Chapter Text
Leo, for the sake of complete transparency, doesn’t hate Casey Junior.
He knows that’s what his family thinks, at least going off some stern looks he’s gotten, and he hasn’t exactly done much to defend himself in that aspect.
"Wouldn't hurt to be nicer,” Mikey told him once, when Casey’s appearance promptly left Leo leaving his breakfast half-eaten in the kitchen.
“I am nice,” Leo said, which wasn’t really true. But he’s never been outwardly unkind, and that should count for something.
“Nice-r,” Mikey repeated. Then, a little softer: “He’s a long way from home, you know?”
Leo did try being nicer after that. It never really worked out.
But the most annoying thing about Casey Junior is that he’s really hard to dislike. He’s got those big doe eyes and harsh lines that age his face in a particularly tragically-disheveled way and a lot less meat on his bones than he probably should.
Undeniable kicked-puppy charm.
Leo can imagine himself, older and rougher, loving him with ease. Finding the fingerprints their family left on him and adding his own, watching him straighten into something tall and brave, with a heart on his sleeve despite everything, like having it torn open would still be better than living hidden away.
Casey Junior is nothing like him. In his future, Leo must’ve been very proud of that.
But he’s a stranger to him now, and the way Casey looks his way makes him think he wishes he could say the same. Leo wouldn’t try to convince him otherwise.
It’s easier to steer clear from the other boy as much as possible, which is a task easier done than said.
Casey’s even more nocturnal than they are, and he doesn’t tend to linger in one place for too long. Leo’s not really sure where he’s disappearing off to, but he tells himself he’s not worried about it.
Maybe his family does. Maybe they’re all just pretending together.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
They haven’t really spoken much about it yet, mostly because it felt cruel to do so with Casey around, but his family seems to approach the boy with a bit of a softer attitude.
But Casey never told any of them the things he told Leo in that subway.
Maybe Master Leonardo would’ve done it differently. Had a bit more compassion, or at least enough bravery to cut himself off. But Leo and Master Leonardo didn’t seem to have all that much in common. Casey made that point more than clear himself.
So, as it was, Leo wasn’t really expecting to see Casey in the living room.
He wasn’t expecting to see anyone, actually, given that it was still the middle of the night, and the only reason he left his bed was his hollow stomach.
He’s always so hungry these days.
“Oh,” he says, just a moment too late, all stilted. “Hey.”
Casey’s face does a funny thing, like he was happy to see him before he thought better of it.
“Hey,” he replies, mostly kindly despite it.
They haven’t really spoken in weeks, not like this. There wasn’t really that much avoiding to be had when Mikey set his mind on a ‘family dinner’, but the last time they’ve been left alone was the worst day of Leo’s life, and the memory only turns more bitter the more he lets it linger.
Casey never apologized for what he said that day, which is probably more than fair.
Leo never apologized for the portal. He doesn’t think he ever will.
But it leaves behind something rough and unspoken, always lingering in the stiff air around them. Leo doesn’t know what he could say to make it go away.
Quietly, Casey turns back to the couch, fiddling with a bag – lying spilled open across it. Leo eyes it for a moment. It might be Raph’s, judging by the sheer size.
“You’re packing.”
It comes out more as a statement than a question, all wrong and cold, but Casey doesn’t seem bothered. Or more so – doesn’t seem bothered about this one specific thing. Just a million others.
“Yeah, I mean… So are you,” Casey replies in that odd tone that always leaves Leo wondering if he’s joking or not. It reminds him of Donnie, in a way he’d rather not wonder too much about. “Sorry. I mean, I think it’d be weird for me to stay here.”
Leo thinks so, too.
That’s mean and awful, and he doesn’t really mean it, and he hopes only some of it spills onto his face before he manages to pull it back. He’s gotten really awful at it, like there are more emotions in him now than he’s able to hold in.
Casey doesn’t say anything about it, but Leo’s not yet rusty enough to think he didn’t notice.
“We’re not, like, kicking you out, dude,” Leo says, because that at least is true.
Being around Casey makes something in his chest swell until he can’t breathe, and there’s something awfully bitter in every look the other boy gives him, and they’re not exactly friends, but Leo doesn’t hate him.
Casey’s flakey at best, but he’s lowered his guard in the last few weeks, and it’s nice to see him gain a bit more shape. Leo’s not cruel enough to take away the only pieces of familiarity the boy may have.
“I know.” Casey nods. It sounds honest enough.
Leo looks at his half-packed bag. It already looks too full for a simple trip.
“You got someplace in mind, then?”
For a moment, Casey looks almost sheepish. He shuffles in place, awkward and rigged, like he really needs to think about it. He’s usually open and honest, but there are some things he holds close and shares only through a tight grip.
“I guess,” he says, vague enough for Leo to wonder if that will be it, but then he turns, picking something out from the pile of things still littering the couch before handing it to Leo.
It’s a travel guidebook – a little faded and crinkled from water, old age, and whatever else they had plenty of in the future. The cover is a mostly tasteful mix of maps, pictures, and bold letters; North America at its finest. He flips it open.
