♡ While I do self-ship, it's with characters that I feel have "grown up" with me. Everybody's in their 20's unless stated otherwise. However, you will not find any NSFW content of these characters on this blog.
♡ (That being said, I do have one hell of a mouth. If you're sensitive to swearing, this may not be the place for you.)
♡ I don't take any of this seriously, this is just for amusement and comfort! If you do, that's cool, but I'm just here for a good time.
Just wanted to double check before sending in a request, but I saw your writings about rise Donnie and Leo and HDBSHSJAK I love them soooo much!! Literally made me giggle and kick my feet!! I was going to send in a request but I saw you didn’t have them on the list of characters you write for?
LMAO thank you! So sorry I'm only seeing this now, that's embarrassing.
Go ahead and send it in! Thank you for reading the rules, I appreciate it :] I forgot to update my list LMAO
Info + Warnings: Sequel to When Life Gives You Lemons. Donatello's brothers are scheming and Reader and Donatello are learning each other. No gendered language, pronouns, or Y.N used for Reader. Set a few years post movie.
Commentary: And YOU get a POV and YOU get a POV and YOU-
Leo's going to lose it.
Mikey's plan- a Doctor Feelings hypothesis turned little brother antic- was fine. Donnie's stuck in an uncharacteristic neutral, you don't know him well enough to read between the lines; fine, play matchmaker. Force Donatello to actually interact with you. See if maybe they can pop the clutch and get him back on the road to his usual self-assured, charming self.
The theory was sound. Don's charming- not Leo charming, obviously, but he does alright. He just needs a push here.
And you're a smart fit. You're clever, you're witty, and- when Donnie actually acts like himself around you- you listen and ask questions and actually pay attention.
But in practical application?
He's gonna make Mikey pay for the noise cancelling headphones he's going to need.
Because now, Donnie's loosening up. He's talking. And talking. And talking.
And you're encouraging him.
Now, movie night starts off with Don's theories in place of trailers as everyone settles in.
Leo and Raph's weekly Jenga competition is interrupted by mechanical whirring, followed by the high-pitched whining of a struggling motor and a dangerous-sounding hum, immediately followed by a clatter and a shriek and silence.
Then you're laughing, and Donnie's saying something dry and measured and subtly good-natured that they can't quite hear, and you're laughing louder.
(Leo and Raph glance at each other and silently decide they don't need to know. "Your turn," Leo says breezily.)
Donnie sits at the counter the next time you help Mikey out, and he's full-blown-info-dumping about how yeast works while the two of you knead what will eventually be bread.
Leo's going to lose it. He knows you know this. You told him the basics months ago.
And you're encouraging him.
You're nodding and smiling as he talks and you're actually enjoying yourself and since it's not just out of that bottomless curiosity you have- you know this already- Leo's pretty sure it's just because it's Donnie talking.
Mikey glances backwards at him, a smug grin appearing for the briefest of moments, and Leo knows he looks beyond exasperated.
How the fuck do you two not know?
Donnie's around more, now.
Your time in the lab seems to have broken the ice. He slowly starts to ask for your assistance more and more often, and he actually talks to you on purpose now, and every time he turns to you or pauses when he walks by to say something you feel a little like the sun is shining on your skin.
It's like when a grumpy cat accepts you, you reason. It's nice. Makes you feel special.
He's... so talkative, sometimes. If an idea has his attention, it can be entire minutes where he doesn't seem to take a breath between sentences- maybe that's a turtle thing? Lung capacity?- and you just try to keep up.
You ask questions, when you have them.
He never makes you feel stupid for them.
You ask more questions.
Sometimes, you ask a question and see Leo roll his eyes a little.
You resolve to ask more questions. If Leo's going to be a jerk about Don's enthusiasm, you're just going to have to counter it.
You think Donnie is seeking you out, now. He comes out of his lab when you get to the Lair, and even if he doesn't have anything to say, he comes into the kitchen to get a drink.
