Chapter Text
“I’m going to your apartment!” Mikey danced through what was very much not her front door and continued to sing. “I’m going to your apartment!”
“Not if you keep that up.” Kendra breezed by him into the store.
Mikey lowered the volume, but continued to sing the phrase.
She picked up and stuck him with a basket.
He took it like a prop and she mistakenly made eye contact with the shop’s attendant.
The cashier at the desk looked up against her long lashes. “Been wondering when you’d be back.”
“Shut up.” Kendra strode down the familiar aisles to the one she needed.
The woman’s laughter chased her.
Mikey was first caught looking back at the employee and then at all the colorful packaging. “She seems nice.”
“Oh, yeah. So nice.” Kendra growled out. “So easy to upkeep a rainbow Mohawk when your uncle owns the store and you get shit for free!!”
Mikey looked up the fluorescent lights and waited to see if the lob would land.
There was obvious grumbling from across the store.
“Always someone.” Kendra glared at the shelves of dye.
She shouldn’t be here yet.
She needed to get everything else first. “This way.”
“You do get judged a lot.” Mikey followed.
“Thanks.” She retorted bitterly as she got to the developers.
She tossed a bottle into the basket.
“Like more than me.” He went on.
“That was code for ‘knock it off.’ I’m not in the mood.” She hissed as she passed him.
“I wonder why.” He went on regardless.
She ignored him and went over a mental tally of what she had at home. Most of her stuff had definitely expired which had prompted this impromptu trip to the beauty shop she frequented. Her mixing bowl and brushes were still usable. She had a plethora of ratty towels and all the clips necessary. She could get by on what bleaching products she had so it was just developer and hair dye that was missing.
He caught her eye and turned to her openly. “Like your vibe is not inviting it, so why does it happen?”
“Don’t know. Always has.” She stunted out as he continued to be endlessly stubborn.
“Is it the hair?” He wondered.
“Mikey.” She tried to put a finality in her tone.
“I know. I hear ya. I just…” He shook his head.
“Look, I don’t know and you sure as hell don’t. If I find out, maybe I’ll tell you.”
He softened a little. “I’ll take it.”
“You sure you can spot check this?” She let her doubts leak to cover up his gooey expression.
“Yup! Been there, done that on my own! Nearly burned all the hair off of my head.” He tossed his locks.
They were well maintained to her eye.
He came up into a salute. “You were clear: I’m here to watch and nothing else. I will point and maybe help out only if there’s a spot you can’t reach.”
“Easy, solider.” She pushed his plastron gently.
“Sir, yes, sir!” He tossed his arm out in an act, but smacked a shelf.
He caught all the items before they hit the floor and juggled them in his arms as he failed to get them back to their places.
She stepped in to help him. “You’re a mess. I should have asked someone else.”
She had no one else.
She hadn’t had anyone else in years.
She could have done it alone, but there had been mistakes.
Spots.
This was the first time in a long while that she could do this and save money by doing it herself. It wasn’t like her family friends supported her color. She’d been shelling out way too much on doing this at a salon. It always felt like an annoying waste when she knew how. She’d been doing it since she had virgin hair.
That time she permanently stained Deborah Ricci’s tacky yellow bathtub.
The woman had been forced to redesign her whole gaudy color scheme.
Jase had spotted her back then until she had gotten Jeremy into it. They had dying parties. There was hair management. They used to mask on weekends and watch movies. They weren’t good times; they were simply times.
Of the past.
Kendra moved to her section of purples.
Her exact shade wasn’t in stock, so she evaluated for the next closest.
She didn’t care as long as it pretty much read what she wanted it to.
She was here.
She was saving money.
Mikey was useful because he could catch those annoying spots.
She had cleaned up her apartment for this.
One payment for another.
The stupid balancing act.
“You know art or whatever, right?” Kendra asked without looking.
His voice closed in. “Yup! That was my other credential.”
“Which do you think between these? I like this brand.” She held up two similar shades of purple for him.
He hummed loudly and clearly was juggling two boxes of his own.
One orange.
One cyan.
She stared a little too obviously at one box. “What are those?”
“Huh?” He looked like he had forgotten he was holding anything.
He laughed.
He held the orange up beside his face. “What do you think? This is so my color, right?”
His lashes fluttered.
He squished closer to the box that matched his mask.
“Yeah, sure.” She stepped forward with the purple boxes out like a plea. “What’s that one?”
