Rum soaked ship's biscuits

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Apartment  ♥︎

Time: 7:30 A.M.

For whatever godforsaken reason, you found yourself back in college to pursue an education. Knowledge is power, of course! That, or whatever bullshit adults had been preaching to you since childhood.

There’s too much going on. It’s finally your last year, second semester; shouldn’t adulthood be familiar at this point?! Sure, maybe there were parts of this era you’d sacrificed for an advanced degree…but, sweet jesus. There were times you regretted it.

You figured your life would be squared away by now! Bills paid, apartment cleaned, and, by God, maybe a significant other possessed? Hilarious! This was unheard of– for you, at least. Most certainly now, the chaos is quite clear as one foot scatters over the other; unintentionally mismatched socks glaring at you as you rush out of the door. 

The hallway outside your apartment is too bright. It’s too early, screw these eight AM classes, and you’re already running late. You take the stairs two at a time anyway, because the elevator will take too long and you don’t have time for anything that takes too long.

There are papers seeping out of your bag as it was tossed over your shoulder. Binders are nonexistent. Folders have been long forgotten. Shoving items into random places and forgetting them seemed more natural to you, given the amount of time you spent rushing from one place to the next. As much as your advisors and counselors insisted upon them; they were useless. Who knows? Maybe they’d serve you right. One day. Just not now.

Right now, there was a more treacherous task at hand; would your GPS just calibrate, for God’s sakes!? The cracked phone that was held with a firm grip in your hands had lit up, suggesting your building was one way, then another– you let out a quiet, disbelieving breath, quickly glancing around as the GPS cheerfully reroutes you yet again. It fails. The building is now– well, now, apparently it’s nowhere. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” you mutter under your breath, slowing just enough to glance around at the cluster of buildings surrounding you, maybe one might stand out. Engineering buildings should be somewhat identifiable, right? Screw this app. You’ll find it yourself. 

Maybe if this building had been near the bunch of halls where classes that dealt with your major were located, you’d already be settled in, comfortably taking notes and actually learning something! But no. Of course not. Why make things easy? This mysterious building was home to a required course, for some reason, completely unrelated to your major, tucked away in the Engineering Hall, Room 301: Neural Systems Modeling & Adaptive Robotics. Wherever that may be. 

It was hard to even presume what was taught in this class. What an amalgamation of words! Some type of specialty course, apparently. With a quick search of your phone, you discover that it was designed to teach students about the creation and advancement of the minds of machines; their ‘neural-systems,’ as they were called, and how they would adapt to their environment based on technology and the actual manmade thought put into them. You would literally be teaching machines how to think. 

Hm. Yeah, somewhat outside of your bubble. You had some experience with building machines. Nothing too fancy (or, so you’ve considered.) This sounded like some class where you learned to make one of those oddly humanoid bots that would soon colonize the Earth, or some shit. Cool, yes, but what did this course have to do with your major? Why in the world was it required? 

You were a biology major, something you had chosen on a whim. You were good at science in high school. Great, even! But you had no idea what path you desired to take five years from then. Nothing was interesting. Nothing was set to make you enough money, given the current state of the world. Financials, and all that. How were you even supposed to make these decisions as a teenager? It’s too late to change, now. As much as you wanted to divert your attention to a different major, you preferred to just graduate and go.

You searched, frustration mounting as you circled what felt like the entire engineering campus twice. The morning air carried a chill that seeped through your thin jacket, but you barely noticed– you’re far too focused on the impossible task of finding this stupid building. Your GPS had long since given up, displaying a sad little spinning wheel that mocked your efforts.

Students trickled past you, some leisurely, others with the same frantic energy you currently possessed. You spotted a couple looking at a campus map and nearly sprinted toward them, slowing at the last second to appear casual. "Excuse me," you managed, trying to catch your breath. "Engineering Hall, Room 301?"

The girl pointed vaguely to your left. "That way. It's the ugly one with the weird, uh, shrubbery out front."

Of course. The ugly one. As if that narrowed anything down.

Your phone buzzed with the time – 7:57 AM. 

You didn’t even have time to thank the girl. You simply nodded and took off, your backpack and its interior contents thumping rapidly against your shoulder.

The ‘ugly one’ turned out to be a towering, certainly boring looking structure of poured concrete and questionable architectural choices for an engineering building, set back slightly from the main walkway. It did, indeed, have strangely manicured, geometric shrubs out front. Who is making these design choices? This was a fairly prestigious college, you’d think there would be a decent amount of money put towards campus aesthetics. This was straight up comparable to an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Blaring white and stained grey.

A long hallway stretches before you when you are met with that godforsaken door: 301. It’s slightly open, allowing the chattering and rustling of a settling classroom to spill into the quiet hall. You slide in just as the clock on the wall ticks over to 8:00 AM, your arrival punctuated by the soft click of the door behind you.

There are rows upon rows of open seats. The room was unsettlingly large! It was a much bigger lecture hall, the rows spanning in an upwards motion the further up you looked. The floor was carpeted, rather than hardwood, and, unlike your science classes, it did not smell like formaldehyde in this room. Instead, it reeked of freshly warmed printer paper; a scent that was rather soothing, compared to the indescribable scent of the organisms you were often tasked to dissect that were hiding in containers of awfully pungent chemicals.

Another thing you also seemed to notice: the lights were significantly dimmer in here, practically dark. A few sleepy students scattered around the lecture hall, not really grouped together, moreover just looking for a spot to claim. They’re hunched over and scrolling through their phones while their laptops sit idly in front of them. Many were asleep. You’d think they laced the air with melatonin, if doing so was even theoretically possible. In search of a spot of your own, you hopped quietly down to the lower middle of the rows, hoping to just soak up enough of the material to make it through the year with a better-than-average GPA. The seats were nice. Warm. You felt settled, thankfully, given the morning you’d had. 

Next to the warm paper, you also smelled coffee, which prompted your eyes to drift over to the figure up front; holding a cup and sitting in his chair, so gently swiveling as he slowly eyed the room. 

Hm. 

He’s not what you expected for a professor in such an advanced course. Different from a human, definitely, but it’s his height that catches your eye first—even seated, he towers over the desk he’s leaning against, his frame folded into a standard office chair that looks like it’s going to soon collapse under his long limbs. His skin has an uniquely different, almost olive-green tint under the lecture lights he’s dimmed, and you scold yourself for staring at the three thick fingers wrapped around his pen as he taps it against the stack of papers and grips a huge cup in the opposing hand. His eyes keep darting toward the growing crowd, flicking from face to face like a nervous wreck, before he remembers to adjust his glasses—pushing them up his beak-like nose with a knuckle, only for them to slide right back down again. You laugh softly from your seat. He sighs through what looks like nostrils but… nope! They’re just slits. Ah, well. It wasn’t your right to ask anyway. Just wonder for now… just wonder.

Mutants and humans were well acquainted in this society. Rightfully so... the ruckus in a world divided would cause far too much much trouble.

He was green; a turtle, you presumed. Tortoise? They live on land, not turtles. Again. It wasn’t really your right to ask. 

This… ‘reptile’ wasn’t particularly dressed the way you would depict an average teacher, either. Likely due to his size. What clothing was going to fit this absolute behemoth of a turtle? The only clothing that seemed to adorn him were his deep purple mask and withered pieces of tactical gear. For whatever reason, he possessed them; they had little marks of purple, and you couldn’t really see from afar, but he had some scarring around his shell and arms. 

Visibly, he was interesting to look at! Different. You always appreciated different. 

The students continued to chatter with their seat partners or neighbors, ignoring the tall, turtle-like figure they assumed was their professor as he took a breath.

He rose from his seat, the chair left to spin behind him as he unfolded himself to what you guessed was over six feet tall, damn near reaching seven! He fumbled with the remote for the projector, nearly dropping it twice before getting a grip. 

You heard a mumble from the girl next to you about his instability. You shoved it off. Just being a jerk, and he hasn’t even spoken a word.

“Good morning,” he says, his voice quite resonant and distinctive considering the immense amount of trembling he’d been doing prior. Your professor pushes his glasses up again, muttering something under his breath that you can’t quite catch, fingers drumming lightly on the desk. 

“Uh, my name is Donatello. Students call me a variety of different things. Dr. Hamato, Professor Hamato, or just Donatello. You can call me whatever comes easiest to you, I’ve learned to respond to each.” There’s a deep, yet quiet inhale before he begins again. “Welcome to Neural Systems Modeling and Adaptive Robotics! Excuse me, that’s a mouthful. I usually just call it Neural Systems. Or adaptive robotics, vice versa. Call it what you’d like. I’ll never know.” He shakes his head, rambling. Quite cute, actually. 

“I won’t keep you long. It’s syllabus week. Nothing too harsh on you guys,” he swung his feet, eyeing the crowd once more. There are students relaxed, most-half mindedly scrolling on their phones. He exhales quietly, adjusting his glasses again before continuing. “This course is… structured a little differently than what you might be used to. We’ll cover both the fundamentals and in-depths! This being neural modeling, adaptive systems, feedback loops. You’ll learn the why’s and how’s, but I’m more interested in how you apply them.” 

His fingers start to tap again on the desk. They are restless; rhythmic. Your professor adjusts his posture, shoulders going tense, like he’s noticing something. The room is too big, too full? Crowds did not suit him. He looks like he’s trying, you didn’t doubt that– his gaze never settled long enough on any student. Eyes darting and scanning methodically like he’d been on a high of caffeine. 

“You’ll be building a variety of things, followed by the process of testing them. Breaking them on purpose. Fixing them again. Making them better. Teaching them, essentially! That’ll be the primary thing that makes up your grade, here. Labs, that is. Those are the only mandatory attendance days. I know that there’s lots of you here who take this class as an extracurricular, or, as an unrelated major class.”

Donatello took a breath. Oh, dear lord, here came his favorite part– he thought with sarcasm. 

At his mention of attendance, the previously tuned-out students had decided to perk up. Like a little puppy, hearing its favorite word! Ooh’s and ahh’s came from the group of learners, many of whom were fist-bumping their partner. The turtle’s tridactyl hand came up to pinch his nose, shaking his head.

“Yes, that is… most people’s favorite aspect of this class. Attendance. Or, lack thereof.” Donatello pushed the rim of his glasses up. The taped bit in the middle was unfurling; he needed to replace it. 

“It’s not required. I don’t take attendance. You’re adults. You know why you’re here, what you’re paying for. If you don’t want to come to lecture, that’s your decision. You’ll be responsible for the material, obviously. But I’m not going to babysit you.”

He leans back after sitting down again, propping one foot up on the corner of that tall desk of his.

“Just to get it out of the way, my philosophy is simple: if you’re not engaged enough to show up, I’m not going to force you. The lab work is where the real learning happens anyway. The lectures are supplementary, for those who want to dive deeper. Or, well, for those who need to hear my ramblings about neural networks in order to understand the lab manual. Speaking of which…”

He picks up a thick stack of papers and sets it on the desk with a thud. The sound woke up a sleeping student; his eyes drifting from his hoodie. It didn’t take him long to drift back off. 

“Syllabus. It’s all in there. Grading breakdown, lab schedule, my office hours, my other job’s contact info if you can’t reach me here, and my email address is on the last page.” He gestures vaguely toward the stack. “Here in a few, I’d like you all to take one on your way out.”

You glance at your neighbor. She’s already packing up, even though he’s clearly not finished.

“Alright, I guess I can take a minute to give a little insight to what we’ll be doing.” Donatello nods his head back. Was he thinking? He seemed to do an awful lot of that. 

“Neural Systems Modeling is essentially teaching machines how to think. It seems boring, but I promise you, this is the absolute furthest thing from it! I teach this topic for a reason. When it comes to building things, not just robots, but circuitry, computers, any piece of technology that requires a neural interface, you’re not only teaching it to process commands. The entire point is to give the thing a mind of its own. How to actually adapt and respond to new information. We're talking about creating systems that can learn from experience, much like how you and I, living biological beings, have neural networks that process the same way!" 

You find it fascinating how the turtle is practically speaking with his hands. Rambling off the top of his head like it was nothing. This man was a hypertechnicality of a being. If you could somehow shove redbull and black coffee into one drink and consume it safely, this man would have probably done so already with the way he was moving. 

You were, quite frankly, mesmerized. The way he moved, spoke, and thought. He was a walking genius. The way his fingers moved, his gestures– it was as if he were sculpting the very air, molding complex concepts into tangible shapes for the class to grasp, despite the attention of absolutely nobody except for a few. He's a little clumsy, a little awkward, something of a mess, you’d already seen the poor guy trip over himself once– and still, he continued on with his passion. It was admirable, to you. 

“...Right. Before I let you all go this morning, just to get a sense of your experience—this isn’t really a beginner question, so radio silence is fine— does anybody know of an example of a cybernetic system where adaptation is driven by feedback from prior outcomes, rather than fixed instruction?” His eyes are rampant, darting around the room once more. 

Silence. A few students shift uncomfortably in their seats. 

“It’s simple. Not a trick question… I promise.” The edge of his mouth is curving up. 

You lean toward your lab partner—a blonde girl who's been more interested in her nail polish than the lecture—and whisper, "Do you think that… natural selection might be an answer? Something like that? Since it’s a process where nature eliminates the unfit and the organisms who adapt are ruled as the next predecessors…?" The biology major in you wanted this to be the answer, but there was a slight doubt, as you knew engineering was certainly not fit for your radar.

Your partner blinks at you, confusion very, very evident in her eyes. 

"Dude, I’m an art major. This is my science credit I was forced to take because all of the other classes were filled. I don’t have the slightest fucking clue."

"You have something to share?" Donnie's voice cuts through the quiet, and you realize with a jolt that his gaze has fixed directly on you. Several students turn to look.

"Oh! Um," you hesitate, feeling heat rise to your cheeks, "I was just asking my partner if... if something as simple as– I don’t know, natural selection would be a good answer? Because nature is always evolving, based on its environment and the best fit-organisms for said environment, thus resulting in a system where a subject is taught and is learning based on natural feedback?" You spat. Very quietly, to say the least. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’m guessing.”

Donnie's face lights up, relief and genuine delight spreading across his features. "Exactly! Yes, the human body absolutely counts as a cybernetic system. That’s one of the most accurate answers we’re aware of, as of now. Which– yes, that’s smart to keep in mind, as we need to know about a working person's neural network before we can begin with a non-sentient subject. Or, robots, as you may call them.” Donnie smiles. 

He pushes his glasses up again, but this time his eyes remain locked on yours. "What's your name, ma’am, if you don't mind my asking?"

You tell him, feeling slightly self-conscious under his intense gaze. “(Y/n).”

“(Y/n),” he says again, a little clearer this time, giving a small nod to himself. “Right! Yes. That’s—that’s a very strong example,” he continues, pushing his glasses up again, though they hadn’t quite slipped yet. “Natural selection is, fundamentally, a feedback driven system. Environmental pressures act as input, and the—uh—survival outcomes determine which traits will persist.” 

His fingers start tapping again, faster now, like your answer flipped a switch somewhere in his head. “It’s not immediate, obviously—it operates across generations—but the principle is the same. Error. Variation. Correction over time.”

He glances at you again. Just for a second. Happy someone was paying attention.

“…good,” he adds, softer.

The rest of the class was mostly indifferent. Time went by quickly– you’d been listening to your professor’s nonsensical rambles about whatever topic had weaved its way into his mind. Thankfully, he caught himself right before the hour mark, signified by a gentle clap of his hands together. 

“Alright. That’s all I have for today. Don’t forget to grab a syllabus on your way out. And, uh—labs start the week after the next. Those are mandatory. Please show up to those. You will likely regret it if not.” A pause. “Preferably on time… we’ll start out easy. Material isn’t that hard. Otherwise, enjoy your weekend! See you all next week.”

Almost immediately, there is a shuffle of movement that follows. Backpacks zipping, papers shuffling, the release of a student holding in their fifth cough of the afternoon. Students were in a hurry to just leave– very eager to exit the building in spite of their endless boredom. 

There was a difference with you, though. There was no point in rushing. Your next class wasn’t for a while. Again, curse these 8 AM’s– every other class was available… at a later, more understandable time. This time period gave you a good few hours until you had to be somewhere again. 

By the time you make your way down toward the front, the room has thinned significantly. A few students linger, grabbing papers, but most have already disappeared into the hallway.

You reach for a syllabus, fingers brushing the edge of the stack—

“—(y/n), right?”

You glance up.

Holy shit, he is so much taller when you’re standing directly in front of him. 

Professor Hamato is leaning against his desk, one hand on the back of his chair. The other holds his half-empty mug again. The lecture hall’s dim lighting catches the edge of his shell, the purple of his mask. He looks tired, but also, like he’s had an entire load lifted off of him just from class ending. More relaxed without a whole lecture hall staring back at him.

