This is the first chapter of my fic, you can also read it on Ao3, if you’d prefer, at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77913071/chapters/204144431
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Okay, so, he may have fudged the whole “or a few hours, I don’t have a watch thing.” But, look, if you’d seen the looks on his bros faces when he said a few months (which was still seriously down playing it) you'd have back peddled a lot too!
So what had actually happened was… he jumped through the portal, got kidnapped and experimented on for a bit, broke out, just survived for a bit, started taking out Kraang bases, then his bros showed up. That’s the broad strokes at least, he really doesn’t have the energy to delve into specifics right now okay. Point is Dimension X lasted a whole lot longer for him than it did for his bros.
During that time he hadn’t realized that time on the outside wasn’t moving like time in X was. That means for all the time he was there (he was estimating 5 years based on Leatherhead’s account and some Kraang records he found) he thought Leo, Donnie, and Raph were living through the same amount of time he was. As time went on, he’d imagined how they’d grown up. How tall would they be now? Did any of them start growing hair? Mikey knows that none of them had hair when he left, and he doesn't have any, but he still envisions a world where they might. Did they wear clothes now? Was Leo still a Space Heroes super fan? Ya know, stuff like that.
But then the portal had opened, and out fell the same bros he left behind. They hadn’t changed one bit, they looked like they had fallen out of a photograph, a time capsule of an age Mikey no longer belonged to.
Now they were here. In a farm house, in a field. No father, no lair, and Leo in a coma. Mikey stood in the kitchen, gazing around the room. It was still a novelty to him to be able to walk freely in a constructed building rather than the dirt walls that he’d called home for the last 5 years.
That was a long time, wasn't it. Now when he looked at his brothers he didn’t see the infallible heroes he had worshiped as a kid, the safety and security only a big brother could provide, he saw a group of kids who just lost their dad.
He supposes that he also just lost his dad too, but frankly, he’s not felt the loss as hard as the rest. In his time in X he got a bit of a head start on the grieving process. Honestly, part of him was still shocked that anyone he knew here was still alive. Somewhere along the line he’d started to accept that they were probably all dead, I mean, why else wouldn’t they have come for him. He’d imagined worlds where they were happy and healthy, where they all got to grow up and do normal teen things, but those had never felt real. So in that way, he’s been grieving Splinter for years already, which means he has to be there for his brothers.
And that starts with making breakfast.
Raph hasn’t left the bathroom Leo’s been staying in since they got there, and Donnie’s locked himself up in the barn trying to find a way to bring Leo out of it. Which means, neither of them have been eating. That makes it Mikey’s job to fix that.
Taking out a pot from one of the cupboards, he gets to work. He goes to one of the upper shelves and pulls out some oats. Mikey pours about 4 cups into the pot, and adds some water. He then places the pot on the stove on medium heat. While the oats come up to temp, Mikey sets about gathering the fixings. Some brown sugar and cinnamon from the cupboard. Some bananas from the table get set on the counter next to the stove. He grabs the bag of mixed berries from the freezer. Donnie can never stand the little seed in the mixed berries, so the banana should still get some vitamins in him. Raph on the other hand is weird about bananas. Mikey’s never understood it, but Donnie’s suggested it has something to do with triggering his gag reflex.
Steam starts to curl up from the pot around the edges of the lid. Mikey pulls off the lid to check the oats and gives them a stir. He then mixes in a decent amount of sugar and a dash of cinnamon, recovering the pot to allow it to cook in. He sets about preparing 5 bowls, one for each of them: Raph, Donnie, Casey, April, and himself. He’s not sure how Casey and April like their oat meal, so he’ll leave the stuff out so they can do it themselves.
The oats still need a few minutes so he heads out to find Casey and April. He finds April on the couch in the living room.
“Morning April,” he says, announcing his presence quietly, so as not to startle her.
She looks up from whatever show she’d been watching. “Morning,” she says with a warm smile.
“I’m making oatmeal for breakfast. I wasn’t sure how you liked it so feel free to come in and fix yourself a bowl when you’re ready.”
April perks up a bit at the mention of food, “Oh! You didn’t have to do that for us Mikey. You guys are going through… a lot right now. If anything Casey and I should be the ones doing that stuff.”
“It’s cool man,” Mikey replies, brushing off the concern, “I don’t mind! Actually, it’d probably drive me crazy to not have anything to do right now.”
April examines him for any hint of deceit. As expected, she finds none and replies,“In that case, thank you Mikey!”
“No problem! Oh, and if you see Casey, let him know he’s welcome to some too.”
With that Mikey returns to the kitchen to finish up breakfast.
