worn out

Extracting his legs from the snarl of sheets and blankets, Leo gets out of bed and immediately trips on his backpack. And then his swim bag. And then all the outfit rejects from this morning, including a pink knit vest and those pants with all the buckles (he keeps wanting to wear them but they tragically don’t look right with any of his outfits—SO FAR, he’s not giving up on them yet.)

“Eugh, who put these here,” Leo jokes under his breath, righting himself super gracefully and Definitely Not banging into the wall hard enough to wake Donnie. Nobody saw anything, so it basically never happened.

The red glow from his LEDs casts all his green clothes black, like little mounds of shadow on his floor. Spooky. (In the way that makes him confront that he really should clean his room.) His bedside lamp chases it away, though, dousing the room in warm light.  

Leo kicks aside a paper plate with crumbs and one of Raph's textbooks (oh that’s where that is, geez, he was tearing apart the house for it on Friday, Leo should really hide it in Donnie’s room) and makes his way to the door. Absentmindedly, he feels up on his head for any wayward curls and tucks them back in his blue silk scarf. 

Their apartment is nice and cozy at night. Mikey used to be real scared of the dark when they were little (well, so was Leo, but even the CIA couldn’t get that outta him) so they put up kiddie nightlights in every outlet down the hallway. And then they just never took them out. When Leo was ten or so, he used to try and hop from one pool of light to the other. Undisputed champion of “nightlight hopscotch” over here, five years running, no paparazzi please!

Oooh, maybe there’s a hopscotch club. Would that be too lame or just lame enough that it circles back around to being cool again? Post-post-ironic?

Leo shuffles down to the ground floor, careful not to slip. Fuzzy socks + hardwood floors = waking everyone up by eating shit down three flights of stairs, nooo thank you, that has happened before and he was not fond of it. Sure, he escaped with just a couple bruises, but his pride still has not recovered.

Holy shit, his thoughts are all over the place. Oof. Yeah, Leo’s really not sleeping tonight. 

It’s one of those times where his mind just keeps spinning and spinning with no end in sight. He calls it Beyblade Brain. Other people probably have different, lamer names for it, but that’s really how it feels; just sort of gears whirring and clicking and thoughts cartwheeling about. Y’know, regular stylez. 

That’s how Leo knows not only is he NOT sleeping tonight, he’s gotta find something to do. Being bored is already the worst thing maybe ever, but bored when he’s Like This is basically freaking torture. Seriously. 

Oh, someone’s awake. 

A slice of cold light from the half-open downstairs door trips up the steps in chunks. Either someone is in fact awake, or Dad forgot to turn the lights off when he went to bed: both equally possible.

Leo doesn’t bother to be quiet when he slips in. Dad sleeps like a rock even during midday naps (jealous? Yes, Leo is jealous, thanks for asking) so smack-dab in the middle of his REM should be no problemo. 

It’s not Dad, though—it’s Donnie, clearly also not in sleep mode, twists up in a messy bun and glasses low on their nose, bundled in the weighted hoodie Raph got them last Christmas. They’re spreading almond butter on a sleeve of saltines one by one.

“Why don’t you ever just take the crackers and the almond butter with you?” Leo asks, in lieu of greeting. “It always takes you, like, a million hours to get all of it on there, and then you’re balancing forty-five saltines face-up on a huge platter instead of—I dunno, a regular-sized snack plate?”

Donnie looks up long enough to roll his eyes as Leo skirts past him to the coffee machine, but otherwise turns his attention back to his task. “You should know better than to suggest I partake in regular snacking, Nardo.”

Fumbling in the cabinets for his fancy Starbucks Veranda blend, Leo scoffs. “I just think there’s a less dramatic way to eat crackers. Myyy bad.” The coffee filters cling to each other stubbornly, even as Leo tries to wriggle a finger in and separate one. He growls in frustration—on GOD, he’s lobbying for a Keurig. Starting TOMORROW. This is fucking ridiculous. This is straight-up clownery.

