Work Text:
"I don't know if I can keep doing this."
Donnie frowns and stills his hands, leaving them to hover over the insulation block. He's been soldering a busted motherboard for - how long has it been? - ah, just over four hours, and his full intention was just to keep going but the quiet words make him pause. Too smooth, too firm the way words can get when rolled around in one's mouth for far too long.
His thumb has already automatically clicked the flame off. No point in wasting gas on empty air.
Donnie places the cooling burner on its hook, returns the roll of tin solder to its box, and flips the tinted visor up. It doesn't help much - there isn't a lot of light in his lab, most of it concentrated around his work bench and drowning the rest of the space in hulking, viscous shadows.
He squints into those shadows, light-blind from the blue flame of the burner, until one of them gives in and resolves itself into the shape of his brother.
"What?" he asks, eloquently.
Leo shrugs. He's perched on a stool, feet tapping the floor in patterns that make him rotate slowly left and right, and his head is almost disappearing into his thick scarf and hunched shoulders.
He's been sitting here for a good while, Donnie knows. Arrived at some point between him cleaning out and fixing a supplementary CPU socket and the CMOS battery suddenly spouting a leak that by then felt almost like personal betrayal. So yeah, maybe Donnie wasn't one hundred percent focused on Leo's inane ramblings so far, for that's what they've been - base gossip, supply runs, training schedules, his brother bleeding any drop of entertainment from what currently counts as their everyday life with the perseverance of a terrier worrying a taxidermied bear.
Donnie's used to it. He doesn't mind Leo running his mouth as long as Leo doesn't mind him concentrating on his projects without offering any, you know, actual input. As far as stress release strategies go, this is an amicable agreement between them. His younger self, in all of his maximalist grandeur, would be appalled at having to compromise like this with what can only be called an annoyance.
Well, his younger self didn't have an apocalypse to live through. And yes, Leo may have the whole base to roam, welcomed everywhere, looked up to by everyone - but when he needs to shed that spotlight and hide from the world and just be, he flees to the lab.
Donnie can relate.
It's been a tough week. A botched recovery run, a team of eight nearly lost to the Kraang, a small explosion at a factory far away from the base that almost released heavy metals into their water supply - everyone is on edge. (After all, there's a reason why Donnie is basically resurrecting a motherboard from smithereens instead of just scrapping it for parts.)
And no one is on edge more so than Leo, because of course the idiot keeps piling it all onto his own shoulders, and straining under the weight, and grinning and joking and putting on a brave face, and then staggering to the lab and dropping it all at Donnie's feet and whining as he decompresses.
That, Donnie is used to.
The torn edges, the filaments exposed to air - that is new enough to warrant his attention.
Leo, however, doesn't jump at the chance to vent, eyes stubbornly stuck on the floor, flicking between a crack in the concrete and - what's that - oh, a screw Donnie's dropped, he was looking for that one earlier.
"Spit it out, Leo," Donnie says, sending a metal arm to collect the screw.
Leo gives him a sheepish look. His monotone voice probably didn't fool him, and now Donnie's taken the thing for his eyes to snag onto.
"I just…" he finally tries. "I dunno. It's a lot, you know?"
Way to say everything and nothing at the same time. "Hm."
Another pause.
"I'm…" Leo's voice catches in his throat, and he sighs it out. "'M just tired, Dee."
Donnie looks at him properly then, takes in the haggard lines of his silhouette where they nearly dissolve into the shadows. Leo isn't wearing his bandana, his face bare, so Donnie studies the deep creases on his forehead, in the corners of his mouth, the dark shapes leaving indents beneath his eyes.
He looks exhausted.
"And I- I know everything that can be said here, you don't gotta play Doctor Feelings with me or anything, that's Mikey's job, I just - don't know how long I can go on like this. How long we can go on." Leo grimaces. "You know? And - I know people are counting on me, I know, it's not the time to sit and mope, I've got a team on a repeat recovery mission right now - they're all out there, doing things, and I…"
He trails off and shrugs, pushing his chin deeper into his scarf. Hiding.
