Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mikey stares at the problem before him. He places his left hand under his chin, then replaces it with the right, just to be sure. He cocks his head to one side and then the other, letting his eyes roam up and down from every angle. If he were being really thorough, he could’ve done a handstand for good measure to get the upside-down perspective too, but he really doesn’t think that the current situation calls for all that.

No – one full room-width pace later, he returns to the center, sure of his conclusion. With a click of the tongue and a shake of the head, he lets his hands settle on his hips as he finally stills.

“Well?” Don prompts from beside him, rapidly tapping his fingers together. “What’s the verdict?”

“It, uh…sure is somethin’, Donnie.”

Don’s hands halt, fingertips frozen together end-to-end, linking both arms to create a full electrical circuit. After the brief pause, he nods. “Yeah, that’s why I called you. What can I do?”

“With this?”

At this, Mikey motions with his whole arm to the wall in front of them both as they stand in the middle of Don’s lab. While usually clean, if slightly cracked and chipped here and there, the concrete wall has now been unwillingly and extensively decorated. Unruly black text – numbers, lines, and letters from beyond the English alphabet – scrawl their way from one end of Don’s massive whiteboard to the other, and further still, onto the concrete walls. From there, the text flows from lines and paragraphs into charts and diagrams, and finally a Q.E.D. box symbol at the bottom right to show that whatever theorem Don’s cooked up this time has finally come to an end.

But only after traversing the entire wall, with barely a single square inch left untouched.

Most of the text is illegible, thanks to Don’s, gently put, unique handwriting, but it sits starkly defined against gray stone. Still, Mikey's caught the slightly damp and smudged spot in the corner, hinting at an attempt to destroy any evidence. Not that the culprit of this mess is hard to spot, thanks to the black ink stains on Don’s palms and the bold sharpie pen hastily discarded in the trash can.

Mikey finally gives in and laughs. “How did this even happen?”

Don shrugs, arms flailing out. “I don’t know!”

To be fair, Mikey has seen his brother lose himself in calculations and schemes for wild inventions many times over. But for Don to both accidentally exchange his usual dry erase marker for a permanent one and space out so much that he ignored where his whiteboard ended and the wall began? Now that was a new one.

Now that his detective cap is firmly on, Mikey supposes this slip in his brother’s judgment might be related to another mystery: the curious case of “When’s the Last Time Don’s Gotten a Good Night’s Sleep?” His mental magnifying glass narrows in on his brother’s bloodshot eyes, the fatigued slump in his posture, and the way his fingers shake with the tell-tale signs of caffeine consumption on an empty stomach.

Uneasiness takes root in his chest. Mikey usually prides himself on being a dependable nuisance to his brother, dragging him away from his projects when they threaten his wellbeing. But now he can’t remember the last time he whisked his brother away from his fortress, guarded by fire-breathing toasters and tanks in shining armor, for a simple night of video games. He can’t remember the last time he watched his brother read a book for fun or join them for a movie, snuggled up on his side of the couch until the relaxation slowly sank in through Don’s skin to his very bones, and he finally let himself drift off to sleep.

He doesn’t know when the walls of Don’s lab had grown so much taller and thicker, forbidding like a mess of brambles. He doesn’t know when those same walls that he’d trounced again and again, passing through as easily as a poltergeist, had started keeping him out too. 

“I figured you of all people would know something, with all the times you’ve gotten your paints and pastels all over the lair before,” Don continues, oblivious to how Mikey’s focus has switched from the wall to him. “You’re good with this kind of stuff. And I know for a fact that Dad made you scrub your drawings off the walls at least once when we were kids.”

Mikey neither confirms nor denies this accusation.

“So how did you do it?” Don asks. Mikey hears the real question: how do I make this go away?

“Yeah, well, unfortunately we aren’t dealing with one of my masterpieces here. That’d be a whole ‘nother story – I mean, who’d wanna take that down in the first place?”

Don gives him a flat look, and Mikey knows a tough crowd when he sees one. 

“Okay, okay – straight to business, then. Got it.” Mikey purses his lips and thinks for a moment. “Did you try rubbing alcohol?”

“Uh-huh.”

To be fair, Mikey didn’t even need to ask that one, he could smell it just fine when he did his pass over the wall.

“What about vinegar?” he tries next.

“Yup, that too.”

“Ok then, how about baking soda paste? Like, mixing some baking soda with a bit of water?”

“Yes.” 

It’s subtle, but with each question, Don seems to get more and more flustered. It’s not anger –  Mikey’d sniff that out in a second. No, he’s pretty sure his brother is just embarrassed. Don likes to think of himself as responsible, but the truth is that he gets into just as much trouble as the rest of them. It had been particularly satisfying day when April had finally realized that too, after one too many impromptu adventures together.

So he pokes a little. Just for the hell of it. Just to see another emotion in his brother's eyes than worry and exhaustion.

“And you let it sit?”

“Yes.”

“For, like, a good while?”

“Yes.”

“Like at least five minutes.”

“Yes.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Don huffs and gives Mikey a pointed look. “Yes! I let it sit for ten whole minutes before scrubbing it off – twice! But that’s all it did.” He points accusingly at the smudged portion of the wall.

Mikey gives the spot another look and snorts. Yes, the baking soda clearly did not work.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Donnie,” he says, stepping back up to the wall and rubbing his hand over it. “This concrete is super porous. It’ll soak in the color from just about anything. That’s probably why the alcohol and other stuff didn’t work. My guess is it’s already stained.”

“Permanently?”

“Permanently.”

Don looks glumly at the guilty black smears. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

Mikey purses his lips, trying to find the silver lining that his brother clearly can't. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with just keeping it as is? ‘Show your work’ and all that. Isn’t that what you used to tell me all the time?”

That manages to get a laugh out of his brother. It’s quiet, but there.

“Does that mean I get extra credit?” Don quips, smile tugging at his lips.

“Like you ever needed it.”

And that’s just it – usually Don doesn’t need help. He’s never stumbled over equations or struggled to find the right words for an essay. He always knows what to do – hell, half the time he has a solution before the rest of them even know there’s a problem to be solved.

It would be the understatement of a lifetime to say that it’s not every day Mikey’s genius older brother comes to him for help. It might not be the help Mikey wants to give him right now, which would be to shoo him off to bed for a nice 24-hour power nap, but it’s the help Don’s asking for. And he wants to be just as much of a support to his brother as Donnie so often is for him.

So Mikey tries, he really does. He racks his brain, trying to think of all the tricks he’s used in the past to erase his mistakes. Crayons on the walls and markers in the tub. All the ways he tried to cover over those slips of judgment, so no one would know it happened in the first place. Like slightly changing his incorrect 6 into an 8 on his math worksheet when Dad called the correct answers out. 

And that’s when it hits him.

“Hey – what if we painted over it?”

They raid the local hardware store that night, slurping morale-boosting milkshakes loudly as they cruise through the empty aisles on shopping carts. Mikey takes full advantage of his baby-brother privilege and drags his brother through all his favorite sections first. He points at the fancy light fixtures and reimagines their lair as a vampiric castle, with red carpets, black curtains, and a chandelier in every room. They make a detour through the gardening section, and Mikey can see the gears whirring in his brother’s brain as he mumbles about “hydroponics” and “soil acidity levels” under his breath.

Once they finally get down to business, the supplies are easy enough to rustle up. Tarps and painter’s tape, some rollers and brushes too. As for the paint itself, there’s no lack of it on the football field’s worth of overburdened shelves, but finding the right shade proves a challenge. 

