#disaster twins | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lasanya539 · 21 hours ago

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stay with me, my blood

(written for @petrichorandarson / @hey-little-gay-boy-why-would-we)

Fandom: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Word Count: 4212

Posted on AO3!

Summary: “What brings you to my neck of the woods?” Leo asks Donnie with a tired grin at three AM.

OR: What keeps you up at night, and what keeps you going.

“What brings you to my neck of the woods?” Leo asks with a tired grin.

It’s 3 AM on a Wednesday. Way past the time everyone had given each other their mandatory hugs, wished them good night, and gone to bed. Except for Donnie, who’d gone to his lab, and apparently Leo, who’d gone straight to the living room to the ever-present pile of old comics.

Leo shifts on his armchair to make room. Donnie squishes himself between the cushy armrest and his not-so-cushy twin, both of them completely ignoring the empty sofa right there. He yawns and stretches, purposefully hitting Leo in the face.

“Ouch.” Leo responds mildly, leaning his weight away so he can face him. “Having trouble sleeping?”

“Can’t have trouble sleeping if you just don’t go to sleep.” Donnie answers, eyes closed. His head hurts, and somehow staring at bright screens is making it worse? Insane. Preposterous, even.

“That’s my line.” Leo flips through another old JJ comic and tosses it aside. “Your line is ‘you’re a dumbass and you need to sleep.’”

“Would you listen if I said that?”

“No, because my next line would be ‘duel me for it.’”

“And what makes you think I wouldn’t win?”

“Because it would be a sword fight, of course. Princess Bride style.”

“I’d still win. Those fights are cake-walk.”

“‘My name is Inigo Montoya—’” Leo begins in a horrendous Spanish accent.

Donnie elbows him in the ribs to shut him up. “The only things prepared to die are my ears.” He complains. “Do you have coffee?”

“No.” Leo replies, taking a sip of coffee.

“Gimme.”

“Get your own.”

Donnie blindly reaches out a hand, and Leo tries to climb the armrest to avoid him. Donnie grabs his leg to pull him back. Leo trips and his grip fails.

The coffee mug crashes to the ground, spilling tar-black liquid.

“Press F to pay respects.” Donnie says a second later.

Leo swats him on the head, looking genuinely irritated. “Dude, I told you to get your own, didn’t I?"

“You could've just shared it like a normal person.”

“It was my coffee, and you just spilled it everywhere. Thanks for nothing.”

Leo gets up and stalks away to get a mop. Donnie shuffles on his feet, feeling a little out of place, hands back in his hoodie pocket. “Sorry.”

“Whatever.” Leo nudges him out of the way as he cleans.

“I can make you another cup?” Donnie offers as he finishes.

“No point. That was the last of it.” Clipped sentences. Wow, he must’ve really wanted that coffee.

“I can buy you some? 7/11 run?” He tries, running his finger on the edge of his wallet with his credit cards in his pocket.

Leo lets a breath out between his teeth, gaze flitting to his twin and back. In the dim light, Donnie catches sight of the dark circles under his eyes. “I dunno.”

“7/11 run.” He repeats firmly, turning and walking towards the entrance. “We’re going. Don’t make me drag you there with my battle shell limbs.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.” Leo snarks, yet he follows.

In hindsight, a portal would have been the faster option, but for now, Donnie and Leo walk to the 24/7-open store, keeping their heads down and their giant hoodies up. The humid early May breeze of New York City greets them, the bright light of the advertisements making the heavy clouds in the sky glow.

Leo is unnaturally quiet their whole trip, and eventually Donnie tsks. “You can’t seriously be this upset about your black and bitter coffee.”

Leo gives him an upset look from under his blue hood. His eyes shine in the streetlamps for a millisecond, and Donnie’s heart drops to his stomach. But he immediately blinks it away and forcefully relaxes his posture, shooting his twin some facsimile of a Leonardo smile.

“Can’t even mope over the loss of a well-made cup of coffee anymore.” He drawls out in a teasing voice. “You still owe me a drink though.”

“Leo—” Donnie starts, and stops. Think about the non-answer he’s going to get. Thinks about how he’d rather hear nothing than hear something fake. Starts again. “I’m not getting you any of the fancy syrups, though. Just regular drip coffee.”

Leo pouts. “Not even dark roast?”

“Especially not dark roast.”

The fluorescent lights in the store almost blind both of them, but they power through. Instead of heading to the coffee station, Leo lets out an ‘ooh’ and goes straight to the energy drinks display.