Donnie leans back in his chair and considers, wishing he knew what to say in times like this. Nothing ever feels right. His head hums, the sound tinny between his ears, matching the buzzing of one of the lamps. He glares at it.
Bone-tired, all of them.
None of this can be fixed, not in the way they aren't already fixing. The world is still going to hell, they're just postponing the inevitable, tearing bloody chunks out of its flanks to cling to as the ground dissolves beneath their feet.
He knows it. Leo knows it. They always know it - you've got to be truly delusional to have a snowball's chance in hell to forget about something like this. But they grin and bear it, and eventually the endless, impenetrable wall of doom leans an inch away and lets them breathe again for a while.
Which means that this is a temporary low. Leo simply needs to rest.
(They all do.)
Donnie's shoulders twinge, and he gets up to take his shell off - the interruption has torn him out of the flow and the heaviness in the back of his head tells him that he won't be continuing tonight, so he might as well stretch while he can.
The skin of his shoulders is losing colour again in favour of something mottled and pale, and Donnie scowls as he massages some feeling back into the sore muscles, still a bit damp from the shower he took before his motherboard hyperfocus.
When Donnie fixes the shell on its stand and turns back to his workbench, he finds Leo kneeling on the floor where he'd slid off the stool. The scarf is unwound from around his neck, bunched up and tossed aside. His hands are fisted in the loose fabric of his pants.
(He looks away when Donnie turns to him, but he still catches him staring at the bruising.)
It feels odd to sit back down in his chair with Leo like this, the distance between them shortened, the difference in their eye levels thrown into contrast. But sit he does - what else is he supposed to do? - frowning down at the pool of shadows that his brother is now apparently making his home in.
"Leo," Donnie says. "Get off the floor."
It's dirty, it's cold, and it's making him feel weird.
Leo shakes his head.
"I can't, I- Donnie, what do I do?"
Donnie's mind fires off suggestions on how to combat stress and existential dread and everything in between, a list of physical and psychological techniques, of philosophical and ethical scaffolds, all the way down to basic needs and their hierarchies and priorities. It's a neat list, compiled meticulously from books and experiences and accounts, an elegant testament to the depth and dedication of his research.
He discards it. Leo knows all of this already.
Then why is he here?
Think, Donatello. What would Mikey do?
He would hold Leo, certainly. That would be his first move. And then, Leo's right, one of the members of his impressive health professionals conference would probably make an appearance and say words that never manage to get a foothold in Donnie's head because they never make any goddamn sense.
But the former does not come naturally to Donnie, and the latter is not what Leo needs either - he's said as much himself.
Why is he here?
Donnie looks at his brother - his oldest brother, now, willing his face to betray something, anything, for him to work with.
Maybe that's what it is - maybe, with Raph gone (an abyss yawns open in Donnie's chest, wide and bottomless and at a perfect absolute zero, and it's been years now but a wound like this will never close), without an older brother to rely on anymore, Leo teeters and sways himself, his compass left to go haywire without a stabilizing force.
The thought irks Donnie. They all miss Raph, they all need him, they were all left behind when he pressed on and into the fog - shouldn't it mean, now, that they are here for each other? That Leo can finally allow himself to lean on them more than he did before?
It's not as if they don't, already. Mikey was hit the worst by Raph's passing, a deep scar layering over the criss-cross of casual everyday wounds of living through an apocalypse. Where a lesser being would fall, Mikey seems to have unearthed something in himself, a steel core so radiant and unshakeable that Donnie won't be surprised to see him survive all of them and the universe itself. He offers it freely to Leo, to Donnie - to everyone who asks and to many who don't, and it doesn't seem to retract from him, only build him up stronger. A quieter sort of energy, different from how he was as a kid, but even more formidable for it. He shares, he gifts - he listens. He guides.
And Donnie… What can Donnie do?
Why is Leo here?
Donnie refocuses his eyes right as Leo looks away, a crease between his brows souring his expression.
He was leaning in, just now, head bowed in what almost reads as supplication, dipping undeniably beyond the vague outline of Donnie's body heat. Unconsciously, probably, but there is no covering it up as he sways, rebalancing where he sits, face awash stubbornly in the shadows.
