Okay so I may have kind of just watched Big Hero 6 earlier today...and it was SO GOOD! And, I don't know, this kind of just cropped up in my mind soo yeah haha
(Dstabilised has already happened, Phantom Planet never does)
Hope you enjoy!
It's a Friday evening when Hiro stumbles into the Lucky Cat Café and finds an unfamiliar girl with black hair and bright blue eyes working behind the counter, and he has to blink and rub his eyes a few times to make sure he's not hallucinating.
"Hiro!" Suddenly Aunt Cass is there, sweeping him into a warm hug and with a smile. "You're finally back in time for dinner!"
"Made a lot of progress today," Hiro tells her with a sheepish grin. He's guilty, he knows he is – for the past week he's practically been just swallowing down whatever's been put into his hands, staggering home late every night. His eyes flicker back to the black-haired girl, and then to his aunt again.
Aunt Cass notices immediately. "Oh, Hiro, this is our new employee," she says, and she glances over at the girl, who beams at him brightly and bounces over.
The one thing that Hiro first notices is how happy she looks. She looks so energetic, and full of life, and she's grinning wildly at him.
(He also thinks she looks kind of cute, but, you know, that's totally a different thing altogether.)
"Hi!" she says to him, brightly. "I'm Dani. With an i."
He thinks it's a funny way to introduce yourself, but it's also kind of cute. He grins back at her. "Nice to meet you, Dani with an i. As you've probably guessed, I'm Hiro."
"Yeah, Miss Cass couldn't stop talking about you," says Dani with an i. "Are you really in college? And, like, the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology? That is so cool!"
He can't help but beam at her, letting her words wash over him. She's not staring at him with open adoration, exactly, but her enthusiasm is bubbling and literally rolling off her in waves, and even though he's drop-dead exhausted, he can't help but stand up a little straighter and grin a little brighter at her.
"Well, yeah," he admits. "I guess it is pretty cool, huh?"
Dani laughs, suddenly. "Don't think you're gonna get a whole load of compliments from me just because I think it's cool you're only fourteen and in college," she tells him, as if she's read his mind, and Hiro can't help but laugh as well.
"What about you, then?" he asks her. "You look like you're my age. Shouldn't you be in school?"
She shrugs, and avoids his eyes. "Hey, I've gotta find something to do with my free time," she says. "And this place is totally cool. And some extra cash is always good."
Cass' eyes flicker from one teen to the next, watching how Hiro slides his hands into his jacket pockets and grins so visibly, so brightly, watching how Dani's already stuffed her hands into her jeans pockets long ago and is bouncing on her feet, like she's got way too much energy she has to let off.
"So, how long have you been here, anyway?" Hiro asks her, as he makes his way over to the counter with Dani and with his Aunt Cass, and he picks up a donut to eat. He bites into it and looks at Dani curiously.
"Working here? Today's my first day," Dani says. "San Fransokyo? Not for very long."
"Maybe one day Hiro could show you around San Fransokyo," Cass puts in, and watches as the tips of Hiro's ears redden slightly, the way Tadashi's used to.
"It's okay," Dani says. "You must be pretty busy with college and all. I've got a friend who's in Harvard or Yale or something, and she has, like, a ton of things to do, all the time. Besides, I've seen the city. It looks amazing, especially from way up above."
"Way up above?" Hiro asks, and Dani ducks her head and mumbles something about tall buildings and a skyline view and nonsense like that.
"Well," Hiro says, "if you ever want it, I guess I don't mind giving you a tour."
Dani blinks at him in surprise, and it is totally not one of the cutest things that Hiro has ever seen.
Hiro's not sure when it becomes a routine, exactly.
Dani's in every day of the week, in the late afternoons till evenings from Monday to Friday, and then nearly the whole day on the weekends. She becomes a familiar sight, her black hair jammed under her red hat, the tips of her scruffy sneakers peeking out from under her faded jeans as she takes orders and delivers food and grins brightly at everyone who walks in through the doorway.
One day, before he walks out the door, she stops him in his tracks and pushes a Styrofoam cup of coffee into his hands.
When he looks at her, slightly confused, she shrugs. "You look like you need it," she says. "Have you looked in a mirror lately? You look exhausted."
