A text on his phone told him where to be- an intersection only a few blocks east of the fire escape he was lounging on- and Mikey made it there at roughly the same time Woody's old boat of a Coupe de Ville pulled around the corner.

He dropped from his perch on top of a streetlight to the curb, and Woody leaned over from behind the wheel to pop open the passenger side door with a grin.

"Hop in, bud."

And Mikey certainly didn't need telling twice. The car was warm, the pizzas in the back had it smelling like the best of Little Italy, and Mikey wasn't sure the passenger seat had ever looked as good as it did then. As he pulled his seatbelt on he said so.

"Rough day, huh?" Woody asked sympathetically. His eyes were on the road, but there was an amused slant to his mouth, and Mikey ducked his head and fished around for the money bank Woody kept his delivery receipts in, to figure out where they were heading- and so he wouldn't get stuck staring at Woody's face the way he sometimes did.

"Yeah, I guess. Between Leo moping about Karai and D pining after April, it's like I'm living Sleepless in Seattle. I'm telling you, dude, as soon as Raph gets a girlfriend, I'm moving out."

It made Woody laugh, and Mikey grinned back automatically. They stopped at a red light, and Woody glanced at him, about a hundred different colors in his eyes and the footprint of a smile left on his face.

"I'll never fall in love, I swear," he said, the soft edge of laughter left in his voice as he ran a hand through his curly mop of hair. It was a joke, or it sounded like one, but it was the first joke he'd ever made that Mikey didn't think was funny.

Like divine intervention, a new song came on the radio and Mikey turned it up; half so he wouldn't be forced to stop and identify the prickly feeling suddenly turning in his stomach, and half because-

"Oh, turn it up a little more, Mike- I love this one."

The light turned green, Mikey agreeably nudged up the volume, and he wouldn't tell Woody "I know all your favorite songs," even though he did. He kept a lot of stuff to himself these days.

Woody's shift was over at eleven, and they had plans to head back to his apartment after and check out some movies he rented, but Mikey's phone went off at a little after ten.

It was essentially the sound of his night being shot to pieces.

"Aaand there's Leo." He checked the message- Where are you? Come home- and tried not to feel crushed by his big brother's well-meant concern. After all, Mikey had disappeared after a pretty lousy day of getting nothing but yelled at, and he was usually home before now. Leo wouldn't be Leo if he didn't fear the worst by default.

Woody pulled into a parking lane of a largely deserted street- a really good place to drop ninjas off, Woody's gotten pretty good at subterfuge- and Mikey tipped a smile his way.

"Sorry, man. He worries. Can I take a raincheck on movie night?"

"Yeah, definitely," Woody said, and he sounded about as disappointed as Mikey felt. Which should have made Mikey feel worse, but for some reason it made him feel a little better instead. He hopped out and shut the door behind him with a little wave, and he was heading for the relative safety of some deep shadows in the alley when Woody called, "And, hey Mikester!"

Pausing under the streetlight, Mikey turned back. "Yeah?"

"What you were sayin' before, about moving out- I know you were just kidding around, but if you ever need a place to go- or just want a place to go- my door's always open."

It was a small, sweet sort of just-because kindness that Mikey had never expected from anyone but his brothers, and he stood there feeling uprooted and confused. The twisty feeling in his gut was back with a vengeance, and Woody waved goodbye as he pulled away, and the phone in Mikey's belt started ringing again, and-

I think I might be in trouble, here.

"Donnie? Hey, can you... are you busy?"

Don was tinkering with something, as usual, and didn't even look up to reply, "Yes, Mikey, I am."

Figures, Mikey thought, totally bummed. Ordinarily he probably would have whined or wheedled to get his way, but he wasn't gonna stick around this time and chance starting a fight. Don was likely to snap at just about anything that moved lately, so Mikey scooted out of the lab again with a quick "sorry!" and leaned against the doorjamb in the safely neutral hallway with a groan.

If his genius brother didn't want to help him, he could always try Leo. Raph didn't have a crush, not that Mikey knew of, so Raph wouldn't be able to-

"Mikey?"

That was Don, leaning through the doorway, and in the name of maintaining the tentative peacetime of the lair, Mikey engaged evasive maneuvers.

"I was leaving, D, I promise!" He lurched away from the lab-side wall and kept his hands up where Don could see them, the picture of innocence. "Look at me, here I go!"

"Woah, easy." The taller turtle followed him, moving close enough to put a hand on Mikey's shoulder and hit the brakes on his escape attempt. The surprise in Don's face was nose-diving quickly into guilt and he said, "Have I been that short with you lately?"

"Uh... maybe, a little," Mikey hedged, because there was no easy way out of that one. "But it's cool, y'know, you're busy. You've always got a lot of stuff goin' on in there. I was just gonna go ask Leo."

