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You needed a dancing partner at this party.
This big, gigantic party that everyone and their mutant friend had to attend, because April was graduating college and the city got along with yōkai and mutants and everything in between now and the world was happy and peaceful and even the villains of the city had seemed to move on to calmer, less violent things.
But you were also very, very scared. Emotionally. Nervous, maybe. You’d never danced before, and Mikey had already jumped up there onto the dance floor, going to his own tune like always, Leo picking up an attractive person who caught his eye an hour ago, hell, even Raph found someone to dance with.
And then it was you, swirling your water around - hydrate or die-drate, as Donnie always said - your two champagne flutes for toasting the graduates (one from Mikey, who was still underage and slid you his at the start of the ceremony) empty and forgotten.
Speaking of Donatello - the subject of your secret affections for a year now, your good friend, your college study buddy do-or-die, he was, well.
He was also sitting next to you, twiddling his thumbs.
(Glancing at you out of the corner of his eye every two seconds, still cursedly trying to gather the courage to ask you to dance, but oh, his legs didn’t want to move, his voice caught in his throat, his beautiful mind racing, racing, racing.)
You take a sip of your drink. Watch Mikey spin someone, then switch it up and get spun by his dance partner with a loud giggle.
Donnie takes a sip of his drink. It was hot in here. Fuck, he looks at his high-tech self made watch and hopes the dancing ends, dreads the end of the dance all the same.
He’d been busy, lately. With upgrading his tech, figuring out new ways to better his security systems, to research new forms of clean energy, build a brighter, flashier, techier future, et cetera. It was terrible how he fell for you. You’d snuck up on him - metaphorically found your way into his heart one rainy day when you convinced him to follow his dream and pursue a tangible double-major degree - and now all he wanted was to, like, hold you or hug or something?! The literal audacity of his brain?!
(And he wanted to dance with you?!)
You take another sip of water.
Donnie copies your actions. Sets his glass down at the same time you do.
Eyes meeting yours briefly, he raises a brow. Damn, he always looked so nonchalant, like nothing got to him. It was stupid how you hoped, like a little schoolgirl, that he might ask you to dance. This wasn’t Cinderella. This was real life.
You try to smile back, wishing you had more than just a used napkin to fiddle with.
Raph laughs at something, and you turn, seeing him beaming and having the time of his life, and then there’s April, and Casey, and -
“Dance?”
In the midst of your distraction, among the loud slow dance music, Donnie had scraped back his chair in one swift, fake-it-til-you-make-it movement, now standing over you and blurting out some more words when you met his eyes.
“I - uh - shall we-“
Fuck.
He coughs loudly, fumbles for his glass of water while he keeps his eyes locked on you (lest he look away and lose his dwindling nerve), knocking around the silverware before he gulps down the liquid, sets the glass down, coughs again, and shoots you a tight smile.
“Ahem. Something in my throat, my bad, as I was about to say,” he swallows, and you feel a flush come to your cheeks with the implication of his next words, was this really happening?
“Will you dance with me, Y/N?”
You bite your lip. You’ve never danced before, you’ll be terrible - but your legs are moving on their own and your heart dictates your actions as you smile back and take his outstretched hand, heartbeat louder than the music when he takes you onto the floor.
“I don’t know how to do this.” You immediately admit once he’s got his left hand out for you to take, and he tilts his head.
“Come again!” He leans down a bit to hear you better, and you repeat yourself with much less confidence. Luckily, he’s got your back.
Actually, he’s got your waist, he’s genuinely making one of those small smiles and telling you ‘No! Can it possibly be true? There’s an imposter in our midst tonight?,’ making you smile again (his chest burns for that smile) and then he’s tentatively putting his right hand on your waist, feather-light.
“It’s pretty easy, actually, you just place your right hand here,” he turns his left palm up to direct your attention to it and you take his cold hand, remarking about the temperature and making him snark something back with a teasing shake to his head, nodding to his right shoulder. “And you put your other hand here. See?”
“Yeah. Easy.” You mumble, looking up at him when you’re in the right position, when he breathes out an awkward huff of a laugh for no freaking reason and begins to move with you to the music.
“This one’s not a true waltz, so. The footwork shouldn’t be too hard, either.” He starts rambling about more difficult styles of dance, catching your gaze and finding it increasingly more difficult to find places to retreat his glances away from you, from this new closeness. “I mean, if Mikey can do it…”
There’s your giggle. Pizza Supreme in the Sky, Donnie thinks he needs a defibrillator with the way that sound makes him feel.
It makes him ramble some more about dancing, because look, it was something he could genuinely focus on, and you were being surprisingly reticent, and he shouldn’t talk about schoolwork, right? No one wanted to talk about schoolwork at a dance. No way.
You both make it closer into the middle of the dance floor, catching Leo’s exaggerated wink and thanking every entity in the universe Donnie didn’t see that, because you think you would’ve melted into a puddle right there and then. This environment was killing you, the way the lights lit up Donnie’s face, the sparkle in his eyes, the soft smile as he talks about Flamenco, ugh.
“And I can spin you, too. You know, if you want.”
You feel a bit of pressure as Donnie begins to gently push you away in the spin but you give him a wide-eyed look in return, squeezing his hand tighter. He stops, then, and his eyes flicker somewhere just past yours before hesitantly meeting your gaze again.
“Uh, maybe not right now!” You rush out apologetically, “I’m really not a good dancer, Dee. With my clumsiness, I’d probably trip and then it wouldn’t be very good.”
Your attention is diverted in so many different directions. One part of your brain is focusing on not stepping on Donatello and breaking his foot or something drastic. The other is trying to keep your right hand steady, to not have it twitch in his hand because this feels intimate, this little space between you, and the fact that most of the other dancers up here are real couples makes it weird and anticipatory all at once.
