Chapter Text
It was one of those rare days when not one, not even two, but three of Saitama’s most trusted supermarkets were having big sales. They were practically going-out-of-business sales. Sixty percent off milk. Two pounds of rice for the price of one. Three pounds of beef for less than a thousand yen. Beef was never that cheap.
She and Genos split up. Saitama gave him a list and some coupons and sent him to the farthest supermarket, the one in City J that was practically throwing their eggs away. Genos had argued that it made more sense for her to go to the farther store since she would be able to get home faster, but she reminded him what happened last time she went out to get eggs. She just wanted the eggs they bought to come home in one piece this time. Besides, Genos had mentioned wanting omelets earlier in the week and she promised to make some for him for dinner after their trips.
This left Saitama to go to the supermarkets in City D. They were separated by only a few blocks, and with the smaller amount of food she was going to be picking up, Saitama guessed that she would be back at the apartment well before Genos. Maybe if she gets back early enough she can take a bath. She hadn’t had a nice hot bath since Genos moved in, and she was starting to miss the feeling of it. Genos always took forever to clean. He said that it was because of the intricacies of his joints: his shoulders and hips were constructed to mimic the natural ball-in-socket joints of the human body, but his elbow and knee joints had multiple points of articulation that, along with a unique plasticized rubber that Dr. Kuseno had pioneered blah blah blah blah. In the five minutes it took him to explain the mechanical details of his joints and ligaments, he never explained why he had to keep the warm water running for the hour and a half he spent cleaning the gunk out of his elbows.
She turned the box of soap over and over in her hands. They were nearly out, and there was a specific brand that they could both use. She didn’t have a coupon for it, but the pennysaver said that all products for a certain brand were fifteen percent off, and she wasn’t sure if that included this soap because it was part of a smaller company that larger company owned. If it did include the smaller companies than she could get the larger bottle and—
“Excuse me.”
Saitama half turned around. Behind her were a trio of high school girls. Two were standing on the other side of the aisle, a tall one and a black haired one, with their backs almost pressed into the shelves. The girl closest to her, a brunette, was holding her hands in front of her stomach, fingertips twitching against each other. The brunette glanced away for a second when Saitama faced her and answered, “Yeah?”
“Um,” the brunette mumbled, “I…we just wanted to ask you, ah, if you were the Caped Baldy?”
Saitama’s mouth twitched into a small smile. Were…were these fangirls? The two farthest girls stared at her in anticipation. She spun the box of soap between her palms. She wished Genos was here to see this. With his mountains of fan mail and the twenty different forums dedicated to him, was he ever stopped in public? Well, yes, but this was the first time Saitama had the chance to speak to her admirers. She closed her eyes. “Why, yes, I am.”
“Oh my God,” the brunette gasped. “So, okay, do you really know the Demon Cyborg?”
Saitama stopped spinning the soap in her hands.
Oh.
“Um, yes,” she said quietly and carefully.
All three girls squealed.
The brunette took a step closer. “Is it okay if we ask you questions about him?”
Saitama blinked. “Like what?”
“Is he naturally blond?” the tall girl asked.
Saitama squinted at her. “He’s a cyborg.”
“That must mean that he is,” the black-haired girl whispered. The tall girl covered her reddening cheeks with her hands and turned to her friend. The brunette took another step closer. Saitama took a step back. The girl’s hands were clasped tightly together in front of her chest. She stared up at Saitama with round, glittering brown eyes.
“Is he as great as he seems?” she asked.
Saitama touched the back of her head. “How does he seem?”
The brunette’s gaze fell to the floor. “Well, he just seems so determined and brooding,” she said quietly. She squinted and her eyes moving slightly from side to side as she continued: “But…he doesn’t seem conceited. It’s like, like maybe he’s actually fighting for something.”
The hand that had been touching her head cupped the soap box still in her hands. Saitama ran a thumb over one of the corners. How long have they been living together? Three months? She must’ve known him for at least four months, then. That didn’t seem long enough. She thought of a night, back when she was still C-class, when she came home tired after uselessly running around town all day, and she opened the door and he was there, back straight against the wall, legs fully extended with his laptop open and sitting on his thighs. He looked up at her and said, “Welcome home, Sensei,” just like any other day. And for whatever reason, for that moment, she was weightless, like she could drift through the ceiling and glide over the floor.
“He’s better than you can even imagine,” she said.
The brunette looked up at her. Saitama realized she was smiling only when she saw the girl beaming.
The black-haired girl raised her hand. “Can I ask you something?”
Saitama looked at her. “You know you’re not in school right now, right?”
“Have you seen him naked?” she asked.
