#my first reader insert!

Spring Shed

"It's gross how excited you are about this," Donatello mumbled and you can’t help but smile a little at his mildly disgruntled protest.

"What? You said you could use some help. I'm helping," you reply, and smile wider when he frowns at your pleased expression.

You can tell that he’s nervous and perhaps a bit hesitant by the way he squirms slightly beneath you, but that was to be expected from him. Genius that he was, he still got adorably bashful over things like this, and straddling him as you were, you squeeze your thighs in a bid to keep him still.

"Yeah, but...this is not a normal thing partners do.” Still frowning, his huff stirred the steam swirling all around you in the bathroom, and in an effort to comfort him you tipped your head up to place a soft, quick kiss along his jaw.

“Shh, just let me enjoy this,” you mutter as your fingers splay out over his skin, searching for the spots that will bring him some relief.

 You determine that your time in the bathroom hasn’t been sufficient and he wasn’t soft enough for you to really work with yet, and because of that you press on his shoulders in a bid to get him to sink lower into the warm bath. With another huff he obliges, sliding down into the extra large soaking pool until only his eyes are above the surface of the water.

It was so typical of him to feel embarrassed about this, you muse. Even after you’d assured him a hundred times over that you did, in fact, love all his turtle quirks. And besides, you’d not been able to see this particular one before, given the timing of your getting together last summer. You’d been around the past spring, sure, but he’d hidden this bit about himself away from you. But now that you were together? Oh, you were so here for this.

Submerged up to his eyes he looked up at you with his brows knitted together. His face had a completely different look when he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He squinted more, for one thing. Farsighted as he was, you knew that squint well, and knew that at this close distance you were really more of a blur to him than anything. His glasses had been safely folded and placed with the rest of your clothes on the old metal patio set he and his brothers kept tucked into the corner of the bathroom. And it really was a ‘bath room’ as its sole feature was the singular giant soaking pool.

Even if he couldn’t see you clearly, that didn’t stop Donnie from taking both of his large, tridactyl hands and sliding them over your thighs until they gripped the swell of your ass.

“Hey now, you know the rules. None of that business in the soaking tub,” you chastise, taking a light swat at the top of his head.

“But you’re really pretty. And you’re naked,” he reasoned. The lower half of his face was still underwater, yet you could somehow just make out the words despite the few bubbles. Donnie emphasised his thoughts by continuing to slide one of those hands up your torso until it cupped your left breast and his low churr began to vibrate the water. The sensation made you inhale sharply through your nose, but you’d grown wise to him. You knew he was trying to distract you and was doing a damn fine job of it and you needed to maintain focus, so you poked him in the forehead between his eyes.

“We can do that later. Right now it’s shedding time and that shoulder cap is so close to coming loose,” you insist.

Glowering in response he blew a few bubbles through his nose before sinking fully below the water, almost like he was hiding from you. You snort softly, trying not to laugh at his pouting.

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” you coax.

“You’re not the one whose skin is peeling off wholesale,” came his distorted voice from at least a foot below the water’s surface and you’re surprised you could make any of it out at all. You threw your hands out in mild exasperation and sent droplets of water flying.

“No, my body just flakes off dead skin cells and hair 365 days of the year and that floats around in the air and you breathe it in and it makes boogers and you have to dust it off furniture. Does that sound better?”

“No…” he grumbles reluctantly and then surfaces again just enough so his head is above water and you watch as his pale third eyelids fold back into the inner corner. He still looks sullen and so adorably cute— that is until he puckers his lips and squirts a stream of water at you and you splutter as it catches you straight on the chin. Then he submerges again, the cheeky bastard, and you know he can hold his breath for way longer than you’re willing to wait for him.

“Come on,” you bargain, wiping water off of your face. “The sooner it’s done the sooner we can go back to your room and I’ll let you have your way with me. And you’ll be free of that tight, itchy skin.”

For a moment you stare down into the water and wonder if he’s going to resurface again, but a few seconds later he does, looking resigned.

“Fine,” he drawls out and you take his face in your hands and lean in to kiss him right on that soft spot you love between the nostrils of his flat nose.

“I promise I’ll be gentle,” you tease and earn an honest to goodness snort of laughter from him.

Holding his face now, you could see that it too was still peeling a little, but only along his jaw and the outer edges of his wide cheeks. He’d already told you how he’d scrubbed at it hard before you arrived because he didn’t want you to see it at its worst. Which was silly because you planned to be with this man until death did you part and there were a lot of springs that would happen between now and then, universe willing. Maybe next year he’d feel comfortable enough letting you see all of his struggles, you hoped.

