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Raphael glanced at the clock for around the thirty bajillionth time that day. “Leo…”
Leonardo, sprawled out on the couch flipping through a magazine, one leg draped over the arm like he forgot how couches worked, groaned. “Come oooon, he’s fine!”
“You know he goes weird when he gets so deep in a project he never leaves the lab and stops eating, sleeping, and bathing for more than a couple'a days,” Raph felt a deep, ice-cold shiver run down his spine, "someone needs to pull him out before it gets… bad.”
Leo propped himself up with an elbow over the back of the couch and met Raph’s gaze with his own half-lidded, uncaring stare. “Y’know what? I think this a perfect job for Doctor Delicate Touch, actually.”
Raph gasped. “How dare you?! Don’t you remember what happened the night of August second, twenty-fifteen? I’m not putting him back in there.” He motioned to Michelangelo across the room, who obligingly pulled out the wateriest puppy dog eyes in his arsenal and pointed a sad, suddenly-shaking finger at a tiny scar on his arm. The thing was barely an eighth of an inch long and at this point you had to squint and use some imagination to see it, but Mikey had played it up past the point of obnoxiousness when it was fresh.
“Okay, but maybe he’s changed, grown bigger as a person or whatever, and maybe you can do it this time?”
Raph glared shuriken at Leo.
“Raph did it the last three times while you ‘supervised!’ Last time, you signed this legally binding document saying you’d help next time.” He held up the crumpled receipt from his pocket on which Leo had scribbled in his absolute worst handwriting:
‘IOU one Donnie wrangling
-Leon <3’
“You know, actually, we never had that notarized...”
“Leo, you have two minutes to get your butt in there and drag your twin out before Raph starts telling Mikey all about the time with the chocola-”
“You wouldn’t!” Leo gasped, shooting to his feet, hands clasped to the sides of his head in horror.
Mikey blinked in innocent confusion.
Raph jerked his thumb at the stairs, brow low and flat, and Leo went, grumbling all the way.
Leo burst into the lab car. Since Donnie set the doors to swish open automatically, denying Leo the chance for a dramatic entrance, he took a moment to turn around and kick the wall to make a satisfying bang. “Okay, Donolulu, time for all good little techies to take a bath and go nappy-time!”
Donnie made no attempt to respond.
In fact, Leo couldn’t see him anywhere in the lab. Pieces of half-welded something-or-others scattered on the workbench, yes. A pile of stripped wires on the table to his left. A mysteriously recent scorch mark on the floor. The persistent hum of Donnie’s usual set of computers and monitors endlessly working. All signs of the nesting habits of the genus humanoid turtle, species stupidly smart twin-brothericus . And yet…
Leo poked his head out with a thumbs up. “Alright guys, problem solved, he’s not even in here. We good.”
Both Raph and Mikey, watching from a safe distance, narrowed their eyes and flapped their hands at him to go back in. He rolled his eyes and turned back around.
Huh. Was Don’s empty desk chair spinning like that before?
He leaned forward and rubbed his chin, inspecting it. “Odd…”
Something behind him clattered to the ground, and he totally didn’t startle and jump a foot in the air in response. He held out his arms in front of him, defensively, pulse racing.
It took him a few seconds to register what he was looking at. Somehow, in his first survey of the lab, he had missed an entire wall covered in hand-written equations in a deep red that dripped slowly downwards. As the scientific scrawls climbed up the walls, they became increasingly shakier, all the way to completely illegible near the top, as though the writer had progressively lost their sanity.
They looked… Leo shivered. They looked like they were written in blood. He knew Donnie had markers in all sorts of colors; he’d even used Donnie’s red one to give Raph fake chicken pox that one time. He knew that that marker bled ink like a nicked artery. But even knowing there was a logical explanation for all this, it looked like something out of a horror movie.
“Hokay, definitely time for a nap. Don? Donniiiiiiiiiiiie, I’m going to drink all of your flavorless juice and move everything in here two inches to the left.”
He turned and started peeking behind the various machines and tools. Making his way around the 3D printer, the only one he recognized because it was awesome, he accidentally elbowed something and heard a small zap.
The lights started flickering.
“Oh, come on!”
