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Donnie hates getting sick.
Though no one would or should enjoy feeling like their insides are melting, their brains turned to slush or their noses constantly blocked (it's worse when it's one nostril first and then the other one, God.) But Donnie thinks, in his humbly correct opinion, he's wholly justified in his immense dislike of being sick. And it's not just due to the aforementioned reasons. But the actuality is far too... icky, gooey emotional to think too hard about for too long, even if it always pops back around, unbidden and unwanted. He prefers logic over the pile of irrational insecurities that linger in the back of his brain, collecting metaphorical dust.
The actuality is that whenever Donnie gets sick, he gets really sick.
Second to Leo, Donnie's immune system has always been bogus. Whenever a bug went around, Donnie was the first to get it, and it hit him like a bus. He'd be out of commission for days until his system finally purged the parasite, letting it spread to the brothers and father who'd hovered over him the entire time despite his protests.
And this leads nicely to the other issue that arises whenever nature decides to screw him: his family will not leave him alone. Ever.
He knows he's not the strongest of his brothers. That title, of course, goes to Raph easily, no question. But that doesn't make him weak. Just like his neurodivergent traits make him different, but no less a person and never a burden (in Dad's words, which, heart clench). Or how his soft shell makes him vulnerable in a fight but also Leo's favourite pillow on nights when it's impossible to sleep. They're all things his family have learned to work with or around to make Donnie's life somewhat easier. He's grateful for it.
All of that goes out the metaphorical bloody window the moment Donnie gets a case of the sniffles. And Raph is by far the worst for it, an all-around mother hen on a good day and a goddamn vulture of virtue during flu season. Except for Rat Flu, then it's every turtle for himself.
So this time around, Donnie deigns to keep this whole situation as far away from Raph's overprotective radar as possible.
Except this time, they've just survived an actual alien invasion by the skin of their teeth. And Donnie's got a raging fever that's higher than anything he's ever had in all his sixteen years alive. One does not simply walk away from merging with the central system of a spaceship without bruises, scars and a virus that attacks his body with the proficiency of Dr Delicate Touch yeeting a whole-ass building with his bare hands. Which... actually happened, holy hell.
But they have more important things to worry about in the aftermath of the almost-apocalypse—namely ensuring Raph doesn't go blind in his right eye, or that Mikey's hands aren't forever marred by tearing a hole through reality, or that Leo doesn't die in his sleep.
So Donnie does what does best: he gets to work and ignores the pleas and cries of his aching body. He tends to Leo as he sleeps his injuries off. He dodges Raph's worried gazes like it's an Olympic sport and he's going for gold. He evades Mikey's gentle prodding like he does his responsibilities.
He's dizzy, itchy and all around just one big green and purple mass of overstimulation, mucus and pain, but he gets away with it.
Or he would have if it weren't for Casey being a snitch.
It's the fifth day after—well, after, and Donnie is hanging by a thread and pure spite. It's all he can do to pry his eyes open, everything sore and just plain awful in a way it's never been the last time he'd gotten ill, his body slumped at an uncomfortable angle over his desk. He forgot to take his battle shell off again, so now his back hurts on top of everything else.
It's worse than Rat Flu, worse than anything, and his shell hurts so bad he feels like crying. He's too tired for that.
So he settles for something simpler. He lies on his bed and lets nature take its due course. Surely, death is a mercy at this juncture.
But the universe has other plans and sends in Casey Jr to intervene.
Future Boy is doing his rounds, hopping between rooms to check up on everyone as Nardo sleeps in the med bay. It's the one time during the day that Casey isn't glued to the slider's side, which is as endearing as it is exasperating. Donnie has done the math, and math doesn't lie. Leo is going to live. He'll be okay. And if the math is lying, Donnie will beat it raw until it tells the only truth that matters to him.
“Master Donatello, as funny as it is to listen to you wanting to beat maths to death, I'm legally required to ask if you're okay.”
Oh. Donnie cranes his sore neck to find Casey standing behind him. He blinks slowly. Had he said all that out loud?
“Yes, you did,” Casey smiles like this is nothing new to him. It probably isn't. “You missed breakfast, and Raphael asked me to come to find you in case you, erm... were dead? I can't tell if that was supposed to be a joke.”
Oh frick. His ruse. It's slipping. Better catch it before it falls off the metaphorical cliff and lands him in the biggest pile of metaphorical shit.
