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“Oh, have we reached critical mass yet?” is what Donnie snarks when Leo finally, finally appears at his door after four days of no sleep.
Donnie’s twin can be so freaking stubborn sometimes. (Donnie himself? Noooo, he would never. And you cannot convince him otherwise.)
“Fuck off, Dee.” Leo’s voice is hoarse, and he rolls his eyes, leaning against the doorframe. Slumped with the weight of exhaustion. The tremble to his hands, the red rims of his eyes.
Donnie reaches up to disengage his battleshell with a hiss of hydraulics, but he loudly says "Siiiiiigh" before he does it so as to retain his Emotionless Bad Boy image. He kneads at the tight muscles in his shoulders, unwilling to actually admit how much of a relief it is to have it off. Yikes.
Predictably, Leo’s gaze hones in on the way his mouth twists with ache and sore, and Donnie’s twin snaps his fingers thrice. “Hold up. Hold up hold up—how long have you been wearing that?”
“Aahhh.” Donnie tries to grin, and mentally adds a task to his To-Do List (subsection Priority-Low): Get better at lying. “Not. Too long. He said completely sincerely, nailed it.”
Leo narrows his eyes at him.
Donnie gives. “Too much?”
“Like, way too much, like four times too much.”
“Why four?”
“I don’t make the rules, dude, I just enforce ‘em,” Leo says coolly, strolling into the lab, and then he trips over a stray cord and eats shit on the concrete floor.
Donnie bursts out laughing, so hard his throat gets a little sore and tears prick at his eyes. Maybe he should have made sure Leo was okay first—Leo’s making a miserable whining noise—but oh God the way his leg folded under him—
“Donnieeeeee why do you hate me,” Leo is wailing into the floor. He turns his head and presses his face to the cold concrete.
“Gross, Nardo that’s the floor.” Donnie maintains a dry monotone, but can’t keep the grin off his face.
Leo makes big eyes up at him and well, he does look so pathetic.
“You don’t know where that floor has been.”
“Probably in here?” Leo mutters, covering his face with his arm.
“You’re taking a shower before you get into my bed.”
"Nooooo, ‘Tello, I’m so fucking ti-ired…” And ah. That was nearly a sob. They really are at critical mass. Donnie sighs, tabling this excellent bit for another day. He’ll set a reminder. Deploy it at the most opportune time. Strike when Leo least expects it. Yehehessss, evil laugh.
Anyway. Being nice.
"Put-upon sigh." Donnie dismounts his desk chair and crouches next to the heap of Leo on the floor (which is—in actuality—fairly clean, because Donnie may have hypothetically spilled a whole bunch of engine grease yesterday and may have hypothetically had to mop it up.) “I suppose I can be negotiated into a washcloth treatment.”
“You hate me,” Leo whines, and it’s got that edge to it that says it’s only half a joke. Ugh. Fuck. That’s where they are. Alright.
“Okay, up.” Donnie smacks Leo rapidly on the shoulder, pap-pap-pap-pap-pap. “C’mon, dum-dum. Get up. Let me fix you.”
And then Leo says something like wehhhhhh. But he does get up—not without listing dangerously to the side, where Donnie has to grip his chilly twitching arms to steady him. Yeah, he’s fucked up. It’s okay. Donnie’s fixing it.
“Don’t think I…forgot about your shell, Dee…” Leo groans as Donnie half-drags him to the bed. “We’re gonna…have a talk about it.” Donnie dumps him on top of the covers.
“Get the floor gunk off your cheek—no no, don’t lie down, idiot, that defeats the entire purpose—and then maybe we can talk about it,” says Donnie, with zero intention of talking about it. He conceals the lie (flawlessly) by turning away, going to wet a washcloth (in hot water, because he also has no intention of giving Leo more things to whine about. Of course. No other reason.)
Leo’s trembling by the time he gets back, and frustratingly horizontal, and Donnie really was not kidding about the floor gunk. He snaps his teeth at Leo, who cracks a glassy eye open and mumbles, “Not touching bed.” Points to his cheek.
“Technically,” Donnie says, just to be an asshole. “Nothing is ever touching anything.”
“Oh my godddddd, y’re like, literally proving my point.” Donnie wipes at his cheek with the warm washcloth. Leo closes his eyes, tension bleeding out of his shoulders, and makes that subvocal purr he denies to his dying breath. Donnie can’t hold back a smug grin.
He lingers a little bit longer, past the point the floor gunk is certainly gone, just gently cleaning his brother’s face. Studying Leo’s dark circles. Sort of wishing he could wipe them away too.
Being all gross and sappy and shit like that, Ewwww ew ew feelings.
“Done.” Donnie tosses the washcloth in his laundry hamper, which automatically closes back and retreats into the wall. Once he gets the pneumatic tubing system installed throughout the lair, ideally the vent will lead directly to the laundry room. Maybe directly to the washer. Donnie should just stake his sole claim on it, honestly; he made it, after all.
