"Good morning, sunshine."
Tadashi smiles as his son, Daniel, slowly blinks his large blue eyes open, obviously not quite awake yet but smiling all the same.
"Morning, Papa," the little boy greets him, yawning.
"You sleep well?" Tadashi asks, sitting down on the side of the bed and gently stroking his son's dark brown hair.
"Mm!" Daniel nods.
"I'm glad to hear that!" Tadashi grins down at him before asking softly, "Do you remember what day today is?"
"Uh… Maybe?" Daniel says uncertainly.
"It's your birthday!" Tadashi says with a smile.
Instantly the little boy shoots up and out of his bed. "That's right!" he cries. "It's my birthday!"
"Right!" Tadashi grins and pulls him back down to his level-one of the struggles of parenting a mer, they weren't just limited to the floor and whatever they could climb on, they could go literally anywhere in the water and they tended to be extremely fast and slippery. All the same, given the fact that Tadashi had been born a mer, he was pretty fast in the water himself, and he thanked his lucky stars every day that his adopted son was overall extremely well behaved and so didn't require much chasing.
"Are we going to have the party soon?" Daniel asks eagerly, giggling as his papa pulls him close, cuddling him close to his chest.
"Soon," Tadashi promises, playfully blowing a raspberry onto the little boy's belly and making the him with pleasure. "Everyone's coming after lunch. For now, you ready to go up and see your dad and Grandma and your uncles for breakfast?"
"Yes!" Daniel agrees eagerly.
"C'mon, then!" Tadashi smiles and gently takes his son's tiny hand in his own. Daniel clasps it back before asking eagerly, "Can you make us go really fast?"
"Well, since it is your birthday, I don't see why not!" Tadashi chuckles. "Are you holding on really tight?"
"Yes!" Daniel answers, nodding his head vigorously.
"All right then!" Tadashi makes sure that he has a firm hold on the boy's hand before using his tail to propel them quickly through the water and towards the surface. Daniel shouts happily as they go, enjoying the feeling of the water rushing past them. And then they were at the surface, heads breaking through the water and into the open air.
"There you two are!"
Tadashi can't help but grin as he sees his husband, Fred, already waiting for them at the side of the pool.
"Daddy!" Daniel cries, holding his arms out to these days the little boy insisted that he was too old to call his second father "daddy" anymore, going with just plain "dad", but times like these he sometimes slipped into the old habit and Fred certainly never complained about it.
"How's my birthday boy?" Fred asks, scooping his son out of the water and swinging him around airplane style. Tadashi watches them with a warm smile as he pulls himself out of the water, letting his tail form back into two legs. It was thanks to his husband that, after nineteen years as a mer, he was able to live on dry land as well as in the pool inside his family's ancestral home-the same pool that was now Daniel's home. Technically Fred and Tadashi were never supposed to have met-for his own safety, Tadashi had been kept hidden away from the rest of the world, living out his days in the pool where he needed to stay in order to survive. His aunt and brother, Hiro (both of whom had been born human despite the mer gene or family curse somewhere in their family's lineage), did their best to make his life as pleasant as possible, but nineteen years was an awful long time to be stuck in the same pool and, beyond that, he was starting to feel lonely. Hiro was precious otouto and the best friend anyone could have asked for, but after a certain age most people started feeling the need for a different type of companion, and given he'd grown up on the fairy tales Aunt Cass had read to him and Hiro before bed, he had been dreaming of finding his own prince charming ever since he'd been a little guppy. However, considering he was never allowed to see anyone outside of his family and his tutor, his chances of finding a boyfriend or even a friend at all seemed grim. That is, until the day the new houseboy, Fred, came literally stumbling into his life. It hadn't been love at first sight, per se, but after a couple of months of dating they had majorly fallen for each other, their summer romance culminated in a true love's kiss (yes, apparently that really was a thing) that rendered Tadashi able to switch back and forth between human and mer form at will. It was also thanks to this kiss that Tadashi had been able to start attending his dream university, the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology (SFIT for short), with Hiro and, after gaining their robotics degrees, to go on to open a company where they produced their world changing inventions. It hadn't been all hard work along the way, though. They'd managed to make some friends-friends who actually knew Tadashi's secret and worked as hard as the rest of his family to protect of those friends were Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and GoGo (all nicknamed by Fred)-human classmates who had found out about the mer's true identity during a fateful tour of the SFIT campus while Tadashi had still been mer (Fred and Hiro had attempted to disguise his tail using a wheelchair and a specially built moisturizer that covered it and kept him from drying out.) The other person who knew the truth was Robert Callaghan, Tadashi and Hiro's favorite professor at SFIT and something of a legend in the robotic industry, whose late wife had been a mermaid. It was actually thanks to Callaghan that Daniel now lived with Tadashi and Fred. The professor had found the boy's mother mangled by a boating accident shortly after the couple had been married. Before passing, the mermaid had desperately asked the man to look after her child, and he'd agreed, taking the tiny merbaby back to San Fransokyo with him in a tub full of ocean water. He'd asked Tadashi and Fred if they'd be willing to take the orphaned mer in, given Tadashi was a mer and would best know how to care for him. At first the couple (Fred especially) had been hesitant about taking the baby in-they'd only just been married, Tadashi's career had just