A purple-gloved hand darts into his vision and swipes the filters. Leo turns to see Donnie pull one off with insulting ease. And again, he’s wearing gloves! How is that fair!

“I’m not thanking you,” Leo says, in an attempt to humble the smug smirk off Don’s face. It doesn’t work. Obviously.

“Fine. You’re not welcome. See if I ever help you with anything again.”

“Uh-huh.” Knowing full well that Donnie loves being needed too much to ever make good on that threat, Leo turns his attention back to his coffee. He dumps some grounds into the filter, about halfway to the top. And then he adds some more. And then a little more, just for good measure. He likes his coffee full of sugar and caffeinated enough to give an elephant heart palpitations.

Oooh, Dad will probably agree to a Keurig if he thinks it’ll discourage Leo from drinking entire pots of coffee in the middle of the night. Of course, it will not, but that’s still an argumentative point in the Keurig’s favor. It would be nice to make just a CUP of coffee instead of having to make a whole POT, Leo will say, as earnestly as he can manage. Hook, line, and sinker. Too easy.

“You’re not sleeping,” Donnie says, not a question but an observation.

Leo flicks the coffeemaker on and spins around, clocking Donnie’s raised eyebrow. “Neither are you, hermano.”

“True, but unlike you, I do intend to go to bed at some point. Likely soon.”

Stretching his arms over his head, Leo leans back against the counter. Faced with Don’s total lack of judgment or well-intentioned but anxiety-slash-guilt-inducing worry, it’s a little easier to admit: “It’s a No-Sleep night.”

Donnie nods, and resumes laying out their crackers on a tray. They must have been in the workshop before getting a snack; they tend to be more sensitive about touching food with their bare hands when they’ve been elbow-deep in circuits for several hours. Hence, the purple latex gloves. 

It was actually Leo who got a pack for him first, back when they were kids (and partially as a joke to be honest), but then Donnie started wearing them all the time. Said they helped with feeling like his hands are too dirty to touch certain things, even after he’s washed them. And with the added benefit of preventing bad texture-issues. Yeah, Leo’s a genius, best brother ever, hold your applause.

Donnie finishes making their snack. Their face relaxes, content. 

So obviously, Leo decides to be a problem. He heaves a big, dramatic sigh, and drapes himself across the kitchen island, whining, “I’m boooooored.”

“Ack— Leo, get off!” Donnie complains, moving the tray to the other counter, rescuing the few stray saltines that have migrated dangerously close to the edge. He turns and fixes Leo with a glare that could melt steel. “Is it your personal mission to find any semblance of peace I create and obliterate it into shrapnel?”

“Literally yes.” Leo flings out an arm, blindly reaching to poke Donnie or tug on his hoodie or something, just to be annoying. 

Donnie smacks his hand. “Go find someone else to bother.”

“It’s the middle of the night!”

“He says, without a hint of self-awareness.”

“Oh, I’m plenty aware.” Leo scoots his back further up the counter, squinting against the fluorescents. He’s gonna do a back walkover off this kitchen island and/or die trying. “I’m aware that I have a shitass ugly stupid sibling who doesn’t appreciate me.”

“That’s one out of four correct.”

“You haaate me, you’re praying on my downfall.” Fully upside-down now, Leo reaches for the ground. He’s totally got this.

“Two for two. Good job.” Ouch, okay. “And I see you gearing up for a back walkover; just know you’re going to break your leg against the fridge. Also, your coffee’s done.”

“Aw, sweet!” Leo loses concentration for half a second, and his hand slips. Before he can brain himself on the hardwood, though, Donnie’s arms are under his shoulders, hauling him upright. His legs slip off the counter and land hard on the floor. Ow fuck that’s going to bruise. “Owwwwww.”

Even though Donnie’s face is upside-down to Leo when he cranes his neck back, the contempt is clear as goddamn day. Probably visible from space. “You’re an idiot,” Don informs him. One of their twists slips loose, dangling down over Leo’s face, and he bats at it like a cat.

