"A-Are you serious?" Hiro stammers out, most of his brain saying that this had to be some big prank but wanting so, so badly for this to be true.

"Very serious," Tadashi answers, squeezing Hiro's hands. "I've been looking for you for so long-I'd just about given up hope that I would ever find you! No one would ever give me any clear information on where you were or what happened to you... You were so young when the accident happened, d-do you remember me at all?"

"Not clearly," Hiro admits sheepishly. "I always sort of remembered that I had an older sibling but I couldn't remember any details, and I sometimes thought maybe I'd imagined it-wishful thinking that I had some family out there in the world that might want me…"

"Well you do have family who wants you very, very much," Tadashi answers, standing back up to his full height and pulling Hiro into a tight hug.

Hiro allows himself to just melt into the embrace-after all these years, he'd finally found the person he'd been missing for all this time and hadn't even known he was missing.

"I don't want to waste any more time not having you in my life," Tadashi says when he finally pulls away, still keeping his hands on Hiro's arms as if afraid to let go of him. "I'd take you home with me tonight, but that might be considered kidnapping and probably wouldn't look too good for my case of being your legal guardian… Do you have your social worker's phone number? If you do, I'm going to call them first thing in the morning and see how quickly I can get the ball rolling on getting custody of you."

"Wait, what?" Hiro cries. "C-Custody?"

"I'm sorry, I'm probably going way too fast right now, aren't I?" Tadashi says apologetically.

"No, you're not!" Hiro gasps out. "I just can't believe… You actually want me to come live with you?"

"Of course I do!" Tadashi puts his hands on Hiro's shoulders. "Fred was seriously about to get a private detective involved if we went too much longer without getting any word from the foster system about you!"

"A private detective? To find me?" Hiro repeats a bit faintly, his brain overloading at the idea that anyone would go to that much trouble to find him-that anyone could want him that much.

"Of course." Tadashi pulls Hiro into another hug. "I've spent ten damn years without you. I wasn't going to waste another one. If you were with a family that you were happy with of course I wouldn't have taken you away from them, but since you're not-"

"I'm definitely not!" Hiro reassures him.

"-then if you want it, Fred's and my home is open to you," Tadashi tells him with a warm smile. "We already started setting up the spare bedroom with general things like a bed and furniture, but now that I've found you you'll have to tell me all of the things that you like so we can get it decorated for you! I don't know how long it will take for me to be able to get official custody of you, but if anyone tries to put up a fight Fred's family has a very good lawyer who should help speed things along."

Hiro just nods wordlessly. He couldn't believe that this was really happening, but at this point he decided that if it was a dream he never wanted to wake up.

"Now come on." Tadashi eagerly pulls Hiro back into the booth they'd been sitting in. "Tell me everything about you-I have ten years' worth of knowing you to get caught up on!"

And so Hiro did. Everything that he'd bottled up for so long came spilling out. He told Tadashi all about the awful foster homes he'd been in, about getting bullied at school both for being a foster kid and for being a genius, and most recently about the bot fights. He was pretty sure that Tadashi was about to go through the roof when he found out about that, but Hiro reassures him that he'd never been hurt at a bot fight to date (he'd come close, but he wasn't about to tell Tadashi that.)

"I promise you that you'll never have to go to another bot fight once you're home with me," Tadashi tells him firmly. "And if you want to go to SFIT this fall, we'll get you registered right away!"

"Um… Isn't registration already past due?" Hiro answers, hating to get his hopes up over something that wouldn't happen.

"You forget who you're talking to," Tadashi says with a confident smile. "Between me and Professor Callaghan, you're a shoo-in, and I know we'll be able to find a scholarship for you. If you want I can even help you with your submission for the incoming student expo!"

"That all sounds amazing," Hiro admits with a grin before looking up at the clock on the wall and suddenly realizing how late it was getting.

"You probably need to be getting home, huh?" Tadashi says, also looking at the time.

"Probably, yeah," Hiro reluctantly admits.

"I don't want you getting in trouble so I'll drive you home," Tadashi tells him. "I hate the idea of you going back to that place, but the less your foster parents suspect hopefully the easier it will be for me to get you back sooner."

"I hope so," Hiro agrees with a nervous smile-he knew that his foster parents wouldn't be eager to give up their essentially free source of income (they barely provided him with the basic living necessities so they were making a lot more money from him than they spent on him) so the less they knew about Hiro knowing about Tadashi the better.

