#downtime

Raph was really, really starting to hate robots. As if he hadn’t already thanks to Stockman’s mouser army, that turtle mimic death machine, the copy of Master Splinter and the other Foot mechs, all the nonsense they had to endure by extension because of the Fugitoid—you get the point.

Today’s incident rang of the mouser invasion in particular, except these things were almost as big as Leatherhead. And this was already on the tail end of a week where they had to bear down relentlessly on one, two, five Purple Dragon operations, while also forced to go the extra mile to clean up the aftermath and keep all that activity as hush-hush as possible, lest the Foot get wind of it via Hun and barge in just to feel included on the street scene.

One day, one measly day off where they got to just tear up the sewers on their rides in peace, was that so much to ask?

Apparently so, as seven-foot tall robots were being sicced on them from parts and persons unknown. It didn’t look like Stockman’s usual work; there was no arrogant branding of any kind but whoever they were, they worked in bulk. Mow one down and three more would already be marching down the tunnel to take its place.

They had to reduce the risk of the robots scouting far enough to find the lair ASAP, which meant thinning out the herd by splitting up, each of them leading a sidewinding, wild turtle chase through the tunnels. Thank shell for their rooftop runs or there was no way they would have had the endurance to keep leading them on for hours on end—but they couldn’t keep running forever.

When they eventually regrouped, they had to call on Leatherhead just so the robots would have a target their own size to pick on. It was only thanks to that shift in the enemy’s immediate priorities that they managed to wipe out the last of them.

The moment the last few sparks drifted, sizzled out in the sewer water and smoke began to rise, Mikey had crumpled on the side of the waterway with a groaned “Hooray…” that sounded more like a bleat for mercy than a cheer.

Don had leaned on his bō like a crutch, staring down the field of technological debris. For once the prospect of studying it sounded more like a chore than an opportunity, as that meant somebody would have to lug it all the way home first. Raph hoped he didn’t expect him to do it; he was still struggling to resist the urge to lean on the tunnel wall while he caught his breath.

And Leo? The only indication Leo gave of how grueling it had been was a wordless, slow swipe of his wrist wrap over his sweaty forehead, the ten minutes it took for him to suggest they finally start for home, and the fact that he waited for Leatherhead to offer to carry the robot carcass rather than presumptively sucking it up and bearing the burden himself.

For a while after they got home, they had to go on collective autopilot to get through the motions—food, painkillers, showers, Master Splinter’s soothing balms on their aching limbs—before they could even think about how they wanted to spend the last hour and a half before bedtime. They weren’t going to be robbed of that much on what once was supposed to be their day off.

No TV shows or video games blaring. That would be considered a good time any other night. Tonight? Don was somehow mustering the will to pick over the dead robot. Mikey had buried his head in his earphones and scrap paper, loosely doodling. Now it was just Raph sinking into the blessed couch cushions with his knitting and Leo minding his business with one of his books.

Back when he was first fumbling his way through fiber arts, Raph would have seen one of his brothers nearby and balked at the thought of working on it in front of them. Trying to keep track of all those loops and knots and hooks and rows with the sense that somebody was hovering nearby, probably sneaking glances and judging him, it made his scales itch. But Leo would get so absorbed in his reading, he barely acknowledged Raph had come into the room. They could just orbit each other in relative silence—a rarity in this household.

Mikey had teased them about it once, talking like they should start a club for their old lady hobbies, until he discovered Klunk was a big fan of reading and knitting nights. He loved being a pest, challenging himself to get past Raph and play with his yarn, and then when he eventually tuckered himself out he could crawl over to nap in Leo’s lap. With enrichment for his cat in mind (and the threat of what Leo and Raph might do to him if he called them old ladies again) Mikey was all for these club meetings!

No sign of Klunk for now though. After a day like today, Raph would savor the peace while it lasted…

If only Leo would stop being so distracting over there. Maybe the chapter he was on was a stressful one, maybe a character had made a stupid decision he never would have made in their shoes, maybe there was a plot twist that made no sense. Whatever the reason, he kept flipping his pages more erratically than usual. Noisily shuffling. Turning back a page, then forward. Then back again. Rubbing a hand down his face, sighing here and there. Hanging his head, then tensing, sitting back up to readjust on the couch cushions, retracing the pages again. Rinse and repeat.

