how to get very good at juggling

🌻 chapter 3 🌻

Donnie flexes his emotional muscles, Mikey plans a menu around Splinter's green bean casserole, and Raph plays hide-and-seek.

April trudged into the lair after her exam, tossing her backpack roughly to the ground the instant she crossed the threshold. Donnie straightened up from where he was sitting on the couch, presumably waiting for her after picking her up on the security cams. He was looking at April and, judging by the furrow in his drawn-on brows, trying to figure out whether or not he should offer to give her grade a boost. "So…" he drawled, doing a miserable job of covering up his apprehension. He was tapping his fingers against the latch mechanism of his battleshell, it was one of his easiest tells. "How did it go…?"

"The test? I mean, it probably could've gone better, but it's alright. I'll make up for it on the final," April sighed, kicking her shoes off her feet and into her backpack before flopping down onto the couch beside Donnie.

"No, I mean like, your parents. And Mikey."

April closed her eyes as she curled into herself, pressing the heel of her palm into her forehead in an attempt to stave off the incoming headache. "Didn't Mikey tell you guys? It went alright, he charmed them so easy."

Donnie shifted uncomfortably beside her. "Well, yes, Mikey gave us the rundown, but it's been radio silence from you. You haven't texted any of us back! I presumed they had words for you after he left. Was that not the case?"

April leaned into Donnie's side, feeling him stiffen before awkwardly placing a hand on her back. "Hm…Should I go get Raph?" he asked, and April shook her head.

She needed a few more seconds to get the words out. "I left a lot of stuff out. About like, Shred-head and the Foot and the– and the Krang. Mikey let it slip about Raph and Cass' extracurricular–" She felt Donnie shift beside her, pulling out his phone. "Nah, I already updated the snitch tally." He put his phone back down. 

"But so, they think you've all been dabbling in stopping like, petty crimes and whatnot–"

"Which we do."

"–and they really freaked out. Like, my mom cried, Don. I told them they can't stop me from hanging out with you guys, and they can't, but…I just really wanted them to like everyone, y'know?" April finished, blinking back tears. 

"Oh boy," Donnie mumbled to himself, sounding a bit overwhelmed. He cleared his throat, before shuffling closer to April and pulling her into a hug. "There there. Comforting platitude," he said stiffly, patting her back. "Again, I can go fetch Raph."

April couldn't help but let out a wet chuckle, giving Donnie a squeeze before shifting away from him and releasing him from physical contact prison. "Thanks, bud. I'll be alright, though," she said, straightening up and wiping her eyes with the palms of her hands. "We've got two days to plan the most bangin' family dinner, so I guess I better find Mikey and let him soundboard stuff off me."

"Hm. I'll pray for you," Donnie said, a distant look of horror flashing across his face for a brief moment. "While I have you though, any thoughts on the pyrotechnics?"

"Um, none?" 

"No thoughts? Alright, I suppose I can have Leo review my favorite routines and–" Donnie started, typing something into the screen on his arm brace before April cut him off by grabbing his upper arms and giving him a shake.

"No. No pyrotechnics, Donald," she said, trying to sound as serious as she possibly could. 

"I thought we were trying to make a good impression?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. 

"Yeah, that's why we shouldn't do any pyrotechnics," April futilely tried to explain.

Donnie wrested free from her grip, giving her what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile, before patting April on the shoulder. "Don't worry! We're all going to be at the top of our game. I'll have the routine triple checked– quadruple checked, even! There will be no fire-related mishaps on my watch."

"That's not–! ...Alright, sure," April conceded, briefly closing her eyes. "Yeah, go consult with Leo about it or whatever." She hoped that the other turtle would have a bit more sense about the situation than Donnie, but her hopes weren't very high. 

"You got it, April! We won't let you down," Donnie promised, giving her a salute before running off in the direction of Leo's room. "Leonardo! I am in need of your discerning eyes!"

April watched him go, taking a moment to resign herself to the situation, before turning and heading into the kitchen. Mikey seemed to already be cooking, horrifyingly enough. 

