Archive of Our Own

He’s just been born, and you hate him.

Or, well, you decided you did. You decided you hated him as soon as his presence made that man (there is no way he is your father, you’d rather die) stick around for any longer than he had to, voice loud and scattered beer bottles stinking up the home. How many times now have you been sat in front of Donnie or Raph, carefully pulling the shards of glass from their hands while your mother and her boyfriend howl obscenities at each other? Too many times to count, so many times that it’s become normal. Your baby brothers have taken to refusing to leave your room if you’re not beside them while that man is in the house, their little fingers curled in yours so frequently that you wouldn’t be surprised if you grew up to have the shape of their hands indented into yours.

But once he’s laid in your arms, writhing and wailing, that once-familiar hatred begins to waver and fail to find purchase in you. You don’t know why, you have no reason not to hate him – he doesn’t even look cute like people said babies looked, pale skin oddly wrinkled for a being so young soaked in unfamiliar fluid. He barely looks human, more like a hairless, miniature version of the baby monkeys you saw on the television a few days ago.

And yet, he’s not malicious. He’s so impossibly little, so impossibly weak. A stray breeze could shatter him like glass, you’re sure. The dangers that serve as annoyances to Donnie and Raph suddenly make your stomach twist with icy dread – what if he was punctured with one of those shards? He wouldn’t make it, surely. There’s not enough blood, not enough strength in his tiny, frail body.

Despite the way he drips, and the ever-constant shrieking, you press him as close to your chest as you can manage. You hunch over him slightly as Mama groans and shifts away, mumbling something crude, suddenly painfully aware of the flickering light above your head, the half-empty fridge, the cruelty of this baby’s father, the heartlessness of your mother. Not for the first time, you find yourself wishing you could send him back to wherever he came from before he was in your mother’s stomach, but for the very first time it’s not out of a vengeful urge to make Mama’s boyfriend go away. Instead, it’s a fruitless hope for this pure little thing, that you’ll never have to see the haunted fear in his eyes the way you see it in Donnie and Raph’s, that he’ll never crowd around your legs crying Leo, I’m hungry; Leo, I’m cold; Leo, I’m scared.

Despite your wish, he remains, shrieking against your chest. Mama lurches forwards, shaking limbs jerking in odd ways as they struggle to lift her above the floor.

“Give it here, boy” She grunts, voice low and hoarse.

Terror and familiar protective anger pierce through your heart as you lean away from her without thinking, tucking him ever close while you shake your head. Whether the action is pleading or defiant, you can’t tell – just that you have to protect this precious baby from all that’s unsafe, like Mama and her boyfriend.

Your body tenses as soon as the action is done, but all you do is hunch your body over him, bracing yourself to take every ounce of the rage that Mama’s about to throw unto you, praying please don’t be scared, please don’t be scared, please don’t be scared.

The baby’s cries only increase, and you feel like you could cry. But you’re the one protecting him, not the other way around, and you’re the one protecting Donnie and Raph as well.

You can cry later, in the bathroom during the night where no one can hear you, but not now. Now, all of your brothers’ eyes are on you, and you need to hold steadfast.

Yet, blessedly, the yelling never comes, your mother instead choosing to drop back down to the floor with a grumble; “Fine, but you have to learn how to feed him formula if you want him to shut up.”

You stare, wide-eyed, as she shuts her own eyes and deepens her breathing, out like a light with your baby brother still tethered to… some organ within her. You should cut that, shouldn’t you? He can’t spend forever attached to your mother – she’d let him drag on the floor and bang his head on the obstacles in the way. You can’t have that.

But it’s still pulsating, red and fleshy and thrumming with something like a heartbeat. What if cutting it hurts him in some way? What if all of his organs are travelling through it like a pipe, and cutting it off will mean cutting off his access to his organs?

But you can’t lay him on the floor. The floor is cold, uncomfortable, and currently relatively drenched with blood. What if he writhes against the hard surface and breaks his bones?

You spin around – a blanket should work just fine, right? They’re soft enough to be comfortable and thick enough to protect him from the elements while you rush off to the kitchen and grab the formula mixture boxes on the countertop. They should have instructions on them – Mac and Cheese boxes do, after all.

Luckily for you, for once in your life, the good grey blanket is sprawled out on the couch behind you, close enough that when you contort and stretch to grab it, it curls willingly into your hand. You yank it down without a second thought, desperate to return the baby to the resolute safety of both your arms instead of just one.

It takes you what feels like thirty minutes to wrap him up, heart thudding in your chest as you war between I have to feed him, I have to feed him, I have to feed him, and I have to make sure he’s safe and comfortable, I have to make sure he’s safe and comfortable, I have to make sure he’s safe and comfortable.

