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The best part of living in New York was that even if someone saw The Nick Fury kick open a manhole cover and climb into the sewers, no one was going to blink an eye at that. Classic New Yorkian behaviour, that.
The several boxes of pizza in his arms garnered more attention, and that’s only because the sheer amount made people think there was a party happening, and that they could potentially get in on the free food.
Joke was on them, there; Nick was gonna be lucky to get a slice or two himself, and that’s only because he was the one to provide the food. Any stranger trying to steal some pizza would find themselves on the wrong side of a turtle shell, and Nick wasn’t going to save them.
Yes, he said turtle shell.
Now, they weren’t exactly turtles — as much as they might resemble them, save for the vastly increased mental capacity, speech ability, bipedalism and greater dexterity — but for his own sanity, Nick elected to use that descriptor as a sort of a mental shorthand.
His running theory was that they, along with Nick’s current partner, were aliens.
The sort of aliens whom the USA government didn’t know anything about yet.
It was a problem, but not one Nick could solve. Oh, of course he could share information about them with SHIELD, but he was pretty sure that would make him single again, if not worse.
Until the Avengers stepped up — or down, considering the aliens in question have repurposed a startlingly large area of the sewers underneath New York into their home — and brought the intel in themselves, Nick’s hands were tied.
“PIZZA’S HERE!”
The yell jarred him from his thoughts, and he braced his grip against the bottom box as the rest of the stack was rapidly claimed by clawed hands.
“I am also here,” he said dryly, watching the teenagers scatter with their loot.
“I’m afraid they find you far less exciting than the pizza,” Splinter’s voice drifted in from the small balcony next to him. That particular installation had appeared seemingly overnight sometime in the early stage of their relationship, and coincidentally happened to be precisely tall enough to place Splinter’s head level with Nick’s own.
Kissing what was essentially a large rat’s snout had become startlingly normal, Nick mused.
“A battle I cannot win,” he sighed, passing over the last box of pizza. “And what about your attention?”
Splinter threw himself over the railing with elegance that still caught Nick by surprise sometimes. Despite his frail-looking elderly appearance, Splinter was still a martial arts master.
“Unlike my sons, I am capable of multitasking,” he smirked over his shoulder before walking away towards the sofa, his cane clanking cheerily with every step. Nick followed after him, contemplating his words.
It was the crux of his current dilemma, really. Not the multitasking — he was already well aware of Splinter’s talent at that, discovered through certain activities Nick would never be disclosing to anyone under any circumstances — but the first part of it. His sons.
Splinter’s sons.
Of course, the turtles were already fairly grown — equivalently to human teenagers, as their chosen moniker proclaimed — and if this was any other relationship, Nick would have been happy for their independence, but…
It wasn’t any other relationship, now, was it?
Nick settled down on the sofa first, as was customary, letting Splinter make himself comfortable in his lap. The rat seemed happy enough to busy himself with the pizza for now, so Nick let himself fully board his train of thought, one arm wrapped around Splinter’s waist.
He had never planned on dating what was essentially a giant sentient rat, not until he already fell head over heels down a sewer hole. But now that he was in this partnership and going strong — nearing three years now, far longer than any other relationship Nick had, and that included the relationship with his parents, too — he was having some… ideas.
Some very paternal ideas.
Now, did the turtles want an additional father figure? …Not particularly. They barely listened to Splinter, and the rat’s had them since birth.
Nick was lucky that the kids seemed to be on board with their relationship, at the very least. In fact, he started dating Splinter thanks to some extended Rube Goldberg-style scheme the four had concocted, so he definitely didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to the risk of them sabotaging him.
But even if they didn’t need him, he still wanted to be there for them. One could never have too much support, especially when in the throes of puberty.
And that was another thing Nick was rather worried about. Seeing as SHIELD had nothing on file when it came to Splinter’s race, Nick had no idea what to expect from the kid’s puberty — other than that it had to be brutal, to go from a turtle-adjacent look to a rat-like one — and no way to research it.
No way other than, of course, asking Splinter outright.
“So, uh,” Nick cleared his throat, already regretting speaking. He searched for an alternative topic of conversation he could use, but his mind was uselessly empty.
