Chapter Text
April and Casey were on the floor of their apartment on Casey’s night off because the turtles were...somewhere in space? Space or another dimension. The voice message hadn’t been very clear. The guys had made it clear that they were fine, they hadn’t been kidnapped, and they’d call as soon as they’d gotten back in—well, there the call had cut off, but presumably back in range.
So April was shamelessly exploiting Casey for his body. Or bartender’s mixology skills. One of the two. Mostly the mixology. They were already a couple of cocktails in.
This was a regular thing they made time for, as roommates. Get together, put on some old Masterpiece Theatre movie, talk about all the things certain friends of theirs who had never experienced middle school did not have the proper context to appreciate. When you had lived inside each other’s pockets since you were teenagers and also on a spaceship for six months, you lost most of your secrets. And body shyness. April had found a weird mole on the inside of her thigh last week and her first thought had been I should ask Casey if this is weird. Casey had promptly duly inspected it and said it was probably fine.
“—so we went back to her place and we had sex and the sex was so boring,” April complained. She buried her face in her arms and groaned. “It’s just! I thought maybe that was it. Maybe I should have been having sex with girls. And it was nice, it was good, she was better than plenty of guys I’ve been with, and she had so many vibrators. But there was no—whoosh. Y’know? When your veins go all bright and tingly and time slows down and all of your skin feels alive and right.”
Casey started laughing into his drink. “Yeah, that’s called an adrenaline rush, Red. I think you’ve been risking your life too much, Ms. I’ll-face-off-with-Kraang-Prime-and-control-the-universe.”
“You can’t talk, Mr. Goongala, I’ll-beat-up-gangbangers-with-a-hockey-stick.” She hauled herself up enough to take another sip out of the drink that had taken six bottles and an alarming noise from a cocktail shaker.
“Yeah, which means I fucking know all about it,” Casey said. He rolled over onto his back, snagging one of the seat cushions off the couch to prop his head up. “Hookups aren’t, like bad, it’s always nice to nut—I should put that on a t-shirt—”
“Gross.”
“—but they aren’t fun. Needs more spice.”
“Spice,” April said, rolling the world around her mouth. “Well, if you know so much, what do you do about it?”
She caught him right as he was taking a sip of his drink, and consequently caught him right before he hacked a spray of cocktail across half the room. She hadn’t heard him cough like that since the last time they fought something with spores.
“Okay,” he wheezed, when he’d recovered. “Look, before I say anything else. You gotta make me a promise. You can’t tell Raph about this.” He shuddered. “Or the other guys. But mostly Raph. He’d kill me.”
“Sure,” April said, suddenly consumed with desperate curiosity. Weird that he specified Raph and not Donnie. She knew Casey knew about Raph’s sex life, because they all knew about Raph’s sex life, because Raph had no shame and neither did Mona and it wasn’t like he wore clothes that hid all the interesting bruises his girlfriend gave him. But whenever Raph or Mona or Mikey came in for some collective mockery Casey and Donnie refused to look at each other. She had to assume it was a guy thing. “Lips zipped, I promise.”
Casey groaned, rolling over and burying his face in the pillow. His next words came out muffled.
“I can’t hear you,” April said.
“I said, Don and I have a...thing.”
April peered at him. On the TV screen, someone was crying at a funeral while sad organ music played.
“You...and Donnie? Are dating?”
“We’re not dating. We’re buds. We just have this thing where sometimes he, y’know, chases me around, and I run for my life, and he tries to catch me. And then we fuck.” He tried to casually sip his drink, which would have worked better if there had been any of it left. April noticed this with the part of her brain that wasn’t immediately occupied with picturing how this thing he described would work. In detail. “Like you do.”
“I don’t.” She propped her chin up on one hand, staring at him. “How long have you had this...thing with Donnie?”
“Eh.” Casey rolled to his feet, all rough grace and long legs. “Like five years now?”
“Years?!”