Raph could have snapped at him for the abnormal disruption. A part of him was sorely tempted. Another part of him wanted to abandon the couch and go knit in his room but honestly he couldn’t find the energy for either. What little he had left in the tank for today, he wanted to dedicate it to decompression, not picking another fight. He just couldn’t be bothered. Leo would either figure it out or give up and leave of his own accord. You do your thing, I do mine. Minding our business. Orbiting, not intersecting.

Suffice it to say Master Splinter had the right idea about the rhythm of knitting being something for Raph to really settle into—the click, click, click was soft but just persistent enough to poke through the rest of the world’s noise and hold his attention. So well, in fact, that he didn’t even notice the gradual, sluggish shift in his peripheral until there was a thump and a weight dropped on his shoulder with no warning or permission.

Ugh, great.

“Butt out, Klunk,” he grumbled, already rolling his neck in preparation to shrug the rascal off. “We’re not playin’ today, okay? I’m not lettin’ you tear up another—”

Oh.

Uh.

What?

Raph blinked, then blinked again just to be sure and…yep. That was a plot twist he hadn’t seen coming. That was Leo slumped sideways against him.

Considering he’d keeled over so suddenly, Raph’s first gut reaction was a pulse of worry that he’d collapsed, passed out. That thump, he realized, had been his book sliding out of his grasp and hitting the floor; Leo didn’t drop his precious books willy-nilly like that. Perhaps he hadn’t come out of the battle as unscathed as they thought. Knowing him, he would hate to inconvenience everyone with a medical emergency when they were already so worn down; he might have opted to put it off or hide it as he did so infuriatingly often. All that fidgeting and fussing before could have been his struggle to stifle the pain and keep coping under the radar until his body and brave face couldn’t take it anymore.

Biting back a curse, Raph dropped his knitting in his lap and tried to awkwardly twist for an angle on Leo’s neck to get a pulse, only to stop up short when it jostled a snore out of him. Not one of those low, unobtrusive snuffly purrs he usually made—a real, raw, ragged sound vaguely reminiscent of a street racer tearing by.

…Okay. Not dying then. Just dead asleep.

On one hand it took an immense amount of self-control for Raph not to startle him awake then and there with a burst of incredulous laughter, which would naturally have been followed by plenty of badgering because that—that was rich. Years now everyone had been giving him crap about nighttime disturbances, sounding like a chainsaw, and all of a sudden Leo was no better! Preachin’ to the choir when you’re part of the chorus, pal!

On the other hand while he knew his brother would be significantly more self-conscious about it being pointed out than he ever was, which would be part of the fun, there was a strained undertone to the sound that gave him pause. The others had also said before that his snoring got a lot worse when he was extra stressed, sleeping rough after an even rougher day; that could run in the family.

Like he didn’t already know Leo had to be particularly exhausted to zonk out so hard so fast. He couldn’t even last through one of his favorite pastimes and make it to his customary sleepy time tea or brushing his teeth or his little stealth missions to be sure his brothers were safely tucked in ahead of him.

Guaranteed Raph wasn’t supposed to be aware of the latter; if he ever was still half awake when Leo poked his nose in, he’d fake a snore as obnoxiously as possible just to make him leave faster and go to bed already, shell-for-brains, we’re all still right here! We said goodnight, you watched us go, we didn’t teleport away as soon as our doors closed!

Although, given how many times they had actually been teleported out to parts unknown, separated with little to no warning, maybe his concern wasn’t totally uncalled for. But unless/until that became a problem again, Leo really ought to be more worried about the more current issue of the sleep debt he was digging for himself with his “patrols.”

Maybe Raph should be worried too if sleep debt this deep meant he had to put up with Leo uncharacteristically droning at this volume. After a few moments’ consideration he opted to take pity and nudge him before anyone else could come along and overhear. His breath caught in his throat and he coughed, grumbling and nuzzling more emphatically into his perch. Raph snorted wryly.

“Make yourself at home, why don’tcha?”

That he did. How he had decided the jagged joint of Raph’s shoulder was a good pillow, he didn’t know but once he was resettled, the clinging claws of unseen tension eased their grip on his frame and he softened, quieted, breathing easier.

So…now what?

Back to his knitting, Raph supposed, and just try to keep his movements fluid enough not to shake him awake. So much for orbiting without intersecting, but he wasn’t going to give up on his downtime plans just because he suddenly had an extra passenger on his side of the couch.

The book on the floor was bothering him, though, simply because he knew how much it would bother Leo to know the creases in the pages were actively worsening the longer it sat facedown like that. Whenever he rejoined the land of the living, he would either complain because Raph hadn’t done anything about it or complain that he hadn’t woken him sooner to pick it up himself.

