HERE IT IS, AND JUST IN TIME FOR APRITELLO DAY!
Enjoy ^3^
As always, huge thanks to our betas Queequegg and Theherocomplex 3
Casey rolled his shoulders, muscles cracking, and his groan resonated down the lonely street. Hockey practice had been brutal—and he was friends with Raph!
Coach was so pissed they wouldn't qualify for the state semifinals—Billy leaving them high and dry meant they were short one player, thank you Billy—that he'd prepared the toughest workout Casey remembered. And all that did was piss everyone off, until a fight broke out. Any other day coach would break it up eventually, barking and spitting like a bulldog. "Save it for the game!" But not this time. This time it was part of the workout.
Now Casey had bruises on his bruises—heh, bruised bruises—so many that he almost didn't feel like patrolling.
Almost.
Who was he kidding? He wouldn't miss patrol with Raph if he had a broken femur. He'd say he could use the distraction, and somehow he'd pull it off. He was struck by the most awesome mental image of Raph carrying him on piggyback, as he swung at the bad guys from his shoulders like a polo player. A snort escaped him, and he groaned again at the resulting pang in his ribs. Wincing, he massaged the sore spot, then brought his hand to his nose and took a whiff.
"Phoo!"
His hockey shirt reeked like a monkey's cage, so bad it was putting him off. Considering a shower before patrol, he fanned the hem of his shirt a little in the cool night breeze, then stretched it to his nose and sniffed again. Nah, just needed to be aired out a little.
As he continued fanning, he felt a buzz in his butt pocket, and the little tune made him grin: Cinderella. Raph would love it.
The text came with a little angry face.
idontgiveaflyingf: Dude, where are you? Thought we were going patrol-skating tonight.
Casey swung his bag over his shoulder and held the phone in both hands to start dumping typo-ridden complaints on Raph. A few tiny raindrops started sprinkling the screen by the time he reached his place, and he finished his rant with a not-at-all-exaggerated statement.
IAmCaseyJones: dude i am BROKEN
if taht asshole billy isnt dead, im gonna kill him!1
He hit send and stuffed his phone in his pocket to climb the fire escape ladder to his dad's balcony. As he retrieved the bag with all his gear from his window sill, he threw a glance at the light coming through the living room blinds. Dad was back from his late shift, but most likely snoring in front of the TV by now. Not that Casey would bother to inform him of his plans anyway.
Footsteps echoed nearby, and he caught sight of a figure stumbling down the empty street.
Dude seemed very high or very drunk, or both, looking around as if disoriented. It wasn't a rare sight in this neighborhood, but something about this guy told Casey he wasn't one of the usuals. There was an especially fishy stench about him that Casey didn't like.
Careful not to grab his attention, keeping an eye on him in case he tried something, Casey climbed back down. It wasn't until his shoes touched the silty pavement and the guy turned for a brief second that he recognized him.
Billy.
I knew it! He wasn't sick, motherfucker was out getting wasted!
Casey emitted a high-pitched scoff of disbelief. Bruised bruises or not, he couldn't just walk away now. Maybe it was time he put on his hockey mask and gave Billy a taste of coach's special training.
"Bill!" he yelled, the sound slashing through the silence.
No answer. Billy's head twitched slightly, then he kept walking. Probably drunk himself deaf. He looked like he could be headed for his place, which was only a few blocks up the street. Casey took off after him.
"Hey, Bill!" he shouted, catching up to stride alongside him. But Billy still acted as though he hadn't even heard or seen him.
There was a weird smell in the air, and it wasn't Casey's hockey shirt. At first Casey thought someone must have been mopping the sidewalk with bleach, but the strong chemical stench was actually coming off of Billy. One of the sleeves on his sweater was pulled up to his elbow.
"Eugh! What the fuck, man! What have you been taking? Where you been?" Casey sped up to get in his way and gave Billy a shove on the shoulder, trying to make him stop for a damn minute and face him. The guy clearly needed help, at the very least just to get home safely.