Finally, though, he’s swaddled so heavily in the blanket that his head is almost miniscule in comparison. Your heart just about breaks in your chest as you rise to your feet, his cries ever persistent.

“I’ll be back soon” You assure him, and hope through his cries he can’t hear the fear wavering your tone.

He’s two weeks old, and nobody has given him a name.

Mama calls him that baby or that brat. You just think of him as baby, and call him as such. That’s what he is, after all – a baby, your baby brother.

It isn’t until you’re sat down in class and your teacher asks you, “You have a new baby brother, Leo? How wonderful! What’s his name?”, that you consider that maybe being nameless might be wrong.

You shrug. “He doesn’t have one.”

She looks at you with a slightly furrowed brow, something amused and yet simultaneously worried crossing her previously excited face. “Everyone has a name, Leonardo” She replies, somewhat seriously.

The oddly concerned response makes something anxious writhe in your gut, but he doesn’t have one, and so all you can do is swallow your fear and say: “I’ll ask Mama to give him one tonight.”

It doesn’t make the expression disappear from her face, but she does stop speaking about it, staring at you with a strange, puzzled face for a heavy moment before moving on to the next kid in your class with their hand up.

At lunch that day, you wander aimlessly throughout the library, anxiety making you too nauseous to eat even if you did have food to eat. How are Donnie and Raph fairing, all alone again in that dirty apartment? They’d been doing good with the baby, but it’s still so frequently that they run up to you as soon as you get home, crying We can’t make him stop crying, Leo. Make him stop, make him stop.

They’re so little, but you can’t run home to check on them. Every other time you’ve tried, the school has either called the cops on you or put you in detention or both. Once, they even called the police on Mama, and as soon as she and you were done chasing them off your trail with sweet nothings about how your mother takes excellent care of you all and you’re just so full of love for your little brothers that you just had to come home and check on them her punishments on you lasted for days. You had to wear every long-sleeved shirt you owned all throughout the blistering heat of summer to keep the bruises from showing.

So, instead, you spend every lunch and every recess in the library. You’re too anxious to have fun playing with other kids, but when you play alone the supervisors come up and force you to play with other kids who will inevitably ditch you for either the poor way you smell or the strange way you act and then the cycle will repeat until free time is up. Plus, all the noise of the playground is nerve-wracking, the constant screaming making something hot and terrified swell in your throat, but there’s nowhere to hide from it within the confines of the schoolyard.

Luckily, libraries require people to be silent, and as such the only people around are the librarian and her sparse few student assistants, who are mostly older kids as equally disinterested in talking to you as you are, though they do smile warmly at you when they see you. The winding bookshelves also make for easy spaces to cram yourself into and hide within whenever everything is too loud or the toll of everything going on is too great. Most days, especially these days with the new baby at home, you do nothing at lunch but curl yourself into those little nooks and crannies pretending that not a soul can see you until the bell rings.

Today, though, you’re on a mission. A very important mission at that. Every person has a name, and your baby brother is a person, which means that you have to give him something to name him that isn’t Baby, because the librarian said when you asked her that Baby is only a nickname or a name for a cat. He needs a real name, something proper that people can call him – but which one?

You all but tear through the library, running each name on every title and book synopsis through your head.

Pax, eh. Winnie, no. Puff, absolutely not. Charlotte, girl’s name. Corduroy, yuck. Tikki Tikki Tembo, huh?

It feels like you’ve gone through a thousand names, your brain spinning with all the unfortunate possibilities and your stomach rolling with every choice you have available to you to create your baby brother’s forever name, when a student assistant trips and spills the books she’s carrying down in front of you.

You stiffen for a moment before picking up the first book you see in front of you on reflex: Masters of the Renaissance: How Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael Changed Art Forever.

Leonardo. Michelangelo. Raphael.

“Hey,” You call out softly, turning the book to her and lifting a finger to the name when she turns to look, “How do you pronounce this?”

“Michelangelo” She replies, reaching out to take it from your hands. You let her, burning the spelling and the pronunciation into your brain.

You repeat it in your head the rest of the day, picturing his wrinkled face and putting that name to it. When the teacher hands out your worksheet to you, you briefly experiment with writing the name down on the top just to see how it looks.

Raph presses him into your arms when you get home as always, though this time all it takes is you rocking him a little against your chest and going, “Hi, Michelangelo. I’m home now, it’s okay. What’s wrong?”, for his wails to quiet down into silence.

“Michelangelo?” Donnie echoes, “Is that his name?”

You nod, bouncing him gently. “Yeah. I chose it at lunch.”

“Oh, shit!” Your mother exclaims from the kitchen, “I forgot to get him a birth certificate!”

