#8963 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lasanya539 · 23 days ago

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need you on the same ground

(written for @dorky-pals; beta'd by @hey-little-gay-boy-why-would-we)

Fandom: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem; Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Word Count: 8963 Summary: Raph huffs, the soft sound disappearing amongst the noise of the city below him. The fresh air has calmed down the roiling emotions from earlier. His limbs feel heavy and fatigued, the absence of his sais from his belt making a noticeable difference as he shifts his weight.

He needs to go home. It’s almost curfew.

“Why a hair salon?”

The voice does not make him jump, because he’s been expecting it. There was no way he was going to get away with practically running away from the sewers in a haste without having some kind of confrontation.

OR: A study in big brothers, cracked shells, and learning how to ask for help.

Posted on AO3!

It’s a school night.

Of course it's a school night. Every night is a school night nowadays. Be it homework, or practice, or group projects—from Mondays to Sundays, Raph is always busy with something to do with Eastman High. It’s a far cry from the days when he was practically dying to have anything interesting to do outside of training and comics and YouTube. Now, he’s at the mercy of a bed-time again like he’s five years old.

The early September coolness hangs in the air, the promise of a crisp fall. Raph shivers against it from his spot on a random rooftop, leaning on his elbows on the parapet and looking at the darkening skyline.

This has never been a particularly exciting time of year for four turtles living out of a sewer. Having a home in the de-facto trashcan of the city means that ‘fall’ is generally referred to as ‘Wet Garbage Season’ in their family. Their entire house gets covered in sticky leaves and black grime, and it always gets on Splinter’s last nerve. Their chore wheel spins a lot more frequently those weeks.

‘This year will be different’ , a definitive voice comes back to him. A memory from a few days ago, the declaration by a certain blue-masked brother. ‘This year, Wet Garbage Season will be Pumpkin Spice Latte season.’

Raph snorts at the memory, particularly the part where Leo got an orange squishmellow thrown at him for ‘acting like a basic white woman.’ And the part where Leo launched into his mini-lecture to Mikey on gender stereotyping and trivialization and ‘your comedy club needs some serious revamping if this is the best you can do,’ while Donnie oohed the background.

Always so quick to keep them in check, he thinks, and for once that thought isn’t filled with resentment or resignation. It’s a quiet awe mostly, filtering through his haze of exhaustion. Leo’s strong sense of right and wrong and almost debilitating kiss-assery has led to many a grounding from their dad, and he’s always hated him for it.

But sometimes it gives him pause. Makes him think about the day Splinter gave them all their real weapons, and declared Leo their leader as he handed him his sharp katanas. There hadn’t been a single hint of disagreement from the other three when they bowed respectfully at the orders from their Sensei. Because who, if not Leonardo? The righteous jerk. The disciplined swordsman. The big brother.

Raph huffs, the soft sound disappearing amongst the noise of the city below him. The fresh air has calmed down the roiling emotions from earlier. His limbs feel heavy and fatigued, the absence of his sais from his belt making a noticeable difference as he shifts his weight.

He needs to go home. It’s almost curfew.

“Why a hair salon?”

“What are you talking about?” He asks in a gravelly voice, and clears his throat.

He feels Donnie walk up to his side, his bō staff clicking with his gait. He doesn’t look at him. “You’re standing on top of a building with a really big hair salon. And some kind of massage place, I think. Interesting choice.”

“I don’t know.” Raph replies, already needing conscious effort to not sound irritated. What kind of opener is that? “First building I found, I guess.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees him open and close his mouth, clearly unsatisfied with the reply but unsure of what to say. It should make him smile, reducing his smartest brother to silence. It doesn’t.

He looks down at the traffic, momentarily distracted by the distant sound of a siren.

New York City is never at the mercy of a bed-time, he notes. It stays just as vibrant and alive at all hours of the night. From his perch, he watches families walking together on the sidewalk, a group of friends laughing over the drinks in their hands in a nearby alley, a dog walker wrangling an excitable golden retriever back home. So many people going out and living their lives, the way they deserve to.

It’s almost surreal how close they had come to losing it all. Raph clenches his fist.

“What are you thinking?” Donnie asks, his eyes following the motion.

“Nothing.” He grunts.

“Raph.”

“Nothing, Don, stay in your lane.” He crosses his arms and tucks in his fists, shooting a glare at him before going back to people-watching. “What are you doing out here anyway? Don’t you have a dumb anime to get back to?”

Raph immediately regrets those words, but thankfully Donnie doesn’t take the bait, choosing not to respond to it entirely. “Dad got worried about you.”

He chokes on a bitter scoff. “He should not be worried about me right now.”

“Raph .”

“What?” He finally snaps. Donnie is still in his training gear, like he is. There is unmistakable worry on his face, intelligent eyes trying to decipher him like he’s an interesting puzzle.

He can only handle the scrutiny for so long before cracking open like a raw egg, all messy. “I’m thinking about Superfly, okay? Happy?”

He hates it; he hates how his voice cracks straight through the middle at the name. He hates how he shivers at the haunting sound of a hissing voice. Deranged and sadistic eyes staring right through him. A claw holding him in bone-crushing grip, a loud crack in his ears, leaving no room for him to breathe.

When they first started settling into the human world—and the entire country was going batshit crazy at the appearance of so many hero mutants—the mayor of New York City had offered to set their little family up with ‘psychological welfare resources’, which was fancy talk for ‘therapy’. Something, something, ‘post-traumatic stress and stunted social development due to an isolated childhood’.

