#fun fact i mispelled your url like 6 times trying to add that tag

[goodlucktai]

17 with rise b-team?

dialogue prompts

17. “How many fingers am I holding up? ... I don't have six fingers.” 

x

“Ohmigosh!” Mikey scrambles down the fire escape with half of his usual grace—which is to say, not much—and lands with a clumsy splash next to Donnie’s boneless sprawl. “Donald, you hit the ground so hard pops probably heard it at home. Are you okay?”

Donnie makes a noise that just sounds like eeuuugrrgghheeuugh. Rainwater is seeping into him from all sides thanks to the puddle he landed in. Normally, he would be making this everyone’s problem by now. The fact that he’s just kind of laying there like he’s given up on life is really worth freaking out about. 

Worried, Mikey tugs frantically at the shoulder of Donnie’s jacket until he opens his eyes, then demands, “How many fingers am I holding up?” 

Squinting at him, Donatello thinks about it for a moment, then announces, “Six.”

“I don’t have six fingers!” Mikey shrieks, the peace sign he’s still holding up an inappropriately cheerful gesture for the current situation. 

His big brother scrambles upright at that, his wooden expression falling away and sheer panic flashing across his face instead. 

“What in Lovelace’s name do you mean you don’t have—”

Mikey lifts his left hand in its bright yellow short arm cast. They both look at it, and then Donnie puts his face in his hand without speaking in a way that manages to speak volumes. 

“You’re the one who told me to pretend like my broken hand wasn’t even there!” Mikey says defensively.

“Yes, because Nardo will hunt me for sport if you make that break any worse while I’m directly responsible for you.”

Drawing himself up to his full height, which isn’t remarkable on a good day and even less-so when he’s kneeling in the rainy mush of a Brooklyn alleyway, Mikey grits out, “I’m not a baby. I don’t need supervision.”

“Counterpoint, you are a baby and you do need supervision,” Donatello says dryly, heaving himself up off the ground. The battle shell absorbed the brunt of the impact, designed to protect his spine in pretty much every conceivable scenario, but he still looks like he feels pretty sore after that dramatic fall. He puts his hand out for Mikey to take, but Mikey sulks at him and ignores it. “Michael, I just watched you do a handspring off the railing of a sixth-story fire escape. 

“Yeah and it was sick.” 

Or it would have been, if not for the rusted joints that gave beneath roughly one hundred and fifty pounds of ninja turtle. Donnie’s last-minute save was sick as hell, though. 

He didn’t think twice before grabbing Mikey and hauling him onto the safety of the solid rooftop, using himself as a counterweight to pull it off. He wasn’t wearing the battleshell that could fly or turn into spiderlegs, because they were doing a junkyard run and he wanted the one with extra storage space instead. He knew he’d fall, he’s too smart not to have run all those calculations in the split-second he had, but he didn’t miss a beat. 

Mikey doesn’t like that Don almost got hurt helping him. It sours his righteous annoyance a little. And it also lessens his argument by a lot. 

“There are four of us, which divides neatly into two halves of two,” Donatello says patiently. “Two of us who are older, and two of us who are younger. You are firmly in the younger half. If it makes you feel any better, our fearless leader is, too. Why do you think Raph refuses to let him out of his sight while his leg is in that brace? You’re both the babies.”

“Bet you wouldn’t say that to his face,” Mikey mutters, but it does make him feel better, so he lets Donnie haul him to his feet. 

And Donnie was right about more than that, because the second they meet up with Raph and Leo, Leonardo demands, “Miguelito, what did you do?”

As one, Donnie and Mikey look down at his cast—which, okay, which has a thin crack down the middle. Presumably from when Mikey landed on the roof after Donnie’s Hail Mary throw. How did Leo even see it from way over there? 

Donnie starts to look hunted even before Leo whirls on him and says, “You had one job, Tello—make sure his razz stayed un-tazzed!” 

“That is easily a three-turtle operation and there is only one of me!”

Since the twins can go on for ages once they really get started, Mikey drifts over to Raph, offering his biggest brother his best smile. Raph smiles back like a knee-jerk reaction, reaching over to rub Mikey’s head affectionately.

“Have fun, big man?”

“Yep!” Mikey says sweetly. “Donnie will probably tell you some crazy story about acrobatics on a rooftop, but you know how he likes to exaggerate when Leo eggs him on. We had a totally lowkey junk run. Can we get Crazyshakes on the way home?”

Raphie’s not stupid, but he has three very significant blind spots, and they’re all little-brother-shaped. He softens completely and lifts Mikey up to sit in place of pride on his shoulders, tall enough to see all of Manhattan. Then he passes up his phone, even though Mikey totally would have ordered the shakes on his!

He’ll never not complain about being one of the babies, but he has to admit—just to himself, in secret—that there are definitely some perks. 

“Make sure you get that shortcake one for Leon,” Raphie says offhandedly. “He’s been on a strawberry kick recently.”

Part of Mikey wants to roll his eyes at this additional bit of proof that Donnie is constantly right about everything. The much larger part of him just feels warm and sweet and cared for.

He wraps his arm around Raph’s head and squeezes, as much of a hug as he can manage with the phone in one hand and the other in a cast, and adds all four of their favorites to the order. The twins’ argument bounces off the alley walls around them, both of them on the verge of laughter by now and trying not to be the one who breaks first.

Mikey normally isn’t very fond of rainy days, but this one he wouldn’t mind living in.