A/N: I had always intended to expand on this mini 'verse, and a prompt from a pal on tumblr pushed me into gear. Chapters are titled after songs or lyrics relevant to my otp, consider this fic a Woody/Mikey mixtape.
Song: "World Without You," by Hudson Taylor.
Donnie straightens his jacket for the third time in as many minutes, and Mikey darts an anxious glance at the clock on the wall.
"I don't wanna go," he says plaintively, twisting his favorite hat in his hands. Looks from Donnie's patient brown eyes to Raph's soft green ones, two people in his life who are always—no questions asked—somewhere on his side. "Is it too late to call him and cancel?"
"Absolutely," Donnie says, not unkindly. "Same as the last six times you asked. Don't worry, Mikey, they'll love you."
Woody promised the same thing, and Leo and Splinter, too, and Mikey knows better than to doubt all of them all at once; but he can't help doubting just a little bit anyway. And Raph looks pretty tense, and like he might be thinking this whole thing is a bad idea after all—his arms are folded to make up for his twitchy fingers, and he keeps staring really hard at Mikey's face when Mikey isn't looking at him, like he can glare a layer of protection into Mikey's skin by the sheer force of will and all that love he keeps unspoken and under wraps.
But just as Mikey starts to think it might be worth it to turn his efforts over to his red-banded brother, and turn up the pleas and puppy-dog eyes until Raph cracks, the red-banded brother in question says plainly, "Leo'll be back with your boy any minute, cheeseball," and Mikey's shoulders slump in defeat.
Sensei chuckles, a richly amused sound, drawing Mikey's gaze to him where he sits calmly on the lip of the pit. "You take after your father," he says warmly, and it warms Mikey right up, too, the easy affection stomping down a good ninety percent of the raw nerves fluttering like butterflies in his stomach. "You should have seen me fret the day Shen brought me home to her parents."
"Okay, but sensei. You were a human back then, and probably super handsome and cool and rad at martial arts. Of course mom's parents were gonna like you." Ah. Oops. 'Sort-of-mom.' But Splinter is still smiling, and rises to join their little group; smooths out a wrinkle Donnie somehow missed, and then slides gentle fingers under Mikey's chin, tilting his face up by a few degrees.
"You boys are everything I was, and more," he admonishes lightly, leaving Mikey looking probably as stunned as Raph and Donnie do. "Woodrow has been kind to this family from the night he found us, offering warm food and friendship without ever a moment of fear or disgust. I can only imagine the woman who raised him taught him the same thing I have tried to teach you; that what skin we wear hardly matters, and it is the hidden heart behind it that makes us worthy of love."
Oh, wow. That's a pretty big endorsement. Mikey looks down at his hands, and tries to feel worthy.
Woody greets Splinter with an endearingly awkward bow, and Mikey's brothers with a wave, and then he's leaning in for a kiss, right there in front of all of them. Making up for the months Mikey kept this a secret in that way he does—the same way his brothers make up for it right back, with teasing and a few only-partly-joking shovel talks and absolute, blanket niceness wherever Woody is concerned. They were sorry Mikey thought he couldn't tell them about his crush– ashamed he thought it was something they might not let him have– and they do their best, unnecessarily, to make him never think that way again.
Raph wolf-whistles, and Don and Leo laugh, while Splinter chuckles somewhere behind it all, and Woody smiles at him like a person-sized sun.
Mikey's composure is effectively shot. His grin back is a little wobbly, but he's not quite as anxious anymore. Families are weird like that.
When Woody's family townhouse comes into view, just barely visible through the swirling wind and snow, Mikey's courage fails him. He wants to stop, to turn and run back home, to 'maybe-another-time.' A secret part of his heart is afraid that this is it.That Woody's family, as nice as they might be, and probably are, won't be able to see past the green. That they'll be scared of Mikey right away, and then Woody will change his mind, and then Mikey will lose what he's come to love so, so much– and that'll hurt a whole lot heck of a lot worse than never having it in the first place.
He's afraid that tonight will be the last night that this wonderful impossible thing is his.
If he could just put it off for a little while longer–
He tugs to a stop, his hand in Woody's squeezing too tightly–oops. He loosens up, starts to let go, stammering a lame-sounding, "Um, actually- I don't think- maybe we shouldn't."
But Woody's fingers curl more tightly around his own, and he looks vaguely amused, like he was prepared for Mikey to totally try to bail or blow it or make a big dummy out of himself. He pulls Mikey a step closer by their linked hands, right there on the sidewalk in busy nighttime Manhattan, and leans until he can push their foreheads together.
"You," he says, absolute and patient, trying-to-be-firm and really only coming across as fond, "are going to have a good time. You're going to walk into that house, and charm everyone to pieces within five minutes, and they're all going to love you." Then Woody's voice pitches low enough that Mikey shivers a little– and maybe it's from the cold, but maybe not, as his boyfriend adds, "And then we're going to go back to my apartment for the night, and I'm going to love you. Think you can manage?"
Well. It's a tall order, but with a reward like that on the line, Mikey thinks he might be able to pull it off.
Woody's mamaí was short and somehow willowy at the same time, with a cascade of vibrant red hair pulled up into a bun and a delicate dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. She was dressed casually, in a sweater with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of paint-stained jeans and a fluffy pair of house slippers shaped like hedgehogs, and Mikey wanted to earn her approval instantly.
When she pulled open the door, his breath was held and he was clutching Woody's hand for comfort and borrowed confidence, braced for any number of explosive reactions– he'd seen them all at this point, nothing would surprise him.