Casey, in the kitchen, did not answer. April flopped back down on the pillow. Lightning crashed on the TV. How had she not noticed that two of the people she loved best were basically dating for five years.
“If you’re getting another drink, I want one too.”
It was kind of an accident at first. At this point, it was very much intentional, but like. Casey hadn’t woken up one day and decided out of nowhere to have elaborate, kinky sex with one of his best friends.
They’d been at the farmhouse after that whole weird thing with Dracula. Donnie had gotten hit with some...something that made him go all werewolf-y—no fur, just a lot of growling and aggression and chasing down anything that moved. Mostly Casey, because he’d been using himself as bait after they’d triumphantly lured Donnie into the barn and then realized that all of the tranq guns were in there and they needed him out of the barn.
Nothing had happened. Casey had just been running through the woods, fleeing for his life, business as usual, and Donnie had been running him down, and eventually had tackled him, and Casey had been totally pinned, and Don had shoved his face against Casey’s neck and mumbled something about him smelling good and Casey had thought he was going to die from how fast his heart was beating. And then Leo and Raph finally caught up with them and hit Donnie with like six tranqs and that was that.
And then a couple days later because he was insane and also extremely lucky and very charming he managed to convince Don it was worth doing again, actually. And it had been a fun training exercise, so they’d done it a few more times, running through the woods with his blood up and danger-that-wasn't on his heels. And Casey had been caught again, and pinned again, and Donnie had grinned down with a wild look in his eyes and flexed his crazy strong hands and the only range of motion Casey’d had was humping his leg and well. No brothers interrupted them that time. One thing led to another. Afterwards Donnie had shoved Casey in a pond to get the smell of sex off his clothes before they both went back, but it was fine because he’d pulled Donnie in with him and then they’d found a bunch of frogs.
It had been fun, and then they just...kept doing it. And then Donnie did a bunch of research and had drawn up a whole bunch of rules and shit. And now a couple of nights a month they went off on their own and Casey got to run for his life and Don got to let himself live out his evil dreams.
“So you have date nights,” April said, once he’d finished the explanation and most of another drink.
“We’re not dating,” Casey repeated. They weren’t. They didn’t—okay, they cuddled sometimes, for aftercare, but he didn’t bring Donnie flowers or anything. Raph would kill Casey if he knew what a lousy boyfriend Casey was, just using Raph’s big brother for sex. Casey would kill Casey for just using Donnie for sex, if Donnie actually wanted a boyfriend.
“Right. You completely platonically let another man hunt you for sport. My mistake,” April said, all dry and ironic and mean. It was kind of hot. Right, that’s why they were having this conversation.
“I mean there’s definitely sex. There’s so much sex. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. About the sex.”
April stared at him for long enough that Casey started to worry he might have fucked everything up. They weren’t teenagers anymore, and he’d liked to think he’d gotten less stupid over the years since he or Donnie had breathed a word about April picking one of them. Sure, he and April had talked plenty about their hookups with each other when the guys weren’t around, because talking about something like casual sex with a stranger around people who would never have that option was kind of unfair. But that was strangers, and this was one of their mutual best friends, and Casey knew down to his bones that he loved them both enough to walk through hell for them, and they felt the same way. He didn’t want this to fuck things up.
“Give me a second,” April said, and she picked up her mostly-full drink and drained the entire thing in one go. “Okay,” she said, a little breathlessly, when it was empty. “Proceed.”
God, Casey loved her. He was going to get her such good sex.
Donnie liked a lot of things about having sex with Casey. He liked getting to stop thinking for a bit and just focus on chasing. He liked having the schedule he made clearly defined and their routes planned out and coming up with a new ideas together and talking them out. He liked the actually having sex part very much. Most of the time he even liked the Casey part about having sex with Casey, the noises the man made and the way his hips tracked smoothly into the plane of his stomach and how he shivered and went limp if Donnie hit the right buttons.
