Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“For the record, I still think this is way too risky.”

“And for the record, nobody asked, Donnie.”

The two Hamato brothers walked along the sidewalks of New York city, each with a backpack and a suitcase filled entirely with Leo's belongings and cloaked with the brooches they’d had since they were kids. Donnie had only agreed to help Leo move into his dorm room because he wanted to check out the campus before classes started the next day to map out the quickest routes to his classes, and maybe to give his brother another lecture about how dangerous living with a random human would be in a school full of humans.

“I’m just saying, there are so many different risks to this.” Donnie continued, adjusting one of the bags on his back. “You could lose the brooch in the dorm, it could fall off during classes, someone could walk in on you without it on-”

“In the 14 years that we’ve had these, how many times have I lost my brooch?” Leo questioned as he pulled on the Hamato crest pinned to his jacket, earning a “are you serious” look from his brother.

“Ok maybe I’ve lost it a few times-”

“Try 47.”

“Well it’s not like you’re without your risks either, Donnie,” Leo pointed out. “There aren’t many college kids that can make an AI bot like Sheldon, I give it 3 projects before they figure out you know way more than any of the professors.”

The other brother huffed at that. “I’m smart enough to know how to stay on the down-low, how dare you doubt me.”

“Your ego says otherwise.”

“Gasp!”

“Anyway-” Leo says quickly. “I’ll be extremely careful this time, and it’s not like I can bail on it now, classes are tomorrow and I wouldn’t be able to get a refund on the dorm.”

Donnie sighs, “I guess so. But I’m not the only one that’s worried, you know. Raph’s been weird all week because of this.”

“Ugh, tell me about it.” Leo groaned. “I think that hug he gave me earlier cracked my shell.”

“I still have his worry-stink stuck in my nose,” Donnie made a face at the mention of one of Raph’s stinks.

The pair crossed the street to avoid another crater yet to be filled in caused by the invasion. Even if it had been a little over two years since the Kraang invaded, there was still a lot of work to get done around the city. A few buildings had been replaced, but larger towers had barely been started yet, not to mention that the areas that were run down hadn’t even been looked at for repairs yet. The only reason Leo and Donnie were able to afford going to a college in the city was because they had all basically cut their tuition costs in half, due to students not wanting to come to New York anymore after the invasion.

Most of the world still wasn’t completely sure what had happened, most evidence from that day being low-quality videos or pictures that were easily taken down by Donnie as soon as he could get to them, although everyone knows you can never completely get rid of something once it goes viral on the internet. Luckily though, no one had figured out the vigilantes responsible for defeating them were four teenage mutant ninja turtles, three of which were secretly cloaking themselves and stressing through finals in highschool at the time, even if they had ended up passing all their classes due to the schools either being destroyed or canceled for the rest of the year due to the “recent traumatic events.”

“Anyway,” Leo changed the subject. “I wanna think about all the good stuff about staying in a dorm, like the fact that I’ll have some peace and quiet for once.”

The other brother smirked. “Yeah, like you're not the one blasting Lady Gaga at 3 in the morning,” Donnie pokes him playfully, earning a light smack on the arm from Leo.

“I do not blast it-”

“You also occasionally play Kahoot music.”

“I only play it when I know you’re also awake because I know it annoys you,” Leo defended.

“Uhuh,” Donnie doubted. “You better hope your roommate doesn’t do that or you’ll be sleeping through all your classes.”

“I’ll be fine,” Leo assured him. “Besides, I’m pretty sure this…Yochi? Yuchi? No wait it was Yuichi I think,” he struggled to remember the name that was on his housing contract. “From the information he put it seems like he’s pretty chill.”

“You better hope so, Nardo.” Donnie replied as they walked past another half-built apartment building.

The rest of the walk spent mostly in silence, thankfully a huge perk about Eastlaird University was that it was pretty close to the lair and Run of The Mill Pizza, where Leo would be working as both a delivery boy for the human customers, and occasionally a waiter on other days.