They stop in front of the display of color swatches. There have to be at least a hundred, Mikey thinks, as he starts to comb through them one by one.

“So what kind of vibe are we going for here?” he asks, holding up the most obnoxious shade of neon green he can find. “Think this’ll do?”

Don immediately snatches the colored cardstock from his hands and puts it back in its rightful place. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Hey, I’m the one with the eye for color here. You should listen to me more. I bet you can’t even tell the difference between these three,” he crows, snatching up three off-white swatches. 

Don stares back at him blankly. 

“Wait for real? You can’t?”

He doesn’t get an answer aside from, “The vibes should be calm, but also nothing that will mess with the lighting for experiments, so I don’t want anything dark or overly pigmented. Something in that family should be fine.” Don swirls his hand in a vague motion at the exceptionally boring swatches in Mikey’s hands.

“You got it,” Mikey says, albeit with a hint of disappointment. “This’ll be a piece of cake.”

It is not, in fact, a piece of cake. Mikey picks his favorites, to which Don has a perfect rebuttal every time. They argue themselves in circles over the slightest contrast in shade, which Mikey’s still not sure Don can detect. They take turns holding “Honied White” next to “Cotton Sheets,” just to spot the difference, explaining why this one is too yellow but that one isn’t yellow enough. Eventually it devolves from squabbling to scuffling, from scuffling to all out war, and by the end they’re throwing paint swatches at the display, each other, and just about everything else in range.

“We’re supposed to be painting my lab, not the store!” Don hollers as he hides behind a conveniently-placed forklift.

Mikey just laughs back and gathers more ammo. “You should aim higher, Donnie – we can paint the whole town!”

And if this store had a better selection of spray paint, he actually might.

It’s certainly not of his own volition that Mikey calls for a truce a few minutes later – he’d basically had a guaranteed victory, dammit. But Leo’s face appearing on his phone, noisy ringtone overpowering their yells, means that they’re running out of time. After holding up his hands in a hasty “T” for time-out, Mikey declines the call and texts that they’ll be home soon, hoping that’ll be enough for their worrywart brother. 

Don is already picking up the swatches off the floor by the time he hits “send.” Mikey joins him, gathering a rainbow in his hands, only to have it scatter across the ground when a sharp bump jostles him as Don walks by.

“Oops,” Don says, in a way that makes Mikey certain that it wasn’t even remotely an accident.

“You wanna fuckin’ go?”

“Only if you want to explain to Leo why we’re late,” Don replies, tone smugly sing-song.

Mikey huffs, accepting defeat – for now. But he hopes Don knows what’s coming for him.

The two stuff the paint swatches back on the shelf with much less attention-to-detail than they should. But, as Mikey figures, it’s really Leo’s fault, so he doesn’t feel too bad about it. Once everything is back in its semi-rightful place, though, they both realize that they’re back to the beginning of their conundrum, without a single can of paint in their cart.

“Why don’t we just go with chalkboard paint?” Mikey suggests.

The look Don gives is answer enough, but, of course, he doesn’t stop there. Mikey knows his brother isn’t opinionated about a lot of things – what movie to watch, what to have for dinner, which Real Housewives series is the best. But when he has an opinion? Well, it’s an Opinion with a big, fat, capital O. All the same, the disgusted expression on his face is, in Mikey’s opinion, uncalled for.

“Chalkboard paint?” Don repeats. “As in…like a chalkboard?”

“And they call him a genius,” Mikey quips, receiving another bump to the shoulder as a reward. “Yes, as in like a chalkboard. It makes sense – I mean, that way you wouldn’t have to worry about writing on your walls again, right?”

Don snorts out a laugh. “I guess that’s a fair point,” he says, but that’s where his praise for the idea ends. “It's just…they’re so dusty and noisy, and no matter how much you clean them, they're just never really clean, and the chalk makes everything else around it messy too? And you know when you’re holding a styrofoam cup and your skin just kind of sticks to it in a weird way? And if your fingernails touch it, it’s just so…awful?”

Mikey doesn’t, but he also doesn’t necessarily have any fond feelings for styrofoam either. So he just shrugs.

“Yeah, it’s like that,” Don says, face scrunched and looking worryingly sick. He comes back to himself eventually, dusting invisible chalk-dust off after another good shudder. “So, no. No chalkboard paint. Besides, I said nothing dark.”

“Ok then, fair. But now we’re back to square one – where we’ve been for the last thirty minutes. It’s almost midnight. Leo’s gonna give us so much shit.”

Donnie huffs and crosses his arms. “Yeah. I mean, I guess we could just do rock-paper-scissors to decide. But I just want something that feels right, you know? Maybe…”

Mikey tunes out the rest of Don’s ramblings as he looks down at the paint swatch in his hand. The varying shades of eggshell white stare back at him. They all begin to swirl together through the moisture of his sleepy eyes. He turns the swatch over to read it and snorts.

“Ok, how about this,” he says, cutting off the rest of his brother’s externally-projected internal monologue. “We pick the color that has the craziest name. My entry is Yank My Doodle.”

Don coughs out a laugh. He stops rustling through the paint display and looks back, wondering if he heard correctly. He stalks over and takes a look at the card in Mikey’s hand. “There’s no way that’s actually what it’s called.” A pause. “Oh my God, it is.”

“I dare you to find a better one.”

Despite Don’s best efforts, positing suggestions ranging from I Cannoli Imagine to Chiffon’d Of You , they both agree that their first choice just has a certain je ne sai quoi. So they add several cans to their cart. It’s a nice eggshell color – more on the side of beige than pure white, with just enough of a peach undertone that Mikey agrees it’s warm enough. They tally up their total and leave a wad of cash by the register. 

Mikey is ready to crash in bed by the time they’ve packed up their supplies and made it back to the sewers, but Don’s clearly still buzzing with excitement, just as potent as coffee. He makes a beeline for his lab, laying the supplies out neatly by his desk and measuring out the space by sight. Mikey sighs, dragging his feet behind him.

Training tomorrow is gonna be a killer.

“Hey, Dee – you sure you don’t wanna, I don’t know, go to bed?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Don turns around, sheepish grin plastered on. “No time like the present?”

“Or maybe you’re just too embarrassed to leave your unpainted wall up for everyone else to see?”

Don shushes him. “Starting a project is always the hard part, so if I get the tarp all laid out and line the borders with tape, it’ll be easier when I start painting tomorrow.”

“When I start painting tomorrow?” Mikey echoes, arms coming to cross against his chest. “Oh, so this is just a you thing now? What, don’t think you need my help anymore?”

Don blinks, confusion written easily across his features. “Well, I didn’t really think that you’d want to. It’s not exactly riveting work.”

Mikey presses his lips together, hands tightening their grip on his elbows to mimic the tightening in his chest. It’s nice – or at least it was – to have his brother throw the door to his walled fortress wide open for him, to ask his advice on something for once, instead of the other way around. To be the one helping to fix something instead of needing the help himself. To feel like things used to in the old days, when they were still kids and the two of them would spend hours dreaming up the craziest inventions they could.

When Mikey would use up all their paper and crayons to sketch up designs, giving their dreams a name, a face that Don could bring to life. When their lives were full of untested possibilities and Don’s hands were busy pushing boundaries instead of fixing everyday amenities. Mikey realizes he isn’t even sure the last time he can remember his brother working on something he was passionate about, instead of kneeling elbows-deep in the wires of their refrigerator or alarm system.

