Quite the Idiot

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I'm well aware that a visual overdeck processor probably does not exist.

Maybe it should... for the sake of the story.

By the end of the week everyone had found out that Casey kissed April, thanks to the big mouths of Casey and Raphael. Donatello didn't know quite what to think about it. It was partly what he expected to happen when he gave April the green light to go ahead and date him, but he didn't expect to feel so hurt over it. Not that he let his brothers know, he just avoided the topic of April as much as possible and tried to avoid the sympathetic looks Leo shot at him. He didn't need the sympathy.

Of course by the next time April dropped by, unaccompanied by Casey, Don might have taken some of that sympathy his brother had to offer.

"Hellllllllllllloooooooo April. Been seeing much of Casey lately?" Donatello could hear the smooching noises Mikey was making at April from his room. "Ow!" Was the next sound he heard from the rambunctious turtle and by the time Donnie came out to greet his friend Mikey was lying flat on his shell. April had obviously responded very appropriately to his teasing.

"Hey Donnie." She turned to him.

And just like that whatever she did or didn't do with Casey was forgiven her. She could do anything and Don was pretty sure he'd have an excuse for her or he'd let it slide. "Hi." He gave her a small three-fingered wave. He'd missed her. He always did. But he accepted that she had a life, a whole other world up there which he could never a part of. He was glad she had that, she deserved it.

"Never tellin' Mikey anything ever again," Raphael turned up suddenly with a gruff sentence that he meant as a semi-apology to April for spilling the beans. Only people that spoke "Raph" would be able to grasp that however. April did and shot him a small smile.

"Soooooo, what've you been working on?"

"Oh not much. You know," his hand went unconsciously to the back of his neck. "Just this visual overdeck processor with a 41 gig hardrive that I had to completely rewire and... just keeping myself busy." He finished with a nervous yelp at the end of it.

"Cool, can I see it?"

Donnie was a little taken aback. "Sure. Um, come with me."

He was used to being the one to ask her to hang out one on one (not that he'd been in the mood for it as much since Casey entered the picture). And it wasn't that April had never wanted to see what he was doing before, it's just that she insisted before talking to anyone else. Before practicing with Splinter. Before messing around with the rest of his brothers. She obviously had a motive for wanting to get him alone - a Casey related motive - but he would take what he could get.

Donatello sat down across from her and then handed over the processor and apprehensively watched her face for her reaction.

"Hey this is awesome," she said, rotating it in her palm.

"Yeah, I thought so too."

He could tell that she was mulling things over in her mind, probably thinking of a bunch of different openings she could use to bring up her new relationship with Casey. He actually felt a little bad for her, she didn't have to explain herself to him. "Look, we don't have to talk about Casey." He told her, meeting her eyes and then quickly looking away.

She sucked in air, clearly surprised that he was the one to bring it up and then shook her head. "No, Donnie. I want to talk about it." She fiddled with the mechanics in her hand for moment, careful not to break Donnie's hard work.

He was listening, intently, leaning forward (and yet painfully aware of her hands still on the processor). He cared about her and he cared if she needed to have a sounding board to vent her feelings for the vigilante. "Okay."

"Casey's a nice guy..." she paused, closing her eyes and imagining just how she was going to put this (delicately of course). "And everybody dates." Her eyes flew open. Everybody? Like the guys? Totally the wrong thing to say. "That's not what I meant." She flushed. "I mean people date." She wanted to hit her forehead with something blunt. Now she was saying that Donnie wasn't a person? Great. Could she screw this up any more? "I just meant that I... this would happen eventually." She finished with a cringe.

"I knew what you meant," he said darkly. "And I told you I was okay with it." It's not like the two of them were ever going to become an item. Donnie may have been optimistic but people had told him that from the very beginning and he was starting to accept it.

"I don't know if I'm okay with it," April replied flatly, her shoulders slumping. "It's just that I have no idea what I'm doing and it's not like my life has exactly stablized and I don't think I have time to date but then I think to myself if not now then when will I ever get time to date? When I'm in college?" She let out a nervous chuckle. "Sometimes I think I like him and sometimes I think..." she trailed off, exhaling. Sometimes she thought she liked someone else.

Donnie didn't know what to make of all this. The friend in him wanted to tell her to stop worrying so much and just enjoy it - this normal rite of passage that he himself would probably never go through. But that other more selfish part wanted to tell her to give up on it and never date again... ever. He'd just opened his mouth to say something when Leonardo opened the door. Donnie had never been so thankful for an interruption before.

"Hey April, Master Splinter's asking for you."

April raised her head with a new determined expression and handed back the processor. "Right! Training!" She said bounding to her feet. "Speak to you later guys."

And with that she was off. Donnie raised his eyes to his brother's expecting to see that usual pity in them and actually relived this time when he did so, as his brother sympathetically clamped him on the shoulder.

"She wanted to talk about Casey." Donatello said with a frown.

"Ah," Leo replied, with a nod of understanding. "You holding up okay?"

"Besides wishing it was me?" He gave a small pathetic laugh, "yeah, I'm doing fine."

"Give her time. April will work things out."

"Or get even closer to Casey..."

"I guess it's a risk you have to take."

"Really not making me feel any better Leo."

"Want to go see Mikey beat Raph at video games?"

"Okay, that might make me feel a little better."

Leo grinned. "I know it will."

Sadness...