Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

2007

The expectation was for Raph to be the first one to speak, him being the eldest. After Mikey was born, Dad and Mom rushed around the house, trying to take care of four little kids as efficiently as they could manage, but they also spoke the most around Raphael, hoping he would finally utter his first words. After all, he was two-years-old and it was just the right time for him to open up his mouth and blabber some word while butchering it up in the most adorable way.

Which meant that everyone was extremely surprised when the first child to speak was Leo rather than Raph.

Apparently, Hamato Leonardo was much more determined to get his point across than Raph, because one day when their parents tried to feed Donnie and him some mushy stuff Donnie wasn’t all too sure about, Leo pushed the spoon away from his face, scrunched up his little nose and cried, “No, no, no!”

Naturally, instead of being exasperated by the action, the parents both swooned, marveling at the sound of their child, even if he was still trying to sluggishly flip his plate upside down with his chubby little hand, nearly smacking Donnie in the face in the process. And the entire time he kept on calling, “No, no, no!” at the top of his lungs, not really caring for their parents’ excitement.

Later on, he said a few more words, as well (mommy, dada, toy, to name a few) before Raph finally caught on and started speaking as well. Maybe he didn’t like the fact that his younger brother started talking before him. Or maybe he just felt compelled to be able to communicate with Leo now that he was trying something new.

When Mikey turned two he also started butchering up words, giggling in delight every time his parents or Raph laughed at him or clapped their hands to encourage him further. He seemed to blossom under the attention, milking it the best he could as he tried and failed to pronounce the more difficult words he was hearing from people around him.

And then all the focus turned toward Donnie. Suddenly they all waited for the three-year-old to speak, too, and he could do nothing but stare at them all indifferently as he kept on silently playing on the floor, Leo sitting next to him comfortably, the only one around who didn’t seem to want to pressure Donnie into speaking. Actually, Leo never even seemed to be bothered by Donnie’s silence. He accepted it as it was, somehow understanding what Donnie wanted with nothing more than a look.

Under the cover of darkness, with nothing more than the light coming from the nightlight in the twins’ room, Leo and Donnie silently worked on developing their own language—one that wouldn’t require Donnie to speak up unless he really wanted to, which he didn’t. The idea of letting people hear his voice sent shivers down his spine, and the little kid didn’t like it. He much preferred gesturing for Leo with his hands.

But while their speechless language was enough for Donnie, he still found himself speaking just a little every night, just to be on the safe side. And since he didn’t feel comfortable doing so around the others, he only ever dared open his mouth and let out verbal words with Leo around, trusting that his brother would keep it all to himself. And he did, because Leo was goofy, but trustworthy.

Donnie trusted Leo so much, that whenever their parents tried to give them food they didn’t like, he knew Leo would voice his own displeasure, but he’d also speak for him, always knowing how Donnie felt about stuff.

Present

It was a good day, so Donnie found himself sitting in the school cafeteria during lunch, swirling his fork to wrap the spaghetti around it before shoving it into his mouth, careful not to leave a stain on his face. Then he chewed, swallowed and just as carefully took a bite out of the meatball in his lunch box.

He didn’t participate in the conversation idly going on around him between Leo and his friends. They were talking about their recent math lesson, mostly just whining about how difficult the material was and how much effort it took for them all to pay enough attention to follow their teacher’s words with her drawling voice and monotone speech.

Saying he was surprised by Leo’s attitude would have been a lie, because Donnie was very familiar with his brother’s claims. After years of growing up together and basically being attached at the hip, Donnie could confidently say that even when Leo succeeded in something, he still liked to dramatically moan about how tough it was. Maybe he expected sympathy. Or perhaps he thought he’d get more appreciation if he made it sound like all of his achievements were harder to acquire than they actually were.

Either way, Donnie rolled his eyes at his twin’s agonized tone as he took another bite from his pasta, making a mental note to let Mikey know how delicious the meal he’d made all of them was, because it honestly was. Especially after the fiasco of February, when Mikey had made them all something that smelled and tasted like rotten fish, which ended with most of the family being hunched over toilets or buckets for hours.

Eugh, the mere thought of it made Donnie shudder, before he forced himself to concentrate on the heavenly taste in his mouth instead. He was eating spaghetti and meatballs. This was not going to give him food poisoning.

Hopefully.

“I can’t believe she gave me a D,” said Dave as he waved a meatloaf sandwich around. “My dad is literally going to kill me when I see it. And I studied this time! My sister saw me—and she played on her phone loudly the entire time, and I know she was doing that on purpose—so I have witnesses! I put an effort and all I got to show for it is a lousy D?”

“Studying’s the worst,” grumbled Leo around a mouthful.

Donnie pursed his lips and nudged him pointedly, which made his twin look slightly apologetic as he swallowed the food in his mouth and offered him an appeasing smile before turning back to his friends. Content, Donnie turned back to peacefully chewing.

Alex rolled his eyes. “Man, you got a B,” he said, glaring at Leo weakly. “You have nothing to cry about. You know who is allowed to whine about this test? Me! I nearly got an F! And Mrs. Carley wanted to talk to me after class to ask me if I needed help or a tutor. I mean, it just doesn’t get worse than that.”

Shrugging, Leo casually said, “Well, I have Donnie to help me study—and focus—so I guess I do have a slight advantage over you two.” He threw his arm over Donnie’s shoulders and flashed him his bright grin. “Isn’t that right, Don? Who’s your best student in the world? No, no, don’t tell me—it’s me, right? It’s gotta be. Mikey is way worse than me when it comes to concentration. So who’s the best? Moi! Say it’s me, say it’s me!”

The other two exchanged a look, then shook their heads in exasperation as they ate their food.

Seeing as one of his hands was occupied, Donnie chose not to bother with putting his fork down and instead only used his free hand to sign, Raph. He used ASL instead of TSL (Twin Sign Language), but instead of spelling the name, he made the sign for the word ‘big’ with his fingers crossed to represent the letter R.

Gasping and making a wounded sound, Leo put a hand over his heart, dropped his fork noisily (which earned him a glare from Donnie) and exclaimed, “Raph? No, way! I’m a way better student. How can he be better? He learns things we haven’t even covered yet!”

He’s not as difficult as you, signed Donnie. Also, he gets everything I explain faster than you, dumb-dumb.

Eyes narrowed as he tried to follow, Dave said, “You know, if the student has trouble, it might be because of the teacher.”

“Yes!” said Leo excitedly as he pointed at his friend. “Exactly! Clearly, the problem does not lie with me, but with you. Maybe you just teach me badly. I should find a different tutor. But then I’d have to pay them for the extra help… I don’t think my studies are worth it, honestly.”

“I thought you wanted to be a doctor,” noted Alex.

Leo finished the food in his mouth before speaking this time, which Donnie appreciated. “Well, I mean, I do. But that doesn’t mean I have to agonize over schoolwork. You know, Mr. Carter actually gave me an extension on the history project.”

“No way!”

Smirking, Leo let go of his fork again in favor of crossing his hands behind his head as he smugly leaned back. Donnie just shook his head silently and took the last few bites of food in his lunch box, trying not to let his lips tug up at the familiar sight of Leo basking in the reaction he was getting from his friends.

“Yes way,” he said proudly. “I told him that Raph deleted the file and that I had to start all over again, and of course he bought it.”

Of course he did, because everyone in the school, including the teachers, knew that the eldest Hamato wasn’t the best with technology. Not because he didn’t understand how to work it all, but because he for some reason had the worst bad luck when it came to phones and computers, always making things go wrong somehow.

Mikey claimed it was a curse. Leo thought Raph was hilarious. Donnie just made sure everything precious to him was safe because he didn’t feel like losing everything important to him because of Raph’s accidents, even if he wouldn’t fully blame his older brother for it. Of course, that only happened after Raph had somehow gotten rid of some of Donnie’s research (don’t ask) deleted with the press of a button.

Dave and Alex laughed a little as Leo happily grabbed his fork and took another bite from his food. He still turned a little when Donnie closed his lunch box, shoved it in his backpack and got up. His wide grin eased up a little and his eyes softened the way they sometimes did when he was done messing around and joking with his friends, instead turning his attention to something more important.

“Going to the library, right?” he said.

“Don’t you spend enough time in there already?” said Dave, Alex still snickering next to him. “I mean, every time we have a free period, you’re at the library.”

Donnie just pressed his lips together and signed, I want to finish the chemistry paper as soon as possible.

“That was too fast,” whined Dave.

“I think he said he’s going to do a chemistry experiment there,” whispered Alex loudly.

Leo shook his head at them but didn’t correct them. “Want to wait for me to finish up here so we can go together?” he suggested.

“Dude, we were going to replace Mr. Verra’s markers with permanent ones after lunch,” protested Alex. “I already have them all ready to go.”

“I heard he was in a faculty meeting right now, so there’s no way we’re gonna get caught, but only if we do it now. You can’t bail on us!”

“Uh, right.” Leo turned back to Donnie with an apologetic shrug. “Then I’ll see you in class later. Ooh, you know, this is better—I’ll just copy off your work so I won’t have to put any actual effort into my paper—”

In your dreams, Leo, signed Donnie.

Again, Donnie didn’t spell Leo’s name. They had a sign for it just like they had one for Raph. Only, well, in Leo’s case, Donnie and Leo had both given each other names back when they didn’t know American Sign Language, instead only relying on their own method of communication, which they had later on dubbed Twin Sign Language.

So while they’d decided to combine the first letters of their names with the word for ‘twin’ all the way back then to say their names, they didn’t use ASL for that, instead still using TSL to say it, which meant it always looked odd when people who knew ASL saw it, since the signs always looked more like they were calling each other weirdos, which was sort of similar enough to the word for ‘twin’, but not enough for people not to be confused.

But since Leo and Donnie never really liked sharing their own language with anyone—including their own family, although they knew Raph, Mikey and Dad knew perfectly well what every word and gesture meant even if they never used it themselves—the two just kept everyone baffled, not explaining the true meaning of the nicknames, which included Leo’s friends.

He could see their grimaces at the way he signed the name, glancing at each other with this look that clearly showed they still had no idea why Donnie chose to call his brother a weirdo all the time. Leo thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. Donnie just ignored it like usual, not really caring what people thought about Leo’s name.

“Fine, fine, I’ll just do my best and then ask for your help—you’ll do everything in the end anyway, so I don’t see why you won’t just give in now, but whatever…” mumbled Leo as he settled back in his seat, though he still quickly gestured, You feeling all right? I can ditch them if you want, in TSL so his friends couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“Ugh, I hate it when you guys talk like that,” whined Alex as he smacked his head against the table.

Donnie just shook his head. I’m fine. See you later.

“Okay, see ya,” said Leo out loud, then turned back to his friends, quickly directing the conversation toward their upcoming basketball game enthusiastically, his free hand gesturing wildly, likely without him even realizing he was signing the entire time.

Turning around, Donnie left to exit the loud cafeteria in favor of finding some peace in the library among the books and the sour librarian that kept on lurking behind every bookshelf like a vulture, waiting to see who her next victim would be. She really liked chastising kids who forgot to put their books back in place or who weren’t careful enough with them. Donnie only ever got berated by her once, and it was solely because of Leo.

It happened later that day, while Donnie was walking toward his next class, which was the only one he wasn’t sharing with Leo, it being his major. Leo had chosen to study biochemistry while Donnie’s major was engineering.

He was just about to walk around the corner so he could get to his engineering workshop that was in the next hall over, but the voices of Leo’s friends coming from that direction caught him off guard. And while normally he wouldn’t have stopped just from hearing their voices so randomly, this time their words made him freeze up.

“…isn’t embarrassed, I have no idea. I mean, I would’ve been in his place. Raph and Mikey I can kind of get, because they don’t spend all of their time around him, but seriously, I mean, can he not take a hint and just leave Leo alone?”

That was Dave’s voice, Donnie’s brain offered unhelpfully. And he was clearly talking about Leo and… and someone who was bothering him, maybe? And if there was someone out there bothering his twin, Donnie wanted to know about it, although he didn’t understand what Raph and Mikey had to do with it. Or why Leo’s friends knew about this but Donnie didn’t.

After all, Leo and he talked about everything, didn’t they? Heck, ever since they were little, Leo had told Donnie every time some celebrity in a movie or show caught his eye, which meant that before anyone else knew, Donnie had already been in on the secret that his brother was gay. It was never a big thing to him, though, because this was just… the only version of Leo he knew.

Leo had once shoved his used socks in Donnie’s face, demanding to know if they were too smelly. He’d once refused to put on clothes because Dad wanted them all to dress up nicely and Donnie couldn’t bear the feeling of the suit pressing against his skin, so Leo’s way of helping him had been to run around their room, completely naked, evading their papa as he chased him all around until Donnie could be excused to wear something much more simplistic and comfortable.

So his brother had no secrets kept from Donnie, and he clearly had no shame, so what could have possibly made him not tell Donnie about someone who was always nearby, to the point where even his friends knew it was annoying him? And how come Donnie hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary?

“Yeah,” said Alex. “I mean, I have a sister, too, but you don’t see me hanging out with her all the time. At some point it’s just too suffocating.”

Wait…

“And Leo’s too nice to say anything about it. Man, he can be blunt to our teachers, but he can’t say anything rude to his brother or his whole family would hear about it. And, I mean, they should side with him, but who knows how these people work.”

Donnie’s blood ran cold as he found himself taking a subconscious step back and away from the voices that were getting louder and louder as the two boys walked closer to where he was, probably in order to turn the corner, too. Then they’d find him standing there and it would be even worse than it already was, because they were obviously talking about him.

They thought he was bothering Leo because he was constantly around? But… but he wasn’t doing anything different. Leo and him have always been inseparable. It was just… the way the two of them worked. It was something everybody knew, and no one ever said a word about it except for the occasional comment about how they were basically one unit with two parts, incapable of being apart for too long.

But it wasn’t bothering Leo. If anyone could find the constant togetherness annoying, it was Donnie who couldn’t handle being around people sometimes, although Leo was the exception most of the time. Even more so—Leo was usually the one to proudly state that they were attached at the hip, not Donnie. So he couldn’t possibly be annoyed with this.

Although… well, Donnie knew that Raph and Mikey sometimes liked hanging out with their friends without other members of their family dropping in on them to tag along. Which made sense, they were their own friends, not their brothers’. And Leo’s friends were Leo’s friends, not Donnie’s. Donnie didn’t really have friends since he never seemed to be able to get close enough to anyone.

“I swear, when I first met them all I thought it was super weird that Leo was even related to them,” laughed Dave. “I mean, I know he has his quirks, but he’s so much cooler than the rest of them. I mean, Raph and Mikey are at least kind of awesome. Being the best football player and the most talented artist in the school is fine, but Donnie…”

“He’s so weird, man,” said Alex mirthfully. “I mean, I guess he has being smart going for him, but he waves it over his brothers’ heads like he thinks they’re all stupid.”

“I never once saw him hug any of them. Leo can practically throw himself at him and the guy wouldn’t budge. Like he’s some kind of robot or something. Does he even feel emotions? Sometimes I swear it feels like he’s just going through the motions.”

Alex snorted. “I don’t actually think he cares about his brothers for real. I mean, remember our last game?”

Huffing, Dave exclaimed, “Duh! The guy didn’t even show up! He missed Leo scoring that last hoop. I saw Raph and Mikey in the crowd. Even their dad showed up to the game, but Leo’s literal twin decided to skip. What, did he have a meeting with the robotics club or something?”

“He would fit right in with that Kendra girl and the other weirdos,” Alex laughed, then he sobered up and added, “And Leo was still super forgiving about that, too, remember? He forced us to show up to the robotics competition Donnie participated in, like he had to be there for him, but his brother didn’t share the same obligation.”

“Seriously messed up.”

Donnie’s heart was racing in his chest, but he was careful not to make a single sound as he finally forced his legs to silently carry him back and toward the closest classroom door around him. He slipped inside and leaned against the door with his head ducked down so it wouldn’t be visible through the little window.

The voices were too muffled to understand now that there was a door separating him from the hall, but he could hear Alex and Dave as they kept on chatting outside, walking past the classroom without even being aware of who was hiding inside.

“Uh…” a voice from the other side of the classroom said, startling Donnie.

His wide eyes snapped toward the corner of the classroom. He found himself blinking at a girl that was sitting on the floor, back leaning against the wall with her backpack resting in her lap. She was about his age, although he was pretty sure she was slightly older. She had a green jacket and a mop of brown curly hair that fell into her eyes as she stared up at him, something uncomfortable sparkling in her gaze.

“Hiding from a teacher?” she offered a long stretch of silence.

Donnie hesitated, then shook his head.

Everything in his body seemed to buzz, the blood in his veins racing up and down his body, not allowing him to feel even slightly relaxed. Actually, Donnie was pretty sure that even during his most overwhelmed moments he’d never felt as terrible as he did right now. There was a ringing in his ear and a lump in his throat that would’ve prevented him from speaking up even if he wanted to.

And God, his eyes were stinging, like he was going to cry. He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t like crying at the best of times, and right now he was stuck in a room with some girl he didn’t know. This was less than optimal, but his body didn’t seem to care in the least about that. No, his eyes kept rapidly blinking as he sniffed pitifully, feeling like a kicked puppy.

The girl seemed to notice this, because her wariness dampened a little as she furrowed her brows in concern. “Hey, are you okay? You failed a test or something? Because trust me, I know the feeling and it is not pleasant. I cried for two hours straight once because I got an F on my social studies exam. I mean, I didn’t really study properly, so that was on me, but it was still frustrating ‘cause I had to get my mom to sign it, which was just a drag and elicited a whole lecture from her about putting more effort into my school work…”

She blinked. “Sorry, you, uh, didn’t ask to know all that.”

Donnie couldn’t care less. He just kept staring at her, his eyes unfocused behind his glasses as he tried to calm himself down, which seemed to be an impossible task thanks to Alex and Dave’s voices still swimming around his brain, repeating on the same things he just heard them say about him.

Was he really a bother to Leo? He didn’t think so… his twin loved him, right? They loved each other, even if it was more difficult for Donnie to show it. And even if Leo had to sometimes work a little harder to accommodate to Donnie’s needs.

Like, yes, Leo had been the one to suggest communicating with signs and then took it upon himself to learn ASL and teach it to the other people in their family so they’d be able to talk to Donnie, too.

And okay, sure, Leo really did always come to Donnie’s competitions and extracurricular activities to support him and make sure he was doing all right, but it wasn’t like Donnie asked him to come. And Donnie would have shown up to all of Leo’s games, but it was just… he couldn’t handle all of the cheers and the noise and the lights in the gym. It was all too much for him to take all at once, and Leo was aware of that, so Donnie was excused.

Yes, fine, sometimes Leo would give up on doing whatever he wanted to do in favor of doing what Donnie wanted even though it clearly frustrated him that they once again couldn’t go to a movie because Donnie couldn’t bear the thought of sitting with a bunch of chewing people, surrounded by too loud speakers and no access to his phone in case it all got to be too much, but—

God, he felt like a jerk.

“Hey, whoa, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the girl said frantically as she pushed herself to her legs and took a few uncertain steps toward Donnie, her hand reaching out awkwardly as if she wanted to comfort him. “I—I don’t know what’s wrong, but I didn’t mean to make it worse, okay? No need to cry…”

And… oh, yes, Donnie brought his hand up to his cheek and it came back wet from the tears that were currently streaming down his face silently. He hated crying, and yet he was doing just that. And in front of a stranger, no less.

Waving his hand dismissively, Donnie tried to let the girl know it wasn’t her fault—maybe then she’d mind her own business and look away so he’d be able to compose himself without her eyes trained on him. But she kept on staring in concern, apparently not getting what he wanted from her.

The bell rang just then, signaling the beginning of class. Donnie knew he was supposed to already be in the workshop, sitting at his desk and ready to learn some more with the help of his major teacher, but instead he was standing in this empty classroom with a girl he didn’t know, crying and incapable of even entertaining the thought of sitting in a classroom and taking notes. Not when his mind was still racing.

Was he seriously a bad twin? He never thought he was before, but Leo’s friends did make some valid points. He was inconsiderate, selfish, self-absorbed… Leo was always there for him, but was he equally as there for Leo? It wasn’t like he hadn’t done things for his twin, but clearly not enough. In retrospect, he was rarely ever willing to go along with Leo’s wishes if they stood in contrast with his.

This should have been obvious to him. How come he was only realizing this now?

Sure, Donnie wasn’t the best with feelings, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care about his family. He didn’t have friends, but he had his brothers and his father to think about. Papa always tried his best to understand Donnie and cooperate with his oddities, Raph was the most overprotective big brother in the universe, Mikey was like a ray of sun on bad days and a great person to turn to when emotions were involved, but…

But what has Donnie done for them in return? He was closed-off, distant and usually refused hugging or being hugged by them all since it made his skin crawl and his insides clench. He sat at dinners with his headphones on just to cancel out most of the sounds around him, including their voices as they chatted. He even ended up kicking Leo out of their shared room once because he couldn’t—he just couldn’t be anywhere near another human being, including his own twin.

Sliding to the floor, Donnie wrapped his arms around himself. And even though his hands were literally identical to Leo’s, he still didn’t find the same comfort his twin’s arms offered as he numbly stared into thin air, still crying silently.

“Ooh, boy,” the girl muttered as she took a few more steps closer, clearly cautious and uncomfortable. “Do you want me to call someone for you? Do you need anything? I can get you some water, maybe, or… I could call the counselor, I guess.”

His first instinct was to make the familiar sign of Leo’s name, but the moment he was done with the gesture, his hand fell down lifelessly and he sniffed. He couldn’t call Leo. His friends made it abundantly clear that his brother could use with a little time without Donnie clinging to him. He needed to get over this and just… just accept the fact that maybe he really was the worst twin Leo could have had.

The girl raised an eyebrow. “Was that… sign language?” she said hesitantly. “Do you not speak?”

Donnie nodded without looking at her.

She was quiet for a moment, then crouched down right in front of him, leaving far less space between them. Donnie expected to see exasperation on his face, like so many other people had whenever they realized communicating with him would be even tougher than they’d originally thought, but instead she smiled easily while slipping her hand into the pocket of her jacket and pulling out a phone with a cat case.

“Here,” she thrust the phone into his hands without waiting for a response. “If you feel like telling me what’s wrong, you can write it here. Sorry, but I don’t actually know ASL. Never thought I’d need it, you know.”

Donnie glanced down at the unfamiliar phone, then back up at the smiling girl. Apparently his distress calmed her down. Go figure. He didn’t write anything, though. He didn’t know her, and he didn’t feel like telling some strange girl what was going through his head—what kind of realization was hitting him right now, making his skin crawl and his heart squeeze tightly.

“Okay, you don’t have to tell me, I totally get it. I wouldn’t wanna bear my soul to someone I didn’t know, either,” she said flippantly, like it wasn’t a big deal. “We can talk about other stuff, if you want.” She paused, then smirked and held her hand out for him to take. “My name’s April O’Neil. And yours?”

He stared at the offered hand for a long moment, then shook it lightly before dropping it back down as if it burnt. She didn’t seem to care all that much as she kept on smiling nonchalantly. She seemed so… calm. It made his racing mind slow down a bit, like it was taking notes from the other person in the room.

Opening the notes on April’s phone, Donnie typed his name, then turned it around to show her.

“Donatello Hamato,” she said, surprise in her voice. “Oh, hey, I’ve heard about you guys. Hard not to know about the football star. And you have a twin, right? The one that plays on the basketball team. I saw their last game, and he was good. I can’t believe I didn’t realize you were related—you look remarkably similar. Granted, I didn’t see him that well because he was constantly moving and I was sitting all the way over at the bleachers, but still.”

Of course they looked remarkably similar—Leo and Donnie were identical twins. Of course, he didn’t say that and instead just tried not to let his thoughts spiral back out of control. He didn’t know April, but she seemed to be all right so far, and she was distracting him, which was great. He could focus on the black pit in his stomach later on, when he was back home and alone.

Alone, because he won’t be bothering Leo, who would clearly appreciate some time apart from his twin.

“You know, I skipped class last month and snuck out to get myself a drink from the Starbucks on the other side of the street. What do you say we go there and get something delicious to take our minds off our problems? I heard they have this new drink that’s so gross, it’s actually nasty. We could check it out.”

He shouldn’t. Donnie has never before ditched school. Then again, skipping class wasn’t really something he was used to doing, either. And even though April seemed to be a really bad influence from this bit alone, he couldn’t help but admit to himself that getting out of this building for a short while sounded better than staying holed up in this dusty classroom.

At his hesitant nod, April beamed and got up. “Cool! You can teach me some basic ASL while we’re there so I have a better time talking to you. Or, well, I guess you’ll have a better time talking to me because you may have noticed, but I have no problem talking to people even when they don’t answer. It’s a gift—no matter how much my mom claims it’s a curse.”

He wiped the tears from his face the best he could and got up to follow her out.

Chapter Text

2009

Donnie was silent. Er… no, that wasn’t the right word for it, seeing as he was always silent. No, this time Donnie was just… existing, not quite responsive or willing or alive. He just went through the motions, mostly allowing everyone to do as they pleased with him without arguing or crying and wailing or protesting. He just… went with it.

His chest felt hollow and his eyes felt dry. He didn’t cry and he didn’t throw his fists. He just let his papa do whatever needed to be done with his lips firmly shut and his eyes staring ahead blankly, not taking in as much information as usual. Everything felt too unimportant, insignificant, irrelevant. Donnie couldn’t find it in himself to care.

Raph was grumpier than usual, walking around with his fists clenched and his eyebrows furrowed angrily around the house. He looked like he wanted to punch something, although he was clearly unsure as to what this something even was. Mikey kept on sobbing and sobbing, calling out for a person who could no longer hear him, his voice increasing in volume whenever Dad tried to soothe him, because Dad wasn’t the person Mikey wanted at the moment.

And then there was Donnie, who just was. He didn’t make a fuss, didn’t throw a fit, didn’t cry or yell or whine. He just got out of bed, did as he was told, tried to act appropriately, the way Mom would have praised him for.

She’d never praise him for his behavior again.

He heard his dad say that he was worried about Donnie, that he was concerned about his behavior. It nearly made Donnie break and cry, because he was trying to be good so how come Dad thought he was messing it up? Where was he going wrong here? Wasn’t he making things easier for Dad? Wasn’t he being pleasant and easy and comfortable to deal with?

Then, one night, he was roused from his sleep by the feeling of a small hand shaking his shoulder incessantly. When he blinked open his eyes and blurrily squinted at the dark figure looming over him, it didn’t take him long to realize it was Leo, and that he was extremely upset, rolling tears on his cheeks and a wobble to his lips.

Instead of speaking out loud like he usually did, Leo signed, Can I sleep with you?

His first instinct was to say no. Donnie didn’t like touch, and he was so tired, he just wanted to turn over and get back to sleep. But Leo looked like he would start sobbing with a passion if Donnie denied him, so he just scooted over and lifted the corner of the blanket, allowing Leo to climb into the bed while also leaving enough space between them so they wouldn’t be completely pressed against each other.

I miss Mommy, signed Leo shakily.

Donnie yawned. I miss her, too.

Mikey said you don’t care that she’s gone, said his twin without missing a bit. He said you don’t love her, because you don’t cry or ask or talk about her at all.

Frown forming on his face, Donnie quickly signed, Of course I love her! I do miss her!

Leo nodded. That’s what I told him.

They both paused for a moment, just breathing in the darkness. Donnie wasn’t sure what Leo was thinking about, but he figured it wasn’t all too happy since he started sniffling. When he moved his hand to the pillow under Leo’s head, Donnie’s fingers felt the wetness from the fresh tears.

I don’t like crying, signed Donnie. When Leo didn’t look surprised, he added, Everyone cried after Mom died except for me. What’s wrong with me?

Nothing. Leo’s fingers moved sharply now, an upset crease between his brows as he glared at Donnie through his tears. You don’t have to cry to miss her. Mommy wouldn’t have cared. She knew you loved her, and I think that’s enough. Mikey’s just sad, too, so he can’t think straight.

They fell asleep shortly after, sharing the pain and showing it in different ways. Although Donnie did cry—several days later, when he tripped down the stairs and scraped his knee. His mom never showed up to kiss the pain away and put a band aid on it, which had caught him so unprepared, he couldn’t help but cry and cry for what must have been hours.

Present

He left April in the Starbucks the moment he saw his brothers through the front window, waiting for the bus back home at the station, with Raph and Mikey looking slightly worried and with Leo pacing back and forth while repeatedly looking down at his phone and back at the school, clearly waiting for something other than the bus.

Before he could even figure out what he would tell them all, Raph said his name in a voice filled with relief, and suddenly Leo’s head snapped toward Donnie, his eyes narrowing down on the approaching teen. And then he was right in front of Donnie, demanding to know where he’d been because he hadn’t shown up to their last lesson.

Several students turned to look at them, then tuned them back out, going back to their own business. Donnie was grateful, because even though they wouldn’t be able to understand what he would be saying—because most people didn’t know ASL—they would still understand Leo, Raph and Mikey.

I’m sorry, signed Donnie. I should have texted to let you know.

Leo frowned. “Where did you even go? I don’t remember you ever skipping class before. Oh, and I told Mrs. Blanchard that you were just sick. You owe me for that, by the way. I usually don’t mind lying to teacher, but I actually like her. She’s nice.”

“You only think she’s nice because she thinks you’re good,” noted Mikey.

“Pish posh,” said Leo dismissively as he waved his hand and turned back to Donnie. “Point is—where have you been? I thought only the end of the world would ever make you miss out on school by choice, but apparently something else went on that I knew nothing about because the world is clearly not ending yet.”

Technically, started Donnie.

Raph quirked an eyebrow at him and cleared his throat. “Donnie,” he said pointedly.

Pointing over his shoulder at the Starbucks, Donnie signed, I went there. With a friend.

Leo looked like Donnie just slapped him. “You skipped class to go to Starbucks? With… a friend? Who?”

A-p-r-i-l-O-N-e-i-l.

Raph hummed in surprise. “Oh, she’s a senior. Never talked to her before, but I think she works on the school newspaper.”

Perking up, Mikey bobbed his head up and down and called, “Yes! She’s the one who wrote about the evil cafeteria worker we have here! My friend saw her trying to question him that one time about his past because she thought he might have been a mad scientist or something.”

“So… she’s crazy?” said Leo.

“No, no, I think she was really on to something.”

“…right.” Leo rolled his eyes once Mikey wasn’t looking, then focused on Donnie again. “So you just met her and decided to go sneak out with her? Just like that? I literally begged you three weeks ago to ditch school and you insisted you would never do it. Something about falling behind and getting in trouble and—”

“You’re a bad influence,” noted Raph dryly.

Leo shrugged. “Guilty as charged.”

“I would’ve totally snuck out with you, Leo,” said Mikey brightly.