Back in the kitchen he takes the lid off the oatmeal. He gives it a stir and then tastes the goopy meal for quality control. Finding it satisfactory, if not a bit bland, he scoops out some into one of the bowls. He places the bowl back on the counter and looks between the bananas and berries. Which problem to tackle first…
Donnie’s going to put up a fight, Mikey’s probably gonna need to get him out of the barn before he has any chance of getting food in him. That will take time, and Raph has issues about oatmeal that isn’t steaming anymore. Going over his options, he picks up the bag of berries. Raph will probably be easier to break down, or he’ll break faster at least. He’s probably starving but just doesn’t want to leave Leo to take care of himself.
Mikey pours a good helping of the berries into the hot oats and gives it a stir. To let the berries warm up a bit, he starts putting back some of the stuff he used. Sugar and Cinnamon in the cupboard. Berries in the freezer. Milk in the fridge. Casey and April know where that stuff is if they decide they want them, no reason to let all the berries thaw or leave the milk out.
After putting everything away, he examines the bowl of Raph’s oatmeal. The berries have begun to bleed their color into the goo surrounding them, turning the whole bowl into a pinkish-purple gloopy mess. Mikey shudders looking at it. It reminds him of the Kraang and the weird stuff in their dimension. Everything there was different shades of the same pink staring out at him from Raph's meal.
He shakes his head. Now’s not the time, Mikey, he tells himself. The bowl is still steaming so Mikey grabs a spoon and the bowl and heads up to the bathroom.
Opening the door to the bathroom feels like disturbing one of those egypt tombs from the Mummy movie. Everything is still but at the same time feels like it’s screaming at him to get out.
He can’t leave though, not until Raph finishes this bowl of oatmeal.
“Raph…” he calls wearily into the room.
He hears something shuffle and grunt in the darkest corner of the room. Bingo, that would be Raph.
“Raph, buddy, I know you’re not really feeling it, but I brought you some breakfast.”
“Go away,” something grunts at him from the corner.
“Are we really doing the whole Batman thing right now?” He asks tiredly.
His only response is a series of rude scoffs and grunts he approximates to mean something along the lines of Fuck off.
Okay, for reals, Mikey cannot handle the whole emo routine right now. He sighs and rolls his eyes, flicking on the lights with his hand not holding the bowl.
Raph squints at the light, recoiling more into the corner for a moment, before grabbing a face towel and moving to place it over Leo’s eyes.
“Seriously Mikey! Donnie said to keep the lights low, it's supposed to help him or something!” Raph grunts angrily at him.
Mikey refrains from rolling his eyes again (it would not go over well considering that this time Raph would be able to see him do it).
“He’s in a coma man, pretty sure light levels are the least of his concerns,” he says gently.
Raph just glares at him while he continues to adjust the face cloth over Leo’s eyes.
“Bro, I know you want me to leave and all, so I’ll make you a deal.”
Raph rolls his eyes, standing up and crossing his arms over his plastron defensively. Scoffing, he responds mockingly,“What’s the deal you have in mind?”
“Simple brochacho!” Mikey responds cheerfully, this is honestly going better than he hoped, “Just eat this bowl of oat meal and I’ll leave you to practice your Batman impressions with Leo.”
“I’m not practicing Batman impressions!” Raph responds indignantly. More quietly he continues, “that’s Leo’s thing anyway…”
Mikey gives him a look and holds the bowl up, “Come on dude, I made it just the way you liike~”
Raph eyes the bowl skeptically for a moment, “Did you put something messed up in this, like worms or something?”
“Dude no! Gross! It's literally just oats, sugar, cinnamon, and berries.”
Raph continues to eye him skeptically, but takes the bowl anyway. He scoops up a bit on the spoon. He gives Mikey one last skeptical look, but finally eats the spoonful anyway. His eyes widen at the taste and he starts to devour the bowl ravenously.
Ha ha, success! He probably hadn’t even realized how hungry he was until food was actually in his mouth. Mikey watches fondly as Raph demolishes the bowl of oatmeal, finishing the whole thing in like less than two minutes. After finishing, Raph lets out a burp which he does not apologize for and roughly shoves the bowl at Mikey.
“There, done, happy now!” He grunts.
Mikey gives him a big smile, taking the bowl gently from him, “Very!”
As Mikey turns to leave he hears a quiet “Thank you” from Raph. Mikey doesn’t acknowledge it, knowing Raph probably only half wanted him to hear it, but he appreciates it nonetheless. There we go, he thinks heading down the steps, one down, one to go.
Re-entering the kitchen, he gets started on a bowl for Donnie.
He slops some more of the breakfast goop into the bowl and grabs one of the bananas. Mikey peels the banana and grabs a small paring knife from the knife block. He carefully begins to chop the banana on alternating diagonals, just like Splinter taught him when he was little. When the whole banana has been sliced into the bowl, he grabs the milk from the fridge. He pours in a dash of milk and gives the bowl a thorough stir.