But Billy pulled away from Casey's grasp, looking right at him with a snarl before changing direction. The smell of his breath almost threw Casey on his back, and he stumbled sideways, clasping his nose and mouth.
"Dude…" he gasped, running to catch up to Billy again just as they passed a streetlight, and he had a better look at him under the dim orange light. "Damn!"
Billy's clothes were full of weird brown stains, and his sleeve wasn't pulled up like Casey had thought; it was torn off at the elbow. The skin of his arm was bruised and puffy. His eyes looked sunken, pale face greasy and sweaty, and Casey didn't feel like badgering him anymore. His old team-mate was in real bad shape. And still he pressed on, completely ignoring Casey.
Changing tactics, Casey tried lowering his voice to sound helpful. He reached out to grab what was left of his sleeve. "Yo, Bill, you alright? Maybe I should get you to a-"
Billy's fist came at him full force. The dry blow to the sternum propelled him backwards, his feet leaving the ground. He landed and skid across the street, feeling his clothes rip on the pavement. Too concentrated on the pain, the wind knocked out of him, he'd hardly noticed the pair of headlights approaching fast.
A car horn blared and Casey's body reacted on reflex. He rolled to avoid the tires now screeching to a halt, hitting his head against the curb as a result.
"Ow!" Once it was clear he wasn't getting run over, Casey pressed his hand against the pain and checked for blood. Luckily his fingers were clean… ish. He tried to get up, rubbing the fresh lump, and another jolt of pain cut through his hip. He didn't have enough hands to cover all the places in his body that were hurting. At least he didn't seem to have broken anything.
Finally he managed to get upright using the car as leverage, and almost bumped into the driver who had just stepped out.
"The hell you doing, boy?" the old woman squealed, looking half-worried, half-annoyed. "You on drugs?"
"Never mind, grandma!" Casey waved her off, turning to look for Billy.
"Bah!"
Casey heard the woman mumbling something sounding a lot like "shitty neighborhood". Then the door closed, and the car took off.
But by then, Billy was gone, the street deserted.
Yo, screw that.
He rubbed his head again, then his scraped knees, then his sternum, thinking Billy was definitely stronger than he looked.
A vibration on his butt-cheek told him Cinderella had just texted him back. Good thing he'd landed on the pocket with the wallet, and not his phone. He reached for it with a hand full of scratches, excited to tell Raph what had just gone down.
IAmCaseyJones: i was almst run over hahha! and youll never guess who i just litterly bumped into!
April sleeping over excited Donnie more than he would ever dare proclaim. It hadn't happened since they got back from the farmhouse several months ago. From what he overheard April say over the phone, he could make a pretty good guess as to what the reason was for that.
"I can really use Donnie's feedback on these problems," he heard her say softly as she paced back and forth by the turnstiles.
So yeah, that might have confirmed it: Kirby apparently wasn't thrilled. Donnie felt his hopes for the night crumble before his eyes. But then, at last, after a bit of insisting, April smiled. "I promise, no late night patrols. Love you too. Bye."
Donnie couldn't really blame the man for worrying. After all he'd been through, letting April stay over on a school night was a show of good faith. Donnie was actually impressed. When April came back, he regretted to see a trace of guilt tainting her triumphant expression.
He was a little ashamed himself of how much he missed the old days, when April had to live with him and his brothers. If only they could do that again, but without the need for alien invasions, or a missing father, or homicidal kunoichis trying to kill them all.
He was momentarily shocked to realise he was referring to Karai. The very same Karai that was sharing a roof with him and his family. Talk about a plot twist...
And because Karai had to sleep somewhere—as well as have her own cave to lurk in and decorate—they'd given her the guest room, which had been April's once.
Refusing to let April sleep on the lab's wobbly old cot, with the other option being letting her join the Lotus camp, Donnie had offered his own room. Actually, it was more accurate to say he'd had to force her, as April kept protesting. But after a few well-reasoned arguments—Donnie was more than used to the cot, and April did have school in the morning, and needed to be well-rested—he finally got her to agree. Even then, he'd still had to fight her over changing the sheets.