Raph pointed at him sharply. “See what you’re doing? Stop corrupting our brothers, Leo. I swear, one day I’ll find Mikey in a ditch because he followed you around like a lost puppy, and Donnie maybe won’t do everything you tell him to do, but he won’t stop you, either.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an excellent older brother. Right, Mikey? I’m compassionate, kind, caring, loving, thoughtful…”

Humble, signed Donnie.

“…pleasant, smart, wise, responsible, dependable—”

Grimacing, Raph brought a hand up to block Leo’s mouth. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Mikey bounced up and down on his feet, gripping the straps of his backpack tightly. “I think you’re a great brother, Lee.”

“See?” said Leo smugly as he pulled Mikey into a side hug, the youngest going in willingly.

“He’s too impressionable,” dismissed Raph.

“Nothing can satisfy you,” scoffed Leo, then he snapped his head back toward Donnie. “You are still not off the hook, though! You skipped class! I still have a hard time believing you actually did it! It’s so unlike you! And you did it without telling me. I thought if anyone would’ve ever made you skip class, it would’ve been me.”

Raph sent Leo another look. “Your goals make me sad.”

“Mind your own business, boss man.”

Grumbling, Raph crossed his arms and looked down at his feet.

And Donnie found himself staring back at Leo, who acted and sounded like he was mostly offended that Donnie hadn’t invited him to come along on his little adventure with April. But there was a gleam in his eyes that Donnie wasn’t sure how to interpret, and it made the pit in his stomach make itself known again.

Because Leo was right, he’s been trying to drag Donnie out of school since they started high school, always failing because Donnie never wanted to actually skip class, no matter how boring it was. He was a model student, and this was going to stay that way. And now April—a girl Donnie hadn’t even known before today—asked him to ditch once, and Donnie accepted immediately.

So basically… he hurt Leo. Again.

Which was just what he needed right now—to hear from Leo’s friends how terrible a brother he was, and then go wallow in it while incidentally hurting Leo even more. Because apparently there was no right thing to do here—if he stayed away from Leo, he was hurting him by not involving him, and if he kept close, he was intruding.

This was so… complicated.

Relationships in general were complicated.

Sorry, signed Donnie, not quite meeting Leo’s eyes.

His twin looked mildly surprised by this. Maybe because Donnie rarely ever apologized. He wasn’t good at it, and he was never all too sure about what to say, when or why. So he avoided it the best he could unless he had no choice but to apologize and make things right. So for him to apologize now…

It made sense Leo looked a little stumped.

“Er, d-don’t worry about it,” he said after a second, the hand that wasn’t holding Mikey gestured the words subconsciously in TSL. “Next time, though, you can text me and I’ll join you guys. I’m a master at sneaking and out of places, especially school. And Pops’s room.

Raph looked at him again. “That’s actually very true.”

Leo grinned proudly.

“Hey, Don-Don,” said Leo as he entered the bedroom, eyes instantly locking on Donnie. “I just talked to Dave and Alex, and we’re going to Run of the Mill tonight. The theme’s going to be: No Studying Just Stuffing Our Faces. I think I’m gonna wear my leather jacket—you know, the new one I got last time we went to the mall. What’s it gonna go with?”

Donnie tore his eyes away from the Word file that was open before his eyes and turned to look at his twin as he rummaged through his side of the closet, humming to himself critically. Donnie went to get off his bed, but the thought of moving from his comfortable position with the laptop in his lap made him change his mind.

“Ooh, how about this? A white shirt? Button down with a leather jacket, though? I don’t think so.” He glanced back at Donnie, as if to see his reaction. Then he turned back to his closet. “Eugh, you’re no help. You only ever wear sweaters. Can’t you get yourself something nice to wear so I’d be able to raid your closet?”

Banging his knuckles against the wooden frame of the bed to get Leo’s attention, Donnie signed, Scoff. I am not going to get myself clothes just so that you can steal them. You have enough to choose from, anyway.

Rolling his eyes, Leo quietly mumbled, “Whatever. Just get off the bed already and get ready. Alex is coming to get us in half and hour and I don’t think I’ll be able to convince him to wait for you.”

Donnie pressed his lips together and stared at Leo’s back as he kept on searching for something to wear with his jacket before finally settling on a black shirt and a pair of dark, scuffed jeans. He looked so casual, so at ease, like there was nothing unusual in his words at all. And just this morning Donnie would have seen nothing strange, too.

But now he couldn’t help but cringe to himself at the thought that Leo just instinctively included Donnie in this hangout, no questions asked. Like it was so obvious to him that his twin would follow him around that he didn’t even find it odd that he was inviting him to a meeting with his friends—Leo’s friends, which were certainly not Donnie’s friends, because he didn’t actually have any of those.

It was so unnatural, now that Donnie thought about it. After all, Leo wasn’t inviting Raph or Mikey to come every time he went out with his friends. He rarely ever suggested they ate at the same table during lunch at school. But Raph had his own friends, and Mikey had his. Donnie was the only one who only had his brothers, and since Leo was his twin, naturally he ended up being the one stuck with him most of the time.

But was Leo truly oblivious to this? Was he really inviting Donnie without seeing how weird it was, or was he well aware of how clingy Donnie has been their entire life? Was he just too nice to say anything about it? Because while Donnie knew that Leo could speak his mind very well when he was annoyed or upset, he could also keep quiet and seethe in silence. So maybe he was well aware of what was going on, yet he was being pleasant and nice, waiting for Donnie to finally realize he should take a step back.

“Uh, hello? Earth to Donnie?”

He blinked furiously and focused back on Leo. He was holding the clothes he was planning to wear in his hand, the other one resting on his hip as he looked down at Donnie with a raised eyebrow.

What?

“You just zoned out for a second,” said Leo, a note of suspicion in his tone of voice. “You doing all right? You haven’t really left the room since we got home from school. Tell me you haven’t finished our homework for the next month or so just to spite our teachers. Better yet, tell me you didn’t do it without me.”

Donnie shook his head. Was working on something.

Thankfully, Leo didn’t ask what. He stopped doing that after he realized Donnie actually answered and droned on and on about the subjects whenever he was asked, even though Leo never truly understood what Donnie was even talking about, nor did he care to find out. Although he never interrupted Donnie’s rants unless he had something better to do, which was nice of him.

“Right, so… anyway, get ready. I’m even willing to order dark olives instead of Hawaiian.”

You go. I’m going to stay home.

This made Leo pause. His eyebrows drew closer together as he stared at Donnie like he was speaking a foreign language. Then his gaze drifted toward the open window through which rays of sun streamed into the room. It seemed to make him even more confused.

Senses going haywire? asked Leo skeptically.

The fact that he switched to signing instead of talking just in case Donnie couldn’t handle loud noises right now warmed Donnie’s heart, but he could see Leo wasn’t convinced this was the case, because usually when that happened, Donnie also closed the windows to block out the light from outside. Plus, he’d dim the light of his laptop screen and turn off the lights.

Which wasn’t the case right now, because Donnie was feeling mostly all right.

I just don’t feel like going, he signed.

“Why?” Leo switched back to talking out loud.

Donnie simply shrugged.

For a long moment Leo just stood there and watched him, expression unreadable. Donnie didn’t meet his eyes because he didn’t like eye contact at the best of times, and this was… not good. He wasn’t even sure what was going through his twin’s head, which was even worse than knowing it was something bad, because he wasn’t used to not knowing what Leo was thinking about.

Why was he looking at him like that? What did it mean? It wasn’t like Donnie was doing something unheard of. He just told Leo he didn’t want to join him and his friends. Was it really that odd? Was it that unheard of? He was doing Leo a favor, giving space. People needed space. Surely Leo appreciated it—

“Okay,” said Leo eventually, still supporting that same expression. “I’ll just… I’ll grab you a slice, kay?”

If you order Hawaiian, do everyone a favor and don’t save me a slice.

Leo smirked and winked. I’ll tell Hueso to find his best pineapple, shred it to bits and then add it to the tomato sauce.

You’re evil.

Anything to make you happy, D-o-n-t-r-o-n.

Once Leo left, Donnie focused back on his laptop. He pressed a random key just to turn the screen back on, then stared at the list he’d made all afternoon, wracking his brain to try and think of everything Leo had done for him over the years. It took much more effort for Donnie to come up with things he’d done for him.

Leo took upon himself the job of taking care of them all whenever they got hurt, because Dad wasn’t always around (he did have a job, after all) and Raph got nauseous every time he saw blood. Which meant that Leo was the one who’d bandaged Donnie whenever he got a new bruise.

Whenever they went out in public and people turned to Donnie only to realize he didn’t speak, Leo automatically appointed himself as Donnie’s personal translator, saying what Donnie was signing with a bright smile and not a hint of exasperation for having to put off his own things just to help his twin.

When they learned to ride a bike and Donnie’s one got out of control and crashed into their neighbors’ mailbox, knocking it over, Leo had told everyone it was his fault and not Donnie’s so he ended up in trouble instead. When asked later, Leo had told Donnie that he didn’t think it was fair to blame Donnie when he nearly got his bones broken because of it (which was a lame excuse).

Every time Donnie couldn’t handle eating in the cafeteria, Leo could somehow just tell, and he’d steer them toward the art room, where Mikey had told them they would be able to eat as long as they didn’t touch anything with their greasy fingers (which—rude). So Leo just sort of missed lunch with his friends in favor of keeping Donnie company when he couldn’t handle the loud cafeteria.

And the list went on and on. Donnie still had more instances pop up in his head, which he typed down with a deepening frown and a growing sense of shame. Because knowing Leo’s been an angel without receiving anything in return, and seeing it written there, black on white, were two completely different things. It just… it hit differently.

It made his stomach lurch, knowing that Leo’s been doing so much for him, and he hadn’t even thanked him. No, so far, Donnie has been accepting of this fact, almost seeing it as a natural thing to do. Of course—why wouldn’t his twin sacrifice and do so much for Donnie? He was the center of the world, after all. No reason to be grateful or anything.

God.

Why did Leo even bother?

Sure, they were twins. Sure, they cared about each other. Sure, sure, sure. But. But this was just too much, okay? As far as Donnie was concerned, Leo hasn’t been putting that much effort into making Mikey and Raph happy. Sure, he joked around and hung out with them a lot, too, but it was nothing compared to this list of things he’d done just for Donnie.

And Donnie just accepted it all, thinking that since they were twins, it made sense. But it didn’t. They were brothers, just like Raph and Mikey were their brothers. They never expected anything special from Leo or Donnie, so why did Donnie just roll with it? Even if he was a little different than the rest of them, he still figured they most likely knew he didn’t need that much extra attention.

So as Donnie kept on writing and writing—adding to the growing list of deeds Leo had done for him over the years—he kept on thinking that he was going to loosen the pressure. He’d let Leo pull away. He’d show him that it was okay, and that Donnie would survive without this special treatment, even if it was nice. Leo could live his life without having to worry or look out for Donnie all the time.

Maybe it was just time to grow apart, even if the idea seemed strange and foreign in his brain.

When Leo came back home later that night, Dad and Raph both tore right into him, demanding to know where he’d been and why he ignored all their calls. Donnie had tried telling them that Leo’s phone was most likely dead because he never bothered charging it, but they still got extremely stressed until Leo finally returned with a clueless smile on his face that soon morphed into an annoyed and slightly sheepish frown.

“You didn’t answer your phone—”

“You didn’t reply our texts—”

“You stayed out way past your curfew, by the way—”

Leo threw his hands in the air, looking exasperated. “We don’t have a curfew!”

Papa leaned back and huffed. “Well, now you do. No staying outside past ten o’clock, Blue. And this goes for all of you. Especially when you don’t even bother letting us know what is going on with you. My heart can’t take this anymore, you know! I’m going to get a stroke or a heart attack because of you!”

Shaking his hand dismissively, Leo moved past them to get to the stairs to the second floor, where Donnie was standing, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his expression blank. No way was he going to show just how worried he’d been when none of them could catch a hold of Leo. Heck, it got to the point where Donnie even considered calling one of his friends to see if they knew what was up with his twin.

He could already hear Alex and Dave in his head, mockingly talking about how he couldn’t even let Leo go out with the two of them without climbing up a wall of boredom and concern. And it wasn’t validated—they all knew Leo was out with them and that he tended to lose himself when he hung out with his friends. It’s just that… usually Donnie was with him to remind him it was time to quit and go home.

And he wasn’t there this time.

“Relax, guys. My phone ran out of battery, that’s all. And I’m not that late. Seriously, you don’t need to worry this much.” He noticed Donnie and quickly gestured toward him. “Don wasn’t worried about me, was he? You guys need to just chill out, all right? Oh, here you go, as promised.”

Donnie blinked when Leo suddenly thrust a small pizza box into his hands. The carton was still hot and the smell was divine. Leo flashed Donnie a grin, then moved past him and skipped up the stairs before Raph and their father could berate him some more. Instead of following after him, though, Donnie could only stare down at the pizza box in astonishment.

Leo had gone out with his friends, and he actually remembered to get a personalized pizza for Donnie? Was he kidding? Why did he even bother? He could have easily come back empty-handed. Donnie wouldn’t have even blamed him for it, because he was half convinced Leo would forget all about his promise to bring back a slice for his twin.

And this was arguably more than a slice.

The thought made his stomach coil unpleasantly and Donnie grimaced before he silently moved past Dad and Raph—who still looked like they wanted to scold Leo some more—and into the kitchen so he could put the pizza in the fridge and save it for tomorrow. Maybe he could share it with Mikey and Raph so it wouldn’t feel as personal as it was.

After all, Leo didn’t come back with pizzas for everyone—only for Donnie.

Just another thing to add to the list.

“Don-Don?” said Leo. “You awake?”

Donnie took in a breath as he kept on blankly staring up at the dark ceiling over his head, a silver moonlight cast across it from the space between the curtains. But while Donnie could handle the little bit of light, he firmly kept the window shut. The mere thought of the sounds and breeze from outside creeping into the bedroom made his skin crawl.

Especially when his mind was already riddled with everything that’d happened that day. He thought about the pizza waiting for him in the fridge, his gut still twisting just from that. Normally, he would have been ecstatic to know he had something delicious that he truly loved waiting for him the next day, but this time he couldn’t find much joy as he remembered the pizza box.

Slithering his hand out from under his blanket, he tapped the nightstand next to his bed lightly.

The next moment there was a click and the twinkling light of a Jupiter Jim lamp washed over the room. It was a gift from Raph to Leo for Christmas a few years back, something that had made Leo squeal for the whole day, walking around with the thing lit up until its batteries ran out. Now he kept it on the nightstand between their two beds, only using it if necessary.

Like right now, in the middle of the night, when he wanted to talk to Donnie and needed to see his hand gestures. Luckily, the lamp’s white light had been replaced with a warmer yellow one ages ago once it became clear to Donnie that Leo would use it every chance he got. Since he couldn’t handle the bright white light always shining in their room, Leo had let Donnie switch it up.

Yet another thing Leo had done for him—he’d let Donnie mess with something that was precious to him just because it made him uncomfortable.

Sitting up a little and leaning against the wall, Leo turned to look at Donnie. His expression was unreadable yet again, although Donnie wasn’t sure if this time it was simply the fault of the dim light. So, ignoring the uneasiness growing in his stomach, Donnie looked right back.

“What happened today?” asked Leo. “I mean, you agreed to go with someone you didn’t know to Starbucks instead of going to class. Alex said that he heard from Kendra that you skipped engineering, too. It’s… it’s so unlike you.”

Scoff. I thought you were the one who always encouraged me to mix things up. Isn’t change a good thing?

“Change is a good thing,” agreed Leo slowly, this time his words accompanied by ASL. “I guess I just… I know you don’t like change, and I figured… I mean, you don’t like skipping classes. Or school, in general. When you were sick last year Dad had to keep an eye on you all the time to make sure you didn’t sneak out to attend class. So it’s just… I guess I just wasn’t expecting this.”

Last year Donnie had been sick for nearly a month. He hated every moment of it, especially once it became apparent it wasn’t getting better, but rather worse. At first he could still play it off as nothing, but then Leo’d noticed how droopy and lightheaded he was, and he’d immediately snitched to their father, meaning Donnie had been forced to stay home and rest until he felt better.

And while Donnie didn’t appreciate it—not back then and not right now—he still figured Leo had done the right thing. So… just another score in his favor. Just what he needed right now, a reminder of how caring Leo was compared to Donnie’s cold-heartedness.

A smile appeared on Leo’s face, though something about it looked a little wrong as he said, “Hey, I was serious before, you know. Next time you and your new friend decide to skip, text me. It’d be cool to sneak out with you. What was her name again? That girl?”

Donnie spelled it out, his mind barely noticing the way he switched from ASL to the letters Leo and he had made up when they were kids. Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time he or Leo talked to each other without others around, their gestures gradually slipping back to their childhood language rather than the formal one. And, as always, Leo didn’t bat an eye at the change.

“Right, April O’Neil,” he said, his own signing now also using the familiar TSL words. “I’ve gotta remember to congratulate her for doing the impossible if I ever meet her. And I plan on meeting her. Did you guys talk about me at all? Bet you did. You can’t go more than five minutes without mentioning me, right? I am your coolest brother.”

Rolling his eyes, Donnie huffed. She did most of the talking. But rest assured, I would have mentioned Mikey before you. People love him way more.

Leo squawked indignantly. “I take offense to that! Mikey might be adorable, but I’m still way more loveable! Just ask Hueso!”

Hueso nearly kicks you out every time you go to his restaurant, dumb-dumb.

He’s just messing around, though, signed Leo, ditching his verbal words entirely. Don’t tell me you don’t think I’m loveable, Donnie. Betrayed by my own twin! I am deeply hurt.

Straightening up a little in his own bed, Donnie made sure to focus more on Leo’s hand now that he was no longer speaking out loud. He wondered whether the instinct to rely solely on ASL and TSL came from years of silently talking to Donnie like this. Was Leo just used to the quiet conversations, or was he forcing himself to fall silent, thinking it would make Donnie more comfortable?

He hated the fact that he couldn’t tell.

Anyway, he signed sharply, this was a one time thing. I don’t plan on skipping school again any time soon, so you have nothing to worry about, N-a-r-d-o.

A pout formed on his twin’s face as he let out a little whine. What? Why? I was already planning everything in my head. It would have been epic!

You’re a terrible influence, Donnie gestured wryly. Raph was right.

“You know what?” said Leo as he smirked and snuggled back down and under his blanket, taking his eyes off Donnie as if to say he wasn’t expecting a reply. “I don’t believe you. You had the taste of freedom. There’s no chance in hell you’re not going to be tempted again, and you’ll leave school grounds again—mark my words. And when this happens, you’re going to call me.”

He turned the lamp off.

Donnie turned his back on Leo and toward the window overlooking the street outside. He tried to understand whether Leo was serious. Did he really want to sneak out with Donnie? Wouldn’t he have a better time with his friends? Donnie was already taking over every other prospect of Leo’s life, so leaving school without Leo would allow him to enjoy some alone time without his clingy twin.

Unless… maybe… Alex and Dave were wrong? Was it possible? It didn’t make sense. Donnie figured Leo’s friends knew their friend. Sure, they didn’t live with him under the same roof, but there must have been things Leo shared with them more readily than he did with his family. Like his complaints about Donnie. He had enough tact not to throw it harshly in his face, after all.

But he sounded so genuine. Like he truly did want to sneak out with Donnie if that were ever a possibility.

“We’ll see,” he mumbled in a throaty, raspy voice.

Leo hummed in acknowledgement but didn’t make a deal out of Donnie’s words—as per usual.

Chapter Text

2010

Donnie threw a fit the moment Dad started trying to help him out of his warm sweater, and for once it wasn’t because Donnie just wanted to keep on wearing a sweater rather than anything else. No, they were at the beach and it made sense he’d have to take it off to enjoy the waves without his sweater getting wet.

But the thought of not having his sweater on—the thought of being bare-chested near other people who would instantly be able to tell the glaring difference between Leo and him… it made Donnie’s head fill with alarm bells, which naturally led to him running away from their dad, kicking sand as he push forward as hard as he could so Papa wouldn’t be able to do this to him.

Raph tried to yell at him to calm down, promising that everything was okay even though he clearly had no idea what was even bothering Donnie in the first place. Dad had no idea, either, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Donnie was not going to let Dad tug his sweater off. He wasn’t ready for this. He will never be ready for this.

Sitting in the sand, Mikey was already busy trying to build a castle with his bucket, his tongue sticking out as he patted the sand to try and make it as steady as possible. Leo helped him by filling his own bucket with seawater and delivering it over to Mikey so he could use it to stabilize the structure.

He did glance up several times to see what was happening, giving Dad and Donnie baffled looks, like he didn’t understand what was wrong, even though if anyone should have seen the problem, it was Leo. Donnie was certain his twin would be the first to realize what it was that was making him this worked up, but apparently he didn’t find anything wrong with the situation.

No, no! Donnie kept on gesturing sharply with his hands, the motion not seeming to help him much as his father kept on giving chase. I don’t want to! No!

“Purple, don’t you want to go in the water?” called his dad as he stopped to catch his breath, hands on his thighs. “You can’t do it with your sweater on. It will get wet. Let me just—”

No! he signed again.

“Come on, Donnie, it’s not too cold, is it?” said Raph gently with a coaxing smile. He stepped into the shallow water and wiggled his toes. “See? This is really nice. It would be a shame if you didn’t get to enjoy it with all of us.”

“I need seashells for the decoration!” announced Mikey obliviously.

Kicking the sand at his feet, Leo said, “You have a bunch of them right here.”

Mikey stuck out his bottom lip and gazed up at him. “I need more.”

For a moment it looked like Leo was going to argue, but then he put his half-empty bucket next to Mikey and ran over toward Donnie with his wide green, the freckles around his cheeks and eyes stark against his skin, especially under the light of the sun shining above them in the bright sky.

“If you don’t want to get in the water, you can help me look for seashells in the sand,” said Leo.

He didn’t even hesitate—he immediately began to nod and follow after Leo as he started scouring the area, bending down to pick pretty seashells off the ground every now and then. Donnie followed suit easily, keeping the prettier shells in his right hands and the chipped or mundane ones in his left.

They didn’t stray far, making sure Dad could still see them from his spot next to Raph and Mikey. Now that Leo was busy with a different task, Raph took it upon himself to bring Mikey the water he needed, although he also ended up accidentally stepping on one of the towers of the castle, which nearly made Mikey burst into tears—it was a close call that Dad managed to avoid, luckily.

“Why don’t you want to take off your sweater?”

Donnie’s head snapped over to Leo. His brother bent down to pick up another shell only to drop it a moment later in distaste. He sent Donnie a look then, waiting to see what he would sign in return.

Frowning down at his occupied hands, Donnie dropped his seashells into Leo’s hands so he could gesture freely.

We’re supposed to match, signed Donnie.

Leo grinned, his missing front tooth making him look even more like the troublemaker that he was. “We’re twins, D. That’s sort of what it means, right?”

But we don’t match anymore.

The grin dimmed a little as Leo cocked his head to the side. “What?”

Donnie let out an annoyed huff. Your burn mark.

Eyes instantly glancing down, Leo looked at his chest. Once upon a time it used to be completely blemish-free. His skin had been as smooth and clear as Donnie’s. But then Leo had helped Dad make noodles, and he ended up pouring boiling water down his front and… they’d gone to the hospital in a panic, but even though it ended up not being all that bad, it still left a mark.

Raph had told Leo it kind of looked like a turtle to try and cheer him up once they were free to go back home. Mikey had flapped his hands excitedly, claiming he wanted a mark like Leo’s, apparently not realizing it wasn’t a good thing. Maybe he’d thought it was like a temporary tattoo or something.

But Donnie hadn’t said or signed a single word, only holding onto Leo’s hand numbly and staring straight ahead, the words flowing all around him without leaving an impression. All he could think about was that suddenly they were no longer identical. Sure, they each had their own tiny scars from small injuries they mostly couldn’t even remember, but this was huge.

So Donnie didn’t want to take off his sweater, okay? He didn’t want to reveal the difference to everyone, including his own family. As long as he kept the sweater on, Leo and he could still claim to be identical and no one would know any better. They had no reason to suspect otherwise.

“I don’t want you to have this burn mark,” said Leo sternly. “It hurt. I don’t want you to be in pain, too.”

We’re not identical, pressed Donnie. We’re supposed to be identical.

“What does it matter?”

We’re supposed to be identical!

Leo stared at Donnie for a long moment, his brows furrowed in confusion as he seemed to try and understand what the big deal was. And Donnie wanted to explain, but he wasn’t sure how, because he wasn’t sure what his deal was, either. All he knew was that they no longer matched, and it was horrible. It felt like the world was off its axis. It felt like all the colors were wrong. It felt like that one sweater Donnie had gotten for Christmas only for it to be scratchy and itchy and simply horrific.

Exhaling through his nose, Leo pressed his lips together for a second, then lifted his corners into a smile. “I have an idea.”

Which led to them getting scolded by Papa for using one of Mikey’s permanent markers to scribble a turtle on Donnie’s chest. They still didn’t match, really, but they both had turtles on their skin, now, so Donnie accepted it for now, even if it really did get them in trouble and made Dad very unhappy.

And years later, after realizing their father was never going to approve of them getting tattoos, Mikey made them all key chain clay charms. They weren’t identical, because they all wanted different types of turtles, but they matched all the same, which was good enough, and it was one of the things Donnie swore he’d treasure forever.

Present

The whole ride to school felt off for some reason. Donnie was pretty sure it was because the silence between the four of them lingered instead of getting smoothly broken by Leo’s boisterous voice. Usually they’d find a place to sit or a corner to stand in, and then Leo would open his mouth to start a conversation that would last until they arrived at school.

This time, however, Leo’s shoulders were hunched from the moment he got up in the morning, muttering something about not sleeping well. He kept on dragging his feet and staring at the floor instead of everyone else around him, and when Dad commented on how much foot was left in his plate, Donnie realized he hasn’t eaten much, either.

And now he was just… silent; standing in place while being pressed against Mikey and the window, his eyes still trained on his shoes. Donnie could see Raph restlessly itching in place while also not moving enough to allow anyone to enter the little space they were creating for Donnie’s sake, and Mikey looked all around with pinched eyebrows and clear confusion written all over his face.

And yes, okay, maybe Donnie would have tried to do something to try and help Leo with whatever it was he was going through, but today was just not his day. He was wearing his comfiest clothes, and even they were too itchy and tight. He felt like the collar of his hoodie was choking him even though he kept on tugging it down to make sure it wasn’t even touching his neck.

The noise on the bus wasn’t helping, either. Everything was too loud, too wrong, too overwhelming. He wanted to curl into himself and hide from the world until it stopped being the worst, but instead he had to act like a human being and go to school with his brothers on this awkward bus ride.

Once the bus finally came to a stop next to their school, they all practically launched themselves off the vehicle, clearly glad to have the space to get away from each other just a little and shove away the suffocating silence they were so unfamiliar with. Even Donnie, who felt like the voices around him were drilling into his brain, would have liked the small talk on the bus better than the silence. At least it was familiar.

“Mikey, Mikey!” called a redhead that passed by, her eyes bulging out in excitement as she latched onto Mikey’s arm. “You have to come see this! I finished that abstract art project yesterday and it’s a masterpiece. Miss Olive’s face when she saw it was super impressed. Come on, you gotta come see!”

And so, with nothing more than a wave and a squeaky goodbye, Mikey got dragged away from them and toward the school, apparently more than a little eager to go with his friend rather than stay with his strangely-quiet brothers.

“Uh…” said Raph hesitantly, his eyes flickering between Donnie and Leo quickly. “I need to go talk to my teacher before the bell rings, so… I’ll see you guys later, all right?”

See you later, signed Donnie back, though he trained his eyes on Leo instead of Raph.

Nodding his head a little jerkily, Leo’s lips lifted up widely and he said, “Yeah, later. Give your teacher hell, will you?”

He went to go away, but Raph quickly added, “If you need anything, just text me, okay?”

Donnie gave him an odd look, confused as to why Raph would say that when he never bothered saying stuff like that. There was no need to—they already knew that their big brother would literally cross the country for them if they asked him to. Mikey once suggested using their power to see how far they could take it, but Leo stopped him before he could make Raph drive to the other side of the city just to get them his favorite ice-cream.

And sure, Leo looked like he was having an off day today, but Donnie figured it wasn’t all that strange. Leo tended to have a hard time falling asleep ever since they were kids. And sometimes it just got to him, leaving him more tired and subdued than usual. The solution was always to shove him back into bed the very next day and hope he’d have an easier time with sleep.

There was nothing for Raph to do when they weren’t even home, though. He could maybe somehow get Leo a pillow, but Donnie figured he wouldn’t do that because it would mostly just get Leo in trouble for trying to sleep during class—which was something he was already managing to do just fine even without a comfortable surface to lay his head on.

No, that wasn’t true—he used Donnie as his pillow more often than not.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, big guy,” said Leo dismissively as he moved past Raph and started heading toward the front steps of the school. “Donnie, you coming?”

Hey, Raph signed urgently before Donnie could catch up to Leo, if anything seems more off than usual with Leo, tell me.

Seriously, Donnie didn’t understand what was going on today. So Leo was a little quieter than usual—it was no reason to bend out of shape. He was still just fine, only tired. No need to worry so much. Still, he gestured quickly that he would, then he moved ahead quickly to fall into step beside Leo as he climbed up the stairs to the front door.

“Do you think I can sneak out of Mr. Torres’s class today? I want to go to the library and see if I can play an episode of Jupiter Jim without getting caught. I still have the notes somewhere of how you did it last time, so I think I can make it work…”

Donnie quirked an eyebrow. You love Spanish.

Leo waved him off as he and Donnie stopped at their lockers. He easily twisted the lock to open his. Donnie wasn’t even sure why he was bothering stuffing the books in his bag if he wasn’t planning on studying today, but he didn’t comment on it, too used to Leo’s behavior. Sometimes it was just better not to question things. Made life easier.

“Amo más a Jupiter Jim,” said Leo fluidly, then he flashed Donnie a grin. “Wanna come with me? I know you do—you’ll be at the library. It’s quiet there. You’ll have an easier time there than in class with Mr. Shrieky that’ll drill his lesson straight into your brain.”

It made Donnie grimace because… well, Leo was right. Mr. Torres’s voice was always loud and shrill on the best of days. Donnie had a hard time sitting in his classroom without wanting to tear his ears out, and today he wasn’t sure how he would get past his lessons with the teacher, seeing as everything was making him feel like he would very much like to go underwater, where it was quieter.

Of course, he was allowed to use his noise cancelling headphones if everything got too much, something Dad made sure every single teacher in their school knew after an unfortunate incident with a teacher that forced Donnie to take his headphones off, which led to a sensory overload and Donnie dry heaving in a toilet stool with Leo standing nearby to ward off any other student.

Still, even with the headphones Donnie could picture the headache he would get from his Spanish lessons today.

I’m not missing class again, Donnie signed.