Casey sat at the kitchen table, looking up from whatever he was doing on Mikey's laptop when she stepped through the doorway. "Hi, April!" He greeted her, giving a small wave which April returned. He'd been getting better about calling everyone by their names the past few weeks. 

Mikey whipped around, gesturing violently at April with the wooden spoon he'd been using to stir. A bit of soup flew past April's head, splattering on the wall behind her. "You! Try these," he ordered, gesturing to the two pots in front of him. April grabbed two spoons from the utensil drawer, before approaching Mikey and the simmering pots. 

"What am I trying here?" she asked, dipping her spoon into the first clear broth. The two pots looked pretty similar. "Are these both miso soup?"

Mikey nodded, watching April intently as she tried the first one. "Well, it's gonna be. Right now, I'm just trying a different dashi recipe. Usually I make iriko dashi, but Dad said his mom used to make awase dashi, so I'm making that too, but you gotta pick which one is better for your parents." As Mikey talked, April let the umami soup sit in her mouth for a bit, trying to memorize the flavor profile. She swallowed, before reaching toward the second pot with the clean spoon. "Nuh-uh-uh–!" Mikey started, blocking her spoon and pointing toward the open bag of sliced white bread on the counter, before he and Casey said in unison. "Palate cleanser." Right. 

April fondly rolled her eyes, tearing a slice in half with her hands and eating it, watching Casey's eyes dart across the computer screen. "Whatcha doin' there?" she asked through a mouthful of bread, catching Mikey shooting her a distasteful look out of the corner of her eye. 

"Stardew Valley! Ma– Mikey set me up with it. Do you wanna see my farm? I just got sheep," Casey explained, starting to move the laptop around to face April, but pausing as he waited for her confirmation. 

"Soup first," Mikey said, beckoning April back toward him. 

"Yeah, I do Case, let me get Mikey off my back first," April laughed, walking back toward the stove and dipping her spoon into the second pot. She took a sip, pausing thoughtfully, before tapping her spoon against the rim of the first pot. "This one, it's a bit more subtle, a bit less salty, I guess? You're gonna put tofu in it, right?" Mikey nodded, and April tapped the rim of the pot again in confirmation. "Yeah, I think this one will go better with the tofu."

"Awase dashi wins!" Mikey cheered, turning off the stovetop for the time being. "Once it cools off a bit, can you guys help me put it in the fridge? I'm gonna use the iriko dashi for dinner tonight."

April gave him a thumbs up, walking around the table and sitting down on the chair next to Casey, leaning over to get a better look at his computer screen. Casey gave her a wide grin, moving the character around the farm, showing off the frankly insane number of crops he was growing, all sorted into neat 5x5 fields. He'd gotten a chicken coop, and as advertised, a barn with two sheep in it. He was pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing, which made April feel bad about the fact that she was about to ruin the mood. 

"Can I ask you a future question? Not like, inherently heavy, but…" she trailed off, waiting for Casey to confirm before she continued. 

The boy next to her hesitated, his whole body tensing for a second. "Um, yeah, sure. Can't guarantee I'll answer."

"That's fine, that's fine," April said quickly, trying to be reassuring. "I just…wanted to know if you knew my parents."

"I didn't," Casey admitted, and April wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed. "You– I mean, Commander O'Neil, they came up sometimes when she told me stories about before the Krang, but that was all I heard." He looked like he wanted to say more, but he kept his mouth shut, staring at the laptop keyboard. 

"That's fine, Case. I just wanted to know in case there was like, something we should know before they come over on Friday," April said, giving him a smile and bumping her shoulder against his. She knew the smile didn't quite reach her eyes, but it was hard when she kept thinking about the girl that would become Commander O'Neil. Her dad, stuck in Chicago and far away from her family. Her mom at work downtown, right at the epicenter. It was fully possible that April had gotten a whole month more with her parents than Commander O'Neil had ever gotten, and that made her heart hurt. 

Casey’s eyes locked back onto the computer screen, his character systematically watering all of the crops one by one. Did he know he could upgrade his watering can? The three of them fell silent, the soft clicks of the laptop keyboard and the rustling of Mikey cleaning up from his dashi experiment filling the kitchen. 

