#It came up like 3 times in the same day this week

[ninetailedfoxmanchi]

Mafia! BTS - They Want to Spoil You

Warnings: /

A/N: They realize you're not well-off or are even struggling financially and that makes them want to take care of you even more. Per popular request <3.

MASTERLIST

Jin

Jin was already lying in bed when you got out of the bathroom. You grabbed your pyjamas from your bag as he watched you change.

"Oh no ..." you mumbled when you saw that the seams in your side tore and left a gap in your top. "Can I borrow a t-shirt?" you asked as you turned to your boyfriend but you already knew the answer. You were beginning to suspect too that Jin even preferred it if you wore his clothes.

"Do you need new pyjamas?"

"No, I'll just sew this up and they'll be like new again," you told as you grabbed Jin's t-shirt from one of the dressers.

"Just get a new pair," said Jin as he sat leaning against his pillow.

"I can already barely get through the month, I can't just buy new clothes whenever there's a tear in them," you laughed as you pulled on Jin's white t-shirt. You climbed into the bed but your smile faded when you saw Jin frowning.

"Are you okay?" you asked gently and scooted closer to him.

"You barely get through the month?" asked Jin seriously. Your mouth parted and your face went blank. Your cheeks turned pink as you thought about how much less you earned compared to Jin. You had made your peace with it already when you two began dating but the difference between your incomes and savings never crossed Jin's mind.

"It's not that bad," you smiled and tried to reassure your boyfriend. "I have a beginner's salary, it's normal."

"It's not normal if you're struggling," said Jin sternly as he sat up straight and his hand cupped your cheek. "Let me take care of you." He frowned even worse.

"You don't have to take care of me, Jin, I'm fine, really," you insisted although the past few months have been really tight for you financially. Your rent took most of the money whilst you were staying at Jin's place the majority of the nights. Then there was the food and the bills, the everyday things and the public transport. Your phone was so battered that the screen had began to flicker a couple of weeks ago.

A look so determined filled Jin's eyes that it began to worry you a little.

"Please don't think about it anymore, Jinnie," you begged as you took his cheeks and kissed him. He struggled to respond at first, his mind in a storm, but he couldn't resist your soft lips.

The next day when you woke up, you reached for the nightstand blindly to check the time on your phone but you couldn't find it. You rose your head and frowned when your phone was nowhere to be seen.

"Have you seen my phone?" you mumbled sleepily when you came into the living area, finding Jin already dressed in another one of his perfect outfits. It must have been late in the morning judging by the daylight if not close to noon. Jin liked to sleep in as well but not that day. He had been up since early morning.

"Here you go, princess," said Jin as he handed you a phone.

"This isn't my phone?" you asked confused and tried to give it back to Jin. It seemed brand new so you figured he changed his.

"It's your phone," insisted Jin, his eyes still filled with the same unbending look as the night before. You frowned and tapped the screen. The background was the same as on your phone, the contacts and the apps, everything was the same but the machine itself.

You looked up and finally noticed the dozens of bags lying around on the sofa and the coffee table.

"What's all this?" you breathed, your frown only deepening.

"You bought this for yourself, princess," said Jin as he took your free hand and placed a black card in your palm.

"N-No, I didn't," you backed away but tried to give the card back to Jin at the same time. He didn't even look at your hand.

"Jin, please," you begged when you realized what he was doing. "I don't need any of this—"

"Y/N," warned Jin when he turned to you. "Not another word." His hands caressed your neck gently before they moved up to your jaw and made you look up at him. He leaned in slowly and kissed you, silencing any protests that might want to come out of your mouth.

"I'll know if you won't use the card, Y/N," he cautioned against your lips, sending shivers down your spine, but you only wanted another kiss. Jin backed away when you searched for his plush lips again. You opened your eyes, seeing the stern look on Jin's handsome face.

"Just let me take care of you, princess," he spoke quietly, his chest vibrating with the deepness of his voice. You nodded weakly, folding at the prospect of Jin's affection. True to your presumptions, he rewarded you with another tender kiss.

Namjoon

You found your boyfriend sitting on the sofa, checking something on his laptop when you took a seat beside him.

"Are you busy?" you asked quietly, not wanting to disturb him.

"No, it's just some stupid emails," said Namjoon absently, his eyes scanning through the unnecessarily long blocks of text. "What is it, baby?"

"I was just ... I was wondering if ..." You cleared your throat as you squeezed your hands nervously. "If you could maybe lend me some money," you asked with difficulty. Your cheeks flushed pink in embarrassment when Namjoon tore his gaze from his laptop and looked at you, his eyebrows furrowing into a heavy frown.

"I'd pay you back everything," you said quickly. "It's just for rent—"

"What do you mean you'd pay me back?" asked Namjoon sternly, a tempest of thoughts behind his dark irises.

"I'll get my paycheck next week and I'll pay you back every cent, I promise," you explained although the demanding look on his features gave you little hope. His pensive eyes studied your face wordlessly. "It's okay if you don't want to, I'll ask my mom—"

"For rent?" Namjoon cut you off. His frown only grew deeper as he struggled to understand what you were asking.

"It's okay, I shouldn't have asked; I know it's weird," you said quickly and took Namjoon's hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. You tried to get up but he caught your wrist and pulled you back down.

"How much do you make?" demanded Namjoon. His voice was gentle but no less inquisitive. Your face went blank as more heat rose to your face. You didn't even make a hundredth of what Namjoon was bringing in in your first job as a beginner with no position.

"You know I don't make as much as you do," you swallowed. Even though your answer gave little information, Namjoon realized for the first time since you began dating that you might be financially unstable. He knew what you did and you liked your job but since money was never an issue for him, he never considered it might be an issue for you.

"I'll take care of it," nodded Namjoon and smoothed his thumb gently across your cheek before he got up.

"Take care of what?" you asked wide-eyed as you stared up at him. "Namjoon, I just need—"

"I'll take care of it," repeated Namjoon and gave your forehead a kiss as he buttoned his suit jacket. He grabbed his phone and his wallet and made for the door.

"Namjoon," you called again but he was adamant and gone.

A few hours later, you were looking through the fridge to think of some ideas for dinner when Namjoon came back. He set down a brown folder on the kitchen isle with a credit card on top of it before he pulled off his jacket and came to you for a kiss. You closed the fridge blindly as you responded to his lips but your mind was on the folder.

"What's this?" you asked as you removed the card from the brown paper and opened the file. It was a title deed with your name on it as part of a property transfer. The apartment in question was your rental paid in full and written in your name. Your eyebrows gathered into a frown as your mouth parted and your stomach gave a nervous squeeze.

"I told you I'd take care of it," said Namjoon easily and grabbed some orange juice from the fridge. You stared at him, your frown as deep as ever.

"You bought my apartment?" you asked astounded.

"No, you bought your apartment," said Namjoon as he drank the cold juice from a crystal glass. His fingers sat down on top of the dark credit card and he pushed it towards you. The letters of your name were engraved on the luxurious-painted plastic.

"Are you insane?" you blurted, your chest riddled with guilt. You were used to working hard for everything you had and hated accepting things from others. Even birthday gifts if too extravagant made you uncomfortable.

"I can't accept this, I won't accept this, Namjoon," you insisted although you could see it on his face that you were shouting in deaf ears. Your boyfriend was one of the most intransigent people in the world and when he decided on something there was no changing his mind.

"It's yours," said Namjoon nonchalantly, "Whether you like it or not."

Your eyes flinched in the direction of the crackling fireplace as you held the folder in your hands. Namjoon followed your gaze and smiled with amusement.

"I have a digital copy, baby," said Namjoon as he came closer to you. "The apartment is yours and so is the card." His arms wrapped around your waist as he pulled you to him, his forehead almost leaning against yours whilst you stared up at him.

"I'll know if you won't spend anything," he purred a warning and came even closer. "And I won't like it if you don't spend anything." His deep voice gave you goosebumps as your eyes flicked down to his plush lips.

"I want to spoil you, baby," said Namjoon against your soft mouth. "You should let me." He closed the space between your lips and kissed you deeply enough for the folder to fall from your hands as he pulled your waist to his hips.

Yoongi

"Fuck ..." you mumbled under your breath as you scrolled through the bills on your email, your back against the foot of the sofa and your laptop on the coffee table. Your stomach was in a tight knot. You tried to calculate the priorities but even that surpassed the amount that was left on your bank account from your last paycheck.

"What is it?" asked Yoongi as he sat on the sofa behind you, his legs on each side of your frame when he kissed the top of your head.

"Nothing," you whispered and closed your laptop quickly. You looked up and gratefully responded to Yoongi kissing your lips. His hand was caressing your neck gently, the cold rings on his long fingers giving you goosebumps as they made contact with your warm skin.

"You sure?" asked Yoongi when he pulled away a little. You set your eyes forward again and bit your lip as you nodded. Yoongi's hand glided around your neck and pushed back your soft hair as he began to run his fingers through it. You leaned your head against the sofa and closed your eyes.

"Tell me what's wrong," said Yoongi. His voice was deep and quiet but no less authoritative.

"Nothing's wrong," you insisted as you shook your head a little. Yoongi frowned more and more with each second. You didn't even have to open your eyes to see his expression. You knew that he knew that you were hiding something.

"You don't trust me anymore, jagi?" asked Yoongi. His hand came down to your cheek and caressed you gently. Your eyes opened at those words and you turned around to look at him.

"Of course I trust you," you spoke feverishly.

"Why won't you talk to me then?" said Yoongi as he tucked a lock of hair behind your ear.

"Because it's nothing," you lied. "And you'll worry and think that you have to fix it."

"Fix what?" pressed Yoongi. You groaned desperately and buried your face into the sofa. Yoongi seized the opportunity and opened your laptop behind your back, his eyes scanning over the bills.

"No, wait—" you tried to close the laptop when you noticed what he was doing but it was already too late. He saw everything.

"Yoongi, don't do anything," you begged as you got up to your knees and cupped his face. The look in his eyes was as hard and unmoving as a mountain and your words fell on deaf ears. He pulled the wallet from his back pocket and slid out a slick black credit card.

"Here you go, kitten, happy anniversary," said Yoongi as he offered you the card. You stood up with a frown.

"Our anniversary won't be for three months," you protested although that was far from Yoongi's point or yours for that matter. He stood up as well, took your hand and wrapped your fingers around his card.

"You can give me that card all you want but I won't spend a dime," you insisted. Yoongi turned to you slowly and took a good look at you. His eyes made your stomach dance with butterflies and fireworks.

"Fine," said Yoongi as he came closer to you. "Then I'll make you." His voice send shivers down your spine as he towered over you. He took your hand and you had no choice but to follow him. He drove you half-way across town until you arrived to a large glass building.

"Why are we here?" you questioned when Yoongi opened the car door for you. "Please, let's just go home." You took your boyfriend's hand but he wasn't paying your tugs no mind.

"Yoongi," you gasped under your breath and squeezed his hand tightly when he led you inside the Cartier boutique. It was too late to leave without causing a scene in front of the elegant saleswomen.

"Mr Min," said the older one of the two with her hair in a neat bun. "We're so happy to see you're back. It's been too long," smiled the other lady and took in the sight of you, giving you a warm smile as well.

"We have a very special thing for you," said the older lady and disappeared in the back.

"Yoongi," you pleaded in a whisper as you tugged on his hand a little but his fingers were tightly intertwined with yours. Yoongi looked down into your eyes, defeating you in an instance.

"This is one of our rarest and most sought after items, Mr Min," purred the older saleslady. She placed a beautiful red box on the glass counter before you and opened it with care. "This is out Panthere Maillon Etrier necklace in 18 carat white gold. It's distinguished for its geometric shape with the center of the necklace set with brilliant cut diamonds around 2,15 carats."

Your lips parted as your face went blank in the face of the exquisite piece of jewellery. You had never even stood in a jewellery shop, much less in Cartier itself. Yoongi observed your reaction for a while before he nodded to the saleslady.

"Very good," she smiled and motioned to her assistant to take care of the payment.

You realized that the purchase was agreed to and looked up at your boyfriend with wide eyes.

"Please," said the younger saleslady when she gestured elegantly at the payment terminal. Your gaze shifted between her, the astronomical number on the screen and Yoongi.

"Your card, kitten," said Yoongi as he stared down at you. You were still clutching to the black piece of plastic in your clammy hand. You swallowed before you inched the card closer to the terminal until it made a sound of approval.

"See? It's not that hard," purred Yoongi in your ear as his arm wrapped around your waist. You turned to him, your lips only inches apart. "You can use it for other things now too, kitten, and I'll know if you won't," he spoke quietly, his hot breath teasing your mouth as he slowly closed the space between you and kissed you greedily.

Hoseok

Although you have been dating Hoseok for a while now, you were never very comfortable talking about money with him. You grew up poor and even though you were just starting your first job now, you still struggled quite a lot. You didn't mind that Hoseok made a lot of money, you accepted that right in the beginning of your relationship, but you never wanted to talk about your situation because of that. Yet when you had a glass of wine too much with your dinner last week, you told Hoseok about your upbringing and how the notion of always having to save money was still rooted deep inside of you.

You shouldn't have said anything, though, because once Hoseok found out about it, he began to shower you with gifts every single day. You didn't mind him paying for meals when you went out but the gifts he was giving you now weren't anything short of luxurious.

"Hobi, I swear if you get me another thing—" you threatened when you saw the timeless Hermès Kelly on your nightstand. Your stomach twisted into knots just at the idea of how much it must have cost.

When you turned around with your index pointed at Hoseok, he was standing so close to you that the wind was knocked out of you. Your lips parted as Hobi towered over you.

"Or what?" he asked with an amused smile resting on his lips and in his dark eyes. You were at a loss for words. "Or what, kitten?" he asked again, taking another half a step closer to you and closed the space between your bodies.

"You should look what's inside, baby," Hoseok encouraged, enjoying every moment of seeing the puzzled and flushed look on your face.

You looked inside the leather bag hesitantly and found a creamy white jewellery box inside. It was already clutched in your fingers before you let it go and took a step back, your hands hugging your elbows as the corners of your eyebrows pulled downwards.

"I don't want it, you spoke weakly as Hoseok frowned at your reaction.

"You haven't even looked at it," said Hoseok but you shook your head and backed away some more.

"I don't want it - I didn't earn it and I sure as hell don't deserve it," you tried to leave the bedroom but Hoseok caught your wrist.

"Y/N," he called as he cupped your neck just beneath your jaw and made you look up at him but you were avoiding his eyes. "Y/N," Hoseok warned again and you looked at him. His frown softened when he saw the sad look on your face.

"That's the least of what you deserve, baby." He brushed his thumbs along the gentle line of your jaw. "Stop fighting me and let me take care of you." Hoseok leaned his forehead against yours, his closeness calming down your anxiety immediately. Your arms found their way around his sides as you came closer, pressing your cheek against his chest.

"It's okay, baby, you'll get used to it," Hoseok spoke gently against your hair before he kissed the top of your head, his hands caressing your back.

"Wear it to the opera tonight, baby," he said after a while. "Will you wear it for me, kitten?" Hoseok cupped your cheeks again and made you look up at him. You nodded a little. He smiled and leaned in, his thumbs caressing your soft skin as he kissed you tenderly.

When you finally found the courage to come near the bag and the jewellery box again, you were already wearing your evening dress. You opened the delicate velvet box and found a pearl necklace in 18 carat yellow gold. The letters Mikimoto were engraved in the satin interior of the box.

"Do you like it?" smiled Hoseok as he came up behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist before he pressed a soft kiss on your bare shoulder.

You nodded weakly as you studied the necklace without a breath in your lungs. "It's beautiful."

Hoseok took the necklace from the box as you scooped up your hair and the cold pearls made contact with your warm skin. Hoseok fastened the clip in the back and took your soft hair from your hands, his fingers letting them fall down your back.

"You're so beautiful, baby," purred Hoseok when his hands returned to your waist and pulled you to him as his lips left tender kisses along your shoulder.

Jimin

When you got back from work, you were surprised to find Jimin already at home. It was barely the afternoon and he sometimes stayed at the office until evening.

"Hey," you greeted softly as you cuddled up next to him on the sofa. You wrapped your arms around his sides and leaned against his chest but he didn't budge. Jimin was pretending to watch the TV and refused to even say hello.

You sat up perplexed as you studied your boyfriend's sullen frown.

"What's wrong?" you breathed, your chest heavy with guilt although you had no idea what you did wrong. You took your boyfriend's hand and squeezed it pleadingly but Jimin gave no reaction.

"Jimin-ah," you tried again, your voice almost cracking. You couldn't stand having him be upset with you, especially when you had no idea what could have made him react this way. Jimin was never upset with you no matter what, which is why his reaction affected you so much.

The desperation in your voice made Jimin break his harsh facade. He turned to you frowning no less.

"Why do you think I gave you that card?" said Jimin bitterly but you were lost. He leaned forward and grabbed the bank statement from the coffee table and showed it to you.

"You promised me that you would spend money on that card, Y/N," said Jimin when you read through the humble list of meals you had paid with Jimin's card, the 30 dollars that you had spent on buying some cute office supplies and the 20 dollars you had left at the bookstore.

"But I did," you insisted, showing Jimin the bank statement that he knew by heart now. He rolled his eyes and glared at you again. You had never seen him behave like this before. His jaw clenched as his eyes narrowed at you. A part of you knew that he wanted you to spend more money but there was nothing you really needed that much. After Jimin found out that you weren't exactly financially stable, he pulled the card right from his wallet and gave it to you.

"You promised me, Y/N," said Jimin and got up. Your wide eyes followed him and your lips were parted in shock. He grabbed his car keys and waited for you to get up as well.

"What are you doing?" you asked your boyfriend.

"I'm making you keep your promises to me, sweetheart," said Jimin darkly as he took your hand and led you down to his car.

Jimin drove you to the enormous glass building where he liked to shop. You had been there with him a hundred times before but the prices made your stomach twist into knots.

"Jimin, this isn't necessary—" you tried to reason with him but he only grabbed your hand and led you straight to Tiffany & Co.

"Jimin, please," you begged him as your chest grew heavy with guilt. The salespeople knew him. He already got you a pair of their earrings before but you had only worn them once to your anniversary dinner for fear of losing them.

Jimin picked out a 20 carat diamond necklace for you since he knew you'd refuse to choose any of the items the salespeople displayed especially for him.

Your boyfriend gave you his card and stared at you. He was still angry with you and the sight of it made your heart break.

"Jimin," you pleaded but he didn't budge. The lady at the cash registry waited patiently when the five digit number appeared on the payment terminal in front of you.

"Y/N," Jimin warned when he saw you hesitate. You swallowed and gave in. You pressed Jimin's card against the terminal and felt even worse when it gave a sound of approval.

Jimin took you to Dior next, then Celine, Balenciaga and even Chanel where his card caused more rings of approval from the payment terminal. Your boyfriend's frown, however, began to melt away when he saw you try on couture and get tended to from every direction by the salespeople.

Jimin leaned against the door frame of your dressing room as he watched you put on a beautiful white dress with a black ribbon that screamed Chanel. He glanced over his shoulder before he came up behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist. Jimin leaned his chin against your shoulder as he watched you in the mirror.

"See? It's not that hard, baby," he purred before he pressed a soft kiss on your exposed neck and you couldn't help but lean back against him.

Taehyung

"What's this?" asked your boyfriend as he opened his bank statement. You looked up with big wide eyes and your heart sank a little. After Taehyung found out that you weren't exactly financially stable, he gave you his card and practically threatened you to spend money on it when you refused.

"I-I just ... " you began to stutter. You had bought yourself a new bag for your laptop and for the things you needed whenever you went to study or to work and a perfume that you knew Taehyung loved. Those were the kind of treats you could only afford once in a while on your own but since he encouraged you, you got them for yourself although it made you feel no less guilty.

"You said ... You said I should get a few things," you spoke carefully as you watched Taehyung's frown whilst he scanned the contents of his bank statement before his dark eyes turned to you.

"Why didn't you?" he asked sternly, showing you the slip. Your eyes turned into a different kind of wide when he spoke the opposite of what you imagined. You took the bank statement and saw your two items on there along with a few meals that you paid for with Taehyung's card.

"What do you mean? I got the bag," you gestured towards the beautiful accessory that was sitting at the foot of the sofa. "And I got the perfume - it's Gucci." Even saying the brand name weighed heavy on your tongue with guilt. You had never owned a luxurious brand item in your life before you met Taehyung.

"Yeah, and you got tteokbokki, bubble tea, two coffees and spent 12 dollars at a pizza place," Taehyung listed the rest of the items of places where the card was used.

"Do you want me to pay you back?" you asked unsure but that made Taehyung frown even deeper.

"Come on," he instructed as he took your hand and led you to his car. You watched him as he drove you to the city center and pulled up in front of Cartier.

"Tae—" you protested but he cut you off by getting out of the car. "Tae," you tried again when he grabbed your hand and took you inside the luxurious boutique.

"Mr Kim," the elegant saleswoman greeted the moment she saw your boyfriend and you enter their exclusive shop. "We're so glad to see you return, it's been a while." She smiled a bright smile when she saw you before she brought out a collection of their most exquisite items, timeless pieces inspired by art deco.

You tried to get your boyfriend's attention and get out of there but he would not so much as budge. He chose a sapphire and diamond bracelet for you. When the lady presented a six digit on the computer screen, your face grew hot with fever.

"Tae, don't—" you tried but Taehyung glared at you so intensely that you were at a loss for words. He showed you his card - your card - and pressed it against the payment terminal. Your mouth parted when the machine gave a happy sound of approval and the saleslady thanked the both of you. She tried to hand you the velvet box within a beautiful paper bag but Taehyung accepted it instead.