Leo pouted at him as he closed his locker and leaned against it to face Donnie better, his backpack hanging off his shoulders again. Donnie just ignored the look he was receiving in favor of pulling out his own textbooks for the day. He’d rather carry them all around for the entire day rather than stop at his locker again and suffer through the horrible chit-chat in the hall once more.

You did it yesterday, signed Leo. He must have realized his words weren’t helping Donnie’s general feeling. Wouldn’t it be way more fun to sneak out under Mr. Torres’s nose together? I’ll even let you put your favorite movie, even though it’s the stupidest one.

It’s not stupid.

JJ looks for ice on a planet that’s surface is ice, Leo signed with a dry look on his face. It literally doesn’t get any stupider than that.

Donnie huffed in annoyance as he zipped his bag shut again and prepared to walk toward class with Leo. He raised his hands to argue—like they’ve done countless times, because apparently he was the only one with good taste in his family when it came to the best Jupiter Jim movie—but then a voice from down the hall said his name and he faltered and sent a look over his shoulder.

It was April, her hair bouncing behind her as she skirted around everyone else, carrying several books in her hands that she tried to keep from falling. She didn’t seem to have a backpack today, for some reason, although it wasn’t stopping her from grinning at Donnie like she was actually happy to see him again.

He didn’t smile back, but he did stop walking to allow her to catch up, which made Leo pause and eye her curiously, too.

“Donnie, you will not believe it—apparently I missed a new assignment that I have to finish in two weeks, and I am crumbling under all the work I still have from two months ago. I have five extensions already, and my teachers are definitely not happy about that, especially when I barely even pass my tests without failing, and—whoa, hey, there are two of you.”

April stopped right in front of them both, her gaze moving between them like she wasn’t sure who she was even talking to. Which was actually a response Donnie and Leo were used to, so it wasn’t all that surprising that April couldn’t tell which one of them was the twin she knew from the previous day.

And then Leo grinned and shifted his stance to a more nonchalant one, suddenly not looking as tired as he had been since the moment he woke up. Donnie never understood why his brother bothered with the different acts he put up in front of people, but since he never got a straight answer, he just tended to ignore it and enjoy the reactions Leo got out of people.

“Hey, you must be April,” said Leo, the usual rich quality of his voice present even though he was keeping it lower than he normally did, apparently still keeping Donnie’s sensitivity in mind. “Heard you managed to do the impossible and got Donnie to sneak out. Which just—respect.”

April blinked at them both one more time, then smiled at Leo as she moved her hand more securely around her books. “Well, then you’re Leo, huh? That last basketball match was amazing! I really thought you were going to miss that last shot.”

“Yeah, yes, I’m pretty awesome.”

I have a video of you tripping over a pencil straight into Dad’s DVD collection with a glass of water.

Leo spluttered. “That was an unfortunate accident and we don’t talk about it,” he hissed at him. “Dad can never know why we had to throw away all his DVDs, okay? That’s going to go to the grave with us.”

Looking at them in confusion, April shifted her legs a little. “…right, I still don’t know sign language, so I have no idea what that was about, but…” She turned to Donnie with a bright smile. “You guys wanna share a table during lunch? I sometimes sit with this exchange student in my class, but she’s not feeling well today, so I have an empty table. Everyone’s welcome.”

The smile on Leo’s face relaxed a little as he said, “Sorry. I think we’re gonna go to the art room for lunch, right, Donnie?”

He didn’t elaborate any further than that, saying it was because Donnie was obviously not going to be able to suffer through lunch in the cafeteria, but it was still obvious that was the reason behind this choice, since Leo had no other way to want to eat his lunch at the art room instead of with his friends.

“The art room?” said April in surprise. Donnie expected questions, but instead she just shrugged and said, “I could go for a quiet lunch there. I think one of my old projects is still in there. I could show you—it’s this misshapen clay statue of a cat. It looks more like a blob with whiskers, but I think it’s cute.”

Leo’s brows furrowed. “Uh, I don’t think that’d be a good—huh?”

Donnie tapped his arm and quickly signed, April can come.

“Oh.” Leo looked stumped and a little lost for a moment. Then he grinned at April again. “I guess as long as Donnie doesn’t mind an extra person there,” he shrugged.

If April comes, you can stay with your friends, Leo, Donnie signed.

“What?”

You can eat lunch with your friends without worrying I’ll be left alone, Donnie gestured more slowly, not quite meeting Leo’s gaze as his twin turned to stare at him. It’s more comfortable in the cafeteria, anyway. Don’t worry about me.

Honestly, April was a godsent for appearing out of thin air and allowing Donnie to loosen his tight grip around Leo. His friends were right—Donnie’s been clinging to him for far too long, and now that April was there, willing and wanting to hang out with Donnie, he could finally let Leo be with his friends without his twin following him like a shadow.

Even if it was only for lunch period, this was already better than nothing.

So why was Leo looking at him like that—with his eyebrows low and his lips pressed tightly together? The unreadable expression from the day before came back full force and Donnie still had no idea what it meant, but with the exhaustion from his lack of proper sleep, Leo looked even more like a riddle to Donnie than he did before.

But it lasted less than a moment. Donnie blinked, and suddenly Leo was smiling again like he always did, nodding at Donnie’s words in agreement. And even though Donnie really didn’t like the idea of eating lunch without his brother, he figured… well, this wouldn’t be too bad. This was April. April was nice. And Leo would have a good time with his friends, unburdened by any members of his family for a short while.

“I have got to start learning ASL properly,” said April as she looked between the two of them, still clearly baffled. One of her books slipped between her arms and down to the floor. “I’ve no idea what’s happening anymore. Are we on for lunch? Yes? No? Clue me in, boys.”

“Yes, sorry,” said Leo as he shook his head, bent down and picked up the book for April. “I’m a little out of it today. Um, Donnie, I’ll see you in class, all right? I need to go to the bathroom real quick.”

He left before Donnie could even lift his hands.

“Are guys fighting or something?” asked Mikey as he lingered by the door.

Donnie looked up from his lunch box—this time containing homemade chicken nuggets and rice. Both things were made by Mikey, and Donnie was pretty sure that the vegetables tucked to the side were put there by their father. He wondered whether Leo and Raph would actually eat theirs because they usually whined about how much they didn’t like vegetables.

No, Mikey, we’re not fighting, he signed.

Biting his lip worriedly, Mikey looked like he wasn’t sure whether he could take Donnie’s word for it or not. At least he didn’t look as frantic as he did earlier when he burst into the art room, immediately zeroing in on April and Donnie as they ate together in the corner, making sure not to destroy anything.

Apparently his little brother went to the cafeteria with his friends, saw Leo sitting there with his friends without Donnie in sight, and it freaked him out. Something about not being used to seeing Leo sitting only with his friends unless it was during basketball practice. Which only proved to Donnie just how incredibly clingy he’s been this entire time without even thinking about it.

If seeing Leo without Donnie sent Mikey into a frenzy, running through the school to try and find out what happened to Donnie and expecting to find him either beaten up or melting down in some corner, it meant that Donnie was probably doing the right thing by pulling away at long last.

Leo deserved to be able to walk around without being thought of as one half of a single unit. He didn’t need Donnie to keep on dragging him down or force him to stay behind when he could go on and on, further than he would be able to with Donnie’s constant presence around him.

“So why aren’t you eating lunch together?” said Mikey slowly, like he thought Donnie was dense.

Which was honestly just offensive, seeing as Donnie was smarter than all of his brothers, thank you very much.

“That’s what I said,” said April with a nod as she raised her spoon to point at Mikey with a smile. “Until lunch came, I thought I was going to eat lunch with both of them, and then I got here and heard Leo was going to eat with his friends instead. Not that I might, Donnie, but it would have been easier to speak and eat at the same time with a translator in the area.”

Donnie frowned. Leo’s not a translator.

Looking at Mikey questioningly, April raised an eyebrow.

“He said Leo’s not a translator,” he said, then cocked his head at Donnie. “But… Leo always helps you talk to people, D. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded. Unless… did he mind?”

Donnie huffed in annoyance. He wouldn’t tell me if he did, A-n-g-e-l-o, he signed, his movements slightly sharper than usual. But he deserves a break from this, and we’re doing just fine without him.

When Mikey repeated the words out loud, April shrugged. “Sure. We’re using our phones. We did the same yesterday. And Donnie’s helping me learn ASL, too. I’ll be a pro in no time. Although right now I still caught absolutely nothing. He moves too quickly,” she whined.

“Yeah, maybe slow down a bit,” said Mikey, and to Donnie’s surprise he entered the room and sat down on the floor next to them. “You’re… hmm, how do I put this gently… you’re a terrible teacher.”

“That was gentle?”

Scoff. I am an excellent teacher.

“You’re really not,” said Mikey. “You get upset every time people don’t get what you’re saying the first time around. We’re not all genius like you, you know. Teachers need to be patient.”

That much was true, actually. Donnie was an incredible teacher, but he did lack the patience to be one. When people didn’t understand simple things, he just lost it. He could never understand how people couldn’t see the same logic he could, although growing up with vastly different brothers certainly helped. Heck, his own twin had a different way of seeing things than him.

“All right,” said April as she got more comfortable in her spot. She took a sip from her soup and smiled at Mikey. “Then I’m guessing you’re going to be the translator this time around, huh? You must be Mikey.”

His little brother lit up and beamed at her. “Yes! And you’re April, right? I read your page in the newspaper about the possibility of our teachers actually being witches, and I’ve gotta say it was enlightening! Now I understand why they can never operate the computers in the classrooms—they’re just too magical to get along with technology.”

“You read that?” said April, her eyes glowing excitedly.

That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, signed Donnie with a flat look.

Mikey repeated it for April’s sake, then said, “You’re too closed-minded to accept that magic might be real. Which it is. Teachers are evil, and April revealed the truth as to why. I think we need to start a new witch hunt!”

The girl laughed. “I like your spirit, Mikey.”

For a second Donnie wished Leo was there with them because he knew his twin didn’t believe in magic and witches, unlike these two bozos. But then he banished the thought determinedly. No, he wasn’t going to selfishly want Leo to be there when he was probably having tons of fun with his friends right now.

It was fine. Donnie didn’t need anyone in his corner. He could stand his ground by himself just fine.

Chapter Text

2012

“You will not believe what I just heard!” whispered Raph excitedly as he bounded into the twins’ room.

That how they found out that the teachers at their elementary school wanted to skip Donnie two grades up because he was way ahead of his class and even Raph’s one. They wanted him to go from second grade to fourth grade. They wanted him to keep doing his best and actually make the most out of it instead of lingering behind with teachers and students who were talking about stuff he couldn’t even find interesting in the least.

Leo’s first reaction was a happy chirp as he started jumping up and down on his bed, singing loudly to himself and everyone in the vicinity about how smart his brother was and how he was going to build a rocket one day and send it to space with Leo inside so he could explore the sky and see the stars up close, which was a new dream of his.

Unlike him, though, Donnie felt nothing but terror at the prospect of skipping two grades. Starting school for the first time had already been difficult for him. He’d been so scared and anxious the entire time, he kept himself basically glued to Leo’s side, letting him take the lead and handle every single situation with all the charisma his little six-year-old body could contain.

The thought of going through something similar once again—only this time without Leo by his side to help him—made Donnie want the world to just stop turning for a second so he could catch his breath. Also, so that he wouldn’t have to worry about the future because he did not want to dwell on this for too long, but the idea was festering itself in his brain and he couldn’t make it go away.

Raph had to leave five minutes later because Dad called him to take a shower, which left Leo and Donnie alone. And the moment the door closed behind their brother’s back, Donnie lifted his blanket and covered himself with it, his body shaking as he closed his eyes and tried to pretend like he wasn’t there, wasn’t there, wasn’t there, wasn’t there, wasn’t th—

“Don-Don?” Leo said, his enthusiasm ebbing away so that he mostly just sounded confused. “What’s wrong? Do you want me to turn off the light? I can get out if that’d help…”

It took everything he had to crawl back out from under the covers to clumsily gesture to Leo what he had to say, telling him that he didn’t want to skip grades. He didn’t want to be smart. He didn’t want any of that to happen because he just wanted to stay with Leo, where he didn’t feel on edge all the time. He didn’t care if his teachers bored him—he couldn’t handle the thought of getting used to new people, a new classroom, a new environment without anyone familiar to be with.

The longer he signed, the more confused Leo seemed to get. His eyebrows furrowed and he tilted his head to the side, staring intently at Donnie’s hands as he moved them around. And when Donnie was done explaining to the best of his abilities, Leo remained quiet for a very long moment, just standing in front of his bed with a thoughtful expression on his face, like he sometimes got while trying to do his homework without any help.

“Are you sure?” he said eventually, sounding uncertain and nothing like the confident kid everyone around seemed to think he was. “You might like it there if you try.”

Donnie shook his head stubbornly even though it gave him a headache. Don’t want to. I won’t like it.

“Won’t know it ‘til you try,” said Leo, his voice slightly more subdued as he repeated their mom’s words, from back when she was still alive and with them. Then he shuffled his feet and sniffed loudly. “Then tell Daddy you don’t wanna do it. He won’t force you.”

He’ll be mad.

Leo smiled at him. “He won’t be mad. He’ll just be… he’ll be confused, but he won’t be mad. It should be your choice.”

He just kept on vigorously shaking his head from side to side. The thought of coming up to their papa to tell him that Donnie didn’t want to advance to the fourth grade made him shiver. He wasn’t scared, but he didn’t want to disappoint Dad by telling him he wasn’t going to live up to his expectations just because he didn’t want to face a fresh start by himself.

Smile dropping, Leo said, “Are you sure about this, Donnie? Shouldn’t you just give it a shot and see what happens first? You might actually like it! And we’ll still go to the same school, so we can meet all the time during recess—”

No. No, no, no, no—

“Fine.” Leo let out a breath, then nodded to himself as he took a step forward and gently wrapped the blanket more securely around Donnie. “Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.”

Donnie peeked at him from behind the blanket. Flavorless juice? he signed hopefully.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you your nasty juice, fine. Just hold on a minute.”

And then he left Donnie, turning off the lights on his way out. It took him longer than a minute to get back, but once he returned, he took a seat on Donnie’s bed and silently offered Donnie his glass of juice before signing to him that he talked to Dad and they weren’t going to make him skip to fourth grade.

Donnie never heard what came up during the conversation between Papa and Leo, but he didn’t care—he was just glad this was all behind him.

Present

Donnie scrolled through the list he’d made while sitting on the couch in the living room, ignoring the cartoon Raph was watching instead of doing his homework or sending Donnie or Leo slippery looks, which he seemed to really enjoy doing over the last week or so, like he was waiting for something to happen even though Donnie wasn’t even sure what this thing was.

Anyway, Mikey was over at a friend’s house to do a project together and Leo was still at school for basketball practice. And even though Donnie didn’t get a text from him today, he knew he would most likely go eat pizza with his teammates afterward, so he wasn’t supposed to come back any time soon.

The fact that Donnie hadn’t received a text was slightly baffling, though, since Leo tended to almost always let him know what he was planning to do. Dad had drilled into all of them, that they had to let someone know where they were, and instead of texting Dad—which was naturally what their father had been hoping for—Leo chose to let Donnie know his plans instead.

But this time he got nothing. Just like the previous day when Donnie woke up in the morning and found the other bed in the room empty, he checked and saw no clarifying message from Leo. Which was fine. It was a Sunday so they didn’t have anywhere to be or any reason to stay home, but it still felt odd, going about his day without hearing from Leo.

Still, this was his plan. Donnie wanted to give Leo space, and his brother was probably finally realizing this wasn’t a fluke but rather Donnie actually growing up enough to let go. So Leo not texting was, in fact, a good thing, since it meant he was loosening up, too, enjoying his newfound freedom now that he didn’t have a leech sucking on his blood all day long.

It didn’t make Donnie feel any less anxious and upset at being left in the dark, but he could handle it. And next time he would be sure to keep it all in instead of bursting out at Mikey for no good reason, because Mikey was innocent and had nothing to do with the way Donnie was currently feeling.

In short, everything was fine, but Donnie still found himself reading the notes in his list of deeds Leo had done for him over the years, feeling a pang in his chest at the sight of the much shorter list of things he’d done for Leo. He could hardly think of any, so the fact that there were any even written in the first place was actually incredible.

He ended up staring into space, thinking about that day when Raph had told Leo and he that Dad was going to let the teachers skip Donnie two grades up. He remembered his own alarm at the mere thought, which returned years later when they got to high school, where new teachers wanted Donnie to attend honor classes—only Donnie, not Leo.

Naturally, he’d refused once more, only this time he was the one to tell the adults that he didn’t want to attend different classes. Dad didn’t argue too much, apparently not finding a reason to push Donnie when he didn’t want to be pushed. His teachers, though, refused to relent until Donnie got his own school plan, which allowed him to stay in the same classes as Leo while also doing extra work so that he could be at the same level as the honor classes.

He never really minded the extra work because, well, some of it was actually interesting.  Leo called him crazy for wanting to study more when he didn’t have to, but he didn’t give him too hard a time for it. He never really brought the subject up himself, like it wasn’t something he thought was worth talking about.

But now, looking back, Donnie wondered if maybe his twin was just disappointed that once again Donnie had refused to let go just because he was too attached. Maybe he never spoke about the honor class debate because he didn’t want to let anyone see how much he wished Donnie would have just said yes.

With a frown, Donnie knocked his knuckles against the side of the couch to draw Raph’s attention. It took him a moment, but Raph managed to tear his eyes away from the cartoon and over to Donnie, smiling at him despite the worried glint in his eyes that Donnie couldn’t find the source of.

Do you think I should switch to the honor classes? he asked.

The worry became more prominent as Raph turned to fully face Donnie and not the TV, his hand absently holding up the remote so he could lower the volume.

“I thought you didn’t want to be in the honor classes. That’s what you told everyone when it first came up, right?”

Donnie just shrugged, because he wasn’t wrong but he didn’t want to sign the confirmation if he didn’t have to. He knew what his own feelings on the matter were, after all, so there was no need to rehash them all over again.

“Right…” said Raph slowly, appraising Donnie like he was seeing someone that wasn’t quite his younger brother. “Are you okay? Did someone in your class upset you or something?”

What? No, signed Donnie. Why would you think that? I am doing just fine, thank you.

“Are you and Leo having some kind of fight, then?” pressed Raph. When Donnie just gave him a blank look, he awkwardly said, “I mean, you guys have been acting sort of… off. For over a week. We’re all kind of just a little weirded out. And now you’re trying to switch to a different class even though you’ve told us you didn’t want to attend the honor classes—and you were really adamant about it, too, so… I’m just a little confused, buddy.”

Donnie frowned. Nothing’s going on. Leo and are fine. I just thought it might be a better idea than completing all the work for the honor classes here. What if I miss something without noticing because I don’t have the proper teachers? And the students there seem… nice.

Some of them, at least. Some—like Kendra and her dumb-dumb band of over the top psychos—were just plain rude toward Donnie, mostly because they thought his choice not to speak was ridiculous and should be ridiculed, which they did relentlessly every time their paths crossed and Donnie had none of his brothers around.

Which was yet another thing Leo always did for him. He knew there were certain kids at school who liked messing with Donnie as long as he was alone, so he made it his job to almost always accompany him in the school halls to ward off any unwanted attention. Donnie made him stop doing that on Friday, figuring it was yet another thing he could release Leo from.

Donnie could stand his ground just fine without a guard dog. He was sharp and smart and the few times he’d lashed out at people with the help of one of his brothers’ translation (mostly Leo, of course) he made people leave him alone with ease because, well, he could be a psychopath when he wanted to be, and he was good at playing the part. The silence helped sometimes, too.

So there was no need for Leo to look after him, okay? Even if Donnie kind of found himself avoiding the busiest school halls now so he would have less of a chance of running into anyone who might hurt him in any way—verbally of physically; both were very unwelcomed.

And yes, he had April with him, but she wasn’t there to defend him and she wasn’t there to glare at people until they left him alone. She was mostly there to talk to him because apparently they were friends now after sharing a little time in Starbucks together. Their conversations were slow because while April was slowly learning ASL from him, he was still forced to either spell out entire words to get his point across or type it on a phone. But it was still better than nothing.

The crease between Raph’s eyes deepened as he stared at Donnie. The worry in his gaze didn’t lessen at all—in fact, Donnie got the feeling it only increased since the beginning of their little chat—and he looked like he was seconds away from turning off the TV and calling for a family meeting, meaning he would actually force Mikey and Leo to get back home despite the fact that they were both busy.

Donnie had to diffuse the situation before it got too far.

You know what? I’ll just go talk to Papa about it, he signed quickly. You can go back to your show.

“Shouldn’t you, uh, talk to Leo about it before?” said Raph when Donnie pushed himself to his feet. “I mean, does he know you’re considering this?”

With a frown, Donnie gestured, Why wouldn’t he want for me to be in the honor classes? He wanted me to take the chance the first time around.

Raph still looked troubled by this, but he let Donnie go without another word.

It took him a little while to notice that Leo was standing at the entrance of the room, just staring at Donnie with unseeing eyes, like he wasn’t fully focused on what was right before him, instead stuck inside his head and deep in thought. But eventually Donnie raised his eyes from his phone, sprawled out on his bed, and realized he wasn’t alone.

Leo? he signed.

Leo didn’t even bat an eye, still staring ahead bleakly.

Leo! he gestured again, more widely this time. It made Leo blink and his gaze seemed to become more focused. Why are you standing there? How was practice?

For a second his twin didn’t answer. He was looking straight at Donnie, this time definitely seeing his brother and not whatever it was he was thinking about before, but his lips remained clasped shut, like he couldn’t bring himself to talk. Or maybe he just didn’t have the words to say, for some reason.

Then Leo smiled like always and took a step into the room. “Oh, you know, it was great. We all went to that sushi place a few blocks away from the school. Addison wanted to go and since you’re usually the one who can’t stand sushi, no one really objected this time. It was awesome. McGuffin nearly threw up. Apparently it was his first time eating the stuff and he wasn’t prepared.”

Only the thought of someone throwing up made Donnie shudder in displeasure. He would definitely not have enjoyed this gathering. Not with the sushi and the puking. When people threw up around him, it tended to make him queasy, and sushi was just a nasty thing someone had once created for some reason and he was still trying to find a way to make people forget its existence—for the good of humanity, of course.

Sounds fun, he signed dryly, then looked back down at his phone as he kept on aimlessly scrolling to pass the time.

Strangely enough, Leo remained standing close to the door. When Donnie looked away from him, he started shuffling his feet, like he was nervous, although Donnie had no idea what his brother could possibly be worried about. This was just their room. It wasn’t that big a deal. He came back from hanging out with his friends. What was bothering him, then?

“Hey, um, I actually, uh, got you something,” said Leo after a few long, unbearable moments.

Looking up, Donnie arched an eyebrow at the way Leo was now also clutching the straps of his backpack. Again, everything about him looked agitated and tense even though there was nothing to be worried about. Donnie would have tried to calm him down, but he wasn’t sure how to approach this. He didn’t even know what was making Leo so on edge.

“Here, it’s… it’s just, uh…”

Donnie couldn’t help it—he just stared at Leo as he scrambled to get his bag off his back and unzip it, his words coming out all stutter-y and uncertain. This was a side of Leo he knew existed, yet he wasn’t used to seeing it. Leo was usually more confident than that, always standing tall and filling every room with his ego without even trying. Boasting and gloating were second nature to him.

The moments in which Leo was hesitant, unsure or nervous were almost nonexistent, and they were almost always concerning since… well, they were so rare, nobody ever knew how to handle them quite right.

Which basically meant that Donnie was stumped.

And then Leo pulled out a box from his bag—one that was extremely familiar to Donnie after months of staring at it through the store window on his way from the bus station back home. It was this chemistry kit that Donnie has been begging their father to buy him, yet since it was too pricey, Dad kept on saying no.

Donnie’s been saving for a while now, determined to get his hands on the kit as soon as possible, but it was slow-going—mostly because nobody wanted to hire a fifteen-year-old kid. Go figure. And nobody really wanted Donnie to tutor him because, well, Mikey was right—Donnie was a terrible teacher.

Which made it all the more baffling to see Leo holding the chemistry set in his hands, grinning at Donnie with an unfamiliar glint in his eyes as he kept on standing by the door, as if expecting to get kicked out of his own room or something. And while holding the chemistry kit, no less!

How did you— Donnie started to say, then paused with his hands in front of him, shaking his head.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Leo said, “Oh, you know how it is. I got off the bus and saw this on my way over, and I thought… I know I’ve been saving to get this new JJ limited edition movie set, but, I mean, I could always buy it some other time… if there’s anything left…” He gulped thickly, then widened his smile even more and tossed the kit over to Donnie. “Anyway, I know you really wanted this, and it wasn’t a big deal.”

Donnie just barely caught the kit, his phone slipping to the bed. He blinked down at the kit he was holding—something he’s been longing to have for a long time now—and couldn’t help but replay Leo’s words in his head on repeat, making his heart clench tightly despite the fact that he was holding the chemistry kit.

For months now—almost as long as Donnie has been pining for the kit—Leo’s been ranting to them all about this Jupiter Jim limited edition movie that was going to come out. Something he was determined to get his hands on, even if it cost him all his savings. And he’s been working hard to get as much money as possible in order to make his dream possible. He even begged their dad to let him mow the lawn for some extra pocket money, which was something Leo hated doing with all his heart.

And now he was standing there, telling Donnie that he used his precious savings to buy him this chemistry kit instead of waiting only a little longer for the JJ movie to be released? Was he serious?

As much as I would love to take this, I cannot, signed Donnie once he put the kit on the bed in front of him, drawing his legs closer to his body so he wouldn’t touch it.

“What? Why not?”

You’ve been saving this money for a really long time. I can wait with the chemistry kit, okay? I’m going to have enough to pay for it myself eventually. You won’t get a second chance to buy your movie. Just return it—get your money back.

Leo had this unreadable look on his face again as his eyes drifted from Donnie to the kit and back. Donnie was beginning to loathe this expression with all his heart, but he didn’t say anything and just kept himself in check, not daring to touch the box again in case it made him change his mind.

He was supposed to be doing stuff for Leo now—not the other way around. Why was his twin so determined to ignore every single clue thrown his way that let him know he could finally have his own, personal life without having to worry about Donnie? What was he thinking, just buying this kit on a whim?

“I’m not taking it back, forget it,” said Leo. “I don’t need that movie. It’s… it’s just a movie. This is more important.”

No, it’s not.

“It is.”

Donnie frowned at him. Why? What makes this chemistry kit more important than that dumb-dumb movie? It’s all you’ve been talking about for nearly a month straight! I could literally buy this kit any other time. It’s no big deal.

“It is a big deal!” protested Leo. And wow, he looked upset now. “You said it yourself—it’s just a dumb movie. I don’t have to watch it. But this kit could actually help you, and you’re definitely smart enough to use it. And if I didn’t get it, then some idiot kid would’ve, and you’d do so much better with it than anyone else, okay? It could help you when you start taking those pretentious honor classes.”

Eyes widening, Donnie frantically signed, How did you know about that?

Leo threw his backpack near his bed without stepping further into the room. His hands clenched once they were free, as if he was holding himself back from signing right back at Donnie. Because, once again, signing wasn’t something Leo needed to do—only Donnie.

“Raph texted me,” he said. “He told me you talked to Dad and that you’re going to go to school early tomorrow to sort it all out. Congratulations, by the way.”

Why are you upset? demanded Donnie. You wanted me to say yes the first time they offered. Why are you upset?

“I…” Leo’s mouth opened and closed several times before he muttered, “I’m not, I’m not, I’m really happy for you. Ecstatic. You’re way too smart to be stuck with all the dummies in our class, anyway.” He threw the chemistry kit another look. “Just… just keep it, okay? Keep it. It’s just… it’s a gift. Because you’re going to either blow up a school lab or blow up their minds. Either way, you can already start working on blowing stuff up here. With this.”

Donnie glanced back down at the chemistry kit. The expensive chemistry kit he needed to return to the store so that Leo could buy his stupid, precious movie.

But when he looked up at Leo again—not quite meeting his eyes because for once his brother was the one to avoid eye contact—he could almost see the desperation rolling off him in waves as he waited to hear a confirmation from Donnie that he would indeed keep his present instead of exchanging it back for the money.

Feeling like he was taking a step backward instead of forward, Donnie numbly signed, Thank you.

Leo’s shoulders relaxed and he finally smiled again, though there was something off about the smile that made Donnie squirm a little on his bed, his heart squeezing tightly and alarm bell going off in his head. He wasn’t sure why or what exactly was setting him off, but… but Leo looked off in a way he couldn’t explain logically.

“Good, good,” said Leo as he bobbed his head up and down, backing toward the door. “Right, so I’ll just… I’ll be heading out.”

Again? You just came back.

He hesitated at the doorway. “Why, did you wanna do something together?”

God, yes. Donnie would love to just get off his bed, go downstairs and play some video games with Leo until Papa forced them to depart with the game I favor of eating dinner together.

No, he lied, I have some homework left that I wanted to finish today.

Leo started nodding even before Donnie finished signing. “Right, yeah, homework. So… yeah, I’ll just… leave.”

He looked at Donnie expectantly, as if waiting for him to ask where he was going and with who, like he usually did. But Donnie only reached out and grabbed his phone, training his eyes on his lap instead of his twin. He figured if he looked straight at Leo again, he’d break and ask him tons of questions before begging him to stay and hang out with him or at least ask him to come, too.

When the silence stretched, Leo cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles on the door lightly. “Right, okay, um… see you later, Donnie.”

And just like that, he was gone again.

Chapter Text

2015

Donnie felt like his skin was prickling, his eyes were stinging, his ears were on the verge of bleeding if they weren’t doing that already. His entire body was curled in on itself as he huddled into his sweater the best he could, trying to disappear into it the same way Mikey sometimes did after stealing one of Raph’s large sweaters.

But he couldn’t hide. Not now. Instead, he was obediently sitting in the principal’s office with his hand clutched in Leo’s. Their father sat on Leo’s other side, looking tired and slightly ruffled after having to leave his job to come to the school in the middle of the day so he could hear that his son decked Ron Kleiner and yelled at their geography teacher in the middle of class.

To his credit, Leo looked like he wasn’t worried in the least. Instead, he was this soothing, confident presence next to Donnie since the moment this all began. He kept his back straight and his mouth relaxed. His eyes looked straight into the principal’s pupils, as if daring him to accuse him of anything even if Leo really did get himself in trouble.

Technically, Donnie was supposed to be in class or at least wait outside, but once Papa showed up and noticed how he was clinging to Leo like his life depended on it, on the verge of hyperventilating, he sided with his kids and told the principal Donnie would stay with them. Something about emotional support—Donnie kind of tuned his words out once it became clear to him that he was allowed to stay with his twin.

