Under Pressure

Frustration

I hadn't slept long before I heard a banging on my door, so I sat up and opened it. Leo was there, tapping his foot impatiently. "Donnie, I didn't see you in your lab, so I looked for you. You didn't answer your door when I knocked the first time, why?"

"I was sleeping." I answered dryly. I didn't have the energy to deal with this, so I wasn't putting effort into it.

"Sleeping? Really? It's daytime, you can't just be sleeping right now." He folded his arms. "You can sleep at night, but for now, we need you working."

"It's always about me working with you!" I was too exhausted and stressed to care about how he felt, he didn't care about how I felt anyways. "But no one else has to work the way I do! No one else constantly has all the responsibilities I have! You guys get breaks, you guys get to keep being teenagers! I always have to do the majority of the work!"

"I'm the leader! That's the hardest job of all!" Leo snapped. "I have to protect you guys and make all the tough calls."

"If you're the leader and you're supposed to protect us, then why won't you protect me?!" I retorted. "Why won't you give me a break for once?! I'm so tired, Leo, I'm exhausted!"

"I'm tired too!" Leo got too close to me, his face was in my face. "I'm exhausted too! You think you're the only one that's looking for solutions but I'm working even harder than you are!"

"No!" I shoved him away from me, keeping distance between us. "You don't get it! You haven't seen how hard I have to work! My head hurts! My stomach hurts! I feel sick and dizzy! I'm tired, I can't even sleep because you won't let me!" 

"You're not sleeping?" Leo immediately went from demanding to concerned.

"No!" I clenched my fists. "I haven't been sleeping, getting water, eating, anything! I can't even stop to take care of myself because you immediately show up to get onto me about it! April had to force me to take  a break since I didn't even want to! You want to know the real reason I haven't been able to make any progress?! Do you?!"

"Yes." Leo didn't seem to know what to say other than that.

"Because I can't even read! I'm so exhausted my vision's blurry!" I took a deep breath and sighed, collecting myself again. "I'm tired, I need sleep but I can't sleep when you're constantly nagging me."

"Donnie-" 

"It's fine, nevermind." I rubbed my eyes and walked out of the room. "I'll get that stupid solution so you can get off my shell and rest after all the hard work of doing nothing." I stormed off into my lab, catching Mikey in there again. "Mikey! If you don't get out of my lab right now, I'm going to!-" 

"Dude, I'm going!" He whined and started walking out. I sighed and put my head down on my desk once I was alone. At least in my lab, people assumed I was working. Most of the time, anyways. April heard me go into the lab apparently because she walked in and looked at me.

"What happened to going to sleep?" She asked, putting her hands on her hips.

"Leo happened." I said blankly, pulling over the paper I'd been working on my calculations on and squinting at it to make it clearer. "I'll be fine, April, it's alright." I smiled to her.

"Donnie, if you're not going to accept my help, fine, but at least tell me!" She was upset with me, which was the last thing I wanted.

"It's not that..." I felt bad. "I tried, but if I try to go to sleep again, Leo'll just get mad again."

"Didn't I say that I was going to handle him?" She had a good point.

"Well, yes, but he doesn't care what other people have to say." I spoke quietly, almost inaudibly. "He doesn't care that I'm tired, he doesn't care about what I want. He just cares about being heroes or something." I rolled my eyes.