And then sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes Donnie got back from getting dragged into a surprise mission really quite looking forward to a scene with Casey. And he got to run Casey ragged and fuck him limp on a cot in the secluded warehouse he paid through a shell account so he could have some decent storage and also a place to end these nights that wasn’t a sleeping pad on a random rooftop. And he enjoyed getting to wrap himself around Casey, and bask in his victory and afterglow and captive human body heat and endorphins. And it was all great up until Casey mumbled sleepily into his shoulder, “Oh, yeah. I told April.”
“Told her what?”
“What endurance training is code for.”
And those were the times were Donnie considered that in spite of everything he liked about having sex with Casey, he might have to kill the guy anyway. Too bad, so sad. “You did what?”
“Wow, you’re loud,” Casey said, less sleepily. “I don’t think they heard you in Hoboken. Wanna try that again?”
“You—Casey—I was gone for three days!”
“A guy has needs,” Casey said, lifting his head to give Donnie a stupid smug grin. It faded fast. “Joke! Joke, that was a joke.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Donnie said. He was already sitting up and grabbing for the wet wipes.
Casey took them out of his hands and started helping. Donnie sat and fumed. “We were talking, okay? Me and April. And I told her about what we do, and she, uh. She wants to give it a try. With us.”
Donnie stared at him for long enough that Casey looked up and frowned at him. “Earth to Don. You’re looking weird.”
“I’m sorry, I think I started hallucinating,” Donnie said. “April wants to do. This?”
“We both had some pretty exciting formative years,” Casey said, cheerfully. “You know how it is. Nothing to get you going like running for your life.”
“You’re insane. You and April.”
“Yeah, but you like that about us.” Casey finished with Donnie’s legs and moved on to cleaning himself up. “Look, I just thought—you don’t have to say yes. I’m not even asking. I’m just letting you know. I told her, she wants to talk to you about it, we can see where it goes.”
“Do you want her to join?” Donnie couldn’t tell, a lot of the time, what was happening in Casey’s head. It was why he’d been very strict when he was drawing up the rule for scene debriefs. Jokes were okay. Dodging a direct question was not. The last thing he wanted was to push Casey past his limits and hurt him.
“Yeah,” Casey admitted, pausing as he pulled his shirt back on from where Donnie had thrown it. Donnie hadn’t even torn it this time. Too much. Casey didn’t need to sigh over it like that. “I think she’d have fun. I thought you would too.” He leered, enough to make Donnie scoff. “I definitely would. But yeah. She’s...you’re both...I don’t know. I trust you, man, alright?”
There was just enough glow from the hazard lights inside the larger warehouse, outside their little room, to see Casey looking rumpled and loose and relaxed. His face was soft, for once, not grinning or hard set or hidden behind a mask. Donnie could feel the hungry inhuman thing that lived in his chest wanting to grab Casey, to drag him back into bed and curl around him and keep him there forever. He already knew that was a kind of hunger that was never full. Even now, just moments away from having had Casey warm and weak in bed with him, it was rumbling.
At the idea of April there—of having both of the humans, caught by his hands and his brain and dragged into his lair and curled up beside him, beneath him, around him, the hungry monster in his chest sat up and roared.
“Yeah,” Donnie said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll talk to her.”
Donnie wasn’t strong enough to tell the monster no. Maybe that made him the monster.
“So. Endurance training,” April said, leaning against his workbench. “Let me guess, Casey came up with that one?”
Donnie laughed, weakly. “My idea, actually. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to come up with a set of things that you and my family would both believe we’d do together and that none of you wanted in on.”
April paused and Donnie didn’t have to be psychic to practically see her putting the pieces together. “Wait a minute. So when you were having baseball night at the apartment…”
Donnie pretending to be very occupied with his welding.
“Our apartment! Did you—the couch?”
“No!” Donnie said, quickly. They hadn’t made it as far as the couch. “That one was Casey’s idea.”
“I’m going to kill him,” she said, exasperated and fond. “Though I guess it is the easiest place for the three of us. As long as your brothers and Angel aren’t dropping by.”
