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deliciousmusiccoffee · 2 months

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Wrote this to satisfy my urge to write ficlets and wax poetic about the ‘12 gang. This one goes out to everyone’s favorite crime-fighting hockey player.

Blame @2309analysis for indulging in my obsessions, and that post I reblogged like a week ago about shedding light on BroTPs. Also @alwerakoo for so meanly introducing me to alllll the fics from Taizi, that has led me down my first fan fiction rabbit hole in years and inspired tf out of me. Casey deserves some appreciation, and I’m here to dish it. And also to provide some fresh ‘Angelo perspective.

Mikey actually avoids getting too close to Casey, in the early days of his friendship with the gang.

Only for a while, and not because he dislikes him, he’ll swear up and down on that. But Mike knows he’s lucky to be as amicable as he is. He’s lucky to be utterly blessed with a cute face and an inviting smile and an inclination to make friends wherever he goes.

And he knows Raph is typically the type to treat conversations more like allergens. The type that’ll grin at riling someone up, alllllmost as much as at cheering someone up. And Mikey also knew during their first introduction, that in picking fights and bashing heads, Casey Jones and his brother were uncommonly matched. It’s rarer for Raph to click with someone, to go out of his way to spend more time with someone outside his brothers, especially when he and his brothers look and live the way they do.

Mikey’s got friends, but he knew when Casey entered their lives with a bang, that Raph needed someone that could match his rage and passion and whatever other insanity he and Case can relate to each other over. Mike might thrive off of connection, might be the most drawn to it and feel the most deprived of it, in their constant separation from the world. But that didn’t mean Raph didn’t deserve someone he could also feel closer to in their lonely existence.

So, rather dutifully, he hung back. He contented himself with his standing friendships, with Leatherhead, and April, and Ice Cream Kitty, and let Raph and Casey go on their raucous adventures with a knowing smile, happy his big brother was finally coming out of his shell a little (pun very much intended).

But over time, as Casey becomes less of an occasional acquaintance, and weaves tighter into the fabric of the family, Mikey figures out how similar he and Raph actually are, by means of their growing mutual friendship with the guy.

Leo and Don have always gravitated toward April between the two of their close human friends. Donnie has been gah gah over her since the day they met, but it’s more than that. He’s at ease around her, once he maneuvers around the harrowing teenage battlefield of emotional and physical attraction. Those two goobers can bond together over weird science crap, laugh about jokes together in that smarter, more clever way that Don likes (jokes that sail right over the others’ heads and leave them reaching uselessly).

April and Donnie have developed that unspoken communication, that Mike doesn’t think has anything to do with her psychic powers or his genius. As the awkward years dealing with crushes and feelings and drama finally dissipate, they settle into a friendship where they feel understood with one another, in the secret, comforting way an old friend/flame will.

And when Leo does open up, if he opens up, it’s to April, gossiped over the phone or muttered under his breath over morning tea. Mikey never thought to use the word ‘catty’ to describe the eldest of the team, but he walks in on the two of them one day, bonding over how unnecessarily irritating Shinigami can be (“I mean really, a bodysuit and tights? Come on.”), and reconsiders.

There’s an ease there too, between them, but it’s more steady and somber, more rooted in the need for feedback and understanding, in a world where that kind of thing is tough to find — sometimes for April, and most of the time for Leo.

Casey Jones, on the other hand, humors the reckless, unpolished side of Raph and Mikey, and in that way, the team remains perfectly balanced. Where April adds stability, Casey counters with all the akimbo wildness in the world. Wildness that both Raph and Mikey have been encouraged, more often than not, to tame over the years.

He’s a bad influence, 80% of the time. Sure, he’ll be the first to steel his gaze and tighten his hold on his death-bat to lunge headfirst into a fight, regardless of how outnumbered he is. His willingness to lay his life down for the cause is more out of glory, where Raph’s is out of sacrifice. It’s still an admirable quality, in Mike’s opinion.

But Casey’s also the first to condone dusting a thick layer of down feathers on the ceiling fan, for the next victim who feels a little warm in the living room.

It’s sitting in the living room one evening, shooting the shit while Raph and Leo gripe over some needless detail in mission strategy, when Mikey realizes how well he could gel with the daredevil. He confesses a long-lived and long-repressed fantasy of covering the floor of the dojo in glue traps, just to see the look on Leo’s face.

Where Donnie would roll his eyes, or even Raph would smack him upside the head, Case leans in, brows raised in intrigue, like Mike just invited him to the rager of the century, and says, “I’ll swing by the Ace, if you fork over half the bill.”

It’s the unwillingness to back down that Mikey can appreciate, and gravitates toward. And in it, he starts to understand his brother more, with his brazen attitude of taking life by the horns. Raph’s got more grudges, and he’s motivated by a vengeance that’s… honestly, scary, if he’s brought to use it. But Michelangelo can finally start to understand, on the rare occasions he’s invited out with them on their little joyrides around the city. He can see that Raph needs the thrill of adrenaline that accompanies the ridiculous adventures and late-night trouble-making. Almost as much as Mikey does. It gives them somewhere to release all the wily energy they work so hard to suppress, for the sake of the team. And it’s nice that Casey will egg them on, and challenge them to one-up their antics, be it in battle or in jest.

