#let them have a night off to just chill and trashtalk television shows

[spectrumscribe]

trust fall.

@lgbtmntweek thank you for giving me the excuse to write a soppy hurt/comfort fic for capritello, after that nasty rib cracking incident in Wanted: Bebop and Rocksteady. 

#ProtectThePuckboy2017

(slightly mature jokes told inside, but nothing even close to graphic.)

Casey probably should have expected it to happen, and should have been completely used to it by now. He decides he could just blame getting startled by tapping on his window on the painkillers.

Two shadowy figures crouch outside his bedroom window, somehow hidden perfectly, despite the sun still being in the process of sinking below the city buildings. Ninjas, honestly. They never seemed to let go of the dramatic flair with their appearances.

Then again, who is Casey to talk about drama?

He pops the window lock, and sits gingerly back down on his bed as April and Donnie climb inside. His ribs ache like nothing else, and he very acutely feels the rampant bruising across the front of his chest. Casey isn’t too broken up about it though; it could’ve been punctured lungs or possibly straight up kabob-Jones instead if he hadn’t had his gear on. And with the fights he’s been in, that they’ve all been in over the years, a few broken ribs is small turkey.

Well. Mostly. They still hurt a whole lot and make even getting to the bathroom a pain in the ass.

“You two are out early,” Casey comments, leaning back against his mound of pillows, courtesy of his dad and sister. They’d even brought him dinner in bed, which had been awesome, except also a little lonely in his room with just his laptop and Netflix. Casey doubts he’ll be lonely much longer, now that his partners are here.

“Would have come sooner, but we got held up by Leo,” Donnie says, and what’s that? Casey’s boyfriend looks embarrassed about something. Consider his interest piqued.

“We got the Talk,” April says without a stutter, earning a miserably embarrassed groan from Donnie. She always was the boldest of them with this sort of thing, once she got past the initial three-way romance issues. “He felt it was his leaderly duty to remind us to use protection.”

“We’re eighteen, for god’s sake,” Donnie mutters, dropping his bo staff off the side of the bed. “We know what protection is. And you have broken ribs anyways. We’re not. Doing that for a while.”

Casey grins at Donnie, who avoids his eyes and looks both peeved and shy at the same time and aw, still embarrassed about discussing sex things after all these months? Fucking adorable.

“I told Leo as much,” April adds on, kicking off her shoes and dropping her sword and fan with Donnie’s bo. “Also where he could stick his invasive opinions about our bedroom life.”

Casey snorts, trying to not laugh for the sake of his poor ribs. “Is that why I got a bunch of all caps texts and snapchats from Mike and Raph?”

“Probably speaking. What were they about?”

“Mostly Leo looking like he’s lost his desire to exist.”

“Then yeah, that’s what they were about. I might’ve gotten a little… strong, towards the end.”

Donnie snorts. “Try strong at the beginning and devastating towards the end.”

April shrugs and seems to regret nothing. Casey laughs and does regret it as everything hurts. “Ow, ow, ow, fuuuck this. Hey Don, can I trade you a foot massage for some mutagen? You can just change me back once my ribs are healed and stuff.”

“Uh, no, because that’s an even stupider way to heal faster than Raph’s method. Which is power drinks and in protein smoothies and even more exercise than usual,” Donnie sniffs disgustedly in the way only a medic can. He starts shoving stray pillows out of the way and moving up the bed. “Now strip. I need to look at your chest.”

April makes an interested sound, and Casey pretends to be shocked. “Oh, already? Thought you said-”

“Casey.”

Casey grins unrepentantly, and April giggles into her hands. Donnie gives them both frustrated looks he doesn’t really mean.

“You’re both terrible,” Donnie grumbles.

“That’s Donnie for ‘I love you’,” Casey says in a stage whisper to April, who laughs harder as Donnie cuffs Casey’s ear. “Ow. I thought we were treating me nicely, I’m injured after all-”

“You’re an idiot, that’s what you are,” Donnie snips. Casey sticks out his tongue, but starts to gently pull up his shirt.

April watches with her knees curled at the end of the bed, while Donnie starts examining the wide, dark bruises on Casey’s chest. Casey whines when a stethoscope comes out, frigid on his very tender skin, but breathes when asked as Donnie listens.

“Any coughing? Odd pains?”

“Uh, I feel like a walking bruise? Does that count?”

“Casey.”

“I’m fine, Donnie. The doctor checked me out, said they’d heal up before I knew it.”

Donnie frowns. His worry obviously decreases an astounding 0%. Typical.

“That was really close,” April says softly, looking very intently at the big rhino horn shaped bruise. “Too close.” Donnie looks even more frustrated and worried as she does, and Casey wants to sigh in a way his current lung capacity won’t allow. April continues, “Casey, can you promise me you’ll be more careful next time? Please? This is the second time in just a few months you’ve had to go to the hospital.”

Casey squirms a little, regrets the movement as his ribs and core muscles complain, and settles on pushing Donnie’s hands away from his chest. He pulls down his shirt as he talks. “I’m not doing this stuff on purpose, Apes, I swear. I’d avoid it if I could.”

That’s not the answer April is looking for, judging from the tight, unhappy expression she has. Donnie looks no better as he slides his stethoscope back into his belt pouches. Casey tries to lighten the mood. “Hey, come on you two. No one and nothing can kill Casey Jones- this is but a flesh wound. I’ll be on my feet and kickin’ ass again before you even realize.”

April snorts. “You would say that, even if you lost every limb you had.”

Casey grins. “You know me so well, Red.”

“I know,” April says, fond and sad. “and that’s why I know you won’t promise me to stop getting hurt all the time.”

