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klunkcat · 1 month ago

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kitchen counters

part of the "live to let you shine" collection

rise of the tmnt word count: 2.7k

archer au belongs to @goodlucktai but they've been more than kind and let all of us expand the larger universe with them on this journey. Check out the link for future instalments by my lovely collab partners.

Art in this chapter is by the lovely @soldrawss

it's a delight and an honor to play in this sandbox with you all <3 read on ao3

He got up. He started the coffee machine, making sure to put the exact scoops needed and enough leftovers for an eventual third cup if it was that kind of day. It always was that kind of day. Today he was thinking he’d make avocado toast for breakfast. April had brought a bag of avocados yesterday, sometimes the variety was more effective than even a third coffee.

Sometimes his brothers almost smiled.

There were motions to this sort of thing. You made things with your hands to keep them from shaking, you washed blankets and folded them on empty couches. You kept the TV on playing old movies just to pretend it wasn’t silent.

He’s been moving in the same path for long enough to be an expert. No one notices. He doesn’t need them to notice.

The coffee pot is full, the kitchen is warm. If he’s alone then he’s alone and finding tasks to be busy with. To keep his hands moving.

“Hi,” A voice greets him. Mikey blinks up, he’d been making toast, probably; half unconsciously. A familiar dotted face stares back, impassive and steady.

Giorgio, the last little light. It pulls a smile on his cheeks from some tired place within himself that’s still curved comfortable and safe. “Hi sweet kid, want some breakfast?”

Gio settles himself against the counter, arms crossed and wide eyed. He nods slowly.

It’s one of those mornings again— he’s aware of the way the silence clings to the bones of this place, shaves it cold and hollow with memories no one wants to think on. There’s no movement down the hall to Donnie’s lab, but the door is shut fast and firm. The wide open spaces where the skate ramp had once stood are stark. It’s a morning that feels haunted, except they’d all want for the haunting if they could.

“April brought groceries?” Gio asks quietly. It’s more a prompt than a genuine question.

Gio had fallen into their lives at a point where the safety net had more holes than threads to hold. He was young, had the signs of a life hard won and fought through, but he tried. Absorbed absolutely anything his family would give him, even when it was nothing at all. Dark eyes, taking in any and all of the light he could just to find himself.

It was a tragedy in three parts just to watch him thrive off wavering candlelights and embers, wandering around the halls like a detective finding hints of some past crime.

Mikey squares himself. Finds that thread left in him that’s farther and farther away every day. Gio deserves the light, he can make some for him. He can.

“She did, I’m going to introduce you to the wild world of avocado on toast today. How’s that sound?”

Gio shrugs, curiosity flickering in his dark gaze. He’d take anything any of them laid out for him like it was a gift. Mikey’s throat ached with the old wound of wishing.

“You know, it’s funny. The first time I ever got my hands on fruit like this was because of April. Hard to buy things in stores, you know?” Gio did not know, Gio grew up somewhere far away in between pages, but he tilted his head at Mikey like he understood anyways. Mikey’s grin grew stronger. “I think it was peppers. Thought it would be neat to make these stuffed ones I’d seen on TV, use up all these special spices. Man, they were good .” He turns back to the fruit in front of him, carefully and easily slicing around the pit in the center.

“Raph had two, ate them so fast I didn’t even see them go. So I thought I’d make him a third. Asked if he’d want this next one with more spice.” He shakes his head fondly. “And he just sort of squints at me, you know? He says, ‘are peppers not always spicy?’ So that’s how we found out he was allergic. The guy didn’t even stop trying to eat them after.”

Gio huffs a breath, it’s as good as an outloud laugh. The bones in Mikey’s hands feel warmer as he carefully scoops the halves of the fruit into a bowl.

He knows the version of Raph that Gio knows is… different. That he barely talks, let alone plays along. It’s another ache, another ghost. Mikey scoops out the pit from another avocado, and crushes it in with the rest.

Mikey doesn’t want the kitchen to be silent. He’s so, so tired of silence. “You want to hear a story?”

The quiet telltale noise of a kitchen chair sliding back answers his question for him, Gio props his chin up under his hand. The pilot light in Mikey’s chest flickers fondly.

There are a thousand versions of a thousand moments he could pick from, they all hurt like pressing on an open wound. Some are more like bruises, though. Some he thinks are better to hurt.

“There was this chef I knew. Had this crazy accident with mutagen, somehow instead of using it to make his cooking show more popular it made him desire eating people. Go figure.” He scoops out a portion of the spread onto a piece of toast, scraping it across as he talks. “Had a vendetta for people that told him no, funny that. He’d decided once that his whole plan would be to poison every other potential competition, which was crazy but you have to believe me when I say his pastries were actually that good.”