Her eyes hadn’t moved.
Mikey followed her gaze and lit up.
“Oh, this one’s yours!” He offered it.
“No.” Her eyes followed. “It’s not.”
He stared. “Uh… Yeah, it is.”
“No.” She shook the boxes with purple hair dye. “This is. I’m asking you which one.”
“Oh, yeah. I was thinking about that.” He closed the gap.
The cyan box got closer.
“Of those two, the one on the left. Er, your right. I always mix that up.”
She hadn’t looked away.
“But I was thinking… Are you sure this isn’t your color?” The cyan dye shifted in his hold.
“What are you talking about?” She spat.
He didn’t flinch. “You’re wearing it right now.”
She didn’t have to look.
There was her signature cyan lipstick.
There was a cyan splash across her otherwise drab hoodie.
She had thrown it on just for the sake of going out.
Something to cover up her bleached and stained top that she wore when she did her hair.
That didn’t mean anything.
“It’s not.” She told him with a voice that could cut glass.
Again, he was somehow immune to the barbs. “I’m gonna be straight up and you can get as mad as you want.”
Her gaze finally moved to his face.
“Do you even like purple?”
Her lips parted and it sounded like a crash to her ears.
He was impudent.
He should be scrubbed from the Earth.
How had she let this happen?
She let a man in that would say something like that to her face.
She had let him get close enough.
For what?
He knew nothing.
They were kindred spirits.
They had nothing in common.
He was a fool.
A jester.
She had kept him in her court because she found him entertaining.
She knew the real reason for fools.
Control the masses.
You allowed one wretch within your means to make fun of you. It gave the others the illusion of freedom to do the same. They could laugh along, but that was it. The royalty still ruled with an iron fist. The jokes kept them passive. It made them think they could entertain their complaints. In reality, they were offed one by one.
Heads rolling.
That was what Kendra sought.
Totalitarian rule.
She didn’t need to keep a fool.
She was in no position.
She would get another when the time came.
She had one who was assigned to her since matrimony.
Jase looked better in bells than he ever did in anything else.
“Obviously.”
He continued on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Cause like I get your old group had the name in it, but that was because it was your school mascot and it’s not even just what you’re wearing right now. I don’t think you own much purple. I mean I haven’t seen your house yet, but, you have, what? No purple clothes that I’ve ever seen.”
She couldn’t speak for fear his stupidity would make her stutter.
“Or food! Not that… there’s a lot of turquoise or purple foods, but…” His brow creased with his mask. “That’s a bad comparison. What else have we done?”
She was still holding those purple dye boxes.
“It doesn’t matter!”
Like a buffoon.
“It just seems like-”
She was the clown.
He was still talking.
It was makeup, she thought then.
Not like her lipstick, but everything.
Everything she put on was a costume.
It was her power.
It was pretension personified.
What else could she do?
She’d never been the tallest.
She’d never been the fastest.
She’d been the smartest.
She was the first amongst anyone to realize a brand.
She then crafted her own bit by bit.
From tomboy to trendsetter, she had tried out a series of hats in a store until a random person walking by complimented her beret. It was a comment along with some song she hadn’t been particularly impressed by, but she would own it. They would love her; she would make them.
Her hair came later.
After the jacket design.
After Jase.
After Debroah Ricci.
The bathroom redesign.
The internal version of herself smirked, but it felt empty. The void of her mind was aflame, but the fire wasn’t purple. Her avatar, a digital one as that made the most sense, was purple lighting. It struck the wasteland and filled it with teal flames.
It was wrong, she screamed without a mouth.
That was not her color.
Her color was-
Why had she chosen purple?
The Purple Dragons.
She was the leader.
She had built her brand on that stake.
A tech club that won awards where there hadn’t been anything prior to her.
She’d clawed up with her nails. The ones she couldn’t paint because any would be ruined by all the typing. Her hair was fair game. From a black flag, she rose the sails of her turning tides. She chose the most electric color that was also the cheapest. The tub had been ruined with her first round of bleach. She fried her follicles, but what arose was her.
Purple.
When people saw her they thought of that.
Purple Dragon.
She hadn’t been one in years.
A hacker.
That violated her parole.
A convict.
Patently true, but not one she filed beside her name.
Purple.
She was purple.
She was.
She had to be.
Had she ever changed her lipstick?
That predated it all.
It was a faraway memory, but it struck down her avatar.
Right into the cyan flames.
