Chapter Text
This has to be the absolute worst , Mikey thought. Choosing to hurt my family; or choosing to let this opportunity just slip through my fingers.
“Don’t do it!” Leo cried out, trying desperately to catch Mikey’s gaze with a near teary eyed look, his hands held close to his plastron as he leaned towards him.
Mikey shook his head, looking away from his brother. He couldn’t make his choice with his expression haunting him.
He looked at the others in the room, almost all of them looking at their youngest with the same nervous expression, tension obvious in the position of Raph’s shoulders by his ears, Leo fidgeting with the tips of his fingers. Out of his three brothers though, one of them was smiling.
Donnie caught Mikey’s glance before nodding, his smile broadening on his cheeks in a way that looked almost predatory.
Mikey nodded in return, his choice made.
He looked at everyone once more before letting a smirk cross his face.
He ignored their raising pleas as he raised his arm, barking a quick laugh before lowering his arm to meet the table in a sharp motion, lifting his fist into the air and calling out a single word.
“Uno!”
“NO!” Leo yells, lifting his hands to his face before falling back against the cushions behind him, wriggling for a moment before letting out a sigh and mumbling, “Who knew you picked up such evil behavior, who dared taint our baby bro?”
Donnie chuckles before waving a hand to smack at Leo, lightly grazing his shoulder before stating, “That, my dear twin, would most certainly have been yourself.”
“Yeah,” Raph agrees, tossing his rather large pile of bad luck draws to scatter onto the rug, “if I remember you are the one that rigged the last game.”
“Unsuccessfully, if I might add, my dearest Raph,” Donnie decalres before setting his cards down and shoving himself from the floor, rolling his shoulders and stretching. He stands for a moment more, rubbing at his shoulders with a groan, “I will be heading back to my lab for a while, there’s a new gadget that requires my attention.”
Mikey immediately looks up at him, his lower lip tugging downward in a pouting frown. Donnie can’t bail now! Mikey had just gotten all his brothers in one spot, and rest assured, that is not an easy task. It took a solid five minutes of puppy dog eyes and promises of french toast with whipped cream for breakfast to get Leo and Raph to join.
Donnie, as always, was the hardest sell. But, also as always, Mikey has his ways. Super, top secret ways that may or may not involve promises of Mikey’s Special Espresso Shot, Death by Caffeine Guaranteed, every day for a week.
It only takes a moment of Donnie noticing Mikey’s upset for his older bro to sigh, longsuffering but warm. “I’ll set a timer for 40 minutes, and I’ll be back on the dot. Does that settle your precious little mind, Michael?”
“Mind is settled,” Mikey assures, nodding rapidly enough his stability on his seat becomes mildly precarious. Donnie must be in a good mood today, and Mikey is 100% willing to take complete advantage of it. Solely for brother-bonding time of course. “Mind is totally settled.”
Once he’s satisfied with Mikey’s answer, Donnie returns the nod and walks off, starting the timer as he crosses the threshold from the den.
Mikey turns back to the other two, just in time to turn his focus to a small spat breaking out.
“I’m not that bad of an influence, and he can’t have picked it all up from me!” Leo says, gesturing wildly from his spot on the floor still. The statement is a blatant lie, but Mikey definitely isn’t about to add fuel to the fire. The last time he and his blue-banded brother spent one-on-one time together was about a week ago, and it was when Leo tried to teach him to use his katana.
Blood was shed, lectures were said, but it was totally worth the three minutes he and Leo spent running around in circles screaming to learn how his big bro did all of those crazy cool moves. And Mikey got a cat-shaped bandage and a super secret get-better kiss out of it, which was totally rad.
“I ain’t sayin’ ya the only one, but… no, actually you kinda are! You’ve rigged more games than Donnie has made things explode, and I ain’t too sure which number I should be more scared of,” Raph preaches, a smile tugging at his lips even through his crossed arms and tall stance.
Without hesitation, Mikey shouts, “Catch!” and breaks out into a sprint towards Raph, crossing the den (dodging the coffee table of doom, which has annihilated his knees and caused wipeouts more times than he cares to count), and launching himself full-speed at his oldest brother.
