I just had to pic a Donnie gif. And we get to see his actual eye here so there we go.
Anyway, I woke up with this thought, and the sentiment could technically apply to any of them, but it's more Donnie leaning (as are all my thoughts):
You and Donnie have finally gotten together. You've been friends for quite a while, and you know him really well. His funny quirks, the things that tick him off, what makes him laugh the hardest...but that doesn't mean you know everything about him.
Donnie, for his part, never thought you'd choose him for all those good ol' chestnut reasons. But you did, and he cannot wipe that smile off his face.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have his insecurities. Maybe one day early on you make an offhanded comment about a co-worker of yours and the big shot hedge fund manager she just got engaged to. You don’t give one fig about it, but maybe you said jokingly, “well, she’s set for life”. And that hits a soft spot for Don, though at the time you don’t realize it.
One day you’re both at your apartment for the night and you’re doing something mundane, like washing the dishes, when Donnie calls you over to your coffee table. You dry your hands and take a seat next to him on the couch and eye an unfamiliar folder with a reasonably sized stack of papers in it, and one by one he starts pulling sheets out and laying them down for your review.
It's his bank account balance. His list of patents. His whatever. He wants to show that he can provide for you in that traditional sense, too. Maybe he can’t reasonably provide routine vacations to far flung places, but he wants you to know you he has plans and security. He doesn’t want you to worry about what you'll both do when you're old and gray (because he very much wants to grow old and gray with you).
He's outlined his financial plan and expected growth for the next ten years.
He has a spreadsheet of his patents and the net income they bring in annually.
He’s researched new apartment listings for you for places that are nicer and closer to him (and easier for him to access) and he’s worked out the financing and what the cost differential would be over your current place and how he could make up the difference...or pay more. He'd be happy to do it, but doesn't want you to feel pressured.
Or you could move down into the lair with him. He’s got blueprints for an extension to the lair he could build, one that would give you both more privacy from his brothers. And sure enough there’s a graph of how you could invest that money you're saving on rent and what that could look like in 5, 10, and 15 years.
He even has paperwork ready for you to sign so you can be added as a beneficiary to his accounts should something ever happen to him. He’s already got it set up for his brothers. It makes sense that you are on it, too.
It's a lot, and it's very sweet of him to be concerned about, but mostly you’re just stunned. You didn’t need or expect any of this.
When you turn to tell him that, however, he looks somehow both hopeful and afraid, like the next words out of your mouth carry so much more weight than you’re ready for. And now all you want to do is reassure him. So you kiss him, and tell him thank you.
You don’t need for him to prove to you that he can provide for you, but in that moment you sense that it’s important to him, and so you let him ramble on, and ask questions, and show how impressed you are. Over the course of the conversation he even puffs up a little, feeling pleased with himself and seeing him happy makes you happy.
Most importantly, though, is that you're letting yourselves dream of a future where you grow old and gray together.
Well lookie here. I actually wrote a short thing in second perspective.
I could have fussed with this more, and probably would have kept adding to it, but the exercise was to write something short and contained, so here it is. This has some adult suggested themes, but no actual smut. I just wanted to write a sweet scene about shedding. Which is a weird sentence, but there it is.
Dog Days readers can easily read this as Elise, but the fem Reader character has no description, so can also be a blank slate.
Thanks to @milykins for checking this over for me.
Spring Shed
"It's gross how excited you are about this," Donatello mumbled and you can’t help but smile a little at his mildly disgruntled protest.
"What? You said you could use some help. I'm helping," you reply, and smile wider when he frowns at your pleased expression.
You can tell that he’s nervous and perhaps a bit hesitant by the way he squirms slightly beneath you, but that was to be expected from him. Genius that he was, he still got adorably bashful over things like this, and straddling him as you were, you squeeze your thighs in a bid to keep him still.
"Yeah, but...this is not a normal thing partners do.” Still frowning, his huff stirred the steam swirling all around you in the bathroom, and in an effort to comfort him you tipped your head up to place a soft, quick kiss along his jaw.
“Shh, just let me enjoy this,” you mutter as your fingers splay out over his skin, searching for the spots that will bring him some relief.