But it isn’t until she vanishes and you proceed to spend every waking hour of the day taking care of your baby brothers to the point that the police come to investigate multiple unexcused missed days on your attendance that the nice lady, Sunita, gets one made for him with the name you gave her.

He’s two years old today, and one of these days he’s going to kill you.

It’s not his fault – he’s only a baby, the same baby he’s always been. Beyond that, though, it’s not even his doing.

Sometimes, it feels like it is, when he screams over something like not being allowed to eat bottle caps off the floor or having to get his diaper changed, but most of the time, it isn’t.

Most of the time, it’s like this, as most of the time, he’s like this:

He’s sat down on your lap, drumming his chubby little hands on the wooden dining table while you mop the cake residue off his chubby little cheeks with your wet thumb. He only managed to grab a piece in between everyone else in the group home scrambling for a slice, but as always he takes what he’s been given on the chin with a big, half-toothless grin. He’s growing so much each day, bigger and smarter – he’s almost too heavy for your hands, and instead of crying when he wants your attention he now waddles around the house on his little legs calling out Eeeeooo! Eeeeooo! Eeeeooo!

You still remember the first day he smiled back at you, and now it’s all he ever does, running around life no matter the circumstance with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen on his face. You can always tell which room he’s in by following the sound of laughter, not that you separate yourself from him frequently. It’s not entirely that he needs you too, either, now that he’s bigger and far more adventurous than he was as a newborn, but you feel better when you’re around him.

At the sight of him, the presence of his warmth, something beautiful and comforting blossoms in your chest, something that soothes away almost all your fear and never fails to make a smile split across your face. Maybe it’s his constant joy, maybe it’s the way he so obviously and unashamedly loves and adores you, maybe it’s just him. Whatever it is, sometimes, especially on days like these, the presence of him makes the love in your heart grow so great that you worry it might explode. Sometimes, the love grows so strong it begins to hurt, and you weep at the sheer luck you have to be gifted this little brother, this baby. He’s going to be something great someday, you know. He’s going to rise above all these places with his big grin and even bigger heart, and you’re going to be right there holding his hand.

“Eo?” He calls, soft and worried as twists around to look at your face, drumming silenced.

You fight to bite back on your tears – any upset on his little face fills you with grief. He doesn’t deserve to be sad, he’s only a baby, and the best one around at that, so full of joy and curiosity. But the thought of that only makes you cry harder – he’s going to grow big and strong someday, bigger than your arms can hold and stronger than you. You can only pray he’ll keep you around, pray that when he doesn’t need you anymore he’ll still come home at the end of the day and pull you in for a hug.

“Happy tears” You choke out, “Don’t worry, Mikey. They’re happy tears.”

He tilts his head at you, eyebrows furrowed and face twisted in an unwelcome frown. You reach forwards on instinct, leaning him into your chest where he rests with practiced ease, only shifting a little bit for comfort as you rub lines up and down his back with your palm.

This position is a tried and true method of calming him down, but today he doesn’t just lay still like usual. Today, he works his little arms out from in front of him and wraps them around your sides, failing to make his fingers meet on your back. Soft spitting noises hiss out from his mouth as he struggles to imitate the shushing noises you placate him with when he cries.

You lean down over him, pressing a kiss to the top of his soft, mostly-bald head. “You’re the best baby in the world,” You tell him sincerely, “There is nobody in this world I’d rather love but you.”

He’s seven years old, and you haven’t seen him in eight months.

You even missed his birthday. He’s too young to have a phone, and you didn’t know where he was. You bought him a gift though, rebelliously snatching a handful of cash from your foster father’s wallet and sneakily buying him a positively ginormous cat plush along with several bags of candy you hid under your bed until now, when they made you leave. You didn’t regret it even when he beat you so hard for stealing that you couldn’t walk right for days, and you certainly don’t regret it now, practically bouncing up and down in your seat as the social worker pulls up into Mikey’s driveway.

It’s a nice house – it looks like its three floors tall, with a blossoming garden out front and a high wooden gate on the side with a sign on it that reads: KEEP GATE SHUT – DOG IN YARD.

What kind of dog is it, you wonder? Mikey would get right along with a golden retriever, but he’d also probably get right along with any dog. He was probably ecstatic to be given to a home with a dog, you can hear the sound of his laughter in your head now as you see the image of him running about in the yard with it in your minds eye. A dog would be good for him, even though he likes cats more – they’d have a better time keeping up with his endlessly high energy and boundless affection.

They’ll place you here, with him, now. You won’t let them make any other decision, but you take a few moments away from your excited imagination to dutifully memorize the address in your mind as its pasted on one of the porch’s wooden roof support beams just in case.

