Chapter Text
When Mikey was sixteen years old, he stole a razor.
A nice Gillette, with five blades and a bright green handle. He took some Dove shaving cream while he was at it, trying to enjoy the pinkness of the label as he scuttled out of the aisle in the closed drugstore, leaving a few crumpled up bills on the counter to soothe his guilt.
And he did feel guilty, because while he was always down to tag what needed to be tagged, or mural-ize whatever wall was just a fraction too drab, he’d never actually stolen anything. Not like this. Not when it wasn’t, like, super duper important, fate of the world kind of shit.
But the fact was that he needed it. He needed it more than he’d ever needed anything in his life, and the only way he could get it was by slipping in the back window of a mom and pop corner store, and taking it.
Because Mikey was experiencing a Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad disaster that might or might not be some kind of puberty and he could never, ever let anyone find out ever.
Because Mikey was growing hair.
He was turtle! He had always been a turtle! And turtles did not grow hair! Donnie would have told him all about it otherwise. And even if turtles did grow hair, his brothers never had, which meant Mikey definitely, 1000% shouldn’t either.
After slipping out the back window and using a piece of dental floss to pull the latch closed, Mikey hunkered down on the top of a dumpster and put his bandana wrapped head in his hands and tried very, very hard not to cry.
It was stupid to be so upset about it. To be… scared. But three weeks ago, when he’d been singing Shakira in the shower and swiped a hand over his head, he felt it. Tiny, barely there little things. Growing out of his skin. So thin and soft they were basically invisible, especially when dry, but still there. Definitely there, and definitely hair.
“Its cool,” he mumbled into his knees. “Its fine, its cool, its just stupid hair. Humans deal with it all the time, its fine. I can do this.”
But when he smuggled his ill gotten gains back to the lair and into the bathroom in the dead of mid-morning when his brothers were sleeping, he realized that no. He couldn’t.
The shaving cream got everywhere. He couldn’t contract himself enough to see everything in the mirror. He cut himself all over, and he knew that head wounds bled a lot, duh, but he didn’t think a couple little nicks would be quite so messy.
By the time he gave up, he was covered in pink tinged foam, scalp stinging, and staring at himself in the mirror as tears dripped down his face.
He had never felt so ugly in his life.
“What’s with the hat, Mikey-o?” Leo asked, chin in his hands, elbows planted on the counter, and big bright eyes staring at Mikey. Specifically, the slouchy, soft, bright yellow beanie he was wearing.
“Why?” He asked, expertly flipping a Strawberry Banana Extravaganza PancakeTM and giving his brother a sunny smile. “You jelly?"
“Super jelly,” Leo agreed brightly. “Just call me grape puree and stick me in a jar. But also asking; what’s with the hat?”
“I’m experimenting,” Mikey said archly, sliding the cake onto the waiting stack on Raphs favorite plate and sticking it in the warming oven Donnie’d made special just last month and that Mike now loved almost more than life itself. “It brings out my spots, right?”
“Sure does,” Leo agreed and, praise Kami and Gram-Gram, apparently bought what Mikey was so desperately trying to sell. He extended a lazy thumbs-up. “Looking cool, dude.”
“Thank you,” Mikey said primly, and just for that added an extra couple swirls of cinnamon sugar and dark chocolate goo to Leo’s CinnaBonBon Bonanza PancakesTM.
“What sparked the fashionista urge?” Leo asked, and tried to sneakily get his grubby little hands on Mikeys squeeze bottle of goo. “Watching SATC again? I’m telling you, Carrie’s a crackhead, none of her outfits make even a little sense.”
Mikey whacked his bro’s hands with the spatula and basked in his wounded whining. Served him and his grubby mitts right.
“You just don’t understand the beauty of a hot mess, dude. Chaos is a theme if you just try hard enough.”
“She blew rent money on the ugliest shoes in the world,” Leo said, and began attacking from a different direction, trying to hide his fingers approach behind the fruit bowl. Mikey just waited for the first hint of phalange before nailing it with the spatula again. “Fuck! Ease up, I use these things!”
