Chapter Text
Hiro Hamada is simultaneously exactly like his older brother and nothing like his older brother and he has no idea what to make of that.
Tadashi had been more than eager to share his workspace, and with labor laws and medical next-of-kin and all the paperwork that came along with hiring a minor, the department head had been inclined to agree. Tadashi had quickly squared up his belongings so that his brother could be moved in by the time the beginning of the new rolled around, even sooner if he could have had his way.
He’d admit that he’d been more than a bit bemused at Tadashi’s sudden enthusiasm.
“Most people wouldn’t be thrilled about having half of their workspace taken away,” he had commented idly to Tadashi as he watched his TA search for a new place to put his soldering station.
“My brother’s awesome,” he had shrugged, putting the station immediately to the left of his computer. He cracked a grin. “And it’s not like I’m not used to sharing a room with him.”
And that…was something he hadn’t known. He had known, of course, that Tadashi lived with his aunt (presumably because his parents had died, but he wasn’t going to press his TA on that) and that his aunt owned and lived above the Lucky Cat Café. It made sense, thinking about it now, that Tadashi and Hiro would share a room; housing above storefronts was not known for being spacious. It also explained a little bit more about Tadashi and Hiro’s relationship. In his experience, siblings that were forced to be in such close contact either were the very best of friends or couldn’t stand one another; it seemed that Tadashi and Hiro were the “best friend” variety. Idly, he wondered if Tadashi was even capable of disliking someone; he had certainly never seen it happen and the young man didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his entire body. He snapped himself out of his musings and continued to chat with his TA before excusing himself for the evening; Tadashi wasn’t the only one who had things to prepare for Hiro’s arrival.
Everything, of course, made significantly more sense once Hiro had begun working in “The Nerd Lab”. It became apparent that both Tadashi and Hiro primarily thought of themselves as one-half of The Hamada Brothers and while he would usually object to them pigeonholing themselves as that, it seemed to work quite well for them. That wasn’t to say that they didn’t have different “modes”, so to speak, there was still Tadashi Hamada, biomedical and mechanical engineer and then Hiro Hamada, electrical and robotics engineer, and then there was Tadashi-and-Hiro, the collective that had the strangest, but most technically impressive work that he had seen from undergraduates. In addition to continuing to develop their respective projects, they had somehow managed to find time to create: a collapsible hoverboard (which Hiro now rode to classes, again much to his brother’s dismay), a “smart helmet” for Tadashi and GoGo, and an array of devices and sensors that, although unconventional, would make everyone’s research go a bit more smoothly.
Overall, once they had gotten past the initial hiccups that came with introducing a new person into an established routine, productivity had skyrocketed. Tadashi had never been a slouch when it came to meeting deadlines, but even with his ambitious schedule, he had been breezing through the deadlines; at this rate, he’d be done with his project’s databases in mere weeks!
And it wasn’t just the Hamada brothers. He recalled Tadashi once saying that his brother would fit right in at his lab, and now he truly understood the full meaning of that. With him, Hiro had brought…something that seemed to energize everyone working in the lab. It seemed like every time he came by the lab nowadays, there was some interesting development being shown to him: improved precision of the laser-induced plasma, a new way they had found to reduce the charging time of traditional lithium-ion batteries, a more efficient supercapacitor. If he were being honest, he would say that it was all making him come by the lab more often. Seeing everyone’s newly renewed passion in their work had quickly become one of the only joys in his life, and that probably said more about him than it did the quality of the work that he was seeing, but the point still stood.
Sometimes he’d look at the Hamadas and wonder how two radically different people could get along so well (not that he was going to press it and risk messing something up). Hiro was all rough edges and sarcasm and Tadashi was just a gentle, patient young man. While Tadashi tended to be more methodical and had a quiet sort of enjoyment to his work, Hiro worked with a single-minded, almost manic passion. It was truly a bit perplexing that they worked so well together, but as long as there were no problems and they were cranking out results, then he wasn’t going to question their odd dynamic.
He started as he pulled himself out of his thoughts; in his boredom (due to literally no one coming by his office during open hours), he had been stuck in his head for way too long. He looked at his computer one final time, sending off a couple of quick replies to emails that had come while he was lost in thought and powered the machine down for the evening. He stood from his desk, stretching as he did; office hours were hell on his neck.
He almost didn’t even notice that there was someone standing right in front of him.
“Hi, Dr. Callaghan,” someone called. He glanced up, curious at to who it could be this late in the evening. He was only slightly surprised to see Hiro loitering in his still-open doorway.
“Dashi asked me to bring these by you office on my way home,” he grinned, holding up a small box filled to the brim with papers. “Graded homeworks for your Ethics in Robotics course. He also told me to tell you that he’s started on the Feedback Control homework; he says they should be done by Friday.”
He took the box of papers from Hiro and put them in the top drawer of his desk. He’d hand them back in class tomorrow. He turned back to his newest lab worker.
“Have you considered what we talked about last week?”
Hiro frowned lightly, but not angrily. “I don’t know about publishing just yet. There are still some kinks that need to be worked out in locking a design after the transmitter’s been removed.”
He gave a small sound of acknowledgement.
“I’m not going to harp on it, but I would encourage you to keep the thought in your mind,” he advised. “It’s never to early to start building a list of publications.”
Hiro smiled lightly and brought his hand up to rub the back of his neck nervously, “I suppose. I just want to make sure that everything is the best it can be before I send it off to be torn apart by my “peers”.”
Torn apart? His brows furrowed slightly. Did Hiro not realize that his microbots had exposed a huge fault in the assumptions in the fundamental laws of their shared field? In his own research? The only reason that no one had beat him to the punch was that no one, including him, could figure out how in the hell he had done it.
“I’m sure that anything you put forth on the matter would be well-received,” he reassured.
Their conversation was interrupted by a loud chirrup presumably coming from Hiro’s phone in his pocket. Apparently, judging from their slight jumps at the loud noise, they had both forgotten that Hiro was on his way home before he had stopped by. He nodded understandingly, “The café calls, I see.”
Hiro nodded apologetically. “Aunt Cass needs some help with inventory and, well, I’m still in trouble for getting both Tadashi and me arrested.”
Wait, what.
“Bye, Dr. Callaghan. See you tomorrow!” Hiro called, unfurling his board and quickly departing.
He stared at the doorway where his researcher had been mere moments before. Honestly, while he was curious how Tadashi and Hiro had managed to be arrested without him hearing about it, he wasn’t really sure he wanted to know. He had learned quickly with the Hamada brothers that some things he would just have to let slide.
He shook his head, feeling just a little bit lighter than before. Truly the Hamadas were an odd pair.