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It starts with an offhand remark:
“Might be nice,” Casey says. Raph glances up from the magazine he’s thumbing through when Casey doesn’t follow that thought up with anything else.
“What?”
The human gestures with the remote, and Raph follows his gaze back to the T.V., where what looks like a romcom is playing out on screen. An inappropriately pretty couple are sitting across from each other over a candlelit dinner, dressed to the nines, and holding hands on the tabletop, and sipping champagne from crystal wine glasses.
“What?” Raph says again, stupidly. Casey doesn’t look at him—just shrugs, and starts flipping through channels again.
“Forget it.”
Raph, unfortunately for everyone, does not forget it.
When Mike laughs, it’s totally without cruelty.
“You two have been together forever,” he says, thoroughly amused. “What, two years now? I can’t believe you’re here for dating advice.”
Raph would snap at him for not taking this seriously, except that he put his comic aside already, and he’s sitting up from his comfortable-looking nest of blankets and pillows, and giving Raph his undivided attention.
It’s easy to talk to Mikey about the same things Raph could never bring up around Donnie, would rather die than tell Leo. Mikey has mellowed over the years, impossible empathy and frantic energy meeting somewhere in the middle and producing a kindhearted young adult where an overexcited child used to be; but the inherent understanding of Raph that’s always been Mike’s forte is still there, thank god.
“You weren’t this nervous when your anniversary rolled around last year,” Mikey continues. “What’d you do then?”
“Broke into an amusement park,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Climbed to the top of the Ferris Wheel, and drank like a hundred shitty wine coolers.” Enough to get tipsy, enough that everything felt loose and warm and easy; and then they both almost died three times each climbing back down to solid ground, laughing so hard at every close call they kept losing their grips. Raph bites back a smile at the memory.
“Wow,” Mikey says, and it’s impossible to decipher his tone. “Yeah, that sounds like a real good time.”
It was. Raph still has some pictures on his phone. Most of them are motion blurred and hard to make sense of, but the whole night was like that. This whole thing he has with Casey is like that. Fast and fun and frenzied, spur of the moment and different all the time, and the way their pictures always suck because they never want to sit still kind of sums up the whole of everything they are. And Raph’s okay with that.
He thought Casey was, too.
“So why switch it up?” Mike’s question brings him back, and he glances up into smart blue eyes. “I mean, a fancy date sounds nice and all, but it doesn’t sound very you.”
Raph tugs on one of his mask tails, frustrated with his inability to put it to words. The way Casey looked, last night, watching a movie about two people in love who could be in love out where other people could see. Not ducking around corners or hiding in the shadows or dodging police. Not waiting until after hours, when everyone else is gone and it’s safe to sneak inside.
“I just want to try,” he finally says. Even though he doesn’t, really.
Because after everything Casey has put himself through in the name of dating a mutant ninja turtle (war and aliens and outer space, to name a few things) Raph can give him this.
By the time Casey shows up, Raph is ready.
The table is set, dishware arranged painstakingly over a cream-colored tablecloth, and Mikey and his boyfriend have disappeared. The candles are lit, the whole place smells like garlic and lasagna, and Raph squares his shoulders as he opens the door.
Casey stands in the hall, fist still raised to knock again. “Uh,” he says eloquently. Raph stands back to let him in.
Mikey must have got to him, even though Raph stayed pretty vague on the phone, because Casey’s in jeans that aren’t ripped or faded and the spraypaint-stained hoodie is nowhere to be found. For Casey Jones, the wrinkled button-down shirt and open sweater combo he has on instead is as good as a three-piece suit by normal person standards.
He also has. Flowers. Raph wants to die, just a little. Similarly, Casey shoves the bouquet into his green hands like the plastic wrapping burns.
So Casey’s equally weirded out. At least there’s that. But it’s a cold comfort, because this whole stupid thing is Casey’s fault in the first place, and Raph half wants to punch him just to make things feel normal again.
…The flowers are okay, Raph hazards. What’s he supposed to do with them?
“So… We’re doing this,” Casey says, slowly, taking in the Romantic Setup™ of the borrowed apartment with round amber eyes. “That’s cool, I mean—I’m down for whatever, dude, if this is the kinda thing you want to—”
“Hold the damn phone.” Raph stares at him. “This is what you want to do.”
“Okay, no. No. When did I—why would I—”
“The other night! You were having an emotion over that movie, with the people dating, you said it’d be nice to try—”
“Oh my god. You—they were eating tiramisu, Raph. I wanted to try the tiramisu.”
Honestly, that makes a lot more sense than literally anything else does. They wait a beat, studying each other across the small pocket of space uncertainty and unfamiliar ground left between them. Then, springing into action simultaneously, Raph trashes the flowers and Casey claws his way out of the sweater like it did something to offend him personally.
“I can think of five other places to be right now,” he offers, and Raph gestures expansively for him to lead the way to anywhere else.
Mike laughs at his weak explanation over the phone for like five minutes solid, and Raph can hear Woody in the background, also laughing. He threatens to hang up on them, but he doesn’t really mean it.
“You guys are the worst,” Mikey says cheerfully, happy for him, Raph can tell. “Glad it worked out. Tell Case they sell tiramisu at like, every supermarket that exists. Please don’t commit any felonies on your quest for romance.”
Casey rolls his eyes when Raph relays the pertinent parts of the message, sitting on the edge of a rooftop with one leg dangling over the side. It’s dark out, but the city is bright at night, and Raph aims his phone at him to take a picture.
The result is a little crooked, a little grainy, out of focus. A familiar silhouette back-lit by city lights, its features blurred and fuzzy. Raph saves it with the rest and puts his phone away.
Casey tastes like the cheap pizza and flat beer they had for dinner, and his lip is split from the fight they found just around the corner from Woody’s place when they left. His hands are cold, his mouth is warm.
The whole thing is pretty much perfect, so Raph kisses him again.