Donnie sits up and immediately regrets it, his spine seizing with the rest of him in agony, but he channels his inner Leo and plasters a smirk onto his face, spinning in his chair to face Casey. “Have no fear, Donatello is here. I am very much in one piece, as you can see, and very much undead—no, wait, not dead. I'm—I'm good.” Nailed it.
Casey doesn't look convinced. Phooey. “Are you sure? You look pretty beat. I mean, it's expected given the circumstances, but...”
“Yeah, yeah, I'm good,” Donnie scrubs a trembling hand over his eyes. It does nothing to dull the stinging behind them or banish the spots dancing across his vision. That's new. “I... I may have overslept, but alas, schedules have no meaning after the world nearly broke. Like our table—y'know, like the meme?” He snickers. “Has Mikey introduced you to memes yet, or—wait, did you have memes in the future? Jeezy creezy, can't imagine what kind of dark humour manifested in that timeline—also, time is relative according to Einstein, so really, maybe I didn't miss breakfast, maybe breakfast missed me—”
Casey puts his hands on Donnie's shoulders, steadying him as he lists too far to the right and nearly falls off his chair. The touch, for once, doesn't burn or make his skin itch with wrongness—Casey's palms are a balm for Donnie's frayed nerves. But he keeps himself from leaning into it as the boy pins him with an unreadable look.
“Donnie, please don't take this the wrong way,” Casey says with a disarming smile. “But what the actual, genuine hell are you talking about?”
Donnie stares at Casey, blinks slowly through the pain, and says, “you have pretty eyelashes.”
“... what?”
“And your nose. 's a good nose. Good for sniffin'. You sniff out all the bullshit with that big ol' schnozz, don't cha, Jones?” He snickers again, and even to his ears, he sounds drunk. “Bet that's why you can't—can't stand sitting near Nardo for too long, he's fulla bullshit—oh sweet Galileo your had is so coooold that feels nice—”
Casey presses one palm against Donnie's forehead and hisses through his teeth. “Donnie, you're burning up. Like really bad.”
Donnie leans into Casey's palm, chasing the coolness. He feels a grin stretch his beak, delirious as the rest of him, as his mouth runs like the damn wind. “M' bad to the bone, daddy,” he giggles, “you can't handle all this hot stuff, look at me. Y'looking? I hope not, actually, that'd be weird, like Leo's obsession with the bone guy and his skin brother. That shit is wild, lemme tell you. Leo's so freakin' weird, fully bonkers, but I love 'im anyway—“
“I'm not kidding, you should not be this warm, not even for a regular—oh no.”
“Ah, that piss-talking son of a bitch, I miss 'im. I don't tell him that a lot... oh god. Leo could've died up there, 'n I didn't tell 'im I love 'im... ohhhh I'm such an asshole—”
“Donnie, your shoulders... is your shell hurting you? How long were you exposed to the Technodrome? How long have you been sick and not said anything? Donnie—oh shit!”
The world tilts, colours a gross mix of dull greys and purples, and Donnie's pretty sure he's on the floor. He feels so hot. And sweaty. And he's crying now. Gross.
“I love 'em all so much 'n I never say it, but feelings are hard,” he blubbers. Everything still hurts, but not quite as intense. Maybe that's a bad thing. It probably is. “I'm a bad—bad brother. I lie badly 'n I keep stupid secrets like bein' sick 'n dying but—but Leo, and Mikey's hands a-and Raph's eye, so like, what's it matter that my brain's melting or whatever when Lee nearly freakin' died—”
“Donnie, spirits help me you gotta stay awake, stay with me, please—Raphael! Donnie needs help—!”
He feels Raph's impossibly fast, lumbering footsteps shake the ground, and hears his choked voice call his name like a prayer. And then the world finally, finally, goes black.
~0o0~
'My mouth tastes funny', Donnie thinks when he finally crawls out from the sweet abyss of sleep.
It's a reluctant thing, but he's not mad about it. Nothing hurts, which is a nice surprise. His brain throbs, but it doesn't feel like he's melting or about to combust. His shell itches, but it doesn't hurt.
Huh.
There's something blessedly cool laid across his forehead, the rest of him bundled in something soft and smooth—his finger twitches—oh, his blanket. His special blanket from his special closet of special things for when the world sucks more than usual. Where did it come from? He doesn't remember getting it out.
