I've been outlining this story, I think I have 10 planned out.

This chapter is shorter than the others, I suppose I need to flesh Mikey out even more, but I'm trying not to stress over chapter lengths as well.

Regardless, I'm just tryna write/finish stories. I hope you enjoy!

"Dad?" Dewey fell out of bed, startled by the sound of his middle son standing in the doorway and calling out for him.

"Mikey? What's wrong?" Dewey asked, scrambling to pick himself up and rush over to Mikey's side, the light from the doorway almost blinding him in the process.

"Nothing," Mikey said, shifting from foot to foot, "I'm fine…"

Dewey didn't buy it for a minute.

"You can tell me if something's wrong, buddy, I'm here for you."

"It's nothing, I shouldn't have woken you up…"

Dewey pulled his son into a hug before Mikey could bail, "It's okay, I've got you, tell me what's on your mind."

"I had a nightmare," Mikey mumbled into the hug.

"Aw, buddy, I'm so sorry. What was it about?"

"It's embarrassing," Mikey said, pulling away.

"That's okay, I'm not going to force you to tell me if you don't want to."

"Fine, it was about DJ."

"What about her?"

"Well, we were like on this cliff, and all of the sudden this bolt of lightning came down and split the cliff in half, and her side started crumbling and then, right before I woke up, she fell."

Dewey nodded, beginning to pick up on what this nightmare was really about. Aside from alluding to Mikey's childhood fear of thunderstorms, there was an obvious reason for such a difficult dream.

"I'm so sorry you had to experience that, Mikey. That must have been terrifying."

"Yeah," Mikey said. His voice was shaky and Dewey pulled him into another hug.

"Do you miss sharing a room with DJ?" Dewey asked after a moment. Recently DJ had asked for her own room and Dewey had done some finagling to get her her own space, moving Mikey into Raph's room. Raph was being a fairly good sport about suddenly sharing his room, partially because he did genuinely care about his siblings, and partially because Dewey had bribed Raph with a lot of nice new paints.

"What? Why would I miss that? DJ is way happier now in her own space, and Raph's super cool…." Mikey hung his head, "Yeah. I miss her."

"Hey," Dewey said gently, "It's okay to miss sharing a room with your sister. You two are twins, you've always been close. When I moved out on my own I missed my brothers a lot. It had always been us and suddenly it wasn't and that was really hard."

"And then what happened?" Mikey asked, looking interested. When he didn't have anyone he was trying to impress, Mikey really was a genuine and sweet kid.

"And then two of the most wonderful and intelligent and cool little kids came into my life and I didn't feel so alone," Dewey said, hugging Mikey close again.

Mikey looked a little embarrassed, but he was smiling, "Don't be cheesy, dad."

"Can't help it. Dads have to be cheesy, it's the rule."

"Well, if that's the rule… Anyway, what am I supposed to do? I can't exactly adopt children right now," Mikey pointed out, pondering his own dilemma.

"No," Dewey agreed, "That wouldn't be in your best interest. But you could talk to DJ about your feelings, see if you can hang out with her more, and..."

Oh gosh, what was he getting himself into?

"And?" Mikey prompted.

"I think you're old enough to have a pet. A little one, mind you. Something reasonable. Like a fish, or something."

"Can I have a snake?"

"Something reasonable, Mikey."

"So no snake."

"No snake. We can talk more about this in the morning, buddy. See what would fit you best."

"Thanks, dad. That could be really cool…"

"What can I say? I'm a cool dad."

"No you aren't," Mikey said with a laugh, "But you're still a pretty good one."

Dewey thought his heart was going to explode, "I love you, Michelangelo."

"I love you too, dad." Mikey was hesitating, clearly not wanting to go back to his new room.

"Mikey?" Dewey asked, noticing the hesitation.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?"

Mikey smiled gratefully, "Yeah. Thank you."

"Any time." Dewey knew he could kiss having the covers to himself goodbye, all of his children were notorious blanket hogs, but it was a small price to pay for having the coolest, bestest children in the universe.