Chapter Text
It doesn’t get easy all at once, it doesn't even get easy thereafter. After Saitama gets over the initial shock of having to readjust to having Genos live with him, no matter how easy settling back into their old routine is, he still feels that gap. Like a skip in time, like an afternoon gone by in a blink or that time with the pears when he thought he was alone, but not, because Genos had always been, there.
It wouldn’t affect him that much, he was an adult after all, but he, embarrassingly enough, found himself reaching out instinctively, to touch, to take, and Genos let him.
And let him. And let him. And then he said, “Sensei, it’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
And Genos would just look at him like, you really don’t know, and say, “It hasn’t stopped you before.”
Some mornings, Saitama would straddle the line between sleep and wakefulness, and dread crossing over either line, but Genos would always be within earshot or line of sight. In the kitchen, at the table, coming in from putting out the trash, taking in the mail, or he’d leave the television or the CD player on, each time drawing Saitama out of that thick dark sleep and into the bruising sun.
“It was like this when you were gone,” Saitama mumbles, voice thick with sleep.
“When I-?” Genos would say from the kitchen, from the table, from the genkan.
“But not, because it was like being underwater, or seeing a reflection in the mirror,” Saitama says, blinking the grit from his eyes.
They were both different people now. Different from when Genos first arrived, different from when Genos left, and when he returned again. Saitama had thought only Genos was subject to change but he found himself staring blankly into the mirror one day, struck by a sense of déjà vu, “That’s strange, I thought that’s what I was doing. Living.”
Except Genos would call him from the kitchen, from the table, from the genkan, “Breakfast is ready, sensei.” Saitama would reply with, “Just a minute,” and splash his face with water until his besotted look became a sodden look.
Never mind that he’s allowed this now, it doesn’t change the fact that he isn’t used to it, doesn’t know what to do with it, with himself.
When the static fills his ears and he feels like his bones are hollow and his skin is made of paper, Genos is there, with a cup of tea, sitting shoulder to shoulder against him until either of them leans their head onto the other. Saitama holds his breath, waits for the accompanying guilt that never comes. All he can hear is Genos quietly humming.
When Genos’ eyes darken to a pitch black and his movements become erratic, Saitama restrains him or lets him loose, whichever is necessary, until he comes back to himself. “Sensei,” Genos says, his voice muffled in Saitama’s neck. “I still, don’t, am I really,”
“Yes, yes,” Saitama would reply, leaning his head against Genos. “It’s over. You’re fine.”
They still did chores. Saitama did the laundry, Genos in charge of the cleaning and both of them taking turns to cook. They still went out and fought dangerous monsters. The hate mail didn’t stop coming either. Childish scribbles declared “Why are you even here? We don’t need you!” And, well, no one had ever needed him. “Bikes,” he says, shrugging.
“No, sensei,” Genos says, holding his hand like he’s a child as they walk to the grocery store.
Saitama had never been very good with letters, but he had enough experience with them that he recognised the intent behind them. So it wasn’t like he thought letters were meaningless then, just that hate mail was meaningless now.
His father still sent him yearly greetings in the mail which Saitama kept in a box at the back of his shelf. He kept them neatly bundled because they were always written on expensive looking card paper in his father’s beautiful calligraphy. That was how Saitama knew how the time and effort someone spent on a letter showed.
So when he finds a paper bag sitting beside the cupboard filled with handwritten letters, he can tell at a glance what they are. “Love letters? I thought the mail already came in today,” he muses, picking one out and flipping it over.
“What le-Sensei!” Genos exclaims, peering out the kitchen window and then rushing out into the living room when he sees what Saitama has in his hands. “Those! Th-those, are from me,” he says, his voice dipping even as suds drip from his hands. Saitama doesn’t pay attention to the growing puddle on the floor, instead, his eyes are fixed on the way the letter is addressed simply to “Saitama-sensei”.
“You wrote love letters?” Saitama asks, staring at the letter and the bag in fascination.
“To you. Yes.”
At his confirmation, Saitama finally flushes, “There’s a lot.”
“Yes. I was gone for a month and I really did want to see you but-”
Saitama rifles through the bag. The letters are bundled in the tens and there are more than three bundles. “I, Genos there’re a lot of letters here. Way more than a month’s worth.”
“I may have written more than one a day. On several occasions.”
“You didn’t mail them.”
“I,I did want to send them to you. I really wished I could, I,” Genos stammers. “There was no mailbox?”
Saitama knows why he hadn’t. He just asked to tease him, but faced with the knowledge that Genos had, for that whole month, written letter after letter to him, unable to stop himself. “I'm keeping these,” he says. “And don’t try to stop me, these, they’re from you.”