"I said it's okay!" she cried a fourth time as Donnie pulled the sheets off the bed, slowly but surely. He took it really calmly just to see her struggle as she went around undoing his work. Soon they were each pulling from opposite sides of the old sheet in a childish tug of war, giggling uncontrollably. April was laughing so hard that the sheet slipped from her fingers and she stumbled butt-first into the bookcase. Donnie quickly crumpled it into a ball before she could recover, and tossed the bundle out the door. Unfortunately for Leo, he was just passing by with a cup of tea, and got hit squarely in the face.
"Can't a turtle drink his tea in peace in this place?" Leo groused, the now tea-stained sheet rolled at his feet, empty tea cup dangling from his finger. The disapproving Queen Leo glare on his face only made them laugh harder.
"It's your fault! Why do you always have to walk around with that perpetual cup of tea?" April laughed breathlessly as she helped Leo clean up the mess. Donnie took the opportunity to quickly finish making the bed, earning a satisfying glower of mock-outrage from her.
Then Mikey's voice boomed from across the lair, "Gu-u-u-uys, dinner's ready! Come get i-i-i-it!" and Donnie cast a terrified glance in its direction.
With all this sleeping over business, he'd completely forgotten about Mikey's promise to put that ice cream to good use, and judging from Leo's and April's looks of dread, so had they.
Mikey welcomed the household to the kitchen like it was the Ritz, completely oblivious to the expressions of doom on all of their faces. They marched to their seats like they were about to have their sentences read to them.
"I give you 'Fried Ice Cream á la Mikey'!" the chef announced.
Apparently 'á la Mikey' meant the bacon grease Mikey had deep fried the scoops in hadn't been hot enough—or the ice-cream wasn't cold enough—and the whole thing had melted in the pan. The result was a kind of oily chocolate-fudge tortilla with chopped chilis and a crunchy burned base, topped by maple syrup and cheeseball bits. Donnie's stomach flip-flopped as the smell hit him.
"If I didn't know you better, Mikey," Raph said, sniffing the spoonful warily, "I'd say this was your revenge for earlier."
Donnie had been about to suggest the same thing. But no, Mikey seemed to believe he was doing them a service. As for the Ice-Cream Kittens, they'd have to get rid of them behind Mikey's back, since he seemed determined to keep them in the freezer forever.
As a joke, Donnie then proposed a hypothesis: that this family had survived Mikey's cooking all these years only thanks to their mutagen-enhanced gastrointestinal tracts. This thankfully might include April, with her half-Kraang nature. As for Karai… Obviously she had to have some superpowers left over from her time as a mutant. But since he couldn't just grab someone to the street and subject them to the same variables, there wasn't enough data to corroborate this hypothesis.
While they were still laughing at that, they all managed a few bites of the disastrous fried ice-cream before even Mikey admitted he might have gone a bit overboard with the… everything. Thankfully he allowed a plan B, which consisted of a dozen packages of instant noodles. That didn't stop him from eating everyone else's leftovers though.
"I mean, I can't let it go to waste," he mumbled through a mouthful.
While he gobbled down his own masterpiece's shredded, burnt remains, Mikey retold his and Donnie's encounter with the ghost the previous night for April and Karai, narrating every detail and then some. More than once, Donnie felt obligated to debunk a few exaggerations.
As Mikey yammered on, Donnie managed to catch April's eye. She gave him the tiniest of hidden smirks that made him feel as though the noodles in his stomach had just come alive. None of the others knew their plans to borrow Hachisu's mystery object for a little paranormal investigation.
Donnie peeked over at Leo, fearing he might have seen the exchange, but his brother's watchful eye was on Karai. Karai, however, had been as casual as ever the entire meal, if a tad less chatty than usual, although he couldn't say that was a weird thing. It was hard to tell with Karai, as she was a renowned master of deception.
