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side-shuffling-hyperfixations · 8 days ago

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TMNT - Fangs For Nothing

Summary: Leonardo's been getting better about his fear of snakes these days but that doesn't mean they're any less dangerous.

A/N: This is my first 1987 Turtles fic and I haven't seen all of the show yet so sorry for any inaccuracies ^^" I just found out there was an episode about Leonardo having a fear of snakes and figured I could pull A Situation out of it

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“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wha-ahh—yow! Ahhh!”

The hullaballoo from the bend in the tunnel was accompanied by a sharp rattle, clatter, crash and splash. Raphael and Donatello, too far behind to see exactly what had happened, shared a look. Both of them had other things they would have rather been doing right now than skateboarding; the only reason they weren’t indulging in terrible, trashy soap operas and just as terrible tinkering in the lab respectively was because Michelangelo had turned his puppy pout up to nearly full power, pleading that it had been five times forever since they shredded the sewers together.

Considering whatever series of unfortunate events had just unfolded and the recent rains making the tunnels extra slippery, there might have been a very good reason for that. Amplified by the echo, that crash sounded about as dramatically contrived as a plot twist from one of the soaps Raphael was missing right now. That scream, however…If he weren’t already coldblooded, he might have gotten a chill down his scutes.

“Leonardo! Leonardo, are you okay?!” Michelangelo demanded, uncharacteristically terse with concern. “What just happened? What hit ya? That was a major wipeout!”

There was an unsettling beat of silence, followed by Leonardo piping up, “I…I’m fine.” His voice quavered in an immaculate impression of someone who was very much not fine right now.

On that note Raphael and Donatello shared another more impactful look and sped forth on a united front, rounding the corner to find the others in a two-turtle huddle against the tunnel wall—well, more like Leonardo was in a heap against the wall and Michelangelo had forgotten the concept of personal space, hunched way down into his face and trying to get grabby with the arm Leonardo was currently hugging to his chest.

“Just let me check it out real quick, bud,” Michelangelo urged, poking and prodding to no avail. “Did you land on it funny?”

It sure hadn’t sounded funny. Raphael might have pointed out as much if he hadn’t been more concerned with how much grayer Leonardo’s green looked all of a sudden, even in this junction’s low lighting. Michelangelo’s manhandling, however well intentioned, only continued to push him further into his shell.

“What have I said before about trying to arm-wrestle the patient, Dr. Delicate Touch? You keep this up, someone’s gonna file a complaint with the board,” Raphael chided, keeping his voice light for their leader’s sake as he nudged his skateboard toward Donatello to deal with and came to crouch on Leonardo’s other side. “Though from the sound of it, your board filed a complaint with you, Evel Knievel. What’s the damage?”

Leonardo gulped, wide, dark eyes a sharp contrast to his colorless face, fingers trembling as he curled them against his plastron. “I-I’m okay, really.”

Raphael clicked his tongue skeptically. “Uh-huh. So am I to assume your scream was an audition for one of Michelangelo’s home horror movies or were you just feeling out the acoustics around here?”

“I didn’t mean to…It was nothing,” Leonardo squeaked, shoulders hunching up to his ears as he struggled to convince himself as much as the others.

“Then you’ve got nothing to hide and you’ll be just as okay after I see it, won’t you?” When he declined to answer, Raphael glanced at Michelangelo hovering overhead. “How about a second opinion? Michelangelo, when you say ‘major wipeout’…?”

“I mean one second we were neck and neck on opposite sides of the stream and then the next thing I know, I look back and see him falling head over heels in love with the concrete! By the time I hopped over here to check on him, he was still spinning like a top, all—” Michelangelo briefly mimed a frantic, vaguely beetle-like flailing of his limbs, earning a weakly accusing glare from Leonardo but he didn’t try to deny it. “It was gnarly!”

“So maybe you’re still not seeing straight, Leonardo. Maybe you aren’t the best one to judge whether or not this is nothing.” Raphael didn’t push or pull at him but he did beckon with obvious expectation for Leonardo to put a hand in his. “Come on, Fearless. I won’t bite.”