A clip started of her going through her mom’s makeup and getting scolded. If she was so interested then she should get her own products to ruin. She was taken on a transformation trip all her own and it was there that she picked the first audacious color that caught her eye.
Her mom grimaced even though she still made the purchase. That neon swatch heralded in years of evolution. It was no longer some swatch that rubbed off her lips after a few minutes of wear. It was eventually upgraded to a custom formula made at a lipstick lab. She no longer had to ask; a refill was her automatic Christmas present every year.
It grew beyond her lips.
She chose teal sneakers for a new school year. There was once a seafoam bedspread donning her mattress that had since been tossed out. Her entire decor centered around fringed frames and binders in aquamarine.
When had she ever chosen purple?
She picked it because it said something.
It was supposed to say her name.
Had it?
Did it?
When had it not?
Cyan muddied her purple avatar.
The flames burned through the exterior.
Revealing what lay beneath.
Something chosen for the sake of it.
No deeper meaning.
Because it had caught her eye.
She liked it.
She liked the way it sat on her skin.
She had tried other lipsticks, but they weren’t as satisfying.
She liked to be electric.
Bright.
The CYMK pressed for print.
Layered colors.
A true leader and a purest form.
When she turned back a tear was sliding down her cheek and Mikey was still talking.
He was downright babbling.
She looked at him and saw he had only a box of purple in his hands now.
“I dug through the stock and compared and this one isn’t listed! This is it though, right? This is your current color? I’m so sure it is. I was going to ask the cashier, but yeah, we all know that wasn’t about to happen. Like I need her help. I have an eye for color and this is it. I’m sure. I’m like 98% sure, but I can make up the other two. You know we can mix color? I know how to blend! I’ve watched hundreds of hours of those palette matching videos. I love the way they smear, but I hate the sound! I just watch them on mute, but that’s not important. What’s important is I was talking out of my ass and I’m sorry, but I got the color, didn’t I…!?”
She looked at the box.
Her preferred brand and, damn him, her exact color.
Or what was.
Maybe it was time to move on.
“Where is it?” She spoke thickly through her tight throat.
“Where’s what?” He blinked wide at her.
“The other one… You said teal. It’s cyan.”
“The box said teal.”
A bubble of anger rose and popped in a way that made her stomach feel fizzy. “Where is it!?”
He fumbled the purple box like a volleyball and barely caught it.
In a full rotation of his body, he expertly swapped it out for the cyan dye and presented it to her.
“You don’t have to-”
“Stop.” She took it from him and stared at the shade.
It was a little too blue based on the art, but her thumb on the box paired well enough with it.
“If this looks bad, you’re paying for the fix.”
“Done.” He spoke stunned.
She glanced at the purple.
She watched it go.
Back on the shelf where it no longer had a tag.
The last of its kind.
“Let’s go.” She turned. “You got the basket?”
“Yup!” He grabbed it because he had actually set it down and followed her to the counter.
“This.” Kendra slammed the dye down in front of the employee. “And that.”
She stepped to the side in perfect time so Mikey could make some noise putting the basket down. “Much appreciated!”
Kendra stared at the little one-off products around the register like candy.
“That’s new.” The employee spoke as she rang her up.
“Is it though?” Mikey spoke in her stead.
“Uh, yeah. Who are you, by the way? Buy-or-leave doesn’t have friends.” The employee pointed at Mikey with a bottle of developer.
“Aw cute.” Mikey chirped. “Your nicknaming skills are on par with your color knowledge.”
“Excuse me?!”
Kendra’s head whipped around.
“I mean either you or your stylist is spinning the color wheel, but it’s crazy someone shoved violet in-between red and yellow. It’s ROYGBIV and I know my orange. Don’t they teach that in like, kindergarten?”
The last item passed the scanner and the employee dove under the counter.
Mikey covertly swiped the items into the bag.
The employee popped up with a mirror in hand and was desperately rotating her head to get a glimpse of her mohawk.
Mikey seemed to wait for a particular move before he slammed a few buttons on the computer screen and the pay now option popped up. Kendra patted down for her wallet, but Mikey beat her to that too. He swiped his card for the chip and then confirmed the purchase with another stretch of his arm across the counter.
“What the fuck!?” The employee hissed at her reflection.
There was a ding of a completed transaction and her attention shifted.
“Hey!”
Kendra caught the bag and ran.
“Put orange in its place next time!” Mikey hollered as he chased her.