In the stuttery half-darkness of the lab, the shadows suddenly grew long and ominous. Leo gulped. He felt his shoulders start to rise, defensively, against his will.
The blood red ink on the opposite wall seemed to drip…
Then, from right above him, a clack-clack of metal on metal.
He shrieked and turned to run, pinwheeling his limbs wildly in panic, but his foot caught on one of the printer cart’s wheels and he went tumbling to the ground in a painful clatter that jarred his funny bone.
Lying on the ground, holding on to his elbow and wincing, he heard the noise again.
Oh yeah.
Now that he thought about it, it sounded a lot like…
His gaze trailed upwards, into the deep flickering shadows of the train car ceiling. He saw: long, gangly robotic limbs with claws on the end, poised as though to strike. A few spidery metal appendages clamped tightly to the ceiling, leaving deep indents that suggested a terrible strength. White eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. The shine of bared teeth. A terrifyingly large forehead.
“Oh, hey Don,” Leo said, and waved.
Donatello hissed, long and deep, something primal that made Leo instinctively cringe back. The spider arms carried Donnie across the ceiling and away from Leo with the same metal clacking noise.
“Ohhhh no you don’t,” Leo grumbled. He scrambled to his feet and hopped around the printer, following after Donnie with a little jump in his step. “It’s time for some TLC whether you like it or not, hermano.”
Every flickering shadow through the frosted windows of the lab train car was making Mikey flinch. He eventually covered his eyes, even though there was nothing to watch, but then peered out through his cracked fingers, even though, again, nothing to watch.
Raph put a hand on Mikey’s shoulder. “I’m sure they’re fine,” he said. “Last time, it took another few days for Donnie to get really bad. They’re probably just, negotiating?” His grip on Mikey’s shoulder suddenly tightened at the noise of something shattering.
The sounds were thus: a deep thump of a body hitting the ground. A feral hiss. A wordless yell. An ungodly screech. A series of banging noises ending with a hollow thud and a scream.
Then, out from the doorway stumbled Leo, panting, something wriggling around in his arms. “I got ‘im, guys!”
The something in his arms snarled loudly, thrashing with its feet and its many mechanical limbs. Its living hands were white-knuckling an object which whirred and blinked. Its eyes, pupils blown wide, were fixed unerringly on the object, fiddling with it with fierce abandon.
“Eugh boy,” Raph commented, sounding tired, “we did leave it too long. Donnie’s gone savage.”
“Savage? No, nonono,” Leo said. “We’re calling it bitey. Because he bit me!” He twisted a little to show off his shoulder, which sported a very unfortunately familiar set of raw, red marks, a little bigger than the healed-over scars of years past. One of the tooth marks was bleeding just slightly. “Betrayal of the highest order!”
Donnie craned his neck as far as it would go and snapped his teeth at Leo’s face, very narrowly missing the end of his beak. Drops of spittle slapped Leo right in the eye.
“That’s it! No more Mr. Nice Nardo,” Leo grit out. “Mikey!” Michelangelo saluted. “Get me the blandest flavorless juice we got on tap, and those protein crackers that taste like if air and disappointment had a baby! Raph!” Raphael stood up a little straighter. “Rustle us up some bubble bath action! We're gonna self-care Donnie until he begs for mercy!”
“Somehow Raph doesn’t think that’s how self-care works,” Raph mumbled, turning to go start up the water in the tub.
Leo held Donnie as still as he could while Mikey pinched a cracker between his longest pair of salad tongs and held it out towards Donnie’s mouth carefully. “Here comes the airplane!” He wiggled it back and forth with a few zooming noises, waiting for Donnie’s attention.
Donnie didn’t even seem to notice until Mikey bumped his snout with the cracker on accident. Then he startled so hard that his head rammed Leo’s chin, and Leo went a little crosseyed but his bear hug stayed firm and unyielding.
Okay, no airplane for Donnie.
It seemed to take Mikey a second, but then it came to him. “Okay Donnie, the airplane flew away. Here comes the drone!” He wiggled the cracker again. This time, Donnie’s head bobbed a little, unfocused, then shot up to point unerringly at the food in front of him. “Zoom… zoom?”
“Don’t quote me, but I think it’s more like ‘bzzzzz’” Leo said, voice strained. He was still seeing stars a little from that bonk.