Leo makes a raspy churr. He blinks up at Donnie, red-eyed and sleepy, and tries a threatening glare that comes nowhere near close. “Shell,” he mumbles.
“Hm? What? Oh I didn’t quite catch that what a shame guess we’ll never know.”
He gets a thin hiss in response, and when Donnie looks over, it’s to Leo weakly baring his teeth. A very un-Leo-like behavior, typically, but everything goes out the window when he’s this sleep-deprived. Woe, turtle instincts.
Donnie takes a brief pause in setting the heated blanket up to flick his twin on the forehead. "Hawking, you are so dramatic.”
“Shell,” Leo insists again, and then yawns like a cat, eyelids fluttering.
“You are literally falling asleep as we speak.”
"Donnie."
“Fine!” Donnie raises his hands, sore shoulders hiked up nearly to his tympana. God, he’s been cursed with the most insufferable twin on the planet. “But just for the sake of, oh, I don’t know, logic —I demand you at least acknowledge the absurdity of lecturing me about self-care when you’ve only slept three-and-a-half hours of the last sixty-four.”
(But who’s counting.)
Leo hauls himself up on a trembling arm. “Don’t care. Didn’t ask. Show me your shell.”
"Fine, I said.”
And then, after a long second wherein Donnie mentally sorts himself out to prepare for a (HYPOCRITICAL) lecture, he shucks off his hoodie.
More silence. Oh joy.
Leo’s freezing fingers ghost over the top part of his shell and Donnie jolts. “Sorry,” Leo mutters. He feels the cold travel leftward, to the particularly tight trapezius, and then a shaking experimental pressure.
A hiss inwards of breath. “Donnie.”
“I know.”
"Dude."
Donnie hikes up his shoulders even further, defensive, feeling the tight, sore pull. “Stop it. Stop—stop that. I had everything under control. It just—there is a slight possibility that maybe the…the removing of my battleshell may have slipped my mind. Perhaps.”
“Okay, okay, chill. Jeez. You’re gonna pull something.” Leo’s hand again, pressing on his shoulder to relax it. “Just lay down. God.”
Frustration catches like the loose thread of a sweater as Donnie realizes Leo sounds more awake now, the syrup drawl of sleepiness draining away to that raw rough tired again. Donnie hates hearing that in his brother’s voice.
So he lies down. Gives Leo that, at least.
Settles in on his stomach, cheek on the pillow, looking at Leo. Shell exposed because it’s just his brother. His twin, who used to sleep on it back when they were tiny, and still sometimes begs to if his insomnia tortures him enough.
His twin flicks him on the forehead. Outraged, "Ow!"
Leo shoots a red-rimmed glare at him. “You’re stupid.”
"You’re stupid,” Donnie mutters pettily, and then groans. “Why are we even having this conversation? Need I remind you—”
“We can both be stupid, ‘Tello,” Leo says, and the ache there, that scrape of exhaustion, has Donnie closing his mouth with a little click. “Just lemme take care of your stupid shoulders. God.”
Donnie wants to argue, but then Leo presses the heel of his hand into the trapezius and Donnie is going a little boneless. So sue him.
Leo’s…blegh… right. It was, perhaps, way too long to wear his heavy tech. But there was just—he just got caught up. Whatever. Leo’s taking care of it.
“C’n you get my neck, too,” Donnie mumbles, more a senseless string of syllables, really, face smushed into the pillow.
“Oh, now he wants a massage,” Leo snarks, but kneads his fingers into the knot right below Donnie’s skull all the same. “Jeez-us, Dee, did you put metal in here? You goin’ cyborg on us?”
“Mmmm, if only.”
Leo’s silent for the next few minutes, and Donnie fights not to fall asleep, even though it is—he can admit it— incredibly nice to feel the overwrought muscles coaxed into relaxing. He honestly didn’t even realize just how sore he was. Which is a thought he almost wants to ignore, given the evidence it provides to the claims made by Leo and the rest of his family, but Donnie would never willingly (openly) engage in a logical fallacy.
But he can’t fall asleep.
Because if he falls asleep before making sure Leo is going to sleep, and he wakes up the next morning to Leo gone, and he finds him sitting on the kitchen counter drinking coffee, struggling through a level of Tetris because his hands are shaking so badly, Donnie is going to actually fucking lose it.
And his suspicions are proven to be one-hundred-percent correct (surprising literally no one, Donnie is right about everything) when Leo finishes his work, stills for a long moment, pats Donnie’s shell gently, and then GETS UP TO LEAVE.
Donnie shoots a hand out and grabs his wrist. Turns his head, peeks an eye open to glare venom and ice at him. Way more effective than Leo’s weak-sauce look from earlier.
