me completing closer pt. 2: ten!!! the vampire/siren!!!! brooding, sexy yet mischievous & accustomed to modern times but still has this regal, sophisticated aura,,,,
You wake up abruptly, with your arms full and your chest heavy, Mike’s head tucked under your chin and his hair in your mouth. For a long moment, you’re disoriented -- you don’t recognize the room you’re in, or the voice that woke you, or the man standing above your bed.
“Jesus, kid, if this were life or death, you’d be shit outta luck.”
You blink once, twice.
“Is it?” you manage, and the man gives you a dark look.
“It will be the next time I come home to this shit,” he says with feeling. Now you’re fully awake, and it hits you that this must be Leatherhead’s roommate, Slash, home from his graveyard shift. And all he walked in on was some harmless cuddling, but from the look on his face he’s taking it about as well as your high school classmates would have.
You’re out of your small-minded town, out in the wider world. You thought it would be better here.
You pull your sleeping friend closer, curling him against you as you sit up warily, and you’re running a quick mental catalog; your things are still packed, Klunk is in the next room, you’re both dressed -- it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get up and get gone before this guy calls the cops or something.
Your thoughts must show on your face. Somehow, it only pisses this stranger off even more.
He opens his mouth, heated. His eyes drop to Mikey, and his mouth snaps shut again. “Kitchen,” he bites out, and turns on his heel to storm out of the room.
The non-sequitur throws you off. You sit dumbly for a minute, staring at the empty spot where Slash was standing, and then let your eyes move past it to the rest of the small apartment.
Leatherhead is awake, and smiling wryly at you from his seat at the kitchen bar. Klunk is in his lap, gnawing on a sausage link, and his gentle presence combined with the luring smell of fresh coffee is too much for you to deny.
Disentangling yourself from Mike without waking him is something you’re practiced at, and you shuffle warily into the bright kitchen -- only to have a mug off coffee thrusted at you unceremoniously.
You manage it catch it without spilling any, and follow a pointed finger into the empty chair at Leatherhead’s side.
“First of all,” Slash says sharply, “don’t look at me like I’m every other bigoted asshole you’ve met so far. That kinda black-and-white thinkin’ is only gonna get you in trouble, kid.”
You look from his angry everything up into Leatherhead’s mild countenance, and Leatherhead smiles at you. He holds up his left hand, where a plain wedding band sits comfortably on his ring finger, and you stare at it.
Look again at Slash, find his left hand and the matching band on it, and say, “Oh.”
You feel kind of stupid. But somehow most of the ire is leaking out of Slash’s face, and the man sighs shortly.
“Yeah, oh. My problem ain’t with you and your boy bein’ a couple, it’s with you and your boy bein’ babies.”
“What -- we are not! We’re both nineteen.”
“Like I said,” Slash says dryly, “babies. I’m not really in the business of harboring runaways.”
Your grip on the coffee mug tightens.
“We’re just trying to get to New York,” you say bitterly, so frustrated and doing your best not to raise your voice. “My truck needed repairs, so we’re stuck in Boulder for now. Your roomshare was way cheaper than a motel would have been, so we -- “
“What d’you think you’ve got waiting for you in New York?” Slash says with the same exasperated knowing disguised as worldly patience that Leo likes to use, and your hackles go up.
“We’ve both got a full ride to NYU! And with the way everyone’s actin’, I’m startin’ to think that’s a bad thing!”
Silence greets the remark, full enough that it’s almost a statement in itself. You’re staring at the countertop, so you have no idea what the men’s faces look like -- and you’re willing the angry heat in your eyes not to turn into tears, because then you’d really have to leave, and you don’t have anywhere else to go.
“NYU?” It’s Leatherhead who asks, and the ex-Marine has been nothing but kind to you so far, so you nod grudgingly. “I had no idea. Congratulations are in order, then.”
“Thanks.”
This prickly attitude is hard to hold onto. You’ve always been one to just let things go. For Mike, though -- for him -- you’ll hold heavy grudges until the weight of them breaks your back. It’s the least you can do after everything he’s done for you.