Oh well. He snuggles deeper into it with a sigh, a drunken smile pulling at his lips. Donnie loves this blanket. He loves whatever heavy thing is draped over him from behind, squishing him tight enough that it's comfortable, like Raph's hugs. He loves Raph's hugs. He loves Raph.
“Purple? Are you with us?”
He also loves his Dad, like an embarrassing amount, and readily leans into the clawed palm that cups his feverish cheek. He doesn't open his eyes yet. Too much effort. “... D-ad?” he croaks and wow, is that his voice? Lordy.
He hears the smile and relief in Splinter's voice—“Yes, I'm here, my son. You gave us quite the scare.”
A cough rattles Donnie's chest and dry throat when he tries to speak again. Splinter carefully lifts Donnie's head from the pillow and brings a glass of water to his lips—beautiful, blessed water, how I have craved thee. Donnie drinks what he can as fast as he can without choking. Splinter chuckles, chiding without heat, “slowly, Purple.”
He takes the glass away, and Donnie smacks his lips. He frowns. “... teeth still taste like bees.”
There's a startled, familiar deep laugh behind him and Donnie jolts. Raph is here? Huh. That explains the weight, he supposes, and how the blanket got here. It's still odd because this is Donnie's bed, which is wedged against the far wall of his car, and Raph's too big to fit—
“You're not in your bed, Don,” Raph is still chuckling, exhaustion peeking through the cracks of fondness and relief.
Oh. He's talking out loud again. Lovely. “... where 'm I, then?” he murmurs.
“You're in my room. In my bed. With me.” Raph's voice darkens slightly. “Because I had to hear from Future Boy that you were too busy dyin' to come outta your lab for breakfast. Two days ago.”
Donnie's eyes snap open.
He sees that he is in Raph's room, wrapped from head to toe in his special purple blanket. He sees Splinter sitting on the edge of Raph's massive bed, which is just an oversized beanbag chair with blankets and pillows piled to the nines, his eyes crinkled by his tired smile. He looks over his bare shoulder (oh, his battle shell is gone, that explains the lack of pain) and sees Raph, his massive frame curled around Donnie's in a loose but protective embrace. He also sees that the smile on his brother's face doesn't reach his eyes at all.
Oh, Donnie thinks, I'm in the deepest of shit.
Raph takes a deep, deep breath through his nose, and Donnie wants to crawl into a pit. “Why,” he says slowly, patiently, his smile replaced with a frown half as deep as his chasm, “didn't you tell us.”
Now that his mind is more or less clear and agony-free, Donnie can list the plethora of reasons why he'd kept quiet: from the smothering and the mothering over the years over every little thing—his shell, his immune system, his 'functions'—to the part where, out of all his siblings, he'd come out of the invasion mostly unscathed. He could afford to ignore his needs over theirs and deal with the aftermath when it came. Once everything was fine and normal again.
But he looks into Raph's eyes—bloodshot, deep bags barely visible under his mask, damp with tear tracks—looks over at Splinter, whose fur is nearly matted and streaked with more grey than before, and finds that he can't.
Donnie doesn't always understand emotions, not like Mikey does, or even Leo, when he's not busy being a nightmare and an asshole who Donnie inexplicably adores. He doesn't always get why people do the things they do. Emotions are wild, unpredictable, and scary—they lead people to do dumb things like lying, crying, screaming, and sacrificing themselves for their families without thinking about the consequences. Donnie prefers logic, facts, and stone-cold evidence because it's safe, makes sense the way the rest of the world sometimes just—doesn't, not to him.
But it's his love for his dum-dum brothers that made him neglect what his body logically needed to keep going. Made him ignore it. Because it made even more logical sense to look after his family first. Just like they take care of him. Even if they smother him, it's not on purpose. That's their logic. It makes sense to them to take care of Donnie that way. Because they love him.
Logic driven by emotion. The two can co-exist, after all. And Donnie is an idiot.
He shuffles in his blanket prison until he's facing Raph and buries his face under his big brother's chin. Raph twitches, perplexed. “Don—?”
“M'sorry,” Donnie mumbles. He shuts his eyes against burning tears. “Didn't... had to take care of you. Leo's hurt. Mikey's hands... your eye... didn't need me going down, too. You'd focus on me and I—I couldn't... I thought it was the logical course of action, keeping my mouth shut, making sure you dum-dums get better, but—”
He sniffs. Dammit.
