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“Are you okay?” Raph doesn’t bother knocking - Leo probably already knows he’s there, and if he didn’t, knocking would give him more time to try and hide the tear tracks down his cheeks.
Fortunately, Leo isn’t startled by his presence. It takes a minute for his older brother to compose himself and tidy up the last few sheets he’s hanging, but he eventually responds. “Not - not really, actually.”
That gets Raph a little. He’s not used to Leo not frantically batting at his own face to cover any sign of crying, let alone openly admitting something’s wrong. But things have been changing between the two of them, recently, what with… everything. He perches on the counter, taking care to only slightly mess up Leo’s carefully-folded blankets. “Wanna talk about it? Or do you need, like, advice?”
“I don’t know,” Leo sighs. Raph watches him for a minute, taking note of how his hands are shaking and his shoulders have the exhausted droop of a prior intense training session. Whatever’s bothering him has clearly been doing so for a while - and it’s not something he wanted to talk about. “I feel like… I don’t know. I don’t think this is something that can be helped.”
Raph thinks for a minute, reaching over to squeeze Leo’s hand in his (and smiling at the adorable pout Leo gives him for it), before shrugging. “I mean, sometimes just talkin’ helps. And I know you like to think yourself in circles; maybe you need an outside perspective.”
Leo snorts and kisses him, folding one last sheet before tucking himself up on the counter beside him. Raph decides not to comment on the unusual seating, especially so when Leo brings his knees up to hug them. “Uh, it’s about my…”
A stone drops in Raph’s stomach. Well, not stone, he decides. It’s more of a pebble. Leo’s not super super distressed, and with how open he’s been with all of this stuff recently, Raph doesn’t think it’s anything bad. “Self-harm?”
“Yeah,” Leo mumbles, slowly. “‘S that okay?”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
“Cool. I’ve just been. Thinking, I guess. About my scars.” Leo picks at something on the counter, refusing to meet his gaze, and Raph forces himself to grab Leo’s hand without pushing for any more. Leo’ll respond when he’s ready. “I… They’re really going to be there forever, huh? And it feels weird, ‘cause they’ve been there for so long already and I’m only - only seventeen, you know? Like, I have so much longer left with these things, and they - I have to constantly hide already.”
“You don’t have to hide,” Raph soothes, but even he knows it’s not true. Not with the way Donnie and Mikey wince, still not entirely used to them. Not with the way their friends get uncomfortable. Not with the way April starts treating Leo softer than’s comfortable, or how Casey’s eyes darken and he hops on his phone to text his sister. Not even with the way Raph will sometimes crumble, brushing over them like porcelain and failing to keep in all of the bitter pain he has knowing Leo was hurting for so long.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Leo sighs, and Raph doesn’t fight him on that one. “I’m already so careful and I - I have to do that forever. And this all feels like teen bullshit, to me, because the only time you see people c-cutting is when they’re angsty emo teens, right? And, like, I’m not going to be an ‘emo teen,’ forever, I’m going to be a broken adult.”
“You know that’s not true,” Raph hisses. Hearing Leo talking about himself like this - it makes something boil in his gut. Leo’s not just a stereotype, he’s more than all the bullshit the world gives him about this.
Leo, however, just lets out a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “Fuck, Raph. I know! I know it’s ‘not true,’ but that doesn’t matter to, like, everyone else! It being not true doesn’t change people’s minds or their - their perceptions of all of this. Do you remember, a couple years ago, Casey sent that joke to the group chat? The one about the emo girl saying you couldn’t cut in line, but she said it so that the punchline was - was about emo people cutting themselves? And I know he’s changed considering… everything, but…”
“But it still hurts,” Raph sighs, wishing he could tuck Leo up all safe and sound inside his shell and keep him from all of the bullshit biases and prejudices of the world.
“Yeah. But not… It doesn’t hurt like normal, though. It hurts more that… no matter how much I recover, or how long I’m clean, or whatever, most people are going to think mental illness and/or crazy town first, and see me second.”
“Well, third, after the giant turtle thing.”
Leo blinks, and then laughs quietly. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Really, Raph’s stumped. He doesn’t know what to say to help his mate.
"Sorry. I…" Leo shifts on the counter, looking a little bit like he's going to jump down and run away, and Raph grabs one of his hands.
"Don't be sorry," he chides. He massages Leo's hand as he thinks about what to say next, hoping to offer any comfort he can't give through words. At some point, it's more about letting Leo get his feelings out than trying to talk over him with solutions. Especially with something like this, that doesn't really have an answer. "The people who love you will never see you that way, bro. You know that."
Leo sighs. The way he curls even more into himself has Raph's heart twisting. "It's not about you guys, it's - it's about people's snap judgements. Everyone will always -"
"Since when did you give a fuck about what pther people think?" Raph snaps. He's angry, now. Not at Leo, but at the idea of his mate giving any credence to what shitheads with nothing better to do than stare think. "That's not the Leo I know; what's this really about?"
It takes a minute for Leo to answer, but Raph has waited for him countless times before and he's okay with doing it again. Finally, Leo begins. "I just… Like I said, I've just been thinking. I don't want to deal with this forever. I regret it so much ."
Oh. Raph has… no idea how to touch that. He squeezes Leo's hand again, and Leo snorts derisively in understanding.
"It's fine, I don't expect you to, to understand or anything. In a good way." Leo takes his hand away to rub at his arm, fidgeting with the wrappings, and Raph wonders if there's more to this than he's letting on. "I just - um. It sucks that I did it. And I have no one to blame but myself."
Raph disagrees. Their shitty world, the lack of support, the pressure - all were significant in Leo’s self-harm and all had traceable roots. But that's not a conversation they need to get into again, and he lets Leo continue on. “I hate myself for starting, but I - I always have the urge to do it again . It's so stupid .”
“It's an addiction,” he not-so-gently reminds. A shitty addiction that had almost taken Leo from him, and he hates Leo acting like it's anything but, like a personal failure on his part. “And, y’know, there's not much you can do about regret except keep going forward on the right path. And you're doing that , Leo. You're putting so much effort into healing and it's paying off.”
Leo stares at him. His eye twitches. “You're missing the point. No matter how much ‘healing’ I do, I’m always going to have the scars.”
“So what?” Raph shrugs at the glare Leo sends his way. “The scars are just as much a part of you as any other scars. Or your eyes. Or your embarrassingly short height -”
“ Hey .”
“Point is, they're just. There. There's nothin’ wrong with them. You don't have to shame or praise ‘em if you don't want. And, yeah, how they got there ‘s a little different, but that doesn't make ‘em any different than the scars here -” he taps the three grooves across Leo’s plastron, the ones that still hadn't quite healed “- that you overcame, too. They're just part of you now.”
Leo blinks. And keeps blinking. They sit in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time until he leans his head onto Raph’s shoulder, curling up tight against him. “Thanks,” he whispers.
Raph knows that he'll never be able to understand this, or how Leo feels about any of it, but an outside perspective can't hurt. Regardless of whether or not Leo accepts his advice and views, he'll know he has people there for him that he can talk to.
“Any time, bro,” he whispers back. Leo pouts at him again, and this time Raph doesn't mind the sheets as much as he pulls him off the counter and into a playful spin kiss.