So you flick a cautious glance at Slash’s face, trying to gauge where to go from here.
The man is still frowning, but it doesn’t seem to be directed at you anymore.
“Your families ain’t for it?”
“My grandparents gave me money and the truck,” you say immediately, taking up for them. “They didn’t have to do that, we’ve been saving for years. They’re proud of us, both me and Mike. They know how hard we’ve worked for this.”
“That kid’s parents, then -- Mike’s parents -- they’re not proud?”
“Nah, it’s -- they had an uncle looking after them, but he wasn’t a very good guy. It’s just Mike and his brothers now.” You feel Klunk climb into your lap and let go of your coffee to pet her. The soft rumble of her purrs soaks into your hands, soothing. “They weren’t gonna let him go, ‘cause it’s so far away. But we’ve been -- we want this,” you say, desperate to make this stranger understand. “And I couldn’t leave him. He’d suffocate back there, man. In that place. He’d really -- “
“Alright, kid,” Slash says, pushing a full plate toward you. Something about his rugged face has gentled, even if you can’t put your finger on what. “I get it.”
Mikey wanders into the living room about an hour later, all tousled curls and crooked clothes. He must have been tired if he slept through the smell of food.
There’s a plate for him in the microwave, and Leatherhead rises from his overstuffed armchair to heat it up for him. Mikey smiles at the massive hand that ruffles his hair as the two pass each other, but doesn’t divert from his beeline straight for you.
He puddles into your lap like a boneless creature and kisses you soundly, like you’ve been doing it for years. The sunlight burns hints of color into his dark hair. You hook an arm around his waist to keep him from falling.
“Ugh,” Slash says, “babies, makin’ out on my couch.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” you say agreeably.
“So how long has this been going on?” Slash asks, gesturing between you and Mike. You blink, and then you blink at Mike, who tilts his head thoughtfully.
“I dunno,” Mike says innocently, impish mischief tucked into the corners of his mouth, “what time is it?”
And maybe you’ve been a little bit in love with him since you first heard his still-nameless song on that ridiculous mixtape. Maybe you listened to it more times than you’re willing to admit, thinking of kissing him instead of kissing Sally in the bed of your truck, your fingers in his hair instead of hers, knowing his weight and warmth on top of you the way you know the road home.
Maybe you still have that tape, tucked away in the glovebox.
(Maybe you’ve wanted this even when it was something you couldn’t have.)
When Mike’s phone rings, he fishes it out of his pocket without the dread you were expecting.
“I blocked Raph and Leo,” he says by way of explanation, and his voice is light. He wouldn’t be Mike if pushing his brothers away didn’t hurt, but a moment later he says “Donnie!” brightly and you can relax.
He explains your car problems and talks about the men you’re staying with, and you cringe a little at how it sounds put so plainly.
“We found the roomshare on Craigslist,” you lean into say, hoping that makes their arrangement sound more credible, knowing it probably doesn’t.
“Please be careful,” Donatello all but begs.
“I’m always careful,” Mike replies easily.
You both know it for a lie. Mike is very rarely careful for his own sake. He has a reckless streak a mile wide, one that comes from living in a house full of ghosts.
You’re glad he hasn’t had a chance to grow up like his brothers.
The two of you are never getting older.
The night before your truck is ready for the road again, Slash and Leatherhead both have the night off and the small apartment is filled with the smell of homemade pot roast and the unobtrusive sounds of the city creeping in on a breeze through all the open windows.
Mike found the DVD collection sequestered under the TV and he’s been arguing passionately with Slash over some ancient mecha cartoon for the better part of an hour. Mike opens up when he has room to, really brightens when he’s not living under a shadow, and when Slash bullies the two of you into programming his and Leatherhead’s numbers into your phones, you get the distinct feeling you and Mike have been adopted by them both.
“You brats better get to bed if you’re gonna be driving again in the morning,” Slash says gruffly, and then, before he can be mistaken as caring, adds, “And if you’re gonna bunk together, there’s not gonna be any funny business. That bed in there ain’t for any recreational activities, got it? ”
You color and scowl at him. Mike looks very serious and says, “We’ll sleep on it.”
