Work Text:
It was five in the morning, and Leo was actually asleep for once. Or on the edge of it, with the glow of his phone screen still behind his eyelids, but definitely for sure dozing or maybe even snoozing if he actually knew the difference, which of all people he’d be the least qualified to make a statement on. But the point is he was asleep until a shaking twin climbed into his bed.
It took Leo's brain a second to get its bearings, but his arms had no such hesitation, immediately circling to hold a trembling Donnie tight against his chest. “Woah, woah, what’s wrong, D?”
Donnie did not answer, and Leo blinked sleep-fuzzy eyes to just barely make out the shape of him, face buried in Leo’s shoulder, braids tickling his neck. He shook his head in a tiny motion and clung tighter around whatever of Leo’s waist he could get from the other side of the blankets.
“At least get under the covers,” whispered Leo, trying to sound light and chill, peeling away just long enough to make an attempt at freeing the quilt from between them. Donnie made it extremely difficult by refusing to loosen his grip, but Leo had been working around Donnie’s sabotage his entire life, so he was ultimately victorious, tossing the covers over them both.
He immediately wrapped his twin up again, a tight hold around the shoulders and a gentle hand on the back of his head. This was a fun role-reversal. And by fun he meant it fucking sucked, holy shit how did Donnie deal with this, the silent upset of your other half in the middle of the night?
When it was Leo, it always felt like Too Much even when he didn’t say a single word. Like he’d be called in front of a judge and found guilty just for taking up space in the room and having his brothers’ eyes on him. With Donnie he knew it was different; not a shouldn’t but a can’t. So it wasn’t like Leo could just coax it out of him, not if he was upset to the point of nonverbal. All he could do was be there.
Wow. Lucky Donnie.
Since it’s okay and you’re alright had been on Donnie’s blacklist since, like, forever, Leo whispered, “I’m here. Don’t worry, I’m here.” For whatever that was worth.
Donnie’s breaths got choppy and hitched like he was going to cry.
That stabbed a hot knife directly through Leo’s sternum, painful and unrelenting. Fuck. What the fuck was wrong? Did something happen? He swallowed down the way his heart was trying to make a violent escape from his chest and continued the soft stroke of Donnie’s hair, planting a little kiss on the top of his head.
And it was shitty and self-centered of him, maybe, but there was a split-second where he wondered if this was what his brothers felt watching him do his cool little self-implosion in the winter. Part of him argued it wasn’t the same, another part was like yeesh probably, and the whole of him was extremely unhappy with this thread of thought and tried to cut it off. But Leo’s mind-scissors had been really dulled by the aforementioned self-implosion so it was doing that thing where it just bent the yarn in-between the blades.
Donnie cried a little, getting snot and tears all over Leo’s Nightwing t-shirt, but it had only been maybe five minutes when he tightened his grip impossibly further and said, almost too quiet to hear over the traffic outside the window, “Nardo?”
Leo’s heart cracked down the middle. “Yeah, Tello?” he asked, so incredibly soft against his will. He wanted to be steadfast and unaffected but that was clearly not going to happen.
Donnie pushed his head into Leo’s chest, maybe trying to wipe his eyes without releasing Leo. His hands were still trembling where they clutched Leo’s sides. It was a long moment before he finally said, in a tiny, tiny voice, “…Please don’t go anywhere.”
It drove a chisel down the crack in Leo’s heart and the two halves flew apart. Leo couldn’t help the lump in his throat, the immediate sting of tears in his eyes. His twin asking him not to leave. The amount of times he’d wished over the past six months that he could disappear.
Leo swallowed hard, and then again when his throat didn’t clear. He didn’t know what to say. “Did something happen?” he asked quietly, instead of addressing…that, or maybe doing anything else helpful.
Donnie made a tiny, choked sound in the back of his throat. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said wetly.