The employee continued to yell after them until they got several blocks away.
There Mikey puffed with laughter which interfered with his breathing.
“What was that!?” She elbowed him as they slowed to a regular walking pace.
“I noticed it the second I saw her! Why’d she do the colors like that?” He continued to chuckle. “So off.”
“What if I can’t go back!?”
“I mean maybe I can’t go back, but why wouldn’t you?” He addressed her openly.
“She’s pissed at both of us! I brought you there!”
“Find somewhere else? She sucks.”
“It’s closest to my apartment!”
“Eh…!” He strung out the syllable before a light bulb went off. “I get to go to your apartment!”
She made a move like she was going to shove him into traffic and he readied himself. She didn’t do it, as much as she wanted. Instead, she bumped into him and stayed close. With her head down, heart beat anxiously out of her ears. The teal hair dye felt heavy in the box.
Mikey adjusted ever so slightly after the wave of surprise had passed and offered his arm.She pinched his skin for the sake of it. He clearly squirmed, but didn’t retreat. For that, she slunk her arm through his. They walked in silence that she thanked him for with her prolonged contact until he slowed.
She checked out and found he had taken them as far as he could before he didn’t know where her apartment proper was. She pulled on him gently before getting her arm free and pointing. She caught his hand in the process and he allowed himself to be led with a smile. Only the bag of products crinkled as she dodged into an alley and then turned down a narrower one. It was out into a back plaza where she hooked a fire escape.
It came down with its usual rusty creak and she made the perilous journey up it as she had many times before. She could feel Mikey oozing unsaid questions behind her, but he kept his trap shut. She knew it was strange that this was the only way to access her apartment, but it was because of this and the building’s absent owner that she was able to afford this much.
They turned a corner and there was her door.
She could hear Mikey’s jaw drop at the sight of a door on a fire escape.
She dug out a key and unlocked it. “Wait til you're inside.”
He nodded furiously and she opened the door for him.
“Don’t say shit.”
He checked with her before he ducked in through her threshold. She followed and nabbed the bag from where he was stuck. The door closed behind them and she left it for now. She would come back and lock it, but first she went to drop off the items in the bathroom. When she returned Mikey was still staring at her studio apartment and the mattress on the floor that had been messily made.
“How are you always so quiet and so loud?” She complained as she did up three locks.
“I don’t have a bed frame either.” He blurted out.
She looked up from the last lock and turned to him.
“I sleep in a hammock.”
“What? Like outside?” Her face screwed up in confusion.
“What?! No!” He seemed to think better. “Well…?”
“You’re still in the sewer with the rest of them?” She tossed the question as she gestured for him to follow.
It was only a few steps to her tiny bathroom where they clearly both weren’t going to fit. “Not the sewer exactly. You can get there from the sewer, but it’s an old subway depot.”
“Huh.”
“Can I say what I’m most surprised about?” He blurted out suddenly.
She rolled her eyes.
She had heard it all before.
She had only had a few visitors, but it was always the same.
No one could believe she lived like this.
“Sure.” She stunted out. “I’m stuck with you for the rest of the afternoon so keep that in mind.”
She unearthed a color bowl and brush along with a silver shampoo she hadn’t remembered she had.
She was reading the label when Mikey finally spoke up.
“There’s no electronics. No TV. You don’t even have an alarm clock.”
She looked up in her vision without moving her head.
Had someone mentioned that?
She couldn’t recall.
Maybe about her lack of a computer.
“Call it rustic.” She decided.
Mikey snorted.
“What?” She glared at him in the mirror as she used the sink below it as a platform to mix the bleach powder she had with the developer she had just purchased.
“Rustic is for cabins.”
“Uh huh.”
“You wouldn’t be caught dead in a cabin.”
“You don’t know.”
“You like hiking?”
“No.”
“Do you like outdoors?”
“Not really.”
“Bugs?”
“Turn around.”
Mikey spun and saw a cockroach crawling up the wall that she had spied in the mirror.
He screeched, recoiled, and flung a fireball at it that expertly scorched the thing without burning her wall.
She turned her head to view him where she was stirring. “And here I pegged you as an advocate for bug lives.”
“Not cockroaches. Nah!” He shuddered.
“My roommates that don’t pay rent.” It was a joke that amused her and she finished up mixing her first bowl. “I’m gonna start with the back. There’s a computer chair propping up my clothes rack and a stool with my phone cord wrapped around it. Grab those.”
