The Heroic Adventures of Captain Vanilla

By: Serendipity

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters used in this fiction, they belong to Eastman and Laird, who probably would not like to read about what I do to them.

Author's Note: So, I guess here we put some of the warnings: we have some bondage goin' on in here, because I am exploring bold new worlds. Nothing too insane, because I know my limits! Ahahaha! The pairing in question is Mike/Leo, because I'm a big lazy ninny who doesn't want to start exploring new relationship angles between different characters at this time. Also, because I just like Mikey. So sue me.

No one should read this expecting intensity and an edgy, tension-fraught atmosphere, because this fanfic is meant to be about the fun and the awkward. No one should be reading this expecting detailed, pornographic sex scenes, because…well, just because. I'm not a sex scene person. Get it, got it, good? LET'S GO!

"I can not believe you talked me into doing this," Michelangelo groaned, pulling a length of lightweight cotton rope from the pack that Leonardo had so helpfully packed in his efficient, boy scout way. Then his mind shuddered away from the boy scout analogy, if only for the enormous weirdness of the image of a boy scout into bondage.

Leonardo, the source of his problems, was smugly lounging in the corner on a mattress. The mattress hadn't been there when they first found the place, and he suspected that that Leo had hauled the thing in here ahead of time, just like he'd picked out this secluded place so they could get up to happy fun times far away from the lair and their protesting, somewhat freaked-out brothers and their oblivious father. It was like a honeymoon suite, only without any interior decoration at all aside from the single boring mattress and whatever strange collection of sex paraphernalia Leonardo had provided him with today.

So, apparently just having sex wasn't good enough anymore. No, that was just boring and plebian, and really any couple of morons could do it. Where was the challenge in that? Clearly, Leonardo was an insane thrill-seeker with unusual fetishes, and he should have seen this coming a mile away. Hell, he should have seen this a year in advance! The instant he'd received his first sexual proposition from him, he should have turned him down because it should have been all too obvious that sooner or later, Leonardo would start showing his inner crazy.

And show it he had, in the form of a disturbing inclination towards bondage. As if the whole melting candle wax thing hadn't been enough of a zesty new twist, now he had to go and insist upon this whole rope fetish. Michelangelo was not aware that Leonardo would be such a demanding and high maintenance deal. If he had, he would have had some sort of bedroom contract written up before they'd started embarking on their glorious journey of coupledom. As it was, he really hoped that black leather and spikes were not going to enter the equation any time soon.

"I don't see what the problem is," Leonardo said, sounding amused, "It's just some knot-tying. Nothing you haven't actually done before."

Michelangelo let out a frustrated noise and turned around. "Yeah. Okay, if we're gonna do the whole specific thing, it's something I haven't actually done before in bed," he corrected.

"We haven't had sex before in bed, either," Leonardo said musingly. "Not in an actual bed, since you have the bunk that neither of us wanted to deal with, and you seem to think my futon hurts your neck muscles. So, really, you haven't tried anything out in bed, and yet, this hasn't come up as a roadblock so far."

Ignoring this burst of nitpicking logic, Michelangelo continued. "Ropes just aren't supposed to go in this kind of situation, dude. It just doesn't compute for me. Usually, when I'm tying someone up, it means that they've recently tried to kill me and I don't want them trying that again."

He spotted his brother's thoughtful smile and glared at him. "Okay, that was not a suggestion!"

When Leonardo actually looked mildly disappointed at that, Michelangelo began to wonder about his personal safety. He'd been having these funny little doubts about his brother's point of view about intimacy when Leo had started to insist that they spar or have intense weapons training before they went at it. The fact that he was most, well, interested after missions and giant epic drag-down fights with the Foot had gone past with the simple explanation of adrenaline rushes and what they did to a person's system. And to be honest, he wasn't about to complain about being jumped from the rafters on occasion, because really, who didn't appreciate that every once in a while?

But this new turn of events gave him hardcore and irrefutable evidence that Leonardo had been forever scarred by some traumatic accident, probably involving rope, some candles, and a lot of physical pain in his formative years. He'd sat down with Leonardo one day, brandishing this theory like a cross against a vampire, and explained that these twisted sexual desires must have been the result of a depraved upbringing, and only with years of counseling could he be whole and normal once again. He was far gone but not a lost hope, Michelangelo had assured, and with the right amount of TLC, a cure could be effected.

Leonardo had simply waited patiently for him to finish before handing him a book about kinky positions to bind someone up in, told him to study the highlighted bits in detail, and had gone back to his meditation.

"And make sure you study hard," he'd said, eyes shut peacefully, "There may be a pop quiz."

"You'll get yours, Henry Higgins," Michelangelo had muttered darkly at him, clutching the Book of Sin.

The bossy, research-infatuated lunatic. That's what he got for trying to be a supportive partner.

That left him with the situation as it stood so far: him holding a length of rope and wondering exactly which position Leonardo wanted to be arranged in, Leonardo sitting with overwhelmingly smug assurance on the mattress from God-Knows-Where, and no escape in sight.

Okay, so to be fair, he had agreed to this scheme. Leonardo had come up with a Fair Trade Agreement a while back, and it had seemed like a pretty reasonable deal. After all, Leonardo had been pretty much catering to Michelangelo all this time, and it was only fair that it work the other way around for at least one day. It wasn't like he'd been walking around blindfolded, not knowing where this was going. He just had jitters. Yes, that was it. First-time jitters.

Which was really weird seeing that the whole 'first time' experience had come and gone without ceremony until after it was done, which meant that on his actual first time he'd had post-first time jitters. This was something new altogether. He attributed it to the fact that he'd skipped breakfast this morning, that book had frightened him with some strange pictures involving duct tape, and also the minor detail that Leonardo was still sitting there with every appearance of total calm, waiting to be tied down with fucking rope! Rope! His sex life had gone insane!

"You know, I really don't see why I have to be doing this," Michelangelo said, untangling the stuff.

Leonardo raised an eyeridge at him. "Really?" He said 'really' exactly like an elementary school teacher would. Michelangelo knew what that tone meant. It meant: "Explain this misguided notion to me so that I may disabuse you of your foolish fantasies."