With how close the campus was to the lair, it would be easy for Leo to catch up with his brothers whenever trouble came up with mutants or other criminals. Although it would mean he would have to come up with excuses for suddenly leaving so quickly, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

Raph would be able to handle smaller things on his own while Leo and Donnie were on campus, and Mikey still finishing up high school. Unlike the rest of the brothers, Raph had decided not to finish school and to throw himself into training and watching out for trouble. The other 3, however, thought that it would be interesting and very beneficial to at least complete high school, but Donnie and Leo wanted to take it further into college to possibly get a job in the human world.

Donnie said he was only studying mechanical engineering because he wants the degree, and in his words “they wouldn’t be able to teach me anything I don't already know.”

Leo, however, definitely needed to learn more about the medical world, for both his sake and his brothers’. After the Kraang invasion, he was on bedrest for weeks, and his limited knowledge of medicine definitely caused the healing process to be slowed. He wanted to be prepared in case something ever happened to his brothers.

And hey, the money didn’t hurt either.

After making it to the building Leo was pretty sure was the one he would be living in and checking in, the pair spent about 30 minutes trying to find where the dorm was. Leo refused to use a map because every time he swore up and down he had found the right room, he turned out to be wrong, completely unsurprising to Donnie. Eventually though, Leo finally unlocked the right door and they were able to set down Leo’s things.

The room was about what Leo had expected. Beige concrete walls with a popcorn ceiling, two twin beds on either side of the room, a window in between going from about their knees to slightly over their heads overlooking the street below, and two desks behind the beds right next to a small open closet. There were bathrooms on each floor, but the showers were on the bottom floor that had to be shared by everyone in the building. And the singular kitchen was to be shared by the whole building, so Leo would have to keep the groceries light.

He supposed that’s why the university offered a decent meal plan.

“I didn’t even think you had this much stuff, Leo,” Donnie groaned as he set down the two bags and stretched.

“Well I had to get some new stuff, I gotta be prepared for anything!”

“Is that why you packed more clothes than what could possibly fit in that closet?”

“Like I said, anything,” Leo said as he grabbed the first bag and emptied it out onto one of the twin beds. Leo hadn’t bothered organizing everything he packed, so the bag was full of clothes, a few small decorations for his side of the room, and a few school supplies.

“Well I’ve done what I need to, so I will leave you to unpack while I explore and map out all of my class routes for tomorrow,” Donnie made his way back to the door before looking back at his brother. “Let me know how it goes meeting your roommate, Raph and Mikey are gonna want to meet him.”

“Yeah I figured, I’ll let ya know,” Leo told him as he started grabbing various clothing items and sticking them in the closet.

“And you’re working tonight right? Make sure to bring back some pizza”

Leo sighed, tilting his head back. “Yes, Donnie, I’ll bring back my hard-earned, free pizza from Hueso’s.”

“Good, we rely on that pizza,” Donnie replied before closing the door, leaving Leo alone in the room.

Even with his brother out of the room, it was still a little noisy with countless students moving into their dorms. Leo could hear the thumping of people walking all over the place and moving things around on the floor above him, as well as people talking in rooms next to his.

Thin walls. Leo noted. Fantastic.

He could deal with the noise, Leo lived with three other brothers always making noise his whole life. Raph was always training a lot, Donnie working on some new piece of tech, and Mikey either skateboarding in the ramp room or painting a graffiti-free surface he hadn’t gotten to yet.

Maybe he would miss the noise of the lair, but that was fine. He could always go home whenever he felt homesick, or whenever he wanted to pester Donnie about helping him with his homework.

After turning on one of his playlists, Leo got to work on unpacking before he had to leave for his shift at Run of The Mill. Starting with the first bag he had emptied onto his bed, he took out the two posters of Jupiter Jim and Lou Jitsu and set them aside so that they wouldn’t get accidentally crushed.

Leo started to wonder if his brother was right in saying he had packed too many clothes after forty-five minutes of unpacking. He had already filled up most of his closet with shirts, jackets, and hoodies, leaving very little room for his pants. The small dresser in the closet would barely be able to hold both his underwear and his pants, with it only having two drawers.

He decided to just shove as much as he could into the drawers and then set the rest of the pants on top, if it got messy he would deal with it eventually. Forgetting about the desk chair behind him, Leo stepped back, right onto the leg of the office chair and right as he heard the beep of the door unlocking.

As Leo fell butt-first on the floor, the door to the small room opened up, and he locked eyes with the cutest guy Leo thought he had ever seen.