He blinks at her; he's definitely been feeling exhausted, working later and later on Baymax until well into the night, or his coursework, and, well, everything, really. And every day he's reminded even more of Tadashi, and sometimes it feels like there's an empty hole in his chest where his heart should be. It's a sort of unavoidable thing, his emotions and the amount of work he has, but he's just a little touched that Dani notices. "Thanks," he says, and she shrugs again and smiles brilliantly (which totally does not make him feel a little weak in the knees) and tells him to drink up and heads back behind the counter.
It's not long before he's grabbing a Styrofoam cup of coffee every morning from the counter, and getting a brilliant smile every time.
(He really needs the coffee – he's not just grabbing it so that he can see her smile at him. Nope. Nuh-uh. Because that would be totally and completely ridiculous.)
One day, he comes back to find her sipping her own coffee as the streets of San Fransokyo darken, and he doesn't really think about it, and he pulls up a chair next to her and flops into it because he's just so darn tired.
She looks over at him. "Bad day?" she asks, even though he's back earlier than usual.
"Very," he groans. He's been trying to work on a project on the side, a project that's not Baymax and has nothing to do with Tadashi because his heart hurts so much – but everything, and everything, reminds him of Tadashi and even though he never wants to forget it's difficult because it's just so painful.
She pauses, as if uncertainly, and then she says, "We've got some donuts, if you want. They're still pretty good."
"Not really hungry."
She scoffs. "Yeah, right," Dani says. "You should see my cousin when he finally gets back from the gazillion and one things he needs to do. He keeps insisting he's not hungry, but put a plate of food in front of him and BAM! It's gone in five seconds and he ends up feeling better than ever."
Hiro laughs, just a bit, at that. "Okay," he concedes. "Donuts it is."
When she hands over a donut, she asks him, "You know any good video games around here?"
He blinks at her in surprise. "I've got a couple upstairs, if you want to see," he says.
"Can I?" she asks. "I mean, it's so long since I played a video game. Pounding someone into oblivion sounds like a really good idea."
So every week, twice a week, Cass will find herself watching the two teenagers from the staircase as they play video games, yelling, hollering, laughing wildly as they challenge each other, and compete, again and again and again; and even though Hiro's a complete genius and whiz, he still gets defeated, time and time again, by the petite black-haired girl who yells in triumph every time, and who gets defeated herself and who groans dramatically in frustration every time she loses.
(And sometimes, it's not so painful to think of Tadashi, not when there's someone pounding away at you on the screen and when there's a girl next to him grinning so brightly and laughing so enthusiastically.)
There are times, when Hiro just wants to curl up on his seat and pound his head against the wall because it hurts so much to think of Tadashi. It's times like this where he sits by himself and scowls at the world, where he doesn't eat, where he thinks to himself that he has to fix Baymax up again. When he gets like this, Aunt Cass just quietly leaves food and tries to talk to him; but he gives one-word answers, short sentences, so she disappears back down the stairs and bites her lip.
One of these times, it's not Aunt Cass who brings up some food, but Dani.
He nearly falls off his chair in shock.
"D-Dani!" he stammers, and he's suddenly aware that his hair is in a mess and his room is in complete and utter disarray and he's got his hundred and one action figures clogging up the shelves and mountains of scrunched-up paper and discarded ideas and plans and dirty clothes strewn all over and is that his underwear thrown on the floor oh god –
"What are you doing here?" Hiro stumbles to his feet as he tries to kick some of the mess under his bed, back to where it belongs; and Dani can't help but grin slightly at that.
"Miss Cass asked me to bring up your dinner," she says. "You've hardly been out for days."
Hiro shrugs, slightly uncomfortable, as he takes the plate of food that Dani's holding up. "Haven't been feeling so good," he tells her.
She raises her eyebrows, as if she's sceptical, but she doesn't ask. And suddenly, Hiro feels incredibly grateful that she's not pressing the issue, that she's not trying to get him to talk, just like how everyone always does when they meet him when he's in one of these moods.
(He doesn't know, of course, that she knows what it's like to not be feeling so good – after all, trying to run away from the man who created you and is now trying to melt you into a puddle of goo isn't the best feeling in the world.)
"So this is your room?" she asks him, looking around interestedly.
He nods, and then flushes, and then attempts to kick a long-forgotten T-shirt under the bed. "Yeah."
"What's that?" Dani wanders over to the divider that separates Tadashi's old room from his.
Suddenly Hiro feels cold, and he wants nothing more but to sink back into his chair and bury his head into his pillow but most importantly he wants Baymax right now because it hurts so so so badly.
