Work Text:
“Oh, mysterious Demon Cyborg, how I long for your strong arms to take me and push me against the wall—”
“Okay, forget I asked,” Saitama butted in as he pulled away from peering over the other’s shoulder. He sat on the other side of the table. “Y’know, there’re just some things that don’t need to be written down.”
From opposite him, past the two stacks of different colored paper, Saitama saw Genos nod. He raised his brow at that.
“Okay,” Genos said, folding the letter in his hands and dropping it unto the stack on his left. “I’m done.”
Saitama gave the stack on the right a pointed look. The pile of letters reached up to his cheek, at least. “You sure?”
A whirring sound started up as Genos lifted his palm towards the pile.
“Oi— OI OI OI OI! OI! ” Saitama scrambled as he grabbed the boy’s wrist and pushed it upwards. Remembering the newly fixed roof, he aimed it somewhere else. Remembering the newly fixed hole in the wall, somewhere else. Remembering his mangas, Saitama resorted to just waving the arm around. “Stop stop stop stop.”
The whirring thankfully died down. The dreaded look in the cyborg’s eyes did not.
“What did we say? What did we say? Burn after you read them.” Saitama let go of the wrist. He then pointed at the door. “And you do that outside!”
Genos frowned as he picked up (more like violently plucked) a letter covered in magenta glitter. “I am in an excruciating amount of pain.”
“You were just a head last week.”
“Excruciating.”
Saitama sighed. “Come on, man. Not everybody has a fan club. Exhibit A.” He gestured to himself.
“I am your fan club, Sensei.”
“Brat,” Saitama snorted. “You don’t count.”
“On the contrary, Sensei, I most certainly do count, for my support for you parallels the highest mountains of the entire world combined.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself.” Saitama scratched his cheek a bit, the only possible thing to do when your face is absolutely not turning red. He leaned on the table with his elbows. “And like I said, your fans worked hard on these. The least you could do is read ‘em. Even though…” After gesturing towards the myriad of letters and Genos nodding, Saitama picked up a yellow paper. “Even though some of them are really, really, weird.”
He glanced at the contents of the paper and snorted again. “Hey, hey. Listen to this one.” Once he had the disciple’s attention, he cleared his throat. Then, he daintily pressed his hand on his chest.
“To my darling savior…” Saitama began in the most dramatic matter. He heard Genos huff out a laugh and shushed the boy. “Let me, let me do this, come on.” He cleared his throat again.
“To my darling savior, I simply cannot express my utmost gratitude for your heroism on the 13th of March, a Thursday afternoon, when the clock struck 4:18, the very moment my heart began beating once it caught sight of your shine, in this small piece of paper — That is one whole sentence, wow.”
“If Sensei were to read all my fan letters like that, I believe the task would be less agonizing.”
Saitama snickered. He went back to the letter, “I am merely just so full of this warmth, it enveloped me much like the earthy brown ooze that splashed unto myself on the ground when you completely annihilated that hideous rat monster. I could never forget the thighs that were once before my face, so close yet so far. I wish I could have taken the chance to smother into them— Woah okay. Just inhaling it all in me. Filling me up to the brim—”
“You can stop now, Sensei.” Genos opened the letter in his hands and briefly skimmed over it before discarding in unto the pile.
“They talk about your thighs a lot. Wow. Geez. Okay. A lot, the next two paragraphs are literally just about your bulging thighs and how, like, you could choke them to death and they’d say thanks.” Saitama glanced at Genos, the boy seemed to be completely ignoring him as he picked another letter from the pile.
Saitama shrugged and straightened up. He wasn’t finished. He delicately placed his fingers to his forehead and eyebrows, and exhaled. “Oh, my dashing hero, your figure stars in my sweetest dreams, the wind against your form. I pray that one day it would be I against you— Oh my fucking god.” The man bursted into laughter.
“Sensei.” Saitama glanced up and saw the corner of the cyborg’s lips beginning to quirk.
The man sniffed, tears welling a bit in his eyes as he chuckled. “I just,” he cleared his throat. “I just simply want to see you once again, this warmth inside of me too much. It burns me, in all places, from my head all the way to my toes, akin to a fire billowing through rainforests. I cannot take it anymore, I want to take you. You, you, into me and into you, only you, Caped Baldy — wait, what.”
The air around them shifted so suddenly. The sense of realization plummeting upon the two men like a piano dropping comically to the pavement.
Saitama read that one sentence again. Then he reread the entire letter. Then back to that final phrase, where his hero name was written in perfect calligraphy.
“Oh.”
He blinked.
“‘The hell did they mean ‘your shine’?!”
The letter was snatched from his grasp. Genos had his hands on it, scanning the paper with what looked to be the gaze of what one would have against an everlasting nemesis. The scene made Saitama chuckle a bit.
“Well,” he said. “Looks like you’re not all alone in that fan club. Even if that other member is kinda worrying and I don’t know if I’ll be able to recover from this and no you are not going to track this person down to burn their eyes out get back here, Genos.”
The cyborg already had one foot out the door. But after a few moments, Saitama heard the front door shut and saw the cyborg enter the living room. Genos sat back down in front of the table with a loud thump, hands gripping the letter in a tight hold.
“Come on.” Saitama pried the letter out of the death grip, “It’s not so bad.” He looked at the letter again and snorted out a laugh. “Sounds like you got competition, though.”
Genos snapped his head up at that. Ah, Saitama knew that look. Before he could say anything, the cyborg whipped out his notebook and pen and slammed them unto the table. He flipped the book open and ripped out a single blank page.