You determine that your time in the bathroom hasn’t been sufficient and he wasn’t soft enough for you to really work with yet, and because of that you press on his shoulders in a bid to get him to sink lower into the warm bath. With another huff he obliges, sliding down into the extra large soaking pool until only his eyes are above the surface of the water.
It was so typical of him to feel embarrassed about this, you muse. Even after you’d assured him a hundred times over that you did, in fact, love all his turtle quirks. And besides, you’d not been able to see this particular one before, given the timing of your getting together last summer. You’d been around the past spring, sure, but he’d hidden this bit about himself away from you. But now that you were together? Oh, you were so here for this.
Submerged up to his eyes he looked up at you with his brows knitted together. His face had a completely different look when he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He squinted more, for one thing. Farsighted as he was, you knew that squint well, and knew that at this close distance you were really more of a blur to him than anything. His glasses had been safely folded and placed with the rest of your clothes on the old metal patio set he and his brothers kept tucked into the corner of the bathroom. And it really was a ‘bath room’ as its sole feature was the singular giant soaking pool.
Even if he couldn’t see you clearly, that didn’t stop Donnie from taking both of his large, tridactyl hands and sliding them over your thighs until they gripped the swell of your ass.
“Hey now, you know the rules. None of that business in the soaking tub,” you chastise, taking a light swat at the top of his head.
“But you’re really pretty. And you’re naked,” he reasoned. The lower half of his face was still underwater, yet you could somehow just make out the words despite the few bubbles. Donnie emphasised his thoughts by continuing to slide one of those hands up your torso until it cupped your left breast and his low churr began to vibrate the water. The sensation made you inhale sharply through your nose, but you’d grown wise to him. You knew he was trying to distract you and was doing a damn fine job of it and you needed to maintain focus, so you poked him in the forehead between his eyes.
“We can do that later. Right now it’s shedding time and that shoulder cap is so close to coming loose,” you insist.
Glowering in response he blew a few bubbles through his nose before sinking fully below the water, almost like he was hiding from you. You snort softly, trying not to laugh at his pouting.
“Come on, it’s not that bad,” you coax.
“You’re not the one whose skin is peeling off wholesale,” came his distorted voice from at least a foot below the water’s surface and you’re surprised you could make any of it out at all. You threw your hands out in mild exasperation and sent droplets of water flying.
“No, my body just flakes off dead skin cells and hair 365 days of the year and that floats around in the air and you breathe it in and it makes boogers and you have to dust it off furniture. Does that sound better?”
“No…” he grumbles reluctantly and then surfaces again just enough so his head is above water and you watch as his pale third eyelids fold back into the inner corner. He still looks sullen and so adorably cute— that is until he puckers his lips and squirts a stream of water at you and you splutter as it catches you straight on the chin. Then he submerges again, the cheeky bastard, and you know he can hold his breath for way longer than you’re willing to wait for him.
“Come on,” you bargain, wiping water off of your face. “The sooner it’s done the sooner we can go back to your room and I’ll let you have your way with me. And you’ll be free of that tight, itchy skin.”
For a moment you stare down into the water and wonder if he’s going to resurface again, but a few seconds later he does, looking resigned.
“Fine,” he drawls out and you take his face in your hands and lean in to kiss him right on that soft spot you love between the nostrils of his flat nose.
“I promise I’ll be gentle,” you tease and earn an honest to goodness snort of laughter from him.
Holding his face now, you could see that it too was still peeling a little, but only along his jaw and the outer edges of his wide cheeks. He’d already told you how he’d scrubbed at it hard before you arrived because he didn’t want you to see it at its worst. Which was silly because you planned to be with this man until death did you part and there were a lot of springs that would happen between now and then, universe willing. Maybe next year he’d feel comfortable enough letting you see all of his struggles, you hoped.
The greyish colored layer of skin was getting water logged now and you carefully pinched a bit at his jaw and found that it pulled away with ease. It sticks a little to the pads of your fingers, and for whatever reason you lift it closer to your eyes to look at it. However, when you refocus beyond your fingertips you see that Donnie is squinting at you and his mouth is set in a rather grim line.
“You’re just as handsome as ever,” you reassure, leaning forward to place the bit of skin in the designated bio-waste container Donnie had brought. He huffs again and tries to believe you.