He dug his nails into his arm as the principal kept on talking and talking, telling Dad about the incident that landed them in this situation. Before the pain could begin to register in his brain, though, Leo’s fingers gently uncurled his own before pulling his hands apart to prevent him from hurting himself.

At Donnie’s distressed whine, Leo shushed him quietly, releasing one of his hands to sign, It’s going to be okay.

“I think three days suspension should be an appropriate punishment in this situation,” said the principal. “And an apology to Caroline Forman from Leonardo—”

“I’m not gonna apologize to her!” protested Leo.

“Quiet, Blue, you are already in trouble,” said Dad with a warning look toward Leo.

Usually, this was enough to get Leo to shut up for a little while, but this time he squared his shoulders and pressed on. “But she made Donnie take off his headphones! This is so unfair! She’s supposed to be responsible, but she made him run to the toilet for almost, um, half an hour.”

He stumbled over the time, apparently not really sure it was right. Still, he sounded pretty confident, overall.

“Which was an unfortunate turn of events, of course,” said the principal, “and you can be certain I will have a word with her, but yelling at her was not the way to go about it, Leonardo. You are old enough to know that.”

“She wouldn’t listen to me!” he argued.

Papa furrowed his eyebrows and sent Donnie a quick look, as if to see for himself in what state his son was. Then he turned to look at the principal again, looking warier than he did a moment before. He had this look Raph sometimes got when he was upset at Leo for teasing or mocking Mikey too much.

“I can understand Mrs. Forman’s initial demand for Purple to take his headphones off, but I’m curious to hear why she didn’t listen to Blue when he tried to tell her it was a bad idea,” he said politely.

The principal’s lips curled a little. “I believe she assumed Leonardo was, well, messing around. It would exactly be his first time trying to fool his teachers,” he said with an admonishing, tired look in Leo’s direction.

“It’s her fault she didn’t listen,” grumbled Leo.

“But,” added the man when he noticed Dad glaring at him, “I can of course see that, in this case, the teacher was wrong. And I assure you, I will make sure such a thing never happens again. Still, I must insist on the suspension. Whether or not his actions were justified, Mr. Hamato still hit one of his classmates—”

“He was laughing at Donnie because he started breathing funny!” shrieked Leo. “I was trying to help Donnie, but that idiot—”

“Blue!”

“—kept on laughing at him and it was making Donnie feel worse. And Mrs. Forman wasn’t helping at all! She didn’t even care that Donnie wasn’t feeling well. He left to go to the toilet and she told him to come back because he wasn’t allowed to leave without permission. So I punched Ron. I’m not sorry. He deserved that!”

Donnie weakly tugged on his hand.

You’re making it worse. Stop it, he signed.

Leo’s hand twitched, like he was about to lift it in order to sign back, but in the end he just clenched it and drummed it against his thigh as he tightened his hold on Donnie’s hand a little, as if making sure Donnie was there and no longer sick in the bathroom.

Their father did not look much better as he levelled the principal with a flat glare. “I must admit, this makes me think I should just transfer my kids to a different school. I do not like it when people mistreat them, even if some of them happen to be less reliable than the others,” he added, throwing a side eye look to Leo.

Personally, Donnie thought Leo was one of the most trustworthy people on the planet. He could always count on him to know what to do when he felt off, after all, and Leo seemed to be able to diffuse bad situations with the kind of ease people aspired to. When he needed someone to turn to, Donnie knew he could always trust Leo.

Even if he goofed around and lied and tricked people left and right just to get a laugh or to keep out of trouble, he was also always capable of taking things seriously when things turned sour. If things were really wrong, Leo could be the most trusted person on the planet, for all Donnie could tell.

By the end of the conversation, Dad managed to get the principal to promise Ron Kleiner would get punished, as well, and Leo got out of having to apologize to Mrs. Forman, although he still had a three days suspension (“Who cares? I don’t wanna go to school! This is perfect!”), which clearly devastated him.

None of their teachers ever dared say a word against Donnie having his headphones on during class after that incident, which was a bonus.

Present

“Hey, guys. Have you seen Leo anywhere?”

Donnie and April looked up from their lunch to look at Raph as he stopped next to their table, his eyes scanning the cafeteria rather than looking at either one of them. He seemed tense, although Donnie was starting to think it was just a new constant nowadays. For some reason everyone just looked so tense all the time.

There was once a time when he believed Mikey would never be able to find anything all too intimidating or bad—when he thought Mikey would forever stay the sunshine of their little family, constantly happy—but now he walked around with this small frown on his face, always looking at his brothers in almost despair.

“Sorry, big guy,” said April as she swallowed a mouthful of rice. “I haven’t seen him since you guys got off the bus this morning. Isn’t he with his friends over th—”

She shut up when they all turned to look at Leo’s usual table only to find Alex and Dave sitting there without their third party. Donnie sent a look around the cafeteria, scanning the faces there, but he couldn’t spot Leo anywhere. Which was… odd. He’s been eating all his lunches with his friends lately, so where was he today?

Held back by a teacher? he suggested.

Raph’s nose scrunched up. “I don’t know. And Mikey went to check the art room, too, but he’s not there, either.” He looked at Donnie urgently. “You have absolutely no idea where he might be? Nothing at all?”

All Donnie could do was shrug. Leo was usually either with his friends or with, well, him. And since he wasn’t with either, he had absolutely no idea what to think. But it wasn’t a big deal, because it didn’t mean anything. Leo was sneaky—always has been. He was probably just… in the bathroom. Or maybe he was hitting on some unassuming boy. He could be anywhere, and it wasn’t a big deal.

“Well, if you see him, let me know, okay?” said Raph with a sigh.

April tipped her head and pointed her fork at Raph. “I’m guessing you already tried texting him?”

“He hasn’t even read our messages,” he sighed. “And our calls all reach voicemail, so… that was a bust.”

He’s probably fine, Donnie signed with as much confidence as he could muster.

Nodding, Raph offered him a weak smile. “Yeah, of course he is. He’s Leo. He’s probably just… messing with us on purpose or something.” He didn’t sound too sure about that. “Just, um, let me know if you see him. See you later, D. Bye, April.”

“Bye!” she called after him, then turned back to Donnie with a slight frown. “You think he might have skipped school? You said he does that sometimes, right?”

Donnie wouldn’t know since he and Leo haven’t texted each other in almost two weeks, and they no longer shared a single class other than physical education, which they didn’t have today. Just like April, he hasn’t seen his brother since that morning, which was… strange, but not catastrophically wrong.

At least, that’s what he kept on telling himself.

Maybe, he signed without any conviction, and maybe April understood the look on his face because she didn’t ask what the sign meant.

It was actually April who found Leo. She left Donnie for a few minutes to go to the bathroom, and when she came back she had this troubled look on his face as she told him that she heard someone throwing up in the boys’ bathroom. She didn’t go inside to check who it was, but she said it might have been Leo.

And even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, Donnie pushed away from the table and left the cafeteria to go see if it really was his brother. Which it clearly was, since the moment Donnie stepped into the room and heard the pathetic groan from one of the stalls, he recognized his twin’s voice.

He knocked on the door.

“Someone in here,” muttered what was very obviously Leo’s aggravated voice.

Donnie wrinkled his nose when he smelt the faint scent of puke, but he forced himself not to dwell on it enough to make himself sick. Leo was inside the cubicle, clearly feeling unwell, and right now he came first. Donnie just had to hold it in for now. He could do this for his brother, couldn’t he? Even if he could already feel his stomach rolling…

He knocked again.

Leo moaned. “Someone in here! Jeez…” He let out a whimper and Donnie could almost imagine his miserable expression as he bent over the toilet. “Dude, all the other stalls are empty. Just go into one of them already—”

“Nardo,” Donnie rasped out.

Silence enveloped them both as Leo seemed to shut up instantly. All Donnie could hear was the sound of the students in the distance, the leaking sink in the corner of the room and Leo’s uneven breaths as he seemed to dry-heave a little more. The sound made Donnie’s inside flip more violently, but he still determinedly kept it all in.

After what felt like forever, a small voice from behind the door said, “Donnie?”

He lightly tapped his fingers against the door of the stall twice, then listened as there was a click. Leo opened the door hesitantly, peering up at Donnie from his place on the floor in front of the toilet, his face pale and kind of sweaty as he scrunched his eyebrows together, looking mostly confused, as if Donnie was an apparition.

“What are you doing here?” Leo asked.

Donnie ignored that. What happened? Are you sick?

Leo bit his lip, his hand coming up to rest over his stomach, like he was trying to soothe it somehow. His eyes momentarily glanced at something behind Donnie, something flickering across his face, but when he turned to see what was there, all Donnie could see was a bin.

“I, uh, think it’s something I ate,” said Leo with a faint smile. “It’s no big deal. I’m fine, really. You should get to class, though. I think—I think the bell’s supposed to ring soon, and you wouldn’t wanna be late, right? So just… go. You should go. I’ll be fine. I’ll just… stay in here for a little while longer…”

With a frown, Donnie pulled out his phone and sent a quick message to Raph and Mikey to let them know Leo was found.

“What are you doing?” said Leo, and he almost sounded afraid.

Raph and Mikey were looking for you, signed Donnie, and he watched as something flickered across Leo’s face for a moment before it disappeared, replaced by the same faint smile from before, which… didn’t look right to Donnie. You should go home if you’re not feeling well. Tell Dad.

Leo shook his head violently. “No! No, I’m fine! See? I’m perfectly—never been better in my entire life.”

He tried to stand, but the moment he started moving, a shudder went through his body and his face scrunched up before he twisted around and threw up in the toilet once more. Donnie flinched and took an automatic step back, his body buzzing with the need to get out of there before he emptied his own lunch on the floor.

The sound, the smell—it was all too much for him. He needed to get out of there as soon as possible. But… but Leo was sick, and he probably needed him. How could he just leave him like that? Usually when the roles were reversed Leo was there to comfort Donnie and soothe him however he could. But what could Donnie do? What could he do to help Leo when he was seconds away from pathetically ending up in the same position as his twin?

How come he was doing so much to help Leo, and he still felt like he was failing when his brother truly did need him? What, he could only give him space by switching classes, but he couldn’t be there for him when he was stuck in the bathroom, miserable and sick? Awesome job—brother of the year, he was.

Feeling around with his hand, Leo caught the tail end of the toilet paper hanging from the wall and tore himself a piece to wipe at his face before dumping it into the toilet. Once he was done with that, he turned around, leaned on the wall, and squeezed his eyes shut tightly, as if trying to shut out the world around him.

Setting his jaw, Donnie gently kicked his ankle to try and somehow help Leo see that he wasn’t abandoning him—then he sped-walked out of the bathroom with his phone clutched tightly in his hand. He inhaled deeply once the door closed behind him and he could bask in the feeling of air that didn’t smell like vomit entering his lungs.

His eyes burned a little as he lifted his phone and sent Raph a text, telling him he should come and be with Leo because… well, Donnie couldn’t. He hated himself for it, but he really couldn’t stand it, being in that small room that was making his stomach flip and twist unpleasantly. But at least someone would be with Leo in there.

Once he got confirmation from Raph that he was coming, Donnie sent their father another text, informing him of the situation and telling him to pick Leo up because whether it was all because of a meal his body wasn’t agreeing with or something else, he couldn’t really attend his classes like that.

The bell rang a minute before Dad texted that he was getting out of work and on his way. Raph passed by him two minutes prior, patting Donnie gently on his shoulder on his way into the bathroom, like he knew Donnie felt like he was letting Leo down by not being there with him himself.

Only then, secure in the knowledge that Leo was being taken care of, did Donnie leave his post next to the bathroom door, dragging his feet toward his next class.

Papa texted later to let them all know that he picked Leo up and took him back home, which was unnecessary but appreciated. He also told them that Leo stopped throwing up, but he was still very clearly feeling under the weather, so if they could keep it down once they got back home, it would be great, which was much more necessary because they (and by ‘they’ he meant Raph and Mikey) tended to be very loud.

Donnie tried not to think too much about Leo being sick without any of his brothers around to keep him company. The problem was that his classes weren’t interesting enough to captivate him and drag him away from his thoughts, so Donnie ended up taking notes automatically without truly taking in any of the words his teachers were saying.

When they all got on the bus back home, he wanted to beat himself up when Mikey happily informed him and Raph that he got all of the notes and homework he could get from Leo’s classmates and teachers so that he wouldn’t miss anything because he was sick. Honestly, Donnie should have thought of that. That was what Leo usually did for him, yet apparently he couldn’t even remember to do this simple thing for his brother.

Seriously, he was messing things up left and right, apparently. He couldn’t give Leo space. He couldn’t help Leo when he needed someone to even just be with him. What could he do?

It did cheer him up a bit to watch as Mikey and Raph practically tiptoed into the house, looking around anxiously, as if they were scared of disturbing Leo accidentally. Of course, the sound of the three of them entering the house was drowned by the TV show playing in the living room, which Leo was watching with a downturn to his lips and a bucket in his lap.

“Hey, buddy,” cooed Raph.

Behind his back, Mikey rolled his eyes at the familiar tone of voice, but he didn’t say anything. Leo just tiredly looked up at Raph, his eyes looking dimmer than usual as he turned away from the TV to look at the three of them. When he smiled at them, Donnie’s gut twisted uneasily because this definitely looked wrong.

“Oh, hey guys,” he said, his voice deceptively light. “You know, there’s never anything good to watch on TV at these hours. I swear, all of the good series are later on in the day. Sick kids all around New York are probably bored out of their minds because they have nothing to watch to pass the time. I know I am.”

Mikey shoved his hand into his backpack and pulled out a stack of papers with a grin. “Wanna do your homework, then?”

Leo stared at him flatly. “I said I was bored, not desperate.”

With a shrug, Mikey hopped onto the couch next to Leo after absentmindedly throwing his bag on the floor and setting the papers on the coffee table. He pressed himself to Leo’s side, apparently not worried he might get infected in the least. And while normally Leo would melt into the touch, this time he looked stiff and uncomfortable as he remained still, unmoving.

“Well, I’ll just put it in your room later,” said Mikey, and Donnie noticed the worried look he sent toward Raph having noticed Leo’s strange reaction. “Oh, before I forget—Alex and Dave said that they hope you’d get better soon, and that the practice on Thursday got canceled because Coach Jordon’s wife is at the hospital right now—”

“Oh, she’s finally having the baby?” said Raph as he took a seat next to Mikey. “Taylor said she was supposed to have it, like, two weeks ago. It’s about time, isn’t it?”

Leo hummed, his eyes trained on the TV again. He still looked stiff next to Mikey, like he wasn’t sure what to do with the kid that was trying to get him to hug him. Instead, his arms wrapped around his bucket more tightly and he set his jaw to the point where it almost looked painful.

I heard it’s going to be a girl, signed Donnie.

“Really?” said Mikey with sparkling eyes. “Do you know what they’re going to name her?”

“Why would I know that, Michael—”

“I have a list of great names!” he interrupted, bouncing up and down on the couch until Raph gestured for him to calm down because Leo was beginning to look a little queasy. “We can go visit them once Leo gets better. I can give them my list. They can call her Caitlin, Dona, Lauren, Cadance, Sophie, Penny—”

Raph quirked an eyebrow. “Since when do you have a list of baby names?”

Mikey didn’t bother answering the question, instead waving his hand dismissively as he kept on reciting names. “Jaquelin, Aurora, Jasmine, Belle, Tiana, Ariel—”

“Now you’re just naming Disney princesses,” muttered Leo as his gaze flickered toward the space on his other side, like he was contemplating moving to it so he could put some space between Mikey and him.

“—and, of course, Leontyne,” finished Mikey proudly.

“Leontyne? Really?”

Leo sniffed a little and smiled again. “I like that name.”

With practically stars in his eyes, Mikey turned to beam at him. “I knew you would.”

Of course he would—it has his name in it, signed Donnie exasperatedly.

Smile dimming once more, Leo returned his attention back to the TV screen, his shoulders hunching on himself a little as he pressed the bucket against his stomach like it might help him in some way.

Raph and Mikey exchanged an anxious look, then smiled at Leo again as if nothing was wrong, though Donnie thought he could still see remnants of their worry on their faces. And while he would agree and say Leo was acting slightly, um, unusual, he was sick. Maybe this was all just a fluke. He was simply unwell, which explained his weird behavior.

“Well, I like this name,” stated Mikey firmly as he elbowed Leo gently. “I’m gonna convince Coach Jordon to name his baby girl that if it’s the last thing I do, mark my words!”

Fondly shaking his head at his little brother, Raph smiled, then turned to look at Donnie expectantly. “You going to stand there forever, or are you going to join us? Apparently we’re binging a bunch of boring TV shows today.”

“You guys really don’t have to,” mumbled Leo.

He sent the empty seat next to him another look, then lifted his gaze over to Donnie, that unreadable expression once again taking over his face. Donnie was becoming more and more acquainted with it, which he wasn’t sure was a good thing because not knowing what his twin was thinking was not pleasant.

Donnie uneasily shifted his weight between his legs. I think I’d better go do my homework, actually.

Leo turned to face the television once more, and Donnie wasn’t sure whether he read him right or not. Was that look meant to tell Donnie he should keep his distance, or was Leo just looking at him for the sake of looking at him? Now he couldn’t even tell whether he’d guessed right or not.

By the disappointed frown on Raph’s face, Donnie could gather that at least his older brother wasn’t all too happy with his conclusion.

“Are you sure? You can always catch up later—” Raph tried to say coaxingly, but Mikey cut him off.

“Oh, right,” he said, turning back to Leo, “your English teacher gave me back your last English test today. She said she’d let you do a make-up test once you feel better.”

“A make-up test?” echoed Raph.

Leo seemed to curl into himself even more, his gaze glued to the screen, like he couldn’t look away from it even if he tried. A raging fire could set the room ablaze and Leo would still be unable to tear his eyes away from the TV and the painfully boring cartoon that was playing there right now.

“Yeah,” Mikey said as he leaned forward to leaf through the pile of papers on the table. Then he pulled out two stapled papers that were filled with more red ink than Donnie was familiar with. His teachers rarely ever had to leave him notes because, well, he aced nearly all of his exams with ease.

He huddled closer to Mikey along with Raph in order to stare at the test in astonishment, his gaze settling on the big, red F scribbled at the top of the page right next to Leo’s name that was messily written in blue ink.

“Wait… Leo—you failed an English test?” said Raph in shock.

Leo’s pale face turned a little green. “Apparently…”

But it’s one of your best subjects! protested Donnie, signaling with enough ferocity to draw Leo’s gaze toward him. You’ve never failed an English test before.

“I just… I guess I wasn’t focused enough or something,” said Leo lightly. “It’s no big deal. I’ll take the make-up test and everything’ll be fine. Seriously, don’t worry about it.”

You’re the top of the class in English, though, insisted Donnie. And you didn’t just get a B or a C—you failed. How did this even happen—

Leo snapped his head around to face Donnie, and instead of looking sick, he just looked angry as he glared at Donnie with narrowed eyes and his hands clenched around the bucket like he might just try and crush it.

“Gee, Donnie, I don’t know,” he snapped. “I guess we’re not all geniuses in this family! I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to get one failed mark! I’ll try to be more perfect next time, all right? Because apparently I’m doing something wrong if everything I do still fails!”

Startled, Mikey pulled away with wide eyes. Next to him, Raph’s lips parted in surprise as he blinked at Leo with a mix of bafflement and sadness, almost like Leo was an upset puppy. Apparently, neither one of them expected Leo to raise his voice in any way right now, which Donnie could certainly relate to.

And, even weirder, Leo himself seemed to be surprised by his own tone of voice, blinking rapidly at Donnie as if silently asking him if he really did just yell at him out of nowhere. But then, before Donnie could even find it in himself to search for the words to say back to that, Leo scrambled to his feet, dumping his bucket to the floor, and rushed out of the house before anyone could stop him, the front door shutting loudly behind him.

Donnie stared at the closed door for a long moment, then turned to the failed test that Mikey was still holding numbly, the red lines on the page blurring before him as his eyes stung in this particular way that he hated.

“Uh…” Mikey looked around at the other two. “Should we go after me?”

“Y-yeah,” stuttered Raph as he shook himself out of his trance. “Yeah, yes, we should. Um, Donnie, would you maybe—Donnie?”

He ignored Raph as he pulled his headphones out and pulled them over his head as he rushed to climb up the stairs to his room. Then he shut the door, put his backpack away and threw himself onto the bed, face buried in his pillow so that even if he ended up crying, the tears would get soaked in the fabric instead of rolling down his cheeks and nose—just in case.

Donnie took a shower, like every day.

And no, he definitely did not try to drown himself while doing so, thank you very much. He also wasn’t trying to mask his tears as he let them stream freely under the showerhead. Oh, yes, and he was obviously not delaying the moment he would have to go back to his shared room with Leo only to find it empty once again because Leo wasn’t back yet.

No. Nope. He was just taking a nice, normal shower.

And okay, maybe he was a tad bit confused by everything, because it looked like… for some reason everything was going wrong. He was trying to help Leo, and instead he ended up with his twin yelling at him. It didn’t make sense, because Donnie was helping. He was finally being more pleasant and less of a burden, yet Leo was acting like something was off.

None of it made sense no matter how hard Donnie thought about it. He knew that Raph and Mikey were worried—mostly because Leo was out and about while also being sick—and that Papa was trying to call Leo to get him to come back home already. They were probably planning to talk to him, to try and find out what was going on and how they could fix it.

For some reason, though, Donnie had the feeling this all had something to do with him. Call it a hunch. Or Leo’s voice still ringing in his head.

Shaking the thoughts out of his head, Donnie tried to calm down as he walked from the bathroom to his room. He could hear his father’s voice coming from downstairs, whispering something to Mikey or Raph. Or maybe both of them. Maybe Donnie needed to get down there and see if he could help somehow, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet their eyes and see… whatever emotions they were feeling toward him right now.

Then again, he was also not prepared to enter his room and find Leo lying in his bed, his head resting against the window pane as he stared outside with a faraway look, like he wasn’t even in his body, instead living in some land Donnie didn’t have access to. And even though the idea was ridiculous, it was foreign and terrible and wrong.

Before he could figure out what to do with himself, Leo’s head swiveled around to the entrance and he blinked at Donnie with a set of familiar eyes that seemed duller than usual, for some reason, like all the color and life in them got sapped out without Donnie even noticing.

Come to think of it, Leo looked like a mess—which wasn’t surprising, because he’s been throwing up for quite some time earlier and clearly wasn’t feeling too great, but it still struck Donnie as very bad. His hair was a mess, his skin pale. His cheeks were slightly gaunt, like he’s been skipping on meals—or maybe throwing them out because of a stomach bug—and, come to think of it, he was wearing one of Raph’s hoodies that hung off him instead of one of his flashier clothes.

The least concerning part of his appearance were his eyes. Or, well, the bags under them. They all knew that Leo was an insomniac, regularly having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep for longer than several hours at a time. So while the bags were nothing new, Donnie still thought they seemed to be bolder, more prominent, like Leo hasn’t gotten a good night sleep in a long, long time.

Are you okay? Donnie asked before Leo could look away.

“M’fine,” he said, his lips tilting up into that off smile. “I actually saw this pigeon outside that was eating pizza. I wanted to take a picture of it, but apparently my phone is dead again, though I swear I charged it all night and I haven’t really used it that much today. It’s super weird.”

How did you fail that English test?

Leo’s smile stilled. “You’re still on about that? It’s just one test, Donnie. Let it go. I’m trying to tell you I saw a pigeon eating pizza. Who cares about some dumb test?”

Donnie frowned. If it was dumb, how come you got an F?

The smile completely slipped off his twin’s face. Leo started clenching and unclenching his hands the way he usually did when he was holding himself back from signing grandly, which normally happened when he was upset or angry.

“What do you want me to say? That’s I’m dumber than the dumb test?” he said crossly. “Fine. I failed because the test was dumb, but I was dumber. Is this supposed to be surprising? Wow, would you look at that, Leo is actually stupider than we thought possible. I’m shocked!”

Donnie threw his hands up in frustration before quickly signing, I didn’t say that—stop putting words in my mouth!

“Nobody can put words in your mouth!” called Leo. “You don’t use words! No, you have to flail around and hope I’ll always understand what you want, but I don’t. I don’t know what you want from me, okay? I don’t know what you’re trying to do or what you want me to do. For once in your life, can you just speak to me?”

His hands were finally flying before him as he seemed to give in to the urge to use TSL on top of his voice. Unlike every other time, this time it made Donnie feel like he was trying to add more volume to his words, as if raising his voice just wasn’t enough anymore. As if he was trying to show Donnie his point by using both his hands and his verbal words to shout at him.

All concern for his twin evaporated at once as Donnie felt something burning in his chest and stinging in his eyes. He opened his mouth to yell back—use his voice against Leo, just like he wanted him to—but for the first time in his life he couldn’t force words to crawl up his throat. This was Leo—the person he trusted most in the world—and he couldn’t. Couldn’t bring himself to talk to him.

Donnie’s hands stuttered; his breath was caught in his throat. He stared at Leo’s searching, expectant face and suddenly his burning rage was replaced with an icy feeling in his gut, a trickle of fear that poured into his blood and made him feel both lightheaded and grounded at the same time, like he was trying to float out of his body while also being trapped inside it, staring at the world through his eyes that weren’t being operated by him.

Out of everyone in his life, Leo has always been the one who seemed to just accept the fact that he didn’t speak. He never asked Donnie to talk to him with his voice, never got frustrated with his silent signs, never looked at Donnie with the same kind of exasperation everyone else seemed to feel at least once because it was difficult to follow what Donnie was saying when he wasn’t using his voice.

So to hear it being thrust in his face now… to realize that all this time Leo has been sparing his feelings by keeping a smile on his face despite his very obvious annoyance with Donnie’s silence…

Donnie felt like his voice—or what was left of it, tenderly held between Leo’s fingers for years—has been burnt to ashes.

The silence stretched between them, suffocating and tense. Donnie gulped, pulling his hands to stiffly hang by his sides as he kept his lips sealed shut and his eyes away from Leo’s face. Leo who, by the way, was still staring at him intently, clearly daring Donnie with his gaze to open his mouth and explain himself, retort, say something.

“Right, right, of course,” muttered Leo after what felt like more than a few eternities.

When Donnie finally mustered the courage to look over at him again, he found Leo sitting with his cheek pressed against the window pane once more, looking just like he did when Donnie first came into the room. Only now his face didn’t look distant. He looked almost hollow, instead, like snapping at Donnie completely drained him.

Silently, he padded over to his bed, opened his laptop and brought up his list so he could stare at it until his vision was too blurry with tears he wished he could will away.

Chapter Text

2018

The house was on lockdown.

Raph and Mikey intercepted every call they got, reaching out to the house telephone before Leo could even think to touch the thing, saying: “Hello, who’s speaking?” in polite, cold tones, already expecting the worst and only melting if it was some kind of ad or a person trying to collect money for whatever Godforsaken disaster people cared about now.

It was almost funny—the only time their family was happy to receive these dull house calls was when they were literally trying to handle a disaster of their own.

Dad, while still looking a little shocked and caught off guard, took it upon himself to close all the curtains around the house and volunteer to open the door whenever someone knocked or rang the doorbell, which was very unusual for him, considering he was usually too lazy to do it himself, instead calling for one of his kids to do it instead.

Once, they all sat in the living room when the doorbell rang. Leo tried to get up and open the door, but Mikey almost committed suicide by launching himself at him, settling in Leo’s lap as the older kid huffed and groaned, only letting out a whine when he noticed Dad was already walking toward the door instead.

It creaked open. They all remained in the living room, staring at the TV while straining their ears to maybe hear what was being said. Then Papa’s loud voice said, “You want some juicy gossip? You don’t need to come all the way here for that—you can just open up a magazine! Now get out of here, you little brat!” Then the door slammed shut and Splinter walked back into the living room, looking all innocent.

While they all did their best to handle those things, Donnie did his best to distract Leo however he could. They played video games, watched movie after series after movie, studied for an algebra test (okay, that was mostly for himself rather than Leo), tried to cook and bake (emphasis on ‘tried’). Anything, as long as it kept Leo busy.

None of it helped, of course. At night, when Donnie and Leo went to sleep, Leo still ended up tossing and turning in bed, sniffling as quietly as possible even though Donnie could still hear him. It was a silent room with only the two of them—it was hard to miss the only sound echoing between the four walls, okay?

Leo, signed Donnie after he knocked on the nightstand lightly to draw his twin’s attention, it’s going to be okay.

Eyes gleaming with misery and tears, Leo shook his head. “Everyone knows, Donnie,” he whispered in mortification. “Everyone knows.”

Is it really that bad, though? You weren’t hiding it, Donnie noted. So people know. It’s not the end of the world. Just calm down. We can go to Run of the Mill; Hueso’s pizza will cheer you up, right? Like it always does.

Leo squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyelids. He sniffled and bit his lip—probably to keep it from wobbling. Like that, curled in on himself under his blanket in the dim light that was coming from his twinkling JJ lamp, he looked smaller than Donnie ever thought was possible for someone as boisterous and flamboyant as Hamato Leonardo.

“Donnie,” he said eventually, pulling his hands away and sending Donnie a look that slightly irritated him, giving him the impression that Leo thought he was acting like a little kid, “you know I love you, but not everyone is as accepting as you guys are. I heard that Amanda’s mom already called the school to demand them to expel me or she’ll pull Amanda out.”

It’s stupid, signed Donnie sharply.

Leo let out a small bitter laugh and rolled to his back, his eyes now staring up at the ceiling, staring at the twinkling shadows caused by the lamp with a forlorn, distant look, as if revisiting the events of the day in his mind, which was most likely not going to let him rest much.

Donnie wished someone else was with him to help Leo because he honestly had no idea what the right thing to say or do was.

“What if they really do expel me?” said Leo in a small voice, and instead of looking at Donnie to see what he had to say, he groaned and threw his arms in the air above him, leaving them to hover there. “This is so unfair! I really did think I could trust him! I thought he was okay! I should have… I don’t know, I should have realized he was bad news. What was I thinking?”

It’s not like you told him. You just acted like yourself, signed Donnie, but Leo was still not looking his way.

“And now everyone knows. I mean, I think Raph already guessed, and Mikey couldn’t care less because I don’t think there’s anything we can do to make him hate or resent us, to be honest, but Dad didn’t know! I was going to tell him eventually, on my own terms, and instead I had to tell him now, like this, because that jerk spread it all over the school! UGH!”

His hands fell down and he covered his face as his body shook violently with sobs that tore out of his throat the same way they were tearing Donnie’s heart to shreds. After all, this wasn’t Leo being dramatic or making a fuss. This wasn’t Leo trying to gain and hoard some extra attention. This was Leo with his defenses down and his heart displayed on a silver platter that he was holding in his hands, letting Donnie of all people watch as it sped up to the point of being unbearable.