“Really? Uh, I mean ‘bzzzzzzz…’”
Donatello extended his neck and chomped. Mikey yanked the salad tongs away as fast as lightning, and they both watched with more than a little relief as Donnie chewed and swallowed the offering. Then, in a move that shocked literally everyone, he opened his toothy maw terrifyingly wide and seemed to wait patiently for more. All the while, his eyes were glued on the Thing, fiddling with the wires hooked to the back, thoughtful little rumblings in his throat like talking to himself.
Leo could tell it was a trap, and Mikey seemed to get the vibe as well. He got no closer, but hefted a cracker between his fingers as though it was a shuriken and readied his aim. One, two crackers landed on Donnie’s expectant tongue, and crunch they went. “Two points!” He cheered.
“No fair,” Leo grouched. “I wanna play.”
The next one went a tad wide, and Leo swung Donnie around a little to compensate. He could feel the way Donnie grumbled about it, deep in his chest, vibrating under Leo's tight grip.
"Sorry!" Mikey said with a wince.
Leo felt that little tingle of mischief drip its way down the back of his neck - the thing that he knew better than to listen to, but always listened to anyway because self-restraint was for party poopers and older brothers. "No, s'cool, s'cool - go long!" He hopped backwards a couple times to widen the distance, and Donnie wiggled unhappily, driving his heels back on Leo's shins repeatedly before settling. Ow.
Mikey, always a good sport, agreeably backed up as far as he could in the room and really actually held the next cracker like a shuriken, bent elbow and angled shoulder for the windup and all. "Okay, ready?"
"Let 'er rip, Miguel!"
Mikey threw it. It spun through the air, arcing in just the right way that Leo was sure it was going to be a bullseye, but then something - a draft, maybe the cracker itself not being perfectly flat? - caused it to veer off to the left and head right for the wall, and Leo tensed, instinctively wanting to dive after it but knowing they'd never make it. Especially not with an armful of bitey brother. (See? Bitey? That was going to catch on like wildfire.)
"Aaaand he misses by a mile!"
"Aw man..." Mikey huffed. He readied the next one, sticking out his tongue between his teeth like it would somehow help him concentrate better.
"And Miguel steps back up to the plate..." Leo narrated. "Will he make the game-winning goal? The crowd tenses in anticipation!"
The cracker's trajectory this time was perfect. And Leo didn't just give flying cracker compliments out willy-nilly! Leo didn't even have to wiggle Donnie at all; it sailed right into his open mouth.
"Goal!" Leo cried. "And the crowd screams!"
Mikey took a bouncy little bow, but when he straightened back up there was a strange look on his face. "...Leo..."
"But! Will the M-V-Turtle continue his streak?"
"Leo- hold on-"
"Let's see if he can replicate that while he’s hanging upside down!"
"Leo for the love of all things cheesy and carb-loaded look at Donnie!"
And- and oh, oh yeah, while Leo was monologuing Donnie was choking to death. Apparently. "Holy moley- Mikey, did you throw that cracker straight down his throat?!?!" That was so cool!
Bad. He meant bad.
Donnie would so think it was cool, though, when he was in his right mind. Probably. C'mon, that throw was at least 40 feet and it went right in there!
Mikey hopped from foot to foot in clear distress. No worries, though. Leon was on the case. He was already kinda sorta in the heimlich position, so he readjusted his grip, leaned back and squeezed Donnie a couple times as hard across the stomach as he could, real quick and forceful, pushing in an upwards direction. Donnie was so lucky he had a soft plastron or he'd be doomed right about now.
Leo didn't hear Raph walking down the stairs until he was almost at the bottom. "The bubble bath is good to go. Raph even put in the purple rubber ducky, but Donnie better not try to chew on it or nothing, 'cuz it's special edition- what is going on down here?!"
Leo hit the diaphragm just right, and with one heavy hork the cracker flew back out of Donnie's throat...
...and right between Raph's eyes with a gooey, crunchy splat.
Raph blinked.
Leo cringed.
Mikey cast his gaze aside in feigned innocence.
