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i.
The telltale scent of rain chases after them as they skulk through the junkyard. Raph knows nobody’s desperate enough to be out here right now with a storm like this hanging overhead, but even if there is, seeing a couple mutant turtles probably ain’t high on their priority list. Tactical ignorance; New York traditions and all that.
Raph’s instincts stick with him regardless, keeping his steps lighter than a dragonfly skipping off the water’s surface. Beside him, Don swings himself over a bent flagpole that’s been wedged under the busted back half of a pickup truck. He lands soundlessly into a crouch and doesn’t straighten back up, so Raph stops to wait for him.
“Okay… I think this is where I saw it last time,” Don says thoughtfully, before sinking deep into the pile of slag like the guy in Terminator 2.
Raph scopes out the area for a while, keeping an eye on Donny’s shell while he savors the crisp air. It’s the kind of sweet, unassuming storm that doesn’t know the city’s about to crack it open like an egg. Don once explained why that happens. Something about air pressure, maybe? Raph doesn’t remember the details.
All the way out here, though, the prospect of lightning seems less like a chance and more like a promise. And since they’re currently standing around a bunch of ungrounded metal, Raph’s got a twenty-minute countdown going in his head until he plans on dragging his brother back to the lair. He swears it won’t take that long, sure, but Don swears a lot of things.
Still, he ain’t stupid, so he wouldn’t have asked to go diving if he thought the storm would pose a problem. A little bored, Raph idly stretches his arms and heads over to the pile, eyes trailing along the long gleaming line of a two-seated bicycle covered in scratches. At the end of it sits a moldy-looking cardboard box, half-curtained by a spray of snapped guitar strings dangling down from somewhere to the left of Don’s head. Raph gives it a hearty kick before leaning over to look, trying not to shudder as a family of cockroaches scuttles out from under it.
Don turns at the noise but doesn’t seem bothered, returning his attention to whatever it is he’s doing in there with the reciprocating saw. They continue in companionable silence, broken up by the occasional distant roll of thunder or by the next installment of their disjointed conversation.
(Raph tugs a Sonic issue from between two disintegrating dime novels, holding it up to the last dredges of sunlight for inspection. “Hey, this thing ain’t too damaged.”
“Yeah? We should bring it back for Mikey.”
He flips through it. The pages are a little careworn, sure, but the thing’s only missing two signatures, and there’s a weird ad-lib section in the middle where some little kid with blocky handwriting filled in all the noun spaces with dinosaur species. Raph feels a smile tugging at his face as he rolls the comic up and tucks it into his belt.)
(“Oh no, Leo does not need another one of those things,” Raph says.
Donny grins at the mud-caked tamagotchi in his hands. “I was thinking more along the lines of a gift for Master Splinter. Wasn’t he just saying yesterday that he missed when we were babies?”
“Somehow, I don’t think that’s the same, Don.”)
See, that’s the fun of garbage diving. Humans throw out all this stuff because their life of excess doesn’t teach how much it’s worth. They say these old parts are lousy, but Don can still use them to build electric stovetops, an air conditioning unit, and multiple fully-armored vehicles. These old towels have apparently hit the threshold of tolerable wine stains, but Raph knows all they need is some borax, washing soda, and a nice long soak. Mikey can see both the humor and the heartbreak in an abandoned wedding dress or a well-loved Mr. Potato Head, and it’s a poorly-kept secret that Leo will read just about anything he can get his hands on, no matter how trashy.
Did you know you can repair a split skateboard with a water bottle and a torch? How about making yarn out of trash bags and jewelry out of newspaper? Raph almost feels bad for all those people who're scared to use any scavenged pots and pans that look a little off-kilter. If only they had a Donatello of their own, reminding them that cast iron and lead have wildly different melting points, so they don’t gotta worry about leeching poison into their omelette or whatever.
Maybe it’s not fair that his family is left to pick off the leftovers of human society. He sure wishes Don could make everything he wants to make, and that Mikey could have all the recognition that, despite Raph’s teasing, everyone knows he truly deserves.
But at least it makes gifting easy. Raph loves that he can scope out a pile of abandoned garbage and find a memory of his brothers in every single item.
“Got it!” Don cries eventually, his hand emerging from the underside of the truck with a final rattle. He’s got something about the size of his forearm. Raph should’ve guessed—catalytic converter.
“Lucky ya saw that before someone else snagged it,” Raph says, easily jumping back to his feet. “We done out here? Storm’s comin’ in.”
“Yeah,” Don sighs, then flashes Raph with a warning smile. “But we’re coming back soon. I need to keep looking for a pressure transducer, and Stocktronic’s due for another scrap deposit soon.”
“And you really don’t mind using that sleazeball’s leftovers?” Raph asks, for probably the millionth time.
“Well, as much as we hate Stockman, rescuing his trashed parts is the only way for me to keep things like the Sewer Slider up and running.” He pauses. “Does it bother you?”
Raph huffs. His next words are honest: “Hey, long as it’s the same to you, I don’t give a rat’s ass where your tech comes from. Let’s just make tracks, yeah?”
“Ooh, watch the potty-mouth, Raph, Master Splinter might hear you talking about him behind his back.”
The dark clouds have fully swallowed the scrapyard by this point, so the two of them finally heed the slow spatter of raindrops and rise to their feet. They kick off in tandem from collapsed couches and clear overturned sink cabinets like hurdles, jogging through their little obstacle course like a well-oiled machine.
When Raph spots it, he only slows for a second.
A grassy-green sweater hangs from the open face of a standing fan, its ragged sleeve tangled in the blades. It’s big enough that Raph could wear it if he wanted to. He doesn’t, but… Without a second thought, he reaches out to cuff it as he passes. There’s a short struggle, the fan clinging to the sweater so hard that it ends up toppling over with a clatter, before the sleeve rips out and Raph escapes with most of the thing in his hand.