“Absolutely not.” Donnie says sternly, seeing the greedy look in his eyes as he stares at the Celsius. “That will kill you.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but caffeine will never hurt me.” Leo sings-songs, grabbing a dragonberry one and literally prancing away from Donnie as his shell limbs whirr to a start.

“How about I hurt you? Will that convince you otherwise?” Donnie groans half-heartedly, turning his face away from a CCTV camera with practice.

“Well, I did say sticks can break my bones, so sure, you could probably do the trick with your tech-bō.” Leo shrugs and starts picking out a Starbursts packet, like that was a completely normal thing for one half to say to his other half.

Donnie stares at him.

“That was a joke, Nardo, I did not mean that literally.” He explains in a blank voice, tapping his fingers on his thigh, worried. “And don’t call my beautiful tech-bō a stick. It’s beneath her.”

They check out with Donnie’s credit card, because of course Leo makes him buy the Celsius and three whole Starbursts packs, while Donnie sticks with his tongue-incinerating Hot Cheetos.

When they leave, Leo takes a clean, deep breath in the open night sky, and Donnie catches a whiff of food from somewhere. Something spicy and flavorful. His stomach grumbles, and he fails to cover it with a cough.

“Mikey’s dinner was awesome today, right?” Leo casually asks a few moments later. “I love his ramen, the chicken is always super juicy.”

“Yeah, the, uh. The chicken was great today.” Donnie agrees dutifully. “It had just the appropriate amounts of protein for muscle synthesis and sodium for electrolyte levels.”

“Mikey made hamburgers tonight, not ramen.” Leo deadpans at Donnie. Fuck. “You gonna tell me why you skipped dinner? He was worried about you.”

“I was working!” Donnie protests, a thread of guilt shooting through him for dismissing his baby brother when he’d knocked on his lab door. “I have a lot of important projects that require my focus.”

“Oh, yeah? Wanna share with the class?” Leo kicks a stray bottle cap onto the empty road. “I don’t know what you’re working on, but you’ve been very secretive about it. Don’t think we haven’t noticed you always find a way to change the topic whenever we ask.”

Donnie bites his lip. Damn it, so much for improving upon his acting skills. “It’s not a big deal, and I don’t have to go reporting to all of you what I do in my spare time.”

Leo raises his eyebrows. “I’m giving you a free pass to infodump and you’re not taking it? Yeah, something is definitely up.”

He comes close enough to Donnie for him to feel a faint shadow of an affectionate shoulder bump without actually making contact. “If it’s keeping you up at night, it’s bugging you a lot. So spit it out, Dee.”

Donnie could dig in his heels and outrightly refuse, but he seizes the opportunity presented to him.

“Might I propose a good, old-fashioned quid pro quo?”

Leo jumps over a crack in the pavement. “Your Hot Cheetos for my watermelon Starbursts? I love how your mind works, done.”

Master of dodging the point. “No. I meant, I tell you what my project is, and you tell me why you’re up for the third night in a row today.”

Leo shoots him a surprised look, and Donnie tries not to smirk. “Yes, of course I know you haven’t slept for three days, Nardo. I might not be very good at lies, but I’m extremely good at catching them.”

Leo deadpans at him again, long enough that Donnie has to look away, tugging at the collar of his hoodie. “Okay, fine, fine. I installed a transmitter on the coffee machine, which tracks when it’s used, how much, and at what settings. For the past three nights, it's been running between midnight and 5 AM, always on the extra hot setting, and our dark roast stash has been dwindling. There’s only one person in this family who drinks his coffee as black as his nail polish, and insists that it be scalding, because he gets cold at night when he’s alone.”

Leo looks put upon. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” Donnie counters. That’s the one thing he’s certain of, a truth that never wavers in his mind. “Now, deal or no deal?”

He twists his lips wryly. “It’s a sucky deal for you, dude. You already know why I can’t sleep. Insomnia, remember?” He chomps on his candy. “Not uncovering the secret of the universe here.”

Sometimes Leo acts like it’s Donnie’s first time being his twin. “And your insomnia always gets worse because of something. You and I both know that. So spit it out.”

“You first.” He shoots back. Frustrated.

Donnie tugs at the cord in his hood. Here it goes. “I’m building a robot.”

“Most normal day in the Genius Built lab.” Leo replies instantly, and he huffs in response. “What’s different about this one?”

“It’s… well. It’s sentient.” Donnie mumbles, and he trips over his own two feet.

“Pardon?”