Oh - oh, but now it clicks for Donnie, so obvious he could slap himself. Details and signs that he would have missed otherwise - has missed in the past - but that align into a comprehensive pattern when he is suddenly reminded to look for it.
Oh, Leo.
It makes sense now. Yes, it makes sense.
Donnie considers it.
Some might say that 'hate' is too strong a word to be used freely, but Donnie doesn't count himself among cowards. He hates many things, honestly and openly, from nasty textures to drafty rooms to people who won't push the chairs back in after getting up from the table in the mess hall to the Kraang to every single piece of tech arrogant enough to fail him on the battlefield.
Above all that, Donnie hates being useless. He won't speak openly about it - that's another thing he hates, by the way, mark it down - but to sit idly by, to not be asked for help when he so obviously can help - oh, but it burns.
And worse, still, the feeling that comes after having to turn someone away. A rare event in itself, thank Laplace, but withering nonetheless.
To put it bluntly, he cares about Leo. He wants to help. And if this is what Leo needs from him, if this is what he can give…
…Wordlessly, slowly, Donnie spreads his legs.
"What-" Leo jerks back and freezes in place, the momentum stifled by his rigid posture. "Donnie..."
Leo is not trapped between Donnie's knees, not at all. He isn't even crossing the chord connecting the apexes of his kneecaps, something that arbitrarily feels like the point of no return.
He is shivering anyway.
"What are you..." Leo tries again. His voice is small, exhausted.
Donnie frowns. His intention is to alleviate his brother's troubles, not heap on more questions.
He realizes he has yet to speak. To comment on his actions when everyone else is too slow to follow. As per usual.
"I am offering," he tries. The words barely manage to leave his mouth, his tongue aching as it depresses. His heart is pounding for some reason. "If you need."
Leo's brows knit together at the last words, and Donnie finds himself mirroring the frown for a moment, unsure of the misstep.
Seconds tick by. His pulse booms so loudly the reverberations bounce inside his shell, front to back to front to back.
Over the echoes of it, endless as they fold into one another, Donnie hears Leo's throat click as he swallows.
"Why?" he breathes.
Donnie doesn't know if Leo is looking at him. His own eyes skirt way past the edges of his form and then some just to be safe.
Ah - so that is the real point of no return. The way Leo doesn't push back or laugh it off. The resignation in the simple question - as if he'd only just now realized that his secret is out.
His foolish brother, so wonderfully, paradoxically naive even now, when the very notion of naivete has long been scorched out of every last survivor of this cracked planet. Somehow, he perseveres. Not in everything, no - can't lead an entire resistance without earning a jagged edge or twenty - but in this, apparently.
But he's always been good at defying odds. At blindsiding Donnie, at trashing all his meticulous calculations and projections and data points. It used to piss Donnie off on a regular basis - but it's a rarer occurrence now that they've both grown older and logged a list of irreplaceable losses across their souls. Makes some things less significant in the grand scheme of things, who knew.
This blindsided him too at first, back when it all first clicked together - the way Leo acted around him. The almost imperceptible shift from their stubborn, paranoid codependency to something even tighter, a shift so quiet and small and so unlike Leo, although that part Donnie understands. Can still sympathize with Leo's uncharacteristic hesitation to act on an urge, given how...unconventional all of it remains even in a world where no one bats an eye at their green skin or mystic powers anymore.
Donnie doesn't know, himself, what this means for them. Doesn't know what he feels.
Why is he doing this? For once Leo is posing a reasonable question.
Once more, with feeling: he cares, undeniably so, not foolish enough to pretend otherwise within the confines of his own mind. He cares about Leo. For his brother, his twin, he would - will do anything. Them against the world, always, now sharply more so than ever, first four - now three. In this context, his body is once again nothing but a tool, and Donnie is happy to use it however it serves best.
But then again, Donnie can't even imagine - not with Mikey. The circuit spark of the thought alone makes his skin crawl.
So why Leo?
"We need you in fighting shape," Donnie finally responds. "Can't have you stuck in your own head. This will help."
Leo flinches, and Donnie feels his own mouth twitch in distaste at the clipped tone of his voice.
But he doesn't know how to be anything else.