That choice of words was both a blessing and a curse—a blessing in that after a few more moments Leonardo’s uncooperative façade finally crumpled and a curse in that his face crumpled with it, tears welling with a speed which usually befit only the most gut-wrenching of ASPCA commercials as he hiccupped another shaky breath.

“You don’t have to. It already did,” he warbled miserably, arm finally sliding out of his bracing grip for Raphael to catch ahold. No sooner had he done so did he spot the twin puncture marks in Leonardo’s arm, puffed up and sluggishly oozing red. “I ran over a snake!”

The last word crescendoed to more of a wail, bouncing off the walls with such sincere distress at such a volume that it rattled Raphael’s heart out of his ribs to drop to his toes. Ever since the defeat of Cobrato, Leonardo’s fear of snakes had become much more manageable (not that the rest of the guys could have told much of a difference, considering how well he had hidden it from them all those years) but knowing what they knew now and judging by how nasty this bite looked, a wail was well-deserved. A wail was even a step up; his soul probably would have left his body on the spot if this had happened before his Conquer-Your-Deepest-Fear Day. Regardless it wasn’t ideal.

What were the odds the recovering ophidiophobic who got past several hundred snakes without a scratch would have a run-in with a single solitary danger noodle that actually knew how to aim its teeth?

The odds were whatever the writers wanted them to be and today they were not in Leonardo’s favor.

As Donatello got on the Turtle Comm. to Master Splinter, asking him to bring the first aid kit to this junction, Michelangelo risked a peek at the wound and blanched almost as much as Leonardo himself. “Yowch! That looks wicked icky, dude!”

What an infinitely helpful observation, spurring tears to roll down Leonardo’s pale cheeks in fat globs that had Michelangelo cringing in instant regret. Raphael, master of multitasking, sent Michelangelo a withering look even as he thumbed comforting circles into the lines of Leonardo’s clammy palm.

“Hey, hey, hey, turn down the waterworks, pal, we’re not plumbers. This is—I mean yeah, okay, it’s pretty bad,” he allowed. He could feel Leonardo’s shaky fingers swelling into sausages under his touch by the second. “But it’s only gonna get worse if you lose your cool now. Our levelheaded leader, our Leonardo, staging a big sob fest? Come on, that’s so much extra work and for what? That stupid snake ain’t even around to be guilt-tripped properly.”

There was also the fact that bursting into tears raised his heart rate and sped up the spread of any venom that had been injected but he wasn’t about to alarm him further by pointing that out.

“Speaking of the snake,” Donatello began once he was off the comm., lifting both feet back onto his own skateboard and casting a wary look around the immediately visible sewer floor, “out of, um, curiosity, did you happen to see where it went?”

“I’m not sure. When it—After it—” Leonardo sniffed and tried for a steadying breath. “After it got me, I think I kicked it toward the water.” That would explain the splash Raphael and Donatello had heard amidst the initial commotion.

Michelangelo peered uneasily over his shoulder at the nearby stream of sewage, no doubt thinking of how he had jumped over it without a second thought to check on Leonardo. “Think it’s…still in there?” Watching, waiting to strike again now that it’s gotten a taste for turtle? he didn’t say but they could all infer as much. As he unwound Leonardo’s elbow and wrist wraps to make room for swelling, Raphael felt his friend’s pulse skip nervously at the thought. Two for two on keeping him calm, Michelangelo. Not.

“The current’s pretty fast because of the rain,” Donatello noted, “and it’s moving away from us. Unless it was a water snake, adept at swimming and coincidentally not venomous—” He grimaced apologetically at Leonardo’s arm, which clearly indicated they couldn’t be so lucky. “—well, it’s probably been swept away by now.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah, well, good.” Michelangelo blew a forceful raspberry, rolling his shoulders against the urge to shudder. “Good riddance to rude reptiles, am I right?”

“It’s not good when we’re supposed to identify what kind of snake it actually was; otherwise we won’t know which antivenin we’ll need to administer. Can you describe it, Leonardo? Were there any identifying colors or patterns?”

“I don’t know! It all happened so fast! It was…big,” he choked out, blinking hard against the mental image and the tears still stinging. “Maybe brown? And blotchy? T-That’s probably not very helpful, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was just trying to get it off me; I didn’t mean to let it get away! I was just—I couldn’t help it, it just hurt so much and I forgot anything I should have done, I just freaked out!”