At the time it seemed like the dumbest idea on the planet. Sure, the fight with the multi-mutant monster had been hard, and sure, maybe the milking thing had been a little worse, but shouldn’t they all be focusing on a government agency hell-bent on destroying their family instead of stuff like this?

So when Leo and Donnie and Mikey said yes, Raph had scoffed and brushed it off, saying he didn’t need it. Evidently, it didn’t take long for him to regret that decision.

Raph suddenly stands up straight, not wanting to spiral down that path again. Donnie tenses at the movement, but he just swings his legs over and climbs the parapet, sitting down on the edge with his shoulders hunched.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He says pointedly. “Superfly, I mean. So don’t try to make me.”

“Okay.” He agrees after a second, surprisingly amenable. The lack of persistence actually surprises Raph for a second. Maybe this therapist is actually working their magic on his irritating little brother.

“But you gotta come home with me now, dude, it’s getting late.”

Nevermind, he’s still just as irritating. He stifles a groan. “No.”

“Bro, it wasn’t that big a deal, okay? No one is mad at you, can you chill?”

“‘Chill’?” He repeats, not missing how the angry growl in his voice makes Donnie flinch. He tries to suppress it, but it’s obvious enough. His flared up frustration fizzles out immediately.

“I’m mad. So just… leave me alone.”

“You’re mad? At who, Leo?”

“No!” Raph exclaims. “Of course not! I’m mad at me, dude. And Leo should be too.”

It started out as a regular training session; they don’t get to have many of those anymore between school and their newly-found patrol routine. Shedding their daily clothes for their old ninja gear, they’d all hauled up in the refurbished space a little ways away from their lair that they use as their dojo. Mikey and Leo were so excited to finally be trying out some new moves, while Donnie just complained about having to leave in the middle of an episode despite the grin tugging at his lips.

The problem was that no one in the family had bothered asking how excited Raph was for the training session. Which was not at all.

The day had gone like this: Raph was startled awake to Michelangelo’s blaring alarm at 5 in the morning, which was an absolutely criminal time for anyone who wasn’t a first responder to start their day. He’d apologized, sure, but an apology would not put him back to sleep or get rid of the tension headache that followed him for the rest of the day. And then between that, an Algebra test he’d practically failed, his English class with the loudest kids on the planet, and a wrestling practice where he’d lost every single match, Raph had been just about ready to blow a fuse.

The thing is that he’s pretty good at keeping a lid on it nowadays, a far cry from before and an accomplishment he’s pretty proud of. His meditation pillow and him against the world, right? He can deal with his shit, no problem. Sure, he might snap at his brothers a little more and forget to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to his father, but those are far from unforgivable crimes. One evening of deep breathing, one night of a decent sleep, and he’d be completely back to normal. An infallible solution to a cranky Raphael.

Now if only his dumb brain would actually follow through on this well-worn path as perfectly as it used to back then. Because the truth of the matter is that sleep is far from decent now. It’s filled with exhausted tossing and turning, restless buzzing that won’t quiet down, his mind flitting from thought to thought at a speed that makes him nauseous. And that’s on his good days.

On his bad days, Raph feels like he’s clawing against the nylon sheet of sleep, relentlessly fighting against suffocating fear. He can’t see, can’t move, only left to echoes of his brothers’ screams that drown out the thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat in his ears. Until he’s finally unceremoniously jerked out of the nightmare, an ungodly amount of adrenaline pumping through his veins. He can never shake the long-suppressed instinct that whispers in his hindbrain, telling him he’s prey.

All that to say: today had not been one of his good days.

So when he walked into the dojo behind his brothers, stretched and practiced his katas, he’d already been at the end of his line. Told himself that it would just be a couple of hours more, and then he’d be free to zone out with his headphones in his ears and a nonsensical wrestling match in his face, pretending he didn’t exist for a while.

“It was a mistake,” Donnie tries. “You didn’t mean to shove Leo that hard.”

Nardo had been having one of his good days, apparently. There was a pep in his step and a confidence to his grin that he hadn’t seen in weeks. Joking with Donnie, ribbing Mikey, teasing Raph—gently, because Leo was always good at reading his moods. He also brought up April only once, which meant that whatever was making him so happy had nothing to do with fleeting external validation.

On any other occasion, this would’ve been a perfect opportunity to really go at it in training. After all, messing with his brothers in the dojo while they practice is one of his favorite ways to spend time with them, and it’s been eons since they’ve done that. Turns out that each of them separating into their own respective niches, after fifteen years of being uncomfortably close, has left Raph just a tiny bit off-balance. Like walking comfortably up the stairs with one hand on the railing, and suddenly finding the railing gone. It’s never enough to make him stop, just enough to make his steps stutter and hope he doesn’t trip and fall.

“I shouldn’t have shoved him at all.” Raph mutters, a maelstrom of emotions in his chest. “We were just sparring. It was supposed to be fun. It was .”

Until Leo started winning. Call it Raph’s anger, irritation, exhaustion, whatever—but it was making his moves jerky, his technique haphazard, and soon he was forcefully shifted from offense to defense. His Sensei had been telling him to ‘focus , focus , focus’ on the sidelines, nearly inaudible next to the unnecessary commentating and jeering by Donnie and Mikey. And in the crucial moment just before he stumbled, the only thought that rushed through his mind was that he’d be damned before he lost one more fight.

And so he snapped, like a stale breadstick. All those years of practicing the art of ninjutsu and inner peace went to shit when Raph broke form, hooked an ankle behind Leo’s calf, and shoved all of his weight onto his plastron when he slammed him off the mat and onto the solid ground.

