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Perseverance	By : EvaBrick Category: Comics > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 9920 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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“I’m goin’ fer a hike - anyone else comin’?” Raph asked, the next morning at breakfast, striding into the kitchen with a water flask in his hand. He went to the sink to fill it up.

“Can’t, bro,” Don said. “The windmill’s wobbling pretty badly. The next big gust might break it and then we’d have no power.” He passed Charlie a cup of coffee and stroked his big green finger over her slim ones as she took it from him with a smile. He still hadn’t figured out the right way to tell her how much she meant to him. He looked back to his brother, “I wish I could though, dude.”

Don had thought about sneaking to her window last night with a big bouquet of wildflowers, tapping gently on the glass to get her attention, and declaring his love on the roof in the moonlight, but Charlie had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder while they were all watching The Simpsons. He didn’t have the heart to wake her and he’d carried her up to her bed, and slipped in under the blankets with her. The cool sheets were soft and they smelled so fresh that it had only been a few moments before he’d fallen asleep too.

He grumbled at himself as he tuned back into the conversation. He wanted to do something that would impress her and thrill her... he wanted her to feel as special as he knew she was.

“And I’ve been recruited to help, so I guess I’m going to have to decline too,” Leo added, visibly disappointed. “Maybe you and I can go tomorrow?”

“Sure, Leo. That’d be cool.” Raphael said, hanging the flask at his side like a cowboy. He grinned wickedly at the blue turtle. They often climbed up to the top of the small mountain together to spar. It had been about three years since they’d made peace with each other, but there was still something fun about going out into the wild and pounding away at each other like cavemen. It was primal and forbidden... it was what kept them bonded.

Splinter had sent them up there together once when they wouldn’t stop bickering, and they’d wound up kicking the shit out of each other until they were both too tired to lift their weapons. They’d sat on a huge rock, glaring at each other, chests heaving, and sweat pouring off them while they insulted and swore at each other. Finally, they ran out of nasty things to say and Leo had sighed and asked, “Why do you hate me so fucking much? Stuff used to be cool with us and now we just fight all the time. What happened to us, bro?”

“I dunno, Leo,” Raph said, sadly. “I just feel like ya don’t even try ta understand me. Ya just disapprove automatically of everything I do, like you’re my fucking mother or something. You’re always fucking grilling me, man. It’s like ya don’t trust me.”

“Well maybe if you talked to me more, then I wouldn’t have to worry about you so much, Raph.”

“That’s just it! Splinter should worry. Not you. It’s not yer job. I’m a big boy, Leo. I’m not gonna do anything stupid... I just like ta be alone a lot.”

“Why?” Leo asked.

“I dunno... fer the same reason that Master Splinter likes ta be alone, maybe. I like being with people, but ya need ta learn not ta bug me when I wanna be alone. When Mike or Don wants ta be by themselves, then something’s wrong, but when I wanna be alone, everything’s fine. I’m not you and I’m not them.”

“So how am I supposed to know if something really is wrong?” Leo said, sitting a bit closer to his younger brother.

“I’ll tell ya.”

“Will you really?”

“Straight up, yeah.” Raphael promised, and when Leo looked at him, he could tell that the red turtle wasn’t lying. “Look,” Raph added with a sigh. “If you’re gonna be our fearless leader, ya gotta stop judging people as hard as ya judge yerself. I ain’t you, man. I’m mostly pretty happy with who I am, and I’m mostly happy with who you are, but we ain’t clones, okay?”

Leo thought about it for a minute. “Okay. But you have to cut me a little slack, too. Dilute your attitude. If you’re going out, let me know. You don’t have to say where you’re going or what your plans are, but just tell me that you won’t be around for a while. If you’re going to be out later than one o‘clock, text me so I know you’re ok. It’s cool if you wake me up... I’d rather get woken up in the middle of the night to find out that you’re okay, than to wake up in the morning and find out that you didn’t come home.” Leo sighed heavily before continuing. “And try to just openly disagree with me fifty percent of the time, okay? And for fuck’s sake stop calling me “the fearless leader,” please. It drives me nuts!”

“Okay,” Raph said after a pause. He was quiet for a long moment as they sat together. “Y’know, things ain’t just gonna change overnight between us.”

“Yeah, I know... but we gotta try,” Leo said, lying down in the sun. The turtle part of him loved the heat.

Raphael lay back too and they looked at the clouds for a while. “Ya know I still love ya even when we fight, right?” he said.

Leo chuckled, “No one’s said that they loved me since we were little.”

“Yeah, it’s kinda gay,” Raph snorted before adding, “No one’s told me that in years, either.” They were quiet for a minute.

“I love you, bro,” Leo said.

“Yeah, I know, man... I know.”

