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Fitting for someone with his sort of ability—Leo’s annoyingly hard to get away from.
“There you are.”
Donnie turns, just in time to watch Leo’s portal fade away in a flurry of blue light, leaving his brother in the middle of a rooftop, hand still on his sword. Donnie didn’t tell anyone where he was going, but there are only so many rooftops quiet enough for him to actually be able to think clearly, and his brothers know them all.
He always hated how loud the city gets.
“Yes,” he says, which isn’t really an invitation, but Leo seems to take it as one either way.
Donnie didn’t really know he was hiding from Leo in the first place, actually, but he realizes it now, letting his brother knock their elbows and shoulders together as he sits down. He’s not really sure why, but he knows it must be showing because Leo winces.
“Gee, what’s wrong with your face?” He says, but not unkindly.
Donnie knows him well enough to recognize when he’s being mean for the sake of it, and when he’s only doing so because he thinks it’s the only way of showing care that won’t make Donnie shy away.
It’s dumb, and Donnie hates that he might be right about it.
“Mikey told you everything, didn’t he?”
They never said it should stay a secret, mostly because Mikey can’t keep any of those for the life of him, and the mere knowledge of their existence usually makes Donnie sweat with anxiety. But he wasn’t particularly keen on discussing it any further than they already had (Mikey talked and Donnie pretended not to listen—for the sake of clarity), and he had even less interest in hearing their brothers’ opinion on the matter.
At least, that’s what he tells himself.
He’s been lying to himself a lot lately, and sometimes it's really hard to tell when he’s doing it, but Leo always seems to know. He always knew Donnie better than anyone else.
“Oh, I'm sure he exaggerated a bit, you know how he gets,” Leo tells him with a shrug, all casual.
“That’s a ‘yes’,” Donnie concludes. He grinds his teeth a little, flexing his fingers.
He might yell at Mikey when they get back.
Mikey was always in the business of ratting Donnie out—telling Raph or Leo how little he slept last night, how much coffee he’s really been drinking behind their backs, or how the leg he broke when they were twelve still aches when it’s about to rain—and Donnie’s never seen him lose profit. He used to feel kinder about it, but tonight it feels like everything is rubbing off on him in the worst ways.
“Okay, yeah,” Leo says agreeably. “He did. He said you got really upset.”
Donnie wants to say something to that; something like ‘whatever’, or ‘it doesn’t matter’, or ‘fuck off’. It comes out more like a mumble than anything else.
Leo’s frown deepens. He scoots a little on the edge of the rooftop, pulling his legs close to his chest to nudge their knees together. He’s a warm and familiar presence, but the look on his face makes Donnie shift; wrapping his hands around his knees like a wall.
He’s being silly and he knows it, but he can’t really help himself.
“How are you feeling now?” Leo asks.
“Fine.”
The cars below look really small from all the way up here. When they were younger, Leo used to pretend they were toys; moving his arm this way and that to glide them along. Donnie was the worst at playing pretend, but he always liked whatever it was that made Leo happy.
He glances to the side, watching his brother out of the corner of his eye. Leo’s looking down, his face carefully blank now. Donnie wonders if he’s also thinking about their little toy cars.
“Can we move back?” Leo asks suddenly. “I don’t like sitting this close to the edge.”
He reaches out a hand to scratch at his neck; at the small, faded scar Draxum’s vines left there a lifetime ago.
They move back.
“What’s wrong?” Leo speaks up before the silence has a chance to take hold between them. “Come on, don’t be like that.”
That’s the reason he’s been avoiding Leo, he realizes suddenly.
Donnie’s a stubborn creature, and he’s not in the habit of letting his thoughts out without a fight. But Leo always had his way around him, knowing which buttons to push, when to pull away, and when to bite back—an endurance hunter at his best.
He’s not letting go easily, and Donnie already ran out of any fight he had left within.
He looks back towards the city. From where they’re sitting now, he can’t see the cars anymore.
“Is it wrong that I'm still mad at him?” He says. It feels like the words burn in his lungs all the way through it.
When he was little, Dad used to read him to sleep once or twice a week.
He read to all of them, actually. They used to share a room back then. Sleep always came easily to his brothers—already dead to the world a few minutes in – but Donnie’s mind ticked away for hours, always busy with this thought and that.
When Dad read to them, soon enough it would be just the two of them. With three siblings, his undivided attention seemed a rare and precious thing. There was never enough to go around, and Donnie hungered for it like he hungered for very little else.
Dad was quiet back then, and usually, Donnie’s brothers were more than enough to fill out any conversation. But he spoke a lot during those late evenings, shifting from stories about hungry caterpillars to his own—about his childhood, old friends.
He’d sit close, and Donnie would curl up into his side—sleepy and warm—his whole world packed together neatly into one small room.
These days, it feels like he’s been starving for a very, very long time.
“Oh boy,” Leo says, which just about sums it up. For a moment he seems a bit lost for words, rather unlike him. “You’re mad about the car thing?”
“I don’t care about the stupid car,” he snaps. That’s not really true, and his brother must know it, but he doesn’t say anything. “I hate that he lied to me like that.”
Dad asked to spend time with him and Mikey both, but it was Donnie’s tank, and it made him feel six years old all over again. He didn’t realize how desperate he’d gotten for this kind of attention until he got a mouthful of it.
Being lied to like this felt like the night Dad left as soon as his brothers fell asleep, and Donnie already knew that would be the last time he ever read to them.
“He said he was sorry, and I guess I forgave him, so it should be fine, right? I don’t know what else I even want from him right now.”
“Man,” Leo says, suddenly sounding very unsure. “I think… Maybe this is something you should talk to Mikey about.”