Don glances over with a note of confusion. “It’s summer, Raph.”
“Nah, bro. This,” he thumbs around the collar until he finds the tag, “is at least six balls of 70% wool yarn.”
“Ohh,” Don says, understanding. “Whatcha gonna make?”
Uh-huh, leave it to Don to ask the practical questions, but only when it’s convenient for him. How the shell is Raph supposed to know? He's barely had the thing in his hands for five seconds.
They’ve nearly reached the edge of civilization proper, so he keeps quiet. There's a slick metal staircase that climbs up the top of an abandoned building like ivy—the two of them sink into its shadow. Manhole’s out in the street, and the rain isn’t quite heavy enough to cover them. He keeps turning the question around in his mind as they carefully make their way back.
Raph doesn’t often knit with the intention of a final product. Don probably doesn’t quite get it. It’s less about the thing you make, more about the making of the thing.
It makes sense, he guesses. Most of his yarn is a few years old and looking a little weary for this world. Unfortunately, in knitting, good technique can’t always make up for poor quality. Raph would honestly be lucky to string together a dishcloth from his stash, and really, you can make a dishcloth from practically anything. He could go into Donny’s lab tonight and find fifty things to turn into a perfectly good dishcloth. Or a scraper, at least, for when Mikey’s too lazy to clean out the oatmeal from his bowl.
Even though there are probably thousands just like it, the thought makes the bundled-up sweater weigh heavy in his arms like a precious jewel. He wants to mess with it until it pills itself to pieces like the rest of his ratty collection.
“Dunno,” Raph answers finally, once they’ve slipped into the cool comfort of the sewers.
Really, it’s fine if the dregs of this old sweater never become anything. He’s got ninety-nine problems, but ten thousand stitches ain’t one.
He says as much over another loamy rumble of thunder, still audible from the upper tunnels. For a second, a hard line nestles into Donny’s brow like he’s trying to work through the bad math. He doesn’t really know why, but the sight of it makes Raph feel kinda lucky that he gets to call this dimwit his brother.
The guys are gonna kill him one day, he knows it. Sometimes he loves them so much, the weight of it all burns deep in his chest, like a firework bursting into long streaks of color.
ii.
“Oh, Raph,” April says offhandedly, “I got you something.”
She’s not even looking as she says it; she’s leaning around the counter to peer deeper into the lair, where Mikey and Splinter are chatting on the couch (leaving him, Don, and Leo to put away the food, of course). A plastic bag leaves her hands and hits the table with a thunk.
An involuntary “huh?” escapes his mouth. Busybody Don’s already on the case, leaning over to pinch aside the bag handles and take a peek.
“Aww, come look,” he needles, clumsily tucking a smile behind his hand.
“Uh, sure,” Raph says slowly. “But what’s the big deal? Not like it’s my birthday or whatever.”
April turns back to give him a strawberry-red smile. “Oh, it’s not a big deal at all. I just saw it at the store and just happened to remember that you liked it.”
He blinks, something unfamiliar settling in his chest.
Leo watches with well-hidden interest from where he’s crouched before the fridge, meticulously organizing various pizza toppings in the door as Don slides the bag into Raph’s reach. Part of it catches and drags under the object inside, pulling the material tight.
It’s cylindrical, ribbed around the top, a can-shaped thing. Sounds like it, too, judging from the noise it makes. Raph hasn’t even touched it yet when he realizes he can read the label through the wrinkled, semi-translucent plastic.
Lovin’ Spoonful, it says. Very cherry.
It hits his memory fast and strong. Grainy pears, grapes with the skin peeled off. Leo always lied about how the stringy pineapple hurt his mouth so that the rest of them would take it upon themselves to pluck the leftovers from his bowl. Raph can taste the cherry halves like they’re already in his mouth.
April’s right, it isn’t a big deal. It’s just a can of fruit cocktail. It couldn’t have cost more than, what, like… 50 cents?
He pulls it from the bag, feeling the weight shift, the syrup inside sloshing. The viscosity is just as recognizable as any logo, evoking that familiar saccharine-sweetness with the ferocity of a river bursting through a dam.
Leo puts something away with a heavy clunk that reverberates in Raph’s head, before speaking up with a gentle smile. “Oh, hey, we used to love that stuff when we were kids.”
“Yeah, but it was kind of rare for Pops to bring back that kind of thing,” Don adds.
April pushes a new container of oatmeal into the corner. “I guess that makes sense. What did you guys eat when you were kids? It must have been really hard to scavenge enough for all of you.”
Leo shrugs. “Normal stuff, I guess. Different combinations of canned vegetables, beans, and whatever else Master Splinter could find. We only had to go for cat food and worms and stuff when things got really bad. He always felt awful about it.”
A horrified look passes over April’s face.
“Don’t knock it ‘till you try it, April,” Donny says cheerfully. “We were just being practical.”
Her face melts into something a little more apologetic. "If you say so. Still not trying it, though."
"Dude, Donny's underplaying it," Mikey says. "You'd think being a giant sewer-dwelling turtle-man would lower a guy's tastes, but even in my state of pre-pizza awareness, I knew we were missing out. So you better not let up on these grocery runs, April, because I’m never going near a can of Fancy Feast again!”
Raph thinks maybe it’s the bright, easy way with which Mikey makes that joke that makes his stomach flip. Or maybe it's the way April slips a bag of whole-wheat bread into the fridge, even he knows she prefers to keep her own bread in the pantry. The fruit cocktail is still in his hand. The thin, sticky label clings to his fingers, like the paint’s rubbing off in his grip.
