#tmnt brothers au | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

angelmichelangelo · 4 months ago

Text

i think i deserved it, a kinder goodbye for @lesbians4leonardo

verse: human!au

rating: g

word count: 7k

read on ao3!

Donnie is hurt. Badly.

Leo knows, in all his ten year old wisdom that he holds mostly in his heart rather than anywhere else, that this was beyond scraped knees or bumped heads or even the bruises that crept up Raph’s arms when Mama would hold him too tightly.

This wasn’t any of that – those things, they were easy for Leo to soothe away with kisses and promises in hushed, shaky voices that it would get better.

Those things were something he knew how to fix.

Donnie’s arm, it’s bent up all funny; the wrist has gone a weird deep purple, stark against the rest of his paleing skin and he’s cradling it limply in his good arm, like it had just stopped working altogether to hold up on its own.

He’s since stopped crying; it took him a while, ever since Leo had swept through the kitchen to go peel him up off the floor where he’d been knocked down, but Raph carries on for him, like he was the one that’d busted his arm. Like he could feel equal parts of his pain.

They’re camped out in their bedroom now with the door firmly closed and Leo’s dresser wedged a few inches across it because Mom is never really strong enough to fully break down the barriers they put between them and her. Not when she’s like this.

But it makes Leo feel safer somehow, tucked away in their dingy little bedroom that is far too cramped for four growing boys, with the wallpaper peeling and crayon scribbling beneath it where Leo had let his brothers try and make up for the lack of goodness that was held in this room.

Mikey rolls about on his tummy on the ground, only half engaged on what was going on as he waves about a plastic leg of one the action figures that had been had been long since snapped off before they’d snagged it from the Salvation bin Mom sometimes took them to when she was feeling up to it.

“I… I think it might be broken,” Leo concludes as he inspects his brother’s puffy arm, careful not to knock it like Raph had done just moments ago on accident when trying to wrap his arms protectively around his twin. “It doesn’t look right.”

“Look right! Look right!” Mikey repeats with glee, because that’s what he’s been doing of late — picking up fragments of other people's sentences and yelling them out with a big cheesy grin.

And it’d been funny at first because Raph would get him to say silly things like Mikey smells or Raph is the best! Because it’d earned giggles out of four boys until Mom and her new boyfriend would start yelling at each other, screaming matches far too loud for their cramped, boxy apartment, and Leo would press all his siblings close to him like he could just swallow them up and spit them some place new and quiet, and Mikey started yelling out things like bitch! dumb bitch!

Donnie hiccups a sob, his big brown eyes wobble and gloss over, more tears to be shed.

“You gotta fix it, Leo!” Raph is demanding with as much force as he can through his own tears and the lisp he’s yet to shake.

He’s pushing past Don’s good side to get to him, looking at him like he holds the answers in the world because he’s just seven years old still and believes that big brothers were full of magic like that. Leo doesn’t want to be the one to break the spell but he doesn’t think he can fix this one this time.

He rubs Raph’s shoulder slowly, in a way that he knows will help balm all his burning emotions that bubble up inside of him, nowhere to escape except in a place that becomes explosive and loud and angry because Raph hurts just as much as Donnie’s busted arm some days.

“I, um. I can ask the lady next door,” Leo suggests timidly.

He didn’t know her by name but he knew that she smiled kindly at them whenever she crossed their paths in the lobby. She would look at Leo with a look that he would come to recognise when he got bigger, that was pity because Leo’s childhood wasn’t very normal and something to be pitied to some people.

“She can maybe help Donnie’s arm.”

Donnie huffs, screwing his whole face up to squeeze more tears down his face. “It really hurts, Leo,” he whimpers in a small, scared voice. It had talons and it’s sharp when it takes grip on Leo’s heart, tearing into it with force.

He leaps up off the bed with a breath lodged in the back of his throat. “Raphie, stay here with Don and Mike. I’m– I’m gonna get help.”

He’s able to move the dresser himself because Leo is a big boy and he has to be big and strong for his brothers, even when he doesn’t feel like he can be, and he makes his way out through the apartment.

He doesn’t have to worry about bumping into an angry, hurtful Mom right now; she was currently locked away in her bedroom where she felt a million worlds away from Leo and his brothers – a million worlds distance that felt safe enough for him to come out and try the front door that he knew wasn’t ever locked anyway.