Once Mikey walks out those doors, they’ll close behind him and he’ll be behind the walls again. Part of the furniture, the background. The face that comes in periodically to provide food or company, but never anything of substance. Not good enough to stand among the marvels Don is capable of on his own.

Once he walks out those doors, who knows when they’ll open again in the same way they did today? And if there’s anything Mikey’s ever hated in his life, it’s a closed door. 

He locks eyes with Don, trying to figure out how to say what he needs to. How to say that he won’t screw it up or get in the way. That he can fix things too. And that, even if he can’t, it would still be worth it to try, even if only to do something together, like old times. 

He wants to say it all – but well, maybe Don likes how things are now, when he’s working for hours on end in perfect solitude. Maybe those old days are gone forever, and they’re locked behind doors that slammed shut a long ago and he never even noticed

He wants to ask. Ask if it would be ok if he stays, even if just this once. 

But Don beats him to it. “But if you’d like to help, you know I won’t say no.”

Mikey’s lips twitch up at those old words, the ones Don always used to say when they were kids and Mikey would stare in awe as his genius brother illluminated their brick sky with electric lights and conquered the singular sewer season of damp cold, replacing it with warmth on those chilly winter nights. Mikey would always ask how Don did it, but the two could never find a common language Don could speak and Mikey could understand. So, instead, Don would offer the best instruction he could – a free shoulder for Mikey to peer over and a set of guiding hands.

Not that Mikey could ever replicate his brother’s work. But, in those old days when all they knew were the four walls of their small home, it was like peering behind a magician’s curtain and realizing there was so much more to be found than just magic.

“Ok,” Mikey says. “But just so we’re clear, I never did say I was doing it for free.”

Don lets out a quick bark of a laugh. “Oh, I see now. Here we go. What’s your price, Mikey?”

“First – yes, first – I get to DJ while we’re painting.”

Don seems surprised by the small request. “Fine. But your playlist better be real songs, not joke songs. I don’t want a repeat of Casey’s birthday party last year.”

“Like I would do anything different!” Mikey holds his hand to his chest and furrows his brows in mock offense. “And you guys seriously exaggerate. Casey had a great time – told me himself.”

Mikey makes a note to whip together a kick-ass playlist, while also inwardly planning how many times he can get away with sliding Rick Astley into the queue. He figures that the number is probably very close to zero, but he’ll take his chances. 

“You literally played All Star three times in a row.”

“What can I say? The bangers keep comin’ and they don’t stop comin’.”

Don just rolls his eyes. “Ok, DJ Dickhead, what’s your second request?”

“That you never call me that. Ever again. But my third condition for our little contract here is that you can’t do it without me. I am an integral part of this team, and I expect to be treated as such.”

He’s sure to lay on the dramatics – a scandalized hand rests over his heart, his voice adopts something approaching a British accent, and the end of his tirade is punctuated by a sharp harrumph! But maybe he still needs to polish his craft as an actor, because Don just stares at him for a moment. Then another. 

Until eventually Don’s eyes soften and a faint smile ghosts across his face. It isn’t happy, but it isn’t sad either – maybe something in between. 

“Of course you are, Mikey,” he says. He takes a step closer and pushes his index finger into the middle of Mikey’s forehead. “And don’t you forget it.”

Mikey’s toes grip the ground, weight shifting as he steadies himself against the miniscule force. It's barely a tap, but still he blinks, feeling like his skin is flaking away, muscles shrinking to reveal the mess of his organs inside beneath Don’s gaze. But he doesn’t look away. Not once.

“So I’ll go to bed now, and in return you’ll help me out tomorrow after training,” Don says. “Deal?”

And, the thing is, Don doesn’t set traps like this. He doesn’t offer something he doesn’t intend to give. He doesn’t say things he doesn’t really mean. He doesn’t make promises just to break them. There are so many ways that he can be closed off – the times he’s lost and spacey, the ways he hides his hurt and guilt. But not when it comes to the soft smile he gives as he offers the space beside him. Never this. 

And that’s a door Mikey would die to keep from closing.

“Deal.”

Training the next morning is, in fact, a killer, despite them going to bed earlier than Don would have liked. Although, as Mikey would argue, any time before 6 A.M. would be too early in Don’s book, so he’ll take what he can get. It doesn’t mean he’s any less exhausted by the time their father calls an end to practice.

Despite their aching muscles, it only takes five minutes of panting on the tatami-mat floor before the two recover enough to lock eyes. They don’t need to speak in order for the message to pass between them –  it’s go time.

“See ya, Sensei!” they call as they bound to their feet and skitter out of the dojo and into Don’s lab, leaving their older brothers still prone on the floor.

They get to work. Don lines the floor with tarp – I’ve already messed up one surface in here , he says – while Mikey sets up the fans for ventilation. They push tables out of the way and press painter’s tape to the corners of the wall. Don insists they need to scrub the wall first so the paint will stick better, though Mikey’s not sure he sees the purpose – it’s just some boring white paint, and with how uneven the wall is, it’s going to look wonky no matter how many layers they slather on. 

If there’s anything their father taught them, though, it’s that a job worth doing is worth doing right. So they take a bucket, filled this time with soapy water instead of paint, and scrub months of dust from the concrete crevices.

Mikey, true to his word, manages a constant flow of upbeat tracks, staying away from any songs that could even slightly be connected with internet culture (for now, anyway). He sings along to each 80s hit, and Don harmonizes wildly off-key, leaving Mikey to suspect that his brother may be both colorblind and tone-deaf. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

When the stone dries and the time finally comes for the paint itself, they don’t bother with coveralls or aprons. It would probably be too much of a pain to find ones that would fit over their shells, anyway. 

They slather the paint on, layer by painstaking layer. It’s a little more satisfying than washing cement, but not by much. Leo pops his head in at one point, surprised that Mikey hasn’t rushed off for a snack or comic break yet. But as boring as something like this should be, and maybe would have been to him a year ago, he almost doesn’t want it to end.

That is, until they actually have to wait for it all to dry. 

Because there really is something to the phrase “like watching paint dry,” Mikey discovers, as he does just that. And boy is it dull. It’s like the moisture just clings to every inch of the wall, so much he swears it might even start dripping. Or maybe that’s just the fumes talking. Because there’s no way drips could form from the kick-ass job they just did, if he does say so himself.

Don cracks his knuckles. “Well, I guess that’s it then,” he says, clapping Mikey on his shell. “It looks nice! Good job.”

Mikey smirks. Great minds indeed.

“I could use some water,” Don says. “Wanna get something from the kitchen?”

“Hmm?” Mikey hums, diverting his attention from their masterpiece. “Nah, I’m good, thanks. Be there in a bit.”

Don nods and slides his hand from Mikey’s shoulder as he steps out and heads for the kitchen. Alone now, Mikey steps closer to the wall, eyes roaming from floor to ceiling, marveling at the smooth texture. Somehow they managed it, even on the worst possible canvas in the world. Except – there, in the bottom right corner, his corner. Mikey crouches down and scoots up to the wall, where damp paint meets plain concrete. There’s a slight warble in the otherwise flat surface. A series of ridges and a small distension – maybe where he raised the brush too quickly, or accidentally scuffed it with his leg while moving from one edge to the other.