The words “I didn’t ask for any stupid fruit cocktail” are flowing from his mouth before he even notices the anger building. To his own ears, the protest sounds ungrateful and petulant—not to mention slow on the uptake, since his family has already moved on from the subject. Since it doesn’t matter.
Come on, he thinks to himself. It ain’t a big deal. Chill out! The rushing in his head swallows it up, like a monster straight from Mikey’s comics.
He tries again. “It’s fine, Apes, ya don’t need to do something like that.”
“Raph, it’s a gift,” April protests. He can almost sense her next words and the teasing lilt they carry: you do know how gifts work, right? Obviously he does, his brothers give each other gifts all the time.
“Don’t get on my shell about it,” he says defensively.
“Alright, sorry,” April says.
She sounds genuine, he guesses. She’s ceding less because she’s scared to press on and more because she probably doesn’t care that much.
Nobody cares that much. Because this is nothing new, just hothead Raphie losing his cool again.
Because it’s just one stupid can and it Ain't. A Big. Deal.
The quiet intake of Leo’s breath is sharp against the insistent blur of background noise (because Raph’s trained himself that way, to pull the shape of that needle from any haystack), but Raph is on the move before he has a chance to say anything. He escapes with a muttered apology, his eyes hooked on the line where the ground begins to curl up and around them like a stockinette.
iii.
Raph doesn’t like to feel left in the dark. Lucky he knows the life cycle of a ball of yarn like the back of his hand. Working out a few rows of purls is sometimes easier than remembering not to grind his teeth.
It’s easy to slide the needles in and out, clacking with each stitch in syllabic intervals. It’s good, he thinks, watching his fingers slowly will a shape through every stitch. He likes to knit while gently rocking his hammock, the curtains to his room drawn tight so there’s nobody around to look away. The flick of his wrists is familiar, not too different from flipping forms with his sai. Back and forth, like metrical poetry.
The best parts of any project are the beginning and end, though. The beginning is simple, satisfying, and lacking constraint. Raph knows twenty different flavors of the cast-on stitch and he likes them all equally. The end is simple, too, because Raph gets to decide exactly when it happens. He just takes out the needles and starts pulling, letting the yarn run a marathon across itself, a silent film on rewind.
“Frogging”, they call it. Because you take the yarn and “rip it, rip it, rip it”—if you don’t get it, try saying it out loud.
It’s kind of a stupid name, but in the privacy of his own mind, Raph has to admit he thinks it’s sorta cute, too.
iv.
He’s about two minutes deep into unraveling his 70% wool sweater around the back of Splinter’s lounge chair when Leo comes out of the dojo, finishing off the last contents of his water bottle. The sweaty sheen on his forehead dances as he passes under the dangling overhead lamp. Raph feels sort of like a deer caught in headlights, looming over the chair and tying it up in loops of green yarn like it's some kinda prisoner.
“Hey,” Leo says between gulps. His tone is amicable enough, Raph thinks, but sometimes his brother is uniquely difficult to parse.
“Yo,” he acknowledges, then turns back to the yarn.
He’s not sure if he’s hoping for the conversation to peter out after that. It doesn’t matter what he wants, though, because he can hear Leo softly padding over without needing to look.
He watches for a moment while Raph continues on, balling up a dismembered sleeve in his hands and winding it around the back of the chair. He’s already picked out the seams, leaving him with a few flat pieces that are currently lounging over the arm of the couch. The bad news is that the chair’s probably a little too big for this—an annoying burn creeps into his muscles as he reaches all the way around to wrap it again.
Leo frowns. “That looks inefficient.”
Nitpicking as usual.
“'S rude to tell a guy how to wind his own yarn,” he retorts.
Leo reaches out and takes each side of the half-formed skein in his hands, easing it off the chair. “Want some help?”
A faint childhood memory trickles over him, cold on the back of his neck. Leo always wanted to help with whatever Raph was doing, even though most of his hobbies were a one-person job. Well, Raph supposes that never really went away, it’s just…
Raph scoffs a little. “Come on, Fearless, ya don’t need to do that.”
“I’ve got nothing else to do,” Leo says.
He levels Raph with that annoying solid patience, his arms held out between them like tree boughs, weighing heavy with fruit but still straight and firm. Raph finds himself holding his breath, worrying the connective strand of yarn with his fingers. Testing out that patience, just for the fun of it.
“Yeah, just…” Raph starts. “Take off your elbow pads first, alright?”
Leo smiles and heeds the request, but not before tossing the flimsy skein over Raph’s head like a necklace to free up his hands.
“Do you know how annoying you are, or are you just like this on accident?”
“Who, me?” Leo asks, annoyingly.
“Who else?” He rolls his eyes. “Goofball.”
Wordlessly, they agree to shift over to the couch where they can both sit down. Leo takes back the loop and stretches it out between his arms. The TV screens in front of them take on a low, twinkling static for a few seconds before focusing back—a telltale sign of Donny tinkering with one of his high-voltage thingamabobs in the lab. Raph catches the corners of Leo’s mouth twitching up, like he’s noticed it too, but the sight is just as fleeting as the flicker of electricity that precedes it.
They sit in a comfortable silence like that as the yarn bridging Leo’s arms grows thicker and thicker with every new loop. He hardly even shifts, solid and unshakable even when Raph makes some unsubtle attempts to jostle him.
“Showoff,” he grumbles. And never let anyone claim that Leo isn't just as much of a petty shell-for-brains as the rest of 'em, because the jerk just loosens the tension for a few seconds in retaliation. It's a miracle things don't devolve into a slap fight from there. Lucky Raph's not incapable of being the bigger turtle sometimes. He's actually pretty okay at it. When it comes to Leo, anyway. Y'know, since the bar is so low.