"You're getting this when you pay for dinner tonight, kitten," said Taehyung to you and only you, his dark voice sending shivers down your spine as he towered over you. He handed you back his credit card and left a small kiss on your jaw right above your neck, his lips hiding a shadow of a smirk.

Jungkook

"Please don't make me do this," you begged when Jungkook took you to Calvin Klein and made you try on a series of luxurious fragrances. The prices of the items they sold made your cheeks flush red with discomfort. Ever since Jungkook found out that you weren't financially stable, he insisted you spend money on his elite black card. If you failed to meet his expectations, he made you go shopping and this was just one of those instances.

Jungkook's nose brushed against your neck where one of the wonderful perfumes mingled with your skin.

"You smell so good, kitten," murmured Jungkook, his dark voice giving you goosebumps. He pulled away, his face only inched from yours as he watched you with amusement. Your boyfriend leaned in slowly, a few locks of his dark hair brushing against your forehead. You put your arms around his neck and guided him to you but he pulled away at the last moment, leaving you wide-eyed and perplexed.

"Only after you use the card, kitten," said Jungkook and placed the black credit card into your hand.

"But ..." Your gaze flicked between your boyfriend and your palm. "Jungkook," you whined in protest.

"You should have done this on your own, Y/N," said Jungkook smoothly as he stepped closer to you and you backed away until your back hit the perfume counter. His long arms leaned against the wooden surface and trapped you there. A sharp breath caught in the back of your throat as you stared at you boyfriend but your gaze kept drifting to his lips.

"We could have been somewhere else right now," spoke Jungkook quietly as his eyes gained a dark, glossy look that made your knees go weak.

"O-Okay," you found yourself stuttering.

After you paid for the perfumes you liked, you were eager to leave the luxurious shopping center.

"Not so fast, kitten," said Jungkook as he caught your hand and pulled you inside the Bvlgari boutique.

"Jungkook—" you spoke breathlessly but the salesman already nodded to Jungkook and went to retrieve something from the back.

"Jungkook, please, let's just go," you tried to reason with your boyfriend, but this time, instead of tempting you with his kisses, Jungkook frowned at you. His eyebrows arched sharply as he caressed your cheek.

"Stop fighting me, kitten," he spoke quietly but his chest was vibrating with the deepness of his husky voice. "We made a deal."

Jungkook had made you promise that you would use the card and not just for the things you needed like meals and everyday items.

"Here it is, Mr Jeon," smiled the elegant salesman. He presented a beautiful velvet box on the counter and opened it carefully. A Serpenti Viper Necklace was sitting on the cushion made in its shape. The metal used was white 18 carat gold with so many diamonds it would take you a month to count them.

Your lips parted in awe as you looked up at Jungkook. His frown vanished behind a small smile when his eyes found yours, a playful look in his dark irises.

"Would you like to try it on, Miss?" asked the courteous salesman. You checked with Jungkook and he nodded to the employee. He didn't let the salesman put it on you, though, that was his job. You turned to the mirror whilst the salesman went to assist the person in the back and Jungkook's arms wrapped around your waist. His gaze traced the viper's tail that led down the middle of your chest.

"Do you like it?" asked Jungkook, his hot breath teasing your ear as his eyes found yours in the mirror.

"It's exquisite," you breathed, feeling the weight of the diamonds and gold against your skin. Your hand took one of Jungkook's and intertwined your fingers with his,

"Just like you, kitten," he spoke softly and left a tender kiss on your neck.

[schemmentigfs]

Sweetening The Deal. (part 2.)

Summary: Melissa finds out more about your tough reality and the deal between you continues, bringing the stability you needed. Meanwhile, she proposes something unexpected.

Tags: @italianaidiota @lisaannwaltersbra @greencurlyhair

Part 1. Part 3.

Two weeks had passed since that night at La Sirena, and things had fallen into a rhythm — or as close to a rhythm as you could get with Melissa Schemmenti calling the shots. You’d met her twice since then, at the same restaurant, each time sitting across from her as she set the terms of your arrangement with that same intensity in her eyes. True to her word, she’d sent over an envelope of cash every week, enough to cover your rent and leave you with some breathing room. But there was still a distance between the two of you, a formality that you held onto as a reminder to keep things strictly business.

Her texts came at unpredictable times, always short but direct, and she’d even called you once, her voice teasing yet unmistakably firm. You could tell she liked control and was meticulous in keeping things on her terms. She didn’t ask questions about your day-to-day life, but you had a feeling she saw more than you were letting on.

Then, one afternoon, her name lit up your screen again:

You’re home, right? Text me your address. I want to see where and in what conditions you live, darling.

You froze. Her messages always carried a certain finality, a tone that made it clear you weren’t to question her decisions. The text felt like a verdict, not a suggestion. You had no choice but to obey, but still you’d tired to stalled with vague excuses, insisting it wasn’t necessary, but she was having none of it.

Are you sure about this? My apartment complex is not in the best condition. Maybe we could meet another day? you quickly typed back, nerves prickling.

Honey, I’ll come by tonight after my meeting, she’d texted, with that self-assured tone that didn’t leave much room for debate. Just make sure the place is unlocked for me. Okay?

You swallowed hard. You couldn’t even remember the last time you felt so out of control. Fuck this situation, you were never out of control. Melissa Schemmenti was doing things to you that seemed to awaken a submissive side of yourself that you didn’t even know you had.

Reluctantly, you agreed. Understood. I’m waiting for you, just please don’t notice the mess in the apartment. It’s a little old.

The redhead’s response made you choke on your own saliva. Good girl, see? You can follow orders when you are supposed to. And about the mess, don’t you worry. I just want to see what I'm dealing with, Y/N.

Her words make your stomach flip, and your cheeks flush. She knows exactly the effect she has on you, even from behind a fucking screen. You’re not sure if it’s the blunt command or the way she casually assumes you’ll fall in line, but something about her confidence, her control, always leaves you breathless.

You tossed your phone on the bed and groaned, throwing yourself backward onto the mattress, the soft scent of stale air and clutter filling the room. It wasn’t much of a space, and you weren’t exactly proud of it, but it was yours. Still, it felt too small when you thought about her. When you thought about how she was used to finer things, and this place... well, this place felt like a damn joke.

Two weeks. Only two weeks have passed since that night, but already, she’s gotten under your skin in ways you can’t shake. Her presence in your life feels constant, grounding, and somehow.... electrifying. It’s like she’s rewired you to respond to her — one word from her and you’re falling into place, waiting for whatever she asks next.

Another text pops up. I’m arriving at five. You better be prepared, beautiful.

Great, you only got two hours left.

You spent hours trying to make your tiny apartment look presentable, straightening up, hiding the chipped paint on the walls with old posters, and dimming the lights to make it seem warmer. You stopped in front of the mirror checking if your appearance was alright. You’d tossed a pile of laundry into the closet, stacked dishes haphazardly, and even dabbed on a bit of makeup in a rush. But no matter what you did, there was no hiding the worn-out furniture.

And as you stood in your cramped kitchen, waiting for her to arrive, you couldn’t help feeling out of place, like this wasn’t where she belonged.

“Fuck, fuck,” you rubbed your eyes with your hands. “I’m fucked. What will she think of me?”

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and your stomach twisted with nerves and sicknesses. When you opened it, there she was—Melissa Schemmenti, cool and collected in an all-black outfit, and a ponytail, her sleek black sunglasses pushing her authority to another level. She took her giant and expensive sunglasses off as she surveyed the space, her gaze moving slowly over the cracked walls and mismatched furniture. Her expression barely shifted, but you could sense the judgment simmering beneath the surface.

The building smelled like old wood and dust, and the hallways felt narrower than they ever had before. You hated the way your surroundings felt — the peeling wallpaper, the noisy neighbors, the ever-present sense of grime that seemed to coat every surface. It was humiliating, honestly, but you couldn’t escape it.

Melissa didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she didn’t actually care. She walked past you, her red louboutin heels clicking against the wooden floor, and into your tiny apartment without hesitation.

“Well, this is…” the redhead paused, taking a long look around. “...quite the environment.” Her raspy voice was cold, but it wasn’t supposed to sound mean and teasing. It was just blunt, like she was simply stating a fact. You winced, standing awkwardly by the door as she took in the dismal conditions.

“I don’t usually bring people here,” you mumbled, feeling your face flush. “It’s just temporary. Until I find a new job that pays more. I’m looking for something better.”

Melissa ignored your excuse and walked further into the apartment, her green eyes scanning every inch of the cramped space with calculated precision. Her black sunglasses hung loosely from the collar of her shirt, disguising the cleavage that seemed to jump and have a life of its own. What? Focus, your asshole! It’s not appropriate to watch her boobs. Oh, boy, you felt like a child under her scrutiny.

“So,” she quips, knowing the answer is obvious, “This is where you live, pretty girl?”

You rubbed the back of your neck, touching the small amount of baby hair. Your cheeks were heating with embarrassment. “Mmm...it’s not exactly glamorous, but it’s affordable.”

“If you call this affordable...” She scrunches her nose, feeling the smell of something dirty.

You took a shaky breath, feeling the heaviness of her gaze, as she leaned back slightly, crossing her arms in that familiar way that told you she was completely in control. She hadn’t even removed her jacket, and already it felt like she had rearranged the whole atmosphere of the place. As if she were shifting you and your life by sheer will alone.

“This,” the older woman said, lifting one of the crumpled bills, her tone cool and unyielding, “is unacceptable. You’re moving out. And I don’t want to hear a single word against it.”

“Wait, what?” you widen your eyes.

“So here’s how it’s going to work. You’re moving. I’ve already picked out a place for you in a decent neighborhood, and you’ll have what you need there. None of this…” She gestured around your small apartment with a mild look of disdain. “…dumpster shit situation. You’ll have a clean space, safe, without worrying about rent or broken pipes. And I don’t want to hear a single word against it.”

You opened your mouth, heart racing, wanting to protest. “Ma’am, I don’t need—”

Before you could finish, she closed the space between you, her manicured hand gripping your chin in a way that was both commanding and unsettlingly gentle. Her thumb brushed your cheek as her eyes bored into yours, making your stomach flip. “I said no arguments. You’re better than this place, honey. Now call your boss.”

You blinked, flustered, feeling the heat rising in your cheeks as her fingers stayed firm on your chin. She tilted her head, her gaze unrelenting, and you found yourself swallowing hard, nerves prickling. A gush of wetness dripped into your underwear. That felt good. And for a split second, you imagined how her fingers would feel around your neck. Or maybe somewhere else..

The truth was that you weren’t used to someone like Melissa—someone who didn’t just ask but demanded, without hesitation, and with an absolute certainty that her wishes would be met.

“Go on,” the redhead prompted, pulling her phone from her bag and pressing it into your hand. “This ends now.”

“Schemmenti,” you sigh quietly. “I..can’t.”

“Call. Your. Fucking. Boss.” Her words came out slower this time, her voice both reassuring and intimidating, the kind of authority that was impossible to ignore.

Your hands trembled as you reached for your phone, scrolling to your boss’s number. She kept her hold on your chin for a moment longer before releasing you, her green eyes watching every movement with quiet satisfaction. The reality of what you were about to do started to sink in, and you felt like you were on the verge of spiraling, like you were teetering on the edge of something irreversible.

As the phone rang, you stole a glance at Melissa. She leaned against the counter, arms crossed, exuding a calm authority that both irritated and reassured you. You had to admit—no one had ever looked at you the way she did. Like she was willing to strip away everything if it meant giving you something better. But even as you stumbled through your brief conversation with your boss, quitting the job you’d held for far too long, a flicker of rebellion rose in you.

“What if I don’t want to move?” you managed once the call ended, a spark of defiance in your voice. You could see the hint of a smirk playing on her lips.

She lifted an eyebrow, that smirk intensifying. “You’re cute when you act tough,” she said, brushing past you to examine a stack of books on a rickety shelf. The dust covering her fingertips. “But I’m not interested in games. I’m giving you a choice. You can either stay here, or you can let me take care of you. But you can’t have it both ways.”

You wanted to argue, to fight her on it, but your lips trembled with uncertainty. “But, I... I can’t just leave. This place—it’s all I have. I—”

The redhead stepped closer, green eyes flashing with a rare, intense frustration. “You think this is optional?” she yelled sharply through the small space, leaving no room for doubt. “I’m doing this for you, and if you can’t accept that, maybe we’re done here. You either take my help, or this arrangement is over.”

Your heart dropped, and a pang of desperation flared up inside you. The last thing you wanted was for her to walk out and leave you standing there, with only the smell of her perfume lingering behind. You felt your knees buckle, and before you knew it, you were on the floor, clutching at her sleeve, gazing up at her in pleading silence.

“Please,” you whispered. “Don’t go. Don’t end this.”

Her lips quirked into a dark smile, her eyes traveling slowly down to where you knelt before her. “Already on your knees for mommy? Maybe you’re finally learning.”

The heat in her eyes made your cheeks burn with embarrassment, and yet, some part of you thrilled at her approval, that faint but undeniable satisfaction in her body language.

You swallowed hard, feeling her fingers brush over your cheek as if savoring your quiet submission, and your pulse raced. She stepped back and tilted her head toward the door, her expression softening just a little. “Now get up. You’re coming with me tonight.”

You blinked, surprised. “Where?”

“To my place,” she said, her tone decisive. “No sense in staying here another night. You’ll see what it’s like to live somewhere better.”

Nervously, you gathered your things, feeling a strange thrill at the idea of seeing her home, even as the reality of this shift in your life sunk in. In a blur, you found yourself in her sleek, black car, barely speaking as she drove. And when you finally stepped into the garage of her penthouse, it felt like you’d entered another world—one of order, elegance, and effortless luxury, all touched with her unmistakable presence.

You couldn’t believe this was where you were spending the night, and the thought made your heart pound with nervous excitement. Even in this new space, with her watching you, you still felt that familiar mix of shyness and thrill.

Melissa’s penthouse was everything your cramped apartment wasn’t: sleek, spacious, and expensive. The moment you stepped inside, you felt a little like you’d walked into a magazine spread, the kind of place you’d only ever imagined for people like her. Everything was polished marble and soft, warm lighting, a quiet sense of power and control in every line and surface. It was so distinctly her—refined, commanding, even a little intimidating. You couldn’t shake the feeling of being out of place, no matter how much she’d insisted on bringing you here.

“Make yourself at home,” she said, dropping her keys onto a side table. She gestured to a hallway on your right. “The bathroom is down there. You can get cleaned up before dinner if you want.”

Grateful for a moment to compose yourself, you headed to the bathroom, which was easily twice the size of your entire apartment. After freshening up, you found an oversized shirt on your backpack that you had prepared for you earlier.

Dinner was surprisingly casual. She’d ordered from a high-end Chinese place nearby, and as you both sat at the table, she poured you a glass of wine, studying you with a cute smile that made your stomach flutter. She was still very much in control, still the same assertive woman who’d marched into your life two weeks ago and decided she was going to change it. And yet, tonight, there was a gentler side to her. She asked you about things you’d never thought she cared to know, small details about your life and tastes, and for once, you felt like she was letting you into her world.

After dinner, she led you to the guest bedroom where you’d be staying. It was just as lavish as the rest of her home, with an enormous bed, plush sheets, and a view of the city lights twinkling against the night sky. You took a moment to freshen up again, glancing at yourself in the mirror and smoothing down your hair, wondering if she’d think you looked good enough for her standards.

Then, on your way to find her again, you noticed the door to her room was ajar. You knew you shouldn’t, but curiosity got the best of you, and you peeked in. There she was, her back to you, undressing in the dim light. You couldn’t help but stare for a moment, taking in the lean, defined muscles of her back, the soft curves that hinted at a life of both strength and indulgence. Her skin was pale, smooth, and there was something undeniably mesmerizing about the way she moved, graceful and unhurried, like she knew exactly who she was and didn’t care who saw it.

And then, there was her…you couldn’t help but notice it, a part of her you hadn’t seen before, and your cheeks warmed as you realized you were staring into her pale ass. You felt a pang of embarrassment, quickly averting your eyes and stepping away before she could catch you. You’d never imagined she’d have that kind of effect on you, making you feel like some bashful kid with just a glimpse of her body.

Even though you’d only seen her for a second, your mind replayed the image of her exposed skin—her back, her pale ass—again and again. You were flushed, still unsure of what it all meant, or why your heart raced at the thought of what you'd just witnessed. It was almost like you were crossing some invisible line in your head, and it scared you.

You quickly shook your head, clearing your thoughts, and made your way back toward the living room, trying to avoid thinking about what you’d just seen. Melissa, however, never knew. She didn’t even acknowledge it when you rejoined her in the main area, as if nothing had happened. The nonchalance with which she moved, made your thoughts scatter once more.

Later that night, she kissed you goodnight, but it wasn’t like the kisses before. This one, lingering, almost brushing your lips, made your heart jump in your chest. The redhead woman didn’t pull away immediately, letting the moment stretch just a little longer than usual. You stood there, stunned, your breath shaky as she pulled back, leaving you with an almost electric buzz in your body.

Green eyes met yours, cool but somehow warm at the same time. “Sleep well, sweetheart. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Melissa.”

You couldn’t quite breathe properly as she turned, walking back toward her room, leaving you alone to process what had just happened. Your brain was spinning, unsure of what you were getting yourself into, but you knew one thing for sure. You were already in too deep to turn back.

And as you lay down in the guest bedroom, your body still warm from the kiss, the image of her naked skin lingered in your mind, both haunting and thrilling you in equal measure.

[goodlucktai]

till you can breathe on your own

rise of the tmnt word count: 20k i wrote this fic for the turtle trenches server’s november gift exchange ! my giftee was @acewithapaintbrush and ace’s prompts were “found family, leosagi, wholesome disaster twins, and splinter being a good dad to the boys.” instead of being normal and picking one i decided to create an au that included all of those things at once and this is what i came up with. ace i really hope you enjoy it <3 happy turtle day ! title borrowed from keeping your head up by birdy

read on ao3

x

When Leonardo was eight years old, he and his best friend survived a house fire.

The blaze was put out thanks to a passing yokai with a magic spell for rain newly purchased that she was happy to use to help, but two of the children attending lessons there came up unaccounted for. Panicked neighbors searched for upwards of an hour only to find the boys fast asleep in a cart of clean linens parked out front of the bath house. 

There was a faint trace of mystic energy lingering around them but no one came forward as the one it belonged to, and they wouldn’t be able to explain what had happened. One minute they were trapped and frightened, and the next everything was blue and they were safe. 

Ultimately the rescue was credited to a powerful good samaritan who wished to remain anonymous, and the townsfolk collectively decided to be grateful for the miracle without unraveling it any further.

Leonardo’s friend moved away while his house was repaired, and Leonardo was returned to where he belonged at the local orphanage. He smiled when the matron fussed over him, even though he didn’t feel like smiling, and continued to pretend like he didn’t hear the other kids calling him bad luck.  

“You’d think someone would want him,” one of the older kids whispered during lunch. “Last time we had a turtle here they got snatched up in like a week.”

“Miss Toto says that way of thinking is archaic,” a tiny otter yokai piped up with remarkable authority, given that he clearly didn’t know the meaning of the word he was repeating. “Kameko has as much of a chance as the rest of us do.”

“Clearly,” the older kid muttered. 

Leonardo, who wasn’t Leonardo yet—who was called Kameko by the orphanage matron because she wasn’t especially creative, and Lucky by the other kids so they could be mean in a sneaky, underhanded way, and Stripes by his best friend, who mattered more than any of them—spent a lot of time dreaming of having a chance. 

He had no way of knowing that at the same time, miles away and a city above, an early-middle-aged man run ragged day in and out by three energetic children and sloughing through a persistent sadness was dreaming, too. 

The man was dreaming of his own childhood; a garden with a pond and lines of laundry drying in the late summer sun, a delicious smell sneaking out the kitchen window where jiji was grilling fish for dinner, his mother lifting her head to grace him with a smile he once took for granted. 

In the dream, she had to reach up to hold his face, because he was the same age now as she was when she died and several inches taller than her in adulthood. She didn’t mind his fur or snout or big rounded ears, and if anything the involuntary twitch of his whiskers only made her smile deepen. 

“My sweet boy,” she murmured, “I’m so proud of you.”

“How?” he choked out. He clung to her arms. He had a thousand things he wanted to tell her. All that came tripping out was, “How can you be?”

“Because I know how big your heart is,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “You love so richly and earnestly. Even after that was taken advantage of and betrayed, you found more room in your heart for your little ones. Your little turtles.”

The thought of his sons pierced through the gloom of self-hatred like an arrow of light, as simple as flipping a switch in a dark room. He wouldn’t trade a moment with them for anything—not even for another moment with his mother. The overwhelming grief and love coexisted as naturally as two little otters holding hands at sea.

“But don’t you know?” she asked. “Can’t you feel it? Did it get lost in that big heart of yours? One of your children is waiting for you.”

He jerked as if electrocuted, going stiff and still beneath his mother’s hands, because she couldn’t mean to say what it sounded like she was saying. 

That tiny fourth turtle with the blue-patterned shell and bright gold eyes—the first one to smile and reach up to be held, the one that had fallen during their frantic escape and was left behind in the crush of the destroyed lab—the one the little shrine in his room belonged to, even though he didn’t have a proper photo, or a decent idea of what Blue would have looked like grown into personhood—the one that a corner of his heart belonged to, even now, even still—

“He’s alive, my darling,” his mother told him. In the dream, she sounded so certain. The clan symbol on her obi seemed to glow, a warm, shining thing that cast all darkness and doubt aside. “Go and bring my grandbaby home, okay?”