The brunette whipped around. “Setsuna!” she cried. The tall girl hid her face in her hand. Setsuna asked what was wrong with asking.
Saitama shrugged. “I mean, we live together,” she said. She has seen glimpses of him naked around the apartment, though he tried his hardest to never be without clothes around her, a consideration that Saitama had never reciprocated. He was also naked at the Hero Test, though that was so long ago that Saitama could barely remember what he looked like.
The girls fell silent. The tall girl pulled her hands away from her face and stared. Setsuna’s face turned scarlet. The brunette stood completely still. Saitama heard her mumble something about a demon cape being real.
“Wh-What do you mean you live with him?” Setsuna challenged. Her fists were raised and she was leaning toward Saitama, her weight resting on an extended foot.
“We live in the same apartment,” Saitama said.
“Does living with an S-Class hero make it easier for you to take credit?” Setsuna demanded. “Or are you just that thirsty for him?”
Setsuna’s friends shouted at her. The tall girl wanted her to stop. The brunette wanted her to shut up.
Saitama tossed the soap box into her shopping cart. She walked down the aisle, away from Setsuna’s claims that Genos would never want to do her and how she was barking up the wrong tree because some freak bald liar would never be good enough for the Demon Cyborg. Other customers were staring as she walked past, face blank and eyebrow twitching as the voices of the teenage girls faded into furious whispers. Brat didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.
###
The apartment was empty when Saitama returned. The curtains in front of her sliding doors dulled the bright, late afternoon sunlight and kept the room cool and dim. She dropped her groceries in the kitchen and opened the curtains. A cat was napping on the wall of the balcony. Its feet were tucked underneath its chest and its head dipped forward solemnly. The trash and the cactus were still out there. She needed to remember that trash pick-up was changing. A monster had torn up the waste management plant and she and Genos hadn’t helped. Now that there were enough trash trucks to service the edge of the ghost town, they didn’t have to walk a mile with leaking bags of trash at six in the morning just to make them someone else’s problem.
Saitama turned on the news and went back to the kitchen to put away her groceries. The anchorpeople chattered about a another monster in a another place that other people defeated. She hefted a bag of flower into a cabinet, pushing it toward the back and pulling the nearly empty bag to the front. Always use up what you have first, her mother had always said.
Freak bald liars will never be good enough for Demon Cyborg!
Brat.
When all of the groceries were away, Saitama pulled a pan out and set it on the stove. She needed to wait for Genos to turn up with the eggs, but this way they wouldn’t be bumping into each other in the tiny kitchen. She watched the news for a few moments, catching the gist of the conversation—some expert was drawing a connection between the high unemployment rate among recent college graduates and the kind of scents human resource people liked the least—before turning off the TV. She still wanted that bath.
The mirror fogged as warm water filled the tub. She kicked off her pants, socks, and underwear, and pulled her sweatshirt over her head. She slid into the small tub, submerging her head while her bent knees poked through the surface. Like little volcanoes, she thought. Mountains sinking into the ocean as she pulled herself up, her head like the moon taking reign of the tides. She rested her head against the back lip of the tub and stared at the beige, stained ceiling. Did they have a leak in their ceiling? There were floors above theirs. Maybe she and Genos could find a way into the upper floors and find where the leak was coming from.
Are you just that thirsty for him?
Thirsty…what did that even mean?
Maybe she could ask Genos. He knew more about teenage slang than she did. But then she might have to explain where she heard the term from, and that would inevitably lead her to tell him about the girls and the last thing she wanted was an angry cyborg on a witch hunt for his teenage admirers. She'll just look it up herself.
She lathered the remainder of their old soap between her hands and ran the slick down her arms and up her shoulders. She massaged little circles on the sides and back of her neck. She sighed and sunk deeper into the tub, the pleasant water resting against her bottom lip. Her hands, dragging against the water, moved down from her neck, over her breasts. Her fingers flew over the ripples of her abs and felt the deep creases of her pelvis.
Her fingers stayed there, moving back and forth, feeling the connection between taught muscle, hard bone, and velvety skin. She closed her eyes. Her legs hinged open. Fingers splayed wide on her inner thighs. She tipped her head back, leaving her mouth fully exposed to the misty air. There was a roiling in her stomach, a fluttering wave of warmth that pitched higher and higher with each beat of her heart, coloring her face cherry pink and leaving her mouth open, waiting, wanting.
“Sensei, I’ve returned.” Saitama heard the door close and Genos’s heavy footsteps as he walked into the living area, pause, and then walk back to the entrance. “Sensei?”
