Summary: Mikey is cooped up in bed and bored out of his mind. Donnie helps.
Written for catbowserauthor's TMNT Pure Fluff Bingo. powerof041984 requested #5: Oooo these prompts look fun! I'd be interested to see what you do with "read to/with me", maybe with Mikey and/or Donnie?
“Dude, you never said going blind was this bad! Warn a guy next time!” Mikey lamented, forced to hunker further down into his blankets and shove his hands under his thighs to resist the urge to dig them into his eyes—his puffy, sticky, searing, oozing eyes.
“You’re not goin’ blind, drama king,” Raph huffed. Mikey could practically hear the eye roll he was performing (Lucky him, being able to roll his eyes so freely!) as he snapped on gloves and scuffed around the room, no doubt picking up bits and pieces of infectious laundry for Leo and Master Splinter to deal with. “Y’think a little case of pink eye holds a candle to gettin’ a flashbang to the face?”
“Well, it feels like someone’s holding a candle to my eyes! Imagine Chinese water torture, right, but it’s dripping hot wax instead!”
“And it’s that power of imagination that’s gonna get you through it, bro.” The caustically sarcastic edge in Raph’s voice rather undermined the false cheer of the words, as did his following grumble of distaste. Mikey couldn’t really blame him; he could hear him peeling wet washcloths off the floor, the warm compresses he had abandoned after they went cold, and they were probably just as full of gross goo as his eyes were. “Imagine yourself not takin’ hot wax to the eyes, not trying to claw ’em out or rub all this crud further in and you’ll be just fine till the end of the week.”
Funny how when someone told him not to think of something, that made it ten times harder not to think about it. As if his eyes weren’t temptingly, torturously itchy enough before. His fingers twitched even more fiercely with the urge to scrub at them; he had to squirm and settle more emphatically to remind his body he was keeping them trapped and away from his face for the foreseeable future.
Foreseeable. Ha. He wasn’t seeing much at this point. He wasn’t sure where he had picked up this case of pink eye but it wasn’t fair. He hadn’t gone anywhere or done anything his brothers didn’t and yet somehow none of them had been struck down by this highly contagious infection!
Although it may have had something to do with rubbing the sweat from his eyes with his mask tails while they were out on that rooftop run…He couldn’t remember off the top of his head when he’d last washed his mask but it had probably been longer than Master Splinter would approve of.
If Raphie were willing to meet him where he was and commiserate, even something as small as a gruff “Aw, yeah, poor you”, it wouldn’t be as bad. If any of his brothers were willing to spoil him, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad but despite them technically waiting on him hand and foot, they approached it like a rotation of the guard duty, not like tending to a poor, sick loved one. Sensei didn’t want them spreading the germs across the whole lair so Mikey was mostly confined to his room while they brought food and fresh washcloths in, then empty plates and dirty laundry out.
It’s not like he wanted any of them to catch it! It sucked! If he were in their position, he’d be ducking in and out as quickly as possible to avoid their cooties too. But living in close and obviously unhygienic quarters—it was the sewers, it went without saying—meant it was usually more than one of them sick at the same time, which automatically guaranteed a quarantine buddy to serve as company. Even if they were grumpy and out of sorts, they could be grumpy and out of sorts together! But that wasn’t the case this time.
Not to mention that for once his cool loft bed felt more like a chore than a privilege. Whenever he went up and down the ladder, he had to disinfect whichever rungs he touched every single time. Staying tucked up there to keep a distance while the others puttered around the ground floor made him feel…shelved. The opportunities he got to be out and about were few and far between and no less tense; it was mostly just blurrily fumbling his way to the bathroom, forced to keep strict track of where his hands were and whatever he may have contaminated along the way so the others could then disinfect it.
And the most miserable part was what else he had gotten by the end of that rooftop run, what he had intended for himself as a treat: he had finally saved up the money to drop into Atomic Comics and get his hands on the last restock of Silver Sentry vs. The Future. Now with even the tiniest sliver of light setting his eyes on fire, he had to slog through a whole sick, nasty week before he could even enjoy it!
He had what felt like an eternity to stew over the unfairness of it all, catching his hand multiple times just as he was about to start scrubbing ferociously at his eyes; he didn’t even remember letting his control slip but with every near miss, the unscratched, unrubbed, unattended itch niggled deeper—as did the exasperated boredom.
Just for the sense that he was making a move without actually going anywhere, he rolled onto his side with a dramatic sigh, only for it to hitch into a groan of realization when he remembered too late that he wasn’t supposed to do that. Letting his face make contact with his pillowcase meant he’d probably just smeared gunk on it and it would have to be changed again. He considered just…halfheartedly brushing any residue off the pillow, off the side of the loft bed and hoping for the best, but that would pretty much guarantee one of the others catching it the next time they came by and (rightfully) blaming him—and more immediately, it would get the stuff all over his hands when he was specifically trying not to touch!