“Yeah,” Mikey agreed. “For grand theft ingredients. And you’d spend all your rent on kicks if you could actually wear shoes, don’t lie.”
“I would not,” Leo lied confidently around the fingers he’d stuck in his mouth, eyes all sad ASPCA puppy, shoulders slumped.
Mikey was not moved!
“J’yeah, you would.”
“Says the man who thinks light up shoes are mankind’s greatest creation.”
“Greatest creation in the footwear category,” Mikey corrected, and flipped the last pancake onto the plate, sliding it into the warmer to join Raphs, right below Donnie’s Basic Bitch PancakesTM on the top. “Cheese and The Pinkest Pink are mankind’s greatest creation in general.”
Then, steeling himself, he pulled the bowl with the rest of the plain batter over and proceeded to craft The HorrorsTM (not pancakes, because not even the OG on high would recognize them as such). His dads demand of honey, matcha and jalapeño, because Splinter was a ratman determined to commit every possible culinary atrocity he could before he died, and force Mikey to sin alongside him.
“Oh. My. God,” Leo gagged behind him as the batter hit the pan and began to heat. “Mikey, mi caro hermano. What the fuck is that.”
“A great evil,” Mikey said grimly, and flipped the cake. “For dad.”
“Gotcha,” Leo said, and grimly performed the sign of the cross several times. Probably the wrong way, but every little bit helped in Mikey’s opinion.
When the last disc of doughy evil was safely on its plate and left far, far away on the counter under a cloche, its evil contained, Mikey stretched and sighed.
“Alright!” He said, and pumped his fist in the air. “Lets get this party started. Leo; assemble the troops.”
“On it,” Leo said, whipping his phone out and typing at the speed of light. Probably filling their entire chat with enough typos to make Donnie leave the lab for the sole purpose of wringing his neck and smothering him with a thesaurus. Which was probably the reason Leo did it in the first place. “ETA; super soonish.”
“Excellent,” Mikey purred and began lining up the accoutrements to his pancake medley; butter, whipped cream, syrups of varying kinds, honey, honey butter, and a nice tray of assorted fruits and berries. A meal fit for carb-loading kings.
They both admired it for a moment. Basking in the work of art that was breakfast, before the thud of an incoming Raph had them both looking at the door.
“Wow!” Raph said, bursting into the room. “Why does it smell super good and super disgusting at the same time?”
“Dad,” Mikey and Leo said in tandem. Raph nodded seriously.
“Ah. Raph’s got it.” He hurried over to his stool at the bar-top counter and beamed at the setup. “Lookin’ good, Michael.”
“Just wait til you see this,” Mikey said with relish (like, the emotional kind, and not the pickle kind), and whipped Raph’s plate out of the warmer.
Mikey would never, ever tell them out loud, but the best part about cooking wasn’t actually the cooking. It was watching his brothers eyes bug out of their heads and how they drooled and the way when he really hit it out of the park they’d say “Wow, Mikey. This is waaay better than takeout”.
“Wow,” Raph breathed, pulled his plate closer gently, like it was a small and delicate animal and not a stack of pancakes piled on a platter the size of garbage can lid. “This’s way better than takeout.”
Mikey preened.
“Leo, if you delete spell check one more time, I am going to dismember you and scatter your body throughout Lower Manhattan,” Donnie declared, marching into the kitchen.
“No dismemberment, only eats!’ Mikey said, sliding Leo’s baby blue plate and Donnie’s fuchsia next to each other. “Dig in.”
Donnie’s stomach growled and Leo cackled.
“Haha! Loser. What’s the last thing you ate? No no, let me guess.” Leo whipped a fork off the counter and jabbed it in Donnies direction. “A lug nut.”
“You don’t even know what a lug nut is,” Donnie grumbled, using the tip of his finger to nudge the fork away, but all his attention was zeroed in on the most boring pancakes in the world.