“Yes! That’s me,” you say, your voice sounding smaller than you intended. You grab a syllabus, clutching it to your chest.

“You’re a life sciences major of some sort, I assume?” he asks, his gaze drifting momentarily to the sticker on your laptop before returning to your face. He doesn’t wait for an answer, his words picking up speed as his enthusiasm overrides his earlier tremor. “It’s a refreshing perspective. Most students in this hall are just here to check off a science credit or, worse, think they’re engineers who know all about programming. They miss the general aspect and point of science.”

You offer a small, surprised smile. “Biology, yes. I was worried it was a bit too... organic for a class about machines.”

"Pfft. Hardly," he scoffs, the sound manifesting as a rhythmic, clicking resonance deep in his throat. He sets the coffee mug down, those long, tridactyl fingers finally finding a moment of stillness as they curl around the edge of the desk. "No. Science is everywhere; there's really no denying its reach! Biology merely mimics pre-existing mechanisms. I'm glad you were able to make that connection, even if it is something as simple as natural selection.” Your professor praises.  “Most people just glaze over the parallels in the mundane world. It’s ridiculous. I suspect if more people adopted that perspective, we'd advance as a society at a much quicker pace."

He glances away for a second, a flicker of self-consciousness crossing his features before he meets your eyes again. "Anyway," he continues, his tone shifting back to something more professorial, though a hint of that original energy remains. "I just... I wanted to say I appreciated your contribution. Don't be afraid to speak up again. Even if no one else is paying attention. If you need help with anything in this course, please don’t hesitate to reach out. It’s tougher than it looks. I promise I won't bite."

A small, genuine laugh escaped you at his attempt at humor, and you felt yourself nodding with a bit more enthusiasm than intended. You gripped the syllabus tightly, raising the paper in a silent salute as you backed away toward the exit, a smile lingering on your face. "Yes, of course. I'll absolutely take you up on that. Thank you!"

"See you next week," Donatello replied, his own head dipping in a matching nod. One of those massive, tridactyl hands rose in a slow, somewhat tentative wave, watching you depart until you finally disappeared beyond the heavy door. 

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Apartment  ♥︎

The rest of your day was a blur. Your remaining classes were just some useless extracurriculars, and the others were repeated with a teacher you’ve already had.  It was endless. Topics you’ve already learned, countless times, just being rephrased and reiterated in different ways. Sometimes you wonder why you chose this major. It certainly got to be… repetitive. Your eyes scanned the catastrophe of papers that littered your apartment. 

God, you needed a hobby. 

The digital numbers on your microwave glowed 11:47 PM, casting a bluish rectangle across your linoleum floor. The only other lights were from the broken lamp near your window; the one that so graciously allowed the moonlight in. Your couch cushions had long since molded to your body, creating a shallow valley where you'd been straight up marinating for the past three hours. A half-empty pint of some drink had sweated condensation rings onto your coffee table, joining the community of mug stains that you swore you’d just clean later. 

Your phone buzzed against your thigh…another notification from that stupid class group project nobody had bothered to start. You ignored it, thumb hovering over the streaming service's remote instead. The now additional blue light from the television paints the shadows of your apartment in shifting patterns, and as the moon shifts, it turns to highlight the mountains upon mountains of bio textbooks piled upon your dinner table. 

Somewhere between the third episode of whatever mindless show you'd chosen, you found yourself staring at the ceiling, following the barely visible crack that branched like a lightning strike across the plaster. There were a bunch of these strikes. Duh, it was a popcorn ceiling. Idiot. Next week’s lecture schedule scrolled behind your eyelids—8 AM Neural Systems, 10 AM Research in Cellular Biology , 2 PM Stats. Thank God it was Friday. 

The praise still felt... strange. In a good way? Yes, you had thought. It was always nice to receive validation from professional figures! Even if they were ‘just teachers,’ as your peers had called them, it was an honor to be told something as simple as “good-job” by someone of a much higher education.

Thinking about it like this has really gotten to be a low point, apparently. 

Ping! Your phone buzzes again.

It's another notification from that stupid dating app your friends had practically forced you to join. Endlessly, through the day and the dead of night, you'd get pings from that damn thing—but it was never a genuine connection. Not what you wanted, because at this point in life, was a relationship really worth it? The algorithm never seemed to be in your favor, always offering the horniest of men or the direct epitome of someone who is not your type! 

As you guessed, this time, it was the first. Just another man looking for nothing but a lousy hookup. First day back, and the local man has no self respect. Predictable.

You locked your phone with a decisive click, flinging it onto the opposite cushion. No way in hell you were dealing with that tonight.

But with the presence of free thinking came a ridiculous, fleeting thought that soon invaded your mind.

The awkward, towering, ridiculously intelligent turtle professor. Tortoise, question mark?

You'd spent the rest of the night comparing your other professors to him, and they all came up lacking. They were polished, professional, and boring as hell. They taught from their slides, reciting the same tired information they'd been using for years. Donatello, on the other hand, seemed like he quite literally might just explode with the amount of ideas he had rattling in that brain of his– he was messy and genuine and so impossibly smart. Not to mention the words that he’d said about you. The smile he gave you after your apparently better-than-correct answer. Or even the–

Go to sleep! Touch grass! For the love of God, find serotonin in !anything else! besides professors, you thought. This was surely just some midnight ramble your mind had spiraled into while you were busy dozing off on those goddamned insomnia meds.

Your eyes drifted shut. For a moment, just before sleep took you, your mind conjured up those geometrically unusual shrubs outside the engineering hall, certainly not sufficient as eye candy. Weird design choice. But then again, was it any more peculiar than a seven-foot-tall turtle mutant lecturing on neural systems? 

Mutants had become integrated a long time ago. You were glad that they had been given the same opportunities humans did; much more thankful that the majority of society had accepted them for who they were. People–humans, really, discriminate far too much for concepts they do not understand. And for that, mutants, yokais, any among the like, were feared. 

The remote slipped from your fingers, clattering softly against the hardwood floor. You were asleep before the sound fully registered.

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Lecture Hall  ♥︎

The first lab was scheduled for today. 

True to his word, the mandatory attendance day was sparsely populated. Out of a class of nearly fifty, only a handful of students had bothered to show up, including you. 

You'd arrived early, setting up your station with lots of care! The lab was simple enough… constructing a simple feedback loop using basic microcontrollers and sensors that would theoretically allow the device to "learn" to avoid obstacles. It was baby stuff compared to what he'd rambled about in lecture, but still engaging.

The empty stool beside you scraped against the linoleum as your lab partner, whose name you learned to be Lilah, the art major who'd been more interested in her phone last week, stumbled into the laboratory. So. Very. Late. 

She plopped down beside you without so much as an apology, her perfume—sickly fruity– pungent against the laboratory's scent. It made you scrunch your nose. If she couldn’t bother to arrive on time, could she at least bother to not give everyone in a five foot vicinity a migraine? Jesus.

"Hey," she said, not looking at you but rather scrolling through her phone. "Do you have the answers for yesterday’s assignment? I didn’t bother to get it done.” Her words were a mumble; her verbality almost incoherent. 

“I did. I left it, though.” Lie. You didn’t waste your time with people like her. She scoffed, rolling her eyes and setting her keys down at an abnormally loud volume. 

She let out a short scoff, dropping her keys louder than necessary. “Cool. Love that for me. More F’s.” Lilah had uttered. “What’re we even doing?”

“The syllabus has all of the lab dates listed… this one is over circuitry. Basic circuitry.” 

“When did we learn that?”

“In the papers and research that he taught then assigned… two days ago, I think?”

“Oh.” Lilah clicked her tongue. “Well, looks like we’re failing.” 

Oh, Jesus. Just leave. Please leave. I can do it myself. 

“I doubt we’ll fail… It’s actually pretty straightforward.If you need help, I’m more than willing to help walk you through it!” Be nice, be nice, be nice. 

“Oh, shit, yeah. Thanks.” 

And with that, you explained the process to your lab partner, slower this time, pointing to the manual you'd already annotated with helpful notes. She nodded along, but you could see her eyes faltering before you'd even finished the first paragraph. And then– this girl, god forbid– somewhere in the middle of your ramblings, she’d picked up her phone to adjust the music in her earbuds. Plural, which is important to note, as both were placed in her ears!

Just deal with it. Do it yourself, it’ll take less time without having to explain basic circuitry.

Your gaze lands on your professor, his back hunched over a neighboring table as he helps another student with their circuit. At least that kid seems to be paying attention; Donnie is happily in his own element, explaining god knows what about the mechanisms behind the device. Once the other student successfully programs his circuit, the turtle gives him a quick pat on the back and a nod—off to round up the finishing groups. 

“Dude, he’s gonna beat our ass. We started late.” 

“Uh,” there were no words able to come from your mouth. She was late! She’s the reason you might fail this lab for unfinished work! What an ass. “We lost some time, that’s all. You came in like ten minutes after we started. Is your class before this a long walk away?”

“What? No. I didn't have a class before this. That’s too early. I slept in. Hangover. You get it, right?” 

No. You did not get it. Partying on a weekday? Going out wasn’t really your forte, but parties on a weekend made sense– but becoming intoxicated on a Tuesday night? Please. 

One more student until he was at your station. The buzzing fluorescent lights above seemed to intensify, you could now see every dust particle dancing in the air– it didn’t feel like this at first, but now you have suddenly gained the ability to notice every little thing that’s been going wrong with this lab. 

You stared at Donnie from behind your table, heaving a few breaths. What would he think if you presented a shitty project that hadn’t even been started?! After the praise he gave you for your previous contributions, what were the odds he would take it back? Would he be mad? Would he be disappointed? Would he– 

"Hello? Earth to… I forgot your name." Lilah snapped her fingers in front of your face, her phone still held aloft, the blue screen reflected in her glazed eyes. "Are you gonna help me or not? I'm not failing this class because you're too busy staring at Mr. Tomato."

“I’m sorry? Tomato?”

“Is that not his name?”

“Dude, no. Hamato. Come on,” you mumbled; rubbing your face.

“Tomayto, tomahto,” she shrugged. 

Shit. Have you been staring? Probably. But not like that. Not the way she was implying. "No. I was just thinking about what he might say when he gets over here," you muttered, turning back to the half-finished circuit on the table before you. You needed to finish this. The wires were neatly arranged, color-coded according to your own system that made sense to you but definitely not to her. "Here, you need to connect the sensor output to pin seven, and then—"

"Hold on," Lilah interrupted, scrolling through her phone with one thumb while absently fiddling with a wire with the other. Holding a wire you needed. "My friends are wondering if I want to go out Thursday night. Thirsty Thursday, you know? It's practically the weekend anyway."

You watched in horror as her hand, guided by direct ignorance, flew in the direction of a small tray of resistors.

It tips. 

They scatter across the table like skittering pests. Some roll to the edge. Clatter to the floor. A few landed in the exposed wiring of your nearly-completed circuit.

"No, no, wait—!" 

You reach out too late. 

A tiny spark flashed, and with it, came the burning plastic. 

And, oh; the LED indicator on your microcontroller, which had previously been blinking successfully in a pattern you'd programmed ten minutes ago, went dark. Dead as a doornail. 

"Oops." Lilah finally set her phone down, face up. "Well, that's probably not good."

“Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding m–”

“Hey, is everything going okay over here-? I saw a– oh. Never mind.”

Well, there he was. The purple turtle, tilting his head, found his place towering over you once again. You covered your face in embarrassment, refusing to speak. Donnie clicked his tongue. 

“Anybody mind explaining what, uh, what happened? I guess?” The reptile shrugged. He looked a little concerned; but you couldn’t exactly tell what that concern was directed towards. 

Lilah, so eager to speak yet so eager to shut up at this exact moment, had shut her mouth. Zipped it. Threw away the key. Her eyes darted towards you, begging for an excuse. 

“I did it.” You slumped your shoulders, taking the blame for your partner. “I can fix it, though. It shouldn’t take long…”

Donatello simply nodded. “Alright. You can stay after, assuming you have nowhere to be. Lilah, pack up, you’re dismissed.” He nods her out of the room– quite vigorously, actually. Like he was adamant she would leave. 

Some poor excuse had slipped out of her pesky little lips, now. Making things so, so much worse. 

“Oh, shoot, thanks. I totally forgot I have a study group for my art history class. Like, right now.” She flashed a smile at Donnie that was all teeth and no sincerity. “Professor Hamtoes, is there any chance I could get an extension or exemption on the lab? Thank you! Bye!”

Donnie’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “That is… not even… remotely close to my name. There were a million other things I provided– you know what? Nevermind.” He turned back to you, now.

Fuck. You. Asshole!!! Leaving me alone with him!!!!

You slowly lifted your head, meeting Donnie’s gaze across the table. His expression was unreadable behind his purple mask, but you could feel the frustration radiating off him in waves as he watched the spot where Lilah had disappeared.

“For the record, I know you didn’t do it. I could hear her from across the room, she’s not subtle.” His hands moved to grip the edge of the table, and the scale of them became apparent again— oh god. Long, tridactyl fingers that could probably encircle your entire wrist. Stop it. Stop thinking that.

He tilted his head slightly, watching as the remaining lab groups packed up their equipment and scattered out of the classroom in packs, their footsteps echoing until silence settled over the two of you. 

“Her commentary is quite colorful. And the sound of her phone notifications are a drastically annoying high pitch. She should change it,” he mumbles. Donnie shakes his head, trying to rid himself of his negative thoughts towards students. 

That was a habit of Professor Hamato’s; speaking down upon those who were… less intelligent than him. Perhaps that was an unfortunate trait he had picked up from his brother; Leonardo, who would act the same any time they would come home from a mission and had performed much more poorly than the blue brother had. The negative talk would rub off on Donnie, and it would stick. So, he changed his ways. Donnie knows better, of course– he hates catching himself in this act— and always shoves it off. 

“You could hear her? From that distance?”

“Yes. Enhanced hearing, among other things. Perks of being a mutant and working in a primarily homosapien-dominated environment,” he clicks his tongue again. You didn’t bother to ask questions– that was a conversation for another day. For now, you simply smiled, nodding. 

“I see. Cool features, then.” You offered a small smile. It was cool, though.

Donatello let out a small, self-deprecating chuckle. “Mm, it has its drawbacks, believe me.”

“Oh, I can imagine. Sounds like a nightmare.” You found yourself watching his hands as he messed around with the circuit, running what would be his thumb over a conductor. Again, with the three fingers. Quite hard to tell what would be wha–

STOP LOOKING!!!

Your gaze was pulled away immediately. He just laughed, seemingly oblivious and unaware of the thoughts that roamed your mind.

“You have no idea.” A shake of your professor’s head and a genuine smile graced his face. “Comes in handy sometimes, though. Especially when I troubleshoot things, I don’t know. Makes it easier to narrow things down.” 

He adjusted his goggles, pushing them up his forehead with one long finger. “When I was in college, rather than teaching, I think I used to drive my lab partners insane when they pulled stunts like… what’s her face, that just left.” He cursed himself for being discriminatory towards a student… yet again. 

A small breath of a nervous laugh escapes him as he continues. “They’d always get a little bit, please pardon my language here,– pissed– when they’d break something and I would persist that they stay and fix it.” 

“I always thought it was easy,” he rambles, continuing, “because I could hear what was wrong with it. Took me a minute to realize regular humans aren’t exactly capable of that,” a light snort came from his nose. 

You chuckled at his little curse, the word not being anywhere near as vulgar as the things you’ve heard from students, but it was nice knowing he felt comfortable enough to say so. 

“Well… I guess I can confidently say I know how you feel,” you smiled softly; warm, like seeping honey. 

“How did you end up teaching?” You shifted your weight, the metal legs of your stool scraping against the linoleum. “You seem like a genius compared to everyone else here, you’re clearly overqualified—” Realization hit mid-sentence, and you rushed to fix it. “In a good way! Of course. I’m just curious what led you here.”

Donatello shakes off your mistake with another laugh. Leaning against the table as you two spoke again, the fabric of his lab coat– that he only really wore when working with his materials– pulled tight across his shoulders. People were starting to trickle out. “You’re okay, no offense taken. I have another job,” he says, his voice dropping an octave. “This is only a fraction of the work I do. I’m a researcher and lead scientist for a private lab nearby. Teaching is just a change of pace for me.” 

A hand comes up to cover his face as he makes his next statement. “And, don’t worry about it, that’s how most people react when they think that’s all I subject myself to. How my brothers did, too. One of them. At least. Not my proudest moment.” Hm. Seems he wasn’t very fond of recalling that memory, whatever it may have been.

“I will refrain from asking, then.” Your response came out softer than you intended, barely above a whisper in the now-silent lab. Outside, the afternoon sun angled through the windows, casting elongated shadows that danced across the floor like shy visitors at an awkward party.