He frowns. He’s not sure why he cares so much, really. If it were his own sketchbook or canvas, or even his own bedroom wall, he’d call it a day. Say it adds character. But this isn’t any of those things. This is Don’s lab, where the main miracles of their lives are built. It’s the birthplace of everything their brother pours his heart and soul and every waking moment of his time into, just to make them safe and comfortable.

Don wouldn’t ever just dust off his hands and call it a day when there was still a loose screw or a dented panel he could buff out.

So Mikey won’t either.

Thoughts revolve through his head as he sits there, wondering how to fix this, and it occurs to him that a painting this large and grand should be signed. Writing on the wall is what put them here in the first place, sure, but the wall looks so much more bare now. It needs something, a bit of character. Something they can look at and say – Yes, that’s mine. I did that. And something that won’t be a mistake anymore, but something he chose to do.

Sticking his thumb out as far as it will stretch away from the rest of his knuckles, he nestles the print of his finger into the drying paint. He holds it still there for a moment, feeling the cool moisture cling to his skin, before pulling it back.

He smiles. In his finger’s wake, an ocean of grooves has appeared in the paint, each line swirling in and around the others like a maelstrom. His own special pattern, now a world for smaller figures he scratches in with his fingernail. A boat climbing the cascading waves, a sailor toppling overboard. Seagulls escaping dark thunderclouds and roiling waves.

His mind and body go somewhere else while he does this. Or, no, that’s not right – they’re still right here. But it's like part of him is subsumed into the act. It feels like his body becomes more of an extension of his will when he paints than in any other moment, even when flipping and directing his limbs through the most difficult katas. He feels the emotions of his canvas – the relief of a drowning sailor as a life raft appears at his side, the elation of a watchman as he spots dry land. All of it – the chaotic sea, the hopeful horizon, the vast white emptiness – it’s all him.

Maybe that’s why the scene grows so much beyond what he intended. When he finally sits back to look at the finished etching, he’s not sure what to feel. Pride, yes, for turning something so small and simple into something new, bursting with life. But also dread, because what actually was he thinking? Seriously. Why didn’t he just try to paint over it again like a normal person?

Because what used to be just the smallest, tiniest little imperfection is now a series of scratches on the wall, like something Klunk would have done to sharpen her claws. It’s so much worse now. He’d be able to spot it from the doorway like this. Don might not have noticed it before (except of course he would have and probably had already because Don notices everything), but now he’ll definitely notice, and maybe he can paint over it again, but-

But it’s already too late, because familiar footsteps are already padding closer and closer towards him, and soon Don is right behind him, looking down at him and his scrawled maritime disaster.

Mikey smiles up sheepishly at his brother. He’s waiting for Don’s bemused and slightly concerned laugh, or that awful, slightly disappointed furrow in his brow as he asks what in the world he was thinking. Wondering why he’d ruin something they’d just spent the whole day working on. Shooing him from the lab before he can screw up anything else.

But Don is silent as he crouches down and squints at the etching. He turns his head this way and that. He purses his lips in thought. 

After a moment, he turns to Mikey. “Do you take commissions?”

They go back that night for more paint.

Chapter Text

Mikey isn’t sure what to paint at first. There are so many options – a window to the outside world, the rolling fields of vibrant green grass that surround April’s mountain cabin, or swirling galaxies from their travels. Or something abstract, something neither of them have seen before and perhaps never will.

What he does know is that, whatever he ends up painting, he wants it to be perfect. Perfect like how Don makes things – no screw stripped, no wires crossed. Perfect, just this once. After all, this is his first official client – the drawings Master Splinter requests for Father’s Day presents every year don’t count.

He tries to elicit ideas from Don first.

“What do you want me to paint?” he asks, sitting on his stool by the lab’s empty wall. His palette is ready, paints piled and unopened on his side table, waiting to share their spark. 

Don looks up from the project in his hands. It looks like a walkie-talkie of some sort. “Hmmm,” he hums, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t know. Whatever you feel like, I guess.”

Mikey rolls his eyes so far back that his head lolls as he turns his gaze to the ceiling. “Wow,” he groans. “That is so helpful.”

Don gives a shrug and a sheepish smile. “Sorry? I’m not very good at this kind of thing.”

“What, are you about to tell me that you’re not creative?” Mikey asks, deadpan, as he motions to the hundreds of gizmos sitting on the shelves, designed for purposes he can’t even begin to imagine. “Try again.”

“That’s different.”

“Sure, sure, whatever you say. Doesn’t matter – just give me something to work with!”

“Um…maybe I can tell you what I don’t want?”

It’s a start, Mikey supposes. “Lay it on me.”

“Well, I want the general vibe in here to be…motivational. Inspiring. So nothing too violent or dark.”

Mikey lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Yeah, cuz I was totally planning on painting satanic rituals all over your walls. Really thought you’d love that.”

“And I thought you’d like the freedom of picking whatever you wanted to do!”

Mikey holds his arms up in a prolonged shrug. Don does have a point. Usually, he would like the freedom of just doing whatever he wanted, when the rest of their lives are so constrained by circumstance. To be honest, he’s not really sure why he doesn’t now. It’s almost like there’s a chain wrapped around his arm, digging into his flesh and binding his fingers together. Every time an image comes to his mind and his hand moves to paint, someone or something pulls on the other end and forces him to stop. Even if the constraints allowed him to have any ideas or will of his own, there’s a part of him that worries it wouldn’t be enough. He worries that maybe it would be better to quit while he’s ahead and say this was all just a big mistake.

“Yeah,” he says eventually. “But I want you to like it.”

“Oh, well that’s easy, then!” Don says, and Mikey perks up, eagerly awaiting the answer. “I like everything you draw!”

Mikey groans and slumps over. “You’re really no help at all.”

Don smiles widely, like he’s proud of it. “I know.”

It takes several hours of waffling between ideas before, eventually, he settles on something simple. Something he could draw with his eyes closed, because he sees it nearly every night, whether he’s awake or asleep. Something familiar and warm.

He starts sketching the outlines of the New York City skyscape, barely needing to glance at the reference he’s pulled up on his tablet. He plots it out in his sketchpad first, making sure he can get the perspective right, adding details here and there. The sounds of his pencil blend in with Don’s, as he plots schematics on blueprint paper. Something about it brings a smile to his face. Each of them works with a different medium, but here they sit, back to back, condensing themselves and their dreams into a mere two dimensions and willing the page to reflect the promise they see in reality.

Mikey knows he’ll have to time his artistic sessions carefully. He knows his brother and the exact conditions he demands from his workspace. Sanitizing equipment perched on every surface. Temperature monitored within a hundredth of a degree. Diffuser lenses over all the light fixtures, damping any harshness. No contaminants, no unknown variables. 

And, of course, peace and quiet – the foundation on which the whole frame is built. And Mikey would hate to send it all toppling over.

But one day inspiration strikes – suddenly, as it tends to. Without thinking, he scampers into the lab, paints in hand and a stained apron streaming behind him – his own coat of many colors. He throws a rushed hello to his brother and charges straight towards his stool by the far wall.

He sees toxic chemical symbols and the blue flame of the bunsen burner too late. He pauses where he stands, bent halfway over to set his tools down by the wall. Shit. He should apologize. Better yet, he should get out of here before he screws something up and makes his brother regret this whole arrangement.

But before a single syllable can leave his mouth or his feet can trace their steps back to safety, Don pulls up his protective goggles and turns off the gas. The flame goes out.