The social worker only needs to knock on the door once before it’s all but ripped open, and you’ve only a second to drop your gifts on the ground just in time to be given an armful of sobbing baby brother.

You throw your arms around him without hesitation. He’s so big now, could you pick him up if you tried? When he left you eight months ago, you could pick him up so well he practically had his own home tucked against your chest. But he’s grown so much, it makes your heart ache as it burns at the sight of him so upset.

“Sorry about him” An unfamiliar, deep voice chuckles. “He’s, uh, missed his big brother.”

“Oh, don’t worry, the feeling’s mutual” Your social worker laughs, as though this is some kind of joke, some kind of cute game. You rub your hand up and down his back, kneeling down to press your lips to his head and pull him ever closer, chubby face burrowing itself in your neck.

“I’m here, I’m here” You assure, voice soft in his ear, taking comfort in how its heard only by him as the social worker and foster father proceed to chat cheerfully over your head. “It’s okay, Mikey. It’s okay. I’m not going to let them take me away again, okay, Mikey? No matter how hard they try. I’ll always find you. I’ll always come home to you.”

“It’s so awful” He sobs, “Don’t make me go back, Leo, don’t make me go back. I was so alone. It hurts so much. They hate me, they hate me and I don’t know why. Don’t make me go back, Leo, don’t make me go back.”

“I won’t” You promise, hugging him ever tighter, “I’ll never let them separate us again, I promise.”

“Am I bad kid, Leo?” He hiccups. “I didn’t mean to be, I promise I didn’t mean to be.”

“You’re not a bad kid” You reply, voice hard and true, “I promise. You’re the best kid there ever was, Mikey. There’s no better kid than you.”

But Mikey just shakes his head mournfully, “Not anymore.”

He’s ten years old today, and neither of you can stop smiling.

You’ve been waiting for this day all year, dutifully saving up every penny left over after making sure your brothers were warm and fed. Mikey hasn’t been the most receptive to how you’ve had to keep shoving him off whenever he begs relentlessly for more candy or more toys, but today all of his nine-year-old dramatics have fallen away as he stares at himself in the mirror, bouncing his twists up and down in his hands with a grin for the history books plastered onto his face.

That makes it all worth it. Every time you’ve nearly wanted to put duct tape over his mouth to quiet his tantrums, all the seemingly endless hours working to put food on the table and clothes in the closet and blankets on the beds, every night you’ve spent half-awake helping him out with a school project he conveniently forgot to mention to you until the very last second. Every single second is worth it, every single grey hair on your head and every single ounce of exhaustion in your body, all of it’s worth it – because at the end of the day, you get this as much as he gets this.

“You like your birthday gift, kiddo?” You ask warmly, smile only widening as he turns his face up to you with his own so wide that his eyes have scrunched shut on his chubby face.

“It’s the best birthday gift ever!” He exclaims, spinning around and throwing his arms around your stomach, squeezing you so hard it hurts. “Thank you, Leo! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you-!”

“I get it” You laugh, patting his new hair gently with your hand. “Take a breath, Mike. And you’re welcome.”

Mikey only squeals wordlessly in response, legs stomping at the floor excitedly. “I can’t wait to show everybody at school!”

He’s thirteen years old, and there’s an intruder in your house.

“Who the fuck are you?” You snap, instinctively shifting yourself between him and the door to Mikey’s bedroom. Fear and fury become one ugly mass in your stomach, hissing and spitting, “And what’re you doing in my house?”

You can’t call the cops, because they’ll see how you stole your little brothers away from your foster homes and put them right back into that mess, that mess that ruined them, that ruined you. You curl your fists at your side, all but baring your clenched teeth like a wild hound while your heart threatens to give out in your chest.

Instead of charging you or shooting you or anything, though, the man just raises his arms by his head in mock surrender. “I’m one of Mikey’s friends” He says, voice gravelly and deep, matching the dark stubble lining his jaw, “I’m just, uh, waiting for him to finish getting dressed. And then I’ll be out of here.”

“Getting dressed for what?” You bark, “It’s fucking midnight. He’s asleep. How do you know my brother?”

The man bites his lip, eyes darting to Mikey’s door and then back to you. “Just… around. Friend of a friend.”

“Which friend?” You all but growl, but he’s cut off from replying by the sound of Mikey’s door opening behind you.

He turns to look, a smile just beginning to curl at his lips, and you dare a glance behind you, praying that you’ll find a half-awake little brother in rumpled pyjamas looking at you in bleary confusion.

But lucky and Hamato are two words that have never gone together, so the sight of your brother is the polar opposite of innocent: Wide awake and dressed in the tightest outfit you’ve ever seen, clothes you would never even begin to think that he had, clothes that if he showed you them at the store you would’ve responded with a strong No – because what kind of business did your baby brother have walking around in slutty outfits when he’s barely even a teenager?