Hamato Yoshi woke up with a gasp, half-blinded by tears. 

——

The boys took the news as well as they possibly could have. It would have felt wrong not to tell them—cruel to keep them in the dark, even if it would shelter them from a hope that might only lead into a dead-end. 

They already knew of their fourth sibling, having long-since discovered the little shrine in Splinter’s room during a pre-Christmas snooping several years ago, but there hadn’t been much that Splinter could offer them when they peppered him for information and eventually those eager questions tapered off. They had only had a few months together in Draxum’s lab before Splinter could stage their escape and bring the facility down behind them—before tragedy had carved a hole into their brand-new family—and that wasn’t long enough to have more than a handful of stories to share. To do the baby’s memory anything resembling justice. 

But since waking up from that dream, Splinter had reached out with his ninpo in the way he hadn’t done since he was very young, like stretching out an atrophied limb, and he felt it. A fourth presence in his heart. It was a very faint echo somewhere far away, like an imprint of smoke left in the sky after a firework. Distant now and fading, but once-bright. Once-blue. 

And he knew. He knew Leonardo was alive.

“Red, you are in charge,” Splinter said, jittery with anticipation. He spared a moment to cup the snapper’s cheek in his palm, brushing his thumb over the rosy-colored diamond pattern there, and added, “Aunt June’s phone number is on the fridge if anything happens—but nothing had better happen! April can visit but you are not allowed to leave our home until I return.”

Red nodded several times, twisting his fingers together. He had inherited Splinter’s anxious heart, but he took being the oldest very seriously, and failure more seriously than that, for all that he was only nine. 

“Are you going to get Leo?” Orange piped up, bouncing in place. He had, in fact, not stopped bouncing since he had gleaned the gist of the conversation that began nearly a full hour ago. “Are you going to bring him home?”

“I am going to try,” Splinter said, kneeling so that he could poke his youngest baby playfully in those ticklish spots on his sides that always elicited a sunny giggle. 

Orange trilled in glee, and then he pulled his limbs and head into his tiny shell the way he often did when he was overexcited or overwhelmed and continued making turtle noises to himself from inside there. 

Splinter caught the talkative box shell before it could clatter to the floor and offered it to Red, who held it to his front the way he hugged his stuffies. 

“Okay my sweet boys,” Splinter said, “stay here and be good and I will see you in a short while.”

Purple trailed him to the front door, or what served as such in their repurposed underground home. After tugging on his coat and boots, Splinter turned to him and crouched down so they were at something approaching eye-level, even if eye contact did not seem to be on the table this morning. 

“You said we hatched at the same time,” Purple surprised the hell out of him by saying. His recalcitrant softshell son very rarely spoke aloud unless asked a direct question, and here he was volunteering whole sentences without preamble. “You said he came out of his egg right after me. He had stripes, and eyes like mine. You called us twins.”

Leonardo was not a forbidden topic in their home, but he was a bit of a sore one. It ached to press on the bruise that was their missing part. Purple in particular had a difficult time making himself understood and being understood in turn. He was also incredibly stubborn, and hard to match wits with. 

A twin must have sounded like a dream. Splinter wondered when Donatello had first shaped this little wish out of clay, and how often he spent taking it out and admiring it, wearing the rough edges into smoothness, giving it substance and character until all that was missing was the life. The color. 

“He was not the same species of turtle as you,” Splinter said. “But you did hatch together, and you did have the same eyes. Blue would fuss at bedtime until I placed him on your shell. You tried to take chunks out of the alchemist’s fingers whenever he parted the two of you.” For tests, he didn’t feel it was necessary to add. He offered his hands, and added, “So that is what I called you. My twin babies.” 

After a moment, Purple took his hands. His mouth was a firm line, golden eyes glued to the floor. There was enough of a wet shine in them that Splinter’s heart strained with the need to right every wrong for him at once. 

“I will find him, Donatello,” Splinter said. “Now that I know he is out there waiting to be found, there is nothing that can stop me. It might take a long time, but we have waited quite a while already, haven’t we?”

Purple nodded, and then stepped forward to bury his snout in the front of Splinter’s coat. It meant that a hug would be not only tolerated but appreciated, and Splinter didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around his little boy. 

“Go on now,” Splinter said, only when Purple had extracted himself. He turned the child around by the shoulders and propelled him back to where Orange and Red were waiting. “I love you, little monsters,” he called loud enough to be heard by all three of them. “If the lair is still standing when I get home, you will get ice cream.”

Their noisy cheers followed him down the tunnel, warming him more effectively than direct sunlight ever could.  

And now Splinter was back in the Hidden City, although he had sworn to himself he would never return. 

His heart was racing, every nerve a livewire, so prepared he was for danger around each corner. He had hoped that the mad alchemist died in the destruction of the lab—had comforted himself with the fact, even, on those nights he woke up from bad dreams—but with Blue’s miraculous survival, Draxum might very well have lived too. Like a cockroach. 

And so he was hesitant to trace his steps back to the ruins of Draxum’s lab. He was not even sure if he would be able to find it. There was a restless, dislocated thing inside of him that made standing still a painful exercise, he so badly wanted to run and run until he found the little turtle he was looking for—he just didn’t know where to go. Where to start. The Hidden City was larger than he remembered.

“Excuse me,” someone said, startling him. He turned to find a short beetle yokai in a rumpled button down shirt and slacks standing just behind him, mandibles clicking idly. The beetle smiled and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but notice you seemed lost. Can I help in any way?”

It was Splinter’s first instinct to deny the apparent kindness. Lena—or Big Mama as she was called—had carved out the remains of his idealism as deftly as a gardener pulling up the last stubborn weed in a flower bed. People, he had been taught, were rarely kind for no reason. 

But April’s mother was a force of nature in her own right, and had bullied Splinter into friendship with her within a week of their children meeting. A New Yorker to her core, June O’Neil had only needed a moment to adjust to the sight of a mutant rat and three mutant turtles, at which point any lingering strangeness was overshadowed by the relief of finally having another single parent to commiserate with. She was on-call for every scare, every tantrum that left Splinter feeling out of his depth, every milestone. She refused to allow him to wallow in self-pity while he had three little boys to raise. 

June was the sole reason that there were a few shoots of hope growing in the ruin Lena left of him, stubborn and resilient and flowering. People were rarely kind for no reason, but rarely did not mean never. There was goodness to be found if one took the time to look for it. The risk did not always pay off, but the reward when it did was worthwhile every time. 

And so Splinter took his heart in his hands and faced the stranger and said, “Yes, please. If you’re able. I need help.”

The beetle yokai, a friendly, down-to-earth character named Cricket, listened to the bare bones of Splinter’s story and immediately began to guide him down the street. It was a street that would not have looked out of place in Osaka in the 80s. There were storefronts with neon signs and restaurants with enticing noren doors and the steady foot traffic of thousands of yokai milling about their day. No one paid a tall rat mutant any mind. 

“You’ll want the Chamber of Decisions,” Cricket said with a certainty that settled one small inch of the chaos in Splinter’s heart. “There will be someone there who can help you find your son.”

The beetle yokai took time enough out of his own day to show Splinter all the way through a startlingly mundane municipal building to a floor with a placard on the wall declaring it the Civil Courts. He even waited in line with Splinter, making pleasant conversation, until it was his turn to step forward and address the employee behind the front desk.

“Goodbye,” Cricket said at that point, stepping away. “And good luck!”

He was gone before Splinter could thank him, and the gazelle yokai behind the desk repeated, “Next,” in a tone that suggested she would be deeply unhappy to say it a third time. 

“Yes,” Splinter said quickly, “sorry, that’s me.”

“What is your name?” the yokai asked briskly. She had long spiraling horns and a long, narrow face, deceptively delicate. She wore a badge on a lanyard around her neck that read Helena, Court Clerk, and then a mess of characters beneath it that did not look like English or Japanese. 

“Hamato Yoshi,” Splinter replied by rote. When he spoke, a small crystal hovering unobtrusively above the desk glowed a clear spring green. It seemed to indicate his truthfulness, because the yokai didn’t request any further proof of identity. 

“Hamato?” the yokai, presumably Helena, said with a spark of interest. She read something from the text that populated on the holographic tablet in front of her and then added, “We have a backlog of forms here for you. It has been a long time since someone has claimed tenancy of your clan’s branch house in Neo Edo. I assume that’s why you’re here?”

“Uh,” Splinter said intelligently, “no. What?”

“The Hamato Estate,” Helena said. She seemed less than impressed with him. “The one that has been sitting in disrepair and bringing property values of the neighborhood down for more than a century. That has nothing to do with your visit today?” 

The Chamber of Decisions was very human in structure, and the bureaucracy was completely disarming. Splinter didn’t know what he showed up expecting to find here but he sort of felt as though he was walking through a lucid dream.

“Sorry, no, I—I was unaware my family had any dealings in the Hidden Cities at all. I was raised in Japan. In—a human city in Japan. And now my children and I live in New York.” 

Helena’s expression cleared with understanding, her attitude suddenly more helpful as she seemed to realize Splinter was not being willfully obtuse. She opened a drawer of the filing cabinet beside her desk and rifled through it until she came up with form after form that accumulated in an intimidating heap. 

Splinter bit the inside of his mouth so that he wouldn’t say something unfortunate. He was catching up to himself, the surprise and uncertainty of the situation he had found himself in fading into the background, his single-minded focus sharpening into a point once again. 

Blue had waited long enough to be found. It was deeply unfair to make him wait even a moment more. And unfair to Splinter, too, who just wanted to be given a direction that he could run in until he could scoop his son up and never let him go again. 

“Excuse me,” Splinter said, wrestling with himself until a semblance of good manners won its cage match with snarling impatience, “but I am here because I was told you might help me locate a missing child.” 

The gazelle’s head jerked up, hooved hands stilling. “What missing child?”

For the second time that day, Splinter explained his situation to a stranger. Not the whole thing; not the nature of his or his sons’ mutations, or the desperate life-or-death struggle that preceded their flight from the destroyed lab into the nearby city—this city—and then ultimately New York. But the gist of it. The fire, and the baby who fell from his arms, and the long years he has spent mourning a son he thought had died. That much he imparted as succinctly as he knew how. 

Helena punctuated his story with clipped nods, listening intently. She sifted through the stacked bundles of paperwork and withdrew two or three that she placed on the top of the pile. 

“We will register you and your children as citizens of the Hidden Cities,” she said firmly when Splinter had finished detailing the dream that led him to believe his son was alive. “Your clan has already been established here for centuries, so this will not take long. As a citizen you will have the full weight and reach of this court’s resources behind you. We will locate your son.” 

If there had been a chair behind him, Splinter would have collapsed into it. As it is, he only swayed on his feet for a moment, before mustering a hoarse, “Thank you.”

After the dream of his mother, Splinter had been feeling acutely guilty of the way he had left his family name well behind him, crafting a new identity for a new life in America. Now he was only grateful that Lena and that lunatic Draxum would not think twice about a rat mutant named Hamato Yoshi, or his children.

It felt surreal to write down their names—Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo. For so long, they had been only his precious joys. The human world was not one he could trust to appreciate them. The O’Neils were a shining exception, one in a million. So his little family was kept a well-guarded secret. 

And now here he was, signing an official document that gave his turtles another place to belong, a place that could not be taken away by a mad alchemist or scheming spider. 

“If you come with me, I can take you to the appropriate department,” Helena said, cordial and efficient as she placed the last of the paperwork in a folder that glowed a friendly green before disappearing into fragments of light that spelled out ‘FILED.’ “It’s lucky you came when you did. We have a witch on retainer, and we would have called her in for this, but she’s already working from the office today.”

“Right,” Splinter said, smoothing down his shirt with nervous fingers. 

He didn’t know what his expression was doing, but it seemed to give the gazelle yokai a sense of urgency. She hustled him down a couple of halls and through more than one doorway that seemed to lead to another building entirely, until he was hopelessly lost somewhere in the depths of the administration.

But the office he finally stepped into was one that wouldn’t have looked place in any of the high rise buildings in FiDi, with an executive desk of solid wood, a neat row of filing cabinets, a less neat wall of overflowing shelves, and sparse, impersonal decor. There were a few oddities—self-watering hanging plants suspended in front of the window, and a glowing crystal levitating above the desk where a computer might have sat otherwise—but nothing that made Splinter’s animal hindbrain balk at the door. 

The young woman sitting behind the desk looked up and smiled, round brown face dimpled and kind. Half of her voluminous braided hair was piled on top of her head in a neat bun, while the rest framed her shoulders in interchanging plaits of black and mint green. Her long, pointed ears were pierced a dozen times each and dripping in tiny precious gemstones. 

“Hello there, Helena and friend,” she greeted. “Can I help you?”

“Nimue, this is Hamato-san. He recently had a prophetic dream that a child he lost in infancy is, in fact, alive,” Helena replied promptly. “We’ll need a spell for finding.”

It sounded actually insane when put so plainly, but she spoke in a way that reminded Splinter of his former account manager, no-nonsense and judicious. The young lady behind the desk took them both seriously and stood, brushing her braids back over her shoulder.

“I’ll start at once,” Nimue said. “It’ll only take a few minutes.” 

“Summon me if you need anything else,” Helena said briskly. “I’ll be finalizing the documentation up front.” 

Both yokai and witch were very perfunctory about the whole thing, as if it was business as usual. It went a long way in disarming that last kernel of doubt that Splinter had harbored every step of the way here.

With the doubt uprooted, there was space at last for painful, smothered hope to burst into full and violent bloom. 

He was shuffled into the adjoining room and into a squashy loveseat. This area seemed much more like a witch’s workshop; there were tricky, delicate glass instruments whirring away under their own power at a carved wooden table in the corner, and stacks of heavy leather volumes on all the shelves and flat surfaces, interspersed with jars of things like feathers and stones and shiny beetle shells. Dried herbs and flowers dangled in neat bundles from a rack on the ceiling, where motes of something too colorful to be dust floated in wandering circles. There was a small furry animal curled up to sleep on the arm rest of the chair opposite Splinter’s, light brown with a darker brown band across its eyes. When it lifted its head at the sound of the door closing, Splinter realized it was a ferret. 

“Please excuse the mess,” Nimue said, “I’m really not here that often so I tend not to prioritize organization. I know it’s a sad excuse.”

“I’m a single father parenting thr—four boys,” Splinter replied, heart skipping a beat at the self-correction. He would be parenting four. “The last thing I am qualified to judge anyone on is tidiness.” 

Nimue laughed. “I’ll take it! Now, I told Helena this would only be a moment, and I meant every word. There are lots of disclaimers and policies I could bog you down with, and probably ought to, but I know they’ll just go in one ear and out the other. You’re here to find your son, and that’s what I’m going to help you do.”

“Yes,” Splinter breathed. “Please.”

“Of course! A spell for finding is one of my favorites, not in the least because it’s super simple.” 

Nimue sat across from him, lifted the ferret off the arm of her chair and into her lap, and then held out both her hands. Splinter took them without second-guessing it. 

“Magic draws so much from nature,” the witch went on. As she spoke, various pieces of glass or crystal in the room began to glow, as if her voice contained a brilliance that could be caught and reflected back. “In our spells, we use plants, stones, animal shed—things given by the earth—and sometimes energy generated by a storm or the sea. A friend that I graduated university with channels power from lightning. Very flashy, but very hard to pin down.”

A pool of light formed between them, beneath their joined hands. It was flat and still, like the surface of calm water. Four little jewels in bright candy colors shone through—red, orange and purple clustered together, and blue clear on the other end. Splinter’s heart ached; he knew them. He knew them. 

“At its core, it’s orderly,” Nimue said, her voice calm and smiling. “The most powerful rituals I know of are tied to star charts or phases of the moon, because even celestial bodies follow a pattern. Magic wants to make right. It wants to return things. And so a spell like this costs absolutely nothing. A lost child belongs with their family; that’s as fundamental a thing as gravity.”

She let go of Splinter’s hands and turned her own to catch the pool of light in the cup of her palms. She closed her hands together, as if compressing something as tight as possible between them, and then with a sudden jerking motion, flung them up and open. 

The light spread between them in a translucent, shimmering curtain. It looked like a chart, or a map, though not one Splinter had any hope of reading.  

Nimue hummed in what could either be surprise or delight, her smile showing teeth. 

“Oh, look at how clear and bright they are,” she cooed, “shining like stars. You must be so proud. And here’s little boy blue,” she added, pointing out the lonely light living by itself, isolated from the others. “He’s in Sawara Town, not too far from here.” 

Splinter’s heart was a frantic drum inside his chest. He wasn’t sure if he’d taken a single full, deep breath since he woke up from that dream that brought him to this moment in the first place. He twitched with the urge to scoop those colorful, twinkling little lights out of the rest and hold them close, hold them safe. 

“So what now?” he managed to choke out. “Are you going to teleport me there or something?”

Nimue laughed again, scritching the ferret’s ruff with the tips of her fingers. 

“Teleport? I’m good but I’m not that good! I’ll call you a cab.”

Not even two full hours later, Splinter was walking up the main street of Sawara. It was a bustling rural town with a mighty canal for a heart, filled with wooden fishing boats and framed by thin wisps of willow trees. Machiya-style houses rambled along in tight rows on either side of the waterway, most of them with front doors and shutters slid open to display shop spaces. 

Splinter stopped at a dry goods store to ask for directions to the orphanage, and the storeowner pointed him toward the sprawling estate at the edge of town, tucked into the natural bend of the river. 

He was floating in that dream feeling again. Everything was two inches left of reality. He was half-prepared to discover that this day felt impossible because it was impossible and he should have known better than to believe it could be this easy. He was half-prepared for someone to yank the curtain back and reveal the wizard was just some guy running a long con the whole time. Splinter had always, always been the punchline of a bad joke. 

But he promised the boys he would find their brother. He thought of Purple’s eyes, wide with hope, and his quiet voice saying, “You called us twins.” He thought of that sweet baby he had only briefly been anything like a father to, the first of the four to smile at him, the first one to want to be held by him. 

Resolve filled every chamber of his heart until it overflowed from there and filled the rest of him for good measure. That floating, dreaming feeling scattered into painful cognizance. 

He was Lou Jitsu. He was Hamato Atsuko’s only son. If life had taught him anything, it was how to take a punch. He would follow this road to wherever it led, and if Blue was not at the end of it, then he would find another road to follow. He would walk forever if he had to. He would let his heart get broken a hundred thousand times. 

Splinter let himself through the gate and strode up the meandering path toward the front of the house. He wondered if he ought to announce himself, and then discovered a doorbell half-hidden beneath the leaves of a drooping hanging plant. He rang it, and squared his shoulders, and waited. 

After about a minute, the door slid open to reveal a harried-looking pangolin yokai with a squirming raccoon child in her arms. It was a scene immediately familiar to Splinter as a pre-naptime battle of wills. 

“Oh, hello,” the pangolin said, offering a smile as she managed not to drop the uncooperative toddler with a deftness that spoke of years of experience. “My name is Tomomi, I’m the matron here. How can I help you?”

“Hello,” Splinter replied, returning her bow automatically. He realized suddenly that he probably should have been practicing what he would say in this moment, because he was coming up blank. “Ah, my name is Hamato Yoshi, and I’m—I’m, uh—I’m here for my kid.” 

Nailed it. 

“You may need to be slightly more specific than that,” the matron said, bemused. 

“Right,” Splinter said. Specifics. He could do specifics. “I had a dream. And then there was a whole thing with a witch and a finding spell. Uh, I have documentation? That the court clerk sent with me?” 

Tomomi maneuvered the child into one arm and reached for the papers Splinter offered with her freed hand, all of them stamped with Helena’s imposing seal. As she read, her eyebrows made a shocked jump toward her scaly hairline. 

Splinter’s heart fluttered madly. His chest felt like a cage full of restless birds. 

“My son was lost to me when he was a baby, and I believed that he was dead. Something happened recently that—that revealed him to me. It showed me that he was still alive. If he’s here, I—I want him. I have always wanted him. He has three brothers who have been missing him, too. He has never,” Splinter faltered, and had to swallow twice before he could go on, “he has never been unwanted, not even for a single day.”

“Oh, my spirits,” Tomomi murmured, crouching to let the little raccoon yokai slide free and then dart victoriously away. She straightened again, a hand pressed flat to her chest as she passed the papers back, perfectly stunned. “If he’s here, and he’s yours, I’ll help you however I can. What can you tell me about him?”

Splinter said, “He’s—he’s a little turtle. Eight years old. His shell is—just, one moment.” 

With shaking hands, he crammed the documents into his jacket pocket and withdrew his phone instead. His pictures weren’t sorted into albums, because 99.99% of them were all pictures of his children or April, rendering any attempt to sort them entirely redundant. That did mean he had to swipe for a moment before he found a decent photo of Orange’s carapace, and the warm yellow pattern of his scutes. 

“His shell pattern would be very similar to his brother’s, you see? And his eyes were this color,” Splinter went on, swiping to a picture of Purple glaring resolutely away from the camera, golden eyes distinctive even when narrowed and averted behind thick prescription glasses. “He was—he was very sweet. Very talkative. He wanted to be held all hours of the day. He—”

“He’s here, Hamato-san,” Tomomi blurted, eyes huge. 

“He’s… oh.” Splinter stared back at her, phone still extended dumbly in his hand. He felt frozen in place. A gust of wind would probably have been enough to knock him clear over. “He’s here?”

The matron seemed to be in disbelief herself, staring at Splinter as though he was a figment of her imagination and if she moved too suddenly he might disappear. 

