lucetilogs | I'll be fine, I swear

Entry tags:

I'll be fine, I swear

Who: [Bad username or site: gaijin_ninja title=Raphael @ livejournal.com] and [Bad username or site: i_speak_softly title=Donatello @ livejournal.com]
What: Brotherly weekend camping trip
When: Backdated to early this morning
Where: Near the western lake
Summary: Raph and Don take a much-needed break from civilization to regroup and recover from recent losses.
Rating: T

For the first time in weeks, Raph's actually excited to start the day. They'd done all their packing the night before, told Casey all about their plans in case someone started asking after them, and headed out for the west lake at the break of dawn.

The morning was warm, but not unbearably so compared to the heatwave the rising sun was sure to bring. Luckily they'd be traveling by the shade of the forest through the worst of it, and reach a suitable campsite by the cool relief of sundown.

Now Raph would never call himself anything but city-bred. He loves the noise and clamber of the streets far more than what's good for him. But walking through the dappled shade to the sound of summer breeze and birdsong is something he's learned to appreciate.

Quiet. God, he just needed quiet. Give him some time to get away from prying people and just relax for once.

He closes his eyes, shifts his pack, and sighs, sending another watchful look to his brother following not far behind.

"Reminds you of Northampton, don't it?"

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"I ain't breakin'." He steels himself with a sharp inhale, a stubborn set of his jaw. He fights the urge to shove Don off of him. No, he's not breaking. He's fighting. Fighting the only way he can, by getting freakin' pissed.

"I'll break their fuckin' jaws," he spits, with hellfire in every word. "Cowards."

Don takes the hint and disentangles himself from his brother's shoulders. That's his Raph. That's his stubborn Raph, who would take on any hero or villain in Luceti, even without magic powers and invincibility.

He stands up. "Come on."

He's taken aback when Don stands, suddenly disoriented as he's pulled from his own little angry world. He gets ready to follow him, but stops for a moment, eying him critically. "Where you goin'?"

"Not back to sleep, that's for sure." He takes a step towards the hill. "I think there was something you wanted me to do."

Raph doesn't want to grin. He doesn't feel like grinning. But that does earn Don a crooked, broken sort of smile.

He gets up, thumping his brother soundly on the shell. "Let's do it."

Then he takes off running toward the cliff, running for the sake of running, into a more familiar dark. The leap is like jumping rooftops. The moonlight reflects like a million plate glass windows. A slice of home.

It's not perfect, still jagged around the edges, but home all the same.

He hits the water and it takes his breath away. Oh, sweet distractions.

Don hits the water half a second after Raph, plunging into the silver and black.

It feels good, and he can tell Raph is enjoying it too, finding a little light in a place that has been so dark for him.

He surfaces slowly, and eases towards the rocks. He needs to do that again.

Raph surfaces, backstroking away from the cliff's edge. In the dark, it's a towering mountain of shadow, looking far more formidable than it was in the daylight. But that just makes it more fun.

"I told ya," he crows as Don climbs up the rocks by the shoreline. "That's good stuff!"

Don sniffs derisively. "That wasn't good stuff. This is good stuff."

And, reaching the top of the rocks, he does a back somersault off the edge.

"Oh yeah, hotshot?" He calls once Don surfaces. He's already scrambling for the rocks as fast as he can, a devilish grin on his face that all brothers know spells the universal language of start running now.

Fancy moves may not be Raph's forte, but he sure as hell knows how to make a splash. He cannonballs dangerously close to where Don's swimming.

When Raph surfaces, Don only shakes his head. "Don't you know you get a deduction for splashing? Six-point-five."

"I'm playin' by my own rules," he snickers. Did you expect anything less?

And now he's swimming backwards again, out toward the middle of the lake where the moon's reflection's made the water bright with silver.

"Bet the Captian's octopus'd come out at night, Donnie. Surprised you even got in the water."

"Ah. In that case, nine-point-two."

He follows Raph into the deeper water, sending small ripples across the silver disk of the moon's reflection.

"I thought you didn't believe in the octopus." Just a little reciprocal teasing, to show he's not scared by Raph's ghost stories.

