#rise of the tmnt

[cupcakeslushie]

Happy New Year!!!

Have a not-at-all New Year themed short! I have no idea where this was going, but I wanted to do a quick, wholesome something for the in between of Leo’s arc and Donnie’s.

[deepseadozing]

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! 🎉🎉🎉 thank you guys for everything. ♡

[anixolt]

Happy new year everyone!! 🎇🫶

[silanyx]

Happy NYE or New Year depending on when you see this 🧡💜❤️💙✨

[tangledinink]

final update of 2024 :)

✩ the gemini ✩ [ start ] [ prev ] [ next ]

[andva-ri]

feral over him

[v-albion]

Yay new mission!! Surely this won’t go horrible wrong right?

Masterpost || Commissions Open

[tasenwrobots]

Bringing this back

This was way funnier in my head

[ihateitallsomerandomguy]

🎄☃️❄️

HAPPY NEW YEAR 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Without text and the background (background also by me)

❄️❄️❄️ love ya NOW BYYYYEEEE

[loryska2]

Aaaaand Raphy’s done!!

[cupcakeslushie]

I reread EW, why does Donnie look like he always has a concussion

Immediately thought of that line from Buffy…

Donnie doesn’t take much care with his own safety.

lol. He’s rattled his brain around so much. I mean….he did fall flat on his face in the last update, and seemed okay (if you can call laughing hysterically okay)…

Original

[rallentando1011]

kinda crazy to be at almost 1K notes on this…

once again tysm for how wonderful this past year has been, hope y’all close out this year spectacularly with a great new year!

certain ineffable things

(rise Donnie x touch starved gn reader - little bit of angst, mostly fluff) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lazy circles drawn on hips.

Tender pats on the shoulder or head, conveying much more than mere words.

Nudges of encouragement or of endearment or at least conveying that someone else was there.

Various affectionate displays - all luxuries experienced in the most painfully infrequent intervals.

 At least, they were to you.

Home definitely wasn’t the place to be seeking out stuff like that - your upbringing had all but made certain of that - nor was anywhere with your colleagues or friends. Any time anyone so much as got near, your skin seemed to crawl and spine shivered and-

In short, it seemed an endeavor destined to fail.

That wasn’t to say you didn’t like it. The physical contact part, that was; the yearning and all that was inarguably awful.

But the occasional touch or elbow rub or hug just absolutely made you melt. Only when you felt like it though. And normally only when you initiated it. And typically only with a certain purple clad significant other-

A hand grasped onto yours.

You snapped back to the present, sitting in Donnie’s lab where you’d been idly passing him tools and utensils as needed and he’d been discarding them back into your palm, and where a misunderstanding where each of you thought the other to be passing them something and extended two empty hands made quite the startling connection of the two.

“Sorry!” Your hand retracted as if repulsed by his. “Sorry.”

He jolted on his own accord before looking over at you. “You alright?”

“Are you?”

Donnie blinked. “You shuddered as if I transferred a few thousand volts which, considering my current field of experimentation, is feasible. Did I do something wrong?”

“No, not at all.” You shifted uncomfortably in your seat. What a way to get dragged out of a soliloquy. “It just, uh, caught me off guard is all. What about you? You just about leapt out of your seat.”

“All’s good on my end.”

“Yep. Same here.”

“Alright then.”

A terse moment passed. Despite how fervently you hoped he’d turn back to his work and drop the upsettingly awkward conversation, Donnie’s softly confused gaze stayed fixed on you. 

It made your stomach churn in a manner halfway between flustered and unbearable - that was to say, leaving sounded like a viable option.

“You know what? I might go get a snack or something; it’s been a minute since I had anything so...”

“Right. Want me to have S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. fetch you something?”

“No!” You took a deep breath upon realizing you were nearly shouting. “No, that’s quite alright. I don’t mind moving around a little bit.”

“Oh. Okay.” Donnie remained wide-eyed and immobile, tracking you curiously even as you moved for the door. He probably kept that up as long as he could, as long as you were in his sight before going back to work, not that you knew for certain, of course. You had squared your shoulders and rushed out as swiftly as possible, only easing up when you reached the kitchen.

You set straight to work on that snack and a warm drink to help you recuperate.

With a sigh, you prepped a kettle on the stove, leaving it to boil as you ventured mindlessly to the pantry.

After retrieving something to munch on, something easily poppable, you returned to an eagerly whistling kettle, the contents of which you quickly emptied into an eagerly awaiting mug. You plucked a tea bag from the cabinet adjacent to the stove and dunked it in, setting a timer.

As the tea steeped, you tried not to do so in your thoughts. Swimming and swarming uncomfortably through your brain with unpleasant reminders of how unfairly you’d behaved earlier, how unfair the circumstances around how averse you felt toward simple contact were-

No, not going there right now. You busied yourself with snagging pieces of your snack, losing your thoughts under the fervent sound of crunching and grinding and-

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Right. The tea.

Steeping over and tea bag tossed, you gathered your bearings and paused in the doorway. On one hand, you could go back to the lab and talk things out like a sensible person. On the other hand, cowering away in Donnie’s room was also there.

“Psh.” You shook your head lightly at yourself and trudged your way to his room, ever the craven.

You sipped at your earl grey contentedly, navigating around stacks of thick books and planters filled with rich soil and plum-colored tradescantia. Donnie, ever the botanist at heart.

