Dr. STONE[D] ✿ I.S.

Sunflower

You'd gone to bed quiet.

The rest of the gang had retreated to the village to sleep, which left you and the scientist alone for the night. That was nothing unusual. It was like this most nights save for the ones Chrome or Kohaku were too tired to go home across the bridge.

It only became unusual when you entered the science hut and immediately climbed into your sleeping bag without saying a word.

Senku was already in there, divvying up some extra filter material they'd use for the gas masks later. You'd avoided his eyes when you came in and kept your back to him as you fell asleep.

He had half-expected you to waltz in, ready to argue some more about tomorrow, but the other half reminded him to not to try to predict your next move. You weren't a complete mystery anymore, but you were still a girl. Even in all his years studying everything there is to know about the world, he still had a hard time understanding those.

Through you, he thought he was starting to make more sense of them, despite your odd personality. Most nights, when it was just the two of you, you'd stay up for hours just talking about the most random stuff. The conversations mainly started with you asking a bunch of questions (ranging from silly ones like why the fuck can ostriches run faster than horses??? to what his favorite astrophysics paradox is) and would often drift into a different topic from there.

I mean, the guy was practically a living Google. You could ask him anything and he'd have an answer.

Part of him thought it was rather exasperating that you could go forever chatting about basically nothing and cracking jokes that made nobody laugh harder than you did yourself. But now, staring at your turned figure, the scientist realized something.

It was rather annoying when you were so bright and smiley, but even more annoying when you weren't.

He sighed and crawled into his own bed (bag), thinking you must be mad at him. He admitted he could've been nicer in telling you you wouldn't be accompanying them to collect the poisonous sulfuric acid.

Senku had told himself you shouldn't go because you'd probably make a joke and then trip over something, dying a fool's death that wouldn't help anyone. But that didn't add up– he was much more clumsy than you.

Then, he decided you couldn't come because you were needed back here to help make more tools for the laboratory, but that wasn't true, either. Old man Kaseki had reduced the workload on that by tenfold.

As the author of this awesome fanfic, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you guys that this boy was simply REACHING for excuses without even knowing why.

So when you'd straight up asked him the reason you weren't allowed to help, he jumped on the first thought that popped into his head. You were 'from the modern era and therefore indispensable.'

At least there was truth in that one!

...

The next morning, you weren't there when he woke.

That was weird, too, considering how you normally kept sleeping until somebody woke you up. You didn't exactly snore, but damn were you a deep sleeper.

Senku groaned tiredly and sat up. It was going to be a long day.

He climbed out of the hut to see Chrome strolling into the clearing in a big yawn, half-assedly covering only part of his mouth.

"Mn, good morning!" the brunette greeted his friend with a wave of his hand.

"'Morning," replied the scientist. He scanned the little field as if searching for something and internally sighed when he didn't see it. He thought he might as well ask, even though you were probably out chasing a cat or something.