Raph, who clearly has some sort of super power, doesn’t even have to look away from Leo to catch Mikey mid-leap, two large hands firmly under his knees and behind his back.
Listen, this is Raph’s life. He is the biggest brother. He is always ready to catch things, little brothers included. It’s just the law! The rules of oldest-biggest brother-dom. And he’s really, really good at it.
“Hahaha, nice!” Mikey giggles, scampering up to settle himself on Raph’s shoulders, twisting his brother’s long bandana tails around themselves a few times before undoing them and starting again. He likes it up here, with Raph being so tall he can practically see the whole world from his shoulders. And he fits perfectly to take naps up here when he feels like sleeping with style.
Leo looks up at the giggling before jumping up, landing on the balls of his feet and walking towards the two now stacked turtles. He pokes at Mikey’s leg, chuckling, “hey, I don’t remember my little brother being over 8 feet tall, did you eat your vegetables or something?”
Mikey giggles at the ticklish sensation, trying to scramble away from Leo’s evil, bony fingers. He’s about to answer with a cheeky, ‘no, no. I just sprouted like a radish, or like Raph!’ when the sudden Older Sibling side eye from Raph quickly makes him rethink. Mikey pats the top of Raphs head rapidly, squeaking a nervous, “Yep! All veggies eaten here!”
Raph scoffs at the answer, clearly knowing better but not bothering to correct, while Leo gasps, still poking at Mikey groaning, “How can I call you my little bro now? You’re so much bigger than me!”
Mikey can’t help but giggle at the ridiculousness that is Leo, and after a second of just balancing on Raph’s shoulder he looks over to the TV and gets an idea.
“Hey, how about we play some Wii while we wait for Donnie?” Mikey asks, pointing to the game shelves before saying, “Don’t we have some new characters unlocked on Mario Kart?”
Leo’s face lights up at the suggestion, responding with a loud, “That we do, mi hermano!” and taking a mere second before rushing over to the shelves housing the controllers and turning the tv and Wii on. He pauses a second before calling out, “Mikey, catch!” and tossing him his controller.
“Got it!” Mikey yells, because you have to be ready for flying projectiles at all times in this household. Unspoken rules. And while usually Mikey is an old pro at catching all manners of things on-the-dime (pencils, plushies, on one memorable occasion a whole frozen rotisserie chicken), this time he leans forward too far on Raph’s shoulders, barely hearing Raph’s, “Watch it, little bro,” before he’s tumbling knee-pads over mask-tails to the floor. The rug that they’ve had since they were babies, while very nostalgic and you could pry it from Mikey’s cold dead hands , is not very forgiving, worn down to barren threads from the constant traffic and wrestling that happens on it daily.
Mikey lands with an oof as the air is knocked from his lungs. All he can do is blink at the tall ceiling for a moment before Raph’s worried face edges into his line of sight, brows furrowed under his mask and warm concern in his voice. “You good, buddy? Didn’t mean to drop ya.”
Mikey stares up at him for a moment before saying, “Dude, I don’t think I’ve seen you from this angle before. It’s… majestic .”
“Yeah, you’re fine,” Raph decides, grabbing Mikey’s arms and lifting him into the air a moment before placing him on his feet..
Mikey leans down to pick up the controller, his smile slipping from his face when he sees the light flicker a few times before turning off.
“Aww, I think it’s broken,” Mikey whines, holding it up for Raph to look at.
Raph gingerly takes the remote, almost comically small in basketball-sized hands, and shows it to Leo, who watches the flashing light and no 2nd player popping up on the screen before shrugging.
“How about you just go ask Donnie, it’s probably something he can get pretty quick,” Leo suggests, using his controller to get things set up on the TV.
Mikey’s brows furrow in thought for a moment before he shakes his head. “We shouldn’t bother him. I think I can do it. It can’t be that hard and I’ve helped Donnie before!”
“He lets you in his lab?!” Leo shrieks, completely forgetting the task at hand as he cranes his neck to look at Mikey upside down. “He never even lets me past the door unless he needs a personal servant to bring him stuff!”
