Leo came home an hour early; didn't even bother changing out of his scrubs, just shrugged off his coat and tossed his bag into a chair by the kitchen table, making a beeline for his brothers where they sat on the couch. Don closed his laptop and slid off the sofa, plopping into the beanbag chair by Raph's feet, and Leo sank into his surrendered seat.

So Donnie called him after all. Ugh, Donnie.

"Before you say anything," Mikey led with carefully, like he was walking on eggshells, because Leo's dark eyes were like super intense, "I'm really, really sorry I didn't tell you sooner. Okay?"

Leo smiled at that, a small, crooked thing. "I'm not mad, you goofball. I'm relieved we finally know what's been bothering you all this time." He lifted one arm and Mikey lit up, and scooted over, and was tucked warmly against Leo's side. "You guys eat yet?" he asked, and Raph nodded.

"Did earlier. Yours is on the stove, should still be hot."

"I wanted to wait till you got home, but Donnie said no," Mikey added, and Donnie gave him a Look; totally unimpressed with his tattling. Yeah, well, that's what he got for calling Leo. But, unfortunately, it also gave him a window of opportunity to share his research with the class.

"We need to get Mikey on a schedule," Donnie said, opening his laptop again and maximizing a few windows. And Mikey felt his shoulders hunch up at the way Donnie was talking about him like he wasn't even there, but he didn't say anything. Didn't exactly have any room to whine about it, really, not after all the junk he'd been putting his brothers through lately. "He's sort of fallen into this practice of missing meals and missing sleep, and his body is conditioned to it now."

"So you just gotta teach yourself to want food at certain times," Raph said, reaching over to give Mikey's shoulder a nudge. He was grinning when Mikey glanced over at him, and just that little thing went about a hundred miles in making Mikey feel better. "That's no big deal. It'll be just like all those times we had to drag Donnie out of his cave to eat dinner."

"Dude, we had to do that like yesterday," Mikey replied with a grin of his own, and the atmosphere got lighter by about two hundred percent when Leo started chuckling, and Don shook his head with good humor.

"I've been doing some reading," he continued, waving a hand to indicate the solid block of complicated looking text on his computer screen, "and we should go to the grocery store for foods rich in magnesium—certain fruits, beans, most nuts, some dairy. Magnesium is basically something like nature's tranquilizer; it reduces stress, and a lot of people seem to take it in supplements for anxiety or insomnia. I think something like that would help- and maybe some of that non-caffeinated hot tea you like, too, Leo."

"But I don't have anxiety or insomnia," Mikey said for what felt like the twentieth time, heroically ignoring the way Raph rolled his eyes at the ceiling with so much emphasis that it telegraphed through his whole body. "And I've been sleeping better lately! I don't think it's that big of a deal."

"I think it is," Leo said. "And it's not like they're hard changes to make, right? Just for a little bit, till you're back on track?"

Mikey puffed his cheeks out at him, but he nodded. They weren't hard changes to make, and maybe his brothers were overreacting, but it's not like it was the first time that ever happened. And if it made them feel better in the long run, then sure, Mikey could make sure to eat dinner before six p.m., and have breakfast and lunch with his brothers, and eat all that weird stuff, and whatever else Donnie put on his "fix Mikey" list.

"Yeah, okay," he said, rubbing his arm. "I just… y'know, feel bad. That you guys have to worry about me so much. And 'cause I cause so many problems for you all the time."

"You do not," Raph said sharply, his voice as close to a growl as humanly possible probably. "Don't be an idiot. Worryin' about you's our job, kid."

"That's dumb," Mikey retorted. "Leo's job is at the hospital, and he had to leave it early today 'cause of me."

"Don't even go there," his oldest brother said, without batting an eye. "We didn't have any patients to see tonight, and Karai has been worried about you, too."

Mikey tilted his head at that. She had, really? He'd only met her twice—though, he still thought she was pretty cool. She knew Japanese even better than Leo, and had a bunch of cool piercings and multicolored hair ("Absolutely not," was all Leo had to say, when he caught Mikey ooh'ing and ahh'ing. "Ever.") and if things were different—if Leo hadn't always had so much to worry about, if he hadn't always had three little brothers to raise and provide for—Mikey figured Leo probably would have let himself have the biggest crush on her.

But Leo never let himself have much of anything. Which sucked, for lots of reasons, and Mikey could probably name half a dozen at the drop of a hat; it sucked, because Leo and Karai looked pretty great together.

"Don't look so surprised, knucklehead," Raph was saying. "Everyone's been worried about you."

"That doesn't make me feel better, actually," Mikey said plainly, and Leo smiled at him.