He went to search for the necessary items as she yanked her hoodie off.
She left it on her bed and Mikey returned with the chairs.
“Take your pick.” She waved him off. “Turn to the wall for a second.”
He set the chairs down and dutifully did as he was told.
She dropped her leggings in one fell swoop and snatched up a pair of athletic shorts that had fallen off the side of her bed. She threw them on as they were disposable if they got product droplets on them. When she was clothed again, she smugly summoned Mikey and sauntered over to show off that they had a strip lining of purple. He took his assessment fast and returned her gaze with an equally smug look that said he knew that they were expendable for the process. She turned her nose up at him and went to her vanity to section her hair off.
He set the computer chair ready for her like a throne and hopped up on the stool, which teetered beneath him.
She scooped up a blob on her brush and started painting bleach on. “What are you, anyway? Eagle Scout?”
“Todd Scout.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“Nature’s not really my thing either.”
She eyed him in the glass.
“Come on, admit it.”
“Fine. It’s boring.”
“It’s pretty.”
“I guess.”
“The trees. Being able to breathe. The water.”
“The booming quiet. The bugs. The lack of general humanity.”
“I thought you were going to say AC.”
“I don’t even have AC.” She met her own eye.
Mikey had to turn. “We can find you one of those window ones. I saw some good deals on a resale site.”
“’We?’”
“Yeah. I’ll show you the marketplace I use. I’ve got a good eye.”
That wasn’t her point, but she let it slide. “Purple’s a bitch to strip. This’ll take a while so bring it up.”
Mikey bobbed with laughter that shook his stool.
“What?”
He flapped a hand at her.
“Mikey.”
“Phrasing!” He quacked.
“It’s true.”
“I believe you.” He puffed with giggles.
“You’re thinking of your idiot brother.” She finally started painting bleach into her hair.
“I am.” He admitted.
“Gross. Y’all are too close.”
Mikey grunted as he popped upright. “Hey! Don’t be nasty!”
“Me?” She gave him an exaggerated look.
“Yes! I was thinking about how hard it is to get him to take off his battle shell sometimes!”
For a split honest second, Kendra couldn’t help but agree.
A lifetime ago when they had stolen said objects, the lot of them had waited hours for him to finally deactivate all three so they could remote in.
Before that he had endlessly used one or all of them in a rotation.
It was only for a moment and she was back.
“Sure…” She dragged out the word as a tease.
Mikey wriggled with irritation. “That bleach is boiling your brains!”
“It’s going to, with the amount I’ll need. How’s the coverage?”
“Get…” Mikey turned his head and demonstrated with a point to his own. “Here, above the bottom on the right.”
She nodded and started to paint with her eye on him.
He nodded appropriately and she coated the strands. “Good job though.”
“I’ve done this before.”
“No, talking about Donnie. I appreciate it.”
“It was like five seconds.”
“Five seconds more than before; I love my family.”
She continued to apply bleach. “Sorry your favorite brother got in my way.”
“He’s not my favorite.” He responded immediately.
That gave Kendra a quick pause.
“Gotta be second.”
“You rank them.”
“Yup.”
She chuffed. “Now that doesn’t sound like you. I can hear your whiny voice. ‘I love all my brothers equally.’”
“I do!”
She didn’t bother giving him a look; he surely felt it.
“It’s just that… sometimes they get on my nerves and I put them in an order that changes based on my mood which is a nice little dose of revenge because they totally lose it when they drop a spot!”
“Spoken like a true youngest.”
“Coming from what? An only child!? That’s the vibe you give off!”
“Step.” The word felt punctuated as she began to move around toward the front of her head.
“How many?”
“One.”
“Huh.”
“Jason.” She felt the need to name him. “Jase.”
“Who’s older?”
“Me, barely.”
“So it wasn’t really-?”
“I was stuck with him.”
“Oh, like that.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a big oldest child complaint, pretty sure. Raph hated me when I was younger.”
Kendra paused to think.
“My favorite.” He clarified.
She turned her head a little to glimpse him.
He shared the look.
Her eyes darted away.
“Kendra.” He openly scolded.
“What?”
“You don’t know which one he is, do you?”
“It’s not my fault!” She bristled.
“We’ve been dating for months!”
That felt like a cold shock. “You barely talk about them!”
“I-!” His complaint died in his throat.
For a moment, there was only the sound of thick bristles painting strands of hair.
“That’s weird. I guess I haven’t… Huh.”
