Hey guys! This story was requested by silverfox02029…see Silvie I finally did it! Family of Two AU, hope y'all like it! Please review!

TADASHI

Foster care sucks.

This is the ninth foster house Hiro and I have been to since our parents died eleven years ago. No one's kept us for more than eighteen months. Usually we don't even make it the year.

I come home from work to find Hiro shivering, wrapped in blankets on his bed. Poor thing. He's home all day without heating while I'm at SFIT and then work, trying to make some extra money for heating in our room.

"Hi, Hiro," I say drowsily, my words slurring together. "Howwuz your day?"

Hiro grumbles in reply. I don't push it and throw a hand over my eyes, exhausted. Snow starts to fall outside the window and the temperature drops about ten degrees, but we can't turn up the heat.

When I wake up, Hiro is gone. He's probably gone downstairs for dinner and didn't want to wake me up.

I head downstairs, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Brittany and Aaron, our foster parents, are sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee. No sign of Hiro.

I pull a few things down from the cabinet and start on a kettle of hot chocolate. I'm still freezing, even though there's heating down here. Brittany just won't let us have any in our room. She thinks we're a waste of the heating bill.

"Where's Hiro?" I ask as I sit down.

Brittany shrugs. "We headed up to the mountains while you were asleep."

That seems like an odd response. "And?"

"That's where he is," Brittany replies, taking a sip of her coffee.

I drop the mug. "You left him there?!"

"Of course, idiot."

"In this storm? Are you crazy? He's going to die out there!"

She shrugs again. "So what?"

I huff indignantly and head for the garage. I'm getting Hiro and bzzting Brittany can't stop me.

A hand grabs the back of my collar, pulling me back. I whirl around and see Brittany glaring at me.

"Where are you going?" she hisses.

"To get Hiro," I say, as if it should be obvious. Which it should, really.

"No, you're not." Brittany shoves me toward my room. "He's staying up there until he learns some discipline."

"Discipline? In the way of death by exposure?"

She sighs and forces me back into my room. "You're so dramatic."

"Dramatic?" I can do nothing but repeat what she says now. "I'm not the one who abandoned a twelve-year-old in the mountains in the middle of December!"

She scoffs and slams the door. A second later, I hear a click as it locks.

I pound on the door, yelling at her to let me out. Her footsteps grow fainter as she walks away.

I pace my room, waiting for Brittany and Aaron to go to sleep. Mostly for Brittany—Aaron doesn't hurt us, but he's a total pushover and does almost anything Brittany says.

When they're finally asleep, I ram my shoulder into the window as quietly as possible. The glass shatters and a cascade of shards spray toward my face. I turn my head, but several pieces stick in my shoulder and I yelp.

I squirm out the window, which is harder than it should be, and drop to the snowy ground. It's not coming down anymore, but it's also starting to melt, so the roads will be slick. I just hope I can get to Hiro without crashing.

I silently open the garage door and wheel my moped out onto the street. If Brittany wakes up, I'm dead.

I rev the engine and speed away, not caring how much noise I'm making now. Even if Brittany woke up now, she'd never catch me.

I drive all the way up into the mountains, dodging the black ice stretching across the road. They can't have gone too far up. Hiro must be here somew—

I yelp as the moped tips sideways and skids across the ice. My cheek scrapes on the jagged edge.

My head aches as I push myself up, intending to get right back on the moped and keep going. But something in the snow catches my eye—a footprint. Exactly the right size to be Hiro's.

I stand up and stumble along the path, searching for some evidence that Hiro was here. Finally I come across a small hole in the snow, recently dug and big enough to fit Hiro inside it.

I crouch down by the hole. "Hiro?"

A small cough comes from inside. "D-Dashi?"

"Hiro!"

I reach into the hole and pull out a slight, slender figure, coughing. His skin is cold to the touch, and his lips are blue. How long has he been out here?

"Hiro, are you okay? What happened?" I ask, pulling Hiro's ice-cold form into my arms.

"Stopped…to take a picture…" Hiro mumbles, shivering. "Told me…to watch the…stuff…while they got the…tripod…drove away…"

I stand up and right the moped, sliding into the seat and placing Hiro behind me.

"Hold on, okay?" I say. Hiro nods and wraps his arms around my chest.

We speed off and arrive back at the house without crashing. I boost Hiro up so he can climb in through my shattered window and then follow him.

"We need to get you warmed up," I say, glancing at his blue lips. I grab about seven blankets from the stack of spares and toss them at Hiro. "I'll get you a hot chocolate and a few other things. Just hold on."

I get Hiro all the warm things I can think of—cocoa, a hot water bottle, and a warm rice sock. I wouldn't have known when I heard of it that a sock filled with rice and warmed up in a microwave was such a good remedy.

Hiro is wrapped in all the blankets I gave him when I return and has started to sweat. I tone it down to two blankets and hand him the other remedies.

"Better?" I ask when he's situated.

Hiro nods, taking a sip of the hot chocolate. He looks tiny wrapped up in the blankets, dwarfed by comparison. He does eat more often than I do, since I give him my dinner when he doesn't get any, but his metabolism is also faster and he doesn't retain weight for long. He's practically a stick.

I, on the other hand, have some muscle and a decidedly healthy amount of fat in my abdomen. Hiro has no insulation—probably why he got hypothermia so quickly earlier tonight.

It's well past midnight when Hiro falls asleep, finally warm enough to focus on something other than the cold. I climb into bed and let my dreams take me away.

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