(One day, you ask him about a project, and he seems pleasantly surprised as he takes his freshly-brewed coffee and leads you to the lab again just to give you the show-and-tell update. You notice, a few minutes in, that there's a steaming cup of coffee already on the desk, and you wonder if he's really been that distracted by this new machine.)
(You mention it to Leo, because he's the least likely to get outwardly worried and irritate Donnie but you don't want his newfound forgetfullness to leak into the field and get him hurt. Leo looks at you like you're either an alien or a moron for a second, then he sighs and says he'll keep an eye on it, muttering something about not having a choice. You opt not to give him shit for it.)
Donnie sits at the bar when you work with Mikey, sometimes. He gets little samples, and he tastes them good-naturedly as you and Mikey scrutinize his reactions.
Sometimes something pulls his string, and he starts offloading about the chemistry of what you're making.
You know some of it already, but you enjoy the newness of him talking to you too much to derail him.
Mikey seems content to listen, too, and sometimes Donnie mentions something neither of you knew and you glance at each other in make a mental note.
"Leo 'n' I are gonna grab some pizza from Señor Hueso's," April says pleasantly, gesturing a thumb at the turtle as she speaks. "Wanna come?"
You smile, but shake your head. "Thanks, but I told Donnie I'd help him test his latest and greatest."
Leo glances at April, and April steadily does not look at him, and you have the sudden uncomfortable feeling that you're missing something. "Sounds like fun," April says, mostly genuine. "But if it's a helmet-"
"Okay, what's with helmets?"
"I'll tell you about it sometime," Leo says breezily. "But Hueso's expecting us, so we should get going. Want anything?"
You ask them to grab you a little something, and offer them money to cover it, and they both roll their eyes at you and leave without it.
You're around more, now.
Mikey- Doctor Feelings, in this case- had been correct; spending time with you in Donnie's own element, in his lab, had indeed let him find his footing.
Now, he was able to do more than just add on to your commentary in a group setting.
Now, he could talk to you- unprompted, even.
It feels good to be competent again. He was really starting to dislike the feeling of being tongue-tied.
He can't explain it. He's had... feelings before. Shudder.
They've never rendered him mute before.
And then you strolled into his life, an April friend turned Mikey and Leo friend turned family friend turned Donatello is not available right now, please leave a message and he will return your call.
It bothers him.
Not you. You don't bother him. Not understanding bothers him. Yes, he understands the chemical solution that is a- quote- crush, and yes, he understands that feelings defy logic with maddening frequency, but for someone as eloquent as him to lose all fluency in his native tongue?
For someone as- dare he admit it- verbose as him?
It goes beyond defying logic. It begs incredulity.
So, in face of what he could neither explain nor quantify, he had been left with but one path: listen to his brothers.
Again. Shudder.
But it has paid off, and now- in a beautiful move of cosmic balance, karma, even- they must listen to him.
He has found himself once more, and with his rediscovered confidence and access to his vocabulary, he is talking to you.
At nearly every opportunity.
He is delighted to find that you are even better company when he actually engages.
It was one thing to see and hear you be witty and sweet to his family. It is an entirely different experience altogether to see and hear you point that attention towards himself.
When he had slid underneath the new vehicle-in-progress (the very start of a new Turtle Tank, one with much better gas mileage and far less hackable electronics, now that Stockboy is approaching college age and is more frustrating than ever), he'd had to pull his goggles down over his eyes, to keep from visibly staring at you.
And then he'd realized he'd been so busy staring that you'd missed where he'd actually needed the board, and the way you looked at him- a little amused, cocking a brow like you thought he was being overly meticulous- had made his heart actually skip a beat.
Now, you make that face at him a lot.
But you also do as he asks, trusting him and his methods, and that... that's a kind of nice he never really expected.
And now he's so busy thinking about that- about you- that his hands have stilled in front of him, a nut halfway onto a bolt.