It’s cold out in the hall but his home is colder in a hundred different ways than none. There’s a few envelopes and leaflets scattered about and abandoned across their welcome mat that he toes past and goes to the next door over. He knocks three times with a heavy, determined fist.

It doesn’t take long for the door to swing open.

“My brother needs help.” He’s saying it with a singular breath, all the words said with as much courage as he could possibly muster because Leonardo has felt like he’s always been chasing after the idea of asking for help, never fast enough to catch up to it in notion and now here he was, feeling hot tears spring behind his eyes as his neighbor looks at him with that same pitiful look in tenfold now because this was real.

“Alright, kid,” she says, soothing him with her gentle tone, crouching down into his space in a way that for once, doesn’t feel suffocating or scary. “Tell me what happened.”

***

Leo never gets the name of the kind neighbor that calls the cops on Mom after he explains what had happened, because as soon as they turn up, storming up the stairwell with force, he’s whisked away from her apartment and into the back of an ambulance as per Donnie’s request.

It feels safer there in the cramped, wobbly vehicle that smells strongly like alcohol wipes and leather than it ever did back in that small, horrid little bedroom that he’s not so sure he’ll ever see again, yet when he watches as Raph and Mikey are placed in the back of one of the flashing cop cars, Raph’s face still streaked with tear marks and Mikey’s whiny little fussing he tended to pout out around when he was picked up for too long, does it start to feel very unsafe.

“Where are they taking them?” He’s asking of the EMT workers, a tall, gangly man who’s scribbling down a boat load of notes as they check Donnie over. “What’s going on?”

Nobody gives him a straight answer right away, and when the back of the van doors slam shut and they start to drive off without his other little brothers, does the panic start to swell up inside him like a wave.

“Wait!” He’s rising to his feet, almost toppling over right into poor Donnie who’s laid out comfortably on the stretcher. “Wait, please!”

The EMT guy sits Leo back down and clips his buckle in.

“It’s alright kid,” is the response he’s given; the man’s voice crackly and mid-way between breaking. “It’s alright. Just sit down, okay?”

Leo does as he’s told despite the way his heart pounds at his chest. He’s still got Donnie to look after, and when he glances over at him, still being tended to on the stretcher with fresh tears wetting his eyes, does he swallow all that panic down with a big, ferocious gulp.

It doesn’t take them long to get to the hospital, and as soon as the back door fly open and Donnie is being wheeled out, Leo is following him, spilling out into the parking lot, searching for that cop car like a bloodhound before there’s a pair of hands on his shoulders, guiding him in through the big double doors behind his brother.

He gets to sit with Donnie as the doctor inspects his arm. The room is full of people — nurses and strangers that Leo isn’t quite sure who they are.

After they x-ray Leo’s brothers arm and conclude that is in fact broken, there’s a tall lady standing in the corner of the room, flitting between scribbling down notes on a bit of paper and talking fast into a cellphone that’s propped precariously between her ear and shoulder.

“They’re gonna let me pick the colour,” Donnie announces proudly. He’s sat on the edge of the bed, arm now temporarily hung carefully in a sling as he swings his legs back and forth. They’d given him something for the pain a while back, and it seems to have dried up his tears. “Isn’t that cool, Leo?”

Leo, sits in the plastic chair beside the bed, feeling eyes burn hotly into the back of his neck where the strange lady stands at watches over them both. He reaches up and takes Don’s good hand to give it a reassuring pat.

“Really cool,” he says to his brother with a confident bob of his head. “What are you gonna have?”

Donnie looks down at his broken arm, as if to envision a multitude of options and what would look best there. “Maybe purple,” he says in a shy voice, eyes lifting to meet Leo’s. “I like purple.”

Leo smiles warmly at him. “You can have purple then if you want.” He tells him. “It’ll look good.”

The doors then hiss open, another doctor waltzing in to fix Donnie’s new cast on his arm, the lady doesn’t leave, still watching on, and by the time Donnie’s cast is now his preferable purple, she’s advancing on them, crouching slightly to meet his level.

“That looks reallty cool,” she says with a big, toothy grin.

Leo and Donnie quickly share a cautious look between them before looking at her again.

“Yeah,” Donnie says, voice small. “Thanks.”