He takes a deep breath, sets the plate down, and he goes over to stand just a short distance behind her. "My brother's room," he says, quietly. "He died in a fire a couple of months ago."
He hears her sharp intake of breath, sees her gaze suddenly dart around the room and fall onto the photos of him and Tadashi and Aunt Cass, and sees her eyes widen. She scratches the back of her head, steps forward, uncertainly. "Sorry," she says, quietly.
Hiro shrugs, tries for a grin. "You didn't know," he tells her, just as quietly.
She looks at him, with those bright blue eyes of hers, and he notices, vaguely, that her dark hair's escaping from its ponytail, looping around her face.
"What was his name?" she asks him.
"Tadashi," he tells her. "He's the whole reason I'm in San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, you know. He is – was – the best brother – "
He has to swallow, then, and draw in a deep, ragged breath.
"He sounds like a pretty cool guy," Dani ventures.
Hiro smiles sadly. "He was amazing. The greatest guy ever."
Dani shifts from one foot to the other. "I don't know how this works," she admits, "but do you want to talk about him? Or do you want me to go away?"
(He can't help thinking, even through the pain that he's feeling, the cold, empty feeling in his chest, that he's never met anyone quite like her before.)
He slides back onto his chair, and gestures to his bed; and, carefully, almost cautiously, she sits down on the rumpled covers, and she crosses her legs and looks at him expectantly.
When Cass heads up, a couple of hours later, wondering where on Earth Dani and Hiro are, it's to find Dani curled up on his bed asleep, an open notebook in front of her filled with diagrams and notes and drawings that looks suspiciously like one of Hiro's, and her nephew asleep with his head on the table and the faintest of smiles on his face.
She thinks that she won't disturb them – after all, Hiro's sleeping, and he does look peaceful, and the plate next to his head is almost empty and bare. And besides, she can always explain things to Dani's parents if they choose to call up.
They don't call up, though. Cass figures Dani must've texted them before she fell asleep.
One Saturday, Hiro asks Aunt Cass if she can let Dani off for the day.
Cass glances over to where Dani's behind the counter, grinning brightly and talking to a small girl who's ordering a chocolate muffin. "Why?"
Hiro flushes, slightly, and Cass' sharp eyes notice immediately. "I kind of wanted to ask her if she'd like to see the lab," he admits. "I mean, I tell her about it, you know, once in a while, and she keeps asking about it, so I thought, um – "
He's cut short by the sound of Cass laughing brightly. "Of course you can!" she tells him, and Hiro isn't quite sure he likes the way her eyes are shining brightly, or that he likes the knowing smile on her face. "Take the whole day, in fact. I can manage."
So Dani finds herself trudging alongside Hiro through the streets of San Fransokyo, her hands in her hoodie pockets.
"If you get bored," Hiro says to her, suddenly worried and slightly anxious and nervous, "I could always give you directions to head back – "
Dani laughs. "Well, if I get bored, I'll be sure to let you know," she assures him. "And I'll blame you for it, too."
He grins at her.
When they enter, they're immediately ambushed by Honey Lemon.
"Oh, Hiro, is this your girlfriend!" she exclaims, leaping over from her latest experiment to look at Dani excitedly. "Oh, this is amazing – "
"What?" Hiro says, nervously, anxiously, sharply, as Dani clears her throat and her face flushes slightly pink and she stares down at her sneakers like they're the most fascinating thing in the world. "No! Honey Lemon, this is Dani. She works in the café."
"Oh." Honey Lemon makes a face, but then she beams, and the next thing Hiro knows, Dani's being dragged over to take a look at her new experiment while Honey Lemon talks a mile a minute. She throws a frantic glance over her shoulder to look at Hiro, who grins at her sheepishly and mouths sorry.
It's GoGo she meets next, who looks unimpressed with her as she snaps her bubblegum.
"Dani with an i?" she says, when they're introduced. "What kind of a name is that?"
"What kind of a name is GoGo?" Dani counters. "It sounds like some sort of cartoon character's name."
GoGo grins at that, slowly. "Nickname," she says, briefly. "Fred comes up with them. You could call me an adrenaline junkie."
"Nice," says Dani.
When they meet Wasabi, he just sends a knowing look Hiro's way, who rolls his eyes and shakes his head because Dani is totally not his girlfriend. (Not that he would mind, if she actually was. He wouldn't mind at all. But since that is totally and completely not the case, he is not going to think about it.)
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Dani," Wasabi says.