Mikey refilled his plate from the platter of sausages and scrambled eggs that he’d cooked. Charlie passed him a second platter, which was covered in Don’s pancakes so he could spear himself a few fresh ones with his fork. She still couldn’t get over how much food the boys could pack away. She leaned back into the big wooden chair and held Don’s hand under the table. He smiled at her and pulled her hand toward him a little as he shoveled in his breakfast with his free arm. She still wasn’t used to seeing the guys in broad daylight, and part of her felt sad that they lived like prisoners of the shadows.

“I’m not coming either,” Mikey munched through his egg. “I’m spending the entire day in the pond on my floating chair.”

“All day?” Raph said. “It’ll be cold until this afternoon. Come with me and then we’ll go fer a swim when we get back.”

“No way, man,” Mikey said sloppily. “When I was trapped in the lair with my bad arm, I dreamed of that pond. It kept me from going nuts. Today it’s gonna be just me and the pond... all day... just me and the pond.”

Charlie rolled her eyes and slapped Mike’s hand away from her last sausage. “I’d love to go with you, Raphael,” she said. “If you want me to come, that is.”

“Uh, sure,” he said, surprised. he hadn’t thought that the bookworm would be interested.

“It’s a nice trail,” Donatello said, pleased that she’d have something to do. He’d been a bit worried that she might be bored while he was busy with Leo. “There’s a well-worn path for the first half, but the second part gets pretty rough. It might be a bit much if you’re not used to it.”

“Don’t you know some kind of ninja massage technique?” Charlie asked, flirtily, resting her head on his shoulder and looking innocently at him, expecting him to blush like he usually did. Instead she found him looking at her with a slightly raised eyebrow.

“You mean like this?” he teased back, letting her hand go. He skimmed it up over her back to her neck and pressed a couple of big fingers into the soft tissue at the sop of her shoulders and immediately her whole body melted in her chair.

“That feels amazing,” Charlie mumbled. Her muscles were relaxing so fast that it was making her brain go fuzzy. She leaned against Donatello and shut her eyes.

“Cut it out, Don, or I’ll be goin’ hiking by myself,” Raph grumbled. “Yer puttin’ her ta sleep!”

Don laughed and took his hand away from his girlfriend’s shoulders. Immediately, she felt more alert. She blinked a few times and sat up to find four turtles grinning at her. She looked at Donatello in awe and asked, “How did you do that? I was ready to put my head down in my eggs and go to sleep!” She swatted Mike’s hand away from her sausage again.

“Nuts...” he mumbled.

“It’s a pressure point technique,” Don explained, reaching for the jug of cold orange juice. He poured her a glass and passed it to her, gazing deeply at her as she took it from him. “It was traditionally a geisha thing.”

“Yeah,” Leo added. “Women aren’t as strong as men, so they can’t usually take down a man with any degree of success, so historically they use poison, or in ancient Japan, pressure points.”

“You get him into bed - which wouldn’t be hard to do - and then you offer him a backrub...” Mike trailed off and shrugged.

“Which he wouldn’t say no to,” Raph added, “And your problem’s solved.”

Charlie shuddered and looked at Don with a little cloud of worry behind her eyes. “You can kill someone by rubbing their back like that?”

“No no! Not like what I did!” Donatello said quickly, putting his arm around her and pulling her close into his side, noting her curves. “That’s something else, entirely, I promise.”

“Okay,” Charlie said, relaxing against him. She looked into his soft, brown eyes for a moment. They were so deep and soulful, but there was something else there, too. Something familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She made a mental note to ask him what he was thinking about when they had some time alone together later.

For a moment, Don was lost in Charlie’s eyes. They were so beautiful... she was so beautiful... he’d never felt the kind of things that she made him feel. Yesterday had been wonderful and he wished that she had stayed awake for another five seconds so that she would have heard it when he whispered that he loved her against her hair.

He leaned in and placed an achingly soft kiss on her pink lips. He didn’t care that his brothers were watching; all that mattered to him in that moment was showing her how he felt about her. He pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, their noses rubbing.

“Some of us are trying to eat,” Mike gagged through a piece of toast. Don didn’t budge.

“Just you wait, dude,” he sighed, making Charlie blush.

“I hate ta interrupt, but are ya comin’ or not?” Raph sighed, plopping down into a chair. He sounded cranky, but when Charlie looked at him, she could see the amusement in his eyes. Leo was blushing and Mike was trying to steal her sausage again.

“Yeah,“ she said, “Let me go grab my sneakers from upstairs.” Charlie hopped up from the table and pointedly grabbed the sausage to eat on her way to her room. Don and Leo wouldn’t actually take the food off of someone’s plate, but she didn’t trust Raphael and Michelangelo around her breakfast.

“What the heck was that?” she thought to herself as she sat on the edge of the bed to lace up her shoes. Her heart was beating hard and her stomach felt fluttery. It hadn’t been anything particularly special; it was just a kiss. She smiled to herself and giggled quietly. There was no doubt about it; in that weird, yet perfect moment, she had fallen in love with Donatello.
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Perseverance