Mikey opens his mouth to apologize, to say he’ll come back another time, that he won’t be a bother anymore. Until he sees the soft smile

As if to say: I know that look.

Don nods to the wall. The gesture is small, but it’s all Mikey needs.

“Thanks, Dee.”

Really, looking back, he should have known that Donnie would recognize a spark of inspiration when he saw one. After all, his brother’s a genius and probably gets at least ten a day. 

Not like him, Mikey thinks, as he stares at the Beksinskian hellscape before him. It’s a mess of crooked lines and halfway-finished buildings that look more like eldritch monsters built of brush-stroke bones than sturdy towers of steel and glass. The sky is only partly filled in, because he can’t decide if it should be cloudy or clear. Instead of the bustling home he loves, the New York City he’s recreated is an unsettling liminal space, a ghost town devoid of any actual life.

Mikey squints his eyes, wondering if maybe by blurring all of the colors together he’ll be able to tell what’s missing. Because something is missing, he thinks. Yes, the mural is only half filled in – most of the buildings are just held up by sketched scaffolding, and the sky longs for its missing stars. But it’s something more than that, something deeper. Something is wrong on a fundamental level, and the wrongness is spreading out from some unknown epicenter and ruining the entire piece. He just isn’t sure what it is, and he can’t fill in the rest until he knows.

Mikey glances back at Don, who’s absorbed in soldering a circuit board at his work bench. Safety glasses down, hands steadily and constantly moving. Always making progress. 

Mikey sighs. He and his brother are very different people. Of course he knows this. He’s known it all his life. Still, it’s humbling to sit here with him, back to back, and be faced with just how wide the gap between them is. He wonders when it started feeling like this, like he was running behind his brother instead of right next to him. 

Don has always been like a machine in motion, like he’d been installed with lithium ion batteries that would last for several years before needing a recharge – or the occasional caffeine touch-up. Mikey can’t remember a time in his life when his brother wasn’t working on something. Since they were kids, Don’s brain had always outrun any creation he’d ever dreamed up. Even when he was sick and confined to bed rest, he was infamous for turning the blank ceiling above him into a fresh blueprint chart, and he would move his hands through the air as though slotting ghost pieces into place. Always moving and working, always productive.

In contrast, Mikey has been sitting motionless in front of his mural for the past hour. If he looks back on how he’s spent his last several months, maybe even years, he wonders how much time he’s similarly squandered while his brother made monuments to each of his minutes. Mikey knows he’s certainly bragged enough about getting all the trophies on some of his hardest video games, about his speed run records he’s never been able to livestream. And honestly, he is proud of those. 

But maybe he shouldn’t be. Maybe he should have spent more of his time contributing to something meaningful, or at least into developing his skills into something greater. Maybe he’s already so far behind that he’ll never catch up. 

Maybe he never should have agreed to this.

He shakes his head. This isn’t helping, he thinks, as he gets up from his stool and decides to set his thoughts down with his paints. He leaves them behind as he treks out of their home, grabbing his skateboard on the way. He speeds away to the closest skate park – a place made for making mistakes. 

He’s watched the skaters there before, taking turns diving down the vert ramps to master their tricks. Each beginner’s attempt at an airwalk is a variation on the same theme – the first try might end with their feet missing the board and slamming into the concrete, while the second might end with them losing their balance and slamming their face instead. They wipe out over and over again, right in front of everyone. But they pick themselves up and keep going, with their audience just waiting to clap once they finally make it.

Mikey’s never had an audience for his own skating practice, but he’s always wondered what that would be like. To be alone in a sea of strangers all cheering for your success. Sure, he and his brothers support each other in their ninjutsu studies, and everything else – they have to, if no one else will. But how well they learn their split kicks directly impacts how well they’re able to protect each other in the field. And while family remembers your successes, family also remembers your mistakes. Even though Mikey knows they mean well, sometimes he’s all too aware of the eyes on his back. He wonders how it would feel instead, that support and rush of success – not because it was imperative that he master what he was learning, but just because it looked sick as hell.

He returns hours later, fully exhausted and with a few scrapes on his skin from trying and failing to land a kickflip body varial 540, but with a wide smile on his face. He’s back late enough that most everyone is in bed, so there’s no one hounding him to cover up in bandages, but he does at least wash himself off. On his way back from the bathroom, he notices that the light in Don’s lab is off. He walks in, wondering if maybe now inspiration will strike.

He stops just short of grabbing his paintbrush. There’s a piece of paper sitting on his stool, with familiar chicken-scratch scrawled across. The top of the paper reads “Underrated things about New York.” Bullet points punctuate the space below:

• Second Time Around and browsing estate sales with April
• Rooftop runs
• Us (duh)
• That one building under construction where Leo bonked his head on the rebar, even though he denies it (we know the truth)
• George the pizza delivery guy who gives us free garlic bread
• That one guy who raises pigeons and offers to have them deliver messages if you tell him a secret
• Watching people fight over parking spots
• The albino crocodile Raph and Leo still claim lives in the sewers (guys, we’re not seven anymore, give it up already)

He smiles wide at the words, reading them top to bottom and then back up again. Something about it brings memories surging back. How could he have forgotten all the times Don’s run into a wall and flopped next to him on the couch, moaning about running into a dead end that he’d never recover from? And all the times Mikey had sat with him, bouncing ideas back and forth, throwing the craziest thoughts he had at the wall, just to see if even one might stick? 

He may not understand technology the way Don does, just like Don can’t draw more than a wonky stick-figure whose legs are so crooked it looks like someone took a hammer to their shins. But it was never the execution that mattered in those late night brainstorming sessions. All that mattered was a listening ear and a non-judgmental eye.

Mikey drinks in the list Don left as an offering and wants to smack himself upside the head, like Raph’s so fond of doing. He of all people should know that New York has never been what rises to the top. There’s a whole nother world below too.

“Dee-Dee!” Mikey strains his vocal cords as he growls low and loud, like the frontrunner of Metallica. It’s one of the best ways to announce one’s presence in a room, he thinks, as he enters the lab.

“Mikey,” Don replies in turn, voice equally gravelly. It’s uncanny, really – the impression. Although, something about it is a bit off – metallic, even, in a way that reminds Mikey of the Shredder somehow. He has to pause in the doorway for a moment to shake off that feeling of deja-vu before continuing to his work station.

“You’re weirdly good at that,” he admits as he sits and begins wetting his brushes.

Don shrugs but doesn’t look up from his task. “There’s a reason the lab is soundproofed.”

“And that reason is so you can practice your screamo without giving the rest of us a free concert?”

“You always were quick to catch on.”

“Not as quick as you are to bullshit.”

They ease into a comfortable silence, punctuated by the swish of water as Mikey washes his brushes between colors, and the soft grinding of gears and screws into place. This time, when Mikey stares at his work and can’t find a way through, he casts a look back at his brother and calls for his attention.

“I’m not sure about this section here,” he says, pointing to a set of windows peeking out from an apartment building. “It looks kinda empty right now, so I want to add something in maybe one or two of the apartments. But I’m not sure what exactly. Any ideas?”

It had been far easier to map out the myriad of sewer tunnels that now run along the bottom half of the composition. While most humans might imagine that the underground lacks the same night life of the surface world, Michelangelo grew up knowing otherwise. In the most chaotic times, he finds reassurance in the fact that, no matter how things change, he can still hear the soundtrack of his childhood – the drone of flies buzzing their wings, low bass croaks from frogs, harmonizing notes and high hats from the squeaking and scuttling of rats. While Don might know the scientific names for the native flora and fauna, Mikey’s memorized their shades and shapes and recreated them on this wall in painstaking detail.