“I can’t believe it. After all this time.” Then she shook her head, and wrapped professionalism back around her shoulders like a trusty cloak. She said, “Please come with me to my office, I’ll have Kameko brought to us there.” 

Kameko. Turtle child. Splinter didn’t know how he felt about that name, but kept it to himself. He was minutes—minutes— away now. If he absolutely had to go crashing through every single wall in this building one by one to find his child, that was entirely within his power. He would save that as the nuclear option, but not remove it from the table entirely. 

“He really is the sweetest thing,” Tomomi said. “No trouble at all, helpful as can be. Incredibly smart for his age—he’s leagues ahead of his classmates.” 

Like his brothers, Splinter thought, with a sort of dazed, wondering pride. All of them were happy little boys with distinct, dynamic personalities, but June—who had been a parent for one whole year longer than Splinter and had the added experience of helping to keep a dozen nieces and nephews alive, and was therefore the expert between the two of them—had often expressed surprise at how quickly the turtles tore through their learning material. 

Donatello was an unstoppable force that had yet to encounter an immovable object, but Raphael and Michelangelo were both well ahead of the curve, too. Splinter wondered, sometimes, if that had been part of Draxum’s design for them. 

“The younger kids adore him, though the older ones ostracize him a bit,” Tomomi was saying. “He’s had a number of failed placements, I’m afraid. Just bad luck.” She winced, as though the word left a bad taste on her tongue, and hurried to add, “It’s been hard on him since his friend moved away. He really deserves this. You’ll see.”

She was clearly trying to upsell the kid, as if to preemptively change Splinter’s mind about giving him up. As if there was any force in the universe that could even dream of being strong enough to compel him to do that. 

The orphanage as they walked through it was noisy. Kids in clothes that were second-hand but clean and well-fitting chased each other down hallways and in and out of rooms at speed. The building itself showed the inevitable wear and tear that came of hordes of children putting their marks on the place, but it was not dirty, or drafty, or in any sort of disrepair. No one looked hurt or underfed. There was a comfortable amount of clutter, plush toys and books and electronics scattered about the den they passed by. In all corners of the house there was shrieking and laughter and the thunder of little running feet. 

Yoshi was feeling a hundred thousand things right now, all of them in immediate conflict with each other and jostling for first place, but relief was chief among them. He had, in a shadowy corner in the back of his mind, feared the worst upon hearing his child was living in an orphanage. At a glance, the bulk of those fears were dispelled. It was good to know that he probably would not have to raze this place to the ground for their poor treatment of Blue. He could not imagine that would endear him to Helena. 

Tomomi leaned into an open doorway and called out, “Ren, please find Kameko and have him meet me in my office, okay? It’s important that he comes quickly.”

“Okay, Miss Toto!” someone called back, and then a tiny otter yokai went zipping away.

“I don’t know all of his hiding spots, I’m afraid,” the matron murmured, opening another door further down the hall and inviting him inside. “I don’t want to take you on a wild goose chase and waste a second more of your time. You’ve waited long enough already.”

“Thank you,” Splinter said. He sank into the seat she offered him and twisted his fingers, a nervous tic that his eldest son had inherited from him directly. “You said—he’s ostracized by the older kids? Why?”

Tomomi moved around the office, preparing cups of tea with hot water from an electric kettle. She said, “Yokai are very superstitious, as you well know.” Splinter did not know, actually, but nodded to maintain the ruse that he had been a rat yokai his entire life. “Turtles are viewed as—well, lucky. But since every single one of Kameko’s placements failed for some reason or another, some of the children decided he must be an omen for bad luck instead of good. It’s silliness, Hamato-san. But as much as he claimed it never bothered him, I’m sure it must have.”

Splinter had to take a moment to absorb that. Blue was a miracle. The fact that he was alive at all—the Hamato clan in its entirety must have spent every scrap of its allotted good fortune for the next billion year

Bad luck, he thought with a bewildered scoff. Where?

He held the teacup between his hands but forgot what to do with it. He was doing his best to listen to Tomomi but all of his attention craned toward the door instead. Riveted to each pair of footsteps that thundered past, each bright, energetic voice, each unfamiliar spark of qi… 

Splinter stopped breathing a second before a knock sounded on the doorframe. 

“Miss Toto,” a young voice called. “Renren said you wanted to see me?”

Tomomi glanced at Splinter sidelong and then called back, “Come on in, sweetie. There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

He was unaware of moving, but somehow Splinter turned in time to watch the door rattle open, and there he was. 

In a neat coral pink and cream-colored jinbei, knees dirty from playing outside. Not quite grown into his stripes yet, still huge bright red crescents that took up most of his face. Eyes the same color as Donatello’s, the same shape as Splinter’s. Alive. Healthy. Small for his age. The brightest thing in this little riverside town. 

Leonardo. Blue. 

A painfully dislocated piece of Splinter’s long-broken heart clicked neatly back into place.  

The boy blinked and then smiled widely. He was all at once perfectly charming, happy to be standing there. Tomomi smiled back at him like a knee-jerk reaction and ushered him inside. 

“Hi!” Blue said brightly. “Nice to meet you!” 

Splinter could only sit there and take him in. His smile. The sound of his voice. He was so alive. 

“Kameko, this is Hamato Yoshi-san,” Tomomi said, steering the turtle closer to Splinter’s seat. “He’s come all the way from the human world to find you.” 

Blue’s smile faltered for a split-second, giving away his confusion. He had probably been fed a lot of lines from people looking to adopt a lucky turtle into their family over the last eight years, but this one was brand new. 

It was hard to explain to his little face that he had been—left behind. That Splinter had spent the entirety of his life mourning him. That looking at him was like looking at a ghost. Splinter did the best he could, grateful that Tomomi stepped in to pick things up wherever he faltered. With her help, he didn’t make an entire mess of the conversation.

“I have brothers?” was the first question Blue asked when they had finished. “I really do?”

“Yes, you—here, you can look,” Splinter said clumsily, offering his phone again. Offering anything. 

The turtle looked up into his face, and then over at Tomomi, and only took it after their combined reassurances. He was hesitant with the device even then, as though half-expecting Splinter to change his mind and berate him for handling it at all. 

But when the camera roll came up, Blue’s breath hitched, and all his uncertainty blew clean away. He blew up one of the photos and swiped through them that way, full-screen snapshots of a life he had missed out on. He stared intently at each picture as though doing his best to memorize each one in as much time as he was allowed to look. 

“What,” he started to ask, and then darted a quick glance up at Splinter again. Splinter nodded, heart in his throat, and Blue dared to continue, “What are they like?”

Carefully, Splinter shifted closer, until he and his son were side by side. Reaching around him, Splinter said, “Raphael is your biggest brother, and a year older than you. He may appear spiky and imposing, but he is actually very sensitive, and fond of stuffed animals and Barbie movies. I call him Red because of his rosy diamond patterns.” 

Blue mouthed ‘Raphael,’ drinking him in. 

The next few pictures were a blurred mess, Splinter’s attempt at taking photos while managing chaos as his boys helped in the kitchen the morning of April’s tenth birthday. Finally he landed on a clear one of Orange, covered in a dusting of flour, a comically large mixing bowl of funfetti cake batter in his arms that he had insisted he could handle without help. 

“This is Michelangelo. He is the youngest, only seven now. He is silly and spirited and will probably take over the world one day. We’ll all be better off with him in charge, I think. He would work all day long to win a single smile from someone he loves. Can you guess what his nickname is?”

Blue traced his little brother’s sunny spots with his eyes, overwhelmed. Still he guessed correctly, a soft-spoken, “Orange.” 

“Yes,” Splinter said. “Our crazy Mikan.” 

“Then this is—” Blue said, swiping on his own to a picture of the only remaining sibling. “Purple?” 

“Mm. Donatello. He is about a minute older than you, if that. He is smarter than any one hundred people put together, and creates spectacular things out of scraps and discards. But he struggles to make himself understood, so often opts out of talking at all. It does not mean he does not have anything to say.” 

This final photo rattled Blue completely, because there was an obvious likeness there. Donatello’s striking eyes were a mirror image of Leonardo’s own. There was no argument to be had about it—they were related. 

Remembering Purple’s burdened little hope, Splinter can’t help but add, “I once made the comment to him that the two of you could be twins, because you hatched together, and you were inseparable for every moment after. Donatello has latched onto the idea. And because of who he is as a person, I’m pretty sure he will die on that hill.”

Tomomi looked politely confused by the slang, but Blue huffed out an involuntary laugh, which was Splinter’s goal in the first place. 

“What’s, um,” Blue asked, “my name? Those ones—they all match. They’re artists. We talked about them in class once. Did I—did I match, too?”

“You did,” Splinter replied at once, trying to sound completely normal about the question. “I named you Leonardo. You were fearless, you wanted to see everything, you wanted to be everyone’s friend. Nothing could slow you down.” He reached out, telegraphing every inch of the move as he made it, and cradled that precious striped face in one careful hand. “My little lion. My Baby Blue.”

Leonardo didn’t cry, though it looked like he would like to. He reached up and seized Splinter’s wrist in both hands instead, clinging with the disproportionate strength Splinter was used to from raising his brothers. The four turtles were meant to be weapons, genetically altered to that end, but Splinter had taken one look at the freshly mutated babies and instantly resolved that he would secure a normal life for them if it was the last thing he ever did.  

He felt every inch of that resolve rekindled in this moment. He would do anything. He would topple a hundred laboratories, fight a thousand warrior alchemists, survive a million rounds in the Battle Nexus. If that was what it took to keep his Blue, to bring him home. He would do all of that in a heartbeat. 

“Well,” Tomomi said, unselfconscious about the tears she was blotting away, “let’s just get a few things signed away, and Kame—ah, Leonardo can start the first day of his new life! Sweetie, how about you go and get your things packed? You can say goodbye to your friends, too.” 

Blue pressed his cheek more firmly into Splinter’s palm, not wanting to go. Not wanting to test the limits of this strange, perfect dream. Splinter understood completely, and would prefer that his second-youngest child never left his sight again. 

But he didn’t want Blue to be afraid. He didn’t want to teach him fear.

So Splinter packed away his own anxieties and said, “Why don’t you hold onto my phone for me? It seems I will have my hands full with paperwork. It would be a lot of help.”

“Okay,” the little turtle said, reluctantly drawing away. He kept the phone in a tight grip. “I’m a good helper. And a quick packer! I’ll be right back!” 

“Don’t forget to say goodbye!” Tomomi called after him, but she was only talking to an empty doorway, the door itself left open and Leonardo’s running footsteps already halfway down the hall. “I wish I could bottle up some of that energy and keep it for a rainy day,” she said lightheartedly, getting up to close the door herself.

“I know what you mean,” Splinter said, fully sincere.  

“We really don’t have a lot for you to sign here, since the Chamber has already processed the lion’s share of the paperwork, and he’s rightfully yours to begin with,” Tomomi explained. “I just need you to hear a few things.” 

Splinter nodded, giving her his complete, undivided attention for the first time since he arrived. She didn’t seem to know what to do with it, flustered as she shuffled through a drawer of file folders.

“Ka—Leonardo,” Tomomi corrected herself again ruefully, “has had a rather hard time. I’ll give you a copy of his file, since he’ll pop back in here at any moment, and I hate to discuss it in front of him, but it’s important for you to fully understand. He’s been handed a lot of disappointments in his life. Please be patient. It might take him a long time to really trust you.”

“Then it’s a good thing we have the rest of our lives,” Splinter said firmly. “Blue could be a crazy man-eating alien for all I care—but if he’s going to terrorize humans, he can do it at home.”

The pangolin yokai laughed. “I’ll quote you on that. I also wanted you to be aware that we had a bit of a scare recently. He used to go into town to practice kendo every evening. A few nights ago, some of the other students decided to run around and cause trouble by the hearth,” her curt tone made it clear what she thought about that, “and started a fire that consumed the house. Leonardo was one of two children trapped inside.” 

“A fire?” Splinter parroted, halfway out of his seat in a second. He thought of the densely populated town down the way, the rows of houses he had passed that were all made of wood and straw and rice paper. Houses that would go up like tinder with a single misplaced spark. 

His baby, in a burning house. 

“He was rescued, and only sustained some minor burns and smoke sickness,” Tomomi was quick to reassure. “We had the boys both seen by a healer first thing. I’m letting you know because I would want to know, and Leonardo is unlikely to mention it at all.”

For a moment, Splinter could only imagine the horrifying what-if scenario; what if Leonardo hadn’t been rescued? What if Splinter’s dream had come a day too late? What if they had discovered Leonardo had been alive and that they had already lost him a second time? What if they had never discovered him at all, and he had died as a child that everyone believed nobody wanted?

Yoshi, he could almost hear his mother scolding him, clear as day, what good does it do you to think about that? It did not happen. Life is happening now. You will miss it if you don’t pay attention. 

“Yes,” he said belatedly, bobbing his head. “Right. Anything at all you feel is important, please tell me.”

They only had ten or so minutes to talk before Blue came back at top speed. Along the way he had collected that little otter yokai, as well as a fluffy owl in a pink yukata and a lizard whose green scales shimmered into a dull yellow as Splinter watched. 

“Koko’s leaving again?” the lizard demanded. “Is Ren gonna get that whole room to himself now? That’s not fair.”

“Shut up,” the owl said to her sharply, then turned to ask, “Is he really leaving, Miss Toto?”

“I’m afraid so, Susumu,” the matron said. “Have you all said your goodbyes, darlings?”

The question caused the otter child to burst into tears instantly. Leonardo was quick to drop his bag, shove Splinter’s phone into the pocket of his shorts, and scoop his little foster sibling’s face up in his hands. 

“Renren, don’t cry! How am I supposed to be brave if the bravest person I know is crying, huh?”

“I’m not crying,” the otter sobbed miserably, “I’m just, just so happy for you!”

“Great, I won’t even have to miss you, because Ren’s gonna keep repeating every single stupid thing he’s ever heard you say,” the owl complained, but she put her winged arms around them both and squeezed. “Bye, Koko. I hope these are your people for real this time.”

“Thanks, Suzy,” Blue replied, bonking their heads together lightly. “Take care of yourself or I’ll haunt your dreams!”

“Haunt your dreams,” Ren parroted thickly. 

“And if you see Snowy—” Blue added in a quieter voice. 

“I’ll tell him everything, don’t worry,” Susumu said, and hefted Ren away with her when she stepped back into the hall. 

That left the lizard girl, who looked as though she wanted to shrivel into a tiny bug and disappear through the floorboards with the attention of everyone else focused on her. Shoulders hunched, she whacked Leonardo in the shins with her long tail. 

“I think you should start biting people,” she announced.

“Niji,” Tomomi said warningly. 

The lizard lifted her chin, scales shifting from yellow to defiant red. “I mean it. If this new dad is mean just bite the hell out of him. Then he’ll send you back here and no one else will want you and we can age out of the system together and go start a gang.”

“Niji!” 

“Deal,” Blue said, and they shook on it. It was precious. 

Later, when all goodbyes had been made and Blue had been cried on by the pangolin matron and it was finally just the two of them making the journey back into town, Blue looked up at Splinter and said, “I won’t really bite you, Hamato-san. I just wanted to make Niji feel better. She tries to sound mean but she worries a lot.” 

“You have my full permission to take a bite out of any grown-up who tries to hurt you in any way,” Splinter said, smiling at him. He was carrying his child’s bag over his shoulder with one hand, the other clutched tight in both of Blue’s. “And you can call me whatever makes you comfortable, but Hamato-san is a little stuffy, don’t you think? If you don’t want to try ‘dad,’ how about Splinter?”

“Splinter?” Leonardo bounced on his feet. “Is that a code-name? Do you have a secret identity?”

The walk was long, but it went by quickly, peppered by question after question once Blue seemed to realize Splinter did not mind answering them. 

Where do you live? Have you always lived there? What’s California like? What’s New York City like? Do you know lots of humans? Are they nice? Who’s April? Will my brothers like me? 

Splinter answered, and explained, and reassured. Mostly, he listened to Blue’s animated voice that did its best to fill any empty space it found. Blue was not the jaded, angry child that Splinter himself once was, even if he had just as much—if not more—reason to be. But he was not a naïve boy, either. Hope had been all but trained out of him by now, the way it had clearly been trained out of Niji back at the orphanage. It was still there, clinging on with the tips of its fingers, but only just. 

And when Splinter tilted his head back and laughed at the clever joke Blue came up with on the spot, he saw that fragile little hope peeking out at him in the form of a crooked smile, shy and earnest and daring. 

Afternoon had given way to evening by the time they arrived at the edge of town where the cab was waiting. The driver, a skeleton yokai, was a local, and seemed happy to idle there and let the meter run since it was on the City’s dime. 

He glanced up from his sudoku book when Splinter and Blue approached and belted out, “Well, look who it is! Hey, kiddo!” 

“Hi Benny!” Blue shouted back. “¿Cómo estás?”

“Estoy bien, niño. And you’re doing just fine, too, huh? Guess I won’t be giving you many rides anymore. Hopefully this one sticks.”

Despite his flippant tone, the last remark was clearly aimed at Splinter. Splinter, for his part, held his son’s hand a little tighter and tried not to let the implications sting. Blue was so used to being shuttled back and forth that he was on first-name basis with the guy doing the shuttling. Blue had a reputation in this town as being an unwanted, oft-returned orphan. 

Splinter was simultaneously offended by anyone who would deem his precious child an unworthy addition, and endlessly grateful he had not been snatched up before his family had a chance to claim him. 

“This one,” Splinter said, flinty, “will stick.”

The driver muttered something in Spanish that made Blue muffle giggles behind his hand, and Splinter magnanimously decided to ignore that. The two grown-ups affected a playful antagonism for the duration of the hour and a half car ride, bantering back and forth, because anything that made Blue forget himself enough to lean forward against his seatbelt and fill the cab with chatter was worth doing. 

Benny did not let them go after dropping them off until Splinter agreed to bring the children to visit Benny’s cousin’s restaurant in Neo Edo sometime soon. Only then did he lower a bony hand out the driver’s side window so that Blue could bounce forward and bump their fists together.

“Nos vemos, chiquito,” the skeleton cabbie said fondly. “Have a good life, got it? We’ll have problems if you don’t.” 

He pointed warningly at Splinter, letting him know exactly who the problems would be had with.  

“See you, Benny!” Leonardo said. His eyes were wet, but he did not let his bright smile slip an inch. Splinter had worked with professional actors less talented than this nine year old boy. “I’ll be good, promise!”

“You are already good,” Splinter couldn’t help but interject, brushing a hand over the crown of the little turtle’s head. “That’s quite enough of that. Let’s be happy instead.” 

——

Raphael’s initial impression of his newest little brother was that he was very brave. 

He was tiny, not much bigger than Mikey, with bright yellow stripes on his arms and legs, and two big red ones on his face that curved over his cheeks and eyes. Pops carried him into the lair when he first brought Leonardo home, because the tunnels that wound to and around their house were dark and maze-like. Sometimes Raphie got lost in them if he strayed too far and he’d lived there forever. 

Raph remembered thinking how small Leo was, in a huge, confusing place, surrounded by people he had never met before. It would have been overwhelming for anybody, but he didn’t cry at all. He smiled instead, big and silly, like there was nothing in his whole life he needed to be scared of, actually. 

As Raph got to know him, he realized that Leo very rarely wasn’t smiling. 

He was even smiling a little bit as he poked his head through Raphie’s doorway in the middle of the night.  

“Hi,” Leo whispered, even though he could tell Raph was awake. 

He was doing that thing he always did, greeting first and then hanging back to make sure he was welcome. He never just walked into a room or jumped into a conversation. Raph probably wouldn’t have noticed Leo did that if he hadn’t heard Aunt Junie and Pops talking about it a few days ago. 

Raph wiped his eyes on his blanket quickly and tried to sound like he hadn’t been crying. 

“Hi, Leo. C’mere.”

The smaller turtle crossed the room at a run, climbing up into the bed and under the offered comforter. Raph pulled it up over both their heads when he was settled. The dark, warm space beneath the blanket felt the way Raph imagined the inside of his shell would feel if he could hide there. He squeezed Lamby until she glowed from the star on her belly and laid her between them so they had just enough light to see each other by. 

It was a familiar ritual for Raph. It was what he always did for Mikey and Donnie when they sought him out after bedtime. 

“Are you okay?” Leo asked in his quietest voice. 

“I’m okay,” Raph assured him quickly, feeling stupid about the tacky feeling on his cheeks and his puffy eyes. “Don’t worry about Raph.” When Leo’s brow wrinkled, not comprehending why he shouldn’t worry if he felt like it, Raph quickly said, “What about you, buddy? Why are you up?”

He had definitely been asleep when Raph had peeked in on him and Donnie earlier, but that didn’t mean a whole lot. Leo only seemed to sleep for a couple hours at a time. He always dragged his feet at bedtime, as though a good night’s rest was a concept that applied to other turtles, but not to him. If he didn’t share a room with his twin, it would probably be impossible to convince him to go to bed at all. Raph wasn’t looking forward to the contest of wills they’d probably have every single evening once Leo’s bedroom was finished.  

‘Miss Toto says I’m a night owl,’ Leo had announced at breakfast during his first week at home when Pops asked him how he slept. ‘I don’t know what kind of turtle that is.’ 

Mikey giggled, and Donnie said, ‘It’s not a kind of turtle, it’s an idiom.’

Overly-offended, Leo squawked, ‘You can’t just call people idioms!’

The conversation got so silly from there that Pops forgot about asking in the first place. Leo was really good at making people forget they asked questions. But that just made Raph hold onto his questions really tight until he got an answer. Even if it didn’t really matter—he didn’t want Leo thinking he could get away with sneaking around it when it did matter. 

