Title: Weekend Musings
Recipient: lastoftheuchiha
Author: Darkfireblade
For: lj community heroesholidays
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Hiro/Ando fluff
Summary: On a rainy Saturday night, Ando finds himself reflecting on his sudden friendship with a newly arrived Hiro Nakamura and where it might lead them.

"Hiro? Hiro, are you awake?"

Ando tapped the smaller man on the shoulder and received no answer from him but a tired groan. In the foreground, the blare of the television screen provided the small apartment sitting room its only illumination. So much for a Star Trek marathon for the both of them; they had only managed to watch five episodes before Hiro drifted off to sleep, his head falling onto Ando's lap.

It was only after a few minutes of prodding that Ando gave up trying to revive his sleeping companion. Hiro wasn't going to be waking up any time soon, no thanks to the painstaking demands of being the new group leader of their work division. Ando sighed, sunk deeper into the couch and watched as the crew of the Enterprise set about to solve another round of problems they were facing.

A few minutes passed. Ando sighed again and rubbed at his slightly stinging eyes. A remote was produced grudgingly from between some couch cushions and the TV blinked off. Watching the series just wasn't quite the same without Hiro's fascinated (and at times fascinating) commentary. Ando's eyes drifted aimlessly around Hiro's apartment, gaze sliding from one poster to another; none of them caught his waning interest. Finally, his sight was directed back at the intruder of his personal space.

Hiro Nakamura was an out of the closet otaku and all-around eccentric. Ando Masahashi was at the bottom of nearly all his classes and a fine example of complying with society's demands. Yet despite their glaringly obvious differences, Hiro had somehow managed to plant himself firmly into Ando's secluded life. Ando had expected money, and endless shifts staring listlessly at a computer screen from his job; he had not expected to land himself with a fumbling desk partner with more inquiries than the company's Q&A handbook. The next thing he knew, Ando was spending more hours with his partner than he was with himself.

Some people at work snickered upon realizing the amount of time the duo spent together nowadays. One would almost never see Ando without Hiro following close behind, or vice versa. In their early days working together, such tailing by Hiro was highly noticeable and unnerving to Ando. It had taken over a month for him to realize that Hiro was only doing what he thought his job entailed; but by then, the other's presence barely registered as a blip in Ando's figurative radar. Only when Hiro didn't show up to work one day did Ando appreciate the constant that Hiro had been. Well, as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Makes the heart grow fonder…Ando frowned and studied his companion's boyish face. How fond he could stand letting his heart get was the question. He heard the whispers at work, but then again, the S.O.B.s there whispered about anything and everything they could. Ando had almost taken it upon himself one day to take matters into his own hands, only to be surprised with the fact that Hiro had beaten him to the punch. Apparently, Hiro had also heard the rumors circulating around the workplace and had given himself the responsibility of not only defending his own honor but Ando's as well. That quieted things down for a while, but as usual, things started back up again. They always did.

Ando took it all in stride: after all, the world wasn't perfect and one only did what one could and tolerated the things one couldn't. Hiro, on the other hand, with his heroic preconceptions on how the world worked drawn from American comic books and various manga sources refused to take such abuse from the others lying down. And of course, Hiro's vehement defense of Ando just added more kindling to the others' fire and Ando had to draw Hiro aside more than once to explain to his partner that reality just didn't work the way Hiro imagined it. Those talks never really worked.

That was another side of Hiro that Ando just couldn't understand. It was Hiro's utterly wild imagination as well as his morals taken straight from a naïve protagonist's viewpoint of the world. Ando tolerated some of Hiro's stories, such as the one that was jokingly known as "Future Hiro" (Hiro had come to a conclusion after filling in for Ando at work one day that a Hiro Nakamura from the future had phoned in asking the missing partner's advice). When asked for his reasoning, Hiro just shrugged and answered that he knew his own voice and that if he ever accidentally traveled back in time Ando would be the first one to call. Ando just smirked and told Hiro to lay off on the sake. That comment was received with a wrinkling of the nose and mock cold-shoulder treatment for the rest of the day.

Hesitantly, Ando reached out his hand and brushed it softly through Hiro's short-cropped hair. It was unsurprisingly soft to the touch. When Hiro's head unconsciously nudged back towards Ando's hand, he nearly jerked away in surprise.

Okay, so Hiro Nakamura was complete weirdo and a geek. Not only that, but he had his head in the clouds and had not fully grasped the idea of reality even at the age of twenty-three. But having Hiro Nakamura around all the time wasn't quite as bad of an experience that Ando had thought it would be. Who could have imagined that the bumbling idiot that couldn't even staple a document on the right side (Hiro always stapled it on the right, which ticked the living daylights out of Ando) would become one of his only sources of entertainment and camaraderie? Ando sure couldn't.

While Ando mused to himself, he didn't notice the sliver of partway open eyes gleaming up at him. Hiro quickly shut his eyes back up again before Ando's attention returned back on him. He was enjoying this brief lapse of Ando's usually brusque self and planned on enjoying it some more. With a shadow of a smile gracing Hiro's face, he snuggled closer into Ando's hand, hoping that the other would just mistake it for a restless sleep.