hey! yes soo, as you might have guessed, i'm just a little bit obsessed with BH6 right now. and i love tadashi so much and my heart hurts when i think of him dying.
so here's just something i crapped out for the fun of it. i know, pretty badly written, but hey. it was fun to write.
(and cupcake doesn't get enough love. that too.)
hope you enjoy!
When he meets her, she's already starting to lose her belief.
Cupcake's moved out from Burgess, away from Jamie and Pippa and Monty and Claude and Caleb, because she's got a place in the San Fransokyo University of Arts and Social Sciences. It's a pretty good university, better than the ones around Burgess, and she's got an uncle who stays there, too, so it's not so bad.
But living in the bright, booming city, it's hard to hang onto your beliefs.
It starts one night when she video calls Jamie. Jamie, to her, has always been her best friend, even though Cupcake knows he's always been closer to Pippa. He's always been the sweet, friendly guy that she's known since childhood, the one who can make her smile and laugh like nobody else does and who always makes everything better.
She tells him what she's learning in her classes.
He tells her that he and Pippa have finally gotten together.
(Something breaks in her heart, and her whole world is crashing around her.)
"It's, like, I've always thought about it for years, you know?" he tells her, excitedly. "I've always liked her. I never knew she liked me too."
Cupcake somehow finds it in herself to laugh and tell him 'congratulations' and 'of course she likes you, you big idiot'.
But it's the beginning of the end, because nothing is the way it was before.
She's in a big city, all alone, with only her uncle and his wife in the same flat. She's in a big city, all alone, because she's never been good at making friends and she still isn't. She's in a big city, all alone, because the boy she's gone to sleep every night thinking about is in love with someone else. She's in a big city, all alone, and with her childhood in tatters and everyone is growing up around her. She's in a big city, all alone, and she needs to grow up.
She doesn't see the Tooth, or any of her fairies, because there's no one around to drop their teeth. She doesn't see Bunny, because Easter isn't that big here and by the time she's arrived Easter has gone. She doesn't see North, because Christmas hasn't come, not just yet. She doesn't see Jack, because winter hasn't come either.
The only one she's sure of is Sandy, because every night her dreams are sweet and beautiful and happy. (Even if she's curled up and staring into darkness every night before she falls asleep because she will not cry.) But even then sometimes it feels like a dream, and that everything was a dream.
She is all alone. And she is growing up.
And she is finding it so, so hard to keep believing.
Sometimes, she will take out her old things, and stare at them. Drawings, of Bunny and of Jack and all the other Guardians. A couple of old quarters she doesn't bear to use, because they're from Tooth. An old, faded unicorn toy, from North long ago.
It's still hard to believe. It's so hard to believe, when she's in a huge, noisy city with bright lights and everything around her screaming to grow up.
So one day, she goes out and decides to find a place to study because she doesn't want to stay alone in the apartment where she's reminded every day of everything that was and everything that needs to be.
She finds herself at a place called the Lucky Cat Café.
She's walking in through the door when she barrels into someone.
He's lanky and tall and well-built, with a baseball cap and a jacket and bright green shoes, and both their things go flying all over the place as they crash into each other before landing on the ground.
"Oh, no, I'm so sorry!"
Vaguely, Cupcake is aware of a voice apologising, as she scrambles upright again.
"S'okay," she mutters, and she starts to gather her things, her papers, her notes. She doesn't want to talk to people. Not really. She's out so she can be surrounded by people, not so she can talk to them. And she's no good at it. She doesn't like talking. Not so much.
But he doesn't give her much of a choice.
"Let me help you," the voice says, and there are long hands helping her scoop up her stuff, the papers with her scrawled notes and half-thought-through projects and assignments. Cupcake wants to snap at him to leave her stuff alone, but she bites it back because he's being nice, after all, and they collect the last of her things and she scrambles to her feet.
That's when she sees him, properly, for the first time.
(Her first thought is that he's really very attractive, but she pushes it out of her head.)
"I really am sorry," the guy says, again, and he is looking at her so apologetically that Cupcake wants to roll her eyes and say, Sorry for what? I wasn't looking out either.
But she says, "Me too. Sorry."
She sees him glance down at her notes, before passing them over to her. "You major in history?" he asks, curious, and she thinks about not giving an answer and pretending she hasn't heard, but then she pushes the thought aside. He's being nice, she tells herself. He's being friendly.
She doesn't like small talk, sure, but it's not getting awkward just yet.
"Yeah," she says. "San Fransokyo University of Arts and Social Sciences."
