#lol I hope I captured the dread of getting a tooth extraction perfectly

[gakupoid2m]

Lol, I suddenly got an urge to complete this fanfiction I wrote last year after getting four of my teeth pulled out to get my braces. 

Title: Toothache

Word count: 1,699

Fandom: Gintama

Pairing: Gintsu

Sakata Gintoki was a big baby. And to say that Tsukuyo didn’t know this when she was getting into a relationship with him, would be wrong. It was just that she didn’t know the severity of the situation.

You see, if you would’ve told her that The Shiroyasha, one of the Four Heavenly Kings and the Savior of Yoshiwara was afraid of the ‘dentist’ and would lock himself up in a room the moment you even mentioned the word, she would’ve thought you were joking. Because sure, the man still behaved like a ten year old but to think that you could get him to sweat bullets by saying the words ‘dentist, clinic, and tooth extraction’ in one sentence, was something she hadn’t quite anticipated.

In the years she had come to know him, she had figured out that the man had a huge sweet tooth and would look for any opportunity to stuff his mouth with the sweetest thing he could find and she was more than fine with it, because Hey? She liked to smoke, he liked to eat disgustingly sweet things and everybody else on Earth was probably also addicted to atleast something. But it becomes a problem when your ‘addiction’ causes you to suffer, which in Gintoki’s case, manifested in the form an extremely painful toothache.

“I am not leaving this room, you hear me!” He shouted from inside as he held his cheek trying to soothe his pain. He thought about the last time he had visited the dentist and shuddered. Looking at his free hand, he thanked God that he didn’t walk out of the clinic that day with a toothbrush in place of his arm.

“He’ll just take a look and we’ll be back before we know it!” Tsukuyo shouted back, still trying to get the door to open but it seemed as if Gintoki had blocked it from the inside somehow.

“That’s what they all say! And then before you know it, you’re walking out of the clinic with a tooth missing from your mouth!”

Tsukuyo rolled her eyes at his childish argument. She figured she wasn’t going to have any luck opening the door by force so she decided to be crafty. Perhaps a bribe would work better. She smirked as her mind began to cook up an offer he could not refuse.

“Okay, if you don’t wanna go, it’s fine.”

Gintoki’s ears perked up when he heard her say those words. It seemed highly suspicious to him that after pestering him for a whole day to go the doctor, she would give up like that. But then again if he hadn’t whined so much about his toothache in the first place, she wouldn’t have even asked him to get it checked out.

Maybe, she decided to let it go?

He slowly got up and opened the door slightly to see what was going on.

Tsukuyo was sitting on the couch, smoking her pipe. He let out a sigh of relief and decided to walk over to her, one hand still on his cheek. He sat down opposite to her and opened his copy of Shonen jump, hoping it would help him take his mind off the throbbing pain in his gums.

“It’s really unfortunate you know. Hinowa was just telling me about this amazing desserts shop that opened last week but since you have a toothache, we can’t really go.”

So that was her plan.

Gintoki smirked understanding all too quick what she was trying to do, but he wasn’t going go down that easy.

“I see. Well, maybe it’s about time I start cutting down on my sugar intake.” He lied. There was nothing in this world that could make him do that but if he wanted to win against her, he had to make bold statements.

“Really? Well, I guess you’ll miss out on their special jumbo parfait then.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“I heard it reaches 3 feet high.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And it’s supposed to taste like every dessert combined.”

“…”

“They even top it off with this divine strawberry syr-”

“FINE! I’ll go get it checked out, but you’re going to take me to this new place as soon as we leave.”

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he needed more than bold statements to win against Tsukuyo. So he surrendered. And in the next hour he found himself sitting in the most dreadful seat he had ever been in.

The walls of the clinic were pink in color and the furniture along with the dental chair was white, as if the architect wanted to mimic an actual mouth.  There were posters of people smiling, showing off their perfectly straight, white and cavity-free teeth. There was another one with a dentist standing next to a tooth, which had face on it and both of them seemed to be doing a fist bump. To Gintoki, that was something he’d see in his nightmares but for the sake of his jumbo parfait that Tsukuyo had promised him, he suppressed his urge to scream at it.

