how to get very good at juggling

🌻 chapter 2 🌻

Mikey gets his dibs honored, April's parents become aware of the Hamatos'...whole situation, and April unwillingly learns some things about her mom.

April ushered her parents out of the hallway and into their living room to sit on the couch. "Okay, okay, okay, you got this. You can do anything, you're April O'Neil!" she muttered to herself, pacing back and forth in front of the couch and nearly tripping over Mayhem as he wound himself between her legs. She made a startled noise, stumbling forward a few steps in her attempt to not step on him. "Watch it, May– Mayhem! That's it!" she exclaimed, grabbing the creature under his front legs and lifting him up to swing him around in her parents' faces. 

"...Yes, we've met Mayhem before," April's father said with barely restrained amusement. 

"I know you've met–! No, what is he?" April asked. She shook him a little for emphasis, and the creature grumbled a bit at the disturbance. 

"He's obviously a dog," April's mother said at the same time as her father answered, "A cat?" They both paused, turning to face the other. 

"See!" April exclaimed, shaking Mayhem again. He finally decided he was done with this behavior, teleporting out of her grasp and onto the back of the couch. "You guys didn't think it was weird that he teleports? He does it all the time!"

"I don't know, animals can do a lot of stuff nowadays. Isn't there that dog on your uh…tick-talk app that is learning how to speak?" April's mom shrugged, leaning back to scratch Mayhem behind the ears. 

Leo and Donnie were going to have an absolute field day with her parents. She could already see it. They'd once managed to convince Raph that Leo had three stripes on his arms instead of two. Donnie had doctored every photo in the house and the ones on Raph's phone. It was a nightmare to clean up. 

"...Okay, sure," April said exasperatedly. She was running out of time. 20 minutes was more like 13 and a half in Mikey time, especially with how excited he sounded. If Leo hadn't been in the nap pile with Casey, Mikey probably would've gotten him to just create a portal right to April's living room. "What I'm trying to say is, um, the Splintersons are…kind of like Mayhem. Sort of. They're, uh, different? Totally normal kids, like they're the best, I cannot stress that enough, but they are also, um…" She trailed off, the words getting stuck in her throat.

Why couldn't she just say it? They're part turtle! It wasn't like the boys were ashamed of it, it wasn't like it was some deep dark secret of theirs that she was revealing. Her parents wouldn't do anything to hurt them, and even if word somehow got out about them, April was pretty sure there wasn't a government in the world that could actually hold the Hamatos. They'd stopped the Krang when the military hadn't even been able to put a dent in their advance! Her boys would be safe, and it was okay for her to tell her parents, and it would even be good and nice to have both halves of her family be able to interact, so why couldn't she–

"Shh, you're alright," her mom said, taking April's wrists and gently tugging her toward the couch to sit between her parents. April wasn't sure when she had started crying but her face was wet and hot, and she couldn't breathe out of her nose, or actually really breathe at all. Her parents wrapped her up in a hug, her mother murmuring comforts while her father stroked her hair. Whatever had locked up in her chest was suddenly gone, and she was finally able to pull air into her lungs before letting it out as a loud bawl.

She'd cried a few times since the Krang invasion. She cried when they thought Leo was gone, when Raph told them he was alive. The first time she saw her mother after the invasion, they'd sat on the couch just like this and sobbed, both so relieved the other was alive. When they brought Leo home from the Hidden City hospital, April didn't cry right then, but she heard Raph crying that night when he thought she was asleep, and while she'd initially crawled up onto his bed to comfort him, once he got his arms wrapped around her, April realized just how close she was to crying, too. 

She'd read articles saying that crying was therapeutic, that it could help bring emotional relief, so there had been several nights where April sat alone on her bed in the dark, scrunching up her face and trying to make herself cry. Sad videos, sad music, sad thoughts, it just didn't work, tears weren't something she could force. But now, they were coming out all at once, and it was overwhelming and relieving all at the same time. 

No one could cry forever, and she wasn't sure how long it took, but April eventually found herself naturally winding down enough to feel a little embarrassed about getting snot all over her dad's polo shirt. "'m sorry," she mumbled, not moving her face from his shirt regardless, and feeling him press a kiss onto the top of her head. 