Pushing his covers off, Donnie rolled off his bed and stood up before crossing the small distance between the two beds. When he patted Leo’s shoulder, his brother didn’t even sneak a peek at him—he simply shifted aside to make some space, then wrapped himself around Donnie the moment he finished lying in Leo’s bed.

“I-I know I joke ab-about wanting people t-to stare at me all th-the t-time, but th-this isn’t what I m-meant,” hiccupped Leo, his voice muffled as his lips moved against Donnie’s pajama shirt. “Pizza Supreme, th-they’re all going t-to stare at m-me! O-o-or they’ll expel me, like Am-Amanda’s mom t-told them.”

Donnie scowled at the curtained window. “They’re not gonna expel you, Nardo.”

Leo shook his head without saying anything.

“They’re not,” Donnie repeated stubbornly. “And if they try—and they won’t succeed, because you have Papa in your corner and he’ll die fighting them before letting anyone hurt you—then we’d better leave this school anyway. We really shouldn’t stay in a place that has a problem with its students just because they love someone this dumb-dumb society thinks they can’t love. What do they even know? All the teachers in this school are dumb anyway. And the principal doesn’t know what the seventy-first digit of pi is, so he’s a dumb-dumb, too. Who even gave them permission to teach the youth?”

Leo started shaking against him, though this time the sounds he was making were somewhere between sobs and laughter. His hands clutched Donnie’s shirt desperately, as if he was worried he might disappear if he let go. At least Donnie didn’t particularly care all that much about all of this contact at the moment—he would have hated himself if he couldn’t handle his twin hanging on to him when he needed him.

“Listen to me, Nardo—if anyone is going to have a problem with you being gay, Raph is going to pound them to the ground, Mikey will probably steal all their notebooks and textbooks and fill them with doodles until they can not longer be used, Dad’ll get all the staff fired and get actual good teachers and responsible, open-minded adults to replace them, and I will dig up every nasty secret there is about these mean dumb-dumbs so all the attention will be on them instead. Actually, I can just do that, anyway…”

Yes, Leo was definitely more laughing than crying at this point, his face still tucked against Donnie’s face as he shook with laughter, the sound still wet, but certainly mirthful rather than heart-wrenching and bitter. Donnie hesitantly brought his own arms around Leo, and when it didn’t feel awful, he tightened the hold a little, quietly waiting for Leo to get it all out of his system.

It took a minute or two, but eventually Leo pulled his head back and met Donnie’s eyes with his own. There were still tear tracks on his cheeks and Donnie was pretty sure Leo’s eyes were red and puffy even though it was kind of too dark to see, since his own body was blocking the light of the Jupiter Jim lamp. But the small smile on Leo’s face was visible even in the dim light, which was enough.

Pulling back one hand, Donnie signed, We won’t let you face any of this by yourself.

Leo sniffed. Promise? he signed shakily.

Instead of signing it back, Donnie wrapped his pinkie around Leo’s.

Present

Mikey woke Donnie up before his alarm went off, whispering to him that Dad told him they should let Leo sleep in instead of waking him up for school, so Donnie had to tiptoe around the bedroom in order to get ready, keeping an eye out to make sure Leo wasn’t waking up from all the fuss.

Instead of filling the ride to school with small chit-chat the way they’ve been doing the last couple of weeks, Raph and Mikey both stared out the window, looking tired and worried. Donnie threw them inconspicuous looks every now and then, trying to discern what was on their minds, but he had no idea what they were thinking about, no matter how hard he stared, willing his unknown telepathy to reveal itself at long last.

With the three of them not speaking, the ride seemed to take forever, but eventually the bus arrived at the school and they all trickled out of it slowly, and… was it only Donnie, or did it really looked like everyone else was in a better mood than the three Hamato brothers? Everywhere he looked students were laughing or smiling or messing with each other; meanwhile, the three of them just stood there with hunched shoulders, apparently not all too eager to start the day.

Glancing at each other one last time, they all seemed to silently agree they were done with each other because they all whirled around and walked in different direction to meet up with their own friends.

The thrill of thinking he actually had his own friend now was barely a tickle in the back of his mind, almost entirely overshadowed by the intrusive thoughts that kept on swirling around Donnie’s head, demanding his attention as they seemed to try and make it impossible to forget what Leo had told him the previous day.

The breeze felt like needles were piercing his skin, the noise made his eardrums pulse painfully and his brain rattle in his skull so there was a sort of sharp pressure behind his eyes, aching and fierce. The sun was peeking from between the clouds, nearly blinding him as he stood there, rooted to the spot.

“Hey, D!” someone called.

A familiar voice.

He blurrily turned to see April waving at him from her seat around one of the picnic tables in front of the school, her friend—Sunita, the exchange student—turning to look at him with a bright smile that matched April’s, like she was as excited to see Donnie as April was.

They weren’t supposed to be excited to see him, though. Why were they even his friends? Donnie was literally a nobody in this school. People knew him as the genius brother of the football star Raph, the basketball prodigy Leo and the adorably loud and artistic Mikey. Everyone liked his brothers, but nobody liked Donnie because he had a hard time understanding other people or being tactful, he was always right, which nobody really appreciated, and he couldn’t even speak.

“You don’t use words!”

“Donnie?” April called again, her hand faltering a little. “Hey, you coming or what? I was just about to tell Sunita—hahaha—what my mom did yesterday. You’re not gonna believe it.”

Donnie was barely aware of the way his hands crept up until they were pressed against his ears. He started shaking his head with his eyes closed but had to stop when it only made his brain rattle even more. Why were everyone around him wearing different perfumes and colognes? It all clashed horribly and it was filling his lungs and making him nauseous.

He probably deserved to be nauseous. If Leo was nauseous, Donnie would be, too. He didn’t need a reason beyond the obvious—he made Leo feel bad; he upset him. Maybe Donnie wasn’t exactly sure what exactly was the catalyst here, but he did know it was something to do with him, and so being nauseous was a small price to pay.

“Donnie?” someone else called his name this time, from further away.

He didn’t turn to see who it was, instead determinedly walking toward the entrance of the school. He knocked into other people who all grumbled and complained, but he hardly even spared them a glance as he climbed up the stairs and hurried down the halls of the school, his eyes squinted as he kept on pressing his palms to his ears.

He needed someplace quiet. Someplace quiet where he would be able to empty his churning stomach that still felt queasy from the assault of just about everything on his senses.

A place must have crossed his mind, but Donnie’s rattling, stabbing brain was too busy agonizing him to let him know his legs were taking him to a certain place and not just randomly carrying him around the halls filled with loud students that all seemed to intentionally grate on his ears, his brain. He brushed against them and his skin itched, burning at the contact.

And then he pushed a door open with his elbow and stepped into an empty room with lame doodles on the walls that bored kids must have scribbled down with sharpies just to spite their teachers and the principal (and maybe the janitor. Janet Prowell always seemed to have an agenda against him which nobody else understood).

The boys bathroom.

He entered the first stall instantly, then backed up and chose another one when he noticed there was no toilet paper inside and that there were suspicious wet spots on the floor. Seriously, had the janitor not passed through here yesterday? Maybe that was why Prowell disliked him as much as she did.

The second stall was fine. Donnie barely had enough time to step inside and crouch down before his breakfast climbed up his throat. He shivered and closed his eyes, his head torturing him as well by filling itself with Leo’s words from the day before. His angry scowls that were aimed solely at Donnie and nobody else.

When he reached blindly for the toilet paper to his left, Donnie found himself biting his lip—hard enough to draw blood, he was sure—at the feeling of something slipping past his eyelids. Tears. Again. He was crying again, and this time he was doing it in school, no less. His throat ached as he fought to prevent sobs from emerging. The last thing he needed was for someone to hear him and spread the rumor that Donnie was a pathetic crybaby, too.

And this time, if such a thing were to happen, Leo wouldn’t be with him, willing to fight anyone who dared even look wrong in Donnie’s direction. He wouldn’t translate Donnie’s words, he wouldn’t stick by his side to make sure he was never alone with someone who might laugh at him, he wouldn’t try to cheer Donnie up by getting him to rant about things that he liked.

Cleaning his face, Donnie did his best to erase any trace of the tears that were now filling his eyes but not spilling down his cheeks. Once he was done, he threw the used paper into the toilet, then flushed it all down and shakily stood up.

His phone pinged in his pocket and it was absolutely torturous, echoing inside his brain like the sound was trying to drill a hole in there. In all honesty, it was doing a pretty good job.

Stumbling out of the stall, Donnie fumbled a little with the straps of his backpack before he finally managed to pull them down enough so he could unzip it and pull out his noise cancelling headphones. He tried to pull them over his head, but his hands were trembling so badly, they slipped right through his fingers and landed in the bin.

And, of course, with his luck the headphones were obviously heavier than all the paper towels that were in the trash, meaning they sank right to the bottom. The thought of reaching down there made Donnie’s skin crawl and the bile returned to his throat instantly, but he needed these headphones. He needed a little more peace and quiet right now.

So, holding his breath, he wrinkled his nose and closed his eyes as he thrust his hand into the bin, moving past layers of both dry and wet paper towels that were all too rough or sticky or damp or revolting. Still, he pushed past them until his hand closed around something hard and he instantly grabbed it and pulled his hand back out.

The instance he was no longer touching the horrible garbage, though, his brain remembered to register the texture and shape of the thing he’d pulled out and Donnie realized that—oh, wait, this was some sort of box, not a bow.

He hissed and dropped the object in horror and disgust, his eyes snapping open to look at what he’d fished out of the trash instead of his precious headphones that he really, really, really needed right about now because his head was exploding and he was still trying to hold back tears and everything just felt so wrong and Leo was mad at him, which was the worst thing about this new world he woke into, as far as he was concerned—

His eyes widened and his heart stopped when he realized what he was looking at—a rectangle, blue box with a familiar peeling sticker of Jupiter Jim Sails the Seven Galaxies. Donnie numbly bent down and opened the box, revealing a meal that was now assaulting his nose with the most horrid smell after just lying there for hours, uneaten.

He recalled the way Leo’s eyes had travelled past him and over to the bin the day before after he’d asked him why he was vomiting. Leo had told him it was because of something he ate, but… did he even eat anything? Had that emotions that had crossed his face for a split second been guilt? Had Leo lied to him? Was he worried Donnie might open the bin and see the lunch box inside?

Why did Leo even throw it away like that? The lunch itself, maybe, but not the whole box. He loved this box. It was a birthday present from Donnie that he’d gotten for Leo for their thirteenth birthday and Leo had used it every day since then. Why was it in the trash?

Or was the better question just how mad at him Leo truly was?

(At least Donnie knew Leo would have been proud of him for once again skipping class, even if this time it was because he had a whole meltdown in the boys bathroom, the tears streaming down his face refusing to stop and his hands cradling the abandoned lunch box despite the smell and how gross it was.)

“Do you always have two lunch boxes?” April said the moment Donnie entered the art room.

He took a seat in front of her and delicately put the blue lunch box in his lap, his own purple one clutched in his other hand. He still felt shaky and weak, but at least he wasn’t as overwhelmed anymore. His headphones were resting over his ears—washed to the best of his abilities—and the discarded lunch box was just as clean, no longer smelling like rotten meat but rather like the soap in the toilets.

The logical part of his brain told him to just shove the box in his backpack and save it there for later. Then he’d be able to clean it better at home and maybe give it back to Leo. If his twin wouldn’t want it, that’d be… it’d be fine. Completely fine. But first Donnie had to make sure it wasn’t somehow an accident, however unlikely it seemed.

How could a lunch box accidentally end up being thrown in the trash in the boys bathroom, after all? There was only so much sheer luck could do, after all. Someone must have thrown it in there, and that someone was also very clearly Leo.

But the mere thought of putting the box out of his line of sight made Donnie feel sick all over again, so he’s been going to all his lessons up until now with the lunch box clutched in his hands, gaining a few odd looks from his peers and teachers, although when they asked and didn’t get anything in response, they let it go, luckily.

Actually, Donnie was pretty sure he hasn’t talked to anyone today. He kind of just kept to himself, mostly going through the motions without lifting his hands to sign a single word, whether the people before him knew ASL or not. Even Raph, who’d caught up to him during their first recess to ask Donnie is he was okay and why he hadn’t gone to his first lesson (how did he even know?) got nothing but a shrug from Donnie before he sped out of there.

“You have to flail around and hope I’ll always understand what you want, but I don’t!”

April was still waiting for Donnie to sign something, but with Leo’s words still ringing in his ears, he found himself incapable of signing a single thing. All he could do was give his friend a look before he turned to stare down at the blue lunch box in his lap.

“…all right,” muttered April as she used her fork to toss around the vegetables in her own lunch box. “You’re not sick, are you? I heard Leo was home sick today. Mikey mentioned something when I ran into him earlier. Did you catch the same thing or something ‘cause you don’t look too hot. Not in a bad way, just…” She paused for a split second. “Actually, it is in a bad way. You look terrible, D. Maybe you should have stayed home today, too.”

The idea of sharing the house with no one but Leo for hours on end while knowing Leo was very clearly mad at him made Donnie wince. His headache spiked a little for a moment even though he was kind of hoping it would go away soon because it’s been much duller since his, like, third class of the day. Well, apparently he was wrong.

Just another thing to add to the list of mistakes made by Donnie, even if this one affected no one but himself.

April tilted her head to the side. “Okay, you’re starting to scare me a little here. You good? Why aren’t you saying anything? I’ve been practicing, you know. I can understand some of what you say if you go easy on me.”

His stomach churned as he clenched his hands on both lunch boxes. That’s right—April became his friend (somehow) and to do that she had to learn sign language. Because Donnie couldn’t just speak to her, he had to force her to learn a whole new language, which she was willing to do, for some reason, although if his own brother got sick of it, Donnie had no doubt April would, too. Eventually.

“Whoa, hey, that was supposed to be a good thing—why do you look like I just murdered a kitten?” said April anxiously as her hands shot out to hover in front of Donnie, like she was worried he might lose consciousness or something. Her fork nearly stabbed him in the eye. “Donnie, seriously, just tell me what’s wrong. Are you worried about Leo? Because I’m sure he’s gonna bounce right back. It’s probably just some bug he caught, nothing major. He’ll be just fine with a little bit of rest.”

Donnie let go of his own lunch box, ignoring it as it clattered to the floor without enough noise to startle April. He didn’t even give it a second look as he pulled his phone from his pocket, quickly unlocking it. He had to text Leo. He had to make sure he was all right. Maybe he wouldn’t mind sending a text back since… well, tons of people texted each other. That was a normal thing people did, even ones who weren’t mute.

He tapped the screen and opened the chat with Leo, his thumb hovering over the keyboard as the curser blinked, waiting for him to figure out what to say. Donnie stared down at the older texts—ones from what felt like ages ago. They haven’t texted each other in a very, very long time, which was very unusual for them—although that was exactly the point and Donnie needed to be proud of himself for managing not to bother Leo so much for so long.

He didn’t feel proud. He only felt a hollowness in his chest at the sight of the last date when they’d texted. Numbly, he scrolled up to see their earlier conversations, his eyes taking in the words that had flown between them so easily. Leo had always been the one to answer the quickest. Donnie sometimes took a while to read texts and answer them because, well, he didn’t always see the need to reply rapidly when he was already doing something else. Leo, on the other hand, tended to read and reply to messages almost instantly.

Would he still answer Donnie quickly? Would he just see Donnie’s name and choose to ignore it? The fact that Donnie couldn’t tell which choice his brother would make made the pit in his stomach grow larger. His hand tightened its grip on the blue lunch box as he kept on staring at the screen, unable to bring himself to type a single word.

“Donnie, hey, just breathe. Come on, honey, just breathe,” said April as soothingly as possible.

She held out her hand, as if wondering if she should put it on his shoulder or back to help some more, but Donnie was glad when she chose against him. He already felt on edge—the last thing he needed was for someone to make contact with him when he felt like his skin was already prickling uncomfortably.

A loud bang made Donnie flinch and drop his phone in surprise. He brought his hand up to press his headphones more firmly against his ears, sending a look toward the door as Sunita rushed in, waving her own phone in front of her like it was the most important, precious, exciting thing in the world. Which it wasn’t.

“There you guys are!” she called, and then lowered her voice when April motioned for her to keep it down. “Have you seen it yet? I’ve been looking all over for you, this is just so weird!”

“What is?” said April as Sunita crouched next to her, nearly stepping on a sculpture on the floor. “Girl, tell me Bensen still has his pants on. I swear, that boy loses them every other week, somehow.”

“Who?” Sunita stared at her, then shook her head and held the phone away from her body so both Donnie and April could see the screen as she pressed on a video. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s going all around the school right now—I heard it literally just happened, but I just can’t believe nobody has noticed it except for the people who were there. Apparently it happened, like, two classrooms down the hall from ours, so I’m just shocked we couldn’t hear a thing.”

April shook her head at her. “What happened exactly?”

“Watch!”

Donnie didn’t particularly feel like watching a gossip video of any kind, but he reluctantly obeyed and turned to the phone screen right along with April, watching as the shaky footage came in and out of focus a couple of times before finally zeroing in on the three students who were clearly causing the whole commotion.

Suddenly his body turned rigid when he noticed that one of them had his face, but since he must have been in class at the time, this must have been Leo, who was supposed to be home sick, not shouting at people in the middle of class while someone decided to take a video of the entire thing.

“—an’t go around telling people their family shouldn’t care about them!” Leo said, throwing his arms in the air in clear frustration.

“We didn’t say anything like that! I swear,” said one of the other two, and Donnie realized it was Alex. “Come on, we like Donnie. You know that. Right, Dave?”

“Totally. He’s so… awesome,” said Dave with a clear grimace. “I don’t know what he told you, but we didn’t tell him anything, okay? Chill out, man. You’re blowing this way out of proportion—”

Leo rounded on Dave. “He hasn’t told me anything—that’s the problem!” he yelled, ignoring the teacher who was trying to calm them all down in the background. “He’s been acting super weird for ages now and I had no idea why, but now I do! Why would you ever tell him I was sick of him hanging out with me?”

Alex elbowed Dave before he could snap back, holding his hands placatingly between the other two like he was trying to settle things down without turning this into a scene even though it was already disrupting their lesson. There were snickers from the other kids around that neither one of the three seemed to care about.

“Okay, let’s all calm down, okay? All right? We can work this out like civilized people—between ourselves, you know,” said Alex slowly, his head turning from Leo to Dave repeatedly, then he offered Leo a small smile. “But hey, at least it’s good to see that you’re feeling better, right?”

Leo gave him such an unimpressed look, Donnie could almost hear the way he was grinding his teeth.

The words did prompt Donnie to scan the image of Leo in the video more closely, though. He didn’t really look any better than he did the day before. His skin still seemed to be pretty pale and even though his body was rigid, he looked weary defeated in a way that just didn’t fit with who Leo was.

But the most startling thing about his appearance—which should have been obvious to Donnie from the moment he laid eyes on the screen—was that Leo wasn’t wearing his own clothes, nor was he wearing one of Raph’s. Instead, he had the hoodie he’d once dubbed as his Comfort Hoodie. Which was actually one of Donnie’s that Leo kept on stealing.

He usually only wore it when he was sick or sad, claiming that wearing something that felt like a hug from his favorite brother (“Don’t tell Mikey, Donnie, I swear; he’ll kill me in my sleep if he knew—“) made him feel better. And since Donnie usually didn’t mind too much, he let Leo get away with it unless he thought Leo was just messing with him by stealing his hoodie rather than actually needing the article of clothing.

If he was wearing it today, though, it meant he really was feeling bad, even if he was out of bed and the house—which he shouldn’t have done if he was feeling that bad, but it looked like Leo had a bone to pick with his friends whether or not he was sick.

Aiming an almost shark-like grin at Alex, Leo brightly said, “Oh, yeah, I’m feeling so much better! I slept until all my problems just went away—oh, wait, no, I’ve been up all night trying to understand why my twin keeps avoiding me lately because I didn’t know you two got in his head and made him believe I didn’t want him to hang out with me!”

“Mr. Hamato, please calm down,” said Mrs. Carley. “I think you should go to the nurse. You look like you might keel over.”

She was right—Leo was swaying a bit in the video, like he was slowly losing his balance or the energy to keep himself upright, yet he ignored the teacher as he kept on glaring at his friends, the two of them sending slightly nervous looks around at the other students in the classroom, like they were embarrassed by their audience.

“Leo, I’m telling you, we didn’t tell anything like that to Donnie. I swear,” said Axel.

Behind him, Dave crossed his arms. “Maybe we should have, though. When we go out, I expect to hang out with my friends, but he always strolls along, like he’s part of our gang, and then he does this annoying thing—you know, the one where we say something and then he starts ranting about how wrong what we said was and he corrects us even though half the time I don’t even know what the hell he wants from me. Can’t he speak like a normal person? What’s his problem, anyway?”

“Dave!” hissed Axel.

Pushing Axel aside, Dave got in Leo’s face, stabbing his chest with his finger. “No, you know what? I don’t know where he heard it from, but it’s about damn time that freak finally realized what literally every sane person in this school thinks of him. I mean, seriously, how can you be proud of having a brother that I could swear has literally no emotional capacity. I wouldn’t be surprised if he feigns it every time he acts like he can actually feel something.”

Donnie flinched a little away from the phone Sunita was holding, his hands trembling as he opened and closed the clasp of Leo’s lunch box anxiously, his eyes trained on the image of Leo standing in front of Dave, his entire body shaking as he wiped the fake grin off his face and replaced it with such a hateful scowl, Donnie almost feared for Dave’s life.

“Tell me he did not just say that,” hissed April from Sunita’s over side, the words sounding like they were coated in venom. “Donnie, you had better not believe a word he says. Ooh, I’m gonna hunt this guy down—I can destroy him with the newspaper, just say the word.”

“Shh,” said Sunita urgently as she waved the phone a little. “It’s not over yet! Watch this!”

She sounded strangely excited about this, but April and Donnie both obediently turned back to the video.

“Dave,” said Axel warningly, “Shut up, dude.”

“No, no, I wanna hear this,” said Leo, his hands balled into fists by his sides as he glared squarely at Dave. “You think Donnie’s an emotional freak? That’s interesting… I was just telling Mikey the other day that I think you’re a heartless prick, which is basically the same thing, only it’s not actually true when it comes to Donnie. Sorry, I should have just told you that sooner.”

April snorted a little. Donnie’s own lips tugged up a little at Leo’s words.

“All three of you, go to the principal’s office this instance!” Mrs. Carley called, gesturing toward the door sharply. “Go on, right now. Off you go. I don’t want to hear another peep out of you.”

Leo didn’t seem to have any qualms about simply leaving after that, because he turned on his heel and started walking toward the door without making a fuss. Axel, on the other hand, had to grab and drag Dave with him toward the exit because it looked like he was too angry to move.

When Leo was one step away from the door, Dave said, “You know, it’s so obvious that the only reason you actually put up with him is because you have no other choice. You know that everyone here pities you because you got the lamest worst twin and you have no choice—”

WHAM!

Sunita’s grin turned impossibly wide as April and Donnie both gawked at the screen of her phone, where they could see Leo rubbing his fist, his back to the door and his face contorted with anger as he glared at Dave, the guy now covering his nose with both hands as he staggered back.

Leo punched him.

Leo punched him.

Leo punched h—

No, no matter how many times Donnie thought about it, the words didn’t compute in his brain. Leo always preferred using his voice rather than his fists in situations like this one. Raph was much more prone to hitting people than Donnie’s twin. The only other time Donnie could think of when Leo had punched someone was when they were in fifth grade and Ron Kleiner kept on laughing at Donnie.

Sure, they were four boys at home who had plenty of playfights, but that was it. Their father laughed at Leo and Donnie more than once after finding them biting each other playfully rather than throwing fists. And, well, um… it was kinda hard to explain that it came more naturally for the two of them to snack on each other rather than smacking one another—at least… it would be hard to explain it without sounding insane.

“Whoa, the guy can pack a punch,” whistled April, clearly impressed. “And he deserved it, too. What a jerk!”

“The video’s been spreading all over the school,” Sunita informed them, exiting the file of the video in favor of showing them one of her chats, everyone sending text after text about the video. “Nearly every chat I’m in is blowing right now. I had to silence my phone.”

“Tell me Leo broke that guy’s nose,” said April eagerly. “Oh, please tell me he broke his nose!”

Sunita shrugged. “I don’t know. I saw him and that other guy sitting next to the principal’s office, and he had an icepack, so I couldn’t really see the damage. But his shirt was soaked in blood, it was disgusting.”

Donnie tapped her shoulder urgently and once Sunita was facing him, he signed, Did you see Leo?

She furrowed her eyebrows. “Um… sorry, I don’t know what that means.”

He turned his eyes over to April instead, gesturing the same thing again, more slowly this time.

“Um… something to do with Leo, right?” she said, smiling more confidently at Donnie’s nod. “Right, uh… do you know where Leo is? Was he in the principal’s office when you passed there, maybe?”

“Nuh-uh, the door was open and there was nobody inside. I haven’t seen Leo at all. But I heard a few girls talking about seeing him leave the school, so I’m guessing he just went back home or something, right? It would make sense if he’s still sick.”

Donnie got up before he could even make up his mind about his next move. All he knew was that Leo was very clearly upset and unwell, and if he was telling the truth in this video, then he would be happy to see Donnie right now. Because of course Leo would be happy to have Donnie around. Why wouldn’t he? How much of an idiot did Donnie have to be to believe someone who claimed Leo resented him?

“Wait, Donnie, your phone—oh.” April held up his phone, her eyes trained on the screen as she frowned a little.

He reached out and grabbed it from her, his other hand still carefully holding onto the lunch box. The screen was still displaying Donnie’s chat with Leo, but Donnie could see he was currently receiving messages from Mikey and Raph in the brothers’ group chat, both of them frantically saying that they saw the video, they knew Leo had come to the school and punched his friend in the face before leaving and—

But according to their father, which Mikey had called immediately after watching the video, Leo hadn’t come back home, and he wasn’t answering his phone.

Chapter Text

2020

It started with Donnie skipping class, which was something Leo wouldn’t have believed had he not seen it with his own two eyes, because the world must have shifted overnight or something for Donnie to not come to class for no apparent reason.

But it happened, and Leo found himself sitting at their desk with the seat next to him vacant, making it utterly impossible for him to be able to listen to a single word that was coming out of his teacher’s mouth because he was just too busy thinking about how odd it was not to have Donnie sitting next to him, hissing at him to quit messing around and pay attention.

Seriously, so weird.

He kept on discreetly checking his phone to see if maybe Donnie answered his texts, asking him where he was and if he was okay, but they haven’t even been read, and according to Mikey and Raph, neither one of them knew where Donnie was, either. They were all waiting to hear from him, but it was like Donnie had just vanished, and while Leo loved magic, this branch of it gave him more anxiety than joy, if he was being honest.

Later on Raph, Mikey and Leo found out that Donnie had ditched school to go to Starbucks with some senior girl Raph and Mikey recognized vaguely. Apparently Leo was the only one who had no idea who the hell April O’Neil was, which was fine, it was fine, fine, fine. He was actually really happy to hear that Donnie had a new friend, even if they left without telling Leo.

If Donnie liked this girl, she was okay in Leo’s book.

But it just… it kept on bugging him for the rest of the bus ride and even as they all chilled back home. Leo couldn’t help but think back to the way Donnie had looked at him with a look that felt—and he was sure he wasn’t imagining it, it was real—more distanced than usual.

It made no sense. Donnie had no reason to be upset with him, right? And he didn’t tend to throw Leo these assessing looks, like he was trying to get a better read on him, because he already knew how to read Leo. There was nothing to read, actually—Leo was an open book. Especially when it came to Donnie. It was just so difficult to lie to his twin, because Donnie seemed to be able to sniff out his lies better than anyone else, including Raph and their dad.

Convinced he was just overthinking things, Leo made plans with Dave and Alex to go to Run of the Mill and hang out for a little while. It was just one of those places where Leo felt like he could calm down and be himself without having to worry about the consequences. Maybe because Señor Hueso had a soft spot for him and let him mess around in his restaurant without getting too annoyed.

And it would have worked and made Leo relax… if only Donnie didn’t decide to sit this one out. Leo still went out with his two friends, but he felt like he was stuck inside his own head the entire time, listening to their voices as they chatted between themselves without chiming in with his own comments like he usually did.

He kept on trying to picture Donnie’s face as he turned down the offer to join them. Sure, Donnie didn’t always come with Leo when he went out, but there was an actual excuse or a reason for that most of the time. This time Donnie didn’t offer anything. He just… didn’t want to go.

Which was fine. It was completely fine. He didn’t have to go if he didn’t want to. Obviously.

It’s just… well… Leo couldn’t get the detached gleam in Donnie’s eyes out of his head. Every time he closed his eyes he saw this blank look staring back at him from the pair of eyes he was the most familiar with in the world, and not just because they matched his to a tee. He was supposed to know Donnie in and out, yet this look on his brother’s face was so unfamiliar.

The feeling it stirred inside Leo was so wrong, he felt slightly nauseous, so once their pizza arrived, Leo just gestured for his friends to go on without him. He wasn’t hungry, anyway.

It was just an off day, he decided. It wasn’t a big deal or anything. Donnie woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He wanted to spend the night talking to April, his new friend, instead of Leo and his friends. Which made sense because Donnie could do whatever he wanted and Leo needed to let this go already, before it became too weird.

Still, he ordered one personal pizza box with olives for Donnie, because he’d told him he would get him something and Leo wasn’t going to let his brother down when it came to pizza. Even though he accidentally let his whole family down by forgetting to charge his phone—oops. He probably deserved the way Raph and Paps chided him for it, though handing Donnie his pizza made it all worth it.

Kind of.

So, well, he was a little bit on edge the next day. Sure, yeah, that’s true. He took forever to fall asleep, so he was tired and so busy trying to replay the events of the previous day in his head that he hardly blinked and suddenly the drive to the school was over and Leo found himself stepping off to the curb with his brothers, feeling their eyes on him and making him feel even slightly annoyed.

It did help that Donnie was acting like he always did, though. He walked with Leo into the school, even if he still had this strange look in his eyes that made Leo feel like there was someone else residing inside his twin’s head that he didn’t like. But it was all in his head. Obviously. Donnie was acting perfectly fine, just like he always did, and Leo was the one being weird, so just… he had to get his act together.

And he did—for like… five seconds. He talked to Donnie as they picked up their stuff from their lockers and Leo was aware enough to realize that Donnie seemed to be shrinking away from the students who moved past them, flinching at the louder sounds that didn’t even bother Leo. Right, so Donnie was having one of those days.

He’d remember to head over to the art room for lunch. He’d try to keep his words to Donnie mostly limited to sign language instead of anything verbal and loud. He’d make sure not to touch or crowd him. It won’t even take much thought because it was nothing new, and it was something about Donnie that he was so used to, it was second nature to respect that and make sure others did, too.