Donnie nodded, his gaze lingering a moment longer than necessary before he moved toward the nearby supply cabinet. The doors opened with a soft hiss.

His fingers, those fascinating three-fingered hands, fuck, why are you so focused on his hands– bypassed several smaller instruments before selecting a screwdriver that seemed impossibly large. It was sleek and metallic, a deep purple, matching his mask. Custom accommodated for his mutated size. 

As he walked back to the table, those eyes of yours drifted to his clothing choices for the day. His arms were so unbelievably defined underneath his lab coat. It was cut out in a funky shape, so his shell was somehow still visible in the back in order for it to not be a giant lump covered by material, but sewn again so it looked somewhat normal from afar. As normal as he could get, that is.

He leaned over your damaged circuit, mumbling scientific jargon. 

"Resistance is fried, obviously," he murmured, more to himself than to you. "And the capacitor took the brunt of the surge. Amateur mistake, really."

His thumb—large and green—traced along the damaged board. You wondered briefly if his skin felt like a human's or if it was different. Rougher? More textured? 

Cut it out, cut it out. Cut. It. Out.

"I need to start building my own circuit boards to hand out to classes, these are not put together very well. Anybody could damage them in a heartbeat if they wanted to,” He paused, glancing at you over the top of his goggles. "Though most would have been paying more attention." That was more of a jab towards the other girl. Maybe all the arguing between those two that you had heard was getting to him. 

He’s got a sense of humor, too.

There was no accusation in his tone, just a statement of fact. Still, you felt warmth creep up your neck. 

"She was... distracted. Just broke the thing by accident. At least it’s able to be fixed."

"Mmm," he hummed in response, his focus returning to the circuit. "There's a difference between being distracted and being uninterested. I'd say she fell into the latter category."

He finished with a final, decisive twist of the screwdriver and straightened up. The microcontroller's LED flickered back to life, blinking in the pattern you had programmed earlier. He had not only fixed what was broken but improved upon the original design, adding a small protective component that would prevent similar damage in the future.

"There," he said, turning slightly toward you. "That should hold."

Your eyes met across the table, and for a fraction of a second, you froze. His eyes, so dark, seemed to see right through you, and you found yourself unable to look away.

The distant sound of a door closing down the hallway broke that sense, and you both blinked.

"It's getting late, and you probably have other classes," he remarked, his tone softening as he spoke. "I should probably let you get on your way."

Neither of you moved. The lab equipment continued to hum softly, the only sound in the space you now shared. You could hear your own heart beating, steady and insistent against your ribs.

"I should," you agreed, still making no attempt to leave.

He extended the screwdriver toward you, an invitation. "Want to try adding the sensor calibration yourself? I can walk you through it. If you don’t have anywhere to be, that is. Can’t have you skipping."

“Nowhere to be. It’s an easy day today.” The words were quieter– but why? Why does your voice betray you now? 

When you finally managed to look at his face again, you saw Donatello waiting patiently for your response. There was a slight tilt in his head; the tails of his mask following along.

“I’d be happy to learn,” you said, voice quieter now, eyes dropping back to the circuit. You grasped one of the components like you were studying it, which you would happily be doing, on a normal day–! Though, your focus kept drifting somewhere else. 

“Show me how?” You handed Donnie the circuit again.

He took it, zero hesitation and full attention.

“Happily.”

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Apartment  ♥︎

10:00 p.m.

The deadbolt of your shithole apartment locked with a satisfying click. 

For just below $1000 per month, you’d managed to find what was possibly the worst apartment that was closest to the university as possible– that apartment so, so conveniently (you think, with sarcasm), has the world's shittiest utilities, wifi, and, the worst of all… neighbors. 

Every night. It was like a damn party in their house, you swear. When it wasn’t a party, it was like they were two mating rabbits, heinous for nothing but the scent of their own lust. 

Their headboard had to be broken by now, you wondered. Matter of fact, you’re almost 100% positive it has–! The sound you’ve tried too fucking hard to drown out has seeped through earbuds, earplugs, classical music, quite literally anything. Noise machines: a useless investment. Banging back on the wall in spite did nothing. They just didn’t quit.

In a measly attempt to focus on quite literally anything other than their nightly romantic incursions, you breathed in the scent of warm eucalyptus as thick steam arose from a teapot. The liquid caffeine had some remnants of jasmine… even some apple, you noticed. Light notes. 

Certainly better than whatever your neighbor’s room probably smelled like. 

Your hand gripped softly, gently around the handle of the green teapot; the steam blooming onto your face and drafting into the air. The ceramic was warm on your palm. 

You’re glad you’re able to focus on this, and not on the endless whines and thumping coming from your shared wall.

The intruding thoughts of today's little… conversation with your professor starts to invade, anyway. 

Forget about it. Jesus. It was nothing. You’re being inappropriate, stop getting hooked on people you can’t have. 

You carried the steaming mug over to your sofa, sinking into the familiar dip of the cushions. It was dark. Again. You weren’t one for the big lights– the natural lighting from the moon served you just fine. You focused on the tea, letting the floral notes of jasmine and apple settle your nerves. 

Might as well get this part of the night over with while you’re still willing. 

The intro to one of many dating apps jingles as it’s opened. A red notification bubble disappears as you click on the ‘3 New Messages!’ button. 

From one man, named Matt, who you’d been somewhat speaking to for the past week or so, were a set of triplet messages. Man must’ve been desperate as fuck when he sent these. 

Alright. Brace yourself, you thought.

From Matt, 9:42 PM: getting ready to shower 

From Matt, 9:42 PM: it’s a shame u’re not in here w me

From Matt, 9:43 PM: hello? ik ur online

Sigh. Do frat boys not have anything better to do? Sad adult men, they were.

You didn't respond. Matter of fact, you hit the block button-- the personal image didn't exactly do it for you, anyways. You were starting to find a common pattern amongst these men holding giant ugly fish in their profile pictures.

Why were you even doing this? To appease those friends of yours, the ones so firm and convinced that this was the only path toward securing a partner? You’d thought back to that one miserable day, the one miserable day where your friends had signed you up for the apps without your permission. The first time a message popped up was enough to scare the absolute shit out of your system. It didn’t help that that message was one of more explicit nature. 

In hopes of the app working, you kept it. Now it just felt like a stupid game. Some app you regularly checked in on every night, like social media, or something. Trying to bring yourself to delete it was a meticulous task; what if it did work… eventually? What if? What if, what if, what if? 

A particularly loud bang against the shared wall snapped you back to the present. Your teacup rattled in its saucer– spilling a little bit of its contents. 

“Shut! The fuck! Up!” 

You slammed your mug down onto the coaster—harder than necessary, maybe, hoping the retaliatory clatter would carry through the wall. Useless. They wouldn’t notice a wrecking ball at this point.

You sank deeper into the sofa, the warmth of the tea doing nothing to ease the headache from the noise. 

Your dating life was a joke. You were stuck in this shoebox of an apartment– thank you, New York– marinating in other people’s animalistic noises. What was the point of all of this? Your major was a dead end. Biology was a strong suit– over multiple years of your education, you’d expect it to be– but it just wasn’t a passion.

That emotion was enough to get the best of you, for the night. Tipping your head back onto the couch brought such a sense of relief. 

With Jasmine and apple lingering on your tongue, and the blue moon sifting through the blinds, you decided that attempting to sleep wasn’t such a bad idea.

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Donnie’s Scientific Research Laboratory  ♥︎

3:00 a.m.

The soft hum of specialized machinery filled the pristine white corridors as Donatello made his way through the underground research facility. 

He, in his figure, towered over absolutely everyone there; but it was natural. In his element, the man didn’t care. The top of his head damn near hit the top of the ceiling, his legs causing a louder stomping sound he tried so hard to muffle. 

"Morning, Donnie!" chirped a coworker of his from behind a microscope. He barely looked up, dark curls falling in front of the circles below his eyes. "How’d the first week go? Bearable, I presume?"

“Good very early morning, Dr. Perez.” Donnie managed a smile, his shoulders slumping slightly and what would be his nose, scrunching into a sarcastical bunch. As he sat down, he kicked his feet up on the top of one of his desks; it got him a light side eye, but, who the fuck cares.  One leg hooked over the side of the desk, the other bouncing faintly, restless.

“Uh—yeah, bearable,” Donnie mumbled. “One of them shorted a basic microcontroller. Which— I mean, it's fine, that happens, but—” he huffed quietly through his nose, rubbing the bridge of his glasses. “That was... f'king great to repair.” The curses came out mumbled; in a workplace like this, it was really considered disrespectful; a habit he needed to quit. 

"Her lab partner stayed and helped fix it, though. Thankfully. She's actually... remarkably intuitive, from what I’ve seen. A biology major. Most people in her situation usually take it for the GPA boost. But it's a refreshing perspective, I admit." 

His eyes glazed over his coworkers' current project, eyeing the slides he was examining via microscope. Although, with his eyes now darting around, it was quite clear he was thinking about something else.

Perez hummed, adjusting the microscope. “You don’t usually get this detailed about students. Should I be concerned?”

"I—what?" Donnie's face grew warmer, his purple mask doing little to hide the sudden color rush to his cheeks. "That's not—that is completely—"

The scientist laughed, a bright sound that carried down the corridor. "Relax, big guy. I'm just teasing. But I did notice you worked late in the university lab yesterday according to the access logs. And you're usually back here by 4 PM sharp."

"The circuit broke. I had to fix it, thank you, my other classes ran a little longer," Donnie mumbled, standing up to make his escape toward his private workstation. “And, hey, some students require additional guidance!"

"Yeah, okay, Mr. Additional Guidance, you want me to remember that one next time you start dogging on people for being dumber than you?"

“That motherf– okay, I’m exiting myself from this conversation! Goodnight!” Donnie called, shaking his head and covering his face with his hands; a groan escaping his mouth.  

Donnie continued to walk the trek to his own personal lab. The automatic doors slid open with a soft hiss, revealing what was once a stark white room, now transformed into a decorative combination of deep purple and ebony black. LED strips ran across the wall in meticulous shapes and patterns, the light pulsing like a rhythmic throb. 

There was an immense amount of random bullshit tossed and thrown across the floor—but up front, highlighted by the dim glow as if it were in a spotlight, sat a white bionic arm mechanism; torn into tiny, tiny pieces and strewn about.

“Look at you,” he muttered to the inanimate object, his voice a low rumble. “You beautiful idiot. You’re supposed to be perfect. Been working on you for ages and you’ve given me nothing.” The turtle ran a finger along the piece of machinery… the circuits whine. 

Five weeks ago, the turtles had faced a fight unlike any other.

Correction: Raph and Donnie had faced a fight unlike any other. Patrol went wrong. So, so, wrong.

Donnie hasn’t shut his eyes since.

╰♥︎ ╮Flashback: Patrol

It was Raph and Donnie’s night for patrol; Leo and Mikey had stayed back. Training, as always.

Purple and Red had been tracking hordes of foot soldiers through the industrial district when the ambush occurred. It was supposed to be a routine sweep, as it always was!! But the silence of the docks had been a lie. 

A fucking ruse. 

Donnie had been too focused on his tech. Eyes glued to his scanner as he tried to pinpoint the source of a lingering signal, completely oblivious to the sharp flash of steel aimed at his shell. 

Why was it flashing? Where was this signal coming from? God, if he had been listening, only listening–!!

A fraction too late, Donnie looked up.

Raphael hadn’t even blinked before thrusting his massive frame into the line of fire. Shielding Donnie from getting his then-oblivious head chopped off from a fucking ambush attack.

The foot soldier's blade sliced into Raph’s skin with a hiss. The physical sensation was a white-hot flash of agony that instantly numbed his entire side, followed by the terrifyingly warm, heavy rush of blood soaking through his gear. 

Raph had always thought he was the strongest. Physically, that was.

In two seconds, that was ripped away from him, quicker than Donnie could’ve possibly intervened. 

Donnie watched in horror as the blade connected with his brother's right arm. Severing. Ripping through reptilian skin and flesh with a sound that would haunt his nightmares for years—a sickening wet tear followed by Raph's choked scream of pain.

Blood—so much blood— what, what is he supposed to do–? He could’ve stopped this, had he just been listening, for fuck’s sake-–!

No. Every time Donnie had thought about it… the guilt had been an immediate, corrosive acid in his gut. Raph’s screams. Raw, painful, they’d bring tears to Donnie’s eyes any time he thought about the occurrence. He’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night; thinking the incident was his fault. Was it not?

While Leo and Mikey had focused on the recovery, Donnie had retreated into the only sanctuary that made sense: his lab. If his brother had lost a part of himself to protect Donnie’s incompetence, then Donnie would build him something better than flesh and bone. Better to hide than do nothing and sulk. Pft. Not like Raph would want to see him. Or, at least, that’s what he thinks. 

Amongst a bionic arm that is painted stark white, all Donnie can visualize is red. Crimson liquid and metallic steel. 

The thought flashes in his mind.

He can’t do this on his own. 

For weeks, that’s what Donnie did. He sat. Stared at the arm. Radio silence. 

How was he supposed to fix anything out there when he couldn’t even figure out how to fix himself?

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Lecture Hall  ♥︎

Many Weeks Later…

Almost always, you’re the first to walk in. Donatello is sitting down at his desk, cup of coffee in hand, nodding and smiling over the cup as you sit down. Your presence has begun to be something he expects, now. 

Sometimes, you two talk! More often than not, actually. 

He’ll ask how your week has been. How your weekend has been, if you’ve done anything interesting. Once or twice, you’ve admitted to having a few fun nights out, getting drunk at a bar. He always snorted at that. Never has he had a student openly admit something as ludicrous as intoxication. 

You’ve become increasingly good at his class. So much so, that he’s had a personal talk about you switching your major. With this being your last year in college, you played that one off with a nervous chuckle. 

It was true though. You were fucking incredible at whatever it was he had managed to teach you. 

There’s been a few times he’s stayed after during lab days; playing your conversations off at his research job as another circuitry or laboratory malfunction, lying on those days, just because he became engaged in some silly conversation with you. About robotics. Comics. Science. Sometimes, it even got as advanced as relationship history. 

Hell, you even told him about the motherfucker that decided to sext you in the middle of the night. But you didn’t go very in depth there.

Weeks pass by. Multiple, and you’re practically acing the course! Professor Hamato’s lecture hall, once a sea of unwilling academics, starts to empty. One by one. Two by two. You noticed your old art major friend has decided to drop the class; likely for the better. What a tiring individual. It’s just the core few now. 

The lecture hall was half-empty when you arrived, early as always. 

Donatello stood at his desk, hunched halfway over instead of just sitting, arranging slides for today's presentation. His lab coat was slung over his shoulder, not on, this time. As you approached your seat, he looked up, a smile already forming beneath his mask.

"Good morning," he said, his voice softer than when he addressed the full class. He seemed tired. "You’re here early again? I'm starting to think you don't sleep."

"I could say the same to you." You replied, taking your usual seat in the front row. To your dismay, your voice carried a hint of a flirtatious lilt. Maybe a side effect of the lack of shut eye. 

“Rough night?” 

“I’ll spare you the details.”

His eyes darkened momentarily before he recovered. "Please do. Sleep patterns and their correlations fascinate me."

You softly chuckled, shaking your head. "Yeah, a little bit of a rough night then, I guess."

"Oh?" His head tilted, those three-fingered hands stilling on his keyboard. "Studying too hard again?"

“I wish.” You mutter under your breath. “I don’t sleep well in general. Though my neighbors might share some blame. They’re very… animalistic, when night comes around.” Phrasing that in a way that didn’t just straight up tell him that your neighbors were going at it all night was slightly more difficult than you had guessed. That conversation was much easier when you had imagined it in your head.

"Ah," he said, his voice lower now. "Yeah, I get it. I have some expertise in that particular area of suffering." His thumb gestured vaguely toward the empty lecture hall– thankful for the lack of students. “Living with three brothers teaches you a lot about that kind of… unwanted noise.”

Spring was not Donnie’s favorite time of year. By God, he’d invented his own white noise systems to drown out Mikey, sometimes. 

“Three brothers!?” 

“Yes, good god!! Don’t even get me started on–” 

As if on cue, a group of students began to trickle in from the back door; the entrance near the very top of the lecture hallway. They had erupted into some previous conversation about a party that went on during the weekend. Yeah, not your forte, but at least they made it on time? Not that you cared. 

Donnie exhaled; the sound audible to only the first few rows. “Maybe that was my cue to shut up. So be it then,” he said, his voice shifting to a more formal tone as he straightened his stance and switched his location to the front of his computer. He cracked his neck and sat down on top of the desk, swinging his gigantic feet as he watched only a few other students waltz inside. 

