Together As Mutants (Book Six)

Chapter 52: Swimsuits Aren't the Only Thing That's Revealing

"Leo?"

Leonardo looks up as Destiny wades closer to him, eyes darting towards the beach. She's sticking close to him—her hearing aids aren't water resistant and, with how hard Donatello and Sarina have worked on them, she opted to keep them off for the day. Even though she's human-appearing, he can clearly picture her wolf ears flattening against her head. Her mannerisms are engrained in his head.

"Yeah?" he asks.

"Bianca keeps staring at us."

Leonardo looks towards the beach. Bianca is doing a terrible job of acting aloof. She's holding her magazine up but her eyes are clearly elsewhere. She's been on the same page for the past five minutes.

"Or...maybe me," Destiny adds, wrapping her arms around herself.

Leonardo frowns a little and looks back at her. She's wearing a simple black bikini with a tie in the front and high-waisted bottoms. Even with the high waist, the dark scars crossing part of her stomach are visible, and her hand covers it the second she catches his gaze moving there.

"She doesn't matter," he says. It's hard to find a balance between speaking loud enough for her to hear and soft enough that it doesn't introduce everyone else to their conversation. "You look beautiful, as always."

Destiny doesn't look convinced. Leonardo spares another look at Bianca before focusing fully on his girlfriend, grasping her hips and dragging her closer to him. She meets his eyes, lips pursed, still clearly nervous.

"And even if she's staring, let her," he murmurs, letting his hands drift from her hips to the small of her back as he comes even closer. "I've got an idea to distract you."

She narrows her eyes a little. "What?"

He grabs her tight and jumps, plunging them both into the water. They burst back to the surface after a second, Leonardo already laughing as Destiny splutters, gasping as she gawks at him.

"Rude!" she exclaims.

"Payback!" he retorts.

"For what?!"

"That time back when we first met and you threw me in the lair's pool!"

Her mouth falls open even as she starts to laugh. "You threw me in, jerk!"

His eyes widen and he thinks over the memory. She took a picture of him with her new t-phone, he chased her, he...he threw her in the pool.

"Oh. Whoops...?" he says. A wicked grin spreads across her face. "Wait! Wait, wait—"

Before he can defend himself, she lunges, tackling him back into the water with a shout, and they both go under with a splash and a spray of bubbles.

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While Leonardo and Destiny keep splash-fighting and play-wrestling in the water like a pair of wolf cubs, Donatello stands on the shore with Sarina at his side. She keeps twitching whenever the water splashes, whenever the pair resurfaces just to tackle each other back into the surf.

"A sting-ray pool was one thing," Sarina says. "This is another." She eyes the sky, bright and sunny, then the water. "Actually, I believe I need to apply more sunscreen—"

"No. No, no, no," Donatello says, tugging her back even as she tries to walk away. "You've applied more than enough sunscreen."

"I'm very fair-skinned, Donatello!" she insists. "The sun is not to be trifled with!"

Even on top of the generous sun protection, she's wearing a grey wetsuit with purple and blue striping—it covers her throat, her entire torso, arms down to the elbows and legs down to the knees. Not only that, she's wearing a baseball cap over her short white hair. It's the most athletic he's ever seen her look and, honestly, it's cute.