Leatherhead guffaws at the awful pun, and Slash looks like he doesn’t know whether to be irritated or proud. You end up falling asleep on the couch in the end, with Mike in one arm and his stupid stuffed sheep in the other and that god awful cartoon still on TV, and the last thing you’re aware of is a blanket being drawn up around your shoulders.
You were only in this place, with these people, for a handful of days -- and you think it’s kind of amazing, how much more like home it already feels than the town you left behind ever did.
You wake up groggy, the alarm on your phone beeping insistently. You find your shoes, exchange goodbyes you barely remember, allow plastic tupperware heavy with leftovers to be forced into your hands, and follow Mike out the door into the dark blue of early morning.
“My turn to drive,” Mike says softly, and you fall asleep again in the passenger side seat of your old truck with Klunk in your lap and the radio on low.
The noonday sun digs fingers into your eyes and it’s that more than anything that wakes you.
Mike is humming his song underneath his breath, fingers tapping the steering wheel, and you know he’s working something out. You’ll have to take over soon, so he can whip out that ever-present notebook and write it down.
When he notices you’re awake, he tips you a bright smile.
“We shoulda stole Slash’s mattress,” he says with all the certainty of someone having come to a decision whole hours ago. It makes you grin as you push yourself upright -- both because Slash would have been equal parts pissed and impressed if you managed to pull it off, and because it’s exactly the kind of caper you and Mike rock at pulling off together.
“Next time,” you tell him. The bighorn sheep you bought at the Garden of the Gods is sitting on the dash, its cheesy "Someone in Colorado loves you!” shirt facing out the window in the direction you’re going.
pairing: Woodyangelo (you can pry this ship from my cold dead fingers tbh)
@tmntflashfic‘s january challenge is “old friends, new futures,” so i wrote a new installment of my Closer AU because why not
google search “how many blink 182 lyrics can i incorporate into my fics before i get shot”
x
You aren't there when Mike shows his brothers the college acceptance letter. His bright, surprised delight left an impression in your house, a happy shadow that you wish you could bottle and keep, and similarly it seemed to lend him courage enough to face his family on his own.
You pace the whole house five times that night waiting for a phone call, nerves curdling sickly in the pit of your stomach—because you know Mike in the same way a compass knows true north, you know when something's wrong—and two hours after Mike left after dinner, he shows back up at your front door.
His eyes are red, sticky tear-tracks obvious even in the porch light. You shove open the screen door and wrap your arms around him. You trapped his hands between the two of you, so he can't hug you back—but he curls into your chest with a soft, sad intake of air, and presses his face into the warm hollow of your neck and shoulder, and curls shaking fingers into the front of your shirt.
You hold him for what feels like a long time.
“They don't want me to go,” he tells you miserably over a mug of hot cocoa. You meet your grandma's eyes over the top of his head. Her lips are pressed into a firm line, the dark blue of her eyes sympathetic and angry. “It's so far away.”
“Donnie went,” you point out, bristling with the unfairness of it all. “They didn't stop him.”
“Donnie ran away.” Mike's fingers curl around the packed warmth of his drink, eyes fixed on the wafting steam. “They didn't have a chance to stop him.”
And that, you think, with the slow burn of sudden inspiration, is a great idea.
“If you need anything,” grandpa says firmly, helping you pack the bed of your truck in the dark of one o'clock in the morning, “anything, you just give us a call.”
Your sleepy cousins are in their pajamas on the porch, hugging Mike because he was always like a second big brother to them, and he's kissing their soft foreheads around an affectionate smile. Grandma is inside, throwing together a cooler full of food for your long trip, and you slam the stubborn tailgate shut with so much love ballooned up inside of you that nothing feels impossible.
Grandma embraces you both at the same time in both arms, right there on the sidewalk, grandpa's coat thrown on over her nightgown. Grandpa pushes an envelope into your hands—its thick with cash, and he refuses to take it back. Your cousins tug you down for another round of hugs and kisses, and you squeeze them tight, missing them already.
Mike leans out the passenger side window of the truck, waving and waving at your family until you turn the corner and throw them out of sight.