Donnie snarled, his efforts to escape his fleshy imprisonment suddenly tripled in urgency, and with one hard heel to Leo's iffier knee he was free. He turned around to hiss loudly all up in Leo's business, teeth snapping oh so close to Leo's delicate face, and then scrambled up on top of the nearest cabinet. He hunched over, his battleshell facing the room in a clear dismissal, pulling a tool out of somewhere and working to unscrew a screw on the side panel of the Thing.
Raph reached up a hand and wiped away the cracker remains with a visible shudder. "I'm gonna just go ahead and assume that you guys got something into him before you two started on your nonsense. Which means it's bathtime. C'mon Don, let's leave these bozos."
He reached up with one arm and scooped up Donnie right around his waist. Donnie began gnawing on the arm immediately, fumbling with his screwdriver and nearly dropping it as he did, but Raph didn't even seem to notice as he headed back up the stairs.
Leo and Mikey shared a look, the classic shameful expression of little brothers who did a bad thing and know they did a bad thing but definitely don't want to be in trouble for the bad thing so they're hoping the authority figure forgets they ever did the bad thing in the first place-
And they hopped up the stairs after Raph.
"Come on, Donnie, you like these bubbles," Raph coaxed as Donnie fruitlessly struggled against him with the desperation of the dying. His spider arms had long since retracted back into the battleshell and it looked like he was too far gone to remember he had them, which was the only progress they had made so far. "This is that, uh, Organic? Peace? something-or-other stuff," he squinted at the bottle sitting on top of the toilet tank but couldn't make out the cursive logo, "no smells, and it doesn't leave that weird feeling on your scales, right?
"And look," he reached out and squeaked the purple ducky, "I've even got Mr. Quarky! He's getting lonely floating in this warm, scent-free bath by himself..."
The words clearly went in one ear and out the other for Donnie, still poking away at the Thing in between trying to crawl up Raph's shoulder and away from the scary bath.
"Aww, is the aquatic turtle afraid of a little water?" Leo teased from the doorway.
Raph glared. "You shut your mouth, you. Mikey, help me get his battleshell off. Please." He carefully grabbed Donnie under the armpits with both hands and turned him around so his back was facing outwards, perfectly positioned for Mikey to approach and undo the clasps from behind.
Unfortunately, the maneuvering left Raph's face vulnerable to the many swipes of Donnie's nails on his free hand. They weren't strong enough to break all the way through Raph's thick skin, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt, especially since it was his face that was getting mauled. Gasping in shock as much as pain, he did the only thing his brain could think of to do, and let go.
...Donnie dropped straight into the tub with a tremendous slosh and shrieked to the high heavens in betrayal. In the process, the Thing sailed right out of his hand and through the air towards the open doorway.
"Leon's got it!" Leo shouted and ran backwards out the door until his shell collided with the back of an arcade cabinet with a hefty oof. The Thing landed in his hands and he vanished with it, presumably to go squirrel it somewhere out of sight and out of mind.
There was a sudden silence in the bathroom that lasted for all of a second and a half, where nobody dared to breathe.
Then Donnie's sleep deprived brain finally seemed to catch up with all that had just happened, and Donnie did not like that. Not one little bit. Whatever Raph had thought of Donnie's struggles up to this point, it was nothing compared to now. They'd gone and pressed his berserk button. He was up and out of the tub in a flash, slipping and sliding as he tried to scramble out of the room and back towards the Thing, and when Raph barged in front of the doorway to block it, Donnie tried to go over and through.
They were both so drenched and soapy at this point that neither could get a good grip or foothold on the other. Donnie would attempt to climb Raph and slip down before he'd even made it partway up, and Raph would try and wrap a hand or arm around him only for him to slide out of Raph's grasp like a slippery little fish. The suds only got worse the more they struggled.
Raph dared a glance at Mikey, only to see him tapping on his phone and holding it up. "Mikey don't you dare."
Mikey pretended not to hear him, continuing to hold up the phone, his finger approaching what Raph knew was the record button.
"Mikey, I will tattle to Donnie when he's better, don't you think I won't. You can say goodbye to photoshop. Every filter on your phone. Your collection of pirated Van Bradford movies you think we don't know about. All your bookmarks for your favorite Jupiter Jim fanfics. Your custom ringtones."
