Archive of Our Own ^beta

Leo, for all his ninja training and towering height, could not, for the love of Lou Jitsu, grab it back. “Okay, that’s enough! Come on, give it!” he whined, zipping around the girl. 

She couldn’t believe just how tiny he used to be. She ducked high and low, dodging his arms, all the while swooning. “You’re so cute! Did your brothers look like this too?” 

“Yes! Great, look at Donnie! You-hoo, Y/N! Baby Donnie!” He rummaged through the bin of childhood photos and pulled one out, luring her in with the picture of his brother. When she finally tore her eyes away from the portrait in her hands, he froze with the one of his twin: “Are you—are you crying?” 

Tears were, in fact, welling in her eyes. “Look at you!” she squeaked, completely ignoring the picture of Donnie in favour of holding out the photo of him, and then pressing it to her chest, just out of reach of another one of his attempts.

Leo nearly collapsed in on himself, sending several of the glossy images flying from his fingers as he spun around in frustration. “This moment will follow me to my grave.” He landed face-first on the couch cushions.

She sniffled lightly and grinned at the photo again, savouring one last look at his precious grin and big, twinkling eyes. “Alright, I’ll put you out of your misery.” She handed it back to him and he looked up, hopeful. 

He spared a quick glance at the picture and sighed. “It’s too late. You already have the memory,” he told her, bouncing up off the sofa and burying the photograph at the bottom of the stacks with a pout.

She smirked. “That I do. Burned into my brain for all eternity. Tiny, adorable, four-legged Leonardo with stars in his eyes.”

“I still have stars in my eyes, thank you very much.” 

She made a show of looking for said stars and Leo shoved her away when he realized what she was doing, biting the inside of his cheek to stop the laugh bubbling at the back of his throat. “You’re the worst.”

“A title I wear proudly,” she beamed. 

“What-what is that?” Donnie asked, alarmed, as he walked into the common space, spotting the bin. “Where did you get those?” 

“I think Dad brought them out,” Leo shrugged. 

Donnie gestured between the girl and his brother, rushing toward them apprehensively. “And she is here, why? Looking at our old family photos, why?”

“I like nostalgia,” she said.

“You cannot be nostalgic for a time in which you were not present—RAPH!” Donnie yelled, straining to grab the large bin by himself. 

Raph and Mikey poked their heads in curiously until they too spotted the culprit of potential embarrassment. 

“Ho-kay. No, no,” Raph said and lifted the bin with Donnie still hanging off of it. With his grip slipping, the soft-shelled turtle slid down the length of the plastic tub and crashed to the floor. “You have a good day now, Y/N.” Raph announced, sidestepping the heap of turtle on the floor, and carried the bin straight out the lair entrance. 

“Yes, good. Destroy it,” Donnie said from the ground. “Destroy the bin, Raphael!”

“How much did you see?” Mikey asked her with signs of stress in his posture.

Splinter appeared in the room then, halting Raph’s tracks. The turtles seemed to deflate all at once. He’d been so close, too—nearly out the door. “Ah, yes,” Splinter said, as though he’d just now remembered the prime source of his sons’ humiliation. “I meant to move those. Come, Red.”

Splinter guided his disheartened older son back to another room as his brothers watched, tense. They all seemed to relax once the photos were long gone out of sight. 

The room filled with a sort of unwinding silence.

“You wore glasses, Don?” Y/N asked, breaking it.

Dread filled the turtle in question and he trudged out of the room grumpily, turning around to point accusatorially between Leo and Y/N again, grumbling under his breath. 

“I think you broke him,” Leo said, inspired. “Actually, hey, Raph?” he called, enthusiastically following his brother into the next room. 

Mikey forced a smile. “We just get a little weird about pictures before... you know. The whole mutant thing.” His eyes crinkled and he gestured awkwardly to his physique. 

“Hey, I get it,” she said. “I’m not going snooping, don’t worry.” 

This seemed to calm him. 

“Buuut, if you wanted to show me a tiny Leo learning to wield a sword, I could certainly keep that between us.” 

Mikey’s eyes lit up for a moment, then dimmed again. “No, no. He’d get me back. There’s definitely a video of me being potty trained somewhere and I think we’re both better off not seeing that.”