Eventually Mikey slid into the seat on the other side of the table from April and Casey, pushing a spiral ring notebook across the table to April. It was open to a page full of notes that April was coming to recognize as Casey's handwriting. "This is what I've got so far," Mikey said as April picked up the notebook. "I'm thinking miso soup for the appetizer, obviously, and I know Pops wants to make his green bean casserole, so that's one of the sides. Since this is gonna be a cross-cultural nightmare dinner anyway, I figured I'll just do what I want, and I wanna make this honey garlic pork belly recipe I've been looking at for ages, I just need to actually go to Canal Street and get the pork belly. Do you think you can get Raph to make those dinner rolls he made for Christmas last year? We need a good dough to go with the pork belly since it's gonna be so saucy. And then that just leaves dessert! I'm thinking I'll break out the ice cream machine, maybe do a sorbet? That way I can make it ahead of time. Strawberries aren't quite in season yet, but I think that's where my head's at. Thoughts? Feedback? Any unknown allergies I'm violating?"

April's eyes followed along the scribbled notes while she listened to Mikey. Other recipe suggestions had been written down before being scratched out, and she could see the train of thought bouncing all over the page as Casey had transcribed for Mikey about as neatly as possible. It looked like Mikey had considered bullying Splinter out of making the green bean casserole, but April was glad that Mikey hadn't vetoed it in the end, since Splinter was just about as excited for this as the boys were. "This looks great, Mikey. Do you wanna send me a shopping list? I'll pick up all the stuff tomorrow after class, and then I can come over Friday morning and help cook it all," she said, setting the notebook back down on the table and giving the youngest turtle a smile. 

"Girl, that'd be so helpful," Mikey said, tension that April hadn't previously noticed leaving his shoulders. "Casey, you'll help me get the ingredient list together?" he asked, shifting his glance toward the boy. 

Casey glanced up from the computer screen, making eye contact with Mikey before nodding. "Yeah, I can do that. Gotta see if Raph will make the bread first, though," he reminded the two of them. "Otherwise, I think we decided on making noodles to go with the pork belly? Right?"

Mikey looked back toward April sheepishly. "Could you ask Raph about that? Please?" he asked.

It was a bit of a weird request. Mikey usually was a bit of a control freak when it came to menu planning, and he constantly had to be reminded to delegate. Not that April minded, but well, it was weird that Mikey was asking her to do this in the first place. "Yeah, of course, but uh…why?"

Mikey and Casey shared a look that made April think she was being kept out of the loop on something. "Guys…" she warned, and Casey shifted uncomfortably next to her. 

"Raph and I…kinda got in a fight last night," Mikey admitted. "I was pretty mad after he made me come home. You know how weird he's been since, well, everything." April actually didn't know. She'd thought he was still pretending to be about as fine as he could be. Had he started slipping and she hadn't even noticed? "We'll be cool by Friday, promise. He just…I hate when he babies me like this. I'm a lot less breakable than he thinks," he huffed, fiddling with his compression gloves. 

April got Raph's overprotectiveness, she really did. There weren't a lot of things that April could protect her brothers from that they couldn't fight off themselves anymore, though. It'd been hard to accept that, but she'd had to come to terms with it years ago. She had to learn how to be okay doing what she could. "I'll talk to him," April told Mikey, reaching across the table and placing her hand over his. "About the bread and you."

"Thanks, April," Mikey sighed, giving her a small smile. "You're the best, y'know that?"

April got to her feet, moving around the table and kissing the top of Mikey's head. "Yeah, I've heard it before," she teased, before slipping out of the kitchen. 

She wasn't exactly sure where Raph was, so she resigned herself to doing a lap around the lair. Leo and Donnie were animatedly talking about pyrotechnics in Leo's room, but Raph wasn't there, so she let them be. He wasn't in his own bedroom, or the living room either. This lair was bigger, more spread out than the old one, and April kind of hated it. It made it so much harder to just stumble across each other, compared to when nearly every room had connected to the atrium in the old place. 

She pulled out her phone to open up the tracking app Donnie had made, realizing she'd gotten some texts from her mother. 

Momma O'Neil

April are you done with class yet? I thought it ended at 2

April are you coming home for dinner?