Don gives the query a respectable moment of consideration. “You know, there’s a lot of people we’ve saved but never run into again. Maybe you could imagine what their lives look like now?”

Mikey bobs his head in thought. “Hmm…that’s not bad actually. But, I don’t know, it’s not quite resonating. Maybe if you gave it to me again, but in a Kermit voice this time?” 

Don scoffs and just continues tinkering. But the next time Mikey asks for a burst of inspiration, he’s met with a frightening approximation of his second-favorite green animal.

“Well,” Don says, voice barely recognizable under the nasally tone, “how do you feel about rainbows?”

Mikey blinks, frozen. “Ok, what the hell? How do you have a better Kermit impression than me? The Donnie I know would never have kept this secret from me for the last 16 years.”

Don raises an eyebrow, and, after a moment of consideration, Mikey shakes his head in defeat – he absolutely would have.

Mikey turns back to his piece, but periodically he shoots ideas back and forth with Don, each time requesting a new impression. Don never responds with his request immediately, but by the time Mikey asks for another suggestion, Don has some new silly voice prepared for him – almost like he’s practicing in the interim, or downloading his next voice impression file, like he’s somehow plugged into the Matrix. As Don eases into Mikey’s game, his suggestions for the mural get more outlandish too, and honestly Mikey isn’t mad at it.

Mikey eases into their working session too, his years of ninja training slipping from his mind. Tension eases from his body and his muscles relax, fully giving into their new task. It’s a nice feeling, he thinks, as he lets his wrist sweep in lazy loops.

There’s a danger, however, in letting his guard down – one he’s abruptly reminded of as their  father’s deep and displeased voice erupts behind him. Mikey’s glad he’s already so close to their makeshift med-bay, because his heart nearly stops. 

“Michelangelo!” Master Splinter’s voice roars. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Mikey shoots out of his chair and swivels around on his heel so quickly he nearly slips and topples over to land face-first in his paints. Luckily, he catches himself, but, to be honest, he probably could have used the color with how quickly blood is draining from his face. He can’t imagine what he’s done this time to get Master Splinter so angry. If you ask him, he’s been a model son this past week, and he even has Don’s express permission to be here. He’s about to say so when-

He can’t find their father anywhere. He turns left and right, but the only person in front of him is Donnie. Donnie, who’s holding a device in front of his mouth, which almost covers his wicked smirk.

Mikey stands still and stares, uncomprehendingly. Until he puts together the strange series of vocal impressions Don has managed over the past few hours, and the new device Don has refused to explain the purpose of, despite all Mikey’s badgering.

“Donnie!” He tries to sound stern, with an affronted hand posed on his chest. But even he can’t stop the breathless laughs that burst out of him. “What the hell?”

Don’s giggling too as he lowers the device from his mouth. “I’m sorry, Mikey, I tried to resist, but I really couldn’t. It was sitting right in front of me.”

MIkey’s still recovering his composure as he searches for something to say. “How did you do that?”

Don pushes a few knobs on the device in his hand and then raises it back up to his mouth. “Science, my good fellow!” he says – but it’s no longer his voice. Instead it sounds strangely like…Professor Honeycut?

Don hands the device over to him, and Mikey marvels at it, twisting it this way and that.

“I was thinking a device like this could be useful,” he begins his explanation. “As it is, whenever we run into a pack of the Foot and take them out, reinforcements always know they’re needed if they haven’t heard from the group for a while. I was thinking that, maybe if we could analyze their voices and get hold of their communicators, we could send a false message back and avoid an unnecessary fight altogether.”

Don chuckles to himself. “But then you gave me an idea for some other applications too.”

Mikey shakes his head in awe. “Damn, Donnie. That’s awesome!”

Donnie shrugs, as he usually does when receiving a compliment. “There’s still a bunch of kinks to work out. I was hoping I could find someone to help me test it?”

Within just a second, Mikey already has a dozen devious ideas percolating in his brain. “Ah man, I don’t know,” he says, a sly grin spreading across his face. “That sounds pretty boring. I’m not sure I’m the right person for the job.”

“Oh, absolutely not.” Don’s grin and sardonic tone match his. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Hopefully you can find some way to have fun with it.”

Don shoots him a quick wink and turns back to his desk.

Oh, will he ever.

Three hours later finds the two of them in metaphorical stitches, having just barely escaped needing real ones. Suffice it to say, Raph had found Mikey’s creative methods for prototype testing less rigorous than aggravating. Thanks to a Mikey-patented combination of gaslighting and well-timed quips under the guise of different voices, Raph had been almost driven to thinking he’d lost his mind, before he’d wisened up and caught Mikey in the act. And when Don had rushed in trying to save his prototype from being crushed under Raph’s heel – well, their resident genius hadn’t gotten away unscathed either. 

While the two of them had darted out of the lair and to the Battle Shell for safety, Mikey’d felt a hint of pride as he caught Leo and Master Splinter looking at each other and trying not to laugh. So even if his ribs hurt a little bit, it was worth it in the end.

Don’s chest, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be bothering him, seeing as he can’t stop laughing even with their home 10 minutes behind them. With one hand firmly gripping the wheel, the other wipes tears from his eyes as he chokes back his next fit of giggles.

“The look on his face…oh my God, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so confused,” Don wheezes out, and Mikey knows what he means. Raph is King, 16 years running, of the “I’m confused because you’re being an idiot” look, as well as a number of other scathing combinations of raised brows, crossed arms, and eyes expressing concern to the point of condescension. But actual, true befuddlement? Now that was a rarity. 

Don clears his throat and blinks away new moisture from his eyes. Mikey wonders if he should be concerned about his brother’s ability to drive, given how blurry his vision must be at this point. But if there’s anyone who knows what he’s doing, it’s Don – he’s the one who taught the rest of them to drive, after all.

Actually, now that Mikey thinks about it, maybe that would explain why they all have questionable parallel parking skills. And poor judgment of speed when it comes to sharp turns. And-

“I can’t believe you actually thought I could do impressions,” Don goes on. “It’d be like saying Leo somehow learned how to lie! I mean, you’ve heard me sing along to the radio.”

Mikey rolls his eyes. He doesn’t mind having egg on his face, though, if it means seeing his brother laugh like they used to when they were kids, and the dumbest comment from either of them could send them into a laughing fit so bad in the middle of dinner that their dad would have to separate them.

It’s a strange world that they live in, he thinks, and an even stranger family that he has – one where his older brother can be fully expected and relied on to pilot an alien spacecraft or dismantle a nuclear bomb, but never to sing even remotely on key. Even if he had a million years to create comics, he wouldn’t ever be able to dream up characters like the friends and family he knows best.

The two of them drive on a little further, until Don slows the car to a stop in a narrow one-way street down in the East Village, right by an alleyway. He parks in a way Mikey will simply call illegal and leave it at that, just because he’s feeling generous today. It’s fairly late, but still a while til midnight, which means the city is still alive and showing no signs of slowing down. 

Don turns to pat Mikey’s shoulder. “How do you feel about some people watching?” 

Mikey grins and immediately hops out the door, sure that will be enough of an answer. He hears the engine shut off behind him a moment later and hears his brother tracing his footsteps – through the alley, up the fire escape, and onto the rooftop of a relatively small residential building, only five stories tall. The two mosey over to the edge and sit. Don sets his duffel bag down by his side and pulls out two Cokes. They crack them in unison and tap them together gently.

