Chapter Text
They had been sitting in the lair’s main room, doing their own set hobbies while being near each other for comfort. Old habits die hard and the boys had yet to break the routine of Pit Sit Time in the evenings, having been enforced by a tired Splinter putting the turtle toddlers in a makeshift baby playpen all those years ago.
The time was often quite enjoyable plus soothing, but at the time Leo had been struggling to reign in his focus to the book in his hands. Donatello was doing his Donnie things on his laptop and Raphael was doodling away in his sketchbook with headphones balanced over his head, both completely in their own worlds.
It was Mikey.
His held hand game console lay ignored on the floor, 8-bit music still rolling. His youngest sibling was annoyingly gnawing on his little strand of colorful pony beads and messing with a homemade zipper toy (gifted to him from Donnie to aid his fidgeting), all while rocking side to side. Not for the first time in his life, Michelangelo was drowning in his own thoughts, surroundings null to him, he didn’t notice Leo’s deep glare.
Raph couldn’t hear the cacophony thanks to his music and Donny had gotten used to his little brother’s quirks via Michelangelo tailing him whenever he got bored. Leo was left to suffer on his own lest he say something now.
He slammed the book in his lap. “Mikey, would you quit it !”
The noises stopped at once and Mikey had the decency to look at least a little bit guilty.
“Sorry, Leo. It’s just-” The gnawing and rocking started again, albeit slowly, while Michelangelo tried to find his words. Leo made a show of sighing and crossing his arms.
Leo could hear Donny close his laptop and push it to the side to place his full attention on the conversation. Since they were kids, Mikey had difficulty explaining his feelings but it was always Donatello who would be there to help him get to the right words. It saved a lot of unnecessary confusion and unwanted frustration amongst them. Especially when it came to situations with Leo or Raph who Mikey had a knack for getting himself wrongfully yelled at or in trouble.
Donatello, ever the peacemaker in the family, slid from the beanbag where he was perched and crawled his way over to place a hand on Leo’s shoulder that was able to soften the eldest’s features. It was a silent communication of
Please have patience
A reluctant, You're right I will
“You know how, sometimes, how when you want things but it’s like you never wanted them before but you DO. Like you really, really do?”, Michelangelo stammered.
Leo and Donnie glanced at one another for a second trying to see if the other understood Mikey in the slightest.
Neither did.
“What do you mean?”
While Leo had the smallest feeling that this conversation was headed towards another one of Mikey’s long rants about unusual nonsense and/or wacky daydream retellings, he was willing to give him a chance.
Especially when Donnie offered up, “As in wanting to do something new, like a hobby? Or could you possibly mean wanting new stimuli? You know that if you just ask me, we can go to the dumpster behind that crafts store and find you some stuff to build new toys? Are you listening to that ASMR playlist I made for you? OH! Are you sick? Spring is coming but that doesn’t mean it’s going to warm up anytime soon. Maybe you want to sleep? Maybe you want vitamins?”
“Woah, woah! No? Yes! All the time! But that’s not what I feel right now! It’s just-”
Mikey fiddled with the kids' craft beads, suddenly shy and a little bit bashful.
Leo grabbed the game console to turn it off, the music annoying him a bit now, like he couldn’t fully hear what was happening. Mikey voiced no complaints about his in-game progress being lost. If Leo had truly been paying attention at the time, he would’ve witnessed the subtle flush that colored the youngest’s freckled cheeks. He saw the way Donnie’s eyes tried to understand and calculate what Mikey was feeling.
Raph in his ignorant bliss was kicking his feet to whatever music he was playing.
“Do you guys ever want sensei to do more than just hug you?”
Like a smitten teenage girl talking about their crush, Mikey stifled a small giggle with a big stupid grin on his face.
Leo, for all he knew, didn’t understand right away. But he thought he did. Did Mikey want more affection from their father? Leo knew at times that Sensei could be a bit distant, but that was just in his nature as an adult man, right? He himself couldn’t deny that he missed the days as kids when Splinter would carry them in his arms or map out the sewers while carrying them in a homemade baby sling, but they were older now and so was Sensei.
Did Michelangelo want more praise? Did he want more alone time with Splinter? Leo would never admit to it but when he realized that as the oldest son, Splinter would automatically spend more one on one time with him to debrief their days, training progress made, or even just to chat, he felt extremely important, which made him happy. Was that what Mikey wanted also?
Donnie’s breath hitched, unbeknownst to Leo who stupidly uttered, “What? What do you mean?”
With his eyes fluttering, Mikey dreamily said, “Sometimes I think about Sensei kissing me, or, or me kissing him and I-” The youngest’s pupils dilated immensely and his vocal chords vibrated.
The kid was fucking churring .
Which immediately got a reaction out of everyone. Don and Leo couldn’t help the heat that rose in their cheeks, embarrassed for their baby brother, implied taboo feelings shoved aside for now. Leo let out an indignant gasp and started spewing jumbled unfinished sentences of accusations and some not very nice things.
Raphael, who could apparently feel the vibrations even with his auditory senses occupied, hurled the pillow he was using at Mikey’s face.
“Ewgh! Gross, Mikey! Do that shit in your room!”