“Uh, what are you doing?”
Genos set his pen down on the paper. He looked up and stared straight into Saitama’s eyes, yellow boring into brown. “Competing,” he said. “Dear Caped Baldy…”
“Oh my god.”
Genos continued to write as he spoke. “Since another member of the fan club has spoken about your thighs, I will be glorifying another delectable body part of yours. Your butt .”
“Genos!” Saitama groaned, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, which looked to match the color of his cheeks.
“Caped Baldy’s butt is one of the single greatest things I’ve seen in my entire 19 years of living, including the sardines that were at 75% off. Although the plump is unlike most, this particular butt is very cute. The shape fits perfectly into my hands and it is as if I’ve been gifted by some higher being to place my every inch of care into it.”
“Did,” Saitama stuttered, “Did you just call my butt flat.”
“It is cute.”
“You called my butt flat!”
Genos raised his hands and squished the air, “Cute.”
“You— Okay, okay. You’re gonna be gettin’ a letter too,” Saitama proclaimed, pointedly ignoring the heaps of paper addressed to the Demon Cyborg and glancing around. “I don’t have paper…” His eyes met Genos’ notebook. He looked at the cyborg, raising his brows and widening his eyes a bit.
Genos dutifully ripped out a page and handed it to Saitama.
“I don’t have a pen, too.”
Genos dutifully picked up his pen and handed it to Saitama.
“Thanks.” Saitama wiggled into a writing position and cleared his throat, “Dear Genos — “
“You have to use my hero name—“
“Dear. Demon. Cyborg.” Saitama scratched out some letters and continued to scribble. He squinted as he tilted his head a bit. After a few seconds, he wrote and said, “Dear, my sweet demonic cyborg prince.”
Saitama heard Genos huff again and saw him cover his mouth. He gestured for Saitama to continue.
The man squinted at the other before writing again, "You… are nice. ”
This time, Genos barked out a laugh, a boyish one that was being diminished by Saitama flailing his hands at him.
“Shhh!!! Quiet, quiet, quiet! I’m not good at this!”
“Sensei is so romantic.”
“Fine! Fine! Demon Cyborg has a nice butt.”
“I’m aware.”
A thwack of a paper to Genos’ head was drowned out by the boy’s laughter. Genos huffed out one final laugh and plucked the pen from Saitama’s hold. “Despite the lack of volume, his butt is surprisingly still soft. Getting hit by it and flying through a wall would be deemed as worth it — “
“Stop talking about my butt!”
“The cuteness transcends all.”
Saitama leaned over and got the pen. He sat back down, “No no no no. Wrong. You know what’s actually cute? That small, like...”
He set the pen down and began writing. “When Demon Cyborg is pleased, mostly after cooking a meal that’s going to be, hands down, the most delicious shit you’d ever eaten, or seeing some really expensive boots that match whatever his fashion style is, or receiving that damn 75% off pack of sardines I had to wait, like, three weeks for, he gets this small smile on his face. It’s like the letter ‘D’ in the English alphabet and, like, it’s so small. But it’s there. It’s there and it’s happy and it’s so…” Saitama shrugged. “Precious.”
He looked up and widened his eyes at Genos’ face. “That one!” He pointed at the other’s lips, which was indeed curved in a way of a small open-mouthed smile. Accompanied by it was a light air of steam gently whooshing out of the boy’s shoulders. Saitama waved the steam around before speaking again, “It’s that smile.”
“You have this kind of smile too, Sensei.” The small grin stretched.
Saitama scrunched his brows, “Eh?”
Genos got the pen and went to his sheet, “Caped Baldy, whenever he gets groceries in time for a sale, or eats hotpot with cabbage, or sees a cat, or says an unfunny joke, or gets a simple thank you from someone he’s saved, or when he’s looking at me and thinks that I do not notice, he puts on a small smile. A smile that may seem generic to an outsider, but is everything to me, for this very smile is worn on a man that is everything to me. From his kind soul, all the way to his generous actions. This man is the strongest man on earth, strong in so many ways. Strong in spirit, in beliefs, in his heart.” Genos stopped writing. He hummed, “Heart. Yes. Sometimes, his smile comes in the form of a tiny heart. That is indeed cute.”
The pen was set down and their gazes met. Saitama was hell aware of the warmth in his face. His chest felt tight.
He snorted, rubbing the damn red on his cheeks away. “Heart mouth. What, like heart eyes but for the mouth? I don’t know. Uh, wait.” The man fumbled through the table and picked the pen up, “You actually have heart eyes, though. Like. You look at me in a way that’s… so much. And, uh. Like. I don’t know, Genos. I’m just a guy.”
Genos nodded, looking down. “Yes. You are. But...” He tapped on his sheet of paper, the words ‘a man that is everything to me’.
Saitama let out a soft breath. Fingers fiddling with the pen, he simply just looked at Genos, who in return looked up and kept his unwavering gaze on him. Saitama’s chest felt tight again, but after a few moments, he realized he was wrong. It felt full.
He spun the pen around and went to write, only for faded ink to appear on his paper. “Ah shit,” Saitama muttered. “Your pen dried out, sorry about that.”
“It’s okay, Sensei.” Genos smiled that letter of the English alphabet. “There are just some things that don’t need to be written down.”
Saitama smiled what was apparently a heart. “Well,” He glanced at the yellow paper at his side. “Looks like it wasn’t a competition after all.”