“It’s sentient. Like—okay, not fully sentient yet, but I’m programming it to have its own intelligence capacities. The plan is that it will be able to take in information through its optics and audio receptors, and I’m working on a speech module so it can talk to us. And then it’ll be able to, y’know, learn actively without needing constant software updates, and eventually adapt and grow its understanding of the real world and hopefully develop its own sense of personhood. Which is really complicated, obviously. I mean, ‘personhood’ itself is kind of a philosophical nightmare to code, and I haven’t exactly built most of the programs yet, but the base systems are up and running, so that’s something—”

“Woah, woah.” Leo skips into his way, and Donnie blinks to a stop, suddenly feeling dizzy with the lack of air, and taking in a deep breath. There’s a distinctly shocked look on Leo’s face. “Are you talking about… AI? Like, I, Robot or HAL 9000—you’re telling me you sat in your lab and created artificial intelligence? On your own?”

“…Well, I’m trying to.” Donnie responds, feeling shy. He hasn’t actually gotten far enough to say he’ll succeed, no doubt about it—and he hates having to talk about projects when they’re in that ‘kinda, sorta, maybe’ stage and not in the ‘I’m a fucking genius and all should bow to me’ stage. Which is why he’s been so quiet about it. “It’s been a huge undertaking. I’ve been doing a deep dive into the ethics of artificial life and intelligence and trying to, y’know, not bankrupt creative and scientific industries, or set the apocalypse into motion. My plan is to train this robot on recordings of me, which means that the NLP model will be highly grammatically accurate and make constant references to famous historical theoreticians. And probably say ‘cowabunga’ a lot, as well.” He adds. “That’s on Mikey. He should be happy about that.”

“Holy fucking shit, Donnie, that’s huge.” He exclaims, and there’s a genuine grin on his face, all happy and excitable Leonardo cheer, and Donnie smiles automatically at the sight of that. “I mean, that’s a little terrifying, having a tiny clone of you running around the lair—I know you said you want to prevent the apocalypse but I think that would just fast-track it—”

“Oh, go suck an egg—”

“But, holy fucking shit!” Leo makes grabby motions with his hands like he could just pick Donnie up and spin him around. “You’re a bonafide genius! We already knew that, but still! Amazing job, dude. That’s incredible.”

A flood of affection almost chokes Donnie. Leo’s always taken his ‘President of the Donatello Fan Club’ duties seriously. “Thank you, Lee.”

It feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest as he finally allows himself to talk about his project, all the research that’s gone into it, and all the work it’ll take to actually build it. And also the name he’s come up for it.

“SHELL-DON? You’re lying.” Leo cackles, the sound bouncing off between buildings as they head towards a manhole cover in an alley.

“It fits!” He defends himself. “It’s made by me, Donatello, it’s going to be in the shape of a turtle, and what do turtles have, pray tell?”

“A surprising affinity for puns, no matter how much they deny it?”

Donnie swats at Leo’s head, grinning despite himself.

They eventually come back home, the living room clock ticking closer and closer to 4 AM.

Leo lets out a giant yawn. “Well, that was fun, I think I’m gonna hit the hay now—”

Donnie’s tech-bō extends, and trips Leo onto their big couch before he leaves.

“You’re forgetting your end of the quid pro quo.” He sings-songs, flopping down next to him, and Leo groans.

“Can’t we, like, just hope for the best that I sleep tonight? So I don’t have to talk about this? I’ll try super hard this time, pinky promise.”

Hmm. So it wasn’t just his inherent insomnia being worse than usual, something external wouldn’t let him sleep. “Or, you could just tell me what the problem is so I can fix it.”

He runs a hand over his eyes. “You can’t fix people, Tello.”

“I sure as hell can try.” Donnie replies stubbornly. “I’ll even give you some Cheetos. Because I’m nice like that.”

Leo takes a final swig of his energy drink and swirls it around his mouth. Donnie cringes. That must taste like tart acid fumes.

“Do you remember…” Leo begins, and he sounds almost grave, which is not a word Donnie would like to apply to his twin. “Do you remember when we faced off with Draxum last time?”

Kind of a silly question. There’s no way any of them could’ve forgotten. “Yeah. His whole New Jersey magic-saurus trick, all the evil mutants, fish and ladder fighting—I remember. Hard to forget.”

Leo worries his bottom lip between his teeth. “Remember how he told us Lou Jitsu was our dad?”

“The best news of my entire life.” Donnie states matter-of-factly. “Lou Jitsu is the best.”

“True.” Leo allows, although he looks the opposite of happy. “It’s just that—well. Where does Splinter fall into all this?”