And Leo screamed.

“I lashed out again.” It was pure torture to admit those words, but they were true. “I shouldn’t have, but it—the whole thing—was pissing me off. And then I hurt him.”

Donnie doesn’t refute that, even though Raph wasn’t expecting him to, but it still makes him feel so much worse.

“Leo isn’t mad at you.” He reiterates. “We all thought his shell must have healed by now. It’s been weeks. Mutant physiology is really more of a guess most of the time.”

“That’s not the point, Donatello!” Raph snaps, tight with it. “I’m not supposed to hurt him.”

Donnie frowns, confused. “'You’ aren’t? Something special about you?”

Raph rolls his eyes, ignoring the immediate sting. Who knew the genius of the family would have such a hard time following simple logic?

“I’m supposed to be the one that protects you guys, Don.” He spells it out for him. “I can’t be dumb enough to hurt any of you, for any reason. Who cares if it was a mistake? I should be more careful. I’m sorry.”

Raph looks away when he says that last part; he can never make eye contact when he’s apologizing for some reason, no matter how genuine it might be. It makes a weird feeling rise under his skin when he does, like he’s too exposed and needs to cower away.

There’s a few moments of silence. The city lives around them as if nothing had ever been dumb enough to hurt it in a fit of rage.

And then he hears Donnie scoff. “You are so full of yourself, Raph.”

He almost gets whiplash from how fast he turns to face him, the snarling creature behind his ribs cowering in unexpected hurt. Donnie’s the one glaring now, eyes narrow and lips pursed.

“What the fuck?” He asks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Compared to him, Donnie is the other way around. When he’s overly emotional, he has no problem looking anyone in the eye and telling them how he feels. Which is what he does right now, and Raph can’t glance away.

“I mean exactly that: you’re fucking full of yourself. What the hell makes you think you’re supposed to be our ‘protector’?”

He repeats the words with air quotes, so mockingly that he actually flinches a bit.

“I—I’m the biggest, and the strongest, it’s my job to—”

“Oh, are you?” Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because his temper flares. “The ‘strongest’, really? Huh, I don’t remember you coming into this family with a fucking label on you. ‘Handle with caution, can crush you into bits, sole purpose is to take care of the littler, weaker brothers.”

Raph feels lost, as the end of the sentence seems to come out in a growl , which is practically unheard of from him. “Donnie, what are you even saying—”

“Because that’s your problem, right? You think we can’t handle our own shit! You think we’re weak.”

The air punches out from his lungs. Despite his own words, Raph can’t help the bloom of guilt spreading through his body. “That’s not what I said.”

Donnie throws his hands up, pacing away a couple of steps, still glaring at him over his shoulder. “Oh, don’t give me that. You and I both know what you meant.”

“I didn’t.” He says insistently, a sinking feeling in his chest as he wonders if he actually did. “It’s just… I—I’ve always thought it was up to me to be the heavy-hitter, you know?”

“Well, I’m telling you right now to cut that crap out.” He responds brusquely. “Contrary to whatever you believe, I—we —don’t need you for that.”

The words slice through him far quicker than he’d like to admit, and he’s unable to hide it. Raph swallows dryly. And yet, he has to forcefully remind himself that while Donnie’s bluntness is often a cause for strife, it’s almost never that serious. He means what he says very literally. And oftentimes, Raph has to recontextualize the conversation to Donnie’s perspective if he wants to make head or tail of him, and not give into the Cain instinct.

Raph places both his hands on the parapet, subtly regulating his own breathing and biting back the automatic, bitter reply. He focuses on the rough texture of concrete, and runs the last ten minutes back in his head.

“Is this still about Leo?” He asks finally.

Donnie flits his gaze away, and Raph thinks ‘ah’.

“Yes. No. I—I don’t know.” He shakes his head, the confusion not slowing down the vitriol. “But it’s definitely about you. You have this really stupid habit of making everything about yourself.”

He gapes, now openly hurt and more than a little angry. “When the hell have I ever made anything about myself, dude? You’re making shit up.”

Donnie turns towards him fully, and strangely Raph can recognize the look in his eyes. That’s how he feels when rage presses against his seams and eventually bursts out of him. It never ends well for anyone.

“Oh, great question,” he says with faux nonchalance. “Maybe the stunt you pulled on Friday with the football team?”

Oh.

Now, Raph has seen a lot of high school movies, okay? A lot of them. Most, he understands now, are over-exaggerations. No one can hijack a parade float whenever they want to, no one can give an inspirational speech and change the world in one day. Many of his delusions were wiped clean after his first week in the New York City public education system.

But there are some tropes that exist because of how true they are IRL. And he’d heard enough about the Eastman High football team to know that one, they suck, and two, they were assholes. And if there ever was a perfect target for a sucky, asshole athlete, it was a nerd named Donnie.

On Friday, after practically escaping the giant lunch line to go sit alone for some silence, Raph had turned onto the locker hallway expecting to find it mostly empty. Only to see Donnie in front of his locker with a few guys from the football team surrounding him.

The scene had immediately caught his attention, pinging in his brain. Not just because he’d heard enough about the football team to never actually interact with them one-on-one, but also because of Donatello’s posture and stance. He’d been backed up against the metal door of his locker, holding his laptop over his chest protectively, shoulders hunched. Eyes darting from one person to another with something akin to fear. That had made him freeze.

He doesn’t really remember the conversation, he probably couldn’t hear it over the sound of his blood rushing to his ears, hot and angry. There were jeers and laughs, and the more they spoke the more his brother’s face had been falling. He kept trying to back away further, but his shell wouldn’t let him get too far, and apparently that was hilarious as well. And then one of the players, the captain probably, had reached out and shoved Donnie’s shoulder roughly.

