Together As Mutants (Book Six)

Chapter 21: A First Time for Everything

Leonardo takes a deep breath as he stands outside Destiny's room. He's faced monsters, mutants, things that still linger in his nightmares to this day, so he can definitely handle his girlfriend when she's in a bad mood.

He knocks.

"What?"

"It's Leo. Can...I come in?"

There's a pause, then the door opens a crack. Destiny's unscarred eye appears. "What?" she repeats.

He purses his lips. "Can we talk face to face? Maybe?"

She doesn't say anything for a second, then pulls the door open the rest of the way. She goes back to her bed, sitting down and pressing her back against the wall, arms crossed. Leonardo maneuvers around Sarina's futon and settles down across from her, noting how she tenses up and how her nostrils flare.

"I want to take you out," he says, "on a real date. I think we can justify using the human patches to go and do something...human."

She blinks. "What'd you have in mind?"

"Well..." he says, starting to smile. "There's this...ballroom, masquerade party happening near the Wolf Hotel tonight."

"And...are we invited?"

"I mean, not technically, but..." His smile grows into a sly smirk. "Ninjas have their own way of getting into these things."

"True..." She leans back, staring up at the ceiling, and exhales. "Yeah, okay. Let's do it."

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Destiny stares at herself in the bathroom mirror, fiddling with her brand-new Donatello and Sarina patented hearing aids. She hates wearing the patch—it's pointless to her. Her scars don't go away, she can't fly, she can't hear properly and her senses are so...mundane that the entire process is annoying. Today, she's alright with it, mostly because Leonardo's intoxicating scent isn't as prevalent without her wolf senses.

As she stands there, trying her best to make her hair look nice, she's once again glad she isn't human. She can't imagine trying to make herself look nice every time an event happens. It's so much easier to just grab your sword and go.

Her hair isn't quite long enough to put it in a bun, not like she could figure it out anyway, so she braids her long side-bang, creating a multicoloured braid of hair, and pins it up. There, she thinks. Simple but effective.

The dress is another debacle. They're supposed to be going to a ball and yet she's wearing the same short black dress she wore for her eighteenth birthday party. She doesn't have a ballgown and there's no one she knows who could possibly lend her one, so this was her only option.

So she doesn't look like the put-together, effortlessly beautiful goddess that she wishes she could be sometimes, but it's fine. This is fine. She's going to go out and have fun with her boyfriend and try to ignore the ways that nature (or, rather, the unnatural) is changing her.

She leaves the bathroom, walks down the hall, and emerges into the lair. Leonardo is waiting for her, wearing a white button-up dress shirt, black pants, shoes, and a blue tie. He faces the entrance to the lair, running his fingers through his black hair, hemming and hawing as he shifts in place.

Her heart-rate spikes as her eyes wander along his broad shoulders, down his back. She bites her cheek against a low growl and picks up the pace. Leonardo turns around when he hears her coming, his eyes lighting up. She's forever grateful that, turtle or human, his eyes are the same. It reminds her that the human boy she's looking at is truly Leonardo.