Donnie blinks. “Dad? Well, he raised us, of course. He’ll always be our father in all the ways that count. Having Lou Jitsu’s DNA is just an added bonus. It doesn't have anything to do with Dad.”

A chasm appears between his eyebrows, and automatically, Donnie grips his tech-bō tighter. “What if it does? What if—”

“What if what?”

“What if our Dad… is Lou Jitsu?”

There’s a few seconds of shock-still silence, and Donnie lets out a laugh. “That’s not possible.”

“Why not?” Leo says, and there’s a calculating look in his eyes. The chess-master at work. “Splinter never told us where he was from before he got mutated.”

“He was Hamato Yoshi, of course, he lived in Japan, he said that—”

“Yeah, but that was just his childhood, right? When did he come to the States? How did he get turned into a rat? The real reason, anyway. He used to tell us he found ooze spilled in a gutter with four turtles, and when he touched it, he became Splinter. But that was a lie, wasn't it? Draxum created us.”

“…Which means he must’ve gotten us from Draxum’s old lab in the Hidden City, before it got destroyed.” Donnie continues, mind reeling. “And there had only been one human there.”

“And the only non-turtle DNA we have is of Lou Jitsu.” Leo finishes. “Ergo. Dad is actually our biological dad, and he is, in fact, our childhood hero.”

“Holy fucking shit.” Donnie mutters a second later, and Leo huffs. A mixture of euphoria and confusion fills him. “But that’s great news, right? Our father is the best moviestar slash action hero ever! Then—then why would he hide this from us? And why is this bothering you so much?”

There’s a picture forming in the peripherals of his mind, building an answer with facts and fragments he already has, but Donnie can’t focus on it, as he watches Leo pull out a shuriken and spin it between his fingers. An anxious gesture.

“Dad didn’t find us till ‘05.” Leo finally points out.

Something close to horror climbs up his chest.

“LJ went missing in 1995."

Donnie shudders. The picture reveals itself, torn and bloody. “And—” he adds, “Draxum had said that Lou Jitsu was the greatest Battle Nexus champion in history.”

“For ten years.” Leo punches out the words, meeting his eyes with the same mixture of anger and dread. “Dad, our Dad, was stuck in Big Mama’s barbaric and dishonorable fighting ring, for ten years.”

It was different, when they’d just been imagining their idol being a part of those brutal bloodsports led by a vicious and ruthless mob leader. Donnie must’ve subconsciously romanticized it. He’d heard the awe in Draxum’s voice as he’d spoken of those amazing victories and thought ‘man, LJ was so cool.’ He’d never actually considered the cruelty of it, not in any tangible sense.

He’s faced with all that now, sitting in the home Lou Jitsu—Hamato Yoshi, their father—built from the ground up, brick by meticulous brick. A place made safe and warm for his sons, with love poured into every crack and crevice. All so they could have the peace that had been denied to him for years and years.

Donnie’s eyes sting with the force of that realization. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Leo replies hoarsely. He rubs at his face again with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Yeah.”

“You’ve been sitting with this, alone, for three days?” Donnie asks him. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

Leo gives him a sad, crooked smile. “I was kinda hoping I was wrong. Telling you, and having you agree, would just make it real for us.”

That, and the fact that he'd had probably been hoping to not inflict this truth on anyone else, Donnie surmises. He can see that in the rapid flicks of his twin’s gaze on him, guilt barely hidden.

Donnie dries the moisture from his eyes. “So,” he clears his throat, “our dear sensei is Lou Jitsu. And has a shitload of trauma that we can’t even begin to imagine.”

“It kinda makes sense, in a really fucked up way.” Leo hums, the shuriken glinting in the low light of the living room as it spins rapidly. “You remember when Pops wouldn’t get out of bed for days at a time, don’t you?”

Donnie does. He remembers this one particular time, when he was six: Papa hadn’t left his bedroom for so long, and they’d run out of food in the lair. Mikey wouldn’t stop crying, Leo was unbelievably cranky, and poor Raphie had been terrified to go out scavenging for something to eat without his Daddy. And Donnie had had one of his worse meltdowns, banging his fists on the walls, before Leo grabbed his arms so he wouldn’t hurt himself. When Papa had finally resurfaced, he’d woken up to find a seven-year-old Raphie holding an eight-year-old April’s hand, right in the middle of the kitchen, as four young turtles gorged on squished peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“It had gotten so bad.” Leo continues. He helplessly waves a hand. “And I—I resented him for it, for the longest time. Even though I knew what the effects of clinical depression are and how it really, really wasn’t his fault, and he always did the best that he could for us.” He swallows, looking away. Grips the dulled edges of the shuriken hard enough that they dig into his skin.