April you need to text me back

Pizza Supreme, April was going to lose her mind. 

mom im at the splintersons

i always come here on wed?? im staying for dinner which i also always do

ill be home later tonight maybe 9? idk yet

She closed out of her text messages with a grumble, switching over to the tracking app, zooming in on Raph's icon. He was actually in the lair, except he was hanging out in the garage for some reason? Whatever, Mikey had said he was being weird lately. Maybe April could at least knock him out of it. 

Concrete stairs lead up to the garage, which was located just beneath the surface of New York. April wasn't sure what its purpose had been in the original design of the train station, maybe a parking area for any buses? A rare designated employee parking perhaps? Either way, it now held the turtle tank and the shell hogs, plus any larger projects Donnie happened to be working on. April paused in front of the closed door, trying to listen to see if she could hear Raph, but there wasn't any sign of him from outside. Still this was where the tracker said he was, so she took a deep breath and swung the door open. 

Honestly, April wasn't sure what she'd been expecting. The garage wasn't really a place anyone hung out in, except occasionally Donnie. The room was dark, light from the hallway flooding in as she opened the door. There was a punching bag set up that hadn't been there whenever the last time April had actually come in here was, although it was busted open with sand spilled out across the floor. A small grumble came from further inside the room, away from the light that the door was casting. "Raph?" she called softly, reaching for the light switch, though she hesitated and retracted her hand before she could actually flip it. 

"...I'm here," came Raph's quiet response, tucked away on the other side of the tank. 

April sighed, turning on her phone flashlight before shutting the door behind her and sending the room back into near darkness. She navigated around the tank, stepping over the scattered tools and wires that Donnie had left around and eventually coming upon Raph, tucked against the wall. She kept her phone flashlight off of his face, taking a few steps toward him, though she stopped when he flinched back against the wall. 

"Can you leave me alone, please?" Raph asked, doing a very good job of keeping his voice even. It might've worked, if April was brain-dead. 

"That's a good one, big guy," April responded, turning off her phone flashlight and leaving the device on the workbench next to her. She fumbled through the dark a few feet forward until she felt Raph, before getting to the floor and crawling up beside him. 

"Raph means it, April," Raph said, trying very hard to sound like he actually meant it. It wasn't very convincing when he had almost immediately curled into her. 

"Uh huh," April murmured, wrapping her arms around his neck as she rested her chin on top of his head. Raph let out a whine as one final protest on how much he wanted to be alone right now, tucking his face into her collarbone. 

Donnie was her best friend, it wasn't like that was a secret from anyone. But Raph and April…they had an understanding in a way that neither of them had with anyone else. They didn't have to be the strong older sibling for each other. That was the rule, ever since Raph tried to play the big brother card on April and she set him straight on the fact that she was actually 9 months older than him, thank you very much. There was more to it than that, but there had never been any reason to explicitly define it, so they hadn't. April could rely on Raph and Raph could rely on her and that was that. 

April hummed tunelessly, softly scratching the back of Raph's neck in an attempt to get him to relax a bit. "...Do you wanna make those dinner rolls on Friday?" she asked. 

Raph initially let out a strangled grumble as a response. April waited patiently for some actual words, and was eventually rewarded, sort of. "I…don't know if I should be there," he admitted, tucking his arms tighter against his plastron as he curled into himself. 

April did have her arms around his neck, she was in a prime position to throttle him. She considered it for a moment, and maybe if it was Donnie she would've actually done it. But no, this situation probably required a bit more tact. "Raphie, I have no idea what you're talking about," she said. "My parents are gonna love you." They'd seen pictures and videos of everyone already, and now she'd almost certainly end up giving them a talk before the dinner about not being weird about Raph. 

Raph went quiet again, keeping his arms between himself and April. What exactly had she missed out on this past month? She started trying to run through every interaction she'd had with Raph since the invasion when she realized she'd seen surprisingly little of him, especially ever since they'd brought Leo home from the hospital. In fact, that was the last time she'd seen Raphael in more than passing. She hugged him a little tighter, taking a shaky inhale. "Raph, we're not mind melding right now. You're gonna have to talk to me."