“Okay, that’s—that’s fine.” Leo stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and tried to pick out constellations to slow the racehorse of his mind thundering down the track at…however fast horses ran. 100mph? That seemed like, way too fast. Maybe 50? He spotted Cassieopia and Orion, and he thought about the way Donnie had held his wrist in the bathroom a couple months ago and told him we do not need to lose any more of you. They didn’t want to lose him. That concept should not have been so painful to imagine, but even now, it was like pressing on a bruise.
Donnie pulled away for a second to wipe his eyes—still with Leo’s shirt, thanks, Tello—but didn’t let Leo see his face. Unprompted, he said, “I had a…” and sighed, short and sharp through his nose. He swallowed audibly. “I had a nightmare.”
The levels of role-reversal were actually insane, now, Leo thought with a mild hysteria that didn’t distract him well enough from the situation. Even though he both didn’t want to know the answer and kind of already knew it, he asked, “About me?”
Donnie squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head—not like he was saying no, but like he was having a particularly painful thought and wanted to physically clear it from his mind the way you’d erase an Etch-a-Sketch. It churned Leo’s stomach a little, because it was so too-familiar.
It was getting kind of stuffy in the blanket nest, the combined heat of two twins in the spring thaw to summer. But like hell was Leo pulling away, and he suspected he’d need a crowbar to pry Donnie off of him at this point. Leo stared at the square of watery light on Donnie’s wall and tried to breathe.
Finally, instead of answering, Donnie whispered, “…You scared me so bad.” It was small and broken, the vulnerability only five-AM under a shared quilt could pull out of him.
Then the words registered, and Leo’s heart lodged in his throat, choking him with every beat. The guilt burned like acid, but almost worse was that intent care and worry pulling him apart like taffy. He wanted to hide. He wanted to box himself up in a neat pretty package, plastic and infallible. He couldn’t let go of the feeling that somewhere, there existed a perfect amount of Leo—enough for his family but not too much for everyone else—and he just couldn’t seem to find it.
“I’m sorry,” Leo whispered.
Donnie didn’t reply, just pressed his head back close, ear to Leo’s chest like he was listening to his heartbeat. It hurt to think about. The lump in Leo’s throat grew and he swallowed hard.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Leo whispered, before he was even aware he wanted to speak, because Donnie wasn’t the only one whose safe space was five-AM under a shared quilt.
The reply was immediate. “Anything.”
“Do…do you remember when, um. When Mikey told you guys—uh, that thing I said about my comics?” Leo kept it vague, because if he burst into tears he would lose his nerve, and this memory was a dark bruise that he’d kind of been poking over and over.
Apparently Donnie felt the same, because he took an extremely shaky breath that screamed he was in immediate danger of crying again.
Leo took that as the answer it was. “So…I k-kind of heard you guys. Um. Talking. After that.”
There was a silence only punctuated by their breathing. Well, only Donnie’s hitched breaths, really, because Leo was frozen still with the anticipation. He didn’t really think Donnie would be mad, but…y’know, the last time he thought he knew how to read people…
Maybe didn’t turn out so well. Haha.
“And?” asked Donnie, crackled but otherwise blank. He must have heard how Leo’s heartbeat jumped at the ambiguity because he peeked a bloodshot eye up at him and clarified, “I’m not mad. I just—is that the secret?”
It wasn’t. And of course he could tell.
Leo set his chin on Donnie’s head so his face wouldn’t be visible. He focused on the warmth of his twin intertwined with him, Donnie’s fingers pressed into his ribs. “You said something, you said…” it kind of felt like being flayed alive to say it out loud, so Leo whispered it: “Um. ‘I want my Leo back.’”
Donnie squeezed him so tightly and so suddenly that it was a little bit painful. He said, “yeah,” but his voice was so full of tears Leo couldn’t tell if it was a prompting question or an agreement.
Leo had to keep going either way. He was so close, and if he stopped he would not be able to start again. “What if…?”
And then he couldn’t finish the thought.
He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say, how to put a voice to the loud and clamoring fear, the guilt that circled we don’t want to lose any more of you and the idea that they wanted Their Leo back.