This business, apparently. Your heart cracks in your chest, and you can’t tell whether to scream at him or scream at yourself.

You’re saved from having to decide for now, however, because regardless of his outfit there is still a strange older man in your house, a strange older man that knows Mikey. A strange older man picking Mikey up at midnight in revealing, improper clothing without bothering to inform you even a little.

“Where are you going?” You demand. “And who’s this?”

Mikey at least has the decency to look sort of ashamed as he averts his eyes and digs his foot into the shag carpet. “I won’t be gone long, Leo.”

“You won’t be going out at all” You snap. “And that answers neither of my questions.”

Now, he has the audacity to roll his eyes. “We’re just going over to his house to hang out for a little bit. And he’s my boyfriend.”

“Your BOYFRIEND?!” You howl, guilt just barely permeating through the storm of terror in your soul when Mikey gives a full-body flinch at the noise. You find yourself just barely grateful that Donnie and Raph are at April’s for the night, even though this might’ve been easier if you had backup. “And how old is he?!”

Mikey hunches down into himself, wrapping his arms around his shoulders in some sort of lonesome hug, rubbing one shaking hand up and down his bicep. “I’m mature for my age” He squeaks out softly, “My body and mind are well beyond my years. It’s okay.”

He’s barely 5’2. Baby fat clings to his cheeks and he’s grown clumsy in these past few months as he struggles to grow accustomed to his growing limbs. The cartoons he watches on the television are flashy and loud, and he begs you for candy and chocolate at every grocery trip. His laughter is still high-pitched as an angel, his voice hasn’t yet begun to drop.

You spin around and slam your fist into his ‘boyfriend’s’ face without any sort of first or second thoughts. There isn’t a drop of you that regrets it, either, as he staggers back with his hands cupped over his nose, eyes pinched shut with pain. Rage roars in your ears, blood rushing at speeds you didn’t know were possible through your body. The notion that murder is very much illegal remains the sole force between you and hounding your fists onto him while he’s down until he’s dead.

Quick footsteps rush forth behind you, tiny trembling hands grasping onto your bicep tightly. “Leave him alone, Leo!” Mikey cries, “He loves me! He thinks I’m pretty!”

“He’s a pedophile” You snarl, glaring at the man before you as he carefully rubs the growing bruise on his face with a hatred that would incinerate him where he stood if looks could kill. “A pedophile who needs to get the fuck out of my house and never come back.”

“Leo!” Mikey all but wails, “He’s the only one who understands me!”

“I understand you” You bite, ire lessening only by a fraction when the man stands up and stumbles for the door, “I raised you.”

The door opens with a creak, and the man leaves without even a glance behind, let alone a word, tail tucked between his legs.

For a long moment, the two of you stand in silence, you shaking with barely restrained rage that’s quickly bleeding out into terror and him shaking with the force of his poorly hidden tears. It isn’t until the distinct rumble of a thunderous engine starts up and then gradually fades out into the distance that Mikey moans: “You don’t even like me.”

You can’t say anything, you can’t open your mouth. Your heart is hammering in your chest at the speed of a runaway horse. How long have they been dating, how long has this been going on? How many times has Mikey snuck out of the house with a strange older man at midnight? You had just forked out as much money as you could afford to get him a box of melatonin because he’d been having difficulty sleeping, waking up exhausted and irritated. You offered to sleep in his room or his bed with him, because he always used to sleep easier when you were by his side, but he rejected you instantly. He’s a growing boy, you reasoned through the sorrow in your heart, he’s becoming a teenager and he wants freedom and maturity. Isn’t that what every normal teenager wants? But normal teenagers don’t do this. Messed up ones do, ones whose parents are failing to protect them, to keep them safe.

But how? You’re only twenty, and you never had a good parent to call your own. Everything you do is improv, with occasional ideas stolen from other parents in the street and movies. Do you ground him? That seems right, but what if he just sneaks out again? You can’t stay awake forever, and you can’t afford to put an alarm on the door. What if he runs away from home? But what if you do nothing, and one of these days a man takes him out and never returns him? But you can’t let him have this, you can’t let him run out into the wild world in the dead of night with nothing but pedophiles to keep him company. What if he’s doing drugs out there? He’s better than that, he’s better than all of this, but how do you make him see it?

His hands release themselves from your arm, his bedroom door slamming behind you soon afterwards.

“Don’t go anywhere!” You call out, and despite the fear that drives it, it sounds like anger.

He’s fifteen years old, and he’s been missing for ten days.

His new foster dad, Yoshi, phoned you on the first day, voice remorseful and tight.