“Better than yours?” Gio cuts in softly.

He’s so, so grateful for the little bits of love Gio’s found here. How he radiates all of it back out so loudly in his own way. “Hah, I learned everything I know from watching him, but I will take that compliment.” He grabs two plates and slides them across the table, dragging his knuckle gently across Gio’s cheek as he goes.

“We drove Raph up the wall. ” He remembers fondly. “He was dead set on trying to teach us to handle problems, and we were distracted by how delicious these things were.”

Gio arches a brow. Mikey laughs, holding up a hand. “Survival instincts developed later.”

He sits across from the kid, who hasn’t even made a move for his toast. Dark eyes serious and trained on him like anytime Mikey talked about who they had been before. Echoes of echoes, ghosts haunting themselves.

“You wouldn’t believe it. All of us blearily goofing around and Raph panicking, trying to get us to take any part of it seriously. And our blue just walks up to a guy we needed information from, sweating up to his eyeballs and manages to charm his way almost entirely through the whole thing.”

His smile turns inwards. They’d all relied on Raph so much, then, but there’d been these moments where Leo would just… clue in to what needed to happen. Pull an answer out of thin air like he’d known it all along and was just hoping someone else would give it a shot first. He’d always seen twenty steps ahead.

Gio shifts. Reaches for his toast and takes a careful bite. Mikey pulls himself back to the present, makes sure his smile is warm and fond.

“If we’d had you back then, I’m sure you’d have thought we were all completely off our rockers. Raph would have been delighted to have a back up.”

He loves you, Mikey thinks. He does, I swear. He’d have loved to have loved you.

The kid hums, considers. “Depends.”

“On?”

Gio shrugs. “How good were these pastries?”

The kitchen is warm, the laugh that bursts from him is bright. Real, for a second, caught in this space between loss. He faults that for the way he forgets himself.

“Leo would have loved you,” he says.

The moment freezes. Ices.

Gio’s eyes are shining, but careful across from him.

He doesn’t say his name; he thinks it, a thousand times a thousand ways, but he doesn’t say it. He can feel the flinch like a wounded noise in the stillness of his home. Ghosts misplaced and unsettled.

Right.

The smile fades.

He misses the flash in Gio’s eyes.

“You know,” Mikey makes himself say, a limping version of his usual cheer strangling itself in his voice. “I think I’ll save the rest for later. Maybe when Raph and Donnie are up.”

“Right,” Gio says, softly.

Raph and Donnie are never up. Dad’s room is a black hole. April hasn’t stayed in the lair longer than saying hi in months. Ten years stretches itself long and warped across the stone floors, a shadow that never sits right.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” He says to Gio’s careful dark gaze. I’m sorry , he means. I don’t have more to give you. I’ll be better next time.

Gio shifts, scoops Mikey’s plate from in front of him. It’s okay, it means. I know. It’s plenty. This is enough.

There were motions to this sort of thing. You tried to be someone larger than yourself. You watched your family drift farther and farther away. You were never enough on your own.

The coffee pot is full, the kitchen is empty. He can’t pretend his hands don’t shake when he stops moving.

Gio didn’t need a lot of love, he thrived like a weed on the barest scraps of it; a dandelion pushing through old slabs of shattered concrete. A kid growing despite himself in the middle of a ruined family.

He should have it, though. The kind that was loud, was obvious. Didn’t need explanations or excuses, the kind that just was.

Mikey’s family did love Gio, he knew they did. It was just… All of their love had gone somewhere else. Down a rabbit hole, following a comet in the night sky. Flashfire quick and burnt up in the atmosphere. It existed, it was there, but quieter; the feeling of heat after the sun has left.

Raph sometimes brushed his hand across Gio’s head when he made the infrequent journey from the practice area to the front door. Dad called him ‘Grey’ in the same way he’d used Orange and Red and once, Blue. April had gotten into a kick of looking for all the types of food Gio had missed out on through his ambiguous years before them, roped the kid and Mikey into trying out recipes together too.

Don kept looking forward. Mikey couldn’t ask anything more of him.

The love was still there, though, because it always was. It just wasn’t always the kind that Mikey thought the kid deserved. The kind he himself had been lucky enough to know when he was younger.

You should get to be greedy, Mikey thinks, watching the kid try and fail another time to breach the threshold into Donnie’s room. You should never have to question it.

A larger lump in his throat he clears away with a harsh blink, sorry Leo, you left me pretty big shoes to fill.

“Morning,” He tries for a smile, forcing everything else back under the constant thrum of movement he’d been surviving off for ten years and four months. Gio blinks up at him, as unphased as ever by his brother's complete lack of interest.