They don’t actually speak for another few minutes. With Leo, this kind of thing is different. With Mike or Don, usually they like to fill the silence as much as they can, and Raph doesn't really mind that (as much as he might gripe at them in the moment). But Leo's good to be quiet with. Raph finds himself falling into the repetitive motion of winding the yarn over and under, over and under. He thinks Leo does too, judging from his downcast eyes and the way his breathing settles into a simple, easily-countable pattern. It’s kind of nice. The almost imperceptible thwup-thwup-thwup-thwup of stitches popping out of formation thrums softly against Raph’s fingers.
“Hey,” Leo says again, but in the specific tone of voice that he only uses in moments like this. Raph acknowledges him with a grunt before focusing back down on his hands again.
Leo purses his mouth before continuing. “Do you ever think about what we’d do if we could live topside?”
“What, like… if we were human?”
“No, just if people accepted us the way we are.”
Raph swallows the urge to say something dismissive.
“Yeah, sometimes. I don’t mind it too much down here, though.”
Raph finally hits the little buttonhole near the front collar (the button itself, by the looks of it, was already long gone by the time Raph snagged this sweater), so he pulls back for a moment to fiddle with the shorter strands. Leo examines him for a moment before his strict posture hesitantly sags, letting the yarn go slack between his arms. Without anything to hold them tense, the loops of yarn kink back up into evenly-spaced bumps.
“I don’t mind it either. I think about what Mikey and Don would do, sometimes,” Leo says haltingly, “but I don’t know about you.”
“Really?” Raph asks. He thinks it’s interesting that Leo says it like that. Normally, he’d just ask, but it seems like some kind of confession now. Leo only shrugs, curiosity plain on his face, so Raph pushes on.
“It's probably nothin' that’d surprise you. I guess it’d be cool to live outta some one-room, I dunno. Disappear between lines of traffic or whatever. That’s what New York’s good for, right?”
But that's not so different from what they do now, is it? Maybe some farm would suit him better, he thinks to himself, not daring to mention the idea aloud. Something simple and rewarding, where he can go and be relied upon, to take care of something that’s wholly his own while he loses himself under the heat of the sun. Maybe. That would be its own kind of loneliness, the kind that might drive Raph crazy.
“Yeah,” Leo smiles, but there’s the slightest note of something behind it—something Raph can’t identify. “That makes sense. I probably could have guessed something like that.”
“What about you?” Raph asks.
His smile grows more private. “I mean… I’ve always wondered what it would be like in a real library.”
Raph turns away with a barking laugh that doesn’t quite come of his own accord, but at least it distracts from the sudden squeeze in his chest. “Just the library? I thought we were talking about, like, big life stuff, bro.”
He doesn’t know why he thought that. Just his dumb head getting things mixed up again, he guesses.
“Well, I haven’t thought about it that deeply,” Leo says defensively. “I’d just want to stick with you guys.”
“Let me change my answer,” Raph demands.
“No one said you couldn’t.”
He rolls his eyes and finishes up with the buttonhole, reaching back to start winding up the rest of the sweater. “I’d go to the library, too. Easy.”
“What about your big dreams of blending into the New York crowd?” Leo asks with a small, lopsided smile.
“Hey, wandering around the city sounds fun and all, but at least there, the books probably ain’t falling apart at the spine like ours. It’d be nice to read some more recent releases, too. The kinda books that ya don't throw in the dumpster halfway through. I know, your favorite,” he grins. "Why d'ya even wanna go?"
Leo glares at him. “Well, April was telling me a little bit about it earlier. Y'know, what it's like? Apparently—so, you know how you have to go back and return the books after a few weeks?”
“Uh, yeah, I know how a library works, bro.”
Leo scrunches his face up, but continues to ignore Raph’s helpful commentary. “Well, apparently in order to turn it in, you have to slide the books into a little slot at the counter and it falls into a big pile of books in the back. And, uh, April says it’s very satisfying.”
Raph takes a second to bask in the sun of this fascinating information.
“Crazy,” he replies.
Leo makes another offended expression. “She can explain it better if you ask her.”
“Sure.”
The word sounds more snide than Raph intends it to be. As fun as it is to bully his bro, his lack of detail makes sense. Not like Leo has the privilege of speaking from experience or anything.
“Hey…” Raph says slowly. “So, what d’ya think happens if ya don’t turn something in on time?”
A long, thoughtful pause fills the room, but Raph rides it out with some semblance of patience.
“I guess they turn you in,” Leo says gravely.
"Pfft. No way it's that bad.”
"Guess that's just another question for April, then…"
"I'll slot it in with the rest of 'em."
With that, Raph finishes unraveling the front of the sweater, leaving only the back piece remaining. He slides the skein off Leo’s arms, who shifts in response, like water rippling around a surface touch. The yarn stubbornly clings to its tightly-crimped shape, unwilling to liberate itself from the memory of what it used to be.
Leo holds his arms back out with a small smile. It’s an unnecessary offering—Raph already has the last piece in his hands. He digs his fingers between stitches to pull out the end of the yarn.
He tries to be subtle about it as he enjoys the quiet scene, allowing himself to sit with his complicated brother in this rare harmony. But Raph knows Leo knows, from the way he relaxes his shoulders again, like he’s only pretending, in the way an adult might crouch down to speak to a small child. It’s kind of sweet, and it’s kind of condescending as shell—but Raph just laughs under his breath again. He thinks if he’s not careful, then this moment of peace will shatter in his hands like glass.
v.
Sometimes Raph looks around the lair and feels surprised by himself. He supposes he doesn’t finish quite as much knitting as he thought.
The lair is defined in sharp lines, like a pen sketch. In the darkness, it almost seems haunted by the lack of knit cozies wrapped around their mugs, clustered atop stacks of old magazines and stained coasters. There are no patchwork blankets draped over the back of the couch, no rugs or ottomans or table-runners, no handmade socks for when the cold nights start growing teeth. Raph’s an active knitter, but his home is filled with hard corners, and the bags of yarn under his punching bag are still overflowing.