With him finally ready to begin you reach around his shell for the clean loofa that’s resting on the towel. You note that the temperature in the bathroom is almost as warm as the water and you can feel sweat beading along your hairline as you slide back in and resettle yourself in Donnie’s lap.
“You just tell me if whatever I’m doing hurts or anything,” you encourage as you wet the loofa and slowly press it against his cheek. His eyes slide closed at the contact, and with his churr starting up again he surrenders to you, slowly tilting his head to the side to give you better access. His hands also return to your ass, but you don’t protest this time.
Donnie had put on some brand of lo-fi beats to play in the background, and relaxing to the music and the warmth you slowly began to work. Because he’d told you before, you knew it was painful and actually detrimental to try to remove any skin that wasn’t ready to be shed yet, so you concentrated only on the cooperative bits you found. With gentle swipes you encouraged the now soggy, translucent bits of skin to break free and carefully place each piece in the container for incineration later. Donnie was fastidious in that way, at least.
You continued to work, but after a short time you found that your fingers and fingernails were actually more efficient at coaxing the shedding skin away. Donnie shifted around a little when you switched methods, but eventually settled again with an almost strained sigh. You quickly found that small circular motions worked better than gentle prodding, and when you managed to work off a particularly large chunk from his left shoulder you felt somewhat triumphant. It was then that you realized you were probably enjoying this entirely too much.
You glance up to check in with Donnie, but his eyes are closed with his head lolled back on the towel he was using as a pillow. He’d rolled it up and wedged it between his neck and shell and it looked comfortable enough. With his head arched back like that you could see the thick column of his throat clearly, but more importantly you could see all the new bright undulating stripes of dark green and creamy yellow across his skin. They were what was beneath all this shedding skin, and while they were something he grumbled about, you adored them. He’d explained once that they were ‘an evolutionary sign of his virility’ and ‘highly embarrassing’. You thought they were beautiful, however, and secretly mourned their loss when they faded with the coming of summer.
“Look at those handsome stripes. I missed them,” you cooed as you leaned forward to kiss his throat, and as you did you felt his muscles work when he swallowed thickly. His churr grew louder then, too, and his progressively restless hands continued to slowly caress your naked skin under the water. “Don’t get yourself worked up. I’m not done yet,” you admonish lightly before pulling back to resume your task of working the layer of greyish skin on his right shoulder cap loose with your thumbnail.
“Honeymoon phase over already, hmm?” He cracked a smile as he let his thumbs press into your inner thigh, just shy of the juncture of your legs. When you do a little wiggle to dislodge him and his distracting intentions his grin gets wider and he slowly opens his eyes and turns his head to try and watch you, but you are entirely too close for his farsighted eyes. So instead he leans forward and kisses your shoulder and breathes in the scent of you.
“Shh. Just a few more minutes, I’ve almost got this,” you murmur placatingly. You’ve been at this for perhaps thirty minutes now and you can tell he’s about ready for this to be done, but you’re so close to working his shoulder shed off in one huge piece. You just need a bit more time. Carefully your thumbnail works in those small circular motions and you feel a little more of the skin separate with satisfaction.
Huh, maybe there was something wrong with you, after all. You really shouldn't be enjoying this that much.
Don groaned with affectionate exasperation as he let his head fall back onto the folded towel again at the same time you hit a ‘not ready’ spot and he lightly hisses at the sting. You apologize, but undeterred move on to a different area.
“I love you,” he smiled tenderly as you continued to work the loose, soggy flap of skin off.
“I love you, too,” you reply automatically, eyes remaining fixated on the task.
He gives your ass one more squeeze as he resigns himself to sit there until you are through. His tone is teasing as he says, “You know you’re still gross for enjoying this, right?”
And you laugh at yourself, because it’s true.
Maybe next year you’ll be lucky and he’ll shed his carapace scutes.
Honestly, I don't know why I fixated on this. Also, the title just made me laugh.
I was writing what I consider a ‘part 2’ to the Spring Shed blurb, but then there was going to be a line in that where Donnie pees while he and reader are both in the bathroom getting ready for bed. Couples do that. I like the realism. Anyway, the mention of it was going to be all of a single sentence, but then I went down a rabbit hole of how large mutant turtles would use the bathroom if they had more turtle leaning anatomy, and then this happened.
