Purple Hearts
a/n: So, I had this dream a couple weeks ago... and the following morning, I caught wind of it being "Self-Insert Week." So I DID start this fic then, but things got in the way, so it's a bit late. This is a very true-to-life self-insert. All facts presented about this dimension are 100% true. (Ask for details; I'll talk your ear off.)
Rating: PG-13-ish
x-x-x-x-x
When the dream started, they were already deep in a kiss. Neither felt the need to break away, nor disturb the viscous substance surrounding them. The vague light source which provided just enough diffuse light to see each other, indeterminant. His hand reached up to brush her face, then press against the back of her head, drawing her further into their gentle but firm liplock. When they broke away, both were breathless.
After a moment of dazed, euphoric silence and catching his breath, he said uncertainly, "This is a dream."
"Does explain why we're waist-deep in grape jelly, doesn't it?" his companion answered.
He looked down at the wobbly, blobby gel surrounding them. "Why, though?"
"I dunno. Must be something Freudian. Very thematic, though… purple turtle, prplbeedoo… I guess one of us has… grape expectations?"
He snorted. "At least you didn't say we were in a jam."
She waved him off. "'course not. If you wanna be a smash you can't go for the low-hanging fruit! Ya gotta preserve your best for last!"
"Gah…"
"Whassa matter, bro? You jelly?"
"You really are this bad in person! Could you stop with the grape puns?"
"Wine by me!" At his mock-rage, she held up her hands. "I'm stoppin', I'm stoppin'!"
Nodding, he admitted with a blush, "I've… had a crush on you for the longest time."
"Big mood," she agreed, staring into his mahogany eyes with her own lust-lidded cocoa ones.
He moved a hand to the back of his head in an awkward gesture. "Kind of embarrassing to admit you have a crush on a fictional character…"
She blushed too. "Yeah, little bit… It's a very common thing, though. There's something about crushing on someone whose qualities you like and admire, even if they don't exist. Even if, technically, they're from a cartoon…"
"Book series," he corrected, and she canted her head with a curious look.
"Are we talking about the IDW comics? Because I haven't read those…"
Don blinked. "What? No, there's only the quadrilogy, as far as I know…"
"Wait… What?"
"Y…you're my favorite character in 'The Chronicles of Kiersten."
She looked almost offended. "The what?" She shook her head dismissively.
"I mean… Kiersten is just the name of the character in the books she… I mean, you—"
"No, no… I mean, I know that, but… That's not right. You're the fictional character here." At his confused scowl, she added, "TMNT," and when that didn't seem to ring any bells with him, enumerated, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 2012 series. Best of the bunch, even if they did kind of screw it up in the later seasons, I feel."
"That's ridiculous!" he said, mirroring her put-off expression. "What a terrible name…Who would call us that?!" He ran a hand down his face. "Maybe it's a good thing this is just my weird dream."
"I thought it was mine," she retorted.
He held his chin in his hand. "Or, I suppose it's possible—"
"—that it's both?" she finished for him. "Quantum mechanics…"
"…multiverse theory. Yeah. And the dream is some kind of a…" He circled a hand, searching for words, which she supplied.
"…a quantum bridge, a temporary rift… or some random intersection of dimensions?"
"Exactly… one of those." He felt drawn to her again, nuzzling her face. "It's so nice to talk to someone who understands these concepts."
She bared her neck to him as he began nibbling at it. "I'm just skimming the surface… Fillin' in the gaps and surfin' other people's brain waves."
"You have a flair for that."
"'s just a weird thing I do. Educated spit-balling with language," she quipped wryly, and he laughed, drawing her in to run his fingers through her hair and leaning her back against his other hand. "I should probably admit, I've written fanfic of you." She reddened a bit and added, "Some of it erotic."
"When I get to the tedious part of a project, I daydream about you sometimes. Not always PG-rated…" he confessed.
He withdrew the hand in her tresses, instead running it down the curves of her torso.
"I can live with that."
"Me too."
She looped her hands around his neck for further stability, and it wasn't long before they were passionately making out again.
Sometime later, surfacing from the thrall of the dream, she startled out of their kiss with an "Mm!"
"We shouldn't be doing this!"
"What do you mean?" he said blearily, his mind trying to shake off the lust enough to listen to her.
"What about you and April?"
"What about us?" he asked, uncomprehending and still muzzy.
"Isn't this kind of like cheating on her? And I don't want to wreck that… I love Apritello! Apritello is my jam!" She reached down, scooping up a handful of the jelly surrounding them. "More than this," she said, letting it fall. "You two are so perfect together!" She bobbed up and down in her excitement, her infectious enthusiasm catching him up in the mood. "I can't believe they just dropped your whole romantic angle after Season 3 and completely failed at all other romance in the show… Like, come on writers! What the hell?!"
"What about you and your husband? After all you went through, that other girl claiming him against his will and then emotionally abusing him so by the time you picked him up, you had to work to heal him? Leaving your home and family to move to another continent to be with him? The fifteen years of dancing around each other? It's such an epic romance, and I wouldn't want to break that either…."
