Someone of your choice to Raph with number 2 or Leo with 23 :D
IT'S THE HURT/COMFORT DRABBLE* MEME! (*A 100-word limit is impossible for me. This is not a literal drabble. It's just generally "short.")
Pine requested: Someone of your choice to Raph prompt #2 “You’re burning up.”
2003!micro-fic.
Leonardo yanked his hand back from Raphael’s forehead with a hiss. “You’re burning up.”
“Ha. You’re burning up.” Raph sluggishly accused. His panting filled the stuffy, dusty space.
Leonardo fumbled in the dark for the canteen.
They’d just gone for a day hike. He wanted to check out the cliffs and copper cave shrines in the hills above the Battle Nexus Arena. It was just a hike. Get some sunshine. Stretch their legs. He’d convinced Raph to come with him. Everyone else wanted to stay in town and eat street food–why hadn’t he just gone with them? Why’d he have to drag Raph into this? Into a landslide?
He knocked into the canteen with clumsy fingers and it toppled over. Leo could hear it slide down, bouncing off loose rocks and gravel. The short stairwell down into the little pocket of air by the shrine had turned into a ski slope of ankle-twisting stones. And their only water supply had just disappeared down it. “Dammit!”
“Uh-uh, Leo.” Raph coughed and the loose dirt and small stones rained down from above them. His lower half was pinned in the rock slide, but his head and one arm were still free. “Put a.” He coughed again. More pebbles and a few larger rocks hit them both. “A dollar in the swear jar.”
“Stop talking. Every time you cough, the rest of the ceiling could fall in.” Leonardo pulled out his shell cell. The battery light blinked its warnings, but he needed the light from the screen if he was going to find the canteen. “I’m gonna go get the canteen.”
“What? Go?” Raph sounded more alert and alarmed than he had since the rocks hit him.
“Just down the stairs. There’s maybe–”
“Leo.”
“Raph. There’s only–”
“Leo!” Raph’s hot hand gripped his wrist as if he were falling off a building.
“Raph! It’s our only water. You’re bleeding. You’re feverish. You’re stuck; it has to be me that gets it. It’s only 3 or 4 steps down. I’ll be right back.” Leonardo knew he was rushing Raph to let go. But the battery would only last so long.
“I–” Raph’s voice cracked around the single syllable, and Leonardo desperately wanted to sit back down next to him.
“I’ll be right back.” Leonardo returned his brother’s grip, squeezing just as hard. “I promise, brother.”
In the faint green light of the shell cell, Raph grimaced, but surrendered Leo’s arm. With supreme force of will, Leo let go as well. On hands and knees, he backed down the uneven stones, bumping and sliding even the few feet to the bottom. His shell made horrific grinding noises against the ceiling as he went.
“Leo?” Raph’s voice sounded so far up above. He coughed and Leonardo could hear the cascade of gravel that pelted down on him. “Dammit.”
Leo held the phone up, trying to see his brother in the gloom. He’d stirred up too much dust, though. The light reflected off it and Raph was just a dark patch in the darker hillside.
“Dollar for the swear jar,” Leo choked out. His heart wasn’t in the joke. It hung in the thick air between them. He needed to finish up and get back up there. How heavy were the stones on Raph's chest? Was he smothering?
Leonardo drew in as deep a breath as he dared. How long before they ran out of oxygen? “I’m at the bottom. Don’t talk so much. You’ll cough again.” Leonardo wheezed and hacked, but at least the ceiling held. “There’s room to turn around down here. I can see the canteen.”
The dim light of the shell cell reflected off the spidery veins of green copper that lay like a net along the walls at the back of the shrine. As Leonardo scrambled over the uneven landslide debris towards the canteen, his phone lit up and trilled with pings and beeps and alerts. He nearly dropped it! “What?!”
“WHAT?,” called Raph from up the incline. “What’s going on, Leo?!”
“It’s–Raph! Raph! We have signal! There’s signal! The–the copper down here–we’re getting a signal!” Leonardo hit the call button with one hand and grabbed the canteen with the other. “Raph, we’re getting out of here!”
