A/N: my entire job in the tmnt fandom is writing woody into every au under the sun

someone has to do it

A knock on the door is an uncommon occurrence, and very rarely good news. It echoes through the warehouse-like meeting place of the two-man club, and Mikey puts down his radio to look at Leo, who sits across the table cleaning ash off the nicer of their two cameras, in consternation.

"We already paid the fee this month, didn't we?" Mikey asks, standing slowly. "And there hasn't been any property damage in weeks. We've been super under-radar, right?"

"Don't borrow trouble," Leo says calmly, gesturing for the door. "It could just be someone who got lost."

Mikey doubts that. The student committee tucked their club into the farthest corner of campus, making them all but inaccessible to anyone who wasn't up for a half-mile hike uphill from everything else.

The knock comes again, a little hesitant this time, and Mikey hops up the steps to the door and calls, "It opens out, hang back a bit."

"Oh! Gotcha!" an unfamiliar voice says, and Mikey shoves open the ancient door with curiosity well in the front of his mind.

He's met with smiling green eyes and a grin to match them, all but buried under a mop of tumbled yellow curls. The friendly-faced young man looks about his age and several inches taller, thin and long-limbed the way Donnie used to be.

"Hey," he says, offering a hand. "I'm Woodrow, but you can call me Woody."

"Michelangelo," Mikey replies, warming to the other man already as he shakes his hand, "and any shorter variation is fine by me. So what are you doing way out here? You're not lost, are you?"

"Man, I hope not. This is the paranormal society, right? I couldn't find your membership application online, so I thought I'd drop by for a copy. It took me almost an hour to find this place. You're a pretty well-kept secret, huh?"

Mikey does his best not to look as stupefied as he feels.

"Uh," he says eloquently, "wait a sec. You want to join the club?"

"Definitely," Woody replies. "We had a similar club at my old school, but it was mostly just watching horror movies and looking up spooky EVPs on Youtube, y'know? I mean, it was fun, but - not really what I was going for."

Standing back to let him in, Mikey says, "So you just transferred here?"

"Sure did. I live with my uncle. We moved from Manhattan to be closer to his sister and her kids. She's going through an ugly divorce and she could use the extra help." Woody smiles at Leo, lifting a hand in greeting and trading introductions before he goes on. "I was going to a Visual Arts school before, but the admissions counselor told me my credits would transfer no problem, so I could finish my film degree here. Tuition is way cheaper, so I'm down with that."

He looks around their club room as he talks. Mikey can't help waiting for condescension or the always-fun, super-incredulous "are you guys for real?" but it never comes. Woody's face stays open and eager, eyes catching on the equipment on their listing table the way of a sticky-fingered kid in a candy store.

Mikey likes this guy.

"We'd be happy to have you, obviously," he says, and laughs when Woody's face lights up. "What, you were worried?"

"Well, a little!" Woody drops his bookbag on a chair and runs a hand through his hair, relieved enough now that he must have been nervous. "I mean, I'll be real, I got a few chuckles when I asked around about you guys. And half the people I talked to didn't even know there was a paranormal society here. Maybe if that's all I had to go on, I'd be a little iffy."

He smiles, and points at Mikey.

"But I found a subforum online, local ghost stuff. People with the same problem all saying the same thing. Some scrawny college kid showed up and helped them, and left without leaving a name. But this city isn't that big, y'know, and there aren't a lot of dudes that look like you and do what you do. You weren't hard to find."

Leo is smiling, a soft, full thing he directs at his hands, probably rightly guessing that Mikey wouldn't fully appreciate it at the moment.

"A forum?" Mikey says weakly. "Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack." Woody looks fond, somehow, for all that they only met about a minute ago. "So, sure, you might be a bit of a joke around campus, and it looks like you get, like, negative funding, but - " He shoves his hands into his pockets, and shrugs, and says around a grin, "You're the real deal. How many people can say that?"

Mikey sinks into his chair, and promptly buries his face in the scorched tabletop.

"So is there a membership fee?" Woody asks cheerfully, somewhere above his head.

"Nothing like that," Leo replies, sounding amused. "We'll get you a club shirt if you're interested, and add you to the official roster online. Meetings are daily, but there's no attendance requirement. We're actually going to check out a possible passive haunting next weekend, which is plenty of time to get you familiar with all the equipment."

"Nice. I have a Canon at home that I would swear by. Want me to bring it in?"

"Not if you're that attached to it," Mikey interjects without lifting his head. "We lose a lot of gear."

"Duly noted," Woody says, dropping into the chair next to his. "Is it dangerous?"

"It can be," Leo says honestly, "but we're always careful. And Mike usually takes the risky jobs by himself without telling me, because he's the worst club president in the entire world."

"Ouch?" Mikey sits up to look at him, wounded. "Tell me how you really feel, Leo."

Ignoring him, Mikey's best friend goes on without missing a beat. "Fifty percent of our time is going to be spent either corralling him or running damage control when his brother finds out what we've been doing with our free time."

Woody grins. "Protective, huh?"

"Almost to a fault," Leo says dryly. "But you probably won't see him much, so I wouldn't worry about it."

Considering he died a year ago, neither Leo or Mikey add aloud.

"I do a lot of babysitting for my aunt, so I think I'm probably overqualified to keep an eye on Mikester, here." Mikey squawks in indignation and Leo chokes on a laugh, and Woody pushes his sleeves up, reaching across the table for one of the battered cameras. "Mind if I help with some of these?"

It takes two days and most of a third afternoon for Woody to become a regular fixture in Mikey's life. He's hard-working and immensely likable, and ignores Raph's bark and bluster when he comes around with an unflappable ease that blows Mikey's mind.

It takes three months after that for Mikey to work up the courage to introduce him to his always-absent brother. Woody doesn't move for several minutes and when he does, for some reason, it's only to stand and pull Mikey into a hug.

Within a year, Woody is as comfortable with cramming into Mikey's wheezing double-bed as Leo is. His arm is warm across Mikey's waist, his heartbeat is familiar, and Donnie watches over them both with a fond smile.

And Woody laughs one day, bright and uncontrived, as they wait outside a burning shack for Leo to bring around Mikey's Jeep. They're covered in dirt and soot and some sort of clear, ectoplasmic slime that is a very new development and one Mikey doesn't want to think about for too long until he's had a very hot shower, and Woody slings an arm around Mikey's shoulders.

"Man," he says, "I'm glad I'm here."