She pursed her lips in agreement. “Good call. So you guys are really that freaked out over baby turtle pics?” 

Leo strolled back in, empty-handed. Either he hadn’t found the picture he was looking for or he’d thought better about his actions, the same way Mikey had. “It’s not really about the pictures. It’s just weird seeing ourselves as... turtles. Like, real turtles.”

Y/N considered this but waited for him to elaborate. 

Mikey substituted. “It’s like we weren’t… people... yet. You know?”

“I mean... I wasn’t a person as a baby either,” she offered.

“It’s different though. We were never supposed to be... I dunno—cognizant? Intelligent?” Leo tried, turning the words in his mouth. 

“The latter of which you are still not,” Donnie called from the next room. 

“Excuse me a moment,” Leo said too politely, creating a portal that he stepped into with all the grace of a butler. In the distance, there was a loud yelp from Donnie.

She considered Leo’s sentiment. She didn’t tend to think of them as anything other than people, but they were right: they weren’t supposed to be. Y/N tried not to dwell on it too much. “And it freaks you guys out?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mikey admitted. “Like, a lot, actually."

She filed the information away for later, feeling a little guilty about what now felt like a breach of their privacy on her part. 

“Anyway, you guys wanna watch Jupiter Jim?” asked the boy in blue, hopping back through a new portal and putting out a small flame on one of his mask tails.

Donnie—with a newly bruising jaw—and Raph poked their heads back in. “Jupiter Jim?” they asked at the same time. 

***

The sound of corn popping in the microwave and the soft, yellow glow from the projector nearly lulled Y/N to sleep. The movie hadn’t even started yet, but there was something about the atmosphere down here, below the busy city. It was a kind of quiet she doubted the people of New York had ever known. 

Leo plopped down on the floor next to her, a large bowl of popcorn to share in hand. “You’re not already falling asleep on me,” he said in disbelief.

“Shut up,” she murmured, sitting up straight. Leo let out a small laugh and smacked her in the face with a handful of popcorn. She tackled him to the ground, sending most of the kernels flying.

“That’s perfectly good popcorn,” Mikey whined, sinking down into a beanbag with his own smaller bowl. Inside, he'd mixed in M&Ms and drizzled chocolate syrup over his popcorn.

“So wasteful,” Donnie deplored from the other beanbag, shoving handfuls of pretzels into his mouth.

“We still have,” Y/N said, pausing her attack to shake her bowl in front of the apparently more judgemental bunch of the Hamato clan. "See?"

“Oh, sorry, ‘we’? You thought this was for you?” Leo scoffed, grabbing the bowl back and emptying a good portion of what was left into his mouth. Y/N snatched the bowl in turn, sending even more of the kernels flying, and set it far off to her side, out of reach from the red-eared slider.

“Everybody ready?” Raph asked, jumping over the back of the recliner and settling in with several bags of candy. 

Leo laid straight out over his friend to get a hold of the bowl and she had to hold him back by the shell. Mikey and Donnie started on an eager chant for Raph to begin the movie and the two of them froze in their sprawled out forms to join in. “Raph! Raph! Raph!” 

The eldest sibling re-winded the tape—the whirring sending shivers through Y/N's body—and pressed play. Leo feigned making himself comfortable over her lap and she threw him off playfully, rolling her eyes. 

They all sung along obnoxiously to the opening credits, which was funny, because there weren’t actually any lyrics. Eventually, they quieted down enough to give their full attention to the screen.

It wasn’t long until Y/N's fingers found the bottom of the bowl—mostly thanks to Hungry Hippo over there—and it sucked her out of the movie momentarily. She glanced around. Aside from Raph, everyone was completely enraptured by the film, as though it were the very first time they were seeing it.

She snuck a glance at Leo beside her, the two of them laying flat on their stomachs, and found the glow of the strung-up fairy lights shining in his eyes. 

She jumped a little when he glanced at her and then back at the screen, as though he didn’t want to miss even a second. “You okay?” he whispered, leaning in close.

Snapped out of her daze, she mumbled back a very quiet, “yeah,” and got up to collect everyone’s bowls. 