“Mhm?” Splinter said through a mouthful of cheese, glancing back at him. He’d get suspicious if Nick took much longer, and there was nothing more annoying than Splinter determined to get answers out of you.
Nothing beside four mini-Splinters trying to do the same with far less finesse, of course.
Well, there was nothing to do but ask directly. “What exactly should I expect from the kids’ puberty?”
Splinter choked on the bite, struggling to swallow it all before he could choke. Nick thumped him on the back, trying to help, but it didn’t really do much when Splinter refused to spit out the food blocking his airways.
He managed, eventually, though Nick’s heart was beating far too fast from the stress of wondering if he managed to somehow kill his partner with pizza and a mistimed question.
If only killing hostiles was this easy…
“What?” Splinter wheezed out as soon as he could form words again.
He left the pizza on the table, turning around on Nick’s lap to face him.
“The kids,” he repeated. “They’re yours and they’re still teenagers, so I assume at some point they will have to lose the shells and all the… non-furry parts…?”
Nick watched as Splinter slowly lost a battle against hysterical laughter. The rat bowed until his forehead rested against Nick’s chest, wheezing all the while.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” he grumbled, heat crawling up his cheeks. “You’re my partner and they’re your kids. And I have no idea what to expect-”
“They’re adopted,” Splinter finally said.
That… Made a lot more sense than Nick’s original assumption of a race with drastic dimorphism between the juvenile and mature specimens.
“Ah…”
“It’s cute how you were ready to accept some sort of insanely complicated puberty process though,” Splinter was still smiling when he looked up at him. Happiness really suited him, even if it was at Nick’s expense. “Fully prepared to support them and all-”
“They’re your kids,” Nick repeated, like that explained everything.
To be fair, it did.
He might have let the longing become audible in his voice, but… Did it really matter? As much as Nick might wish to be more involved… Well. There was little he could offer them that they needed, short of intervening if they were ever detained; Which, considering their track record, might never happen.
“Oh, so you want to deal with us more?” A voice piped up from behind the sofa and Nick startled badly enough to launch Splinter a foot into the air.
The rat had never looked more like a cat than when he scrambled to hold onto Nick’s shoulders, panic on his face.
Nick craned his neck back, looking upside-down at Donatello.
“I forgot about your bugs,” he admitted, which was pretty telling in itself. To have his paranoid ass feeling safe enough to completely ignore the surveillance… “I take it you heard the whole thing?”
“Think a lot of it might have happened inside of your head,” the turtle vaulted over the back of the sofa, settling himself beside them. He reached for the pizza, too, but Splinter had his cane rapping Donatello’s knuckles before he could grab a slice. “All I heard was the stupid puberty question and you essentially saying you want to adopt us.”
“You took some major liberties with that summary.”
“Is he wrong, though?” Nick didn’t startle as much at Micheloangelo’s voice. He was expecting the rest of the turtles to crawl out of their nooks as soon as Donatello showed up. These boys were the definition of FOMO when it came to their brothers. “We thought you weren’t interested, so we kept our distance. Letting you date sensei without the baggage and all-”
“Don’t call yourselves that,” Nick frowned.
But Micheloangelo just grinned at him, wriggling his hard shell in between Nick and the sofa armrest, as if there was enough space there for him.
…Well, Nick made the space, so he wasn’t really wrong.
Leonardo and Raphaello weren’t far behind, joining the impromptu cuddle pile. Nick hadn’t cried in nearly two decades, but this was the closest he had come to tears since then.
“I’m not calling you dad, though,” Leonardo warned, as if Nick had any illusions about that.
“Fair enough.”
“Well I will,” Raph said, elbowing Leonardo in the shell under the guise of settling in better between the cushions. “Pass the remote, pops.”
Nick snorted, but tossed him the remote, if only to hear the other three teenagers groan and complain about it.
“It’s nice to have a watch party with the whole family,” Splinter said, his tail flicking against Nick as he shifted to lean against him.
Wrapping both his arms around his waist and resting his chin on top of Splinter’s head, Nick was inclined to agree.
It was definitely entertaining to watch the four teenagers realise in real time that the TV was permanently locked to only show Splinter’s favourite show.