Raph had seen red.

“Have you ever considered,” he continues, gritting his teeth, “that I can fight my own damn battles?”

In sudden clarity, it all slams into him. Moments from days before flip through his mind like glossy photographs. Angry stares from across the room, tight-lipped responses to his questions, a permanent cold shoulder turned away from him. He’d chalked it up to Donnie’s signature attitude, barely paying attention to some rudeness between brothers. He might have not even noticed it, actually. He doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.

Raph gulps, his ire collapsing into nothing once more.

“I didn’t make that big of a scene,” he tries fruitlessly. “I didn’t even tell anyone about it.”

“It’s not about the ‘scene’. You barged your way into a conversation that you shouldn’t have. Yeah, sure, they were jackasses, but I could have taken care of them myself. I’m a ninja, dammit. We’re all ninjas.”

Donnie paces away, gesturing wildly as he rants, “And it’s not just this one thing, you’ve been doing this for a while. You freaked the fuck out when Mikey’s phone died the time he was hanging out with his friends. You actually yelled at Leo when we had to file out because of the school shooter scare and he didn’t answer your texts—it was just a drill! Just because you think that somehow you’re stronger than us doesn’t give you the right to treat us like we’re… inferior!”

There’s so much sheer bitterness in his voice. This has clearly been bothering Donnie—maybe all of them—for a while.

He quells his urge to lash out, say something like ‘if you guys watched your own backs then maybe I wouldn’t have to!’. But not only would that be a sure-fire way to prove Donnie right, it also wouldn’t be true. They are fully capable of everything he is, and much more, especially in the genius’s case. He does believe that, he’s certain of it.

Raph looks down at his own hands, vaguely registers the calluses on his fingertips, born from years of practicing with his sais, of lifting weights, of pushing himself farther, faster, stronger. Back then, in the before, his goal had been to just be the best among his brothers, beat them at training and impress their father.

Now, he knows without a single doubt, his only goal is to protect his brothers from any harm that could ever befall them, whether it comes in the form of a jerk football player, a shrill alarm in the school buildings, or a kaiju monster destroying the city.

“I…” he begins, and stops. Collects his thoughts. Thinks about the look on Leo’s face when he shrieked in pain because Raph couldn’t control his anger. He already knows he’s disappointed Donnie and Mikey. He wonders if he’s disappointed his father.

“I messed up.” He finishes, again making sure to look away. A little ways ahead, there’s a giant billboard of a new car on top of a commercial building. Raph keeps his eyes on it, subconsciously counting the spokes in the wheels. “You’re right about that, okay? I’ve been butting in too much, constantly getting on your guys' asses about things I shouldn’t have. But—I did it because I was scared.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that it’s scary to admit he’s scared? It might have been the lack of practice, it’s not like he does it very often. Ha. If he actually did have a shrink, they’d have a lot to say about that, for sure.

Donnie is silent on his side, and he’s too tired to read too much into it, as he continues, “When that huge football guy was ragging on you, all I saw was another gigantic asshole trying to hurt you, and I—I panicked. I grabbed his arm too tight, I lost it on all of them. I shouldn’t have.”

‘Back off!’, he remembers yelling now, feeling nauseous at how frantic his own voice had been. ‘I’ll fuck you up, back off my brother!’

“When Mikey went AWOL, and when Leo wouldn’t reply to my messages, I freaked out then too. But, you have to understand,” he wonders how dumb he must look to Donnie, speaking to the car poster two blocks away with such desperation, “it’s not because I think you’re ‘inferior’ or anything, okay? That’s not it. I—I can’t help being scared, all the time. I always think that something might have happened to you. Yeah, maybe not a whole kaiju monster again, sure. But what if Mikey hadn’t been okay when he went out to Central Park, and instead got taken again, huh? What if Leo hadn’t just been separated from us, and actually got shot at school? There are still people that think we shouldn’t exist, aren’t there? They can still hurt us, and I can’t stop thinking about that.”

Raph curls into himself, arms folded over his plastron and a leg tucked under another. A natural turtle instinct, he thinks wryly. Feel too exposed? Curl up inside the shell. If he wasn’t as bulky as he is, he would have been able to retract his limbs like Leo, that would have been nice right about now.

He hears footsteps again, and he tries to brace himself. If Donatello put hand on his shoulder right now, he doesn’t think he could stand the contact for long. He already feels stretched too thin, like a rubber band pulled taut and too close to snapping. Also, he really doesn’t want to get yelled at again.

He stops before he comes too close though, and goes, “Oh.”

Raph snorts despite himself.

He doesn’t say anything more, but climbs onto the parapet, still maintaining the distance, the bō staff resting between them. Raph’s shoulders come down from his ears. The rubber band loses some of its tension in the companionable silence.

The city lives on around them. The group of friends has resorted to attempting drunken handstands and are failing miserably, howling with laughter. A teenage girl talks excitedly on her phone as she walks on the street. A stranger’s poodle pees on the wheel of an improperly parked truck.

Raph wonders how the people of New York have been dealing with the aftermath of the mass. Do they need a shrink too? Do they get awfully upset at things they shouldn’t? Do they look at their brothers happily having breakfast in the morning, and are slammed with the heart-dropping realization that all of this could have been taken away in one instant?

How hard do they have to try to feel normal again?

Donnie gulps next to him, the click in his throat audible. “Do you—have bad dreams too?”