Time stretches. Donnie waits for Leo to refuse - surely, now, he will refuse. His heart now hammers somewhere in his stomach, beating his insides into stone, heavy and cold.
Leo's throat clicks again. His head is bowed when Donnie chances a glance, face hidden by the generous shadows.
And then, almost unnoticeably, Leo leans forward.
It feels like victory or defeat, Donnie isn't sure. A sucking, painful spasm grasps at something in his insides.
Leo's hands, clenched and pushed into his thighs, jerk upwards, straining under the atmospheric column, halt, move again.
'You may,' Donnie wants to say. He can't.
His legs shift farther apart in what he hopes reads as an invitation, before he is hit with the cold chill of - what if it looks like he is moving out of reach?
Donnie has no time to swallow the sudden fear: Leo's hands land on his knees, warm and clammy even through the fabric of his pants. His forehead comes to rest on the back of his right hand. An exhale shakes through him.
Donnie knows that one - the sigh of one set of unbeatable odds beaten while the next arises before him.
His jaw tenses. His leg shifts under Leo's weight, enough, apparently, for the alchemic change of potential energy into kinetic, because Leo straightens up again, eyes boring into Donnie's so sharply that he finds himself too skewered to look away.
"Are you sure," he asks. His voice does not even bother to lift into a question - or maybe it can't.
Silly. That part is easy.
Donnie opens his mouth, unsticks his impossibly heavy tongue from where it's glued to the roof in defiance of the law of gravity.
…Maybe not 'easy'. Curse him for ditching vocabulary precision when it matters most.
'Simple', then. It remains simple.
"Yes."
Now come all the other parts.
Leo is still looking at him, and Donnie wonders if this is where he will try to kiss him. He finally manages to tear his eyes away, the needle at the end of a glass drop shattering between them. He doesn't know if he wants to see it coming.
One of Leo's palms grows heavier again - he leans his head on his hand once more before slipping off, his brow pressing into Donnie's thigh. Donnie watches his bared nape, watches the delicate machinery of tendons and ligaments drag and pull as Leo tilts his head - and Donnie guesses more than feels him leave a kiss.
It is happening, then. It is truly happening.
The drumbeat of his pulse fades into the background, as inconsequential as any last piece of scrap metal in his lab right now (and never let anyone hear him call it that), his body dissolving into the murk.
Against it, starkly: Leo's hands, tectonically slow, sliding their way up his legs; Leo's mouth hiding kisses in the wake of one of them; Leo's eyes, shut, his expression, concealed. Every touch pulls Donnie stubbornly, insistently back into being. His knees exist, then his thighs, then the creases at the edges of his plastron, concealed by the fabric but mapped out, undeniably defined all the same by the careful press of calloused fingers.
Leo breathes, once, twice, his hands twitching. His back heaves like the curve of a great beast rising laboriously from the ocean, and Donnie is seized by the sudden urge to pet it. To let it know it's okay. It can breathe now.
He controls the urge. At least, that is the reason he gives himself.
Leo has nowhere else to go from here, and they both stay motionless, waiting for him to accept it.
Donnie wonders what Leo feels right now. The adrenaline wracking him with shivers, the sympathetic system warming his limbs, quickening his breaths - what is making them fire off?
It is probably shame. It must be.
There is no need for it, though Donnie understands, in a theoretical sort of way (as is generally his lot), why Leo would be feeling this way.
Still, no need for it between them.
"Can we- can you-" Leo's fingers flex on Donnie's waist, and a resolute spark of his old self finally shines through as he lets out a sharp breath, hot against Donnie's thigh. "I'm gonna."
Donnie doesn't nod - Leo wouldn't see it anyway. "Okay."
Something changes in Leo, a sense of urgency arising from his actions as he makes quick work of Donnie's buckles and buttons and zips. Donnie automatically tries to stand but halts and falls awkwardly back into his chair when Leo doesn't move out of the way while tugging Donnie's pants down his hips.
A faint ripple of surprise makes Donnie realize that this is not what he expected when he made the offering - not that he had expected much in the first place. He thought, vaguely, of cots and sheets and a full body weight in top of himself (dark, humid, hot), but maybe Leo's kneeling position and his own invitation had dictated the play by play of this encounter, Leo's intent corralled into action by the spread of Donnie's legs.