Donatello blinked too, taken aback by the self-criticism in his voice. “You don’t have to apologize; it’s a scary thing to happen! Any one of us would have—”

“But I thought I wasn’t afraid anymore! I’m not supposed to be—I thought—!” Leonardo’s breathing hitched again, shallow but speedy as his face dropped another few shades of green. His throat bobbed convulsively. “I, uh, think…I t-think I’m gonna—”

“Ohhh, boy!” Let it never be said that Raphael would abandon one of his fellas in their time of need—but let it also never be said that he would be eager to hang around while Leonardo gave ample ammunition to all the people who said pizza was bad for your health. Apparently it was a lot worse for your health��and hygiene—when it came back up. Dodging to his other side to clear out of the splash zone, Raphael busied himself patting his shell as he spat and spluttered. Every lurch jostled his arm against his side, earning stifled, disjointed whimpers caught in the back of his throat between coughs. Even when the substance dwindled to bile and then the bile to drool, he struggled to find air. He wasn’t the only one, given the smell.

“M’sorry,” he croaked again, wet and thick with guilt, no doubt utilizing his eerie eldest mind reading skills at the most inopportune moment to catch the last part of Raphael’s train of thought.

“Save your breath on sorries and talk to me about the flavor profile. Any bad taste in your mouth besides the obvious?”

“The obvious being that mushroom, mustard and marshmallow pizza he had for breakfast?” Donatello piped up gingerly, hugging his own sides against any urges of sympathetic nausea from his new tactical retreat spot a few yards away.

“What a waste of a supreme specialty triple M,” Michelangelo murmured.

“…Unh-uh. Tastes like a different M. Like metal. S’kind of…tingly.”

What luck! That was precisely the answer Raphael had hoped not to hear! Of their own volition his pats to Leonardo’s shell shifted to an agitated drumming of his fingers.

“You get an ETA on Master Splinter and that first aid kit, Donatello? I’m pretty sure medical emergencies usually operate under a bit of a time crunch!”

“I am here, my turtles.” Speak of the guardian angel. Master Splinter’s ears and tail twitched with tension as he observed the shocking state Leonardo was in, swollen, sweaty, shivering and covered in sick, but for all they knew he had seen a lot worse in his time. He maintained the stalwart front of calm with an ease his students could still only dream of. “Tell me, tell all three of us what we can do to help, Raphael.”

With Master Splinter there to keep everyone on task, it wasn’t too much trouble to glove up, get Leonardo bundled in the emergency blanket and use the zip lock bag it came in to free his lap of the worst of the mess. Michelangelo cranked the chatterbox routine up to eleven, rambling about anything, everything and nothing in a bid to keep Leonardo distracted as Raphael and Donatello handled the disinfecting and treating of his arm. With a “big, brown and blotchy” description of the perpetrator and only three known venomous snake species living in the wilds of New York, they were thankfully able to narrow down which antivenin to use.

Of course, actually using it was easier said than done. By then Leonardo’s whole arm looked like a discolored, distended water balloon. When every little nudge and shift was agonizing enough that he forgot how to breathe, threading an itty-bitty butterfly needle for the serum probably made him feel like the limb would pop like one too. No doubt he would have thrown up again if he had anything left in his stomach. Raphael just might have too if he took more than a millisecond to consider how Leonardo was crying now—not hysterically but openly, more open than he’d ever been about his phobia in the first place. Though quiet, every sob had enough hidden force behind it to shake him, slip the needle from its course and draw out his torment even longer.

Michelangelo unsurprisingly couldn’t help but start crying with him. Donatello, also unsurprisingly, did not but there was a muscle in his jaw working with such force that Raphael wondered if he’d sprained it yet or if he’d even notice.

Things were never supposed to get so serious for them. Things weren’t supposed to get scary.

Master Splinter knew it too. He was the eye of the storm, unwavering, coaxing Leonardo to stay coherent despite or at least through the fear. Cupping his face to keep him from looking at the others’ work, he mopped up tears and snot and saliva with cotton swabs from the kit and reminded him of the deep breathing exercise he had taught them years ago on their first day of meditation. Something simple, safe and familiar to fall back on.