“Owww, I’m grev-i-ously injured, Donald.” Leo pouts. “Help me up.”

“It’s grievously.” Without warning, Donnie stands, dropping Leo back down on the cold floor. It knocks the wind out of him. Don steps over his broken, shattered, betrayed body and retrieves their tray of saltines. “And remember, I’m never helping you again. Because you, dear Leonardo, are ungrateful.”

Leo scrambles to his feet, because he wants company way more than he wants to continue this bit. “Wa-wa-wait, hold up.” Adjusting his hair again, Leo worries at his lip. 

Donnie’s stopped in the doorway, looking back at him impassively, but he knows he has about—ehh—five seconds (give or take) to come up with an excuse for them to spend time together. Either that, or resign himself to a night spent losing at Bedwars half a million times. (At least with Donnie on his team, he actually stands a chance.)

“Do you wanna play video games?”

Don’s expression doesn’t change, but he shifts on his feet a bit. “I’m in the middle of something right now.”

“Oh.” Cool, cool. That’s cool. Leo totally gets it. It’s just that if being bored when he gets all spinny is the Worst Thing Ever… being alone probably takes silver. 

All the same, Leo forces himself to smile. Because he’s a good brother and he gets that Donnie has way more important shit to do than, say, lose to Leo in Mario Kart. “Gotcha. Have fun, mellizo.”

A beat of silence. Leo stares at the pictures on the fridge to avoid meeting Donnie’s eyes. 

There’s Miguel winning his most recent gymnastics championship (for about the millionth time), holding up a trophy with a thousand-watt smile. Raph and April before their orchestra concert, both in black suits. Donnie, dangling his gold AcadDec medal over a dozen of the same kind, grinning smugly. One of Leo himself, bowing to accept Best Solo Acting Performance at NY-freaking-TF last year. Oh, that was nice. That was a fantastic day. Some of the people from school were sooo mad because he was only a freshman, but—

“I’m not using the desktop in the Lair.” Donnie’s looking down at his tray when Leo turns. Even though his intonation hasn’t changed, as monotone as ever, Leo can hear the implicit lead-in. And sure enough, “As long as you don’t distract me, I won’t mind if you use it while I’m working.”

Fucking around on the big three-monitor desktop and distracting Donnie while they’re working? Win-win! 

Leo feels his face split into a shark-like grin. “Moi? Distracting?” he chirps, and Donnie’s ensuing eye-roll is so worth the smack upside the head he gets. 

“Don't make me regret this,” Donnie warns, with no real heat. 

“I don’t know why you would say that. I have never done anything wrong in my life,” says Leo solemnly.

NIGHT 1, 3:12am

Leo is losing his goddamn mind.

“I need a different game.”

Bathed in purple and blue light from the LEDs, hunched over with their hot metal tool thingy about four inches from his comically oversized safety goggles, Donnie squints at his circuit board and says, “You keep saying that and yet, you keep losing. Basic statistics indicate that the game is not the problem.”

Leo stares at the GAME OVER screen that’s been flashing since he rage-quit Overwatch five minutes ago. Ow. 

Okay, so. Okay. That. Um. Ouch.

Normally it doesn’t bother him. When things bother Leo, he’s typically really good at shoving down the hurt into a tiny little space that he imagines is like, the bottom left-hand drawer of his heart. And then locking it. And throwing the key into a volcano.

But, um. When he’s lost at, like, four hundred different fucking games in a row in front of Donnie, who’s standing over there making their own custom circuit boards, it kind of. Sort of. Hits a little hard. 

Jeez. He’s being such a baby. It’s not Donnie’s fault that Leo isn’t— 

“You’re just jealous ‘cause you don’t see my vision,” Leo says quickly, stopping that train of thought in its tracks. And then exploding it. “This is actually a gambit I’m doing. This was part of my plan all along.”