The greyish colored layer of skin was getting water logged now and you carefully pinched a bit at his jaw and found that it pulled away with ease. It sticks a little to the pads of your fingers, and for whatever reason you lift it closer to your eyes to look at it. However, when you refocus beyond your fingertips you see that Donnie is squinting at you and his mouth is set in a rather grim line.

“You’re just as handsome as ever,” you reassure, leaning forward to place the bit of skin in the designated bio-waste container Donnie had brought. He huffs again and tries to believe you.

With him finally ready to begin you reach around his shell for the clean loofa that’s resting on the towel. You note that the temperature in the bathroom is almost as warm as the water and you can feel sweat beading along your hairline as you slide back in and resettle yourself in Donnie’s lap.

“You just tell me if whatever I’m doing hurts or anything,” you encourage as you wet the loofa and slowly press it against his cheek. His eyes slide closed at the contact, and with his churr starting up again he surrenders to you, slowly tilting his head to the side to give you better access. His hands also return to your ass, but you don’t protest this time.

Donnie had put on some brand of lo-fi beats to play in the background, and relaxing to the music and the warmth you slowly began to work. Because he’d told you before, you knew it was painful and actually detrimental to try to remove any skin that wasn’t ready to be shed yet, so you concentrated only on the cooperative bits you found. With gentle swipes you encouraged the now soggy, translucent bits of skin to break free and carefully place each piece in the container for incineration later. Donnie was fastidious in that way, at least.

You continued to work, but after a short time you found that your fingers and fingernails were actually more efficient at coaxing the shedding skin away. Donnie shifted around a little when you switched methods, but eventually settled again with an almost strained sigh. You quickly found that small circular motions worked better than gentle prodding, and when you managed to work off a particularly large chunk from his left shoulder you felt somewhat triumphant. It was then that you realized you were probably enjoying this entirely too much.

You glance up to check in with Donnie, but his eyes are closed with his head lolled back on the towel he was using as a pillow. He’d rolled it up and wedged it between his neck and shell and it looked comfortable enough. With his head arched back like that you could see the thick column of his throat clearly, but more importantly you could see all the new bright undulating stripes of dark green and creamy yellow across his skin. They were what was beneath all this shedding skin, and while they were something he grumbled about, you adored them. He’d explained once that they were ‘an evolutionary sign of his virility’ and ‘highly embarrassing’. You thought they were beautiful, however, and secretly mourned their loss when they faded with the coming of summer.

“Look at those handsome stripes. I missed them,” you cooed as you leaned forward to kiss his throat, and as you did you felt his muscles work when he swallowed thickly. His churr grew louder then, too, and his progressively restless hands continued to slowly caress your naked skin under the water. “Don’t get yourself worked up. I’m not done yet,” you admonish lightly before pulling back to resume your task of working the layer of greyish skin on his right shoulder cap loose with your thumbnail.

“Honeymoon phase over already, hmm?” He cracked a smile as he let his thumbs press into your inner thigh, just shy of the juncture of your legs. When you do a little wiggle to dislodge him and his distracting intentions his grin gets wider and he slowly opens his eyes and turns his head to try and watch you, but you are entirely too close for his farsighted eyes. So instead he leans forward and kisses your shoulder and breathes in the scent of you.

“Shh. Just a few more minutes, I’ve almost got this,” you murmur placatingly. You’ve been at this for perhaps thirty minutes now and you can tell he’s about ready for this to be done, but you’re so close to working his shoulder shed off in one huge piece. You just need a bit more time. Carefully your thumbnail works in those small circular motions and you feel a little more of the skin separate with satisfaction.

Huh, maybe there was something wrong with you, after all. You really shouldn't be enjoying this that much.

Don groaned with affectionate exasperation as he let his head fall back onto the folded towel again at the same time you hit a ‘not ready’ spot and he lightly hisses at the sting. You apologize, but undeterred move on to a different area.

“I love you,” he smiled tenderly as you continued to work the loose, soggy flap of skin off.

“I love you, too,” you reply automatically, eyes remaining fixated on the task.

He gives your ass one more squeeze as he resigns himself to sit there until you are through. His tone is teasing as he says, “You know you’re still gross for enjoying this, right?”

And you laugh at yourself, because it’s true.