metalogs | [Open] Trying Not to Fall Apart

Entry tags:

[Open] Trying Not to Fall Apart

Who: Donnie

purplexing and you!
What: Oh you know, just an average week in the life of a teenage mutant ninja nerd
When: Early June before things start to really implode
Where: Central
Content Warnings: N/A, will update as needed

can't sleep something will eat me - Apartment
It's easier to sleep when you run yourself ragged and let yourself pass out. Then there's a seventy percent chance that you'd be too exhausted to dream. That hadn't necessarily been his plan but it had been more or less effective the night he, Leo and Accelerator had come back from their tech heist. Since then, sleep had been...elusive.

While it's not unusual for Donnie to pull late to all-nighters, he's been leaning on such practices extra hard lately. It's easier to get away with when he's got actual projects. Guy's telescoping stun baton gets done relatively quickly in this regard. The game systems they'd found at the recycling center have been reappropriated into a single gaming system and they now had a high-definition projector that freed them from the constraints of a flatscreen TV. Spare phones have been repaired, wiped and upgraded in the case that they might run into anyone who needed a phone or just didn't trust the ones the Guild handed out.

But even productive turtle teens need sleep, and whenever he succumbs to it, it's always fitful and ends up with him clawing his way to wakefulness, away from the blood-filled nightmares with the grasping, reaching hands and tendrils. Sometimes he stays in his room, other times he slips out to sit in the kitchen wrapped around a cup of coffee or huddled under a blanket on the couch, reading a book or poking around things on his phone. If his head's clear enough then he'll do some late night work dismantling something or another, or work on repairing circuitboards.

third time's a charm - Sewers
The whole point of having a lair deep in the sewers is so people can't get to it easily. The sewers are already a maze, but thanks to the flooding from all the rain last month, Donnie's managed to get a decent amount of it mapped out with the aid of his mystic-tech. They aren't as convoluted and full of abandoned places like New York, but he and Leo had finally found a promising location.

Moving things into a new lair is never much fun. They'd already had to rebuild their home once, after all. Here at least they don't have too much stuff to worry about, but then they are still basically starting from scratch. Priority had gone to hauling their ill-gained goods down there once basic setup had been handled, some tidying up (okay, a lot of tidying up), and initial security measures installed. With things stirring in the world above, Donnie's not taking any chances.

There's still a lot to do, but they've got this much done. It's just a shame that they have to do this at all after getting so used to living almost normally.

what a town - Around Central
Life still goes on, even when you're trying to play things cool after being mildly (?) traumatized, even when there've been drastic changes in the meta-world.

There are library books to be returned, after all, and if Donnie can't sneak-borrow more by using Leo's card, he can at least read things there, his earphones bumping some techno or K-Pop (it's catchy okay) so he doesn't accidentally nod off. It's an attempt, anyway.

Coffee runs go without saying, and there's something nice about being able to sit in a cafe enjoying an iced latte. It's a change of atmosphere and he can more or less blend in with others who are here tapping at their laptops and tablets. Kind of. Other times he'll just be grabbing a drink to go, so one might catch him all purple hoodied up on his way to or from.

It might be weird be hard to believe, but Donnie has other hobbies, which is why at some point or another one might come across him carrying a small cardboard box with a variety of plants ready to be repotted. The backpack slung over his shoulder holds a few pots and some potting soil. He's a turtle on a mission and nothing is keeping him from working on a balcony garden. Alternatively one can find him perusing the selection at a small plant nursery or shop.

that other option - Wildcard
(Got any other ideas/requests? Have at it or ping me on discord or the plork!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Leo thinks to himself that it’s probably a good thing Donnie hasn’t been able to go to school yet for that very reason. He doesn’t say it, though.

“Yeah, gotta say, it’s been nice to live somewhere that doesn’t smell like sewage. Then again, that’s what most apartments we’d be able to afford smell like.”

He’s set up the pallet and the thin mattress, so now he leans against the opening to his space so he can better talk to Donnie.

“People are pretty good at messing things up even for themselves. You know they were never going to make it easy for us.”

There's been enough on his mind of late that high school's been practically forgotten for the moment. Probably a good thing, the constant roadblocks keeping Donnie from something that should have otherwise been a simple process would just build on that growing depression.