But then April showed up and offered to eat lunch with them and… and she seemed really nice—Leo really liked her, he did—so why did it have to go wrong? Why did Donnie push him away? What did he do wrong?

For a split second Leo entertained the thought that maybe Donnie liked April, which was why he told Leo to eat lunch with his friends rather than in the art room with him and April, but then he dismissed the idea. No, Donnie didn’t like her like that. He barely even knew her. He just… he didn’t want Leo to eat lunch with him.

Which was, once again, fine. Fine. Fine, fine, fine. Why wouldn’t it be fine? Leo could eat lunch with his friends instead. It was something people did, after all, and nobody ever made a big deal out of it. Raph did it. Mikey did it. They never complained or whined about it, so Leo wasn’t going to act like a crybaby about it—

At least, not in front of other people. He still found himself rushing to hide in a bathroom stall so he could pitifully sniff in there, away from people’s curious eyes.

He was being dramatic for no reason, he knew. It was all just in his head and he was blowing this all out of proportion. Everything was all right—except for Leo, apparently, who couldn’t seem to act like a normal human being without catastrophizing for no reason other than that his twin wanted to eat lunch with his friend rather than him.

Seriously, there was something wrong with him.

During lunch he listened to his friends talk, but like the day before, their words just rolled right off him, leaving nothing in their wake. He played with his food a little, moving it around his lunch box thoughtlessly, but eventually he felt too antsy to just sit there like that, so he closed the box and shoved it into his bag, muttering some excuse to Alex and Dave as he pushed away from the table and ran toward the art room.

He took one peek inside and felt his stomach twist unpleasantly at the sight of April and Donnie sitting and laughing with Mikey. He thought… he thought Donnie wanted to be with April without anyone else because he wanted to hog his new friend all to himself, but apparently he just didn’t want Leo around, because he didn’t seem to have any problem with having Mikey there.

Before they could notice him, Leo ran out of there and tried to regulate his breaths and ignore his churning stomach. He didn’t even eat—there was nothing for him to throw up, so he wasn’t going to. He wasn’t.

Or, well, he wouldn’t have thrown up that day had it not been for the fact that when they got back home he found Mikey eating Donnie’s pizza by himself, obliviously telling Leo that Donnie said it was for him and Raph. Donnie never even touched it.

Which was fine. It was fine. Naturally. So Donnie didn’t wanna eat the pizza—no big deal, right? Leo wasn’t going to turn this into a big deal. Even though pizza was a big deal. Not eating free pizza was a huge deal, a massive deal. It was catastrophically enormous—

Fine. Leo was fine, thank you for asking. He just needed a little bathroom break to throw up stomach acid because, um, the smell coming off the pizza was making him sick, see? It was a normal reaction. To the smell. Nothing more, obviously, because there was nothing else that could have caused this.

He nearly got caught when Raph came to see what was taking him so long, but Leo just dismissed his concern with ease before fleeing. Score.

Friday night found Leo lying in bed, wide awake and with his mind racing as he kept on shifting his gaze from the window next to him and Donnie’s bed, where his twin was soundly asleep, his back to Leo and his breaths coming out in soft puffs.

No matter what he did, Leo just couldn’t fall asleep. He kept on trying to figure out how to fix things with Donnie. He had no idea what was wrong in the first place, and Donnie wasn’t offering him anything to work with other than constantly offering him to go hang out with his friends or eat lunch in the cafeteria without Donnie because he had April now and so wouldn’t be alone.

Every single time he did it, something in his eyes flashed, like encouragement that let Leo know that Donnie wanted Leo to leave him be. He was phrasing it all like suggestions, but there was no doubt about it—Donnie wanted to keep Leo occupied with other things and other people. He was literally shoving him out the door every time he could, and Leo tried not to let it affect him, but it was kind of hard to realize that his brother was suddenly sick of him.

Sick of him. Donnie. That was a thing now, apparently. From an inseparable pair they became the two brothers who interacted the least in their household. Mikey and Raph kept on eyeing them and asking them if everything was okay, so Leo took a page from Donnie’s book and promised that everything was fine, his voice not betraying a thing as he desperately squeezed his hands under the table tightly enough to leave marks.

If this was making Donnie happy, Leo would let him. He could hang out with his friends. Or with Raph and Mikey. Or even Dad, maybe… Or, you know, he could go around by himself and just aimlessly wander the streets while feeling completely lost inside his own head—that was another possibility—though if anyone asked, Leo said he was hanging out with his friends. It sounded better than “I was wasting my time doing nothing and feeling sorry for myself”.

Actually, he was kind of doing the same thing that Friday night, just thinking and thinking and thinking until he felt pressure behind his eyes—pounding and painful and sharp.

The decision to let Donnie have a Leo-free day was made at around four o’clock. Leo figured that since it wasn’t a school day, he could get up before Donnie even woke up, then he’d spend the whole day outside and just… pass the day bird-watching or something. He’d crash at Alex’s house, or… or he’d go to Run of the Mill and mess with Señor Hueso until the man actually kicked him out like he threatened to do all the time.

Sneaking out wasn’t hard. He just got up at five, got dressed as silently as possible, grabbed his phone and his keys, and… walked out the door. Everyone was still asleep. No one noticed him as he went away, and the first message he got—from Mikey—arrived at 11:47am, asking where he was.

Leo was actually just sitting against the house’s wall behind a couple of bushes, but he told Mikey he was in the park.

The next day, after his basketball practice, he went to Run of the Mill instead of heading out with his team, where Señor Hueso let him sit at the bar despite not ordering a single thing. He kept on giving Leo these side looks while moving around to take care of the patrons. Maybe Leo should have cared, but he couldn’t bring himself to muster up the energy, so instead he just slumped against the countertop, his eyes blankly staring at the opposite wall.

At some point Hueso put a glass of milkshake in front of Leo. When he didn’t touch it, though, he replaced it with a glass of water and ordered Leo to drink the whole thing or he would sweep him out of the establishment with his mighty broom. Leo obliged, though if the clock was to be trusted, it took him nearly an hour to finish all the water, which was just pathetic.

“You want to talk about it?” said Hueso at some point, and Leo could have sworn he just appeared by his side out of thin air.

“Nothing to talk about,” he mumbled, his cheek still pressed to the smooth counter.

Hueso stared at him for a moment longer, then put another glass in front of Leo, this time with tea inside. The threat in his gaze was enough to make Leo drink the thing slowly, too, even though he didn’t really want to. And it was so sweet, too, like an explosion of sugar in his mouth.

Not that he was going to complain when Hueso was being nice enough to let Leo stay inside the restaurant like that. He didn’t need anyone else to be upset with him, after all.

But then he checked his phone an eternity or so later, feeling the pang of disappointment at seeing no texts from Donnie. But he did have a few unread ones from Raph. Apparently Donnie wanted to switch to the honor classes.

Which.

It was fine. Naturally.

So fine that Leo’s fingers curled around the tea cup so tightly that his knuckles turned white and he lost feeling in his fingertips. He stared at the words as they started swimming before his eyes, making less and less sense the longer he stared at them.

Because.

Because it didn’t make sense.

He was giving Donnie space. He was doing what he thought Donnie wanted, so why was he still pulling further and further away? Why was he doing any of this? Where was this coming from? What was Leo supposed to do? Why wouldn’t any of this make sense? What did Donnie want—

No. No, he couldn’t think like that.

Honor classes—that was awesome! Donnie totally should have gone there from the very start, after all. He chose not to, back then, which had actually been a relief because Leo was terrified of going to his classes without Donnie. He would have been supportive, of course, but he… well, if he was being honest, he was glad that Donnie chose not to take the honor classes.

But now he was going to start taking them, and Leo would put on a smile and he would congratulate him and—and—

This was obviously fine, and it was great because Donnie deserved this. He was smart. Smarter than anyone else Leo knew. Definitely smarter than Leo, because Leo was… yeah, he wasn’t the brightest. He just knew how to manipulate a situation to his advantage, but Donnie was brilliant in a way that sometimes made Leo’s head spin.

Honor classes. Cool.

Leo’s body moved before his mind had the chance to catch up and he rushed to the bathroom in the back of the restaurant, slamming the door of the nearest stall open so that he could empty his already empty stomach into the toilet.

“Maybe I should call your father,” Hueso’s voice said from behind him as he trembled and shakily tried to wipe his mouth.

“M’fine,” mumbled Leo. “Eugh…”

“This is not what I would call ‘fine’, pepino,” the man said, but he made no move to call anyone, so Leo didn’t care. “I’m going to get you some more tea.”

Leo didn’t argue, though the moment he was holding the warm cup, he grimaced and waited until Hueso left him for a few minutes to pour it into the toilet and flush the water.

He decided to walk back home instead of taking the bus. His body was already drained after a school day and his practice, but walking took longer, and he needed the extra time to try and get his mind to work properly again so he could actually face Donnie with a smile rather than a plea to please, please, please let him back into his life because it was starting to feel like maybe Donnie hated him, and Leo couldn’t…

He couldn’t handle the thought of Donnie disliking or hating him in any way. This was his twin. They were supposed to be friends. Donnie was his best friend. Clearly it didn’t go both ways, but he thought Donnie at least liked him to some extent. Maybe not as much as he liked Raph and Mikey, though, because Raph always took care of them and Mikey was… well, he was Mikey—nobody could compete against him, right? Leo paled in comparison to them, but they were still brothers, so he figured…

Maybe he figured wrong.

His eyes landed on a shop as he walked by it and his steps faltered when he noticed a familiar box taunting him from behind the window. A science kit. Chemistry, according to the words on the box. Donnie wouldn’t shut up about it, and he’d shown Leo the money he was saving to get it, carefully collecting it all at a slow pace, the same way Leo was doing in order to buy a Jupiter Jim movie he’d been fantasizing about for months.

Without his permission, his legs carried him through the front door of the shop and he approached the old clerk and asked him how much the chemistry kit cost. The number should have floored him, but Leo’s first actual thought was that he had this sum of money. His JJ film cost more, so he already got himself enough to buy this kit.

This kit he couldn’t care less about.

But Donnie’s been dreaming about it for forever, which made it important to Leo.

He bought it with shaky hands, a part of his brain shrieking in agony at what he was doing because he would never be able to gain this much money back before all the copies of the limited edition movie would be sold out. He would miss his chance because of this, and it wasn’t like he was going to get another one—

But maybe Donnie will like me again, a small part of him thought. Maybe this will fix everything.

With nothing to go off of, Leo was fumbling around, trying to find the thing that would get him his brother back—even if only a small part of him—so missing out on a precious movie for the sake of giving Donnie something he longed for sounded like a good way to trying to go about it.

Anything. Leo would literally do anything at this point.

So he gave the kit to Donnie, his hands shaking and his heart fluttering with hope, hope, hope that this nightmare would finally end or at least ease up a bit so that he could breathe properly again—

And Donnie put the kit away from him, not even touching it, like the fact that it came from Leo made it disgusting or something. He tried to get Leo to give it back. He didn’t want it. It didn’t fix anything. Donnie somehow looked at Leo with a look of something akin to horror, as if the mere idea of getting something from him made him uncomfortable and appalled.

He accepted it eventually, of course, but he looked so reluctant to do it, like he wished he could just throw the chemistry kit out the window right along with Leo. Leo almost told him he should do it—it would save him the trouble of trying to get away from this suffocating room as soon as possible. And maybe the pain would distract him from the way his heart was cracking as it beat loudly in his ears.

“I’ll just… I’ll be heading out,” he said, and he hoped he didn’t sound as panicked and hollow as he felt.

Again? Donnie signed, his legs close to his chest as he still refused to touch the chemistry kit. You just came back.

Leo hated himself for instantly clinging on to the hope that maybe Donnie wanted to hang out with him—that maybe he was planning on doing something together now that he was finally home again. Still, he asked—like the idiot that he was.

No, I have some homework left that I wanted to finish today, Donnie signed hurriedly.

Apparently he couldn’t get Leo to leave him alone soon enough, then. Of course. He asked because he wanted to be polite. Because they were brothers. They’ll always be brothers, to Donnie’s disappointment. Donnie would at least be civil with him, even if he didn’t want to be with him or have anything to do with him or—

“Right, yeah, homework.”

Donnie already did his homework. Raph had told him once he got home that they did their homework at the same time.

“So… yeah, I’ll just… leave.”

Nothing. Donnie went right back to his phone, as if Leo wasn’t even there.

“Right, okay, um… see you later, Donnie.”

He couldn’t run fast enough out of the room, and once he was outside he kept on running, running, running until he collapsed against a bin a few blocks away, his stomach churning and his eyes stinging as he wiped the tears away.

Dad didn’t scold him when he came back home late that night even though Leo hadn’t texted to let anyone know where he was or what he was doing. Instead, he gave Leo this sort of assessing, sad look, like he was mad but rather worried. Which was ridiculous. Leo was fine. Even if his skin felt itchy and his eyes kept on stinging.

He was just tired, right? He needed to get some sleep and he would be as good as new. Not good enough for Donnie, obviously, but that was… yeah, that wasn’t really something anyone could be. Good enough. Donnie deserved the best, and Leo was failing at that. Maybe Donnie was just realizing it now for the first time.

He went through the motions after that, too numb to get out of his own head. He berated himself every time Donnie would look at him and hope would rekindle in his heart before it got snatched away the moment his twin averted his gaze. Because why was he being stupid? Why was he torturing himself when it was clear he wasn’t fixing the problem, giving Donnie no reason to want him around again.

Seriously, though, what was he even supposed to do? He wasn’t sure how to fix this without hearing from Donnie what needed to be fixed, and even then… Donnie was the one who usually solved problems, not Leo. What if Donnie wasn’t telling him what he needed to change because he already knew Leo wouldn’t be able to do it?

Raph started trying to ask Leo to eat with him dinner every day, which was… fine. Leo didn’t mind. He could hardly touch the food without feeling like he was going to be sick, but he did his best just to appease Raph, then rushed away the moment he could and spent a little while hunching over the toilet seat, his throat feeling raw and the muscles in his stomach tense.

Mikey tried sitting Leo down so he could have a few words with Dr. Feelings, and when that didn’t work, Dr. Delicate Touch made his appearance and yelled at Leo to snap out of it and tell them what was going on, which just made Leo curl into himself on the sofa and shrink into the hoodie he’d borrowed from Raph, wishing he could block out the frustration that was rolling off Mikey because of him.

A part of him wanted to just shout and tell him that Donnie didn’t love him anymore. He wanted to burst into tears and beg Mikey to somehow make things right again because this new world he was living in made no sense and he hated every second of it, so would he please, please, please talk to Donnie and maybe let Leo know what was wrong with him—!

But his jaw was locked, his lips pressed together as he stared at Mikey from his perch, his eyes peeking out from just above the collar of the hoodie. The numbness in his body and brain was overwhelming him more and more with every passing day and he just… he couldn’t be bothered to say a single word. What would even be the point? It was his job to make things right, not Mikey’s. No point in dragging him into this mess.

And if he couldn’t do anything to make things better, the least Leo could do was to keep out of Donnie’s way and just… give him the space he was clearly craving. So what if Leo missed his twin? Clearly his twin didn’t miss him.

And then there was the English test.

And, well.

Leo could still picture that day as clear as day in his head.

He was sitting in the back, the seat next to him vacant, of course, because Donnie was in the honors class. Mrs. Blanchard was quietly grading other papers at her desk, raising her head to look at the students as they hunched over their tables, writing quickly as the clock ticked from its place hanging above the door.

Studying for the test was no problem. Leo just sort of went through everything there was to study beforehand, having nothing better to do or focus on back home. So once he had the exam form on his desk, he immediately snatched up his pen and got to work, scribbling down his answers and writing down an entire essay that Mrs. Blanchard would have been proud of.

Susan finished first and got out of the classroom before everyone else, but Leo was a close second. He didn’t even go back to read his answers. He just cupped his pen, pushed his chair back, got up, walked up to Mrs. Blanchard’s desk at the front of the class, gaining several despaired looks from his classmates who were still writing or massaging their hands.

“Oh, hey, Leonardo,” said Mrs. Blanchard softly, “you’re done?”

“No, uh, sorry.”

The words spilled from his mouth before he could even plan out what to say. His hand was clutching his complete test tightly, the paper wrinkling between his fingers as he found himself staring down at his own handwriting, the words jumbling as his brain had a hard time deciphering them.

He had no idea why Donnie decided to suddenly, abruptly, pull away from him. He had no idea what it was that he’d done to make Donnie hate him all of a sudden. And the one time he’d tried asking him about it after finally mustering up the courage to approach Donnie ended up with Leo chickening out at the blank look he’d received from him.

It was so stupid, because Donnie always looked at him like that. He looked at everyone like that. He was just… he wasn’t good with emotions, and Leo knew that. Donnie always had a hard time expressing himself and what he had running through his head. It was something Leo should have been used to, but suddenly he stared at his twin and he couldn’t remember if Donnie always looked at everyone this way or only Leo.

So.

So Leo had no idea what to do, and apparently he couldn’t ask Donnie about it without wanting to first throw himself off the roof. Figuratively, of course, because he wasn’t really going to… throw himself off a roof.

Obviously.

Um.

The point was. Right. He was… getting sidetracked a lot, just… maybe sleep was important when people needed to be lucid. Mikey told him that once, but Leo didn’t really pay him much attention, since—

God, the point was that Leo had no idea what Donnie wanted, and he couldn’t think of a single thing he could just approach and make right again. He wasn’t sure how to handle this situation without anything to blame other than simply himself. It wasn’t very helpful, and he needed something to focus on, something to point at and scorn so that he would maybe not have to hate every single thing about himself.

And, well, Donnie did call him dumb a lot. He called a lot of people that, but Leo knew it was because sometimes the way people thought didn’t make sense to Donnie, and it got him very frustrated.

Well, Leo could be dumb. Or, er, dumb-er.

“My pen—the ink just spilled all over the test,” he lied, plastering an apologetic smile he was used to put on in front of his teachers. “I just… can I have a new form, please?”

And once he was back at his desk with the blank test resting on top of his desk, Leo set his jaw, uncapped his pen, and wrote so much nonsense, his head felt like it was going to explode from how utterly ridiculous he knew all of his answers were. He got a few right, just to make it appear like he wasn’t trying to fail, but other than that…

He felt no sense of pride in the abomination he ended up with, that’s for sure.

Still, he kept his face neutral as he handed the test to his teacher before walking out of the room while shoving the proper test form to the bottom of his backpack, where it would remain until he remembered to clean his bag, most likely.

The next evening he still thought about it, though, his eyes staring at his backpack that was lying on the floor of his room, taunting him. Every now and then his eyes would drift toward Donnie’s bed—empty, since his brother went bowling with April today, which Leo knew because Dad mentioned it once. It was actually why Leo had holed himself up in the room, the lights off and the curtains pulled shut so he’d be able to sulk in peace.

At least until the door creaked open, drawing Leo’s attention to his little brother’s figure standing at the entrance, hesitantly shifting his weight between his legs as he looked at Leo anxiously.

When he didn’t say anything, Mikey seemed to take it as permission to come inside. He quietly crossed the room and hovered next to Leo’s bed for a second or two before finally lifting the blanket to crawl in next to Leo. Then he clung to him like a koala, his grip so strong, Leo felt like he was trying to make sure Leo couldn’t escape.

Hug him back, a voice in the back of his mind yelled.

Leo’s fingers twitched but didn’t move any more than that. He couldn’t muster up the energy for that. The exhaustion in his body from the lack of sleep mixed with the numbness he’s been feeling lately… it made even this small action seem like the most tiring, demanding things in existence.

Which was stupid, because Mikey’s hugs were the best. They were like the sun itself was warming him up; like a choir of angels singing from above the clouds; like warm water enveloping him, washing away all his worries and anxieties and frustrations. Mikey’s hugs were magic, as far as Leo was concerned, and he deserved to be hugged back for bestowing them upon their family as if they deserved them.

“Raph said we might be ordering pizza for dinner,” said Mikey, tilting his head back to look at Leo. “Which one would you like?”

“I’m not really hungry,” said Leo.

He was pretty sure that was true, too, even though it made no sense because he hasn’t eaten anything all day—other than a couple of cookies and a cup of tea, both given to him by Señor Hueso when Leo showed up at Run of the Mill again, just to… pass the time staring at nothing.

Leo was pretty sure Mikey’s lip wobbled a bit.

“You always eat pizza,” he said, nudging him with his foot playfully, though his voice sounded strained. “You ate three whole trays in under ten minutes that one time, remember? And then you got really sick and Dad didn’t let you get close to another slice of pizza for over three months.”

He remembered that, of course. Donnie had sided with their dad, claiming Leo should have known better. Then he’d snuck Leo two slices without anyone knowing, grumbling under his breath like this was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

Mikey waited, but when Leo didn’t speak up, he clung to him even more and his fingers grasped at his hoodie, digging into Leo to the point where it was almost painful.

“I’ll just save you a slice, then. For when you’re hungry. Or, um, there’s gnocchi in the fridge. It’s from yesterday, remember? I made some and I put some in a container for you. I know you haven’t touched it yet, so it’s… it’s there, too. You can eat that. Or I could make something else. Just… just tell me what.”

He was staring at him with bright, shining eyes and a sort of desperation that made Leo’s heart stir in his chest. It hurt to see Mikey like this—of course it did, he was his little brother—but Leo just… couldn’t. He couldn’t find it in him to try and comfort him or soothe him. All he could do was stare back at Mikey and let his dumb, stupid, numb brain focus on the feeling of Mikey’s fingers fisting in his hoodie and digging into his skin.

“Okay, okay, fine,” said Mikey as he shook his head a little. “Can you just… promise me something?”

Leo forced himself to hum—showing he was listening, but not committing to anything.

Mikey’s eyes were tearing up as he locked eyes with Leo again, but he didn’t bother wiping the tears away. “I don’t know what’s going on with Donnie and you right now, and I won’t force you to tell me anymore, I swear. But… but I just need to know you won’t up and leave, okay? I don’t… I need you—all of you—so you can’t, Leo. I’ll never forgive you if you… if you leave or, um—or…”

His voice trailed off and faded away. He blinked, probably trying to see past the tears as he kept on staring up at Leo, waiting, waiting, waiting…

And all Leo could do was stare back, his cracked heart completely breaking and falling apart at the desperate, terrified look on Mikey’s face. It didn’t suit him. Mikey was a ray of sunshine, always smiling, laughing, giddily spreading light around him. None of this scene suited him, and it was Leo’s fault, obviously, because he was making Mikey this sad and upset.

Still, he just… he couldn’t find the words to say. Or the energy to open his mouth and at least pretend to have something to say back to all of that. He knew Mikey deserved the world, yet all he got was Leo, and even though Leo felt the way a part of him yearned to help and comfort and console, the more prominent part of him just felt too detached to react or do a single thing.

There weren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe how much he hated himself in that moment, as the silence between them stretched and stretched, to the point where Leo kind of just wanted to turn his back to Mikey and pretend none of this was happening.

Instead, he watched as Mikey’s face crumpled. When he buried his face in Leo’s borrowed hoodie, he noticed the way the fabric was dampening quickly, meaning Mikey was fully sobbing now, his small body shaking as he still refused to let go of Leo, even though he probably should have, because he was hurting him and not even trying to do a thing to fix it.

“Leo,” he mumbled into his chest, “I’m scared.”

It snapped Leo out of his daze just enough to finally bring his arms around Mikey, because frankly… he was kind of scared, too.

His days passed in a haze. His nights passed silently as he laid wide awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling while trying to ignore Donnie as he slept so close to where he was even though it felt like they were worlds apart at this point.

Leo went to school, let his teachers’ voices roll off him as he stared out windows and off into space, a constant buzz filling his head all the time. He was pretty sure he wasn’t acting like he typically did because everything he did felt slow and clumsy and just… off. But his friends kept on smiling at him like they always did and other than brief looks of concern from a couple of his teachers, nobody seemed to notice anything different.

Maybe he should have taken drama classes. He would have nailed those if he could fool people even when he was dead on his feet, going through the motions while feeling more like a robot than an actual human being.

The hollow feeling in his body wasn’t helping, either. Hueso told him it was because he needed to eat more, which Leo figured was probably right, though he had the feeling it was more than that. Call him crazy, but having half of who he was suddenly pulled away from him would make him feel hollow, too.

Still, Hueso was smart—one of the people Leo trusted even in his messed-up current state. So… he decided to give it a shot and at least try eating the lunch Mikey had packed for him today instead of instantly throwing it in the trash so he wouldn’t have to look at it and feel guilty.

He went to the art room, because he knew Donnie was feeling okay today and wouldn’t be occupying the room, instead probably sitting with April—and maybe that friend of hers, which Leo frankly knew close to nothing about. Not like Donnie was sharing, you know.

Problem was, the moment Leo took out his lunch box and opened it, the smell of the food inside hit him and his stomach made this violent wrench. He snapped the box shut again, hoping it would help, but everything in his body was still tightly coiled, his mind racing as he stared down at the familiar blue box.

Quickly, he got back to his feet and rushed out of the room, down the school halls and into the nearest bathroom. He didn’t bother taking off his backpack. He just threw the lunch box toward the sink and then rushed into one of the stalls.

Behind him he heard a loud thud as his lunch box missed the sink and fell straight into one of the trash bins. He didn’t turn around, too busy vomiting the literal nothingness in his stomach, but he figured it was fine—he’d just wait until he was done throwing up, then he’d dig out his lunch box and put it in his bag.

It was fine.

It wasn’t fine.

Donnie found him. Seriously, out of everyone in the school who could have found him hunched over a toilet seat, heaving and trembling, it just had to be the one person who wanted the least to do with Leo right now.

Of course. Thank you, universe.

Still… he once again hoped… he hoped Donnie was there because, maybe, he cared. Maybe he noticed Leo wasn’t in the cafeteria with Dave and Alex. Or maybe he heard someone throwing up in the bathroom and wanted to check everything was all right.

The fact that he wasn’t just leaving let the small flame in Leo’s chest light up, because he knew Donnie hated it when people threw up. His twin would rather be literally anywhere else than with someone who was puking. It usually made Donnie end up in the same situation, which sucked for him quite a bit. Yet he was staying with Leo, which was… it just had to mean something, right?

He looked disgusted and he was very obviously avoiding looking at the toilet itself, but he was there—

And then Donnie texted someone, and Leo’s mind blanked out with fear, because what if he told their dad and he ended up getting in trouble? He knew Dad wouldn’t actually be too mad at him for throwing up, but he might be upset if he found out that Leo’s been in this situation almost every day without fail, sometimes more than once.

“What are you doing?” he asked shakily.

Donnie looked at him again. Raph and Mikey were looking for you.

And just like that, the flame was snuffed out yet again.

It shouldn’t have been surprising, of course, because Leo should have known better. He should have known Donnie wasn’t the one concerned here. Of course Raph and Mikey were the ones who sent him looking for him. Of course it wasn’t Donnie’s idea. Of course, of course, of course.

His head hurt, pounding behind his eyes like his brain was trying to bang on the skull in order to be let out. His gut clenched painfully as he tried not to show anything. Donnie might hate him, but he still knew Leo better than most. He could read him like a book, so Leo had to mask the pain, pretend he was fine and not extremely disappointed—

Leo wasn’t even supposed to feel disappointment. It was all his fault in the first place, anyway.

Probably.

God, he wasn’t even sure anymore.

He put on a smile, tried to convince Donnie that he was fine. It backfired when everything about the act made the feeling in his body worse, which forced him to face the toilet once more so he could throw up some more.

Wiping his mouth, he leaned back against the wall of the stall, his eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to look at Donnie. He was scared and hurt and in so much pain. His mind felt muddy and slow, his limbs heavy and worn-out. Every breath he took made his muscles ache from the strain.

He wanted to cry, but he wasn’t even sure there were any tears left for him to shed. And Donnie’s presence made it so that he couldn’t help but hold himself back. He couldn’t cry. His brother was watching him, reporting back to Raph, Mikey and probably their father. The last thing Leo needed was for Donnie to also tell them all that Leo was crying for no reason in the bathroom.

But then he felt Donnie’s shoe nudging his leg lightly, and Leo opened his eyes to watch in astonishment and hurt as Donnie speed-walked out of the bathroom, the door closing behind him with a loud bang that made Leo startle and jump, his entire body shaking.

He kept on staring at the door expectantly, his brain refusing to believe that Donnie really just left him there.

But for a long time the door remained shut, and once it did finally swing open, it wasn’t Donnie who stepped in but rather Raph, his eyebrows pinched worriedly as he instantly approached Leo, his huge body towering over him and making Leo feel even smaller than he already was, sitting curled up on the floor like that.

“Leo, hey, buddy,” Raph said gently, his hand going down to rest on top of Leo’s head and play with his hair. “Dad’s on his way, okay? You’re gonna go back home and get some rest. You’ll feel better in no time, I promise.”

Leo didn’t care about that.

“W-where’s Donnie?” he rasped out.

Raph bit his lip. “He just went to class,” he said slowly, as if weighing his words carefully. “Do you need me to call him back? I can just go get him, if you want—”

“No.” Leo leaned his head back against the wall and let his eyelids droop down as he let the numbness take over again. “No, it’s fine.”

He didn’t speak much after that, mostly just nodding and shaking his head whenever he was asked questions, either by Raph or Dad, who showed up not too long after, to bring him back home. He didn’t even point out the fact that his lunch box was still in the trash, because he knew he wasn’t ready to answer any questions about that. He would just… he’d get it back some other time. Hopefully.

He needed to get it back, but not with Raph or Dad looking over his shoulders.

The moment he stepped into the house, Leo left his bag with his dad, then dropped onto the couch in the living room, turned on the TV and stared at it without actually seeing anything that was playing, his thoughts chasing each other too fast as he tried to ignore the pit in his stomach and the nasty taste in his mouth.

Donnie left because Leo was throwing up. He knew that. He would have stayed with him otherwise, even if he wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of hanging out with him. After all, Leo was very clearly having a rough time, and Donnie could see it with his own two eyes, even if he did his best to hide it behind a fake smile. This would have usually made Donnie stay to try and help, even if he wasn’t sure how.

But he… he left. Which, again, made perfect sense, but Leo just couldn’t get past it. He couldn’t get that image out of his head—of Donnie walking away, leaving him behind without a second glance. Like he was running away from a nightmare rather than one of his brothers.

His twin.

God, they were supposed to be so close, and instead felt like there was a wide chasm between the two of them, threatening to grow wider and wider with every passing day. It was eating away at everything Leo cared about or thought he knew. Every good memory with Donnie was suddenly tainted by this hole in the floor that was consuming his doubts like some kind of parasite, feeding off of his misery.

He kept on absently staring at the television screen like that until his brothers all got back home, clutching a bucket Dad had given him just in case. The moment he heard their footsteps passing through the threshold, Leo furiously blinked his eyes to try and chase away his weariness, glaze and haziness. They were already worried about him—at least Raph and Mikey were. He was determined to show them he wasn’t doing too bad.