His little brother’s eyes were big and dark in the blanket cave. Sure enough, he didn’t try to weasel out of answering. 

“Sometimes I lived in places where I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I got used to it.” 

“Why couldn’t you?” Raph asked, frowning. 

“In one house it was really noisy,” Leo said easily enough. “The badger family that lived there was crepuscular. That meant they mostly were awake before the sun came out. Just a little bit of noise is enough to wake me up, so I started being crepuscular , too. Only kendo practice and all of my school classes were in the daytime, so it didn’t work out.” 

To Raph, that sounded a lot like Leo wasn’t able to sleep at night and didn’t have time to sleep during the day. He can feel anger stirring deep in his heart, because it wasn’t fair. That badger family got to have Raph’s brother when he should have been here, and they didn’t even take care of him. How hard could it have been to give one little turtle a quiet place to rest? Pops found a quiet place for four of them in New York City.  

He reached around Leo to lay a hand flat on his carapace. The scutes there were hard and smooth, unlike Donnie’s spiny, leathery shell and Raph’s rough spiky one. It was slightly flatter than Mikey’s domed shape, but otherwise entirely familiar. And it was second-nature to rub in slow up-and-down motions, because that’s just what you did with little turtle shells when the little turtles inside couldn’t sleep. 

Leo blinked a couple times, all fast and surprised, as if he’d never had a shell-rub before in his life. Raph hoped that wasn’t true. 

“Why are you up?” Leo asked, never one to be waylaid for long. 

Fair was fair. Raph felt embarrassed about it, but since Leo had answered his question, he said truthfully, “I had a bad dream.”

He was maybe a little bit prepared for Leo to laugh or make fun or—something. But Leo said, “Sorry, Raphie. Bad dreams are the worst. Do you want to talk about it, or talk about something else?”

It sounded very practiced, like he had either said it a lot or heard it a lot before tonight. But it still loosened a tight little fist deep in Raph’s chest somewhere that was clutching really hard to worry. 

Carefully, each word picking its tentative way out, Raphie described the dream he’d had the best he could. It had already faded from memory for the most part. The definite edges were gone and all that was left was the nightmare soup—the dark room and his pounding heart and the loneliness that was big enough to eat him whole if it wanted to. 

“I dreamed I didn’t have anybody,” he mumbled out. “I was all alone. It felt like I’d be alone forever.”

“I had one like that before,” Leo said quietly. “I ran all the way to Snowy’s house to make sure he was there. He let me in through his window and we had a sleepover. Why didn’t you have a sleepover with Donnie or Mikey? You wouldn’t even get in trouble for leaving the house like I did since they’re just right down the hall.” 

“I’m the biggest,” Raph said, the truth of his life that had always been and always would be. “I’m responsible for you bozos. I look after you three, not the other way around.” 

He made sure Leo knew it wasn’t a bad thing, poking him playfully on the end of his beak until he scrunched it up. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was the best thing about being Raph. 

“All by yourself?” Leo asked. “Everybody needs help. Even Jupiter Jim has a sidekick.”

Ever since his siblings had shown him those movies, Leo was a big fan. And it was hard to argue his logic, because Red Fox was a character they all loved beyond reason, and Raph would never dream of saying Jupiter Jim didn’t need her. 

But it was different. 

Raph knew that he could be bossy. He didn’t mean to be. Sometimes it took Donnie crossing his arms and baring his teeth to make Raph realize he’d been nagging. Sometimes he didn’t know until Mikey started shouting that Raph had been talking over him. He really didn’t mean to. 

He just hated not knowing what was going to happen. Every accident and surprise—Donnie wandering out of his room for bandaids when his latest build managed to cut past his gloves, Mikey’s experimental stir fry setting off the smoke alarms, Pops juggling too many things at once and dropping something that shattered on the floor—made Raph feel sick. It made him feel unsafe. 

“I just want to be careful,” Raph managed to force out. “That’s all. I don’t want anything bad to happen. I don’t want it to be my fault. I don’t want to mess up and let you guys down. I don’t wanna be—”

Alone. 

Leo nodded solemnly, his cheek pressed against the pillow. Eyes all big and serious and older than the face they peered out of. 

“You’re the best big brother I’ve ever met,” he said, sounding so certain that Raph was a second too slow to doubt him. “You care so much. You care enough for a hundred turtles. I didn’t know anybody could have a heart that big.”

Raph blinked, feeling fresh tears sting his eyes and slide down his face. Donnie would have frozen in distress, like the whole world stopped spinning when one of his siblings was hurting and Donnie stopped spinning right along with it. Mikey would have jumped in for a sticky octopus-style hug, because there was nothing broken that he couldn’t fix by wrapping his arms around it and holding on tight. 

Leo didn’t freeze and he didn’t jump in. He landed somewhere in the middle of those extremes, shuffling closer and putting his problem-solving face on. He tugged on a corner of the sheets beneath them until enough of the blanket came up that he could use it to wipe Raph’s face free of tears. He did everything so earnestly, as if each tiny moment meant the world to him.  

“But guess what?” he went on. “Everybody cares about you that much, too. I can’t even think of something you could do that would make us not want to see you every single day. If you were ever alone it’d only be ‘cause you got lost, and then we’d just burn the whole city down to find you again. We’d never leave you behind.” 

Leo smiled, not the big shining one. This one was different, lopsided and sweet. Raph had only seen this smile of Leo’s a handful of times and it was already so important to him. 

“You know that in your heart, I think,” Leo said. “You just get stuck in your head, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Raph whispered, feeling wobbly and see-through. 

“It’s okay, Raphie. I can remind you. Just give half of what you’re worried about to me and we’ll share it. I’m on your team! I’m your sidekick! Nothing’s as scary when you have backup. As long as I’m here you don’t have to be scared of anything.” 

Raph’s words got stuck in his throat. He had no idea what he might have said if they hadn’t. Instead he pulled Leo in snug against his plastron, safe beneath his arm. Lamby ended up smushed between them and her glow turned off. Leo wasn’t afraid of the dark, so it was for Raphie’s sake when he worked the stuffed animal free and squeezed the light in her middle back on. 

Maybe Raph cared enough for a hundred turtles, but Leo was brave enough for a thousand. He wasn’t afraid of anything. 

“Deal. And as long as I’m here,” Raph said, “you can sleep.”

“Raphie, I told you,” Leo complained. “I’m a night-owl-badger-turtle. Can I just play Professor Layton on your DS? I’ll be really quiet.”

But Raph knew all the tricks. He put his hand back on that slim shell and scritched idly along the blue-patterned scutes. Leo’s eyes drooped almost immediately, though his big frown was slower to fade. He was so small and so stubborn and Raphael loved him completely.

“Everything you wanna do tomorrow will still be there when you wake up,” he said, borrowing those words straight from Pops, as well as the fond tone he said them in. His own bad dream was the last thing on his mind. It was easy to smile and add on, “You can sleep. Raph’s not gonna let anyone bother you. I’m on your team, too.”

Leo didn’t reply right away. He leaned back enough to look up at Raph as though he was waiting for him to take it back. When he didn’t, because of course he didn’t, Leo curled his arm tighter around Lamby and tucked his head back under Raph’s chin and didn’t say anything at all. 

Raphael imagined what it would have been like to grow up together—having Leo’s certainty and cleverness in his corner when Raph didn’t know what to do, Leo’s courage and silliness when Raph was scared, Leo’s smile that made the darkness shrink no matter how big and impossible it seemed to be at first. 

Imagining it made Raph’s heart ache. He thought about the future instead, and how they’d live in it together forever, and keep each other safe and make each other brave.

When Leo finally dozed off, Raph was only a few minutes behind him. He didn’t have any more bad dreams.

——

Sometimes Mikey felt like he had to shout to be heard. 

Raph and Donnie were his big brothers, and they were also his best friends and secret-keepers and partners-in-crime, but Mikey was their little brother first. He just wished that wasn’t the only thing he was. 

Donnie liked Mikey’s company and never kicked him out of his room, but Mikey wasn’t allowed to touch anything in there, because Donnie didn’t know how to share. Raphie loved to carry Mikey when he got tired or the stormwater runoff in the tunnels was steep, but he didn’t seem to understand that sometimes Mikey didn’t want to be carried. He could walk just fine on his own! He could outrun all of his siblings, actually, without even breaking a sweat. 

Michelangelo knew that he was loved—he had never wasted a single second wondering about that—and he loved his family so much that he could fill the sky with it the way the sun filled it with light in the summertime. 

But he wasn’t listened to. It would be nice to just be listened to sometimes. 

Today Mikey watched avidly as Leo showed off his cool sword. He had been folded into their afternoon martial arts training seamlessly, like he’d always been there. Dad assessed his skill-level and announced that he was not very far behind the rest of them at all, because he had been training in something he called kenjutsu ever since he was little. 

“You are little, pipsqueak,” Raphie said playfully.

“Everyone’s a pipsqueak to you!” Leo retorted.

Splinter smiled proudly and said, “My Blue. You’ll be unstoppable one day, you know that?” Leo radiated joy at Dad’s approval and threw himself headlong into learning ninjutsu alongside his kendo, eager to do well. So he split his time, and in the last half Leo broke away from his brothers to the other side of the dojo, where he practiced the sword. 

He hadn’t brought much with him when he moved in, but his bokken was his pride and joy. It was made of shiny red wood and the handle was wrapped in bright blue cord and there was a little white rabbit charm dangling from the guard. 

“Last year Snowy’s big sister snuck up to the human world for a senior trip with her friends, and she brought us both souvenirs when she came back,” Leo had explained the charm happily. “Like hush money, only bunny-shaped! So way better.”

Dad snorted, and Leo seemed to grow two inches taller at having made him laugh. 

Unlike everything else he owned, Leonardo didn’t offer the sword out to be held or touched. It wasn’t quite like the way Donnie guarded the things important to him, because Mikey didn’t think Leo would hiss at anybody for getting too close—Leo probably wouldn’t even get mad. But at seven whole years old, Mikey knew a thing or two about hurt feelings. If Leo wasn’t willing to snap at somebody for taking his stuff, Mikey would just have to do it for him. 

An hour into training, Mikey was about to snap for a different reason. 

“Mikey, you’re doing it wrong,” Raph said again. “You keep going too fast.” 

“I know, ” Mikey said back through his teeth. He’d done it a billion times, he knew that. Raph didn’t need to keep saying it. 

“If you know, then do it the right way,” his biggest brother replied, not giving an inch. “I know cartwheels are fun but we’re doing kata now. You can play later.”

Frustration boiled inside him. Mikey knew the right way to do the forms, but he was bored. He wanted to do it faster, he wanted to add a flip or a handstand, something to make it more interesting. He didn’t like training at all sometimes—Donnie was quiet and unenthusiastic, and Raphie was bossy and made them start over until they got it right. It was better when April was there, because April could quell the boringest and bossiest of brothers with a single sharp look and then take Mikey out for froyo, but their sister only joined in on the weekends. 

Leo glanced sidelong at Splinter as he slowly began to lean his bokken up against the wall. When Dad didn’t stop him, he put the sword down quicker, then trotted over to fearlessly interject himself into the middle of the brewing storm. Donnie watched him go with round eyes, always one to remain adamantly on the outside of any confrontation.  

“That was really cool, Mike,” Leo called out, beaming. 

Mikey, who had been clenching his fists and preparing himself for another big brother to gang up on him, blinked. 

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah, really! I can kind of do a handstand, but I can’t flip all around like that.” He thumped his knuckles on Raph’s carapace as he passed by, but his shining smile was all for Mikey. “Can you teach me?”

“Really?” Mikey said again, and then excitement swooped in before he could be confused for longer than a second. Bouncing on his toes, he exclaimed, “Of course, Lee! I can teach you right now!”

“I still have to learn this tricky ninja stuff first,” Leo said. “Can we do it after training instead?” 

“Sure! I can help you with the kata, too, I’m really good at it,” Mikey said eagerly, falling into line beside him. He demonstrated the proper form carefully, so that his newest big brother could follow along. “Like that, see? You’ll get it! Try with me this time!” 

He didn’t realize he was mimicking the same thing Raphael told him every time he fumbled in the dojo—his mind jumped straight to the first helpful thing he could say and that was it. He also didn’t catch the wink Leo sent at Raph over his head, or the way Raph’s shoulders loosened from where they had been bunched up by his ears, the way they always bunched up before a disagreement. 

When Leo first came home, Aunt Junie had said that they all needed to be patient with each other and give Leo time to adjust. Like when Piebald’s tank water needed to be changed and they had to do it a little bit at a time, because even a whole bunch of good, fresh and clean water would be bad for her all at once. 

Aunt Junie was right about everything, but maybe she just didn’t know Leo well enough yet. Maybe Leo wasn’t like Piebald at all, and jumping straight into a brand new tank was actually the best thing for him. 

Because Leo seemed so happy to be there, always smiling and in a good mood. Teasing Donnie like he knew exactly where to poke to elicit playful snaps instead of vicious ones—talking Raph’s ear off about the Disney movies their big brother watched with him and singing along once he knew the words—forming inside jokes and super-complicated extended handshakes with April within minutes of meeting her—following gamely wherever Mikey tugged him along to like he couldn’t wait to be a part of the fun. 

The immediate problem was that Donnie, Raph and April loved Leo just as much as Mikey did, and they all wanted to spend time with him, too. But they didn’t always want to spend that time doing the same things. That afternoon, it became an issue.  

“Me and Leo always watch a movie after lunch,” Raphie was saying, brow knit stubbornly. 

“Yeah, so let him do something else for a change,” April replied, poking Raph in the shoulder with the corner of her bedazzled phone case. “I told him about Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh and he wanted to read it. I downloaded the audiobook for us to listen to.”

“Can’t you do that later?”

“We’re building something,” Donnie bit out, impatient enough to speak up instead of just slinking away on his own. 

For his part, Mikey tugged on Leo’s sleeve. “Leeeee, color with meeee.”

Leo didn’t say anything to any of them. He seemed to be frozen in place by all their noise.

Once, when Mikey was way littler than he was now, Dad found a baby bird that had been swept through a grate into the tunnel during a heavy rain. He let Mikey hold it after Mikey promised he’d be careful. They emailed a video of the bird to a wildlife rescue person they found online who said that it looked about three weeks old, and had probably only just left the nest when it hurt its wing. It was a quivering palm-sized ball of brown feathers and beady eyes. Mikey could feel its frantic heartbeat in his hands. It didn’t look big enough to have left its nest. It was hard to believe anything that small could just be on its own in the world. 

Right now Leo reminded Mikey of that bird. His smile had faded to almost nothing, eyes round and worried under their bright red stripes. The longer the arguing went on around him the bigger and more worried his eyes got. 

Then Dad said, “ Enough.”

He had his disappointed frown on as he strode in from the kitchen, sleeves still rolled up from washing the dishes in the sink. He didn’t miss a beat in lifting Leo up into his arms.

“What did your Aunt June tell you all?” Dad said sternly. He included April in his pointed look, even though Aunt Junie was mom to her. “If the four of you can learn to share pizza and video games without killing each other, surely you can learn to share your brother’s time.”

They all shuffled, feeling scolded, and April was the one who said, “Sorry, Leon.”

“It’s okay!” Leo said immediately, smiling brightly at her. But he was still clutching Dad’s shirt with both hands and wasn’t squirming to get down even a little bit. It made Mikey feel bad all the way to the bottom of his stomach. 

“Why don’t you let Blue decide what he wants to do this afternoon?” Splinter suggested in that tone that made it obvious it wasn’t actually a suggestion. 

“Yeah, Leo, you should pick!” Mikey said right away. 

Leo hummed, looking much more like his normal self than he did a moment ago, but he still had one fist bunched in Splinter’s sleeve. Very, very carefully, like he was afraid it wasn’t the right thing to say, Leo offered, “Raphie, you said you’d show me how to skate. Can we?”

“Sure, big man, that sounds fun!” Raph said, all fast. He came over and put out his hands, and when Leo reached back, Splinter allowed the snapper to take him. Raph tossed Leo in the air and caught him again, surprising a squeaky noise out of him that became a giggle. The mood in the lair shifted back towards bright, like magic. “You’re gonna be skating circles around me in no time, Fearless.”

“I wanna watch!” Mikey shouted gleefully. And even though Donnie hated sports, he settled next to Mikey to watch, too, close enough that their shoulders bumped. When Mikey swayed playfully to the side, it made Donnie sway, too. 

April rolled her eyes, like it was very typical of one of her little brothers to want to waste the afternoon skateboarding, but she insisted upon getting pictures of Leo all kitted out in borrowed helmet and knee- and elbow-pads, in poses that got sillier and sillier by the second.  

The afternoon raced by like it had somewhere important to be, punctuated by the rolling and click-clacking of skateboard wheels on the wooden ramp. Leo learned to ollie and shuvit, picking up speed and gaining confidence as he went, but he also learned a lesson the rest of his siblings had learned years and years ago. 

He learned to trust Raph’s hands to catch him. He learned not to be scared of falling because Raph would always catch him. 

In no time at all, Leo’s laughter was bursting out of him in bright, ringing peals. It was easy to forget, just for a minute, that he hadn’t been right there with them all along.  

Mikey felt like there was a sun inside him, he was so happy. He didn’t know what to do with all of it, where he could possibly hold it. So he did what he always did when he felt too much. He popped inside his shell. 

From outside, there was an instant clatter and a thud, the fast-rolling sound of a loose skateboard shooting away, and April calling out, “Woah, Leo, are you—”

Then Mikey felt the familiar sensation of being picked up. His shell was compact and the perfect size for other little turtles to hold. Mikey felt warm and snug, and loved to be held, so he just curled up happily like a cat in a box. 

Outside, he heard them talking.

“He didn’t mean to!” Leo said, so fast it was all a jumble of words bumping into themselves. 

“Who didn’t—Mikey?” Raph said. “‘Course he did, he does that all the time.”

“No, he—he’s good, he doesn’t—” Leo sounded alarmingly like he was going to start crying—something Mikey hadn’t even known it was possible for him to do. “Please don’t let him get in trouble, he’s good. He’ll be good.”

“Of course he is good,” Splinter said, his voice coming closer from where he had been keeping an eye on them from the sofa. He sounded the way he did when Mikey or one of his brothers was sick, worry and love all twisted together. “All of my babies are good. Even when they are dissecting kitchen appliances or flooding the bathroom or sneaking the last donut out of the box that I had been saving, April.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” April said unconvincingly. “What’s a donut?”

“Mmm-hm. That crazy little citrus fruit you are holding is not in trouble, Baby Blue,” Splinter added. 

“Why would he be in trouble?” Raph asked, sounding like something was hurting him. 

“Sorry! I had different rules before,” Leo replied. The arms holding Mikey’s shell were tight, and he could hear the heart he was being held against racing, quick and frantic thump-thump-thumps. “I’m really sorry!”

“No one needs to be sorry,” Splinter told him gently. “No one has done anything wrong. And for future reference, in case you are confused, you will never be punished for hiding inside your shell. You are a turtle, and it is an important part of you. Would you scold a caterpillar for spinning a cocoon?”

“No,” Leo whispered. 

“There you are.”

There was a beat of silence, heavy and thick. Mikey wanted to come out and look around but he thought that if he interrupted the conversation they would start to talk about something else. 

“It wasn’t that bad,” Leo finally said. “I was only there for a little bit, the house where they—so it wasn’t that bad.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Donnie said in a loud voice. He said it like ‘judge’ meant ‘monster who bites people until they die,’ even though Mikey was pretty sure it didn’t.

It surprised Mikey at first when Donnie started interjecting loudly at things, because he never used to do that. His jokes were always ones slid in under his breath, and his smile when they made Mikey laugh would be quick and sideways and half-hidden in the collar of his bulky hoodie. 

Now he didn’t hide near as much as he used to, and was a lot less secretive about things he wanted his brothers to hear. Mikey thought that maybe he had wanted to be close to them all along, he just didn’t know how to get there. There wasn’t a bridge between where they were at and the island he ended up on. Then his twin came along. 

Aunt Junie called Leo an instigator. She said it laughingly, and told him he was just what this family needed. She was, after all, right about everything. 

“We’ll discuss it later,” Splinter said. He came closer, and Mikey’s stomach swooped as he was lifted up higher from the floor than he already was—Dad must have picked Leo up again, and Leo was still holding Mikey. “Come here, my little turtles. Ah-ah, you are not getting out of this, O’Neil. In fact, you must hug twice as hard so that your mother is here in spirit.”

Silliness was the best medicine. No gloomy mood could outlast six people cramming together for a big group hug. Raph tripped on the skateboard and almost toppled everyone over and the sudden lurch made Leo giggle. Mikey came out of his shell to join the embrace, managing to get one arm around Leo and the other around Donnie and squeezing for all he was worth. 

Mikey and his brothers kept close to each other even after Splinter left to take April home. A pillow fort was constructed in the TV room and they turtle-piled in there with all the best blankets and stuffed animals and snacks. Leo was quieter than usual and sat tucked against Donnie’s side, like he was absorbing his twin’s strength and stubbornness since his own had run out. 

“Hey, Leo?” Mikey asked, when the movie Bolt was over and Raph was snoring and Donnie was a tiny ball tucked under the snapper’s sprawled arm. Mikey knew that Leo would still be awake.

Sure enough, Leo said, “Yeah?” 

“Why don’t you cry when you’re sad?”

For a little while, the only sound besides Raph’s honking snores was the song playing on TV as the credits rolled. I made a wish upon a star, I turned around, and there you were, the song went. 

“People don’t like kids who cry,” Leo finally said. “No one will want me if I don’t behave.”