It doesn't matter, not really. Leo seems happy enough, if 'happy' applies here at all.
(He seems laser-focused on Donnie - and thus, on something other than his demons. So, considering all parameters, this counts as happy.)
The meticulously filtered and ventilated air hits Donnie's exposed skin in a cool wave. He gives an aborted squirm, inadvertently pushing his hips forward, tilting his pelvis - and almost misses the way Leo's eyes widen, fixed firmly below his waist.
There's nothing to gawk at down there, Donnie knows (tucked away, dry - clean, mercifully), and he withholds the urge to scoff, forcefully relaxing his grip on the armrests - he hasn't noticed digging his nails into them, how long has it been like this?
That train of thought is promptly derailed when Leo plants his hands firmer on Donnie's thighs and leans in and - oh fuck, licks a stripe up his tail, the sudden cold so sharp on tender skin that Donnie can feel it dot with goosebumps.
Leo pauses - looks - huffs a quiet laugh. Does it again.
"Hah-" the sound is punched out of Donnie, he doesn't even know if he wants to get closer or twist away, the moist feeling so shudderingly weird but oh god, the way it sets his neurons ablaze…
Thank Galileo he's soundproofed the lab. This could get very embarrassing very fast otherwise.
Apparently encouraged, Leo grows bolder, nestles closer, licking and kissing and nuzzling before he delves in, alighting something bright and sharp low in Donnie's belly, his body obviously - eagerly, he finds with some embarrassment - responding to the caress. He notes the signs of nascent arousal, tilting his head back onto the headrest when it makes him dizzy, and the muscles inside of him draw up and relax into Leo's searching touches, his thorough attention such a stark contrast to Donnie's usual bored disinterest that, under the gentle onslaught, he almost forgets to think.
Almost. Not quite.
With his body coaxed into arousal like this, a purely physical reaction to purely physical stimuli without any input from his brain at all, Donnie can't help wondering if this is all there is to it. If other people - well, presumably they feel more, but the concept of sexual attraction has always felt too vague for Donnie to take seriously. He isn't even sure he can feel this way, although some could count him ending up in this current situation as an argument to the contrary, offering himself to Leo readily and willingly when he hadn't even considered doing it for anyone else before.
Is that what it is? Maybe the difference lies between not wanting to and not minding, then. Maybe, for him, that's what it means.
It's not much of a hypothesis, but it's a working one.
Donnie glances down just in time to see Leo's temporal muscles jump as he opens his mouth wider and presses impossibly closer, wet and hot and decadently soft the way nothing about Donnie is soft anymore, or ever was. The sight wrenches another sound out of him, a moan or maybe a sob leaving his mouth before he can clamp a hand over it, and Leo echoes it, his eyes tightly shut and his brows pinched as if pained.
He wants it. Leo wants it, that much is undeniable - was already undeniable before, when the first pebble shifted as a herald of this all-consuming landslide, but for some reason it's seeing him like this, making blissed out noises and flexing his hands on Donnie's thighs and shifting impatiently on his knees that truly confirms it for Donnie. Something moves in his throat, his chest, his stomach, so quiet and full that Donnie is almost afraid to breathe - afraid to crush it with his lungs or to be crushed by it in turn, he can't truly say.
Donnie feels himself sag in his seat, sliding forwards in increments as his bones seem to grow softer, his spine inconsequential, and Leo meets him eagerly halfway, the bright coalescence at the point of their connection pulsing stronger, a sweet ache spreading down his legs and up to his neck. It consumes him whole, and Donnie, floating and tingling right out of his body, lets it.
He can't help making another sound, breathless and pitiful, and he feels Leo smile against him as he burrows closer, pushing Donnie's thighs even farther apart to make space for his broad shoulders. He dives in, bold and almost too forceful, and Donnie's body quivers around his tongue.
It's there, it's happening - the thickening weight inside of him, deeper than even Leo's tongue can apparently reach, the almost ticklish flutter of his abdominal muscles as they itch to contract and push it out regardless of what his brain is telling them.