He's suddenly uncomfortably aware of his own music, the electronic beat loud enough to pulse through his workbench and vibrate against his forearms.
Loud enough that he doesn't realize that he'd been prompted out of his thoughts by his subconscious registering the sound of the lab door.
So when something creeps into his peripheral, cautious and friendly, he has his screwdriver in his hand like it's a weapon and is up and moving before even his mind can catch up.
His expression very quickly goes from pure danger to confusion to something like frustration, as he comes to a complete stand-still, screwdriver grasped tightly.
"Sorry," You practically shout over his music, hands up in playful surrender. Luckily, you'd had the common sense to approach from afar, so while you have no doubt that this still could have been very bad, he at least had time to process who you were before being dangerous. "Knocked. And texted. Andddd called. And I'm late."
He doesn't look down as he reaches over and hits a button on his phone, to the side of where he'd been working, and the music drops to a nearly safe volume. "I didn't hear you."
"Oh, really?"
He rolls his eyes at your sarcasm. "You really shouldn't materialize around here. We're... tightly wound."
You suspect, after a few weeks of being around him, that you've gotten a handle on what embarrassed looks like on him.
You're pretty sure it looks like this.
"Heard," You say, lowering your hands to the pockets of your jacket. "Sorry again."
He huffs, and mechanically turns back to the table beside him to set the screwdriver down. "Shelldon should have announced you," He muses testily, and you don't think the frustration is with you.
Which makes you grimace slightly, because you know why he didn't.
"He uh… seemed busy."
You get a silent, cocked brow.
"I think he's having a spa day?" You offer sheepishly.
"Excuse me?"
You gesture over your shoulder, back out towards the main area of the lair. "Mikey was scrubbing him with a little brush. I don't think either of them saw me, honestly."
Donatello's eye twitches.
He turns, then, with a thoroughly exhausted sounding sigh, and beckons you over to the workstation in front of him. "I will address that later," He says, firm and dismissive in the same breath as his focus shifts to the work ahead. "For now, we have a new periscope to finish constructing."
"-a spa day!"
Leo, against his better judgment, doesn't just close the door.
He could. He could close his door, and go back to bed, and not have anything to do with Donnie's voice sounding as shrill as it had at sixteen.
He doesn't, though. He sighs, and he rolls his eyes, and he mutters under his breath, but he steps out of his train car and makes his way towards the shrieking in the lab.
"Come on, D!" Mikey cajoles, and Leo can hear the sunshine smile from across the lair. "I've been right so far, haven't I? I'm tellin' you, you need alone time!"
"I do not need alone time," Don snaps right back, incredulity thick enough that Leo is reasonably sure this won't be violent. Probably. "I need for my highly advanced, one-of-a-kind assistant to be where he is supposed to be! Announcing our guests so that I do not stab them!"
…Maybe. Maybe it won't be violent.
"Hermanos," Leo groans, making a show of rubbing his eyes as he interjects and not reacting to the lazer-sharp glare Donatello sends his way. "I know some of us are a lost cause, but please, I still need my beauty sleep."
"You couldn't sleep if I dosed you with enough sedatives to kill a small elephant," Donnie snaps immediately.
"Not with this racket, I couldn't."
"C'mon, Leon, back me up!" Mikey chirps, wiggling a little where he stands. "Don's makin' progress, and the next step is to have ambiance!"
"Ah, the romance of sterile steel and LEDs," Leo drawls, just as Donnie shrieks "I do not need ambiance!"
He probably does, but Leo doesn't see the point in arguing that.
"And if I do-" Don throws his hands wide, gesturing everything and nothing all at once- "I can produce it without you distracting my incredibly hi-tech security system with brushies!"
…yeah. Okay.
On that note, with that context, Leonardo barks a laugh, turns on his heel, and walks right back out of the lab, leaving Mikey with the monster he created.
