Chapter Text
Leonardo wasn’t sure what day it was and honestly, he didn’t care. The exact day didn’t matter as long as he knew that it had been a few days since his last visit to greenhouse three. And because he knew it had been a few days, it was time to make another trip to greenhouse three to visit his secret admirer.
Well, secret to everyone else. It wasn’t to a secret to Leo. It hadn’t been since they were teens, when Leo first began to notice the way that Donnie looked at him sometimes. He had suspected for years, and gotten confirmation when he learned to mind meld, and his first look into Donnie’s genius head told him everything he needed to know.
Donnie had feelings for him.
Ten years ago, that thought might have been the reason for the shiver that runs down Leo’s spine. But today, he knew it was just because of the air growing steadily colder as he walks down the sloping tunnel towards the greenhouses, his footsteps echoing off the rough stone floor and walls. Today he’s known about Donnie’s weird affections for him for long enough that they have settled into the background, into something… normal. As normal as knowing your brother was in love with you could be.
Besides, he’s told himself time and time again, it’s Donnie, so an amount of weird is expected. It’s only weird for Leo if he reciprocates. Which he doesn’t, so it’s fine.
Really, the biweekly visits to the greenhouse are for solely Donnie’s benefit. If he didn’t make the effort to come down, Leo might never see his twin at all. Donnie is always running around doing something or other. He might be in the armory one moment, the medical wing the next, then the sewing room the moment after that. He even goes to war meetings with Raph, although he doesn’t usually stick around to relay information to the troops. Leo doesn’t know how he does it. For himself, Leo is content being the faceman, the guy who high-fives people in the hallways (the only reason he doesn’t just portal himself everywhere), plays the fun uncle to Cassandra’s kid, and does nothing more official than occasionally helping Mikey out in the dojo. Really, it’s the least Leo can do to keep himself out of any position of authority, since everything that has happened since the Kraang invasion is entirely his —
No time to think about that, he told himself as he passed by the large circular doors of greenhouses one and two. Today was not a harvest day, so Donnie was unlikely to be where they grow their staple crops. Instead, he would be in the experimental greenhouse, which is a little further down the tunnel. Leo gave a little wave to a deer yokai walking back the way he came, showing his best smile even though she did not return it, and pushed open the door to greenhouse three.
Donnie was there, just as Leo knew he would be, hunched over the desk near the door and tapping quickly at what appears to be a monitor hooked up to a microscope. There are petri dishes and vials of mysteriously colored liquids and different shapes and sizes of leaves strewn over everything, including Donnie himself.
It was almost a silly sight, Leo thought with a smile. It looked exactly like somewhere Donnie should be.
He approached the desk, knowing Donnie would hear him coming, and prepared to greet him. Should he try to say something cool, maybe? Nah, Donnie would just glare at him. Maybe he should tease him? Say something about the leaves on his lab coat, maybe pick one off as he said so? Yeah, that could work. That would be like something you see hear in a movie with a backtrack of smooth jazz. Perfect!
He took a breath just as Donnie turned to face him, and the look on his face made the words die on his tongue.
“Donnie, what—”
“We have a mole.”
“…what?”
“You heard me,” Donnie turned back to the screen, the harsh light deepening the worried lines in his forehead as Leo steps closer, “We have a mole. Someone is leaking secrets to the Kraang.”
Leo pulled an extra stool closer to Don’s own and sat down in it heavily. A mole? Really? It didn’t make sense… how could someone in the resistance do such a thing?
“How do you know?” he asked after a long moment of silence.
Donnie gestured at the monitor and waited until Leo scooted closer to explain.
“Here,” he said, tapping at one of the many windows open on the screen, “…is the formula for the herbicide April discovered. The one we—”
“Yes, I know, I know, the one your team has been trying to synthesize for months, I remember,” Leo caught the miffed look on Don’s face at being interrupted and set a hand on his shoulder in apology, “What about it?”
“And this,” Donnie tapped a different part of the screen, “is the formula my team developed in order to neutralize it. It’s dangerous to all organic life, which includes the Kraang, but also includes my team, so we needed some way to control it if there were ever any spills.”
“Makes sense.”
“And this,” Donnie dragged another window next to the one he had just pointed out, “is the formula for the shit that leaked out of that Kraang suit we stole during the battle on 4th street.