If you weren’t so skittish, just trying to appear competent enough in front of Bootyyyshaker9000 himself, maybe you’d have noticed how hard of a time he had making eye contact, how, when he did, he had to forcibly remind his brilliant mind to tell his not-so-brilliant heart to keep beating, or to stop beating so fast, the extremes oscillated frequently, perhaps he should’ve considered that he could be having a heart attack right now, most likely that wasn’t the case, but with the way you shyly looked up at him one could never be so thorough in their self-examination. Ohhhkay, what was happening right now? Breathe, Othello Von Ryan, breathe! You’ve made it to the chorus so there’s really only a minute and a half left, so breathe!
He feels…protective over you. This strong emotion surges up in him, stays in one spot near his heart and doesn’t leave, as you smooth out your fingers on his shoulder, gaze into his eyes with your own intelligent ones, the dimmed lighting setting the perfect warm mood to stir up all of those gushy feelings that he’s tried so hard to ignore when it came to you.
Donnie’s stopped taking the lead. You didn’t think leads and non-leads (Was that even a thing? You really needed to take more dance lessons) really existed in dance, but when you got out on the floor with the purple-banded genius his influence on where you stepped was palpable. Except for now, of course, which is terrible because you don’t really know where to go and Donnie’s got an eyes-glazed-over expression and you think he must be tired because of how he’s zoning out on your face right now and so you try to fill the awkward space.
“So, you like 80’s songs?”
Eloquent words, Y/N, great job. An english major you shall be! Now Donnie’s probably thinking that you’re even more stupid than he’s most likely already perceived you to be, knowing you for two years. Of course he liked the genre. You’d jammed out in his lab on a break to some 80’s tunes when you both had to figure out an engineering thermal expansion problem that almost had the purple-banded genius pulling out his nonexistent hair.
The pressure on your waist’s back, the gentle force of the lead slowly returning at the same rate that Donnie seems to snap out of his dissociation as his mouth ticks upward.
“Ahah, yeah,” he partially chuckles, some of the awkwardness of this closeness wearing off from the conversation, not even calling you out for the simple question you both knew the answer to, “The groove just hits different than other genres, ‘ya know? Although it could just be the retro aspect. Or the synthesizer,” he breathes out another laugh as you slowly move to the music, the lovey-dovey lyrics unhelpfully sinking into your mind when he continues to talk. “I like the bops better, though. Uh, this one’s okay, too! Just, a faster tempo really gets the ol’ 80’s jam on.”
You smile, all you can really say being “Yeah, I get that, Dee” as the colors of the venue blend into the background, Donnie’s crooked smile something that you know will be engrained in your memory.
There’s a pause, and your heart is fluttering against your ribcage because you have a humongous crush on this amazing, talented, probably oblivious genius who also probably doesn’t feel the same way. What else can you say to fill this space?
“You good?” He’s tilted his head down slightly so you can hear him better, his grip on your hand shifting slightly, his steps more purposeful for the few seconds it takes for you to realize that you’re speeding up your tempo, out of sync. It doesn’t help your crush case at all, at the fact that he was such a great lead at this, such a great dancing partner.
A chuckle breaks you from your thoughts, and in a flaming twinge of heat that rushes to your face, you realize that you said that ‘great dancer’ part out loud.
“Thanks.”
You blink up at him, forcing your steps to align with his.
“No, really. Sorry, that might’ve sounded sarcastic, but I mean it.” He’s insistent, yet chill, and you wonder how many champagne glasses it takes to get tipsy because maybe you were seeing things when he smiles softly, an actual, rare, genuine smile. “Do you want to try the spin?”
“Only if you make sure I don’t fall on my face.” You reply, mirroring his expression, and he frowns teasingly for a brief moment.
“Gasp! How dare you insinuate that I’d let that happen to you, Y/N, truly, you wound me.”
You both chuckle this time, the sound lost in the music yet echoing in your minds as he speaks.
“Okay, one, two, and”-
There’s that gentle push again, and you probably take too many steps, looking out at the rest of the dancers, their smiles, their gazes of joy and adoration at their partners, a whirl of color and you’re lost but Donnie’s there, bringing you back. The spin was only a couple seconds, likely less than that, even, but you find yourself grinning at his familiar face, at the return to his close, gentle hold, your heart beating like you’d run a marathon.
“That was actually kind of fun,” you say, and it’s a miracle because Donnie’s smiling again, even brighter, influenced by your own beaming light.
“Aha! I knew you’d be converted. It was me, wasn’t it? You can’t help but be entranced by my righteous moves.” The purple-banded turtle boasts in one breath, his smile still stubbornly, exhilaratingly there when you wholeheartedly agree that Bootyyyshaker9000’s moves could turn anyone into a professional dancer within mere minutes of contact!
He spins you again, and again in the next song, a peppier one, and when another love tune blasts through the speakers and makes both of your palms sweaty once more, your minds hurriedly trying to come up with casual conversation, you take a chance and speak up.
“Can we talk about thermodynamics? I know we’re going to have to learn it this summer, so.” You trail off, seeing your crush’s face light up as he tightens his hold on you for a moment.
Donnie swears he’s died on the spot.
“Oh, sweet Nicolas Carnot, Y/N, have I ever told you how much I love you?”
If a record scratch could occur, now would be a great time.
“Wait, you what? Donnie! Ow!”
A misstep, a fumble, and in that great dance hall, a genius mutant turtle, a master of dance, trips over his wonderful crush’s foot, face plants, and takes down half of the patrons with him in a domino effect for the ages.
Hey, look - even the most experienced of dancers could have two left feet, after all.