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goodlucktai · 21 days

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13 with sunset duo :)))

dialogue prompts

13. “I would believe that you’re fine, but you have a goddamn knife sticking out of your leg, so.”

Raph probably would have been successful in sneaking to his room if Mikey hadn’t decided to swing by the kitchen for a snack refill. When he flicks the light on, his biggest brother freezes mid-step cartoonishly and they both just stare at each other, one caught, the other confused.

“Uh, hi,” Mikey says. “Is your Goon Gala with Casey over already?”

It’s what the former Foot recruit calls it when she and Raph get together to be rowdy and reckless and somewhat violent but like recreationally. Full throttle vigilantism. Mikey tagged along once and was so exhausted by the end of the night he had to be carried home—allegedly!!

The twins quietly disapprove, but they haven’t ratted Raph out to pops yet. They probably think the same thing Mikey does; that it’s good that Raph has something that’s his. It would be better if it was something safer, shared with someone slightly less likely to commit felonies for fun, but it’s a start.

“Uh, yep,” Raph says awkwardly, standing kind of sideways. “Raph’s actually pretty wiped, I was gonna—”

Mikey’s eye for color pings. That’s the only explanation for why his subconscious was like hey something’s wrong about this picture and his gaze flicks down to follow the thought.

It lands on the hilt of a knife sticking out of the thigh Raph is trying to keep out of view. Deep red drips down his knee.

Mikey drops the empty popcorn bowl, stray unpopped kernels scattering across the floor.

“Hey, hey, no, it’s okay,” his brother says quickly, heading off the very loud reaction he can sense building up between them like an active geyser. “Shh, Mike, come on. I’m fine.”

It would work a lot better if one of the two hands he held up to shush him wasn’t bloody. Mikey’s panic wracked up another three levels automatically.

“I would believe that you’re fine, but you have a goddamn knife sticking out of your leg, so–”

“Language,” Raph scolds by rote.

“Don’t language me!!” Mikey says shrilly. “What happened? No, don’t answer that. I know what happened, you got stabbed. You should be in the infirmary already! You go, and I’ll get—”

“No!” Mikey is grabbed by the shoulders, actually lifted off the floor so he and his brother are eye-to-eye the way Raphie has a bad habit of doing when tensions are high as Raph goes on, “Leo doesn’t need to know. I’ll take care of it.”

Mikey blinks, processing that. It takes a minute, because it might be the stupidest thing this particular brother has ever said directly to his face. And then he scowls.

When he bellows, “LEO!” it’s in that particular baby brother voice that gets every older sibling in a mile radius moving with gusto. If Donnie weren’t at April’s for the night he would have removed the kitchen wall to get there two seconds faster.

As it is, Leo tumbles into the room wild-eyed, probably wondering what the hell could have happened in the three minutes between Mikey asking him to pause the movie and this targeted attack on every protective instinct in Leo’s body.

It takes him a second to clock that Mikey is present and correct and just sort of dangling in Raph’s hands still. Then he leans against the doorframe, playing it cool. What a nerd.

“Guess this is where the party’s at,” he says, doing that thing where he manages to look at Raph without looking at him. “So what’s the cover fee? Any live music?”

He probably would have kept going, but he’s processing the scene with sharp eyes, and that’s about when he connects the blood on Raph’s hand to the blood on his leg. Every single ounce of disingenuous charm and cheer evaporates from him instantly. His smile drops like a ton of bricks.

“What the fuck, Raph?” Leo says in a tone Mikey doesn’t know if he’s ever heard from him before. “Is that a knife? Casey let you get fucking stabbed?”

He moves while he’s talking, so fast that Mikey isn’t a hundred percent sure he didn’t actually teleport. He has the daisy-printed dish towel formerly hanging on the oven door in his hands and he’s kneeling at Raph’s side, wrapping it around his thigh and pressing down hard.

“Jesus, language,” Raph says, lowering Mikey to the ground before taking a resigned seat in one of the kitchen chairs. “Casey didn’t let me do anything. I’m fine, I’m handling it. You should see the other guy.”