“They are,” Genos says, fidgeting with his apron. He excuses himself, “Are you going to read them now? If you are, I will go to the shops. We’re out of mirin and I will be making katsudon tonight so-”
“You can stay.”
Genos stops, foot half out the door.
“I know you want to see me read them.”
“I don’t,” Genos says unconvincingly.
“You do. Well you will anyway because I’m probably going to tear up, at least. I’ll go make some tea while you decide,” Saitama says, going into the kitchen while Genos enters the living room. When he comes out with the tea, Genos has put on Debussy and is sitting seiza. The letters are arranged neatly on the table by date.
Saitama hands him a cup of tea and kisses him on the temple for good measure. He sits adjacent to Genos. There are a few in which there are three or four letters grouped into one and Genos looks away, abashed when he sees that Saitama has noticed them. He’ll get to those, eventually. Then after, they'll talk about them, and what they mean and what they don't mean, and after that, they'll make dinner or get dinner but eat dinner, and after, after, well, that comes after.
He opens the first letter and scans it. The writing is respectful and devoted. The handwriting neat, yet clearly characteristic.
‘Dear Saitama-sensei,’ the letter reads.
Saitama owns only one blanket. When Genos came to live with him he slept on a sleeping mat until Saitama could go out and buy him a futon of his own.
When he still lived with his parents, he slept on a bed. They’d sold the house after they retired to live on a beach somewhere warm and safe. He kept his old blanket, though, the heart patterned one. He brought it with him from shabby student accomodations to derelict apartment after derelict apartment. It is this heart-patterned blanket that he lifts the edge of as Genos stares at him uncomprehendingly.
“Right, what I mean to say is. You can sleep with me tonight,” Saitama said.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, so, that’s why I’ve pushed the futons together. You turn off the lights.”
Saitama still leaves his hugs open, gives Genos some space to move or pull away if he needs to. They’ve been taking naps together, but they’ve never slept this close for this long.
Saitama feels ridiculously warm, not just from the heat radiating off Genos but he’s also pretty sure his face is red with embarrassment. Genos is pressed flush against his back, curving round his body. His forehead is pressed in between Saitama’s shoulder blades, one hand stroking rounded fingertips up and down his back.
“Heh, this is nice, isn’t it?” He says, laughing nervously, just to break the silence.
Saitama can hear Genos’ processors pick up speed like how his own heart is beating faster. Saitama has never felt this warm in his life. He’s felt the unbearable pressure of the summer heat and the stifling atmosphere of a sauna, but this is nothing like that. This feels like sitting in a kotatsu, like standing in a kitchen stirring soup, like lying in a patch of sunlight. All things he’s done with Genos, he realises.
There’s a warmer region where Genos has draped his other arm over his hip and has reached under his pajamas to run his hand up and across his stomach. He’s all hard edges, which makes sense since he’s built for combat, but his frame has a certain curvature and a certain tenderness makes his touch unmistakably human.
He’s humming a nonsense melody into his skin, and Saitama can feel it vibrating through his chest. He’s warm, and sleepy and comfortable and at that moment, so, so content.
“Sensei,” Genos murmurs into his skin.
“Hm?”
“Sensei, sensei, sensei,” Genos says over and over. Saitama chuckles and tangles his legs with Genos’.
“That’s me all right,” he jokes.
“Saitama.” Saitama’s breath hitches as Genos presses his name with gentle fervour into his back and neck, “Saitama, Saitama, Saitama.”
He kisses the base of Saitama’s skull and Saitama shudders. He can feel the beginning prickle of tears at the corners of his eyes and this is confusing because he feels inordinately happy.
Genos stops stroking his stomach and reaches up to lace his fingers with Saitama’s where they’re curled against his chest and he rubs circles with his thumb onto the back of Saitama’s hand. His other hand curls around Saitama’s stomach and pulls him even closer. He’s being so gentle, treating Saitama like something precious and Saitama feels so incredibly undeserving to be the recipient of such unadulterated devotion.
Genos murmurs, “I have waited so long to be able to do this. I want to draw you inside of me and keep you there forever. There is space. I know there’s some space beside my core.”
“There isn’t,” Saitama says, numbly.
“There is. I will make room. I will always make room for you.”
“Saitama-sensei?”
“What is it, Genos?”
“If you were a colour, what colour would you be?”
“I don’t think I’d be a colour. So, colourless, I guess.”
“I see.”
“Pretty boring, huh?”
“No, that must mean you were something else, something greater.”
“Maybe. What brought this on?”
“You said you spent many years training-”
“Just three.”
“Was this not what that had all led up to? And me too? Weren’t we both comets or black holes, travelling through tunnels of light, picking up bikes while walking across great plains of grey, flying across white skies?”
“You think? But that was all just a metaphor.”
“For what?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“…I understand. Good night, Saitama-sensei.”
“Good night, Genos.”