“Cheers,” Mikey says, taking a sip and letting the bubbles pleasantly sting his nose on the way out.

He grins as he catches sight of a trio of tourists, judging by their bold NEW YORK hats, tired gaits, and what must be over a dozen bags between the three of them from souvenir spots all over Manhattan. He nudges Don and motions vaguely to the stack of books one is carrying. “Bet they’re coming from The Strand. Bunch o’ nerds, probably wouldn’t call it a trip to New York without a stop there.”

Don nods and narrows his eyes, even though it would take a good pair of binoculars to make out the book titles from this distance. “The one on the right studies political science, and he’s been to New York before. You can tell he’s leading the rest of the group, even though he’s not in front. He likes to manage from the background.”

It’s an old game of theirs – as old as their games of hide and seek in the sewers and follow-the-leader on scavenging nights. In those days, when they were small and felt even smaller, trampled beneath the feet of the surface-dwellers, they would gaze up through grates and storm drains and make up lives for these people who lived in what seemed a storybook world. 

It’s different now, finally looking down from above, at these people who seemed so strong and untouchable, like the gods and monsters from myths their father would read to them at bedtime. Most nights nowadays, he and his brothers are so high up on the rooftops that the humans look more like ants, small enough now for them to trample over. From only a few stories up, though, Mikey can distinguish the details that make them really feel like individuals: the swagger in their steps, the accessories so intentionally purchased and placed.

Every now and then, as a rare and dangerous treat, he’ll even see them on their level, eye to eye. Central Park is an obvious spot for people-watching, but Mikey’s personal favorite is Prospect Park. Wide open swaths of grass, with kids playing soccer and their parents watching from lawn chairs and picnic blankets. Dogs leading their owners by the leash and squirrels jumping from tree to tree, taunting passers-by with the leaves that fall down in their wake.

Of course, at this hour, two young men staring people down while dressed in trench coats and fedoras would certainly draw some uncomfortable attention. So Mikey accepts his banishment to the roofs of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

A young couple passes by with a young child serving as the link between them, grasping tightly onto one hand from each of her parents. The father holds a takeout bag in his free hand, while the mother uses hers to support her swollen belly.

“Ooh, man, I could really go for some Moroccan right now,” Mikey says, not sure if he can actually smell the warm spices of roasted eggplant wafting up from below, or if his stomach is trying to tell him something. What he’s certain of, though, is that the man’s dinner jacket is two sizes too big, and the woman’s sandals shift around her swollen feet with every step. Tonight was probably a splurge for them.

“They’re celebrating their kid’s birthday,” Don imagines, even though he says it as a statement. “But she’s actually more excited about the fact that she’s getting a little sibling.”

The little one squeals as her parents lift her up between their arms and then let her swing back down, laughing and speaking in a language Mikey doesn’t understand.

“They asked her opinion on what they should name their new kid at dinner – they want her to feel involved in the process. But internally, they’re wondering if they should give their kid a name that honors their heritage or will help them assimilate.”

Mikey nods. “Or maybe they’re thinking of bucking the system altogether. Names from the Italian Renaissance are making a comeback, I hear.”

As the little family walks back to their small corner of the world, Mikey takes a moment to survey the windows of the building across from them, each with families and stories of their own.

Suddenly, he thinks that maybe this view isn’t too bad. In fact, it might be the exact angle he’s been looking for.

Mikey returns to his canvas after their evening of people watching with a new determination: he wants to immortalize his family on the wall too. Over the next few days, he brings his other older brothers into what he’s dubbed his and Don’s Sanctuary of Semi-Solitude – it might be presumptuous to claim co-ownership of the space, but he thinks he can maybe get away with it now that he’s become a persistent fixture there. 

Mikey dreams of a New York, not as it necessarily is, but as he and his brothers experience it. He recruits Leo, thanks to a heavy helping of puppy dog eyes, to stand up against the wall as he traces his oldest brother’s outline. He turns the bumpy shape into the shadow of an apartment building. He and his brothers may live in the city’s shadows, but in the past years he’s also grown to think of the city as living in theirs. They use their bodies as shields to cast a blanket of security over the streets below, where the ordinary citizens can remain ignorant of the dangers lurking out of sight.

There may be no monuments in the Hamato name that inspire hordes of tourists to make pilgrimage, but Mikey knows his family has made its mark on this city, on its every alleyway, every brick. He dips Raph’s hands in paint and conceals his fingerprints among the leaves of every tree, for each life they’ve saved and help to grow. He draws ribbons of their bandanna colors through the clouds, and the streaks remind him of headlights and streetlights – sometimes their only companions on patrol.

He lovingly places April in the storefront of her antique shop, Second Time Around, dusting a vase off while Casey is caught in the moment before he breaks one. Quarry and her friends find their place on the corner, talking easily by the bus stop and relishing the open air.

The city’s underbelly grows as well, from the ruins of their old lair to the sprawling footprint of their new one. The pipes become the maze his racing mind constructed as a child, full of twists and dead ends and secret passageways only the bravest of adventurers could find. This time, though, instead of albino crocodiles and giant spiders, the sewers house friendly faces. Professor Honeycut takes a leisurely stroll, no longer chased by Triceratons across the galaxy. When Leatherhead stops by to help Don on his project and sees his likeness reflected on the wall, surrounded by all the injured animals he takes in and nurses back to health, he bursts into tears on the spot. Mikey is subjected to the longest and tightest hug he’s ever experienced, but it’s a welcome gesture from a friend who so often fears his own strength. 

Finally, he feels ready to paint his brothers. He plots a spot on one of the rooftops and dares to mar his skyline with green shells and a rainbow of bandanna tails streaming in imagined wind. He’s unaware of how much time he spends standing there painting, counting the passing minutes only in cricks in his spine and joints that need popping. It’s probably a good thing, he thinks, as he takes a step back and frowns. 

It’s not, well…

It’s not good. There’s really no sidestepping the truth. The proportions are all wrong, and the colors, which had seemed so accurate at the time, are jarring now in the evening light the rest of the piece is blanketed under. He huffs, letting out the frustration of having slaved over something that’s obviously not worth anyone’s time.

Mikey wonders if there’s any way he can salvage what he has so he can avoid starting over from scratch, when the door to the lab swings open. He curses, and not even under his breath. Of course Don has to come in right now, just when he’s screwed up the whole thing and it’s ruined and ugly and just awful and-

It’s ok. Maybe he can fix this before Don comes in and has a chance to look at the cancerous green mass growing on his canvas of indigo skies and silky white stars.

“Hey, Mike.” Or not. “How’s it going?”

“Great! Just great.” Mikey tries to scumble the edges, blending the outline of his family with the background. “Never better.”

A pause. “Did I come in at a bad time?”

“Nope, nope. Definitely not. Nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen! Move along now!” 

He drops the brush, not even bothered by the splotches it stamps across the floor as it rolls this way and that. He snatches a cloth from his table, drapes it over his index finger, and smears the makeshift eraser across the wall. He frowns, as it barely changes the image. Maybe his finger isn’t big enough, maybe he should use his entire hand –

“Hey.” Don’s hand wraps around his wrist, shaking with tension as he tries to scrub away the offending colors. Don’s eyes, in contrast, are the same rich brown they’ve always been – steady and calm, as though there’s not a problem in sight.

“Show your work and all. Right?”