Leo-speak was a language full of subtlety and complicated undertones, all of them stemming from the basic fact that he was a total buzz-kill. It had taken many years, but he now had a perfect grasp on it, and he knew now was the time to backpedal.

"Well, like, I know I agreed to this whole bondage thing, and that's totally cool. I'm fine with that," Michelangelo lied through his teeth shamelessly, "Whatever. But you're the expert, right? You probably know how to make a heart-shaped knot or something. You are the Rope Guru. I bow before your superior mad skills. So why is it that I'm the one doing the tying down?"

Leonardo sat up and gave him a look. "It's because you're lazy," he said accusingly.

This took a moment to sink in. "Um, exsqueeze me? Lazy? Moi? Who is it that just hiked a few miles through the sewers carrying a big old sack of stuff I probably don't want to look at right now? Um, is it that pipe? No. Is it that mattress? NO, and you're totally going to be called the Sex Boy Scout for that. Is it the traveling company of Foot ninja? Uh, no."

Michelangelo began to mime looking around the vacant room as if searching for the Great White Slacker that Leonardo was referring to, and ignored the expression on his brother's face that said: "Oh great, he's doing the melodramatic actor thing again."

Finding no sign of anyone who could match Leonardo's description, Michelangelo put his hands on his hips. "Oh, right. That person was me. Who was it who looked through your mega-crazy book of craziness just for your crazy, crazy pleasure? And studied it like a book of advanced chemistry for a final exam? Oh, that would be me again! Me! It's all me! Doing a whole bunch of not lazy things!"

Leonardo rolled his eyes. "All right, let me rephrase: you mysteriously start being lazy whenever we're in bed together. "

Michelangelo threw his hands up in the air. "Oh my god, how does that even work?"

"Simple. Every time we end up doing this, it always goes the same way. You get all active and hyper during the foreplay, which is great, but when it comes right down to it…"

"I can't believe you're even talking about this," Michelangelo groaned.

"When it comes right down to it, you always have this convenient excuse as to why I should be the one doing all the work. Either you pulled something in practice, or you're just not 'feeling it', or you're too nervous, and there was even that one time you tried to convince me that you had a pathological fear of being on top because of a past skateboarding accident."

"It haunts me to this day," Michelangelo insisted. He felt a little embarrassed despite himself, because he had no idea that his excuses had been wearing that thin. If he'd known that, he would have come up with a solid, amazing excuse so awesome that not even Leonardo could point out its nonexistent flaws.

Leonardo snorted. "Right. Okay. Anyway, I believe we decided that today was my day to do as I like with, and this is what I want. It is my turn to bottom, Mike, and that's all there is to it."

He pulled something that looked like a bunch of handkerchiefs out of the bag and frowned at them as if they were entirely to blame for this new and sudden change in his sex schedule. "So, that's it then?" he said, "You're invoking your God-given right to be the bottom?"

"Yup," Leonardo said, sounding unconcerned.

"You're totally sure about that? I mean, like, what if I sneeze or something and twist a muscle? I've never topped before, you know. All kinds of mistakes could happen. Stuff like that happens with first times. You didn't even give me a dummy to practice on or anything."

As Leonardo choked at the idea of a practice dummy being used for such a thing, Michelangelo continued triumphantly. "Yes! You see how potentially dangerous this is, dude? Also, I'm sure you have all kinds of control fetishes that won't be coming into play today. What happened to all those control fetishes?"

"I'm sure they won't mind for one day," Leonardo said dryly, settling back down into the mattress.

This really didn't seem to be working at all. Of course, this was Leonardo he was dealing with here, he of the unshakable mindset and the iron will, so it was probably to be expected that the whole persuasion tactic wasn't going to work out too well. He tried for another tack: when all else failed, it was time to go for the 'for the good of the mission' pressure point! Time to channel Smokey the Bear and talk about safety!

"Okay, well…what if someone attacks us when you're all tied up?" he pointed out, "I mean, that could be pretty embarrassing. The Foot or Bishop or some giant, ten-foot monster barge in here expecting they're in for an epic battle, and you're all wrapped up in rope and without your weapons. I don't think they'll buy: "Oh, excuse me, I'll be glad to fight you once I'm all untied." And we don't even have any socks to put on the door to warn them!"

This, he thought, was a very good point. Not just the sock thing, of course, the basic idea of evil running amok in the sewers and them not being able to defend themselves because of the fearless leader being tied up for his kinky games. Point to him! He had him there! He would bend to the weight of his impeccable logic!

"It's just clothesline," Leonardo pointed out, "If anything happens, I can just break it. As long as you don't go too overboard, that is. Also, my swords are right next to the mattress."

Or not.

Leonardo was still sprawled out, one arm behind his head and the other resting casually on his plastron, looking completely at ease and really as though he was quite at home with the idea of staying there all night and straight into the next day. His gaze flickered in Michelangelo's direction and he sighed and turned onto his side.

"Look," he said, "It's obvious that you're trying to use conversation as a stall tactic."

Michelangelo frowned. "I'm not stalling. I'm having thrilling pre-pillow talk. Some of those couple books say we're supposed to talk. They say that lack of communication is bad in a relationship. I think you're just being a…relationship...bad-maker." He pointed accusingly. "You're making a rift!"

"Less talking, more tying."

Since it was clear that he could not woo his brother over to his side with the use of logic and his insane charisma, Michelangelo reached into the bag to extricate the last of the stuff.

And pulled out a bullwhip.

This pulled him over the brink of sanity and straight into a gibbering state of lunacy in which the only coherent thought that reached him was: "Holy shit! He's gone insane! He's watched one too many rodeos! I refuse to re-enact any crazy Western scenes that may have caught his fancy! I am so gone!" This was equivalent to opening a bag of innocent popcorn and pulling out a pit viper.