"Cool," he says. "I'm studying at the Institute of Technology." He beams at her, for a second, but she just looks back blankly at him; and then a goofy smile comes up on his face, and he clears his throat and sticks out a hand and says, "I'm Tadashi."
She looks at him, curiously, almost suspiciously, and then accepts the hand. "Cupcake."
He blinks at her. "What?"
She can't help it. He looks so confused, so bewildered, that she has to laugh. And it feels funny, because she can't remember laughing like this for so long. Not since she moved to San Fransokyo. Not since Jamie told her his big news.
(Her heart clenches, then, but she pushes it aside.)
"It's a nickname," she tells him. "Everyone calls me Cupcake."
"Oh," he says, and he grins again. "It's kind of a cute name."
"Don't call me cute," she says, automatically.
He just grins at her again, with that goofy smile.
(Cupcake can't help thinking that he's really kind of cute.)
"If you don't want me to," he says, and he laughs. "See you around, Cupcake?"
He makes it into a question, and she shrugs. "Maybe."
"I'll take that as a yes," he tells her, and he grins again and he slopes off down the street.
Cupcake stands at the door of the Lucky Cat Café for a minute.
Maybe talking to people isn't so bad.
It's a few days later when she sees him again.
She's sitting at the Lucky Cat Café, because the food's really good, and she can look through her work in peace there.
(Of course, she's totally not sitting there because she hopes that he'll walk in again. Of course not. Because that would be incredibly stupid. And desperate. And Cupcake is neither of those things.)
"Hey, Cupcake," he says, cheerfully, and he slides into the seat opposite her with a grin and a coffee and a plate full of donuts.
She knows she should say hi. It's the polite thing to say. But instead she stares at the plate and asks, "Are you planning to eat all that?"
Tadashi glances down, sheepishly, and back up at her, and he scratches the back of his head and takes off the baseball cap.
(And she thinks, but she'll never say, he looks a lot better without it.)
"Stress eating," he admits. "I've got this robotics project to work on, and I've probably done at least thirty tests, but it still isn't working right." He shrugs, and takes a bite of donut. "So I just came back because I couldn't stand another hour in there. Aunt Cass let me have them."
"Aunt Cass?"
He nods, through a mouthful of chocolate-sprinkled donut. "She owns the café."
Cupcake blinks at him, and she's not quite sure what to say. "Oh. Okay. Cool."
He laughs, then, again, and Cupcake thinks he must be one of the most ridiculously happy and friendly people she's ever met. "You don't talk much, do you?" he says, and he grins at her. Suddenly he looks just slightly stricken: "I mean, I don't mean that in a bad way, did that come out wrong, I mean it's just that you sound like you didn't really know what to say so you just said that because it wasn't really anything that could be replied to and I kind of just – no, wait, that came out wrong – "
Cupcake can't help it. She laughs.
(What is it about this guy that makes her laugh so easily?)
"You're right," she says. "I don't say much." She shrugs, and then adds, "Not good at talking."
"I think you're great at talking," he tells her, swallowing his mouthful of donut. "I mean – well – yeah." He breaks off, and he looks slightly sheepish.
She can't help it. She laughs again.
Somehow, it becomes a routine.
Every Saturday morning, and sometimes Sundays too, she heads over to the Lucky Cat Café and gets her work out. Tadashi sits with her for an hour or so, before heading out to work on his robotics project at the institute, and she stays there for nearly the whole day, doing her work, her laptop usually up and running in front of her.
Sometimes, she's still there when he comes in. He'll collapse onto the chair opposite her, and rest his head on his hand, and ask her how she can do work for so many hours without a break.
"I do take breaks," she tells him, the first time he asks.
"Cupcake," he says, "five minutes of eating a cookie and sipping coffee isn't considered a break."
She just shrugs, then, uncomfortably, because she doesn't really know what to say. Because spending hours alone focussed on one task is something she knows how to do, something she's been doing since young.
"Take a break," he says, in a sort of pleading voice that Cupcake's heard on Jamie before and something catches in her throat; but she forces it away, forces her attention on the dark-haired guy in front of her instead. "Come on. Grab a drink with me or something."
"I have a drink," she says, and taps her coffee cup.
He makes a face, and Cupcake has to fight the urge to chuckle. (He's really kind of cute when he does that.) "Okay, how about dessert?" he says. "There's not a bad ice-cream place nearby."
Tadashi smiles at her, with that goofy smile, and somewhere in her brain Cupcake tells herself this is a very bad idea but she goes along with it anyway.
(How does anyone say no to a smile like that?)