He hasn’t come home from school and he’s not picking up any calls, he informed. I don’t want to accuse him, but, well… you know how he is. I have to inform his social worker, but I thought I should tell you first. Maybe he’ll pick up your calls?

You swallowed roughly, dread a hard ball in the bottom of your stomach, festering within you like a disease. You wanted to deny him, wanted to say his phone’s probably just dead and he’s caught up with friends, but you do, in fact, know how he is. You watched him fall, watched him rot, and still you couldn’t save him. It was you who sent him back to the government’s hands, begging Please make him better, please. I don’t know what’s wrong, I can’t save him. I’m sorry for running away with him. Take him from me if you must, please, just make him happy again.

Luckily, they were willing to let you and your other brothers keep in close contact with him, even if he didn’t live with you under your care anymore. It’s not the first time he’s been taken from you, and this time it was even on your terms, but somehow watching the social worker drive away with him hurt your heart like you were thirteen and without your baby for the first time in six years all over again.

I’ll try, you said, because who were you to promise you could bring him home? You may have been his father, but that never meant you were capable of saving him. At the end of the day you’re a blundering older brother, struggling to keep your little family’s boat afloat while storms rage and holes stab through the bottom. But you were going to try anyways, because he was your baby brother, and not long ago he ran right up to you when you were reunited after being in separate foster homes and didn’t let you go for hours. Maybe, you desperately deluded yourself, maybe it’ll be the same.

Predictably, he didn’t pick up even one. Still, you phoned everyday, texting religiously and pasting missing posters everywhere you could, asking everybody around if they’ve seen him. Some of them who know him shake their heads at you in resigned sympathy, voice weak when they say they’ll keep a look out. A sparse few, mostly the kids at his school, are far more direct with you: That guy’s fucking nuts and he’s probably dead in a ditch, dude.

You shake your head, but it keeps you up at night. What if he’s got another boyfriend, and they’ve got him locked up in their basement? What if he’s crying out for you just this second? What if every second you spend not having found him, he’s somewhere out there being tortured? What if he’s halfway across the country? What if he really is dead, and you never got to figure out how to tell him how much you love him? What if he died scared and waiting for you to come save him, to come comfort him, and you weren’t there?

Not even the foster system or his social worker care all that much. It’s just another missing foster kid to them, par for the course when you get one as troubled as Mikey.

But Mikey’s not just another troubled missing foster kid. His favourite season is summer, although he loves snowball fights in the winter, and his favourite colour is orange. He’s been begging you for a cat as soon as he knew what they were, and he’s been feeding every stray one he’s found forever. He wants to run a cat café when he’s older – and he’d be good at it too. When he’s happy, he can light up a room, capable of bringing laughter to morgues. He cooks like he was born to, even through his passion for mixing up absurd foods like gummy worms and pizza. His paintings and comics make you pause without fail every time in admiration, and your wall is lined with the numerous ones he’s gifted you over the years.

He’s just fifteen right now. He’s fifteen and he’s had a hard lot in life. He’s figuring out how to be a person, he just hasn’t gotten yet and the cards are stacked against him. But he’ll make it – you know he will, because he’s Mikey. He just needs help right now, and though you’re not sure what kind or how to give it, you’ll be damned if you don’t give him all you have.

With everyday that passes by, your worries fester and grow. Eventually, you’re barely functional, every waking moment of your life consumed with finding him to the point that Donnie’s moved in with you for now to make sure you eat and sleep. You barely feel human, let alone like yourself. What will you do if he really is dead? He’s only a baby, your baby, the only baby you’ll probably ever have.

After ten never-ending days, though, you find him. You’re on your way home from work, when movement in an alleyway catches your eye, and you find yourself staring at your gaunt little brother, huddled over himself and lighting a crack pipe to his mouth.

“Mikey?” You call, relief and horror flooding your tone all at once. You stagger towards him, hands reaching out on instinct to pull the pipe from his hands with a feeling in your chest like he’s two years old and trying to eat a bottle cap he found on the floor again. He doesn’t offer resistance this time, however, jolting and turning to stare at you with wide eyes.

“Leo?” He responds, voice soft and trembling.

You toss the crack pipe behind you unceremoniously, taking his hollowed face in your hands. “Yeah, Mike. It’s me, it’s me. What’re you doing out here? Where have you been?”

It doesn’t feel real. You have to be dreaming – here he is, before you, looking at you, warmth radiating onto your hands, turning to look behind you, leaning forwards into you, reaching his arm out wildly: “Hey, hey! I need that!”

You blink, twisting around immediately. Whatever he needs, you’ll give it to him, as long as he’ll come home and stay home, as long as he’ll be okay.

