Ima Be Thinking About This For The Rest Of The Day - Blog Posts
I-I…um…help?
could you please do 29 for dialouge prompts, leo and donnie?
dialogue prompts
29. “Tell me where it hurts, and be specific.”
x
When they were little, Donatello’s twin was his translator.
Donnie was the last of the turtles to start talking—though the first to start reading and writing and dismantling kitchen appliances—and no amount of coercion or bribery or outright begging was enough to get a single word out of him in English or Japanese before he was good and ready.
Splinter was in over his head already just by having four unplanned children to raise who were not even the same species as him. He fretted about his sons’ health and their development in those early years, and had absolutely no one he could turn to for regular parenting advice, let alone advice on what was and was not normal for mutant turtle children.
He tells the story now with a rueful good humor granted only by hindsight and a decade and a half of distance, but at the time, Donatello refusing his second meal in a row while blinking silently in face of his father’s increasingly worried questions probably would have driven Splinter to tear his fur out if not for the contribution made by Donnie’s talkative striped shadow.
“It’s the, uh, the red things, daddy,” Leo piped up. “He doesn’t like those.”
Splinter blinked at him, and then down at the plate Donnie was refusing to so much as look at it.
“The tomatoes?” he said.
“Tomatoes,” Leo parroted. “They’re hard outside and squishy inside. He doesn’t like things like that. And they touched everything else so all of it is no good now!”
Never having considered that texture, of all things, could be the issue—and kicking himself for it—Splinter scrambled a fresh pair of eggs for his stubborn little softshell. He skipped the cherry tomatoes, and sliced a bell pepper instead that he made sure to put on the opposite side of the portioned plastic plate.
Donnie sniffed his fresh plate of plain eggs suspiciously, but it passed his inspection. He crunched into a piece of bell pepper so eagerly that he must have been hungry. Splinter sank back in his chair with an exhale that left him feeling like a deflated balloon.
Leo, eating the discarded tomatoes out of Donnie’s original breakfast, giggled at him. He was the first of Splinter’s babies to start speaking, and the sound of his bright voice tripping eagerly over clumsy human words rarely failed to coax a smile out of his father.
“Thank you, baby,” he said, poking Leo on the edge of his beak and earning himself another peal of bubbly laughter. “I’m glad one of us speaks Purple’s language or I might have set us up for failure big-time.”
“‘Course I do! ‘Cause we’re twins!” Leo said, with only half an idea what the word meant, but happy for any reason to be one of a pair with his best friend. Donnie knew very well what the word meant and simply nodded along, because he was happy, too.
Now that they’re older, and Donatello no longer needs a translator, he finds himself returning the favor instead. Leo is far from nonverbal—Leo talks too much—but he hardly ever actually says anything. He can pontificate and harangue and lecture to lengths of absolute absurdity without giving a single word of substance away that he doesn’t want to give away.
Donnie can read him like a book. Like one of his favorite books that he doesn’t actually have to read, because he knows every page by heart.
The summer after the world didn’t end, Donnie’s twin becomes someone unfamiliar.
He’s self destructive in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. He seeks out things that scare him, lingering above the death drop an extra second even though he’s been afraid of heights since he was fourteen.
It’s obvious that he’s trying to train himself out of weakness. No more childish fears, no more lazy Sunday mornings, no more silly Nardo.
Raph and Mikey have clocked it, too, in their own ways. At first Raph was pleasantly surprised when Leo beat him to the dojo for training, ribbing him amicably when he was also the last to leave. But then Leo started turning down Mario Kart tournaments and ninja tag in favor of shutting himself away and working working working to correct an internal ugliness that just doesn’t exist. Mikey’s used to being the exception to every rule, used to arms opening for him wherever he goes, and the way his sweet, sunny smile slips every time Leo talks around joining him on the sofa for Kitchen Nightmares reruns—or explains away why he’s skipping dinner—is one of the worst things Donnie’s ever seen.
At the very least, Leonardo doesn’t lie to Donatello’s face. He’s stopped looking him in the eye altogether.
You’re not going anywhere without me, Donnie thinks at him, ready to dig in his heels and fight like hell.
It’s hard to say how long it would have gone on, but one late night Leo limps home from a solo patrol and Donnie is waiting for him, arms folded, tolerance for foolishness nonexistent.
“What, are you tracking me?” Leo jokes half-heartedly. And then, when Donnie doesn’t blink, he adds, “Wait, actually?”
“Don’t waste my time with questions we both know the answer to,” Donnie says, and points Leo directly towards the medbay. Leo, who had been angled toward the bathroom instead, likely because he can close the door and suffer in private with no one the wiser, sighs loudly and course-corrects.