You could just barely hear the sound of his cargo pants swishing against themselves. You forced your gaze elsewhere, desperate to look away before that image became ingrained in your traitorous mind and (un?)willingly altered into something else. 

Like morning fog, Donnie’s voice had dissipated into the crowd of students. They were all of different ages, but the main focal point of the disturbance came from the twenty-somethings. Hungover. Yet again. Jesus, did you miss the message that this place must’ve been a party school? 

“We all settled in?” You heard him mumble to himself. His eyes darted around the room, tongue sticking out for a brief moment. He did that a lot, you noticed. The tongue thing. 

“Cool, coolcoolcoolcool. So–” With a clap of his hands, Donnie switched on the presentation of slides that he had prepared. “I know we’re nearing the end of the semester, but I wanted to offer a special opportunity for any of you interested in gaining some extra research experience. None of this is for a grade, so if you’re not interested, tune me out. Or leave. Please.” 

A couple took him up on that offer. 

“Anyways… I'm leading a project outside of this university that requires some additional hands. It’s a personal thing. Funded by the technology company I work for. Fancy stuff, if you’re looking for that kind of thing on your resume, I guess?” 

Donnie spent a few seconds observing the remaining reactions. Some were uninterested, a few tilted their heads– he didn’t have to land his eyes on you to know that you were paying attention. Even if it was just out of respect, of course. 

“This project,” he says, air-quoting slightly, “is a bionic prosthetic. A robotic arm, basically. Like something you’d see in a movie. I’m trying to rework the interface so it feels more natural.” He pauses, exhaling through his nose. “However, there’s a problem! It’s not working. And I’d very much like it to within the next month or so.” His voice was a tad bit sassy, even dismissing, almost? Like he was frustrated. Probably.

From the back, someone interrupted. “Do we have to, like… do a lot?”

Donnie blinks once. “Yes.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“That’s generally how contribution works.”

“Oh. Nevermind.” Jesus Christ. That was the cherry on top of an already cherry filled cake. 

"Yes, it will be intensive," he groaned. "Time-consuming. But for those of you who actually decide to stick with it, the experience will be unlike anything you'll get in this classroom. I feel like that's a given." 

He set the papers down, leaning against his desk with practiced nonchalance. "If any of you are interested, see me after class with your transcripts and a brief statement about why you think you'd be a good fit for this kind of work." Again. His eyes darted towards you. Lingered a second. Then, back to the crowd.

And with that, his presentation was over. Your professor had jumped straight from that into today's lab: a continuous project of building and calibrating a miniature robot, of sorts! 

Simple work.

╰♥︎ ╮

You’d gone a bit rogue with the circuitry and coding behind your bot, thus taking a bit longer than usual to clean. Not an unusual circumstance. Having the place to yourself was nice! After your lab partner dropped out, everything had run much more smoothly. Occasionally, people had come to ask you for help, but it was of no issue. Packing away your tools the way you wanted to had started to feel more therapeutic rather than some godawful stress ritual. 

Gazing down at the miniature bot in its case for the first time, you couldn’t help but think those childhood STEM camps had actually paid off– as it truly does look like something that was ripped straight out of a Transformers movie! Well, if you sized an autobot down by literal millions. Stripped it down to its core. Heavily reprogrammed it way past what you were assigned. But its little face was kind of cute!

This thing doesn’t look half-bad! Professional, to some degree, you thought. I wonder what–

A soft cough broke your concentration. Followed by the soft scent of coffee steam. 

Donatello stood behind you, eyeing your bot with his hands shoved in his lab coat– the one he must’ve shoved on at some point in class, today. He leaned against the frame of a table that connected to your own. 

"Sorry! Sorry,” he said, pushing himself upright. "Didn't mean to startle you." Was he watching?

You shook your head, tightening the last screw on your project case. "No, you’re fine! Just making sure my little guy doesn't get damaged in transport."

He nodded slowly, taking a smaller step towards your workstation. “I like what you’ve done with the joints. It’s a different approach than what I see in the masses, usually. You’re very creative.”

Heat crept up your neck as you clicked the latches shut. "Oh, that? That… that was just an experiment. Or something, I don’t know. I was gonna take it off. I thought—"

“I’m praising your work, (y/n), not harassing you for it. Sometimes innovation requires you to think outside of the box.” He smiled with a snort. Your cheeks turned red. “Do you have experience with robots like these?”

“Oh, I– I messed around with them a little bit a few years ago, yeah. I build some models for my bio classes, sometimes. Helps me put miniscule things into perspective.”

Donnie’s hands emerged from his pockets, one adjusting his glasses while the other toyed with torn fabric ends of his lab coat. He seemed interested in asking you something– paying very close attention to what you just said. 

“Do you think that you’d be… interested in the prosthetics research opportunity I mentioned earlier? By any chance?” His arms crossed, tight in the material that highlighted their flex. “I think... I think you'd be perfect for it."

You looked up, trying your best to meet his eyes that stared down at you through his broken tortoiseshell glasses. 

“Me?”

“Of course, yes. Who else?”

“...me? Of all people?”

That question left your professor a little dumbfounded. 

“(Y/n)… come on.” His tone softened, more earnest than insistent. “You’ve consistently outperformed most of the class and others, you can’t deny that. I don’t know why you signed up for this course when you would’ve easily excelled in something so much more prestigious!" He pressed on, voice maintaining that careful professional tone while his fingers drummed against the metal of your workbench. "Your bot, there? That’s honestly among some of the early-stage work that my colleagues have done. So why... why in the world would you pick biology?" 

He blurted that question out before catching himself.

"Thatcameoutveryquickly. I’m sorry. I meant that—not that biology isn't a perfectly respectable field—I, oh, god." 

"It's just... complicated," you started, unsure where this conversation was headed. “Finals week is approaching, sir, I’d really like to, but–” 

"Complicated," Donatello repeated softly, testing the word on his tongue. His eyes—god, those eyes behind his glasses. Any time he came to speak to you, it was like they had this way of making you feel like you were the only person who'd ever existed in this unfair universe. "Finals week... right. Of course, how could I forget?”

You watched as his professional mask slipped back into place, the earnestness replaced by that slightly detached academic demeanor he used in lecture halls. It almost sounded like he had mumbled something along the lines of– “Donnie, youfuckingidiot, not-even-taking-schedules-into-account– His fingers stopped drumming against your workbench.

"I understand," he said, and there was something disappointing in his tone that you couldn't quite place. "Deadlines wait for no one. Especially in your field." 

You should have just walked away then.. should have packed your damn things and disappeared into the morning dew like all the other students. But your feet stayed planted, your bot clutched in your hands.

"Wait–! I'm not saying no," you heard Donnie halt. 

The words had escaped before your brain could censor them. "I just... I don't know if I'm the person you think I am for your project." You gestured vaguely at your bot. "This is just—me, messing around with little robots until I come up with something that satisfies me. Your research sounds... very important, Professor. Outside of my capabilities."

Donatello's head tilted again. “Pardon my statement of what is obvious knowledge to me, but that’s how most groundbreaking discoveries start. Messing around, as you put it." He took a small step closer, careful not to invade your space completely, but enough that you could see the tiny piece of tape that held his glasses together. 

"Look," he continued, his voice dropping to that softer register he'd used earlier. "I wouldn't have asked if I didn't think you had something unique to offer. I’m serious. I’d genuinely appreciate it if we could have hands like yours on the team. If there even is a team. I haven’t checked my email since I alerted everyone else of it…" Again, you find those words mumbled under his breath. Like he was annoyed. Not with you, of course.

"Can I let you know by Monday?" you finally said, meeting his gaze properly for what felt like the first time. "I need time. To really think about it, that is. But I promise I can let you know. Email, or something?"

The relief that washed over his face was palpable, though he tried to hide it with a quick nod. "Yes, Monday works! I'll be in my office during my usual hours." He paused, his eyes darting to your bot one last time before adding, "Or you could just... find me here. I tend to work late."

“If things don’t work out, email me. My notifications are on at all times, it’s egregious. But I’ll respond. Just let me know?” It was phrased more as a kindhearted, casually offered question. Not a statement.

“I promise.” 

Donnie nodded, and with that, you found yourself jiggling the keys to your apartment door; face red, perfectly prepared to collapse on your couch until midnight.

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: A Bar, Downtown ♥︎

9:00 P.M.

Your slumber never came. 

That night, the regular thumping noise you’d heard wasn't from your neighbors. 

The thumps you now heard would come from the guitar strums, drum beats and vocal screams of a poorly mixed cover band... not to mention the throbbing headache you had from the noise pollution from the residents of a crowded downtown bar. 

The pulse in your head was aching-- aching so hard, but, alas. Anything was better than the vocals of your suitemates around this time of night.

Everything became louder, it felt like. Sounds became unusually amplified. Dart tips hitting cork, pool balls cracking, someone sliding a fresh pizza onto the counter near the kitchen window. The smell of melted cheese mixed with stale beer and something smoky. It smelt phenomenal. You sat at a high-top table, nursing a strong drink that tasted faintly of lime… and something else. You couldn’t quite place it. You just told the bartender to give you something that’d make you feel something, for fuck's sake.

You had tried to go home. God, you had really tried. But the silence of your apartment that night... was, (and, this is contradicting--) far too loud. No noise machine could cancel out the sounds. Not the audible, nor the mental. Nada.

That got to you, too. The mental thoughts. 

Finals week. What a fun week! Not.

You could make it. You could make it through this last year. You’ve done it before, why not again? 

Cause you’re not that smart, that’s why. Pfft. Doesn’t take a genius to see that. 

Your head was thumped down on your hand as the thoughts raced– intruding–through your head. Maybe alcohol wasn’t the best move for tonight. 

There was too much going on. Too many thoughts to have. 

Number one was the easiest to figure out: you had no idea what you wanted to do with your life. It was as simple—and as frustrating—as that, whether you liked it or not.

Sure, majoring in biology was supposed to get you somewhere, but with everything you could muster up in you, there was little to almost no passion! Nothing! The only joy you found out of the science was the capabilities of the human body… and even occasionally, building models of said attributes that correlate with the subject. Even still… there was no spark.

Number two. That goddamned professor of yours. 

Where to even start? 

Maybe the way he always looked at you. Or spoke to you. Or was so eager to speak with you about your weekend and how guys tended to send unusually explicit messages so early in the morning. 

He was really good at conversation, you realized. The turtle was a nervous, socially anxious wreck, who never raised his voice in a serious way. Sarcastically, sure. Only to things that were common fucking sense, though.

When you spoke, he would listen, with a tilt of his head. When you spoke, he would listen with such. Genuine. Curiosity. His eyes would always follow yours as you got lost in a train of thought; where that train was going, you didn’t know– probably in a loop and straight back to him. 

And then there was your current problem. Number Three. A phone buzz. Again. 

Didn’t you block this guy?

A hand ran through your hair as you groaned… reading the text message he had sent prior to tonight. This was ‘Matt’ again– the same guy who'd woken you up three nights ago with explicit texts about what he wanted to do to you while describing in painful detail how your biology knowledge could "assist" his anatomy lesson. You'd blocked him twice. He just kept popping up. Somehow.

In annoyance, and, admittedly very drunk– you may have accidentally told him you’d be at the local bar. That’s how.

“Well, well. Small world," he slurred, beer breath assaulting your nose. Shit burned your eyes, too. Reeked of nacho cheese and breadsticks. "You're even prettier in person.”

“Don’ even try it,” you slurred back, already turning away, elbow slipping a little as you tried to catch the bartender’s eye. “M’ gettin’ my check.”

“Hey, I'm talking to you," his hand closed around your arm, damp with condensation from his glass. “Don't be like that. I was just being honest.”

"I'm not interested," you managed, voice steady despite your hammering heart. "Please leave me alone."

"Feisty. Just like in your messages," he leaned closer, whiskey fumes making your eyes water. "I bet you're wild once someone gets past that good girl act."

“Yeah, o’kay, bye.” The chair beneath you creaked as you shoved it aside. 

The bartender appeared suddenly, placing a check firmly between you and your harasser. "Her night is covered. I suggest you leave now."

Matt looked from the bartender's unsmiling face to yours, contorting his mouth. "Fine," he finally shrugged, backing away slowly. "Your loss." He held his hands up in defeat. “Text you later!” He had mouthed. 

Yeah, please don’t. 

As he disappeared into the crowd, relief washed over you so strongly you nearly slumped off the barstool. The bartender refilled your water glass wordlessly.

"Thank you," you whispered, fingers trembling around the glass. She simply nodded. 

Outside, the cold air felt fucking phenomenal against your skin. Like a cold shower after a warm workout. It was almost enough to bring you to a sober state, but, not quite. You remained in a state rather just below. 

Wobbling up the stairs felt like trying to walk after getting off a boat. The steps mixed in with each other, you had suddenly forgotten where the railing was– where was your apartment door, again? Was it always this far down?

You stopped in the darkness, kind of just… staring out. Your phone slipped out of your pocket into your hands. 13% remaining, the yellow battery had warned. 

The screen turning on was like the lights of heaven resurfacing themselves. Notifications started stacking along the top.

Three missed calls. And a dozen. Unread. Texts. 

One of them stood out to you particularly. 

One of them= problem number two. Your favorite problem.

Of course it was his email you found yourself opening. Donatello Hamato. Professor Hamato, Doctor Hamato, blah blah blah, whatever he had gone by– nothing else seemed to be of importance right now. Fidgeting with the doorknob of your apartment, your feet stumble their way inside. 

The door swung halfway shut behind you, and you leaned against it for a second, blinking down at your phone.

The email was mostly an infographic sheet about the project he had practically begged to have you on. 

You stared at it longer than you meant to. He’d actually put this together for you—color-coded sections, bullet points, notes in the margins? He’d made this with you in mind. That much was obvious. No pressure, he’d said. Just think about it. But he hadn’t looked at anyone else like that when he said it. 

And after tonight, after Matt, that is– and feeling so undeniably and absolutely clueless about the future? Yeahhh, emailing him felt like a fantastic idea! (Although, the alcohol likely supported that decision.)

Sober you had entertained that thought once or twice. She just needed a little push, though. Maybe that was why you went out tonight. Hm.

Pft. Yeah, fuck doing this sober. Your thumbs were already flying across the screen, autocorrect be damned.

To: [email protected]  From: [your email] Subject: Project thing?

Hi Professor. I know you said to think about it and I DID think about it. i read your flyer and I am thinking about it right now. actually. Crazy

And I think I’d like to help. With the arm. The prosthetic thing. Which is very cool by the way. I meant to say that earlier but I think I panicked and talked about finals instead. whoops i am sorry. 

I don’t actually know what I’m doing with my major. Which is probably not something I should be emailing you at 9:42 PM about. But biology is just. I don’t know it’s fine. I think? I keep thinking about the project. And the joints and the interface thing you mentioned and how it responds to movement and stuff. I think I’m half decent at that? Pretty sure

Anyway. I think I’d like to be involved if that offer is still open. I can handle the workload. Definitely. I stayed late today and didn’t even notice, so that has to count for something.

Also this email might not be very professional. I promise I am normally more coherent than this.

But yes. I would like to join the research project. I think it’s research, if you still want me. 

— (Y/N), Neural Systems

Your brain flicked back to all of those times you’ve verbally made fun of the students that came in with hangovers. You’re a hypocrite now, too. A hypocrite on a Friday night. 

"Fuck," you muttered, trudging to your bedroom. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

You collapsed onto your bed, face first. The comforters, chilled by the AC, felt like a mercy against your skin—thankfully cool enough to coax your mind back toward semi-sobriety as the buzz lifted. Of course, the relief was only temporary. That godawful headache would undoubtedly be waiting for you in the morning.

Reading back on the message now, you don’t know what godforsaken part of you thought that that message was okay to send. But– you know. Inebriation and its effects on the mind. What a beautiful misdemeanor.

The start of the migraine was almost immediate. Blindly fumbling for the pill bottle on your bedside table, you managed to peel the ibuprofen from the blister pack and wash it down with a desperate gulp of the lukewarm, old water left in the glass by your bed. Yuck. Wasn’t even cold. 

The logical part of your brain—the sober part that was now slowly resurfacing—told you that there was nothing to be done until morning. You'd face the consequences then. Perhaps you could claim your email account had been hacked. Or that you'd sleepwalked and typed it unconsciously. Or—

As the glass hit the nightstand again, your phone buzzed against the wood.

What the hell? It’s been six minutes, a response already? Shit. Shit, shit shit, this was supposed to be a future-you problem!! Your heart hammered against your ribs… the water and pill you just ingested threatening to come back out. The sheets rustled as your hand aimed for where your phone had been placed.

Right. God, He was a night owl. He literally told you that himself. 

The notification glowed on the screen:

New email from: Donatello Hamato.

