#shaws.

[imabaldwin]

donny and leo for unsent text

UNSENT oh oh hh

[MSG]: Hey, Leo, uh, where are you? God, Raph is driving me up the wall and this house is a sty and there's nothing in the fridge and, haha, I think I... fucked this up. This project I'm working on, kind of a big one-- no, I definitely fucked it up. Listen, if you

[imabaldwin]

ninny next-door neighbours AU for indie

They live in a house built like an enormous booby trap-- a loose floorboard here, a rusted handle there, a broken tile in the downstairs bathroom (that he always, always, from the start and until he's "all grown up," manages to slip on). For a little while, he fancies himself an adventurer, a cartographer. He hands Mikey the wrinkled papers with instructions to "stay on your toes, we're going where no man's ever been before!"

Leo and Raph warn them against it. He grows out of it faster than any of them, encouraged when it's almost always him that trips, falls, breaks something, cuts an extremity, etc., Mikey standing by the entire time, unscathed. 

It's interesting, he thinks (everything, he says that about everything). Days transform into months which turn into years and his so-called maps stay unfinished and a little bit bloodstained. Every once in a while he stumbles in on a room he's not sure he recognizes. Could be the cobwebs. Could be memory loss. Or, like everything else, the house could be changing all around them while they're right in the middle of it, and he's just so lost in something else that he never even notices.

He's twelve years old and he thinks maybe he lives in a haunted house. Minus the ghosts. He doesn't really believe in ghosts.

There's no one on either side-- on any side, anywhere close. No one but them wants a house like that, he's pretty sure. No one else wants creaking stairs and lights that flicker, every once in a while, when the wind's too strong and they're in the mood. No one wants cobwebs or rattling windows or yellowing bathtubs. No one but them.

He's twelve point nine and, for the first time that he can remember, someone's pulling up in the driveway next door. 

Raph's called them all into the living room to watch, emerging from his constant state of teen angst because there's a "family emergency, everyone hurry the f--"

Leo cuts him off-- Donny hears a thud-- but they all get there anyway. Mikey first, Donny later. Like usual.

"There's a girl, Donny. You missed out."

They're all squinting against the sunlight, Mikey's fingers smearing the glass. Donny notices that first, and then the boxes-- stacked haphazardly by the door, labels big and black but still too far away for him to read. Still, he thinks he knows what they mean.

"They're not really moving in, are they?"

A hand or three clap on his shoulder. They can't just sit around and wait to find out, now can they?

---

He's fifteen years old and every once in a while they still spy out the window. Well, he does-- looking for a car in the driveway, a light from the upstairs, some sign of life. (He hates wasting time, even though he does a lot of it. He hates knocking on doors and never receiving an answer.)

They sit on her front porch and count the stars.

"How many do you think there are?" She asks, folding her arms over her knees.

"A hundred thousand," an intake of breath, "million. A hundred thousand milliion, at least, in the Milky Way."

She laughs, nudges him with her shoulder. 

"I asked how many you thought. Not how many you know."

---

He's seventeen years old and watching his breath in front of him.

"Donny?"

She's talking to him and he's forgetting to listen. Again. Sometimes he wonders if, if your body heat gets too high, if you blush too much, your brain could melt. He thinks it's a dim possibility, though science doesn't have much to say on the matter. It warrants, he thinks, investigation.

He raises his eyebrows in lieu of a question.

"You're not listening again."

"I'm sorry. Can you repeat that?"

"I asked, how many unnamed stars do you think there are?"

A pause. A heartbeat. Long enough for him to zoom in on her collar again, on her hair, tucked behind her ear, on her lips. And back to the sky.

"I don't know."

"That's a first."

They laugh. The steam is like smoke from a dozen cigarettes.

---

He's eighteen years old and trying to build a computer. It's not going well, to say the least, and he's been pulling his hair out by the roots for weeks.

"Maybe I'm not cut out for it."

Her heads on his lap and he's trying really, really hard not to feel awkward about it (like always, it doesn't really work).

"You are."

"I don't think so." 

She pushes him back against the wood hard enough that he sees stars-- more stars, because he'd been counting them again, one at a time, out loud. He knows their names but she gives them new ones. He tries not to mind (like always, it works). 

"You're the smartest person I know. You are."

He can feel her breath on his face. He feels cold, all the way down to his toes. It's late November.

"Okay." 

He hasn't moved and she's pressing her lips to his. There are constellations behind his eyelids, galaxies and universes that he's never heard of in his entire life. For a second, he fancies himself a cartographer. Then it's cold again. His eyes are still closed.

"Okay."