"Tough crowd."

He stops swimming, opting to tread water instead.

"No, but you did. Plus. I think I'm the scariest thing out here." He grins a bit cheekily at that. "But you, you look a lot like cephalope food to me."

He's messing the word up on purpose. He's just that much of a dork.

Don lets his momentum carry him up to Raph, and hides his smirk under the edge of the water. "Ah, the mighty cephalope. It roams the lakes and rivers of many worlds, lying in wait to gore and then devour any hardheaded maniac that crosses its path."

On the word maniac, he lunges forward, pouncing on Raph and trying to force him under.

"I'll show you maniac!" Raph snarls at him playfully, thrashing and wrestling him in and out of the water. He tries to hook his arm around Don's neck and catch him in one of his patented Terrifying Headlocks of Doom.

Don pushes backwards, evading Raph's grab, then turns over and dives. If you want to throttle him, you'll have to catch him first.

But Raph doesn't follow him. Instead, his attention's set in the direction of the campsite. He growls low, this time completely genuine and dangerous. When Don surfaces, he's already swimming silently back toward the rocks, motioning him for silence.

"I heard somethin'."

Don surfaces when he realizes Raph isn't chasing him. Something must be wrong. He's about to ask, but he catches Raph's gesture, and sinks down again, so that only his eyes and ears are out of the water. From this vantage point he watches Raph climb out onto the rocks. He'll stay hidden, for now - better if whatever's moving in the camp doesn't know there are two Turtles in the area.

Raph disappears into the shadows. Something stirs farther up the bank then falls silent again. He hunches low, stalking toward the shadow, ready for a fight. His heart is pumping that sweet adrenaline, and it makes him grin something feral.

Then suddenly, trumpets blare from places unknown and the cougar that had just been rummaging through his backpack looks up at Raph with an intense, startled stare.

"The fuck?" He stumbles backwards in surprise. "Hey! Get outta there! Git!"

But the cougar doesn't move a muscle. Just. Keeps. Staring.

Are those trumpets? Don is pretty sure they are, and he even thinks there's something strangely familiar about the fanfare they're playing.

But that doesn't concern him as much as the fact that a mountain lion is in their camp, and is glaring at Raph with a look reminiscent of rabies.

Don feels his way into the shallow water, and coils on the sand there, ready to spring.

The cougar tilts its head at the both of them from where it sits by Raph's pack. "I can haz s'morez?"

Raph just stares back, dumbfounded. "...What?"

I can haz s'morez?

A thousand memories of Michelangelo beginning a question with the phrase "I can haz" leap to Don's mind, and he knows the answer to the cougar's query.

"We eated them!"

You get a loooong, sideways glance, Don. Raph's really starting to think there was something besides charcoal in that rabbit meat.

"Okay," he breathes, voice escalating with every syllable. "Could somebody tell me, please, what the heck is going on!?"

Raph stalks toward the cougar, waving his arms. Remember when he said 'I'll show you maniac'? This's what he really meant.

"I told ya to git! Beat it!"

The cougar cowers to the ground, ears flattened, eyes wide.

"Wai u so mean 2 kitteh? u no share teh foodz?"

On his way over, he picks up a sizeable log from the pile of firewood, swinging it threatening.

The cougar responds by bearing its teeth and roaring, swiping at the air with its claws, whatever spell it's been under now broken.

Edited 2010-07-22 01:34 (UTC)

Well, that didn't work quite as well as Don had hoped. It always made Mike break down in giggles...

He pushes forward, out of the water, and launches himself up the beach to bodycheck the cat before it can get its claws on Raph. Ducking under Raph's swing with the log, he scoops up his bo and spins to see whether the animal needs to be hit again.

The cat yelps in surprise at the impact, scrabbling away a few steps closer to the brush, yowling in protest at the assault. That's when Raph creams it soundly against the head with a mighty thump, sending it reeling across the ground. As soon as it gets a foothold, it retreats into the bushes.

Raph stands there, panting slightly, wiping his beak with the back of his hand. He barks a breathless laugh.

"Well wasn't that excitin'?"

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