Leo scanned the two windows. The formulas are a jumble of letters and symbols that mean basically nothing to him, but looking between the two windows even he can see…
“They’re the same,” Leo said quietly. Unnecessarily, even as Donnie nods in confirmation.
“If they have the formula for the neutralizer formula, then the herbicide is useless,” Donnie leaned away from the screen, closer to Leo’s side, “And so is every other project in development that used it. The Kraang have all of it. Everything we’ve been working on… useless.”
He fell silent as Leo’s draped an arm Don’s shoulders, offering what little comfort he could as the processed the news together.
“…who else have you told about this?”
Donnie glanced at him, then looked back at the screen. “Just you. You’re the first person I’ve seen since I figured it out.”
“Good,” Leo turned Donnie towards him with the hand on his shoulder, “Don’t tell anyone else.”
Donnie blinked at him incredulously, “What? Why? We’ll need everyone’s looking out for suspicious behavior. How else will we be able to find the spy?”
“But if everyone knows, the spy will know too! And whoever it is will stop acting suspicious until we let our guard down.”
Donnie opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, then closed it with a sigh.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” Leo said after a long quiet moment, “We will find them. We’ll make a plan and find out who it is and – don’t give me that look, we will – and we’ll stop them. You and I will figure it out together, okay? Somehow.”
Donnie didn’t look at him. “We’ll have to. Somehow.”
“Yeah…”
Another long quiet moment, and then…
“Actually, I—”
Leo looked up, but Donnie had shut his mouth before he could finish his sentence. “Actually, what?”
“Nothing. It was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Donnie—”
“You know what?” Donnie stood up abruptly, shaking Leo’s arm off his shoulders as he did so, “I just remembered I need to do… something. Somewhere else.”
“Donnie, wait, what were you—”
“Goodbye, Leo, I’ll see you… well, it’s Tuesday, and you visit me twice a week, so I’ll see you sometime later, okay? Okay. Bye.”
Donnie was gone, the heavy metal door of greenhouse three closing tightly behind him, and Leo was left alone, surrounded by plants, by living things and yet completely alone.
But later that day, in the mess hall, chatting with Mikey over a meal made entirely of things that had been grown in the greenhouse, Donnie’s greenhouse, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he really should have asked Donnie what he was going to say.
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A fact: Leo is the most attractive person he knows.
In all his years, he’s never met someone as attractive as himself. Maybe that’s why he’s never gone further than tipsy flirting with anyone at all. He’s just never found someone who could match him in sheer handsomeness. Sometimes he’ll catch glimpses of himself in the mirror and do a double take, just to appreciate all of his whole situation. His outfit, his stance, his awesome red face stripes… all of it together was the picture of mutant turtle hotness itself. Even his metal arm replacing the one he’d lost barely a year after the invasion added to the picture, giving him a cool, dangerous air. Really, it was no wonder Donnie had fallen for him so hard.
But even though he knows he’s hot, it’s still nice to get outside confirmation once in a while. It’s good for him, healthy, even, to have someone compliment him. Like, it’s his love language or whatever, compliments, and Donnie is his best source of them. All he has to do is flex or stretch or put his arm around Don’s shoulders while he’s working, and the way Donnie’s breath hitches will have him floating on air, his need for attention satisfied for at least a few more days. If he keeps it up and gets a little lucky, Donnie will say something about Leo being ‘too distracting’ and threaten to kick him out, which he never actually does, and that is basically an admission that Leo’s the hottest guy around.
The whole Kraang spy debacle had gotten in the way of him getting one of those precious (albeit indirect) compliments earlier this week, so Leo planned to play it up during his second visit. Maybe he would greet Donnie with a hug, tell him he missed him, ignore his squawking until Donnie surrendered to it and went limp in his arms… oh yes. If he could pull it off, he might not need another session until the end of the month.
That was the plan, anyway. He hadn’t counted on Donnie being busy.
He’s already been there for—he glanced at the clock on the wall—eight minutes, and Donnie hasn’t looked at him twice. He’s too busy talking to that deer yokai Leo had seen the other day, explaining something that Leo can’t follow and occasionally tapping at the screen of the monitor while she listens with rapt attention. Every time Donnie seemed to be nearing the end of his explanation, she would ask another question, and it would start all over again.
It was… strange, Leo decided, feeling nettled by both being ignored and as an involuntary reaction to Donnie in speech mode. He has always dreaded Donnie’s rants, and had learned to tune them out by the time he was ten. He has gotten ignoring speeches down to an art, one that he should have been practicing now. But seeing it from this side, seeing Donnie give one of his famous speeches to someone else, it was different. He doesn’t care about… the acidic properties of manchineel fruits, or whatever it is that Donnie is ranting about, but….