If their positions were reversed, Leo would go out of his way to pick up whatever Raph had dropped. Of course he would. Goody-two-shoes.

Rolling his eyes, Raph set his knitting back down, having already lost track of his rows anyway, and scooted as far as he dared without dislodging his brother, stretching a leg out to snag and sweep the book closer by his toes to flip it closed. Not the precise, delicate handling Leo would have preferred but it would get the job done, right? Except Leo must have subconsciously interpreted his shift as an attempt to get away and proceeded to burrow more insistently into his side. Under that push Raph had to prop his free elbow on the armrest so as not to tip over; of course now at this new diagonal slump, his leg’s reach was a few inches shy.

“Welp…shell. There’s no pleasin’ you, is there?” he huffed, propping his chin on his hand and tapping a toe just short of the book’s corner. “Don’t blame me then when you wake up and there’s a whole chapter dog-eared. I tried.”

Leo chirruped softly, blissfully unaware and content now that his pillow had stopped squirming. He didn’t stir again—not even when Raph jumped at the click of a shutter, piercing in the quiet room, followed by a low but no less triumphant snicker of “Gotcha.”

“Wha—Mikey!” Raph hissed, whipping his head around to find him with Leo’s camera in his hands. “What’re you doin’?”

“I was just coming out to get some more paper and then what do my eyes spy? Scrapbook gold in the making, bro!” he stage whispered, his grin giddy. It seemed any trace of fatigue had evaporated in his glee, at least for now, leaving him to bounce eagerly on his toes. “How’d you get him to do that?”

“I didn’t. What d’you think I did? If I had put him to sleep somehow, I could’ve sent him the other way and kept my personal space.”

Mikey stopped bouncing at that, leveling him with an all too knowing look. “You could’ve. But you wouldn’t. You’re not fooling anybody, Raphie,” he stated, bluntly smug. “You could nudge me or Donnie off anytime we fall asleep on you. You could push Leo off right now. Go on, I dare you.”

“…Tch. What’s the point? The only thing worse than a clingy Leo would be a cranky Leo,” he muttered, barely catching himself in time to resist an awkward shrug. Mikey’s smile widened.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. But seriously, this has to go in the family album. You ever flip through it and notice like ninety-nine percent of the photos in there are of us? Well, us and Klunk. Actually there’s a Klunk solo album in progress, just cause I asked Leo so nicely.”

“Of course there is.”

“Anyway, Leo’s missing from most of those pictures cause he’s behind the camera. In a couple of the early ones when he didn’t know what he was doing, you can sorta see his finger poking in the frame but that’s not enough! And even when I manage to wrangle it away from him for his turn, I tell him to act natural and he always pulls one of those—”

Mikey drew himself up into a contrived, serious, duel-ready stance, miming a sword (and ignoring Raph’s preemptive wince at the thought of the camera flying from his hand with the overly dramatic flaring and flicking of his wrist. That was a gift from April, Leo’s first quality camera that wasn’t a disposable scrounged up from a dumpster with only one or two pictures left. Hearing that crash sure would wake him up fast.)

“—‘I am beauty, I am grace, Fearless Leader at the ready, this is my all natural state.’” When Mikey slumped free of the posturing, his smile and voice were softer, a little sadder. “Gotta try and out-ninja him to catch him out of the act…and you know how impossible it is to out-ninja him. It’s just cool to get a real candid shot that isn’t blurry.”

“Huh.” Mulling this over, Raph glanced back at him. Definitely not the picture of composure with his jaw hanging slack, cheek smushed against Raph’s shoulder and the edge of his mask getting pushed to fold in on itself under his eye. Thanks to that he could just make out the dark circles usually hidden underneath.

He never really thought of the Fearless Leader thing as an act. That was a genuine part of Leo just as much as this was but now that Mikey mentioned it, this—the Leo willing and able to doze off on the couch with a book, unguarded out in the open—this wasn’t really allowed to be a part of him as often.

And he’d let it happen in front of Raph? On Raph? Maybe the initial dropping of the walls wasn’t intentional but the fact that he hadn’t lurched awake and recoiled already, that he subconsciously felt safe enough to let some base turtle noises slip and snuggle closer, wanting him to stay…that was trust. Reliance on the same level as Donnie when he couldn’t think straight thanks to a tension headache, rested his forehead against Raph’s shoulder or plastron for relieving pressure and tricked himself into taking a nap there to sleep it off. Safety on the same level as Mikey when he draped himself over Raph’s shell not to pester or wrestle with him but because he needed some company to drown out dark thoughts or dreams and then very purposely fell asleep there so he wouldn’t be alone if they resurfaced.