His long white hair was tied back in a high ponytail, with a small carrot charm pinned into it, and the only color Leo could see on his face was a small smudge of red eyeliner in the corner of his eyes. He was definitely of Japanese descent, which Splinter would love to talk to him about if he ever got to meet his dad.
Leo silently cursed and thanked whoever had stuck them in the same dorm.

Realizing that he was still flat on his butt on the ground, he blushed a little bit before quickly getting back up and brushing himself off, smiling at his roommate.

“Sorry about that,” Leo laughed, and offered his hand. “I’m Leo, and I’m assuming you’re Yuichi?”

His roommate smiled and took his hand. “Yeah, but I go by Zhang actually.” He corrected, and looked around the room before noticing the music playing.

“Is that Cavetown?” Zhang asked before placing his three bags beside the other bed.

“Oh, uh, yeah it is actually,” Leo confirmed before grabbing his phone off his bed. “You listen to them much?”

Zhang shrugged as he opened up a bag to start unpacking. “When I can, I don’t have much time to relax and listen to music back home.”

“So you work a lot then?”

“You could say that, yeah,” Zhang replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “I work for my auntie sometimes, but mostly I do random jobs around the city.”

Leo raised an eyebrow at that as he jumped onto his bed. “So you just go door to door doing jobs?”

“Uhh,” he thought for a second. “I kind of just step in whenever I see something or someone that needs the help.”

A little sketchy, Leo thought, but at least he wasn’t a drug dealer from what he could tell.

“What about you?” Zhang asked him as he started hanging up clothes in the closet on his side of the room.

“Oh, I just work at a pizza place nearby,” He answered. “I do deliveries most nights, but on weekends I help wait tables. I even get to bring home free pizzas after most of my shifts.”

Leo’s roommate gave a small laugh. “So I can expect a lot of pizza in here?”

“Nah,” Leo laughed. “I actually bring it home to my brothers most of the time.”

“You have brothers?” Zhang questioned, finishing up with his first bag of belongings.

“Yeah, three of them,” Leo answered, holding up the corresponding amount of fingers. “Do-Othello, is my twin, he’s actually attending classes here too, he should be around campus somewhere. Then I have my younger brother who’s still in highschool, and my older brother just kinda does whatever, but he’s awesome.”

Zhang smiled as he pulled the next bag onto his bed. “Sounds like you’re pretty close to them.”

“Oh definitely,” Leo confirmed, smiling at the thought of his family who had become much closer since the invasion. “What about you? You have any siblings?”

He shook his head. “Just my auntie and some close friends, actually. I never knew my parents.”

Leo nodded. “I don’t really have a mom, actually. I kind of have two dads though? I don’t know, their relationship is complicated right now.”

“I can understand that,” Zhang laughed. “I like your eyebrows by the way, do you dye them?”

He raised said eyebrows and looked up as if he could see them. “Uh, no? Those are all natural, I just have vitiligo.”

“Oh cool! I actually have albinism, so we kinda match in a way,” Zhang smiled. “Oh, and I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s with all the construction around here?”

Leo cleared his throat before answering, and remembered to be careful about the next words that came out of his mouth. “It’s from the whole thing that happened a little over two years ago. You haven’t heard about that?”

Zhang waved his hand in a so-so manner. “A little bit, but I honestly thought it was a hoax or something. What exactly happened that caused that much destruction?”

Leo took in a breath, thinking about how a normal human who definitely had no part in the actual invasion would respond. “All I can tell you for sure is that there was this huge, super weird ship in the sky that just kind of appeared. A bunch of people had…something happen to them, no one really knows exactly what though. They changed, in a way, but it went away once the ship blew up.”

Zhang’s eyebrows rose at the last part as he leaned against his bed, forgetting the pile of clothes on his bed. “It just blew up?”

“Well,” Leo started, rubbing the back of his neck. Hopefully he wasn’t giving away too much information. “There were videos and pictures of these four things swinging around in the area, I think there were some people that said there was a huge rat with two teenagers, but that seems a bit of a stretch.”

“A rat?” Zhang questioned.

Leo shrugged. “Like I said, I just know I saw a huge ship, some people had weird pink stuff on them that made them go crazy, and then the ship blew up. The other stuff just comes from really bad footage and rumors.”