“Does that make me… a bad son?” Leo asks, in a small voice. “Hating him for something out of his control, for years, and then suddenly changing my mind about it one day?”

Ah, so therein lies the problem, Donnie thinks. A morality crisis. A morality crisis about his sweet, idiotic twin, who’d grabbed a hold of a psychology textbook from a dumpster and stayed up all night reading it to find a way to ‘make the sad clouds in Daddy’s brain go away’, who’d spent weeks learning how to make the perfect cup of matcha tea to put a smile on his father’s face when nothing else would work, who’d sit on the floor next to his armchair and watch his telenovelas with him, just so they’d have something interesting to talk about. He was worried that he wasn’t a good son.

Donnie scooches closer, and intertwines his arm with Leo’s. He startles, not expecting the contact, but he doesn’t let go.

“Searching for answers to a question, and being satisfied with the result, doesn’t make you a bad son, at all.” Donnie says. “That’s how the scientific method works, Nardo. You keep hypothesizing, and trying out different solutions for your problem, and you keep getting frustrated when your experiment fails because it doesn’t make sense. Until you unlock a key detail that changes everything, and you finally get an acceptable explanation. But that doesn’t mean your frustration wasn’t justified, or that you’re a bad scientist. It means you did the best you could with the data you had. And now that you know more, you understand more as well. That's all.”

Leo’s red-rimmed eyes look up to Donnie’s. “You sure?” He whispers.

“Of course I’m sure.” Donnie choreographs his movements, and gently, affectionately, flicks him right over his Raph Chasm. “I’m a bonafide genius.”

Leo grabs his hand, and holds on tight. His fingers are, as always, the coldest out of the four brothers. Donnie never stops hoping he can warm them up.

“What the hell do we do now?” Leo sighs heavily.

Donnie thinks. “Well, there's not a lot to do, is there? What happened has already passed, and Papa is doing leaps and bounds better than he was back then. I guess, the only thing to do is… tell Raph and Mikey.”

Leo shoots him a panicked look. “No! No, no, can’t we just keep it between us? Why do we have to tell them?”

“…Because he’s their dad too?” He answers like it’s obvious.

“But… but I don’t know if they’ll be, y’know, able to take it.” Leo says nervously. “It’s a lot. Mikey’ll cry. Raph will definitely break something.”

“And is not telling them better than keeping this whole thing cooped up, like you’ve been doing?” Donnie asks, one eyebrow raised. “How well has that been working out for you so far?”

Leo tsks. “It’s fine, I was fine. I would’ve gotten some sleep eventually—it’s not that big of a deal.”

Donnie kicks his leg. “You’re a dummy.” He says, point-blank. “Your health is more important than any of our moods. Sure, they’ll get upset. I am upset. But we have a right to know. And you have a right to have someone to talk to when you’re struggling with something.”

Leo looks away.

“You know, you always do this,” Donnie chides him quietly. “You always hide your worst thoughts from us just so we don’t get sad to hear them. But when will your brain comprehend we’re not sad because of you, we’re sad for you.”

“I don’t want you to be sad at all.” Leo mutters petulantly.

“Well, tough luck.” He responds. “You don’t get to micromanage how we feel. Suck it up.”

Leo glares at Donnie. Donnie doesn’t back down.

Until finally, Leo caves, the way he always has when it’s late and he’s tired and it’s Donnie. He rolls his eyes hard enough to hurt, and sighs, leaning his whole body weight onto his twin. “Fine, fine. You win.”

“Whoop-de-do.” He cheers blandly. “What do I win?”

Leo yawns—a real yawn this time—and stretches like a cat. “Cuddles?”

“Hm. I was hoping for uranium, but this’ll have to do, I guess.”

Donnie wraps both his arms around Leo’s midsection, as Leo tangles his legs with his. And they both finally fall asleep.

Six hours later, Donnie is awoken to a small, warm hard caressing his head. He blindly turns his face into it. “Papa.”

“Shh, my Purple, sleep.” His father’s loving voice says, amusement filtering through. “You are practically melded with your twin. You both deserve your rest.”

“Mm. Love you, Papa.”

“I love you so much, my wonderful boy.”

Donnie nuzzles back into Leo’s hoodie, inhaling the faint scent of rose scent beads and something uniquely Leo, and falls back asleep.

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