Summary: Garou and Genos watch Tareo for the holidays. Chaos ensues but it's fine.
In this Chapter: Saitama faces off against Garou’s elf decorations. Tareo builds a gingerbread house, and Genos accidentally ruins Christmas helps.
Author’s Confession: I meant to finish this by Wanpanmas but alas I did not. I was hoping to at least be done by Orthodox Christmas but then I got sick. I got to use the word ‘sacchariferous’ in a sentence; it was wonderful. Please enjoy this slightly out-of-season holiday train wreck adventure.
If Garou x Genos is your OTP this is one of exactly 9 things you can read on ao3.
[i actually started this for wanpanmas 2021 and things spiraled out of control, lol]
Rating: Teen
Category: Fluff, Humor (Situational Irony Goes Up To 11), Misunderstandings, Comedy of Errors
Pairing: Garou x Genos. Garou and Saitama Are Besties (and also drive each other crazy constantly). There is some background Serirei, which I hadn't anticipated, but characters are like children--they're gonna do what they're gonna do.
Fic Summary: When Garou and Genos agree to watch Tareo for the holidays, chaos ensues. Genos accidentally ruins Christmas with science. Saitama confronts his arch nemesis (elves). And who the heck keeps melting all of Garou's snow monsters? Certainly not Reigen Arataka.
In this Chapter: Garou finally gets revenge on Saitama for stealing his Christmas decorations. The elves have their own plans. Everyone in the house has one fucking braincell. This reads a little bit more like a horror movie than most other chapters. You can blame John-senpai for this, as well as most of my other bad ideas.
“Where were you on the morning of December 22nd?” Garou demanded, slamming his palms on the table. “And don’t give me some bullshit about ‘playing video games’—King is sick and tired of covering for your ass."
Garou adjusted the desk lamp, beaming a harsh glare directly into Saitama’s eyes. With the right lighting and a few key props, Garou had transformed their kitchen into some kind of hybrid courtroom/interrogation chamber… not that you could easily see it. For the sake of dramatic effect, Garou had kept the room dark—except for the interrogation lamp, of course.
Saitama hated Christmas decorations, and Garou understood this. Perhaps for that reason, Garou had decorated their entire yard with garish Christmas geegaws of every terrible, tacky stripe. The tiny wooden elves were the worst offenders, and so Saitama had stolen them a few days ago, and subsequently dumped them in the lake.
“Hey, watch where you aim that thing.” Scowling, Saitama batted the lamp away from his face. Garou, being the impudent cat that he was, batted it right back where it had been. The spotlight washed over the elves, illuminating their loathsome little features and their unusual outfits.
“Did you have to dress the elves up in little judge robes?” Saitama protested. “That’s so weird—”
“Focus, Baldy,” Garou growled. “The longer you stay silent, the worse it’s gonna be for you.”
Would love to hear more about you & me & a high balcony!
Gahh! Thank you so much for the ask. (Original link is here, if anyone wants to join or reblog.)
So, “you & me & a high balcony” is one of the fics I drafted when I was teaching myself to write again. So it's awkward and striving (mostly in the right direction), and still pretty rough--I started writing it in 2020, I haven't really touched it since 2021, and I have learned a whole lot since then. At the same time, it is a fic that is near to my heart and I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about it! <3
“you & me & a high balcony” is about Genos taking Garou home for the first time--why? tbd! I wrote probably about 100k words of various interconnected fics without fully committing to the unifying concept or plot and I will never, ever do that again. Probably.
Anyway, Genos takes Garou home and neglects to fully inform Saitama. You are getting my draft in its fully unedited glory.
Saitama’s cactus is on the balcony and it is a very, very painful experience for him. In keeping with running canon gags, Saitama is absolutely powerless against this ickle, stationary cactus and he finds himself in an ongoing fight with it, almost immediately. He also gets totally entangled in Genos' camping gear, but put a pin in that, we'll come back to it.
What follows is a series of interspersed scenes between Genos and Garou inside the apartment, Saitama making strange noises outside, Genos fabricating excuses and lying (poorly), and Genos occasionally stepping out on the balcony pretending to be Genos (because, again, Saitama is wrapped up like a sad sandwich in an unpitched camping tent.) In retrospect, it's very clear how much I miss writing for stage, because it feels a bit like an homage to Noises Off (but, you know, prose).
