Growing Pains
A/N I do not own TMNT, but I am forever grateful for their existence!
Also, I must give full and very much deserved credit to SetoAngel01 who has given me the gift of numerous stunning pieces of fan art for this fic, including the cover art. She is supremely talented and you all should check her out! Thank-you so much SetoAngel01!
Chapter 1
It hadn't started over night, but by no means had it been a gradual process either. In their younger years Donatello had always towered over his brothers. He had been the family's beanpole. Meanwhile Leonardo, the next tallest, had lingered with several modest inches behind his purple-clad brother. It almost seemed natural that their baby brother Michelangelo would settle in for the long run as the shortest, his feigned altricial behaviour easily slotting him into the role. Then there was Raphael, neither as tall as Leonardo nor as short as Michelangelo. For many years the brothers remained in their respective height designations, but not long after puberty hit and they reached their late teens, did the order abruptly begin to change.
First came Michelangelo's growth spurt. After his sixteenth birthday, the youngest would spend the next year shooting up, past Raphael, past Leonardo and by the fall of his seventeenth birthday, Michelangelo found himself eye-to-eye with his once tallest brother, Donatello. Leonardo's height had not changed in the slightest; he remained content as long as he remained above Raphael. Said turtle on the other hand was less-than-impressed by this sudden turn of events. For within the year of Michelangelo's growth spurt he had endured being left behind as the shortest. Insult only adding to injury by the fact that he also remained the heaviest. It didn't matter that Raphael's extra weight came from his muscular build. Being three inches shorter than Leonardo and a good fifty pounds heavier still left him unsettled. The youngest turtle's constant ribbing certainly did not help.
Come the year of Raphael's eighteenth birthday, the turtles' human friends had finished their senior year, proudly graduating one beautiful June morning. Raphael and April had been an item for the last couple of years and although Raphael had grown, so had his brothers, leaving him still in the dust of their superior inches. April knew her boyfriend was bothered by it, but there was little she could do on the matter. Besides, Raphael was now a good two inches taller than her, which had been a victory in and of itself when only a few years ago April had towered over said turtle, and so she was more than content. Still, following the morning of their graduation, when April and Casey prepared for the class trip to Canada for the summer, April was sad to see her boyfriend still evidently bummed out over the whole situation given that very morning had seen Michelangelo officially surpass Donatello (five nine and a half) by a whole quarter inch on the marked wall by the fridge.
When Splinter had placed a congratulatory hand on his youngest – and now tallest – son's shoulder, Raphael had immediately left the kitchen sulking. It didn't matter that all four turtles were now very near their Sensei's height (Leonardo and Splinter now within a hair of being on par at five eight), Raphael was still the shortest (five five) and with his birthday at the end of summer, it was looking like that was the way it would stay.
Short and fat was how Michelangelo had put it. They all were very much aware there was nothing remotely "fat" regarding Raphael and although the freckled turtle clearly had meant the comment in jest with no intention to hurt, April knew her boyfriend was very much affected by the remark. So come three days later, when Casey and April boarded the bus for their summer abroad, the red-head was very much concerned at the mood she had left Raphael in the mere night previous.
It turned out that although her worry had been justified, nature had a way of ironing out such concerns given a bit of time.