The ride back to Hiro's foster home was quiet-Tadashi tried to keep up the conversation with lighter topics, asking Hiro about his hobbies and favorite movies and other things that Hiro liked, but for Hiro somehow knowing that there was someone out in the world who wanted him made having to return to people who only ever used and abused him that much worse. But, at the same time, the promise that he would hopefully be out of here soon made the thought slightly more bearable as well.

"I'd give you my phone number, but I'm guessing your foster parents keep as close of an eye on your phone as mine did?" Tadashi says as he pulls to a stop a few houses down from Hiro's (he understood the importance of not parking in front of Hiro's home so that the foster parents wouldn't see him getting out of a stranger's car and start asking questions.)

"Yeah, they do," Hiro admits. "But I have an email account that they don't know about that I check on the public library computers!"

"Perfect." Tadashi quickly scribbles down an email address and a phone number onto a scrap of paper. "Here. I'm including my phone number just in case there's an emergency and you need a more direct way to get ahold of me. I'll set my email up to text me an alert any time you send me an email too so if you send something to me I should get it immediately. And I'll email you updates on how things are progressing on the custody front, okay? I don't know how long it will take, but I'll do everything I can to speed the process along. Hopefully you'll be coming home with me before you even have time to miss me."
"Hopefully," Hiro agrees, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

"Hey." Tadashi reaches over and pulls him into a hug. "I love you. Don't ever forget that."

"I won't," Hiro promises, hugging him back. He hoped Tadashi didn't mind that he didn't say "I love you" back, but even though they had technically known each other years ago he had no real memories of that time so it felt like he had just met Tadashi for the first time tonight, which made saying "I love you" feel insincere.

"Be safe," Tadashi says when he finally lets him go. "And remember that you can reach me any time that you need me."

"I will," Hiro promises before reluctantly climbing out of the car and heading for the house that he hoped wouldn't be his home for very much longer.

Hiro made it in without notice that night, and after that he continued to try to keep up appearances, pretending that he had no idea that he had an older brother who was fighting for custody for him. Tadashi sent him daily email updates (sometimes several a day) to make sure that he was aware of every move forward that was being taken. Hiro was worried that his foster parents would put up a fuss about letting him go, and it sounded like they were, but the fact that Tadashi was a blood relative held a lot of weight. And, more than that, Tadashi had failed to mention the fact that his husband, Fred, was the son of Stan Lee, world-renowned innovator and businessman, who had a whole legal team at his disposal. So, even though it felt like an eternity to Hiro, it actually wasn't that long at all before the day came when Hiro's social worker made a house visit.

Hiro was already prepared for this thanks to Tadashi's email, but he pretended to not know what the visit was about when he was called (rather reluctantly, he noticed) into the living room by his foster parents.

"Hiro!" His social worker (who he detested, although not quite as much as he detested his foster parents) greets him with a big, fake smile as he enters the living room. "I have some great news for you!"

"Really?" Hiro answers, trying to play innocent as he sits down on the couch. "What kind of news?"

"It turns out that you have an older brother! He's apparently been looking for you, and he's made a request to get custody of you! Isn't that wonderful?"

"It is!" Hiro didn't bother to disguise his excitement-he didn't have a reason to, so why should he? "When do I get to go to see him?"

"We've already filed all of the paperwork, so as soon as you've packed I can take you to him!" the social worker answers.

Hiro knew the truth-he wouldn't have had a choice in the matter even if he hadn't wanted to go, but he got the feeling that his social worker was happy that he wasn't putting up a fight. For his part, he was only too eager to run up the stairs and grab his backpack which he'd already packed with his few belongings.

"Ready!" he calls as soon as he reaches the bottom of the stairs before heading straight out the front door. He wasn't going to let his foster parents make some big production about how they were going to "miss" him and try to guilt him into staying. He had only one thing to say to them, and that was easily communicated by a one finger salute as he makes his way to his social worker's car.

Hiro realized as they drove that he had no idea of where Tadashi lived. He figured that Tadashi lived somewhere in the city considering he went to SFIT, but other than that he had no clue what the place Tadashi lived in was like. Would it be a house, or maybe an apartment? Well, no matter what it was like, he knew it would be a thousand times better than where he'd been living.

After about half an hour of driving, his social worker turned into a small neighborhood a short distance from downtown. It didn't look extremely fancy, but it seemed nice-there were no bars on the windows, and most of the houses had well kept front lawns, a lot of them with swings or bikes or other evidence that children lived there. It seemed like a neighborhood for families, which is exactly what Hiro hoped he was soon going to be a part of.