Zhang hummed before saying something. “You said people saw four ‘things’ in the area, so are they not human?”

“Maybe?” Leo answered with another shrug. “But there have been rumors about those things for a while, why do you think the tuition and housing costs are so low?”

“Well what do you think?” He asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do you think the ship just blew up, or did someone blow it up?”

Leo thought for a second before giving his answer. “I don’t know who, or what, they are, but I’m grateful to whoever they are for stopping whatever it was that day.”

And he meant it. He was grateful he had his brothers, his dad, April, and Casey. He certainly wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them, and the world probably wouldn’t be here either. But even if they deserved the credit, they had to stay safe and keep themselves as much a secret as they could.

Zhang nodded at Leo’s response. “Well, you are right about the housing and tuition costs. They are pretty low,” He laughed.

Leo laughed a bit at that. “Yeah, I might actually get out of here without that much debt, even with my pizza job.” At the mention of Leo’s day job, his eyes widened as he realized he had definitely spent too much time talking to his roommate and was going to be late for his shift.

“Speaking of which, I actually have to go to work right now or my boss will take my free pizza for the day,” Leo jumped off his bed and grabbed his work hat for when he made deliveries.

“I’ll be back later tonight, hopefully with some free food if my brothers don’t eat it all!” Leo called behind him as he opened the door.

“Have a good shift!” Zhang waved as Leo shut the door and jogged down the hall, praying Hueso wouldn’t be too mad at him for being late.

Chapter Text

Leo decloaked himself, shoving on his work hat as he rushed into Run of the Mill, careful not to accidentally run into any of the customers waiting for a table in front of the entryway.

“Sorry I’m late!” He called out to Hueso as he got to the back of the restaurant, grabbing the delivery bags and the list of addresses he had to run to.

Hueso answered him from the front of the restaurant. “Keep that up, pepino, and you’re going to lose your pizza bonus!”

“It was move-in day, I got caught up with stuff!” He defended as he started to grab the pizzas off the delivery shelf by the kitchen.

Hueso sighed as Leo made it back to the front and waved him off to do his deliveries. Leo grinned and gave him a two finger salute as he jogged out of the restaurant to start his shift.

If Leo’s being honest, he kind of enjoyed his job. It gave him an excuse to run over the rooftops and get some exercise that wasn’t sparring with his brothers or trying to not get killed by whatever mutant was causing problems. Of course he could use his portals, but he would rather run around the rooftops and get some exercise after sitting in classes most of the time. He only resorts to using his mystic powers when the delivery was running late or he had already had a long day and didn’t feel like running around.

So Leo spent the next few hours running all over the city, both on the surface and below in the Hidden City, delivering pizzas and getting his steps in. The majority of his shift was actually quite peaceful, except for the occasional upset Karen he had to deal with.

By the time Leo got back to Run of The Mill at eight o’clock, Hueso already had two pizzas ready to go for him to take back to his brothers.

“Tell them I said ‘hello’ for me, pepino,” Hueso requested as Leo started to leave the restaurant.

“I will!” Leo assured as the entry portal opened up. “And thanks for the veggie supreme, Donnie’s gonna appreciate it!”

“Just make sure you stay out of trouble tomorrow!”

Leo laughed and said something about Donnie being the troublemaker before walking out and making his way to the rooftops. He made sure he had a good grip on the pizzas in case of portal thieves before using his katana and opening up the portal to the lair.

The lair in the abandoned subway station had changed in the two years they’ve called this place home. Donnie managed to find and fix multiple arcade games from their old lair, so the game room was being put together. A skate ramp had been set up in another area of the station off to the left of the main entrance, and the living room was set up in the center of the whole station.

Leo stepped through his portal and into the main entrance to the lair, the sounds of a Lou Jitsu movie coming from the living room. Raph, Mikey, and Splinter were seated on the couches they had managed to find over the past two years, including a recliner for Splinter.

Leo grinned and walked over to them, still unaware of his presence.

“So which one are you guys playing tonight?” He asked, balancing the pizzas on one hand while the other was on his hip.

The three turned to him, Mikey smiling once he saw his older brother.

“Teriyaki Shakedown!” He answered, patting the spot next to him for Leo to come watch.