Mike's house is dark, and the car is gone. You wonder if his brothers are out looking for him, and wonder why they didn't check at your house first. Mike unclips his seatbelt, pops open the door, and promises to be quick.
You leave the engine running, and watch the glowing clock on the dash.
It takes your best friend fourteen minutes to return, tossing a single duffle bag into the bed of the truck and climbing back into the warm cab with a cat carrier in his arms.
“They weren't home,” he says breathlessly, and his eyes are bright now—this one last hurdle leaped, he's finally beginning to believe that you're really doing this. Klunk is purring in a way that matches the grin on Mike's face, and you grin right back.
You stop at an ATM and drain Mike's savings into your checking account, just in case his brothers get any funny ideas. You both have a full ride through school, thanks to a plethora of scholarships and grants and one or two student loans, but it's something like twenty-six hours between Arizona and New York, and who knows what might happen.
You stop at a gas station to fill up the tank and send Mike in for convenience store food. Laugh when he comes back out with an arm full of energy drinks and microwave burritos, and catch the King Size Twix he tosses you over the roof of the truck.
You stop one more time, right on the edge of town, at the You Are Now Leaving... sign. The road ahead is dark, an endless stretch of country highway. Neither one of you looks back.
“Ready for this?” you ask him.
In response, Mike turns the radio on. Your phone is still plugged into the AUX, and within moments All The Small Things fills every inch of space in the cab that isn't already taken up by boy or cat or junk food.
Half of your best memories could fit right here, layered one on top of the other like photocopies, you in the driver's seat and Mike in the seat beside you, speeding in circles down the same road because there was no where else to go—fifteen, seventeen, nineteen years old—beating the same Blink-182 song to death over and over and over again.
Your smile is so wide your cheeks are aching. You shift back into drive and gun it forward, down a new road this time. Mike whoops once, then laughs, and then starts singing along mid-chorus, his voice the most familiar thing to you in the whole world.
You get lost almost immediately, because neither of you thought to buy a map, but Mikey's eyes are wide every time you pull into an unfamiliar city and you'd drive through every state in the country to keep that excited brilliance in his face.
The fall semester doesn't start for nearly a month—you have time to make a few detours. So you follow the road signs into Pheonix, and get there as morning dawns across the desert. You eat breakfast at a waffle house, spend the day lost in a giant mall, smuggle Klunk in Mike's hoodie everywhere you go.
After that, you stop in Albuquerque, and then Santa Fe. You drive with the windows down, unplug your phone and tune into different radio stations as you go. You turn off the road late for the night in Las Vegas, New Mexico, because Mike laughs when he sees the sign.
You make Mike hold his bag until you check the questionable motel room for bedbugs, but after that he's creeped out and refuses to sleep alone. He and Klunk crawl in with you without waiting for an invitation, and you roll your eyes and lean over him to turn the light off.
The linen sheets are more scratchy than soft, over-starched and bleached too many times, and the seafoam green of the walls glows almost neon when headlights pass through the thin curtains. You can't count how many nights you've slept like this in your life, with Mike pressed against your chest, breathing softly, mouth slack against your shirt, but he's never kept you up before.
He's warm, his brown skin dusky against the pale pillows in the dark, and you can't see his freckles even from this close but you could probably still count them if you tried.
In the morning, you wake up with Klunk nestled under your chin, and Mike shutting the door behind him with an apologetic grin.
“I meant to be back before you woke up,” he says, tossing the truck keys back on the lopsided nightstand. He's in his own skinny jeans and your over-large hoodie, curly hair a messy halo around his head. He holds up a plastic bag, amber eyes bright. “I picked up breakfast!”
You open a styrofoam container of scrambled eggs and French toast, a strip of bacon and two strawberries on top shaped like a smiley face, and you wonder what on earth you did to deserve him.
You pull back out onto I-25 North and follow it up toward Colorado. The music is down low this morning, and Mike has the atlas folded open on his knees, tracing the trip so far with a pink highlighter.
His phone is in the glove compartment. He turned it off after the seventh missed call, something tight and unhappy on his face, and there's still a pale shadow lingering there hours later.