Can he really call it ranting when Donnie looks so happy? He lights up with every question and smiles harder as he explains. Whatever he’s explaining on the computer must really be important to him. Maybe Leo can wait and watch a little longer? When Donnie’s excited like that, he almost looks kind of…
Leo never finished the thought, because a moment later the deer yokai - Darcy was her name, apparently - stood up. She said a quick goodbye to Donnie and glanced quickly at Leo before leaving the greenhouse.
Leo was in her vacated chair even before the huge door had swung shut behind her, but the thought still stuck with him. It stayed in his head, stuck in the back of his mind even as Donnie pulled up files and logs on his computer, showing Leo times and places of past incidents that had been attributed to accidents or coincidence but that he now suspected were the work of the spy, and it stayed even as the conversation moved on to discussing how they might use those incidents to compile a list of suspects. He just couldn’t shake it, not the look on Don’s face, not the squeeze in his chest, not the fact that when Donnie is happy he is actually kind of cute. Kind of pretty, even, in a weird, nerdy way.
He wanted to see it again.
“So… what were you talking about earlier?"
Leo surprised himself with the words, spoken into the quiet that had fallen as their conversation came to a close. Don blinked and gave him a look that told Leo he was just as surprised. Then, his eyes narrowed.
“That? Just some research I’ve been doing on the new fruit trees. Nothing that would be interesting to you.”
There was a pang in his chest that Leo chose to ignore, “But it’s interesting to you, right?”
“Obviously yes. So?”
“So, tell me about it.”
“…what?”
“You heard me,” Leo’s heart was beating hard, and he wasn’t sure why, “I mean, that deer girl thought it was cool, right? You were talking about it for, like, forever. Maybe I would think it was cool too.”
“I seriously doubt that.” But something is Don’s expression said he was wavering. Leo might not have noticed is he hadn’t been watching so closely.
“C’mon, Dee,” Leo sad moving his chair closer, knowing that he was signing himself up for what would probably be the longest lecture of his life, “Show me.”
It was the longest lecture of his life, but he left the greenhouse feeling like he had won. Although what battle, he wasn’t sure.
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The communal showers may not have been empty when Leo entered them. They were now. He was completely alone in the cavernous, dimly lit and perpetually wet room. He didn’t even need to turn around and check, because the steady but solitary wash of water from his own showerhead was the only sound. Good thing, too, because if anyone tried to make him let go of the grey stone wall, he might just fall to the ground.
How had it all gone so wrong, so quickly?
Leo’s next breath came out sharper than he meant it to, like he’d been holding his breath without realizing it. Had he? He didn’t know. He couldn’t feel it if he did. All he could feel was the steady rush of lukewarm water down across his shoulders.
He liked to think that he had come to terms with death in the years since the invasion, with the very real possibility that it could happen very suddenly to someone he cared about. He’d been prepared for it even years ago when Pops died, and even though the loss had been devastating, he and his family had gotten through it because they had each other.
This wasn’t like that, though. This was worse.
Because Donnie wasn’t dead. No, that would be too simple. He was just gone.
He traced the line of his metal arm to the crude hand on the end, the one that he had gripped Donnie’s shoulder with after he explained his plan. It was the only way, Donnie had said, the only way to—
But Leo hadn’t let him finish. He couldn’t believe that not only would Donnie think of that, but that he would actually think Leo could be convinced to go along with it… but when Leo had shaken him by the shoulder and told him that it was a stupid, dangerous plan that would get him killed, he just looked away. He fixed his eyes on the ground and kept them there, and for the first time ever Leo had cursed the fact that he had grown up taller than Donnie. He needed to see his face to know that he understood how reckless it would be to do that, and to make him promise that he would never dream of…
When Donnie had finally looked at him and made that promise, Leo believed him, and the relief that had welled up in his chest was so palpable that it nearly swept him off his feet. Donnie had promised, and Donnie never broke his promises, so he wouldn’t ever… he was safe.
But Leo had seen him just hours ago, alone in the ruins of Greenhouse 2. He portalled in as soon as he heard the news of the attack and was immediately greeted by the acrid scent of the acid that had been used to kill every single plant in the greenhouse. Half of their food and medicine supplies, gone just like that.