"Ask him what?" Donnie asked, sliding his work goggles off and giving Mikey his undivided attention. It was an olive branch of sorts, and since Don didn't seem annoyed or even impatient, Mikey went for it.

"About Karai. Well not really about Karai, but about how he likes her. And about how you like April." Well, it sounded a lot better and more put-together in his head. Soldiering on, he continued, "I was just- wondering how you guys knew you liked them. And what it- what it felt like."

Nailed it.

Donatello blinked once, then again, just standing there staring at him, and Mikey started to wonder if maybe it was the kind of question he wasn't supposed to ask his brothers. Which was a new and alarming concept, because Mikey asked his brothers everything. Between the three of them, they had all the answers he'd ever needed.

"You want to know what it's like to be in love?"

"Um, yes. If that's cool."

Tilting his head a little to one side, eyes bright with a curiosity Mikey recognized as absolutely unstoppable, he nudged, "How come?"

Mikey rubbed the back of his head, dropping his eyes away because there was a severely goofy look threatening to spread across his face and then Donnie wouldn't take him seriously anymore. "Cause there's... I mean, I think, maybe... I think I might be- "

"In love with Woody?"

Head snapping up so fast he almost gave himself whiplash, Mikey darted a quick glance at his brother's face- but there was nothing there but honest interest, and something really warm and really fond behind that. Mikey's hammering pulse slowed back to its usually steady swim, and he returned Donnie's smile with a lopsided grin.

"Your genius scares me sometimes, D."

"You talk about him all the time," the engineer said like it was obvious, stepping around behind Mikey to propel him by the shoulders back into the lab. "You sit," Mikey let himself be plopped into the computer chair, spinning it around once just on principal, "and tell me everything."

Don didn't actually have a pen and clipboard in hand, but his expression was the same as when he did, only it was affectionate, and just this side of outright amused. Feeling almost like it was a test he could get wrong, Mikey cast around for somewhere to start.

I could tell you his full name is Woodrow, or that he's an English major, or that his family all lives in Brooklyn, and he moved out here on his own because he doesn't get along with them that well. I could tell you his favorite color's green, he loves to argue, and he was born on the seventeenth. His sister's beautiful, he has his father's eyes...

Mikey hasn't said any of this out loud, but that weird feeling in his stomach was back, and moved up to his chest, and he didn't realize he was clasping his fingers together hard enough to hurt until Donnie's hands were on his. There was a gentle look on his brother's face, a sort of knowing that didn't come across sharp or condescending the way it usually did, and in a sudden burst of clarity, Mikey knew what Don already had figured out.

What that feeling was, and what it meant.

It meant that that harmless totally ignorable little crush had gone behind Mikey's back and transformed into something to be feared- like how Magikarp evolved into Gyarados when no one saw it coming- and now Mikey was in love with his buddy. His really smart, really funny, really human buddy. He'd seen enough of Leo and Don's black moods; he knew how much hope there was in that. And Mikey knew himself well enough to admit that he'd keep hoping anyway, even if it was a dead-end dream.

Suddenly he understood two of his brothers a little bit better.

"It's like I'm holding every breath for him," Mikey said, completely defeated by the realization, and Donnie chuckled.

"It gets worse, and better. Come on, Mikey, tell me. I wanna hear all about him!"

Donnie probably didn't really. He probably didn't care what Woody's major was, or where he was born, or his favorite color. And Donnie also probably didn't care that Woody was a few years older than them, and a human, and a guy.

But he did care about Mikey, and that's why he asked. So with a sigh, and a smile that felt a bit crooked, Mikey gave in with a modicum of grace and a whole lot of useless optimism.

"Well, he'd never tell you, but he can play guitar..."

"I'm gonna have to hold onto that raincheck a little bit longer," Mikey murmured into the phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder. "I'm real sorry, dude."

A day ago, Spike had become Slash and tried to kill all of Raph's brothers, and currently, Raph was sort of... hovering. A fed-up Don had locked him out of the lab, and Leo had taken refuge in the dojo with sensei, which meant Raph's whole entire guilty conscience only had one target: Mikey.

Mikey couldn't find it in him to be irritated, though, and he wouldn't tell Raph to leave him alone- because that would make Raph alone, too, and Raph just lost his best friend in the worst way.

And Mikey had been secretly really super excited to go to Woody's that night, like stupid excited, complete with shaky hands and squeaky noises when he thought about it too long, but Raph's had an arm around his shoulders throughout the last two movies, and seemed more mellow there with Mikey than he had all morning.

So Mikey accepted defeat pretty early on, with a fond smile at his brother that Raph missed completely, and only pushed his arm off to get up to make lunch around noon. And it was that brief interval in the kitchen that gave Mikey the opportunity to make a certain call and cancel certain plans.

"That's okay. Is everything alright?" Woody sounded more worried than annoyed, which took like a hundred pounds off Mikey's chest. He smiled as he unwrapped a frozen pizza, and reminded himself there would be other times.