Leo pulls back an inch, still half-buried in Donnie's warmth as he swallows and opens his mouth - and Donnie can feel him lick his lips, they are so close. Leo is kissing him even as he moves to speak.
"You gonna drop?" he asks, voice wrecked.
Another sweet spasm hits Donnie when he hears him, his chest heaving so hard he fears his plastron will crack into separate bones. His flesh pulses, and Leo lets out a stuttered, guttural moan where he is pressed into it, nuzzling into the mess.
Donnie shakes his head, remembers his words. "No," he manages, ordering his body to comply. "Don't want to."
Because it's not- he doesn't- his reasoning evades him, annoyingly so, but statistically his logic is always sound, so.
Flailing for a moment as his synapses refuse to fire all the right things, too drenched in the hazy tingling of pleasure, Donnie almost misses Leo's momentary pause, the little hunch to his shoulders.
"Okay," he says quietly. "That's okay." Another pause. "Do you want me to- d'you still want me to continue?"
He is holding himself so still, the poor thing. Like a kicked dog. Like he's done something wrong.
There it is - that's what's bothering Donnie. This is supposed to be about Leo - literally, they are in this situation because Leo is having troubles, and maybe there's a part of him getting off on making Donnie feel good, but the obvious neglect of his more direct needs doesn't sit well with him. No, this has to change. It deserves to be done properly.
"Leo," Donnie tries and puts a hand on the edge of his carapace, pushing him back. His voice is so hoarse the name sounds more like a gurgle. He swallows. "Leo. Look at me."
He leans back immediately, eyes wide, cheeks - god, Donnie hates that word, but glistening, there is no other way to call it, slick and shiny with the evidence of his body's own pleasure. He looks dazed, almost swaying as he sits back on his haunches. Oh - with him positioned like that, there's no way to hide how painfully tight his pants look.
Leo opens his mouth, concern - dismay? - already pulling on his features, but Donnie shakes his head, finally remembering to sign when his voice fails him again. He lifts his right hand and slaps himself on the cheek, pausing there.
'Bed.'
Relief is so stark on Leo's face that even Donnie has no trouble reading it. But of course - he isn't wearing his knee pads. He must be sore.
'Bed' is an exceedingly generous way to call Donnie's narrow cot, tucked into the darker corner of the lab, hidden behind a screen that he'd installed after one too many faulty-wires-trigger-a-small-kaboom-and-everything-is-now-covered-with-soot incidents, an infuriatingly frequent occurrence now that nobody is actually producing new stuff and the salvaged parts have had more and more time to decay out in the wild.
But this is the best Donnie's got, and as it's obvious to everyone with eyes that it's much too small to accommodate both of them, he spares them the awkwardness and quickly arranges his two pillows and lies down on his back, pulling Leo on top of him.
Leo isn't looking at him, not that Donnie minds at the moment. Maybe he would have preferred to have Donnie on his front if he is eager to avoid meeting his eyes right now, but - this is what they've got. Maybe next time.
('Next time'?)
Leo is staring hard at a point somewhere above Donnie's right shoulder. His fingers flex where they're buried by Donnie's sides in the soft fleece blanket (the base's - the resistance's - head engineer contraband privilege, thank you very much), and despite the, once again, extremely sparse space they are barely touching.
Is he having doubts? Now?
The haze of arousal is clearing from Donnie's head somewhat, and he shifts his knees where they are bracketing Leo's hips, the pads of his fingers tapping against each other.
He doesn't know how to ask for it. It's frustrating to feel so clueless.
In his confusion, Donnie watches his body move without consulting his brain whatsoever, hips lifting off the bed before settling back down. It's a tiny movement, but the shifting weight ripples across the hard cot, pulls on the bedding enough that Donnie can see the moment the impulse reaches Leo's hands and races up his arms and his eyes snap to Donnie's, pupils blown wide, before something changes and Leo sags against him with a wounded sound.
His hands snake around and under Donnie's shoulders, warm and firm over the leathery skin of his shell, pressured points of contrast against the blanket. Donnie shivers, nearly lifting off the fabric, and Leo's arms seize the opportunity to tighten around him. His head comes to rest in the crook of Donnie's shoulder and he exhales, the air jagged and warm, growing warmer where it is trapped against his skin.