Except I decided to give Leo a try. Look at me branching out.
SFW, unless you consider talk of going #1 problematic. Just a weird slice of life (I guess you could call it that).
Word count: 1,700
Your bathroom was tiny. Why was it so tiny? He knew you lived in a small apartment, but this? This was ridiculous. In fact, how did anything get done in here? There barely seemed room to turn around.
With hands on hips Leonardo stood before the porcelain toilet bowl and grimly assessed his next move.
Your commode was unfortunately tucked into a sort of nook between the wall and sink, and the narrow space left him little to no room to maneuver, despite his ninja agility.
Still, he tried, and confirmed that a forward approach was risky because he couldn’t get his legs on either side of the bowl well enough to get the angle he needed, and a backwards approach was nigh on impossible, what with the shell and all.
He bit down his sigh of frustration.
If he’d been human, this would be so easy. All he’d have to do is unzip his pants and aim. But he wasn’t human, and his equipment wasn’t located on his body quite the same. No, it was instead in his tail, which was right now tucked between his legs under his boxer briefs and twitching slightly from how badly he had to go.
With a sour curl to his lip Leo again wondered why on earth the mutation left that part au natural. It gave him human-like arms and legs and eyes and he was bipedal because of it, so why keep that bit as was? Surveying the angles of approach to the toilet again, he cursed his turtle anatomy.
What was he going to do?
The first thing he should have done was scope your bathroom out the one other time he’d been in your apartment. What had he been thinking? A ninja should always know his surroundings.
Second, he should have made sure he peed before rushing out of the lair. It was only he’d been so distracted by the thought of seeing you alone, that he didn’t think of it. When you’d called and told him your Tea of the Month Club package had been delivered, and then asked if he wanted to swing by for a cup if he wasn’t busy, he was up and on his feet before he realized it. Yes, it was true that he and his brothers might not have known you for all that long, but there was something about the way you would smile at him that tickled a part of his brain, a tickle he found hard to ignore, though goodness knows he tried.
Which led him to this moment, and this tiny, tiny bathroom.
At home in the lair this wasn’t an issue. Given that reptilian cloacas were a slit and not a hose, Donnie had modified their bathrooms to accommodate their uniqueness and so they could sit without fear of breaking something or their tails dipping into the water. And at April’s apartment they simply used the shower as a urinal because over time they’d all learned that that was just less problematic (and easy to clean).
Here, in your shoebox of an apartment, however, even that wasn’t an option. Your shower was also petite and enclosed in glass and there was no way he could wedge his shell in through that small door without scraping and possibly breaking something. And wouldn’t that just be perfect? He finally gets to spend some time with you one on one, and what does he do? He shatters your shower glass.
Hands still on hips, Leo lifted his face to the ceiling, silently cursing.
So his choice was between likely missing the bowl entirely because he couldn’t position right, possibly breaking your shower, or lying so he could go to the roof and relieve himself. And he’d have to say something. He couldn’t just sneak out because you were sitting and waiting for him right next to the only window that was large enough to accommodate him.
His dignity hated all these options, and with leg bouncing because of the strain on his bladder, Leo took a deep, meditative breath to calm down.
Mind over matter.
He would just hold it. Simple as that.
It was only a cup of tea or two, and it was only a full bladder. He’d been through worse endurance strain in the hashi plenty of times.
Or he could just figure it out and urinate, he scolded himself, eyeing the bathroom sink.
What? No. He was civilized. He would not be peeing in your sink, but he had to think of something. After all, he wanted to be able to come and spend time here, with you, and he could never admit to you that he had to go outside to urinate like a dog because your bathroom didn’t meet his needs. So he just needed to—
Leo froze when you knocked softly at the bathroom door and called his name, and then embarrassment rose up to swallow him like floodwater. How long had he been in the bathroom? It hadn’t seemed like that long, not long enough for you to come looking for him, that is.
“Leo?” You say from the other side of the door, also sounding a little embarrassed. He also hears you clear your throat when he fails to immediately respond. “So, um…Donnie was here the other day and he dropped off some stuff. Some medical supplies as a precaution and…and some other things he said you guys might need… Um, look below the sink, just in case you, uh…yeah, just have a look.”