started, and raising a mer in a human world wouldn't be easy. Looking back now, though, they didn't regret their decision to adopt the baby. Daniel had brought nothing but joy to their lives (all right, a bit of worry, stress, and even outright panic too, but the good outweighed the bad!) Even if they weren't biologically related, there was no doubt in either of their minds that the little mer had always been meant to be their son. For the first year of his life, the couple had managed to raise him in their small studio apartment in a small pool that was perfect for a merbaby. After that, though, they'd succumbed to the fact that he needed a pool at least the size of the one Tadashi had grown up in to have the proper amount of room to explore and grow in, and so they'd been forced to move back in with Aunt Cass. At first they hadn't been sure how well things would go, moving back in with the family after being out on their own for a year. Fortunately, though, the mansion had turned out to be plenty big for everyone. To allow them privacy, Tadashi's aunt had even given them their own wing (the wing closest to the pool room) to live in. It was close enough to having their own place that they didn't feel too much strain from it-in fact, by that time, Hiro had moved out to live with his fiance, Ezra, in a small apartment of their own, so given Aunt Cass spent most of her time working at her cafe, it was almost like having a place of their own. There was also the benefit of having a live-in babysitter. Fred looked after Daniel during the day while working on writing his novels, and once the boy was old enough he'd even started homeschooling him. Still, sometimes in the evening the parents wanted a little private time, and Aunt Cass was more than happy to look after her first grandbaby. Not that she looked after him every time-actually, she had quite a lot of competition because all of their friends and family wanted a chance to look after the adorable toddler too. Hiro and Ezra were probably her stiffest competition (Fred liked to joke that he was worried Ezra was going to kidnap Daniel one of these days), but Professor Callaghan, as the boy's adopted grandfather, enjoyed any time he could get with the tiny mer, and of course Honey Lemon, GoGo, and Wasabi all demanded their time with their adopted nephew. Things had gotten a little less heated when Honey Lemon and GoGo got married and adopted two sisters, June and Mei Lin, and again when Hiro and Ezra had also married and first ended up gaining custody of Pypey (the son of a family friend who had sadly passed from cancer) and then adopted a baby named Hope. Having all of these kids in the adopted family took some of the pressure off of Daniel and, on top of that, had the unexpected but wonderful benefit of giving Daniel a whole group "cousins" to play with! Tadashi could never express how grateful he was to know that his son wasn't growing up lonely like he and Hiro had. None of the other kids seemed to have any problem with the boy being a mer-if anything, most of them wanted tails of their own, leaving Hiro to create special synthetic tails for them like he'd created for all of the group when they'd been in college.
So yes. It had been a very busy few years, but, looking back on it now, Tadashi wouldn't have changed a second of it. He knew how incredibly blessed they were, and he never ceased to be grateful for how everything had worked itself out so perfectly.
"How does everyone feel about breakfast?" Fred asks, startling the other man out of his thoughts.
"Yes, please!" Daniel answers eagerly.
"Sounds good!" Tadashi agrees.
"All right then!" Fred grins and, linking his free hand in his husband's, the little family makes their way to the door.
"Do you want me to carry you to the kitchen, or do you want to use your chair?" the fanboy asks once they're out in the hallway, gesturing to the specially made wheelchair that Tadashi and Hiro had spent hours designing and improving to make it possible for Daniel to be outside of the water. It utilized the moisturizer tech that Hiro had designed for all those years ago but was a lot less clunky now, making it easier to hide under a blanket for the occasions when the little family actually left the house. It wasn't often that they did-even the moisturizer couldn't fully make up for being out of the water and there was the risk of someone discovering the ruse. Still, the young parents had managed to take their son out on short outings to places like the zoo or the movies-they wanted to do whatever they could to help him have as normal a childhood as possible, and so far it seemed to be working, something Tadashi was extremely grateful for. His own parents had neglected him growing up in the years of his early life that they'd been alive, considering him nothing more than a "freak" and a stain on their "perfect" family's image. Fred's parents had been too busy with work and social commitments to pay much attention to their son. Both men were determined never to make their parents' mistakes, which was probably why they worked so hard to give Daniel every advantage they could. Not to say that Fred's parents hadn't finally turned things around, at least somewhat. Something about finding out that their son was getting married had finally brought them to their senses and, right after the engagement, they'd started actually making an effort to become involved in the lives of their son and his fiance. Both Fred and Tadashi had been understandably suspicious of their sudden interest in them when it started out, but both men were also forgiving to a fault and so they'd allowed them to start doing their best to make amends. Still, it hadn't been until the arrival of Daniel that they'd chosen to actually divulge Tadashi's secret to them-given the fact that their first grandson had a tail, they had to since Fred's parents weren't going to take "no" for an answer when it came to seeing the boy. The truth had come as a bit of a shock to them when their son in law suddenly transformed into a mer in the middle of their living room, but oddly enough they were quick to get over their initial surprise and came to accept Tadashi and Daniel fully as a part of their family.