She didn’t want to, but she felt the same chilling confusion.
She had lost her way.
Here, Michelangelo was, in her apartment, willingly sharing information she could use and she hadn’t thought twice about. She now knew for sure that they all still lived together underground. He openly approached the topic of Donatello and she didn’t immediately bite his head off. He openly confirmed that Donatello didn’t rank highly which meant it would be easier for her to scam said man without upsetting this one.
The bleach fumes must have been getting to her because she paused.
Why did she care how Mikey felt?
She was supposed to ditch him when this was over.
Plant the virus and be rid of him.
Months.
They had been dating for months.
She had been the one to invite him here.
She hadn’t even plotted out any talking points to get her closer to her supposed goal.
Was that still the point?
She was meant to ruin the symbol of Genius Built.
The grandiose golden boy was going to become a new type of poster child.
So why didn’t she feel like she particularly cared anymore?
She went back to bleaching her hair because that’s what she was doing. She could now see the locks turning blond as the blueish color of the bleach sank into the layers. It stripped the fading hues because that was the chemical process taking place. Her old brand was being dissolved in real time to make room for her new one. Whether it would become teal or cyan depended on whatever convention best fit the marketing.
She felt empty and liminal in a way that one felt amidst great change. It was a sensation that she usually only took on as a precipice. For her, it was one to fling herself over and never look back. She had already done the climb and sailing off the cliff was the goal. The achievement beyond what was tangible and it had never been one she had to think about. There was always a clear goal post to head towards in the sky.
Except there hadn’t been in years. She worked the bleach deep into her stubborn roots. It was just like those garden beds where the top crop had to be cut free before she could access the weeds. She had been shorn for a while now but had cowered instead of growing once again. Her roots were suffering in a visible way because she was suffocating. Doing this, right now, was a step, but she had no direction or plan.
Nothing had changed.
She was still the deadbeat felon who could barely afford to cover her rent, let alone eat. She carted around a loudmouth who, no matter how hard she tried, would never fit her usual lackey mold. He stubbornly walked beside her. She added the last bit of slop to her hair and glanced at him.
He was quietly pondering to himself, but felt her eyes and looked up. “You pretty much got it!”
“Yeah…” She looked at the sink before reviewing her application. “Which one is Raph?”
“Red.”
“So Lee… Leo? Is that the last one?”
“Blue, yeah.”
“Confusing…” She told the strangely calm version of herself.
The one that put up with this.
“You guys match with another thing besides colors.”
“Bandana styles?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, Leo and I show head and the other two don’t.”
“You have hair.” She emphasized as she set a timer for the bleach to do its work.
“Didn’t always.”
“You match, so where’s Leo rank?”
Mikey clammed up.
“Last.” Kendra smirked.
“I love him! We match mask styles!”
“Did you do it to make up for not getting along with him?”
He gave a horrified gasp. “We get along!”
“Always, right? Just like how Raph hated dragging your baby butt along.”
His mouth audibly snapped shut.
“I get you guys do the hero thing, but it doesn’t have to be all the time. It’s a job, right?”
“I guess.” He sulked.
She felt like she had both misstepped and not.
She chased the latter feeling because it was a strange one.
She didn’t usually have this sort of foresight outside her person.
Another odd sensation for the book of today. “You’re orange. You like orange, but you don’t like when that’s all you are.”
She could feel him watching her closely.
“You grew up as part of this set and it’s… I don’t know. You don’t need my permission, but it’s okay or whatever for your life to not be about them!” She sped up as she went on because her chest twisted up around the statement.
The foreign feelings stuck in what should have been the black hole in her heart and made it all too tender.
Mikey was especially quiet.
She checked the timer as if she could rush the process. This all unnerved her for a reason that she couldn’t quite place and she was getting sick of the stacking unknowns. Her hair was a smoothed image in the mirror and she decided then to similarly unruffle herself. There was no point in sulking in what she didn’t know and her time was better spent working on what she did. “Gonna get ready to rinse.”
She still had twenty odd minutes, but decided to widdle it away. He stayed behind as she ducked into her bathroom with the bottle of shampoo. She left the door open behind her as a point. She sat on the toilet as it was buddied up to the tub. It was the perfect place to hang her head over when it was time to turn on the tap.