“Nope,” Leo agreed easily, and began drawing a mustache on his pile with whipped cream, nudging everything just so with the fork. “But more importantly, I don’t hear you denying it.”
“I don’t lower myself to that intellectual sub level,” Donnie said agreeably and proceeded to pick up a pancake, fold it in half around nothing, and nibble at it.
Sometimes, Mikey really worried about him.
“Beef nife,” Raph mumbled around a mouthful of pancake.
“We aren’t eating beef, Raphael,” Leo said innocently. “But if you need a knife, I can go get it.”
Raph smacked the back of his head.
Mikey watched them, and refused to let his face fall into something dopey.
He’d… missed this. Which was his own fault, obviously, because he was the one that kept pretending to be ‘busy’ with ‘projects’ in his room. He’d been successfully avoiding them for over a month, now, only coming out just often enough to keep them from realizing he was in hiding.
Sometimes, he didn’t think he was doing a very good job. Especially considering Leo’d been loitering right outside his room, like he was lying in wait, and then followed Mikey around the kitchen all day. Hunting him, looking for weakness like a… a thing that hunted.
Thank Kami Mikey’d already had his hat on when he came out.
Looking away, he scratched at the back his neck just beneath the knit band. Between his mask and the hat and the stubble he kept buzzing every couple days, it was hella hot. And the knots of his mask got all bunched up with the hat, and pressed against his neck like some kind of wadded up dish towel.
He almost wished he could just… not. But the thought of anyone seeing him, seeing it, made him want to hurl. Or curl up in a ball and cry. Or throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge and just let the current take him.
He peeked out of the corner of his eyes at his brothers, all lined up like a perfectly matching set. They looked so normal. Just the same as always. Smooth green skin, bits of bright color here and there.
Not a hint of stubble that just kept growing back thicker and darker and denser and uglier with every attempt made to make it go away.
It was funny. Mikey’d never really cared about how he looked. Not like Donnie, who always wanted to be neat and slick, with perfect eyebrows. Or Leo, who spent an hour moisturizing before bed and whitened his teeth every month. Or even Raph, who wanted to look cool and intimidating like his wrestler idols, and was always just a lil’ self conscious about his fang tooth.
Mikey’d never really cared.
But he’d also never worried about being ugly.
He scratched his nails over the back of his neck, one slow scrape scrape scrape at a time. Skin crawling, scalp burning. Hating himself.
He just….
He just felt so disgusting.
“Yoohoo, earth to Mikey. Captain Mike, come in please.”
Mikey jolted at a flash of green in front of his face and jerked back to see Leo half leaning over the counter, waving his hand. There was a smile on his face, but Mikey could see the frown in his eyes. The worry.
Worry Mikey didn’t want to deal with and couldn’t afford to let grow.
So he slapped Leo’s hand away and laughed.
“Alright, alright, can’t a guy take a brain break? What do you want?”
“I was asking where yours is,” Leo said and settled back on his stool, tipping it onto two legs. But his eyes were locked on Mikey. Like a hawk or something, ready to plummet down claws first.
Mikey blinked at him. “My what?”
“Your pancakes, dude,” Leo said breezily.
… oh.
Like an alarm bell had been rung, Raph surfaced from his deep dive into culinary bliss and turned big worried eyes on Mikey.
“Mikey, did you forget to cook yourself some?” He asked, in a tone that would have been more appropriate for something like “Did you bash your head on a rock?” or “Did the Shredder steal your lunch money?”. Something way more awful than just possibly maybe potentially forgetting to cook up some ‘cakes. “Here, take some of mine, you made so much!”
“Mine too,” Donnie said, and Mikey watched in horror as both of them began looking around for a convenient plate, forks at the ready for some reshuffling.
“Haha,” Mikey managed, and rolled his eyes as hard as possible. “Dudes. I did not forget. I just didn’t want pancakes. I wanted… fruit salad! Yeah, fruit bowl, breakfast of champions.”