See, he considered himself to be a pretty open-minded guy. When Leonardo had begun to show the less conventional side of his interests, he'd been supportive and helpful and had always supplied a lot of lube. If he'd been into the occasional unusual position, he'd do a lot of stretches afterwards and complain, but he was completely cool with it. The dripping hot wax had been a bit closer to the strange side, but still okay: he got to make fun multicolored wax patterns on his brother's plastron and arms that took an hour to clean off. That was just par for the course by that point, typical Leonardo and his surprising bedroom innovations. (That had turned out to be unexpected to begin with, since straight-laced Leo was the last person he'd expect it from, but ended up making sense on a strange level. His brother had always liked a challenge.)

It was just that bondage tiptoed along a fine line he hadn't previously been aware of. Tying Leonardo up in ropes with his arms forced behind his head and his legs forced apart sounded too much like, well, violence, even if Leo was so keen on trying it out. So it was consensual violence, which didn't make the image in his head any less disturbing. He separated fighting and sex into two categories, and he would have been perfectly happy if never again the twain had met. Unfortunately, it seemed that his ninjitsu-driven bed partner was programmed to want some kind of edge in every aspect of his life, even this one.

So, fine. But damned if he was going to use a freakin' bullwhip.

"This is so off the menu for tonight, man," he said, waving the thing at him after he was finished with his stunned silence. "You thought you could sneak this in here without me noticing or something? Nice. Tres ninja. But, I have found it! Your clever plan is foiled! The night is upon us! I HAVE YOU NOW!"

Leonardo's eyes widened as he took the thing in, and then he blinked in surprise. "That's not mine."

Michelangelo stared at him. "What?"

"Not mine," Leonardo repeated, "Geez, Mike, what do you think I am? That thing could do some actual damage."

"Oh yeah," he replied with as much sarcasm as he could pack into a sentence, "I can see where that would be a problem. Don't want to get hurt doing S&M." He glanced back down at the rope and a simple fact began to settle in. "…Wait. If it's not your bullwhip, and it sure as hell isn't my bullwhip…whose is it?"

They both stared blankly off into space, neither of them wanting to consider the possibilities.

"Put it back in the bag," Leonardo suggested quickly.

"Goddamn it, can't you at least fucking get him on the floor?"

The television was blaring an increasingly annoying wrestling match. This was because Raphael had stolen the remote and was now clutching it possessively, like a mad scientist would clutch a vial of his ingenious, world-destroying serum. Donatello's tireless efforts to persuade him to switch to a different channel had gone in vain, and so now he was sitting at the couch, waiting for the testosterone-laden soap opera to end, and trying to read a book.

The book was fighting a losing battle to keep his interest over Raphael's frequent profane outbursts at the television, the wrestlers, the mothers of the wrestlers, and occasionally the remote. It was probably a good thing that Master Splinter was out retrieving groceries. And speaking of people being out…

"You know, Leo and Mikey have been gone for a while," Donatello said. A nagging little voice at the back of his mind was attempting to tell him he knew why this was, but he ignored it. "They left a couple of hours ago and they're still not here…didn't Leo say that they were just going out to give Mikey some extra training for that technique he keeps messing up? "

Raphael paused mid-shout and glanced at the radio clock next to the televisions. "Yeah, they have. Should have been gone an hour, not two, and it's not like they went anywhere far. I mean, they just go off to a rooftop or the junkyard or something and that's it. You're right, they have been gone pretty long for just some extra training. You wanna call 'em?"

Suddenly, the nagging little voice in Donatello's head managed to relay its message, and all thoughts of calling his brothers fled his mind. "Uh, we might not want to do that."

"Huh? Oh." Raphael went quiet.

"Yeeeaah," Donatello said slowly.

There was a working pact between everyone that stated Leonardo and Michelangelo were allowed to go off and do wicked things in the night, but these things were expressly unspoken of and typically ignored. This was considered safer for the minds of most people involved. Or rather, uninvolved.

The wrestling match went on its loud, angry way.

Raphael eventually shrugged. "Well, it is Friday."

Somewhere along the line it became common knowledge that Friday nights were date nights, but it was easy to occasionally forget such things when they were not being spoken of. At all. In any way.

Just then, another forgotten detail arose from the depths of Donatello's mind like a shark fin from the ocean.

"Oh my god!" he said, sitting bolt upright, "I put a bullwhip in Leo's bag!"

"WHAT?" Raphael almost shouted, whipping around to stare at him in disbelief.

Donatello slumped back into the couch and put his hands over his face. "Well, I thought…you know, extra training, whipping people into shape…stuff like that."

Raphael broke into hysterical laughter.

None of this was coming easily at all. He wound the clothesline nervously around his own wrist like he was testing it, cleared his throat, and tried to figure out how this would go exactly. Like, he could tie the arms or the wrists together, or the legs could be tied to the arms, or…whoa, what if he made some crucial error and Leonardo ended up looking like a game of Twister had gone horribly wrong? He could end up with his neck tied to his kneecap or something potentially dangerous like that! These were not typical bedroom shenanigans. This was a test of his skill and coordination. This was really, really awkward.

Okay, deep breath, you are doing this. It's just some knot-tying, okay? No problemo. I mean, how often have you wanted to tie him up?

Of course, that had been him just wanting to keep his brother from dragging him off on any more madcap adventures: the sort that always happened around Leonardo, like he had some perpetual adventure-trigger field around him. The guy was just a magnet for danger. Michelangelo would be impressed if it didn't totally hamper their free time so much.

Not to mention the whole idea of tying someone up with their arms locked above their head and their legs spread apart kept making him fill a little queasy. He'd only seen something like that when it wasn't quite so consensual, sexual or nonsexual, and the memory of cramped cells and dirty rope flashed through his mind like a montage of horror movie clips. It would figure that his crime-fighting background would surface only to interfere in his sex life. It. Would just. Figure.

He tentatively reached out for Leonardo's wrist, grasping it for about two seconds and holding it as gingerly as someone would hold a snake before dropping it again. "Um, so I'm supposed to talk to you or something? You know, to get the mood going?"

Leonardo sighed, impatience almost palpable, and gave a little half-smile. "All right, talk to me."

"Well, to start with, what does 'no' mean?"

He got a moment's silence before Leonardo turned to him with an expression that suggested that he just grew about four extra heads. "Was that just an existential question?" he asked, looking disbelieving.

Michelangelo blinked. "What? No! I meant, like, if you say no, what does it mean?"

