#gap bros

follow-up to this prompt, coming your way – and sorry anon, you asked for this ages ago. 

Casey flirts with consciousness two or three times before he makes any real commitment to it. His whole body is an ache – even blinking seems to shoot railroad spikes of pain back through his eyeballs and into his brain – but there’s a sixth sense tugging him into wakefulness, something primordial telling him ‘you’ve slept long enough.’ 

So he blinks himself alert, ignoring the subsequent headache, and goes through an unfortunately well-practiced mental checklist. Still breathing, all extremities accounted for, no medical hardware attached to his person – check, check and check. He’s in pretty good shape so far. 

So now Casey just needs to puzzle out why he’s in the hospital in the first place. Details are sketchy. 

And ‘hospital’ is more of a blanket term. He’s in the lair, he knows that right off the bat – there’s a pretty distinctive aroma. But even more distinctive, impossibly familiar, is the combined smell of engine oil and antiseptic and hazelnut coffee and the heated edges of something electric and burning.

He would know that smell anywhere. He would know it eighty years from now. When he’s forgotten his own name and where he was born and what his mother looked like, he would remember April down to the crooked tilt of all her playful smiles, the unobtrusive way Mikey’s kind presence could fill a room, and Don’s inimitablepersonal scent of medicine and mechanics.

Casey smiles. It hurts his entire face, but god help him, he smiles anyway. And when he squeezes the curled fingers of his left hand, they tighten around a work-hardened, three-fingered hand. 

“I told you not to fall asleep,” Don says quietly, sandpaper rough, without so much as lifting his head. “You can’t do anything right.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Casey remembers Don whispering, what feels like moments or years ago. “Just stay with me, please.”

“That’s me,” Casey agrees cheerfully, even though it comes out a few shades too pale. Anyone not a ninja wouldn’t have noticed, but Don has him pegged. He’s treated to a narrow look from muddy, masked eyes; and then Don unfolds his tired body from the side of the cot – doesn’t unfold his hand from around Casey’s – and reaches for him. 

“Next time you scare me like that,” Don tells him succinctly, “I’m throwing you off the roof myself.”

Casey closes his eyes – rewarded when Don’s forehead touches his, a proximity that isn’t usually allowed. And in that shared place between the two of them, Casey promises, “I’m not goin’ anywhere, Don.”

“Damn right you’re not. You’re on bed-rest until I say otherwise. Doctor’s orders,” Don replies right away, and it should put everything back to normal, Casey knows that’s what he was aiming for. 

But Don’s voice wobbles, just a little, and his hand in Casey’s clutches tighter. So Casey lifts his free arm to hold him that much closer, and they’ll stay that way until Mikey and April barge in with breakfast. 

Concern Meme15: 'Would you like a back-rub?’concern meme prompts are closed. 

“Jesus,” was Don’s greeting when Casey dragged himself home, followed by, “what happened?”

Casey shrugged as he shut the door behind him, and shouldered off his hockey gear, letting the bag hit the floor with a muffled thud and kicking his sneakers off next to it. 

“Took a hard check near the end of practice. Shit happens.”

“You’re bleeding,” Don said incredulously. Poor guy still wasn’t used to this college hockey business. But Casey wasn’t exactly complaining, not when Don ignored all his own boundaries to step right into Casey’s space and take his chin, turning his face toward the light to better inspect the damage. “Did you shower at school?”

“Uh, yeah. Thought the bleedin’ stopped, must’ve opened up again on the way home.” 

“Go sit on the couch. I’ll be right there.”

And then he was gone, taking that sudden proximity with him, and Casey huffed a disappointed sigh and grudgingly did as he was told. April wouldn’t be home from class for another two hours, so it was just the two of them, and their small apartment felt somehow smaller as Donnie returned with the first aid kit. 

“Aw, come on, D. All that ain’t necessary.” 

“Shut up,” Don said without heat, and sat on the edge of the coffee table. Casey’s legs made loose brackets that Don’s knees slotted neatly in between, and he took Casey’s face in hand again, all proprietary-like, and it made Casey swallow back a rising heat in his face. 

They were new at this, still. A little awkward with each other just yet, happy to be together with April in this cozy student housing unit Leatherhead helped them scope out, but still getting used to not being at home anymore, and being on their own as mostly-functional quasi-adults, and living together, like people in love tended to do. 

“There,” Don said, what felt like two seconds later, already leaning back and away. “Done.” 

Casey had approximately five seconds after that to regret not getting his ass kicked a little harder at practice, if it would have meant Don manhandling a little longer, and then Don said, “Would you like a back rub?”

“Uh,” Casey said eloquently, and Don started to withdraw into a shell literally right in front of Casey’s eyes. So he continued, too quickly, “No, that’d be awesome, man. Thanks, for real. I just – why, though?” 

“I’ve read that a massage helps speed up muscle recovery after an intense workout,” Don said slowly, in that tricky halfway point between bravery and ‘nevermind, forget it.’ “And you’re usually pretty sore when you come home, so I figured. It might help. Just – stop looking at me like that.”

Casey didn’t realize he was grinning until he noticed Don blushing, and then he could only grin even wider. “You read that, huh? You go lookin’ up how to make your boyfriend feel better after a rough day?” he couldn’t help but tease, warmed and delighted. 

“You want the back rub or not?”

“Babe, you can rub me down anywhere you want,” Casey said with a leer that probably looked ridiculous, given the dumb smile still plastered across his newly bandaged face. “Y’don’t even gotta ask, seriously.”

2. “You’re too young to hate the world.”

It sort of rankles at first, being talked down to by a kid in high school, a human kid, who has no idea what you’ve been through, what you’re dealing with, how damn cruel and hateful and unfair this world is - 

But you take a breath, hold it, and let it go. He’s not talking down to you. He knows the world. He’s seen the worst of it with you. He knows what you’ve lost, what you’re missing. He’s missing it, too.

And you have to be okay, you have to. Raph can’t, he can’t, and Leo is so lost, so it has to be you to keep them going. Keep them strong. Keep them standing under this weight, this silence, this hole the Shredder ripped clean out of you-

But you’re trembling, crumbling under this impossible hurt, and your voice comes out broken when you remind Casey, “He was too young, too.”

Casey’s arms wrap around you, and the heartbreak is squeezing tighter than any embrace ever could, crushing your heart into a muddy pulp, and you take a breath, hold it, let it go. You have to be okay. Your family needs you to be - he would want you to be. 

And you try for them, you really try - but soon, the grief will bleed into something toothed and ugly, and you will hate as much as you ever loved.

donnie: punch you?

casey: yes! punch me, in the face. didn't you hear me?

Donnie and Casey

Season 2: Fungus Humungous/ Season 3: The Pig and The Rhino

Im really proud at how these two came a long way from hating each other, to tolerating one another, and to finally being bros, Its so realistic! For me anyways because not everyone will get along automatically. 

Especially rivals who are in love with a girl, but they worked out their differences, matured a ton (Definitely Donnie!)) and finally found themselves as friends and bros, Some people can really relate to that.

 Correct me if Im wrong. ^-^