It only takes Leo a moment to recognize the handwriting.
He’s seen it millions of times, but Donnie’s usually not this careful with his lettering; his hand barely keeping up with his thoughts. It looks a lot neater here, woven between faded ink.
Leo looks through the pages, quickly eyeing the text. It’s mostly just additional notes, some historical or geographical facts that weren’t in the book originally, probably because no sane person would ever care about them. It’s nerdy and very Donnie-like, and Leo has to bite down on his cheek to stop a smile.
Finally, he lands on the first page, inscribed in careful, blue ink. It tells him:
CJ,
I hope you’ll see it one day. It’s a big world out there.
- D. D.
It’s simple and plain but also awfully sentimental – something he’d expect more from Raph or Mikey. Donnie’s a sap really, but there’s usually not this much melancholy to it, and Leo has a feeling the book was less about Earth and a lot more about Casey himself.
He wonders if Casey knows it, too.
Probably not. He never left The Resistance after all.
“Uncle used to tell me a lot of things about the world. What it was like,” Casey says, sounding a little embarrassed about it. He must’ve taken the look on Leo’s face for something else entirely. “I guess I want to see what all the fuss was about.”
“See the world and all that?” Leo says, turning up his tone into something more playful.
“Right. See the world. And all that.” It sounds more like he’s just repeating something that’s been said to him, but he sounds awe-struck enough about it, fully buying whatever they were trying to sell.
Leo hands him back the book, arms crossed over his chest.
“You sure about it? I mean it’s… Different out there than what you’re used to.”
Casey carries a knife everywhere he goes, and loud noises tend to leave a sort of hollowed-out expression on his face, and it’s more than obvious he spent most of his youth surrounded by much older people. Leo’s never heard a sixteen-year-old use the words ‘electronic devices’ before.
“I actually talk with… Uhm. Casey. Cassandra. She wants to tag along.”
That’s surprising, but not exactly bad news.
Leo didn’t know Casey Senior well enough to even begin to fully understand her thoughts and feelings in all of this, but she seemed more than interested in CJ as a person. She never struck Leo as exactly the ‘mothering’ type, but then again, he doubts she ever did, even after becoming one. Maybe that’s what made the other boy gravitate towards her so much. Cassandra was a handful, but it was always a lot harder to think too much about yourself around her.
“What about April?” Leo asks, which makes Casey frown.
“What about her?”
Leo didn’t really think he’d hear the answer he was hoping for, but a part of him needed to make sure either way.
April tended to let her love life grow behind closed doors, but it was getting a lot harder to pretend not to notice now when they were older. She came to Leo once or twice, fishing for advice thinly veiled behind small talk, which left a rather memorable impression of the kind of desperation he knows all too well.
But he doubts she’d want to leave them this soon after everything. She should, but she probably won’t. They have that in common.
She probably thinks they have time – her and Cassandra. April was always more sensible when it came to love.
Leo supposes he can’t really judge her for it. It’s easy to lose track of time while slowly dredging through water, but it’s hell of a lot easier to break your neck while jumping headfirst.
“Nevermind.”
They linger like that for a moment, awkward and stilted, and Leo takes the time to half-lean onto one of the armchairs. His knee hurts like a bitch.
He’s also still hungry, and there’s nothing he’d like more than to pass out on the couch next to some dirty plates, but something in the way Casey fidgets with his hands makes him think he’s still thinking something over.
Finally, Leo relents:
“Yes?”
Casey flinches a little, like he got a bit too lost in his own head for a moment.
“Oh, uhm, I got something for you. Actually,” he stammers out, voice a bit hollow, like he wanted to say something else entirely.
Leo doesn’t call him out on it, but Casey cringes either way, stiffly turning to rummage through his bag. It’s pretty full, probably courtesy of Mikey and April, and it’s obvious Casey’s not really used to owning this many things. He ends up gutting it more than anything.
“Here,” he says, finally pulling out a small paper bag.
Leo weighs it in his hands. It looks a bit like tea, and it smells vaguely of lemons, and the glowy dust that floats up when he opens it leaves him only a little concerned.
“I got it in the Hidden City. It’s supposed to be good for anxiety. You’re… You… Used to drink it. Sometimes. At least, I think that’s the stuff.”
“Oh.”
You.
Leo doesn’t hate Casey, but he hates that.
Still, he considers it for a moment, but no matter how hard he tries to spin it, the gesture always comes out looking the same – simply kind.
“Thanks. The stuff Draxum gives me is making me have really weird dreams.”
Casey smiles at that, a little funny, like Leo just told a rather crude joke he knows he’s not supposed to laugh at.
“What?” Leo questions, maybe more defensively than he should. “What’s that face about?”
“Just, uhm, kind of weird to hear you say that.” He hesitates on the next part but finally lets out: “You always said you stopped dreaming after Uncle Donnie died. Complained a lot about it.”
That’s not really funny at all, in a way Leo can easily imagine himself forcing humor into. His dreams haven’t been his own since he can remember, and the thought of Donnie taking that one last petty thing away from him before he goes feels strangely karmic. Very much his style.
