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The TV is on, but for once Leonardo isn’t two inches in front of it. He’s lounged back on a beanbag, most of his attention on a magazine, only present because his brothers are there.
Today’s programming is a show about escaped army criminals who solve crimes with ridiculous plans. It’s probably the only TV show Donatello has ever dropped an experiment to watch, and Raphael loves it, but Leonardo’s never really gotten the appeal. He’s amazed Donatello likes it, because he’s always thought it required a certain level of brain removal to accept the plots for what they are, but then, the guys say the same thing about Space Heroes and honourable conduct, so whatever.
April, however, seems to be having a little more trouble accepting the situation. Raphael has already told her, in no uncertain terms, that if she doesn’t like it, she can leave. And Donatello only put up a mild defence of her presence, no doubt because he found her complaints and insistent talking through the show annoying too. So she’s sitting leaned against Leonardo’s beanbag, looking between Donatello and Raphael like she’s trying to work out a very complicated puzzle.
When the show’s over, both Donatello and Raphael stretch with identical satisfaction, agree it was a good episode—Raphael liked the part where they flipped the motorcycle, while Donatello thought the conman’s scene with the crime boss was best—and then stand up. Raphael wants to do some weights, and everyone knows Donatello has to get back to the lab, but he lingers, obviously wanting to spend time with April. But in the end, he chooses duty over pleasure and disappears.
“Finally, we can find something fun to watch,” Michelangelo says, grabbing the remote and flicking through the channels.
“So, neither of you like that show?” asks April, and they shrug.
“It’s okay. I like cartoons better,” Michelangelo says, twisting around to look at her. “Live actors are kind of boring to watch.”
“And the special effects are lame,” Leonardo agrees. “Like when the car exploded. First of all, no car explodes just because it runs into a wall. Second, if a car did explode, it would start around the engine, not the back seat.”
April smiles, and he knows she finds it funny that of all things, that’s what bothers him. So he shrugs again.
“But Raph and Donnie like it.”
“How weird is that?” she says with a laugh. “I never thought I’d see the day when they had something in common.”
Leonardo blinks, surprised, and looks at Michelangelo to make sure he’s not the only one. Then they remember April didn’t grow up with them, and so doesn’t know. He smiles. “Actually, Raph and Donnie have pretty much the same taste in movies and stuff. Explosions, overly complicated or stupidly simple plots, big fight scenes…”
“And they always pick apart the same stuff in good shows,” Michelangelo adds, making a face. “Like, ‘where did they get the hammer from’? And ‘how did he survive that’?”
“But you dare to point that out in their shows…!” Leonardo adds, holding out his hands. “Watch out!”
Michelangelo laughs, while April shakes her head, amazed.
“Never would have picked that. I always figured that if anyone had the same taste, it would be you and Donnie,” she says. “You’re both so… um…”
Michelangelo turns around again, amused by the way she cut herself off, and even Leonardo has to raise an eye ridge. There are lots of ways he and any of his brothers are ‘so’ – they all have their shared quirks and mannerisms. But the way she phrased it, it can’t be anything flattering.
“You guys… think… alike,” she says finally. “Sometimes.”
“Nice save,” Michelangelo says with a snicker.
And it is, because it’s true, and Leonardo has to give her that. Although no one thinks like Donatello does—his smarts make for a very complicated and fast-paced mind—Leonardo rarely has to explain himself to him. Even in fights, if he has to make use of a mimic, he knows Donatello will be his best bet, and probably ready to go. And outside fights, if he needs a sounding board, he’ll go to Donatello, because even if he can only get half-formed theories out, he can usually count on Donatello to not only know what he means, but provide the other half. And in less professional things, like how they interact with the rest of the world. April and Karai aside, they mostly have the same opinion about how things should go topside.
No, with Karai too… which is probably why he didn’t want to tell Donnie about her for so long. Because he knew Donatello would understand, point out all the reasons it was wrong, and then try to help him with it anyway.
But it is a one way street. They might think along the same wavelength, but Donatello’s head is way too complicated for Leonardo to know what his brother’s thinking most of the time. Every so often, Master Splinter makes them do an exercise, where they write down their thoughts as they have them, then trade with each other. It’s hard to do, because you think a lot faster than you write, and they usually do it when they’re too injured or tired to have a physical lesson. It’s supposed to focus their minds and provide insight into each other’s thought processes. Mostly it gives Donatello a hand cramp and the rest of them something to puzzle over for the rest of the day, because they have to translate three pages of shorthand describing at least two trains of thought.
Raphael’s are the easiest for Leonardo to follow, actually, because he’s as straightforward as he speaks. They tend to follow the same path, too, from how much he hates these stupid sessions, to something they’ve done recently, to how it could have gone better, usually veering into some self-recrimination about how he could have stopped someone from getting hurt, before switching to rage about whoever did the stupidest thing in the situation and why he thought or didn’t get why they had done it, and then eventually coming back to how much he hated the sessions.