"Oh, honey, you have nothing to be sorry about," her mom said softly, rubbing her back. There was a pregnant pause, and she felt her dad shift to presumably look at her mother, before her mom continued. "I don't know what we did to make you think that we would be upset that your friends are biracial–"

April jolted upright, nearly knocking the top of her head into her dad's chin. "What?!"

"–but it's very nice that Mr. Splin– Hamato is reconnecting with his Japanese roots, and that he's sharing that with his kids. We wouldn't ever be upset about something like that, okay?" 

April spluttered, turning her head back and forth between her parents. "That's not what I– They're not– I mean I guess they are but like–" she stammered, coming to a stop only when Mikey cleared his throat from the hallway. 

He was standing by her open bedroom door, having presumably gotten in through the (locked) window. One of the pros of having ninja friends was that they could sneak into your house so you could hang out. One of the cons of having ninja friends was that they would always sneak into your house, regardless of what the situation called for. "Apes, I appreciate you honoring dibs and all, but like, is this a good time?" he said, shifting back and forth awkwardly and oh thank the Pizza Supreme in the sky, he was wearing pants. 

Mayhem, traitor that he was, leaped off the couch, teleporting midair and reappearing by Mikey's feet to rub up against his legs. 

"Your friend's a lizard," April's dad said weakly.

"Turtle," April and Mikey corrected simultaneously as Mikey pulled off his orange hoodie to show them his shell. 

"Specifically an ornate box turtle," he explained, doing a little spin before putting his hoodie back on. "Sorry, I kinda thought you did the turtle stuff already since you invited me over."

"I was getting to it," April responded weakly, receiving a doubtful look from Mikey. 

An awkward silence hung in the air as April's parents gaped at Mikey. April managed to extricate herself from their arms, quickly scrubbing her face on her sleeve before stepping over towards Mikey and slinging an arm around his shoulders. "Anyway," she said, dragging out the first syllable. "This is Mikey! Mikey, these are my parents."

Mikey waved, leaning into April a bit before he hefted up the tote bag he was carrying on his arm. "It’s so nice to finally meet you! I would've made something, but I uh, b-bad hand day, short notice, you know how it is, but I got some tiramisu from Hueso's, it's pretty good!" he said. April watched her mom's eyes lock onto the golden cracks peeking through the black compression gloves Donnie had made him. 

"Aw, you didn't have to, Mike," April cooed, pulling Mikey toward the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder at her parents once they passed them, shooting them a meaningful look to indicate that they needed to get over their surprise and get over it quickly.

This seemed to spur her parents into action, and her dad came up and took the bag off Mikey's arm. He placed iit on the kitchen table, taking out the box and starting to get it set up. Meanwhile, April's mom started rummaging around in the kitchen cabinets, getting out the plates and silverware. "So, Michelangelo, do you bake a lot? Is that what I heard?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah! I like cooking, baking, plating– the whole process. I actually sort of know Rupert Swaggart, his deglazing technique is sooooo revolutionary, like I used it on these pork chops I made with a rosemary-truffle-butter sauce situation and oh-em-gee, you guys will have to come over for dinner sometime, the way it unleashes the flay-vour is an absolute game changer," Mikey babbled, his charm turned up to max. In retrospect, April was extremely lucky that Mikey had been the first one to call dibs all those years ago, since he was by far the most broadly palatable of his brothers. Raph would be easy enough once her parents got over his size, but Donnie and Leo…she'd cross that bridge when she had to. 

"Wait, didn't Rupert Swaggart have some horrible freak accident on live TV?" April's dad asked, pausing what he was doing to look up at April and Mikey.

Mikey looked confused for a second, until April prompted him, "The oozesquito."

"OH! Yeah, he's fine, he just got turned into a pig mutant."

"And that's…how you know him?" April's dad asked, watching as Mikey plopped down into the chair at the kitchen table. The hesitancy in his voice seemed to indicate he was aware of the possible faux pas of assuming that all mutants know each other, but the issue was too big to ignore.

"Sort of! He tried to turn Donnie into suppon nabe, and we had to rescue him. He mostly keeps trying to cook us, really. Can't really be mad about it, at least he'd cook us with style," Mikey shrugged. 

April grit her teeth a bit. Mikey may be the most widely palatable of his brothers, but his idea of "normal" was still wildly skewed. "You absolutely can be mad about it. Anyway!" she exclaimed, slamming her palms on the table. Silence echoed around the kitchen for a few seconds, before her mother broke it by starting to cut and serve the tiramisu. 

