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Genos and Saitama arrived home, finally, after a long day of grocery shopping and monster fighting. Well, mostly shopping, with the battle only punctuating the duo’s outing, but still, neither had much patience for it. Genos hobbled in quickly and quietly, immediately getting to work on soldering his back paw onto to the rest of his ruined leg. When he walked through the door, Saitama dropped his bags and breathed a sigh of relief.He threw his head back, tail thumping on the ground, “Thank God! It's freezing out there!”He was right, to a degree. It was late autumn, so the most extreme Genos would’ve gone in describing the weather was “nippy,” but then again, he didn't exactly have his sensei’s... condition.Saitama peeled off his gloves and boots and unfastened his cape from his suit. He grabbed some sweatpants and a long sleeve thermal from the closet. He went into the bathroom, not out of any sense of modesty (Genos saw him naked when they first met, so it's not like he had anything to hide), but so he could discreetly put away the bargain bin wrinkle cream he also bought on their trip at the same time.When he walked out again, he was wearing the sweatpants, but his chest was bare. Genos saw this out of the corner of his eye, and tried very hard not to stare.Tried.Despite himself, his tail gently, subtly wagged.Saitama pulled the thermal over his head, his large ears popping through the hole and flapping up a moment as if they were wings. He looked down to Genos as he fixed himself on the floor.“Do you wanna make a hot pot later?” he asked, scratching at his whiskers.“Sure, Sensei, as soon as I am finished.”“Okay,” he said, sitting down beside him.And so it was for several minutes, Genos repairing himself and Saitama sitting there in silence. Genos looked up from his work occasionally, seeing his teacher gazing off at nothing. It was… odd behavior in Genos’ mind, despite him growing used to it. They would often just… exist in the same space together, hardly talking and hardly even looking at each other. It made him wonder if Saitama was merely tolerating his presence.Though this aloofness was hardly the end of Genos’ confusion regarding his teacher’s behavior. One day, he recalled, he was observing Saitama reading a manga and taking notes, when he realized he was being observed as well. Saitama’s eyes had drifted away from his book and up to him. He stared at him, his face blank, and eventually he blinked, slowly. Genos found it a bit... unsettling.Maybe it was a cat thing. Before Saitama, Genos hardly lived around cats. His village had mostly been dogs, like him, and even with the cats that were there, it wasn’t as if he actively seeked them out or anything. It was an area the sharp-minded cyborg was atypically muddy on.After Saitama had defeated the mosquito monster and Genos began studying him, tracking the lead as his instincts urged, the spitz fell down a research rabbithole regarding feline combat abilities. Cats, he read, are natural born hunters, with keen senses of hearing, smell, sight, and touch that make them efficient and deadly. That certainly fit Saitama to a T, though his overwhelming strength was apparently unusual. Cats were more stealth-based predators rather than brute force ones. Maybe that explained why he was so distant…Saitama shivered. The heat was seeping through his exposed skin, despite his comfy clothes. His gaze set briefly on the thermostat, but the thought of his heating bill hitting an extra digit made him avert his eyes as if the device burned them.He looked over to Genos as if to ask for his input. His leg was back together, and now he was letting it set and cool.Wait.Genos is a cyborg. He’s filled with machinery constantly whirring about inside him, powered by a bright core. Machinery that gives off a lot of heat.Saitama’s pupils dilated.Genos tilted his head, ear flopping to the side, “Sensei?”Saitama flopped atop him.“Sensei!” he yipped in surprise, “Why are you…?”Was this a tackle? Were they fighting?Saitama tucked his limbs underneath his body, his tail curling to his side in a perfect spiral. His eyes slowly shut and Genos’ sensors detected a rumbling.Oh, he was purring.
Oh.
Even someone as illiterate in cat body language as him knew what that meant.Genos felt his face get hot. Actually, no, it wasn’t just his face. He was fairly sure the realization was making him overheat a little.Saitama spoke blissfully, his first word trilling slightly on the coattails of his purr, “Aah… keep it coming, Genos. That’s the stuff…”Genos’ tail beat against the floor at a vigorous pace.“Come on. Don’t be mad, dude…” he droned sleepily.His ears pricked forward. “Why would I be?”There was no reply.“Sensei?”Again, nothing, only the lovely, low, continuous sound of his purr and even breath.“Ah,” Genos said to himself with an amused smile, “he is catnapping.”