Dani looks curiously at his tools. "Do you have a place for everything? What happens when you get something new? Won't that mess up your arrangement?"
Wasabi blinks at her in surprise. "I find a new place and a new arrangement," he says to her, and Dani nods, seriously, like she understands how labs work, like she understands how everything needs its place.
Fred's first words to her are: "Man, you're kind of cute, aren't ya?"
Hiro facepalms while Dani raises her eyebrows. "Thanks," she says, a little drily. "I love being told I'm cute by creepy old guys in Godzilla suits."
Fred grins at her, lazily. "So, you Hiro's girlfriend?"
"She's not my girlfriend!" Hiro says, loudly, insistently.
Fred holds up his hands. "Okay, okay," he says, the lazy, knowing grin still on his face. "Whatever you say, man."
"He's the school mascot," Hiro tells Dani. "By day and by night."
"And I'm totally awesome at it," Fred says to her. "You wanna see my do my sign-spinning?"
"Maybe later," Hiro says, and he pushes Dani gently over to his workroom.
He stands back as she pushes open the door and stares around the room in astonishment, at the diagrams and the plans and the tools and the lit-up screens and the Baymax that is slowly coming into shape.
"Wow," she breathes, and Hiro can't help but feel a huge sense of relief, as Dani starts walking around the room, gazing with wide eyes at anything and everything – and he's suddenly so relieved because she's not creeped out by his friends and she looks just so amazed and actually interested and he suddenly feels happiness swelling up inside him.
"Is this Baymax?" she asks him, and he nods. She moves over to the window and prods at the large red arm – "What's this?"
Hiro wonders, suddenly, if he should tell her. He's never told her about Callaghan or Krei.
And then she looks at him, her blue eyes wide and curious and really wanting to know, and he decides to tell her.
She's a good listener.
She doesn't often interrupt, and her eyes are wide and she's drinking everything in, absorbing it, looking at him quietly as he tells his story.
When he finally finishes, she just says, "Wow."
Hiro raises his head and looks up at her.
"I mean, wow," she says. "You did all that? You helped to upgrade all of them and find out their potential. And you didn't let yourself kill Callaghan in the end, because it was all about your brother and you didn't let revenge take over you. Wow. And then you went after him and tried to save Krei and everything, and you even went into that portal thing to help that girl? Even though you didn't know if you would make it?" She shakes her head, as if in disbelief, and then she looks up at him again with her eyes wide. "Wow," she says again. "That's amazing. That's totally awesome."
And Hiro doesn't really know what to say, because she is smiling that brilliant smile and he can feel her approval radiating off her and he thinks that she really does find it amazing and wonderful and she is taking it so calmly.
So he smiles, and he thinks that maybe there isn't always a need for words.
He works the whole day on Baymax and his other, on-the-side project, and he listens as Dani talks. She fills up the silence with her chatter and her words, but it's not an annoying kind of chatter, it's the kind that makes him get up on his feet and be a little more enthusiastic in his work as she talks and talks and talks. She talks about all the cities and places she's been to, and Amity Park which is a town she'll always consider her home, and her friend Danny, and she talks about San Fransokyo and the university and that she thinks that she'll never be cut out for a college like this because she wouldn't be able to stay in one place for so long, and she wouldn't know what she want to do anyway.
It's late when they finally leave the nerd lab, and Hiro looks out at the dark streets of San Fransokyo worriedly.
"I'll walk you home," he decides.
He's not expecting Dani to freeze up. "What?"
Hiro turns to look at her, and notices how her eyes are wide, her face is strained. He wonders why – does she leave in a bad part of town? "I'll walk you home. It's late, I can't let you get back by yourself."
She shakes her head, vehemently. "I'm fine, really – "
"I'm walking you home," he repeats.
"Hiro – "
"I'm not really giving you a choice, here," he tells her. "There's no way I'm letting you get back alone when it's so late."
(He doesn't think he'll ever forgive himself if there is even the slightest hint or possibility of any harm to her.)
He watches as she bites her lip, taps her feet on the pavement, presses her hands together like she's trying to make a hard, painful decision.
"I don't – " she begins, and then fails; and then she tries again: "I'm not – "
Her blue eyes look up to meet Hiro's, and it's Dani who wrenches her eyes away furiously, and Hiro wonders what's going on in her head.
He doesn't say anything, just stands there with his hands in his jacket pockets and looking at her.