Mikey notes it anyways, the twinge of a furrowed brow, the unsure creep of his shoulders. He stores it in the place behind his heart he’s built for all the protective instincts he doesn’t know what he can do with. He puts a hand on the kid's shoulder.

(He leans into it, of course he leans into it. Fractions of fractions of a family he should have always known.)

“Hi Mike.”

“Hi, I have something for you.”

Gio’s perpetually flat expression melts into a sidestep of curiosity. “For me?”

Mikey giggles, rubs a hand across his spotted head. “See any other little brother’s around? Yes, for you, kiddo.” He leads them towards the kitchen, to the bench stools against the counter. He tries to make it bright in here, he remembers the kitchen always being warm. The kitchen should be warm for him, too.

Gio lets himself be led easily, dark eyes wide and trusting. He is a nineteen year old built in heaps and parts and scraps off self determination, of needing to survive and surviving it alone, but sometimes it all melts into something malleable; something Mikey can almost see the shape of, reaching all the way back half their lives into the past. He tries to be a good big brother the way he learned.

He holds out a sweater, fresh from the dryer and as soft as anything with wear. Bright red and too large, the perfect shape Mikey had always thought, to feel like you were carrying home with you in your arms.

“Loved to borrow this thing when I was younger. Figured it was time to pass the mantle officially,” He tosses it to Gio.

The kid stares at it, at him. Holding it as though the sweater were a fine piece of china and not a decades worn old thing they’d all lovingly had a hand in weathering. Mikey huffs a laugh, feels his smile hang lopsided. “You’re supposed to wear it, Gogo.”

His jaw works. “Isn’t it…” he hesitates, gaze snapping over to the practice room. “Isn’t this Raphael’s?”

Raph’s, Mikey thinks with heartbreak in his hands. Raphie’s. Formalities don’t belong here, I’m sorry I can’t make you believe me.

Mikey nods. “Mhm. Said you should have it, you know. Little brother special.”

He hadn’t really, he didn’t say much of anything to anyone. He’d seen Mikey take it, though. It was as good as giving.

Gio’s dark eyes snap up to his, something overwhelmed building in his expression before he scrunches his hands and pulls the whole thing over his head. Mikey is right, it’s far too big. The bottom of it brushes his shins.

“It’s too big,” Gio says quietly.

Mikey’s not having that today, he shakes his head, stepping forwards. “No, it’s perfect. Exactly right. You’re practically as tall as me, kid, do you think I pulled this off any better when I was your age? Right of passage.” He bends, and carefully tucks the ends of the sleeves into themselves, rolling it all to Gio’s forearm.

“See? Perfect fit.”

There’s a moment— Gio looking up at him, eyes wide. Sleeves poofed and large, hood a halo around his neck— he sees a flash of blue.

“Yeah?” Gio says, flatly as he does. Mikey thinks he detects a hint of nerves in there, something akin to a kid who was once shy. He nudges Gio’s chin with his knuckle.

“Would I lie?” He grins.

He isn’t expecting the serious stare in return. “No,” Gio says, confidently. Without hesitating. Like it isn’t a hole puncher through the core of him, like he’s maybe been hearing the ‘they love you’s’ all along, like he can feel it in the hems.

The kid looks down at the sewn on pocket at the front, shoves his hands in delicately like he’s unearthing a spider web from the dew. “Thank you,” He adds, after a moment. “I won’t wreck it.”

Mikey’s heart springs another leak. “You couldn’t possibly, buddy.”

When the opportunity came, Gio jumped at the chance. Mike let him, god help him, he did. Fighting himself and the cobweb reminders of a brother he was trying to save, that it wasn’t a trade. That he wouldn’t, that losing Gio would be another piece of himself left behind.

It didn’t help that Gio had folded the sweater so nicely. That he’d pressed it into Mikey’s hands and smiled in that tiny, sweet way of his, that he was sure Raph would want it back.

He’d want you back, he’d wanted to say. He just doesn’t know it yet.

Gio looked at him like forgiveness and regret all in one.

Sometimes it goes like this:

You’re a brother, you’re a part of a whole, and then you’re a part of a fracture. Sometimes you love, and you love, and you lose anyways, and what’s left behind is still beautiful, but it looks like somewhere you’ve never been before. You miss what it was, but the places where you were are small and curved and perfect, and what you’d had to become in the remnants is not anything like it had been at all.

Sometimes someone has to go, and it’s not always you. He tries to be okay with that, he doesn’t think he does a very good job.

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #hamato michelangelo #tmnt fic #my writing #hamato giorgio #the archer au #literally have not been so inspired to write so much in forever thats the gio (and tai) effect #thank you so much for giving me n!mikey im insane forever #also the art in this actively killed me sol nailed exactly what i was going for completely im inconsolable

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