Which didn’t work quite well because, well, first Donnie just remained standing there, like even the thought of taking a seat on the couch next to Leo made him reluctant. Mikey sat down and practically glued himself to his side. Raph joined them easily, without any prompting.

Only Donnie stood there and stared, staring at Leo like he was an alien instead of a person who’s been there for his entire life.

And then… then Mikey had to bring up that stupid English test in front of Raph and Donnie, telling Leo that Mrs. Blanchard would let him take a make-up test. Which was great, sure, but it also drew Donnie’s attention to him for the first time in a really long time, something flashing in his eyes that almost looked like concern, and—

And.

Leo had failed that test because he wanted to have something to blame for Donnie’s sudden choice to pull away from him, right? The fact that simply hearing about Leo’s failed mark got a reaction out of him at all was supposed to satisfy him—justify the choice to purposefully fail that dumb test he still had done perfectly at the bottom of his bag.

But, well, he didn’t feel glad.

He didn’t feel accomplished.

He just felt… he felt angry. That out of everything that’s been happening lately, a stupid failed test got Donnie to look at Leo with actual concern. And he didn’t even ask him if Leo was okay. He didn’t ask if he studied or why he wasn’t surprised at the sight of the red F on the paper. No, he just asked Leo how he did it.

Like… like despite knowing that Leo wasn’t all that smart, he still expected more from him, and now he just proved Donnie wrong there.

It wasn’t bothering Donnie that Leo failed, it bothered him that he was wrong.

Like the fact that Leo failed his test was an okay thing to just push aside as long as it made sense. As long as Leo’s failure wasn’t too grand, too out of nowhere, too abrupt. Because he was right, going from A’s to F’s was weird, but what Donnie should have cared about was that it happened, not how it happened!

“Gee, Donnie, I don’t know,” said Leo, looking Donnie square in the eye. “I guess we’re not all geniuses in this family! I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to get one failed mark! I’ll try to be more perfect next time, all right? Because apparently I’m doing something wrong if everything I do still fails!”

Mikey’s grip on his arm tightened to the point where he was pretty sure blood stopped flowing down to his palms, but he didn’t care. Raph subtly tried to catch his eye and gesture for him to stop, but he didn’t care.

His hands trembled around his bucket as he forged ahead, every muscle in his body coiling, getting tenser and tenser until it was just all too much. His headache was getting worse and his eyes were stinging so badly, he suspected maybe there was actually something stuck inside them both.

And then he blinked and he saw Donnie’s stunned face looking back at him, staring at Leo with his skin all ashen and his knuckles white from where his fingers were wrapped around the straps of his backpack.

Nothing made sense anymore. Leo just yelled at Donnie for being worried—albeit, about the wrong thing, but still. He just… he basically called himself a failure in front of his brothers, and they all stared at him like they were seeing him for the first time. Mikey’s grip went a little lax, too, apparently shocked by the sudden loud tone and the words Leo had just said.

None of them said a word. Leo couldn’t take it.

He pushed himself off the couch, letting the bucket clatter to the floor as he moved past all of them and ran out the front door, around the house and to the back. Then he bent down with his hands on his thighs and tried to just breathe. Just breathe, breathe, breathe, like normal people did.

He dry-heaved, but nothing actually came out, which was good because he wouldn’t have known how to explain it or clean it up or… or anything, really. And he wasn’t crying, because… maybe he really did run out of tears, because this felt like the perfect time to sob over the fact that he just lost it over a test he’d failed on purpose.

This was actually his fault. He wanted Donnie to have a reason to hate him that would make sense to Leo, and he gave it to him. Or, well, he gave him a reason Leo could grasp, at least. And instead of the test itself, Leo figured that the fact that he just yelled at him was a much better reason for Donnie to push him away.

It was like a fog came down and covered him after that. He sat on the ground, blinking sluggishly ahead despite not really taking anything in. An annoying fly kept on bothering him, but Leo just… he couldn’t care less about it, so he let it be and didn’t move and didn’t think and didn’t… anything.

He just was, and he wished he wasn’t because he couldn’t take back his words to Donnie, which he could hardly even remember right now, anyway, so at least one good thing came from feeling so numb to the world around him and himself—he wasn’t even sure what he was worried about.

Not fully, at least.

It was Raph who came to coax him back into the house at long last, gently helping Leo to his feet and guiding him inside while shooting him anxious looks that made Leo’s skin prickle, though he didn’t say anything. He didn’t fight. He didn’t speak. He just went along with it, blinking slowly and feeling decidedly like there was a veil separating him from whatever it was that was happening in the world around him.

He was pretty sure he could hear Mikey sobbing and their father’s voice trying to soothe him, but he didn’t even bother turning to check. He just let Raph pull him up the stairs and to his room. The room he shared with Donnie, who luckily wasn’t inside right now.

“Do you need anything?” Raph said.

Leo climbed into his bed.

“Leo, do you want some water? Tea? I can heat you something to eat, maybe,” he pressed.

Leo snuggled into his blanket.

Raph exhaled slowly. It was a little shaky.

“I’ll bring you some toast later, okay?” he said, and his voice sounded carefully even and calm. “It shouldn’t make you feel worse, I think. We can, um, talk about it later. About… everything, all right? Like, uh, that test.”

Leo turned his back on Raph and pressed his forehead against the cold window pane.

“Leo,” Raph said, his hand landing softly on his hair, sweeping the hair out of his eyes. “Leo, you know we all love you, right? Even if you fail every single subject at school or if you yell at us or laugh at us or… or if you murder one of your teachers because they smell funny—we’ll always love you, all of us.”

He never doubted that.

The only one who seemed to have something against him was Donnie, and… and Leo wasn’t sure why it happened, but it did.

But not Raph. Not Mikey or Dad. They all still loved him. He could still see it every time they looked at him worriedly. Because why would they worry if they didn’t care? Dad couldn’t stop loving him—he was his dad. Raph was his big brother, and would always care about all of them because that was just who he was. And Mikey could never hate anyone, especially family.

He knew that.

He thought he knew Donnie, too.

Raph brushed his fingers through his hair a little more, then left Leo to quietly stare out the window without really taking anything in. He was so… out of it. He felt like he wasn’t in control of his body, his thoughts too muddy for his consciousness to even try to navigate his brain enough to make him feel like he wasn’t just some kind of lifeless puppet.

The sound of familiar footsteps roused him a little. He’d recognize Donnie’s footsteps anywhere.

When he turned around, he found Donnie staring at him with pinched eyebrows, like he was staring at an equation that wasn’t making sense—something he was having trouble solving for some reason. His hair was wet and he was wearing his pajama, so he must have taken a shower.

Here Leo was, chiding himself for snapping at his twin for stupid reasons, and in the meantime, Donnie’s been calmly taking a shower.

It made something ugly twist in his gut, but Leo ignored it as he forced his lips to tug up. He started speaking immediately, because that was the natural thing to do, okay? He was nervous, since Donnie was staring at him like he couldn’t understand him, asking him if he was okay, and Leo wasn’t sure how to handle any of this, especially when everything around him still felt so surreal.

And then that dumb test came back up, and Leo felt the anger from before returning. His first instinct was to push it down and away because he didn’t want to be angry. He didn’t want to shout at Donnie again.

But his mind felt clearer with this burning feeling in his chest, and he clung to it desperately, wanting to feel like he was alive rather than just existing. He was so sick of feeling numb, he just… he held on to the only thing that made the world come back into focus, which happened to be frustration and anger and all of his confusion and frustration from the last couple of weeks.

And then Donnie signed, Stop putting words in my mouth! and Leo… Leo kind of just saw red.

Because what did Donnie expect him to do? To just accept the world as it was, with him suddenly inexplicably hating him? Did he seriously think Leo would let it slide without trying to figure out what caused all of this? Without searching for an explanation from Donnie or… or someone—anyone, at this point. He’d take anything.

Of course he put words in his mouth! His twin just seemed to have woken up one morning with the decision to push Leo out of his life the best he could already made up in his mind. And instead of telling Leo why he was doing it, he let him stumble around blindly, no guide or a hint to tell him what he was doing wrong.

It felt like Donnie was nudging him toward something, but he expected Leo to get what it was by himself, and it was going to be the death of him, okay? Leo was pretty sure he was going to drive himself up a wall trying to figure it out, because Donnie wouldn’t talk to him.

“Nobody can put words in your mouth!” he shouted. “You don’t use words! No, you have to flail around and hope I’ll always understand what you want, but I don’t. I don’t know what you want from me, okay? I don’t know what you’re trying to do or what you want me to do. For once in your life, can you just speak to me?”

He expected something in return—either an actual answer for a change, or just… more wild signs and huffs from Donnie as he worked himself up. He expected Donnie to snap or somehow turn it back on him or… or call Leo stupid for not figuring everything out. He expected something.

He didn’t expect Donnie’s face to blanch and his breath to hitch as his hands faltered in the air before he brought them down, clenching his fingers as if to say he had nothing to say. His eyes tore themselves away from Leo, as if there mere sight of him was too much to bear, all of a sudden.

And if Leo didn’t know any better, he’d say that Donnie looked like he was the one who got hurt in this interaction instead of it being the other way around.

“Right, right,” muttered Leo as his shoulders slumped, “of course.”

His anger left him even more hollow than before. The haze returned full-force, filling his head and making his limbs feel heavy and useless.

As he turned back to face the window, he realized he was crying again—apparently he still had some tears left, after all.

He stayed in that position for the rest of the night, pretending to be asleep when Raph came up to give him his toast, and then biting his lip to keep himself silent when he heard Donnie sniffling in his bed before slowly falling asleep in front of his laptop.

And then there were just… hours and hours of absolutely nothing, which only got interrupted when Leo saw the sky outside turning a lighter shade of blue as the sun began to rise. Another restless night, then. Although the beginning of the day was different, since Mikey tiptoed into the room before the alarm woke Donnie and (supposedly) Leo up.

For a few seconds Leo kept his eyes closed at the feeling of Mikey standing next to him, staring down without a word. And then he felt the way he lightly pressed a kiss to his forehead, the touch lingering, like Mikey was afraid to back away.

But he did, eventually, and turned to Donnie’s bed. Leo listened as he woke his twin up, whispering to him that Dad wanted Leo to stay home. He half-expected Donnie to argue or claim Leo didn’t deserve to stay home, but he probably didn’t sign anything because Mikey left without saying another word.

Careful not to move, Leo listened to Donnie as he moved around, getting ready for school while making sure to keep it down for Leo’s sake. He did feel the way Donnie, too, stopped to just… look at Leo for a brief moment. But unlike Mikey, he didn’t touch him—he just let out a sign Leo couldn’t decipher, then walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

After that, it took a while for Leo to find the energy to sit up in bed, but even then he couldn’t find it in himself to get up, get dressed, go downstairs to eat or shower or see what Dad was doing now that he was most likely home with Leo, to make sure he was all right. He just… took a few minutes to sit with his back against the window and blink slowly at the space of his room.

He considered just going downstairs to watch TV, knowing Dad wouldn’t mind letting him just be. But climbing down the stairs and having eyes trained on him already exhausted Leo. Besides, his headache was so bad after another sleepless night, he felt like every single movement of his body was sending shards of pain through his head. Not to mention how lightheaded he was.

No, going downstairs right now was out of the question. But he obviously couldn’t sleep, and he needed something mindless to do so that he wouldn’t have to think, because thinking was just… not his thing, lately.

His eyes landed on Donnie’s laptop. It was still half-open since he fell asleep right in front of it, and then he must have forgotten to turn it off before leaving for school.

Reaching across the space between the beds, Leo grabbed the laptop and pulled out its charger from the drawer of the nightstand. He watched as it started charging up, then hesitated a moment before typing in the password he already knew by heart—Donnie and he used to have no secrets after all, right?

Maybe it was wrong of him to use Donnie’s computer when his twin didn’t want anything to do with him, but his own laptop was just so far away, and Donnie has never before denied him access to his PC unless he needed it for something. So… so he hoped Donnie wouldn’t be too upset.

Well, it wasn’t like Leo was planning on doing anything horrible with it—he just wanted to watch a movie or a cartoon or literally anything. He needed something simple. Something easy. Something that would make him feel lighter—in a good way, not a bad way. Feeling floaty and disconnected was not fun.

But as the screen unlocked itself, Leo found himself staring at an open file—which he honestly would have immediately left alone, it not being his business, but… but he saw his name staring back at him several times from between the written lines and he just…

He was curious, okay? Sue him.

And the thing was that Leo expected something horrible that would make him feel even worse about himself. He expected to—maybe a little hopefully—see the written reason as to why Donnie suddenly decided he didn’t want Leo to be a part of his life. He expected this to crush him even further down.

The longer he read, though, his eyes grew wider and his jaw dropped lower and his fingers tingled restlessly as anger simmered under his skin.

Because this file wasn’t bad.

His stupid fight with Donnie the day before was bad.

This was… so much worse.

4. Leo never pushed me to talk out loud like most other people did. He never thought anything was wrong with me. He just helped me find my own way to communicate with the world.

27. After Mom died he never doubted my feelings even if I didn’t show them the way everyone else did. Although I guess if even Mikey could believe I didn’t miss or love mom, it would make sense that Dave and Alex would think I might not care about others. Leo just knows me well enough to know how I express myself. A lot of people don’t get it, which I suppose is fine. But I do not think I am a robot.

53. We got in trouble because Leo wanted to help me when I freaked out because the two of us were no longer identical because of the burn mark Leo has. Which, in retrospect, should have been the other way around. They were right—Nardo really is too nice to me. He probably felt self-conscious about the burn everyone could see when we went to the beach, but I made it all about me instead.

99. Dave and Alex said I was too clingy, and I can see where they are coming from. I don’t only go everywhere Leo does when he goes out, I also stick to him at school. He was so excited when we heard they wanted to skip me up two grades, and I only said no because I didn’t want to go through a school day without him right next to me. He did get very quiet when I said I didn’t want to go along with that plan. Probably because he was disappointed I wasn’t going to leave him alone, after all. Looking back on it… it makes sense they were both right about that. I should give him more space.

121. He got suspended for yelling at our teacher and punching our classmate because he was trying to protect me. I can barely even remember the thing, but I do remember the aftermath. Nardo’s friends really were right, he does do a lot for me, and I don’t believe I do nearly as much for him in return. I’m pretty sure I never even thanked him.

160. I should have been there for him before he got outed to the entire school before he was ready. I wish I could have seen that that guy couldn’t be trusted. It would have saved Nardo a lot of heartache that I didn’t know how to handle. If only I were as good at reading people like he is. He’s always there for me, yet I showed up far too late.

There were more. So much more that Leo tried to unpack as his eyes brimmed with tears that he furiously wiped away in order to clear his vision so he could read more.

There were 194 points just like that, and Leo read them all through his tears, sniffing and gripping the laptop so hard, he actually had to catch himself so he wouldn’t end up crushing it or throwing it at the wall out of the sheer overwhelming feeling of needing to do something.

He wasn’t sure how he managed to yell to Dad that he was feeling all right when he heard his call from downstairs, considering he couldn’t even get himself to tear his eyes away from the screen of Donnie’s laptop. His thoughts were so loud and the world felt overwhelmingly real around him, as if his body just decided to thrust him back into this reality without any warning.

It must have taken him forever to finish reading the entire list. And then, without missing a beat, he scrolled right back up to the start to read it all over again, the sentences crawling around his brain in Donnie’s voice, taking the pieces of his heart, mending them back together, and then burning them to ash.

Because suddenly Donnie’s behavior was cast in a different light, and Leo almost wished he could turn back time and believe there was just something extremely unlikeable about him instead of knowing this.

This.

That his friends told Donnie that he was a bother, that he was annoying, that Leo would be better off without him constantly staying by his side, that he didn’t really care, that he was supposed to step back and let Leo breathe even though Leo didn’t want to breathe.

All this time Leo assumed that Donnie was pushing him away because he was angry at Leo or sick of him, and it turns out the opposite was true. He genuinely cared about Leo so much, that he took Dave and Alex’s words to heart and tried to do better without realizing he was only making things worse because Leo never thought Donnie was a burden or a bother or an inconvenience.

And God, the fact that Leo’s friends—though they were apparently never his friends, because how could his friends ever look at Donnie and not like him? Not appreciate him? Not enjoy his company?—were the ones to cause all of this made his blood boil as he kept on reading both their names in between Donnie’s notes. He clearly only brought them up to make a point and not to do more than that.

Why did Donnie even believe them? Why did they both come up to Donnie just to tell him all of this?

Wiping the tears away again, Leo shakily pushed the laptop off his lap and onto the mattress next to him. It was late, already, which wasn’t very surprising because he’s been spending forever just staring at a list of things Donnie remembered Leo doing for him over the years, which broke his heart because there wasn’t ever supposed to be a list. Leo never expected anything in return since he always came to Donnie’s assistance for the sole reason of Donnie being his twin.

They were never supposed to keep score. Donnie never needed to return the kindness because that was just what brothers did. And besides, Leo could think of a hundred instances off the top of his head in which Donnie was the one to help him instead of it going the other way around, so what was the point?

For a long moment Leo just stared ahead, the emotions in his body making him both buzz and numb at the same time. He felt like if he tried to get up, his knees would buckle and he’d crumple to the floor. He felt like the world around him was sharp and in focus, yet there was still something in Leo’s brain that prevented him from reaching out and actually touching it all.

He exhaled, the breath coming out stuttered and broken, then got up before he could overthink this.

He didn’t fall, thankfully, but he felt unsteady on the floor, his feet shifting as he tried to balance himself with a whirling head and a weary body. His stomach clenched a little, and for a second he thought he was going to hurl again, but it didn’t get that bad. He just felt… tense, on edge.

His first instinct was to go find Donnie and shake him back to his senses, because his twin needed to know Leo would never actually want him out of his life like that. But Donnie was in school and he hated missing class even if he had a good excuse, like being sick or having a panicked brother who needed to make set things right.

The next names that popped in his mind, though, Leo didn’t mind bothering right now all that much.

So he moved around the room like a tornado, tugging on one of his shirts and pulling on a tattered pair of jeans that honestly probably needed to go in the wash. Whatever, who cares. He hesitated when he went to pull on Raph’s hoodie, his eyes drifting toward Donnie’s side of the closet which was much more organized than Leo’s.

Technically, Raph’s hoodie was comforting enough by itself, and it was so big Leo could huddle into it and hide from the world like Mikey always did, which was the reason why he’d taken it in the first place. And Raph must have been pretty worried about him if he never even mentioned it, which… Leo would think about later.

The thing was, he was tired and lonely and has been feeling overly sick for nearly two weeks straight. And as helpful as Raph was, he needed Donnie. So he left Raph’s hoodie on the back of his desk chair and instead went over to Donnie’s side of the closet before pulling out a familiar purple hoodie that Donnie adored and constantly chided Leo for stealing.

Leo once told Donnie it was his Comfort Hoodie because it felt like a hug from Donnie. He could tell his brother didn’t quite understand it because, well, he knew what Donnie’s indulgence face looked like. But his twin never forced Leo to give up the hoodie when he genuinely needed it, so it was good enough.

And how was Leo even supposed to explain that even though the hoodie itself wasn’t all too special, it still was to Leo? Donnie made sure to wash all his clothes with odorless materials, so nothing ever bothered him too much. But every single item that he wore still smelled like him, even if Donnie himself couldn’t smell it.

Right now a hug from his brother was exactly what he needed, so Leo put on his Comfort Hoodie and basked in the feeling for a second before he tied his shoes on and snuck down the stairs.

Dad was on the couch in the living room, watching TV absentmindedly. It was easy to move behind him without being spotted or heard, and soon Leo was out of the house and running toward the bus station he usually walked to with his brothers.

On the bus he checked his phone to see what time it was, but when he tried to turn it on he realized it was dead. Out of battery again.

Why not, right? It was normal for him, anyway.

Instead he asked an old lady in the seat in front of him, and she actually lifted a hand to check a wrist watch so she could tell him the exact time. And then she went on with the seconds, changing her answer with every tick of the clock until Leo wanted to put his hand over her mouth and maybe stomp on her watch to get her to keep quiet already because he already had a headache and he kind of felt feverish and this wasn’t helping at all.

But he kept his lips shut until the bus stopped at his school. Leo had never before flung himself off the bus this quickly before, but there was a first time for everything.

Now, if only he could maybe catch his breath and blink away the dark spots clouding his vision, that would be great.

Finding Alex and Dave wasn’t hard. He only had to send the clock in the hallway one look before his brain happily supplied him with the classroom he was technically supposed to attend right now. History with Mrs. Carley.

It was a shame. He actually kind of liked Mrs. Carley, even if she could be extremely dull.

He didn’t even have a goal in mind as he burst into the class in the middle of the lesson, interrupting Mrs. Carley’s speech and prompting curious and intrigued questions from everyone. There wasn’t anything specific he thought of saying, nothing he desperately needed to know.

It’s just… these were supposed to be his friends, and he kind of… he was having a hard time understanding how in the world they ended up telling Donnie that he was too much and needed to pull away and make himself smaller and be less. He didn’t understand how it happened and he needed these answers, even though he wasn’t even sure how to bring it up or why he had to do it right now—

He kind of regretted coming, because the more he pressed for answers, the more defensive Alex seemed to get and the more blunt Dave became. Frankly, he wasn’t sure which was worse—Alex denying everything and trying to placate him with what he knew to be lies, or Dave lashing out and telling him to his face that he really did think poorly of Donnie this entire time and thought Leo should feel the same way.

But it was fine. It was fine. He was just going to walk away and never look at these two ever again—

“You know, it’s so obvious that the only reason you actually put up with him is because you have no other choice,” Dave’s obnoxious voice called from behind him as Leo went to get out of the room and maybe throw up for the first time today. “You know that everyone here pities you because you got the lamest, worst twin and you have no choice—”

His response was automatic.

Leo just whirled around and punched him in the face.

When he was younger, after he was outed to the entire school, he had a front row seat to a program that consisted of Raph approaching the jerk who’d caused all their grief and smacking him in the face with enough force to break the kid’s noise.

Back then, Leo had found the whole thing simply incredible. He thought it was so cool and he felt so loved because his older brother beat up some kid because he’d made Leo feel bad. It was one of those moments that he held close to his chest, to Raph’s embarrassment.

He himself had only punched one kid in his life—like, for real—but it had barely any force between it since Leo had no idea what he was doing and he’d been too busy worrying about Donnie to really pay much attention to his form or the way he was handling throwing his fist into someone’s face. Which meant that it was so weak, it only silenced Kleiner out of sheer shock.

But this time Leo had nothing to worry about but his own fuzzy mind, so when he threw his fist, he didn’t hold back at all.

It hurt. Like, it hurt Leo, which was something he would have liked to know before, but whatever. It only made him appreciate Raph even more as he rubbed his knuckles and shook his head with a pained hiss, ignoring the way Dave covered his face and moaned miserably, Alex hovering nearby worriedly.

After that, Leo didn’t stay behind to see Mrs. Carley’s furious glare or hear his classmates’ murmurs from all around. He just turned around and bolted out of the school, only stopping once to empty his churning stomach and lean against the wall for a second or two because he was pretty sure he might just collapse any moment now.

Once he was out of the school he decided against waiting for the bus and instead just started walking away, listening to the ring of the bell signaling the end of the period and the beginning of everyone’s lunch break.

He wasn’t hungry, but a cup of tea might be nice.

Chapter Text

Present

Raph, Mikey and Donnie collectively decided to ditch school in favor of looking for Leo. It was never even a question in Donnie’s mind—stay at school and study some more or go find his brother who looked like he might keel over and disappear on them any moment now? The answer was obvious.

So they snuck out, keeping their phones out as they waited to hear if Dad called or sent a text to let them know Leo got back home safely, which didn’t happen. Because of course Leo wouldn’t take the easy way and return home after making a scene—he had to go out and give them all anxiety by falling off the face of the earth without even having the decency to answer his phone.

Okay, to be fair, Donnie was pretty sure Leo’s phone was just turned off. Most likely run out of battery like always. He had told Donnie the day before that his phone was dead, and if he hadn’t bothered charging it at night or before he left the house earlier, it meant he was just walking around with a turned off phone that none of them could possibly reach.

Which wasn’t helpful at all.

“Leo!” called Mikey, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Leeeeeeooooo!”

“Can’t you track his phone or something?” said Raph as he sent Donnie a desperate look. “You did it to Mikey that one time. There’s no way you can’t do the same with Leo’s phone, right?”

Mikey sent them both a look that was supposed to be annoyed, but the sentiment got lost thanks to the tears that were streaming down his face. He’s been crying from the moment the three of them met at the steps of the school to look for their brother and neither Raph nor Donnie could calm him down.

“I’m still not over that,” said Mikey unevenly. “You can’t just track my phone because you feel like it.”

Throwing him a look, Raph said, “You have any better idea? We’re never gonna find Leo like that. He could be anywhere.”

Head hanging low, Mikey’s shoulders slumped and he wiped some of the fresh tears from his cheeks. He tiredly leaned against Raph until his older brother rolled his eyes and casually lifted Mikey up and onto his shoulders. It earned the two of them some odd looks from several people walking down the street, but neither one of them cared.

Ignoring the debate of whether or not it would be ethical to trace Leo’s phone, signed Donnie, I can’t do it when his phone is deactivated.

He said all that, yet he still lifted his own phone to just try and see if he could maybe, possibly, find Leo this way. The frustration hit him despite his initial doubts when he found that he couldn’t detect anything. Leo’s phone really was turned off. The only good thing about that was that he wasn’t actively ignoring all their calls and texts—he was just unaware of them in the first place.

“Leeeeeeeoooooo!” Mikey yelled again.

Wincing, Raph growled. “I’m gonna be deaf at this rate.” Then he turned to Donnie. “Hey, buddy, do you want to talk about what happened in that video? Because it kind of looked like whatever is going on with Leo has a lot to do with you.”

The words made Donnie’s shoulders rise. He gripped the strap of his bag as tightly as he could with his free hand, the other one squeezing his phone so hard that he was almost convinced it might break in his grasp. It didn’t, of course, but the concern was still there. And the way it creaked a little wasn’t very reassuring.

Shaking his head, he kept his eyes on the sidewalk as he kept on marching ahead.

With a sniff, Mikey turned to him as well. “Did Leo’s friends really say all these things to you? Because if they did, I’m gonna set Raph at them in a heartbeat, you know, and Leo’s punch would look like a small bruise compared to what he’s gonna do to them for hurting our brother—”

Donnie made a sharp motion with his hand, then let go of his bag’s strap in order to sign, They didn’t tell me all of that.

Which was technically true.

Raph quirked an eyebrow at him. “Then what was that all about? Why did Leo think they did?”

Frankly, Donnie was baffled by that, too. How did Leo find out about that? It was one overheard conversation that only Donnie knew about. Alex and Dave were both clearly very confused to hear that Donnie knew what they both thought of him, which meant they had no idea he’d been there that day. And April still had no idea what it was that had freaked Donnie out the day they’d met and befriended.

And since Donnie was certain he hadn’t told Leo anything about it… how did Leo find out? How did he know what Dave and Alex had said? Where did this suddenly come from? The previous day he was furious with Donnie, and now he was suddenly defending him, rushing to the school just to shout at his friends, make a scene and punch Dave in the face.

It didn’t make much sense, which was another reason why Donnie was determined to find his twin—he needed answers.

He probably needed to thank him and apologize, as well. Which… he wasn’t holding his breath for that.

Seeing as Raph and Mikey were still looking at him expectantly, Donnie just shrugged.

“So they never said anything like that?” said Raph suspiciously. “Never said any of the things Leo accused him of? Or those things his friend said in the video?”

“Dave,” supplied Mikey helpfully, then his tone darkened as he muttered, “And I’m pretty sure he’s not Lee’s friend, anymore.”

Raph ignored that and instead kept on looking at Donnie.

Keeping his head bowed, Donnie gestured with his hands, keeping the signs small. I may have… overheard them say things like that.

“Raphie,” said Mikey in a sing-song voice as he sniffed and wiped a few more tears away, “I’m officially psyching you at them the moment we go back to school again.”

Raph cracked his knuckles with a scowl. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

No, signed Donnie.

“You don’t get a say in this,” said Raph. “You’ve been keeping this to yourself, and I bet that’s why you’ve been acting so weird lately, right? Does this have anything to do with Leo’s behavior lately? Is this all related?”

I don’t know what’s going on with Leo.

“HAMATO LEONARDO, IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!” screamed Mikey at the top of the lungs.

Flailing, Raph nearly dropped him as he cringed and grimaced at the loud voice coming from right over his head. Donnie swallowed a small smirk at the way Raph’s eyes turned upward like he was planning a way to get back at Mikey for making him lose his hearing like this.

Sadly, Leo was either not around or he wasn’t going along with Mikey’s plan because nobody came over; although a few more looks were sent their way, mostly from annoyed and irritated people who didn’t seem to appreciate Mikey’s loud voice. They could probably start a club with Raph.

“Anyway,” said Raph after a few moments of silence that was only interrupted by Mikey’s sniffling, “you know we’re not just going to let it slide, right? You can’t just overhear something like that and start acting super weird and not expect us to talk about it, Donnie. The moment we find Leo, the two of you are going to sit and listen until everything is sorted out and we can send you off to therapy.”

I don’t need therapy, protested Donnie.

Mikey leaned his cheek on top of Raph’s head and mumbled, “Dr. Delicate Touch and Dr. Feelings are too spent for therapy sessions.”

“That’s okay, Mikey, they both need to talk to someone, too,” said Raph.

With that Donnie could agree, and he could tell by Mikey’s silence that he could probably see the logic there, as well, because he would have argued and fought against this statement if he saw anything unfair or unjustified about it. His silence was like an admission that he wasn’t okay.

“Leo’s okay, right?” whispered Mikey after a little while longer. “He’s gonna be okay, isn’t he?”

Yes, signed Donnie, because he couldn’t imagine a world where that wasn’t true.

Raph nodded, too. “Yeah, Leo’ll be just fine. He’s just… tired, I think.”

“I don’t think he’s been sleeping very well lately,” muttered Mikey.

They both turned to look at Donnie.

He frowned. What?

“You share a room with him,” said Mikey through his tears. “If anyone knows how his sleeping schedule’s been, it’d be you, right?”

But he didn’t know, because Donnie never had the same trouble sleeping. It was always Leo who’d be awake when Donnie went to sleep or woke up. It was always Leo who ended up sitting at the kitchen island with a cup of tea in the middle of the night, smiling at whoever it was that woke up to go to the bathroom or to grab a glass of water.

And lately… well, Donnie hasn’t been paying as much attention as he normally did, trying to extract himself from Leo’s life as much as he could to give his brother space—space he turned out not to want, which Donnie was so grateful for, but also made him feel like maybe the reason Leo’s been off lately was him—so he had no idea how much Leo’s been sleeping.