You merge left sharply, just barely making the exit, and Mike squawks in surprise.
“Woah, where are we going?”
“You'll see,” you say, and turn off the interstate completely. Mike shifts Klunk out of the way and scoots the map closer to your side of the bench, just in case.
The Garden of the Gods ends up being a day-long stop. You wander some of the trails, and take an obscene amount of pictures, and make shapes out of the rock formations. Mike is flushed by the time closing hours are near, his face stretched into what might as well be a permanent smile, and you tap the arm of one of the two young women standing nearby.
“Do you mind taking our picture?” you ask her, holding out your phone.
She looks past you at Mike and then she smiles, the light of her own adventure bright in her eyes, and takes your phone. You turn to grab Mike's hand, and drag him up to the immense hoodoos, two towering, spire-like rocks that stand together and form a small open window where their edges don't quit meet.
“Tourists take pictures in it all the time,” you tell him, helping him climb up. “It's pretty much required while you're here.”
“Oh,” Mike says, voice soft. You sit opposite each other, knees bunched together, and then turn to smile for the camera. Mike never let go of your hand, and he's still holding it now. You can feel his heart beating through the press of his fingers, a little too fast.
You glance at him, sidelong, to make sure he's okay, and startle a little at how close he is. His face is radiant in the half-light, in the shadowed keyhole of the impossibly huge rocks you're sheltering in, and the fingers of his free hand find a home on your cheek.
Your breath catches.
There’s an eternity here, right here, in the careful way he touches you. You cover his hand with your own, and lean through the two inches of space left dividing you, hair flattening where your foreheads come together.
“You did all this for me 'cause you thought I was sad?” he asks, very quietly.
“Nah, Mikester. 'Cause I want you to be happy,” you say, no louder than him.
The woman hands your phone back, and she's covering a delighted smile with her fingers.
“You two look good together,” is all she says, and you grin, a little bit flustered, a whole lot pleased.
Mike wants to go shopping in the Visitor Center before you get back on the road, and the two of you compete to find the cheesiest, tackiest souvenirs. You end up buying the winner, a stuffed bighorn sheep in a little T-shirt that says, “Someone in Colorado loves you!” and Mike buys twelve dollars worth of 'famous fudge' because you both make bad choices.
You check into a motel and take Klunk inside, and have dinner at an Italian place downtown. The stuffed sheep comes with you, and the waiter laughs when he sees it presiding over the table. The dessert menu is long and impressive, and Mike is torn between semifreddo and panna cotta, so he gets one and you get the other and you sneak bites off each other's plates.
A hearty meal after a day of hiking after several days of driving has you flagging by the time you make it back to your motel room. You're ready for bed in about two minutes, and yawn a goodnight as Mike turns the lamp off.
Mike's voice wakes you up sometime later, in the dark timeless place between midnight and morning. You blink blearily, and lift your head, and find him sitting on the other bed with his phone to his ear, stroking Klunk's fur calmly.
“Do you want me to apologize?” he's saying quietly. “I worked so hard for this, and you were going to take it away from me. What am I supposed to apologize for?”
You're frozen, hardly daring to breathe. The silence is impossibly heavy, and you wish you could hear both sides of the conversation your friend is having. You wish you could see his face, see what new damage this is doing him.
“I'm nineteen, Leo,” is the next thing he says. “You can't stop me from going.” Another pause, and finally Mike's shoulders are hunching as he begins to bow under the weight of the argument, and you can only imagine what he's listening to. His voice is thick and hurt when he snaps, “Donnie was right to leave, and so was I!”
His face is briefly illuminated by the screen as he takes it away from his ear to jab the End Call button. He's not crying, but his eyes are bright and wet, and he rubs them with the sleeve of the hoodie he never gave back to you.
“Woody?” he says softly. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah, Mikester. Let's go get some ice cream.”
There's a 24-hour diner down the street. You walk there, close enough that your arms bump, close enough for Mike to slip his hand into yours while you're waiting for a light to change.
You thread your fingers through his and hold on tight. It would take a tornado to force you apart.