He spun around and grabbed a bowl at random out of the cabinet, kicking it shut as he hurried to the utensil drawer. He tried to ignore the feel of their eyes. Watching him. Looking at him. Tried to tell himself they couldn’t see anything, or know there was anything to see.
God, why wouldn’t they just look away?
“Oh,” Raph said, settling back on his stool with a creak. “You coulda just made us fruit bowls too. You didn’t have to go out of your way like this.”
He poked at his piles of pink pancakes, big shoulders curled in on himself and head down.
“Dude, I might not want to eat them, but I defo’ wanted to make them. And I wouldn’t be able to make them if no one was around to eat them.” Mikey stood on his toes and reached across the bar to bop his idiot big brother on his big dumb dome with the empty bowl. “You’re doing me a favor, man. Don’t overthink it.”
Raph heaved a sigh of relief that rattled his whole shell, watching as Mikey spooned up a bowl of berries and cubed apples. And even when all of them returned to chow town, Mikey could still feel them. Watching him.
So he took his time filling up his bowl. Took his time artfully drizzling honey on top, and getting a sprig of mint from the fridge for some pizzazz. Really made a show of it, and groaned happily at his first bite. Even though he could barely choke it down, and it looked about as appetizing as an overfull puke bucket.
“Ah, that hits the spot,” he said and shoveled another forkful in. He didn’t even gag, either, because he was just that good. “You guys can have your cake and eat it too, but nothing beats some pure, direct from Mother Nature noms.”
“Yeah, right,” Leo said. “I toooootally believe the pastry king when he starts preaching the value of whole foods.”
“I eat whole foods all the time!” Mikey protested.
Leo scoffed.
“Yeah. By snacking of them while you’re in the process of turning them into not whole foods.” He leaned back again, tipped onto one leg this time. “If this is some kind of smoke screen for a diet plan, don’t bother! You’re beautiful just the way you are, bro.”
And usually, that tease would hit just the way Leo wanted it to. It would open the doors to some prime banter, maybe even some grade A tomfoolery down the road.
But not this time.
It landed like a Raph powered punch to the gut, and Mikey’s hands went tight on the bowl as his entire chest caved in and pulled down. Like his heart and his stomach and his lungs were all spiraling away down a drain. And he certainly felt exactly like the kind of thing that got flushed; disgusting.
He could tell they clocked it, too. Raph went deer in the headlights still, and Donnie stopped hamster nibbling his ‘cakes, and Leo unprecedentedly put all four stool legs back on the ground without prompting.
Crap.
“Duh,” Mikey said, and it even came out just right, even if it was a little too late. But he could absolutely fix this. Just a little bit of redirection and he’d be golden. “I’m the prettiest. I should totally be the face man of the group, honestly, but I’ll let you keep chugging. I believe in you, bro!”
“Hey!” Leo whined, while Donnie and Raph booed and laughed respectively. “I’m a fricking knock-out.”
“More like knock down and drag out,” Donnie muttered, and Leo gasped.
“Take that back! We’re twins, anyway; if I’m ugly, you’re ugly!”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Donnie groaned, and Mikey took the opportunity to slide his bowl onto the counter, and his butt right out the door. Success!
~
“Somethings wrong,” Raph said seriously as soon as Mikey was well out of super soldier earshot. Leo immediately rolled his eyes.
“No duh,” he muttered, and viciously stabbed the last, syrup soggy remnants of his breakfast. Breakfast that now tasted like absolute shit.
Raph rolled his eyes right back. “I know we already knew, but this is different. This is worse than we thought. Right?”
“Not worse than I thought,” Donnie said snootily. But he was staring down at his plate too, not eating.
Leo sighed and finally surrendered his fork to inevitability, letting it clunk onto his plate. And so did Raph and Donnie. Looked like when Mikey left, he took all their appetites with him. Which was a horrible thing, considering how he felt when they left full plates behind. Namely; bad.
Crossing his arms, Leo leaned back on the stool, staring at the ceiling. He felt the thump of Raphs foot hooking the bottom rungs, an anchor to keep him from falling, and it was half irritating (Leo would not fall, he wasn’t concussed, Raphie, God) and all melted marshmallow gooey inside (because it was nice to know that if he did fall… well, Raph was always willing to catch him).