Donnie pauses, taking in the tactile cascade, the too-warm, too-hot, too-much sensation of being held. Swallows it down, wills his thoughts away from his skin, pushing it deeper into his body - pushing it farther out, past his fingertips.
There is nowhere for Donnie's arms to go but around Leo's back, and so he rests them there, letting their weight secure Leo's form.
Would it be so easy if Leo's world could fit in the circle of Donnie's arms. Nothing would happen to him here. Donnie wouldn't allow it.
Grounded, Leo lets out a sigh. His weight settles, heavy and warm, melting into the grooves of spaces left unoccupied by Donnie. A turn of his head - and Leo is kissing his neck, mapping out the stretch of it - corded, Donnie knows, wiry like the rest of him, pocked with scar tissue from a field explosion three years ago that had cut through his tall neck guard and was halted only by something so much softer. He lifts his head out of the way; his eyes slide shut.
Donnie doesn't think much about his body - or of it. It functions well enough, most of the time. Recovers from injuries, compensates, builds workarounds - most of the time. (His tinnitus is getting worse. Sometimes he gets so dizzy he sways. There are a few sores on his shoulders and upper arms that refuse to heal for years, chewed into him by his own fingernails or the cramps of his shells, sticking around like unwanted friends.) It tries so hard to bulk up, both as a rumbling call of his genetics and a response to his…active lifestyle. Fails all the same, starving more often than not, too stressed to make effective use of the meager nutrients that find their way to it.
It's enough. It will do. It isn't anything special.
Leo's lips touch it like it is. Leo's hands cradle it like it matters.
Donnie doesn't get it - again, he doesn't get it, this blatant, almost offensive care, too used to casually flinging it in front of his brothers more often than what could be written off as accidental. If nothing else, it is a decent meat shield, and to use it to protect the leader of the resistance or an honest to god enlightened monk who floats more than walks these days is really a no-brainer when all else fails.
(And if all else fails - that means that he, Donnie, has failed to make it count, so it's objectively only fair that he answers for it.)
But Leo tilts his head and lets his lips settle over Donnie's pulse point, and Donnie hammers into his touch, listens to the tidal ebb and flow of air through their rib cages, imagines the circuits that complete when wet lips touch skin and conduct electricity, currents woven seamlessly together.
It's not that different from mind meld, maybe. This way, Donnie understands him too, his obvious yet incomprehensible brother.
He doesn't get him. But he understands.
Donnie expects it to hurt when Leo finally slides into him, Donnie's pants hastily discarded, his own pants unbuttoned just as swiftly, a wet patch on their front hidden into the folds when he shoves them down. By all logic it should hurt even if one accounts for muscle elasticity and lessened friction and the painkilling effect of endorphins, as well as Leo's…enthusiastic preparation.
Donnie breathes out, forcefully bleeding the tension from himself. Leo's face is still pressed into his neck, arms still a vise around his back, like he doesn't even need to see what he is doing. Like his body just knows, and, to his surprise, Donnie finds that his own body responds in kind, pulled in by Leo's gravity, parting readily to cradle him in turn.
It doesn't hurt. It stretches and burns but doesn't hurt, not until Leo sheathes himself fully and something wretched wrangles itself out of his throat, and Donnie's chest caves in in response, a fresh and clear wave of pain washing through his splintering ribs. He clutches Leo then, a gut instinct to hold on to something solid, to keep his head above water.
They grasp at each other, fumbling and lost, and Donnie is almost tempted to say something, anything, to hide behind snark, to throw up a shield between them and lessen the blow of whatever it is that is slowly cleaving his heart in two. But Leo needs to lift a shield of his own then, to have them clash and rain sparks - and in a flash of desperate clarity, Donnie knows that Leo won't meet him blow for blow, not right now, not in this, and so he can't do it either.
What he can do it hold on for dear life as Leo begins to move, slowly at first, then faster as he gains momentum, the pendulous waves of his movement pulling at Donnie so uncompromisingly, reaching so deeply that a part of him wants to shy away, to keep at least something for himself before Leo claims it as his own as well.