He tells her about his brother Hiro.
One day, in between her notes and the endless coffees and the donuts and the occasional ice cream, they start talking about families. Tadashi tells her his story, and when he starts talking about his brother Hiro, Cupcake can't help but smile.
It's so, so obvious he loves his brother so much.
(She wishes she had someone who loved her like that too.)
She tells him she doesn't have siblings. That she stayed with her mum, and now she's staying with her uncle.
She doesn't really know what to say, after that.
"What about friends?" he asks her instead, twisting his baseball cap in his hands.
So she tells him. She tells him about Jamie and Pippa and Monty and Claude and Caleb and even Sophie, and somehow it feels better, so, so much better to talk about them, to remember them, to remember endless days in the snow and hours spent talking and laughing and days drinking milkshakes and eating cookies. And she can remember, but she doesn't say, days spent with Jack Frost, playing around with Sandy, making fun of Bunny whenever Easter rolled around, talking to Tooth every time she came by with her teeth, the glee they all have when they receive presents from North.
For once, Tadashi doesn't say much. He listens.
"They mean a lot to you," he finally says, quietly, once she's ended. "Especially that Jamie guy."
(And it feels like her heart clenches again, just slightly, when she thinks of Jamie and his wide smile.)
"They do," she agrees, but she doesn't tell him And Jamie most of all.
One day, his friends come into the café, GoGo and Wasabi and Fred and Honey Lemon, and Tadashi introduces her to them.
She smiles, stiffly, because she's no good with so many people and she doesn't know what to say or what to do. But Tadashi makes her join in, he takes away her notes and he asks Aunt Cass to hide them, and he says he'll pass them to her after she takes a break with them.
"You're always telling me to take a break," she grumbles.
"That's because you always need one," he says. "If you study so hard and so much, where's the fun in that?"
"I don't study for fun," she says.
"Well, you should study because you have the passion for it," he tells her. "If you study so hard you're going to lose your passion for it."
"No, I won't."
Tadashi just grins at her. "Yes, you will."
She's still no good at talking, though, so mostly she sits and she listens and she watches as they talk. When you don't say much, you learn to observe, because you learn to read people and get attuned to them instead of blabbering on and broadcasting your thoughts; and this is a skill that's Cupcake picked up over the years.
She sits, and she observes. And she learns that GoGo and Wasabi will probably end up together because they are so unlike each other that they are perfectly matched, and that Fred really isn't such a lazy, disgusting idiot that he makes himself out to be, and that Honey Lemon is totally head over heels for Tadashi.
(She wonders why that last observation twists her heart just a little.)
"I'm a man of science," he tells her, one day. "I believe what I see with my own eyes."
"That's nonsense," she answers, immediately.
He looks at her, tilts his head, confused. "Why nonsense?"
"Sometimes, you need to believe things to see it," she tells him.
And she remembers a dark night sky, a white-haired boy floating in the air with a long wooden staff. She can remember snow days and laughter and snowball fights, and endless egg hunts with beautifully painted eggs, and quarters under her pillow, and wonder in the air every Christmas.
"You think so?" he asks her.
(She wonders how can there be any doubt?)
"I know so," she says.
One day, she realises that he says the word 'unbelievable' a lot.
"Why do you keep saying that?" she asks him.
He shrugs. "Things can be pretty unbelievable. Like how my brother insists on using his big brain for stupid stuff instead of for good."
"It feels strange," she admits.
"Why?" he wants to know.
"Because you need to believe in something for it to happen, first," she says.
"You sure?" he asks.
She nods. "I'm sure."
"You have a thing about believing," he tells her.
She smiles. "A lesson from childhood."
"Yeah?"
Cupcake nods. "Yeah. Believing's just the first step to a lot of things. Then there's keeping that belief alive. Because belief and faith and trust in something is bigger than anything else. It's – " she struggles with her words, for a moment, and then she says, "It's important."
They walk in silence, for a while, just the two of them.
(Cupcake wonders if she's said too much.)
"You want to know the first word that comes to my mind, whenever I think of you?" Tadashi says, finally.
"What?" she wants to know.
Tadashi turns to smile at her, and Cupcake thinks that there is something that feels a lot like butterflies flapping around in her stomach but no this is not happening and she is not feeling this way.
"Unbelievable."
(She won't say it, but she thinks he's pretty unbelievable too.)
soo...any comments?
i mean, i might expand this. if people like it. because it's kind of like my incredibles/BH6 crossover, it's on my delete-without-warning list because yeahhhh. no idea where i'm going with this. haha.