Casey shrugs. He can’t help it. If there’s danger, if they’ve got enemies, if anyone is looking to hurt him and his- he’ll keep on fighting until it’s over, one way or another. He knows the two overly but justifiably worried people sitting on his bed are similar in that; they’d all keep standing in the line of fire if it meant if it meant protecting someone of their family behind them.

Grim thoughts like that are just a fact for them, even now that Shredder is gone. Sucks, but what can you do? It’s just life for Donnie, and to an extent, it’s just life for April.

Even if April could hide her powers and Kraang DNA the rest of her life, Donnie is a giant mutant turtle, and won’t ever have an easy time with anything. Neither of them will ever have an easy life, really. Casey’s nearly normal next to them, and he knows and accepts the fact that he’ll keep on having to meet crazy dangerous situations head on to stay with them both. He’ll get hurt, it’ll suck, and then he’ll get back up and keep on going. And that’s as much a fact as the other ones are.

Besides, he trusts them to not let him die, even when he gets in over his head. Donnie saved Leo from the brink of death once, with little more than a medical kit and determination, and April literally pulled Donnie’s molecules back out of the atmosphere. Honestly, Casey doesn’t think he couldn’t be safer than with April and Donnie, all things considering.

“I got you two to back me up, so it’s all good,” Casey says, because it’s true. “If I ever got seriously hurt, I know you guys would figure something out.”

“And broken ribs aren’t being seriously hurt?” April asks incredulously.

“Tis but a flesh wound, remember?”

April sighs. “What are we even going to do with you?”

Casey grins at her. “Hopefully things involving kisses.”

“Casey,” Donnie says, exasperated. April chuckles quietly, but stops as Donnie draws himself up; looking at Casey seriously. The mood turns as such again for a moment, and Casey sobers from his teasing.

“Just… try to stay closer to us from now on, okay?” Donnie asks, twisting his hands together. There’s that sort of desperation in his fidgeting, the kind he developed after master Splinter died. About losing people. “This happened because we got too spread out.”

Casey privately thinks that if it hadn’t been him, it would have just been someone else of their group. Someone who could have gotten hurt even worse, possibly killed. But, he doesn’t voice that thought, because it would just make the anxiety in Donnie’s eyes all the worse.

“Now that is something I can promise,” He says instead, grinning more so for Donnie and April’s benefit than his own. “Getting up close and personal with you two happens to be a favorite pastime of mine.”

He waggles his eyebrows a bit, and is pleased to see the tension break between them all. Donnie rolls his eyes, announces Casey will probably be just fine after all, and seems to let go of at least a little of his worry. April keeps smiling, fond and sad, and Casey tries to keep his private emotions in check while his psychic girlfriend is in the room. She can probably tell his slight bluffs anyways.

“So… you guys busy tonight?” Casey asks in the lull. “’cause I think I know a guy who’s looking for a movie date right around now.”

“Are you lonely, Jones?” April asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“I might be something close to that, yes.”

“Leo said we should be back for evening training, but I doubt he actually thought we’d show up,” Donnie says. He kicks Casey’s legs, though with obvious care. “Shove over. I’m putting dents in your wall like this.”

“Not like it wasn’t dented before,” Casey points out, because considering how many trials and errors they’ve done on his creaky old queen sized mattress, the amount of dents and scrapes in his wall are actually fewer than there could have been. Three people is tricky, even just with cuddling and goofing off.

April starts crawling up the bed, picking carefully around Casey’s limbs, unlike Donnie. “I think there’s been enough denting of things for a while,” She says, coming up Casey’s right side and pecking him gently on the cheek. “Let’s just watch something inane and pointless and trash-talk it the whole time.”

“Fair enough,” Casey admits. He’s more than amiable to the situation if it involves being sandwiched by his two favorite people. “I just got a new season of Master Chef and Forged in Fire. How about one of those?”

“Perfect.”

“How about we vacillate between the two?” Donnie suggests, retrieving Casey’s laptop off the floor. He does so by leaning over the edge, craning himself to avoid squishing April and Casey’s legs. Neither Casey nor April is particularly helpful- poking his cartilage hard belly with their toes the whole time, making Donnie squeak and glare at them.

He still gives Casey a kiss, and then April, even though they keep purposefully bugging him as he sets up their shows. They can’t help it; Donnie is just too much fun to make squeak with well-aimed toe pokes.

“Terrible,” Donnie repeats to them both, but the scolding effect is lost because it’s between kisses.

In the end, Casey is laid comfortable against a thin pillow between his bruise ribs and Donnie’s chest, with April’s compact furnace of a body pressed up against him. April’s ponytail musses as she lays her head on Casey’s shoulder, and Donnie’s cheek rests on the side of Casey’s head. The laptop rests mostly on Casey’s lap, though it gets jostled a little now and then as their legs tangle together.

The three of them groan and snark as a bladesmith dunks his knife too soon into the oil, probably putting fissures in the blade and screwing himself over for getting into the next round- and Casey barely feels a single throb from his ribs, surrounded the way he is by protective care.

Maybe he’s not as indestructible as he likes to portray, but Casey doesn’t even spare a second thought to worrying about future injuries.

After all, when he’d been flying through the air without any left inside him, April had caught him, and held him close while Casey tried and failed to breathe right. Furiously shielding him from anything else that might’ve tried to hurt him, ferocious enough no one had so much as considered it twice. And after that, Donnie had picked Casey up like he was something too fragile to even touch, and carried him safely out of danger. Not stopping until they were on a rooftop far from the action, and then launching straight into doctor’s mode.

Casey is safe and warm now, tucked between Donnie and April both, and he’d been safe then, on a roof with the two of them looking at him with so much concern and care it’d stuttered his heart.