Leo sits up a little, desperate to make himself bigger. “Would be better if he had no broken arm at all. It really hurt, didn’t it Donnie?”

He looks to his brother, a pinkish tint now blooming beneath his cheeks as he awkwardly shrinks away.

He doesn’t answer him, probably out of embarrassment, but the woman seems to be at least sympathetic on the matter; her smile falters and there’s a little crooked line running between her brows when she frowns.

“I know, honey. And that’s why I’m here,” she explains. “So it won’t happen again.”

Donnie shifts in his seat, the paper towel he’s perched upon, wrinkling under his small weight. “Is… is mommy in trouble?” He’s asking, voice pitching upwards, almost hopeful in a way that has Leo’s tummy squirming uncomfortably.

The lady smiles kindly at him, as if to balm his worries.

“Sweetie,” she starts out by saying. “Mommy made a mistake, didn’t she?”

The feeling in Leo’s stomach coils up tight. Mom made many mistakes, that was for sure.

“She needs help,” the lady says the words slowly, as if she wasn’t even too sure on them herself. “That’s what we do. We help people.”

Leo swallows thickly. “You’re a social worker.”

It wasn’t much of a question; Leo had met these kinds of people before, when he was really little, when Mikey was just fresh out of Mom’s tummy, they’d knock on the door and look right past Leo.

His hackles are up, and the woman must sense this, backing away with a single clip-clopped step of her shiny high heels.

“I am,” she says with a nod of her head. All her hair is scraped up nearly into a tight bun on the top of her head, not a single strand out of place. “My name is Sunita.”

Leo tips his chin upwards, a swell of bravery overcoming him makes him feel big all of a sudden. “Where’s Mikey and Raph?” He demands, just as Donnie makes a pitiful whining sound, shrinking as his shoulders come up and his head ducks downwards.

But whatever teeth Leo has to show off, doesn’t deter Sunita. She doesn’t back away or bite back. She doesn’t get loud and angry like Mom does when he tries it on her on some days.

She just smiles at him, kindly, like that was maybe the only face she had.

“They’re here, being looked after.” A beat. “Could we look after you, too?”

Leo shies away. A certain nervousness seems to shadow that previous bravado as he thinks about being separated from Donnie, pulled away into a room with strangers.

“I don’t need looking after,” he tells her with as much confidence as he can muster. “And I don’t need anyone looking after Raphie or Mike — I can do it just fine.”

There’s the threat of tears now suddenly springing behind his eyes — too long away from his other siblings, out of his reach and the panic from earlier is drumming into his system with each sharp, quickening heartbeat.

“I know you can,” Sunita agrees with a gentle voice. “But Leo,” she looks at him more serious now. “It’s not your job to look after everyone. You’re just a kid, too.”

For a very long time, Leo hadn’t felt like a kid. He’d bypassed nearly most of the other children in his class not because he wanted to, but he needed to make sure he could read big chapter books so he could read them to Donnie, or he knew how to change a diaper before he knew all the rules to softball because Mom never played with him.

And he was the one his little brothers would turn to when they had nightmares or sticky tummies because Mom would either be passed out on the couch, or out of town with her scary friends or locked away in her room surrounded by shadows and monsters.

Leo wasn’t a kid. Not to him, anyway. He didn’t have anyone to look after him, and he knew how that felt, to be so alone in the world, so he made sure that Raph, Donnie and Mikey had the very opposite in tenfold, never once letting them go from his grasp.

He blinks, and fat tears slip down his cheeks. A sob hiccups in his chest where he fails to swallow it down, and the noise makes Donnie turn around to face him, face creasing with worry.

“I want my brothers,” he tells Sunita through his tears, desperate to blink them away. He feels Donnie’s hand reach for his, clammy and warm and his fingers fold beneath his. “I just want my brothers.”

Sunita looks like she might move in on him to wrap him up in a hug but Leo doesn’t want that, and she stays where she is.

“I know. I know, honey. I’ll get them for you. Okay? When they’re done with the doctor, we’ll get them back to you.”

Mom made Leo a lot of promises to him a lot of the times. When she’d promise that she’d start feeding Mikey when he’d cry when he was a baby, or when she’d lay slumped on her bedroom floor telling him through her own tears that she was going to try and get better for them.