Donnie, ever the goodest big brother , was at Mikey’s defense. With swift motion, he grabbed a blanket a draped it around his younger brother (Leo would later agitatedly mumble that being ‘big brother’ was so very easy for Donatello because he only had the one younger sibling) and stepped in front of the dazed Mikey to stand in between and shield all of them from the awkward situation.
Leo remembers the hurt look that smeared itself on Mikey’s face. He tries to forget that once the evident hurt and confusion washed away, a stubborn insistent demeanor shone through.
“Everyone needs to calm down! Pit Sit Time is- is over.”
Donnie had gently guided poor poor Michelangelo back to his room, whispering to him things that neither Leo nor Raph could hear. They both stood nearby but not too close to the orange-banded brother’s bedroom entrance, hesitant to get closer. The tranquility of their lounge time interrupted and forgotten.
“He can’t be serious, right?” Raphael spoke after Leo did his best to retell what had unfolded, face torn between a scowl and equal parts worry, concern, and angered disbelief.
“I . . . I think he’s joking.” I hope he’s joking. It’s a sick joke. “Sensei is our, well sensei . He’s our father. Biological or not, he’s our father and we’re his sons . I don’t think anything like that can happen.” He was so fucking wrong.
Raph seemed to have nothing to say to his statement, they both stood in the hallway awkwardly.
A few minutes passed and Donnie emerged from the room and closed the door. He quickly spotted his older brothers.
“What the fuck was that?! One moment we’re basking or-or whatever the hell you like call it and the next I’m feeling Mr. Perverted Dumbass vibrate like a fucking unanswered shellphone.” Donnie immediately shushed his older - yet shorter- brother by scrambling to cover his barking mouth.
“ Shut up! Shut up! He’s going to hear you!” Donnie hissed.
Quieter -and softer- this time, Raph questioned, “He frickin’ serious?”
Donnie held his breath and looked between Mikey’s bedroom and the dōjō where Master Splinter slept in a side room, trying to hear if either were awake, even though they were all whispering now.
Too anxious, Donnie motioned for Raph and Leo to follow him to his own room so they could talk privately.
“He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong at all.” Don said. “He thinks it’s okay, what he feels.”
“So it was just all a joke? A stunt to get us all ruffled up?” Leo questioned, still refusing to believe the confession. Mikey had done some unsavory things in the past with his jokes and prank-pulling. Once he had caught Donatello napping in his lab, surrounded him with bags of ice and redirected the AC vents, just for laughs. Donnie slept for 15 hours before anyone noticed there wasn’t any noise coming from the lab.
So pranks such as pushing your brother into a forced coma wasn’t new, but was it at the same level as joking about developing feelings for the man that raised you from infancy?
“Unfortunately. He’s not, he’s being completely genuine. Fortunately however, I questioned him some more and it seems to me that these feelings are relatively new, maybe even spontaneous.”
“How the hell is that good? It’s good that he just decided one day to be a sicko?” Raph wanted answers, he didn’t look it but he was close to being sick.
Donnie sat on his bed. “It’s good because that gives me something to work with here! It may not seem so but there’s explanations to whatever Mikey is going through. We. Are. Turtles. Mutated or not. I didn’t want to mention it before but I anticipated something untoward like this happening, especially since we’re nearing -ahem- sexual maturity.”
They all avoided eye contact, more embarrassed now than before.
“Any organism’s goal in its life cycle is to reproduce. In any way that it can, some animals will mate with it’s family or become infatuated with other species if there aren’t any other mating options. Now look at us. We’re isolated, we only have each other. We’re all we have. It’s not like we interact with other living things we’re able to form a bond with. Mikey’s reptile brain must have realized this, ‘freaked’, then chose the most viable mate. Which is unfortunately, Master Splinter. It’s basic evolution.”
“Better him than us, right?”
“Shut it, Raph.”
“It isn’t much but it’s an explanation. I’m hoping that it’ll phase out, honestly. If we don’t do anything then this little crush won’t be so little anymore, it could escalate. We need to somehow get, get out more. Let him-let him see other people without actually seeing them, you know? It could work!”
“And you’re sure this isn’t just Mikey being a incestuous pervert?”
“Raph!” Leo and Donnie scolded in unison.
A few nights later, Leo was given the duty of having to distract Splinter while the others sneaked out to get Mikey some interaction-noninteraction.
Donnie indulged Mikey in the games he wanted to play, but after multiple rounds of losing tag, hide-and-seek, and Michelangelo’s own amalgamation of parkour mixed with h-o-r-s-e, he himself was getting inpatient with how long it was taking Raphael to find an pizza to nab while he and Mikey sat on the very top of a small water tower atop a building.
The moon was high up in the sky, glowing red through the smog. They were in one neighborhood where the people were more alive in the night than they were in the day, where people and cars were loudly audible even from up on the roof tops. Cars honked their horns or blasted music from their interior stereos with the bass set to the highest notch. Both men and women’s mix of laughter and conversation filled the night air. It gave the illusion that the three brothers munching on stolen pizza and thai takeout were apart of it.
Illusion was broken however when the smallest of the three asked, “When can we head back home? I was going to ask sensei if he wanted to watch a movie with me.”