“Uh-huh.” Donnie doesn’t even dignify that with an eye-roll. They lean towards their work at almost an entire 90 degree angle (they’re gonna have back problems by age twenty, Leo keeps saying), and make a low, unhappy sound in the back of their throat. Setting down the coil of metal, Donnie snaps at the adjacent table, sound muffled by their gloves. “Hand me that IC.”

“Don, buddy, you gotta use more words than that.”

“Integrated circuit,” Donnie says, impatient. He points to a square thing that looks a little spider-like, with a bunch of thin metal prongs coming off of it. “That.”

“You’re literally closer to it,” Leo complains, even as he’s rolling his chair over. He ferries the weird little gadget an entire six inches from the desk to Donnie’s hand. And then he just sort of… watches.

Don adjusts his goggles and tucks a stray twist behind his ear. He sets the hot tool on a stand and picks up a smaller tool nearby, one that’s black and rectangular. Slotting the gadget Leo handed him into the mouth of the smaller tool, he delicately aligns it with the circuit board and then presses down, the mouth segment retracting in with the pressure like a stamp. 

Abruptly, Leo realizes, he wants to know what that tool is called. 

It’s on the tip of his tongue. What’s that? But when he tries to ask, his mouth won’t make the shape of the words. 

Leo sort of… hears the exchange in his head, how it would go. What’s that? And then Donnie tells him, it’s a [insert-nerd-sounding-thing-here.] And life goes on. Leo’s picked Donnie’s brain about plenty of times before, so it doesn’t make sense, but for some reason…

Well. In his mind’s eye, he sounds like a little kid. Just sort of… hovering. Asking annoying questions and doing nothing with the answers. 

Why is he—? 

Wow. This is. This is really stupid. Is he actually getting a little choked up because he doesn’t know the name of Donnie’s weird stamp tool?

It’s dumb but Leo still just… really wishes he knew what it was called. And the hot tool. And the—the gadget Leo handed Don, dammit, it was… it was something-circuit. How did he already forget?? They said it like four seconds ago. God. Wow.

“Can I help you?” Donnie asks dryly.

Oh shit. Leo’s been staring for an aaawkwardly long time. 

He should really go back to his own desk. He’s got a mug of coffee going cold. 

Instead, Leo puts on a smile that feels a little weak-kneed—he hopes it doesn’t come off that way. “Just enraptured by your nerd shit, ‘Tello. Don’t mind me.”

Donnie searches his face, brows furrowing. “Are you being sarcastic right now?”

That is. That is a great question. 

“Nah,” Leo decides. “I really—this looks, I dunno. It looks cool.” A little heat prickles at his cheeks. He sounds so fucking stupid and he’s so fucking weirdly nervous. This is insane. Literal clownery. 

One of Donnie’s painstakingly maintained eyebrows quirks up in an insulting display of skepticism. “It looks… cool.” They set down their tools and spin fully in their chair to face Leo. “You, Hamato Leonardo, think that me soldering a DIP IC—that’s an integrated circuit of the Dual Inline Package variety, a logic gate, in particular—onto my build to improve my Boolean Logic implementation for a custom asymmetric encryption algorithm, is. Cool.”

Hitting Leo with that many nerd terms in a row is fucking evil. 

But the worst part is that it’s not, right? Donnie isn’t being evil. They aren’t even really trying to show off, at least not right now, not to Leo.

“...Yeah?” Leo manages.

The flat look Donnie levels him is par for the course, but it still needles at the thrashing, tender thing in Leo’s chest right now. “That seems unlikely.”

“Why?” 

It’s out of Leo’s mouth before he can stop it. His voice sort of bends mid-syllable, whiny and vulnerable and Not At All Chill. Cover. Cover cover cover. 

“Like…” Leo swallows, and then forces a corner of his mouth up into a smirk. He can’t quite meet Donnie’s eyes, so instead he looks up at some of the Jupiter Jim posters on the wall. “Y’know. I’m a—a shape enjoyer. Little squares go brrr.” 

