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Mikey tried three more times to make his crush-thing work out. He even tried saying he had a crush on Kala, the lead singer of the Neutrinos. As hard as he tried he just couldn’t seem to figure it out. Raph kept suffocating him with his overbearing big brother stench. Donnie kept acting like nothing had changed. And weirdest of all, Leo kept his air of smug knowingness.
It took less than two weeks for Mikey to give up.
He never admitted to his crushes not being entirely real, even playing along whenever anyone brought it up. He just stopped trying.
It had been silly anyway. Trying to prove he was mature by pretending he had a crush was one of the most immature things he’d ever done. And he ate peanut butter with his hands! It had been a stupid, backwards plan that had immediately failed anyway. He hadn’t been convincing enough to pull it off and even if he had, would it really have been worth it? Would his brothers actually start treating him more like an equal just because someone could make him blush just thinking about them? Would he really be okay with earning their respect for a lie? What would he have done if he had gotten his actual first crush soon after?
Mikey shouldn’t have lied about his feelings. If he wanted to be seen as mature he couldn’t just act like mature people did, he needed to actually be mature. That was maybe a little harder but he could do it.
He could be mature.
Sure he couldn’t take care of others like Raph, he couldn’t remember facts like Donnie and he couldn’t read a situation like Leo but neither could the others. All of them were mature in ways the others weren’t and all of them were immature too. Raph always pushed himself too hard, Donnie never accepted feedback and Leo refused to acknowledge anything that made him uncomfortable.
Honestly, sometimes Mikey felt like he was the only one who noticed how bad they were at recognizing their limits.
With that in mind Mikey knew what he had to do. He needed to stop thinking about how everyone else