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desceros · 17 days

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tries to sleep, fails, gets melancholy, copes by writing purple turtle fic donatello/reader, gn!reader, rated t, 1.6k. insomnia, friends to.... friends, (were you ever just friends? are you something more? what is love if not friendship shifted an inch to the left?), yearning, yearning, yearning, yearning—

Donatello is sleeping.

Hefting a fatigued sigh, you hover in the doorway to his bedroom for a moment. Staring at his face, taking it in. He’s gotten unfairly handsome as the years have gone by. Beautiful, even. Pretty angles, sharp defined lines, dark seductive eyes. Like this, unmasked, slack in sleep, it’s free for you to look as much as you want. More than you can during the day. A little secret thing just for your own heart’s keeping.

…Best friends shouldn’t want to stare at each other like this, you think with an ache.

It’s late. You can’t sleep. Lying down has provided nothing but racing thoughts you can’t quiet. Things to do tomorrow. Things to say when you see someone. Things to write down if you can hold them until the morning. Things, things, things. So many things in your head, ten thousand little voices like little snowflakes in your skull. Each small, powerless; but together, a force too mighty to outrun.

And Donnie is sleeping. Normally he’s awake. Fiddling, poking, prodding, studying, twisting, cracking, bending. Available to draw you into sleep. Always soothing, petting your hair, cooing at you until you drift off at last to the dulcet sounds of his low rumbles.

But not tonight. Tonight he sleeps, pretty in his sheets even as he’s all sprawled out and drooling. Cute. He’s cute. He’s cute and close enough to touch but so, so far away that you know you never will. Not like that. Not like that.

It’s late. You can’t sleep.

Slowly, not wanting to wake him, infuriated with yourself just at the thought that you’d risked it by lingering as long as you have, you peel away from his door frame and sneak into the living room. The couch greets you again. Inviting, soft. It smells like turtle ass. Popcorn. Movie night. It smells like family, like home. Scratchy beneath your cheek. You’ve been meaning to get them some new pillows. The way Mikey had laughed so hard he’d snorted his drink. Leo’s squawk when it got all over him. The weight of Donnie’s arm on your shoulder when he’d leaned on you while laughing until he got the hiccups. His cologne, new, smells nice. You should tell him tomorrow.

(You can’t tell him. There’s no way for a best friend to look at the other with pupils shaped like hearts and be the same. You can’t tell him.)

Heavily, you sigh. It’s late. You can’t sleep.

You sit up. Get up off the couch. Stretch a little before exhaling and walking around a bit to try and work off some of this excess energy. The darkness of the living room isn’t so much, anymore, what with how your eyes have adjusted. You can see the pieces of the evening strewn about. A pizza box that Splinter’s going to find in the morning and yell at the lot of you for not throwing out. Raph’s teddy bear, leaning against the other couch where he’d been pretending he hadn’t been using it to hide his face in the scary parts. Mikey’s cup, half-full, forgotten in Leo’s panic to find paper towels. And—

—Donnie, standing in the doorway, bleary-eyed, arms folded.

“Why are you awake?” he asks, voice tumbling over your ears like rocks on a riverbed. Guilt strikes you like a blow. He’s exhausted. You’ve woken him up.

“I’m sorry,” you say as an answer, tangling your fingers in the shirt you’d borrowed out of his closet. The shirt you always borrow. The shirt that’s half yours, now.

Donnie’s quiet. You sink your teeth into your lower lip and hope he’ll shrug and go back to bed. Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’s got enough sleep juice in him that he’ll drift right back off and forget this happened.

He doesn’t. “…Can’t sleep?”

The guilt burns your skin like sand in the wind. You smile and pretend. “I’ll be okay. Go back to bed, Don. You need it more than I do.”

He doesn’t.

“…Please?” you try again.

You’re met, instead, with a sigh. He rubs the back of his head where his mask would tie if he were wearing it. Lets his arm fall to his side—ah, except no. He’s holding out his hand, palm outstretched, inviting you to come close. When you don’t, his beak wrinkles. “Come here.”

You take a few steps closer, but don’t take his hand just yet. “What are you doing?”

“Just come here,” he says again, curling his fingers a few times in an imperious grabby command. You come closer. He opens his tired eyes in a squint, mouth dipped into a frown, and his gesture gets more demanding. “Come here.”