It’d all fallen flat and diminished the idea of promises altogether for Leo. Yet when Sunita makes one, it feels as if it has a little more truth to it.

***

Half an hour later and Sunita makes good on that promise.

They’re taken to a little room that doesn’t smell like a doctors office or medicines, and he’s plonked onto a plush chair with Donnie practically in his lap when Raph and Mikey rush through the door.

Raph’s face seems to have been wiped clear, his tear tracks no longer visible across his skin, yet when he moves across the room to greet Leo and Don, his eyes start to water all over again.

Mikey doesn’t seem at all bothered by the whole ordeal, clutching a little plushie that looks brand new and clean.

“Puppy!” He exclaims with glee as he holds it up to show it off to Leo. It isn’t a dog, but Leo doesn’t correct him, just looping his arm around his neck to bring him in for a brief hug.

Donnie is showing off his new cast to Raph, proudly telling him about how he picked out the color himself, and they chatter amongst themselves as Mikey dances about the room with his new toy.

They have a moment between them all before the door opens and Sunita is stepping in.

Neither Raph or Mikey seem weary of her when they both lift their gazes up at the same time to look up at her, indicating that she’d already introduced herself to them. Mikey actually goes toddling off to her, showing off the plushie that Leo begins to suspect that she herself had gifted him.

“How is your arm feeling now, Donatello?” She asks, smiling warmly at the boy curled up on Leo’s lap still.

Donnie holds it out as if to inspect it before giving his final verdict on the matter. He looks up to Sunita and smiles and says in a slightly shy voice, “Better, thank you.”

She seems pleased enough with that answer. She goes to say something else when Mikey stands right by her hip, nudging her leg with the plushie to garner her attention.

“Mama? Mama now?”

Leo watches as her smile falters for a moment before Raph is cutting in too, pushing forward with his usual boisterous force.

“Are we goin’ home now? Now that Don’s arm is all fixed up?”

Leo waits with a bated breath for her answer: he wishes for nothing more than to never go back to that tiny, little apartment where Mom was mean and angry all the time and where the wallpaper was peeling away and he had to push the dresser in front of the door on bad days and kiss away his brothers hurt.

But there’s also the implications that he was waiting for the fallout now, waiting for the aftershock that would blow his little family apart. That he’d ended up some place without them, alone and scared all over again.

Sunita crouches down to get on their level and Mikey decides that it’s free game to clutch tightly onto her hand, which she gladly allows.

“Mommy isn’t very well herself,” she starts to explain. “She needs a bit of looking after herself.”

Donnie’s brow creases. “Will she get better?”

A ugly voice in Leo’s head sounds off, responding I hope she doesn’t ever.

“We can hope so,” Sunita answers him.

Raph shifts where he’s stood, changing his weight from foot to foot, if the chair Leo was sat on was bigger, there’s no doubt he would have clambered on to join them.

“So we’ll stay here, with mommy?” Donnie is asking.

Sunita shakes her head and Leo feels gravity start to work against him, crushing against him in a way that felt somewhat suffocating.

“We’re going to find you a place to stay whilst mom gets better,” she tells them, giving Mike’s hand a tight little squeeze. “Actually, we might already have a place for you to stay for now.”

Leo had a girl in his class that would come to school in dirty clothes and her hair unwashed. She was mean and nasty and called Leo and the other kids foul names that he darent ever repeat. She would start kicking and screaming in class and one day she left and didn’t come back for a long time.

When she reappeared, she’d had a haircut and was proudly showing off her brand new sneakers that had lights in the bottom and flashed when she stomped about the playground.

“Where did you go?” One kid had asked her. “Did you go on vacation?”

She’d shook her head, neat little bob sweeping over her shoulders. “Nope,” she’d said, popping the p. “I got a new family. A foster family.”

This is what this is, Leo recognises. This is a new family, something better he knows, but anxiety curls up tight in his stomach like a bug and turns his whole body nauseous.

“Will we be split up?” Is the only question Leo is interested in asking her.

Sunita shakes her head, and with it, seems to shake away that lingering fear clinging to every inch of Leo’s being.

He clutches Donnie tight, careful of his poorly arm and watches as Mikey blissfully starts playing with his plushie again, unaware of the situation unfolding around him.

“Okay,” Leo says calmly. “When can we go?”