Wow, Leon. Reeeally going for the fuckin’ Oscar here.

Donnie says nothing for a second. Two, three, four—

And then abruptly, they yank their goggles down around their neck to better fix Leo with an unreadable stare. A sharp one. One that pierces through several layers of skin. Leo swears he can actually feel it: epidermis, dermis, subcutaneous, all crumple inward like tissue paper. 

“Are you angling for a favor?” 

“What? No!”

“Are you sure?” Donnie leans back in his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee, all narrowed-eyed suspicion. “Because lately you’ve been very vocal in your dislike of quote-unquote ‘nerd stuff.’ So I can’t think of another reason for the total about-face.”

Oh.

Leo guesses he has been ramping up the teasing recently, but he didn’t— he wasn’t trying to—! Augh. 

What Leo tries to say is Don, I really do wanna hear about your work. But it comes out as: “Maybe I’m taking an interest in circuitry. Maybe I’m coming for your brand. You never know, Don-Tron—I gotta keep you on your toes.”

Wow. 

The joke—or whatever the fuck that was—does NOT stick the landing. Five-tenths deduction. 

Donnie raises an eyebrow, half-lidded eyes forming the signature portrait of disbelief and contempt he perfected years ago. “Oh, I’m terrified.” And then he clarifies, “Sarcasm.”

Well. Alright.

Now is the time to brush it off. Now is when Leo rolls back to the desktop and pours himself another cup of coffee, finds another game to lose at; now is when he laughs and waves a hand dismissively. 

But. For some reason.

He can’t let it go.

There’s a complicated sort of tugging in his chest. A two-finger pinch to the tender flesh of his heart, and a rising heat pricking up his neck, his cheeks, the tips of his ears. 

“I mean, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous,” Leo finds himself saying. 

Donnie doesn’t look at him. “That you would take up circuitry?”

“Yeah.”

Thin wisps of smoke curl off the hot tool as Donnie presses the metal to it again, movements precise, practiced, skilled. 

“Well. You’d need to start with electronic fundamentals, and then move onto schematic diagrams, component functionality, PCB design principles, etcetera. Circuitry as a hobby requires a wealth of background knowledge in many fields of science—digital logic, electromagnetics, semiconductor physics—that you aren’t interested in.”

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbles up out of Leo’s throat. “Who—who says I’m not interested in that stuff?”

Donnie looks at Leo like he’s insane. “Um, you?” 

Leo’s mouth snaps shut. Ah. Well. Can’t argue with that.

Just barely, Donnie sighs.

It might not even be a sigh, it’s literally just an exhale, could have just been an oddly sharp breath. All the same, Leo has to avert his eyes. Up. Back up to the poster. Jupiter Jim 28 and ½; Sub-Galactic Cruise. Cinematic masterpiece.

“Nardo, if you really want to take up circuitry, heaven knows I won’t stop you. I mean, it would be nice to compare notes.” Whatever Donnie’s working on makes a little snap, almost inaudible over the skepticism in their tone. Mm. Poster. Cool poster. Wow, this poster sure has a lot of bright colors.

“But based on your last, say, one hundred comments about the areas of study it’s tightly interwoven with, it’s statistically improbable that you’d enjoy it. That’s what I was saying. Academically-based hobbies don’t typically capture your interest the way that phys-ed or arts-based hobbies do.”

Mm.

Donnie’s just stating a true fact, here. There’s a very trackable throughline between all of the things Leo’s gotten passionate about before, and it doesn’t include anything that could be considered, like, generally scholarly or intellectual.

So yes. We’ve established: true fact.

What Leo can’t figure out is… why it feels like an insult.

Leo doesn’t tend to spend his free time on especially cerebral activities, that’s basically old news, so even if he seems to be physiologically interpreting it differently, there is really no reason at all that he should feel so… mm. Hurt. 

Huh.

A sudden, horrible burst of shame wracks through him out of nowhere, like being doused in ice water, and Leo shivers despite himself.

“Nardo?”