“Is that Leo?” Donnie called from his lab. “He better have that pizza.”

Leo huffed, setting the pizza down on the coffee table and sitting next to Mikey. “Is that all I’m good for now? Bringing home hard earned pizza?” He exclaimed with a hand on his chest, feigning his offense as Donnie opened to door to his lab to get his pizza.

Donnie rolled his eyes, opening up the top pizza box with the various veggie-topped pizza in it. “Oh cool, thanks for the veggie supreme.”

“Thank Señor, he’s the one who has them ready before the end of my shift,” Leo told him, grabbing a piece of the pepperoni.

“So,” Mikey started, drawing out the word. “How’s your roommate?”

Leo blushed a bit at the mention of his totally-not-cute roommate. “He’s…fine,” he answered, taking a bite of his pizza.

Mikey deadpanned him. “You gotta give us more than that! What’s he look like? Is he nice? Does he like Lou Jitsu?”

Splinter scoffed. “Of course he likes Lou Jitsu! What’s not to love about this?” He gestured to himself, making Donnie cringe with his pizza halfway to his face.

“We, uh, didn’t really talk about movies and stuff,” Leo admitted. “But he is from Japan, so that’s cool.”

Raph took a piece of pizza and looked at Leo. “What else?”

He shrugged and swallowed the pizza in his mouth. “I don’t know. I mean, he’s kinda cute, but I don’t know much about him right now.”

“Oh boy,” Donnie sighed, shaking his head. “Not another one.”

Leo blushed. “He is not another crush, he’s my roommate! He’s not allowed to be a crush!”

“Oh my god, they were roommates,” Mikey referenced, making Raph and Donnie laugh while Leo only blushed harder.

“You guys are impossible,” Leo huffed before taking a bite of pizza. “And besides, he’s human! I couldn’t go after the guy even if I did have a crush on him!”

“No talking with your mouth full!” Donnie pointed at him with his piece of half-eaten pizza. Leo stuck his tongue out at him in answer before swallowing.

Donnie rolled his eyes. “He does have a point though, it’d be best if he didn’t find out about our whole situation.”

“Thank you, Donnie,” Leo waved at him. “And just because he’s cute doesn’t mean I wanna ask him out. I barely know the guy.”

Mikey shrugged and swallowed before speaking. “He at least seems nice though, right?”

Leo gave a small shrug. “I guess so. We didn’t really get to talk much before I had to leave for work.”

Leo messed with the small rip in the couch next to his leg, thinking about said roommate. Sure, the dude was cute, they had a few things in common, but that was it. Zhang was human, and their relationship had to stay as roommates, nothing more. For his safety and Leo’s.

He leaned back into the couch and looked at Mikey. “But enough about my day, how was your first day of senior year?”

The younger brother groaned. “I got stuck with that one teacher you guys warned me about for my homeroom.”

Leo chuckled while Donnie asked him, “Ms. Crabapple?”

“Yeah, that one,” Mikey confirmed, pointing his now cold pizza at Donnie. “She spent half the class just going over her rules. You two didn’t warn me that I’d get detention for having my head on the desk!”

“She had so many rules that I forgot half of them,” Leo shrugged, he and Donnie still laughing slightly. “What about the rest of your teachers?”

The four of them went on talking about Mikey’s day at classes, the youngest sibling complaining about how a few of his teachers expected he would be “just as bright and hardworking as his brothers.”

Raph mentioned that he had to stop another few robberies while on patrol today, which wasn’t surprising to the brothers. Crime had mostly just been human robberies since the invasion, most of the mutants trying to keep a low profile after the world became very aware of the fact that there could be “monsters” among them. Even Draxum agreed that it would be best if he stayed in the Hidden City for the most part, although he did miss cooking and yelling at kids in his lunchroom.

The foot clan hadn’t dared try and regroup after the invasion, Casey Sr. made sure of that. She made it her personal job to keep them from coming back, although they did have to convince her that she couldn’t just destroy them all.And after Casey Jr. started joining her on a few of her outings, she agreed she would have to set some kind of example for him. What kind of example she should set, however, was never settled. So she continued to teach him all the ways to destroy his enemies in good ol’ Cassandra Jones fashion.