She spent several minutes finally reading that bottle. She spent a few more doing a quick check of her email. The last went down to resolving her will and she got the water going to her preferred tepid by the time the alarm sang. She pulled down the handheld shower head. It was the one modification she had really done to the place and she was absolutely taking it with her when she left whether she had to rip it out of the wall or not.
After a thorough rinse, suds, and rinse again, she cleaned her hair until the tingles subsided before she realized she had forgotten her ratty towel. “Mikey!”
“H-here!” He spoke on a bit of a delay.
“Can you get me…? Ugh! It’s like my ugliest towel! Tie dye when it shouldn’t be!”
“One used for dyeing, I’m going to look around!”
“Yeah! It shouldn’t be far.”
“Found it!” He chirped near immediately. “Can I…?”
“Door’s open! Geez! Give it, hurry up!” Blond tips dangled in front of her vision.
He appeared behind her and the cotton brushed her hands.
“Thanks.” She stunted out before scrubbing her head right there.
“We’ve… always… only had each other…”
“What?” She twisted the towel up on her head before sitting back to view him.
“My family.” He looked at her meaningfully from where he leaned in the door jamb.
She felt similarly stripped and small sitting on her toilet lid. “Oh...”
He rubbed his arm. “Sorry… I’ll just…”
“No…” Her hand raised and she flicked her fingers at its audaciousness. “No, I mean… I…”
He leaned against the old wood for the pressure.
“Don’t… expect any gooeyness!”
His expression grew fond.
“I don’t know! I guess it makes sense! You were all cooped up underground for years or whatever! Then you went straight to saving the world or whatever it is that you told me! I guess that makes it hard! When all you have is each other. When the city… seems really big and maybe not to you because to you it’s new, but to your parents it’s a totally different city than they knew, so they’re homebodies and they’re doing their best, but it feels like you gotta escape that oppressive feeling…”
Her voice felt too loud.
“But you’re you! You wanted to show your hero-dad up or whatever! You’re part of some set, but you’re your own piece and getting older, that’s all leaving the nest and not even the most understanding parent is going to agree with everything you do because that’s life. You’re living it. Not them. You gotta stick it to them and stick to your guns… even if… if you fail…”
She had to move and stood.
He expertly swung against the jamb like a second door and she exited.
She approached the mirror and took a deep breath. “I usually bleach twice, but I am so over this.”
He watched as she unraveled the towel. The blond didn’t look right against her skin, but it was lighter than she expected. She turned side to side and the wet follicles slapped against her cheeks.
“This might work though…”
“I want to color it.”
She snapped her head at him and had to wince when some of her hair smacked into her eye.
“Let me.”
When she could see again, it was like viewing fire from a man who could create it in thin air.
For the first time in the last few hours she felt a surge of sureness.
A comfort that she could depend on and she breathed out her lung capacity. “Okay.”
No threat.
No comment.
That was it.
“We need to dry it first.”
She sat in the computer chair and he wheeled her into place. She watched as he moved around her vanity like it was his house. He found her ancient hair dryer before she could tell him where it was. He got the plug going and took a second to depress the breaker. With a firm air, he only had to make one adjustment for the length of the cord before he turned the dryer on his palm. He waited for it to warm up before he readied himself for her.
She bowed for him to go ahead and he got to drying her hair. With light sweeps of his hands, he worked down through her roots to eradicate all moisture. Her dirty blond locks puffed up as they were free of their downy liquid and grew to a lighter dry shade. It strengthened her resolve that this would work and her faith grew in time.
Mikey squashed the last of the anxieties that she would never entertain. She paid attention to him out of curiosity and nothing more. If he was secretly a hairdresser on the side, she would believe it. She would need to look up his cosmetology license and finally get him on having lied to her about something at least partially nefarious.
The way he cleaned the bowl of residual bleach said he had no finesse of the sort.
He only had his own experience, which he showed in asking for foil.
She had only the cooking type to spare in an oversized roll. She did some light internet research to see if it was applicable and it seemed like it was. Mikey prepared a pile of sheets before he checked the bowl and brush a second time. He found them satisfactory and snapped her damp dye towel to lay it over her shoulders like a cape before he got to work.
“You know, your hair being a little yellow’ll work. I’m pretty sure this cyan is too blue.”
She tried not to move too much as that fluttering in her chest cavity returned. “You forgot gloves.”
“Nah, I like to feel my paint.”
“And dye your hands.”
“I’m pretty dark already.” He showed her his palm in demonstration before bringing it right back to start painting her strands.
“And your clothes?”
He paused for that one.