"I'd like to tell you that you're making no sense at all," Leonardo pointed out with an air of rationality, "I think I'm going to blame all the sugar you ate before coming here."

"You know what, that was energy food," Michelangelo said, "I need it to keep up my strength for all of this craziness. It's my life support system. I need it. Anyway, I'm making perfect sense. You're just confused. Obviously. I meant, say I was doing something just now…"

"Yeah, let's pretend you're doing something."

The look Leonardo gave him was pretty explicit. It meant: "Please tell me why you are taking up our allotted two hours of date night with these bizarre questions, you strange person."

He got this one on many an occasion, since Leonardo was a depressingly silent bedmate with no concept of pillow talk. No, he was clearly too ninja for pillow talk. He was big on nonverbal methods of showing affection and quiet sex with no screaming, and other soundless stuff like that. It was a good thing he was there to fill up all that awkward silence, or they would have died from post-coital boredom by now. Leonardo seemed to think it was okay if he made up for this disinterest in normal activities with a whole host of weird ideas, like the one Michelangelo was trying to stall just now.

Michelangelo continued as if he hadn't been interrupted, "…And you pulled a muscle. And then you decided that pulling a muscle meant pain, and pain might not be a good thing during sex. I know, this doesn't sound like you at all, but work with me for a bit…and so you would want to say something for me to stop. Would that be a 'no' or a 'stop', or something really weird like 'Styrofoam' or 'turbine'?"

Leonardo spent a few seconds of silent and staring confusion before something clicked. "Mike," he said with the slow tone of voice used on the mentally deficient, "Are you trying to ask about a safeword? Is that it?"

"Yeah, sure, one of those! Yes, exactly! Safeword! So, is it no?"

He considered this to be a very important key point. All sorts of unpleasant accidents stemming from a lack of clarity about safewords had been haunting his mind. Besides, he liked the idea of Leo saying 'Styrofoam' while in pain. It was kind of funny.

"Well, we don't really need one for what we're doing," Leonardo said, breaking his dream of nonsense words, "I mean, that's not…really necessary, since when I say 'stop' or 'no' it always means stop or no. That's only for people who like to scream 'stop, no' when they really don't actually, uh, mean it. Or for role-playing, which we aren't doing."

"I like role-playing," Michelangelo said automatically without thinking of what it might imply in a bedroom context. "Um, usually anyway."

He was then plunged into a horrible fantasy of people rolling around D20s and taking experience penalties for foreplay and some strange and nebulous DM cackling to himself about rolling initiative. Michelangelo was brought out of this and sharply plummeted back into reality by Leonardo sliding firm fingers just below his jawbone and tipping him forward onto the mattress with him. He sprawled out on top of him with an undignified squawk of surprise, their legs tangled and his hands sliding over the smooth surface of Leonardo's plastron.

"Your elbow's hitting me in the side," he said reproachfully, shifting to a more comfortable position, straddling Leo's legs and moving his hands onto his shoulders, "We should keep your elbow pads on all the time, if you're not going to watch where you're poking those things. You could put one of my eyes out, and it would all end in- ungh!"

He broke off into a half-muffled gasp as Leonardo jolted to an upright position and slid his mouth over the sensitive skin of his neck, sending shivering prickles of pleasure through him.

See, he had a really sensitive neck, something that was completely being taken advantage of now. He decided that it was a hideously unfair tactic to use his neck fixation as a method of silencing him. Completely unfair. Sneaky. Kind of ninja-like, really.

Not that he was going to complain all that much. Not with Leonardo treating his neck like some kind of candy, (or whatever it was Leo ate for comfort food, candy-avoiding freak), and especially not when he couldn't really form a coherent thought other than: 'ooh, nice' or 'want more'.

"Don't leave any bruises this time," he managed, "Last time that happened we got some questions."

In response, Leonardo closed his teeth around the cord of muscle in his neck, firmly enough that the pressure (notquitethreat) was there, but not enough to break the skin or make some teeth marks that might cause some embarrassment when they returned home. "I'll try to be careful," he said, close enough that the breath from his words brushed the skin of Michelangelo's neck.

That was it, he was gone. He made a low noise deep in his throat and moved down so he was pushing them both into the mattress, pinning his brother down under him and stroking from the sensitive skin along his sides and following that path right down to the lowest edge of the plastron, tracing the very edge of where it ended.

They were pleasantly occupied for some time until Leonardo finally left off frying Michelangelo's brain with his tongue. This was not necessarily a good thing. Michelangelo was getting kind of fond of all that brain-frying. He decided to inform him to continue.

"Mmmffhm," he said intelligently, opening his eyes- he'd closed them while Leo was heavily involved in something very interesting concerning his inner thigh.

"Mike," Leonardo said, and his voice had a low husk to it that made him shudder, "I think we're missing something."

"Hmmm?" he asked. It was really more of an inarticulate moan that an actual question, but he figured Leonardo could use his super-sense abilities to figure it out. Then it began to dawn on him.

"Oh," he said, "Oh, right." He'd left the clothesline on the side of the bed, and he fished out one of the lengths of thin rope and wound it between both of his wrists. It tensed in the short space between his hands like the muscles in his shoulders, and he released a sigh. Underneath him, Leonardo's eyes had gone dark and half-lidded, which usually would be his signal to start up the good old Mikey Lovin', but right now he was having some performance anxiety issues.

"Soooo," he said, "I've been thinking about this roleplay idea. And I think it's awesome. I think it's just the best idea that ever hit me. I think my entire life has been leading up to the day where I can play a fiendish dominatrix."

"You probably mean something else," Leonardo said with a faint smirk, "Dominatrixes are female."

Michelangelo decided he did not need to know why Leonardo knew the correct terminology. "Hey, hey! I'll be what I want! And…what I want does not include being female, so I'll be something else instead. Something a little more, um, manly. Because I am a very manly person! As you well know."

Leonardo nodded in a placating way. "Of course I do."

"Dude, I hope you do. It's gonna be pretty hard for me to top, otherwise." He took Leo's wrists and gingerly wrapped the rope around them. He'd taken off his wristbands before they'd started, apparently because he just liked feeling rope chafing against sensitive skin. There was something implicitly unusual about that. Sometimes he wondered if his brother hadn't been captured his way into a fetish while they'd been on all those missions. Definitely something to think about the next time they got tied up somewhere.

