Chapter Text
It had started out as pity. At least, that's what Genos told himself. All those other kids, sitting in the back of the classroom, giggling and trading doodles, all about their teacher and his bald head. His love for what makes plants grow and what makes blood run through a body. His lab coat, that pocket housing a row of pens.
It was pity. He felt bad for his teacher. No one should have to work that hard and be scorned each day.
He would sit in the front, engaged, trying desperately to take notes on everything he lectured, but often he found himself gripping his pen, still and writing nothing, following his teacher with his gaze as he paced in front of the whiteboard, in front of his lab display.
Saitama, he insisted they call him,so informally. Genos was hesitant. Surely he deserved more respect than that...
He was showing them how to use the microscope. His hands, in those red latex gloves that fit him perfectly, turning the focus knobs with care. His eyes, however blank they were, peering down that long lens. It was all Genos could see.
“Now,” Saitama coughed, standing up straight, “I'll be able to better observe the slide if I had this iodine solution...”
He had the rather larger bottle beside him on the table, and he went to lift it by the lid.
It spilled everywhere, all yellow-gold on Saitama's pure white lab coat. Genos growled, turning around to see which of his classmates was guilty of unscrewing the lid. All of them covered their mouths as they laughed.
He was ready to defend his teacher, help him out, tell him I'd never do that to you, and I'll find out who did...
But then he heard him laugh.
When he turned back around, that was when it turned into love.
His teacher was gripping his own stomach, laughing hard at his plight. He was dyed, saturated with that iodine.
“That was a good one,” he sighed, picking the now-empty bottle up off the floor. “Oh hey look! Some of it actually got on the slide!”
He shrugged, accepting his fate, going to the eyewash station as he pulled off the sleeves of his ruined lab coat. It was a teaching moment. He read them the eyewash station instructions.
“Now,” he coughed, rubbing at his face with a paper towel, “what was I doing wrong during that experiment?”
“Wearing that sweatervest,” someone snarled from the back row. Some of the others laughed, low but proud. Genos folded his arms.
Did these kids not know how lucky they were to go to school? To have families waiting for them at home? To be taught by such a man, who wanted only for them to learn?
He raised his hand, trying to aid his teacher in ignoring the comment on his wardrobe. I think you're pulling it off, he wanted to say when he got called on.
“You weren't wearing your safety goggles,” Genos said eagerly.
“Very good, hun,” Saitama praised. Genos tried not to smile wide. Hun. He called a lot of students that, in an attempt to seem a little older, a little more authoritative.
If anyone asked him not to say it, he stopped calling them that. Genos came up with other nicknames for those students in his head.
“Okay well,” Saitama coughed, looking at the yellow stains on his pants and sighing, “let's call it a day. I need to change before the staff meeting later. I can't really pull off the whole Mad Scientist thing, I don't think...”
“It's because you don't have the hair for it,” a girl spat, chewing on her pencil.
“Ya got me there,” he replied, though not at cheerfully as he had dealt with the iodine, with the sweatervest comment. He took off his latex gloves and ran one hand over that bare scalp. “Don't forget to read the rest of Unit 2 by tomorrow. You'll get to be completely hands-on with the microscope.”
Hands-on, Genos shuddered. It was bad, it was sudden. He told himself it was sudden, that he hadn't spent the earlier weeks of the school year biting his lip as his teacher twirled his fancy pen between his lips, at his reading glasses sliding down his well-sloped nose as he graded homework. That he hadn't had some questionable dreams, at the end of which he ended up wearing nothing but that lab coat.
It was almost his eighteenth birthday, he reminded himself. Foolish, he knew, but he also knew he wouldn't be getting a cake or presents. Never had the money for such things in a foster home.
Maybe he would use some of the money he saved working part-time at the grocery store to buy a cupcake and a candle.
He pitied himself, and felt it was pathetic. He pitied Saitama, and it turned into love. Weird.
He was the last student to get up once they were dismissed, sloppily throwing one strap of his backpack over his shoulder.
“Teacher...” he mumbled as he passed by Saitama, who was wringing the remaining iodine solution out of his lab coat into the sink.
“What's up, Genos?” he asked, rinsing his hands.
“I can find out who unscrewed the lid,” he promised, trying not to sound too desperate.
“Oh,” he laughed, patting Genos on the back, “That's okay, you don't have to do that.”
His hand was all warm and dry, the heat finding its way through Genos's hoodie.
“Okay,” Genos agreed, looking at the floor. He wanted to go on, apologize on behalf of his peers. “They're such assholes,” he spat, instead.
“Language!” Saitama said, half-hearted, laughing as he scolded him. “Are they that cruel to everyone or just me?”
He was putting away his lab supplies, taking the slides out of the microscope, wrapping gently the long wire around its base. He lifted it the wrong way, the dangerous way that he had taught them not to. Genos couldn't correct him, too fascinated by the veins in those strangely-strong hands as they gripped so heavy an object.
Genos was young and lithe. He could have been lifted too.
He didn't want to tell the truth, that Saitama got the worst of it. Him and the kids who sat at the corner table during lunch.
“No,” Genos coughed, “they're pretty much always like that.”
“To you?” he asked, suddenly looking a little concerned.
There was that pity. He hated how Saitama looked at him like some poor victim of bullying.
“A little, but I can handle it, Teacher.”
“Tell me if they pull that shi-....” he pushed up his reading glasses. “If they torment you. It's another story if its a student.”
“Yeah, that 'No Tolerance' policy,” Genos mused, thinking of those cheesy laminated posters that did nothing to prevent fights.
“Hey, you should go to your next class.”
“I have a free period...”
“Then you should read Unit 2.”
Just when he was starting not to feel seventeen, a student, just a kid. They had talked before, after class. Always there was banter, always he felt so smart and so much older around his teacher.
He nodded, pulling the strap of his bag higher over his shoulder. He left the classroom without a word, wishing he could stay, wishing he could slip a fresh, clean lab coat over his teacher's shoulders, that he could help clean all of the dyed-yellow stains from off his skin.
When he got to his locker he leaned into it, letting his head hide between the metal walls as he let out a low groan.
“Well, fuck,” he muttered.