She looked at him from around the first swipe of cyan in his hand.
He shot over to the sink for a wash before he yanked his top off.
“Hey!”
“Problem?” He flexed for her.
“Stop! Don’t strip in my place!”
He laughed. “It was your idea.”
“I didn’t say ‘take your clothes off,’ I said ‘ruin them, loser.’”
“You did not.” He chastised and went back to her hair.
“Well, I should have.” She pulled up her legs to get comfortable.
He went on coloring her hair until he seemed to relax amongst the paint.
“You good?” She asked before she could think better of it.
“This is helping.”
“I was too harsh, huh?”
He shook his head.
“I have a hard time believing you.”
“You have a hard time believing anyone.”
“I wonder why!?”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“This is why Red got tired of you. I bet you were like this when you were younger, but worse.”
“I absolutely was. Terrible twos who? I was terrible til like twenty.”
He wasn’t usually self-depreciating and she frowned.
He caught it as he folded some foil. “Obnoxious, not terrible.”
“Not much different.”
“It is.”
“You believe everything your family tells you?”
“Do you?”
They had a stare off.
“Okay, let’s be each other’s judge. I’m hearing a whole lot of us needing perspective here. We swap back and forth sibling stories.” He suddenly spun her chair around.
Her vision rotated until she landed on his scorching gaze.
Her stomach flipped and her scowl turned down to squash it back into place.
He cock a knowing grin.
“No competition allowed. Got it?”
He broiled the statement into her skin until her cheeks burned and she had to look away. “Fine! Calm down… Geez…”
He was more gentle in replacing her chair so she could see herself. “And when you have new hair we’ll put out our verdicts on whether we were bad or not.”
“I never said I was.”
“You tried to convince me that you were beneath me on our second date.”
That was an oversimplification, but he would get her on semantics.
“I’ll start?”
She stared at him through the mirror before giving a curt nod.
“During one of our first official sleepovers ever, I made Leo so mad that he went to dad, but he couldn’t, ya know, go home because we were home…”
She shared a tidbit about how her household stopped buying jello because Jase had one allergic reaction. It then went back to Mikey who used the allergy angle and how he ate peanut butter with his fingers. He apparently put Raph into epileptic shock by scratching an itch he couldn’t reach with the substance under his nails. It pinged back to Kendra, who had to take a dive off a trampoline to save Jase at one of the Ricci family gatherings and the escalation continued.
They bounced off each other in the usual ping-ponging of verbiage until they were soon just complaining about family instead of talking about how they wronged them. It was exaggerated groans of commiseration and champing at the bit to get the next tale in. Judgment was passed early and flippantly. Mikey clutched his pearls a few times, but with Kendra’s relentless press, he snuck in small comments on how he agreed. The color was applied along with a timer and they continued to talk straight through to when it went off.
“Look now or later?” Mikey asked her firmly.
“It needs to be washed first.” She told him with the same gravity.
He nodded and turned her away to get the foil out. She tried peeking, but he took great care in tucking her hair back and out of her periphery. She put on a growing scowl until she wriggled in place and he had to badger her to stop. She hated how much she appreciated when he was poignantly stern and with it when he finally pulled away.
He whipped the towel from her shoulders and a shriek died in her throat about how it would stain her shirt.
He had pinned her length up at some point to keep from doing that exact thing.
She looked to see him holding the towel up like a cover to block the mirror.
She couldn’t see his face, but felt his toothy grin from behind it.
She rushed to the bath and called to him for forgetting the other shampoo.
With a quick scrub and a lengthy loss of color that always seemed to be too much, the water eventually ran clear.
“There’s another towel.” She called with urgency.
“Which?!” He sounded like he was already looking.
“A white one! Clean! I bleach it!” She tried not to look at the swatch of hair right between her eyes.
“White. White…” Mikey’s voice moved until it headed her way. “White! Got it!”
It appeared to her left and she scrubbed it over her head.
There was cyan transfer.
Her heart skipped and she allowed it.
It felt like monumental fate as she took the three steps from the toilet to the vanity.
Her image appeared in the dirty mirror with uncharacteristically wide eyes.
Joy, if she had to label it.
Perfectly wet and dark cyan locks spoke to her eye that they would dry the exact shade she wanted.
For one second, her vision welled up.
She then looked right past it as she grabbed the counter and leaned forward.
Her reflection looked back at her as a cyan avatar.
She could easily command the flames with this.