#if yall liked this please give it some love on my ao3. i crave validation in all forms thaaaaaanks

[angelmichelangelo]

LEO AND MIKEY MEAN SO MUCH TO ME you get it. you really get it. if you feel up to it i’d love if you had anything written about rise leo and mikey and their dynamic. i think about post-movie stuff so offen

LEO MIKEY TIME LEO MIKEY TIME :D enjoy!

x

In a very small fraction of a second, everything changes.

Not thirty milliseconds ago was Leo preparing himself to die. Gonzo. The Big Sleep. The very, lasting End of his life, when there’d been a crackle of hot electricity bursting through the air and so many pairs of hands bruising against skin to yank him back,

Home. The stink of the sewage reserve and overly polluted air that has the undertones of gasoline and smoke — he lands on his shell with a rattled thud, and is almost instantly scooped up by the larger sets of hands: Raph.

“Leo?” His face comes into full view as he cradles him, face taut with worry, each syllable of his name is said with a wobble of concern. “Leo, are you alright? Oh god, I thought we lost you.”

Leo blinks. The sky is no longer a rusty red, the taste of something metallic has since sunk down into his gut, rather than lingering and pooling in his mouth. He swallows, and everything hurts all at once, but he manages to knit himself a frown to match his inwardly confusion.

“Wha—”

Raph pulls him to his body with ease. His arms so gentle as they rest around his limp, aching body. He doesn’t hug back, only because he can’t find even a smidge of energy to do so.

“Mike got you home,” Raph says through happy tears. He can’t see them, not in the way his face was currently pressed tightly into the crook of his shoulder like he was never going to let go, but he knows all his brothers tells without a second glance. “Mikey portaled you home and—”

Something heavy hits the concrete. The sound of a chain spilling against the ground. There’s Donnie’s voice, clipped and short and surprised when he calls out,

“Problem! Problem!”

Raph untangles himself from Leo, a sharp breath snagged and tangled in his vocal cords, it comes out all strangled sounding. Leo forces his neck to move to the left, ever nerve ending firing off at once like a fireworks display, he does it because Raph launches himself upwards without hesitation.

“Michael? Michael!! No, no. C’mon!”

There’s that sudden, frightful urgency creeping back into his tone once again.

Leo can’t hold himself up any longer without Raph supporting him like he once was, so he slowly drifts back to the ground, staring at an unchanged sky whilst chaos continues to erupt around him.

“—get them home, now! Call dad on the way—” Donnie is barking orders fiercely and if Leo had even just a fraction of a smidge of that wonderful energy he was so very much missing right now, he might just tease him for it.

He hears the sound of his brother’s whimpering cry, far away sounding and pained, and Leo closes his eyes, not meaning to fall asleep.

But he does, anyway.

When he wakes up it’s no longer on the side of the dock bay where the air was salty and warm, but instead, in Donnie’s room. Where it definitely smelt worse, in his own humble opinion.

“Yeah, right.” A voice comes from the other side of the room. Leo gingerly lifts his head up, everything feeling so cumbersome and impossible. Donnie is perched in one of the beanbag chairs, flicking through a magazine he was barely skimming over with a quick darting of his eyes.

He pauses to look over towards his brother, expression softening for just a small moment.

“You were saying my room smelt. Something like saltwater and humble pie.” He sets the book down onto the end table. “You’re delirious with pain so I’ll let it slide.”

Leo hums, dropping his head back again, his eyes slowly pinching together, he tries to knit together some kind of coherent blanket of thoughts and memories as to what had happened.

“You passed back out on the way home.”

Donnie’s standing now beside the bedside, googles torn off from where they were usually perched on the come of his head, he’s lacking his usual bandana; a nebula of purple rings swallow up most of his eyes, both bruises from battle and no doubt the stress. He runs a hand tiredly down the entire length of his face and sighs.

“You broke a lot of bones,” he tells him straight. “Like a crazy amount of bones.”

His throat bobs. It’s serious then. “Luckily nothing… majorly important.” He deadpans him, eyebrows looming in low. “Like your neck, for example.”

Tinges of pain creep around his throat, like a ghostly whisper of his hurt that still lingers there. He’d try to reach up and touch it with his fingertips, but he’s assuming his arms were currently also out of commission with the rest of his body.