The overhead lights in the medbay hum to life when Donnie flips the switches. Leo looks over his shoulder to gauge how far those lights have traveled past the open door, restless with wondering if he’s going to have to save face in front of someone else.
All of this? All this behavior? Donnie hates this.
Larger-than-life Leonardo seems smaller as he boosts himself up onto the edge of the bed. The infirmary is the one place he never puts on airs, the one place he takes seriously because his family’s health and safety has never once been a punchline to him. He peels off all his false layers at the door. He’s back to not meeting Donnie’s eyes.
“Tell me where it hurts, and be specific,” Donatello says.
“Your bedside manner could use some work,” Leonardo replies. His attempt at wily good humor limps along a lot like he had limped through the front door, like the least funny thing in the world. “That’s why between the two of us I’m the team medic.”
“And I’m two minutes from pulling the fire alarm and making this a house party,” Donnie says frankly. His tone isn’t gentle, isn’t quite angry. He’s somewhere in the middle, gentleness and anger fighting for the spot that affection has never once surrendered and never once will.
He hates the way his twin’s eyes get wet, staring down at his own knees, knuckles stark white and standing out like a string of pearls where his hands are bunched in the thin blanket he’s sitting on. He hates that it’s come to this, the quiet of midnight in the medbay, one of the brightest lights in Donnie’s life dimmed and miserable and so clearly struggling. It’s laughable that Leo really thought he could have hidden it forever.
Donnie sits beside him on the bed and says, “What if I quit?”
The non-sequitur takes Leo by surprise. He was clearly expecting a full frontal assault and glances sideways at Donnie briefly.
“Quit what?”
“My bad, I should have been more specific,” Donnie allows. “I meant, what if I quit being a ninja? I have better things I could be doing, and I don’t like getting hurt.” Leo is staring at him fully now, totally bewildered. Flabbergasted, even. It melts some of the sternness Donnie has been careful to shore up for this conversation. “Would you love me less?” he asks.
It would have been kinder if Donnie had slapped him. “Don’t say that,” Leo says, barely any air behind it.
“Are you more capable than I am?” Donnie steamrolls on. “Are you better than me?”
“Of course not. I don’t think—I didn’t say—”
“Then why do you have to be perfect if I don’t?” Donnie presses the advantage ruthlessly. “Why aren’t you allowed to struggle and doubt and spectacularly fuck up every now and then without raking yourself over the coals for it?”
Leo glances over at the door automatically, like Raph is going to be summoned by the bad word. He’s sixteen, he’s just sixteen, Donnie wants to scream it loud enough that those resistance fighters in Casey’s future could hear him, the ones who thought it was a halfway decent idea to put a child in charge.
Earlier Donnie thought that Leo looked smaller here. Now he thinks he can tell by looking how much weight his twin has lost since June. There’s a deficit of Leonardo in this world and his whole family is feeling it keenly.
Raph wants to scoop Leo off the sofa when he stays up too late and tuck him into bed, wants to listen to Leo filling the comms with chatter on those nights when patrol stretches long and dull. Raph misses his little brother, the gossipy, gangly, growing up little turtle that Raph used to be allowed to carry everywhere.
Mikey wants to bicker over who gets to play Sonic in Smash Bros and eat cookies while they’re still hot from the oven with the person he admires so much, who taught him all the best cheats in Smash Bros and that fresh sugar cookies in the falling apart stage, pre-icing, are better than ones that have cooled.
‘Sometimes you gotta get burned to get results,’ ten-year-old Leo had announced, but he was always the one who lifted the cookies off the sheet pan, he never let Mikey burn his fingers.
That goofy, clever kid who was always getting them all into trouble and talking their way out of it again is worth a thousand made-up Master Leonardos.
Leo keeps his face lowered, shoulders hunched, because he knows what he’ll see if he scrapes together the courage to meet Donnie’s gaze. He’ll see the love blazing in his twin’s face like one of those digital billboards towering above Times Square, and somehow he’s convinced himself he doesn’t deserve it.
Donnie doesn’t give a damn what Leo has decided he deserves. Donnie’s going to love him anyway, on purpose, whether he likes it or not. If Leo wants to grow up so badly, then he can stop acting like a kid pushing vegetables around on his plate and swallow the truth.
It’s okay if he doesn’t grow up yet. They can be kids awhile longer. It’ll be like when they were babies, when Donatello would rather go hungry than stomach certain foods. Leo never let Donnie sit alone at the breakfast table, keeping him cheerful, babbling company, even when their brothers had moved off to play.
This time Leo is the picky eater, willing to go hungry and sit alone at the table. But Donnie learned from the best. He's returning the favor.
Donnie isn’t going anywhere without Leo, either.