"Well, I'm not talking to Mikey. I'm talking to you, aren't I?” He didn’t mean to blow up like this, but Leo’s acting cagey all of a sudden, and he always hates when his brother pulls away from him like that.
“I’m…” Leo starts then stops, mouth drawn into a thin line. Finally, he finishes lamely: “I really wish it worked like that, Dee.”
Donnie watches him for a moment before turning away with a huff, angrily scratching at his wrist.
“Whatever.”
What does that even mean, exactly? Donnie’s not sure when exactly he lost his innate ability to guess whatever it is that might be happening inside of his brother’s head, but he’s been missing it a lot lately.
Maybe he never really had it, actually. Leo’s mind is a complicated mechanism, with thought patterns no less intricate and arbitrary than a lottery machine. The house always wins, and Donnie might’ve just run out of luck.
After a moment, Leo reaches out a hand, covering his fingers with his to make them lie still. There’s a small cut on his wrist bone that he must’ve earned sometime earlier today, already healing. Leo looks at it for a long moment. Then, suddenly:
“... I'm angry with him all the time.” That catches Donnie by surprise. He blinks up at him, but Leo’s not really looking at him anymore, staring straight ahead. “For, like, everything, you know? Like I talk to him, and all I want to do is strangle him, and I hate how much he just doesn't get... anything.” He frowns, looking ten years older all of a sudden. “But then he has these, like, moments, you know? And I'm like ‘wow Dad, look at us, we're getting on great, I am your son, and I love you’.” His voice breaks up a little at the end, hoarse and raw. “And then he won’t talk to me for the next few days, and I never know why.”
Sometimes, it was easier to think of Dad as a stranger entirely.
The older he got, the less they had in common. Dad’s character and general disposition never quite rubbed off on him the way it did on his brothers, and while it was easy to feel needed around him, their conversations rarely strayed beyond whatever it was that he wanted from Donnie at any given moment.
“I don’t think he really gets me.” He told his brothers once.
“He doesn’t get any of us,” Mikey said from the couch. It was pretty late, but none of them felt inclined to move just yet. “He’s our dad, and we’re teenagers. It’s, like, a whole thing.”
Mikey was reading a lot of parenting books back then.
“He gets Leo,” Raph interjected.
That made Leo wince. He fidgeted with his hands, pulling on his fingers until his knuckles popped.
“In a way,” he said, finally. “What a joy.”
Donnie didn’t think much of it at the moment, and Leo went to lie down soon after.
Leo and Dad were always the most alike, which usually raised more issues than anything else, but Donnie couldn’t help but long for that quiet understanding.
Maybe it was never all he made it out to be. Dad never really understood Donnie, but it was always painfully clear he hated himself.
“Oh,” he says now.
“Yeah.” Leo sniffles, wiping at his face. He’s always been a sympathetic crier, and it takes that reminder for Donnie to realize how hot his own face feels. “So, I get it.”
“I don’t want you to,” Donnie tells him, blinking away the tears. “I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t hate Dad, I don’t want to feel like I do.”
Donnie knows a whole lot more about his father these days. It’s a little easier on the soul to blame these things on a sickness rather than uncaringness, and he’s been seeing a lot more of him, even if so much of it ends in a fight. Donnie doesn’t really mind fighting with his dad. It sucks and it hurts, but it’s a whole lot better than not talking at all.
He just wishes knowing something felt the same as understanding. As a man of science—this has always been one of his many vices.
There’s a hand on his shoulder now; Leo squeezes his arm once, twice.
“I don’t hate him either,” he says. “Wish I did, sometimes. Sure would be a lot easier.”
It all makes Donnie feel rather small; the way he did when they were younger and his own feelings were too overwhelming to fully comprehend. Dad would often ask why he was upset, and Donnie never had the words to tell him. Sometimes, he didn’t know himself.
“This sucks,” he says, because it’s the best he can come up with.
Leo hums in agreement. He shifts to pull Donnie into a hug, holding him tight and steady.
“For whatever it’s worth,” Leo tells him, “I think your tank is sick as fuck.”
Donnie smiles into his shoulder.
These days it feels all too easy to forget how much he still needs Leo. They’re growing up fast, desperate to reach for the sun in whatever direction they can get, even if it means pulling apart. But they’ll always be intertwined at their roots, held together by the same old dirt.
He hates being angry like this, and he hates secrets, and he hates that for a moment today—he forgot what it felt like to be starving. But he’s got Leo with him, and if this makes them bad sons, or ungrateful, or whatever else, they’re in it together.
It’s a selfish thought, but he never claimed to be anything else other than just that.
“Do you want to talk to him?” Donnie asks, more for his own sake than Leo’s. “About all this.”
“Maybe someday,” Leo says, which probably means ‘no’. That would worry Donnie if it were anyone else, but the things Leo wants and does are rarely one and the same. “You?”
“Maybe.” He wonders if he might be lying to himself now, but the look on Leo’s face when he pulls away tells him he’s not.
“Okay,” Leo says. He pats him on the shoulders, a bit like he’s trying to soothe a bristling cat. “I’m sorry about the tank.”
“It’s fine. Mostly cosmetic damage.” That feels a bit like the end of the world, actually, but he’s too tired to think about it now.
“Cosmetic,” Leo repeats, like it’s a funny word. Then: “Wanna drive around? I know a cool spot in Tahiti.”
Donnie wipes at his face with the back of his hand.
He’s tired and achy, and there’s still some ringing in his ears. But he likes driving, and he likes Tahiti, and whenever he’s with Leo—it’s always a bit easier to forget about whatever it is that he might hunger for.
“Yes,” he says. “But I’m not letting you drive.”
Leo pouts at that but doesn’t argue.
It might be good, he thinks, watching Leo fiddle with his sword. Getting out of the house for a while.
For himself, but for Leo, too.
And he always liked things that made Leo happy.