“So…” He shut off the torch and flipped up his mask. “You’re really…?”
“If you’re okay with me there, I’ll give it a shot,” she said. Donnie tried not to think too loudly about just how okay he would be with that. He trusted that she wouldn’t try to pick up on his brain during regular conversation, but it still made him feel. Kind of skeezy. “Casey said you’d want to talk first?”
“Right! Right. Give me your phone,” he said. This was familiar territory. He could make a plan any day.
He had to plug it in to his computer to download the calendar app he’d coded, because he really hadn’t wanted anyone to use this but him and Casey. April followed him, leaning into his space, and Donnie let himself be aware of her. How she smelled. How she felt. He’d spent a long time trying not to have these thoughts, but it was easy to let them back in.
Easier now not to let them take over, too. He shoved them all in the part of his mental notes where he kept ideas for scenes to talk about with Casey and handed the phone back.
“So it works as a regular calendar app, and then if you go to this button, and put in a code—whatever code you want, the first time—it’ll show the actual names of private stuff.” Donnie shook his head. “Trying to keep track of things just by code names gets complicated. And sometimes one of us is hurt when we had something really physical planned, so. Improvising.”
“Uh...huh,” April says, scrolling through the history with an unreadable expression. “What’s the ‘alien probe’ one.”
Donnie can feel himself blushing. “I, um. Tied Casey down.” Casey had suggested they skip any chasing by having Donnie just roofie him. Donnie had asked him to never say it like that again. Instead they’d watched a movie together and he’d petted Casey’s hair until he’d fallen asleep, and then once he’d lured Casey into his clutches he’d chained him up. It had been more fun than he’d expected, being gentle with a scheme in mind. “And then gagged him so he couldn’t talk and pretended to be an alien scientist examining a new life form and seeing exactly what it could do.”
April was staring at him. Donnie couldn’t meet her eyes. This was probably a scenario straight out of her nightmares. It was what the Kraang had tried to do to her, over and over again. It had almost gotten them all killed.
“I think I want to try that,” she said. “Did you like it enough to do it again?”
Donnie had really liked it. “Y—yeah. We could try that.”
“Cool,” she said and went back to scrolling. “Why did you call it endurance training? Didn’t Leo want to join in?”
Donnie instinctively made a face remembering. At least Raph and Mikey had been bored with the idea of more training. “Well, he did, and then I pointed out how much he’d have to slow down to let Casey keep up, and convinced him that I just wanted to go along so I had an excuse to make fun of Casey for being slow.”
April glanced up. “So is he also into negging?”
“We haven’t tried that, actually,” Donnie said, and he was already thinking about making Casey squirm, watching him gasp and curse and try to return insult for insult—would he like it? Would he try to pretend he didn’t, and need to be coaxed down and soothed until he cracked?
“Hm,” April said contemplatively, and he loved her brain so much because it was obvious that she was thinking the exact same thing. She looked at the app again. “...Why is there a whole week blocked off last year when you went to the farmhouse to do repairs.”
“Well,” Donnie said, thinking about the routine they’d fallen into that week, actual repairs in the morning and the afternoons for him to go out and do prep work in the woods and Casey’s thirty-minute headstarts. He’d learned a lot about funneling and herding techniques and game design doing research for his setups for that. Building courses and traps and controlling the terrain to lead Casey exactly where he wanted him. “Do you really want to know?”
April put down the phone and gave him a very familiar look, the one that said Don’t be dumb. “Yes. I do.”
Donnie might be a monster for grabbing this and them with both hands before anyone could take it away, but he thought this might work out after all. Casey was right. They were both crazy, to stick around here this long, and that was part of why he liked them. If they were crazy enough to want things like this with a monster, well. At least he could do those things to the very best of his abilities. “Let me get my map.” It was okay to show her. He would have to change some things up, anyways, if he wanted to trap her too. If she let him.