"Well, I mean the only upside there would be that we'd be used to it," he shrugs, not sounding particularly convinced that it's really an upside.

There's the sound of things being unfurled and fluffed as Donnie reluctantly gets his own bedding set up. This is a sad downgrade considering they actually had beds back home.

"...I guess," he admits. "Knew it was too good to be true anyway. Figured nothing good was going to come out of the whole process they'd made of things. It still stinks."

“Yeah, well… As always, we can only depend on our family, huh?”

The guilds were never trustworthy, and that’s why he’d rather Donnie avoid it. But that doesn’t mean other people here aren’t dependable.

It is pretty depressing, though. Leo will have to get some posters or something to liven the place up. And more pillows. Maybe a bean bag.

“…Anyway, I’m hoping we won’t actually have to live here.”

"...." It's both a sad but comforting fact, and his smile reflects that. "Yeah."

If nothing else, there's always family, even if it is just the two of them. They've found some people to trust, but it's not as easy as that trust that's preestablished in the natural relationship they have.

Donnie gives up on doing anything more for the bed, leaving blankets folded up at the foot, the pillows haphazardly tossed at the opposite end. Already he can tell it's not going to be very comfortable to lie on but maybe he'll have a worktable and things installed before he'd have to really make use of it. Lighting would have to come first. It's terribly drab without his usual preferences and more so with what limited lighting is already there. He catches himself before he can exhale another sigh, instead getting back to his feet so he can step out where Leo is.

"Me too," he admits. "But at least it's something to fall back on. Maybe it'll help to just look at it as a private hang-out."

Leo grins at Donnie, pushing himself off the wall. There's more to do, lights and surfaces and tech, so he can't lounge back too long.

"Nothing wrong with a private hang-out. We can do whatever we want to with it."

Leo holds up his hands like he's taking a picture, swinging around the space. "Once we get some better lighting and some furniture, a place to watch movies and play video games, a place for pizza eating... maybe we can find an old air hockey table again... maybe do some graffiti to liven up the place... We could turn this into something pretty special."

He says it to get himself excited for it as much as Donnie. He hasn't missed all Donnie's sighs, and he gets the sentiment. But if they try to think of it like something fun and exciting instead of the giant chore it is, it won't be so bad.

What's that song from that movie? A spoonful of sugar or whatever? Something like that.

"We can't fit a ramp but maybe we can add a grind rail."

Donnie snorts a quiet laugh. He can always count on Leo to boost the mood.

"Just a little sewer clubhouse. We're definitely going to be needing more stuff to get comfortable for a gaming and movie-watching spot," he says, even as he brings up his computer to add to the list of things to look for. How hard could it be to track down an air hockey table... Although he supposes the real trick would be getting it down here.

"Some neon and some black lights, maybe? Make those colors pop!" He's no graffiti artist like Mikey but he can handle more straight-forward paint jobs. "Ooh, a grind rail could be fun, yeah. They don't even have to be straight, we could try following the tunnel curves."

“Oooh, that sounds sweet.” That’s not even a front, Leo genuinely thinks that sounds cool. It would make it more fun to come in and out if they could grind along the curve.

Neon and black lights sounds great, too. Maybe they can even find some old neon signs. It’s the sort of thing he would have put in his room back home if he could find it.

“We could get some of those LED track lights, too. Use those to line out parts of the lair. And you can change the colors!”

Everything is going to end up purple and blue in here.

This list is getting long and while Donnie figures it might be better to split it up into things they needed and things they wanted, they may as well all be the same thing at this point. Sure, others might disagree that the extra lighting and grind rails wouldn't be necessary, but if they were going to make this place fun and most importantly, theirs, then they absolutely need such things.

"At least LED color-changing track lights will be relatively easy to get." Sooo purple and blue.

"I'm sending you a copy of this list so we can both keep an eye out for things or get stuff as we're able to."

“Alright. I can probably just buy some of it, now that I actually have money.”

Which is crazy to think about. Sure, most of it has been going to food for himself and Donnie, and some fun things (mostly comics), and clothes, but he’s willing to redirect what he can into their lair efforts. It’s not like he can take it with him when they finally go home, so not much point in saving.