Automatically Raph scrunches his nose, even though his heart suddenly thuds really fast. He gives in to the instant urge to deflect and disarm with a pathetic laugh. “Ha, that—that makes me sound like a little kid.”

Donnie doesn’t join his laugh, and from the quick glance, he actually looks contemplative, picking faintly at his purple elbow guard with a slight frown.

“That doesn’t make you ‘a little kid’.” Donnie responds, his words slow and measured and his tone on the wrong side of bland. “A lot of adults have nightmares. It’s perfectly normal.”

“Yeah, maybe for chumps.” God, can someone shut his mouth up? It’s like it’s on autopilot. He can barely stop the defensive scoff, even as his entire body is tensed up, unnaturally still for the nonchalance he’s trying to project. “Not for me. Tough as nails, right?”

What the hell is he doing? Didn’t he just admit to himself that the nightmares were making him cranky? This is like a perfect opening given to him on a silver platter, and he’s blowing it.

He risks one more glance. Donnie’s frown seems to have gotten deeper, head bent low, fingers messing with his gear. He works his mouth once, opening and closing it, before pursing his lips and staying silent. And turns away.

Odd.

Recontextualize the conversation. Raph clicks the rewind button in his mind once more.

“...‘too’?” He repeats uncertainly.

Donnie tenses.

“Nothing.” He responds immediately. “I didn’t say anything.”

Raph gapes at him. The world sharpens around him like it does before a mission, all his ninja training on the skill of observation suddenly in full effect as he studies Donnie thoroughly. There are unmistakable eyebags hidden behind his giant dorky glasses, just a hint of redness in his sclera.

“You’re having nightmares?”

Like the slowest puzzle on the planet, the pieces click together into one sobering picture. Suddenly, it feels like Raph sees Donatello through a cracked looking-glass; all the wrong parts he wasn’t willing to notice in himself blown up in higher proportions in his brother. The anger, the fear, the desperate urge to prove himself better than inferior—all of it rings true between them.

Donnie holds out for one long moment, as if not responding would just take the question out of the air, before he sighs, dropping his shoulders. Opening up, in a way Raph can’t help but be envious of.

“Yeah,” Donnie nods, looking him in the eye. “I’ve been having them for a while. I thought they’d go away, and they do sometimes. But some nights they’re just—terrible.”

Yeah. They are. They’re terrible enough that they can fuck up his whole day, that they can make him act like a jackass to his own family, yell at them when they don’t deserve it. Some nights they’re so bad, he can’t get over himself enough to think about the person sitting next to him. About his little brother, who’s trying to push everyone away, in the way that should make big brothers pull them closer to see what’s hurting underneath.

“I didn’t know.” Raph mumbles numbly, hand gripping the parapet tight enough for the texture to imprint into his palms.

Donnie gives him a challenging glare. “Yeah, well, I guess I gotta be ‘tough as nails ’, right?”

“No!” He backtracks immediately. “No, you don’t gotta be anything, dude. You can just—be .”

‘Raphael, you and Leonardo are my oldest,’ he recalls his father’s stern voice from an evening years ago, when he’d gotten fed up from staying cooped up and tried to sneak out topside before he got caught. ‘It is your duty to set a good example for your younger brothers. They look up to you. Whatever you do or say, they will absorb. You must not lead them astray.’

Bullshit, he remembers thinking to himself when he’d been sent to their shared room. Complete and utter bullshit. What kind of fucked up responsibility is it to have to be ‘perfect’ for his dumb little brothers? Why can’t he just live his own life the way he wants, make his own mistakes, not care about what anyone thinks of him?

But that wasn’t fair of him to ask for that. It wasn’t fair because, despite all his problems with Leonardo, Raph watched and studied him like a hawk. Even if he only ever made fun of him, ever since they were kids, he had been privy to every action and blunder Leo ever made. Sneaking cookies after midnight, eating Mikey’s ice cream, staying up late reading comics—he’d picked up all of those habits from him, and was usually there for the fallout when Dad scolded him.

Until eventually, Leo stopped making blunders altogether. He turned into their sensei’s premier student, and their father’s wisest son. The teachings of bushido, personified.

Had Leo felt the… pressure of being the biggest brother so strongly? Did he have to forcefully turn himself into a picture-perfect, Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes because of how acutely aware he was of the three of them always looking toward him? Sure, they never outright listened to him, and mostly just tried to ruffle his feathers. But despite all the nagging and taunting, wherever Leo stepped foot, they’d always been right behind him, following the flutter of a blue bandana.

It had been so long since Raph remembered that for two smaller idiots, his footsteps bore the same significance.

“What do you dream about?” He asks, and this time he looks his little brother right in the eye. He’s done making this about himself. If the way he’s been managing his own problems are giving them all the wrong message, then fuck that shit. He’s going to be better about… all of this, he has to.

Donnie seems to judge his sincerity, eyes ticking all over his face, and he stops himself from shying away at the scrutiny. Finally he sighs, “Honestly? I dream a lot about Cynthia.”

Raph absorbs this information and tucks away his own reaction. His fingers tap steadily on the concrete. “Okay,” he says, keeping all emotion out of his voice. “Anything specifically?”

Donnie’s gaze flicks down to Raph’s forearms, and the line between his eye-ridges gets deeper, an upset motion to his downturned lips. “The milking part, dude, obviously.”

Reflexively, Raph rubs a thumb over the vein the IV cannula had been attached to, the scar having long faded away but the phantom feeling of an unpleasant needle still persisting. “Okay.”