Mikey shrugs in that bouncy, carefree way he knows can drive Leo insane, opening up the battery case and readjusting all the fiddly little parts in there. They seem kinda important. Maybe.
… Ok, so maaaaybe Mikey is sorta overestimating how much of Donnie’s techno-mumbo-jumbo that he actually absorbs . He always listens, of course! Wide-open-ears Mikey, that’s him. But in terms of actual understanding… it’s probably close to nothing. Mikey sometimes gets distracted by the weird stains on the walls of Donnie’s lab, sue him. The one looks so much like a frog he’s convinced that it’s the burned remains of an unfortunate victim of an explosion.
Still, he can’t let Leo know that. There’s a certain status quo to maintain, that of annoying his older brother into an early retirement. “Oh, I help him with projects allllllll the time. He says my tiny fingers are the only tools he can’t find, buy, or make.”
Leo throws his hands up giving a short, “Unbelievable, the youngest brother privileges with this one!” but follows it with a short laugh and leaning to toss Raph his controller, which is currently in the player 2 spot. Raph catches his personal, much bigger remote carefully, not wanting another to hit the floor and need fixing. Though Donnie has modified that remote to be much tougher, so it would take a lot more than a simple knock to damage it.
“Ya sure you don’t want to just go ask Donnie?” Raph asks, watching over his youngest brother's shoulder as he tinkers with the remote, very little progress being made.
Mikey sticks his tongue out in concentration before mumbling, “Yeah, I don’t need to bother him, I can do this.”
Against his will, though, as the minutes trickle by with zero, nada, zilch progress, his chest starts to give a grumpy rattle, a continuous grumble crawling up his throat. When they were little, his older brothers would call it a ‘purr’, even though the emotion associated with it couldn’t be further from contentment. It drove baby-Mikey crazy , when he was frustrated with something and Leo would shout, “Awww, Mikey’s purring again!” But then they would all dogpile on him and it would be all better, so Mikey doesn’t hold a grudge.
Before too long, the hum has gotten loud enough that Mikey starts to feel it vibrating his plastron as he works, but he can’t be bothered to try and stop it. He’s seen Donnie do this at least a thousand times now-- after all, they were always throwing the controllers around, using them as blunt weapons to smack each other in the shell or dropping them or accidentally drowning them in the sink.
No matter how wobbly and scattered Mikey’s brain felt all the time-- like carbonated soda, poppy and bubbly and almost over-sweet-- he should be able to do this. Just this one thing.
Mikey jumps with an eep! of shock when a familiar, calloused hand lands on his shoulder. Whipping his head up, he gets a good look at what Donnie looks like upside down, crazy glasses in place and one of those indulgent smiles on his face that he reserved only for silly little brothers.
One hand reaches out and effortlessly snatches the controller out of Mikey’s grip, waving away his automatic whine of “Deeeee!”
Donnie turns away for what Mikey swears is a single second- no, a millisecond, and by the time he turns back around the remote is fully functional, glowing a happy green in one hand, and Mikey’s favorite flavor of juice box (fruit punch is superior!) in the other.
“Woooah,” Mikey gasps, thoroughly impressed. Then, very seriously, “Are you magic?”
Donnie grins, a decidedly almost-evil look with his evil-scientist glasses on his face, “Well obviously, young Angelo.”
Donnie shoves both items into Mikey’s hands followed with a rough pat on the head- more like he’s playing a drum than petting a little brother, but Mikey won’t complain- then wanders off to the kitchen. He came out for coffee probably, since there was still a solid 30 minutes left before he promised to be back.
Mikey sits for a moment, watching his brothers retreating shell before looking down to his hands, now holding a remote and a juice box with the straw already put in it. His brows furrowed in thought before giving up, sighing.
Big brothers really are magic.
Mikey couldn’t come up with any other explanation before turning back to his older brothers, currently arguing over who could play as Bowser. Automatically, he starts to sip on his juice box, as grateful as he was confused. It takes only another moment for Mikey to realize his blood sugar had started to drop from the excitement after dinner, his head suddenly clear, as though he’d come out of a pool of water.