"So, Mikey, how did you and April actually meet?" her mother asked, setting a plate down in front of him. "I'm going to be honest, I don't remember what April told us, it was so long ago, but I'm going to assume it was a little white lie." She raised an eyebrow at April as she said this last bit, and April plastered her gaze to the table, sitting down next to Mikey. 

"Um… You found Donnie, didn't you?" Mikey asked, looking at April for confirmation. When she nodded, he smiled before continuing. "I was like five, so I don't super remember, honestly! April's just always been around."

"That time I twisted my ankle playing with Kendra, it was actually uh, I had been playing with Kendra, but we got into a fight, and I ran off and got a little turned around. But then I found Donnie, he was crying behind a dumpster because he'd gotten lost, too, so I helped him get home. Except uh– oh, man, you guys have to be chill about this," April started explaining, pointing an accusatory finger toward her parents who were poking at their tiramisu. "They lived in the sewers, but Donnie and I couldn't move the manhole cover, so we jumped down a sewer drain and that's how I twisted my ankle."

Silence hung around the table, so April kept going. "Donnie and I managed to get back to their house, and then Splinter helped me get home. Don and I talked a bunch on Club Penguin for a few days after, and then I just…kept hanging out with them. Yeah."

"Baby, you live in the sewers?" April's mom asked Mikey, looking a bit distressed. 

"We used to! We had to move um, maybe like six months ago? So we live in this decommissioned subway station now. It's not bad, promise! Donnie's like a mechanical genius, so he got us hooked up to the city power grid uhh…" Mikey tried to explain, looking at April for clarification. 

"You guys had the TV by the time I got there," April shrugged.

Mikey copied her and shrugged as well, taking a bite of the tiramisu, before gesturing with his fork. "Maybe around twelve years ago then? Once he had electricity, Donnie was pretty unstoppable, I mean we have a pretty decked out kitchen, plumbing, heat, A/C–"

"–fastest wifi in New York," April cut in. 

"Don's got priorities. But yeah, the sewers aren't so bad! The new place is nice, don't get me wrong, but I miss the sewer a lot sometimes," Mikey said, trying to sound upbeat about it for April's parents, but the waver in his voice was pretty apparent by the end of his sentence. "But you guys should come over for dinner sometime! You can meet Pops and Casey at our place, and then you could meet Leo, too! He's walking again, with crutches and all, but I'm pretty sure Raph's not gonna let him leave the house again until he's like, 25. Not like Raph'll be able to stop him once his arms aren't broken, but y'know. He'll try."

"Why don't we come over Friday night?" April's dad suggested, looking around the table. "We can have dinner all together, and then talk to Mr. Hamato and Casey."

"Ooh, yeah! I'll get Barry to come, then the whole family can be there!" Mikey exclaimed, turning to April. "You'll help me brainstorm the menu, right? Will you have time to help me cook? Raph gets so stressed about cooking, he said he's only gonna help me bake for a while."

April didn't blame Raph in the slightest, Mikey could be a very demanding lead chef. But before she could even address that, she had to back up a bit. "Are you sure Barry's a good invite…?" she asked, glancing toward the ceiling. It was hard to forget his old crusade against humanity, and even though April was used to it, her parents might be harder to convince of his redemption.

"April, he's family, you can't exclude family," Mikey insisted, scraping the remnants of the tiramisu off his plate with the side of his fork. 

"Sorry, who is Barry? Am I missing a brother?" April's mom asked. 

Mikey shook his head. "Nah, he's our other dad! He actually lives upstairs." He gestured toward the ceiling with his fork, before looking back at April. "You're neighbors, your parents practically know the guy anyway."

"Wait, your other father has an apartment, but you and your brothers grew up in the sewer?" April's mother asked incredulously. 

"Yeah, he used to be evil. But he's totally rehabilitated now, don't worry!" Mikey said, and April already knew it wasn't going to reassure her parents in the slightest. 

"Barry's alright now," she said, hoping that her corroboration smooths things over a little bit. "He had a mid-life crisis, change of heart, sort of thing happen. He works at the cafeteria at my school, actually." Her parents' faces did relax a little bit, but April knew that she was far from done with all of her explanations. 