They pull into the driveway of a house about halfway down the street. It wasn't the biggest one on the block, but it was still a nice size, and Hiro could easily see himself living here. He really, really hoped that it wasn't going to turn out that this was all some crazy dream that he was about to wake up from…

"Hiro!" Before Hiro had even managed to get all of the way out of the car, the front door to the house came flying open and Tadashi was racing outside to meet him, scooping him up into a hug and pulling him close. It practically knocked the wind out of him, but he didn't care-this was real. This was really, actually real, and he was finally home with Tadashi!

"Sorry," Tadashi apologizes as he gently sets him back down, looking slightly embarrassed. "I didn't mean to startle you, I just- I couldn't stop myself, finally getting to see you again after all these years! You've gotten so tall!"

Hiro quickly slips into acting mode-to keep Hiro from getting in trouble for the whole hanging out in a bar thing, as far as Hiro's social worker was concerned Tadashi had finally been given her contact information after his long search for Hiro, and he and Hiro hadn't been in contact since before the accident.

"It's really good to see you again too," Hiro answers, also keeping up the pretense (which he was pretty damn good at after all his time at the bot fights-pretending you were an amateur made winning so much easier because it made people drop their guards.) "I-I'm sorry that I don't really remember you…"

"It's okay," Tadashi reassures him, putting his hands on his shoulders. "You were only three when it happened, you can't be expected to remember anything that far back. But I promise that we're going to make up for all that lost time, okay?"

"Okay," Hiro agrees with a genuine smile.

"Oh, and this is my husband, Fred!" Tadashi tells him, gesturing to a blonde haired man who was making his way down the front walk.

"It's nice to meet you," Hiro says politely-even though Tadashi had sent him a picture of Fred so he knew what he looked like, it was his first time meeting him in-person.

"It's great to finally meet you too!" Fred answers with a warm smile. "Tadashi's been talking about you practically since I met him, I'm so happy that we were finally able to find you."

"Me too," Hiro admits, feeling a bit shy around this stranger, but Fred seemed so genuinely excited to meet him that he tried to tell himself to just relax.

"I think all of the paperwork is in order, and we completed the house inspection," his social worker says, checking her clipboard. "Hiro, do you want me to come inside with you to help you get settled?"

"Nope, I think I'm good," Hiro answers, grabbing his backpack from the car. Frankly he hoped he would never have to see her again, but unfortunately he knew she'd probably still be doing routine checks for a while. But whatever. There was no way that she'd be able to find any reason to take him away from Tadashi so he could put up with that.

"All right." His social worker nods, looking almost relieved-probably glad to be rid of him. "Well, I'll leave you to get settled in, then."

Hiro waits until she had driven out of sight before turning back to Tadashi and wrapping him in a tight hug. "We did it… I-I'm actually here," he whispers.

"You are," Tadashi agrees, hugging him back just as tightly. "You're home, Hiro."

"Yeah." Hiro beams up at him. "Home."

"Now come on." Tadashi finally releases him from the hug but instead takes Hiro's hand in his own. "Come inside and we'll give you the tour!"
"Sorry if it's a bit nerdy, but we are nerds!" Fred laughs, following behind them. "But from what Tadashi's told me you're a pretty big nerd too."

"I'm not sure I'd consider myself a nerd…" Hiro mumbles.

"Little bro, you told me your main interests outside of robotics are video games, superheroes, and Star Wars-that's kind of nerdy," Tadashi playfully says, ruffling his hair.

"Doesn't make me a nerd!" Hiro protests.

"Well, nerd or not, I think you're going to fit in just fine here," Tadashi says as he leads Hiro into the house.

"Whoa…" Hiro gasps as he gets his first clear view of the inside of his new home. The first main room of the house was the living room, and every visible surface was covered with merch and pictures from Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Lord of the Rings, various video games, and just about everything else that he loved. There were several comfortably worn chairs and couches scattered throughout for seating. And, best of all, in front of the TV was an amazing assortment of game systems!

"I'll take it you like it?" Tadashi says with a grin.

"Like it? I love it!" Hiro cries. "A-Am I allowed to use the gaming systems?"

"Well of course!" Fred answers as if it was obvious. "You live here too now, you're more than welcome to use them whenever you want! Y'know, unless everyone else is sleeping, in which case we'd just ask that you don't have the volume up too loud."

"W-Wow, thank you," Hiro whispers, unable to believe that he was going to get to play video games again, something he hadn't been able to do since almost two foster homes ago.

