re: ageswap au
in which hiro is the elder and tadashi is a high school shrimp.
- (●—●) -
"I'm older, so I get the side near the door," Hiro declares.
"I'm younger, so I get the bigger half of the room," Tadashi retorts.
Aunt Cass looks between them. She pinches the bridge of her nose. She sighs.
"I'm also more mature," Tadashi says, cheeks pinched like he's trying not to sound desperate. "Mentally."
"Hey!"
"It's true." A reluctant grunt of assent.
"Come on, Aunt Cass!" Hiro pleads. "I have the floor plan all thought out and everything!"
Oh, she's seen the floor plan. It involves a mattress with a built-in trampoline function and a secret room hidden behind the second wall shelf. Tadashi's plans for the room are only slightly better.
"Ahahaha, no. I'm not falling for that." Aunt Cass turns away to briefly scan the cafe through the curtain. The morning rush has already passed. It doesn't look like anyone needs help.
So right now she has two arguing boys to deal with, both of who want the lion's share of the freshly renovated room upstairs.
Trying to mediate is kind of hard when she's also trying very hard not to laugh.
"Tell you what. How about I just give the whole attic to Mochi, and you two can fight over the living room couch?"
Hiro instantly ditches the pout for a horrified expression. "Aunt Cass, you're gonna pick the cat over your beloved nephews?"
Tadashi nudges his elbow. "Over you."
"Shut up, brother younger."
"I think this is my win, because Mochi likes me way more. Sorry, big bro. Looks like it's the couch for you."
"Hey, hey. If this is a fight we're talking about, I've been able to bench you since… wow. Ever. I don't like your odds, Dashi."
Now it was Tadashi's turn to redden furiously and stomp off towards the kitchen. "I'm six years younger and like a hundred pounds, what did you expect?"
"Is that wet or dry?"
Tadashi breathes deeply - don't freak out, don't shriek, you're not your crazy grad student brother -
"You're a terrible person and I hope you die."
There. He even managed to say it nicely.
"Not before I hit Schneider's human anatomy lecture!" Hiro throws cheerfully over his shoulder. He's already walking past Tadashi, backpack dangling from one arm and halfway to the door.
"Have fun in high school, nerdling. I hear it's the best years of your life."
"I'm still getting that room!" Tadashi shouts after him.
—
"I'm not getting the room," Tadashi moans.
He slumps over one of the outdoor picnic tables that usually get monopolized by senior upperclassmen and groans loudly. Wasabi pats his back consolingly. Fred's off standing in line for more of the dried-out travesties that the school calls chicken nuggets. Honey Lemon and Gogo sit across from them, trying vainly to hold back laughter.
"Look. Smaller rooms - sections - are easier to clean anyways. Plus, you have a lot of light coming in, and that's the best thing, right? Beds are for sleeping, not eating, or drinking, or doing homework -"
"I won't brush the eraser shreds onto the sheets again, okay?" Gogo grumbles. "It's a habit, didn't mean it, didn't know that you'd be such a pansy over it-"
"They're pink and dirty and microscopic! I'm pretty sure there're still some hiding in the cracks-"
"Stop arguing," Tadashi mumbles. "It's a partition. Not even the whole room. I'm arguing over five-eighths of a room. Who does that?"
"You and your brother, apparently." Gogo shrugs. "Honey, your input?"
Honey Lemon shrugs. "I can sympathize. My older brother and sister waged daily wars over who would be the first to use the bathroom in the mornings."
Wasabi's eyebrow shoots up. "Wait. What about you?"
Honey flashes them a brilliant smile. "Oh. I always got there first."
Gogo muffles a snort. Tadashi muffles what might loosely be called a wheeze.
"I woke up every morning at five-thirty a.m. for a year," Honey adds thoughtfully.
Wasabi nods cautiously. "That's… dedicated."
"Such is life."
"Guys? Back to the bedroom thing?" Tadashi reminds them. "How in the world do I convince Aunt Cass to give me the room?"