For what it was, the night went pretty smoothly. Mikey showed them some photos on his phone of his family– disgruntled selfies with Draxum, old goofy photos of April and Leo, the video of Raph’s now-broken pizza box record. It was as they were all on the couch, huddled around Mikey’s phone to watch a video of Leo and Donnie re-enacting the final battle on the deserted island between Lou Jitsu and the Tokyo mafia boss in Last Man Stranded, when he got an incoming call from Raph. 

“Uh… Sorry, I’ll be right back!” Mikey said, hopping up from where he was sandwiched in the middle of the couch and picking up the phone. “Hey, Rafa, you know I’m at April’s right now, right?” he said as he ducked into April’s bedroom, closing the door behind him. 

The muffled noise of conversation echoed through the thin apartment walls. The three O'Neils sat on the couch, a small gap between April and her parents marking where Mikey had been seated. April awkwardly scratched at the fabric of the couch with her fingernail, trying not to listen in on what she could hear of Mikey's conversation. "April," her mom started, and when April looked up at her, she was staring at the wall separating them and Mikey. "How did they go to school?"

"They didn't," April admitted, once again feeling like she was giving up some dark secret, even though it was information the Hamatos readily offered. "I think Splints tried to teach them what he thought they needed to know, like how to read and stuff. Once I met them, Donnie and I made copies of all my textbooks and homework and stuff. He actually made copies through all of high school, but I think Raph and Mikey both got bored with it around the 9th grade curriculum. Leo's maybe part way through 10th grade? He said a couple months ago that he was still working on it, but that was um…it was before," she finished lamely, ducking her eyes toward her knees. Technically, it was before everything with Big Mama and the Shredder happened, but her parents still weren't aware of most of their more dangerous exploits. 

"What about when they got sick? They didn't get vaccines as kids, did they?" her mother pressed. 

"Uh, I don't know about vaccines. Sometimes I'd buy stuff OTC for Splints, sometimes he'd steal it, I think. Leo knows some things about setting bones, relocating joints, some general field medics stuff–" she started, cutting herself off when she saw the way her mother froze up. "Momma?"

"What did they do when Leo got hurt?" she asked, looking distressed, and April couldn't help but mirror her expression. It still hurt to think about, their panic when Leo had passed out in Staten Island, hearing Mikey desperately trying to call Draxum's phone over the comm line Splinter insisted on keeping open. They hadn't even known that the Hidden City had a hospital until Draxum directed them to it. 

"They um, there's a hospital that treats mutants. Well, it treats yokai, but they're kinda similar. We didn't know about it until about two years ago. I mean, actually we didn't know about the hospital until we called Barry after Leo got hurt. Barry's actually a yokai, so–" April started explaining, interrupted by Mikey slinking out of her bedroom, his shoulders hunched together. 

"I gotta go," he grumbled, a sour look on his face. "Raph's being bossy again. It's not like I'm wandering the streets or anything, which he was absolutely doing when he was 15. Plus him and Cass' vigilante thing! Which he is still doing! Even though Pops told him to knock it off!" After that last sentence, he looked a bit alarmed, wide eyes flickering toward April's parents. At least he knew he'd slipped up. "Oops."

"Vigilante?" her mom asked, in a tone that told April that she was absolutely not going to allow this to be swept under the rug. 

"Splints absolutely already knows what Raph and Cass are up to," April said in an attempt to soothe both Mikey and her parents. Her mother's posture relaxed a bit, but the topic was definitely only being dropped until after Mikey left. "But also, I am adding this to the snitch tally." She already had the shared document pulled open on her phone, adding another mark beside Mikey's name. He was in the lead by quite a few points, with Raph following as a distant second. 

"Aprilllll…" Mikey whined, flopping down on the couch beside her, and draping himself across her lap. 

"Nuh-uh, you know the rules. Now get going, before Raph tries to climb in through the window," she said, pushing Mikey off her lap and watching him fall dramatically to the floor. 

He sighed mournfully on the rug, looking up at April with his best babiest brother eyes. She clenched her jaw, meeting his gaze with her own big-sister-who-knows-what's-best look. They stared at each other for a second, tension clogging the air, before Mikey tossed his hands into the air. "Ugh, fine!" he grumbled, getting to his feet and facing April's parents. 