Except for, maybe,
"Oh my stars, Woodrow you flute, get that boy inside before he catches his death of cold!"
"Yes, ma'am," and Mikey's ushered right in to a pair of surprisingly strong Irish arms. He stands a few inches taller than her, and doesn't quite manage to hug back through his dumb surprise before she's taking a step back and framing his face in her calloused hands.
"Mikester, this is my mam," Woody says without missing a beat, closing the door behind them. "You can call her that, everyone else does. Mam, this is Michelangelo."
"Well, I can see that, dear," she says, and smiles so mom-like and fearlessly at Mikey that he has no idea what to do with it. "And I see what you mean about his eyes, just gorgeous."
"Mam," comes the half-hearted protest, and she looks at him sternly over her shoulder, releasing Mikey with one hand to jab a no-nonsense finger at her only son, where he waffles in the foyer.
"Don't you 'mam', me. You left me in the dark about this darling boy for months, I can say what I want!"
Mikey's head doesn't stop spinning until she's bustled off to finish dinner, and he's sitting with Woody in front of the fireplace. They're sharing a heavy quilt, passing a huge mug of homemade cocoa back and forth, and Woody's humming, and the den is thick with warmth. Woody's sisters had to do some last-minute shopping, but apparently they can't wait to meet him, and it's maybe ten minutes later that Mikey finally manages to ask, "Dude?"
"Yeah, amigo?"
"Am I hallucinating, or is this going really extremely better than it should be?" Suspicion was beginning to cloud the confusion, the paranoid-Leo-voice in his brain (that had, admittedly, saved his shell a few times) starting to call 'foul'. He's tensing up without meaning to, hand folding closed around Woody's arm, and his guard shouldn't be up like this just because his boyfriend's mom was nice to him, but he'd spent so long being so worried and preparing himself so much, he just couldn't understand her total lack of reaction.
"Ah," Woody says, and a blush is creeping up his cheeks for the first time all night. It gives Mikey pause. "Well. I didn't wanna say anything 'cause I knew your brothers would get mad, but– I showed her your picture awhile ago."
Mikey stares at him. Woody busies himself with the mug and doesn't look up. Mikey says, "Buddy. Sweetheart. Light of my life. You know my existence is kind of… kind of a huge secret, right?"
He's not angry. He's not even annoyed. He's surprised that it hadn't occurred to him that maybe Woody might have– he never told Woody not to, or asked him to keep any promises. It was all unspoken between them, they were always so on the same page, that he can't help but feel relieved that there's a reasonable excuse behind his mam's easy acceptance, and delighted that he's finally not the one being flustered tonight.
Woody sighs, and puts an arm around Mikey's waist, and scoots him close enough to kiss. It's right there, in that close, warm place, that he says, "You don't know this, because you didn't grow up in a houseful of sisters, so I'll just tell you– there is no such thing as a secret."
Mikey laughs out loud, practically drunk on relief and almost giddy with all that nervous energy expelled, and they kiss a lot more before his sisters come home– each of them bursting inside with all the fury of small, ginger tornadoes, and demanding to meet their baby brother's 'secret lover.' Oh, jeez. Mikey returns hugs more enthusiastically this time, flushed and delighted and happily returning the banter without missing a beat, totally in his element.
Woody catches him again right before dinner, kissing him soundly despite the chorus of catcalls from the peanut gallery, and can't seem to stop touching him– he's so happy he's glowing with it, and Mikey realizes it must feel similar to the day he brought his father to meet Woody that first time, how his heart seemed to burst when his father smiled his approval, and just kept bursting all through the rest of the night.
"I expect to see a lot more of you around here, young man," mam says sternly during dessert, with a twinkle in her eye that makes Mikey think of his own family back home and the way they have of saying more by not saying anything at all. The girls all clamor in agreement, and Woody directs his knowing smile at his cobbler, and Mikey can't believe how lucky he is to know and love all the people that he does.
Woody's sisters help bundle Mikey back up, and he's almost buried under their flurry of goodbye kisses. Mam shoos them off, then beckons at him with both hands, and he's quick to stoop into another one of her embraces. He's never been held by a mother until tonight, and he feels himself storing these hugs away in a safe place in the back of his heart.
"I told you they'd like you," Woody says, sometime after he's surrendered to the cold and hailed a taxi for the rest of the journey home, and they're huddled comfortably together in the backseat. Mikey's got enough layers on that the driver didn't give him more than a cursory glance when they climbed in, and as easily as the cold seems to seep through his skin and stick to his bones, he thinks he'll always like winter best for the freedom it lends him.
"You cheated," he replies comfortably. "You showed her my picture before I even got there. And you let me worry all night long, anyway. You're the worst."
"I told you not to worry. It's not my fault you did it anyway."
"Oh, no way," Mikey argues at once. "It's totally your fault."
This night has been amazing, and Woody is a hundred percent to blame.
A few hours later, laying in bed with his head pillowed on Woody's chest, watching the snow drift sleepily outside through the naked window, Mikey hears his cell vibrate on the nightstand. He disentangles himself from the sheets, pushes Woody's shirt and a stray sock off the bed onto the floor, and reaches for the blinking tPhone.
-how'd it go?
Mikey smiles. It's close to three a.m., but no part of him is surprised. He sits up to thumb back an immediate response, because Raph deserves one for worrying up so late.
-it was so rad. you guys were right, they really liked me.
At that, right away,
-course they did.
-we're real proud of you, champ.
And Mikey thinks that maybe, being loved has nothing to do with being worthy, after all. Love comes on its own, whether you deserve it or not, and everything else just falls into place where it can.