(At least that’s his teenage logic at work.)

“What else can we do right now, though?”

Donnie nods along. Sure, second-hand stuff and recycled junk could be serviceable but they'd still been cast off for some reason or another, usually in need of at least minor repair. New stuff is always nicer when you're the one choosing things and not simply finding something that fit well enough into need or taste.

"Hmmm...." He looks around, fingering his chin. "Well, we got a couple of shelving units to put together, or we could break for pizza, or... Oh!"

He ducks back into his room, digging around one of the bags before he comes back with a couple of digital picture frames, offering them to Leo with a faint, almost sheepish smile. "They're not loaded yet but...I thought we could figure out which photos to add."

Leo is quietly warring with himself over the responsible thing and the thing he actually wants to do when Donnie suddenly presents another option.

His eyes go wide when he sees what Donnie has. He’s not sure when he even got those, but the thought behind it makes Leo’s heart clench. Not in a bad way, of course. It’s touched and a little bittersweet.

Donnie wants to say he’s an emotionally unavailable bad boy but then he does stuff like this. Leo sees through his game.

“…Sappy,” he says, but his tone of voice makes it clear he doesn’t mean it at all - he’s actually really happy. If anything it’s just his attempt at staving off his own sappiness, with little success. The smile that grows across his face is too big to be his normal teasing grin.

“But yeah, we can do that. Sounds great, actually.”

As much as he knows Leo's joking, Donnie still feels embarrassed to the point that if he tucked his head any lower between his shoulders it'd be in his shell.

His methods and ways of showing it have varied and at times have even been questionable, but there's no doubt he's always had the best intentions for his family. Personal tastes or custom specifications, there's always thought put into the things he does. It's just super awkward to be called out on it, but he sees that smile, and it eases his own into something less hesitant.

"Cool. I mean, we only took over a hundred pics alone when we were shopping but it shouldn't take that long to go through everything before that."

They are probably going to get so sidetracked but it would still be considerably time well spent.

His goal isn’t to embarrass Donnie, so he won’t say anything else teasing about the frames. He doesn’t want to, anyway.

He goes back into the room he’s claimed for himself and settles on the pallet bed, patting the mattress next to him for Donnie to join. They are absolutely about to get sidetracked and Leo wants to be comfy while they do it. And without any other furniture this is the best option.

“We’re only picking pictures of my good side,” he says, settling in. “Oh wait, I just remembered: I don’t have a bad side.”

Thinking about this, it crosses his mind that he should get a real picture frame for the picture of all of them, the one Casey gave him. It’s still in his room in the apartment, in his bedside drawer. He should keep it somewhere safer.

He doesn’t bring that up. He’d hate to bring the mood down any. He’ll just add it to the list later.

Plopping down to sit beside Leo at the invitation, Donnie's already got his phone out and the gallery pulled up. He rolls his eyes at Leo's input, not that it diminishes his smile any even as he shakes his head.

"Well, don't be too shocked if you see anything candid and totally unflattering," Donnie offers as a disclaimer even as a corner of his smile ticks up a notch. It's a fair warning, though, right? After all, it is his phone.

While a lot of his pictures will be very biased in his favor, there's still more than enough shots of their family and friends that he's deemed memorable.

"I'll copy the ones we like over to another album and if we need to narrow it down further we'll go from there," he proposes, starting to thumb through as he holds his phone between them.

“Candid, sure. Unflattering? Hard to believe.”

He leans in so he can better see, careful not to get too close. He may not be aware of how much sleep Donnie is missing out on, but he has noticed his brother is even more skittish about physical touch lately. Leo hasn’t pried into it. He’ll get over it soon… right?

Well, anyway. Leo watches him thumb through the gallery. There’s a lot of selfies which is not at all a surprise, so Leo watches for flashes of color that aren’t purple.

“We should add this one,” he says before they go too far back, pointing at one of the pictures from their ultimately unproductive shopping trip. They took lots of goofy pictures that day, but the one Leo points at is the one they took with their disguises off in the dressing room.

Soon, yeah. It's fine. Things'll be fine.

...