Eventually dinner—if it even deserved that qualification—was adjourned. As they evacuated the kitchen and Raph headed out to patrol with Casey, skateboard under his arm, Donnie exchanged a meaningful look with April. She cocked her head towards the lab as confirmation.
But knowing April was sleeping over, Karai intercepted them just as they were heading out the kitchen to 'kidnap her' for a girls' night. And because Mikey was totally against labels, he automatically latched onto that plan like a bag of bolts to a neodymium magnet.
Donnie had to click his tongue at the slight delay of his and April's plans, but smiled, happy enough to see Karai in a better mood and confidently leading the trio to her room.
"I guess I have no choice," April said aloud, glancing back at Donnie.
He laughed silently, and shot her a covert wink. As she was being dragged away, April winked back with the tiniest of hidden smirks that made his insides tingle eagerly.
In the ninety-three minutes that April was Karai's captive, Donnie had time to prepare his cot, set up a nice ghost-hunting mini-lab, and even take a stimulating, near-scalding shower. He got out just in time to let in the first of a line of ninjas in need of a toilet. Maybe he should start thinking about setting up a second bathroom, like Raph had so kindly suggested about a bazillion times...
For a couple of minutes, Donnie hung around in the common room to snoop, in case the Lotus brought interesting news. But the ninjas had arrived tired and empty-handed, and did little other than say konichiwa and keep the bathroom busy for a while.
Perfect.
Back in his lab, and with some time to spare, he decided to give the portal's circuits, which April had helped him solder earlier, a dry run with a test battery. He plugged it in, released the charge, and the portal lit up like a neon lamp. Booyakasha, he thought with a smile, sitting back to gloat over a work well done: the circuits were good to go.
"Cool! Pimp my portal device," a voice said a few steps behind him: April's voice. Finally!
Donnie laughed as he unplugged the device, putting an end to the light show. "Actually, the crystals do that."
But when he looked up at the voice, he had to do a double take to bypass a mental hiccup, as for a fraction of a second he didn't recognize the person standing at the threshold. She looked like an alternate version of April from some parallel universe where she'd been raised in 'the hood'.
She was wearing everything Donnie had never seen her wear: a black, baggy T-Shirt with the words "Ninjas do it in the Dark" in bright red, imitating kanji, and patterned boxer shorts that looked like they'd been stolen from an 8-year-old boy's pajamas. Also, her hair was down, except for a french braid on the side of her head showing off the purple streak.
"Wow," he said, his voice breaking a little. He was a bit confused as to how to react, because the relaxed tom-boyishness of the gettup was weirdly revealing and… kinda nice? "Uh, is that you, April? Did you and Karai fuse or something?"
She snorted, moving closer. "Something. I didn't have my pajamas here since I didn't stop by my place, so Karai let me borrow some clothes. But it was a trap," she added glumly, holding up her spread fingers and showing off metallic, bright yellow, nail polish like she had been marked by the enemy. "I got off easy. They wanted to do full makeup on me, but I put my foot down. I did not feel like washing my face again."
Indeed, her face was makeup free now, her lashes and eyebrows no longer dark, but the same color of her hair—a rare and wonderful sight, as she was always very self-conscious about anyone seeing her without her mascara on. Kind of like how Raph rarely came out of his room without his mask.
"Karai, on the other hand, went all out," April went on. "I'm a little sorry to say she taught Mikey a thing or two… You might want to lock your rooms at night."
But Donnie was still stuck in his own wonderings, basking in the way her hair cascaded down her shoulders, silky and orange like a gentle candle flame, and the pleasing combination of orange with the aqua in her eyes. He never understood why she didn't like her natural lashes. They gave her a kind of magical look that he found fascinating—mystical almost—the way they were near invisible, but shone bright copper in direct light. Her features looked softer like this, fading in and out of view depending on the angle, like a mirage, a fairy creature.
"Looks awesome," he blurted out, every brain cell now concentrated on not letting his jaw hang open.
"What, the nailpolish?"
Donnie blanched at April's raised brow, realizing he had pretty much spoken in response to his own inner musings. His jaw hung open.