“Just yesterday, I had this nightmare. We were all back there again, and this time the TCRI machine was so much bigger, and you were there, she had you strapped to it, and—god, you were screaming and none of us could do anything, it was like I’d lost my own voice, and—” he cuts his damp voice off. “It was horrible.”

“...I’m sorry, man.” Raph can’t think of anything else to say. He’s intimately familiar with the horror in his voice, he knows exactly what it feels like to be helpless in the face of his brothers’ pain.

Donnie looks up at him, the streetlamps reflecting on the lenses of his glasses. There’s a palpable amount of trust in his gaze, as he asks in a small voice, “How am I supposed to deal with them?”

His tapping stutters, and proceeds to get even faster, as the onus of the conversation shifts back on him again.

Raph racks his brain, trying to think under the pressure. He’s not the guy they come to for emotional help! He’s the guy they ask to open a tight jar, or reach for the thing on the top shelf. How the hell is he supposed to know how to deal with nightmares? If he knew, then they wouldn’t be in this mess, now would they?

He breathes deep, feeling the air cycle through his lungs, eyes back on the dumb car. What advice would Leo give Raph if he’d asked him that instead?

Leo would tell him to stop letting everything fester inside, and talk about whatever was bothering him. He’d tell him to get out of his own head because that would only make his problems worse. He’d also tell him he’d be a good listener if that’s who Raph chose as a confidant, even if he'd be extremely awkward about the offer.

Leo would tell him that he didn’t have to go through this alone.

“Have you talked to your—your therapist about this?” Raph asks, hesitating over the word and trying not to be all weird about it.

Donnie huffs and rolls his eyes at him, so he clearly failed. But this time there’s no derision in the look he gives him. “No, not yet. There’s so much else to talk about with her, my life is so interesting. Did you know it’s not normal to base your entire understanding of the modern world on books and TV shows? Crazy, right?”

“Oh, that’s wild. I never would have expected that.” Raph snarks back. “What’d she have to say about it?”

“Um, well,” Donnie fidgets during a short pause, the levity gone as quickly as it had come. He bites at his lip the way does when he’s thinking, before he begins in a practiced cadence, “Dr. Chaudhri—she says that expecting the real world to function within the framework of a fictional universe is actually unfair to yourself, more than anyone else. She said it’s because it forces you to strive towards ideals that aren’t possible to achieve, outside of a storybook ending.”

“...Oh,” Raph swallows his suddenly dry throat, his fingers tapping in a quick and unstable rhythm. He had no idea what the hell he was expecting, but it hadn’t been that . He keeps his tone carefully neutral. “What else did she say?”

“She says it’s important to recognize your mental and emotional limits, and not ignore yourself if you start to feel overwhelmed. Forcing yourself into positions when you’re not ready is only harmful to you. You can't win every fight. You don't even have to fight every fight."

There’s a stare on the side of Raph’s face. It feels far too shrewd and sharp for his liking, much like the words that seem to have found the chink in his carapace. He’s trying to ignore it as best as he can, while trying to suppress the feeling of ‘too-exposed, too-exposed, too-exposed’ rising under his skin steadily.

He only hums in response, as Donnie continues, driving the point home, “She also says that expecting yourself to switch back to what you were before… everything, is unrealistic. If you apply a hard, external force on your bone and break it, even after it heals, it will still show signs of the injury. You have to go through PT to adapt to the newly formed bone structure. It’s the same logic for our brains. The neural circuits of the brain get altered after highly traumatic events, so you have to accept that you work differently now and actively learn how to deal with it. Instead of just—shoving it all under the rug.”

Again, the pointed frustration doesn’t escape his notice, and for once he doesn’t react with his usual defensiveness. Because his genius brother is right, he’s always right.

Raph is so exhausted from pretending he’s got his crap together. Trying to rise above the swell of angst that greets him every morning, and acting like walking through the murky sludge of simply existing isn’t draining everything out of him, is clearly not working well. ‘Tough’? He’s the farthest fucking thing from ‘tough’. He seems to have fallen in the face of the heroism the world has bestowed upon them. But worse than that, he seems to have failed himself.

“Chaudhri also says it’s not our fault. What’s happened to us, I mean.” Donnie finishes, his tone a lot gentler as he scoots to be closer to Raph, close enough he can feel his body heat but still not touching. Raph can’t put into words how much he appreciates that. “The bad things that we’ve been through didn’t happen because we made mistakes. Whatever we were doing, we did in the name of saving the world. But what they’ve left us with, all those nightmares and bad feelings and trauma—because it is trauma, that’s literally what we have—is our responsibility to deal with. Otherwise we’ll be too busy drowning in guilt to do a single damn thing, much less live our new lives.”

Raph’s eyes are watery. Are those tears? Huh, he only ever cries when he’s in extreme pain, and barely even then. When he was being milked, he’d left most of the weeping to Mikey, bearing it in groans of pain. He isn’t in pain right now.

Donnie doesn’t say anything about the tears, leaving Raph to get them under control on his own. He finally chokes out a humorless chuckle. “How many sessions have you had, dude? You could give Dr. Phil a run for his money.”

He barks out a surprised laugh, just slightly hysterical with relief. “Oh, yeah, sure, a dumb talk show host, that’s my future right there.” He grabs his bō, twirling it in the air once, before running a hand down the length of it and back up again absentmindedly. “And… yeah, I guess I’ve talked to her enough to like. Make some kind of a difference, or whatever. Let’s hope it actually does something, right?”

He’s making light of it for his sake, Raph can tell. Which fills him with equal parts regret and sadness.