"It really isn't a big deal. She actually threatened to give me a ride home on her bike if I didn't get a move on, so—"

"A bike ride home with a beautiful, intelligent woman? The horror," Donnie said, one hand pressed to his heart. Leo's face sank into a deadpan, at the same time Raph and Mikey started laughing.

"You should take her up on it next time, fearless!" Raphael chimed in, voice all thick and rich like syrup, the way it only got when he was really indisputably amused. "You'd get over your weird aversion to motorcycles, and you'd probably get a date. Well… yanno, maybe."

"Ooh, if you got a date I think April would cry."

"Sis has been trying to set you up for years!"

"Uh-oh, wait a minute. Karai is his boss. Wouldn't employee fraternization be frowned upon?"

"Nah, not if it's Leonardo; everyone knows he needs to get—"

"Okay!" Leo interrupted, looking equal parts disgruntled and mortified. And his face was all red, aww. "Thank you for your input, I'm glad I have you three masters of romance to turn to for advice when I need it." He rolled his eyes at their clatter of "absolutely"s and "anytime"s, and gave Mikey's hair a ruffle. "And I'm glad you're feeling better," he added, and it made Mikey smile.

"Me too. Gotta remember to thank Leatherhead for that," he said, and Donnie's head popped up from behind his computer screen.

"Leatherhead?"

"Yeah, he's the one who said I should talk to you," Mikey explained, making a mental note to text him before bed. Poor guy was probably worried, since literally everyone in Mikey's life was, apparently. "He thinks you guys are great."

Donnie made a soft little 'huh' sound that Mikey wasn't even going to try to make sense of, while Leo stood up with a mighty stretch and announced to the room at large that he was going to shower. Mikey scooted over to Raph's side of the couch again, and Raph turned the T.V. volume back up—Empire Strikes Back was on, nice. A few minutes went by before he said, "And one more thing?"

Aw, man. Mikey squinted at him sidelong. "What's that?"

"Don't skip lunch tomorrow," his brother said, eyes trained ahead, his mouth tugged firmly down in the corners. Donnie started clacking away on his keyboard, but he was totally obviously listening, and Mikey felt a sudden rush of affection. They were worry-warts, and busy-bodies, but mostly they were big brothers, and all they were trying to do was look out for him—'cause they cared about him, and they wanted him to be healthy and feel better, and what else in the whole world could Mikey possibly say to that besides,

"Sure, bro." He watched relief bleed into Raph's green eyes, something slow and soft happening to his face; and couldn't help adding with a chirp, "You're buying, right? I want Domino's pizza, from the a la carte line! Pepperoni, dude."

Donnie laughed outright at that, and the scowl that crossed Raph's face was purely for show.

Mikey caught Mondo in the hall the next day, and asked him to tell one of his buddies on the football team to tell Bradford to meet him after school instead of at lunch—and then he'd just have to cross his fingers and hope that game of telephone ended well. Mondo gave him a thumb's up and promised to pass the word along—pretty quickly, too, normally Mikey had to do a couple minutes of whining or pleading (or both) to get the guy to do much of anything for him.

Oh, yeah, he remembered suddenly, as Mondo hurried off in kind of an earnest way that really didn't suit him, I yelled at them yesterday. Mondo was probably eager to do him a favor to get back in his good graces.

Oookay, Mikey definitely felt bad about that now. I'll make it up to them at our next practice, he decided. But he had art with Timmy, and Napoleon was in his drama class, and he usually saw Woody half a dozen times throughout the day, so he'd apologize to those guys when he saw them. It did suck of them not to tell him about the thing with Bradford and the Dragons, but it was kind of hypocritical of Mikey to get peeved at anybody for keeping secrets, wasn't it?

Math was actually pretty doable; they were just doing a worksheet, and they got to double up, and he and the blond girl (her name was Renet, she was pretty adorable) had made each other a solemn vow to be partners in every assignment until the end of the year. Neither of them were any good at math, at all, but they both had something to bring to the table: Renet was really good at guessing the right answer off the top of her head, and Mikey had a genius brother who would totally help them study if they asked nicely enough. Boom. Partnership. Passing grade, in the bag.

"It's not so bad," Renet was saying as they walked, scanning her graded worksheet. Mikey hurried to push the door open for her when it looked like she would walk straight into it. "Um, a C isn't bad, right?"

"Donnie says we can do better than a C," he said, with an air of resignation. "Oh, speaking of Donnie, there he is." His big brother was waving at him from their usual table, a peculiar grin on his face. Mikey waved back, then canted a smile Renet's way. "Wanna eat with us, and have him look at our worksheet? He explains stuff way better than the teachers do. Or you could make your escape now."

She giggled, and tossed her long hair over one shoulder. "I think I'm, like, mathed out for the day, y'know? But I'll take a raincheck! See you tomorrow, Mike."