***

They’re not long after ushered into Sunita’s little car, with Leo sat up front, they’re greeted at the doors they’d come in through by a couple of cops that wordlessly hand her a few black sacks that she piles into the trunk.

“We got a few of your things from home,” she explains as Leo buckles himself in. “Just until we can get you new clothes and toys.”

Mikey is strapped into a car seat for maybe the first time in his life, still happily clutching onto his plushie, chewing on the now soggy label between his baby teeth, “Toys! Toys! Toys!”

It doesn’t take an awful amount of time to drive from the hospital to the new house that they’re supposedly staying at. Leo doesn’t say anything the entire ride over, even when Sunita prompts him a few times with snippets of conversation that he chooses to ignore, instead supplying himself with endless ideas as to where he was about to be dropped off towards.

Who was this person that would take them in? Was it safe? Safer than home, at least?

They pull up to a brownstone apartment; the neighbouring building has a bike sprawled out across the small lawn and when Sunita opens Leo’s door for him, she has to side step a man walking his dog that smiles kindly at them all.

Donnie carefully maneuvers climbing out of his seat and onto the sidewalk, Raphael taking up his good hand in his in an instant, like magnets destined to always connect.

“Want me to take him?” Sunita asks as Leo lifts Mikey into his arms, spotting the tired, sleepy expression now drooping across his face, the plushy now hanging limp in his almost fully lax fingers.

Leo shakes his head and follows her up the steps.

The man that answers the door is tall and broad and honestly a little bit scary looking.

Sunita ushers them all in before they start on ahh formal pleasantries.

“This is Lorenzo,” Sunita introduces them. “You’ll be staying with him for a little while.”

“Until mommy gets better?”

That’s Donatello asking again, full of all that childish, naive hope that puts Leo’s tummy on edge a little, even when Sunita politely nods, trying not to prompt any follow up questions on the matter.

“Welcome to my home,” Lorenzo speaks, his voice is low and rumbly, and has Mikey sitting up in his arms in an instant, curious. “Would you like to see your rooms?”

Raph hesitates at first, but once Donnie takes a step forward, he’s quickly following. All of them march down the hallway, past a kitchen and a living room where there’s two bedrooms situated right at the back of the house.

Lorenzo pushes a door open. “This will be your room. You can pick which beds you want, I wasn’t sure what things you liked, so we can head out tomorrow and choose your own new comforters.”

Back at home, Raph and Donnie shared a bed, and Mikey had soon outgrown the cot he’d had since he was a baby, limbs spilling through the wooden rungs, Leo had quickly grown to having him in his bed.

But the room he stands in now is big enough for two bunk beds on either side pressed up against opposite walls. There’s no peeling wallpaper. No dirtied floors with old diapers and stains. There’s a toy box sat beneath the bay window that looks over the city as well as a desk that sits perfectly beside the door.

“Is… is this really for us?” Leo finds himself saying outloud. There’s a flush of fast rising embarrassment touching hotly at his face, creeping across his cheekbones before he can swallow it down, looking anxiously between Lorenzo and Sunita.

They both smile warmly at him, tinges of that pitying look he’s grown so accustomed to in his life, she places a steady hand on his shoulder and tells him,

“Of course. It’s all for you.”

Lorenzo and Sunita let the boys explore their room for a little bit whilst they head to the kitchen for a coffee and a talk. Leo suspects it’s all grown up stuff, maybe even talk about mom that he has no interest in as he curiously inspects the toy box.

Inside, it’s full to the brim. There’s soft toys and plastic action figures with all their limbs. He digs deeper and finds a stim toy — one like they used to have a long time ago before mom threw it at the wall and broke it.

He clutches it tightly and protectively before he walks to one of the beds.

“I want this one!” Raph announces as he starts to clamber up the ladde. “This is my whole own bed!”

He flops down onto the mattress with a giddy laughter that catches on, leaving them all giggling.

Donnie perches on the bed below it, testing out the mattress with a few wiggles before deeming it worthy enough.

Mikey gets the second bottom bunk, only because he can’t quite climb the ladder just yet. He gives a little whine of protest when Leo has to pry his chubby little fingers off the rungs to deter him from trying on his own, but gives in when Leo draws his attention back to the toy box.