He was just happy to have his mom back, even if she wasn’t the one that he remembered.

The brothers talked until Splinter retired to his room and the movie credits started rolling, and at that point it was time for Leo to head out. After taking the few pieces of pizza the brothers didn’t eat and wrapping them in cling wrap, he promised Mikey he’d come back with Donnie after classes to tell him everything. Then he grabbed his sword and went through a portal to the hidden city to grab some groceries before heading back. After all, he had to eat something other than pizza while he was in his dorm.

Leo made his way through the streets of the Hidden City, sometimes stealing a double glance at Yōkai that caught his attention. No matter how many years he’s spent visiting the Yōkai city under New York, he would never be able to get used to all the different beings living here. Some of them looked too beautiful to be real, while others looked like they came straight out of a nightmare. They were too interesting for Leo to not take notice of.

It was when a Yōkai with brightly glowing skin and flaming hair caught Leo’s attention, and he ran right into another one, causing the Yōkai’s bag of produce to fall to the ground.

“Shoot, I am so so sorry,” Leo quickly apologized, immediately dropping down to pick up the various fruits and veggies. The Hidden City had a surprising amount of produce that was also sold on the surface, but for a lot cheaper which made Leo very grateful he didn’t have to drain his wallet for some fruit.

“No you’re fine, I wasn’t paying attention either, I should have moved,” the Yōkai started grabbing the runaway produce as well before going for the same one Leo had grabbed half a second earlier, their hands touching accidentally.

Leo looked up, and could have sworn that flame-headed Yōkai had walked by again because he was starting to sweat.

He was a white bunny Yōkai, but he didn’t necessarily look like the rest of the Hidden City residents. His long ears were tied up, and he wore blue samurai attire with a clan crest Leo thought looked familiar, but still couldn’t remember the clan it belonged to.

Damn, was he cute.

He had large warm brown eyes that were lined with the reddish-orange eye liner that was pretty popular in the east. And his fur looked so soft-

Leo jerked his hand away with an awkward laugh as the Yōkai picked up the fruit. “Let me pay for the ruined stuff though, please,” Leo told him as he grabbed his wallet from his back pocket strapped to his shell.

“Oh please, it’s not that much, I can’t take your money, it was just an accident,” the Yōkai tried to persuade him, but Leo already had his wallet out and he was grabbing a twenty.

“I insist, please.” He grabbed the Yokai’s bag and put the twenty dollars under a few fruits. He knew exactly how much he had ruined by running into the Yōkai, and it definitely wasn’t worth twenty dollars. But Leo felt really bad, and he was really cute so why not try and make his day a little better?

He sighed with a small smile. “Well thank you, I guess. You’re such a gentleman.”

Leo laughed and tipped an imaginary hat at the Yōkai. “You are most welcome, sir,”

The Yōkai laughed as he shifted the bag of produce to his other arm. “Well kind sir, I must be leaving now. Perhaps fate will let us meet again someday,” he bowed for a second, still grinning at Leo.

“I look forward to that day, fair Yōkai,” Leo bowed again, also grinning at the Yōkai before he walked past Leo, still smiling.

