This story is starting to feel group written. I've been using Alex Hamato, Sceincegal and M.D. Owen's lines a lot. So I should keep giving them credit. Oh, and I used a line from Mikell from her review. Hehe
Also, I live in a state other than New York City and so when I picture ritzy housing, I picture local ritzy housing. So sorry if it doesn't fit. That goes for all my mental geography. I try not to do that, but my interior landscape is pretty rural.
I also realized that I'm probably the only person to write a TMNT romance with a recurring Ed Gein theme. Yay me!
Rich. Rich? Shannon was rich? She didn't look like a rich person. All her clothes came from Goodwill. At least that's what she said. She definitely didn't seem like a Brooklyn brownstone type of girl. More like a crummy apartment over a Laundromat kind of girl. The evening before Merritt's arrival, Raph crawled through a basement window and nearly got stuck. What a dignified position. Stuck with his ass hanging out for the world to see. He spent the night snooping in their storage boxes. Nothing interesting. Mostly Christmas ornaments and Shannon's old toys.
Raph replayed the phone conversation that sent him on this mission in his head over and over, looking for sarcastic vocal tones that would make him look stupid for showing up. He had answered his phone in the customary manner, trying not to be pleased at her number on the screen. "What's up?"
"You gonna come see me?" Sad voice and yapping puppy.
He hesitated and recalled shoving her, yelling at her, his face covered in urine, wanting to kiss her… His decision to stay away. "You want me to?"
"I won't be at the hospital. My parents are taking me home for a few days. Merritt and his mama are coming over to see us."
"What! That fucker! I said…" He ground his big reptilian teeth.
Shannon ignored his outburst. "He's gonna apologize. You want to come too? If they're having him over then I should have you come over too. I don't like him. He stares at me real weird. But I like you. The house is real big so you can hide."
"When's he coming?"
She told him the date and time and directions to the house he could tell she was skipping around the room. "Daddy won't like you. He'll say you're the dregs of society."
"Hey, nobody can keep me out if I want to be there." He puffed up a little and spun his sai in his palm.
So Raph made a voyage out to the glamorous brownstones and wondered if she lived next door to any celebrities. He sat in the basement on a pile of In Style magazines, reading about the many girlfriends of Adam Duritz, wondering how a guy that ugly had so many gorgeous girlfriends. He slept behind the water heater, almost screaming out loud when he found a spider crawling on his plastron.
He stretched and wondered if he should do some katas or read more about failed celebrity breast implants when he heard Optimus Prime barking at the new environment. Shannon's voice said, "He's a real bad dog. He might eat your stuff, daddy."
"Why did we buy you that thing if you don't like it?" a woman said. Probably the bitch mother. "Maybe I'll roast it for your dinner if you don't make it behave."
"Carolyn…" a man warned.
"I'm sorry, but I don't want that little rodent shitting all over the place."
Raph listened to the family banter. Mother was a bitch. Liked to tease Shannon. Father sounded like a limp dishrag. He blocked out most of the family babble until he heard the doorbell ring and Merritt saying, "Hey, Mrs. Darling yuh I brought you guys this."
"My name is Mrs. Massey-Darling. Or Honorable Carolyn Massey-Darling. Take your pick."
Raph snuck up the stairs and took a brief look at the kitchen as he passed through. Looked like it had been cut out of a magazine. Cherry wood surfaces and a white kitchen island. A large gourmet stove. He somehow squeezed into a coat closet, his shell scraping on the other side of the wall as he looked out a crack in the door. Shannon sat on a black leather couch, looking relatively normal and distinctly wilted and unhappy. Her parents flanked her protectively on either side.
The Honorable Carolyn Massey-Darling wore both a power suit and haircut and glared power at her prey. Mr. Darling had a painted on tan of some kind and a salt and pepper toupee.
Merritt fidgeted on an identical black leather couth next to his mother. A puffy woman in a light blue sweat shirt with blue jays frolicking unseasonably in the holly. "Quit your moving around!" she hissed at him.
"I'm sorry I got you knocked up," Merritt said awkwardly.
Shannon didn't respond, but looked around the room. Her eyes lit on Raph's closet and he took the chance to flag her down. She sat up straighter and said, "You should be sorry!"
"Yeah, I am. Can we go now?"
Merritt's Mama slapped him upside the head and Mr. Darling flinched.
Raph listened to the whole awkward discussion. Mostly Merritt's Mama described what a screw up Merritt was while Mr. and Mrs. Darling reiterated how he was an idiot. Eventually, Merritt and his mama got up to leave. Raph ground his teeth as Merritt reached out to hug Shannon, who went totally stiff and didn't reach back to him. Her father cleared his throat and stepped forward to open the door, signaling his silent disapproval of physical contact.