"Just… everything, I guess. Black suits you," he said, almost certain the pounding of his heart would affect his voice if he wasn't careful.
She chuckled. "Black goes with everything anyway."
Why was he getting flustered? She had done the opposite of dressing up: she had actually dressed down!
He needed to change the subject quick before he started stuttering again. Setting those questions aside for the time being, he swivelled in his chair to face his computer and swallowed hard once he was sure his mighty adam's apple was out of view.
Let's see. What was he doing here again?
"I've been... doing some research."
"On the ghost?"
He felt a touch on his shoulder: her hand.
"...yeah."
He had looked at her for barely a second, but the image remained burned in his mind: pale, freckled thighs, peeking at him from underneath those short shorts. He reprimanded himself and willed his mind to focus. Ghosts. Portals. Go!
"Oh, hello. What's he for?" April said before Donnie could start, and he almost jumped at her voice. She was leaning in beside him, smiling at the little spy-roach that was standing by next to the computer mouse, as though listening in to their conversation.
"Ah, yes," Donnie said, thankful for the distraction. "I thought we could wait until Hachisu enters REM sleep, so she'll be harder to wake up. He," Donnie pointed at the roach, "is going to help us keep watch from up close, maybe even take a look at whatever she's hiding beforehand."
"Good idea. We could send him out right now. The Lotus are getting ready for bed," she said, pointing a thumb at the lab entrance.
With an agreeing nod, he picked up the bug with the micro-camera, tapped its tiny head with the tip of his finger, and set him down on the floor. The roach scurried away and disappeared under the door.
Donnie rolled back to his PC, pressed some keys and pop: roach vision. April leaned closer, and they both watched as the common room flew past, almost unrecognizable from an insect's perspective. Everything always seemed huge from down there. The roach dodged a few giant feet towards the end of the room and hid under the weapons rack that the Lotus had borrowed.
From there they could see the ninjas set up their futons and sleeping bags on the living room floor. Donnie gave the little guy a nudge with the up-key and let him position near Hachisu's side of the camp. The Lotus leader turned around—looking from this angle as though she'd just fallen from the beanstalk—and for a moment they saw something in her hand as she knelt by her sleeping bag.
"There! It's gotta be inside that box," April said, whispering as though they were really there, and pointed at the little wooden box now set on the floor next to the sleeping bag. It looked like Hachisu wanted it close while she slept.
Donnie nodded, squinting. There was no way of telling what was inside from there.
Finally Hachisu laid down, ready to go to sleep.
"There you go. Now we wait," Donnie said.
"Alright. Any more ideas?"
Donnie pushed back from the desk. "Well, I've set up some equipment."
For the next few minutes he walked her through all the things he had already researched and prepared while she was doing time in Karai's room. The new ghost hunting corner of the lab consisted of a digital camera on a tripod equipped with a heat sensor, three lamps shining down on the desk for proper lighting, a second videotape camera on the wall to capture a wider angle, and last but not least, an EM meter and a cassette tape recorder.
Egon Spengler would be proud.
They had plenty of time before Hachisu fell asleep, so they assumed maximum-productivity positions—side-by-side at their respective computers—and summed up what they knew about this ghost so far.
It wasn't much. For one, they still didn't know that she was an onryō, because it had yet to prove dangerous. He discussed this at length with April, who was surprisingly ghost-savvy, being the horror movie enthusiast that she was.
"She could be something like a yuan gui; not necessarily dangerous, just grieving," she suggested.
"Could be," he agreed, pleased to see they were on the same wavelength.
It had to have some sort of link to Hachisu, that much they knew. If everything went well, they would soon be able to examine the possessed object up close, whatever it was. Donnie expected to find a red Chinese pendant, like the one Future Donatello had mentioned. "Make sure it's safe," he had said, which was reasonably troubling.
"And listen to this." April pointed at her laptop. "In Thai folklore, a phi tai thong klom is the ghost of a woman that passed away while pregnant."