“Don’t let go of my hand okay?” he tightened his grip on her hand and looked at her as if he was about to die. All the color on his face had drained and at that moment she really was sure he would faint the moment the doctor entered the room.

“Gintoki…”

By the way he was acting; even Tsukuyo had started to get afraid. Was getting a tooth extraction really that big of a deal? She shook her head in denial. Even if did hurt as bad as he was acting it would, she was going to make sure he got it. Because she definitely wasn’t going to spend another day listening to him whine about how bad his toothache was.

“Okay, but promise me you won’t run away when the doctor comes?”

Gintoki nodded his head vigorously before shutting his eyes close.

That’s right. He didn’t need to see anything happen. It can’t hurt you if you don’t acknowledge it. Right! Everything was for the sake of the Jumbo parfait that was waiting for him outside the doors of this place.

Bracing himself for the dread that was about to come, he took a deep breath and felt his soul leave his body as he heard the door open with an eerie creak.

“Ah, I see you’re already settled. Well then, let’s see how bad the damage is?”

He heard the Doctor put on his latex gloves and opened his mouth reluctantly. He felt something cold touch the inside of his cheeks and closed his free hand into a fist. Turning his attention away from click and clack of the dental equipment hitting the tray, he tried to focus on the ticking of the clock hanging above him.

Wrong move.

With every passing second he became more and more aware that death would soon come take him but what annoyed him the most was how slowly time was passing. He mentally cursed the clock for mocking and teasing him in his time of worry.

“Hmmm…. Well, the cavity has grown pretty deep. The only option is to remove it.”

There it was. The death sentence.

He slowly opened one of his eye to take a look at what happening and saw the doctor smile back at him innocently as if he wasn’t about to rob him of his tooth in a few minutes. He also took a look at Tsukuyo who was looking worriedly at the huge syringe in the Dentist’s hand. It was then that he realized that his grip on her hand had loosed a while ago and now, she was the one clutching his hand. A little too tight that it hurt but if he was being honest, if this pain would take his mind off his awaiting tooth extraction, he was ready to endure it.

“Open wide for me.”

The doctor administered the local anesthesia and waited for a while before grabbing a forceps-like tool from his tray.

Gintoki shut his eyes once again and counted to three before he felt Tsukuyo’s hold on him loosen. He slowly opened his eyes again and saw the dentist setting his tooth aside on the tray.

“The anesthesia will wear off in about two hours. Remove the gauze after about an hour and it’s fine to see a little bit of blood in your saliva but if the bleeding is heavy, it will treated as a medical emergency. Oh, and be sure to eat only soft food for a few days like soup or ice-cream.”

Tsukuyo listened intently to the instructions of the dentist and thanked him for his work before looking back at Gintoki, giving him a relaxed smile.

“Right. Ice-cream it is.”

.

Walking out the clinic, Gintoki felt like a new man. Finally, he was free to go drown himself in all the ice-cream and parfaits he could manage but first…

“See? That wasn’t all that bad was it?” Tsukuyo walked a little infront him and said in a told-you-so voice.

“I don’t know, I had others things occupying my mind at the time, but maybe you could tell me?” He wasn’t really supposed to talk after his treatment but he couldn’t wait to see her reaction any longer.

Tsukuyo turned around at his remark with a confused face and saw him holding up his right hand directly at her which had a very visible bright red imprint of her own on it.

“T-That is-” She turned around nervously sputtering something he couldn’t quite understand and started walking at a fast pace.

“Oi, you sure you wanna leave me here? You seemed pretty worried about me a while ago? Why don’t you hold my hand again so we don’t get separated?”

She could feel him smiling smugly at her and picked up her pace even more.

“Shut up! Do you want go get the parfait or not?!”

Gintoki relished in his successful attempt of making her embarrassed a little while longer before letting out a sigh.

“Alright, I’m coming.” He scratched the back of his head and started following behind her.

Man, He really couldn’t win against Tsukuyo.