Every item on the list made Mikey slowly put the phone further back down until it slipped into a pocket. Then, like that whole thing never happened, he turned to grab a bath towel from Donnie's special towel cupboard and approached them both on silent feet.
Donnie screeched and thrashed when Mikey hugged him from behind with the towel between them, but Mikey was arguably the strongest of all of them and the power of his embrace was unrelenting. It took a few minutes, but either Donnie started tiring himself out or something about the familiar texture of his special towel calmed him down, because he slowly seemed to run out of battery and started to slump. His head lolled back onto Mikey's shoulder, and Mikey cooed. "Awww, he's sleepy now!"
"Oh look at that, you guys did the hard stuff without me. Too bad. Welp, looks like our job here is almost done!" Leo poked his smug head in through the door, crossing his arms and jutting out his hip as he leaned against the frame. A little purple rubber ducky floated past his feet and out into the hallway.
Raph was still soaked. The soapy drips itched as they raced tiny little rivers down Raph's back, and he shivered, then decided to heck with it and shook himself off, letting droplets fly.
The resulting shouts from Leo and Mikey were just a bit satisfying.
Okay.
Food: kinda. Bath: basically. Next step? Getting Donnie the fuck to sleep.
Mikey, in his brilliant wisdom, googled how people swaddle babies, and Leo and Raph wrangled their bitey brother into a rough approximation. The results were much better than that time they tried to assemble an Ikea chair which April had ended up submitting to her middle school art show as a modern art piece, so there. Then they heaved the sharp purple burrito onto the couch, ignoring his aggrieved hisses that were slowly winding down in both volume and frequency as the past few days of hyperfixation-fueled insomnia finally seemed to catch up with him.
They were all pretty pooped by this point. No one needed to say it out loud; they all knew this called for a good old turtle pile nap. Mikey heaved a sigh of relief and plopped down on Donnie's legs, coincidentally preventing him from attempting escape.
Leo reached over to fluff the pillow under Donnie's head like the angel of a brother he was, about to make a totally innocent teasing comment about the whole baby swaddle thing, when Donnie decided to enact one final attempt at revenge and actually bit him! Right on the schnoz! A light nip, Donnie's teeth barely grazing his scales before Leo screeched and yanked himself away, but still!
Him! Donnie's beloved twin! The yin to Donnie's yang! The Hannah to Donnie’s Montana! How dare he-! Leo reared back, both hands over his tender face. Mikey and Raph both startled and flailed a bit in surprise.
Leo had tears in his eyes. The betrayal! What would he do if it scarred his precious face? They'd be out a face man, his moneymaker destroyed, the whole family living on the streets, forced to do hard labor at the pizza factory to survive...
"What does it look like?" He asked Mikey tremulously, pulling his hands away from his face. "Will we live?"
"'We'?" Raph asked, sounding confused and not at all concerned the way a loving and attentive big brother should be in such dire circumstances.
Mikey stood up and leaned over for closer observation. "Uh. Leo. Did he even actually get you, or...?"
"Obviously he got me! What, do you think I'd just freak out and make noises for no reason?" He looked at Mikey and then Raph.
"Raph doesn't want to answer that on the grounds that it will incriminate him," Raph replied evasively, which was so rude, honestly.
Donnie took the opportunity to wriggle his way out of the blanket wrap, swaying a little from exhaustion but snarling nevertheless and preparing to jump at them, or maybe scurry up the nearest bookcase, and they all braced themselves for the next round, when-
A humming noise drifted through the archway at the end of the room, and they all looked up to see Splinter, with his bathrobe on and a warm mug of tea in his hands, tilt back his head and let out a big belly laugh. "Ah, Purple, your silly antics never cease to be entertaining."
Parental approval. One of Donnie's biggest weak spots.
Everyone slowly turned to look at Donnie, just in time to catch his pupils sinking back to their normal size. He blinked one deep, thoughtful blink. Leo could almost see the gears in that huge brain suddenly spinning back to life.
"See? I keep telling you guys I'm the funny one," Donnie said.
...?!
By the time Leo gathered his wits and lunged to strangle him, Raph had already reached out and blocked it with one palm spread wide, and Donnie had conked right out to sleep and was snoring away.