It was a weird and interesting phenomenon—and by that he meant it fucking sucked— to hate himself for causing this pain but still kind of want the thing that caused it.
Or—it wasn’t that he wanted to. Now, definitely, but even then, Leo didn’t want to disappear, he just…
If people liked him more when there was less of him, he wanted that. And it was…theoretically possible that had been drilled into his head, the screenshots he still could remember word-for-word, the laughter that still rang in his ear sometimes, the ache in his knee when it rained.
But now, his family wanted him to be Leo again. And he wasn’t sure how to go back.
What if I can’t be Your Leo? What if I broke your twin in a way that can’t be fixed?
“What if…” Leo swallowed hard. He whispered it into Donnie’s hair, like they were six again sharing secrets under the covers. “What if there’s not, like. Enough of me. Anymore.”
Donnie inhaled sharply.
The cling was almost bruising, but it placed Leo firmly in his body, in the shared room they’d had since they were little, all the stripped paint from taped-up posters, the quilt worn thin, the t-shirt Raph had bought him for the twins’ birthday so soft (and damp) against his skin. He was here. For whatever it was worth, Leo was here.
Donnie seemed to be at a loss for words, which panged Leo’s chest with guilt. Maybe it was a stupid thing to say. Maybe the fear was even stupider. They’d told him a million times that they loved him, but apparently his dumb ass couldn’t learn a thing. The frustration with himself seemed endless, cyclical, a paradox of hating himself for hating himself when he should just be past it by now.
But that was why Leo asked. Because he didn’t used to be like this, and he wasn’t sure when it would stop.
Donnie pulled back suddenly and Leo’s heart lurched.
His eyes were wet and red-rimmed, cheeks splotchy, braids askew. He put his hands on either side of Leo’s face and said, voice steely, “I love every version of you.”
Against his will, Leo’s own eyes welled up. He said, “Tello—”
Donnie cut him off. “We love you whether you’re quiet or loud, or happy or sad, or anything in between.” The fierceness wobbled a little, and Donnie pressed his lips together before he said, “I—I didn’t mean to make you think I…need you to—to be something specific.”
Leo sniffled, throat sore, and before he could stop himself he said, “Doesn’t everyone, though?”
Donnie’s face flashed with painful understanding. The determination came back tenfold, a furrow between his brows as he squished Leo’s cheeks together. “Not the people who love you.”
Leo shut his eyes. He didn’t know what to think.
Suddenly, with the light and triumphant tone of his eureka voice, Donnie said, “I see the problem here.”
Well that was intriguing. Leo cracked an eye back open to see Donnie’s smile, victorious and full of teeth and totally at odds with the tear tracks down his cheeks. It soothed something in Leo’s heart to see his twin smile, so he said, a little choked-up, “Oh yeah?”
“It’s semantics.”
Leo blinked at him. And then he said, “Oh my God. What.”
“It’s semantics,” Donnie repeated, as if that cleared anything up. “There’s a difference between ‘want’ and ‘need.’”
“Okay?”
Donnie sat up and yanked Leo with him. “You know that we want you to be yourself.”
That had been made extremely clear to him. “Yeah.”
“But if we could draw a line between ‘want’ and ‘need,’ I don’t need you to be like ‘Leo’—” he put air quotes around it “—to love you.”
The words hit something deep in his chest and Leo blinked, stray tears slipping down his cheeks silently.
Donnie reached out again and cupped his face, wiping them away. “I want you to be loud and goofy because I love you. But I love you no matter what. Do you understand?”
Leo could track the train of thought. It seemed too good to be true, but…maybe his assessment was a little biased. He nodded.
Donnie tipped Leo’s head forward and wrapped him in another hug, a little damp but immovable. “That doesn’t change. Ever.” He swallowed hard. “You will always be enough for me.”
Leo shuddered a breath and clung to his twin. He was here. To Donnie, at least, it seemed worth a lot.