In the kitchen, she checked her phone quickly. It was still light when they’d looked through those photos earlier but the sun had likely since gone down, not that there’d been much sun out today anyway. It'd rained on and off with nothing but grey skies since the morning. Y/N decided she could probably make it until the end of the film without any worried texts from her mom and hurried back to the projector room.

When she slid back in next to Leo, she found him sitting up against Raph's seat, legs sprawled out in front of him. He handed her a pillow, eyes still glued to the scene in front of them. She swallowed a laugh and propped up the pillow against his side. She spared one more glance up to see if he minded—or even really noticed—before settling back down, taking it upon herself to assume he was okay with her little makeshift headboard.

By the time the credits rolled, she was very much conked out. Rain had begun to poor up on the surface again, dripping down into the sewers with a very light and pleasant pitter-patter. It’d lulled her straight into slumber, along with the warmth of what felt like home surrounding her. 

The pillow had fallen somewhat to the side as Leo had presumably shifted throughout the remainder of the movie and now she was fully asleep with the top of her head pressed into his thigh, otherwise curled in on herself. 

Leo tried not to move too much, only partially aware of the welcomed weight on his leg, as he turned to his brothers. “You guys wanna watch the next one?” he suggested, not quite ready to leave the Jupiter Jim universe. 

His brothers stared at him, which was saying something, because by the end of movies they were either out cold—Raph; already putting in a new tape—Mikey; or distracted by their phone—Donnie. But the three of them stared him down now, their expressions unreadable.

“What? Do I have popcorn on my face or something?” he asked, swiping at his mouth. 

“It’s… more what you already had on your face,” Donnie told him.

Leo touched his face again, puzzled. He saw it, then: the marks on his arms.

They were glowing, and he could only imagine the red ones on his face were putting on just as much of a show. “Why am I—?” he tried.

Y/N stirred.

“Why am I glowing?” he asked urgently, lowering his voice to a whisper.

Donnie hit a button on his wrist gauntlet and a purple beam shot out from it. He scanned his twin, looking for abnormalities anywhere. 

Slightly elevated pulse, blood pressure, and body temperature, but that was pretty normal considering his present stress response. 

Leo looked between his brother and the sleeping girl in his lap, silently begging him for a solution, an explanation, anything. Donnie watched scrutinizingly as Leo’s vitals spiked ever so slightly each time he looked at her, then dropped again ever so slightly as he blinked back at his family.

It took him a second, but Donatello seemed to put everything together all at once. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. Oh man—It all made sense! The teasing, the showing off, the incessant puns—it’d been so obvious!

Donnie lurched back in his beanbag and nearly toppled over as he brought his legs into himself. He pointed accusingly. “You like—you like her!” he whisper-yelled, adjusting the volume of his voice.

Leo short-circuited. 

It was very difficult to get into a heated argument with someone, especially your dumb but actually very smart, cocky, loser brother, without moving your body or yelling speaking above a murmur.

He made a cancelling motion with his arms, mouthing a fervent “NO!” over and over.

Raph and Mikey exchanged blank looks before breaking into grins. Raph's eyes went soft as he put his hands together by his face, blinking flirtatiously, while Mikey made kissing faces. The younger turtle stood, turned around, and rubbed his arms over his shell as though he were making out with someone.

Donnie nearly cried from holding in his laughter. He actually did topple over this time—silently, somehow—feet hanging over the beanbag and he clamped an arm over his mouth to keep from making noise.

Leo was mortified. 

He looked down at her, praying she wouldn’t pick this moment to wake up. He couldn’t even imagine her reaction at the absolute circus in front of him. His heart rate sped up for a second as he looked at her sleeping face and then calmed down again as his eyes wandered over her features. They were pretty like this, calm and unmoving, but that wasn’t quite fair because they were always pretty.

Oh… no, he thought. Oh sh—

Donnie stood to join Mikey, followed by an elated Raph who gestured meaningfully between the two of them on the floor. Leo looked at him, confused, and then at his other brothers in a quiet panic. 