"I can take myself in my chair!" Daniel says in answer to Fred's question, smiling up at his dad. The little boy was already showing quite an independent spirit, much like his Uncle Hiro's, and preferred to be allowed to take himself places in the chair instead of being carried when he could.
"All right then!" Fred smiles and settles him into the chair, making sure that the moisturizer was firmly in place before letting his son start wheeling himself eagerly off down the hallway (it was, of course, set up to electronically move on its own, but the little boy liked the challenge of actually moving the wheels himself.)
"He's getting fast!" Tadashi notes, having to walk quickly to keep up with him.
"Getting?" Fred gives him a playful smirk. "I think we need to talk to GoGo about encouraging him to race her in his chair or else we'll never be able to catch up with him!"
"Probably," Tadashi chuckles before putting his full attention back on keeping up with his son.
"Good morning!" Aunt Cass was beaming as the little family reaches the kitchen. "How's the birthday boy?"
"Good!" Daniel answers, grinning and wheeling over to hug his much beloved grandmother.
"Hungry?" Aunt Cass asks, more than happily hugging him back.
"Mm!" Daniel agrees, nodding in agreement.
"All right then! Pancakes are almost ready, so go on ahead and head over to the table, okay?"
"Okay!" Daniel replies eagerly, doing as instructed.
"How are you feeling this morning?" Tadashi asks his aunt, coming over to hug her as well.
"I'm fine!" Aunt Cass tells him before playfully swatting him with her spatula. "I may be a grandmother, but I'm not an old woman, y'know!"
"Don't worry, I definitely know!" Tadashi reassures her with a laugh before heading over to the table to join the rest of the family.
Soon Aunt Cass brings over the plates of breakfast which, much to Daniel's delight, included smiley face Mickey Mouse pancakes.
"I'm glad he's not too old for those yet," Tadashi whispers to Fred as he watches their son happy eating.
"Too old? You're never too old for Mickey Mouse pancakes!" Fred declares, working enthusiastically away on his own.
"Right…" Tadashi chuckles, deciding to stop being an emotional wet rag and just enjoy this-someday his son would start trying to act like a "grownup" (a day far too soon in coming), but right now he needed to savor the moments like this instead of worrying about the future.
Soon they hear a key turning in the lock in the front door and then said door swinging open.
"That'll be Hiro and Ezra with the kids," Tadashi notes with a slight smile as he hears the familiar sound of cheerful voices heading towards them.
"There goes the peace and quiet," Fred quietly jokes.
"Daniel!"
Pypey was the first to arrive in the kitchen, eagerly rushing over to his cousin and throwing his arms around him in a tight hug.
"Pypey!" Daniel eagerly hugs him back, eyes shining as he looks up at the older boy (Tadashi said that he saw him as his idol, much like Hiro had felt about him at that age, but Fred liked to tease him that he had something of a crush on the other boy. Tadashi wasn't going to say anything one way or the other-there was plenty of time for things to work themselves out as the kids got older and started figuring things out. Right now, just let them enjoy being children while they could.)
"Well, that's a nice welcome for him, but what about for your uncles?" Hiro asks with a slight smirk as he comes into the room, followed by Ezra who was holding baby Hope.
"Uncle Hiro! Uncle Ezra!" Daniel grins and waves as Pypey finally lets go of him, moving to the side but still staying close to his best friend.
"That's more like it!" Hiro chuckles, coming over to hug him. "Happy birthday, sport."
"Arigatou!" Daniel answers, hugging him back.
"Our little man is getting all grown up," Ezra adds as he joins them.
"Just like Pypey!" Daniel answers with a giggle. "I'm going to be as old as him someday!"
"Sweetheart, that's not exactly how it works-" Tadashi starts to correct him, but Fred puts a hand on his shoulder.