Leo spots Donnie wistfully staring at the desk, looking like he’s unsure if he should approach it or not.

“You could do your homework on there,” Leo tells him. Donnie’s head snaps up fast like a rubber band, looking shameful for even looking before he’s giving Leo a more neutral look.

“Do you think?”

Leo nods confidently. “Maybe we can ask Mr Lorenzo for a new book. I don’t think they brought over any of ours from home.”

After dumping all their bags on the floor, all they’d been left with was a few useless teddies and a handful of clothes that mustn’t been clean enough or just about able to fit them still — there wasn’t a lot in the way of what could have been salvaged, but to see it all here now on the nice, clean rug of their new room in a meek, pathetic little pile, made Leo feel pretty crummy.

“They weren’t all that good anyway,” Donnie admits. “All my favorites had some pages missing or I read them too many times.” Leo knew that what his brother really wanted was something new to sink his teeth into.

“Maybe we can ask,” Leo says again, a new found confidence rising up inside of him already ever since he’d rapped his knuckles against his neighbors front door. “He seems nice enough.”

Eventually Sunita has to leave, and when she does so, she’s lingering by the door, sharing a few more hushed words between herself and Lorenzo before she’s crouching again to talk to the boys.

“You’ll be alright?” She frames it in both a question and a statement that has Leo nodding confidently. “Good. Lorenzo is here to help you guys too. Remember that. Anything you need, we’ll be here.”

She gives Leo one last look before Lorenzo is kindly walking her back to her car. When he returns, it’s oddly silent in the hallway.

He smiles at them, unsure what to say before he’s offering up something to eat and drink. None of the boys turn him down for that.

***

Lorenzo lets them explore the rest of the house, even his own bedroom, keeping his distance as he waits patiently in the doorways to allow them their space.

“Oh, cool!” Raph is jumping up and down as he points out the DVD player that sits neatly on the TV unit. The screen itself is bigger than the one they have at home, and there isn’t a spiderweb of cracks sliced through the corner to ruin the picture. “Can we watch a movie later?” He’s asking.

Lorenzo chuckles softly and nods, making Raph jump higher.

The kitchen is a small little room but a far cry from the one Leo is used to. He stands in the middle of the room as his brothers clamber across the stretch of breakfast bar, trying to picture what his mother would look like in a place like this, strewn across the neatly polished tiles, pushing out a little brother with blood, sweat and—

“Leonardo?”

The voice startles him, making him flinch back. Lorenzo looks as if he wishes to place a comforting hand on his shoulder but refrains himself. He frowns, “Are you alright?”

Leo nods quickly, brain shaking about in his head to rid himself of the mental images that plague his mind like poison, he’s beckoned over by Donnie who whispers to him with excitement about the various cereal choices that weren’t off brand.

For dinner, Lorenzo makes them spaghetti after expressing that it was his specialty. Leo doesn’t remember the last time he had a cooked meal that wasn’t something slung in their tiny little microwave but when he shovels in the first forkful of meat and noodles, it’s hard for him to stop until his plate is entirely cleared.

It’s not until he’s setting down his fork that he realises that he hadn’t even helped Mikey with his yet.

He turns to face him, shame swallowing him whole only to find Lorenzo is cutting up his brother's food with the plastic knife and fork.

Mikey has most of it smeared across his face because table manners were something he was yet to learn amongst other things most three year olds had in their arsenal but he smiles at him nonetheless.

After their meal, they get a bowl of ice cream each, and Leo lets his melt down into a goop before he’s eating his, watching carefully as his brothers messily devour theirs.

And once that’s done, Lorenzo gets to work on the dishes when Leo gingerly approaches him where he stands at the basin.

“Can I help?” He asks.

Lorenzo looks surprised for a moment before he’s shaking his head at the boy.

“It’s quite alright. I could use the practice now I have five plates to wash and dry. Why don’t you go and join your brothers in picking out a movie for tonight?”

It’s said with such domesticity that it almost rattles Leo how easy it feels. He dismisses him politely with a shake of his head.

“No, it’s alright,” he tells him as he watches him run a wet sponge over the orange plate Mikey had been eating off of. “They’ll probably be there for ages arguing over what one to pick.”

A small, impressed smile creeps over him. “You, uh, have a lot of movies. That’s pretty cool.”