He tightened the rope and made to tie the knot, wondering if Leonardo required one of those fancy sailor things or if a simple one would do.

"Don't tie it just yet," Leonardo said, flexing his wrists, testing the strength of the rope, "It's too loose."

"Too loose?" Michelangelo asked, his voice rising a little on the word 'loose', "What, did you want to cut off circulation? Do you want blue hands instead of green? Will you not be satisfied unless you're endangering your health somehow?"

"Yes," Leonardo said with a perfectly straight face.

Michelangelo gaped at him.

"No," he added, rolling his eyes, "But you don't have it tight enough that it should be a problem. You don't even have it tied tight enough that my hands touch each other. I could just slip right out of this."

"But, uh, correct me if I'm wrong…the whole point of that rope thing is so you can slip out? I mean, I know you're not going to escape. You're not gonna try to escape unless something happens with, uh, mousers or crazy attacking clones, so why should I tie it any tighter than that? I mean, if you escaping isn't a problem."

Leonardo stared at him as if he was the one with the logic issues. "Because I want it tighter?"

"Right…tighter. Of course. Skin rash tight. Man, you know what, next time you're going to want a knife invited along with us. We could have a pain party." He looked down to see the look of slow consideration and scowled. "That was not a suggestion! Stop that!"

They were beginning to succumb to boredom. The popcorn had run out. Raphael was eating the last box of raisinets, the movie they were supposed to be watching wasn't even particularly good, despite Casey's glowing reviews, and their brothers still had not returned home. It hadn't even been a stressful week. There was no reason for this sort of, um, lingering. Well, maybe there were reasons, but not any sort he was going to dwell on right now.

"This is the worst movie I have ever seen," Raphael said, watching the screen in disgust.

Donatello had long since stopped paying attention to it. "Well, just turn it off."

"It's so freakin' bad," Raphael said, continuing as if he hadn't heard him, "I mean, look at the special effects! LOOK at 'em! What the hell was that supposed to be, a sparkler? I hate this movie."

Clearly the only thing keeping Raphael from his sullen boredom stage was the enjoyment he gained from wallowing in his own misery. Donatello decided to leave this as it was, and snagged the box of raisinets while Raphael was busy detailing his rant about why the movie sucked worse than a Hoover with a triple-upgraded engine.

Master Splinter entered the room. "Ah, Donatello, Raphael. Good evening. I see your brothers have not yet returned from their training?"

"Uh, no. No, they haven't," Donatello said with perfect casual poise. Raphael grabbed the candy box back and stuck a handful in his mouth, eyes on the cinematic train wreck in front of him. Someone on the television was screaming for help. He found this supremely ironic.

'It is a good thing that Michelangelo has become more diligent about his training," Splinter noted thoughtfully, "Perhaps next time they leave for their training sessions, the two of you could join them."

Raphael choked on a raisinet and made a series of horrible gagging noises.

"Um…I think they said they wanted to do it privately," Donatello explained. On the television, something exploded. This seemed perfectly fitting.

"I am your dark master of darkness," Michelangelo said, scowling in what he considered to be a masterful fashion down at Leonardo, "You will bend to my will, for you are now at my mercy!"

Clearly the effect was totally lost on his brother, who managed to stare at him, lip twitching, for all of one minute before once again succumbing to his overwhelming urge to laugh at him. This was so not fair at all. Here he was, trying to be appropriately hardcore for a bondage session, and he couldn't even get a straight face from Leonardo, let alone a…whatever reaction was supposed to be deemed appropriate here.

It probably didn't help that he'd been trying, with various degrees of failure, for the past ten minutes. He'd even attempted posing with the whip. Leonardo had mentioned that it made him look like a disgruntled rodeo star. He'd given up all hope of hardcore whiphood. Now he was just attempting to be somewhat intimidating.

"You are not helping me, here. I am so not feeling the mood," Michelangelo gestured with a hand, attempting to show his intense lack of mood, "How am I supposed to be a badass dom when you keep on cracking up? Not cool, man. Not cool."

"You just said you're the dark master of darkness," Leonardo repeated, putting sarcastic emphasis on each word, "I can't help it if you sound like a comedy show."

Michelangelo felt affronted. "I do not."

"Also, when you try to threaten me with the rope, you make this horrible constipated face."

"It's an intimidating SCOWL! It's…it's full of threatening goodness, okay? I think it's just you! I think because you're, like, not intimidated by anything except for maybe ten-foot spider demons with acid-dripping tentacles, nothing gets to you anymore! You're just jaded! You're jaded and you can't appreciate my scowl!"

"All right, all right…" Leonardo propped himself up on his elbows and gave him a long look.

Michelangelo arranged his face into a frightening leer.

There was a long pause as they stared at each other, Leonardo's face as blank and unreadable as it was when he was performing a particularly difficult kata. For a moment, he thought that it might just have been good enough for Mr. Extreme Dating. Perhaps he had hit some kind of face muscle nerve in his brain and he'd finally managed to pull off something edgy enough to work!

Then his delusions were shattered as Leonardo gave an undignified snort and fell back into the mattress, clearly amused and unafraid of his glorious intimidation tactics.

"Oh, great," he said, "Just great. You know what? I should just bring in some greasepaint and a squeaky nose next time we go and do this."

"If you think it'll make you look scarier, go for it."

This was entirely unfair. The whole situation, really. All he wanted was a nice, normal roll in the hay, like any SANE person would want. That was all. It wasn't like he went around asking for candlelight and chocolates and silken bed sheets and ambience music like a big wuss. Conversely, he also didn't go around asking Leo to dress up in big funny leather suits and plastic masks and pour liquid plastic over him. He was a very simple guy. He just wanted to get laid in a somewhat normal way, and to continue this as much as possible. That was it. And now he was in charge of tying his bedmate to a creepy old mattress that smelled funny, in a secluded room in the sewers. C'est la vie. Why couldn't Leo have just kept to that biting thing?