“You’re—you’re handling it,” Leo parrots blankly, as if those words in that order don’t make any sense to him at all. “I should see the other guy. Is this a joke to you?”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.” Raphael’s annoyance makes sense, since Leo has adamantly refused to take anything seriously since he was given the leader badge to wear. If Leo slacked off before, he is pointedly doing the absolute bare minimum now.

He’s obviously trying to prove something to someone. Donnie just sighs when Mikey brings it up which means that he’s right but also that Donald isn’t going to break the disaster twins’ honor code by admitting out loud that he’s right.

“This isn’t about missing training,” Leo grits out, really, properly angry. “This is about you sneaking around with a knife sticking out of your leg and scaring Angie and letting me find out by accident instead of—I dunno—calling the second it happened? Were you just going to go yank this out of your leg in the shower and put a bandaid on it?”

Raphie is in pain, and his temper has been poked, so he replies, “For the past month you’ve been acting like nothing matters to you anymore! You’ve wanted nothing to do with me, you don’t want my advice, you don’t want my job—the job that’s always been mine, that pops took from me and just handed to you. So where’s the line drawn? For all I knew, you wouldn’t want to help with this, either.”

If Raph had slapped him, the look on Leo’s face probably would have been exactly the same as it is right now. He’s kneeling there on the floor and there’s blood staining his fingers and the big brother he adores so much is telling him right to his face that he thought Leo would have rather just let him bleed than help. And Leo let him think it this whole time, all because he had a point to prove.

Mikey folds his arms tight, tucking his hands away so no one sees if they start shaking. There’s a saying April quoted last week when she was working on a paper for her Introduction to Literary Journalism class, can’t see the forest for the trees. Mikey didn’t get it then, but it makes an unfortunate amount of sense now.

He knows better than anybody how much his brothers love each other. He doesn’t understand how they could be so blind to what’s right in front of them.

Raph is the kindest person in Mikey’s whole life and can always tell when a hit has landed too close to heart. Some of the anger coiled up inside him like an animal has no choice but to relax its jaw.

“I don’t know what’s going on in your head,” he admits. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to stop,” Leo says. It’s not a shout, but it’s loud, bouncing off all the polished surfaces until it fills the whole room. “Stop believing in me. Stop acting like I could ever be half the leader you were. Stop—stop getting hurt and acting like it doesn’t matter. What would we do without you?”

What will I do without you, he doesn’t say, when you’re not there for me to follow anymore?

Raph’s eyes are huge in his face, and he lifts his hands in an automatic response to a little brother hurting within arms reach, but Leo ties the dish towel and steps back. He’s doing the not-looking-while-looking trick again.

“Bleeding’s slowed. Let’s get you to the infirmary, big guy. Angie, Dad and Dee aren’t home so I may need your hands, okay?”

Leo always trusts Mikey to be able to help. It makes him feel three feet taller.

“You got it!” he says, hoping one of them remembers to clean up the kitchen before Splinter gets home and wanders into a crime scene.

When he heaves himself off the chair, Raph staggers a bit. Both his little brothers flock to either side of him instantly, and he says, “Raph’s just a little dizzy, that’s all. Let me lean on you guys for a bit.”

“Of course, Raphie,” Mikey says, willing to carry him if that’s what it takes.

“We gotcha,” Leo adds, every other thing he must be feeling back to being a well-kept secret behind every layer of armor he owns.

Raph puts his arms around them both and holds them close for the walk down the hall. He said he was dizzy, but his steps are steady. Everything about him is as steady as it’s always been. Mikey thinks he’s pretty good at sniffing out a scheme, but if he points out that Raph was only angling for a hug, then Leo’s going to run away like a feral cat who can’t tell the difference between affection and an attack.

So Mikey doesn’t say anything, and squeezes closer beneath the arm Raph has around him—smiling to himself when Leo squeezes closer, too.

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #sunset duo #hamato michelangelo #hamato raphael #hamato leonardo #a team #my writing #prompt #anonymous #tmnt fic #me writing the tense part of this fic #my music on shuffle: H O T T O G O 💃🕺

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