As soon as the Hopes were out the door, Mr. Darling said, "Well, that's over. Hopefully, we won't have to see either of them again. You alright, Shannon?"
She nodded and picked up Optimus Prime, who hopped at her feet.
Mrs. Massey-Darling said, "It isn't like he could do anything here. I can't believe he got out already. I'll have an eye out for him in case he gets up to any new mischief."
"I'm going to bed!" Shannon declared rather loudly and suddenly.
"It's only 9pm," Mr. Darling said. "But go ahead. Are you unplugging or just sleeping?"
She glanced towards Raph's cupboard. "Unplugging. I'll be out till the clock goes off."
Her parents ignored her and went off to attend to their own lives. What boring people, he thought as Shannon went upstairs. She paused every few steps and he wondered what she was doing. Finally, she sighed and turned around, signaling him to follow. Raph left his cupboard and silently followed her up the stairs, spinning in the air to land on the staircase above her. She rolled her eyes.
Shannon's bedroom was pink. Really pink. A feminine utopia.
"Never had a guy in my room here before," she said. "Want to help me build a fort with the sheets and the chairs?"
So they built a tent out of bed sheets and sat inside eating food swiped out of the kitchen. He lay down on his side and listened to her tell him a confusing story. "Then all the ghosts decided that it would be better to be good and they all decided to stop haunting those people. So they went to a place where ghosts go to get therapy to find out what was bugging them in life so they can get rid of their latent issues and go to heaven like they should. And Percy said that he was molested as a kid and the doctor told him that the uncle who did it was dead so he turned into a ball of light and crossed over but the light was really bright and it made the psychiatrist go blind. So he didn't know it and he was half blind on the way home and he hit a car on the way home and totaled his car and his insurance wouldn't pay for it. So he got really desperate and tried to burn down his business, but they found out…"
Raph opened a jar of peanut butter and scooped it out with his finger. "My turn yet?"
"Yeah, you go ahead and scare me."
"Okay. There was this guy who lived in the middle of nowhere with his mother. And she was a real bitch. Always screaming at him and telling him what to do. So she up and died one day and instead of being happy about it, he was all depressed and he never got any touch before because of her. She was always making him feel guilty. So he decides to go touch dead girls cause they can't fight back and they're dead so it's not evil I guess or some shit. So he goes and starts fucking corpses…"
Shannon wrinkled up her nose. He laughed and rubbed peanut butter on the end of it.
"…so he can't get the same high from just the dead ones and he moves on to killing girls who are alive. Then the cops figure it out and find all these dead bodies and one of them gutted like a deer in his garage. And masks made out of human skin and lamps and chairs…"
"I didn't like that movie," she said, tongue sticking out to get the peanut butter. "My tongue won't reach."
He sat up and did it for her. He licked at the peanut butter, but then kept licking after it was gone. Then kissed her nose. Then realized how weird it must look and he sat there an inch away from her face, thinking something else should happen. She leaned forward and kissed the end of his beak.
The perfect opportunity came and then went as she got up to use the bathroom, leaving him alone in the fort. But then she stuck her head back in the fort and kissed him.
And he just sat there while she pressed her mouth against his, too shocked to respond. A ninja aware of his surroundings, caught off guard by a kiss. She left for the bathroom and didn't bother closing the door.
"You kiss real bad!" she said as she took off her dress and tossed it on the floor.
"Why are you walking around naked!" he hissed as loudly as he dared, lest he summon the parents.
She raised her eyebrows and turned towards him, her perky breasts lit up in the street light. "I thought you liked how I look and I like being naked."
"That don't make any sense!"
"How come you get to be naked in front of me and I can't be naked in front of you?" She put on a nightgown and bounced onto her bed. "Come up here and sleep next to me."
"Uh…"
"You scared of me?"
"I should sleep on the floor here." Inside the fort preferably.
"Okay, goodnight." She lay down and then turned off her radio. Her arm went limp at the side of her bed.
She trusted him. All alone with him and totally vulnerable. She expected him to leave her alone. Raph covered her up and watched her for a second, basking in her confidence.
He locked her bedroom door and then made a bed for himself on the floor. He fell asleep after a few minutes and had very nice dreams. Feeling her under his weight, running his hands down her thighs. Listening to her call out his name. Then he felt a crack on the head as Splinter beat him with his cane yelling, "Get off that girl! Get your dick out of her! You sleep on the floor! Dishonor upon our clan, stupid!" He opened his eyes and sat up in a panic. Shannon lay with her eyes shut, unmoving on her bed and the room was quiet and dark. Splinter finding him in bed with a girl. Truly his worst nightmare. Splinter speaking like him. Another added layer of horror.
Raph fell asleep soundly after a massive masturbation session in her bathroom. The alarm clock went off, sounding a sonic nervous breakdown and he sat up, pulling both of his weapons.