“Baaaaaaaaaaaath,” Saitama cried out. She closed her legs and dunked her head under water. The water muffled Genos’s response. She lifted her head to hear him move back into the kitchen. She cupped her hands and rubbed the soap off of her shoulders and neck. She should finish up and help Genos put the groceries away. She was starting to feel peckish, and Genos probably wasn’t feeling any less hungry. They hadn’t eaten since this morning, and it had to be well after six in the afternoon at this point. Saitama looked at one of her hands. Her skin hadn’t even started to prune yet.
“Sensei…” she heard Genos say, his voice near but quiet, ashamed.
“What?” Saitama squawked.
“Forgive me Sensei,” Genos said, this time a little more loudly, but still unsteady, “but…the eggs…”
Saitama jumped up. Did they have to change their dinner plans? Damn it! She just wanted to make omelets! She wrapped a towel around herself and leapt to the door.
Genos was standing in front of her, head bowed, arms bent and hands extended, offering the carton of eggs, a web of cracks running down the left side of his face and cheek. They started near the corner of his eye—somehow still intact and firmly connected to its socket—and spread to his ear, crept under his hair, and reached the bottom of his jaw.
“I apologize, Sensei,” Genos said, sounding like he was in pain.
“Your face…” Saitama said. “Did you get into a fight?”
Genos looked up, looking Saitama in the face. “Yes. When I was leaving the supermarket a monster was terrorizing the shopping center. I dispatched him quickly, though as you can tell he did manage to damage my face.” His gaze fell, settling at Saitama’s collarbone. His irises were dimmer than normal, making them pale, unfocused. “In my rush to fight the monster,” he continued, voice low and rough, “I am afraid I was not gentle with our food.” He shut his eyes tightly. “I apologize, Sensei. I should have checked before coming back home.”
Saitama looked at the carton of eggs. There were four or five eggs that had been well smashed, their yolks splattered against the plastic, their wrappers shredded. Some eggs had albumen leaking lazily from their shells. A few had already dried and weakly glued the wrapping to the egg. The rest were fine. Better than some of the previous times Saitama had brought eggs home.
She looked at Genos’s face. “Do you need to see Dr. Kuseno?”
Genos shook his head. He looked at her when he answered, “My face is a very minor injury. I have an epoxy and bond to fill and seal the cracks. It should be back to normal within a day.”
Saitama smiled. “The eggs are fine. We might just have bigger omelets than I originally planned. Let me put on some clothes and drain the tub.”
Genos scanned her face. He nodded. His shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch as he thanked Saitama and stepped away from the door.
###
Saitama lay on her back, her head propped on her folded futon, a manga hovering half-open above her face, eyes glazed over as she stared at a single panel of a demonic high school student shooting a gun wildly into the air. The sun had set. The night was warm and the sliding door was cracked open allowing a gentle breeze that ruffled the hem of Saitama’s pajama bottoms. Dirty plates with crumbs of cooked egg had been taken into the kitchen hours ago. The only sound in the apartment was Genos’s periodic, quick typing and Saitama’s slow breathing. She lowered the book onto her chest. Genos was sitting at the desk, back to Saitama. His shoulders were square. His arms moved slightly whenever he typed. She closed her eyes. If she concentrated hard enough, she could make out the muted whrrr of Genos’s core: the power surging through him, electricity rushing through the most disparate parts of his body--his prancing fingers, running brain, allowing his synthetic skin feel shirt on his wide back, pooling in his palms, ready to ignite.
“Sensei.”
“Hmmmm?” Saitama hummed. She opened her eyes. Genos was turned around in the chair, arm slung over the back, serious face terse and golden eyes waiting patiently for her.
“I apologize—” Genos said.
Saitama interrupted, “You ‘pologize too much.”
“—but I wish to ask you a question,” he finished.
Saitama closed her eyes. Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? she thought. Then again, it might be important. She opened her eyes. “’Kay.”
“Have you mentioned our living situation to anyone besides our closest acquaintances?” Genos asked.
Did she? Saitama closed her eyes. The black-haired girl’s face was projected onto the back of her eyelids. She heard her shrill insistence that the Demon Cyborg does not find desperation attractive. “Yeah,” she said quietly, groggily. “Ran into a couple of your fans at the supermarket. They asked a couple of questions, told 'em we lived together.” She twisted onto her side, still facing Genos, nose dug into the bent crook of her arm. She yawned. “Why?”
“Nothing, Sensei.” She heard the chair scratch as Genos got up. “Will you be comfortable?”
“Yah,” Saitama mumbled. She heard Genos walk closer to her. After a few moments of rustling behind her head, a blanket drifted down on top of her. She smiled and gripped the edge of it. She felt rubber and metal brush against her fingers and shoulder as Genos adjusted her blanket. She dug her nose deeper into her arm. “G’night,” she mumbled.
“Good night, Sensei.”