"The biting thing was easier," he muttered aloud.

Leonardo gave him one of his long, searching, opaque looks, the one that meant he was trying to rummage around in his head by breaking into the windows of his soul. Then he smiled. It was a pretty arrogant smile, really, the sort that would have Raphael fuming. "You know what I think? I think I understand why you're having so much trouble with this."

Something about the way he said that made him narrow his eyes. "Do you?"

"Of course I do," Leonardo continued blithely, "It's because you have absolutely no imagination when it comes to sex."

This was so unexpected that at first he couldn't really understand what had just been said. It was like Leonardo had just sat straight up in bed and hit him over the head with a large trout. The strangeness kept him from totally comprehending it. "I'm sorry," he said finally, "I think my hearing went all funny. I thought you just called me unimaginative."

"I did," he persisted, "You are completely lacking in imagination. It's the same thing every time with you. No variety at all. I could probably bring a stopwatch next time for you, and we could see that it all runs by clockwork. It's a very simple routine of foreplay, sex, afterglow chatter, always about how totally awesome it would be to install a television over the bed."

"It would," he protested feebly. This new and unexpected twist was also newly and unexpectedly infuriating. Leonardo was giving him that 'I am clearly superior' look and he felt like smacking it off his face with the bullwhip and then maybe saying: 'Ha! I, too, can be fun and creative, you smug asshole!'

"There's just no helping it," Leonardo continued with a regretful sigh, "You're just naturally boring. I should call you the one-note bedmate."

"Boring," he repeated in disbelief. He was feeling a very serious need to strangle his brother right now. Either that, or flay him alive. Something painful. Meanwhile, Leonardo-Who-Couldn't-Shut-Up continued his forensic analysis of his skills.

"It's because you're excessively romantic about this. Sometimes I think you formed all your ideas of relationships from one of those Lifetime specials that Master Splinter sometimes watches. I'd almost expect some kind of slow music playing in the background. Like I'm making love to a Hallmark card."

Something in his stomach twisted up hard enough to make his throat sting. That need to strangle urge was rising, and it didn't really help that he was actually sitting on top of the future victim in question, with his neck in easy reaching distance. 'Well, you can just tie yourself up, then,' he wanted to say, 'And then use your bedroom creativity to find a way to shove your own cock up your ass!'

This was what he wanted to say, since it was pretty much perfect for the situation. And then he would storm out of the fucking room and back to the lair and play video games, since who really needed this aggravation? It wasn't like this whole thing had been his idea. Typical Leo, he went along with his grand scheme and then there he was, giving him grief for not doing it right. Great. He wanted to tell him off like he totally deserved, yell in his face what a giant asshole he was being. But for some reason, he couldn't find himself able to say anything at all.

So, he just left.

If this wasn't the backfire of the century, it was certainly the biggest backfire of the week. The plan he had to annoy Michelangelo by doing that teasing routine he and Raphael did sometimes and maneuver him into being less nervous seemed to have gone completely awry and now he had made him upset enough to actually get up and storm out of the room. Perfect. Way to go. Shit.

He followed the direction he'd seen Michelangelo dart in, (the opposite direction of the way back home, either he was too angry to notice or he'd just gone to calm down), and wished that he hadn't helped him with all of that advanced ninjitsu training. He was now downright stealthy, a fact he appreciated in battle but not so much when he was trying to track him down. The fact that he'd used actual speed instead of trudging away told him that he didn't want Leonardo to catch up to him…but the wet footprints on the cement told him that he wasn't exactly thinking of covering up his trail. So, angry and upset, but not completely out of reach.

It wasn't very long to go at all- Michelangelo had slowed down after his initial burst of speed, and when he turned down a bend in the tunnel, he caught sight of orange before his eyes filled in the rest of the shape, shadowed in the unlit sewer tunnel. Michelangelo wasn't even facing him, which was probably why he was still in sight and not fleeing down another tunnel. His face was turned towards the wall, fists clenched tightly at his sides in a way that was oddly reminiscent of how Raphael held himself when angry, and when he drew closer he could hear him breathing in noisy exhales, letting out each breath in a harsh burst of air.

Leonardo came up behind him, making sure that his footsteps could be heard. Michelangelo's shoulders tightened at the sound, but he didn't turn to face him. He also didn't turn to run away, which he took as a hopeful sign. It wasn't easy to tell with Michelangelo when he was truly upset, or when he was just frustrated and annoyed. He was so rarely angry that when he was, everyone was too thrown off to actually try and help. Not to mention the fact that he'd hide most of it under his usual goofiness, so they tended not to notice until he dropped the smile and went postal.

Up until now he'd thought he'd been getting better at seeing the signs that meant he'd crossed a line: Mikey getting quiet, grinning more and joking less, and the slightest narrowing of the eyes and squaring of the shoulders. Not this time. This time, he'd just managed to get an explosion without any warning at all, and even though he'd known he'd been nervous from the beginning, he didn't expect the first nudge he gave Michelangelo to send him plummeting off the edge. Drawing up years of dealing with angry, upset, or downright unreasonable brothers, he opened his mouth to attempt to do damage control.

"So, what happened?" Michelangelo asked with a whiplash edge to his tone, "No luck tying yourself up? Or is that even more boring than you're used to?"

He cringed. That plan was definitely a horrible idea. "I'm sorry," he started, hoping to repair the situation which had obviously gone so wrong. "I'm sorry, I didn't think that-"

Michelangelo cut him off, turning around to face him. "That what? That I'm like a living Hallmark card or that I wouldn't leave your ass after that? Because really, that should have been a big, shining, obvious neon sign of 'don't go here, dude'."

"I thought it would…well, forget what I thought. I was obviously wrong."

"Mmhm," came the noncommittal reply.

"It was a stupid idea."

"You got it- wait, that was an IDEA? An idea for what? An idea to bring the entire mood crashing to a halt?"

Michelangelo seemed to flounder around with this for a while, as if unable to comprehend how anyone could be so terminally insane. "You were just lying there, waiting to have sex with me: I pause here because you are sooo lucky you're actually getting that. Sex. With ME. That should consume your brain, Leo. And while you were lying there waiting to get all tied up, inspiration struck and all of the sudden some master plan came up that involved completely pissing me off? Oh, I want to hear this one. Please, tell me what was going on in that strategic genius brain of yours."