To: (Y/N)

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Project thing?

(Y/N),

I'm glad to see your email. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't refreshing my inbox hoping for it.

First, let me address the obvious: your current state of... inebriation, if I had to guess? Unless you compose all your correspondence with the same delightful disregard for punctuation and capitalization? (I ask purely for research purposes, I swear.)

I'm guessing you're not writing this from your usual academic mindset. That's okay. I appreciate the honesty. Though I do hope you're somewhere comfortable and not in the middle of nowhere, like a road. I don’t know. Safety first. :)

Second—and more importantly—YES. Absolutely, unequivocally yes! The offer is more than open, and in more broad regards, I was sincerely hoping that it would be you to volunteer. Your work during labs (and outside of!) is absolutely outstanding. I can’t wait to see how you apply your skills in person. 

My lab is in the science building, third floor, west wing—just past the organic chemistry labs. The sign says "Neural Interface Laboratory," but I'm usually the only one there after hours. Room 302. If you're not too hungover tomorrow, come by around 2 PM? I'll have coffee. And water, which is absolutely more important.

We'll discuss logistics Monday during office hours. Try to get some sleep! Your brain functions better when rested.

Full disclosure. There isn't much of a team yet—you're kind of it, if you accept.

Get some rest (for my sake and yours), 

Donatello Hamato, Ph.D. Neural Systems, Adaptive Robotics & Research Specialist

You read the email twice. Three times. Then a fourth for good measure. Each reading sent another wave of heat through your cheeks. He wasn't mad. He wasn't offended by your informal, very intoxicated message. He seemed amused?

Maybe the alcohol will diffuse in the morning. The embarrassment… likely not. 

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Apartment, Morning ♥︎

10:15 a.m.

"Fuck," you muttered into the fabric. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

But as much as you wanted to die, you also had to be at Donnie’s lab at 2 PM. Coffee, he'd promised. And water. Bless him.

After an ibuprofen and the world’s longest shower, you started feeling somewhat human again. You stood before your closet, suddenly very aware that you had no idea what to wear to a research meeting with your subjectively attractive, brilliant professor who you may or may not have sent a drunk email to confessing your life crisis to.

You ended up deciding upon a muted dove gray sweater, the material nearing an off-white. A simple pair of dressier pants had followed and your hair was finally fixed into something that wasn’t a complete mess. 

Three hours to go.

The apartment felt very silent without the usual background noise of your roommate's music. Every sound seemed amplified. Sliding butter on your toast felt more nerve-wracking than usual, slipping a jacket on felt comforting, even clicking the door shut felt so, very, loud. 

You checked your phone for what had to be the thirteenth time that hour. No new messages, of course. The last correspondence was still there: Donatello's email sitting comfortably in your sent folder, followed by his surprisingly warm response.

You stared at his signature, pasted casually at the end of the email: Neural Robotics and Research Specialist. 

Who were you to even work with someone like that? You’d shown him your advancements in building these little creations, from circuit boards to functioning bots, even biological replicas, sure. You were– somewhat– up there with him, compared to the rest. But when compared to his mind? 

What did he even see in you? It almost felt pathetic. 

At 12:45 PM, you caved and decided to head out early. Well. Better pathetic than late, you reasoned, locking your apartment door behind you. 

The campus was quite empty for a Saturday afternoon, most students also recovering from Friday night or already deep into weekend plans that most certainly didn't involve research with a turtle. You took the long way around the science building, watching the frost of December skitter across pavement. 

Oh, how you missed Summer. Spring, Fall, even– warm weather. You took it for granted. 

The laboratory building doors hissed open with a strange, almost snake-like sound.The inside of the heinously white building was (thankfully) much much warmer– your cheeks had already turned pink! Instead of inhaling the cold, snowy fog– you now inhaled something you considered much, much worse: antiseptic surfaces, formaldehyde, straight chemicals.

The first two floors were bustling with weekend researchers, their conversations floating down hallways as you passed. But as you climbed to the third floor, the noise faded until only your footsteps echoed against polished linoleum. Everyone else had been off in their own world.

The west wing of the laboratory was eerily quiet.

“302, 302, 302…” The room number spilled from your lips, permanently embedded for the last hour and a half. Whispering nonsense to yourself, eyes darting quickly around the never-ending hallway, you nearly passed it—!

A simple white plaque next to the door read “Neural Interface Laboratory,” exactly as Donatello had said, along with a giant 302 labeled underneath. Your hand hovered over the handle for a moment.

Oh, Jesus.

You pushed the door open.

The lab… his lab, was much larger than you had expected. Upon entry,  it was the scent that attacked you the most. Instead of chemicals, you were now graced with that same, gracefully comforting scent of his lecture hall– warm copy paper and espresso. 

The copy paper made sense… he had stacks of them piled around his room. Glancing at one, you had recognized the layout of some engineering project he’d been working on that appeared to take the shape of a metal-looking robot. Convenient enough. 

The institutional white was the next thing you’d noticed had changed. Donnie had apparently taken down, or at least tried to cover, anything that came somewhat close to white in his lab. Anything white had been replaced with a dark purple and grey circuit pattern. The neon pulsated along each wall, lighting up the room in different areas each second. It wasn’t overdone, there were only a few areas that were decorated like this near the top. 

Other than this… the room was quite cozy, actually! Scattered chairs with blankets laid over them. Little juice boxes scattered everywhere. A little bit of a worn-down linen couch hidden behind his desk, where Donnie, a very focused Donnie, sat. 

He hadn't heard you come in. His brow was furrowed in concentration, fingers deftly manipulating a delicate-looking tool and his tongue halfway out of his damn mouth. That coerced a little giggle out of you. His lab coat was draped over the back of his chair, leaving him in his typical attire. Would that be nothing? Tactical gear from whatever he did at night? 

Whatever it was, it did so fucking little to hide lean muscle built from who-knows-what kind of activities. The broken glasses were perched on his nose as usual, and for a moment you just watched him work, the purple-clad turtle completely absorbed in whatever project had captured his attention.

When he finally noticed you standing there, he straightened so abruptly he nearly sent the much larger machine he’d been dissecting toppling off the table.

“Oh—shit, sorry! I didn’t hear you,” he stammered, pushing his glasses up his nose. His cheeks flushed slightly darker green. "You're quite early."

“I am… I’m sorry. I hope that’s okay. I was freaking out a little about being lateee," you drew back the ending of the word late as if it was a habit. It wasn’t; you were just damn near shitting your pants because of this opportunity. 

"Late? You're twenty minutes early." He gestured vaguely with his screwdriver. "But don't apologize. I'm glad you're here. Honestly, I wasn't sure if the... well, if last night would change your mind."

Heat flooded your cheeks at the reminder of your drunk email confession. "God, about that—I am so sorry. I don't usually... that's not how I normally—"

“(Y/n), you’re fine. Trust me. I’ve seen plenty worse.” 

“Oh, thank God, I thought I was going to get kicked off or an email to the dean. Thank you.” 

Donnie let out a laugh. "The dean has more important things to worry about than a student having one too many drinks." He pushed his glasses up with one knuckle. "Although if we're being technical, you're still enrolled in my Neural Systems course, so you'd be dealing with me first before anyone else. But I promise I have no plans to expel you." Donnie nodded his head towards a machine, one that had drafted a scent quite refreshing for the afternoon. “Coffee?” Ah. An espresso machine. 

“Yeah, actually. I’d love that.” 

Another nod. Watching as his legs carried him to the source of the scent, you gazed over his form whilst he busied himself with the machine. Look. Away. Look at literally anything else, please, dear God. 

As Donnie’s hands are put to work, you take the opportunity to look more closely at his workspace. 

The project he'd been working on was clearly some kind of mechanical arm or prosthetic, as he’d said—it was a titanium white, almost metallic, practically torn open in the middle of the wrist; wiring visible through transparent casing sections. On nearby tables lay scattered sketches of what you assumed was the finished product, 3D models of each layer of the arm, and some really long ass lines of code pulled up on his computer. You didn’t touch; but, holy shit, this was intricate. 

You’d built something like this once. Not metal, no, nothing this complicated, but something of an absolutely crude hand diorama made of wire and leftover parts, strings threaded through the fingers to mimic tendons. You remembered pulling them, watching the joints curl. Watching something supposedly inanimate move because you told it to. A puppeteer and its playtoy.

That little free-time project had sat, lifelessly, on your shelf, just begging to be used. Enjoyed. Tugged at. Anything. 

A sudden presence popped you back into life– Donnie’s ginormous figure had managed to surprise you again, appearing right behind your much tinier stature. His hand came around beside your waist, gently setting down a cup of coffee and a water bottle– miniscule, compared to his hands– on his desk in front of you. He mumbled something along the lines of ‘please be careful’, and that the ‘coffee is hot’.

“This looks like something out of a science movie, Dr. Hamato.”

“The coffee?”

“The arm.” You chuckle. 

“Oh. That’s high praise, thank you. I aim to please.” His hand came up to scratch his neck. “Although, I’d say I’m aiming a little above your comparison. It’ll eventually be a prosthetic appendage that can lift over a few hundred pounds, maybe even more, with advancements. It should move with almost the exact mimicry of a human. Hopefully. Eventually…” Donnie messed with the odd number of ripped apart fingers. 

He didn’t bat an eye… but you counted three fingers, not five. 

“Why only three fingers? Have you not added the other two, yet?” A tilt of your head prompts a raise of his eyebrows. He shakes his head; as if reminded of a vital piece of information. 

The turtle took a deep breath in. “No, that was, uh, intentional.” He whispers. “Okay. I should’ve mentioned this earlier… If you want to back out now, there’s absolutely no judgement here. I wouldn’t blame you. This is a bit of a rough, uh, topic…. this part of the project, that is.”

You nodded; gently. “Of course. What is it?” 

Donnie grabs the prosthetic; easily lifting it into his arms to cradle. Not like a baby, but instead pure admiration– hope, for what this thing might eventually form itself to be. 

“Thehe arm isn’t for a human. It’s for my older brother—Raphael. We call him Raph, though. Brute force of a fucking turtle, that idiot is.” His cursing caught you off guard. “He lost his arm a few weeks ago during a mission. Asshole got in the way of a blade meant for… someone else. Someone not very smart.” Donatello admitted, his confession evidently a baked and glazed mixture of guilt and tears. He did not meet your eyes. 

"It was bad. He was the physical backbone of our family. I mean, we all are– but that was his thing. Leo’s got his leadership and negotiation tactics, Mikey’s great at diversions and distractions, I’m supposed to be smart– but Raph is strong. Extremely. It was his primary form of defense.” Donnie leans back in his chair, kicking a leg over another. 

“This needs to be flawless, better than his original. I’ve been working on this for months. But I’m– and, I hate to admit this– struggling– to figure this out. So I am asking for help. Hence, your presence here.” A breath in– “hopefully.” 

“A mission?” you asked softly, the word coming out as a whisper. “I… I didn’t know you were in that line of work. Was it a fight? Are…are you okay?”

Donnie’s eyes, dark and heavy with exhaustion and guilt, flicked away from you. 

"It was," he confirmed, his voice becoming flat and deliberately brief. He walked over to the bank of computers, turning his back to you for a moment as he typed something quickly into a console. "It’s complicated. Our family often deals with situations that require specialized defense, and Raph is the one who usually handles the immediate danger. That’s why his injury is such a critical setback for us all." He forced a breath, turning back around, his gaze now focused entirely on the machinery between you. "Unfortunately, that’s not really the concern at hand. The arm is.” 

“Of course, I understand.” He was clearly shutting down that branch of conversation, and you respected the boundary immediately. You set your coffee down and placed your hand gently on the desk near the limb, messing with the fingers. 

“You’re very passionate about this.” Tracing the edge of one metallic finger, your own felt impossibly small against his creation—fragile. Looking up at him properly for the first time since his confession, your words spilled; oozed, soft, like honey. “I’d still love to help you with this project. If you’ll have me?”

Your professor clicked his tongue with a nod of his head. “Tsk. Knew you’d bite.” 

“Mm. I’ve built smaller versions,” you said, pulling your hand back slightly as heat crept up your neck. “Nothing this complex, but I think we can figure it out. With enough time. Of course.”

“We have time. I can get us time.” 

Before you could respond, he reached past you, his arm brushing against your shoulder as he grabbed a schematic from a nearby stack. His fingers came into contact with your sweater, holding your shoulder in place so he could use you as a balance weight while he lifted a foot off of the ground to reach a littleee further than he had intended. It felt almost as good as you had imagined. Yet, not close enough. 

“These are the initial designs,” he said, his voice strained slightly as he unfolded the large sheet on the desk between you. “But they’re missing something. I’ve been staring at them for weeks and I can’t figure out what. And I refuse to bring this to my laboratory colleagues, they’ll just give unnecessary input and ask unnecessary questions.”

As he leaned over to point to a specific detail, you found yourself leaning in too, the scent of him filling your senses again—warm, like the copy paper you’d noticed… and slightly like… alpine? Ozonic, the stereotypical kind. Obviously, the scent of oil was very distinct, and could easily hide the odd scents that were present. Could they make this scent into a candle? 

“Here,” you said, your own finger reaching out to trace along the schematic without thinking. Your cup of coffee is now finished. You set it down, finally able to use your fingers for a demonstration. This was it. This was the moment you had to bring all of your prior knowledge to try and impress him; to affirm that you’re worthy to be here. Which, you are!

"If you wanna try shifting the synaptic routing to bypass this over here, then introduce a secondary feedback loop in the motor interface… that might help with your reaction time problem."

Your fingers brushed against his as you pointed out your suggestion. Neither of you pulled away immediately… Donnie’s eyes found yours. Contemplating your solution and trying to focus on you all at once. 

“Do you think that might work? Have you tried that?” You murmured. Did he think you were dumb? Please don’t think I’m dumb. 

“You...” he started, then cleared his throat. “You’re right. That could work.”

Donnie allowed himself a light smile. He twisted the paper back into its cylindrical shape– tightened in its rubber band– and threw it behind his computer. 

“I think,” he said, his voice lower now, intimate, regarding the situation, “you and I are going to make a remarkable team.”

“I think we will, Professor.”

“Donnie. Please, call me Donnie. We’ll be working together for a very long time.” 

“Donnie,” you repeated, softly.

“Better,” he hummed, almost to himself. “More coffee?”

╰♥︎ ╮

The crush had only gotten worse with time. 

It’s been about a month or two of working with him, now. And, by God, have you two gotten close.

Working in the lab with him became procedural. Every day– around seven at night, rather than two, you’d visit Donnie in the lab… assisting him with whatever godforsaken problem has chosen to present itself today. He’d explained how this wasn’t really research, anymore. More of a project he had somewhat of a deadline for. 

But outside of the lab was starting to become much, much different. Of course. Of course it was, you were still a student in his class. That reminder formed a deeeeeep hole in your stomach. 

Monday morning's lecture felt like walking into an entirely different universe-- from cozy and (what you both called 'intimate') to a much lesser, mind-numbing class.

Not that you didn't like it-- you loved this class with everything in you! You just-- you know, preferred the one-on-ones. With Donnie. Alone.

It seemed he preferred those, too.

He'd sarcastically eyeroll at you when a student he notably disliked had entered the room. More often than not, he’d be standing by your lecture hall table, hands behind him grasping the table as he would tilt his head backwards to speak with you, hoping to catch your eye. Your chats were often about the project; but lately, they’ve been growing from the usual “how have you been” and “what are you up to.”

He started asking about weekends. Weekdays, your schedule, if anything’s been particularly bothering you lately. He was starting to ask you more and more about how your sleep was, considering the whole situation with your neighbors… and, god forbid. He even brought up the sext you got one night, asking if that man had bothered making an appearance again. You couldn’t bear to tell him he had. 

Not that you were even interested, though. Your eyes were set somewhere else. 

“Did you end up doing anything interesting after research on Friday?” he asked one morning. Same tilted head position where he’s glancing down at you and everything. You gazed up from your notes– pretending you didn’t see him come over and literally position himself next to you. 

“Ah, nothing too crazy… went out for a bit again. Just a couple local cafés. Got coffee,” you added with a light smile. “I think I’ve officially learned my lesson with the, uh… drinks.” A quiet laugh slipped out of Donnie’s lips. You chuckled. “Why’s that? You keeping tabs on me?”

“Of course not,” he said easily, teasing, almost– but there was a faint curve to his mouth. “I like to know how my students spend their time.”

“Your students, huh?”

He was quiet for a second, tilting his head, debating an answer. 

“…you,” he corrected, quieter. “Just making sure you’re getting enough sleep. The prosthetic is coming along quite well, but you’ve been a little out of it lately. Just checking in on you, can I not?” You clicked your tongue– rolling your eyes in a sarcastic manner. Of course he pulled that card on you. 