Info + Warnings: Sequel to When Life Gives You Lemons. Donatello's brothers are scheming and Reader and Donatello are learning each other. No gendered language, pronouns, or Y.N used for Reader. Set a few years post movie.
Commentary: And YOU get a POV and YOU get a POV and YOU-
Leo's going to lose it.
Mikey's plan- a Doctor Feelings hypothesis turned little brother antic- was fine. Donnie's stuck in an uncharacteristic neutral, you don't know him well enough to read between the lines; fine, play matchmaker. Force Donatello to actually interact with you. See if maybe they can pop the clutch and get him back on the road to his usual self-assured, charming self.
The theory was sound. Don's charming- not Leo charming, obviously, but he does alright. He just needs a push here.
And you're a smart fit. You're clever, you're witty, and- when Donnie actually acts like himself around you- you listen and ask questions and actually pay attention.
But in practical application?
He's gonna make Mikey pay for the noise cancelling headphones he's going to need.
Because now, Donnie's loosening up. He's talking. And talking. And talking.
And you're encouraging him.
Now, movie night starts off with Don's theories in place of trailers as everyone settles in.
Leo and Raph's weekly Jenga competition is interrupted by mechanical whirring, followed by the high-pitched whining of a struggling motor and a dangerous-sounding hum, immediately followed by a clatter and a shriek and silence.
Then you're laughing, and Donnie's saying something dry and measured and subtly good-natured that they can't quite hear, and you're laughing louder.
(Leo and Raph glance at each other and silently decide they don't need to know. "Your turn," Leo says breezily.)
Donnie sits at the counter the next time you help Mikey out, and he's full-blown-info-dumping about how yeast works while the two of you knead what will eventually be bread.
Leo's going to lose it. He knows you know this. You told him the basics months ago.
And you're encouraging him.
You're nodding and smiling as he talks and you're actually enjoying yourself and since it's not just out of that bottomless curiosity you have- you know this already- Leo's pretty sure it's just because it's Donnie talking.
Mikey glances backwards at him, a smug grin appearing for the briefest of moments, and Leo knows he looks beyond exasperated.
How the fuck do you two not know?
Donnie's around more, now.
Your time in the lab seems to have broken the ice. He slowly starts to ask for your assistance more and more often, and he actually talks to you on purpose now, and every time he turns to you or pauses when he walks by to say something you feel a little like the sun is shining on your skin.
It's like when a grumpy cat accepts you, you reason. It's nice. Makes you feel special.
He's... so talkative, sometimes. If an idea has his attention, it can be entire minutes where he doesn't seem to take a breath between sentences- maybe that's a turtle thing? Lung capacity?- and you just try to keep up.
You ask questions, when you have them.
He never makes you feel stupid for them.
You ask more questions.
Sometimes, you ask a question and see Leo roll his eyes a little.
You resolve to ask more questions. If Leo's going to be a jerk about Don's enthusiasm, you're just going to have to counter it.
You think Donnie is seeking you out, now. He comes out of his lab when you get to the Lair, and even if he doesn't have anything to say, he comes into the kitchen to get a drink.
(One day, you ask him about a project, and he seems pleasantly surprised as he takes his freshly-brewed coffee and leads you to the lab again just to give you the show-and-tell update. You notice, a few minutes in, that there's a steaming cup of coffee already on the desk, and you wonder if he's really been that distracted by this new machine.)
(You mention it to Leo, because he's the least likely to get outwardly worried and irritate Donnie but you don't want his newfound forgetfullness to leak into the field and get him hurt. Leo looks at you like you're either an alien or a moron for a second, then he sighs and says he'll keep an eye on it, muttering something about not having a choice. You opt not to give him shit for it.)
Donnie sits at the bar when you work with Mikey, sometimes. He gets little samples, and he tastes them good-naturedly as you and Mikey scrutinize his reactions.
Sometimes something pulls his string, and he starts offloading about the chemistry of what you're making.
You know some of it already, but you enjoy the newness of him talking to you too much to derail him.