Mikey blinked, turning his head to find Leo’s face in the dark. His heart was twisting around unhappily in his chest. It hurt. 

“Raph cries all the time but we still want him,” Mikey said. “He’s Raph.”

“Yeah, of course,” Leo said quickly.

“And I cry, too,” Mikey added, the hurt moving up into his throat. “People want me.”

“Because you’re the best, Angie,” Leo told him. “You guys are the best.”

“Whoever told you that stuff before lied,” Mikey said, clinging to his hand. “They lied. You’re my Leo, and you belong here, and we want you. Don’t ever leave us no matter what. Okay?”

Leo nodded, short and punchy. He was shivering like he was cold. Mikey scooted over so he could curl into Leo’s side, because he was a lot of things, but he was a little brother first. And sometimes—when that meant that he was always welcome, and arms would always open for him, and he could snuggle in and be held tight no matter what—that was the best first thing to be. 

“Promise?” he checked.

Leo turned his face, so he could press his cheek to the top of Mikey’s head, and whispered, “Promise.”

The thing Mikey remembered the most vividly about that injured bird they once found was how restless it had been. How ready to fly it was. All it needed was room to get better and grow a little more. A safe place to land. 

‘Look at this guy,’ Dad had said the morning they released it, smiling at the eager noises happening in the shoebox in his hands, ‘ready to leave us in the dust.’ 

‘Will he come back?’ Raphie asked.

‘I don’t think so, my dear. This isn’t his home.’

It was Leo’s home, though. His place to come back to. They just had to keep showing him that they’d catch him. It wasn’t scary to fall down here, because someone would always catch him.  

——

A true photographic memory had never been proven, but Donatello was a scientific marvel in more ways than just the obvious. He remembered everything he had ever seen. The farther back his memories went the less clarity they retained, until they were mostly just emotion given body and movement—but they still were.

When Donnie, Mikey and Raphie found the shrine in Papa’s room, and Papa sat them all down to explain that they used to have another brother, who couldn’t be with them anymore, Donnie suddenly remembered a steady weight on his shell. He remembered not being able to settle for bed unless the weight was there, clicking and purring until they both drifted off to sleep. 

Oh, he thought, we’re orphans. 

The thought didn’t make sense, because Donnie knew what the definition of orphan was, and their parent hadn’t died. He had never abandoned them. He was, at that moment, gently wiping tears off Raphie’s face and trying to come up with answers for Mikey’s endless questions that didn’t all boil down to life is unfair. 

But it was the only word that felt weighty enough for the truth of it all. 

Donnie was a brother who had lost a brother. A twin who wasn’t a twin anymore. There wasn’t a word for that. He looked it up. 

And then, when Donnie was eight years old, he didn’t need a word for it anymore. 

When he had imagined Leonardo growing up, he imagined someone who was just like him in every way. Someone who understood him effortlessly because they were two halves of a whole. Ten minutes after meeting him again, Donatello felt silly about his initial hypothesis. 

Of course his twin would be his polar opposite—they filled in each other’s empty spaces. Leonardo, who was friendly and talkative, spoke up when Donnie’s voice failed him; Donatello, who was observant and defiant, had no trouble baring his teeth at every hurt that Leonardo would have let roll off his back. 

Leonardo lied with every inch of his body and he did it cheerfully; Donnie would always default to the truth even if a lie would have been kinder. Donnie wanted so badly to be close to his brothers but didn’t always know how to get there, a closed door standing between them that he didn’t have a key to; Leonardo had never met a locked door he couldn’t circumvent and pointed out a neat shortcut here, a handy window there. 

Leo took Donnie’s hand and led the way forward; Donnie held on tight and made sure Leo didn’t stumble, since he was always looking up and never down. 

They found each other in the middle. Maybe if they’d had that middle place all along, Donnie would be able to communicate better, and Leo wouldn’t need to pretend so much. Maybe that’s still the way things would be one day. Donnie imagined a drawing of them, purple leaking past his lines and blue leaking out of Leo, like Mikey’s watercolors mixing on the page, spreading until they filled every gap, completing the picture.

All four turtles were in the dojo, doing cool-down stretches. Mikey had skipped the post-exercise routine and moved on to rolling around on his carapace instead, singing Fireflies to himself with twice as much energy as Owl City. Raph just rolled his eyes and made sure to step around and over his littlest brother as he cleaned up. 

Splinter, who had been checking his phone repeatedly all afternoon, stood up swiftly and said, “You boys stay here and finish up. I think we’ll order in for supper today, so agree on something or I will order the worst soup you can think of. ”

Mikey stopped rolling and sat up with a horrified gasp, because he had opinions about soup. 

“Manhattan Clam Chowder!” 

Ignoring that, Splinter said, “I will be right back.”

Donnie watched Leo watch him go, and knew that his twin’s mind was racing even though his breezy smile hadn’t budged an inch. Leo worried constantly, maybe even more than Raphie did. He was always buzzing with what-ifs, like his brain was a jar filled with angry bees—what if he did something wrong? What if he made someone mad? What if he was too noisy, took too much at supper, didn’t help enough with chores, what if, what if, what if? 

Donnie knew, because sometimes Leo told him. After bedtime, when they had to whisper so Splinter’s keen ears wouldn’t catch them staying up late, sometimes Leo would ask, “Did I mess up today?” 

And Donnie would have to jerk his thoughts onto this new track—this crooked, narrow road that Leo was always running on, with its confusing roundabouts and bridges to nowhere and unpayable tolls. 

He wanted to say that Leo could mess up a billion times and still never reach the end of Donnie’s love. Like how the unobservable universe was so big that light from the Big Bang still hadn’t reached Earth from over there. It was as big as that. 

But Donnie struggled with words even when they weren’t monumentally important ones. And Leo’s face would look so afraid in the dim light of the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling, those constellations in Leo’s new room that matched the ones in Donnie’s down to the last star. He would be convinced that this was the day he did something bad enough that Papa sent him away. It didn’t matter that that would never happen, because even impossible things could be scary.  

So instead of what he wanted to say, Donnie would tell him, “You were good.” 

It would always make his brother smile and sink into the pillow, like all that worry was the only thing propping him up. Then they would talk about a hundred other things until they forgot to whisper, and Papa or Raph inevitably found them out and carted a giggling Leo or an unrepentant Donnie off to his own room. 

One day, Donnie was determined to make it stick. Even if Leonardo was the worst person in the whole world, he would still be Donatello’s person. That made him the best. It was unquantifiable. No one was a better subject matter expert than Donnie was. He’d stake the scientific reputation he didn’t have yet on it in a heartbeat. 

For now, he nudged Leo’s knee with his foot. 

“Hey,” Donnie said, “let’s be ninjas.”

Leo’s smile turned into the grin that Donnie preferred, the crooked laughing one. He only cared about good behavior when he thought he was being graded on it. Otherwise he was the first to encourage sneakiness, because if there was one thing Leonardo believed in, it was having all the information available all the time. 

Donnie knew that was how Leo kept himself safe in those other places he lived in before he came home, those places he didn’t like to talk about. The ones that taught him not to cry when he was sad and not to hide in his shell when he was scared. 

If there was one thing Donatello believed in, it was that Leo should feel safe, even if that meant breaking a rule or two or a hundred. 

“Where do you two think you’re going?” Raphie said suspiciously before they’d made it more than two steps. “Pops said to stay here.”

“Or else we’ll get gross soup,” Mikey piped up. “Instead of really good soup, like creamy chicken chili. Or minestrone!”

“Angie, it’s too hot outside for soup,” Leo said patiently, verbally dodge-rolling Raph’s question by humoring Mikey. “If we ordered a bunch of soup the delivery person would cry. You don’t want taco salad in a tortilla bowl? Or an Italian hero with extra pickled cherry peppers?”

Reminded of the whole wide world of food delivery possibilities, Mikey started rattling off all of his favorite meals without pausing for inconsequential things like air. Raph sighed, because it instantly became twenty times harder to agree on supper. Leo beamed up at him, like he didn’t just do that on purpose.

Donnie knew an opening when he saw one and slipped out of the dojo first, following the sound of Splinter’s voice to the front of the lair. 

“...haven’t told him you were coming. I did not want to give him a reason to be anxious all day,” Papa was saying, sounding anxious himself. “He’s so prone to worry, it just eats him up. I thought once you arrived, I would go back in and let him know you were here, and we’d—get it rolling fast, get him all swept up, so he didn’t have a chance to be afraid.”

“Dad knows best,” an unfamiliar voice said kindly. 

It made Donnie’s spine go straight, all of his attention sharpening to a point at this sudden proof of a stranger in his home talking about his twin. He inched forward on silent feet to peer around the corner. 

A big creature stood with Splinter, a few inches taller than him and covered from nose to tail in large overlapping scales. She had a curved spine that created a hunched-forward posture and a long narrow head similar to an anteater’s. With the big tote bag hanging off her arm and the green sundress she was wearing, she looked like an animal librarian straight out of one of Mikey’s chapter books. 

She didn’t seem dangerous. But Donatello watched her with narrowed eyes and wished he hadn’t left his bo behind in the dojo. 

“As for moving,” Splinter was saying, “I am still uncertain. My boys would be able to—to go to school, and make friends, and play in the sun. That would mean the world to me. But the house in Neo Edo needs a lot of work, and the Hidden Cities are dangerous, too. For a multitude of reasons.” 

“And you have family here in New York, as well,” the stranger said, her tone understanding. “It is a lot to consider. You haven’t brought up the possibility to the children yet?”

“I haven’t. Blue’s life has been in upheaval enough as it is. I wanted him to have more of a chance to get settled. Besides, it is not a decision that needs to be made right away. We can discuss it as a family and decide together.”

“Of course, Hamato-san,” the stranger said warmly. “These follow-up assessments are mandatory, and, I’ll admit, an excuse for me to visit with my little ones again. But there isn’t a doubt in my mind that you’re doing right by him.” 

Donnie let go of his suspicion just long enough to wonder about the possibility of moving away from New York City. He wouldn’t want to be apart from April and Aunt June for any extra amount of time. But it sounded like he would be able to go to school in that Neo Edo place and he would like that a lot. 

“Here I am,” Leo’s voice said in a whisper as he stepped up beside Donnie. He was holding his bokken across his shoulder, probably because he wouldn’t have had a chance to store it properly and come listen in on Papa’s conversation without Raphie catching him again. “What’d I miss?”

But he was already looking around the corner for himself, and that smiling expression he was wearing changed in a heartbeat to something pale and shocked. His arms fell to his sides. 

“Miss Toto? Why is she here?”

His voice was too loud. Both adults glanced over at where Donnie and Leo were standing, and Donnie felt caught. But Leo took a couple quick steps closer, dragging his sword behind him like he didn’t care at all that the shiny finish might get scuffed on the concrete. 

Papa looked pale himself somehow. “Blue—”

“Am I going back?” Leo said, getting louder. “Are you giving me back? Why? What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” the stranger said, hands clutched tight in front of her chest. Her eyes were wide. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” 

“No, you said!” Leo shouted at Splinter. “You said, you said you wouldn’t, you said I could stay, you said I was good! I was good, I was! I did everything I’m supposed to!” 

“Baby, I would never send you away, ” Splinter said, arms open to scoop him up, but Leo stumbled backwards out of reach. Leo couldn’t hear him or anybody else, heaving in frantic gulping breaths. 

The sword in his hand started to glow, as if a light had turned on inside it and was shining through patterns carved up and down its length, even though the whole thing was solid wood and didn’t have any carvings a light could shine out of. The shine got brighter and bluer until Donnie had to squeeze his eyes closed against the glare. 

When he opened them again Leo was gone, but the light was left right where he’d been standing—a perfect circle cut out of thin air, the color of the sky in summertime. It was humming, the way things with an electrical charge hummed, and spinning as playfully as a pinwheel.

“Oh, my spirits,” Miss Toto breathed. 

“Did he just,” Splinter croaked out. 

Of course, Donnie thought, finally solving that big puzzle in the back of his mind.  

Donatello was the first of Leo’s siblings to notice the healed burns on his hands, if the others had noticed them at all. Faint discolorations, smoother than the rest of his textured skin. They didn’t seem to hurt anymore but Donnie worried about them anyway. 

He had gone straight to Splinter with his observations, hovering at the other side of the kitchen table waiting to be acknowledged; but Splinter had been too engrossed in the contents of a folder to notice the round eyes level with the tabletop staring unblinkingly at him, like a fox stalking a bird.

‘Papa,’ he said. Splinter jolted in his seat, slopping tea over the rim of his mug.  

‘Holy—Purple! You will give me a heart attack one day, and then who will feed you?’ He closed the folder and turned his chair, and Donnie trotted around to his side. ‘What’s up, buttercup?’

‘Leo burned his hands,’ Donnie said.  

Splinter’s face did something funny, and he asked quickly, ‘Did he hurt himself just now?’ 

‘No. They were there already. How?’ 

‘Ah. How did it happen?’ he clarified. Donnie nodded, and Splinter weighed his words for a moment before he said, ‘A few days before he came to live with us, the house where Blue took his kendo lessons caught on fire. But someone rescued him—plucked him and his friend right out of danger and left them safe in a basket of clean blankets. We are all very lucky.’ 

Donnie had shivered, and bonked his forehead against Splinter’s arm so his father knew to wrap him up in a tight hug until the shivering stopped. He didn’t want to think about Leo trapped in a fire, so instead he thought about the person who had rescued him. 

‘Who?’ he asked when he could manage it.

‘Who saved them? No one seems to know,’ Splinter said. ‘The boys only remembered a blue light.’ 

Leo saved himself, Donatello realized now. He always saved himself. It was the only thing that made sense. The proof was right in front of them, burning like a star in the living room. 

But now the edges of the circle were wobbling, and then compressing, the whole thing beginning to shrink. A door closing, with his twin on the other side. 

Donatello didn’t need to think about it. He heard a cut-off gasp from the scaly anteater, and Papa yelled “Purple!” but he was already running. He ducked his head to clear the top arc and hopped over the bottom, disappearing neatly through the blue seconds before it dwindled into nothing. 

In just one step, he had gone from the lair under New York to a big open countryside. He’d never seen so much greenery in his life. It was cooler here, and quieter—even with the rush of the river nearby, it was easily half the average decibel level of Manhattan. He could smell fish and sesame oil and salt, a hint of smoke, damp wood—town must have been behind him. Ahead of him, the footpath he was standing on winded away toward the water.

Donnie headed forward. There was a big house up the hill to his left and he could hear other children there. But the door hadn’t taken him to the house. It had led him here, trudging through mud and weeds along the bank, until he rounded the bend and found exactly who he was looking for. 

On the opposite shore, Leo was hiding under a rocky outcrop, where the stones of a towering cliffside formed a secret alcove. Sunken boulders in the water created a natural ford where Donnie could cross and he plunged right in. 

Leo must have heard him coming, but he stayed curled up small. He was crying so hard his face was red and his eyes were squeezed shut, which made Donnie’s eyes sting, too. He hated when his siblings cried. He hated not knowing how to fix it. One day he’d invent a solution for everything that hurt them.

Until then, he’d crawl into this muddy hole, and scratch his knees and palms on the rocks, and put his arms around his twin. It was the right thing to do because it was what Raphie and Mikey would do. It made Leo cry even harder, and that hurt Donnie’s heart more than anything else in his whole life ever had, but he just held on tight.  He’d be one of those stones that the river crashed against. Nothing would move him until he decided to move. 

When Leo quieted into hiccups and wet-sounding sniffles, Donnie thought it was safe enough to let go of him with one hand. He used the other to wipe Leo’s puffy face with the balled-up end of his purple sleeve. 

“Don’t leave again,” Donnie said. “You promised Mikey.”

“I don’t want to,” Leo choked out. “But they—” 

“That anteater wasn’t there to take you away,” Donnie told him matter-of-factly. “Otherwise Papa would have caused a scene. She was just there to visit. It sounds like we have a house around here somewhere, and Papa is thinking about moving. But he hasn’t decided yet. If we did move, you’d come, too.” 

Leo pulled back to stare at him, all dirty and wet and miserable. After a moment, he mumbled, “Miss Toto is a pangolin. Anteaters don’t have scales. You’re dumb.”

“You’re dumb,” Donnie replied, heart lifting like a balloon at Leo sounding more like Leo. “Papa will never let anyone take you away. You don’t have to be good all the time.” His twin’s eyes fell down to look at the muddy stones between them. He didn’t say anything, but Donnie could tell he didn’t believe it yet. So Donnie presented the facts: “Raph is bossy and acts like he’s right even when he’s wrong. Mikey never does what he’s supposed to and makes huge messes with his paints and cries when he gets in trouble. And I’m mean. And I bite. But Papa loves us, even when he says we make him want to tear his hair out. And he loves you.”

“How do you know?” Leo asked, like he’d like to be convinced, but he was still clutching at his old truths instead of this new one. 

“Because I know everything,” Donnie told him plainly. “I’m smarter than you and the older twin so you have to listen to me.” 

Leo made a quiet noise somewhere between crying and laughing. His eyes were gold like Donnie’s. Would that ever stop being amazing? Probably not. Here was Donnie’s other half, the most important part of his heart, back where he belonged. He really was dumb if he thought Donnie was ever going to lose him again.  

They walked hand in hand to the house on the hill, which turned out to be the orphanage where Leo used to live. A few of the kids in the yard gave them strange looks, but Leo didn’t stop to say hi to any of them, which told Donnie everything he needed to know. 

A boy with amphibian features stepped right in their way. He had big protruding eyes and webbed hands and a round, flat head. His mouth stretched from ear to ear when he opened it to call out, “Back already, Lucky?” 

It caused a twitch to pass through Leo’s whole body, not a flinch but not not a flinch, either. He smiled back automatically, and Donnie knew he was about to play along with whatever mean joke was being played on him, because Leo was smart and always knew what the quickest way out of a bad place was. 

But Donnie was smart, too. And he didn’t care about getting out as much as he cared about getting results.

He stopped in his tracks and twisted his head around on his neck in the way that always freaked April out. She said it made him look like an alien from a horror movie, so naturally Donnie practiced it in the mirror a bunch of times. 

He’d never had the chance to use it on anyone else until now. He was pleased with the way it made everyone in the yard stand really still. 

“You know turtles eat frogs, right?” Donnie said. “I heard they taste good with ginger and scallions.”

Heard from his baby brother who had an unhealthy obsession with the Food Network, anyway. 

The frog boy shut right up, his throat ballooning defensively—prey instinct to make himself a more difficult meal. 

“It was nice to see you guys,” Leo said brightly to the terrorized crowd of his former foster siblings, circling behind Donnie and pushing him bodily into the house. Once the door was closed behind them, he added, “They all think you’re an oni now! It was just a nickname, Tello.”

“Good,” Donnie said, smug. “And it’s not just a nickname if you hate it, Nardo.”

Leo took his hand again and led him down the hall. There was a landline phone in the matron’s office that they could use to call Papa. It seemed like a majority of the kids were out of the house, making the most of the sunny day, because they didn’t run into anyone else.

“It’s ‘cause I’m bad luck,” Leo said suddenly. “Turtles—you know, in the stories—they’re good. Since I kept coming back to the orphanage, the older kids started saying it’s ‘cause my luck got messed up. That’s why they call me that.”

“You’re not bad luck,” Donnie said, wishing he’d taken a good bite out of that frog kid after all. “You’re the luckiest thing that ever happened to me and Mikey and Raph and April and Papa and Aunt June. That’s a lot of luck for one turtle and you saved all of it for us. But if you don’t like that name I won’t let anyone call you that anymore.”

Leo hesitated long enough that Donnie knew he was about to do something very brave, like tell the truth, even though a lie would be safer. 

Sure enough, he said, “I don’t like it.” 

Donnie nodded. He’d make sure their brothers and sister knew, too.  

The door slammed open again behind them. Donnie turned around, ready to pick another fight with another stupid bully and maybe show off his sharp canines this time, but the kid who appeared in the hallway wasn’t one of the ones they’d passed by in the yard. 

It was a white rabbit with long ears tied in a topknot. He had a bokken strapped to his back, glossy black where Leo’s was cherry red, handle wrapped in gray cord instead of blue. The rabbit was completely out of breath, bracing himself with a hand against the wall while his shoulders heaved, and he stared straight at Donnie’s brother like Leo would disappear into thin air if he so much as blinked.

“I saw the blue light and ran all the way here,” he huffed. “Give me your hand.”

Donnie bristled at this stranger telling his twin what to do, but Leo’s face was pure sunshine. He shoved his hand out immediately and the rabbit took it, neither of them bothering with so much as a hello. Uncapping a marker with his teeth, the rabbit scrawled something on the inside of Leo’s palm. 

“This is my new phone number,” he said, not letting go of Leo’s hand even when he was done writing and the marker was put away. “When you didn’t call at our usual time,  Auntie asked if you even knew her number, and I realized you only had the number for our house that burned down. And when I called here, Miss Toto said I’d just missed you. And Suzy said you got adopted for real and went to live in New York and weren’t coming back.” 

His eyes were big and wet and his mouth was wobbling, but he stubbornly wasn’t crying. From this close, Donnie could see the charm dangling from the guard of his wooden sword—a little blue turtle. 

“Don’t ever disappear again, Stripes,” the rabbit said. “We promised to stick together forever.”

“Forever, Snowy,” Leo told him, in his voice that meant he meant it. “I always come back.”

It wasn’t until Donatello and the rabbit were sitting in the den, watching two tiny sheep yokai kill each other for their turn on an ancient Nintendo 64 while Leo used the corded landline in the office, that introductions were made. 