But the only thing on the ground is the crack pipe. What- oh. Oh. Right.

Fuck!

You spin around, fear quickly poisoning the relief in your stomach, though a hefty amount of it resolutely remains. You can fix this, you can fix this. He’s here now. You can fix this. “You don’t need it, Mikey” You assure him, voice gentle and high like he’s a toddler again, “It’s bad for you, okay? You don’t need it. I’ll find something for you. But you don’t need that, it’s bad for you.”

“No shit it’s bad for me, Leo” Mikey barks, “But I need it. It’s the only thing that makes me feel okay. I need it.”

“I’ll make you feel okay” You plead, “Please, Mikey, please, tell me what’s wrong. Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it.”

“What isn’t wrong?” He snaps, and then abruptly lurches forwards, slamming his shoulder into your chest as he throws his entire body towards the pipe on the ground.

But he’s still a child, a child who’s seven years younger than you, a child who seemingly hasn’t eaten in days. You take your hands away from his face to grab him by the arms, pushing him backwards. “Calm down, Mikey! Tell me what’s wrong!”

“Everything! Everything has always been wrong!” He all but shrieks. The noise of a truck rushes by, and you can’t help but be nearly consumed with immense relief at the noise of shattering glass behind you as it comes.

Mikey, on the other hand, howls in something like grief and terror before yanking roughly out of your arms, sat down in front you.

“You fucking idiot!” He yells, and you fight to bite back your shock and offense. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, he’s not in his right mind. “Do you know how long I’ve been taking that?!”

Terror works its way into his tone with ease, making his voice shake as his furious gaze melts into the look of a terrified child: “I’m going to fucking die!”

Before you can even move, he hunches in on himself, shoulders shaking almost as much as the fingers he runs through his matted hair, mumbling over and over; “I’m going to fucking die, I’m going to fucking die, I’m going to fucking die, I’m going to fucking die…”

You push forwards without a second thought, throwing your arms around his back and pulling him into your chest. “You’re not going to die” You soothe, rubbing lines up and down his back with your palm. “I’m not going to let you, okay? I’m going to take you home and send you to rehab, and everything’s going to be okay, okay? It’s all going to be okay. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

He’s nineteen years old, and he’s dying.

Dying, because he can’t be dead already. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. He’s only nineteen, he’s only a baby, and he hasn’t overcome his pain yet. You’re sure he will, he just needs time, time and patience and love and help. Help far beyond what you can give him, love that you failed to give enough of.

Every moment you pushed him away is flashing through your mind, every single second of every single day that the bright joy in his eyes diminished. When you were seven years old, he smiled at you for the first time and then seemingly refused to stop. You can’t remember the last time he smiled at you, but it can’t have been the last time, it can’t, it can’t, it can’t.

His chest is stiff underneath your hand, but his pulse is still fluttering. That’s all you need to keep pushing down, to keep waiting with all the patience you never had for him when he was young and you were young for breath to return to his lungs, for life to return to his eyes.

You don’t care if he’s a drug addict forever, if he never speaks to you again. He just needs to wake up, he just needs to live. Please, please, please, please, please.

Not my baby, not my baby, not my baby, not my baby, not my baby.

He can’t become another statistic, this can’t be the end of his life. He’s so smart, he’s so full of life, his heart is so full of love. He can’t die before he gets his head on straight. This can’t be the end – he’s only a boy, he’s only a boy, he’s only a boy.

You pause the CPR briefly to lean down by his face again, pushing his head gently down onto the bathroom floor as more vomit foams up from his mouth. You try not to notice the way his blown-out pupils stare blankly ahead as you press your fingers down at the pulse point on his neck, heart almost stilling in your own chest as you wait desperately for the sensation of his heart’s faint thrumming.

When it comes, you could cry with relief, even though it’s slow and weak. You can deal with slow and weak, as a baby he was slow and weak and you managed just fine. It was when he got older that things got hard, when the foster homes got their grubby claws on you all and dug scars deep into your flesh, when the anger and grief and fear became such second nature to you that it was everything you could do just to make sure your baby brothers survived to the next day without you blowing a gasket when they were only boys. But it wasn’t enough, you were never enough. In the end, you yourself were always just a boy – a scared, stupid little boy who never knew what was going on or what he was doing, just that somehow he had to keep his baby brothers safe and happy.

But you were angry. You were an angry teenager, as much as you tried not to be. The fear that had clung to you all your life hardened itself into claws and teeth that you tried and failed not to cut your little brothers with when they stepped on your toes, when they strayed off course and you had to figure out how to right them in record time.

It worked, fairly well, with the other two. But not with your baby, not with the one whom you fed from birth and rocked through the night, not with the one whose raising lied entirely on your shoulders. This one found greater comfort in illicit drugs than in you as soon as he was old enough to obtain them. And why shouldn’t he? You tried so hard, but you failed, you failed, again and again you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed.