Close to Boulder, your truck starts making a pretty ugly grinding sound every time you turn. Mike bullies you into getting it checked out, and the weathered mechanic at the auto shop tells you that your steering column is all but shot.
“Been doing a lot of driving in that old girl recently?” he asks, and you nod, a little shame-faced. “We'll get her taken care of. You're gonna have to stay put for a little while, though.”
You call to let your grandparents know, and end up giving them the number of the auto shop. The mechanic is amused when he sees you the next day, and lets you know that the parts and labor have been paid for. The truck will be ready for the road in about four days, and until then you're stuck in Colorado.
“We're not in a hurry,” Mike reminds you, grinning a little. “Let's go find a place to stay.”
There's a roomshare on Craigstlist advertised for as cheap as twenty bucks a night, and you jump on it.
“After this, we're sleeping in the truck,” you tell Mike sternly, not really meaning it. It's not like you're strapped for cash. But he rolls his eyes and nods along anyway, tugging you towards the bus stop.
Mike's roommate is a pretty cool guy, ex-Marine by the looks of it, and happy to have Klunk sharing their space. He helps Mike set up a fold-away cot, laughing at the anecdotes of their roadtrip so far as Mike shares them, and you stay to make sure he'll be okay before heading into the other room for the night.
“Slash works thirds, so you probably won't see him tonight,” Leatherhead says, Klunk purring warmly in the crook of his arm. “If you need anything, don't be afraid to ask.”
The bed shifting wakes you up. Cool air wafts under the blanket as Mike climbs in next to you, and the mattress settles with his weight. The stupid sheep is under his arm, and his eyes are sleepless.
You push yourself up on one elbow and look down at him. There's a curl of dark hair flopped over one of his eyes, and you push it out of the way with your fingers.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Mike says, gazing at you. His voice is as reverent as it was in the Garden of the Gods, careful and quiet. “Woody?”
“Mikester?”
“I want you to be happy, too,” he says.
Kissing Mike in a stranger's bed at three a.m. skyrockets to the top of your list of favorite things.
He smiles against your mouth the whole time, and you thank god you broke down in Boulder.
I love "Closer" so much, taisi, oh my god. It is just so sweet, and the perfect balance of hurt/comfort! I gotta say, you've absolutely sold me on woodyangelo
that is the best thing u could ever tell me, that ive trapped u in rarepair hell with me :’))) woodyangelo especially is so so good, thank u for being here
i keep meaning to write more of closer and i keep doing other things instead rip
it’s not super developed but basically it’s a kind of exes au where they were together during alex’s gap year, when she was drinking every night, and maggie was kind of in a tailspin herself. they pretty much enabled each others addictions, drank all night long, fucked in back rooms at bars, stumbled home together and fall into bed together and woke up and kinda.....vegged out together. it wasn’t a productive relationship, neither of them were in a really good place for it all and then something happens and alex leaves and goes end gets help and life turns around for her and then a few years later, she ends up back and maggie’s still in the same bar and it’s like deja vu but things are....different. there’s still this pull to maggie but maggie’s living a different life and alex is living a different life and the only thing that’s the same is the sex and they probably shouldn’t be doing it, but they always feel this pull to each other that they can’t quite resist but they don’t know that they can ever realistically make it work beyond sex again because the foundation of their relationship is.....very different from where they’re at now.
Summary: Woody grows up, graduates, and goes to college with his best friend.
A/N: I once threatened to write an AU based entirely around the Chainsmokers’ song “Closer,” and I do not make idle threats. Only the prologue will be in second-person narrative, I promise. Even though it’s my favorite POV to write in.
Prologue
Your first kiss was with your best friend when you were both thirteen, behind the high school bleachers during the homecoming game. Hob bet you ten dollars you wouldn't do it, but ten dollars was two tickets to the movies at the old theater on the square, and they were showing Godzilla vs Mothra that weekend.
And Mike was grinning when you kissed him, because he knew that second ticket was his.
You live with your grandparents and two little cousins. Your parents and theirs split the scene early on, but your grandparents have more than enough room in their home and their hearts for the three of you.