Things with Casey change again, as everything else does, when they flee up to Northampton. Because that’s when Mikey realizes, he and this dude have the same tendency to find mania the best cure for the horrible, gnawing feelings that well up and can’t be combatted.

The first few weeks at the farmhouse are torture. Sure, the sun feels awesome on Mike’s skin, and he’s never heard birdsong this loud in the mornings, used to it being muffled through the metal bars of a storm drain. But he can’t even soak in the anomaly of this, not when everyone thinks Splinter was never coming back. Not when Leo seems beyond repair, and Raph sinks into himself, holes up and refuses to come back out. Donnie’s constantly on edge, snarling at the slightest hint of annoyance. He quarantines himself in that barn, unable to fight his own guilt and inadequacies, that only tighten their grip on him when he discovers there’s nothing he can do to fix their brother. Even April loses that shine in her eye and the soft, indulging smile she’ll give Mike when he attempts his wayward jokes.

But not Casey. Casey welcomes them at full force, and fans the flames in his own itching, secretly-desperate need to feel something than the horrible, dragging knowledge that the world is crashing in around them.

And Mikey can relate.

So they begin to hang out more, finding stupid pranks to pull, reserving them for one another with how prickly the others have become. It’s nice to know that Casey’s reliable for a gappy, shit-eating grin anytime Mikey cracks a joke or erects a Saran-Wrap wall in the hallway to break up the sinking monotony of it all. And in the quiet and close proximity of the farmhouse, Mike starts noticing things about Casey that Casey himself doesn’t often like to admit.

How he’ll jab at Donnie, so that the gears in his head stop smoking with overthink enough for the genius to let off some steam during sparring.

How he leaves a bowl of chips and an apple at the bathroom door every day at 2pm, during the days when Raph’s eyes go glassy staring at a comatose Leo, and he forgets to eat.

How he’ll purposely ignore April’s puffy, tear-tired eyes when she slips onto the couch beside him, and instead reminisce about stupid school inconveniences they once despised, and now miss.

How he’ll smile over at Mikey, uncommonly wistful in the dead of night when it’s just the two of them out on the porch, listening to the crickets, and mutter, “Used to hate these things, back when I lived in Flatbush.”

It’s odd how Casey becomes the glue for the six of them, as much as Mikey (maybe even moreso), during those three months.

And then, when Leo recovers, and the world’s finally hauled back onto its axis after what seems like forever, things start to return back to the way they were. Raph finally re-emerges as his old self, throwing in an elbow and a smirk here and there. Donnie starts smiling again, when Mikey makes weird faces at the breakfast table. April’s sunnier, and finally agrees to a game of Uno every now and then.

Raph and Casey go back to ribbing each other. Mikey finds himself more occupied by Dr. Cluckingsworth, toward the end of their adjournment at the farmhouse. But they let him around even more than before, when he promises not to be a little shit. And he’s relieved to find that he’s accepted into their friendship easily, even if he’s somewhat reduced to a guest appearance in it.

They kick ass in New York, and then there’s the entire ordeal with dinosaur aliens in space, but the dynamic between everybody remains rather solid since that first trauma-bond in Mass. Casey’s as antagonistic as ever, but there’s a side to him that matures along with the rest of them, as they start to face bigger and bigger enemies. As they hurtle closer and closer to the inevitable fact that one day, they might pick a fight they won’t be able to bounce back from. He and Raph stop throwing themselves headfirst at every obstacle, start heeding Leo’s orders. Case even patches things up with Don, after years of tension and competition.

But it’s with Mikey, where he never loses that wicked spark for teenage havoc. They start a text thread of memes, rancid with social media brain rot, that only the two of them understand. There are endless streams of back-and-forth, when they find a joke they both like, or even better, that one of them can’t stand in the least. When Raph’s being a grump, they’ll elect to play video games together, and they totally vibe when they realize their taste in comics is eerily similar.

And of course, Mikey will always be the sweetheart of the family. He’s proud of that, wears that fact like a badge of honor, really. He visits his other friends outside the clan, and becomes what April has been for him and his brothers — a listening ear, an understanding smile, a warm pat on the back and an offer to whip up some delicious meal to cheer them back up.

But there’s something to be said for the less-widely accepted (some might even call it rash) side of him being welcomed and encouraged by Casey.

And so they become each other’s late night fall back, when Raph’s too broody or tired to rouse back into having fun.

They go on their midnight adventures long into their twenties, grinding wheels at the skatepark, walking to the outskirts of town to find the funnier kind of trouble. Like hitting soda cans off fence posts with miscellaneous projectiles, or pranking passersby.

Like tonight, when Casey proudly shows off his backpack positively brimming with paint-flecked cans. Mikey’s reluctant, at first, the niggling voice that Leo’s somehow managed to nail into the back of his head telling him it’s unethical, it’s illegal, blah blah blah, staving him off.

But Raph gives him a playful shove of encouragement, busy gabbing to Mona over the space-time-warp-phone-thing Don had fashioned for him, and Casey’s dangling a spray can in front of him, reminding him that, “Dude, Fearless can try, but ART cannot be stopped”.

Mikey gives in, and he smiles to himself as they hop the turnstiles and duck their heads to avoid Leo’s inquisitive squint in their direction. It’s good to have friends that’re good for causing trouble.

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