find one nowadays?"
"Probably his friends or something." He shrugged, finishing looking over the email in his inbox and closing his laptop. "And... no need to take this seriously or whatever, but you're always welcome here."
"Huh... really?" She visibly brightened, her gloomy mood from before fading away. "I'll take you up on that offer then, Senku! Get ready for a load of information then, 'cause you'll never believe what I started finding around town!"
And like that, everything was alright in the world again, with her by his side once more.
"Keep your eyes on me," Was a fleeting thought of his, as he listened to her rambling and watched the enthusiasm in her expression grow.
All just to find out what she thought, what was going on inside that observant mind of hers, for as long as he could.
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