"It was nice to meet you guys! Remember, Friday dinner!" he said cheerily. There was a brief moment of hesitation, one that April only noticed because of how juxtaposed it was with the over-performed personality Mikey had been putting on, before he threw his arms around the both of them in a quick hug. He jumped back before they could even react, practically running down the hall toward April's room. "Anyway, bye! Love you!"

"Love you!" April called after him, unable to stop the smile rising to her lips. He absolutely could've left through the front door, but well, force of habit was a powerful thing. She turned to face her parents, the weight of the whole situation settling back on her shoulders now that Mikey wasn't around. 

Her mother pursed her lips, shooting a sidelong glance toward her father. "Let's start with the vigilante activities." 

Explaining Raph's Red Angel of Preventing Harm alter-ego led April to explaining that, yes, the boys were actually trained ninjas, which led to explaining that Splinter was actually Lou Jitsu. April knew her dad liked the movies well enough, since she'd seen a handful of them before she even met the boys, but April was absolutely not prepared for her mother to start blushing. 

"Lou Jitsu liked my veggie lasagna?" she mumbled. 

April screwed up her face in disgust. "Mom!"

"He was the big teen heartthrob when I was your age!" April's mom said defensively, folding her arms. "A completely normal celebrity crush."

April looked incredulously over her mom's shoulder towards her father, who just shrugged. "She gets Lou Jitsu, I get Crystal Yistal."

"Wait, is that why he disappeared? He turned into a rat man?" April's mom cut in.

Then April had to explain Big Mama and the Battle Nexus, how Lou Jitsu became the reigning champion for 15 years, leading to him getting kidnapped by Baron Draxum– yes, this was Barry– who wanted to use his DNA to make super soldiers to protect yokai-kind, which sounded a bit nicer than "destroy humanity". Lou Jitsu escaped with the turtles, accidentally got himself mutated, blah blah blah, the rest was history. 

Her parents seemed to take the tale in stride at least. They were good listeners for the most part, only cutting in when April used terminology she forgot was only understood amongst the Hamatos. Still, once she finished (still leaving out the Shredder), her parents shared a worried glance between themselves, and that look alone sent April reeling. "You can't make me stop seeing them," she blurted out before she had even realized it. Technically, she was right. She was 18. She could move into the dorms at Eastlaird. Her scholarship wouldn't cover it, but she could always pick up more hours or take out another loan. She loved her parents, she loved them so much, and logically she trusted them to trust her. But that didn't get rid of the ten year old girl who stayed up at night worrying that her parents would take away her only friends. 

"That's not…" her mother sighed, looking away from April and staring at the floor for a second, before turning back to her daughter. "Mikey's 15? What about the others?"

"Leo and Donnie are gonna be 17 in a few weeks. Raph turned 18 back in March," April answered, still feeling uneasy.

"What does Mr. Hamato think about their vigilante activities? You said he knows about it, right?" April's mom asked. 

That was an easy one at least. "He's their dad, he wants them to be safe," she said. "But he trusts them to protect each other and to know when to ask for help."

Her mother's face went tense. "How am I supposed to trust them to protect you? How am I supposed to trust you to know when to ask for help when we're just finding out about this a decade late? I want you to be safe, too." There was a wetness in her eyes and a tremble in her lips that made April's stomach sink. Her mom had always been the strong one, the rock, the person who killed the bugs. April's mom didn't cry.

Her dad put a hand on her mom's shoulder, squeezing it slightly. "Auggie, that's what the dinner on Friday is for. Don't be so hard on her."

Her mom slumped a bit under her dad's hand, closing her eyes and trying to collect herself. "I'm not mad at you, April," she said softly, taking a moment before turning to face her daughter again. "I'm just…scared for you, okay?"

That didn't really make April feel any better. "Okay," she mumbled in acknowledgment, averting her eyes from her parents. "...I'm gonna go to bed. G'night." She got to her feet, nearly falling back to the couch as she did so. Her legs wobbled, but after a moment she was at least steady enough. As she walked stiltedly toward her bedroom, her parents echoed her good night behind her. 

April closed her bedroom door behind her, making an effort not to shut it too hard. As she stood in the center of the room, she could hear the cars on the street outside, the muffled telenovelas from their next door neighbor, the sound of Barry's hooves clomping around upstairs. April's world might be falling apart, but the rest of it just kept going. 

She went to bed. It was 8pm.