Simple. Slow. In…

Raphael let out a relieved breath of his own, one he hadn’t realized he was holding, as the needle finally found its mark and gave good blood return. And out. Simple.

Slow. According to the antivenin instruction card, the first dose had to be given very, very slowly. Apparently that part of this way too serious medical emergency didn’t call for a time crunch. Why not? Who knows? Not Raphael, and he didn’t care either; he just wanted someone or something out there to have pity, change the channel, cut to commercial, anything. Just make it stop. Just let it be over.

Slow but steady.

Slowly but steadily, the worst of it was over.

Now that’s not to say Leonardo got back up, hopped back on the board and continued on his merry way like nothing. The only way he was on was the one that led straight to bed for the next twenty-four hours (at least) and it was going to be anything but merry. Even the antivenin couldn’t resist wreaking some havoc while it had his body’s attention, smacking him upside the…everything with side effects: his lymph nodes with more swelling, all of his joints with dull aches and his immune system with a fever. The miracles of modern medicine.

Needless to say, he didn’t look much better under the lights of the lair than he had out in the sewers. Propped up on every available pillow in Michelangelo’s borrowed bottom bunk, he was completely conked out when Raphael came to deliver his second dose a couple hours after they got home.

In the Raphael Rulebook (TM), one of the golden rules listed under both Leonardo and Donatello’s headers was this: “Do Not Disturb.” You never knew how much sleep those guys were or were not operating on—unless you were Raphael, in which case having one of them in the bunk directly above and the other directly below meant he was always acutely aware of how often they tossed and turned (often enough to muse how lucky they were not to have hurt themselves on the weapons they took to bed.) They needed all the uninterrupted z’s they could get—but one of the other golden rules in his book was “Be Realistic.” He knew better than to hope Leonardo could snooze peacefully through another injection but that didn’t stop him from feeling like a monster while he nudged him as reluctantly and gently as he could.

“Leonardo?”

“Nnnngh.” Their leader always had such a way with words.

Raphael tutted, bending to brush his beak against Leonardo’s forehead—and not because he was feeling sappy or overprotective, thank you very much. Okay, not just that. It was also the fastest way to gauge his temperature, make sure he didn’t melt into a puddle of turtle soup while no one was looking. Leonardo didn’t seem to mind anyway, still half asleep as he craned his heavy head up from the pillows to chase the cool touch. When Raphael drew back to perch on the side of the bed, Leonardo offered a faint, mournful chirp through chattering teeth before eventually prying his eyes open. It was the same pathetic puppy face he always got when he was sick and clingy and someone pulled away from him but gosh, it never got any easier to look at.

“Sorry, Sleeping Beauty, you’ve got a few more sticks coming to ya than a spinning wheel. It’ll be faster than the first round, I swear.” To put him at ease, Raphael forced a snort and a crooked smile. “Round two brings us from a snail’s pace up to, oh, about an average unmutated turtle pace.”

Leonardo’s half-lidded, red-rimmed eyes crinkled genuinely at the corners, if only a little, before the humor faded as Raphael went for his arm.

“…You don’t have to splurge on a bedside manner for me,” he whispered hoarsely, tensing in an attempt to subdue the achy tremors trailing through him. “Not after I gave you so much trouble.” Raphael quirked a questioning brow and his fever flush deepened in embarrassment, glassy gaze dropping to the blankets. “Screaming, crying, throwing up…Not exactly…fearless behavior. Your…Your ‘levelheaded leader, staging a big sob fest’…”

Ouch. Way to shove his own words back into his mouth along with his foot but Leonardo didn’t seem to hold them against him. Against himself, however? Apparently that was fair game.

“…I’m real sorry, Raphael. I should have been able to shut all of that down, keep it together so you fellas wouldn’t have to…see me like that.” His self-reproachful sigh was little more than a wheeze. “I’m a ninja. I should have been more alert to my surroundings in the first place, I would have seen it coming and then this never would have—”

“Okay, okay, master ninja, how ’bout you practice the way of silence for a second here while your doctor consults a list of follow-up questions,” Raphael interrupted incredulously. “First off: what? Secondly: huh? Third, and more importantly, so it probably should’ve been first—” He jabbed an accusing finger at Leonardo’s snout, turning him momentarily cross-eyed. “Where do you get off kicking my patient while he’s already down? Hasn’t the guy suffered enough?”