At the mere thought of that hassle, the crust around his eyelids stoked the flames to piercing, punishing levels. Flopping back onto his shell, he kicked the wall through his blankets a few times, then clawed uselessly at the air in lieu of giving into the temptation to just rip his eyelids clean off. That mental image did nothing for his revulsion or restlessness but what else did he have to think about? The world was a void with nothing to fill it but nastiness like that! Nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one else to—
“Hey, Mikey. I’ve got a couple more washcloths here—one for each eye. Don’t just use the same one for both, remember, or you risk more cross-contamination.”
His body jumped but his heart leapt at the interruption. Something to do! Bolting upright so fast he nearly bonked his head against the ceiling, he flung his hands out and of course missed when Don tossed the cloths up to him. The few searching seconds he spent frantically patting around the blankets were the worst but once he had the warmth jammed firmly into his eye sockets, the relief was near instant. Sagging against the wall, he could only breathe a reverent “You’re a lifesaver, Donnie.”
“I get that a lot,” Don agreed with understated pride, and Mikey would have let him have his moment to appreciate it if it weren’t followed by the telltale shuffle of his footsteps turning back toward the door. “Leo will drop by with food in about an—”
“No, no, wait!” he yelped, jolting back upright, dropping the cloths in his lap to make some more grabby motions in his general direction. “Don’t go!”
Don cut himself off with one of those small, knowing sighs, the “I realize you only said something factually incorrect to get me going on a tangent to stall for time” sigh. It was, however, also ever so slightly tinged with a note of the “I realize I’m not very good at saying no to you and I’m dangerously close to caving” sigh.
Mikey pounced on it while he had the chance. Screwing up his face, stretching a hand across the expanse toward him, he didn’t have to try very hard to muster sheer piteous agony and longing into his whine. It came naturally with the genuine despair and discomfort. “Donnieeee…!”
“Yeah, okay, okay, I can stay for just a little while.” Which meant if Mikey played his cards right, he could probably keep him around until Leo popped in with dinner. “But I’m guessing you aren’t actually interested in hearing me talk about my hybrid plants, right?”
“Honestly at this point you could yap about watching paint dry, since I can’t watch it with you right now,” Mikey huffed as he slumped back against his pillow, returning the compresses to his face. “Can’t watch the Voyager marathon April and I were planning for tomorrow, can’t read my brand new comic…”
“What comic? Ooh.” There was a rustling near the desk, followed by a crinkle of what was probably the protective sleeve. “Silver Sentry vs. The Future, that looks cool.”
“Right?! But I barely got a chance to look at it before—whoops, surprise bonus issue! Turtle Titan vs. The Curse of Conjunctivitis! I don’t even remember what the cover art looks like right now.”
“Well, there’s Silver Sentry on the left with forced perspective as he’s getting sucked into a black and white spiral vortex toward an hourglass with a skull in it. His mask is torn so you get a full view of this really gaunt, horrified expression. Mouth gaping open, eyes bulging out—it sort of echoes the skull, actually; that might be foreshadowing. And if you look closely at the edges of the spiral, the blacks are actually warped Roman numerals.”
“Oh, yeah…” Scrunching his eyes under the cloth to summon it in his mind, he hummed pensively. “Could’ve used more contrast, huh, since his costume is black and white too.”
“True, but they’ve played up some of the navy blue undertones in his cape to distinguish it; that’s a nice touch.”
“…While I’ve got you,” Mikey ventured, trying not to sound too hopeful, “and while you’ve got a captive audience and time to kill and you just said yourself it looks cool…would you maybe wanna read it to me?”
“Wha—Me?” The sleeve crinkled questioningly again to back Don’s obvious surprise.
“Yes, you. Unless I’ve got some other brother named Donnie who’s in the room with us right now.”
“You do have another brother named Leo, who can do the voices a lot better than I can,” he admitted sheepishly—which was true, Leo was the go-to for most readings. Just the right emotional notes, all the perfectly timed dramatic beats.
“Yeah, but he’s busy with the food. And he’d put everything he’s got into the nitty gritty of the dialogue without describing the big picture like you just did.”
“You sure you don’t want to wait until you can see for yourself? I thought half the fun of graphic novels was the graphics.”
Mikey could harp on the semantic distinction between graphic novels and comics, just as Don had about succulents versus…whatever he had happening on his desk, but he honestly didn’t have the energy right now. “As Raph so sweetly reminded me when he was here, I got the power of imagination, bro,” he assured, wiggling his fingers mystically in midair before remembering he should make sure they were contained, shoving them into his armpits. “Just give me something to work with or that skull with the eyes bulging out of its sockets is gonna be me.”