He lifts his head a little off the table, ticking off the fingers of one hand. "Hiro's older, he's stronger, he outweighs me by like fifty pounds, he's got his black belt, he's a genius who went to college when he was freaking fourteen, how do I start to compete with that?"
"Don't say that!" Honey reproves. "You're - really nice, and smart, and everyone likes you. Come on, be positive. What do you have?"
Tadashi's expression told her that was the wrong question. "Let's see. I'm a fourteen year old shrimp. I skipped a grade, but hey. We all did. I'm good at math, but wow, so is Hiro. In fact, he's so good that he skipped five grades and took a year off to do whatever he wanted after that -"
"Yeah, that's enough," Wasabi says. Honey Lemon looks appropriately abashed.
"…What about chores?" she tries to salvage. "Whoever washes more dishes, works the register, the like?"
"Me and Hiro already work shifts in the cafe in our free time."
"Suck up to Aunt Cass," Gogo says. Honey elbows her. "What? It'd be hilarious to watch."
"Helpful advice, Gogo."
"Yeah, yeah."
Fred plops a double serving of chicken crisps on the table right before he flops across the rest of the seating space afforded by the picnic bench. Honey Lemon nudges his foot off her knee.
"Hey, dudes, dudettes. What'd I miss?"
"Tadashi's angsting over who gets the bigger half of the attic room," Wasabi summarizes.
"Did you seriously spend six bucks on this stuff?" Gogo says, stealing a nugget. She bites into it and grimaces.
"You can see the individual salt grains on it," Honey notes, looking morbidly fascinated.
"Sodium," Fred corrects. "You need it to stay alive."
"It dries you up when you get too much of it."
"Science."
Gogo mutters something unintelligible. Fred switches his attention to Tadashi, who hasn't moved from his spot.
"Look, old friend. I see your misery. I feel your pain. And lucky for you, I have your solution!"
He leans forward a little. Wasabi and Honey Lemon lean forward a little. Gogo's bored expression doesn't change.
"Duel with swords. After the example of the late Japanese dynasts."
Fred pauses, then adds thoughtfully, "You can use mops instead."
"Fred." From four throats.
"What?"
—
"Mr. Hamada."
"Professor Callaghan!"
Hiro flips back the welding mask and turns to greet the person standing at the door.
"Making progress? I know you've about finished your microbots research. Are you planning on furthering that avenue, or…?"
"I'm thinking about going for the neurocranial transmission aspect," Hiro says. "I've been taking some biology classes. I think there's something to be said for biorobotic optical emulation. Still have a ton of stuff to look into, but it's possible." He presses the end of his pencil against his cheek, lost in thought.
Callaghan chuckles, and Hiro hears the door open again. "In that case, I'll leave you to it. Good luck, Hiro."
"Right," Hiro says absently, flipping to a fresh page of graph paper. "Thanks."
—
Hiro comes in with a bang.
A literal bang. The back door slams open and Hiro whisks up the stairs into the living area, tossing his backpack on the kitchen counter and going through the kitchen cabinets.
"Hi, Hiro," Tadashi says listlessly.
"Evening, nerd. Are the bowls in the dishwasher clean?"
"Yep."
"Excellent." Hiro snatches up a bowl, runs a finger around the rim, nods in satisfaction. "What'd Aunt Cass whip up?"
"Table." There's chicken and rice, which is pretty standard. "Aunt Cass's downstairs running the beat poetry circle. She wants us to help clean up in the kitchen when we're done eating."
"Sure."
Tadashi doesn't look up from stirring his cold noodles with a chopstick, but he hears the sound of a chair getting pulled up and loud chewing noises, so he assumes Hiro's eating.
Great. Hiro's even the bigger glutton, for crying out loud. Can't he win at anything?
So Hiro's eating rice and chomping like he doesn't have a care in the world, and Tadashi thinks that if he sits and stews in his cesspool of misery for any longer, he might actually explode.