“All I did was scare you more,” he admits, shame burning deep, scalding holes in his chest. “All I did was hurt. Now I'm here and, and you're here and D-Dad's here, and you're not with them and—I'm the dum-dum, I'm a burden, now, and I-I'm sorry—”
Raph all but hauls him into a shell-crushing hug, curling around him like a spiky shield against the world as Donnie falls apart. There's a rumble deep in Raph's chest that soothes Donnie immediately—an old trick he's used when they were small to help them sleep when Splinter was away. It doesn't stop the tears, but it helps.
“My son,” Splinter hops onto the bed behind Donnie, reaching to stroke his head, claws gently scratching his scales. “You are never a burden. Your health—your life—is just as important to us as your brothers'.” He chuckles. “You know, for someone so intelligent the obvious often illudes you. And I'm sure we've just had this conversation with Blue.”
“Doesn't count,” Donnie mutters into Raph. “Leo nearly died—”
“And you could've, too, Don,” Raph says, and what? “Your fever was high as a kite, and your shell—dammit, Donnie, when you said the ship jacked you up, you didn't say how bad. You... you can't do that again. You can't—“
His voice cracks. Donnie's heart cracks with it.
He looks up and sees the tears leaking through Raph's closed eyelids, and he can't take it. He struggles out of Raph's grip--out of the special blanket that his big brother had made for him out of love and mother-henning that Donnie thought he loathed but wouldn't know what he'd do without-- and throws his arms around Raph's neck. Raph squeezes him back. It sends an uncomfortable jolt through the soft shell, but he doesn't care.
“Stop,” Donnie begs as tears trickle down his cheeks freely. “Stop that. Stop it.”
Raph sniffles. “Stop what?” he croaks.
“Crying,” Donnie hisses. “I hate it. I physically cannot handle watching you do that thing with your eyes anymore, I hate it, stop doing it.”
A pause. Then Raph is laughing, but he's still crying. “Can't help it, Dee,” he says, nuzzling Donnie's shoulder against his wet cheek. “When your little brothers pull too much stupid crap in a row, it makes me feel some kinda way.”
“Join the club,” Splinter mutters, not unkindly. Donnie feels his tail wrap around them. “We've got jackets and tissues.”
Donnie hugs Raph tighter. “If—If I promise not to do it again, will you stop crying?” It's a childish thing to ask but screw it. Screw logic, screw the Krang, screw this stupid bug, screw everything. “I swear henceforward to abstain from pulling any sacrificial, illogical or emotionally driven actions which could be detrimental to my health, yours or the fam's well-being, lest I must bare witness to your incredibly offensive emotional distress—”
“Donnie,” Raph is fully laughing now, bundling Donnie up as he sits them upright on the beanbag bed. Donnie draws back enough to see his watery grin. “I'm not asking for the Declaration of Independence. I want you to stop being a dum-dum and tell us what's up from now on. And I'll... I'll dial back on the smothering thing. I know I do it a lot...”
Donnie wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and shrugs. “Maybe. But I get it. That's how you function. That's how you love. That's... you. And I love you, so... don't change too much?”
Raph stares. Splinter stares. Donnie cringes, his face hot in a way that has nothing to do with his fever. “No, wait, no, that was bad, no, sorry, that was yuck, can I get a do-over—oof! Aaaaand you're hugging me again. Cool cool cool. That's cool—oh, no, Raph, what did I just say about crying?!”
Donnie just catches Splinter's long-suffering mutter of “Boys,” over his screeching and Raph's laughter as the snapper doubles over with Donnie still in his arms.
Donnie doesn't go back to his lab (from which he is grounded for two days, these bastards) or his own room that night. They all camp out in the living room instead for a mandatory turtle pile, plus Casey and April, who support a limping Leo through from the med bay to join them.
Donnie's twin looks at him and says, “you're an asshole, Dee.”
“Ey!” Raph scolds from where he's pinned under Mikey, the box turtle using him as a pillow.
Donnie meets Leo's glare and says, “it takes one to know one, asshole 2.0.”
Casey gives himself hiccups he laughs so hard, and April nearly drops Leo.
Donnie ends up squished in the middle of the pile, just like it always is whenever their resident (and only) genius gets a case of the sniffles. Except this time, it was worse, or it could have been. This time, Leo doesn't bother to ask permission to snuggle under the special blanket with Donnie because he doesn't need to. This time, Donnie doesn't complain about the smothering.
This time, Donnie falls asleep with a smile.