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Mikey’s voice has been cracking more often lately.As someone who’d already gone through experience once and rated it a negative two out of ten, he doesn’t enjoy his vocal cords turning against him for the second time when he’s literally just out here trying to live his life in peace, goddamn.Luckily, the cracks aren’t quite as bad, at least not yet. Just sometimes, his voice will escape harsher than it's supposed to, and he’ll feel like he’s fighting to get it out through a completely clogged throat. He. Is. Losing it.It’s really fucking hard to scream as Dr. Delicate Touch (when necessary, which Mikey is starting to learn is more often than he used to think because saving him for a last resort no longer is always effective when they all now know how to hide knives on their person if they really want to make their point) when his screaming voice is essentially non-existent. After he leaves a certain range, he’s just gurgling whatever the hell is clogging his throat and letting out horace noises that maybe could be called whispering. If this keeps up, Mikey’s going to tell Draxum about this. ⠀⠀Even though Mikey’s sleep schedule has actually been pretty decent, considering his family and lifestyle, it’s a little annoying that he’s still getting headaches. It’s fine, though, he can handle it. Parkour gets a bit harder when his head swims at even the slightest tilt, but he’s had to go after violent mutants while on 3 days of sleep, so this is nothing in comparison. Maybe he’s a bit slower on his feet, and maybe his older brothers keep sending him worried glances, but Mikey’s fine, he’s handling it. When they finally get home from that night’s patrol, Mikey chugs water just in case he forgot to drink some today, because that tends to happen when he gets hyper focused on something and not remembering being hyper focused does not mean he didn’t get hyper focused. It’s probably the right call, anyways, because his throat stings when he swallows, which doesn’t go away even after he’s downed an entire glass of water. Mikey refills his cup, and drinks the entire thing once more. He’s disappointed to find that the pang in his throat persists when he swallows, and he grimaces as he walks into his room with a distant pain that he knows is going to be annoying to him for the rest of the night, because there’s nothing like swallowing hurting to randomly make swallowing the ultimate boredom fidget. As he’s yanking himself up into his hammock, the stinging suddenly intensifies, and as he tumbles onto the fabric he coughs into his elbow, and goddamn it stings. Freakin’ sore throats, he can’t even cough in peace, now.Tonight’s gonna suck.Mikey adjusts himself so that he’s more comfy, then closes his eyes and tries to sleep. He drifts away much faster than he’s used to.⠀⠀The singular cough from last night persists into a full-on cough the next day.Making breakfast is miserable, because Mikey’s essentially holding his breath so he doesn’t get germs on any of the food, and once or twice he breaks and coughs, then he has to wash his hands and try his hardest not to worry about the possibility of anything haven fallen into the food that he wasn’t even facing. When the rest of their family starts coming out of the woodwork, Leon decides to make Mikey’s day slightly worse by being the first one to arrive. He slips into his chair and notes, “You look like shit.”Mikey’s eye twitches, and his throat stings.“You too, I’m surprised you’ve never noticed.”He’s a teenager. He’s allowed to be moody without a persona. Sometimes. Like, once a month. It doesn’t seem worth it past that point. Without any of his usual theatrics, likely because there have been no shenanigans involving him trying to get Red Bull, or god forbid him trying to put Red Bull in place of water in the coffee machine again (that was bad enough by itself Mikey doesn’t even want to think about the nightmare that had been Donnie’s mood after having the Death Coffee without expecting a new taste) and so he doesn’t have as much energy when he replies, “Ouch.”This is not the way to respect a little brother. Mikey is delegating him to being the younger twin for the day, even though usually that choice doesn’t fall under his jobs. “Did you sleep enough last night?” Leon asks, nudging food around his plate, and all around doing a terrible job at pretending to not be pushing the subject. Leon doesn’t need to sort his food, he and Raph prefer to just scarf it. Then, he says, like a liar, “I know that Donnie’s music was loud as hell last night, but usually that doesn’t bother you too much.”“The lab is soundproof, Leon,” Mikey sighs, though honestly with how many random noises decided to bother him last night, some he can’t even recall anymore, maybe the soundproofing has been failing without his notice. “If the music bothers you, then stop falling asleep in there.”“Never.”Abruptly, the prickling in Mikey’s throat crescendos, and he coughs harshly into a fist. It feels completely dry in the back of his throat, but somehow something still manages to escape from his mouth and grossly glop onto his hand. Mikey looks at the dot of phlegm. Leon, from the other side of the room, looks at the dot of phlegm.“I’m not eating breakfast today,” Leon decides.Mikey shoots a glare his direction. “Eat your fucking eggs, boy.”“Make me.”Threateningly, Mikey raises the hand with the phlegm on it. “You’ll get more germs if you don’t eat.”Because Leon is not the worst big brother, sometimes, he starts eating his eggs. Mikey decides that the rest of them can handle serving themselves and cleaning their own dishes, and flops onto the couch for a nice, long session of staring up at the ceiling and trying to spot anything interesting up there.⠀⠀“This is a kidnapping,” Donnie informs in his usual flat voice.“No,” Mikey responds.Donnie blinks.“Alright.”⠀⠀“This is a kidnapping,” Raph declares, then heaves Mikey over his shoulder.Mikey, who was just about to cough, frantically fights the urge so that he doesn’t get germs on Raph’s carapace, because that’s gross and also if it gets on Raph, it’s going to get on everything, because Raph hugs everyone and everyone hugs Raph, and Raph also is great at getting first dibs on the comfy chairs which means he’d get germs on the comfy chairs and—Suddenly, he’s dropped onto a medbay cot, a hand flat against his plastron in order to keep him down. That’s alright, because Mikey has use of enough of his body to cough harshly and painfully into his elbow.Even more suddenly, there is a humidifier. In his face. Mikey almost coughs at that, too.“That’s not how that works, Raph,” Leon sighs, and it’s in that tired voice that means that he’s entered medic mode, and now Mikey has to reevaluate his younger twin ranking and that’s annoying because the two of them always get so smug whenever the rankings are switched, but also medic Leon makes a terrible younger twin, not gonna lie.Raph moves the humidifier out of Mikey’s face, and Mikey now is allowed to consider using the humidifier as a makeshift fog machine sometime. “Oh.”“So, Mike,” Leo says, leaning back in his doctor chair. It’s a normal plastic chair, uncomfortable as hell naturally, which is why it’s the designated doctor chair. It gives hospital vibes, even April agrees. “What are your symptoms?”Mikey whines. “I’m not sick, Leo, I just have something stuck in my throat.”“Ah, yes,” Donnie says. “You’re not sick, you’re just sick.”If Raph were not in the room, Mikey would practise his sign language skills… in order to stop them from getting rusty.Yeah, no, that’s not convincing anyone. Doctor Rude would be flipping him off.Doctor Rude takes a step back for Doctor Ohfuckohshit (not a real doctor, but it’s for the sake of the meme, okay?) when another cough comes up, and this time it’s violent enough to make his head hurt. “So, on a scale of we live in a sewer, calm the heck down to biohazard, how bad is breakfast?” Raph prompts.“You’re all hypocrites,” Mikey informs them. Leon nods gravely. “Then we are fulfilling our roles as older children.”