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“How old do you think you’ll be when you die?”
Donnie spared his brother a glance. In the darkness of his lab, his brother was a lazily spinning silhouette draped over one of his chairs. His features were in shadow, but his form was outlined in the neon pink and serene aquamarine glow of his tech.
His eyes drifted back to the wires in front of him. He pushed back the heavy weight in his mind that threatened to bring his eyelids down with it and swallowed a tired sigh. An exhausted hum filled the air instead, and it seemed that was all Leo needed to continue his train of thought.
“When you think about it, you won’t live ‘til you’re a hundred if you’re lucky, so at most, that gives you maybe eighty years more. But I don’t know... Casey Jr.’s like fifteen, right?”
Donnie disconnected a red wire and gently moved it out of the device, turning to scavenge for some copper tape through a nearby drawer. The room was filled with the sounds of his rummaging, accompanied by the ambient noises of the sewer and the creak of Leo spinning on his chair. The loudest sound in the room was the curtain swaying in the grip of the AC, and the movement of the two turtles.
“That means in his universe, I died at like... forty on the dot, huh?”
Donnie’s eyes wearily moved to the digital clock on his desk.
3:12 am.
“That sounds about right. I don’t know.”
Maybe he should table the rest of his repairs for later. Mikey wouldn’t be pleased if he had to drag their bums to breakfast again. And skipping wasn’t an option, the orange turtle was unforgiving about the quote, ‘most important meal of the day.’
The Hamato household ate three meals a day minimum—no if, buts, or maybes. They really should be getting to bed.
“That means I’d have about... twenty-four years left in me?” Leo sighed quietly, “Math.”
Leo was already spiraling, so he probably had an hour before he finally conked out and the insomnia left him finally let him be. It was a miracle he had as much energy as he did in the morning. If Donnie could find a way to harness his brother’s energy into a usable power source, he wouldn’t have to scavenge for triple-A’s anymore.
Another thing to add to his ‘possible future projects’ list.
Right under insomnia-curing pills.
“And that means you’d have...” Leo’s voice cut off with a sharp rasp. A cut-off breath, holding back tears.
Donnie swiveled his chair and met his twin brother’s eyes with equal tiredness in his own depths. The brothers stared at each other in silence, reclined in their respective chairs, exhausted out of their minds, all the else of the world asleep. Just them, in Donnie’s lab, and the faint sound of their family snoring away in their beds.
Donnie’s lips curled, offering his brother the barest, softest hints of a smile.
Casey Jr. was more than eager to recount tales of their future selves to them despite what Donnie could only assume was massive trauma and heartbreak. And sometimes... just sometimes the wide smile would slip when he locked eyes with the teen.
He didn’t have to be a genius to know what that meant.
Even someone as dumb as Leo seemed to be aware of it.
“Time for bed, dumb-dumb. Get off my chair.”
Leo scoffed.
“You don’t have to keep up the act with me, Don. I won’t tell anyone you’re a giant softie. Everyone already knows you keep extra chairs in here for —awk!”
Donnie tapped his tech brace again, and the metal hands withdrew from where they had pushed over his brother and took the chair away from him. He sighed as he stood with a stretch and a yawn before walking over to kick his brother’s moodily sulking form on the ground.
“Stop being a drama queen and go to your own bed.”
Leo’s only response was a loud dramatic groan. Donnie sighed, exasperated but mostly just tired. He plopped next to his brother on his potentially contaminated lab floor (bless S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. and his equipment, but they did live in a sewer) without a second thought.
He was too tired to drag his brother out tonight.
Leo’s hand flopped onto his face, covering his eyes. Donnie swatted his hand away with a grumble and blearily stared at his ceiling, sparing a second for sentimentality.
It was a different ceiling from the one he’d grown up with, but the sewers didn’t change much. Maybe the tiniest nuances were different, but it was still much the same—gray, cool concrete. Miles under the screaming, honking New York streets.
“Psst! ‘Tello!” a younger voice echoed in his memories.
In his mind, he could see himself looking away from the ceiling of his shared bedroom and meeting his twin brother’s beaming smile with a raised brow.
“I can’t sleep. Do you want to do something fun?”
Donnie’s face split with an answering smile and a hushed giggle.
“Yeah!”
In present-day, Donnie jerked his head back from the floor and back to the ceiling, keeping himself from nodding off. Feeling eyes on him, he turned his face back over. Leo’s eyes—drooping and still—met his.
A hand gripped him, bringing his gaze downward to their interlocking hands.
Donnie closed his eyes and leaned his head back as he listened to Leo choke out a couple more whispered words.
Donnie didn’t reply but squeezed his hand back fiercely.
Memories filled his mind. Tears running down his face, taking him by surprise. Looking down at his wet hands in disbelief. The rising sun and clearing sky and emptiness in his chest. Vast, gaping, desperately starving emptiness gripping and opening his insides. New York, barely standing but holding its weight and greeting the new day victoriously while his brothers crumpled before him.
No.
Please no. Please, please, please, please, no, no, no, nonono—PLEASE—
Please.
After a while, Leo’s breathing steadied out, and he knew his brother had fallen asleep. Donnie opened his eyes and looked at the dull, gray ceiling—so much like the ceiling they had adorned with glow-in-the-dark stars and propped Mikey on their shoulders to draw on.
His gaze fell to his brother and the words the other had murmured before sleep had overcome him:
“Please don’t leave me."
“Hypocrite,” Donnie whispered to his brother's peacefully sleeping face.
The fan in the AC unit whirred, the curtain lightly shifted under its ministerings, and the world stayed quiet as the two turtles curled closer together on the hard floor and fell tenderly into a dreamless sleep.