The foggy glow of the desktop’s screen loses its halo as Leo blinks away the accumulated glaze in his eyes. He reorients himself: three identical screensavers of some mountain scene, two Jupiter Jim posters above the desk, and Donnie, looking over at him.

Leo clears his throat, tries to untangle the knot in his chest. He pictures it smoothing out to un-creased rope. Not a single mark. Like it hadn’t been there at all.  “What’s up, Dee?"

Squinting uncomfortably, Donnie clears their throat. “Are you alright?”

Despite feeling raw, exposed, peeled back to muscle and sinew, Leo summons a smile out of thin air. (He didn’t win that acting award for nothing, after all.) “Right as rain, Don-Tron. Just having a bit of a… y’know.” He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “Thoughts goin’ all around and around.”

“Ah, Beyblade Brain,” Donnie hums. They reach for some small, cylindrical object, and it’s then that Leo decides to turn away so he doesn’t have to keep looking at things he doesn’t know the name of. 

Leo rolls his chair back to the desk. Mkay. No more hurt feelings. Done. Over. It’s getting annoying. 

No new notifications on his phone. His family’s faces grin up at him from his lockscreen, along with Hello Kitty and sparkle stickers he added in Picsart, plus Meryl Streep photoshopped into the background. Eugh, is it really not even four yet? This night is going by agonizingly slowly. Blowing out a breath, Leo wiggles the desktop mouse—ah, server timed out. Figures. Whateeeever! He’s done with FPS anyway. 

Leo picks up the Sparkle On! mug (Raph’s) and chugs his long-cold coffee, overly-sweet to the point that his teeth throb a little, until only grounds cling to the bottom. A ring from where he spilled a bit down the side is drying tacky on the desk; Leo scoots forward and scratches at it with his thumbnail.

The pot’s maybe a third of the way full of cold gross coffee. That’s, what, two cups? Either he downs it all right now (bad idea, might be funny) or pours it in a jar to put over ice tomorrow morning (good idea, booooring). 

Yeah, is that even a question?

Leo picks up the pot, tilts his head back, and—

Donnie snatches it from him.

“Heyyy, come on!”

“As much as I want to see you get karmically punished for your stupid decisions,” Donnie deadpans, “if you chug this, you’re going to vomit, and then I’m going to vomit. So, do it or don’t, but if you do, I’m going to wake up Raph.”

Hmmmm. Leo does some mental math: Raph, grumpy from being woken up at 4am, plus Leo making Donnie sick, plus Leo making himself sick, plus Leo chugging an entire pot of coffee in the middle of the night…

“Ughhhhhh, you’re such a snitch!” But he stands anyway, grabs for the pot and when Donnie raises an eyebrow he says, “Oh my god, I’m not gonna do it. I’m putting it in the fridge for tomorrow.”

“Get me a juice while you’re up there?” 

Leo rolls his eyes. “Uh, no. Never. Fuck you.” They both know he’s going to.

“Die.”

“You first.”

Donnie kicks him.

“Owww Donnie! I’m telling Raph, you GREV-I-OUSLY injured me—”

“I KNOW YOU KNOW HOW TO SAY IT, LEO!”

NIGHT 1, ???am

Unsurprisingly, Donnie’s head starts dipping around 4:30. They just aren’t built for all-nighters. Unlike Leo, who is clearly the pinnacle of evolution. 

After many threats of bodily harm, Leo finally wrestles Donnie into brushing their teeth, putting their hair up, and taking off their makeup, just in time for them to collapse face-first into bed, snoring like a freight train in the way they SWEAR everyone lies about. (Which, like, come on. Okay, Mr. Records-Everything, suuure, claim every single person who’s ever shared a room with you is full of shit. Leo and April, yeah okay. Mikey, sure. But Dad?? RAPH??)

Anyway.