Before he leaves, he grabs a large glass from one of the cupboards and fills it with water. God knows when his brother drank anything but that weird astronaut coffee.
Walking back out of the kitchen he spies April and Casey watching something on the TV. Both of them are making small comments about whatever’s happening on screen to each other and giggling at said comments. Both of them are holding a bowl in their laps, which they eat reasonable spoonfuls from every so often. Well April is taking reasonably sized bites, Casey on the other hand must have grabbed one of the serving spoons instead of a normal one.
He smiles fondly at them before heading out the door towards the barn.
“Yo, Donnie! I know you’re in there, open up man!” Mikey shouts through the door.
He waits for a moment, listening for any movement on the other side of the door.
He sighs, hard way it is then. Mikey sets the glass and bowl down a few feet away from the door. He doesn’t want to risk getting any dust or wood pulp in them, or worse spilling them.
Going back to the door, he winds up his leg and Bang! kicks the door open. A loud shriek comes out of the barn followed by a rather loud thud. Oof, yikes, Mikey thinks, I hope that wasn’t a bad fall.
Going back, he collects the bowl and glass and finally enters the barn.
“Mikey! What the shell was that about!” a loud voice yells from inside the building.
“Sorry bro, but you weren’t answering the door, had to make sure you were alive and stuff,” Mikey replies calmly, “Anyways though, I brought you some breakfast.”
“You could have just left it by the door, I would have found it!” Donnie snips at him, going back to work on whatever it was he was doing before Mikey bust the door down.
“Yeah, no go bro, I tried that yesterday.”
“And I found it, didn't I!” Donnie exclaims defensively. Shell, Mikey can practically feel Donnie's eye roll.
Mikey stares at Donnie's shell for a moment, before pointedly looking at the untouched plate of pancakes and the other also untouched plate with a sandwich, “Yeah, that's gonna be a no on that bro.”
“What why?!” Donnie exclaimed, finally turning around to look at Mikey.
Mikey just sighs and places Donnie’s breakfast on one of the tables near the door. He turns around and fetches the two untouched plates still sitting outside the door. Holding them up he shows them to Donnie.
Donnie just grumbles and turns back to his work. Likely expecting Mikey to just give it up and leave him be. Well that’s not gonna happen today broskee. Mikey takes the two plates of expired food and quickly runs them back to the porch to deal with later.
He then returns to the barn and barges in once again. This time he doesn’t say anything, just grabs the rolly chair Donnie was sitting in and starts to drag it towards the door.
Mikey ignores him, continuing to just pull the chair along.
“Mikey this is my chair! Can’t you use another chair for whatever you’re planning!”
Mikey continues to ignore him, honestly surprised he’s still sitting in the chair at this point, but hey, he’s not about to look a gift turtle in the mouth. Reaching the doorway he roughly drags Donnie all the way out of the barn and swings the chair around. Unfortunately the wheels catch on the grass and send Donnie tumbling out onto the ground unceremoniously.
“What the hell Mike!” Donnie shouts angrily at him picking himself off the ground and sitting on his knees.
Mikey just turns around, grabbing Donnie’s breakfast and closing the barn door behind him. Looking back at Donnie, the purple turtle is glaring at him in confusion and outrage.
“Well…?” Donnie says expectantly.
Mikey sits down directly in front of him and shoves the bowl towards him, “Eat this oatmeal and drink this whole glass of water and I’ll let you back into the barn.”
Donnie is taken aback for a second before scoffing, “Let me? Like you could stop me if you wanted to.”
“You wanna test that?” Mikey asks calmly, looking intensely at Donnie. Mikey knows he can keep him here by force if he needs to, but he would really rather not have to do that. He’s hoping Donnie will have the same reservations.
The two have a bit of a stare down, seated there on the grass in the late morning light. Eventually, Donnie starts to waver, looking uncertainly between Mikey and the barn with all of his precious tech inside. Finally he sighs and begrudgingly accepts the bowl and starts to eat. It's slow going but eventually he finishes and puts the bowl gently on the ground.
“There, happy now?” He asks dismissively.
“Not quite,” Mikey replies, handing him the glass of water with an easy smile.
Donnie gives him a skeptical look, but rolls his eyes and accepts the glass. He chugs the whole glass down in less than a minute and looks expectantly at Mikey.
“Am I free to leave now?” Donnie asks tersely.
“Yep!” Mikey replies cheerfully, gathering up the now empty bowl and cup.
Donnie stands up decisively and marches back to the barn, slamming the door shut behind him.
Oh, well, at least he ate something, Mikey thinks. He picks himself off the ground and returns to the kitchen. He probably won’t do this for every meal, but he promises himself that he will see his brothers eat at least one meal a day until Leo wakes up.
Mission, feed brothers operation complete!
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