Raph tried again, making his motions more obvious this time:

...He wanted them to… talk? Was that knitting? Dance party! Err... Leo definitely didn't feel comfortable doing that. He narrowed his eyes, at a loss. Raph was not good at charades.

“Not helping!” Leonardo mouthed, but Raph only shrugged, smiling knowingly, and steered two smug turtles out of the room. Mikey blew a kiss over his shoulder, much to the blue turtle’s horror.

Alone with her now, Leo wasn’t quite sure what to do. He looked down at his still-glowing arms and then up to the ceiling, where he called on his ancestors to just, please, help a poor guy out, here.

After a few moments of contemplation, he decided he had to move at some point, so better to just rip off the bandage. He slid out from under her, replacing his thigh with the pillow as quickly as his ninja skills would grant him. She stayed sound asleep and Leo was suddenly grateful for the hours of stealth training with Splinter. 

He turned off the projector, which powered down with a low hum, plunging the room into near darkness. The fairy lights lit the path back to his room and, he had half a mind against it, but he picked her up and carried her in the dimness. 

She stirred when she felt the shift in gravity and startled in his arms.

“It’s just me,” he said lowly to her.

“Are you carrying me?” she asked, body tense.

“Do you want me to put you down?” he asked in turn. "We’re almost there.”

Dazed and disoriented, she didn’t quite have the strength to ask exactly where ’there’ was, but she didn’t have to. Leo reached the curtain to his room and slung it open. He dropped her on his mattress, where she rubbed her eyes as he flicked on a small lamp, bathing the room in warmth.

He snuck a look at the marks on his arms. They were no longer glowing so he assumed that was… good?

“Is this—are you inviting me to a slumber party?” she said, stifling a yawn.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have said it like that. I was gonna let you go home, but now you’re not allowed to leave... SLUMBER PARTY!” he shouted, hitting her square in the face with his pillow.

He laughed at the way she stilled from the shock. Her own giggles caught up to his as she grabbed his other pillow. “I think you mean PILLOW FIGHT!” 

They went at it for a couple of rounds until Leo delivered a particularly strong blow, the force of it sending her crashing back down on his mattress where she discovered… Mr. Snuggles.  

Leo’s first instinct was to snatch him back but Y/N held onto him, moving out of his reach the way she had with his baby picture.

“Wait, I love him,” she said, wrapping her arms around the small bear. 

That was it. Leo was pretty sure his heart had fled his body. Melted straight out of his chest and all over the floor, probably. He collapsed next to her out of fear of his knees buckling. “I found him in one of the dumpsters out back when I was maybe, like, four?”

Y/N swooned, her voice turning to syrup. “Little tot-Leo finding his new best bud. Awh, my heart—you did wash him, right?”

“You’re worried about this, what, twelve years later—wait, did I?!”

She put down the bear gingerly, discreetly wiping her hands. He eyed Mr. Snuggles, straining to remember. 

“Speaking of tot-Leo, I think I owe you a bit of an apology for earlier. I shouldn’t have looked through your pictures like that,” she said, breaking the silence.

His eyes moved back to her. “You’re not serious? Come on, Y/N. That’s so not a big deal. Or any deal, actually.” He lowered his voice. “Not sure if you noticed, but we’re a tad dramatic in this family.”

She lowered her voice to match his. “I noticed.” She fought a grin and continued her line of thought. “I just… I get that it’s weird and I feel like I violated your guys’ privacy a little. You’re not just a turtle... anymore.”

“No, but… I am still a turtle. The pictures are a little embarrassing, but it’s okay, for real. I’m cool with it.”

“It’s good to hear that because you were so freaking adorable—“

“Yeah, maybe not so much with the whole high-pitched squeaking thing?"

She clamped her mouth shut. “Noted. Actually, let me make it up to you.”

Leo’s heart stammered in his chest and he tried not to let his mind wander too far into dangerous territory. She pulled out her phone and looked through a text chain with her mom until she found it: baby Y/N.

Leo ripped the phone out of her hand with a growled, “No WAY!”

He stood up and turned away from her to hide his reaction—and any potential illuminating. He already felt his cheeks burning.