"Do you want to see your room?" Tadashi asks with a grin.

"S-Sure!" Hiro agrees-he didn't expect it to be anything too special, but hey, just living here was enough.

"We were up late last night decorating it," Fred tells him with a smile. "We didn't want your social worker wondering how we knew about what you liked so we kept everything stashed in our room until after the final house inspection yesterday and then we were rushing to try to get it all done in time-I think we did a good job, considering!"

"Y-You decorated my room for me?" Hiro gasps in wonder.

"I hope that's okay!" Tadashi says a bit worriedly. "We tried to find things that you'd like from what you told me in emails, but if you don't like it we can totally change it!"

"N-No, I'm sure it will be fine!" Hiro reassures him. Just the fact that Tadashi and Fred had put so much effort into preparing for him meant the world to him.

"Okay, here it is!" Tadashi says as he opens a door off of the adjoining hallway, looking a combination of excited and nervous. "I really hope you like it!"

Hiro stares at his new room in open-mouthed shock. No way. No way this could all be for him! The walls were covered in posters from Star Wars and video games, the shelves were filled with vinyl pops and action figures from all of his favorite shows and movies, and the bed had a freaking Kingdom Hearts bedspread (he didn't even know where Tadashi and Fred had found something like that!)

"Is it okay?" Tadashi asks nervously. "If you don't like anything, we can totally change it!"

"Like it? This is the best room that I've ever seen!" Hiro cries, trying not to completely geek out.

"Well good!" Tadashi beams at him, looking relieved.

"You guy seriously didn't have to do all of this for me…" Hiro whispers, his emotions starting to get the better of him.

"It wasn't all us," Fred tells him with a smile. "When a lot of our friends found out that we'd finally found you they ended up bringing over a ton of stuff for you without our even asking-they're all super psyched to meet you!"

"Whenever you're ready to meet them, of course," Tadashi quickly adds. "I know this is a lot so you're probably not ready to meet a whole bunch of new people. But Aunt Cass was asking if you would be okay to go have dinner with her tonight-"

"Wait, who?" Hiro asks, his head spinning slightly from all of this new information.

"Oh my gosh-I never told you about Aunt Cass, did I?" Tadashi gasps.

"Um, no?" Hiro answers slowly. "Is she like an adopted aunt person, or…?"

"No, she's our real aunt," Tadashi answers with a sheepish smile. "I didn't even know about her until maybe a year ago-she's our dad's sister, but she and our parents weren't exactly on talking terms because they didn't approve of her being bi so that's why I'd never heard of her. She didn't even know about us until she saw something about me on a news report and she reached out to me because I looked a lot like her brother and we had the same last name so she thought that maybe we might be related. Well, it turns out that she was right, and she owns a little cafe downtown and we try to visit whenever we can. I can't believe I totally forgot to tell you about her, I told her about you the minute I found you!"

"I guess there was a lot going on so I get where you would have forgotten with everything else that was happening," Hiro reassures him, still trying to process the fact that he actually had another living family member!

"So do you think you'd be okay with meeting her tonight?" Tadashi asks hopefully.
"Heck, sure, why not?" Hiro answers with a grin.

"Awesome." Tadashi smiles at him. "I understand if you need a few minutes to yourself to process all of this-I know that's how I felt when Fred's family took me in, and if you need us to give you some space for a bit that's totally okay."

"T-That might not hurt," Hiro admits-he definitely needed a bit of time for his brain to take in all of this new information, and he was glad that Tadashi understood that.

"Of course." Tadashi squeezes his shoulder. "Take all of the time that you need. Fred and I won't be far if you need us-Fred will probably be in his office working on his current manuscript, and I've got my workshop out in the garage, but you can come get us if you need anything, okay? The bathroom's just down the hall if you need that, if you get hungry you're welcome to anything in the kitchen or pantry, I'm trying to think of anything else you might need… Oh! And your new phone and laptop are on the desk if you want to set those up, I put the wifi information on a card on the desk too!"

"Wait, you got me a phone and a laptop?!" Hiro seriously couldn't believe how generous Tadashi was being.

"Well you need a phone for safety reasons if nothing else, and you'll need a laptop for schoolwork come fall," Tadashi answers with a shrug. "And don't worry, we don't have any weird monitoring software or anything on them-I know you may have had to deal with that in foster homes in the past but we respect your privacy, we're not going to pry into anything."