She sat up, blinking and then pointed at him and laughed. "That's just Dies Irae. You scare real easy."
"Do not!" He tossed his sai on the floor.
"You're pouting now!"
He flung himself into her closet as her mother knocked on the door. "Why was the door locked? I'm going to work early. Will you be okay? Don't wear your iPod. Just keep radios going in all the rooms. Don't want you tripping and falling down the stairs or drowning in the bathtub."
"Yeah okay." Shannon smiled awkwardly at her mother. "Have a good day."
Her mother saw the mess of sheets and the bed on the floor. "What's this? You have a sleepover?"
"What? I was pretending I was on a safari and I had to sleep on the ground you know. I got lost leaving the camp and there was Cholera going around so I had to…"
"Yeah, fine. Just don't spread that stuff around to our friends. Your weird immature playing, not the cholera. Eat something. I'll be home late. Oh, and you're dad's going away on assignment. A volcano went off in South America that he has to cover because Brenda's on maternity leave. That skanky cow."
Shannon shut the door behind her mother and he crept out of the closet, reached around and pinched her nose. She yelped and slapped his chest. "Bad Raph!"
They spent most of the day eating. Raph played pool in her father's den. Smoked his Cuban cigars. Played with her father's computer and looked at his pitiful porn collection. Then watched Flavor of Love with Shannon on his lap.
"You want to play with my hair?" she asked him.
He skeptically ran his hands through a few times until she batted him away after his fingers tangled and caught.
"Too bad you don't kiss better," she said as she turned the channel, bored of slutty women fighting each other for an ugly guy.
"I was surprised. I kiss good." He tried to run his hands through her hair again, but his fingers tangled up and left a ratty mess.
"You never kissed before. How do you know?"
"Turn around and I'll show you then!"
She shifted in his lap and looked into his eyes. Pretty and blushing now.
"Um…" He awkwardly reached around the back of her head and put his mouth to hers in a jerky forward lurch. Didn't move at first, ignorant of an acceptable outcome. Come on, Hamato. Show her what you can do.
Nothing!
But she moved her lips against him and he moved back. And he figured it out. Much better than the first time. Put your hands someplace, stupid. Don't just leave them hanging out in space. He rested them on her waist, anticipating a sudden withdrawal at his touch.
Minutes later he found himself holding her against him, dimly aware of his name and position in life.
She pulled back and his brain cried out, "MORE!"
"That was a lot better. Your tongue is real smooth. I like it." She nuzzled into his neck, kissing softly.
He listened to her practice a long and pathetic piece of harp music while he did katas nearby in her bedroom. It felt like ninjutsu on another planet. He dropped his sais a few times while he watched her play and she skipped a few notes every time he did a flip.
Play it cool. It's just a girl. He did a complicated kata and she clapped for him.
Then her mother's voice commanded her presence for dinner and she skipped downstairs, her wings flapping.
"Take those stupid things off!" her mother said. "This man came in with a motion to get a child support abatement for a thirteen year old child because he found out it wasn't his. Like that'll ever happen? He raised the child for thirteen years. Like I can make the woman give it back? Where does he think it went? Sit down and stop squirming like that. Don't feed the dog from the table! It has its own food. What did you do all day?"
Raph followed them downstairs and loitered in the hallway, listening. His phone lit up. Leo demanding his whereabouts. He turned it off.
"I kissed a handsome guy today. He was real shy at first, but he was good. He kisses like he's starving and my tonsils are made out of chocolate. Kind of drooled on me, but that's okay. I like it. I hope he liked me. I don't know what I'm doing."
Her mother said, "Mhmm. Was this on the African safari too? I hope he didn't die of leprosy or whatever. What did you really do?"
She sighed. "Watched TV."
"I'm not watching that girlie ass shit!" Raph yelled into his phone as the night air blew past the receiver.
Shannon sighed back at him from her phone. He looked over the roof ledge and saw her at the window, wrinkling up her nose in anger and stomping her foot. "You're being a big baby! It's my room and we'll watch what I want!"
"What are you? Five years old! Ever hear of compromise! And I'm the man, so I should choose!" He hoped she didn't further examine that logic.
"You didn't buy my TV! It's mine! I bought it from my concert money! So I get to pick what we watch and we're gonna watch Maid in Manhattan!"
Raph kicked at the bridge ridge of the roof and yelled, "I'm not watching anything with that bitch if she's not rolling around naked!"
"Don't you watch nothing but porn!"
He laughed loudly into the phone. "No! I watch nothing but porn! You figured me out! Great job!"
"Pervert! I'm watching this alone! You stay up there and have sex with yourself!"
She hung up on him and he heard the sappy violin theme to a romantic movie. He dialed her number again and waited six rings for her to answer. "Hello?"
"Why'd you take so long? You knew it was me!"