In hindsight, telling him that all that actually was planned was probably a bad idea. Actually, the plan itself had seemed sound enough, but the backfire proved it completely a failure. Clearly he wasn't really great at the psychological approach. He realized that he should probably leave that stuff to Michelangelo and Donatello, and use the tried and true method of 'corner it and negotiate until it submits'.

It was just that he'd had the idea from Mike, after all…the way he'd goad his opponents into action, the way he'd poke and torment Raph until he lost his mind and exploded. For some reason, the same approach seemed like it might work. Well, he'd got his explosion- too bad it ended up blowing up in his face.

Meanwhile, Michelangelo continued his tirade. "What was that, anyway? Seriously. What was that? Did I slip up and hit some kind of pressure point for your tactless bastard nerve? I come up here, nervous enough because, like, what if I end up asphyxiating you with my elbow or something? I don't know. And then there's this national insult parade! Is this some kind of holiday?"

Leonardo realized that he had to interject sometime very soon or lose all opening to speak for the next two hours. "No," he said firmly, grabbing Michelangelo by the shoulder and trying to organize his thoughts. "Well, kind of," he amended, in hindsight. "Not about the holiday, but yes, I was trying to get you angry."

"Yes, this is why I love you," Michelangelo said, eying his hand like he had half a mind to break it, "Because of your complete inability to make any sense at all! Um, WHY?"

"Well…because of reverse psychology, really." His brother stared at him in utter disbelief. "It made perfect sense at the time," he said in defense of his faulty methods, "It works fine when you try it on Raph. It works perfectly any other time."

There was a moment of silence in which they stared at each other, and Leonardo waited slowly for what looked to be yet another explosion.

Then Michelangelo covered his face with his hand and sighed. "Oh my god, I should have known," he mumbled, "I really, really should have known. Yes, you're right, it all makes sense now."

Catching up with his brother's sudden flip-of-a-switch mood changes was a challenge. Sometimes he felt like there were at least two miles of odd Mikey-thought between Thought A and Thought B. "It does?" he ventured, hoping that what was to come involved an explanation for this. (Not that he was complaining, an exasperated Michelangelo was better than a furious one any day. )

"Of course it does. You see, Leo, you're really very simple. Not boring like me, but definitely very simple. You somehow got it lodged in your head that everything in life is like a giant battleground, and for some reason…that's just how you act! It's how you train, it's how you think, and apparently it's how you have sex. I should have seen this coming a mile away, because I've always known you are a bushido-happy fight-fetishist. HA! I have you now!" Michelangelo pointed a finger at him accusingly.

"But see," he continued, "Sometimes…things don't really work that way. Sometimes, stuff that might work in a fight situation? Totally won't work where you're supposed to be lying in a mattress listening to sweet nothings, got it? I mean, the ropes and chains and stuff might be distracting…but no one's actually gonna get hurt here. No lives to save, dude. No honor to uphold! Just…a bed. And me. And a bullwhip, for some reason."

They both decided not to think of the bullwhip at that time.

A couple minutes later, Michelangelo sighed again. This time it was less of 'oh, an epiphany has hit' sigh and more of a 'well, on to the races' type of sigh. The kind that insinuated some kind of plan was on the other end of it. "Well! I think it's been maybe a few hours. Don and Raph should be having a mental breakdown deciding if they should risk calling us or not. Only one thing to do: back to the date night. I mean, it is your night."

The tracks of Michelangelo's train of thought were clearly shaped like the world's most tangled-up roller coaster. "Back to date night," he said slowly, "Are you sure? A few minutes ago you were angry at me…"

"Right, well, things change. You came here to grovel to me-"

Leonardo bristled, "Apologize," he corrected, "I came to apologize."

"Grovel," Michelangelo corrected back, narrowing his eyes, "As someone who so completely screwed up SHOULD, and so…I forgive you."

He added a grand and benevolent gesture to that statement, and Leonardo was caught between the almost-conflicting urges to either roll his eyes or growl. "All right," he said eventually. "So…?"

"So, back to business. Time to break out those damn ropes."

They were turning the corner to go back into Leonardo's sewer cabana of love, Leo taking the lead as he usually did in almost everything and looking like something that was immensely confusing and yet not necessarily unpleasant had just swept by and dropped into his hands. He was also being quiet, but this was pretty par for the course, so Michelangelo left that be. He wasn't really in the mood for a conversation, even the fun 'let's see if I can make Leo snap' ones, anyway, since he was very busy working himself up to the task at hand.

It struck him that people really shouldn't need to cheerlead themselves into having sex. That was supposed to come naturally, like breathing and the tides and other things that occurred in nature.

His thoughts had gone from naturally occurring stuff like butterflies flapping their wings and graffiti on walls and had skated straight into stranger stuff like the Foot attacking and superheroes and maybe the super villains attacking the Foot and vice-versa, when he realized that they were back in the room and Leonardo was looking at him expectantly. Like he truly believed that he had any idea what he was about to do next. Michelangelo felt like maybe pulling a mean trick and saying: "Ha, just kidding, I've got a headache! Maybe next time!" Something like he'd have done when he was fifteen and stupid like that, not now, when he was supposed to be five years older and less likely to play mean pranks in bed. (The whoopee cushion didn't count.)

"All right, on the bed we go. We ARE doing it on the bed, right? I mean, you don't have some Iron Maiden rigged up for this or a rack you want me to strap you to, do you?" he asked. This seemed unlikely for tonight, but something about the way Leonardo grinned at him made him regret having made the suggestion.

"Not unless you brought them with you."

"Oh, yeah. That's, see…lots of people think I don't have a superpower. Those people would be wrong. My superpower is the ability to carry a whole bunch of S&M props around in my pockets. Like, the ones that don't really exist. They should just call me Pocket Turtle!"

"Oh, I've got a better one."