"H-How can you… I-I mean, can you really afford all of this?" Hiro stammers out, hating to sound rude but even more hating to think of being a burden to Tadashi, especially when he was still a student right now!

"Hiro, you forget that I invented Baymax," Tadashi says with a smile, lightly tapping Hiro's forehead. "The royalties I get from him on top of my job at the lab, plus Fred's writing career taking off, mean we get along just fine, so don't you worry about that, okay?"

"Okay," Hiro slowly agrees-he still felt a bit weird about Tadashi doing so much for him, but Tadashi had a point about Baymax. Baymax was being used in hospitals all over the world, he guessed Tadashi would probably be making pretty good money off of that.

"Which reminds me, we'll have to have you meet the original Baymax later," Tadashi says thoughtfully. "We don't have to do that right now, but it would be good for him to scan you and have you in his data files-he looks after pretty much all of our family and friends, and it would be good to have him give you a general checkup. Plus I know he'll be excited to meet you after hearing about you for so long!"

"Sounds good!" Hiro agrees. He'd never met a real Baymax before, and meeting the original one? That sounded like a dream come true.

"All right, I think that's about everything…" Tadashi says, looking like he was trying to remember something. "Oh!" He suddenly starts and then heads over to the bed with a smile on his face. "That's right, Baymax! This was something I was excited to show you!"

"Uh… Okay?" Hiro looks at him with a bit of confusion as Tadashi picks up a small, slightly worse for wear stuffed robot toy that looked like it had been white in color once but was now a slightly dingier grey.

"I'm sorry he's not in better condition," Tadashi apologizes, handing him to Hiro. "He was already pretty scruffy before I went into foster care, and he went through a lot with me since then. I was going to see if Honey Lemon-that's a friend of mine who does a lot of sewing-could restore him for you, but I didn't want to do anything without your permission."

"Um… Should I know what this is?" Hiro asks hesitantly.

"Oh… I guess you wouldn't remember him, huh?" Tadashi says with an embarrassed smile, rubbing the back of his neck. "He was your favorite toy growing up, Mom made him for you-you couldn't sleep without him. After the accident… I never even got to see you once before I was shipped off to a foster home. He was one of the few things that I took with me-I promised myself that I'd give him to you when I found you again. He actually inspired my design for Baymax. I kept holding onto him, hoping that I'd get to have the chance to give him to you someday if I ever found you… And, well, now I have so I thought it was finally time he was returned to you!"

"I… Wow, Dashi, thank you," Hiro says, looking down at the toy with slightly more respect. Tadashi had held onto this for him all this time, and it had inspired the design for Baymax? That was pretty amazing.

"Of course," Tadashi answers with a smile before adding, "And I'm glad you remembered my nickname."

"What?" Hiro asks in surprise.

"Just now, you called me Dashi-that's what you always used to call me as a kid because you couldn't pronounce my full name," Tadashi explains, ruffling Hiro's hair. "Most of my friends call me that too, so I don't mind if you use it."

"I… O-Okay." Hiro wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that he'd apparently called Tadashi a nickname he didn't even remember without even realizing that he'd done it, but he wondered if maybe it was a sign that some of his old memories were still somewhere in his brain, and if maybe, just maybe, somehow he'd be able to access some of them someday.

"I'll leave you alone now," Tadashi says, heading for the door-Fred had apparently left already, probably to give them some privacy. "If you need anything, just let me know, okay?"

"I will," Hiro promises-as amazing as all of this had been, he definitely needed a few minutes to himself.

"It's really, really good to have you home, Hiro," Tadashi says with one final smile before finally leaving, softly closing the door behind him.

Hiro sinks down onto his bed-which was easily the softest bed that he had ever been on, holy shit-part of him tempted to go ahead and set up his new laptop and phone like Tadashi had suggested but the overwhelming part of him saying that right now he just needed to lie down and not do anything but let his brain process everything for a few minutes. So that's exactly what he did.

He didn't even bother to pull down the covers-he takes his shoes and hoodie off, but after that he just curled up on the bed, resting his head on the pillows and instinctively hugging the stuffed animal that Tadashi had given him close to his chest. This was all so, so crazy. Crazy, and slightly overwhelming. But that was okay. He was home. Home. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he finally had a place that he was happy to call that. And, with a smile on his face, his mentally, emotionally, and even somewhat physically exhausted body ends up drifting off, feeling completely safe, something he hadn't felt since-well, probably since the last time he and Tadashi had lived in the same house. It was an incredible feeling that he was more than ready to get used to.