That undying fire in the pit of Raph’s stomach, that fiercely protective familial instinct that so often roared like wildfire, mellowed down into more of a warm, homey hearth at the thought. Then the camera clicked again and he had to consciously twist the half smile he hadn’t realized he was wearing into a scowl.

“Hey, ya got your blackmail already, give him a rest.”

“Who said I’m gonna be blackmailing him?”

“Mikey…”

“Okay, okay, I’m done!” Mikey lifted his free hand in supposed surrender for about half a second before promptly twirling on his heel to whisper-call, “Donnie, get in here! You gotta see this!”

Raph’s hand supporting his chin curled into a warning fist but there wasn’t much he could actually do except feign an expression of “I am here against my will” when Don poked his head in.

“Aww…” he breathed in surprise and delight, tiptoeing not only for a closer look but also to pick up the book without even being asked, gently smoothing its pages. “He never falls asleep before you guys! But I had a feeling he was more tired than he let on. He must be if you haven’t woken him up by now.”

“Hey, we can keep it quiet!” Mikey protested. “We’re ninjas!”

“You can’t out-ninja Leo,” Don tutted, “at least not on a good day. Today was…” Seeing someone else resting peacefully must have been his body’s cue to remind him he could do with some of that too, interrupting him with a yawn. “…Mm, today was rough.”

Of course the yawn was contagious, spreading to cut off whatever reply Mikey would have made. Raph had to press his chin firmly back into his palm to stifle his own.

“Want me to take that?” Don offered, gesturing to the abandoned knitting in his lap.

“Yeah, I guess so. Don’t think I’m gonna get much else done like this. Somebody just make sure Klunk doesn’t start diggin’ into my stuff.”

The knitting basket was deposited next to the box of throw blankets; Don figured he might as well grab a couple for his brothers while he was already there. Upon his return Mikey wasted no time setting the camera down and scurrying past him onto the couch too. Another testament to Leo’s exhaustion (or perhaps more so to the whole family’s desensitization toward Mikey’s lack of personal space) that he didn’t wake when Mikey wedged himself against his shell.

“What? If I gotta stick around to keep an eye out for Klunkers, I might as well be comfy while I do!” he pointed out. When no protest came he promptly nestled his cheek against whichever one of Leo’s scutes he deemed most restful with a satisfied sigh, then a sincere, “You’re welcome to the pillow party too, Donnie, there’s room.”

Don hummed noncommittally as he started unfolding the blankets over them. “I’ve still got some work to finish up, cataloguing the parts I brought home and…”

Mikey yawned again at that moment—on purpose, Raph suspected, to derail that train of thought. It worked like a charm, triggering Don into one of those particularly jaw-cracking, eye-watering yawns that indicated nothing useful was going to get done in these conditions. Again Raph had to grit his teeth against the tickle to follow suit.

“…Eh, I guess it can wait till tomorrow,” Don murmured almost absently, palming at his eyes in surrender before ducking under the blankets to curl up against the opposite armrest. When Mikey flung an arm over his shoulders, however, he relented entirely, scooting the other way to properly merge into the huddle.

The more comfortable everyone got, the less comfortable it would look to anyone else—sharp elbows digging into sharper edges of their plastrons, marginal scutes scraping, the surety that sooner or later someone would headbutt the turtle next to him while trying to readjust. The further they relaxed into it, the further they weighed in like falling dominos to ensure Raph would lose all sensation in his arm for the foreseeable future.

Donnie would no doubt start mumbling in his sleep. Mikey would somehow find a way to drool on everyone equally. Leo would probably slip into more of those chirps and chirrs and snuffly purrs and keep Raph awake for a while with the sound so close to his ear. And he wouldn’t dare push any of them away.

And their father wouldn’t dare miss the opportunity to pick up the camera Mikey had conveniently left nearby and snatch one more photo, once the eventual addition of rumbling snores assured him all of his sons would remain unaware of it until it mysteriously appeared in the family album. After which Splinter put the device back exactly as he’d found it and turned his attention to the kitten creeping slowly but surely toward Raphael’s basket.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat almost imperceptibly.

Hunkered down into a crouch, ready to spring, Klunk froze. Gotcha.