Lorenzo seems pleased with this, whether it was the praise at his excessive film collection or that Leo was making something of an attempt at conversation, he laughs gently, his voice low and rumbling like a sound of thunderstorm on the other side of the city. It somehow feels quite comforting.

“I live by myself, I find myself with a lot of free time in the evenings, so I watch a lot of movies,” he tells Leo. “It’ll be nice to have someone to watch them with for a change.”

Leo smiles at that. “That’d be nice.”

Lorenzo wasn’t like most of the adult men he’d known in his life. His and Mikey’s dad barely stuck around to make any lasting impression that wasn’t negative and he’d only met Donnie and Raph’s father once in his life before he was rushing out of the door to avoid any kind of responsibility that might’ve been thrust upon him.

He wonders if perhaps today, both men had been contacted on the outcome of their children. Whether they would have cared or not? Whether they might fight for them at all?

Aside from the fact that if they did, they’d be split into twos, Leo really does not want that to become a reality for a multitude of reasons.

“Do you think we’ll go see my mom tomorrow?” He finds himself asking Lorenzo.

The man pauses, looking a little put out for a second before he’s answering him.

“I… don’t think so.” He frowns. “Did you want to?”

Leo is quick to shake his head. “No,” he says, voice small. He lifts his gaze up, wanting to change the subject he spots a framed certificate leaning against the wall on the kitchen counter. It’s a Psychology Degree awarded to Lorenzo Leatherhead.

That piques Leo’s attention, drawing an amused smile across his face.

“Leatherhead?” He says. “Is that really your name?”

Lorenzo laughs again, flicking a soapy sud off his arm and nods. “Yes it is.” He pauses. “I gave it to myself.”

Leo blinks. “You can do that?”

Lorenzo nods again and hums. There was something about him that was so entirely calming. “I did. I wished to no longer be attatched to my fathers name, so I changed it when I was eighteen. It was after a silly nickname my friends gave me — I was in foster care too, you know.”

There’s something about that piece of information shared over to him that gives Leo a sense of ease.

He’s not an easily trusting child, not when his mother is the way she is, and there’s been random men traipsing through his home making her sick and mean, but Lorenzo stoops over him with his mountainous height and his big, wide grin and his sweeping braids and it makes Leo feel like maybe he could perhaps trust this man somewhat.

“That’s cool,” he admits. “I don’t know what I would change my name too.”

He’d been burdened with his mother’s name, trailing behind his first like heavy, overstuffed luggage. He wasn’t sure if there was another name besides Leonardo Nanimonai that would suit him best, and he wouldn’t dream of changing his first name: he matched with his brothers, it made them a set.

He meekly wonders if Leonardo Leatherhead would suit him at all, but he doesn’t dare voice that thought.

“A name can be just a name,” Lorenzo tells him, plucking up the sponge. “It is the person who bares it that matters most.”

Leo stews in that nugget of wisdom for a little bit before Lorenzo sends him in after his brothers as they indeed get a little rowdy trying to pick a singular movie to watch in his vast collection.

***

Luckily for Leo and the rest of his brothers, included in Lorenzo’s movie shelf is a bunch of Disney classics, and they’re able to settle on Beauty in the Beast tucked away on the couch whilst Lorenzo takes up the armchair.

After the movie is done and the credits are rolling, Lorenzo suggests they head to bed.

“It’s been a long day. Donatello, I believe you’re due some pain meds.”

Donnie gladly takes them, wincing a little as he slides off the couch to be guided to the kitchen for a glass of water to take with his pills.

Leo takes Mikey and Raph to their room to get ready for bed.

It’s when he’s wrangling Mikey into his pajamas that he notes that Raph has lost all his previous bubbly, excitable energy, drooping a little bit with a slight frown etched across his face.

He says nothing when he checks Mikey’s diaper, clicking when he finds it slightly damp.

His little brother was supposed to have been somewhat on his way to being potty trained at least but like most things, fell behind without a parent to urge him on.

He’s digging through their pile from home for any pull ups when Lorenzo returns with Donatello in tow.

“Looking for something?” Lorenzo asks, guiding a yawning Donnie to his bed.

Leo doesn’t look up, still rifling though an assortment of sweaters and jeans and vest tops. “Mikey needs a change,” he explains flatly. He feels a little bit of panic swell inside of him when he realises they must have been left behind.