She glanced around, conflicted as the ardor of the dream nudged them toward one another. Biting her lip and looking back to him, she proposed, "What happens in the dream stays in the dream?"
He considered for a moment, and decided, "…Yeah, I can live with that," diving back into their embrace afterward.
At some point, he tore himself out of their kiss to announce, "And, you know, your books didn't always have the best writing either! Don't you think it was just a little too convenient that when they dragged you out of the Grand Canyon—"
"Okay, they didn't drag me out! I made it to the rim…"
"—that there just happened to be a visiting neurologist who not only specialized in brain tumors, but in ependimomas specifically? I mean, that's just lazy writing! Way too deus ex machina!"
She snorted, looking miffed and turning her head away, nose in the air. "People win the lottery too. This was just my version of winning the Powerball, same as April being able to put all your molecules back together after blowing you to atoms."
"And you came out of it with just a little hair loss and no peripheral vision on one side…" he continued sarcastically.
"Ya know, it was no picnic turning and running face-first into a pole I didn't see the other day!" she snapped back, then muttered. "The look on that Japanese girl's face, though, was almost worth the bruise and embarrassment…"
"I'm just saying… Could be written more realistically at parts."
She waved both arms in frustration. "I can't help if the things that actually happened in my life aren't 'well written!'" With a humph, she turned her back on him, and a moment later, he followed suit. Seconds later, they were on each other again and at it with more ardor than before.
Later, he mentally surfaced enough to say, "I feel I should mention, I'm not actually a teenager. This is more of a… a mental memory version of myself. I was actually born in—"
"—1984?" she finished and pecked him on the nose.
"Yes! How did you— ohh," he said, shocked, then trailed off as she pointed to her head.
"I was seven or so when 'Turtles' hit the airwaves. I grew up on you. My friends and I did 'ninja training' in the front yard. Used what we could find as weapons… broomsticks, toys… I even designed a sort of bungee-kusarigama out of a cat toy… the Cat's Claw!"
"Neat. And it worked?"
"To a point. Enough to snare and yank Ben's stick away from him, leave him flabbergasted and running off. Victory, with a side order of rope-burn."
"Ouch. Your weapons aren't supposed to hurt you!"
"Worth it."
"But then, you're also not…" He gestured up and down at her apparent teenage-ness.
"Oh, no. I was born in '78!"
"That makes you six years older than me…" he calculated, with a slight blush showing through his olive scales.
"More like five… December birthdays are a pain. And ya know," she said, cocking her head, "when you're in high school, the age disparity seems huge, but when you're an adult, and the years are just flying by anyway, it doesn't make that much of a difference. Especially if you're in love."
"You would know, with your older husband."
She nodded. "I would!"
He realized his hands were moving to places that were less than appropriate and tried to pull them back, to no avail. "Oh, um… I'm sorry, I shouldn't be…"
"Dream," she reminded him, flipping a hand at him as she sat and leaned back on the wobbly, grapey surface, likewise groping him on her way down. "I imagine it's just gonna go how it plans to go, so let's get on with it and have some fun before one or the other of us wakes up!"
"Right… right…" he agreed hesitantly, climbing up onto the jelly, which now behaved less like a swamp and more like a waterbed mattress. He blushed again. "Um… I should probably warn you about the size…"
She held up a finger to stop him. "I know. Fanfic erotica writer here… I've done the research," she said, waggling her eyebrows at him and looking down in anticipation.
Something sparkled in his eyes as he positioned himself between her legs. "A girl who does research is so hot…"
x-x-x-x-x Donnie's eyes snapped open. He blinked a couple of times and sighed deeply. "Dammit."
April, already up and dressed, peeked into their room. "Everything alright?"
"Oh, uh, yeah, fine," he said, smiling over at her. "Dream just ended before the good part, is all."
"Darn," she sympathized. "Sleep in a little, if you want to, but I'm making Belgian waffles!" She paused to sniff the air, then darted off toward the kitchen. "They might be a little on the Cajun side!" she called back, a panicky edge in her voice.
Don chuckled and flopped back on his pillow with a sigh of regret. "Go figure, it was my dream."
x-x-x-x-x
She awakened with a jolt and a sharp pain in her outer thigh. "Ow! Dammit, Pokey! Quit stabbin' me with your nails!" A moment later, after a rustling of covers, the culprit stuck his head out from under the blanket and stared at her. She sighed and rubbed the Chihuahua's ears. "Thanks for interrupting a great dream. You little shit…" she said fondly, then fell back into the pillows, only to be bopped in the face with a black shoe. "Hi, Pretty, I see you too," she said, trying to wrest the footwear out of the larger dog's mouth.
"Beedoo!, have you see my shoes?" her husband's voice called from the other room.
"Pretty has one," she replied, still trying to get the insistent dog out of her face. "Go take that to Daddy. Take it to Daddy. Daddy," she said, making various gestures in hopes that the dog would eventually catch on.
When the lumbering hound left at her husband's calling and whistling, she turned over, pulling the blankets up again with another sigh. "Always before the best part…"