“If she’s helping you, then she’s good in my books.” He tells him honestly, meeting his eye when Donnie looks at him, surprised. “I’m serious. Maybe… maybe therapy isn’t really as big of a joke as I thought it was.”

He blinks once more, before lips quirks up in a shy smile, and suddenly he looks so much younger and more innocent than he is. More like the irritating boy in the tent that sobs loudly every time he watches a sad K-drama, no matter if it’s the middle of the night. Like he’d never had a car flung directly at him by SuperDuperfly and had to be pushed out of the way by Raph before it crushed him.

“Really?” Donnie asks hopefully. “So—so, you think you’ll give it a shot, maybe?”

Again, Raph has to make an effort to keep the wince off his face, but he seems to have caught it anyway, because he rushes to explain, “She’s really cool, I promise! No bullshit, no emotional, lovey-dovey stuff. She’s… just the right amount of blunt, and the right amount of care.” He grins at him. “Kinda like you.”

Raph pauses, genuinely touched. And, as easy as anything, he loops an arm around Donnie’s neck and knocks their shoulders together. The exaggerated groan from him is response enough, even as he leans his whole weight on him.

It’s not just that he’s opposed to the idea of psychology, he’s not completely an idiot. He understands there is quite a lot of merit to it, and he knows how important it can be for people who need it. It’s just that, despite everything, he still can’t shake the feeling that he’s not supposed to be one of those people who needs… help.

“What if… she doesn’t work out for me?” Raph asks quietly. “I know you seem to be getting a lot out of what she’s telling you, but maybe it won’t help me.”

“Then we’ll find you another one,” comes the near immediate reply, dripping with sheer confidence. “Even she says that CBT is a bit of trial and error. And even if therapy isn’t the solution, we’ll figure something else out.”

It sounds like an order, like he has no choice but to listen to Donnie, and it cracks a smile on his face because of how similar it feels to Leo.

And no matter how irritating Leonardo and Donatello may be, Raph knows when it’s time to cut his losses and blindly agree with them, his trust in his brothers stronger than the cynicism in himself. “Okay.”

If Donnie’s surprised once more, he doesn’t show it, and together they lapse back into a quiet that seems far less burdened. The sounds of Manhattan waft around them, intermingling with the chilly wind. The pedestrians wrap their scarves tighter around their neck as they walk, the cars drive five miles per hour above the speed limit, both eager to get to their various destinations. Resilient in their quest to not lose what they have in the face of what they’ve been through, in the way only true New Yorkers can be.

They all need to go home. It’s almost the end of the evening.

“Do you think Leo’s disappointed in me?” The question leaves Raph’s mouth before he can stop himself, but he doesn’t cringe away. His calloused fingers tap against his brother’s shoulder nervously.

“No.” Donnie states without hesitation.

“Are you sure?”

This time he definitely does roll his eyes in response, but he also jostles him to the side in a friendly gesture, looking both fond and annoyed, which is usually a mixture only Raph can induce.

“If you’re really that concerned,” he begins, and in one fluid motion, heaves himself up with his bō and does an elegant flip back onto the roof, “let’s go back. You can ask him that yourself.”

Donnie holds out a hand, a smaller one with the callouses in different places, a hand that’s better at wiring circuitry and operating delicate tools than maneuvering a sai. Yet no less strong or capable.

Raph doesn’t hesitate as he clasps it, climbing down from the parapet and following his little brother home.

When he reaches the front door, adorned with pretty fairy lights, he pushes it open quietly, not wanting it to creak ominously as if signaling his own doom. The living room and kitchen are mostly dark, save for a single old lamp next to a worn armchair, and his father’s eyes flickering up to them as they walk inside.

Raph tenses, head bowed low, bracing for impact.

“Oh, boys,” is all their Sensei says, as he immediately stands up to walk towards them. There is nothing but liquid warmth in his voice and concern in his eyes when he raises a hand to his face, stopping just before making contact.

All the turtles outgrew their father when they were thirteen, a fact that dear old Splinter always complained about despite how happy he clearly was. But none of them have been able to shake the habit of bending down towards him to look him in the eye when he reaches out towards them. Which is what Raph does now, and butts his face into his offered palm.

“Hi, Dad,” he whispers softly.

“Hi.” Donnie says behind him, raising an awkward wave so they don’t forget he’s still there.

“Are you okay?” Dad asks, studying his son through his glasses. Raph catches his gaze lingering towards the moisture still collected over his cheeks, but he shakes his head to disarm him.

“I’m okay, promise,” he replies honestly. “Sorry if I stressed you out.”

His thumb makes gentle circles on his cheek. “Stressing out about you four is my whole life.” He quips back, and it sounds so fond, Raph can’t bring himself to feel too bad. “I am sorry training went badly for you.”

He winces. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I know.” Dad interrupts with a soft smile, looking every inch like the man who taught him the importance of patience and forgiveness. “I am only happy you are okay. Where did you go?”

Nope, he’s not going to cry again. He won’t, even if he has to clear his throat to answer. “We were on top of a roof for a while. A—hair salon, I think, according to Donnie.”

“Yeah, so, um. The joke was gonna be that you’re bald.” Donnie says suddenly, and it jarrs them out of the moment, as they give him similar looks of confusion. He rubs the back of his neck, equal parts sheepish and shit-eating. “It was funny you were on top of a hair salon because you have no hair. And a massage place is redundant because, you know, shell.”

Dad huffs out a chuckle as Raph gives him a flat stare. “Your sense of humor is worse than Mikey’s.”