Hiro's eating, but he looks up when Tadashi slams his palm down on the table.
"Mmff? 'Daush?"
"I've made my decision."
Hiro swallows the mouthful of chicken and rice and reaches for his fork. "What's up?"
"You can have the bigger half."
His brother looks up, cheeks bulging. "Hrf? What're you talkin' bout?"
Tadashi pauses. Then he aims the most scorching glare he can muster at Hiro. "You know, the room? Up in the attic? Don't tell me you've forgotten already!"
The steak knife slices through the meat. "Uh, wow. That was easy."
"I've made my decision." Tadashi throws up his hands. "I have weighed every possible option. Every viable path. And it's hopeless. I can't win. I'm never going to get the room."
He waves his hand at the ceiling. "So go on. Take it. It's up there. Gift wrapped. Waiting."
He waits a second, staring up at the ceiling.
A second passes. Then two. Tadashi sneaks a glance back at Hiro, wondering if he's said something wrong. Or weird.
Then he hears him chuckle.
Hiro snorts again. And again. And then he's full-out laughing, gasping and wheezing over his dinner so loudly that Tadashi momentarily wonders whether his older brother's having a seizure.
"That's what you've been so worked up about?" Hiro gets out. "I come in today and you're pushing your noodles around looking like the walking dead. You haven't said a word all through dinner. And then-!" More laughing. Tadashi's too nonplussed to interject.
"So… okay, go be weird. What about the room?"
"Dude," Hiro snorts, "You can have the room. Or the bigger half. Whatever, if you're that worked up about it. It's no big deal."
Tadashi stares. "… Seriously?"
"I mean, it's not gonna be the end of the world if I don't get three more cubic feet of space to shove my junk. I've got the garage for that anyways…"
"But -" Tadashi stutters, thinking wait, wait, wait just a second - "What about the contest? The fight, the, uh -"
He takes one look at the giggles that Hiro is epically failing at containing and feels the blood rush to his face. "Come on, knucklehead! I was freaking out about this all day, the least you could do is tell me why you're laughing your HEAD OFF!"
At least his tone manages to shock some degree of sense back into Hiro, who pauses to catch his breath while still trying valiantly to stop his sides from shaking. "Okay, okay, serious mode. This was all just for fun. I know you're the worryholic and all that, but hey. This isn't something you should be worrying about."
Hiro grins at him. Tadashi subsides in embarrassment, suddenly feeling the need to look everywhere but at his older brother.
"But… I dunno. It seems like you've got it all, sometimes. You're older, you're smarter. I want to be like that, too, okay? How do I match that?"
Tadashi doesn't see Hiro get up, engrossed with the tabletop as he is, but he does feel the older Hamada ruffle his hair. He swats ineffectually at Hiro's hand. "Stop it!"
"Never."
"Urgh."
Hiro laughs again, and then his face is serious as he bends down to look Tadashi right in the eye. "Look, nerdling. Maybe I've got brainy, but you've still got a lot of growing to do. Plus, you're already pretty darn great the way you are."
"…Really?"
"For starters, you're a lot better at being polite," Hiro says, counting them off on his fingers. "You've got lots of friends, not that running cutting-edge research isn't just as awesome. You're super smart and probably way nicer than I could ever be, and -" Hiro ruffles his hair again. "You're my nerdy little brother. How's that?"
"… You're way too cheesy, cheese."
"That's the spirit." Hiro hops to his feet, energy standing out in the way he does the familiar little hop-skip to the stairs. "So you get the room - the bigger bit, anyways - and I get the room and the garage. Now that's settled, what do you say we go help Aunt Cass close up the cafe?"
Tadashi feels a grin spread across her face. "You're on."
He's not his brother. He's not a genius.
But that doesn't mean he's any less.
- (●—●) -
A/N: So this is basically a bunch of random Big Hero 6 au ficlets that aren't really related at all, except when they are. I'll be transferring a bunch over from tumblr at first, but it's nice having them all in one place.