He turned his attention toward the lecture hall, which was gradually filling with students—about a dozen in total, an amount he likely overestimated, though the headcount was steadily rising as finals drew near. Donnie eyed them slowly pooling in. 

“Well, I’m fine, Professor. Really,” you insisted, though the slight tremor in your hands suggested otherwise. He didn’t look convinced, his something-of-a-brow furrowing as he came behind your seat, the scent of espresso becoming increasingly heavier. Coffee sounded great right now.  

“Donnie. Please,” He corrected his name again softly. There was really nobody else in your vicinity that could hear. “Seriously. If you’re getting exhausted from all of the hours…you don’t have to keep brushing it off with me,” he said, quieter now, more gentle and concerned with his words. “If something’s off, you can just say that. I promise I’m not going to—”

His lecture was cut short by the sharp, synthetic ding of your phone. Oh, hell. Not now, please, not now!

The damn thing sat face-up on the desk. Before you could slap a hand over it or swipe the stupid thing away, the banner notification of some random guy had flashed in bold white letters: 

Dating App • New Message from Kyle 

“Hey beautiful, u wanna get back to me abt that anatomy lesson? I’m free tonight if you want to–”

The rest of the message was mercifully cut off. But the damage was done– your conversation with Donnie was over, for the time being. At least now, it was. Silence lingered. 

You watched Donnie’s eyes track the text. His pupils dilated behind his glasses before he jerked his gaze back to yours. The man’s posture suddenly became oddly clinical. Formal… as it had been, three months ago. He stood up much taller than he had before, when he was slouched down behind you, comfortably. 

“Ohh,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, sounding suddenly much more like ‘Dr. Hamato’ than the version of ‘Donnie’ that you knew. “I see. I suppose that explains the… distraction.” He straightened up, his shell hitting the back of his chair with a hollow thud and a slight growl at the pain. 

“I’ll leave you to your… lessons, then. I have a lecture to start.”

You couldn’t even fabricate fake laughter at this point.

WhatthefuckwhatthefuckwhattheACTUALfuck. 

What came out of you was nothing more than a damn-near silent awkward chuckle and nod… you slipping back into your seat as he strided away– refusing to look back. 

That day, he didn’t call on you to answer questions like he normally did. He didn’t lock eyes with you when someone brought up a stupid question. And when the class finally ended, he didn't even bother to say goodbye as you walked out the door.

Sucks ass that you have to see him that night for research, doesn’t it? 

Time began to move very, very slow. 

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Prosthetics Lab ♥︎

7:00 p.m.

The lab door slid open with a louder hiss than what you were used to, tonight. 

Most times, that sound was a sound of comfort. It would usually mean being able to work on a project you’d loved, solving problems through trial and error, contributing to something that– well, meant something– all while working with someone that was starting to mean something to you. Someone who you’d literally been eyeing since the beginning of the year. 

Now it was just cold. The fog from the hiss sent a shiver down your spine. 

You didn’t like what you saw when you entered the lab. Donnie sat in his chair, leaned back with his legs crossed and one foot rested upon his desk, jaw tighter than a knot as he screwed a plate back onto the arms base. Lingering in the doorway for hours felt so right, right right now. 

He didn’t look up. Not like he usually did, when that sound went off. 

You took hesitant steps toward his worktable, the squeak of your sneakers against the linoleum sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet lab. "I, uh..." You cleared your throat. "I looked over the code for the arms memory last night. I didn’t have access to change any of it, but I can work on that today."

Donnie finally raised his head, and the impact of his gaze straight-up hit you like a hammer. 

His expression was absurdly neutral, unlike the excessive amount of warmth you'd grown accustomed to. His eyes were darker, almost sleepier, than normal. What was it? Disappointment? Annoyance? You couldn't parse it.

He gestured vaguely toward an empty chair. "Right. Good. You wanna go work on the code for a bit? I’m a bit busy with this." His voice, usually rich with enthusiasm or laced with dry humor, was flat. Monotone. 

You set your bag beside a spinny chair with a soft thud. For several minutes, the only exchange was technical. And impersonal. It was awful, almost to a level of uncomfortable. Jeez, only once, you pointed out a potential improvement to the pattern of the white base plates he was screwdriving in; he nodded curtly and made notes without comment. You suggested a different power source that might reduce weight; he replied with a simple "Already considered it."

Each clipped response was another punch to the gut after an even worse punch to the gut. So much for learning about each other, God. No more joking about stupid shit his brothers have done. No more joking about the men that speak like this to you all the time. Speaking of which, why is he so pissed now? He’s known about their tendency to send explicitly obnoxious messages to your inbox at the most random time of day. 

You’re unable to bear any more of this suffocated civility. 

Leaning forward, your elbows found their place on your knees. "Donnie," you said softly, testing the waters with his name. "Do you… are we going to talk about what happened today? I feel like… you’ve known for a while about this guys tendency to text me like that, he–"

"Today?" he asked, though you knew damn well he knew exactly what you meant. "In what regard?"

You took a breath. "In the lecture hall. When..." You gestured vaguely at your phone, now safely tucked away in your bag.

His tridactyl fingers began tapping again, this time against the surface of his worktable. 

"I don't believe there's anything to discuss," he said, though his gaze had dropped to the prosthetic, avoiding yours. "You're entitled to a personal life. Your extracurricular activities are none of my concern."

Extracurricular? Is that how he saw this?

"It's not like that," you insisted, leaning forward. "Kyle is—I'm not seeing him. We've never even met. He’s no better than that one guy at the bar I told you about. They’re all looking for one thing and one thing only.” You explained, turning in your swivel chair completely towards him. 

“It's just a dating app, one of those things where you swipe and sometimes you get messages like that. I delete most of them. Fuck, I don’t even have it for my own personal gain. One of my friends had me download it because she was sorry for my dating life." You snorted– though, the reasoning was true.

No other guy would get this in-depth explanation. Just the one that matters. That has mattered, the one that’s paid and given you attention since before you could pray for the slightest opportunity to even come into his well-guarded vicinity.

Donnie froze at your reasoning. His tool hovered millimeters from the prosthetic's wrist joint. After a long moment, he slowly set it down and turned to face you fully, finally meeting your eyes without that clinical detachment from earlier.

Donnie finally looked at you, his expression unreadable. "Oh. Pardon my asking, if that’s the case, then why did he message you about... 'anatomy lessons'? I can only go so far to imagine what that means." 

His voice was flat, but the way his fingers curled into a slight fist betrayed something beneath the surface. He didn’t want to imagine you like that. At least, not with another guy. Another other guy he didn’t even know.

Your cheeks flushed with heat. "God, don't remind me. He’s not even that smart. He knows me from anatomy and phys from, like, two years ago. I helped him study for one test. Now he’s just trying to get a rise out of me. With, uh, terrible, terrible pickup lines."

He’s not even that smart, you’d said. Did you like smart people? Donnie kept that thought to himself.

"So you're not..." he started, then paused, clearing his throat. "You're not seeing anyone?"

You shook your head. "No. I'm not seeing anyone."

He straightened, eyes widening, adjusting his glasses even though they hadn’t moved. He told himself it didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. This wasn’t his business. You were his student. His research assistant, technically. Anything beyond that was irrelevant. He knows better!

“I’m sorry. It’s not any of my business. I should’ve stayed out of it,” He mumbled. “My eyes like to wander. The text was just… rightinfrontofmyface. Forget I ever said any of this. Please?” 

You smiled, ready to tease him once again. Thank God you discussed that whole situation. 

But there was one thing you were still left to wonder. 

You spun slowly in your swivel chair, leaning forward, resting your chin upon your hand as you watched him. Your voice became mumbled by your palm slightly covering your mouth.

“Would it have mattered if the text had been genuine?”

“…It shouldn’t matter,” he said quietly, though it didn’t sound convincing even to him. A brief pause, his fingers stilling against the table before he exhaled. “But it would. Not because it’s my place—it isn’t—but because you shouldn’t be giving your time to someone who clearly doesn’t know what to do with it. Like… What's his face? Kyle.”

“What do you mean, I shouldn’t be?”

“I don’t like the idea of you doing it. It never ends up well. For someone as smart as you, I feel like you’d know that by now.” 

Fuck, how Donnie wanted to just load up your schedule so you didn’t have time for idiots to give you their quote-on-quote- “anatomy lessons”-- he wanted to fill up your schedule with nothing but the research project so you didn’t have time to talk to anyone else. Nobody but him. 

That shit stays in HIS head, though. God, if he ever let those feelings through, he’d– 

“You throw yourself into things—this, the project, everything—and I know what happens when you’re stretched too thin.” A slight tilt of his head, voice lowering just a fraction. “I’d rather not watch you burn yourself out over someone who thinks a message like that is impressive.”

He adjusted his glasses, like he needed something to ground himself. “And, selfishly,” he added, almost under his breath, “I like having your focus here. You’re good at this. You’re good with me.” A beat. “I’m not particularly interested in competing with someone who hasn’t earned it.” 

“Competing with?” you smirked, a hint of a smile slipping in, light and teasing whereas his had gone tight.

Donnie stilled for half a second—just long enough to give himself away—before he scoffed quietly under his breath.

“Don’t start that,” he muttered, though there was no real bite to it.

“Don’t start what?” you pressed, softer now, leaning just slightly into it.

He shot you a warning look. You just stared right back into his eyes. 

After a moment, he broke eye contact, looking back down at the arm between you. "Don't play coy. It doesn't suit you."

“You brought it up.” Donnie could feel the rhythmic beating of his heart against his plastron. Setting his screwdriver down again with a light thunk, indicating slight frustration–no, embarrassment? Giving in, almost? He spun his chair to face your direction.

“Okay, fair. I acted like a child today. In my lecture hall. It was unprofessional, and I’ll be dead honest, yeah, it was far beneath the standard I set for myself. I saw a notification on a student’s phone and I let my personal… what would I call it, biases– cloud my judgment.”

Donnie leaned in a few feet, simply by resting his chin on his hands, elbows sat on his knees.

“Please don’t mistake my apology for indifference, (y/n). I’m a man of logic. Logically, someone like you shouldn’t be wasting your time on someone who couldn’t come up with a better pick up line. Fuck, I could do better than that. He probably went and looked it up online, or something. Unoriginal." The turtle groaned. 

“Most of those men are unoriginal. Easiest dismissals I’ve ever made in my life,” you chuckled. 

“Yeah. Speaking of which,” Donnie leaned back in his chair, the piece of furniture emitting a groaning sound. “Every week it’s something new with you, isn’t it? Another crude message, another man who thinks a cheap pickup line entitles him to your time, your attention, your—” He gestured vaguely, unable or unwilling to finish that thought. “I don’t understand. Why don’t you just… delete the app? You block them. You joke about it like it’s just a regular part of your week. This constant objectifying bullshit is not normal. I think you know that. I also think that you know that you deserve better than that.”

A sigh escaped from your lips– he was correct. Of course you did. Drinking at the bar to get away from everything should have been your last fucking straw, it should’ve been the moment you pressed hold for three long seconds on the app and clicked ‘install.’

“You’re right. About the apps. I should’ve deleted them a hot minute ago,” you mumble, taking your phone out of your pocket. Absent-mindedly, and not even reading them, you swipe away all of the messages. 

He paused in his mindlessly observant examination of the prosthetic, turning his head slightly but not fully toward you. “Then why haven’t you?”

“My friend made me download the app. I think I told you that bit, though. She’s been pestering me about how I never go out anymore, how I need to ‘get back out there?’ She comes over sometimes at night… I deleted it once. Never heard the end of it from her. She’s in love with hearing how my apparent ‘dating life’ is turning out... she gets fake stories. Every time.” You chuckle. 

Donnie turned then, his expression unreadable. “You spend your nights here. With me. Working on something that actually matters. She shouldn’t get to dictate who and when you decide to date.”

You snorted, nodding. 

“Oh, sorry. Forgive me if I don’t see the need for you to waste your weekends with men who can’t string together a coherent thought, much less respect you properly.” He mumbled. 

“Oh? And what exactly constitutes ‘respecting me properly,’ in your professional opinion, Doctor?” You teased, a light giggle at the nickname you’ve probably never called him. 

His lips quirked into something between a smile and a frown. “Recognizing your intelligence for one. Not just your appearance.” His eyes dropped to your lips briefly before meeting your gaze again.

“You seem to have very strong opinions on what constitutes appropriate treatment of me,” you teased softly, your voice lower than you intended. You pulled your phone from your bag, the screen illuminating your face with a cold glow. "But you're right. It is bullshit. And I'm tired of looking at it."

With a few decisive taps, you navigated to the settings. The 'Delete Account' button felt remarkably heavy, yet as you pressed it, a wave of genuine relief washed over you. "There," you said, holding the screen up so he could see the app icon vanish into the ether. "Satisfied, Professor?"

His gaze fixed on the now-empty space where the app had been, then slowly lifted to yours. 

"Donnie," he corrected for probably the fifth time now, voice low, though his focus lingered on your face a moment too long. "Very." He cleared his throat, shifting his attention back to the prosthetic on the desk between you.

“You in the mood to learn something new?”

Quick change of pace.

“Depends. What do I not know how to do?”

“I've been focusing on the more meticulous parts of the arm lately.” Donnie said, gesturing to the prosthetic on the worktable between you. “There's an issue with the response time, specifically in the limb’s grip mechanisms. Sometimes there's a noticeable delay that could be problematic in real time. Raph fights– an extensive amount, for what I would deem normal.” He groans. “Anyways, it needs to be strong enough for someone of his nature.”

The grip mechanisms and reaction time, more specifically, was the area Donnie had been working on for an absolutely egregious amount of time– any time you saw him frustrated, he was fiddling with fingers of the limb and it’s code and it’s servos– it’s no shock he needed a second set of eyes. Or, hands, on his section of the experiment.  

Closer came the wheels of his chair making a soft whir against the floor so he could get a better view of the bionic limb. That scent started to wash over you again. Espresso. Copy Paper. Alpine. Donnie’s three fingered hand reached around you; flattening the arm’s fingers to rest on his workbench. 

"There’s far too many sources of the problem to trial and error alone. I want you to start looking at it, too. Your hands are smaller than mine. You may be able to feel the problem and identify it better than my own capabilities. Think you can handle that for me?"

Your heart quickened at his praise. "I... okay. I can try."

"Excellent," Donnie nodded, turning slightly so his shell didn't block your view of the arm. "Come here, I’ll teach you." He patted the edge of a chair in front of him; its height already adjusted. Conveniently lower than his own chair was set at, for the record. 

You hesitated only a moment before sliding onto the small space he'd made, the warmth of your back ever so slightly brushing up against his plastron; which seems, intentionally, pushed towards you. The warmth of your body under your own lab coat made it increasingly hard to focus. Fuuuck. 

"Alright," Donnie said, his voice lowering as he positioned your hand over the prosthetic. Large and coarsened, his fingers guided yours to the forearm section of the limb where the main sensors were housed. "Feel for this panel here? It… well, if I can get it– slides open. There." In Donnie’s other hand was his purple screwdriver, which he used to rid the arm of the panel– his arms enveloping you again. 

He nodded you along to remove the cover with your own hands. At this point, he was pretty much bracing his own weight on the table, hands remaining planted by your sides. He’d point here and there, for you– what to do, and all, once you’d uncovered the wiring and circuitry. 

“Now,” he murmured. “What do you think is the main issue with the response time, here?”

For a moment, you were silent. “Well, I’d figure it has something to do with the input. You should always start there. I’d check and see if anything is wrong with the circuitry.”

“Good. And where’s that?” 

“Here,” you pointed, where he had just guided you to open up. 

“Mhm.” The turtle nodded. “Do you know why I placed the housing for the wires in that location?” Without an explanation, he gently picked up your wrist. 

“When the user initiates a grip, Raph, in this case…” he went on, quieter now, his words brushing closer as he leaned in, “the signal starts here.” His thumb shifted against your wrist, his own finger trailing across the midsection of your arm for a second before guiding your hand forward. “It runs through this junction… then distributes across the phalanges. Your fingers.”

Long story short, it’s really fucking hard to get any words out, right now. 

“But that’s my problem. I’ve checked every issue that could be in the forearm. But nothing wants to present itself, like it should be doing.” 

 “And your solution is?”

"That's what you get to find out."

You sighed. Of fucking course. 

“I’ll do my best.”

“Hey," he murmured. "You’ll get it. Have faith in your intelligence, I trust you.” Donnie placed a hand on your shoulder; kneading it for a second before he took a few paces back. “I need to head out for a second. Just… try your best for the time being? Please? I’ll be back soon.”

And with that, he was gone. 

╰♥︎ ╮

This. Damn. Arm. 