“Hey! I take personal offense to that!” A voice pipes up from ahead, as Mikey pushes away the curtain to their shared room and joins them. Raph searches his face for any shred of upset, but Mikey grins at him with his signature sunshine charm that could forgive a million and one mistakes of his. He can’t help but smile back. “My humor is impeccable. Here, here, I’ll show you one, okay? I just came up with this.”

He clears his throat. “What does a pizza say when it introduces itself?”

Raph sees what’s coming from a mile away, and groans, “Oh my god, dude, please don’t—”

“It’s slice to meet you!”

Dad guffaws as he always does because he finds dumb puns hilarious, even as Raph groans even louder, hamming up his reaction, his head falling onto his hands. “Horrible. That was horrible.”

In true younger sibling solidarity, Donnie doesn’t mock him, but the laughter seems to be bursting out of him as he says, “No, bro, that joke was so good! It—it was so good, it should be on the toppings list!”

All three break out into more hysterical chortling. Raph shoots him a betrayed look.

“Alright, I’m tired of you two,” he rolls his eyes, pointedly walking away. “I need a break, and there’s only one other person that knows how dumb your jokes are.”

He hopes they have the common sense to pick up on the obvious hint and stay in the living room, as Raph quietly brushes the curtain away and tiptoes inside.

Faint music plays in the room, coming from the purple speaker that certainly doesn’t belong to Leo, who lays flat on his plastron, reading a comic book. He’s braced on all his sides with pillows, his carapace bandaged in white wraps and cotton padding. He looks up as Raph comes in, and gives him a decidedly loopy smile.

Ah. On the heavy pain meds, then.

“Raphie,” Leo croons, reaching out a hand lazily towards him, comic forgotten, “you’re back!”

Raph gives him a twisted smile, caught between the guilt of having reduced Leo to the experimental drugs the American Veterinary Association had concocted for them after their battle, or the heart-melting affection at the sheer trust in his eyes, even in his drugged state.

“Hey, dude,” he greets around the lump in his throat, kicking the rolling chair towards his bed and sitting down close. “Listening to Adele again?”

For once he actually doesn’t mean it in a teasing way, and Leo answers equally seriously, as he immediately sobers up and levels a gaze at him.

“I need you to understand how good 30 is.” He states. “It’s so good, man. So good. It’s—like… it’s transcendent!”

“It is,” Raph purses his lips, wondering if he should remind him if he was the one who got him into Adele. “Remember the concert?”

“The best night of my whole life.” He answers, nodding with each emphasized word so Raph could absorb the sincerity to his words. “Nothing will ever top that.”

Raph remembers Leo saying the exact same thing when they’d been coming back home, ninja-ing their way across rooftops. The two of them had duetted every song Adele sang without missing a single word, while Mikey recorded it and Donnie threw candy wrappers at them. When they’d been at the hospital, they’d shown Splinter the video, who proceeded to get extremely emotional about his two oldest sons bonding, much to their awkwardness.

Truly, nothing would ever top that.

He hums in response, idly wishing he could go back to that moment again, when things had been simpler. Objectively worse, but simpler.

Leo tilts his head at him, a knowing look in his eyes. And Raph gets forcefully reminded that even at his most stoned, he can still read him like a fucking book.

“Okay?” He blinks at Raph slowly.

Despite his earlier stoicism, faced with Leo’s genuine concern, Raph’s lip tremors, unbidden. Every single self-deprecating thought about ‘you should yell, shout, hate me’ batters through his mind like papers caught in a tornado. Donnie’s steadfast faith serves as his only anchor, mooring him against the winds.

Until eventually, he just mumbles brokenly, “I’m so fucking sorry, Leo.”

Leo takes a moment to ingest this, and blinks a few times again, just as lethargically. His whole demeanor seems extremely anticlimactic to the shitshow Raph had been expecting, his own shoulders hiked back up to his ears. Adele’s voice fittingly sings the chorus to ‘Easy On Me’ , music warbling in the air around them.

Ever so slowly, like a turtle coming out of his shell—heh—Leo holds his hand out for Raph. He grasps it tightly like it’s a lifeline, the strength of it shocking him out of his funk.

“Don’t worry about it.” Leo tells him, looking him in the eye. “It’s okay.”

“Is it?” Raph asks, relief and hope clashing terribly in his chest.

“If Mikey or Donnie hurt you without meaning to and apologized,” he explains, big-brother-mode on despite the drugs running through his system, and Raph listens with rapt attention, “would you forgive them?”

“Yes.” He says after a second, actually thinking his answer through, knowing for certain it was the truth. He’d forgive his little brothers anything.

Leo smiles at him dopily. “So we’re good, then.”

He doesn’t make a move to let go, even as his head eventually falls back onto his pillow, neck too tired to hold up the weight. So Raph doesn’t either, clasping Leo’s palm between both of his.

He’s aware that the days ahead will bring even more to worry about. He knows Donnie is talking to Dad and Mikey outside about getting him an appointment with Dr. Chaudhri. He knows Mikey will probably save him an extra piece of pie tomorrow, as a reward for finally getting his head out of his ass. He knows he has to go back to school and deal with the same excruciating routine, clinging to the knowledge that a safe haven is waiting for him at home, full of laughs and colored bandanas and turtle piles, to get through the day.

But for now, he holds Leo’s hand and squeezes it, the creature behind his ribs finally sated, and breathes, “Yeah. We’re good.”

#tmnt #tmnt fic #tmnt mutant mayhem #tmnt tales of the tmnt #tottmnt #tottmnt fic #tottmnt raph #tottmnt donnie #tottmnt leo #tottmnt mikey #fic

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