"Yeah, Raph's just bein' a worry-wart. We ran into a little trouble with a friend of his, and he hasn't let me out of his sight since."

"You got hurt?"

Mikey made a humming sound, an audio version of the it's okay hand flap he couldn't perform over the phone. "A few scrapes and bruises, nothing to write home about."

"If Raphael's worried, I feel like I should be, too."

"Jeeez, you see everything black and white!" Mikey stuck lunch in the oven and set the timer, leaning against the table. Woody's voice was like the greatest thing ever, and he wished he could bask in it the way he did sunlight. "You're my buddy, you're supposed to take my word instead of Raph's, you know."

"Your brothers keep you safe better than you do," came the prompt retort, and Mikey snorted. "Seriously, Mike... I know you're a vigilante or whatever, and you do a lot in keeping the streets safe around here, and I know all that's important, but... you're important, too. The people who care about you don't like seeing you get hurt."

Now Mikey would take annoyed over worried, in a heartbeat. The concerned strain in Woody's voice kind of felt like an arrow in Mikey's chest, and he scrambled for something to make it go away.

"I- I'll try to be more careful. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, just be safe."

"Yeah. Yeah, I will." Mikey's mouth was bone-dry, and as he cleared his throat his heart was racing. He should just leave it alone, he knew that, but he couldn't. "And you, uh... are you people who care about me?"

"You know I am, Mikester."

Dead end, dude, you know it is, Mikey told himself viciously, but heat was rising in his cheeks anyway, and he hid his face in the hand that wasn't suddenly clutching the T-phone like a lifeline. He stumbled awkwardly over a lame goodbye when the time came, and hung up to the sound of Woody's laughter.

Then Mikey allowed himself the ten minutes left on the pizza to groan and plant his face in the counter and regret his life choices.

Stupid Magikarp. This is all your fault.

It seemed like all of his brothers were only crazily perceptive when he least needed it; Raph's green eyes were swinging questions at Mikey and the phone by his knee for the rest of the afternoon, and Mikey, for his part, crammed two slices of pizza in his mouth at the same time so he wouldn't be available to answer them.

But knowing his luck, Raph probably got all the answers he needed just by looking at his face, anyway. Raph could probably see Mikey wishing for that thing he shouldn't be, could probably read it in his eyes or his freckles or the line of his jaw, because it was such a big, loud, impossible wish Mikey thought astronauts could probably see it from space.

I really wish he was mine.

Their first fight was awful and completely one-sided in that it all but broke Mikey's heart, and Woody had no clue.

"I was thinking, I have this friend- she's cute, really funny, and she loves junk food and comics books almost as much as you do," Woody said with a nudge and a smile. "I bet if I introduced the two of you, she'd see right past the shell, same way I did. Waddaya say?"

Mikey's smile froze, and melted off his face. "What? What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're a really great guy, Mike. You deserve- I dunno, you deserve to be with somebody else who's really great."

Mikey was hyper-aware of Leo standing just behind him, of the heat pushing out from the pizza boxes in his hands and curling up in steam through the January night air. All his senses were on high alert, picking up on everything, creating a perfect snapshot of the moment for Mikey to relive in vivid detail a thousand times.

"I don't want to hook up with your friend, Woody," Mikey said, voice climbing into a shout against his will, hands bending the cardboard of the boxes where they clutched too tightly. Leo tensed up behind him at the same time the easy grin fell away from Woody's face. "What do you- how could you say that?"

"Mike- "

"I don't care how great she is! I don't care what you think I deserve! It isn't fair. Why can you see through everything but me?"

Woody's brown eyes were wide, alarmed, and his body language- if Mikey cared to stop and read it- screamed regret. But when he took a step forward, Mikey matched it with a step back, all but hugging the pizzas in front of him like a shield. Then Leo's arm was around his shoulders, pulling them both away into the darkness that dusk was tossing like a blanket over the street.

They went straight underground, making most of the trip back home through the sewers instead of across rooftops, and at some point Leo lifted the pizza boxes out of his hands and used the arm still draped around Mikey's shoulders to tug him into a side-hug as they walked.

Leo was really smart. After that scene behind Rupert's Pizzeria, Leo knew for sure.

"If you ask me if I love him," Mikey said miserably, "I'll lie."

Leo only leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of his head, the way he hadn't done since they were little, and didn't ask him anything at all.

"You should talk to him. You can't ignore him forever, Mikey," Donnie said, managing to somehow come across as scolding and sympathetic at the same time. Mikey shrugged his shoulders, face buried in a throw pillow.

"I can try really hard."