“Going somewhere?”
He tries to press all the frustration into his voice, at the senselessness of this annoying habit of his twin’s: to ask for help and then double back. The sheer baffled, helpless anger when Leo exposes that vulnerable, soft, hurt thing in his chest and then closes back up just as quickly.
Leo’s stripes are nearly black in the purple LEDs. His dark eyes flick back and forth, a too-wide nervous smile pulling at his lips. “Thought you were asleep. Didn’t wanna wake you.”
Donnie does not let go because Leo might bolt again. “And why did you not just go to sleep as well? Like I specifically invited you into my lab to do? Remember that?”
The shiny-fake smile dims. Leo swallows hard with a little click. “…Well, you never technically said—"
“Bullshit,” Donnie snaps.
Smile flicks off like a switch.
“It’s a mutually unspoken agreement we have had for years, you moron.” Donnie tugs on his wrist. “The idea that you’d come to my lab all broken and leave without letting me fix you is laughable."
A complicated emotion flickers across Leo’s face, one that Donnie doesn’t care to decipher—because he’s got a primal turtle-brain instinct that says he’s going to protect his bale and he’s got an insufferable sibling instinct that says he is going to get his way.
He pulls on Leo’s wrist again. “Get over here, dumbass.”
A long moment. Donnie tries to show on his face that he is not backing down. It’s the same instinct that has the two of them demanding rematches in MarioKart until the sun comes up. Will not yield. Donnie is not afraid to start biting.
Leo rocks back and forth on his heels. Twisted-up mouth, fogged-over eyes flicking around like a flighty prey animal. He’s trembling head to toe.
It’s a challenge not to seethe and snap at the hesitation, this puzzle that haunts Donnie. Illogical. Paradoxical. He’s been lectured by Angelo enough times to realize it’s quote-unquote Not That Simple, but there is a part of him deep down that’s just banging his fists on the table and yelling COME ON, YOU MORON! I’M RIGHT HERE!
Donnie pulls on his wrist again and flips back the heated blanket. “C’mon.”
A few seconds of perdurable silence. Leo breaks it with a half-hearted laugh and a roll of his eyes, as if Donnie can’t track the exact angle of exhaustion dragging down every movement.
He puts a hand under his chin and flutters his eyelashes. “Well, if you really want a cuddle buddy.”
“Die.” Donnie tugs on his wrist.
There’s the barest flash of a genuine smile before Leo flops down, immediately pressing ice-cold toes to Donnie’s calves because he sucks and he’s the worst.
“Holy shit Leo, I take it back, never speak to me again—”
"Tooooo late," Leo sing-songs, worming under Donnie’s arm and wrapping shaky arms around his middle. “You love me. I’m your faaaaavorite twin.”
"Scoff." Donnie rests his chin on the top of Leo’s head, dragging the heated blanket up over them. “You’re also my least favorite twin.”
Leo muffles a sleepy giggle into Donnie’s chest. Donnie can’t quite catch the disgusting sappy smile before it spreads over his face.
A mumble: “Your breath smells like coffee.”
“Shut up.”
“Seriously, you need to brush your teeth.” Leo’s still shaking all over, unceasing.
“Seriously, if you don’t shut up and go to sleep right this instant, I’ll knock you out via-blunt force trauma.”
“See, you’re saying that like it’s a threat, but I would actually love that.”
Donnie rubs the back of Leo’s neck, in the hollow between the tendons at the base of his skull. Leo sighs and squirms closer.
“Stop shaking. You’re being distracting.”
“Yeah sure, I’ll get right on that,” Leo snarks, but his voice wobbles dangerously.
Donnie is drenched in a cold panic and crushes his twin tight. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Liar.”
Long silence. Leo shakes in his arms, beak buried in the crook of Donnie’s neck. Donnie shudders at the feeling of warm wet on his skin, ew ew ew, he did not prepare for Leo to come in here and cry all over him. He would have had wet wipes readily available.
Almost inaudible—more of a hum Donnie picks up as it vibrates through his skin—Leo mumbles, high and strained, “I’m just really tired.”
Donnie clutches Leo impossibly tighter. The ache thrums in his throat like a horrible heartbeat. Pulsing, painful.
He clears his throat. Revels in the too-warm shelter of the blankets, the way he’s holding Leo so he doesn’t shake apart. Leo’s here and he’s letting Donnie fix it and Donnie is going to fix it.
“Go to sleep, then,” Donnie says, softer than he means to. He clears his throat. “Duh-doy.”
Silence. Then, a wet laugh.
Leo pulls back a bit, scrubs his face with the edge of the sheet in the way that has Donnie rolling his eyes—on purpose, if the well-appreciated little gleeful look he shoots him is any indication.
“‘Kay,” Leo says simply, smiling, and curls up closer.