Almost too much.
“Maybe I didn’t want to tell you what I was dreaming about.”
That’s too honest, and he knows it even before the words fully leave him. He’s not really sure which one of them knows Master Leonardo better – Casey or himself. But he doesn’t need the other boy to realize which one he thinks it is.
Casey doesn’t say anything for a moment, like he’s considering much of the same, but he smiles at the end, like the idea led him someplace else entirely.
“Maybe. I think you lied to me a lot.”
Leo might know something about Master Leonardo, but he doesn’t know Casey Jones at all.
“Right,” he says simply, tossing the small bag onto the chair.
The picture of Master Leonardo that Casey paints has a lot of cracks in it, but it’s the sort the boy seems to recount fondly still, like he never had any reason to question the good intent behind it. Leo doesn’t usually seem to be given the same grace.
It all makes his mind stray in strange directions.
He wonders if he would get along with a younger Splinter. Younger, arrogant, full of false confidence that fits him like cheaply made clothes.
Probably not.
“I also…” Casey starts quickly, snapping Leo’s attention back up. “Um. Oh, this is gonna sound really weird.”
He says that a lot. Usually it doesn’t feel like enough of a warning for what comes out of his mouth half the time, but Leo appreciates it either way.
“Hit me,” he jokes.
Casey doesn’t smile, but he does shake his head a little, like he’s trying to gather his thoughts. He reaches up a hand to scratch at his cheek before finally spits it out, like it’s been eating away at him all this time, and now he’s able to rip its teeth clean off.
“I guess I wanted to… Say goodbye. I never really got the chance to.”
That punches the next breath out of Leo.
Casey’s grief was a quiet, private thing, and sometimes, it felt all too easy to pretend it wasn’t there at all.
He spoke about his family often – always in the highest of regards, with the sort of smile Leo usually reserved for the most private, most affectionate of thoughts. But the times he wasn’t, were the times he wasn’t really speaking at all.
The boy never said it out loud, and looking at him – it was more than clear that it couldn't be true in the way most people would consider it, but Casey lost a father that day. Leo didn’t really know what that felt like.
Karai left him strangely melancholic, but he never really knew her – not in the way he knows his father, his brothers, his friends. In those few, awfully memorable moments where he thought he might just lose them forever, Leo felt himself already splitting apart.
He doesn’t know if he’d ever be able to pick himself back up.
Maybe he really stopped dreaming without Donnie. Maybe Casey did, too.
Leo knew that before. He knew Casey could never come back home, he knew he lost everything he once could’ve called his own. But he looks a lot older than he is, tall and strong and tough, and it’s only now that Leo sees every year of his life etched onto his face. It seems awfully short now that he’s looking at it.
“Right,” Leo finally manages, voice a bit weak. “Of course.”
He should say something, maybe. Something like ‘I must’ve been proud of you’, or ‘I know I loved you’, or ‘you are not alone’.
He’s sure all these things are true, but he wouldn't blame Casey for doubting him. What does Leo know about his father anyway?
Instead, he picks the only thing that feels at least partially right in the moment – and opens up his arms.
Leo hasn’t hugged many humans before.
They’re all a lot softer than what he’s used to, but Casey’s a lot taller than April and a lot broader than Cassandra, and they don’t really fit together – awkward and stiff. Leo doesn’t know how to hold him.
It’s awful, and it’s probably not what Casey wanted at all, and it makes something awfully painful tighten in Leo’s gut.
He doesn’t really know what he could say to make it go away. But he needs to say something.
“Can I also say something weird?” He says to Casey’s shoulder, not waiting for a reply. “For what it’s worth, I’ve, uhm, always wanted a son.”
He feels Casey breathe out against him, muscles growing a little softer.
“Oh,” he says, more of a breath than anything else.
“Yeah. When I was, gee, I don’t know, maybe thirteen? I used to do this thing where I would pick someone walking out late and sort of, uhm, follow them home– Don’t do that by the way, it’s creepy, I was just really bored.” He can feel Casey laugh a little at that. It sounds vaguely wet. “But there was this one guy who always worked really late, but every time he got to his house, his son would run out to him, so fast he kept almost tripping. I remember one time I was watching the guy carry him back through the door, and he had to push away a little toy car to close it, and I just thought… Must be nice.”
Casey doesn’t say anything for a while, and it’s only after a moment that Leo realizes it’s because he’s crying. If they weren’t standing so close, he might’ve not noticed at all.
“That’s a nice story,” he says, finally.
It is.
It’s not true, but it is a nice story. Leo’s really proud of it.
He never really thought about kids in any sort of way, not until the last couple of weeks. The thought scared him more than anything, but he could never quite shake it off, which probably meant… Something.
Maybe this is something he could tell Casey one day. Maybe it’ll make a good story, too.
“You’ve told me this before,” Casey adds after a moment, pulling away to look at him. His eyes are so big. “About this guy. You’ve always said you wanted a son.”
You.
Leo feels himself smile at that – a little, private thing just for himself.
White little lies are what Leo does best. And he’s always trying his best for his family.