"You ask me, Woody should be doin' the talkin," Raph interjected, an arm draped across Mikey's back in warm, wordless solidarity. It made Mikey think he should have told Raph about the Gyarados situation a whole lot sooner; he would have gladly taken the inevitable teasing since it came in a package deal with unwavering, totally biased support. "And he can start with an apology for talkin' to Mikey like he did."

"He meant well, he just didn't understand," Leo said, checking their volatile brother's temper before it could spark and catch fire. "Mikey was pretty good about keeping it under wraps."

"Was," Mikey lamented, muffled. "And I wasn't that good, you guys all figured it out anyway."

"We've got about a fifteen year advantage on your boy," Raphael said with a grin that Mikey could hear even if he couldn't see it. "We've been translating you all our lives."

"I guess that's true." He hesitated for a minute, then risked a peek at his brothers. "And you don't mind that he's..."

Human. A dude. Out of my league. Fill in the blank.

"Don't even go there," Raph snapped like some kind of mind-reader, punctuating the directive with a sharp jab at the soft cartilage of Mikey's side, between carapace and plastron. Mikey flinched away, surprised enough to lift his head a little, and Raph scowled at him. "I can't believe you thought we'd give a crap about that."

"He could be a flying fish for all we care," Don agreed, eyes fierce and almost red in the fluorescent lighting. "Have you seen how happy he makes you?"

"You deserve that. Being happy. I don't think it's... " Leonardo paused to trade a swift look with Raph and Don, there and gone so fast Mikey didn't have any hopes of decoding it, then went on, "I don't think it's something mutant ninjas are going to find that often. So when you find it- whether it's with a boy, or a girl, or a human, or a mutant, or a ninja, or a superhero- I think you should get to keep it."

"Really?" Mikey asked, eyes wide at the implications of a blanket acceptance like the one they were describing. "As long as I'm happy? It's really that easy?"

"When it comes to you," Leo told him, fond and certain and at peace with the idea, "everything is."

But apparently, as his brothers proved three days later, it was just as easy to shove Mikey down a fire escape. He went down like a sack of potatoes, landing with a very solid oof, and his brothers disappeared at exactly the same moment Woody came around the corner.

Mikey was rendered speechless at such a coordinated and well-timed act of betrayal. He was right to be suspicious at how close they were coming to Woody's apartment building, after all, but how was he supposed to know they knew where Woody lived?

"Mikester?" Woody came a step forward, and stopped, eyeing him with familiar concern and something more unfamiliar- something indefinable- in the warm brown of his eyes. "Can I talk to you?"

Pausing in climbing to his feet, Mikey gave him a wide-eyed stare. "You were in on this?"

"I might have been."

"You told my brothers to push me down the stairs?"

"Well, no, it was on them how they got you here." Woody came a little closer, studying Mikey's face like there was a secret cipher hidden in his freckles somewhere. Mikey did his best not to squirm under the scrutiny. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Uh, go for it," he said nervously, and somehow it made Woody smile.

"Are we still pals?"

"Oh, dude- are you kidding me? Of course we are!" The idea of not being pals with him on purpose practically stole all the air away. "I mean, if you want. I know I went berserk on you back there, and- "

"I'll always want that, Mikester." He said it so calmly and so certainly that a good ninety percent of Mikey's raw nerves just floated away. 'Always' sounded pretty long-term, and even if it wouldn't be in the way Mikey was wishing for, just being friends with Woody for always was like the second best thing in the world. Mikey grinned at him, a little dopily, and Woody's own smile pulled a little wider. "Can I ask you another question?"

"Sure," Mikey chirped, and Woody breathed out a laugh like a sigh. The strange, nameless thing in his eyes had taken root there and bloomed, and instead of asking anything Woody only moved closer. He backed Mikey up against the wall and moved closer still, even when Mikey had no room left and nowhere else to go.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, when I suggested you meet my friend. I just wanted to see if... but I should have found another way to do it. I hate that I made you look at me like that. I was so sure I messed everything up. But here you are, and now... now, I want to ask- "

And Mikey knew, all of a sudden, exactly what it was in Woody's eyes. He thought it must have been what his brothers saw in his eyes when they finally figured him out. Hope so strong it hurt surged through him like ocean waves, and Mikey thought it would kill him if a hope like that got shot down.

So, after this long looking down the barrel of a dead-end dream, Mikey, the king of useless optimism, put his rusty, largely ignored sense of self-preservation to use, and threw out a hand to stop Woody where he was.

"Wait!"

Woody waited. Mikey could feel his friend's heart beating through the soft cotton of the hoodie under his hand, and almost choked over his own heart where it was lodged in his throat.

"If you ask me if I love you," Mikey said carefully, in a voice that didn't shake, to the really smart, really funny guy that he'd been not-so-secretly in love with for what felt like forever, "I'll lie."

And the really smart, really funny guy- that had been very secretly in love with Mikey for who knew how long- tipped his head nearer and laughed.

"In that case, I won't ask," Woody said, and kissed him.