Lorenzo moves into the room to stop Leo. “Not to worry. I have some in the bathroom. I can take him.”

Something wild and protective sits up in Leo’s brain, making his head snap up fast and his teeth to bare as he warms Lorenzo off,

“No!”

Lorenzo looks stunned for a moment, backing away, even Raph has turned to watch him curiously.

Leo expects the feeling to shrink away, to possibly make way for a bout of shame but it doesn’t come. It’s like someone switched an alarm off in his brain and it’s failing to be killed.

“I can do it,” he tells Lorenzo sternly. “I always do it. Mikey won’t like it if you do it.”

As if on cue, Mikey pouts and whines and starts tugging at his damp diaper. Leo moves towards b and scoops him up in his arms.

“It’s fine,” is all he says to Lorenzo as he brushes past him for the bathroom.

He’s able to find the pull ups and wet wipes just fine, all neatly organized by Lorenzo as well as four different colored toothbrushes sat on the side of the basin and an assortment of bath toys lined up on the lip of the bath.

There’s a weird sinking feeling in his gut, like it was falling right out of his body as he finishes up changing his brother.

“You really ought to be using the potty, Mike.” He scolds his brother lightly, pointing to the toilet.

Mikey looks at it and then back to Leo and pinches his face into a tight frown. “No,” he says, and that’s the end of that.

***

After Leo’s outburst, Lorenzo keeps a respectable distance from him. He lingers in the doorway as all four of them clamber into their respective beds.

“If you need me, I’m just down the hall.”

He doesn’t wait for a response, making gauging that he won’t get one now, and leaves closing the door behind him.

There’s a little nightlight beside the desk that glows from across the room.

There’s silence for a while before Raph’s voice comes out as a small little whisper,

“Are we not going home?”

Leo sits up onto his elbows and looks across the room, from bunk to bunk he’s level with Raph, and can see clearly even through the orange glow, the worriesome look he’s pinning him with.

“Mommy’s not well, remember?” He tells him. “We can’t go back. Not yet.”

Donnie rolls onto his good side, fresh, crisp sheets crinkle beneath him. “When then?”

Mikey is already clambering out of bed to make a fuss. “Mama,” he cries at the closed door. “Mama!”

And it makes Leo angry; mom didn’t care before, she didn’t care now — they didn’t cry for her when they were at home and she’d let them go hungry or when she’d get loud in their faces or even when she’d pushed Donnie over and broke his arm earlier today.

So why did they suddenly need her now?

Mikey starts to cry harder, reaching up to the door handle he’s not quite tall enough for, calling out for their mother, Leo races down the ladder to collect him before Lorenzo could hear him.

“Stop it now,” he says trying desperately to soothe him like he’d done a hundred times before. “I know it’s scary, but it won’t be forever.”

There’s the ugly mean voice whispering things in his head, telling him I hope it is, I hope we never go back, I hope mom stays sick forever.

“I don’t like it,” Raph pouts and it’s not long before he too is climbing out of bed.

Leo sets Mikey back into his own bed, tucking him in seems futile before he’s clambering in beside him in an attempt to settle him.

Mikey kicks him, making a disgruntlement noise before he finally seems to be at ease with him beside him. Leo moves over so that when Raph gets in, there’s enough room.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Raph asks Leo with a whisper. “Without us?”

He swallows down that flaming angry feeling from before — something like betrayal because they should be asking that question the other way around, because a kid should need their mom, not the other way around, but his brothers are still so little and unknowing of the world around them in a way that Leo is not, even at ten, he’s bigger than his years, and he nods.

It doesn’t take long for Donnie to join them, curled up on the edge of the bed with Mikey in the middle, mindful of his heavy, cumbersome arm that sticks out, Leo is able to reach each of his brothers like this, cramped up and close in a way that feels comfortingly familiar.

And there’s no crayon scribblings under the walls for him to trace until he falls asleep, or the sound of mom’s telenovelas drifting from the other room or the stink of smoke in the carpets — it's a world away from what they know to be home.

But it could work. If mom didn’t get better and if Leo could put his faith fully in Lorenzo’s hands, it could work.

With his brothers pressed against him like this like he could chase away all their fears and hurts, it could maybe, hopefully work.

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