Following the oh-so-perilous journey across his purple-fluorescently lit room, you settled on his mattress. Something struck you as funny in a deprecating sort of way when you sat - going into his room uninvited and making yourself at home on his bed seemed less intimate than simply coming into contact with him. Maybe you were just desensitized to eradicating his personal space but still quite opposed to doing the same with his personal bubble.

Yes, it was funny. Pathetic, too, but ironically funny nonetheless.

You couldn’t remember the last time you purposefully came into contact with someone and liked it. Like, genuinely, when was the last time you were touched?

Yes, sometimes it happened out of necessity - someone helping fasten on a bracelet’s clasp or zip up an outfit or something of the sort - other times it happened by accident - like earlier - but other than that, you hadn’t the foggiest idea of when you’d last sought intentional contact with anyone. All you knew was that it had been a painfully long time which made it a painfully sore subject.

The quiet shuffle of steps made a sudden appearance, ones you could recognize as Donnie’s without even looking up. So you didn’t.

A weight settled a considerable distance away from you on the bed, the sounds of the anxious pops of phalanges and the wringing of wrists making it even more apparent it was him.

You took a long, slow sip of your tea, savoring the last bit of warmth cascading down your throat before deftly discarding the empty mug on his busied nightstand.

You shuffled.

Talking, right? That was what was supposed to, what needed to come next, right?

Hashing it out verbally, coming to a resolution, going back to sitting in the lab with hardly a word exchanged and certainly no skin brushing by skin.

How do you ask someone why they scarcely touch you without sounding inappropriate or impotent? Not exactly a normal thing to ask. Or feel.

And how do you describe the niche feeling of wanting to feel any kind of contact but only under the most specific of circumstances?

Daunting, it was. All of it.

“Do you want to talk about earlier?” Donnie broke the silence.

The shake of your head was nigh indiscernible, but he perceived it nonetheless.

He twiddled his thumbs.

You cleared your throat.

He looked up from his lap.

You cautiously extended your arms out. An invitation to skip the words and go straight to the resolution.

Hesitantly, his hand met yours, the feeling electric, burning as his digits slid across yours to take gentle hold of you.

The two of you met eyes and, upon seeing no disapproval, continued with the utmost care.

You couldn’t recall which one of you moved to lay down first, but the other quickly reciprocated the shift, both of you ending up facing each other on silken violet sheets.

Legs tangled lightly for the purpose of pulling each other closer.

Tridactyl hands lightly glided to your sides, as if handling something delicate.

Yours made their way up, joining together behind his neck.

“I’m being so honest right now: if you want to stop, we’re stopping,” you voiced quietly yet surely.

Lazy circles on your hips drawn by his thumbs drew you in, drawn by thumbs that had increasingly more bravado by the second.

“Seriously, any moment you’re done, we’re done.”

A low hum sounded his amusement.

“Not as in done done, like done with this specific-”

“Respectfully,” Donnie interjected lightheartedly, “shut up. I’m good if you’re good.”

“…”

The silence this time once again carried an awkward air, but it was decidedly less insufferable.

Another second was spent before he cleared his throat, not wanting to misinterpret your silence. “You’re good?”

“Mmhm.”

“Then it’s good.”

With that, you decided his advice to shut up was the best idea you’d heard all day and did so, nuzzling your face into his neck sleepily. The reverberating churr and tighter hold you received in return were exquisite.

Oftentimes words proved to be the best and most concise way to convey a message; however, sometimes actions took that distinction, able to show as opposed to tell certain ineffable things.

[sopafa]

GET READY JANUARY 3!

KO-FI SHOP HERE

[burnt-sierra]

Forgot to post this…

[sooahbites]

Donnie actually feels so many things, is a completely different thing that he doesn't understand what he's feeling. I don't think Donnie has a lot of emotional intelligence mainly because he doesn't really think much about what he's feeling, his facade is so thin he can drop the mask in seconds, he feels automatically, not thinking much about what he's feeling or why he's feeling like that, so even if he feels something and reacts to that, he won't put much thought in why he felt that, because you know? Bad boy image? I don't feel, I'm not gonna think about that strong feeling i just had, because bad boys don't feel, so it must be nothing!

That's why he sucks at recognizing what he feels, that scene where he talks about feelings and instead names sensations, hunger, sleep, that isn't him not knowing what feelings are because he doesn't have them, that's him not knowing what his feelings are because he doesn't think about them. That's why he's so emotionally constipated, he stops himself from thinking further about his feelings other than the gutural reaction he has at first. AND THIS IS SO GOOD TO WRITING ANGST, HE FEELS, HE FEELS TOO MUCH AND HE DOESN'T LIKE IT, HE FEELS TOO MUCH AND HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND IT, HE FEELS TOO MUCH AND IT'S OVERWHELMING, HE FEELS TOO MUCH TO THE POINT WHERE HE NEEDS TO ADDRESS THOSE FEELINGS AND HE CAN'T HIDE IN HIS THIN FACADE ANYMORE, WRITE THAT, WRITE IT DOWWWWWWN.

i think its so funny when people take the way donnie acts at face value even though its a horrible lie because he's a horrible liar, while understanding leo is bullshitting very well despite him actually being GOOD at bullshitting. many such cases