As though, maybe, it’s not the worst thing to be seen.

Mikey stalls, letting Don’s hand guide his from the wall, revealing the picture beneath. It’s smudged to hell and back, the previous rainbow all blurred together now in streaks of muddy brown. But there’s movement there, like a comet setting out into the dark night, making its own path. It’s how he imagines they must look to the rare lucky onlooker who catches a glimpse of them, when it feels like they’re flying faster than light across rooftops, truly free in body and soul.

“Yeah,” Mikey echoes, face morphing into a real smile. “Show your mistakes.”

Whether or not Mikey draws Don into chatting, it’s rare that the two sit in true silence. Sometimes they put music on in the background, other times podcasts. Today, though, a police procedural plays in the background, filling the lab with overdramatic music and on-the-nose dialogue.

“The mom did it for sure,” Mikey accuses, not taking his eyes off his mural for even a moment. His hand drags a fine tip brush across a stop sign, filling in its block white letters. 

Don snorts. “No way, it’s the best friend. For sure.”

When they make it to the obligatory forensic science scene, Mikey hears the sound of hammering behind him cease. He turns around to find Don’s eyes glued to the dinky CRT TV plugged into the far wall.

Mikey’s about to rag on him about his doctor crush who’s info-dumping on screen, but his brother beats him to the punch. 

“You know, I always wanted to be like that when I grew up.”

Mikey snorts. “No, duh.”

Don rolls his eyes but otherwise doesn’t take the bait. “I thought they were the coolest – the snazzy white coat, the pristine white lab. Stainless steel instruments. Everything they had was perfect. And they always knew the answers to everything. I thought…well, I wanted to be just like that.”

Mikey cocks his head to the side, taking in his brother’s wistful tone and far-off gaze. He’d never truly thought about it before, but Don has never worn a white lab coat – not even before they met Bishop and Dr. Stockman, and that particular image of a bonafide scientist was forever tainted. The walls of his lab have never been pure white either – even before the two started this project, Don had just left the walls as he’d found them, rough and gray.

“But, well, you all know how many times I’ve set this lab on fire.” Don’s lips quirk up slightly as, to prove his point, he gestures to the top right corner of the ceiling, which bears a coal-black singe from where Don’s 3rd attempt at making a smoke bomb, quite literally, blew up in his face.

It’s true – Mikey remembers the occasion well. A thunderous boom rocking the lair, Mikey and his brothers racing to the lab to survey the damage. Master Splinter tutting and shaking his head at the shattered glass sprinkling the floor and embedded in Don’s hands.

And yet, just a few days later, Don had presented them with a perfect smoke bomb.

It suddenly strikes Mikey that, despite the reality of his brother’s many experiences with trial and error, this is the image of Don that prevails. It’s not the hundred times he’s failed. It’s what he’s created in spite of it, because of it.

Don trails off, gaze wandering from the TV to the row of inventions tenderly arranged on shelves. Some remain unfinished, springs uncoiled and screws missing. They were Don’s first attempts at designing his own creations, rather than just fixing appliances their father had managed to drag home. The materials were cobbled together from junkyards all across town, and despite Don’s discerning eye, there’s only a certain level of quality one can find in another’s hand-me-downs. Sometimes rust can’t be removed nor cracks fully sealed. 

Further along the shelf sit older prototypes, the very beginnings of what later morphed into the perfection Mikey knows has saved their lives countless times. Finally, there are the masterpieces, smooth and spotless – with seamless welding and sleek designs, better than anything else Mikey’s ever seen. He’d even say they rival the advanced alien technology they’ve brushed up against.

Don’s hands nurse his latest project, now nearly finished. The console of the device still resembles a walkie-talkie, but its previous jet black design has now been filled in with stickers and doodles, all hinting at the device’s more nefarious uses. Don smiles at it, running his fingers over the smiley that warns: use at your own risk!

Mikey looks back at his painting. He thinks about all the colors he’s blended together and wrapped lovingly across the concrete, despite Don’s initial instructions of “nothing too dark.” He thinks about pristine, spotless white walls and childhood dreams. He wonders if something like this could also ever be enough, let alone “perfect.”

But Don takes the question from him and simply looks over the mural taking shape across from him. “It’s looking great.”

Mikey mirrors the genuine smile stretched across his brother’s face.

Days fly by into weeks. It’s not always easy to find the time and energy to work on his mural, between constant patrols and occasional periods of healing after them. One time, his shoulders are so bruised from being tackled to the ground by Hun that he can’t even raise his paintbrush. Another time, he’s holed up in Don’s lab but strictly limited to the convalescent cot, at least until his blood transfusion and saline drips have finished. Worst of all, one evening, he’s carried home so concussed he can’t even remember that he started the project in the first place.

Motivation waxes and wanes, along with his ability to actually turn his inner vision into something others can see as well. But eventually, one evening, he steps back and lets his arm fall after placing what he thinks is its last brushstroke.

He takes it in, all of it. The skyline he walks in his dreams, the trees swaying in imagined wind tunneling between buildings. The people walking the streets, strange and familiar alike.

But what he’s most proud of are the final, finishing details, the ones he didn’t originally plan on.

On the painted sidewalk, a man is caught in free-fall as he trips on his shoelaces, carry-home pizza flying up in the air – its trajectory clearly headed for the nearest open sewer grate.

In one of the subway tunnels in the underground portion of the painting, he’s recreated his first ever attempt at graffiti – complete with choppy kerning between the letters and wavy lines where his 12-year-old self had intended straight. Their recreated lair is bedazzled with Leo’s first flimsy attempts at pottery, half folded in on themselves, and crooked calligraphy characters with dots and lines all out of place – the same ones that still hang in their father’s room to this day. Raph’s first knitted blanket, with its end side nearly half as long as the beginning thanks to all the stitches dropped along the way, lays across the back of their couch; each mismatched color stands out in a rainbow of all the different yarn scraps Raph scavenged to create it. And up high, on a nondescript rooftop, lies Donnie’s first attempt at night-vision goggles, whose neon-green glow only served to make the wearer visible to everyone in a 5-mile radius. And there, in midair, nearly in the clouds, are the four of them – moving so fast, they’re almost a blur.

It’s the city, their life -- mistakes and all.

Mikey hears Don’s footsteps as his brother comes up next to him, sensing the finality in Mikey’s assessment. A surge of anxiety swells up in him, telling him that he should temper his brother’s expectations. That maybe he should pretend he isn’t finished with the piece, or that he should say something deferential, like it was a learning experience and he’ll do better next time. Instead, Mikey forces himself to stand there, baring himself before his artwork. 

Don swings an arm across his shoulders and squeezes. “Wow. It’s perfect, Mikey.”

Mikey smiles and leans into the hug. “Thanks.”

The two stand there, taking in the landscape. Don takes time to point to his favorite details and marvel at the color choices, and Mikey laughs as he points out the parts he enjoyed the most.

Don cranes his neck to look around the rest of the lab now, cluttered with half-soldered gadgets and nuts missing their bolts, all surrounded by three walls of pristine white – or, more accurately, a warm beige by the name of “Yank My Doodle.”

“You know,” he says, “there are three more walls that are probably pretty jealous right about now.”

Mikey turns to look at the rest of the lab. He cocks his head to one side and then the other. He places his left hand under his chin, then replaces it with the right, just to be sure. He paces across the width of the room, letting his eyes roam up and down from every angle.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I could whip something up.”