In the spirit of adventure, I am sending an unedited screenshot. With comments boxes! I haven't re-read it in years because I'm too nervous, but you can!
“CW” doesn’t necessarily stand for content warning but I guess it certainly could? CW is an abbreviation of my name so it’s how I highlight “shit I need to go back and figure out.” Being older and wiser, most of my drafts are now just bullet points for me to come back to later, when I have a coherent, unifying thought for the story/fic/series. It has saved me a lot of screaming and tears.
Anyway, Saitama keeps moving the cactus into the apartment. Garou keeps moving it back. Genos has no idea what the fuck is happening, but it’s the least of his problems. Eventually it leads to Saitama and Garou having a heart-to-heart (and agreeing not to tell Genos they met) and, idk, man, I love writing Genos x Garou a lot, but (Platonic) Garou + Saitama scenes are my absolute favorite. I just give them my ideal relationship, which is All of the Hijinks and None of the Sex with someone who finishes your sentences, but all the sentences are puns.
I started drafting the story in 2020, and anything I wrote in 2020 chronicles my descent into madness— inadvertently & indirectly. Suffice to say, quarantine was hitting me very hard and a lot of my behavior was centered around making myself laugh. My serotonin starved brain had a tendency to overload scenes with jokes. Even if they didn’t fit, even if they threw off the pacing. But stories and scenes need to have cohesive plots and it’s silly, to the point of being out of character. Sometimes that's part of the process, though. There's always a lot of love in the first draft of a story, I think, because it's a leap of faith.
I had written a litany of things that embarrassed me about this draft, I deleted it. So I'll share one of the things that I am proud of coming up with--I don't play a lot of video games. I needed a fighting game for King and Saitama to play during a stint of dialogue (the outcome of which involves King lending Saitama Hatoful Boyfriend so that Genos can practice dating (and also he does not trust Saitama with any of his beloved Doki Doki sims). So I thought of the one game I played a lot as a kid (Super Smash Bros) and combined it with something I do know really well (literature) and came up, um, this:
The Body Electric is near to my heart because it was a major part of my writing journey. It was also a major part of my writing journey where I learned a lot, mostly by making mistakes. Granted, it remains largely unpublished so I failed in gracefully private but it is really important to me to finish it one day.
Category: Promptfic (for Christmas), Fluff, Humor (Situational Irony Goes Up To 11), Misunderstandings, Comedy of Errors
Pairing: Garou x Genos. Garou and Saitama Are Besties (and also drive each other crazy all the time).
Fic Summary: When Garou and Genos agree to watch Tareo for the holidays, chaos ensues. Genos accidentally ruins Christmas with science. Saitama confronts his arch nemesis (elves). And who the heck keeps melting all of Garou's snow monsters? Certainly not Reigen Arataka.
In this chapter: Genos has never been great with Santa Claus–or any other fairy tale, for that matter. Garou argues that these things have their place. This presents a few problems around the holidays.
Overly Honest Summary: In which Ca-Chan seizes the brief opportunity to complete her story from last year's Wanpanmas, just in time for this year's Wanpanmas. The prompt was "fairy tales," I used the suggestion pretty liberally since this chapter was inspired by a 2021 prompt. 🤣
“He’s been watching the TV Guide channel for two hours—kids aren’t supposed to do that, Gen. You broke him!”
“I believe his disposition has improved.”
“How could you possibly say that?” Garou hissed. “Look at him.”
Tareo, collapsed on the couch, stared blankly into the television screen. He’d been like that for hours—bathed in the dull light, he looked exceptionally dejected, beyond distraught.
Rover, snuggled up beside him, nudged the boy from time to time giving— gentle encouragement, booping Tareo’s hand with his scraggly black snoot, and above all, providing a calm, supportive presence.
Tareo had his arms around Rover, but stayed otherwise listless and still.
“Well, for one thing, he’s stopped crying,” Genos said. “And he appears to have settled on a channel.”
“C-Span isn’t a channel,” Garou sighed. “If he was that upset, you should have come get me. I was right upstairs.”
“I made a solid effort to de-escalate,” Genos said. “I believe I acted to the best of my abilities.”
“You never explained how this whole thing started,” Garou continued. “Just what the hell happened, exactly?”