"Let him enjoy the thought for now, he'll figure it out soon enough," he promises.
"All right…" Tadashi agrees with a tiny sigh before deciding to just let it go for the moment, smiling at the sight of Daniel gently cradling his baby cousin in his arms.
"Okay, I need a picture of all of my grandbabies together!" Aunt Cass declares, pulling out her phone and somehow, by the magic she seemed to possess, actually managing to get them to pose nicely together before going back to playing.
The morning was spent together just as a family, enjoying spending time together. But soon after lunch ended all of the other guests started showing up and the festivities were moved back to the pool room (Tadashi didn't like keeping Daniel out the water too long if it wasn't necessary, plus, as a mer, the little boy was more comfortable there.) Within minutes of arriving, all of the kids were in the water, laughing and splashing and generally just having a good time together while the adults chatted quietly on dry land, with at least one of them keeping a trained eye on the pool at all times to make sure that they didn't get into any trouble. After letting them have free play for a while, eventually the most structured festivities were begun, including serving the cake and ice cream and opening presents. Most of the parents had thought ahead and had Tadashi use the waterproofing spray that he and Hiro had made on the presents before bringing them to the party, allowing them to be safely used and also opened in the water by the young mer. From Honey and GoGo there was a new shirt that Honey had designed specifically for him and a waterproof speedometer to track how fast he was able to swim. Wasabi had brought him some safety-proofed tools which he had chosen for him after consulting with Tadashi about what the little boy wanted and needed for his growing collection. From his Grandpa Callaghan, there was a new book of age-appropriate robotics projects. From Hiro and Ezra was a DVD set of the latest Star Wars cartoon which all of the kids had fallen in love with along with an extremely realistic toy reproduction of the main character's lightsaber made by Hiro. Aunt Cass' present was a cookbook with simple recipes and the announcement that she felt Daniel was finally old enough to start learning to make things in the kitchen along with the promise of cooking lessons to come, something the little boy was extremely eager about. From Fred's parents (who had actually managed to make it to the party, despite how many of their own son's they had missed over the years) was a series of adventure books for kids which were pretty popular at the moment (not the most personal present, and maybe a bit advanced for his current reading level, but they were trying!) And from Tadashi and Fred, along with a few other small presents, was a robotic Vaporeon that Tadashi had made for him. Knowing how much he himself had wanted a pet growing up but not wanting to force a living creature to be as trapped as he had been by the four walls of the pool, Tadashi had found a perfect solution and Daniel instantly fell in love with it, promptly naming it Stream and, as soon as he was allowed to, taking it out into the pool to play with all the other kids.
Eventually, as the hour grew late, parents started calling their kids one by one out of the pool, telling them that it was time to head home to bed-baby Hope was sound asleep in Ezra's arms by the time that they left. When everyone was gone, Tadashi could see that Daniel was starting to get sleepy too and it fortunately didn't take much to convince him that it's time for him to head to bed as well. As usual, Aunt Cass said goodnight to him at the surface and then Fred, using the special breathing apparatus Tadashi had made for him, swims down with his husband to tuck their little boy into bed.
"Did you have a good birthday?" Tadashi asks Daniel as he pulls the covers up over him and Stream (already the two were already inseparable, something the older man couldn't help but find absolutely adorable.)
"Mm!" Daniel nods and smiles sleepily up at him.
"I'm glad." Tadashi leans down to peck him on the forehead, Fred doing likewise.
"Sleep tight, okay buddy?" Fred says softly.
"'Kay!" Daniel agrees before settling more comfortably under the covers, curling up against Stream, his tiny eyelids fluttering shut. "Love you Daddy, Papa."
"We love you too," Tadashi answers with a warm smile as he dims the pool lights to a soft glow and makes sure that the baby monitor was on so that he and Fred would hear if Daniel needed them during the night.
"You coming?" Fred asks softly, stopping by the door when he sees that his husband was still hovering near the bed.
"I'll be up in a minute," Tadashi promises.
"All right." Fred smiles in understanding before making his way back towards the surface.
Tadashi quietly sits down on the side of the bed, gently stroking his son's hair. The boy nuzzles into the touch, murmuring quietly in his sleep-the little guy was all worn out from the day's excitement. Birthdays were always bittersweet for Tadashi. They were a time for celebration, but it also meant that his son was that much closer to growing up. Still, he reminds himself, growing up was just a natural part of life. And even when Daniel was all grown up, maybe with a true love and kids of his own, they'd still love each other just as much. No one and nothing could ever take away that this little boy was his son, now and forever. And that in itself was the only gift that Tadashi ever needed.