"Well, those injuries on her torso were different from that, they looked like cuts. But I suppose that doesn't mean she couldn't still be—" He paused. April's eyes had glinted unnaturally for a moment. He turned, a little startled, only to find that she had, at some point, put on a pair of glasses.
"Oh!" he exclaimed.
"What?" she said with a tinge of threat in her voice. She was intently looking at him out of the corner of her eye as if she didn't want to be seen from the front.
"Nothing," he said, but couldn't keep serious for the life of him. Those glasses were not the most flattering of things: black, thick-rimmed cat-eyes. He was pretty sure she must have inherited them from her grandmother. He chuckled. "I mean, it's just that I haven't seen you in those since… probably that time you were living in the lair."
She gave him a sour smirk, taking the specs off to peer at them. "I hate these things. I took my contacts off because they were starting to fuse to my corneas, and I didn't bring any spares. I thought I'd be able to see fine, but now my eyes resent me," she explained with a wince, blinking hard a few times. "I guess I'm blinder than I thought." She gave the glasses one last nasty scowl before putting them back on.
"You know, you shouldn't be without your lenses, or your glasses," Donnie said in a gentle scolding, unable to help himself. "Straining your eyes like that is only going to increase your prescription."
"I know," she droned through a tired sigh. "I actually used to wear them all the time, before I met you guys—until I saw my picture for the high school card."
"What was wrong about it?" Donnie asked curiously.
"It was so hideous that I had an epiphany." She shivered.
"Hideous?" Donnie blew a raspberry and added, quite sincerely, "Come on, that's impossible." With another covert once-over at her current get-up, he knew she could dress in a garbage bag and he'd still find her beautiful.
A crooked, unbelieving smile, which the glasses only improved, was her reaction. "Wanna bet?" She reached down for her backpack and retrieved her wallet. "No laughing, okay?" she warned, holding a card to her shirt so that he couldn't see the front side yet.
"'Kay." He shrugged, intrigued to see whatever could make April ugly—especially since so far that evening several things had already tried and failed.
And when she flipped the card, he gawked, and plucked it from her fingers to look at the picture up close.
Donnie had never seen anything so wonderful. A slightly younger April was smiling at him—no, grinning, mouth stretched from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat, unabashedly showing off the metal on her teeth. Her glasses augmented her eyes to cartoonish proportions. "Holy Toledo!"
"Hey!" April exclaimed with a dramatic look of betrayal.
"I'm not laughing!" Donnie retorted, though his voice came out a tad too high pitched.
"Then what do you call that stupid grin on your face?" she demanded, hands on her hips.
"I'm sorry, I can't stop looking at it!" Donnie couldn't hide his glee if he wanted to—not that he wanted to—and he couldn't take his eyes off the picture, not even at April's angry growls. "It's amazing! Look at that smile. So uninhibited. So free..."
"Alright, give it back." April tried to snatch the card back, but Donnie wasn't done marvelling at it.
He pretended not to notice her, standing and stretching his arm so she couldn't reach it. "I'm gonna enlarge this and I'm gonna hang it where I can look at it every day," he said, already heading for his scanner.
April rushed after him. "Don't you dare, oh my God!" She pulled his arm, but Donnie kept moving, so that her stocking feet skidded on the floor. But she had learned a thing or two from Splinter's ninja training—Donnie liked to think he'd played a part as well—and suddenly his arms were twisted behind his shell. A pretty well-executed lock...
"Please, I really like it!" he yelped, half from pain, but half from laughter as well; card still gripped in his crooked fingers.
"Donatello, I swear to God!"
"Ah! Okay, okay!" He gave up in between giggles, calculating that her anger could soon turn real. When she let go of him, he reluctantly handed her the card back with a naughty chuckle and a soothing roll of his shoulders.
She yanked it away from him, retreating so he wouldn't take it again, and glared down at the card with a grimace. "I should just burn this."
"No!" he cried, arms out in a pleading gesture. "I really do like it!" Somehow he doubted she would believe that now, but it was true!