“Who are you?” Donnie demanded bluntly. He’d heard enough about ‘Snowy’ that he could probably write the guy’s biography if he had to, but somehow Leo had never mentioned his best friend’s actual name. 

“Usagi Yuichi,” the rabbit replied. He hesitated, sizing Donatello up, then asked, “Are you his family? His actual one?”

“I’m his twin,” Donnie said, feeling prickly and overprotective. He’d only had Leo for thirty-two days and he would defend his spot in Leo’s life with violence if the situation called for it. “He has a big brother and a little brother at home, too. He doesn’t need any more than that.” So there, he thought. 

To his credit, Yuichi got the gist of Donnie’s bottom line quickly. Instead of any of the reactions Donnie was waiting for, Yuichi wrinkled his nose.

“Yuck, I don’t want to be his brother. I’m going to marry him someday.”

Donnie considered that carefully, and decided it was acceptable. They shook on it then quickly jumped apart when Leo wandered back into the room. He collapsed on the sofa between them with a gusty sigh.  

“I think we’re grounded,” he said. “But everyone was shouting too much for me to be sure. They’re coming to get us now. Splinter said stay in this exact spot and wait for him or he’ll have a conniption. What’s a conniption?”

“It means he’ll cry a lot,” Donnie replied. 

“I don’t know how to get to New York,” Yuichi piped up, frowning. “Nee-chan says it’s really big, too. How am I supposed to visit?”

Leo slid his bokken from his belt and laid it across his lap. There wasn’t a single etching or carving on it anywhere, the glossy lacquered finish completely unbroken. If Donnie hadn’t seen those strange glowing runes for himself earlier, he’d have a hard time believing in them now. 

“When I really need to go somewhere, a door opens,” Leo said. “It happened when your house burned up, Snow. We were trapped inside but I got us out. I’ve never done it on purpose before but I think I could. Maybe.”

“Not by yourself,” Donnie said immediately. He didn’t want Leo to get the wrong idea that his family would let him go traipsing off through magic windows all alone. “Or Papa really will have a conniption.”

Leo smiled down at his hands, that crooked, happy smile. He didn’t say anything, which Donnie knew meant he still didn’t believe it all the way yet, but he would someday. He was too smart not to. 

When Splinter arrived nearly two hours later, Donnie didn’t notice him at first. He and Leo were busy conducting experiments, since they had a magical sword on hand and some time to kill. They had collected a bit of a crowd at that point, Leo’s actual friends clustered around him—including a tiny otter who made it abundantly clear why Leo was a professional Mikey-wrangler within seconds of meeting the kid—as he tried to make his bokken glow again. 

“It’s not gonna work,” Niji said with absolute authority. Her scales were teal for now and she kept hitting Leo’s foot with her tail to be annoying on purpose. “Or it would’ve worked already.”

“Google how many tries it took to invent the lightbulb and get back to me,” Donnie replied without looking up, scribbling notes on the back of an algebra worksheet he stole from a bookbag lying on the floor nearby. The lizard girl hissed at him and he hissed right back. 

“Your brother’s mean,” the tiny otter dangling over Leo’s shoulders said with obvious delight. “He made Midori cry.” 

Midori was, of course, the frog yokai that Donnie had threatened to eat. Word got around quickly it seemed—half the room was keeping a healthy distance from the turtles. Donnie tried not to look smug about it, but he didn’t try very hard. 

“He’s nice to me,” Leo said, squinting in concentration. “I think he only makes bullies cry.”

“Doesn’t Midori make fun of you, Renren?” Yuichi asked, poking the otter’s diamond-shaped nose. 

“Yup!” Ren wriggled happily, getting in everyone’s way, obnoxious and noisy and loved for it. “That’s why Koko’s brother is mean and cool. Next time Midori tries to call me a name, I’ll show him the picture Suzy took of his face all puffed up like a balloon!”

“I shouldn’t encourage this,” the Suzy in question, a fluffy owl named Susumu, said primly. “But Midori is such a jerk. I made like twenty copies of the photo in case Miss Toto finds out.” 

“Then I expect to find twenty copies on my desk before bedtime, young lady,” Miss Toto announced firmly, and a ripple of chaos spread through the room as a dozen kids realized their guardian had come home without warning. Even some of the ones who weren’t actually doing something wrong scattered with the ones who should have been working on chores or homework. 

That’s when Donnie realized Splinter was standing in the doorway, looking like he’d just been watching over them for a little while. 

He waved and said, “Hi, Papa. I found Leo.” 

“Don’t you wave at me,” Splinter snapped. “You are in so much trouble, mister. Jumping face-first into a portal! Who raised you?”

“Is that a trick question? I don’t like those.”

Leo shrugged Ren off his shoulders and stood up fast, shoving both his sword and the otter into Yuichi’s arms. When he faced Splinter, he looked like he wanted to hide inside his shell and live there forever, but he only hunched his shoulders and tucked his chin instead. 

“It was my fault,” he managed to say. “I yelled at you and ran away and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I won’t ever do it again. I’ll be—” 

But by then, Splinter had crossed the room in a few swift strides, and scooped Leo up into his arms the way he’d wanted to back in the lair, and Leo was too startled to speak.

“You can’t just disappear like that, Blue!” Splinter chided fiercely. “Red and Orange are frantic, June keeps forgetting herself and trying to call the police, April just about stormed the Hidden Cities on her own, and I was ready to sell my soul to the nearest witch for another finding spell! It is a whole mess back home!” 

He rubbed his furry cheek on the top of Leo’s head and closed his eyes. It was the closest Donatello had ever seen his father get to tears and it made him feel uneasy. Donnie shoved his notes into Yuichi’s already-full hands and scrambled over to tug at the front of Splinter’s jacket. He was lifted up immediately and Splinter held them both. 

“You are my precious treasures, and I had no idea where you were. Do you have any idea how frightened I was?” Splinter said. 

Donnie watched Leo’s face wobble and scrunch up miserably as he struggled not to cry again. His twin was the only person he’d ever met as stubborn as him.  

“Sorry,” Leo mumbled, “sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Papa’s next breath shuddered out of him. He squeezed them extra tight, and kissed each of their foreheads, and then said, “It’s okay. It’s okay now. We are all going to go home, and have a long talk after this, but it is okay .” He looked right at Leo until Leo nodded slowly. Then he added, “But you’re both grounded until you’re at least thirty! You are never leaving my sight again! If you think I’m joking, you have another thing coming!” 

It was his silly-scolding voice, and it soothed the last of Donnie’s worries. Leo’s worries weren’t gotten rid of so easily, but somehow he managed to have more hope inside him than fear. 

So he was brave enough to lay his head on Splinter’s shoulder and say, “Okay, Papa.” 

That surprised Papa so much he nearly fell over. The tiny yokai children in his path squawked in alarm, and Donatello laughed because the suddenness of the almost-fall made his stomach swoop. 

A moment later, just a second behind, Leonardo laughed, too. 

——

When Leonardo was fourteen years old, he split his time between the yokai world and the human world almost evenly. 

Neo Edo was where their ancestral house was and where they went to school. It was where they had nosey neighbors and block parties and parents night at the junior high, where people recognized Leonardo and his brothers at a glance and collectively referred to them as ‘Yoshi’s boys’.

But there was a part of Leonardo’s heart that belonged to New York City. His portals to the lair always opened up easily, even eagerly, giving the truth of the thing away to anyone who knew what to look for. 

It was home. The first one Leonardo had ever had that he could believe was his to keep. 

“Blue,” Splinter called from the doorway of the living room, pausing on his way through to the kitchen, “what are you doing?” 

Leo, more out of boredom than anything else, was poking Raph in the face while he tried valiantly to read the last chapter of his book, and then looking innocently away every time his big brother leveled a glare at him. 

“Nothing, daddy,” Leo called back in his sweetest voice.

“Orange, what is Blue doing?” Splinter tried next. 

“Invoking the Cain Instinct,” Mikey answered without lifting his eyes from his canvas, three days in on his latest painting and fully in that headspace where time and space didn’t exist and he would only eat if someone physically put a sandwich or something in his free hand. That didn’t stop him from knowing exactly what his brothers were up to at any given point.  

“For what purpose?” Splinter asked.

“Dee went to pick up April from work and the twins are like ninety percent of each other’s impulse control,” Mikey said. “Also Lee is just like that as a person.” 

“That’s true,” Splinter conceded, and stayed to watch the show.  

When Raph finally slammed his book down it was Leo’s cue to gleefully scramble to his feet and run for his life. He shrieked with laughter when he was caught and scooped right off the floor in seconds. 

Raph’s act of revenge was aggressively nuzzling the top of Leo’s head with his cheek, rumbling playful turtle sounds at him that wouldn’t have convinced a single living person that he was actually angry.  

Leo could have hidden in his shell if he wanted to—and no one would yell at him for it, or threaten to crack it open to get him back out, or do anything more than carry it as carefully as they carried Mikey’s until they found a comfy place to put it down—but he didn’t want to. 

Ever since he was a little kid who first crawled under his big brother’s blanket after a nightmare, who first learned to skate while holding onto his big brother’s hands, he knew where he was safe. 

“Is that the sound of Nardo making someone’s life more difficult than it needs to be?” Donnie’s voice rolled drolly from the entrance of the lair. “Note my tone of utter disbelief.”

Leo squirmed around in Raph’s arms until he could free one hand and make a grabby motion toward the sound of his twin. Even if he couldn’t see him, he could smell him, and Donnie had definitely come home with Starbucks. 

“I’m rolling my eyes,” Donnie said, but he crossed the room and put an iced coffee in Leo’s waiting hand anyway. 

“Boys, I got the keys to the roof!” April hollered from the turnstiles. “It’s go-time, baby!”

“What roof?” Splinter asked suspiciously. 

“One that I’m definitely allowed to be at and have keys for,” his honorary daughter replied, lifting her chin. Not even the FBI would be able to crack her. 

Raph set Leo on his feet, then swiped his cup away and took an annoying slurp before Leo managed to snatch it back. 

“You don’t even like coffee!” he complained. 

“Big brother tax,” Raph replied unrepentantly, making his way over to begin the perilous undertaking of extracting Mikey from his creative process without losing a finger. 

“Try not to end up on the news,” Splinter said, knowing when to pick his battles. “April, you are in charge. Red, you are also in charge. Blue, you are in charge in a third and different way.” 

“Can I be in charge of Donnie?” Mikey asked, raising a paint-smeared hand.

“Of course you can, Orange,” their dad said. 

“I’m running away,” Donnie announced to the lair as a whole. 

The familiar noise washed over Leo like sunshine. He totally understood why regular turtles could bask in that stuff for hours. He sipped his latte and drew a gleaming silver katana from over his shoulder, an ancient bunny charm dangling from its bright blue guard. 

Leo smiled up at Splinter as he passed him in the doorway, never missing an opportunity to duck in for a hug. His dad always tucked him under his chin and held him tight, as if he was still that little eight-year-old boy terrified to death of being abandoned. 

“Have fun, my Baby Blue,” Splinter said. “And if you don’t come home with a cheesecake for your poor father, don’t bother coming home at all.” 

Leo snorted and started to laugh, and by then Mikey had had enough lingering around, whining at the top of his lungs, “Come on, Lee, let’s go already! It’s Cannonball Day!”

“Yeah, Fearless, lead the way,” Raph rumbled fondly.

Donnie stood there watching him with steady gold eyes exactly like his own, and said, “We’re all waiting for you.”

Leo grew up in an orphanage, an unwanted bad omen, and now he had two houses and two hometowns. He was one of four brothers and he loved them with a conviction that he hadn’t known existed outside of storybooks when he was a child. He had a shortcut home from anywhere and a family who would fight god to keep him. 

Hamato Leonardo—who was called Koko by his old friends, and Stripes by his best friend, and would always be Blue to his dad—was a very lucky turtle. 

[wcnderlnds]

drive ins and twinkie kisses | peter maximoff

・❥・ summary: peter takes you to the movies and uses his favourite snack to make a move ・❥・word count: 1.2k ・❥・warnings: none really. just kissing. ・❥・ authors note: i haven't wrote in a week because i've been sick but this idea came to me after some shenanigans in the evanverse server so <3

The new drive-in opening had been the latest buzz around town. Anywhere you went, everyone was talking about it to the point that you needed to go check it out yourself. All your friends had already been and were raving about it but you? Well, you didn’t exactly have anyone to go with. The night your friends had gone, you’d been on a mission with the X-Men so, although they’d invited you, you’d had to decline. The frown on your face anytime someone brought the drive-in up was enough to melt even the coldest of hearts including Peter Maximoff. Now, he wasn’t heartless – not at all but he wasn’t one to cave in just by seeing a pretty face. He had resisted for as long as he could but he couldn’t take it anymore when he saw you sat looking miserable when you had yet to pass up another opportunity to go.

“Okay, fine,” he sighed heavily, arms folded across his chest as he appeared in front of you in a blur of silver. “I’ll take you but don’t make a big deal about it or anyth- oof.”

Peter stumbled back slightly as you threw yourself at him, arms wrapping around his midsection while you hugged the life out of him. His hands hovered in the air, awkwardly wondering what the hell to do with them. Not that he would ever admit it to anyone - other than Kurt because for some reason he liked to tell him everything - Peter wasn’t the best when it came to physical affection or relationships. Maybe it was the lack of experience. Or maybe he was just a complete idiot whose brain short circuited at the feeling of another person touching him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been in relationships before. He had but they hadn’t lasted longer than a few months before he lost interest or they got fed up with his consistent need to be moving. With you, you seemed to have captivated his interest the moment he met you. He remembered the day so vividly – how you’d walked into the mansion looking lost, almost scared. He’d been zooming through the halls but had come to a comedic halt when he spotted you. Introductions had been made thanks to him worming his way into Hank who had been giving you a tour of the place and it had gone from there. 

Peter found himself wanting to make you smile. On those dark, dreary days where he got lost in his own mind, the image of you smiling could always make things seem a little brighter. The fact you’d been moping around the mansion for the last week just didn’t sit well with him at all. If he had to take you to the drive-in himself then so be it. He could totally sit through a movie with you. Totally.

…so, maybe he couldn’t. Being in a car in the first place was enough for him to go on a rant about how he was much faster and cars were pointless to him but then there was the fact that he had to sit still for at least two hours. It was enough to drive the poor man crazy. A form of torture. His eyes darted around the place, the car full of all the candy wrappers the two of you had been eating since you’d first drove in. His deep brown eyes zoned in on you, the corners of his lips quirking up into a soft smile. Just watching you focus on the movie was enough to calm him, the knee he’d been bouncing up and down slowly coming to a halt. How was it you could make him such a mess yet so calm at the same time? Realising he should probably stop staring at you before he seemed like a creep, he eyed the last Twinkie sitting in the middle of you both.

His hand reached out to grab it but you must have had the same thought because he felt your fingers brushing against his. Peter instantly looked up, his eyes catching yours. “You tryna steal the last Twinkie from me, huh?”

“You were trying to steal it from me!” You protested, cheeks flushing. The feeling of his fingers touching your skin still sending shockwaves through you.

“Me, steal? Never. Can’t believe you’d accuse me of such a thing.”

“Okay, Mr Kelpto.”

Using his super speed, Peter quickly snatched the Twinkie, unwrapping it. “Okay, here’s an idea. I’ll eat from one end and you eat from the other. I won’t even cheat and use my super speed to eat more than you,” Peter stuffed one end in his mouth before you could reply, his hand gesturing for you to take the other end.

Peter could feel his heart beating a mile a minute as he began to chew the sugary treat. The closer the two of you got to the middle, the more he realised how stupid of an idea it was. Like, really? What did he think was going to happen? That was the problem – he didn’t think. Peter got an idea and rolled with it without really thinking next. He was almost certain his heart was about to beat out of his chest and fall into his lap as his face got closer to yours. Then he felt it, your lips gently brushing against his as the two of you ate the final piece. That was all it took for his brain to once again short circuit. Throwing all caution to the wind, his hand reached behind the back of your neck to pull you closer, eyes closing at the sensation of your lips against his. The kiss was cautious at first, Peter’s soft lips moving slowly against yours but when he felt your hand resting on his thigh, he gained the confidence to test the waters a little bit more. His tongue darted out across your bottom lip hoping and praying you wouldn’t push him away. When you parted your lips, he felt like he was actually going to ascend into the heavens. There was no way this was actually happening. Was he about to wake up and find out he was dreaming the whole time? He damn well hoped not.

Peter finally, eventually pulled away. His forehead rested against yours, a breathless laugh passed his lips. He took in your face, the slight red tint to your cheeks, your swollen lips and messy hair – he was making sure to take a mental photograph to look back on. This wasn’t something he wanted to forget anytime soon. Not that he wanted to ruin the moment but he had to speak. The silence unsettled him.

“Lady and The Tramp ain’t got nothin’ on us, babe,” he finally pulled away. He gently smoothed your hair down, reluctantly pulling his hand away from you. The music playing in the background caught his attention. His eyes darted to the movie screen seeing the credits rolling. “Oh, shit. We missed the end.”

“...eh, I’m not complaining,” your hands rested on the steering wheel as if you needed to ground yourself from that Earth shattering kiss. The only thought in your brain was how badly you wanted to do it again.

“Yeah? Should I start carrying Twinkies around with me everywhere now?” He raised his brows, leaning back against his cheek with a smirk.

“Yeah, you definitely should.”

taglist (ask to be added or removed): @ldydeath @jazz-berry @lemoniiiiiii @bohnerrific69 @lacucarachapisser @honeymoon8 @evanpetersbf

[highonakuweeds]

Who Says Money Can't Buy Happiness? (Part 6)

Sylus x right hand man!reader

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | ao3

Summary: You can't have just one peaceful day, huh? Something had to go wrong after a good morning.

After a week or so of doing what Dr. Zayne had prescribed of you, you woke up more refreshed now, which is a good thing. Before you had left his office, you’d taken a hold of his number so that he could monitor your pulse. You confessed to him that it wasn’t necessarily your heart, but the pulse points at your wrists, which is probably the reason why he chose to keep in touch in the first place. Well, either that, or that he knew that you were close with MC, so if she ever contacted you first, you could tell him how she was doing.

So, he added that before sleeping, it would be a good idea to calm yourself down with a good book, and drink some camomile tea to soothe your nerves. It had you sleeping like a baby, and when you woke up, you felt better than you did yesterday.

You picked up your phone in order to update the doctor.

you

thanks for the recommendation of the tea, dr

feel much better now lol

It didn’t take long for him to reply back.

MC’s boyfriend probs

Anytime.

Just keep on calming yourself down before sleeping.

you

🫡

May your relationship with MC flourish  :333

MC’s boyfriend probs

???

You glanced outside, the red moon of the forever night brighter than usual. Today felt like a good day to take a walk along the N109 Zone’s border. It was a good in-between of the unusual home you had at the gleaming mornings of your day job. Plus, what’s a little exercise before going to work—

Wait. It was your day-off today. 

You let out joyous laughter, laying back down as you stared at the small chandelier just above your bed. Could this day get any better?

—--

You raised your arms high into the air, a sigh of satisfaction coming out from your lips. It had been a while since you decided to take a walk along the border, and honestly, it’s been a while too long.

You started off your pace slow, small steps as breathed in the fresh air blowing from Linkon City. You couldn’t help yourself when a little giggle left you, feeling your heart float. You weren’t quite sure where this sudden burst of giddiness came from, but you welcomed it all the same; when working for the most infamous leader, moments like this are hard to come by.

With this rare instance of peace and tranquility, you could tell that your heart began to beat slower than normal, understanding that you were relaxed for the first time in a couple months or so. The feeling of actually having the chance to rest was too liberating to give up, so you forced yourself not to think about Sylus, or MC, or Aries, or anything that could possibly give you stress or anxiety.

The soft wind ran through your hair, making it sway towards the N109 Zone’s side of the border. You couldn’t care less, though; not with the morning light kissing your cheeks.

Of course, however, given your misfortune, you felt a wave of metaflux surge around you, making you groan. You hadn’t even brought your best day-to-day weapon today! All you had strapped to you (since it was strapped to you at all times) was the simple gun that the Association provided you, a little more than half the ammo right beside it, and a small dagger knife Sylus had gifted you a long time ago.

You let out a groan of annoyance the moment your wrist beeped a warning. You didn’t know how you managed to convince your boss, but you barely wore your Hunter’s Watch; your ‘intuition’ (analyzation of surroundings and calculating possible routes of danger) being accurate enough for Jenna to trust you to not wear it. 

A tick of your jaw clicked in your ear, mimicking the sound of your gun cocking. Your eyes sharpened, darting around everywhere to scan the area for Wanderers. They were near, and attracted to the scent of a human after possible days of not being fed. Or perhaps they were hungry for something else.

The bushes behind you ruffled, causing you to whip your head and aim barely beside the shrub before shooting, just in time as the Wanderer’s failed retreat. It hissed in pain at the bullets, but locked its glare at you, making you purse your lips. It was a Herte Knave, and this specific kind of Knave usually came in groups…

You shot another bullet at its other leg, causing its knees to buckle. Quickly, you shot at its companion’s feet, which was stepping on scrapped metal. It ricocheted into its body, right into its heart. With a cry, it fell, and your attention focused on assessing how many Wanderers were around you.

… 1 at your 12:00—the one you just weakened, 1 at your 10:00—the one you had shot twice, 2 at your 4:00, and 3 at your 8:00, one of them being an Advanced Knave.

You could handle this. 