Leo could have sworn other Yōkai were staring at him with the way he was smiling to himself as he bought his fruits and veggies.

~~~~~

Leo used a portal to get back to his dorm building, he was too tired after a few hours of running pizzas around two cities and a grocery trip. He ended up needing to make two trips, one to the Hidden City for his produce and then to the nearest grocery store to get some microwaveable meals because there was no way Leo was gonna be able to cook in this shared kitchen.

And just as he was looking forward to some peace and quiet while listening to his tunes, he saw that he wasn’t the only one who made a late night grocery run. Zhang was also in the kitchen, putting away various things into a cupboard and one of the refrigerators.

Suddenly Leo forgot about the peace and quiet he was looking forward to, and made sure his cloaking brooch was on and cloaking.

“Did a little shopping while I was out?” Leo grinned at his roommate, walking up to the large kitchen island.

Zhang turned to him and gave him a small smile. “Yeah, everyone else did theirs earlier so I kinda had to do it later. Some people can be such animals,” he joked, completely unaware of just how much truth that innocent joke held.

“Oh yeah, I’ll bet,” Leo gave an awkward laugh as he set down his groceries on the table.

“Anyway, how was work?” Zhang asked him after putting away a 6 pack of instant noodles. “Manage to bring back any pizza?”

Leo nodded and swung his backpack off his back. “Hope you like veggie supreme and pepperoni. Don’t worry, I had plenty earlier,” he laughed as he handed the wrapped up pieces of cold pizza to his roommate.

Zhang took the pizza from Leo’s hand. “I don’t think I’ve actually had pizza before.”

Leo looked at him as if he had just said “I’ve never had water before.”

“Seriously?” He asked him, and Zhang only shrugged.

“My home is, uh…traditional, more or less,” he explained. “We don’t have any kind of American food, since it’s not close to any tourist spots or major cities.”

Leo shook his head, still in a bit of disbelief but it was completely understandable why Zhang hadn’t had anything like this before. “Well today’s your lucky day, man. Although it would have been better two hours ago, it should still be pretty good after you warm it up in the microwave.”

Zhang shrugged and opened up the microwave, setting the pizza inside after unwrapping the cling wrap. And while that warmed up, Leo would get to work putting his groceries away. It wasn’t a whole lot, at least. Just stuff to keep him from getting too hungry while he had to stay in his dorm.

He was still grabbing the fruits he had gotten when the microwave went off, and Zhang pulled the pizza off the plate. Leo waited until he had taken the first bite once it cooled off to look at him.

“Soooo?” Leo asked him. “What do you think?”

“It’s pretty good,” Zhang smiled and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “A little greasy, but it’s good.”

“I’m gonna have to take you out on a food tour, dude,” Leo laughed as he started putting his frozen meals into the freezer. “Show you all the wonderfully unhealthy American treats you’ve been missing out on.”

Zhang chuckled. “Maybe on Friday after classes we could go out. It would be fun to try some new foods.”

“That’s the spirit!” Leo grinned at him. “So what else did you do today? You make any new friends with our neighbors?”

“Eh, not really,” he answered. “It’s just the first day though, so maybe tomorrow. Did you make any new friends today, delivery boy?”

Leo blushed for a second as he remembered the cute Yōkai from his grocery run. “Um, kind of?”

Zhang raised his eyebrows a bit as he sat down on one of the stools at the island. “I sense a story coming.”

Leo gave a small laugh as he leaned on the opposite side of the island. “I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily call him a friend, just a cute guy I ran into.”

Zhang raised his eyebrows again. “A cute guy, huh?”

Leo’s face dropped as he realized exactly what he just confessed. “Oh, uh, yeah, I um…is that okay? With you? Like that doesn’t freak you out or anything?”

Zhang shook his head. "You don’t have to worry about that, I'm not gonna think of you any differently.”

Leo breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. Anyway, yeah I totally ran into this dude and I think I blew my chance to ask him out honestly.”

“How did you blow your only chance?” Zhang laughed.

“I may or may not have forgotten to ask for his number…and his name,” Leo confessed, rubbing the back of his neck.

His roommate wheezed at that. “So not only did you not ask for his number, but you don’t even know his name?!”

Leo groaned. “Yes, I suck at getting a date, ok?”

Zhang shook his head, still laughing a bit. “Alright, I won’t torture you anymore. Maybe you’ll meet him again though, and then you can ask for his number, or maybe even his name.”

Leo laughed as he grabbed his grocery bags to throw them in the recycling. “I doubt it, but if it does happen I'll be sure to get his number this time. Oh, and speaking of numbers, we should probably swap ours. Just in case something happens.”

“Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that,” Zhang pulled out his phone and gave it to Leo after pulling up the prompt for a new contact.

Leo decided to be funny and set his name to “Leonardo Da Vinci,” while Zhang decided to just set his name to his full name in Leo’s phone.

“And now when I accidentally lock myself out, I can text you,” Leo joked as he handed back his roommate’s phone. It might have been a joke, but Leo knew at some point he would forget his student ID in his room and would lock himself out of the building.

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen then,” Zhang laughed before turning to the set of stairs leading to the dorms. “Now let’s get to bed, it’s been a long day.”

“Agreed,” Leo followed him to the stairs, feeling warm after talking to his roommate.

Maybe they could be a little more than roommates, though.