“He’s been avoiding us for how long?” He asked the ceiling.
“Three weeks, approximately,” Donnie answered. From the corner of his eye, Leo could see him tap tapping away at his vambrace, eyebrows scrunched as he crunched the numbers. “I’d have to analyze the footage to pinpoint the exact date his behavior changed.”
Usually, that would be the cue to give him shit for a being a weirdo who had his entire house and family under constant surveillance, with a nice detour into ragging on him for having the ability to analyze behavioral patterns at all. But this time…
Well. It was still weird, and Leo wouldn’t lie and say he’d be okay if he was the one about to be analyzed.
But this was Mikey.
They’d all do a lot weirder things than behavioral analysis for Mikey.
“And he hasn’t said anything to anyone? Raph?”
“No,” Raph said miserably. He was staring down at his platter like it was a small animal freshly eviscerated in front of him. “Nothing.”
Which was worrying all its own. Leo had Donnie, for better or worse, the first person he went to, the first shoulder he’d choose to cry on if Leo did anything as uncool as crying, which he didn’t—
Anyway, Leo had Don. And Mikey had Raph. Had always, from day one, had Raph. If something was bothering him, Raph should have known.
Which should have meant that if Raph hadn’t heard about anything wrong, then there wasn’t anything wrong.
Leo slowly dropped his gaze down to the bowl of barely pecked at fruit, and let himself feel the cold, slimy crawl of unease creeping down his spine.
It wasn’t just the avoidance. God knew they’d all gotten sick of each other and chosen isolation enough times over the years to recognize it. It wasn’t the quiet, either, or the way Mikey had taken to not meeting their eyes, not turning his back, not seeking them out. It wasn’t the sudden affinity for headwear; scarfs and beanies and baseball caps pulled low. It wasn’t even the fact he’d skipped patrol at least six times in two weeks.
It was that he hadn’t reached out. Not even once. Not for a hug or a fist bump or a punch to the arm. He didn’t even wrestle for the remote, which he almost always did because he almost always won, the asshole.
And today, when Leo’d schlepped in and gotten his grubby mitts on the food, Mikey hadn’t even properly smacked him for it. He’d used a fucking spatula.
“Think we should bring it up to dad?” Raph asked, and Leo cackled.
“You’re kidding,” Donnie said tonelessly. “Ha ha. Hilarious.”
“Hate to agree, you know, on principle, but,” Leo pointed at Donnie and winced at Raph. “He’s right.
“Ha. Ha,” Donnie enunciated. “Hilarious.”
Raph poked defeatedly at his platter of syrup and nodded. “Yeah. Fair. But what should we do?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
Really sucked that none of them had the answer.
“Keep an eye on him,” Leo decided. Which was genuinely awful, but he literally couldn’t think of a better option. It wasn’t like it was a problem he could just portal up to and drop into the middle of the Pacific. So far, it really just seemed like… an emotional thing. And in a truly ironic turn of events, the only person who was actually good at fixing that stuff was the guy experiencing it. “Wait it out until we get a clue. Or Donnie finds something.”
“That shouldn’t take long,” was Donnies contribution, already tapping away at his phone and his vambrace and a tablet he’d pulled from Gram-Gram only knew where. Already so laser focused he was practically gone, despite still sitting in convenient poking reach.
“So we wait,” Raph said with all the enthusiasm of Dad learning Barry was coming to dinner.
“We wait,” Leo repeated, with just as much enthusiasm.
With only Donnie’s occasional muttering to break the silence, Leo and Raph got up, scraped the plates, and went about doing the only thing they actually could do for their little brother; clean up the mess he’d left behind, and hope like hell it would make them feel just a little less pathetically useless.
Half an hour later, dishes left to dry on the rack and food put away, Leo could confirm it hadn’t worked.
Then again, he hadn't really expected it to.