It was tiny Y/N with fluffy hair surrounding her tiny face and tiny blocks in her tiny hands. She grinned a (mostly) toothless smile, eyes sparkling at the camera.

“Oh. My. Jitsu,” he breathed and suddenly understood the whole high-pitched squeaking thing. He had to clear his voice back down to its regular octave when he spoke again. “Do not show my brothers this.”

She looked at him funny. “I wasn’t really planning on it but now that you tell me not to, it kinda just makes me wanna do it.”

“No, no, no,” he sank back down to her with a plea in his voice. “Don’t. Trust me, just don’t.”

She glanced at the phone he left discarded between them, the screen dimming. “Why?” 

Because they’ll fall in love with you, too. 

“What do we have if not trust, Y/N?” he said instead, but it sounded forced, even to him.

He stood up quickly to take the attention off the weird moment he’d created and unclipped his pouch, shedding some of his gear.

“Are you stripping?” she goaded, weird moment indeed forgotten.

“Yeah. Full naked turtle glory, how’s it look?”

“Turtley.” 

He slid on a blue night robe, then seemed to hesitate a moment. This one actually did make him feel a little naked, so he made sure his back was to her as he slipped off his mask and pulled on his night hat. 

He turned back around, a little insecure. This was the first time she’d seen him without the mask, he realized, watching her eyes travel the length of his face. 

Feeling exposed, he was just about to ask if it’d be better if he put it back on when she said: “Your marks don’t go all the way over your eyes anymore.”

He stilled. “What?”

“Your red marks,” she said, indicating where they would be her own face, as if that clarified things. 

He braced himself against his dresser, trying to look nonchalant.

“In your baby photo, your marks covered all of your eye—most of your face, actually,” she explained.

Leo strained to remember. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I grew into them.”

Y/N was sure she’d never seen Leo look shy a moment in his life since she’d known him. But now, in this moment, he avoided her gaze and pressed his lips together, playing with the pompom on his night beanie to distract himself. 

“Okay,” she said softly, regretting pointing out the changes in his face. “I better go.”

His eyes widened a little and she saw it so clearly without the buffer of the mask. “What—you’re gonna walk home alone at—“ he checked his phone, “—eleven-thirty?”

“My mom’s probably expecting…” she trailed off, checking her own phone and finding a text from the woman in question.

— hey baby, r u sleeping at April’s? It’s getting late

She hesitated, unsure exactly what her move was until she felt Leo’s breath on her neck. It tickled and she shrugged away from him sharply, shaking him off from where he was reading over her shoulder. “My god, you’re annoying."

“A title I wear proudly,” he said, imitating her remark from earlier in the day.

“Hm, you’re so funny." 

"Your mom calls you baby?” he asked, dismissing her comment.

She shrugged, gnawing at her lip. “Yeah. Since I was… well, presumably, a baby.”

“That’s kinda cute,” Leo said with no trace of mockery in his voice. 

“Thanks.” It was rare to hear him so genuine and she struggled with a response. "I think.”

She sat with the open text screen and Leo leant his head on her shoulder to bother her again. At least, she thought it’d been to bother her… 

When he swiped the phone up and out of her hand, though, she understood that it was, in fact, an ambush.

“Leo! Give it!” she shouted. She reached out to get it back but Leo was very, very tall. He stretched his arms way above his head and typed out a response. She climbed on his mattress to get it back, but it was too late. She heard the sound of a sent text and nearly lost it on him. “Dude, what the hell! WHAT did you do!”

He handed her back her phone easily, a coy smile on his face.

— yeah, if that’s okay? love you

He knew her texting style, too. Jerk. 

They stood opposite each other, where he towered over her screen, reading upside down. 

He looked smug when her eyes met his again.

“You really want me to stay?” she asked him seriously.

“I do,” he said.

“Okay, but no more taking my phone."

“Would you’ve stayed if I hadn’t?"

“Help, help, I’m being held against my will,” she professed, but very lowly without much emotion. 