And there had been Donnie, standing unnaturally still in the center of the carnage. He hadn’t moved as Leo approached.
“I’m so—”
“Don’t,” Donnie had interrupted him, still staring at the rusted metal barrel in front of him, “Don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault.”
There was a long moment of quiet.
“It could have been an acc—”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Donnie had interrupted again. He gestured jerkily at the metal barrel, then clenched his fist, “This was full of herbicide, not fertilizer. Someone switched the labels.”
Leo felt his breath hitch. They both knew who someone was.
“This can’t go on, Leo,” Donnie had said as he looked at him for the first time. Leo, who hadn’t been looking anywhere else the whole time, realized with a jolt that even though Don’s fists were clenched, his jaw was trembling.
“I know,” Leo had whispered back, “I know.”
That was the last time they’d seen each other.
If the news of Donatello Hamato’s disappearance had spread like weeds, then the news of his betrayal had spread like wildfire. Donnie was gone, the rumors said, and he was gone because he was joining the side of the Kraang, and he was taking all their secrets with him.
Leo was the only one who knew the truth. He was the only one who knew that Donnie had been planning to infiltrate the Kraang for months, ever since he discovered the existence of the spy. He was probably there now, trying to bargain with those monsters, in the most danger he had ever been in his life and oh god what if he was already dead? What if they didn’t believe that Donnie wanted to join them? What if he had died not knowing that Leo—
His knees had given out. He only realized when his legs had hit the cold, damp floor of the shower. Funny how it didn’t seem to matter, even as he began to shiver, the cold from the floor seeping into his very bones. Funny how the little voice in his head reminded him why he preferred using the private shower near his room. Funny how none of it mattered at all.
Because Donnie was gone, and everyone thought he was a traitor. He couldn’t even defend him, because if he did, the spy might realize that Donnie knew about him, and if the Kraang knew that he knew about the spy then they would definitely kill him if they hadn’t already and—
And now he has to pretend to everyone, even his own family, that he was shocked and heartbroken and angry that Donnie had betrayed them. And he was shocked and heartbroken, but he wasn’t angry. Not at Donnie.
He was angry at himself.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to find the spy and choke them to death. He wanted to find the person responsible for this, for making the impossible happen, for making Donnie leave him, and—
He wanted to sob.
Only his echo could tell if he did.
----------
“It was her,” was the first thing Donnie said to him, even as the Kraang ship he’d been living on for the past four months began falling to the ground behind them, “It was Darcy. She was the spy.”
Leo could barely take a second to process that revelation, scanning the ground for cover from the inevitable explosion. He found an outcropping of rock that looked stable and started dragging Donnie towards it. “Darcy? That deer you were always— wait, was?”
“Was,” Donnie repeated, looking hollowly back at the ship as it rapidly approached the scorched ground, “She’s still in there.”
Good, is what Leo wanted to say, she can stay there. She can die for what she—
“I don’t care,” is what he said instead, shoving Donnie down behind the rocky outcropping and crowding in after him. His head was buzzing too much to risk portalling to safety, so this would have to do. “Head down, now.”
Donnie didn’t argue, just pressed back until he was as flat against the rocks as he could get. He didn’t even protest at the dirt, or at Leo crowding in with him. He just sat there, barely moving, even as the earth begins to shake as the ship finally touches down.
Leo squeezed in even tighter as the ground shook around them, unable to focus on anything but Donnie’s face. He had lost weight in the months he spent with the Kraang, and there was a blankness to his gaze that Leo has never seen before. He was breathing hard from their escape and subsequent mad dash for shelter, and his face and hands were covered in the dirt that shook loose from the rocks with every tremor. But he was alive and there and so close and—
He had never looked more beautiful.
Without a thought, Leo was moving, shifting until he had wrapped Donnie tightly in his arms, hiding his face in Don’s shoulder and trembling in a way he knew couldn’t be explained by the earth shuddering around them.
He doesn’t deserve this, Leo knows. He doesn’t deserve to be the one who welcomed Donnie back. He doesn’t deserve to seek comfort from Donnie now or ever, not when he’s spent his entire life stringing him along. He certainly doesn’t deserve Donnie’s arms coming up around his shoulders, Donnie’s cheek against the side of his head, Donnie’s achingly familiar scent in his nose…
He doesn’t deserve any of it, but he will greedily take it. For now, or for as long as Donnie will give it to him.
Selfish, he knows.