Chapter Text
"Genos—wait, wait, wait. Just—"
Genos didn't spare another second until he launched himself high into a corporate building, smashing glass and sending its shattered pieces glittering like stars into the middle of the black sky. Neon lights danced around Saitama as he listened to the hurried footsteps of all the Corpos fleeing the building like wild geese.
"…Be careful," Saitama grumbled as he raised his head to the fiftieth-something floor where chaos ensued. He crossed his arms and listened to the pitter-pattering of rain and wild gunshots. At some moment, a bright blue fire enveloped the whole floor. The glass panes melted, and Saitama caught himself wondering if Genos' synthetic hair would be alright if he kept burning everything in such close proximity to himself. Then Genos would be bald, too, and the image of it made Saitama chuckle a bit. Two bald guys living together and running around beating up cyberpsychos. Weird.
But then Saitama's eyebrows furred. When Genos first barged into Saitama's life, he'd rambled about his backstory—how his whole family was murdered by a rogue cyberpsycho caught too late. He'd mentioned something about his whole street being burned to ash, no survivors except, by some miracle, himself.
Death was commonplace in NC, especially so for Edgerunners. But it didn't make Saitama worry any less—he cares about the young, hot-headed man whose attitude is as flaming as his cannons. He treated death too much like an afterthought.
Saitama sighed, braced his knees, and jumped into the charcoal-black story, his white cape fluttering like a wind breeze.
He squinted his eyes to see through the black smoke—it wasn't helping that it was midnight and all the lights in the building were fizzled out. Saitama's fingers squeezed his nose bridge as he made his way through what used to be an office floor. "Genos? You got 'em?"
Silence.
"Genos?" He heard the familiar whir of Genos' core, and Saitama sighed in relief. He was alive. "Just keep whirring or whatever, okay? I can't see."
He listened to the gentle hum of Genos' artificial heart as he tried to discern its location. With a thud, Saitama walked into the corner of a metal table—or what was left of it, its whole frame melting onto the ground and only held up by two wobbly legs. Saitama hoped he wouldn't see Genos like that. He was ultra fire-proof, so he should be fine.
"Saitama." He heard a static voice. He sighed in relief.
It was the all-too-familiar voice that Genos had left when his voicebox was beaten up and, most likely, alongside the rest of him. He'd have to carry Genos home again, Saitama thought. He pushed his sleeves up as he made his way around the corner.
Saitama's eyes widened. Genos was completely fine. But he wasn't. He wasn't fine.
All his hair was intact, at least, but something in his yellow irises wasn't. He was kneeling on the ground in front of an emergency staircase that led downstairs. His fists shook as they gripped a charred carpet, its plastic melting into the seams of his knuckles. Saitama realized, after a few seconds, that Genos wasn't breathing.
"Oi, Genos," He kneeled down in front of Genos and gently shook his cold shoulders. His eyes were glued to the ground and his head hung low. How was he so cold? He'd just blasted the whole floor to dust. "Genos? Come on, now. It's over. I'm sure you took care of it. I've got you. You're fine."
Saitama wasn't completely sure what happened, whether the cyberpsycho ran off or they were blasted like the rest of everything, but he didn't care for it. He wanted Genos back from wherever he was.
Genos seemed to stir a bit when Saitama grabbed his hands and gently began peeling off the plastic that's gotten into the nooks and crannies of his digits. He tried picking it off as gently as possible. The cannons in the palms of his hands were slightly cracked at the edges. Genos had really overdone it.
"Saitama-sensei." Genos' dim yellow eyes met Saitama. His voice was less static now, but his black pupils were moving erratically as if his eyes' motion sensors were damaged. "I killed someone."
Saitama's stature stiffened, but he didn't stop holding Genos' shivering hands. He squeezed them gently. "It's fine. You're fine, Genos. Casualties happen. And you saved hundreds of people." And what matters most is that you're alive, but Saitama didn't say that. Genos' fingers squeezed Saitama's in a vice grip that would've broken a normal person's bones.
"It's not fine," Genos' voice broke with the growing tension in his metal joints, a finger snapped off of his hand. Saitama quickly picked up the finger and slotted it back into Genos' knuckle.
"They were—they got caught. In it. I didn't think—I didn't think they'd die."
Genos was curling in on himself until his head met Saitama's chest, his hands held together on Saitama's lap. "They were another Edgerunner. They tried to kill it. With me. I thought it'd be fine to fire as normal. But I—I killed them." Genos heaved that last sentence out like it was a bullet shot into his throat.
Saitama stroked the palms of Genos' hands as Genos leaned in completely, burying his face into Saitama's shirt. Hot streaks of oil ran down his face. His shirt would be ruined, Saitama knew, but he didn't care for it—he gently wrapped his arms around Genos as the young man broke down completely, warbled cries leaving his artificial lungs feeling burnt and cindered.
They could only sit there for a few minutes before the sirens of a Trauma Team's calls blared—the floating red-and-white ambulance was only a few hundred meters away before it would reach the scene.
Genos wiped his face with the back of his palm, making more of a mess of his face with black oily streaks smeared across his cheeks and nose. If his eyes were real, they would've been red and puffy, but instead they were static and still as he gazed at his metal knees touching Saitama's on the floor. He gripped Saitama's hands in his and said with a quiet tone, "If I ever—"
"No, Genos." Saitama's grip tightened, but he controlled it like he did his voice. "There is no if. It was one accident, Genos. You'll never go insane. You're special, alright? You've done this for years."
Genos stayed silent, but his posture relaxed. They stayed there for a few seconds, gently holding each other's hands as if one's wasn't metal nor the other's indestructible flesh. They held each other like fragile porcelain that would break if they let go. But they finally did, and ran off before flashlights could find them.