Optimus Prime came to the window and growled at him. It echoed back into the phone in choppy stereo. "I was trying to figure out if I wanted to talk to you. This is a good movie because they fall in love and stuff. And she has a little boy who's really cute. And she works in a hotel and a rich guy likes her and…"
"I don't give a fuck what happens! I wanted to watch something else!"
"What? Porn?"
Stuttering. "No!" Silence on the end of the line. Jennifer Lopez said something pleading to her lover. "I'm not coming down. Maybe I'll go home."
Her mother's voice suddenly filled the phone. "Who is this?"
Raph scratched his head for a second and didn't respond.
He could hear Shannon say, "That's my BOYFRIEND, mama! The one that kissed me today!"
"Oh, please!" Carolyn snapped. "If you're one of those perverts she's talked to on the internet, let me tell you that if you come near her, you'll be in prison so fast you'll have to go back to the site of your arrest to collect your balls!"
He sat down smiling. Made sure to breathe loudly into the phone.
Then her mother hung up on him and gave her daughter a long lecture in the hallway that he couldn't really understand, but he thought it revolved around the idea of Shannon being too mentally incompetent to talk to men and that they would all prey on her like Merritt.
Some mumbling assents.
Her mother ordered her to bed and slammed the door.
Maybe the bitch mother was right and was taking advantage of someone vulnerable. He looked out over the horizon towards home. But the phone rang again. "Pretty Raph, do you think I'm stupid?"
He took a brief glance at the street and the surrounding windows. No witnesses. He swung down the side of the building. Only needed an inch of ledge to climb inside.
She sat on the bed, cuddling Optimus Prime to her chest. Don't look at the sad girl that likes to kiss you. Just say it. "I'm not your boyfriend. So quit saying it."
"I don't love you no more. Ouch!" Optimus Prime growled and she wiggled her fingers, working them out of his teeth.
"You're not stupid. Hey, I can't… get involved… ugh…" And now the universe played its ultimate joke. The mutant freak explains to an interested girl that he's off the market because he's a mutant freak. Very funny, universe. To hell with explaining. Just take off. Let her figure it out. But his mouth kept moving instead of his feet. "My Sensei has this rule about dating and shit. Mostly about dating humans. I mean… I guess we can't do it. We never talked about it much because… uh… Do you get it?"
She shook her head and Jennifer Lopez begged her suitor not to leave her.
"I shouldn't have… Don't get the wrong idea…" Raph rested his hands on his sais to quash the fidgeting. More comfortable. Then he realized it made him look as if he were about to attack and let them hang at his sides. Awkward. "I like you and stuff. I have a human pretend sister and I think of you that way." Like April! That was it! "So I think of you like a sister." Yes!
She blinked a few times. "I guess. You want to sleep up here tonight?"
Sure. Why not? He slept in April's bed all the time. Sister and all. He sat next to her on the bed and she turned off the TV. Waited to see what she would do.
"You gonna sit up all night?" she asked as she lay down next to him and then pointed at the bed.
All of his muscles seized up as he lay down on his side next to her and wondered what to do next. It was never an issue at April's. You lay down. You go to sleep. Shannon took his wrist and pulled his arm around her, then wrapped herself around him. "You my brother now?" she asked with a slight smirk.
"Yeah. Brother."
The movie ended and her clock radio whispered soft music. A diva belting out her guts and emotion. Shannon's eyes drooped drowsily and she said, "I'm going to sleep like normal so I can feel you holding me. And I lied when I said I don't love you. Night." She giggled. "Brother. I'm your sister. You should kiss me goodnight."
"Not kissing you anymore."
Whining pout. "Why not?"
"Not a good idea."
She sighed and the dog hopped on the bed, trying to wriggle between them. Raph booted it back on the floor. "Too bad you can't meet my family," she said. "They wouldn't like you even if you were human. Daddy would just ask you about your job and mama would call you a criminal. What about your family?"
He talked about his family for at least an hour while she rested her face in his neck and occasionally kissed, nipped and sucked. Choosing to ignore it, he said, "…Mikey likes to think he's real smart and play all these pranks on us. I always see it coming though. He's pretty smart. He tries not to look smart. He might like you. Leo'll think you're weird. Has his katana up his ass. All about rules and shit. But he's cool. Don might try to lock you in a room and do tests. He tries to do that on all of us though. Once he took these colored jellybeans and put them in a bowl on the table and wrote down which colors we all took. I took all the girlie colors and that meant I have some kind of mama issues or something…" She snored lightly against his collar bone and he felt a line of drool run down his shoulder.
Raph shook her awake. "You want to meet my family? We could all use another sister. Why should I hoard you all to myself?"
Sleepy assent as she woke up to kiss his neck, sucking and licking.
"You like my neck?"
She yawned. "Holds your head up."
He fell asleep groaning quietly as her tongue trailed his throat.