He still remembers when they didn’t have any of this. “Home” was just as much of a fantasy concept to them as the books about dragons and treasure-hunting that Splinter used to read to them as kids. He remembers being eight years old and learning what the word migration means. He’d asked Donny if their family was like birds, always hopping from one place to the next once resources ran dry, but Donny told him they weren’t. Birds do it because of instinct, apparently, but moving around so much doesn't feel very instinctual to Raph, does it?
But every dump runs out of stuff to dive, eventually. The valuables inside don’t replenish themselves fast enough to sustain a hungry family of five. Sometimes tunnels would collapse, or vital manholes would grow too active, and so Splinter gathered them all up and they were on the move again.
Raph had been so sure that their endurance would make them special. He learned what it means to huddle under leaf decay, what it means to be born in mud, to be sculled from the city the way a deer knows to flee from smoke. These days, he and his brothers laugh with each other as they jump up to skim the top of sewer awnings with their fingers. When they touch back down, their feet smack against the algae-wet floor, toes digging into the water like children running over white polyester carpeting.
This is home. This is special. Something Raph needs to cling to and never let go.
He remembers the first thing he ever knitted. It was simple, a straight red strip, garter stitched. To make the eyeholes, he’d stolen away with a kunai from Splinter’s bag and taken its tip to the center threads. It cut through easily.
Looking back… hey, not like Raph can blame himself for not knowing what would happen. He was a little kid then, he believed in magic. He didn’t realize such a careful little cut could make the whole thing unwind.
Raph’s fifteen now and he really hopes he’s a little wiser for it. The passage of time has allowed him to walk through the memory without too much embarrassment—crazy how easy it is to hate yourself for the stupidest, most harmless little things. If he thinks about it hard enough, he can almost reach out to his younger self, still weeping over the tufts of red yarn that fall from his hands like feathers from a bird shot down mid-flight.
Well, almost.
vi.
They’re all piled around the couch in front of a game of Tony Hawk. The music is cranked all the way down, Mikey’s mix blasting cheerily instead from the boombox that they’ve dragged to the table, clustered between half-empty cups of water and pulp-free orange juice (courtesy of April). Leo’s hunched over the controller with rare intensity, Mikey practically clinging to his side, both of them forced to sit on the floor to accommodate the short controller cord. His character grinds along a series of rails, kickflipping from one to the next in a bid to rack up some quick points.
Behind them, on the couch, Raph and Don sit crosslegged in a nest of blankets and pillows, their knees pressed together and cradling a bowl of popcorn. Raph’s hands are occupied with impulsively deciding to find out how many increases he can fit into a single row.
“Leo, Leo, there’s the crate!” Mikey shouts, gesturing wildly with one arm and jostling Leo with the other.
“What? Where?” Leo asks frantically.
“There, it’s right there, on your one!”
“Wait, what?”
“No, okay, it’s more like your three now. Turn around, turn around—!”
“Okay, I’m—I’m just gonna leave it. You get it next time, Mikey, I think I can get enough points.”
“It ain’t happening, dude,” Mikey retorts, his voice drenched with unexpected pessimism.
Don laughs at their antics, bumping Raph’s knee with a private grin. “It’s your turn next, Raph.”
He says it quietly, something Raph finds himself feeling thankful for. His head is buzzing with the loud music and his brothers’ bickering.
“Eh, skip me,” he says. He flips his needles around and starts purling like a demon.
“Holy shell, Leo—!”
“Concentrating!”
Raph looks up to see Leo’s skater spiraling through the air, having rocketed off from a high ramp, pulling combinations that Raph’s never even seen before. His combo racks up quickly, and for a second, all four boys are enraptured by the screen. It could actually be enough to reach the score threshold they’ve been trying to beat for the past forty-five minutes. Leo grinds off a telephone wire and leaps onto a rooftop at breakneck speed, reminiscent of a move not terribly unlike their own adventures topside. He keeps the skateboard spinning, hoping to sneak in one more revolution.
It's an unfortunate miscalculation. With only four seconds left on the timer, his character faceplants into the corner of the building and skids a few feet forward. The skateboard flies off with a silent clatter, beckoned off into the sky by the less-than-stellar video game physics.
There's a beat of silence before everyone bursts into laughter. Donny lurches forward, grabbing onto the popcorn so it doesn't spill everywhere, while Raph and Mike both give Leo some good-natured nudges. Leo sighs, putting down the controller and letting the measly final seconds wear themselves out in his own personal, mournful silence.
“I told you, dude,” Mikey says.
“No, he totally almost had it,” Don argues.
Mikey whirls back to grab a fistful of popcorn. “I know everyone loves me for my fearless optimism, but even I don’t believe in the impossible.”
“Whatever,” Leo huffs, doing a poor job of hiding the smile on his face. “Wanna go, Raph?”
Raph laughs and holds up his hands helplessly. “Nah, I’m a little tied up here. Donny wants to go next, anyway.”
“I never said that,” Don says, raising an eyebrow.
Leo squints at him. “But Raph’s right, isn’t he?”
Don gives him a half-amused, half-withering kind of look.
Mikey makes a capital N Noise and snatches the controller from Leo, getting up on his knees to shove it in Raph’s face. “You have to play, Raph! Come on come on come on, you’re hogging the couch anyway! My butt’s getting sore down here, you know. Just play it, play it, play it—!”
“Cut it out!” Raph grunts, shoving him off with his foot. A couple stitches slip off the end of his needle with the movement while Don snickers into his palm again at the overblown drama.
“Raphie,” Mikey whines.
“Mikey,” Raph replies testily.