As he headed towards the table Donatello was parked at, Mikey couldn't help but think it was so weird that he'd had the same class with someone as fun as Renet for like four months now, and he'd only made friends with her a few days ago.

"Hey there, little brother," Donnie asked as Mikey tossed his bookbag into a free seat. His grin was a curled, sly thing, and Mikey… didn't think he liked it very much. So he narrowed his eyes suspiciously, deliberately easing himself into a chair like his brother was some strange creature that would spring if he made too sudden a move. Don folded his hands, resting his chin on top. "Who was that just now?"

"Renet? She's from my math class," Mikey said slowly. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason," Donnie said, way too flippantly for there not to actually be a reason. Mikey frowned, and probably would have said a thing or two about his brother acting like a complete weirdo if Raph hadn't shown up right about then, bottled sodas under one arm and a whole box of pizza in the opposite hand. "Oh, wow, thanks Raph."

"Eh, don't get used to it," Raphael said gruffly, tossing Mikey his orange Crush and sliding a Dr. Pepper in Don's general direction. "The Princess here wanted pizza, figured we might as well all have some."

"You're my favorite brother," Mikey sang-song, grabbing a slice for each hand. "I mean that with all my heart."

"He can be bought so easily," Don mused with an amused quirk to his eyebrow. "We should probably be worried about that."

"Hey, as long as he's getting three square meals a day and a solid eight hours a night, I'm happy," Raph said, and that was that.

The telephone game ended up not going so well, because Mikey had been lingering by the library doors for close to fifteen minutes, now, and there was still no sign of Bradford. Euurghh, that was the last time he trusted Mondo's dumb football friend.

He was considering taping a note to the wall or something, when he heard his name called, and turned to find Woody weaving through the crowd toward him. The older kid's face was so expressive that Mikey could read the "I'm sorry" neatly, just in the drooping brown of his eyes and the turn of his mouth. So when Woody joined him in the little alcove by the entrance to the library, Mikey didn't give him time to get a word in edgewise.

"Sorry for snapping at you yesterday, dude," he said ruefully. "I feel pretty lame about the whole thing."

"Wha—oh, Mikester, it's all good," his teammate replied, looking surprised and gratified, and ridiculously relieved, all at once. "We could all tell you've been a little under the weather lately, y'know? And we shouldn't have kept you in the dark like we did, that's not what teams do."

Mikey offered a fist, and a sideways smile. "Still pals, right?"

"Aw, of course we are, amigo." They bumped knuckles, and then Woody was slinging a familiar arm around his shoulders and ruffling his hair. "Wanna head to the parking lot together, or are you waitin' on somebody?"

"Ummm." He glanced around one last time; still no crazy tall football players in the immediate vicinity. "Nah, I'm good, we can go."

There was sort of a strange feeling nagging at him, all the way through the hall and the auditorium and out the front doors. He grinned at Woody's narration of how awkward the rest of yesterday's practice was after Mikey had stormed off, and added his two cents here and there, but in the back of his mind, something just felt off.

It was that "forgot-to-lock-the-door" feeling. A tugging, insistent, super uneasy feeling. Like he'd overlooked something, or misplaced something, or… he didn't know, something, and it was really bugging him out.

And it didn't make any sense, because things were good. Things were awesome, even; he was on the level with his brothers, he was making good with his friends, his day had been pretty average, pretty okay—so what the heck, brain?

They were squeezing between a truck and a Prius parked too closely together to get to the row Raph's spot was in (going around wouldn't have been as much fun) when Mikey's phone went off. It was probably Don, texting to make sure Mikey had a ride home with Raph so he could stay and do geeky things in the chemistry lab, and he went digging for his cell to fire back an affirmative; then Woody said, "Hey, who's that guy with your brother?" and Mikey looked up, and—

stopped dead, so sharply Woody ran into him.

Because right next to Raph, with a companionable arm propped up on his shoulder, and a sharklike grin on his face, was...

This can't be happening, was all he had time to think, and then Raph caught sight of him.

"Mikey!" he exclaimed; delight stark in his green eyes, a grin stretched across his face in a wide, bright way as he waved his younger brother over. "Mikey, you'll never believe who I just ran into! Check it out, kiddo, it's Spike! You might not remember him, you were really little—"

And Mikey just stood there, staring up into eyes that were still a vivid turquoise, even from a few car lengths away. He almost flinched when the man took a step toward him (and then another, then another), his whole body locking up all tense and rigid; but with Woody right beside him, and Raph smiling from beside his old motorcycle, Mikey somehow managed not to.

"I certainly remember you," the Bogeyman said, with a smile that brought weeks' worth of nightmares rushing back at the drop of a hat, that made Mikey shiver involuntarily. He extended his hand for Mikey to shake, and added, "Good to see you again, Michelangelo."