Was there anything better they could have been testing? Anything that could have been more aligned to your field of scientific research, your understanding of the biological and genetic makeup of a human that could better your performance with this thing? There’s too much wire. Too many connections to be made. Far too much unforgiving complexity that your mind does not appreciate. 

And still, you found yourself completely absorbed by its persevering incapabilities. Persevering incapabilities you need to fix. That your mind says you need to fix, or else you won’t let yourself sleep at night. 

“You look exhausted.” Donnie’s voice appeared behind you. Seems he’s returned from wherever he ran off to. With a slight crinkle sound behind you, you tilted your head up slightly to acknowledge whatever it was he was doing. 

Somewhere in between soldering wires and typing up endless lines of code, he’d managed to silently grab a drink from the mini fridge next to your lab desks. You hadn’t even noticed. He was fairly good at staying quiet. When he wanted to be. 

There was another slight thud of something being placed down next to your deconstructed project; it was much more colorful, but the backside of it was the same metallic grey that has consumed your life for the past month-and-a-half. With a quick switch of your gaze, you register that it was a juice box of some sort– the pouch kind with the insertable straws.

“Is that where you went off to?”

“What’s that?”

“To get a drink?”

"It's fruit punch flavored,” Donnie murmurs. He pushes it towards you, like he’s trying his best to encourage you to just drink something, for the love of God. You manage a slight chuckle. 

“Yeah, I noticed that. You leave them around the lab sometimes.” You tilt your head toward the cluttered area by his desk, where the majority of the empty pouches are homed.

Your professor raises a behemoth of an arm up to scratch the back of his neck. “Yeah. I, uh, don’t always recognize when I’m making a mess of things. I’ll pick them up. Eventually.” He’d forget it, you knew.  

You picked up the juice box, pulling the straw from its cellophane wrapper with a slight crinkle that sounded loud in the otherwise quiet lab. Health-wise, sugar wasn’t that much better compared to your usual caffeine intake from coffee– but it was a nice palate change. It made you happy that he had noticed something of your incessant spiraling. 

"Thank you, Donnie" you mumbled around the straw, your eyes already dropping back to the disarticulated mechanical arm lying across your bench. The dreaded question continued to linger in your head– gnawing, like an incorporeal mouse– how the hell were you supposed to improve this thing? Fix the reaction time when there’s so many sources of the problem? Given your outstanding background, it felt almost ridiculous to not criticize yourself. 

Your job, the role Donnie had been so oddly insistent upon assigning to you specifically, was to fine-tune the programming's biological realism. You were tasked with ensuring the responsiveness of the prosthetic limb. It must be as natural and organic as it could possibly be, but to do so, you had to alter something that was literally, physically, and mechanically the exact opposite. 

Failure wasn’t really something you were willing to entertain. There had to be a way. God forbid, you wouldn’t sleep until there was. 

"Hey, can you come here for a second?” Donnie peeped up, looking up and over from his desk area, where he had, somehow, practically teleported back off to. Only the top of his glasses and the faint glint of his eyes were visible at first. Just dark dots in a dark room. He tilted his head higher—then higher still—trying to see you over the mess. He’s tilting his head now. It’s still not working. 

“I have a question, if you don’t mind… um, it’s about the wiring for the nerves around the radius of the forearm here," you continued, pointing with the hand holding the juice box to a microscopic cluster of a red and blue mess. 

"Okay. I’ve tried a few different code sequences, I wondered for a bit if that might be the problem. But the grip’s still way too sensitive. Do youuu… think the converter we borrowed might be—"

You looked up, expecting Donnie to be halfway across the room, tossing empty pouches of juice boxes into the trashcan or working on something personal. You found him doing the exact opposite. Matter of fact, turning wasn’t even an option; your chair was stuck in place. Donnie was not looking at the arm, nor was he across the room, as you had falsely suspected. Your chair continued to squeal in protest. Donnie wasn't looking at the arm at all.

He was looking down at you, his large, dark eyes narrowed slightly, a thoughtful, almost distant look on his face. He wasn't fidgeting—a rare state for him—just absolutely still, watching you– his hands placed on the back of your chair, stabilizing himself. His weight that was placed on the chair was enough to hold it in place, to hold you in place, deeming you stuck.

His hands were big enough, placed where they were, that he was unknowingly close to the back of your neck. He slid one hand from the chair back, moving it carefully, as if hyperfixated on something else, until his thumb brushed the delicate skin just below your ear, causing a shiver to run down your spine. 

Don't. Move. You thought. 

Sly bastard can probably hear you shaking with those goddamn enhanced abilities of his.

"It could be an issue with the converter, yes, but before we dive into the code for the arm, can we—" he paused, rubbing his thumb along the side of the chair, but not gripping it; he was trying to articulate a thought that wasn't strictly… technical. Professional?

"Can we talk about something else? For a minute?" he finished, the question soft, almost a request for permission.

You immediately set the juice box down. "Yes. Of course. Is everything alright?"

"Yes. No. I mean, yes, everything is fine, I think," he assured you quickly, and you saw the slightest hint of pink in his cheeks. In his head, gears are grinding, lights are flickering, doors are opening; but it seems Donnie isn’t entirely sure if he wants those doors barricaded and locked away. Like he’s debated even conversing with you about this fact; even though he knew damn well this was an issue he should have addressed the second he invited you into his lab.

Donnie steps away— not far away, but near your side now, directly adjacent to the short ends of the desk. Well… at least you didn’t have to worry about your neck giving you away, for now. 

But you weren’t getting away that easy. By fault of your own, of course. 

You turn in your chair before you can think better of it. It was merely a force of habit, speaking directly to people as a sign of respect— it’s a mistake, is what it was.

Now he’s facing you. Fuck, now he could actually see how you’re interpreting this whole interaction. 

Your gaze doesn’t quite meet his—at this height, your eyes land somewhere around his knees—but you’re close. But, sitting down, you’re close enough that your knees bump into his. Close enough that you can see the way his jaw tightened, and simply for a second, the way his eyes flick down—right before snapping back up to yours. 

“Oh, geez, sorry! Didn’t mean to… shit, sorry, I’ll move.” You tilt your head back, finally catching his gaze. The action of looking up has gotten oddly familiar; standing next to him was seriously something that took far too long to get used to. His eyes are wide; almost startled. Like a deer caught in headlights. You wondered if it was a bit of a culture shock for him. Seeing humans up close, small, fragile, instead of from a distance, isolated in the sewers with his brothers. 

Another thing you’ve learned about your professor; that man had made a severe (although impressive) habit of cursing. Not that you minded. It was entertaining, actually. The amount of  “shits” and “motherfuckers” you’ve walked in on since this project started? Egregious.

Due to his isolation, Donnie often misinterpreted regular social situations. He was incredibly book-smart. Obviously. His mind operated on wavelengths most could barely comprehend. His street-smarts were… something else, though. To him? Foreign. He'd mentioned once, offhandedly, that his orange brother possessed this capability; something he was eternally jealous of.

"I’m sorry. Do you, do you mind…" you note, your voice softer than you intended. He was slightly blocking you in now, likely unaware of his size. 

He flinches at the word, though you're not sure why. "Right. Sorry." But he doesn't move. Instead, he kneels down, bringing himself to your eye level. The motion is fluid, practiced—like he's spent years learning how to fold his larger frame into spaces not built for him.

"Better?" he asks, and there's something about his proximity that makes your pulse quicken. You can smell the faint scent of ozone and soldering flux clinging to him, mixed with something sweeter—like fruit punch.

"Mm-hmm," you manage, trying to ignore how his breath ghosts across your cheek when he speaks.

"I've been wondering something," he murmurs, one hand coming to rest on the arm of your chair, fingers just brushing against the sleeve of your lab coat. The contact is minimal—insignificant, really—but it sends a jolt through you like static electricity.

"About...?" you prompt, heart beating against your ribs.

“Am I making you nervous?” 

“No. No, why would I be nervous?” The soles of your shoes started digging into the ground, trying to dig themselves further into the hole they were already stuck in. 

“You know I can hear your heartbeat, right?” He murmured, his thumb brushing against the fabric of your lab coat, tracing small circles against your arm. “And feel when you get a little embarrassed. When your face flushes and you heat up a few degrees.” 

Upon introduction, that idea sounded a little off. He could… actually… oh, god.

Donnie’s other hand came up to gently cup your chin, tilting your face toward his.

"It’s just thermoreception," he explained softly, his scientific mind kicking in despite his current goal. "I have mutated genes. Obviously. Part of what helps me do what I do is my enhanced ability to detect changes in temperature. Your skin is currently several degrees warmer than baseline—classic physiological response to...." He paused, catching himself before he rambled further. “I won’t continue. I’m sure you’re already aware of that phenomenon?” The turtle questioned.  

"Donnie, please..." you whispered. 

"Please what?" he asked, his voice soft but still a little tilt to it. Teasing; but somehow, somehow, still of praise.  It was a pathetic plea, really—what exactly were you asking him to do? Stop?

"I—Jesus. I can't..." The words caught in your throat, thick and useless. What were you even trying to say? That his proximity was unraveling you piece by piece? That every nerve ending in your body was firing at once, sending crackling signals straight to your core? He was painstakingly close now, so close you could count the shades of brown in his eyes, see the slight tremor in his hand where it cupped your chin. His thumb stroked your skin, a slow, deliberate motion that made your breath hitch.

"That's not an answer," he murmured, his voice dropping lower, deeper than before. It vibrated through you, settling somewhere in the pit of your stomach. "I asked if I'm making you nervous."

You shook your head, or tried to—his gentle grip held you steady. "No. It's just... you're..."

"I'm what?" His other hand moved from the arm of your chair to your shoulder, fingers splaying wide across the fabric of your lab coat.

“Close.” You peeped. “Very close.” 

Donnie's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile, something darker and more knowing. "Close?" he repeated, the word a low rumble that vibrated through his hand still resting on your chin. "Yeah, I think that's... that's certainly a word I'd use to describe it.”

What could you possibly say to that? 

The copy paper and espresso scent you'd learned to identify with Donnie had disappeared. Now that he's closer-- so, so much closer-- that man has flourished in another strange smell... strawberry? Pastries, it reminded you of. You thought back to the time he told you the flavor of the icing on Pop Tarts was particularly appealing to him.

Disregarding that... fuck, your breath hitched. Every part of your brain was screaming at you to pull back, to remember this was your professor, your colleague, a fucking mutant turtle for crying out loud! But your body—your traitorous, heat-flushed body—remained rooted to the spot, leaning in ever so slightly.

His gaze dropped to your lips again. Lingered there for a fraction of a second too long before meeting your eyes once more.

"Your workspace is a disaster," you blurted out, and immediately wanted to die. Of all the things to say?!

To your surprise, Donnie laughed, a genuine, rumbling sound that made your chest ache with something warm and unfamiliar. ""You're trying to change the subject." he corrected, but there was amusement in his eyes. "Are you genuinely trying to divert my attention, (y/n), or are you just nervous?" His hands came up to squeeze your waist. 

"If you ask me to stop, I'll stop. No questions asked. I just want you to be honest with me because what I'm–  what we're doing here–  isn't exactly..." The turtle took a breath. "Ethical."

Fuck it. You wanted it. So bad. 

All those nights you spent thinking about him? Thoughts that could all go to waste in a moment? No. Not the time to risk that fantasy, no. 

All it took for that domino to fall was a shake of your head–

And then he kissed you.

It wasn't aggressive or demanding. His lips were softer than you'd imagined.

He took his time, exploring, giving you every opportunity to pull away. But you didn't. You couldn't. Instead, your hands found their way to his arms, gripping the textured skin of his biceps as you leaned into the kiss, answering his question with your actions.

When he finally pulled back, it was only slightly, his forehead resting against yours. 

"Still nervous?" he asked, his voice now husky with emotion.

"Mm-hmm," you managed, the sound somewhere between a whimper and a hum of satisfaction. "It's a good nervous now, I think?”

His hand moved from your shoulder to the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair. "Good," he murmured, before capturing your lips again, this time with more certainty. More need. His other hand slid down from your chin, tracing the column of your throat, his fingers resting against the pulse point there. He could feel your heartbeat, you realized. He could literally feel how he affected you.

"We should... the arm..." you managed between kisses, though your conviction was weak at best.

Donnie chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that vibrated through your entire body. "The arm can wait," he murmured, his lips now tracing patterns along your collarbone. "I'm focused on you now, love."

Your breathing only became heavier. Pants and heaves escaping as he moved his lips further down your neck.

"Are you going to stop?" Somehow, the words managed themselves out. You prayed to god the answer was no. Please, sweet hell, please. Say no.

“Would you like me to stop?” Kisses began to pepper their way down your collarbone. Donnie stopped once he was just beneath your height when sitting down; now, finally, on his knees. “Say the word, I will. I’ll forget this ever happened.” 

The word fell from your lips before you could stop it. A pleading, desperate as fuck whisper. 

No. 

“Thought that might be your answer.” His hands moved from your waist, one slipping behind your back to support you while the other swept beneath your knees. In one motion– predictable for someone of his physique–he lifted you, chair and all protesting forgotten. With a gasp, your hands were found flying to his shoulders for balance as he cradled you against his chest.

Gentle, that’s what he was. Out of his lips spilled an abundance of I’ve got you’s and it’s okay’s.

The couch in the back of the lab—a seldom-used piece of furniture where he occasionally caught hours of sleep between experiments—felt impossibly soft as he lowered you onto it. He didn't immediately follow, instead kneeling in front of you, his expression soft. Searching for anything he may be doing wrong, anything he could fix.

"Doing okay? Still with me?" he asked, his thumb stroking your cheek, hands coming down to lightly scratch up and down your arms.

You could only nod, words failing you as you watched him, this brilliant, awkward turtle who held entire fucking galaxies of knowledge in his mind… but now looked at you with such tender uncertainty. So funny how all of that can happen in a semester or two. 

His fingers traced patterns on your arm again as he leaned in, capturing your lips again in a kiss that was somehow both deeper and more gentle than before. There was no urgency in his touch. He’d take it slow. So slow, for you. 

" I have been trying very hard not to cross a line with you," he breathed, the words so soft you almost missed them. "Every day, you’ve made that increasingly harder."

A quiet, breathy chuckle came from your tilted head as you gazed down at him. “Sorry.”

His eyes darted up through his taped glasses again. “Mm. No, don’t say that. All I’m saying is that I’m beginning to suspect that you enjoy torturing me.” You felt his lips curve into a smile smirk as he kissed against your stomach. 

Speaking of which… his hands moved to the hem of your pants, quite flowy and loose, today– fingers hesitating just beneath the fabric. Donnie made a little noise, sort of a huff, to try and get your anxious and darting attention yet again. 

His gaze drifted over you, appreciative but not predatory. "May I?" he asked, fingers hovering at the waistband of your pants.

You managed a small "yes" despite the lump in your throat.

At your nod, he slowly lifted his finger up and under the fabric, sliding them down your hips. Tortuous, it was. He’d pause any time you even uttered a soft sound. 

"Shit. I’m sorry! Too much?" he asked immediately, stilling.

You shook your head, pressing your palm against his mask. "No! No. I’m just enjoying watching you." Oh, your face was redddddd.

He huffed again; more positively connotated, this time. Almost like a sigh of relief. Kind of cute. 

Donnie got back to work. As he nodded understandingly, the turtle began finishing his task with the same degree of gentleness until you sat before him in your underwear; top half still covered. 

But he made no move to remove his own gear or shell. Instead, he stretched out his own form a little bit, propping himself up on an elbow to simply look at you.

"You're... perfect," he whispered, his eyes tracing every line and curve of your body. "Can I just...?"

You didn't need to ask what he meant. He was asking permission to explore, to touch and discover. That’s what he did, that was his thing. Who were you to deny him this indulgence? 

You nodded. Ah, there was that permission. Permission that you gave with a soft "please."

His hands were everywhere and nowhere at once—tracing your collarbones, skimming down your arms, mapping the terrain of your hips with such care and attention it brought tears to your eyes. 

When he kissed you again, he made it clear how long he’s been holding back. 

"Are you going to take your..." you started to ask, gesturing vaguely toward his gear.

“Hm? Oh.” Donnie glanced down at his tactical gear that lay straining his skin under his lab coat. Elbow gear. Forearm guards. A shell mounted gear rig. Even the thigh holsters, Jesus! You had to look away.

He followed your gaze, a faint blush rising on his green skin. "I’m going to be completely honest. I am... a little bit… different from what you would consider normal. All parts of me. Obviously. I’m not going to lie and say I’m the most confident about my own anatomical differences..." His fingers traced patterns along your hip, avoiding the subject but addressing it all the same. “But– nevermind that. You’re my priority right now. I'd rather focus entirely on you. Maybe sometime in the future, we can look into that, if that's alright with you, sweetheart?"