“Alright, just give it to me, Mike,” Don says amicably. Raph sees a shimmer of mischief in his eyes, though. Mikey doesn’t notice it, too busy celebrating his supposedly imminent relief from the hard stone floor of the lair.
“I don’t suppose I’m switching places with Raph anytime soon,” Leo says, relaxing against the front of the couch until Raph can feel his mask tails brushing against his legs.
“’Fraid not,” Don says, his smile turning into a smirk. “In fact, both of you guys are gonna be stuck down there a little longer.”
Before Mikey can protest, Don dives forward, stealing the controller for himself. Half his weight goes on Raph’s thigh as he crash lands on Leo and Mikey’s (admittedly trustworthy) shoulders, hooking his feet up against the back of the couch like a giggly schoolgirl. His plastron digs hard into Raph’s leg, and it’s not exactly comfortable, but he at least doesn’t mind the physical pressure.
“Donatello,” Mikey protests. “Watch the popcorn!”
The bowl eventually gets passed down to Leo, who seems overtaken with a strange sense of zen now that the responsibility for both the safety of their snacks and the weight of his brother has been thrust into his arms. Donny starts a new round, repeating the locations of all the crates out loud to himself so he doesn't forget.
If Mikey and Leo have any other complaints to share with the group, their voices fly right over Raph’s head. He zeroes in on his knitting without even realizing he’s doing it, playing out the simple arithmetic in his head.
Knit, knit, knit, knit, purl, knit, purl, knit, knit. The clicking of needles is lost under the chatter and the music, but Raph can still feel the gentle pop of each stitch, filling his fingertips with static, texture, and color. Don’s weight on his leg, Leo’s mask tails tickling his knee, Mikey jostling Don and, in turn, jostling Raph.
His chest tightens, memories flashing through his head of a time when they didn’t have any of this. Back before the days of gaming before dinner, of Mikey’s drumming keeping everyone up at night, of the smell of vegetables stir-frying in the kitchen and the sound of water bubbling up in the rice cooker.
The sounds blend together. All of it would be too much to lose, now, if anything went wrong, like what happened with the first real lair they'd ever had. Even so, shouldn’t he be glad to feel so at home, instead of catastrophizing over things that aren’t even guaranteed to happen?
Slip, knit, purl, knit, purl, yarnover, purl, purl, purl, purl.
“—And Raph’s coming with me, riiight?”
Raph blinks, then grunts in vague assent before he even realizes that he’s agreeing to something.
Donny makes a noise of protest as Mikey slips out from under him. Leo swoops in to rescue him from faceplanting, since his hands are still busy punching combos into the controller. Raph feels him roll off his leg, finally, just as Mikey tugs insistently at his arm.
“Mikey—” Raph says, blinking, somehow already halfway to the kitchen. His needles are still in his hand, but the ball of yarn he’s working from is still on the couch, leaving them tethered by a long line of green that snakes across the floor like one of the cables in Don’s lab.
“Ohh, okay, I’ll get it,” Mikey says, the words drawn out as he follows the yarn down with his eyes. Raph feels a smile tug faintly at his face. Mike always manages to pick out a few vowels in need of extra company.
Mikey ditches him for a brief moment to grab the ball of yarn, leaving Raph to wait aimlessly for him in the expanse of yet-unfilled space between the TV room and the kitchen. It conjures a memory of when they were kids, Master Splinter telling them all to wait behind an intersection wall while he scouted ahead. He can hear soft protests as Don props his elbows up on Leo's shoulders.
Mike’s back in a flash, though, the yarn lifting up like a tightrope rising as he wraps it back around the ball. His hand is on Raph’s shell again, pushing him down into the kitchen.
“Alright, what’re ya up to, Mike?” Raph sighs.
“Dude, I knew you weren’t listening,” Mikey says.
The comforting smell of white rice fills the air. Raph can tell that Master Splinter added a little bit of butter, too, before setting the cooker on. He can still hear music playing, but it’s far away, as if underwater.
“Michelangelo, Raphael,” Splinter greets from the stovetop. “Dinner is not quite ready.”
Mikey jumps up to sit on the counter and starts swinging his legs. He’s like a spoiled cat at this point—Splinter doesn’t even reprimand him, only casting a long, imploring look in his direction.
“We know, Sensei,” Mikey says. “I was just itching for some peace and quiet. Hard to get around here, huh?”
“Rest assured, I am quite aware,” Splinter replies, a teasing lilt to his voice. Something passes over his face, though, and he glances at Raph with a knowing stare.
Raph is starting to get the impression he knows what’s going on here. He tucks his head down, his cheeks starting to burn.
Splinter sighs, followed up by the sound of veggies sizzling as he presumably turns back to the pan. “I suppose even the most rambunctious of us can find solace in the quiet. Would you two mind pulling out the bowls?”
Raph shifts, but remembers the needles and yarn are still in his hands. Mikey’s already hopped down to the cabinet, so he stands there, shell leaning against the wall, passing his thumb over the stitches like a guitarist strumming out chords. The bowls hit the countertop with five sequential clicks, lined up like soldiers before the rice machine, waiting their turn.
They’re a little chipped at the edges, still inexplicably sticky on the bottom where the price sticker adhesive hadn’t quite rubbed off. The overhead light sways, reflecting on the ceramic surfaces like the sun gently sifting through lake water. The counter is plentiful and lived-in. Raph watches over the old glass bowl of apples, onions, bell peppers, nestled between stray spice containers, dirty dishes, and various figurines from the junkyard that Mikey’d taken a liking to.
The cabinets, too, are a cornucopia. Splinter’s cast iron teapot, Leo’s yunomi, the ridiculous tankard that Donny uses as a coffee mug, Mikey’s novelty plates. The remains of a tea set that had once belonged to Hamato Yoshi, now reduced to just a few matching teacups and the time-textured Yixing gaiwan that Leo once privately accused of being “overly sensitive”.