"...What if they think I'm a monster?" he mumbled, his voice sounding upsettingly small. 

"Then they'll be wrong. And I'll move in here, or into the dorms at Eastlaird. But they won't think that. They really liked Mikey last night, y'know," she said. 

"I broke the punching bag," Raph said, like that was a connected thought somehow. When April didn't say anything, he continued, his voice a little more stressed. "Mikey and I got into a fight last night."

Okay, maybe April had been a little too absent this past month. Maybe Operation Parents Trap should've happened the instant they brought Leo home. "You're gonna have to spell it out for me, big guy," she cooed, and Raph tensed up in her arms. 

"I'm so angry, April. It's like, it's like when we were kids all over again but so much worse. Mikey was being such a brat when he came home last night, and we argued about it, and I wanted to hit him. Mikey! It keeps happening, it's been happening all month, with everyone, everything–" Raph sobbed, finally breaking. "–I think they did something to me, in my head. I could've killed Leo! I wanted to kill Leo! How long until I get angry enough to want to do that again?"

Suddenly, this entire interaction made too much sense. Raph of all people asking to be left alone, the fact that he was refusing to hug her back, him hiding up all the way in the garage, where no one would even think to look. "They turned me into a monster, and I can't rip it out of my head," Raph whimpered, hugging himself tighter, and April was inclined to do the same. 

"Don't you dare say that again," she whispered harshly. Donnie had managed to find one blurry video of the Sister Krang getting carted off by some government agency. At the time they'd all shrugged and decided to call it a day, but April was starting to consider if she could get Donnie to help her break in and herbicide the hell out of the alien. "You are not a monster, and I will beat up anyone who says otherwise. Including you."

She paused for a moment, pulling out of the one-sided hug and placing her palms on either side of Raph's face. "Difficulty regulating your emotions is a symptom of PTSD," she said sternly, just barely able to see Raph's wide eyes in the dark. "I know Donnie's been doing all sorts of brain scans on you to look for Krang bits, and I know they keep coming up empty. You're not a monster, Raph, you're a kid. You're a kid who went through a horrible thing, and now your brain is trying to sort through it, and it absolutely sucks ass, but you're not alone. Not now, not ever, got it?" 

April blinked a few times, realizing she'd started crying again for the second day in a row, right as Raph let out a sob and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against his plastron. A smile pushed its way onto her lips, and she nuzzled her cheek against the crown of Raph's head. "There you go," she murmured, going back to hugging him. 

It was a conversation they'd had before, and it was one they would probably have again and again. Being the oldest was a heavy weight, and one that was nearly impossible to put down once you'd picked it up. Maybe it was easier for her to remember with Karai always in the back of her mind, maybe it was just because she hadn't picked up the big sister mantle until she was 8 while Raph had been doing it his whole life. It was alright though. This was something she could carry. 

The two of them didn't say anything more for a long time. The vibration pattern indicating her mom was texting her went off a couple of times, buzzing on the workbench next to them, but neither of them moved to check it. Whatever her mother had to say could wait. It did prompt her to think of the bread again, though. 

"So…you, me, making dinner rolls?" April asked after a bit. "You're not allowed to skip out on Friday dinner. I'm gonna need all the help I can get keeping everyone else under control. Mikey met my parents for what, 90 minutes, and I had to update the snitch tally! Imagine the damage Donnie and Leo are gonna do." 

Raph huffed a laugh into her shirt, giving a small nod. "Yeah, we can make rolls," he conceded. 

April let out a sigh of relief. "You're the best. Let me shoot Mikey a text," she said, and Raph let her go as she stretched over to grab her phone off the workbench. Two text notifications from her mother, which she quickly swept away, before settling back down next to Raph. 

mike-n-ike 🍊, Casey Jones the Sequel

ayo dinner rolls are a GO

Casey started typing, but he was still getting accustomed to phone keyboards, so he was always pretty slow about it. April locked her phone, shoving it back into her pocket and leaning back against Raph's plastron. 

"Donnie and Leo are planning a pyrotechnics display," she announced into the darkness.

"Fuck," Raph groaned, leaning his head back against the wall.