Stepping closer, closer, closer, finally you get within range. You realize he wants your hand the moment he loses patience with you, watching as he rolls his eyes and reaches out to encircle your wrist with strong fingers. They eclipse the bones there easily, tugging as he turns, pulling you out of the living room.

“Don—” you start to protest, but he stops you with a breath.

“Stubborn,” he accuses, though there’s no heat to the word. The scoff is thick on the back of your tongue—Donnie of all people calling you stubborn—but you don’t let it out, knowing it’ll be too-loud in the pitch night.

He pulls you into his room, the very room that had been such a sweet siren song to you earlier. He pulls you towards his bed. He pulls you in behind him when he settles in. He pulls you beneath his blanket. He pulls, pulls, pulls, until your chest is flush to his plastron and his arm is around your waist and his breath is in your face and your heart is in your throat.

It’s late. You’re not going to be able to sleep.

“…Go to sleep,” he says after a few seconds, doubtless able to feel the way your pulse is like a hummingbird against his skin.

“Sorry,” you say in lieu of—anything else. You don’t dare try to say another word, unsure of what exactly would tumble out instead. Perhaps a sweet poem about the texture of his skin against yours. Maybe a lament that he feels the need to tuck his thigh between yours so so so close to where you wake in a pool of sweat dreaming of his touch. Or possibly a whispered confession that tastes like lightning and blood and sugar all at the same time; that you want this but not this, you want this but more.

Gently, a forehead bonks against yours. Dark eyes open and meet yours, centimeters away. He studies you, and you watch the gears turn. More slowly than usual, lethargic even, because of his slumber.

“You’re thinking too much,” he murmurs. Dumbly, you nod. “Need to talk about it?”

“…Yeah,” you admit, then, “…but I won’t.”

He doesn’t like that. A frown mars his beautiful, beautiful face.

“Why?”

You swallow the incredulous laugh, the kaleidoscope of responses. They’re all irrelevant, impossible to share, save for one. “You should sleep.”

Donnie’s hand tightens, fingers curling in his—your—shirt in the small of your back. “So should you.”

“Yeah.”

“…”

“…I don’t understand.” The confession, rare, makes you sigh.

“…I don’t either,” you tell him. And you don’t. Why did you have to feel this way for him? Why couldn’t it be someone easier that stole your heart? Why does it have to be the one person you can’t stand to lose? Why does he have to be so comfortable touching you like this and making it hurt even worse? Why can’t you stop feeling this way?

Why can’t you sleep? Why can’t you sleep?

His fingers unfurl from your shirt. His hand dips beneath the hem, finding the skin of your back. Slow shivers spread like little earthquakes as he strokes along your spine, tectonic caresses that ripple and destroy. It's familiar enough a touch that you don't stop him; unfamiliar enough that it rends you inside out.

Donnie leans in. Ghosts his lips along your jaw. It’s not a kiss; you’re just friends, after all. But it’s a sweet caress that feels good, all the way to where he lingers at your ear, whispering there, quivering at the touch that's too close to something else to be fair. “Close your eyes.”

You have one rule: listen to Donatello. So you do; you close your eyes, let his nails drag down your back, let his mouth press warm into your pulse, let his chest rumble with churrs that fill the night air with something akin to a lullaby. His legs curl around yours, mixing, confusing, making the separation of you disappear.

It’s… maddening. You hate this. You love him. You love him so much. You hate that he can do this so easily.

“Shhh,” comes the gentle coo against your skin, like he can tell you’re pulling away from his intent. You obey that, too. Donnie says to be quiet, so you quiet. Thoughts, movements, words; all of them fall away at his beckoning. “Just like that. Good.”

Good, you think, feeling a little fuzzy. It feels good to be good for him. God. You’d be so good for him—but no. None of that, now. Not when you can pretend that these little presses of his lips are kisses. That the thickness of his thigh pressed to your shorts means something. That his hand scratching lines in your skin is something meant to claim as much as it is to calm.

“Making me work for it tonight,” you hear him mumble, half-conscious of the words, not sure if they’re real or part of a dream he’s built for you. “Good job, sweetheart. Just like that.”

More brushes of his mouth. A slow glide of tongue. A lovely dream, you think, finally letting your muscles go slack. A dream of a Donatello who would hold you like this, talk to you like this. A Donatello who is more than just your best friend.