He looks back up at the lights, smeared and spiked at the edges, turning his view of the lair into a creased old photograph, folded here and unfolded there, careworn. This ain’t so bad—standing here in a well-loved home, an unfinished knit dangling from his fingertips.
In the other room, the Less Than Jake song flicks off. His family comes to kneel at the low table for dinner.
vii.
When they first moved into the lair, Donny set up timed lamps in each of their rooms. They fade on slowly, synced up with the sun, the technology complex enough to bear in mind the weather and the time of year. Raph rolls around in his hammock for what feels like the millionth time, his blankets and pillows all having fallen onto the floor at some point during the night. He registers the slow creep of light over his makeshift canopy. Groans and sits up.
Leo’s probably awake already, not that he’d let anyone in the house know it from his impossibly light footsteps. Master Splinter’s usually out by now too, and Mikey… probably in an hour. Donny’s a wildcard, so he’ll come out whenever it suits him.
They used to get up at the same time, back when they all slept together in a pile. Raph finds himself thankful for the privacy (even if he only has a ratty curtain for a doorway).
Mornings ain’t so bad. They’d be nicer if he could have them all to himself. But luckily, he's always known that Leo’s not as much of a morning turtle as he’d like to convince everyone; he’s moodily quiet until Mikey’s already started coffee, so Raph could, theoretically, just pretend he’s not there.
He’s just hungry. And dog tired. And bored.
The artificial sun taunts him from the edge of his hammock, so he clambers out, arms smarting with soreness. Yeah, that would be the unfortunate consequence of his 3 AM excursion to the dojo. Didn’t stretch enough or whatever.
On the way out, he notices something duct-taped to the sticker-stained entrance of his room, small and boxy. Two slats of tape in an X-marks-the-spot shape. It could almost be innocuous in the darkness, if not for the lamplight reflecting off its shiny surface in thin, wobbly lines.
This is a classic Mikey Prank maneuver, or maybe a Donny Gift if he’s lucky. Even the rare Leo Mystery can’t be ruled out, considering that Raph was awake most of the night and would have heard Mikey or Donny sneaking around. He approaches with caution, half expecting a confetti explosion to celebrate the arrival of another wonderful morning.
It rips off easily. There’s black fuzz on the adhesive, as if someone had patted it out on some fabric before sticking it up, probably so it wouldn’t damage whatever this is.
Looks like… a pedometer?
Raph sighs and plants his shell against the wall, holding the thing out so it catches the light. It’s got all the hallmarks of Donny’s techno-finicking: crispier digital display, old rusty screws replaced with shiny new ones, grime carefully cleaned out of seams in the plastic. Raph takes a few steps with it in his hands, eyes on the screen. No dice.
So, broken pedometer, then. How sweet.
He fiddles with it some more, finding that the buttons can add to or subtract from the step count. Another button resets it, and he can also pull up a menu of different counters to swap between.
It takes Raph another few moments to work out what it is, slowed by the multiple obfuscating layers of sleep deprivation and general annoyance that have been cobwebbing up in his head over the past few hours.
His breath catches at the realization. He presses his lips together and squeezes his eyes closed in an attempt to keep his ridiculous oversensitivity in check.
That’s… shell, that’s really nice.
It’s one of the ones you’re supposed to wear like a bracelet, but Donny replaced the straps with a thin metal clamp. Raph puts on his wrist wrappings and hooks it onto the leather, making sure it’s tight enough to stay on—but of course it’s perfect. Donny would have tested it himself multiple times over before passing it on as a gift.
(Well, maybe that’s being a little generous, but he… probably tried it out at least once.)
Raph keeps it on as he heads out into the lair, climbing down the ladder and heading for the kitchen. He works through the central area in near darkness with nothing but his instincts to lead the way. An early morning newscast flickers brightly on one of the TV screens in the corner. A quiet melody of cups clanking and coffee percolating pierces the morning silence.
Leo’s not the only one in their little dining room. Mikey and Don are both up, all three of them partaking in a sweet, uncomplicated silence.
Mikey, of course, is the one to break it. “Well, good morning, sleepyhead,” he says with a critical look. As if Raph’s the weird one for only showing up at six-thirty in the morning.
Raph rolls his eyes and graciously ignores him, instead reaching over to wave his wrist in Don’s general direction.
“Was this you, bro?” he asks.
Donny turns around eagerly in his seat, his coffee nearly sloshing onto his lap with the movement. “You betcha. It’s a stitch counter!”
Raph chuckles, his eyes meeting the floor. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“I was watching you work the other night and I saw you just kept making it wider, so, uh, I figured it might be nice to have an easy way to keep track of stuff. I’m not very familiar with knitting so I did a little research last night on what features would be useful…”
Sometime after he takes a breath—but before he actually starts speaking—Raph realizes he probably shouldn’t mention that all those increase stitches Donny saw him doing were completely intentional. “You didn’t hafta, Don.”
“Nah, it was nice to take a step back from my other stuff to work on something small.”
The easy smile on Don’s face does a little something to brush away some of the heaviness in Raph’s eyes. He goes to settle on the zabuton next to Don’s place, slapping a hand on his shell. “I don’t care if it took ya two days or ten minutes, Don. It’s a nice gadget. Thanks.”
“You know, I could see myself getting into knitting, too,” Donny continues, shining brighter than the morning sun itself. “After all, modern computing technology owes its whole existence to fiber arts like weaving and knitting.”
“No, bad Don!” Mikey butts in. “Knitting is Raph’s thing. If you take it away from him, he won’t have anything left to distinguish himself from the rest of us. Aside from that ugly mug of his, anyway.”
Raph flashes a vicious grin. “Mikey, you are definitely one to talk. Being annoying ain’t a personality trait.”