Michelangelo’s are… difficult to read. Depending on how seriously he’s taking the sessions, they can vary between outlandish nonsense—the guy is a born storyteller—to surprisingly deep meditations on his family’s motivations. Those ones are rare, and intense, and usually result in at least one of them cornering him later for an awkward stare and a shell-crushing hug.
Leonardo blinks as he realises he’s been staring at the same paragraph of his magazine for at least a few minutes, and that April is still looking thoughtful. He coughs and puts his magazine aside to stand up. “I’m gonna get a drink. You guys want anything?”
“Soda me, Leo!” Michelangelo calls, while April stands up as well.
“I’ll come see what’s on offer first.”
“Is this one of your human-food things?” he asks, and she grins apologetically.
“Now I know where you get most of your ‘human food’? Yeah.”
Normally he’d laugh it off, but thinking about thinking has soured his mood. “Give us a break, April. We can’t exactly get our stuff over the counter.”
She winces. “Sorry. I didn’t mean –”
“Forget it,” he says, already regretting snapping at her. “The soda’s pretty flat, but the juice is in date, and the milk’s fresh.”
Her smile is weak, and he knows he’s going to have to extend more of the olive branch by giving her a way out. “So… what did you think of that show?”
“It’s… lame,” she says, and tries to laugh around her awkwardness. “I don’t know, I think my dad used to watch it when he was a kid. It’s pretty old.”
“Yeah. Most of the channels we get only show the older stuff,” he says as they duck through the kitchen. “Donnie keeps saying he’s going to hook us up to more, but he keeps getting side-tracked.”
“I can’t believe he liked it,” she says, making a face. “It’s so… guy-ish.”
“Uh, April?” he says, grinning at her. “You do know we’re all –”
“You know what I mean!” she says, and this time her laugh is genuine as she slaps his arm. “Explosions, manly men and helpless, stupid women. I expected something more… I dunno, intelligent.”
“Egh,” he says, and turns away to get cups. “He’s smart on his own time. You should see what he watches online. Life hacks, engineering, documentary after documentary… So boring.”
“It’s not boring, it’s Donatello,” she says, and he smirks knowingly at that, because Donatello’s not here to see it. She blushes and says again, “You know what I mean.”
“Uhhh huh.”
She scowls playfully, but opens the fridge. “What am I getting out aside from soda?”
“Orange juice and the water jug. And whatever you want.”
She does as instructed. “So you and Donnie think alike, he and Raph bond over stupid TV, you and Raph have martial arts… what’s Mikey’s thing?”
“Mikey’s thing?” he repeats. “What, like we all need to have something in common?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Isn’t that how things go?”
He laughs despite himself. “We’re brothers, April. It’s kind of ingrained,” he points out, but takes a second to think about it as he pours the juice. It worried him for like twenty minutes one day, when they found a management textbook in the trash called ‘Leading for success’ and he thought it would help him be a better leader. It said you needed to find common ground amongst your teammates, or you were doomed to fail. He’d spent an afternoon freaking out, trying to find their connections, before Raphael used the book to hit him over the head and Michelangelo pointed out it’s not like being ninjas is the only thing they have in common.
To an outsider, he can see why it might look weird. They might not seem close. He would bet twenty bucks that April wouldn’t believe him if he told her Michelangelo and Raphael are the closest out of any of them, since they rarely get through a conversation without at least one insult or show of violence.
“I guess, if you want to push it, um… me and Mikey are actually the 'real' martial artists,” he says. “He’s lazy, but he’s a natural athlete. We both just get martial arts, so we kind of have that. Uh, for him and Donnie, I guess it’s how annoyed they get when me and Raph fight. They had hours to hang out together when me and Raphael were being punished for not getting along,” he adds with a grimace of remembered back flips and silent corners.
“What about Raph?” she asks, and he shrugs.
It’s a bit too personal, really. Same as he would never show her their written thoughts, he doesn’t want to tell her about late nights, nightmares, insecurities and dreams. You can’t explain that need to protect and be protected, from the things both outside and in.
“Do you mind taking that water to him?” he asks instead, picking up the orange juice and sodas. He drops off the sodas in the pit, and takes the juice into Donatello, who looks at him blankly until he says, “It’s called juice. You drink it.”
“Get out of my lab,” he says, but takes the juice, so Leonardo heads back out in time to see April steal his seat.
“Hey!”
“You moved,” she says, and Michelangelo grins.
“She is learning the ways of the sibling! I’m so proud!”
“Sibling, huh? A human sister,” Leonardo grumbles as he’s forced to sit on the bench.
“Why not?” April asks lightly. “You have a rat for a father.”
He almost points out the awkwardness of Donatello having a crush on their ‘sister’, but not only is that topic off-limits, but he sees the slightly nervous look that her teasing voice doesn’t cover. So he just smiles and leans over to shove at her shoulder. “I guess you’re crazy enough to fit in.”