And with that you quickly retreat back to the living room, leaving Leo to blink at the back of the closed bathroom door.
Donnie did…what?
With some trepidation Leo then knelt down to peer into the little storage space under your sink, and there amongst your hair dryer, curling iron, and other miscellaneous items, he spied a very Donnie like box of medical supplies along with a black canvas drawstring bag and his hope soared.
Oh Donnie. Blessed Donnie. He was 100% being excused from patrol the next time he asked.
Inside of the bag was a bit of kit Leo hadn’t seen since April’s old apartment years ago, but was thrilled to see now. The flexible funnel with an attachable tube was something a much younger Donnie had first rigged up back in those early days of knowing April. She, too, had had a small bathroom back then, though not quite as bad as yours.
The aid was simple, and easy to direct and easy to clean and Leo had never been happier to see it, even though embarrassment washed over him again because now he knew you knew. Still, the pressure to relieve himself overrode his embarrassment and his hand was on the button of his pants before he realized it.
Now equipped with — and he hated this, but Mike had dubbed the thing the T-Wee when they were young — he did his business quickly. Then he cleaned both it and his hands thoroughly before returning it to its canvas bag and shoving it back under the sink like he could rehide this secret. He knew he shouldn’t be embarrassed about it. They were just formed differently and this world wasn’t made for them, but he still felt his cheeks warm at the thought of going back out to face you and you knew that he needed help to do something as simple as urinate in your bathroom.
Standing, he caught his reflection in the vanity mirror and grimaced at how deep the frown lines were creased upon his face and scrubbed a hand hard over his forehead as if it could wipe the lines away. That failing, he then took a deep breath to gather himself before exiting the bathroom. He couldn’t hide in there forever, after all.
The tea kettle began to whistle as Leo found you in the kitchen. You were just finishing setting up a tray of tea things with two cups, two spoons, two napkins, and one larger plate of sweets in the center. It was so charming, he noted, the way you had arranged the assortment of cookies on that little plate meant for the two of you to share. Also charming was the way you smiled at him as you looked up from your work to see him hovering there just outside the entrance to your tiny kitchen.
“Did you find what you needed?” You asked nonchalantly and Leo couldn’t help but dart his eyes away to focus on some wayward junkmail you had left sitting on the counter.
“I did,” he replied quietly, and hoped you wouldn’t ask more. Mercifully you did not and instead moved to pour the hot water into your pretty blue teapot and then placed it too on the tray before lifting it all and walking towards your coffee table. Leo blinked and remembered his manners in time to take the tray from you before you’d taken two steps, and as he did your fingers brushed his.
You both stall there for a moment, looking at where your hands had touched. Then you smiled again as you looked up into his face.
“Good,” you almost whisper before seeming to remember to find your voice and saying, “I…I just want you guys to feel welcome here. Anytime. Alright?”
You say it so sweetly that Leo’s breath catches in his throat as you continue past him into the living room and then take your seat on the couch, waiting for him to follow with the tea.
It took Leo another deep breath to calm his slightly racing heart before he could make his feet move.
“You’re a very thoughtful host,” he reassured quietly, thankful for your acceptance, or at the very least your discretion.
Leo gently set the tray down on the coffee table before taking his seat next to you. Then with a soft smile of his own he offers to pour your first cup of tea.
I write! Mostly I wrote one giant TMNT fic that is now finished called Dog Days of Summer, which can be found on AO3. It's a beast of a thing coming in at 420k words and is a slow burn romance between BayDonnie (Bay with some other iteration elements) and an OC that takes place largely at the farmhouse.
But now that that project is done, I have the brain space to start writing smaller things. Will add to this as I go:
Bayverse (ish)
Donnie
Mysteries of the Universe
Spring Shed
Let Me Provide
Leo
To Pee of Not to Pee
Misc
Random Blurbs from this Speakeasy AU
I also draw! To find those it's really easier to search the tag adebauchedsloth art, but I also have a not always up to date art post that has a decent amount of them. So far the majority of it is chapter art for Dog Days of Summer.