Mikey seems content to listen, too, and sometimes Donnie mentions something neither of you knew and you glance at each other in make a mental note.
"Leo 'n' I are gonna grab some pizza from Señor Hueso's," April says pleasantly, gesturing a thumb at the turtle as she speaks. "Wanna come?"
You smile, but shake your head. "Thanks, but I told Donnie I'd help him test his latest and greatest."
Leo glances at April, and April steadily does not look at him, and you have the sudden uncomfortable feeling that you're missing something. "Sounds like fun," April says, mostly genuine. "But if it's a helmet-"
"Okay, what's with helmets?"
"I'll tell you about it sometime," Leo says breezily. "But Hueso's expecting us, so we should get going. Want anything?"
You ask them to grab you a little something, and offer them money to cover it, and they both roll their eyes at you and leave without it.
You're around more, now.
Mikey- Doctor Feelings, in this case- had been correct; spending time with you in Donnie's own element, in his lab, had indeed let him find his footing.
Now, he was able to do more than just add on to your commentary in a group setting.
Now, he could talk to you- unprompted, even.
It feels good to be competent again. He was really starting to dislike the feeling of being tongue-tied.
He can't explain it. He's had... feelings before. Shudder.
They've never rendered him mute before.
And then you strolled into his life, an April friend turned Mikey and Leo friend turned family friend turned Donatello is not available right now, please leave a message and he will return your call.
It bothers him.
Not you. You don't bother him. Not understanding bothers him. Yes, he understands the chemical solution that is a- quote- crush, and yes, he understands that feelings defy logic with maddening frequency, but for someone as eloquent as him to lose all fluency in his native tongue?
For someone as- dare he admit it- verbose as him?
It goes beyond defying logic. It begs incredulity.
So, in face of what he could neither explain nor quantify, he had been left with but one path: listen to his brothers.
Again. Shudder.
But it has paid off, and now- in a beautiful move of cosmic balance, karma, even- they must listen to him.
He has found himself once more, and with his rediscovered confidence and access to his vocabulary, he is talking to you.
At nearly every opportunity.
He is delighted to find that you are even better company when he actually engages.
It was one thing to see and hear you be witty and sweet to his family. It is an entirely different experience altogether to see and hear you point that attention towards himself.
When he had slid underneath the new vehicle-in-progress (the very start of a new Turtle Tank, one with much better gas mileage and far less hackable electronics, now that Stockboy is approaching college age and is more frustrating than ever), he'd had to pull his goggles down over his eyes, to keep from visibly staring at you.
And then he'd realized he'd been so busy staring that you'd missed where he'd actually needed the board, and the way you looked at him- a little amused, cocking a brow like you thought he was being overly meticulous- had made his heart actually skip a beat.
Now, you make that face at him a lot.
But you also do as he asks, trusting him and his methods, and that... that's a kind of nice he never really expected.
And now he's so busy thinking about that- about you- that his hands have stilled in front of him, a nut halfway onto a bolt.
He's suddenly uncomfortably aware of his own music, the electronic beat loud enough to pulse through his workbench and vibrate against his forearms.
Loud enough that he doesn't realize that he'd been prompted out of his thoughts by his subconscious registering the sound of the lab door.
So when something creeps into his peripheral, cautious and friendly, he has his screwdriver in his hand like it's a weapon and is up and moving before even his mind can catch up.
His expression very quickly goes from pure danger to confusion to something like frustration, as he comes to a complete stand-still, screwdriver grasped tightly.
"Sorry," You practically shout over his music, hands up in playful surrender. Luckily, you'd had the common sense to approach from afar, so while you have no doubt that this still could have been very bad, he at least had time to process who you were before being dangerous. "Knocked. And texted. Andddd called. And I'm late."
He doesn't look down as he reaches over and hits a button on his phone, to the side of where he'd been working, and the music drops to a nearly safe volume. "I didn't hear you."