“If you say so.” There really was no sound like that of flipping open the first crisp, glossy page of a comic. Mikey automatically relaxed a fraction at that alone. “We’re opening with Silver Sentry and Tsunami standing on a rooftop. Silver Sentry’s silhouetted by the sunrise but it looks like the light is filtering right through Tsunami, drawing a parallel with the sun’s reflection on the bay off in the distance. The blues are even bluer through his skin—bringing in those navy undertones again—and the golds and oranges really pop. But in the next frame it doesn’t look like they’re enjoying the view. They look worried.” Don uncertainly cleared his throat, once, twice, before dropping like an anvil to a strained, gravelly tone that would have offended Raph if he’d walked in at that moment. “I know you said everything would look better in the morning—”
Mikey nearly dislodged his compresses with the force of his barked laughter. “Oh, no, save the voices for Leo! That was more painful than the pink eye!”
“For you and me both, ten words just felt like gargling rocks.” Clearing his throat again more roughly, he restarted at his natural pitch. “‘I know you said everything would look better in the morning, Sentry, but I still see trouble brewing on the horizon. You said you were going to tell the team by now. You have seventy-two hours left. Isn’t that the prediction she gave you?’ …Wait, who’s this ‘she’?”
“The Eye in the Sky, the main villain lady from last time,” Mikey supplied. “She reads people’s future in the clouds like the weather report and told Silver Sentry he had a big storm coming. Supposedly, thanks to the exposure to her accumulating cumulus energy stuff, she foresaw he only had a week left to live before lightning strikes his heart and he drops dead.”
“Oh. Wow. They probably should have put that in one of those asterisk notes in the bottom corner of the page.”
“They know the real fans are following every issue. I don’t even own the last one but I found a way. I camped out on a fire escape and read it along with some kid through the window for like a whole hour.”
“On training run time?” When Mikey opted not to answer that, Don returned to the page. “Silver Sentry won’t look at Tsunami. He looks down instead like he’s going to check a watch but obviously he’s not wearing one over his costume so he clenches his fist. ‘I still don’t know if I believe it. I…I don’t want to believe it. She may have just been trying to distract me, keep my head in the clouds.’ Hehe, that's cute.”
“You can’t laugh, Donnie, he’s fearing for his life!”
“Why would they put in a pun if they didn’t want you to laugh?”
“Dramatic irony.”
“If you say so.” He paused, clicking his tongue. Mikey could see him shaking his head in his mind’s eye and hear the smile in his voice. “…I can’t read that line with a straight face now.”
“Just go to the next one.”
“‘Which is precisely why you need to confide in your team now, when you need them most. That’s the silver lining in all this, that—’”
“Don’t laugh!”
“I wasn’t!” he exclaimed, while laughing because he was a hypocrite. “But they knew what they were doing, putting lines like that back to back.” Mikey couldn’t be too indignant, however, as a clatter and creak indicated Don was pulling up the nearby chair to get settled. “‘That’s the silver lining in all this, that you have people around you who will do everything they can to prevent it.’ Hmm, pretty deep conversation for page one. Tsunami goes to put a hand on Silver Sentry’s shoulder, only to reel back a bit as there’s a static charge. The way they drew it, it’s hard to tell if it came from Sentry or if it was already building in the air. Tsunami’s fingers bubble and there’s a bit of steam. He and Sentry both look surprised but before either of them can say anything, Chrysalis comes to join them…”
Mikey hardly noticed the compresses gradually going cold, where before he had been acutely aware of it. Once he noticed he wadded them up, shoved them toward the wall and tucked himself into a ball under his blanket, keeping his eyes closed.
Don’s commentary was thoughtful, his cadence smooth and gentle, his descriptions colorful enough for Mikey to pretend the pages were painting themselves behind his eyelids. By the time they reached page sixteen, his conscious mind barely had a chance to register the shift from imagination to a dream.
Donnie noticed once Mikey’s sounds of acknowledgment shifted into slow, soft breathing, but he kept reading out loud regardless. Now that he was invested, he was going to find out how it ended in one sitting. Mikey didn’t have to know and Don could just reread whatever he’d missed to him later.
Although, he realized ruefully as his eyes started to water, that duty may end up falling back to Leo.
“‘I like to have someone read to me,’ she explained. ‘It’s been my dream ever since I was a child—to sit in a sunny place, gaze at the sky or the sea, and have someone read aloud to me. I don’t care what they read—a newspaper, a textbook, a novel. It doesn’t matter. But no one’s ever read to me before. So I suppose that means you’re making up for all those lost opportunities. And besides, I love your voice.’
We had the sky and the sea there, all right. And I enjoyed reading aloud. [. . .] I used to read picture books aloud to my son. Reading aloud is different from just following sentences with your eyes. Something quite unexpected wells up in your mind, a kind of indefinable resonance that I find impossible to resist.”
I just fixed 65 typos in my kinktober turned multichapter fic. I’d proofread it twice and a friend read it for me, and we caught a lot that way, but I spent a week reading it aloud to my spouse and THAT is how we caught 65 more. Marked them as we went and I just fixed them all 🤣