He sensed an evil grin moment. "This one better not have anything to do with my Cowabunga phase, Leo," he said warningly. "Those jokes got old, and I KNOW old jokes. I kind of collect them." This was true. He collected them in the pile of memories to never revisit again, and his brothers liked to dig those up to remind him of the days where he was young and had no comedic timing. Damn them.

"Not at all. I think the perfect superhero name for you should reflect your abilities, and with that in mind, I think you should be known as Captain Vanilla."

"Excuse me?"

"It makes perfect sense. If that's what you're good at, then why not just flaunt it? You're no longer the Turtle Titan. You're now Captain Vanilla. Solving crime everywhere with the missionary position. I think you should alert your super friends about the name change now."

Michelangelo groaned. "Veryyy funny, Leo. I'm going to bust a gut laughing at your cutting humor. In fact I-"

He didn't actually get the chance to say what it was he was going to do exactly, since his brother chose that moment to coil into a pounce and tackle him onto the mattress in a burst of some of his super ninja speed. If he was able to think coherently aside from the instinctive reaction of 'oh shit, ambush', and the following reaction of 'he's on me, he's on me!', he would have added this to the list of reasons why Leonardo Takes His Obsession With Ninja Everywhere, Even In Bed. Because he used the element of surprise! No one expected the Leo inquisition!

Well, apparently not HIM. "What are you doing? I thought you said I top tonight-" he asked, admittedly a little short of breath with the way Leonardo was straddling him. Then his brother yanked his mask off an tied his wrists together and yes, even he, the clueless one of the family, could see something was definitely up with this picture. Struggling didn't seem to get him anywhere, (although it probably got Leonardo somewhere, the jerk,) so he sunk his face into the mattress. "Do I NEED to say Styrofoam?" he asked, his voice a little muffled by the fabric.

Then he heard the beeping.

He looked up just in time to see Leonardo talking mildly into the shell cell. "Excuse me, is this Silver Sentry? Yes, I was just calling to inform you-"

Michelangelo thrashed underneath him. "Oh, you unbelievable bastard. How low will you stoop? There are things we do not mess with in this relationship, dude! You do not touch my comic books and you do not screw around with my day job!" He tried to get his wrists out of the knot fast enough to do damage control, bucked around like a quarter-operated kid's ride, yelled assorted variants of 'shut up!' and 'don't believe him!' and all the time Leonardo blithely chatted away and totally ruined his superhero social life.

That did it. That was the last straw. This was officially the worst date night in the history of date nights and he decided, in a wild burst of maniacal logic, that if Leonardo really seemed to want to get tied up in some kind of pain fetish fantasy, he was going to do it. Oh, yes he would. MWAHAHAHAHA.

"Yes, that's what I said. Captain Vanilla. Why? Oh, that's very simple. It's because he's so good at it. You see, in bed-"

And that was when the good ship sanity broke along with his mask bindings, and Michelangelo tossed Leo off to the side and onto the mattress. The shell cell clattered to the floor next to the mattress, where it would be promptly ignored for the rest of the evening, and Leonardo gave him a maddening, smug, 'I am your leader-god smile' and said: "It took you long enough to get down to business."

Michelangelo growled at him low in his throat. "You will have bruises when we go back home."

"Depending on where you put them, that might be fun."

There were so many wonderfully questionable places to put strategically-placed bruises, he found it really hard to choose. Somewhere along his mission to mark every inch of Leonardo's skin he could reach, he managed to pull his arms back and above his head, tied them together a little more tightly than was strictly necessary, and managed to get them on the hook that was conveniently there for rope-hooking purposes on the wall behind the mattress. Conveeeenient. Still, he was reminded of movies with teenagers fumbling at bra straps when he did it, since he was tying and pawing at Leonardo at the same time, with Leo being very distracting in that way only he could be as he did it. It must have taken him at least five hours to tie the knot, (five minutes, actually, but after a few minutes of fumbling with rope while trying to deal with someone's mouth going surprising places while he did so, it felt longer.)

At some point, Leonardo's mouth had him by the throat and his hands had him by a more intimate body part, and he was beginning to wonder exactly who was in control here. He was led to further wonder as Leo practically demanded him to tie his legs, too.

"Legs, too?" he repeated dumbly, brain cells being steadily burned in the heat of good sex.

"Forced spread," Leonardo repeated, "Hop to it."

"Yeah, what am I supposed to tie them to, your arms? I'm not the rope- hmmmmm stop that, I can't talk…I'm not the rope Houdini, dude."

His brother's voice had gone all scratchy and dreamy-sounding like it usually did. "I attached chain around the bed so you can have a place to attach the ropes to."

"Ah, see, I noticed that, but was too polite to point it out. I figured it was your way of decorating."

"I didn't have enough time to really get started down here. Expect more surprises next time."

Michelangelo looped a rope through one of the chain links and tugged, tightening it, "You scare me sometimes. You know that?"

Leonardo gave him one of his half-sleepy, half-smirking opaque looks that meant he was already processing some mastermind horrible mission plan. "I know. About those bruises..?"

By the time he'd gotten his legs tied up, neither of them were in any mood to have conversation.

"No more strange toys in the date bag, Don," Raphael said, looking grim, "Look what happens? They go off forever. And we get to try to explain why they're off doin' practice this late."

"I hate date night," Donatello said, staring at the television. It had long since ceased to be interesting.

At that, the door slid open and Leonardo and Michelangelo walked through, apparently deeply focused on their conversation. Michelangelo waved an arm wildly in the air.

"WHAT?" he yelled, "What do you mean the thing was off the whole time? The shell cell was OFF? You tricked me? I…I feel so used! What's next, you have a secret girlfriend?"

Leonardo walked down the hallway with a Cheshire cat grin and refused to answer.

"You're so trying to get me to think that, aren't you? But I know you're not. I know it because I'm so putting spy cams in your room from now on. Dude, you are so not walking away from me like this. I must be heard! I will be heard! My complaints will be listened to! I will have attention! Get back here, or I will beat you with the bullwhip of terror! Captain Vanilla demands you come back!"

With that frightening proclamation, Michelangelo scurried off after Leonardo, leaving the other two in momentary silence.

"I really hate date night," Donatello repeated.

Raphael frowned. "Who the hell is Captain Vanilla?"