"Oh, really?"
He rolls his eyes at your sarcasm. "You really shouldn't materialize around here. We're... tightly wound."
You suspect, after a few weeks of being around him, that you've gotten a handle on what embarrassed looks like on him.
You're pretty sure it looks like this.
"Heard," You say, lowering your hands to the pockets of your jacket. "Sorry again."
He huffs, and mechanically turns back to the table beside him to set the screwdriver down. "Shelldon should have announced you," He muses testily, and you don't think the frustration is with you.
Which makes you grimace slightly, because you know why he didn't.
"He uh… seemed busy."
You get a silent, cocked brow.
"I think he's having a spa day?" You offer sheepishly.
"Excuse me?"
You gesture over your shoulder, back out towards the main area of the lair. "Mikey was scrubbing him with a little brush. I don't think either of them saw me, honestly."
Donatello's eye twitches.
He turns, then, with a thoroughly exhausted sounding sigh, and beckons you over to the workstation in front of him. "I will address that later," He says, firm and dismissive in the same breath as his focus shifts to the work ahead. "For now, we have a new periscope to finish constructing."
"-a spa day!"
Leo, against his better judgment, doesn't just close the door.
He could. He could close his door, and go back to bed, and not have anything to do with Donnie's voice sounding as shrill as it had at sixteen.
He doesn't, though. He sighs, and he rolls his eyes, and he mutters under his breath, but he steps out of his train car and makes his way towards the shrieking in the lab.
"Come on, D!" Mikey cajoles, and Leo can hear the sunshine smile from across the lair. "I've been right so far, haven't I? I'm tellin' you, you need alone time!"
"I do not need alone time," Don snaps right back, incredulity thick enough that Leo is reasonably sure this won't be violent. Probably. "I need for my highly advanced, one-of-a-kind assistant to be where he is supposed to be! Announcing our guests so that I do not stab them!"
…Maybe. Maybe it won't be violent.
"Hermanos," Leo groans, making a show of rubbing his eyes as he interjects and not reacting to the lazer-sharp glare Donatello sends his way. "I know some of us are a lost cause, but please, I still need my beauty sleep."
"You couldn't sleep if I dosed you with enough sedatives to kill a small elephant," Donnie snaps immediately.
"Not with this racket, I couldn't."
"C'mon, Leon, back me up!" Mikey chirps, wiggling a little where he stands. "Don's makin' progress, and the next step is to have ambiance!"
"Ah, the romance of sterile steel and LEDs," Leo drawls, just as Donnie shrieks "I do not need ambiance!"
He probably does, but Leo doesn't see the point in arguing that.
"And if I do-" Don throws his hands wide, gesturing everything and nothing all at once- "I can produce it without you distracting my incredibly hi-tech security system with brushies!"
…yeah. Okay.
On that note, with that context, Leonardo barks a laugh, turns on his heel, and walks right back out of the lab, leaving Mikey with the monster he created.
(I was going to let them say something, but I don't think it's necessary - we all KNOW what nonsense they would spout)
Before - next
(please tear my heart into pieces link)
Future Donnie and Leo - Bad timeline - Two goofballs in their mid-thirties
Series masterpost
I think that's one of my most beloved twin-situation in the series - and it somehow shatters my heart to draw them like this in the bad timeline with the knowledge about how it ends. Ouch.
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My rottmnt Patreon 18+
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Attention please ‼️
The turtles you find on my site are all aged up, unless they are turtle tots (obviously)
Please make art. You don't have to bare your soul or make a masterpiece, you can be silly and you can be derivative if you want. You don't even have to show it to anyone. Just please make something, it's so good for you
A little monkey told me it was @rufwooff's bday the other day and since they've surprised me with such lovely Replica Donnie art in the past I figured I'd return the favor with a warmup sketch! So here's a shot of Donnie tinkering with his ninpo. Happy Birthday Ruf I hope it is to your liking!