Mike lives with his uncle, and two of three big brothers. You don't see much of his family, because Mike doesn't spend very much time at home. You know Donatello left not long after their father died, and you know it has a lot to do with the kind of person their uncle is.
Mike doesn't talk about it very much, but he misses Don more than he ever missed his dad. He talks about them both in the same way, in a sad past tense that tells you more than words ever will.
He practically lives at your house during the long summer months, and you don't bother lifting your head as he slides open your bedroom window and climbs through.
“Hey, Mikester. Your bros at it again?”
His weight settles on the bed next to you, and he reaches for a comic out of the loose pile by your knee.
“Yeah,” he says, at length. There's a beat of full silence, like a heavy sponge, and you find him with your eyes in the warm lamplight. Then he continues, slowly, as though this familiar space between the two of you is a minefield he has to maneuver with unending care, “Don always knew how to make them stop, but I don't.”
He loves Donatello, even after all these years without him. They were close before Don left, and somehow, phone calls and Skype chats have been enough to keep them that way.
“It ain't your fault,” you say firmly, nudging him with a foot. “Your uncle's one mean piece of work, and this ugly stuff between Raph and Leo nowadays is on him. It's got nothing to do with you.”
“I know,” Mike says, and he almost sounds like he means it. “I just wish things could go back to how they used to be, when we were all happy together. It's like people get miserable when they get older.”
He sounds small and scared, so you sit up. The old springs of your mattress are worn and tired, and they dip you closer to him. Your shoulders bump, and you fold your pale hand around his brown one, and wait for him to risk a glance at you.
“Don't worry about it, amigo,” you tell him. “We ain't ever getting older.”
You want to get out of this town more than you've ever wanted anything. But even more than that, you want to take Mike with you when you go.
The two of you fill out the NYU applications together, on your laptop and the family computer in your grandparents' den respectively, and Mike ends up Facetiming with Donatello on his phone. Don was accepted into NYU two years ago, and he's more than happy to give you pointers.
“It would be amazing if you came to live up here,” Donatello says earnestly. “I'll help you, whatever you need.”
And for the first time, you catch a glimpse of how desperately Donatello misses his brothers – a homesickness that looks like a raw and aching wound – and you realize that it must have been the hardest thing in the world for him to leave them behind.
“I wanna be a writer,” Mike says, from the passenger seat of your beat-up Ford. “But I wanna write music instead of books.”
There's an old piano collecting dust in the storage room behind the high school auditorium. It was donated to the school district after a real estate sale a few years ago, and Mike sneaks in after hours now and then to play for hours on that neglected baby grand.
You go with him when he does, and sometimes Chopin's Spring Waltz or Debussy's Clair de Lune will turn into something else, an original composition in its earliest stages, a nameless piece of music the world hasn't heard yet. And Mike's fingers will stumble across the ivory keys when he realizes what he's doing, but his is your favorite song in the whole world, and that tiny, forgotten room is the only place you get to hear it.
“There's a word for that, you know,” you tell him, just to see him roll his eyes. A new song picks up on the radio, and Mike doesn't waste any time cranking up the volume.
“Oh, man, it's our jam,” he crows unnecessarily. The speakers rattle the whole dashboard, but you're grinning wide open at the way he's belting Blink-182 lyrics out the rolled-down window, his audience nothing but the blurred scenery – rows and rows of waving cornfields and endless cloudy blue sky.
A few days later, you’re doing homework together on the back porch, and he’s scribbling in a worn-out composition book. He’s finished with his work already, so you lean over his shoulder curiously.
“What are you doing?” you ask. You manage to make out two lines of what look like lyrics
tell your friends it was nice to meet them / but i hope i never see them again
before Mike squawks and flaps the notebook closed, with an indignant 'dude!' You raise both hands in surrender.
“Jeez, you writers are so touchy,” you tell him, and dodge the pen he flings at your head. But he’s grinning, flushed and pleased, and you know it’s because of what you just called him.