Leo takes a shower, plays some solitaire, folds about half his laundry (which really goes to show how desperate he is for activity), sews up the torn arm of Raph’s teddy bear that he’s been meaning to get to for a month now, runs on the treadmill, slogs through tomorrow’s homework, and drinks another half-pot of coffee.  

And now he’s cleaning his closet. Leo doesn’t know what time it is, but it’s late (early?) enough that the honking on the streets outside is more frequent, commuters driving into the city pissed off to be at work at the ungodly hour of… whatever. Whichever one it is. It won’t be long before the faint grey wash of cold morning light filters through his window, and Leo will have to actually like, get ready for school, but for now, he’s splayed out on his blue rug surrounded by knick-knacks and clothes he really should give away.

With a sigh, Leo leans forward and drags out YET ANOTHER short sleeved blue button-down. This is the eighth total (and the fourth in that near-identical cornflower color) but—he can’t help it! They’re so versatile! Pop one on over a long-sleeved turtleneck or under a knit vest or a sweater or a denim jacket and BAM; sometimes he threads a bandana through the collar and ties it in a bow—like an ascot kind of thing—and it’s sooo cute— 

But he does have four of them. And they are, legit, the EXACT same color. And Leo’s not sure he can hear the words “rampant consumerism” or “shopping addiction” out of Don’s mouth any more times before some fratricide occurs. 

Into the donation pile it goes. (He’ll only part with two of them, though: the one with the scratchy sewn-in tag and the one with a Kool-Aid stain along the row of buttons. The other six are for safe keeping.)

Considering it’s… whatever time it is, Leo feels pretty okay. His hands are shaking, but if they don’t always do that then it’s a pretty near thing, with all the caffeine he drinks, so y’know. Not super worrying. And he does feel sort of sick. Which is annoying but again, par for the course—like, c’mon; this specific kind of sleepless early-morning nausea is basically an old friend of Leo’s. A kind of shitty friend, sure, but still. 

The next thing Leo pulls out of the closet (lol) is an extremely cloudy gallon Ziploc bag—jeez, this thing must be ancient. Leo turns it over in his hands, plastic crinkling under his fingers, to try and make out the shape of whatever’s inside. Finally, he gives up and opens the slide-zip top:

Chess pieces. 

Oh. Oh wow, these ARE ancient.

Nostalgia floods Leo’s chest with warmth. Man, it’s been forever since he thought about chess. Dad tried to teach them all when they were really little—so little it must have been right after they moved, long enough ago that the memories flicker faintly at the back of Leo’s brain, just a few snatches of sensation:

Running his nail down the wooden ridges that made up the Knight’s mane. The soft plunk of the felt bottoms hitting the board. Dad’s warm hand covering his, showing him in a tactile way—the only way he ever really learns things—how all the pieces moved: Pawns one-space forward, Bishops diagonal, Knights in an L shape (the main reason he remembers Knights being his favorite piece).

Leo reaches forward to sift through jackets and scarves, tossing a couple of unpaired sneakers to the side, until finally he’s able to excavate the accompanying chessboard. 

It’s just like he remembers it. Heavy, sturdy beige-and-brown checkered wood. Leo rests it on his lap, glides his fingertips down the side. 

He sort of remembers the rules, still. 

Remembers how most of the pieces move, at least? He can’t totally recall what the King does, but he could Google it. And, y’know, while he’s there, get a refresher on the rest of the game. And he could play some online, against the computer, only he could follow along with the physical pieces, because feeling them in his hands helps him think. Already, Leo can imagine the gears in his head clicking and whirring as he surveys the board.

Hold up. When did he decide he’s going to learn—or, re-learn—chess?

Leo. Does not know. Really, his brain gets ahead of him sometimes. But he doesn’t even bother tracking the thought process back, because it just… feels right. It makes sense.

It makes him excited, actually. 

To have something to sink his teeth into. Something to focus that fizzy, spinning thing in his brain towards, something he can funnel all this excess energy into. He can get into it, learn all the terms and the fancy moves, get the full scope of it under his grasp until he can win again and again and again.

And it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be fun.

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