He grabbed her from behind as she turned toward his curtain, pretending to leave, and picked her up to body slam place her on his bed. She pulled him down with her because he never did get out of fights that easily with her, even though she knew that, realistically, he could probably kill her in the wrong circumstances. He always seemed to know exactly when to quit, though, exactly how much strength to use, exactly how much of a fight to put up before he let her win. Even so, Leo was always surprised with how well she could hold her own when she needed to. With a little fine-tuning—a few training sessions would probably do the trick—she could more than likely do some real damage in a fight, not that he would dream of bringing her on a mission. She stayed among the people of New York where it was safe, he decided.

Then again, if Y/N made the choice to tag along, he couldn’t imagine there would be much of him deciding anything. 

They landed side by side, facing each other and Leo awkwardly dragged his leg off from its previous position over her hip. She let out a tired pant from their wrestling, her eyes shining with mirth.  

He was about to ask where she wanted to sleep, then rephrased it in his mind to say he’d take the couch in the common area.

“You okay?” she asked before he got the chance.

His brow furrowed. Had he done something to make it seem like he wasn’t okay?

She reached out to touch his face, tracing near his eye with her thumb. “You're glowing,” she said softly.

“Why thank you, m’lady,“ he said smoothly, mainly because it was an impulse for him to make jokes, even though he knew exactly what was going on. He wanted to check for the marks on his arms so badly but he didn’t dare move his eyes away from hers.

Her awestruck smile didn’t waver. He held his breath as she continued to marvel at his markings, swiping along his face gently. 

She wanted to ask what it was, exactly why (and just how) he was glowing—last time she checked, she'd never know this to be an effect of the mutagen—but then a blue aura engulfed him and her breath caught in her throat.

“If you continue looking at me like that I’m gonna kiss you,” he blurted. 

This got her to falter but only for a second. He stilled, ready to take the words back: it was a joke, Y/N, I swear, only a— 

She laughed through her nose and moved to press her mouth to his.

It was over nearly as soon as it began—Leo hadn’t even had time to close his eyes. She giggled quietly when she pulled away and he knew he had to be lit up like a damn Christmas tree.

“No, wait,” he murmured feebly, “come back.”

He met her halfway when she leant in again, sliding her hand back over his cheek.

And if only she could’ve seen it: the way the ring of blue travelled and encompassed her body, binding the two of them in his light. It felt so warm and safe and so much like Leo that she began to tremble.

He felt weirdly vulnerable without his mask, like feeling her skin on his in a place he usually wouldn’t was suddenly too much. In fact, the whole thing was too much—him trying to figure out how this was supposed to work in the first place, their newfound proximity, the fact that oh my god, he was kissing Y/N—but it was all the right kind of too much and he snuck his arm around her waist to drag her in closer. He felt his eyebrows knit, the tingling in the soles of his feet, the warmth building in— 

He thought it perhaps best to ignore that last one.

Her quivering continued and he pulled away (reluctantly) to check in on her.

“What’s—“ he said but then he saw it. The remnants of his pale blue glow draining from around her and back into him until it dissipated and dimmed out. 

She pulled back a little and Leo grinned at her as she did, if a bit nervously. He fished around for the night hat that had fallen somewhere behind him and sat up. She followed, cheeks flushed.

“Maybe I should go…” she started as he tossed his hat on his dresser.

“What? Why?” he panicked. He’d messed everything up somehow, clearly. His stomach turned.

She stared at him blankly, a lingering shiver passing through her.

“Are you tired? I’ll let you get some sleep,” he hurried, hopping over her out of his bed and to the entryway of his room, hoping that if he spoke fast enough she’d forget whatever qualm she had about sleeping over.

Her eyes fell to where his robe had come undone. They were parts of him she saw every day but they somehow felt more... forbidden now. It was her turn to talk quickly. “Wait—I—just meant that—aren’t things, I dunno, weird now?”

“Weird? Why would things be weird? What’s a ‘weird'? Never heard of it in my life."

He stood there breathing heavily and watching a smile form over her face. He smiled back. 

“Goodnight, Y/N,” he said, the soft rumble of his voice sending warmth through her body.

“You’re not... staying?”

“Do you want me to?”

She thought about it for a second while Leo’s heart pounded in his ears. Longest second of his life.

Y/N nodded, finally. “Come back?” she asked, echoing his small voice from earlier. 

"You're not... uncomfortable?" he asked to make sure.