Just don’t fail this time. For the love of all that is holy, don’t fail this time. If it’s the last thing you do, don’t fail this time. Fail a thousand hundred other times, just not this time, just not this time.

A hand settles on your shoulder, pushing you back from your baby, but you dig your hands in, holding onto his warm body by the sides desperately, baring your teeth like a rabid animal: “Get off of me!”

“We’re paramedics” Comes an unfamiliar voice, “You’re doing great, but we’ll take it from here, okay?”

Paramedics. Paramedics with Narcan and everything else your baby needs to live, to wake up to see another day.

Your heart just about shatters in your chest as you lean away from his still body, but many paramedics quickly take your place, clustering around him. One of them takes you gently by the shoulders as though you are a scared child and guides you towards the door.

“What if he’s scared?” You protest, voice cracking wetly, “I can calm him down, please. Please take care of him, please. Please save him. He’s my baby. He doesn’t like to be alone.”

Or he didn’t. Back when he was little, back before the darkness of the world had seeped into his bright light. Back when you were still doing good, and everyday he trailed on your heels, everyday he ran up and greeted you with a hug, everyday he called for you in the dead of night because I had a nightmare or I woke up and I was alone. Sometimes, though rarely now, when he phones you in the dead of night and goes Leo, I don’t feel okay, can you come pick me up? and collapses on your couch doped up and shaken.

Was he thinking of you, when he collapsed here? Was he scared to be alone in what could possibly be his final moments? Did he try to yell for you only for the drugs in his system to clamp up his throat? Did he try his best to grab your attention, and yet you were too far away to hear?

“We’ll take care of him” The paramedic assures, nudging you out the door while you stubbornly refuse to look away from the sight of your baby brother on the floor. This can’t be the last day, it can’t, it can’t, it can’t.

But who are you to stop it? You couldn’t even save him before he was dead.

He’s twenty-eight years old, and you can’t stop crying.

You’re trying your hardest to, blinking as fast as you dare and taking great care to ensure the deep breaths you’re forcing in and out of your lungs aren’t shaking. You don’t even know how there’s tears left – it seems all you’ve done in between rushing about in preparation and working is cry.

And yet here you are, arm locked in your littlest brother’s as you walk him down the aisle towards his husband, a man who found him at his lowest and still said I love you and then proceeded to all but carry him through recovery and then through college where you couldn’t. The man who brought life back into your baby’s eyes, who brought him up out of an early grave and made it so one day Mikey phoned you and said: I’m one year sober in a week, Leo! Are you available to go out with me to celebrate? A cat cafés like, just opened a block down from me and you know me, Leo, I’ve been dying to go! They’ve got big tables, too, so I’ve been planning to invite everyone, but I need to make sure the date works for you most.

Everyone is a lot of people, now, the boy who was once so alone it haunted him everywhere he went surrounded by a legion of friends. His wedding is practically bursting at the seams with them, what feels like a thousand eyes pinned onto you as you lead him down. You can’t cry because of that, not only because it’d be embarrassing but also because this is Mikey’s wedding. You wouldn’t dare pull the attention away from him for a breath.

And yet, the joy is too much to bear, and strong as you may seem you’ve always been a happy crier, just like Mikey, who leans to you now and murmurs wetly into your ear: “It’s okay to cry, Leo. I’m crying too.”

You don’t say anything in reply, too frightened that opening your mouth will open the floodgates of your tears without hesitation. It isn’t until you’re paused before the altar, Woody Dirkins, soon to be Woody Hamato, stood before you, smiling wide with wet eyes, that you turn around and take Mikey’s head in your hands to press a long kiss to the top of his head.

He leans into it without resistance.

“I love you, Michelangelo” You murmur into his hair as soon as he’s done. “There’s no other kid I’d wish for than you, I always knew you’d make it.”

Mikey sniffs loudly. “I love you too, Leo. Thank you” He replies, voice shaking. You run a hand up and down his trembling shoulders, finding ease in your own tears as the motion makes his breaths even out within moments.

You pull away when he does after a few extra seconds of peaceful embrace, though you allow yourself a moment to behold his face, round and bright and handsomely framed by his twists that he got embedded with small, vivid flowers for his wedding. After that, you turn to Woody, and extend him your hand, smiling.

“I know I don’t have to tell you to take good care of him” You say when he shakes it.

Woody’s smile turns slightly wry before you, but his eyes remain genuine as he replies, “But I’ll promise it to you anyways.”

You release your baby from your arms and into his without any other question, but for the first time in your life it doesn’t hurt.