There really aren't too many new pics since Donnie'd come here. The majority would be from their impromptu fashion show, aside from a scattered few in true Donnie fashion. He keeps a smirk to himself as Leo insists he can't possibly produce unflattering images, but they haven't gotten into the photos from home yet.

"Haha, yeah, that one's a keeper," he grins as he copies it over.

Let him believe, okay?

Leo looks over the rest from their shopping trip, suggesting they add one or two of the ones of them in disguise as well. Why not? It’s pretty funny.

Then they start to make it back to the pictures from home, and Leo starts paying more attention.

He didn’t have his own phone when he came here - he has no idea when he lost it, if it was in the prison dimension or sometime before it or if the confluence just decided to yeet it. So he can’t go back and look at pictures like this.

So the photo frames are seriously the nicest thing Donnie could give him. Even more than the everything gaming console or the hypothetical air hockey table.

(See, he’s getting sappy again!)

“Man, this is going to be a lot to pick from.”

Lou Jitsu and April O'Ryan? Why not!

There's a shot from their break-in training as Donnie was taking a selfie, Accelerator launching into the background as he'd tore around the wall during preliminary maneuvering. "Heh, talk about intense, right?"

Maybe they should take more pictures with people they've met here, too. Like, real pictures instead of sneak shots.

Donnie breathes a laugh as they start getting into older pictures. Pictures that stir up memories and make him wistful for home. "Yeah...I mean, I could probably just get a bigger drive to dump everything on and save us the trouble but..."

Maybe it's better this way. He knows he hasn't looked at a lot of them in a while, and even so, it's likely more recently than Leo has.

...not that he's saying that.

He laughs at the picture of Accelerator. "Super intense."

They should definitely take more pics of the people they meet here. Real pictures. Hopefully, when they figure out how to go home, they can take them with them. And for now it would be nice for the frames.

"Nah, I like doing it this way." It's more time-consuming, but he doesn't care when this is what they're consuming that time with. "I haven't seen any of these in awhile, anyway..."

It definitely makes him wistful for home, but he's okay with that.

Time well spent. Donnie can't remember when the last time was that they'd ever all gotten together to go through old pictures. He knows he doesn't go through his own phone very often for that purpose.

"Here's a good one of all of us. Even has April there," he says, smiling. He can do without the ache of not having any of the rest of their family there, but he keeps reminding himself that Leo's gone through it longer. It's a sobering thought.

He shifts just a little closer on the mattress, under the guise of readjusting how he sits.

Donnie shifts closer, and Leo does too - also just readjusting, of course.

"Oooh, yeah." He grins, a little teasing. "I look great in this. Oh, and you guys are fine, too."

He's still going to say stuff like that - it's his thing, and Donnie knows it.

"That's a good one of Miguel." He points at one of the other thumbnails, of Mikey grinning in front of some graffiti he just painted.

"Please, any shots of me are more than just 'fine', but I can understand your wanting to downplay it," Donnie snorts. It's his phone, terrible pictures of himself simply don't exist.

He does smile as he pulls up the picture Leo points out. "Agreed, and might I point out, an excellent composition of contrasting colors. Him in front of the wall, I mean."

Aaand copied.

"Let's see if we can find a decent one of Raph where he's not stuffing something in his face or asleep..."

Again, it is too bad Leo doesn’t have his own phone, because he absolutely has unflattering pictures of Donnie: ones taken while he was asleep, or eating, or mid-sneeze.

He’ll just have to catch more of those kinds of shots on the phone he has in this world and slip them in when he has time. A prank for another day.

He nods in agreement at the assessment about the picture of Mikey. Their little brother would appreciate the artistic consideration.

At the comment about Raph, he laughs. “Hey, those pictures reflect his natural state!”

A minor upside that Donnie hasn't realized.

He does laugh as he can't really disagree regarding Raph. Food and sleep are among their older brother's favorite pastimes when he's not intent on smashing bad guys.

"Too true. Well, there's no shortage of those. Oh! There should definitely be some of our cosplay pictures in here too." Can't not include those!

He’s sure they can find actual good pictures of Raph, too. He keeps his eyes peeled.

“Oh, definitely. Cosplay photos, skateboarding photos… Oooh, you have any basketball photos in there?”

Of course Leo cares about those, he’s the one who’s good at basketball.

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