Your heart swelled at his vulnerability, at the way this brilliant turtle who could navigate complex neural networks suddenly fumbled with matters of the heart. "Yes," you whispered, reaching up to cup his cheek. "That's more than alright."

Donnie's eyes softened, relief washing over his features. He leaned down to kiss you again, slow and tender, his lips moving against yours with deliberate care. "Thank you," he murmured against your mouth before trailing kisses down your neck.

His hands began a methodical exploration of your body, learning every curve and dip with scientific precision but tender reverence. When his fingers dipped between your thighs, you arched into his touch with a soft gasp.

"Sensitive here?" he asked, his voice a low rumble as he watched your reactions closely.

You could only nod, words failing you as he circled that sensitive bundle of nerves with his thumb, sending waves of pleasure through your body.

“I will admit, I am exceedingly curious to know more about the human body,” he murmurs, still… experimenting. "Tell me what you like? Show me, maybe?" He pauses more kisses at your stomach again, feeling your breathing go up and down beneath his lips. "I'm a fast learner. Promise I’ll do my best.” 

A blush crept up your neck at his earnestness. "What do you mean… show you?"

“Give me your hand.” Donnie propped his chin on your stomach, gently taking your hand in his. "Just show me where you want me. I don’t know what I’m doing, either. If I know what you want, I can help you get what you want." His fingers traced abstract patterns on your hip, waiting. Grinning, like the sweet little shit he was. 

You took a shaky breath, hesitating only a moment before guiding his hand lower. "Here, please..." you whispered, placing his fingers against the sensitive bundle of nerves. "This is... mmhm."

His eyes lit up. "Oh," he murmured, beginning to explore with careful, methodical touches that somehow managed to be incredibly arousing. "Your nerve endings here are quite--"

"Donnie," you gasped as he found just the right spot. "Less talking, more... yeah, that."

"Right. Sorry," he chuckled, adjusting his technique based on your reactions. "Got it. More doing, less talking, It'snotlikeyouhaveagirlrightinfrontofyou; genius," you heard him quietly criticizing-- mumbling-- to himself.

With a soft giggle, your hands threaded through the purple folds of his mask as he worked, his touch growing far bolder as your responses guided him. 

His fingers moved with an experimental curiosity that made your toes curl, each touch deliberate and searching. When he shifted positions, lowering his head between your thighs, your entire body went rigid.

"Wait, Donnie, you don't have to—" you started, pushing yourself up on your elbows.

"Shh," he murmured against your inner thigh, his breath warm against your skin. "I want to. I really want to." His eyes met yours from this new angle, dark even through his glasses. "Unless you're uncomfortable? Because we can stop. Absolutely no pressure."

You shook your head slowly, your cheeks burning. "No, it's not that. I just... I haven’t… it’s been a while, is all–" You trailed off, feeling embarrassingly inexperienced compared to his confident explorations so far.

Understanding dawned in his expression. "Sweetheart. That's okay. We'll figure it out together, or at least, jog your memory." He pressed a soft kiss to your thigh. "If I do anything you don't like, just tell me. Or squeeze my shoulder. Deal?"

"Deal," you whispered, settling back against the couch cushions as your heart hammered against your ribs.

His first cautious lick made you gasp, your hands flying to his shoulders. "Good or bad?" he asked immediately, pulling back slightly.

"Good," you breathed out. "Definitely good."

"Thank god," he muttered, more to himself than to you, before returning with more confidence.

His touch was exploratory at first, learning, but even still, with such care. When his tongue found a particularly sensitive spot, your back arched off the couch.

"Right there?" he asked, voice thick.

"God, yes. Please don't stop."

As he continued, your shy protests faded into soft whimpers and sighs. The lab faded away, replaced by the sensation of his mouth, his hands gripping your hips, the low sounds of pleasure he made against your skin that vibrated through your entire body.

"You're so pretty," he murmured, lifting his head momentarily to look at you. Your eyes were squeezed shut, mouth slightly parted as soft sounds escaped you. "So, so responsive."

"Please," you gasped, not even sure what you were asking for. "Donnie, I—"

Words failed you as he pressed closer, his tongue moving with renewed purpose. Your hips bucked against his mouth, seeking more of the delicious friction that had your nerve endings singing. He noticed your movements immediately, his mind cataloging your response before his body acted on instinct.

"Do you need more, love?" he murmured against your heated flesh, the vibration of his words making you shudder.

You could only nod frantically, your fingers tightening on his shoulders as he pulled back slightly. His glasses had fogged slightly from your combined heat, giving him an almost hazy appearance that made your heart flutter wildly.

His eyes held yours as he slowly brought his hand to where his mouth had just been. "I should probably warn you," he said, a slight blush creeping up his neck despite the intimacy of the moment. "My fingers... they're not exactly human-sized. They might be a bit much at first."

You watched, breath held tight in your chest, as he carefully traced your entrance with the tip of one thick, three-fingered hand. His skin was cool compared to your fevered warmth, and just that slight pressure had you seeing stars behind your closed eyelids.

"Just... go slow," you managed, voice thin and reedy.

"Always," he promised, pressing forward just enough to let you feel the stretch. "Tell me if it's too much."

The initial entry was unlike anything you'd experienced before—borderline overwhelming, but fuck. Still phenomenal. He stilled, letting you adjust, his thumb stroking comforting circles against your hip.

"Okay?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"More," you breathed out, surprising yourself with your own boldness. "Please, Donnie."

He obliged, sinking deeper as his mouth returned to its previous attention. The dual sensations were almost too much to process—the exploration of his fingers paired with his tongue.

When he curled inside of you, pressing against a spot that made your vision go white; you cried out his name.

"Found it," he chuckled against you, the sound rumbling through your body. "Fascinating anatomical structure, really. The way you—"

"Donnie," you interrupted, fingers tangling in his bandana. "Less science, more... oh god, right there."

"Right. Sorry," he mumbled, a bit embarrassed. "Force of habit."

As he continued his ministrations, you lost all track of time and place. The pressure continued to build steadily inside you. Higher... and higher... and higher...

Then his second finger joined the first.

You hadn't realized how much you needed this—how much you'd been craving his touch despite never consciously acknowledging it.

"Fuck, you're taking this so well," he murmured, his voice thick with awe.

He punctuated his thought with a particularly skillful curl of his fingers that had you arching off the couch, your head thrown back as pleasure washed over you in waves.

"Donnie," you gasped, hands scrabbling for purchase on the couch cushions. "I think... I'm going to..."

"Let go," he urged, his voice low and encouraging. "I've got you, love, let go. Nobody else is here to see this but me, you're doing perfect."

His words were your undoing. Those fast, quick paced words all rambled together at the end again told you that he was feeling something, too.

The tension that had been building inside you finally snapped.

God. Fucking. Damn. What was this feeling? You wanted more of him, but you couldn't quite place where he was. What he was saying. Was he talking to you right now? Everything is foggy. You can only feel one hand on the side of your thigh, caressing, calming you down. It was dim. So dim. With that touch came gentle murmurs as he worked you through it, his touches softening as you came down from your high.

When your eyes finally fluttered open, he was watching you with an expression of pure wonder, his fingers still buried inside you as if reluctant to break the connection.

"Did I do okay?" he asked again, softer this time. Quieter.

"Hm?" Still hazy. Your vision swam, colors bleeding at the edges as consciousness slowly seeped back into your limbs. One blink, then another, and Donnie's concerned face swam into focus above you. His glasses were slightly askew, and a strand of purple had come loose from his bandana, curling against his forehead.

"Welcome back," he murmured, his voice impossibly gentle. His thumb stroked your hip in slow, soothing circles. "How are you feeling?"

You managed a weak nod, your throat too dry for words. As awareness returned, so did sensitivity—a pleasant ache that reminded you of exactly what had transpired. Your eyes widened slightly as you became aware of his fingers still inside you.

"Sorry," he murmured, carefully withdrawing, the motion making you shudder. "Didn't want to startle you."

When he shifted to sit beside you on the couch, you noticed how his lab coat had ridden up, revealing the tactical gear beneath. Something stirred in you—a reciprocal desire to give him what he'd given you.

"Oh. You didn't..." you started, your voice raspy. "Can I... help you, too?"

Donnie's gaze softened, though a faint blush darkened his green cheeks. He reached for your hand, intertwining your fingers. "Oh, sweetheart, no. That's... incredibly kind of you to offer, but no, this was enough for me."

"But—"

"There's a reason," he interrupted gently, bringing your joined hands to his lips for a soft kiss. "My anatomy is... well, considerably different from what you're used to." He paused, seeming to search for the right words. "And on the larger scale, I'm afraid. I wouldn't want to hurt you, especially not when..." He glanced down at where your bodies had nearly connected earlier. "When we've just... made this advancement. Out of the blue, like this."

"I wouldn't say it's out of the blue. You looked like you've been plotting that for a while."

"Okay, well." Donnie laughed, taking a breath. "I'd say that's mutual, thank you. You're not that hard of a read. I could tell how you felt ever since I asked you personally to join in on my project."

Your heart swelled at his words, at the concern that radiated from him. "Fair. So, maybe another time? Maybe? Possibly?" A gentle ask.

A genuine smile lit up his face. "Absolutely, yes. Fuck yes," he agreed. Again, with the spontaneous cursing. "Nothing I'd want more. Just. some safety measures, is all. When we're both more prepared I can properly explain things. "

"I think I can handle that." You joked around. A smile, alongside a genuine nod, came, as you rested your head against the backside of the couch.

You watched Donnie step out of the way for a brief second, coming back with a tiny purple washcloth and bottle of water for you.

"Would it be alright if I—?" Donnie gestured with the washcloth, his uncertainty palpable. "I can help clean you up. I-If you're fine being touched right now, I know that was a lot in itself."

Your nod was immediate, though shy. He got down on his knees again, gently wiping between your thighs. Donnie was very careful not to press too hard against sensitive skin.

After setting the washcloth aside, he twisted open the water bottle and softly pressed it into your hands. "Here. Drink, please?" You did so, watching as his towering form stood up once again; just to flop down in exhaust right next to you.

Before you could argue against it, Donnie was pulling you against his plastron. His arms wrapped around you securely, the hard shell against your back surprisingly comforting. One hand stroked your hair while the other rested on your hip, thumb tracing idle patterns through the fabric of your sweater.

"Still okay?" he murmured, his chin resting atop your head.

"Better than okay," you sighed, melting into his embrace. The couch wasn't really built for someone of his size, but he made it work.

"You're perfect," he murmured against your hair, pressing a soft kiss there. "Did you know that?"

You hummed contentedly, your hand coming to rest on his chest. "You're not so bad yourself, Professor."

Donnie chuckled, the sound rumbling through his plastron against your cheek. "Oh. My. God. Are we not past that by now?" His fingers traced lazy patterns along your arm, sending pleasant shivers across your skin. "Especially given our current arrangement."

"True," you murmured, tilting your head back to press a soft kiss to his jawline. "So, talk to me. What does this mean? For us? With the semester ending in a few weeks?" The question hung between you, weighted with unspoken implications about ethics and boundaries you'd already crossed.

"I've been thinking about that," Donnie admitted quietly. "Once the project's complete, once you've graduated... there's no formal reason we can't see where this goes. Professionally speaking, of course."

His scientific approach to romance would have been amusing if your heart wasn't pounding at the implications. "So we just... wait?" Your fingers wandered to the edge of his bandana, tracing the soft fabric.

"Three weeks," he confirmed, capturing your wandering hand in his. "Three weeks of focused work on the prosthetic prototype, then..." He paused, lowering his head to brush his lips against yours. "Then I'd very much like to take you on a proper date. Where I don't have to worry about crossing ethical lines."

"You've been crossing ethical lines for months," you teased, though your voice was soft.

"Just wait those three weeks. See what happens then," he smirked, lightly massaging your shoulder.

Good God.

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: Apartment  ♥︎

Time: 8:40 P.M

Three weeks. That was the deal. Three weeks of professionalism. Three weeks of pretending Donnie's lecture hall wasn't suddenly your favorite place on Earth. Three weeks of sidelong glances in his semester-long class that nobody else would see.

Now, with your diploma tucked safely in its tube and the final research paper submitted, you were free. The wait was everlasting.

Your apartment was quieter than the lab. No humming of machinery, no Donnie muttering calculations under his breath. Just the whir of your aging refrigerator and the distant New York traffic. You'd changed out of your graduation gown into comfortable sweats, the ceremonial fabric now draped over a chair in the corner of your room. Your phone sat face down on the coffee table, it hadn't buzzed all evening.

Not that you were watching it. Much.

The text came at 8:47 PM.

Donnie: Congratulations again, by the way. You were brilliant today. Also, would this Saturday be acceptable for our previously discussed endeavor?

You couldn't help but smile at his formal phrasing. Even in texts, he sounded so fancy. Your thumbs hovered over the screen before typing back.

You: Date night?

The three dots appeared immediately, disappeared, then reappeared.

Donnie: Yes. That’s what I’m asking hahahahaha

That’s a lot of ha’s. 

You: Friday sounds perfect. Are you going to tell me where we're going? Donnie: That would spoil the surprise. I'll pick you up at 7.

Donnie: Unless you would prefer to meet somewhere specific?

You thought to yourself; typing away as you came up with a solution. 

You: You seem to have dinner in mind  You: But You: How do you feel about museums? You laughed softly under your breath, leaning back against your pillows as the warmth in your chest spread all over again. Three dots began to type. 

Donnie: I broke into one once.

Three dots again. 

Donnie: I’ll explain over dinner, now you can’t get out it hahahahah Donnie: 😇

You bit your lip, unable to stop smiling. This. Man. Good grief. 

╰♥︎ ╮

Location: The Lair  ♥︎

Time: 8:50 P.M

Donnie leaned back in his chair at the lair's main table, setting his phone face down beside his scattered schematics. He was home, once again; happy to be surrounded by the people he loved the most. His brothers, each in their own colorful distinction, had gone their separate ways, given the recent acceptance of mutants into society.

Splinter demanded they all meet up again. He missed his kids, that’s all. 

Splinter did not miss Mikey’s explicit mouth. God forbid Donnie lets his youngest brother know about this girl.

“Dude!! I had one of those too. Met her in a comic book shop and everything!! I knew her for a while, man, we hit it off real well and then we–” 

“Mikey!” Leo, Raph, and Donnie all spat. 

“What? Just being honest. Topic got brought up. That’s all, bro.” He held his hands up in defense. Raph punched them both down–

His white titanium arm replacing what was previously green. 

“Ow! What the hell, Raph?!” 

“Sorry. Just testin’ it out. Packs a punch, huh?” Raph grumbled, flexing his new prosthetic arm with a grin. “Shit’s fuckin’ awesome.”

“Language, Raph.” Leo mumbled; bent over as he grabbed a box of tea from one of their cabinets. 

Donnie smiled faintly at the praise, though his mind was already drifting back to Friday. To you. His phone buzzed on the table.

(Y/N): Friday at 7. I’m looking forward to it. Very much. Please don’t break into any more museums.

Donnie hearted the message, but couldn’t slam his phone down fast enough before Mikey could get up in his business. 

“Ooh, secret messages? Is it that girl? What’s her name? What’s she look like?”

Donnie’s green cheeks darkened. “It’s none of your business, Mikey. Go bother Dad.”

The orange turtle groaned; but did so. He’d probably get tasered away again if he didn’t leave. 

Donnie: I’ll try my best. Looking forward to it.

Sent.

You: I’m looking forward to it too, Professor. 😉

Donnie’s heart did a little flip. He quickly typed back:

Donnie: You’re going to be the death of me. See you Friday.

You sent a purple heart in response to that message. Donatello smiled. 

He set the phone down, trying to hide his grin as his brothers continued to tease. This was where he wanted to be. This environment, his people; his you. 

He’d made up with Raph. The two of you had finished the project. And, better yet, he was going to take you out on a date. To dinner and a museum. It genuinely, wholeheartedly, could not get better than this. 

Donatello was smart. That was his thing.

He could solve the world’s hardest problem in his head. He could calculate complex theorems; then invent a new one on the spot, like it was nothing. He could predict outcomes, probabilities, patterns—entire chains of events before they even happened. 

But never– in a million years– could that man have predicted you. 

╰♥︎ ╮

AN: I am a veterinary sciences major. I don’t know shit about engineering. I found my information off of some weird ass websites. Pretend like this anything mentioned wasn’t probably surface level knowledge 😖 there's also probably many editing mistakes in here... i wrote this on multiple platforms so it's likely screwed up. let me know if you spot anything and i'll fix it!

sincerely hope you enjoyed :) i said i'd release this on the weekend and it's 12:07 am my time. i sort of lied. forgive me pls

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