This panel worries me, because it appears that Sitch has not learned from his first critical mistake--lack of transparency with his colleagues. It’s almost what got him into this mess in the first place. The scene plays out pretty much the same in the manga and wc, so I’ve included panels from both:
“I do not know why they were called here...”
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHY THEY WERE CALLED HERE?!? Even if Heavy Tank means this figuratively (”I don’t know why anybody would do this, it is such a bad idea”)--it shows a fundamental disconnect between front-lines employees and organizational goals:
ONE goes out of his way to show that there’s suspicion and ignobility on both sides, and Garou only gets the jump because monsters & villains have societal leeway to express on their confusing and ineffable feelings of sadness through random acts of violence heroes are always late.
(Still doesn’t make it okay for Garou to rip Blue Fire’s arm off, though).
I can’t help but think that a bit more transparency and preparation could have changed the outcome of this meeting to something less... bloody.
It’s possible that some of this information is classified, or even speculative (especially in the most recent panel with Sekingar), but that’s a thing that happens sometimes, and if you have a decent rapport with your colleagues, it’s generally reasonable to say, “I’m really sorry, but that’s not information I can share with you just yet.” Which I had to do often, and is part of the reason Middle Management tends to burn through people really fast.
Like... Garou has actively declared war on the Hero Assocation. Sitch (and others) will have to work really hard to ensure everybody knows he’s starting--least of all because transparency and communication is crucial to implementing controversial decisions/strategies.
I am now envisioning a scenario where Garou runs into Genos in the elevator on his way to get his employee ID or whatever, and...
[[Cut to: Garou and Genos sitting side-by-side in a conference room. They are both scowling. Genos seems mildly embarrassed; Garou is considerably singed.]]
Genos: on my life, I did not know he was my colleague. when I saw him, I assumed he was merely an intruder.
Garou: and when I saw you, I assumed the copy machine had achieved sentience, and yet I wasn’t compelled to kill you to death with fire--
I am gently tucking this into my back pocket for Fic Reasons.
Category: Promptfic (for Christmas), Fluff, Humor (Situational Irony Goes Up To 11), Misunderstandings, Comedy of Errors
Pairing: Garou x Genos. Garou and Saitama Are Besties (and also drive each other crazy all the time).
Fic Summary: When Garou and Genos agree to watch Tareo for the holidays, chaos ensues. Genos accidentally ruins Christmas with science. Saitama confronts his arch nemesis (elves). And who the heck keeps melting all of Garou's snow monsters? Certainly not Reigen Arataka.
In this Chapter: Missing elves, mystery potatoes—what the hell is going on in this household? Garou begins to put the pieces together, but he can't tell anyone...yet.
“Alright, Inspector Gadget…Tell me exactly what I’m looking at.”
The portable whiteboard shone as brightly as the snow outside, and had a nasty glare to match. It was also large; roughly as wide as the wall behind it. Countless symbols, letters, and numbers had been scrawled across the surface.
Probably calculations, Garou guessed…not that he could make heads or tails of it. As far as he was concerned, the whole incomprehensible mess may as well be ancient hieroglyphs—incoherent scribblings from some bygone world. And that’s how he felt, standing beside Genos in the kitchen—lost, as if they had come from two entirely civilizations, separated by time, maybe even space.
“These are the comprehensive mathematics of your so-called ‘Santa,’” Genos explained. “Figure two billion adolescents currently in existence, if we rely on the standard legal definition. Of these adolescents, figure that roughly 15% observe Christmas. For simplicity’s sake, we will sidestep the complexities of interfaith households, religious and cultural syncretism, and any calendrical nuances surrounding Orthodox Christmas.”
“Right.”
Garou’s eyes burned from all the variables and equations swirling behind them. Closing them didn’t help.
“On average, there are roughly 3.5 children dwelling in every home—wait, Garou, why are you laughing?”
It was impossible to not be tickled, watching Genos rambling on and on about these nonsensical calculations. And the visuals! Imagine, three whole children standing side by side, and one poor half child stuck in the lineup. Genos took himself so seriously, Garou could help but snicker at his utter sobriety.
“I’m not laughing,” Garou said. (He definitely was). After a moment, he managed to compose himself—or, at least, to put on his best serious face. “Please, continue.”