They all pause, instinctively leaving space for Leo to interject with some warning for them to stop fighting, but nothing comes. Leo just stares down at one spot on the counter, robotically sipping his tea.
(See? Not a morning person. Raph would stake his life on it.)
Mikey recovers quickly from the silence. “Nuh-uh! I present my bright, lovable, and vibrant personality as evidence to the court. I’m actually the unique-est one here.”
“Sorry bro, the jury just called in and they think you’d be a shell of a turtle without your comics.”
“I wanna hear it from the jury’s mouth!”
“It’s okay, Mikey, I think you’re very unique,” Don says in a way that sounds not at all complimentary.
“Gee, well thanks for the rousing support,” Mikey huffs.
A thunk interrupts Don’s next quip. Leo’s forehead is on the table now.
“Yep, very rousing,” Raph says.
“Duuude,” Mikey drawls, reaching over to shake Leo’s shoulder. “How long’s it been since you went to sleep?”
It’s at least a five-second ordeal for Leo to sit back up again, blink slowly, and reply succinctly, “I dunno.”
Donny makes a concerned noise over a long sip of coffee. “We were hanging out for kind of a long time last night, but he said he’d go to his room after sticking the stitch counter up for Raph, so I thought…”
Leo frowns. “I did go to my room, I just had some trouble getting to sleep. Didn’t you say once that lying down with your eyes closed is still restful?”
“I believe I said that lying down with your eyes closed isn’t completely useless. But you still need actual sleep.”
“I just need to meditate.”
“Leo, I will drag your shell back to bed,” Raph threatens.
Mikey crosses his arms. “No, no, that’s a great idea!”
“Mikey, come on,” Don sighs.
“What? You think I’m joking? I’ll have you know, I take my pre-breakfast meditation sessions very seriously. I hope you can block out the next six hours of your schedules, dudes.”
“See, Mikey wants to meditate too,” Leo says before disappearing behind his teacup again, the sheer absurdity of those words apparently lost on him.
Raph raises an eyebrow. He gets that Leo likes sticking to his schedule, and hey, sometimes you can’t help not being able to sleep at night, but the guy already looks like he’s halfway into another plane of existence. He wouldn’t last five minutes trying to get anything done, much less an activity that involves sitting in complete unmoving silence with your eyes shut.
…Oh.
“Yeah. Yeah, you know what, I wanna meditate, too,” Raph says, causing Mikey to visibly brighten and Leo to sag in quiet, if not a little confused, relief.
Donny, meanwhile, looks between them like they’re all insane. “I don’t suppose you’d let me declare a hung jury?”
“No can do,” Mikey says. “I didn’t like that gag, anyway.”
He finishes off his coffee with one long swig and cedes, “I guess I can’t stop all of you.”
“Glad we’ve reached a consensus,” Raph says, slapping his brother on the back before standing up to drag Leo into something resembling a standing position. “Come on, bro.”
“We’re… heading towards the living room,” Leo says astutely.
Mikey’s quick to chime in. “Yeah, there’s, uh, a pipe in the dojo that’s making weird noises. Can’t focus on sharpening your mind with all that racket. Right?”
“…Sure.”
Having hopefully convinced Leo that they’re all totally very interested in a good old meditation sesh at the asscrack of dawn, the four brothers head into the living room. Seeing that things are taken care of, Raph hangs back, drifting towards his room almost without realizing it.
His eyes are well-trained to parse through the low light of the sewers, so the green yarn lying discarded under his hammock isn’t hard to spot. Two corded metal needles glint invitingly.
The stitch counter at his wrist seems to peer up at him. Something sits heavy in Raph’s chest, warm and faded around the edges. It feels almost mournful on a first pass, but there’s also something inexplicably welcoming about it, reminiscent of old memories. He can almost see younger versions of himself and his brothers running along the brick overhang. It smells like metal, feels like old yarn that thins and snaps when you stretch it, and tastes like syrup on the roof of his tongue.
Oh, great. He’s so tired now, he’s starting to get sappy.
When Raph emerges for the second time this morning, he greets his family with his supplies in hand. He sees Leo perched cross-legged on the couch, stiffer than a ruler. Mikey sits right next to him with his ankles crossed on the table, and Donny’s settled halfway up the stepladder he dragged into the room a few days ago for repairs, a particular squint to his eyes that makes Raph think he’s planning on bailing to the lab the first chance he gets.
Raph joins them, letting Mikey peer over his shoulder.
“Y’know, if you wrap that thing around in a circle, it looks like the bottom of a hat,” he suggests.
“I’m not makin’ ya a hat, Mikey.”
“Aww.”
“Guys, focus,” Leo chastises. They fall into placating silence.
Two minutes later, Leo’s head finally droops. He slowly drifts off to the side, eventually sinking against the edge of Mikey's shell. Raph catches Mikey snickering quietly behind his hands before diving for his belt to pull out his GameDude.
He sighs, working the knit around in his hands. Mikey isn’t wrong about it looking like the beginnings of a hat, but still, it’s summer. Not really any need for that kinda thing (even ignoring the fact that they’re a bunch of sewer-dwelling mutant turtles that don’t wear clothes in the first place).
Still, though, the green color makes him think something like that could look pretty nice on April. No doubt it’d bring out her eyes.
The soft thrum of electricity in the air gains new layers of peaceful noise. The choppy chiptune from Mikey’s game, the rhythmic creak from the ladder as Donny restlessly swings his legs, and the familiar click of metal needles sliding in and out of each stitch.
He’s hungry, feeling generally annoyed at the world, and probably in need of a nap, himself, but he doesn’t mind sitting here a little longer. Just until he finishes the next row.
One more row turns into the next, then another, then another. Raph’s eyes slip closed as his brothers drag the night into the morning.