The pathetic puppy face was back, drooping dejectedly further. He could see it now, mushed against a screen door somewhere, begging to be let in from the rain and the cold. But Leonardo wouldn’t be chastising that puppy for whining, would he?

“Fourth question: selective memory loss, much? Because you seem to remember the sob fest part pretty clearly but I also told you to turn down the waterworks, not to turn ’em off, or any of the rest of your big Leonardo-level emotions for that matter. But maybe all that snake venom was clogging your ears and you didn’t hear me properly, Fearless.” Leonardo shrank into his pillows at the dramatic emphasis and Raphael had to set his tools aside to cup and squeeze his cheeks, otherwise it might have been his throat to give him a good shake for his idiocy. “Fear-Less, not Feel-Less, you hear?”

“B-But I wasn’t supposed to—”

“Geez, is this thing even on?” Scowling sternly, he made a show of tapping Leonardo’s temple with an index finger, as if testing a microphone. “What did I literally just say about the way of silence?”

Leonardo’s chin wobbled minutely as he closed his mouth and Raphael valiantly resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Laser-focused eye contact was more effective right now.

“If it was Michelangelo on that side of the stream and he got volunteered to be an impromptu snake snack, you wouldn’t tell him off for boohooing about it. You’d be right there with him having a weep-along like the soppy, sickeningly sweet softy you really are—and I just might let the two of you live it down afterward because it would be exactly what he needed. So what kind of buddies would we be if we weren’t right there for you too? No matter how scared you were.” No matter how scared we were for you. “The only thing you’re ‘supposed’ to do here is get better. And if you put as much effort into that as you do into beating yourself up over a breakdown you deserved to have while you were in excruciating pain, well, you’ll be up and at ’em in no time.”

So Raphael could play his own corny speech card every great once in a while. Who knew selling the novel concept of sympathy to a sick turtle would be so easy?

Now that he’d been given the entirely unnecessary all-clear to feel his feelings and have his needs, Leonardo squeezed his eyes shut and pressed more greedily into his palms, earning a huff of half feigned exasperation, a pat to the cheek and another accommodating nose nuzzle (which a couple of other ninja turtles decidedly did not see as they spied in the doorway, no way.)

“Besides,” Donatello opted to forgo stealth and insert himself into the conversation with no further ado, “you didn’t even swoon like a schoolgirl this time, Leonardo. Screaming, crying and throwing up is progress.”

“Yeah, don’t clam up on us, compadre.” Once again personal space became a thing of the past as Michelangelo squeezed past Raphael’s shell to wriggle onto the side of the bed closest to the wall. On the bright side it freed up Raphael’s hands to continue his work as Leonardo tipped his head back to settle into the new arrival’s shoulder, as if he was just another pillow. “It’s not like any of us have been feeling too chummy with snakes either, since last time. Raphael’s right—”

“Can I get that in writing?”

Michelangelo went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “—if it had been me, I totally would have flipped my lid! Like, full-on mondo bizarro freakout.”

“Completely reasonable compensation for pain and suffering,” Donatello concurred as he came to pat where he assumed Leonardo’s leg was under the heap of blankets.

“I know. Rationally I know that, it’s just…I should have been able to conquer my fear again.”

“You did, though. You’re still here, aren’t you? Facing your fear doesn’t have to look a certain way every time. What matters is you made it through the day.”

“But that doesn’t make the day any less embarrassing…”

Raphael snorted again. “If anybody should be embarrassed right now, it’s that snake. What do you wanna bet the punk took a chunk out of your arm ’cause he’s jealous he doesn’t have any?”

After a moment of startled consideration, Leonardo had to tuck himself more securely under Michelangelo’s chin to smother a raspy, rueful giggle at that. The sound eased something under Raphael’s ribs. Laughter really was the best medicine; he was looking a little better already.

#teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 1987 #fanfiction #fears and phobias #fear of snakes #whump #hurt comfort #protectiveness #brotherly angst #brotherly love #tmnt leonardo #tmnt raphael #tmnt donatello #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt splinter

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