He wished he’d have checked to see if Leo really was asleep all these times when he’d lie in bed, motionless. It wasn’t a secret that Leo could pretend to be asleep well enough to fool most of them. In fact, when they were little he’d tried to help Donnie do the same, though Dad could usually still tell when Donnie was faking it.

I don’t know, signed Donnie at last.

Sighing, Raph pressed a smile to his face that looked very fake. “Well, I’m still sure he’s going to be just fine when we find him.” He squeezed Mikey’s legs a little. “And we will find him, little man, don’t worry.”

“M’not little,” mumbled Mikey without the usual heat in his voice.

What if he is still at the school, after all? suggested Donnie. He might be looking for us right now, too.

“I told all my friends to tell me if they see Leo,” said Raph, and he sent a quick glance down at his phone before sighing once more. “I don’t think he’s there. Where else could he have gone? Where does he usually go?”

“He’s been out of the house a lot lately,” said Mikey miserably. “I asked him where he was going, but he only mentioned going out with his friends. I don’t know where exactly they were going because he’d just leave before I could get another word out.”

Raph dragged a hand down his face. “Wanna bet he’s been lying about being with his friends?”

Donnie did not want to bet on that because he had the sinking suspicion that Raph’s intuition was correct and that Leo’s been sneaking out by himself just to get out of the house, and since he didn’t want to worry anyone (which clearly hadn’t worked) he told them he was out with his friends.

Maybe Donnie could ask them to verify that it was, in fact, true. Although he got the feeling Alex and Dave wouldn’t answer any of his questions right now. He couldn’t say that he’d miss their voices or faces too much, honestly.

“Wanna check the park?” asked Mikey tiredly as he wrapped his arms around Raph’s neck. “Maybe he’s just walking around.”

“I think he’d collapse if he did that,” noted Raph. “You saw him in that video. He looked like he was on the brink of just fainting right there, in the middle of the room. I’m surprised he managed to get here from the house and then leave.”

Adrenaline, Donnie supplied.

With a slight shake of his head, Raph said, “Fine, let’s go check the park. Maybe we’ll find him lying under a tree or something.”

Donnie didn’t protest, instead just following Raph as they changed their direction and crossed the street to go toward the park. It wasn’t a place they occupied often, but every once in a while they’d go there to pass a lazy afternoon together. The chances of Leo being there were slim to none, but they had no better locations to check, so what was the harm, right?

Mikey was just sucking in a shuddering breath in preparation for screaming Leo’s name again when Donnie’s phone started ringing.

The three of them stopped walking abruptly and stared at Donnie as he lifted his phone to check the caller ID.

The strange thing wasn’t that they were getting a phone call, and it wasn’t that the number was unrecognizable for the lot of them, but rather that Donnie was the one receiving a phone call. He’d managed to prevent spam calls and every other kind of calls he couldn’t care less about from reaching him ages ago, and the people in his life who needed to reach him knew better than to call, instead sending him texts.

Sending Raph and Mikey a slightly baffled look, Donnie accepted the call and brought the phone up to his ear, then silently waited to hear what this was about.

For a second he heard nothing but distant clinking and chattering voices.

“I assume by the silence that I reached Donatello, then,” said a voice on the other side finally.

Donnie furrowed his eyebrows at the familiarity of it, though he couldn’t seem to pinpoint where he knew it from. Who did it belong to? Who was he forgetting? It was clearly someone who knew him if they expected him to say a word, after all, and they didn’t sound annoyed by it—only tired.

“It is Hueso, from Run of the Mill,” the voice said.

Donnie’s grip on his phone tightened.

Of course!

“Leonardo gave me your number. He didn’t tell me to call, but I assumed that’s what he expected, so—”

“Is he okay? Is he there?” asked Donnie.

Raph and Mikey stared at him with a pair of wide sets of eyes, their jaws hanging open. Which was to be expected, really, seeing as the only person to ever hear Donnie speak other than himself was Leo. The two of them knew he could speak, but they had never heard him do it before.

But it didn’t matter right now. Leo was probably with Hueso, and he gave his number to the man, so he probably trusted him enough to handle the situation when he himself was… Donnie didn’t even know what Leo was doing right now or how he was feeling. He needed to hear as much as possible, though, so speaking to someone over the phone wasn’t going to stop him.

For a second or two Señor Hueso remained quiet, apparently just as caught off guard and speechless by Donnie’s choice to speak up, but then there was a sort of distant miserable whine from his end of the line that seemed to snap him out of it.

“Oye, esto no tiene pinta de agradable. I’ll get you some tea soon, pepino,” Hueso told someone else, then his voice grew louder as he turned his focus back to Donnie. “He came here not too long ago.”

“Is he okay?” pressed Donnie.

There was no reluctance in his mind. He didn’t feel any need to keep silent right now. Usually forming words felt like he had to work really hard in order to both create and let them out into the world. There was always this lump in his throat that formed there whenever he tried to speak his mind, and that was when he spoke to the one person in the world he trusted would appreciate the effort it took.

But now he spoke without feeling any resistance, any urge to clamp his mouth shut again. Because he wasn’t speaking for himself—he was speaking out of worry for Leo. If Leo needed him to speak to someone over the phone, he’d do it in a heartbeat, no matter how uncomfortable the thought made Donnie.

There was the sound of a gurgle and a groan from Hueso’s end of the line.

“Er… he doesn’t appear to be worse than he did the last couple of weeks,” the man offered.

Well, that answered the question of where Leo’s been going all the time without telling them.

Looking at his brothers, Donnie signed, Run of the Mill, which meant that he signed the words ‘pizza’ and ‘restaurant’ in quick succession because that was the main thing they got there since they’d run into the place years ago.

Shaking his head to get himself out of the shock that took ahold of him, Raph changed directions again and started walking toward the restaurant with much more purpose than before. Mikey clung to him tightly, his eyes still puffy and wet from his tears as he kept his eyes on Donnie.

“Is he okay?” he asked. “Is Leo all right?”

Donnie nodded at him briskly and then told Hueso, “We’re coming.”

“Good, good. No, pepino, turn around before you throw up on the floor. We just had this place cleaned before you showed up.”

Donnie was pretty sure he heard Leo’s familiar voice mumbling an apology weakly.

“I’ll keep an eye on him until you get here,” Hueso told him, then the line went dead.

Shoving the phone into his pocket, Donnie hurried in order to keep up with Raph’s large strides, his throat finally clamping shut as he tried not to let himself panicked at the thought of Leo feeling bad enough to get to Run of the Mill and get someone else to call him.

Raph set Mikey back on his feet the moment the restaurant came into the view, and the second he was on solid ground, the youngest sprinted ahead while wiping the tears from his face. He flung the door of the restaurant open with enough force to make the bell on top of it to jingle much less merrily and much more sharply and obnoxiously than it usually did.

Or maybe that was just Donnie’s senses that were playing tricks of him because he still felt like the whole world was trying to press itself against him, crushing him under the weight of colors, lights, scents, sounds and touches.

“Señor Hueso!” called Mikey, and the moment his eyes landed on the familiar man who was standing behind the counter, taking an order from a startled lady, he ran forward and pressed his hands over the counter, pushing against it so hard that his legs momentarily lifted off the ground. “Where is he? Where’s Leo?”

Hueso took the woman’s credit card with one hand and gestured toward a door in the back with his other one with a blank look on his face.

“Bathroom,” he said.

Mikey wasted less than a second before he let go of the counter and raced toward the back door, Raph and Donnie hot on his heels. A few people sent them annoyed looks, although some of them seemed to recognize the three and just rolled their eyes and ignored them, too used to the chaos that tended to follow their family wherever they went.

Entering the restroom was like stepping into a whole different world. The moment the door shut behind them, the noise of the restaurant subsided and Donnie felt like he could breathe again. But then he noticed Leo slumped on the floor inside one of the stalls—the same way he did the day before at the school—and suddenly he kind of wished the noise outside were the worst thing in his day.

The video somehow managed to make Leo look better than he did in person. Now, in person, he appeared to be so much worse.

There were prominent bags under his eyes and his face seemed gaunt and pale, covered in a sheen of sweat. Donnie’s nose wrinkled a little at the sight of his hoodie touching the floor and the wall, both most likely too dingy for his taste, yet he wasn’t going to say anything right now because this wasn’t all that important. He’ll just… he’ll wash the hoodie back home. No problem.

On the floor next to his legs was a cup of tea that was almost completely full, meaning Leo hadn’t really touched it. And one sniff of the air made Donnie’s stomach flip unpleasantly as he recognized the horrible, terrible smell of vomit.

Great.

The moment the door creaked open, Leo’s eyes fluttered open and he gazed up at the three of them dazedly, his brain clearly having trouble with processing what was happening. And then he let out a surprised, muffled shriek when Mikey ran forward and threw himself at Leo, hugging him like they just brought him back from the dead or something.

“Uh, um…” muttered Leo as his gaze shifted to Mikey, his hands not moving. “Mikey?”

Trying to say anything seemed to be impossible for Mikey because the moment he opened his mouth, he started sobbing. Up until that moment Mikey’s tears have been silent, but now he trembled from head to toe, ugly, heart-wrenching sounds leaving his mouth as he embraced Leo even tighter, clinging to him as if scared he might disappear if he gave him the opportunity.

“Whoa, hey, it’s okay,” said Leo in alarm as he finally brought his hands up to rub Mikey’s back, his eyes trailing up to look at Raph desperately. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“You disappeared!” wailed Mikey accusingly. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

A moment.

Leo seemed to process the words very slowly, obviously too sluggish to comprehend everything that was happening around him without forcing his mind to work extra hard.

“I… my phone died. I forgot to charge it,” he said after too long, still looking at Raph as if asking for help with the crying little brother that was crushing him. “I’m sorry. I… I’m sorry.”

Raph shook his head, relief shining in his eyes as he bent down in front of Leo, resting a hand over the hand he had wrapped around Mikey.

The look of confusion on Leo’s face made Donnie’s chest squeeze painfully. He looked so small and lost as he stared at them all, like he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or not. When his eyes landed on Donnie, something flashed across his face before he looked back at Raph, as if turning to the only safe thing in the room he could focus on right now.

“School’s not over yet,” he said dumbly.

Quirking an eyebrow, Raph said, “Yeah, we know. We ditched to look for you.”

Leo frowned. “…look for me?”

Wordlessly, Donnie stepped forward at long last, holding his phone out for Leo to take. He tried to ignore the wide-eyed, guilt-filled look Leo sent him at his approach. Also, the way Leo’s body tensed in response, like he expected something bad to happen or for Donnie to snap at him or scold him or hurt him in any way.

The fact that Leo was scared of him made Donnie feel like the ground was shaking beneath his feet so violently he nearly got knocked down. The lights around him turned brighter, the noise from behind the bathroom door increased in volume. His already squirming stomach demanded his attention even more as the disgusting smell seemed to assault his nostrils.

Still, he squashed down his discomfort in favor of standing his ground and showing Leo his phone’s screen and the video playing on it.

Leo’s pale face blanched even more.

“Oh,” he said, then hunched his shoulders and looked down at Mikey like it was the only safe thing around right now.

“You punched your friend,” noted Raph.

Voice muffled by Leo’s hoodie, Mikey mumbled, “It was awesome.”

Leo didn’t look like he thought it was awesome. The hand resting on Mikey’s back that Raph was holding clenched tightly, his eyebrows furrowed as he bit his bottom lip, as if to hold back from outright scowling.

“He’s not my friend,” he said stiffly.

“I’ll let you share my friends if you want,” said Mikey as he sniffed.

Leo’s response to that was to pat Mikey’s arm lightly.

And then his eyes gazed upward until they were locked on Donnie’s face, the anxiety swirling in them so obvious and clear that Donnie wondered how he hasn’t noticed it before now. Has it really been this obvious that Leo was feeling terrible because of everything that’s been going on, or was this the first time Leo was letting Donnie see it?

The fact that he couldn’t tell made Donnie’s insides twist guiltily since there was a chance his twin’s been showing him just how hurt he was by the distance he suddenly put between the two of them, and Donnie’s been ignoring it in favor of determinedly forging ahead, his eyes set on fixing a mistake that apparently wasn’t even there in the first place.

“You said you won’t skip school again,” Leo said.

I missed first period, signed Donnie. Figured it wouldn’t hurt anyone if I missed the end of school, too.

Leo’s eyes widened in surprise. Raph turned to Donnie with a look of concern.

“You missed first period?” said Raph.

Mikey pulled away from Leo and wiped his face with his sleeve as he turned to look at Donnie in astonishment.

Squirming a little, he tugged at the sleeves of his sweater. I didn’t feel too well.

While Raph and Mikey looked like this was news to the both of them, Leo just stared at Donnie like this wasn’t shocking in the least. Because if there was anyone in the world who could take one look at him and instantly notice if he was having a bad day, it was his twin. Of course he’d notice Donnie was more sensitive than usual today even while evidently feeling bad himself.

A second passed, then Leo said, “I can’t believe you believed those jerks when they told you I didn’t want you around me.”

Donnie raised his hands to sign, but nothing came to mind. His brain was blank as he kept on looking down at Leo, who had a small frown on his face as he absently ran his hand up and down Mikey’s arm. It was unclear whether he was trying to calm Mikey or himself, but it didn’t really matter.

Holding his gaze for a few moments longer, Leo released a breath, then turned to Raph. “I’m tired.”

Smiling, Raph wrapped his fingers around Leo’s hand and squeezed gently. “Then let’s go home, okay?”

And it was a little awkward for a moment after they stood up (Raph flushed the toilet at long last) and just stood there, Leo leaning against the wall of the stall with his eyes glancing between Raph and Donnie hesitantly, like he wasn’t sure what to do next, his arm held tightly by Mikey.

But then he gently extracted himself from the youngest’s hold and pushed himself toward Donnie, releasing a long breath when Donnie instinctively pressed himself to his side in order to support Leo, whose legs were shaking unsteadily. The relieved smile that tugged at Leo’s lips made Donnie’s eyes sting.

Leo didn’t let go of Donnie’s hand the entire way home, nor did he release it when they stepped inside and Dad came rushing toward all of them, pulling Leo down so he could smother him and chide him for recklessly running away when he was sick.

He expected Leo to push Dad away and whine about how annoying it was when he became so protective over him—which was Leo’s usual response to Papa’s long rants whenever he was worried about them—but Leo just took it with a kind of resigned air to it, like he simply couldn’t find the energy to put up a fight, meaning he just took it without saying a word.

Apparently Dad noticed the strange behavior, too, because it didn’t take him long to release Leo and send him upstairs to get some rest. Which was another thing Leo would have normally protested, though this time he just nodded and turned to climb up the stairs, still pulling Donnie behind him, like the idea of unclasping his hand was unfathomable.

Mikey let out a defiant squeak at the sight of them leaving like that, but Donnie could hear Raph and Dad telling him to leave Leo for now so he could rest. He probably didn’t like it all too much, but since there was no little brother following them to their room, Donnie figured Mikey reluctantly agreed to let them be for now.

The trek upstairs felt odd, mainly because Donnie had no idea what was going through Leo’s head and how he was feeling about all of this. Sure, Leo was refusing to let go, but he was also very clearly suffering from utter exhaustion and his mind was too slow to take in as much as he usually did.

Where did that leave them?

Donnie wasn’t all that surprised to see that Leo’s bed was still unmade, looking like he just jumped off it that morning without looking back even once. He was a little curious to see his laptop on the mattress, though, still connected to the charger even though it was probably already with a full battery.

It took him a moment, but eventually Leo seemed to understand what Donnie was looking at. He cringed, another flicker of guilt flashing in his eyes as he smiled at Donnie—that same wrong smile from the day before that he hadn’t known how to decipher, but now Donnie was pretty sure he could simply qualify it as ‘false’. It was a fake smile, which was why it seemed to be so off.

“Sorry, I just wanted to watch something to pass the time, and my computer was so far away,” muttered Leo as he tried to smother a yawn. “I should have asked if I could use it first, but you were already out—”

It’s fine, signed Donnie with one hand. I don’t mind.

Leo took a moment to simply look at Donnie, clearly struggling to comprehend the words. Then his fake smile turned more sheepish and relieved as he nodded at Donnie silently.

When Leo went to move toward his bed, though, Donnie stopped him, instead pulling him toward his. It didn’t feel like Leo was going to let go of him any time soon, and frankly… Donnie couldn’t imagine leaving him right now—not when Leo looked like he was barely holding himself together. Not after missing out on two weeks because Donnie was too blind to see he was very clearly hurting his brother rather than helping him.

The fact that Leo wasn’t fighting him would’ve made Donnie feel slightly better if it weren’t for the fact that Leo’s eyes were glazed over, as if he wasn’t entirely there, his thoughts dwelling on something far away, beyond Donnie’s reach.

It hurt so much to see his brother like this, but Donnie pushed the feeling away for now and simply did his best to make sure Leo was as comfortable as possible as they both crawled under Donnie’s blanket, pressed together on the bed that barely managed to hold the two of them.

The room’s only source of light was the open window, which Donnie could tolerate. The house was relatively quiet, too, meaning the loudest thing in the area was the chirping of birds outside and the breaths of the two of them. And even though his skin felt itchy and everything touching him was almost unbearable, he found that he didn’t mind Leo’s warm body being pressed against his side all too much.

He still felt somewhat uncomfortable as he shifted as subtly as possible, trying to find a position he would be all right with. The best bet was to lie on his stomach, which he did quickly, sending Leo a look to make sure he wasn’t bothering him, but Leo just lazily stared up at the ceiling, still lost in his own little world.

No matter what Donnie did, he was never comfortable. His skin itched so much, he constantly had to scratch it. The blanket was too light, agitating him every time he breathed or moved to scratch his thigh, knee, arm. And for God’s sake, was there a hair on his pillow that was tickling his cheek, or was he imagining this? He tried to capture it several times, but his fingers always came up empty handed.

And then the body next to him shifted and Donnie tensed, half expecting Leo to get up and trudge over to his own bed. Instead, though, his twin pushed himself to his hands and knees, then slumped sideways until he was sprawled all over Donnie’s back, making him let out a surprised huff at the sudden weight that was pushing him down.

It reminded him of when they were little. Leo used to regularly sneak over to Donnie’s bed and sleep on his back, as if Donnie was his mattress. Dad had tried to stop it at first, but then it’d become apparent that neither Leo nor Donnie particularly cared about the arrangement and they were left alone to do as they saw fit.

They haven’t done this in over a year.

It felt nice.

His skin stopped itching. The blanket stopped moving. Donnie was pretty sure Leo was pressing his ear to his back so he could listen to his heartbeats. He kind of wished he could do the same, but this was all right, too. Leo’s breaths were soothing enough as they were, so he didn’t actually need much more than to focus on them in order to close his eyes and fall asleep.

When he woke up, Leo was asleep. He was sure it wasn’t an act because his body was completely slumped and limp, and he was letting out these tiny, soft snores that Donnie knew for a fact he hasn’t managed to fake as of yet.

Stretching his arm to the side carefully, Donnie managed to just barely grab his laptop without jostling Leo and waking him up. Making sure not to move too much, he pulled the computer closer, then twisted himself just enough to make it possible for him to use the laptop comfortably without waking Leo.

He waited for one second to make sure his twin really was still asleep—because seriously, Leo very obviously needed this nap—then he powered on the laptop and typed in his password. His eyes barely able to focus on what was on the screen as he squinted and immediately went to dim the screen so it wouldn’t burn his pupils.

And then he finally managed to look at what was open on the screen, which promptly made his heart skip a beat.

The list.

The List. The one he’d made for his eyes only, consisting of every single deed made by Leo that he could recall. The one where he’d written a few of his thoughts regarding those deeds and how they connected to what he’d heard Alex and Dave say two weeks ago.

And Leo had been on his computer last, meaning that if this file was the first thing Donnie saw now, it was the last thing Leo saw before leaving the laptop.

Suddenly Donnie understood how Leo knew about Dave and Alex’s words about Donnie. And that guilty look on his face at the sight of Donnie noticing the laptop on his bed made more sense, too, because he probably thought Donnie would be upset if he found out Leo read this list.

And he was upset. Just… not because Leo read it, per-se, but rather because… well, Leo read it and it made him decide to drop by the school and punch Dave in the face before he went to throw up at a restaurant instead of going back home.

The familiar words on the screen blurred before his eyes until Donnie shut the laptop a little too loudly.

He froze when Leo’s breath seemed to catch for a moment, startled by the sound. But then he kept on letting out those little puffs of air that meant he was still asleep.

More carefully, Donnie put the laptop on the floor, then settled back in the bed and tried not to think too hard about what Leo’s reaction to the list must have been.

He was scrolling mindlessly through his phone when Leo finally shifted a little, his breaths becoming slightly more irregular. The silence in the room remained after that even though Donnie was pretty sure Leo was now awake. He considered signing something, but he wasn’t sure what it meant that Leo wasn’t saying anything or moving away, so he just kept on scrolling.

It went on for several minutes—both of them silent. Donnie kept on staring at his phone without taking anything in, and he was pretty sure that Leo was looking over his shoulder to watch as well; it became pretty obvious when Donnie stumbled upon a lame meme that made Leo let out a little snort that brought a small smile to Donnie’s face.

When was the last time he heard Leo laugh? He was pretty sure it’s been way too long.

“I thought you might hate me.”

Donnie’s fingers stilled and he kept on staring at the phone without truly seeing what was on the screen, his mind replaying Leo’s words over and over again in his head until they lost all meaning, leaving behind only the foul aftertaste of something rotten and just so utterly wrong.

I don’t hate you, he signed, hoping Leo would be able to see his hands.

He felt his twin’s body shifting a little, but Leo didn’t get up.

“I know you don’t,” Leo mumbled, sounding almost offended. “I kind of put it together myself earlier today—wait, is it still the same day? How long have we been asleep?”

Donnie checked the time. Leo’s only been asleep for a few hours. It was evening now, the light outside coming mostly from streetlamps rather than the sun, which was nice. It meant the room was darker than before. It also meant that Donnie was kind of hungry, but he wasn’t going to say anything now.

Maybe Leo saw what the time was, too. Or maybe he simply put it together by the lack of sunlight outside. Either way, he slumped a little more, making Donnie let out a breath at the sudden pressure. He elbowed Leo without looking, smiling in satisfaction at the indignant squawk that earned him.

“Why didn’t you tell me about what Dave and Alex told you?” asked Leo after a moment or two.

Hesitantly, Donnie signed, They didn’t tell these things to my face. I overheard them. They had no idea.

“That doesn’t make it okay, you know.”

He frowned to himself and started scratching his arm thoughtlessly. It only became apparent to him when Leo’s hand wrapped around his wrist, tugging it away gently and forcing him to stop.

“I’m sorry I picked up a fight yesterday,” said Leo.

Donnie freed his hand and signed, You were upset.

“So were you.”

I was confused, corrected Donnie. I didn’t understand how you failed that test. I still don’t. And I found you throwing up in the bathroom, so I figured something was wrong.

Leo shifted a little more. Donnie heard the way he gulped, as if getting ready to confess to something unpleasant. He wasn’t sure what Leo had to say, but he figured it couldn’t be worse than hearing from his friends that Leo didn’t like him. Which turned out to be false, but Donnie had fallen for it, so it had hurt up until now. It still did—just a little.

“I wasn’t really mad about the test,” said Leo, his voice so unnaturally quiet that it made Donnie grimace a bit. “I knew I was going to fail it. I answered most of the questions wrong because I wanted to fail.”

Why did you—

“I just needed to have a reason for you not to like me.”

The words stumped him. Donnie kind of felt like Leo just reached into his chest, tore out his heart, and then crushed it before his eyes before burning the remains until there was nothing left but ashes on the ground.

He’d failed that test on purpose because he wanted to be able to excuse Donnie’s choice to pull away? That made sense… in a very roundabout way, maybe. And it wasn’t really the part of the sentence that sat wrong with Donnie. He could understand where Leo was coming from there.

But the fact that he could ever believe Donnie might stop loving him just because he failed a test was just… unthinkable. As if the Donnie could ever hate Leo because he was failing school. Sure, he called him dumb from time to time, but Donnie called everyone dumb. And usually he didn’t really care when people weren’t as smart as him. He certainly never cared when it came to Leo not being as smart.

There’ll never be anything in the world that could make me not like you, signed Donnie firmly. Even if you drop out of school and don’t go to college and end up lounging on a couch for the rest of your days without lifting a finger, I’ll love you because you’re my twin, you dumb-dumb. Though I might be disappointed and slightly annoyed because you’ll probably make me pay for your food.

Leo snorted out a small laugh. It sounded suspiciously wet, but Donnie couldn’t really turn around to see Leo’s face.

“I’ll make you buy me pizza every single day. Hawaiian pizza, just to spite you.”

Donnie blindly flicked his fingers in his direction. Leo slapped his hand away.

It felt so normal for them that it brought a smile to his face. He could imagine Leo mirroring his expression, as well. He could also imagine Leo’s satisfied smirk as he flipped himself so that he was still on top of Donnie, only now they were back to back.

“My head hurts,” declared Leo.

“When was the last time you ate?”

The fact that Leo paused to think about it was already not all that promising.

“Like, a proper meal or…?”

Donnie sighed. “You haven’t touched your food yesterday.”

“I mean, I was sick, so…”

He frowned. “How long have you been sick?”

Leo didn’t answer.

“I found your lunch box,” said Donnie after a few moments.

There was an intake of breath from above him as Leo flinched a little, the sharp movement making Donnie wince at the feeling of Leo’s bones digging into his skin. Then Leo rolled off his back and over to the empty space on the bed so that they could face each other.

“I didn’t throw it away on purpose,” said Leo, and he sounded almost desperate.

Searching his face, Donnie wondered what was going through Leo’s head to make him look at him like he was going to die if Donnie thought the lunch box ended up in the trash on purpose. His face was flushed from sleep, yet he still managed to somehow look almost like a ghost.

“I was aiming for the sink, but I missed,” he elaborated quickly. “I was in a hurry because I was going to throw up, and I wanted to put it away, but it landed in the trash, and I was too nervous to pick it up from there with you or Raph there because I knew it would look worse than it was—”

What made you sick?

Leo bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he said weakly. “Just… just the smell. I opened the box and it just hit me all at once.” A poor excuse for a smile appeared on his face. “Don’t tell Mikey, though. He’ll kill me for telling him his food smelled or something.”

When was the last time you ate a whole meal? asked Donnie, ignoring the second part of the sentence.

“I don’t know,” admitted Leo after a long pause. He looked away from Donnie and down at his hands. “Hueso tried giving me things to eat, but I… I couldn’t eat any of it. and I… I kinda barely touched my food at school… maybe. I don’t know. I just wasn’t hungry, you know? I’m still—I’m not hungry. I can’t explain it.”

Donnie kicked his calf. That’s bad, N-a-r-d-o.

Leo’s eyes flickered up to follow the signs, then they went right back down.

“Was it because of me?” whispered Donnie.

Alarmed, Leo snapped his gaze back to Donnie’s face and started shaking his head frantically. “No. No, no, of course not,” he said.

Then he grimaced guiltily.

A lump formed in Donnie’s throat.

It is, he signed numbly. You were sick because of me?

Leo shook his head again. “No. No. It happened because of… everything, yes,” he said awkwardly, “but it’s not your fault. I just… I just started catastrophizing, I think. You were just trying to help—in a very unhelpful way, by the way. Never do that again, please.”

I’m sorry, signed Donnie miserably.

Leo grabbed his hands with both of his before he could sign anything else. There was an angry spark in his eyes, like a fire Donnie hadn’t seen there in a while. Maybe he’d missed it earlier, back when Leo had confronted Dave and Alex after finding out about the list and what’s been guiding Donnie lately.

He was still curious to know how exactly Leo’d reacted to it.

“Stop it. Stop apologizing,” chastised Leo. “This wasn’t your fault. If you wanna blame someone, blame Alex and Dave. Those jerks shouldn’t have said what they said, and I don’t care if they meant for you to hear it or not. It was wrong either way. The only thing you’re allowed to apologize for is not talking to me about it, and I can’t really ask for that because I haven’t talked to you about any of this, either. So just… stop.”

Donnie glanced down at his captive hands. The longer Leo held them, the more panicked he became. It was completely illogical, but he couldn’t help but think about Leo’s words from the day before, telling him to use real words instead of signs. Having his hands held like that was a way to make him shut up—everyone in their family knew that—and while it would have been fine any other day, right now it only reminded Donnie of their little spat.

Something must have shown on his face, because Leo let go of him so abruptly, Donnie almost got whiplash from it.

“Hey, whoa, sorry,” said Leo hurriedly, his hands now pressed to his chest as he gave Donnie a wide-eyed look. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to—Donnie, what’s wrong?”

Donnie’s hands trembled a little as he signed, Does it bother you that I use sign language?

Leo’s face did this funny thing, where he looked like he was both very confused and slightly amused. Like both emotions were fighting for dominance in his brain, and for the time being he was displaying them both halfway so he mostly just looked ridiculous.

It would have made Donnie laugh, but he was still holding his breath, waiting for the truth to smack him in the face once again.

“What?” said Leo. “Why would it—of course not.”

Donnie stared at him. But I can talk and I choose not to. And yesterday you said you hated it—you said that when I came to the room.

A crease formed between Leo’s brows as he seemed to try and recall their argument from the night before. It took him a few moments, but eventually his lips parted in understanding and his amusement from before slipped away as he settled on a slightly irritated look.

“That’s what you thought I meant? No, Donnie, I wasn’t talking about sign language. I was… I was frustrated because you wouldn’t tell me what I was doing wrong. Instead I felt like you were trying to make me, I don’t know, figure out why you were being so distant by myself and I was sick of it.”

That… made sense, actually.

Leo wasn’t done.

“Do you know how fun sign language is?” he said with a bit more excitement. “I get to talk about people to their faces and they have no idea what I’m saying. It’s so cool! And it’s like we’re in a spy movie or something, using code words to communicate, you know? I love it! And when other people understand sign language we can just switch to our own version and we can gossip freely. It’s the best!”

He smiled, and Donnie was pretty sure he wasn’t even paying attention to the way he was signing with his hands, as if too enthusiastic to only use his voice right now. It made Donnie smile back at him, which seemed to make Leo feel even better.

“Besides,” he finished with a small shrug, “this is the only you I know. And I looooooove you.”

Donnie let out a whine when Leo hugged him without any warning. But even though the feeling wasn’t the most pleasant, he didn’t hate it, and he didn’t try to push his twin away.

Later he’d have to drag Leo downstairs to try and make him eat a little. Later they’d have to somehow handle the school and explain why Leo didn’t deserve to be expelled even though he interrupted a lesson and hit someone. Later they’d have to figure out a way to surgically remove Mikey from Leo’s side because their little brother would refuse to let Leo out of his sight.

But for now… some Twin Hug Time was way overdue.