Two years ago you were sophomores, and two years ago was when Mike realized there was an ugly word for what he is. And you wish he hadn't had to learn it the way he did, in the locker room after gym, a few older classmen throwing “fag” in his face; and you spent the next day after that devastating afternoon trying to think of a way to get rid of the hurt living in his eyes.
But a day was all the time it took for Raphael to hear the story, and he quit the football team the very same morning. He didn't give the coach an explanation, just tossed his jersey on the desk and walked out, and rumors flew around school regarding the whos and whys, but you thought it was pretty obvious – at least two of Mike's tormentors had been on the team, too.
“Fuck those guys,” was all Raph said about it, as though it hadn't mattered what he was giving up. And he ruffled Mike's dark hair before he walked away, with something gentle about his expression; and for the first time since their dad died, the two of them looked like brothers again.
Mike finds a little orange kitten in the alley behind the arcade, and falls in love. He zips the tiny, shivering thing into his coat, and carries it all the way back home, and you watch Leo watch him from the bathroom doorway while he cleans it up.
“Uncle Saki won't be happy to see that cat in his house,” Leonardo says at length, only after the kitten has had a warm bath and something to eat. His expression is a careful neutral, but Mike doesn't spare him a glance.
“Uncle Saki's not happy about anything,” is his blunt reply, petting the kitten's head with the tips of his fingers. Standing his ground, the way he hardly ever does. “And it's not his house.”
Leo blinks, and can't seem to think of anything to say to that. When he moves, it's to sit on the floor next to his little brother. After a moment, he lifts a cautious arm to put it gingerly around Mike's shoulders.
“You're right,” he says quietly, and Mike leans into him.
You ask out Sally from your history class, and Mike stays up with you on the phone for hours to talk about where you should take her for dinner and whether you should bring her flowers and what kind of music to play while you're parked.
He ends up making you a 'romantic mixtape,' on an actual cassette because your truck doesn't have a CD player, and you're not sure if he's serious with it or not because three or four of the tracks definitely belong to Smash Mouth and Cascada, and All The Small Things is on it more than once, but you keep it anyway.
You're with Sally for two months before you finally play the tape for her. You're in the bed of your Ford, and your hands are under her shirt and her long hair is hanging to one side of her head, an elegant parentheses cradling your faces together, and then the music up front shifts from a rock ballad into a piece of bittersweet piano music that you would know anywhere.
And your breath catches in your throat.
You break up with Sally a week later, because suddenly being with her makes you feel guilty and dishonest. You don't tell Mike his song is the reason why.
Leo takes Saki to court and wins. You don’t know all the details, but you know they get the house and everything left of their father's estate and an order of protection against their uncle.
Donatello comes home from New York for Christmas two weeks early, like he can't bear to wait a day longer. Raph picks him up at the closest airport two hours away, and you wait on the porch of their father's house with Mike and Leo. Mike's fingers are so tight around yours they're cutting off circulation.
And the first thing Don does when he steps out of the car is cross the yard to Mike at a run. He snatches him up in a hug that looks like it hurts, like he's trying to make up for the last five years all at once, and buries his face in Mike's messy hair.
“I'm sorry,” he says, and “I missed you, oh my god,” and “I love you so much, Mikey,” and “I'm so fucking sorry.”
Mike curls fingers into the back of Don's coat and holds on as tight as he can. Forgiving, even if he won't forget.
Mike makes you open his letter from NYU. It came late, a whole week behind yours, and he's covering his eyes with both hands while you rip apart the envelope. He's so nervous it's making you nervous, even though you know before the letter folds open in your hands that he made it in.
Your grandparents order pizza to celebrate, and grandpa breaks out the old acoustic guitar as a special treat. Your family got Mike's good news before Mike's family did, but you don't feel bad about that. Mike is beaming, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor with the guitar and your little cousins, and occasionally he darts wondering, amazed little sidelong glances at the acceptance letter hanging on the fridge next to yours; like even after all his hard work he still can't believe it's happening.
You wish he believed in him as much as you did.
“I'm finally getting you out of here,” you tell him, only after he's fast asleep beside you, on the floor of your childhood bedroom. "We’re gonna make it, Mike. We ain’t ever getting older.”