She recoiled with nervous laughter, and hurriedly put the card away, stuffing the wallet back in her backpack.
Donnie waved a hand feigning disappointment and returned to his seat. "Too bad, you know? I think they look great on you."
"You would. You nerd," she grumbled, plopping back down on her chair next to him.
He put on an offended face. "Hey, you're the four-eyes. Who's the nerd here?"
She scoffed. "Well, if you like 'em so much, why don't you wear them?" And then she took her glasses off again to shove them at him.
"Okay." He shrugged, happily accepting the challenge.
The glasses barely fit his head, and he had to gently push them on, careful not to break the hinges. Even then, since he lacked the nose necessary to hold them in place, they immediately began to slide down his snout. He pushed them up with one finger, then crossed his arms at April. "See? Hot."
"That is kind of adorable," April said, and her broad smile lit a bonfire in his belly.
Feeling brave, Donnie leaned forward and slid the glasses down just under his eyes, peering over them at April. He put on a grave, rattling voice. "Don't you mean… irresistible?"
Here's where Donnie expected April to scoff and roll her eyes, and that would be where the games ended. Actually, on a normal day they would've ended a lot sooner.
But April didn't scoff. She didn't roll her eyes. She looked at him through her lashes, and did a little shimmy with her shoulders.
"Clearly that's what I meant," she said, and her voice, too, was a bit deeper.
Wait, what? Donnie's inner voice exclaimed, stupefied, because that hadn't been sarcasm. At least… at least it didn't sound like sarcasm. April was actually playing along. She was… flirting. Wasn't she?
Donnie's brain short-circuited, and his thoughts screeched to a halt. He couldn't say or do anything other than stare. Even when he remembered to breathe again, he stared. April was still looking at him as well, not saying a word. And by Merlin's beard, she was blushing. He wasn't just seeing things. In her face there was a look he couldn't decipher, but she was biting her lip and her cheeks were flushed bright pink.
However, before he could collect himself, he noticed her brow starting to furrow. All of a sudden her eyes were downcast, her expression no longer cocky or flirty, but troubled. Just like that, the moment was lost.
He panicked a little, and immediately made to backpedal, starting with an emergency throat clearing.
"Wow, these are giving me a headache," he said quickly, taking the glasses off, and rubbed his eyes, if only to have something to do instead of continuing to sit stupidly still like a gargoyle.
April accepted her glasses back, and she put them on with a tiny smile. "Yeah, at least one of us should keep a clear head."
"That still bothering you?" he asked as casually as he was capable.
There was still a little wrinkle in her brow as she shrugged. "It's tolerable. Looks like the pain killers worked."
"Good!"
And then there was silence again. They both fidgeted awkwardly. April sighed loudly, and with a weird nod she turned back to her laptop, muttering something like "let's see" as though she'd found something truly promising in that article. Donnie started stacking papers and pointlessly aligning them to the table's edge. Meanwhile one question boomed deafeningly in his head: what did it mean?
Normally it was Donnie's job to be hopelessly awkward. But what was that? That had never happened before! April running out of words, being the first to look away? Could it be?
His analytical mind was tempted to continue flirting some more, as a sort of experiment, and see what she made of it. But he thought better, remembering her fleeting look of distress, which also made this all the more confusing.
And so he sat there, guts twisting nauseatingly as he looked blankly at the articles on his screen, wondering and throwing questions at the void until they were saved by the bell: April's phone chimed and she rushed to pick it up.
"Just my dad. He wants to know how my homework is going," she said, looking at her phone with a sigh. "I guess I better get to it. I'll have to double time if I want to have something to show for tonight."
"Yeah. It's gotten pretty late," Donnie agreed, struggling to find an adequate tone of voice.
"Girls' night took longer than expected." She laughed, seemingly shy, but at this point Donnie didn't know how to interpret her anymore.
Well, when have I ever?
"Need some help?" he offered.
"Actually, I've gotten pretty good at these," she replied kindly, holding up her Algebra book. "Thanks to you."
