TMNT x Reader - In a Turtle World

An Impromptu Investigation

The days after your and Raphael's fight progressed as usual, except with considerably more tension hanging over the space between the two of you. Everyone pretended that nothing had happened at all, and Raph seemed to pretend that you didn't exist: avoiding your gaze and distancing himself from you as much as possible. You saw so little of Raphael those next couple days you could swear that he was just a fleeting shadow.

At first you felt reassured, Raph was no longer smirking proudly when you tripped attempting a roundhouse kick or making snide comments when you sat alone talking with Leonardo. Clearly Raph had realized that you weren't just going to be pushed around. You weren't that insecure, clumsy kid toddling after them, getting in their way, he had accused you of being.

You had won.

But soon that feeling of pride started to wear off, and Raph leaving you alone quickly felt like Raph ignoring you just to be petty. Which, combined with him having eavesdropped on you and Leo when you were basically a gross pile of anxiety and tears, made you even more pissed with him than before.

It didn't help that you were still on the edge with Donatello, which either didn't faze him at all, or he was blissfully unaware. You assumed the former. He could notice by looking at one of his finished inventions if Mikey had tampered with the wiring; how unobservant could he possibly be?

-

You were sat crouched on the roof of your apartment, waiting until Donnie gave the all clear for you to slide in through the window. The sun dipped below the dark buildings of downtown New York, setting the sky ablaze with a deep red that clashed against the now appearing dark blue of night.

You saw a green hand wave from below, your cue. Begrudgingly, you dragged your feet down the rusting stairwell and through the window.

Donnie edged towards the door, his eyes shifting between the two exits of your bedroom. "How long until your parents come home?"

You shook the dust off your jacket, "They're not."

"Oh."

"Business trip for the shop?"

"Yeah. Hold on, when did I – oh, Mom's emails..." you trailed off, running your hands along the well-worn wood of your dresser. The sunlight still filtered in through the window, though dimmer with the impending winter. The blood red horizon that had seemed so harsh on the roof was seeping into your room a warm pink.

"When do they come back?"

"Wednesday, maybe Friday."

"That's," Don paused, his mouth parted as he tapped his finger on the wall, "cool."

"Oh, you have no idea."

The anger welled back up in your throat like acid. First that whole situation with (C/N) and your ex. You still couldn't think about them without wanting to both sink to the ground in embarrassment and straggle their pathetic necks. Then you were harassed by Kraang bots and had to abandon surface life to live in the sewers. After that, Raph being an insufferable asshole, and making you feel even more that you didn't belong anywhere. Next your parents, taking off for Japan (courtesy of some investor you'd never heard of), barely bothering to tell you that they were leaving or notice that you hadn't been home in over two weeks. Since when had they been the kind of people to tell you (inform rather, there had been nothing familiar in what your mom had wrote) they were leaving the country for a week, via text message? And now Donnie, who seemingly couldn't be bothered to care outside of giving you one word replies to anything you said.

How fantastic high school had turned out to be.

"When you asked me if I wanted to go out, was this honestly all you were thinking about? A quick trip to my apartment to grab English notes?" You snatched a desk drawer handle open and thrust the binder into Donnie's arms.

 "Well, I need to know what you've covered already before I start tutoring you.", the turtle looked you directly in the eyes with a thin smile, "Were you thinking of something else?"

"Well, yeah." You huffed, diverting your gaze out the doorway, "I assumed you were taking me somewhere quiet; so, you could apologize."

"What did I-"

"Shut up, Donatello. I'm still mad at you."

Donnie pulled back from you, "For what?" he called after you as you brushed past him down the hallway towards your kitchen. "I can't fix anything if you don't tell me what I did!"

You padded lightly down the dark floors, being careful to step around cardboard boxes. Gripping the end of the wall tightly, you peered into the grey lit kitchen. Papers stuck out from between stacks of dusty blue dishes and pens were scattered along side silverware on the floor. It looked a Staples had exploded. Picking through some of the rubble, you overturned a couple of stacks of paper and let the leaves fan out across the floor.

Feeling a shadowing looming behind you turned and dropped into a fighting stance, legs spread apart, and hands raised.

"You sure you want to fight this out?"

You let your hands fall to your side stiffly as blood rose to your cheeks, "No. Just," you let out a grumble and snatched your binder out of Don's hands, "Help me find my English notebook."

Pointedly turning away from Donnie, you nodded towards the table covered in overflowing papers, "You look through those. I'm checking the boxes."

Don danced around several paper stacks on the floor before reaching the giant heap on the table. "So," he began, shifting through various unnamed documents, "Your parents must really hate trees."

Lights flickered in and out of the dark apartment as cars roared past on the road out front, illuminating the various spots of the room at random. Dropping a box to the ground, you flipped off the lid and sent it sprawling towards the couch. "They've been busy."

"Oh?" Donnie replied, you could hear the pieces of paper flicking together as he sorted through a pile. "Starting their own recycling plant in your kitchen is certainly an undertaking."

You didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply and kicked the box you had been going through once you reached the bottom.

After a few minutes of silence, the turtle spoke again, "I hope you realize your notebook isn't going to be in any of your parents' business papers."

Elbows deep in your third cardboard box, you let out a huff, "Took you long enough, genius. My notebook's in my binder." You returned to lifting papers and reading their titles. Small Business Support Funding, New York City Bylaws – Property Expansion, Gas Pipeline and Water-main Inspection...

"You're trying to find out about these investments, aren't you?" You were surprised with the quietly curious and wonder-struck tone Donatello spoke in, and you slowly rose out from the box, inhaling the smell of freshly printed paper.

"Yeah."

Donnie looked down at the papers on the table and ran his hand over the seemingly jumbled stacks and selected several documents. "I think I might have found something."

* I thought that I would put this at the end, because I didn't want to preface this by spilling my mental health issues at the top of a tmnt fan fic. This story, or really of my stories don't get updated a lot and I can't promise that they will get updated often. I've got a lot of stuff going on right now and I haven't been handling the stress very well, so writing fan fics gets shuffled to the bottom of my priorities. Just thought that I'd give an explanation to anyone who's still following this book as to why updates have been/will continue to be sporadic. *