It’s late. Finally, warm and held and pulled into a sweet dream, finally, you sleep.

#me slurring with a voice thick with sleep: two best friends that are in love but too close to tell and so they dance like leaves in the wind #forever brushing close. darting about like little butterflies. gossamer wings catching the light and enchanting one another w each breath #but too close. too close. you can't see the scope of a painting when it's the single strokes that catch your eye.#.....................it's almost four in the morning. im sure there are errors but i shan't be fixing them now. have it as it comes #tmnt #rise #donatello/reader #my fic #rating: t

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sockendrache · 8 months

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Headcanon: Obito gets violently sick whenever he has a crush bc he's an Uchiha and feels everything way more intense

So. Uchiha feel emotions way more intense than non-Uchiha, yes?

Imagine Obito, who doesn't really have any friends but is desperate to be included, hearing the other kids talk about their little puppy-crushes. About feeling butterflies in your stomach and getting dizzy and nervous, all that jazz.

Then, enter Rin. Who's the first person to go out of her way to hang out with Obito and befriends him and gets to know him. And him, being so deprived of social interactions with kids his age, immediately latches onto her and they become besties-

And then he notices that his heart starts pounding and he gets butterflies whenever he's around Rin, and he just thinks to himself "Is this??? A Crush????" Since, y'know. He's got absolutely no reference to go off of and know the difference between friends and crushes.

What I'm saying is: Obito has no idea what having a friend feels like and is operating purely on what he heard other kids describe crushes to be like.

Years later he's slowly making friends with the other kids at the academy and has more experience on what having friends feels like, and he's cONFUSED as hell, because why the fuck does he get butterflies when he's hanging out with Asuma and Kurenai or sparring with Guy??!!

So he asks his Grandma what that's all about, and she just goes

"Well, you're an Uchiha, and we Uchiha are known to experience emotions about 10x more intense than others. What feels like a 'crush' to other kids is just what 'friendship' feels like to an Uchiha. I assure you, you'll know the difference when you truly develop feelings :)"

And Obito just thinks she's trying to comfort him because "No way that's true, how can my feelings get any stronger than this?!"

...flash forward to him, Rin and Kakashi being placed on Team Minato, and Obito realizing that Grandma was right when the sound of Kakashi's voice is enough to make him violently throw up

Turns out that those feelings could get stronger. A LOT stronger.

His friendship with Rin gives him comforting butterflies and a warm fuzzy feel up his spine that makes him smile for days.

Meanwhile, his rivalry (ITS NOT LOVE, IT'S NOT LOVE!!) with Kakashi makes him physically ill. Obito doesn't just feel warm and fuzzy when chatting (arguing) with Kakashi, he actually gets a fucking fever. Obito doesn't get comforting butterflies when he's around Kakashi, he gets violently sick to the point where he throws up whenever Kakashi so much as breathes in his direction.

And the worst part is: everyone knows what's wrong ("wrong") with Obito, literally everyone.

Everyone, EXCEPT FOR KAKASHI

One moment Obito is chatting with Asuma and Genma, he's completely fine and feels great! ....then Kakashi comes up to them (making sure he gets to the training grounds on time, lol). He doesn't even get a single word in before Obito goes pale, then,

"Obito-"

Hearing Kakashi say his name is enough to make him throw up into the nearest trashcan

Genma volunteers to help Obito get cleaned up, if only to escape the scene

Kakashi, watching them trott off: Tsk. Why doesn't he just go to the doctor already?

Asuma: ...

Asuma: Uhm. How long has he been... sick?

Kakashi: It's been like this for weeks. I honestly don't get why Minato Sensei has me go out of my way to fetch Obito every day when he's clearly too ill to be of any use during training.

Asuma: ...yea that's odd

Asuma, internally: kakashi how dense are you

#naruto #naruto headcanons #kakaobi #kkob #kakashi x obito #obito uchiha #rin nohara #kakashi hatake #obito headcanons #uchiha love to suffer and that extends to their love life too /jk #obito cant catch a break #other kids get butterflies when they have crushes #he gets to experience whats it like to have your appendix burst #for multiple hours #and Kakashi has the audacity to scold him like hes not at fault #team minato #obitos grandma watching him suffer: ah yes young love #tldr obito is so in love with kakashi its disgusting for everyone involved #either kakashi pretends to be oblivious or hes really just that dense

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