She shook her head, more surely this time.

The corners of his mouth twitched. He practically bounced back into bed with her, tugging the comforter over the both of them. “Sleepover!” he whispered excitedly under the covers.

“Slumber party!” she whispered back, matching his energy.

They stared at each other for a moment. The air felt charged and suffocating and Y/N was the first to break eye contact. 

“Should we talk about this?” She gestured between the two of them.

“Nah. Why would we do that?” He pulled the covers down from their heads so the air wasn’t so constricting anymore.

She let out a sigh of relief. “Awesome. I hate those talks.”

“Oh, they’re the worst.”

“The worst…” she repeated, feeling self-conscious suddenly. 

“Can we go back to kissing now?” 

The grin spread over her face before she could stop it. “So it’s true,” she said, feigning hurt. “Men only want one thing.” 

She leant in to show him she was joking but he pulled back. Apparently, he was not (for once). “No, I… I know you’re kidding but I really don’t want you thinking that.” 

“I don’t,” she said honestly.

“Good,” he said. “Because I want all of you. All the time. In every possible way.”

She nearly cried right then and there. “What happened to not having this conversation?”

He smiled charmingly. “Well. I’m actually a huge romantic so… that’s kinda gonna suck for you.”

“Oh,” she mumbled, moving her face closer to his, “yeah, that sounds awful.”

He smiled in the kiss and supported her by the arms as she leaned over him. Eventually, his hands snaked down her body to her waist and Leo had the latent thought that he should stop this now before things went from dreamy to passionate. She gripped the lapels of his robe and he had to swallow down the flustered noise lodged in his throat.

He pushed down thoughts of their differences—and there were many, all the reasons this might blow up in their faces—humans and turtles and— In the end, the way their bodies managed to tangle together like this was worth more than all those thoughts combined.

She must’ve had one of those flustered noises in her own throat because she slowed things down, leaving chaste kisses on his lips as she did, and sank down to rest her head on his plastron. His arms found their way around her back, fingers stroking lightly. 

There were so many things he wanted to say but, Leo couldn’t find the words. “Are you comfy?” he asked instead.

“Very,” she said.

“Really? I feel like that can’t be comfortable,” he replied, knocking against the hardness of his plastron.

“Very,” she insisted. 

He chuckled.

“Are you?” she asked.

“Very,” he repeated and planted a kiss in her hair.

She yawned, sinking deeper into almost-sleep. “So why are you glowing?” she asked. “I feel like I saw it during one of your meditation sessions once but I never asked."

“You saw me meditate? Can guarantee you did not.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t meditate.”

“Can guarantee you do.”

“What are you, some sorta stalker?”

“Hm, only when I have a crush.” 

He felt her smile against him and Leo let out one of those “Oh-ho-ho!"s. “Do you, now?” he said.

“Secret’s out.” 

“Honestly, I’m not sure where it came from," he mentioned, referring to the whole glowing ordeal, "but I get the feeling it’s got something to do with you.”

“Me?” She yawned again.

“Not inherently, but I think you might be triggering it this time."

“Look at me. Being a trigger. The grind never stops,” she quipped but it came out slurred and Leo decided maybe that was enough talking for the night. 

“Alright, that sounds like sleepy time.”

She hummed and he threw the nearest object—a video game case, apparently—at his lamp and it turned off, plunging the room into darkness. He rolled her off of him and snuggled into her, keeping both arms around her.

“For what it’s worth, I have a crush on you, too,” he said softly, unsure if she was still awake. “Just—I don’t know if that was clear."

He felt her kiss his shoulder in response and gave her body a quick squeeze, and then it was dreamland for the both of them. 

Well… perhaps it would’ve been if not for:

“Leo…”

“Hm?”

“You’re glowing again.”

“Maybe I should go sleep on the couch.”

“My little nightlight...”

“That’s it, I’m leaving,” he huffed, but made no move to get up. 

“Shut up, you love me.” She flipped on her other side, keeping hold of his arm around her and intertwined her fingers with his. From the light cast behind her onto the rest of his room, she could’ve sworn he glowed just a little bit brighter for a second.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do."

***