How? How do big brothers just always know? Mikey would like an answer, but judging by the 13 years spent in absolute awe and ignorance, he doubts he’ll be getting one anytime soon.
Oh well, at least it wasn’t Raph , he thinks as he looks over to his oldest brother, who is already looking back. The juice box earns him a pleased grin, and Mikey detaches himself from the straw to stick out his tongue.
Mikey watches them bicker for a moment longer before they finally agree to settle it with a coin toss, and he can’t stop a frown from crawling onto his face, accompanied by the thoughts of why can’t I just do things on my own, why can’t I do anything right ?
“Hey, little bro,” Leo calls, a smile plastered across his face as his screen clearly shows Bowser in his cart and a less pleased Raph with Donkey Kong on his screen, “you coming over here? You gotta choose a character or Raph is gonna pick random for you.”
Mikey quickly slaps a smile onto his face, giving a quick nod, “Coming, I call Princess Peach!” before scrambling up, careful to not spill the juice and make yet another mistake for the night.
When he gets settled down next to his bros, Raph takes a second before leaning into him, bumping his shoulder before asking, “ya alright Mikey?”
“Yep!” Mikey spits out, forcing a smile onto his face before looking up at Raph, doing his best to not hesitate. He’ll sort his own thoughts later, no need to bother them with something so small. “I’m just waiting to absolutely obliterate you and do laps around Leo!”
“Hey!” Leo squawks, settling into a more hunched position before laughing. “Oh, it is SO on now!”
As they choose a course (Sherbet Land, Mikey’s favorite) and settle in, they all take their gaming stances. Leo curls in on himself, tongue already stuck out in pregame concentration, while Raph sits up straight with his shoulders relaxed into the cushion behind him, not prepared to force his younger bros to eat dust quite yet, though the gleam in his eye and the hint of a smirk suggest it wouldn’t take much for him to take this serious. Mikey can’t help but giggle just a bit before letting his mind focus on the race now, ignoring his whirling thoughts for just a bit and deciding to make his brothers taste his tailpipe.
“Loser cleans up the kitchen!” Mikey shouts just as they all take off from the starting line, cackling as his own driver peels ahead faster than the other two as he’s mastered the fast take off much better than they have. He continues laughing as his driver gains a huge amount of ground from the starting line, with Raph’s character having burnt out and spun before he could even get moving.
Leo crunches in on himself more before whining, “Hey, no fair! You said that after we started, I didn’t know the stakes!”
Mikey laughs at his brothers now trying to catch up as he focuses on not falling and making the first of the tight turns, howling with laughter when Leo follows up and misses the turn entirely, shooting off into the water with a choked, “NO!” as he freezes and has to wait a second to thaw out, in that time watching Raph pass him with a cackle.
By the time Donnie comes back from his lab, Mikey has won three out of four games, and Leo and Raph have lost evenly, both at two out of four and arguing on whether they’d try to take another win and go to a five race tournament, or share the responsibility of cleaning the kitchen. While they’re bickering, Mikey connects Donnie’s controller and offers it up to his purple clad brother with a smirk.
Donnie doesn’t waste any time while the other two are arguing to flop onto the couch, build his cart before choosing Rosalina, and help Mikey start a map without warning the others. Before too long, the countdown sound starts, cutting the argument short as they both spun their attention to the tv where a race is just about to start, both scrambling desperately to grab their controllers in time to start the race while Mikey and Donnie both laugh, taking off and ready to make their brothers lose yet another map.
“How dare you, I trusted you!” Leo whines, having to play catch up immediately, desperately yanking his controller and shifting in his seat like it’d make him go any faster. “If I get a blue shell I am so using it on you! No mercy!”
Mikey laughs at his threat as Donnie pulls ahead of him, already leaning forward in a near copy of Leo as they both put their all into the game. He likes this, his brothers all being in the same place and doing things together. When they are all focused on something together, it feels less like they notice his flaws, and he can just be himself.
He has to shake the thought from his head as he realizes he is just about to careen off the edge of the map, just barely saving it with a squeak before taking off after his brothers again with a bright smile plastered on his face.