Donnie's heart did a little optimistic hop at her smile. She wasn't angry at him, she didn't even seem annoyed. There was something going on in her mind, but it was different. All this was different, somehow. Even after she'd turned her face, chin tucked into her collar, he could still see her ear was a bright pink against the orange and purple of the braid.
There was movement in his peripheral vision: something on roach cam. April noticed it too, and they both turned to see Hachisu reach out from underneath her covers for the little wooden box. They saw her pick it up as if it were made of the finest porcelain, and hold it gingerly in her hands, the gravest expression on her face. Her pupils were dilated in the darkness of the common room, and coupled with the greenish tint of the night-vision, it made her face look all the more ghostly.
They watched expectantly, as for a minute it looked like she would open it, which would reveal whatever was inside.
But after a few seconds of hesitation, she stretched her arm again and left the box in the exact same spot, with the tiny clamp facing her pillow. And then she closed her eyes.
Donnie and April shrugged at each other before getting back to work.
After a while, the guys started dropping by to say goodnight. Leo was first to go to sleep, as usual, trying to get Mikey to do the same on the way. Splinter tried to do his part and recommended Donnie and April not to stay up too late. Lastly, Raph got back from his skate-date with Casey and they heard him tramp about, closing his door none too gently without saying goodnight.
"How's Hachisu doing?" April asked in a bored monotone not for the first time. She'd been done with her homework for awhile now, and had since moved to join Donnie on the cot, laptop over her crossed legs. The research for possessed objects was turning out to be quite a challenge, as most of what was posted online was sensationalist garbage, creepy pasta, or questionable testimonies. When there was nothing else to research, they'd taken out their respective sketchbooks. When real exhaustion started kicking in, they'd resorted to looking at animal memes in a desperate effort to keep their eyes open.
"She's still awake. I think she might have insomnia." Donnie moaned, glancing at the roach cam window on his tablet, where he saw Hachisu sigh and turn in her futon. "You know, maybe you should go to bed and I'll wake you when it's time."
"No way." Her protest was drowned in an epic yawn. But even though her eyes were watery with sleep, she stubbornly went back to typing away on her laptop. "Maybe I'll try researching some more, the memes aren't working."
The next time he looked, however, he found her fast asleep, head leaning back against the wall, her breathing deep. He gave a silent chuckle.
Putting his ninja skills to work, Donnie stealthily took the laptop from her and set it on the desk, then very slowly removed her glasses too.
And then… Well, he allowed himself a moment, and let his gaze be caught by April's gravity. His attention travelled across her speckled face, around the sturdy line of her jaw, down her pale arms to her petite hands. Her legs were even paler, and a little spindly. But months of hard training were visible on the definition of her muscles, the skin marred by a few bruises and old scars. April had always had the mind of a fighter, but now she was acquiring the body to match. And he was so proud of her.
He wistfully sighed, then carefully pulled the cot's blanket over her. It hurt how much he loved her. It physically hurt.
For the longest time he had been preparing himself to let her go. Finally he was getting to a point where he was ready to accept that this was all there would be. Raph, and pretty much everybody else, had made it clear from the start: he had no chance with her. None.
But there was something new and intriguing about the way April looked at him now. These... moments. Something had changed, for sure. He just wasn't sure what. And he just couldn't bring himself to forget about it; to forget about her.
With a thoughtful glance back at the drawer containing April's unfinished armor, he wondered: maybe he had a chance. His hopes had been rekindled, even when a part of him knew he was probably setting himself up for more disappointment.
But his mind was made up.
He resolved to try. Not now, but soon, when the moment was right. He had no idea what he planned to do, or what he could ever say to her. But at least meanwhile he could test out his hypothesis.
The prospect made him slightly queasy.
April sighed in her sleep, and her mouth fell open. Donnie grinned to himself, reminded of her infamous high school card picture. He decided to make it his personal goal to see her smile like that again.
Ooh boy, we can't wait to show you next chapter!
So what did you think of these two nerds? And would you dare a bite of that delicious Fried Ice Cream á la Mikey?
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