(And he totally doesn't think of how great she looks in her worn-out hoodie and faded jeans and scruffy sneakers with the moonlight shining down on her and her dark hair and the light reflecting off her eyes. Nope. Not at all.)
Finally she bites her lips and nods, and then he follows her down a maze of streets to somewhere not that far from the Lucky Cat Café. She stops at a street and looks at him, expectantly. "I'm good," she says.
Hiro raises his eyebrows. "No, you're not," he says. "I told you I'd walk you home. Not to your street. Why are you so afraid of letting me know where you stay? I'm not going to stalk you."
Dani mutters something to herself and shoves her hands in her pockets and leads him down the street reluctantly, and finally they stop in front of an old, run-down building. Hiro has to blink in confusion, because he knows this is supposed to be an abandoned building – something about safety issues.
"This is it," she says.
"Dani," Hiro says, "this is an abandoned building. No one lives here."
Dani bites her lip again, and then finally she ducks her head, and mumbles something.
Hiro blinks, and leans forward, because he doesn't think what he just heard can be what she said because did she just say I don't have a home?
"What?" he asks, dumbly, looking at her.
She raises her head, sighs. "I don't have a home," she admits, quietly. "I've kind of made a place for myself here. It's not so bad."
He stares at her in disbelief. "You – you don't – "
She shrugs uncomfortably. "I mean, I consider this place my home now, I guess."
Hiro just continues to stare at her, because how can Dani have no home? She's cool and she's funny and she's great and she always looks so refreshed and clean and well-fed, and she looks so happy all the time so how does this even work anymore? Not that he has anything against homeless people; it's just that with Dani's vibrant personality and the life and enthusiasm fizzing out of her, how can she not even have a place to call a home?
"That's it," he decides, and he grabs her wrist and hauls her behind him.
She lets out a yelp: "Hiro, what the – "
"You're staying with us," he informs her. "There is no way I'm letting you stay there."
"Hiro, I've been staying there for weeks – "
"And now you don't have to."
"Hiro – "
"Not giving you a choice," he says.
So he brings her back, and when Aunt Cass sees Hiro drag Dani in behind him and up the stairs, her eyes widen slightly. "Hiro, Dani, what – "
"She's staying with us tonight," Hiro tells her. "And every night after, actually. I'll explain it all to you tomorrow!"
And he drags her up the next flight of stairs, pulling Dani along even as she's conceded to trailing after him silently.
"You don't have to do this, you know," she says, quietly, as Hiro fishes out a clean shirt and anything that could possibly be used as pajamas for Dani.
He looks up, blinks at her. "Yes, I do," he says, because it's true – what else can he do? It's the only thing that makes sense to him. "You're my friend. And besides, there's the bed."
"What bed?" Dani asks.
"Tadashi's bed."
Dani blinks at him in complete disbelief as he presses his shirt into her hands: "You want me to sleep in Tadashi's bed?"
Suddenly, Hiro is slightly awkward. "If you're uncomfortable with it – "
"No, no," she says (and he totally is not thinking about how cute and flustered she looks when she's embarrassed. Nope.), "it's just – you're okay with it?"
Hiro thinks for a moment.
He thinks of Tadashi, good, kind, helpful Tadashi, who only ever wanted to make the world a better place. He thinks of Tadashi telling him to go do something with his life, Tadashi who only ever wanted to improve the world, to help.
"Of course I'm okay," he says, and he slides back the door and she slips in.
She slides it shut, to change, and when she opens the door again he swallows because she somehow manages to look fantastic in an oversized shirt of his and an old pair of pants he found and somehow the room feels even smaller as she sends a smile at him.
She tugs out the band holding up her ponytail and her long black hair cascades down her shoulders, and she takes off her hat and puts it on the table along with her neatly-folded clothes.
"Um." Dani swallows, steps into Hiro's half of the room. "Thanks."
He manages a grin at her, and his heart rate is totally not increasing drastically as he looks at her and she looks at him. "No problem."
"No, really," she says. And then, without warning, she darts forward and kisses his cheek, lightly, quickly, before stepping back. "Thanks."
And she darts back into Tadashi's half of the room and quickly slides the door shut.
Hiro's hand goes up to his face, slowly, and he can feel the stupid smile slowly spreading over his face, growing wider and wider the longer he stands there.
He flops back onto his bed, and stares up at the ceiling, and there's still the lingering feel of her lips on his cheek, and he smiles at the ceiling stupidly.
Only one word runs through his mind –
Unbelievable.