It doesn't work. Leo's arms tense as he spears him again, pushing tears to Donnie's eyes, the crack in him wide open and weeping. Donnie holds him tighter too, presses him into the carnage of his chest to hide it from view. His legs fall open, hip joints rotating outwards in a way that angles him better, accepts Leo deeper, and Leo sinks into him, and sinks, and sinks, and his teeth sink into Donnie's neck as well, and Donnie gasps and lets him carve out whatever space he wants in him.
He feels it, the change when Leo gets close to the edge. Guesses it somehow despite its unfamiliarity, his mind already logging the differences: the stuttering breathing pattern, each exhale now molded into a moan, the pitch climbing higher; the erratic snapping of Leo's hips as he drives himself in harder and sharper than before, chasing something within the confines of Donnie's body; the cooling moisture on Donnie's neck, saliva or tears - he wouldn't know.
One of Leo's arms frees itself from under Donnie's shell and slides up to cradle the side of his head, the touch so, so gentle and so at odds with the almost punishing way Leo slams into him, and Donnie just doesn't know what to do, he just doesn't. Curse Leo for infecting him with this wretched cluelessness.
The coil of pleasure spins tighter in Donnie's belly, wound more and more with each movement of Leo's hips, but Donnie is content to just ride the pleasant feeling, disinterested in the chase. His focus lies elsewhere.
He wonders if he should say something, encourage Leo somehow. Tell him to let go, to 'give it to him', but it all feels so vulgar. But what else can he say? 'I'm here' ? He already knows that.
Donnie moves one of his hands to Leo's nape instead, a placeholder for all the words that he is simply unable to grasp. Leaves it there, letting his thumb slip behind Leo's jaw, and feels it move, feels the cry vibrate up his throat and into his pharynx as it tears its way out of Leo and into Donnie's abused skin, pain to pain. He holds Leo closer, traps the cry between them as Leo seizes up for a long, torturous moment before he gasps and stutters and falls, filling Donnie with a rush of warmth as he comes.
Minutes pass as Leo's breathing evens out, gasps and sobs softening into something quieter, less jagged. His thumb slides across Donnie's cheek, back and forth. He's still hiding his face.
Donnie mirrors his small movements, fingers stroking his nape. He stretches his legs and lets Leo's weight press the air out of him as he exhales. He didn't come - doesn't really feel the need to, anyway - and so there's no drowsiness he's learned to associate with it in his limited experience, but his brother makes for a nice weighted blanket.
He'll probably grow too uncomfortably heavy soon, and Donnie will push him off. But for now, he can stay - until he regains his faculties.
He's quiet now, at least. Soft - the tension bled out of him.
Donnie smiles inwardly as he stares at the ceiling, half-lidded. Mission success.
"Mm," Leo makes as if to shift on top of him, but either fails or reconsiders. "Uh. You didn't - d'you wanna…"
"Not really," Donnie drawls. Then, because Leo has already had the kicked dog reaction to this today, "'M good. Promise."
He hears Leo swallow. Ah well - can't control how he thinks, tempting as the concept sounds in theory. "Sorry 'bout the mess."
It doesn't sound like the only thing he's apologizing for, a shadow lurking behind it, but Donnie grimaces in agreement - he feels Leo slip out of him, and that's an out of rotation laundry day if he's ever seen one, and also - just ugh. Time to flex his privileges again, he supposes.
"Don't worry about it," he responds, aiming it at the shadow as well. Hoping that Leo will hear.
A minute passes in comfortable silence. Their hands still. Donnie stares at the ceiling, with Leo in his arms, and nothing bad will ever happen to him here.
Maybe it's about Leo, after all. Maybe it's simply about Leo.
"Thanks, Dee." Leo murmurs. His index finger taps Donnie's temple once, the touch feather-light. "Thank you."
"Hmm." Donnie leans his cheek on Leo's crown for a moment. "Anytime."
He feels the air pause in Leo's lungs before he resumes breathing. Donnie's eyebrows tick up in surprise as well, but there's nothing else he wants to say right now, and so he doesn't.
Anytime it is, then.