You were quick to run towards the Wanderer at your 12:00, persuading the other Wanderers to follow suit. Since most of them—aside from the Advanced one—were melee, they took your bait, rushing towards you at full speed. You stepped on the Herte Knave below you, making it scream and squelch as the last of its life drained out of it. And just as the other Knaves were about to attack,

You swiftly move backwards, causing all 5 of them to collide with one another. In their dazed state—as quick as that was—you aimed at the Advanced Knave, easily dodging its ranged attacks. 

You targeted the Advanced Knave immediately, knowing that if you were close enough, most of its attacks would be rendered useless. With one hand, you carried the Hunter’s gun, and in the other, you unsheathed Sylus’ dagger, its beautiful Damascus Steel blade glinting before you sank it into the chest of the Wanderer, making it screech. You could hear the other Wanderers charging at you already, and you rolled your eyes at the nuisance. 

Your foot kicked the Wanderer down, effectively slipping the dagger out of its flesh cleanly. It stayed there as the monster struggled to get out of your weight on that foot, and you made sure to shoot it in its head before shooting the other Wanderers in their hearts. Some of them fell immediately, but the remaining two were resilient; it may be better to kill them with the dagger.

And so you did.

With a stomp to ensure that the Wanderer you had just killed with a headshot remained dead, you used that as leverage to speed up your sprint towards the two Knaves, dagger easily stabbing through their throats. As they fell down to their demise, your melee weapon was difficult to wrench out of one of their necks, leaving it there.

And with the final gush of their blood, the Wanderers were finally killed and dead for good, and you heaved in a sigh. Great, now you have to wash your dagger again. You kneeled down at the Herte Knave with the dagger in its neck, placing your gun back in its holster. Its tip felt hot against your thigh despite the thick elastic fabric distinguishing it from your bare skin. 

Then, out of nowhere, you felt a sharp pain slicing through your other thigh, making you let out a guttural scream. You turned towards the other Wanderer, whose sword was about to cleanly cut your leg in half vertically. It was quick when you stabbed it one more time in its heart, and it dropped slack, no more resistance in its bones. 

Fuck, you could barely even stand with how much pain you were in. you had no choice but to remove your shirt, using your already bloodied dagger to stab a hole into it, making you able to rip it into long strips. With careful and shaky hands, you wrapped it around your thigh, and you cursed when the wound was too big for your shirt to fully cover it. But this will have to do for now. Even if you could already see the blood seeping out of the makeshift bandage.

You didn’t even realize your eyes were tearing up until you tried to stand up. With a loud curse, your knees buckled, causing you to kneel once more. The impact of your knees hitting the hard ground traveled to your thigh, making you suck in a breath at the pain. You had to use something as a temporary cane… Ah, yes, the sword that sliced you in the first place would do.

You stood up with great effort, wincing and groaning throughout it. You placed the blunt end of the sword under your armpit as support, the tip of it digging into the dry dirt of the borders securely. 

How far was home from here again?

—--

You quietly (as quietly as a person with a severe wound could) entered through the staff door that was tucked away somewhere in the back of Sylus’ base. A lot of the people there looked at you, clearly and rightfully alarmed, but you raised a shaky hand, pinching your pointer and thumb and running it across your lips, telling them to not speak a word. 

They preferred you more than Sylus, anyway.

And with that, you were able to go to one of the vacant labs deep underground in Sylus’ base, immediately grabbing all of the tools needed to properly dress your wound. The staff knowing about your condition was inevitable, given they would notice the soiled shirt in the trash anyway. However, you did not want any of Sylus’ doctors to know; they reported everything to him. At least with the staff, you could plead to them to stay silent, but his doctors were relentless.

You sat down on one of the high tables, placing the leg with a wound on its thigh on a stool. The materials were right beside you, but you were just staring at the dripping blood pooling beneath your leg. You had to force yourself to not let any of your tears drip as your wound stung terribly, the flesh around it pulsating as your body desperately tried to fend off any potential infections from dressing the wound in unsanitary ‘bandages’. With shaky and slightly numb hands, you put on latex gloves. This shouldn’t hurt so much; you’ve been through worse. But you were usually under some kind of numbing agent, or under actual good hospital care provided by the Association. Nobody cared if you screamed until your lungs gave out.

But you couldn’t do that now.

Keep yourself quiet, keep yourself quiet, you chided, hissing when you began cleaning the wound, first with unscented, mild soap and water, and then Isopropyl alcohol. It solicited a small whimper from you, and you had to grab a towel from somewhere to bite down on it, muffling any slight noises you made. 

You took a deep breath, staring at the thread and needle in your hands. Could you really do this without anesthesia?

The first stitch that had penetrated you almost made you scream, your hand tensing against the needle driver. You bit down on the towel so hard you couldn’t feel any saliva in your mouth anymore. Push through.

You were glad that you were taught how to suture wounds by Sylus’ doctors long ago. It wasn’t mandatory at all, since you knew that Sylus would most probably just carry you to the nearest doctor that was available. But you insisted on learning, if ever something like this happens. If ever you planned on ‘escaping’ and suddenly found yourself injured.

The thought of you even considering escaping distracted you a little, as it made you giggle a bit. 5 years ago and you were still thinking of leaving such a luxurious place like this. 

You had 3 stitches tied and secured already. But with how big the slash was, you had assumed you needed… 8 more?

The more you worked against yourself, the more you could feel your stomach churn and your forehead dampen. The area burned white with how much it stung, especially after the endless amount of times you punctured yourself with the sharpest needle on Earth.

Well, it wasn’t. But it might as well be without anesthesia.

Finally, after a slow 10 minutes and painful trudges through the necessary procedure, it was stitched. Finally, it was stitched. 

The room was deathly silent, only making the ringing of your ears even more piercing. Your hand slipped slightly with how it was slowly losing its grip, but you managed to place a long strip of gauze over the now neat, clean wound, though slightly jagged from the Wanderer’s sword. Your mouth was dry, your tongue flat against the cloth in your mouth, and you bit down even harder.

Your blood soaked through the first piece of gauze too easily. Too quickly. With a muted curse, you placed another strip, but this time with more conviction; you were slowly regaining your grip.

And so, you grabbed the bandage, finally easily able to wrap it around your thigh. The process was slow, painstaking, and you wouldn’t have been able to deny the times you would force yourself to peel your eyes away from your wound to let your liquid pain drip down onto the cold lab table. 

Two more wrap-arounds and you were finished. Two more wrap-arounds and you were finished. Two more…

You swallowed thickly as you removed the towel in your mouth, sweat beading your forehead. The corners of your vision began to glitch, your physical exhaustion consuming you. But you had to push through; you were already done dressing your wound up. Quietly. Discreetly. Alone. 

It took you a while to clean everything up, to remove the smell of blood from the room. You had grabbed a broom to place under your armpit once more and walked towards your room, which took another 20 minutes. Luckily, throughout the way there, a couple of servants had helped you, though secretly. It was like they didn’t want you to know.

But there wasn’t really anything that could get past your eyes.

—--

The moment you opened the door to your room, you noticed a small plate of your favorite food on your nightstand, still clearly fresh. A smile placed itself on your face; of course the chef knew, too.

You sat down on your bed, the mattress dipping. You didn’t hesitate to take a bite of your food, sighing in pleasure when you tasted the familiar sense of warmth spreading around your body. You laid down to rest your back on the headrest, a hand going down to your bed. There was a file on it, something you didn’t notice through the daze of blood loss you just went through. 

You skimmed through it, right wrist beeping softly at the new information. So that’s what Sylus wanted to do…

Something uneasy and unsettling bubbled in your stomach. Not out of jealousy, though, no, totally not. But rather out of concern for MC’s health. How is Sylus so sure she can handle a mission like this?

You needed to reason out with him, surely.

…

Could you walk like this?

—--

The gunshot was what made you narrow your eyes, your hand hesitant on the door handle. Was there a special client he had to have taken care of in his bedroom ? You knew you shouldn’t doubt your boss as just his subordinate, but when have you ever actually taken that role as serious as that?

So, you opened the door, ready to dispose of a dead body despite your leg, when all of a sudden,

“Oh.” Your heart sank even if you had forced your body not to. Sylus was on top of MC in just his robe, pinning her wrists down. A pink cloud that had the words ”LOVE” written in it was right above them, making your mouth dry.

Sylus cocked his head ever so slightly when he heard your voice, and he raised a brow. “Darling, you should know when to knock.” There was that stupid teasing tone when he spoke, as if taunting you to go batshit crazy.

MC, who came to the conclusion that you two were probably an item of some sort (well, what should she have assumed when he called you darling?), looked rather distressed, immediately pushing Sylus off (or at least attempting to). “Wait! Wait, Nyx, this isn’t what it looks like! I-I needed to get a brooch so I could go to the next auctio—”

“I’m sorry for bothering you both,” your voice hung low with forced professionalism as you bowed your head softly, closing the door

Sylus’ grip weakened at your words, disappointed that you had submitted so easily to what was going on. MC wasn’t having it, though, so the moment she felt his grip against your wrists falter, she slipped away with agility, running towards the door whilst shouting your ‘name’. But it was too late; when she opened the door, you were already gone.

So after she closed the door again, she stood there, anger boiling under her skin. And before Sylus could even sneak in a snarky remark, she marched towards him, making him tilt his head. 

And to say that Sylus was caught off guard was an understatement.

MC’s slap barely made him turn his head, but it still stung nonetheless. He could tell she was fuming, especially since he’d never seen her this mad so far.

“You did not tell me Nyx was your lover .” She said in a low voice, as if restraining herself from doing anything bad. “Why do you treat her like she’s just one of your lowly workers?” Sylus opened his mouth to speak, but MC cut him off with a finger. “And why did you do something so suggestive when you had a girlfriend this entire time?”

“You were the one trying to look for the brooch in my bedroom.” He calmly stated, crossing his arms. “And she is not my lover.”

MC scoffed, rolling her eyes. “I only wanted to steal that damn brooch because I need it to go around the N109 Zone. Didn’t you tell me that yourself? Plus, you were the one insisting that I find it instead of just giving it to me. And I don’t believe she’s your lover. Your grip weakened when she came in. Surely that means something , right?”

Her grasp of the brooch tightened. “The auction isn’t that far from now, and as of the moment, I will go with you. That never changed. But,” she glanced at the door, pursing her lips. “Know your boundaries, Sylus.”

She left the room, pinning the brooch onto her shirt by herself before slamming the door, leaving Sylus in his bedroom, for once speechless.

—--

The tears that came from your eyes were not from the wound you had gotten an hour or three ago. Rather, it came from a more internal wound.

You clicked your tongue as tears dripped onto the dark hallway, MC’s voice quieting the more you walked away. The adrenaline of it all began to wear off, making you lose your balance slightly. You hugged the wall to your left with a thud, but it only hit your thigh, making you seethe in pain. Angry tears blurred your vision, but even with that, you were able to make out the two familiar figures, as well as their voices.

“(Name)!” Luke exclaimed, hooking your arm around his shoulders. “Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?” He pried you off of the wall, and you nodded your head, taking a deep breath. “I’m fine,” you replied, but the quiver in your voice gave you away.

Kieran glanced at the way you kept your left leg on your toes instead of flat against the floor. He was quick to do the same that Luke did with your other arm, essentially making the pressure against your leg alleviate just a bit. “But you don’t look fine. Is there something wrong with your leg—”

“I said I’m fine.” You snapped, taking a sharp inhale before speaking again to keep your composure. “I… I had a little fight with Wanderers a couple hours ago, and my leg is…”

“Bleeding?” Kieran asked you, making you narrow your eyes and tilt your head. “Well, technically. But what do you mean?”

“Well,” Luke stared at your left thigh. “It’s—It’s bleeding. Like seeping through your clothes.”

“What? ” You quickly glanced at your leg and realized that you probably pulled a couple of stitches, making you hiss at the realization. Fuck, that means you’d have to redo everything all over again. 

You bit your lip when the twins sat you down on your bed (you weren’t sure how you didn’t notice the walk there) before looking at them. “You two know how to suture, right?”

They nodded hesitantly, exchanging glances with each other. 

“Get the supplies, especially the anesthesia, or a numbing agent, no matter how mild it is. Please. ”

@readerxyourbabe

[impactrueno]

just saw your tweet from a few days ago where lydia offers marriage again in the third movie and bj goes “nope not falling for that one again” and i think it’s really funny

LMAO i wish i could say i came up with it but it's something i've seen a few people joke about and it's just so funny to imagine

she asks for his help once more and so she tries to strike another deal offering what she already knows he wants, and he's like "oh! :) yeah sure sure, let's shake on it," and when they go shake hands he goes "SIKE. ya ain't gonna fool me THRICE, who do you take me for?!"

"i— wh— okay, then...what do you want?"

"no ma'am. not making any more deals with you, go find another sucker 'cause i ain't doin' it."

"WHAT"

.......then again they say that third time's the charm....and 3 is his lucky number....but if he fails AGAIN it would be humiliating

i'm laughing just picturing a very indecisive and conflicted beetlejuice not knowing what to do but standing his ground at the same time. also lydia trying to convince him to help her, probably thinking to herself "how the hell did i get myself into this"

anyway. that's my pitch for beetlejuice 3. if either one of the warner brothers is reading my blog just know that i'm free this week......

[ceasarslegion]

Please tell me about the guy in your college dorm who got scurvy, I love a good modern day scurvy story. Like bro, have a delightful lemon-parm chicken

So in uni I lived in a co-ed dorm building where we had single-person rooms and shared a common room, washrooms/showers, laundry, and a kitchen. We also had a dining hall that we could purchase meal plans from (which i also had all 4 years, because i juggled full time school and 2 jobs at the same time. I did NOT have the time to cook for myself and I would not have done so in that kitchen to be frank). The building was split up into a bunch of different houses which we took personality quizzes to get assigned to in order to limit the amount of conflicts that would happen in this living situation. I was put in the smallest house (there were only 20 of us) and it was full of real chill like-minded people who liked to watch movies with me. This guy was the next door away from me, but wasn't my immediate next door neighbour because the stairwell broke up our house down the middle.

He was the house shut-in. He didn't really join any of the hang outs in the common room, or go out clubbing with us, he just kinda shut himself in his dorm room and never came out. Eventually we stopped slipping invitations to things under his door like we did with everyone else because there was no point. But I saw him in the dining hall and I saw him swiping a meal card a few times so I knew he was on the meal plan, meaning i KNEW he had access to fruit and veggies and even just like, juice. The food wasn't good but you had all the opportunities in the world to make it good FOR you, if that makes sense.

One of my jobs at this point was as an overnight security guard for an apartment building. I would come back around 4am and then crash out until 11 or 12 and then go to my afternoon and night classes. This is relevant because I was coming back into the building after a shift once in full uniform while he was sitting on the front steps and looking like he was hungover to the point of near-unconsciousness. I ask if he's feeling okay, if he needs anything, he waves me off and says he just needs some air. I'm like okay well, you know which doors mine if you change your mind bud.

He was an enigma who never spoke to us so I waved the situation off as too much college partying or something.

Over the next few days this becomes a common sight among everyone, who says they would also come back from their part time jobs or outings to him nearly passed out on a courtyard bench or something, a few people said they heard someone throwing up in our floor's shared bathroom.

About a week later I come back from my shift as usual and crash in bed until noon, expecting to wake up and go to my classes as usual. I grab my school bag and throw my regular coat and boots on and walk to class. I liked to sit in the back of that lecture hall because that prof had a rule that you were allowed to eat in his class as long as you sat in the last 3 rows, so I'd bring my breakfast and coffee in one of the dining hall to go boxes. I did not end up eating my breakfast or drinking my coffee.

In fact I did not make any notes on my laptop.

In fact, the house discord server blew up while I was asleep.

This guy, this fucking guy, had gone to our don (RA, basically) and told her he needed to go to the ER and then passed out on her couch. She doesn't have a car because none of us did, so everyone who was there and awake ended up dragging him to the closest hospital that was a few blocks away from campus on foot. Why they did not call an ambulance or at least an Uber is beyond me, but panic does weird things to people.

Reading through this in the corner of my eye before class starts, I have forgotten about class entirely. I have forgotten about my breakfast and my coffee. A few people were asking if they should ask for the don's master key and wake me up, thinking that i might have training in these things from what my job was (i did), and then others shut them down saying "no, let him sleep. He gets home at 4:30 in the morning" (WHY DIDNT YOU WAKE ME UP I WOULDNT HAVE CARED IF YOU SAID SOMEONE WAS HAVING A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. I COULDVE AT LEAST KEPT YOU ALL CALM AND DELEGATED TASKS)

I send a message in just saying "guys I'm up now what is going on" with an @everyone attached.

Instantly get "several people are typing." That's never a good sign.

So this guy was in the ER for hours getting IV-fed. Because he had scurvy. And they had to vitamin C infuse him. Because he hadn't eaten a single fruit or vegetable or anything derived from a plant the entire school year. He got SCURVY. IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2019.

Bro eat a fruit. EVER?? But he just didn't. He just never did. He had fucking scurvy. He passed out and had bleeding gums and his teeth almost fell out. Because he had scurvy.

He did not come back the next school year because his parents pulled him out of the dorms on the basis that he couldn't be trusted to take care of himself after that incident. And I do not blame them at all. Ma'am your kid can't be trusted to eat one (1) orange all year.

[deus-ex-mona]

pretty minor thing to think about, but i find it interesting how chapter 7 is the first chapter illustration to show chizuutan as chizuru (instead of chuutan)

like, i get it’s a flashback chapter, but we hardly got to see her as chizuru in the previous few chapters thus far… maybe we’ll get to see more of her as her true self after the hiyori fight/make up? only future chapters may tell, i guess…

[fifty-ten]

i thought splatfest was next week (& only found out it was this week because i happened to check splatnet) so i missed half of it … really disappointing

[anotherpapercut]

one of my favorite things a customer has ever accused me of was 6 years ago when I worked at Rita's (an Italian ice and frozen custard chain) a woman who came in every day with her husband and ordered the exact same thing insisted that the cups were smaller than usual and when we told her that they weren't she started screaming at me and my shift lead that we were "obviously shrinking the cups back there"

I still wonder constantly how she thought we were doing that

[cannot-copia]

this year so far

[guhhhhhhhhhhh]

I am going to make it thru this week even if it kills me I am GOING TO MAKE IT THROUGH THIS WEEK REALLY IM going to make it through this week

[b-blushes]

i'm so excited because i've gotta go to the supermarket tomorrow to get a couple of missing items (we've had groceries delivered for as long as i can remember due to various family health issues and the fact that doing a weekly shop at a supermarket would knock me flat out for days/longer) and i was thinking about a little treat i could get myself to really get pumped for going and i remembered. the supermarket sells FLOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[baekuras]

shoutout to every customer coming in the last hour we were open and special shoutout to the one who came in 1min before we closed and tried to discuss if we still had something available (we don’t) and wanted me to check just to be sure (like literally we don’t sir you’re glasses are antique by now please leave) and then wished us a good closing shift later me and my coworker just said “....now” as they left and raced to close up

just sure last hour and little things are fine but one came in 15mins to get his glasses fully fixed which would require taking them fully apart so uh no come in next week and just the last guy “i need these adjusted” “okay-are they loose or too tight?” “they dont fit behind the ears” .....i guessed that much but HOW do they not fit? too tight too loose too smth else add to that i couldnt even do much because the material was too hard by now so...eh lucky for me because we didnt have to sit around too long and wait but also fucking christ

we were open since 9am you really couldnt have found any other time except 1min before closing? aka 4pm? really? are you sure that was soooo necessary but not necessary enough to not come by ANY other time?

[lunarfortune]

[inkskinned]

i love finding out how big this world is. my girlfriend has only visited boston a handful of times, but i grew up here. i told her we'd be going to do the tourist traps in salem, and she said - which salem?

to be fair to her, there are a lot of other states that have a town named "salem." and i think there's some evidence that the witch trials actually happened in what is now called Danvers. but the thing is - she thought "salem" was like, a made-up thing. there wasn't actually a salem, massachusetts - like there isn't a gotham city.

they don't talk about it that much where she grew up, is the thing! and this made me laugh. a week ago she was talking about her hometown and said something akin to "well the museum's kinda like the one in richmond," and i had to explain i still had no frame of reference for what the hell this museum was like.

i love finding out what knowledge i take for granted. i used to live with 5 other women. 3 of them were from south korea. they had to take, like, a solid fifteen minutes to explain their birthday system to my gay math-blind ass, laughing as they did.

that same month, our roommate from denmark taught me the danish word for wreath by accident - she'd been talking about decorations, used krans, and i'd been able to figure it out through context. i just picked it up and kept talking. our entire house used krans as the word. she came home and slammed the door one evening, mock-angry, shouting: you motherfuckers! it's a - a wreath!

and how often do you use certain words, anyway! i am cuban, so i was raised with certain spanish words sort of sprinkled in there; but never how you'd think. in middle school i asked someone to pass me the recogedor - in a completely american accent, like i was speaking english. i hadn't registered it as a spanish word. i mean, how often in school do you actually use the word "dustpan" - i'd only ever heard it in the context of cleaning my house.

there are places that you grew up that you, just, like, know. that you assume everyone knows. there are things and people and "common knowledge" that you have that, just, like. doesn't exist for me. i don't know what you call your public transportation system, but in boston we call it "the T". our train cards are called charlie cards because of a song where a father accidentally abandons his family, which was written because our system of transportation. in boston, most people would snort and say everyone knows that, kid.

i think you and i should go on a long walk - it's getting dark early these days and we need any sun we can manage. tell me about the first time you saw snow. tell me about the stuff everyone knows about your home. tell me about the cities "everyone's been to," about the food "everyone's already tried." who knows. maybe it will feel nice to you - watching someone learn about it for the very first time.