Plus, it’d look a little cliche, in his opinion.

“And,” Donnie adds pointedly, narrowing his eyes rather suspiciously. “There’s the whole self-sacrifice conversation that has been undoubtedly shelved for another time. If Angelo hadn’t portaled you out of there, Nardo, I don’t know wha–”

Leo finds all his strength at once to bolt upwards, eyes wide with a kind of panic that creeps across his chest with ice.

“Mikey,” he says with a breath. “Where is he, is he–”

Donnie shushes him with a flap of his hand, brows pinched together and mouth drawn in a stern, hard line.

“Quit moving about like that.” He moves towards him, more or less pushing him back down against the springy mattress. Seeing Leo’s concern however, does something to shift some of the hardness from his face, and he manages to pat Leo’s shoulder in a somewhat affectionate way.

“Raph and Dad are with him,” he tells him, drawing his chair up closer to the bed to sit beside his brother. “He’s alright. Pretty out of it.” His throat bobs, as if savoring all the words he perhaps didn’t want to say.

Eyes dart away and Donnie’s hands end up twisting together. Leo wishes nothing more than to reach across and grab them gently to still him, even for a moment. But the casts alongside the drugs that were swimming about in his system prevent his limbs from listening to a single command he wills them to doing.

“It was touch and go for the both of you,” Donnie finally explains, still failing to look at him at all. “What our dear friend Casey failed to mention was…” his throat bobs again, this time to swallow back the tears that brim his eyes. He fixes on a more sturdy expression when he looks to Leo. “Was that Mikey blew himself up when he opened up the portal last time. Or, er, rather, in the future, I guess.”

Leo blanches. “He what?”

Donnie nods. “Uh huh. Like, to dust.” A beat. “He’s lucky.” A ghost of a smile breezes past his brothers face, more tears springing behind warm browns. “We’re… all lucky.”

Leo sniffs. Maybe it’s the drugs, or maybe it’s the fact that they’re outta Staten Island together, but it doesn’t matter regardless. “You gotta let me see him.” He’s telling his twin. “Or I will just get up and walk to the next room regardless.”

Donnie sighs, standing and scraping back his chair, he deadpans his brother and says,

“I figured just as much. Alas, I am ten steps ahead of you, dear brother.” He throws a unbothered glance over his shoulder. “April.” He calls out.

There’s the squeaking of bed wheels against the floor and hurried, excited footsteps. With the med bay curtain pushed back Leo finally has eyes on his little brother.

He’s tucked up in his bed, face lacking his usual mask, highlighting his tired, beaten face. He’s got a split bottom lip that seems to be healing alright, still some leftover dried blood on his chin, and his arms…

Leo’s throat bobs as he soaks in the image. Mikey’s arms are bound tightly, from his hands all the way up, snaking up and around to each of his shoulders.

“S’not as bad as it looks,” Angelo is quick to assure him, voice so airy and breezy like they were discussing anything but their newfound bond over near-death experiences. “Don said I might need to wear compression stockings for a little while after to help with the nerve damage, but it don’t hurt so bad right now.”

Leo hums, waiting for their beds to be pushed together, Donnie side steps out of the way, side eyeing his brothers carefully.

“Well, that would be on the account of the boatload of drugs we supplied you with,” he says, musing over his words. Then, getting very serious, he tells them, “I want you both resting. This isn’t a sleepover. You very nearly died.” His expression softens. He lands a hand on Mikey’s shell and gives it a rather affectionate pat.

“Stop him from going stir crazy in here, will you?” He says, gesturing to Leonardo with a playful bob of his head.

Leo laughs brightly, and is somehow able to reach his arm across, wrapping Mikey’s bandaged fingers up beneath his, giving them the fainest of squeezes. Any other time he’d taken the opportunity to simply bypass Donatello’s laws and rules.

But true to his word, he was indeed hooked up to a lotta good drugs. All of which were seemingly kicking in at once.

“We’ll be okay, Dee,” he hears Mikey say, voice gentle and true. He feels him just about managed to squeeze his hand back, and although there’s a conversation still on sacrifices and suicidal portal missions, right now, with the weight of his brother’s hand in his and his gentle laughter filling the room, it was all the best medicine Leo needed for a peaceful sleep.