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Drip, drip, drip.
Raphael sits on the wooden chair a few feet away from the bathtub, staring. Staring. The chair creaks and whines every time he readjusts. It’s hardwood but uncoated, and he feels splinters digging into his thighs.
Drip, drip, drip.
Leo is still out, has been for days now. Raph doesn’t eat, doesn’t shower, barely trains. He thinks it’s because he wants to watch in case Leo wakes up, in case he opens his eyes to a strange new place and there’s no one there to tell him, it’s okay, you’re okay. Raph knows it’s also because he doesn’t think it’s fair for Leo to wither in this bathtub while he goes about his day normally.
Drip, drip, drip.
Days are riddled with the other guys coming in. Mikey talks to Leo a lot and it’s a wonder the guy doesn’t wake up just for the sheer opportunity to tell their little brother to shut up. April brings Raph food and watches him eat bird bites until he grumbles a thank you to let her know the rest of the plate will go untouched. Casey tries to convince him to get out by suggesting games, training sessions, and old cassettes they can shove into the CRT TV gathering dust in the living room. Donnie sets up an IV drip every day for a couple of hours— and every time Raph tries to stop him, “He’ll be up soon, he’s fine. Stop that shit.”
“Raph,” Donnie says, very seriously. “We have no idea when he’ll wake up. We need to be safe about this. His body can only withstand so long without at least some vitamins and hydration.”
Raphael wants to fucking deck him, but he lets Donnie do his thing. Leo doesn’t stir when the needle goes in, but Raph flinches.
Drip, drip, drip.
The nights are different.
It feels so isolated. Not just in that bathroom, but in the world. The frogs and crickets sing their evening lullabies and even though he’s not used to it, Raph still hears it like it’s white noise— everything is white noise but Leo’s gentle, soft breathing. It’s barely audible, but Raph pulls his chair closer every night so he can rest a hand on Leo’s chest and feel it rise and fall, rise and fall.
It’s like they’re alone in the world and there’s a selfish part of Raph that wishes it were true, just for a moment. Just them.
He closes his eyes, rests his forehead on Leo’s, the incessant dripping of the bathtub tap has already added an extra inch of water to the tub and only Raphael knows this because he watches Leo all day, all night, and even when he falls asleep Leo is there in his dreams— hurt, passed out, broken, bleeding on the back of the Shellraiser, so much damn blood, so much blood, Raph, please, it’s too much, is that normal? Is he gonna be okay?, Mikey’s voice echoes repeatedly in his head. I don’t know, I don’t know.
Raphael doesn’t know if Leo will be okay. It’s been weeks.
“What was the last thing I said to you?” Raph tries to whisper but still startles at the sound of his own voice breaking through the evening silence. He murmurs under his breath, forehead touching Leo’s as his hand rests on his plastron. “I can’t even remember. It could have been the last thing I said to you ever, but I can’t remember.”
He laughs without humour and raises his head to look at Leo.
He looks almost asleep, almost peaceful. Raph dips his hand in the water and raises it to wipe some dirt off Leo’s lip, feeling it cold against his thumb.
Raph pauses, stares at his brother’s lips for what feels like hours, days.
“I’m never gonna get to tell you about any of this crap. This sick shit I feel for you.” He muses, more to himself than to Leo. “Might as well. It’s the universe punishing me for feeling this way, I know it.”
Raph rests his forehead on Leo’s again, takes a deep breath.
“I fucking know it.”
Drip, drip drip.
“I lost control when Shredder beat Splinter,” Raph murmurs, voice soft to not disturb the peace of the night’s quietude. It’s been another few days and he watches as the water level raises with each drop. “You know who comforted me? Fucking Mikey of all people. I was about to knock him out for pulling me away, and he hugged me.”
Leo’s chest rises and falls gently under Raph’s palm. He stares at his brother’s restful face, the bruises peppered on it, the black and blue that slowly faded into a yellow and purple, now barely there.
“When was the last time I hugged you?”
Raphael sighs, draws patterns on Leo’s plastron absentmindedly with the water. A flower, a turtle, a rat, a heart, a flower, a heart, a heart, a heart… they fade away as soon as he’s done, droplets rolling down to meet the stagnant water that submerges him.
“I guess I was always a little scared to,” Raph frowns to himself. “Because if I hugged you too tight you might notice.”
He looks at Leo again, at the barely visible freckles that decorate his skin. Raph can find them by heart, knows the ones that are a little lighter than Leon’s skin and the ones that are a little darker, too. He could place them all blindfolded, even the ones often hidden by the mask.
There’s a small freckle right between his eyes, right in the middle, it’s light green and it scrunches up whenever Leo frowns. Raph touches it gently with a finger. Then he places a kiss on it, then on the two marks above his left eye, then on the one right by his nose— and then Raph takes a silent moment to frown as he stares at the dark birthmark sitting on the dip of the corner of Leo’s lip.
He kisses that one, too.
Drip, drip, drip.
“Donnie is probably sleeping even less than I am.”
Raph has permanently moved his chair right against the side of the bathtub. He spreads his legs so his knees touch the cold porcelain and he leans over the lip, resting his head on his folded arms. Screw what the others think, Raph is too tired to care.
“He’s been working hard to keep you alive and to wake you up. He might be onto something soon,” he smiles. It’s so forced it hurts his cheeks and pricks his eyes. “You’ll be fine, you’ll get up.”
Raph says it to himself, as a useless comfort.
He reaches a hand to cup Leo’s jaw, feeling him cold even with his heart beating gently. Raph wants to cover him in something, but Donnie won’t let him, he’s a turtle, he needs to receive turtle healthcare, not human. Raphael wants to tell Donnie he’s not just a damn turtle, he’s a mutant, too, but the heavy, dark bags under Donnie’s bloodshot eyes have him bite his tongue.
“If you get up, I could tell you,” Raph mutters. He feels the prickle on his eyes again and tries to stop as the tears come. “I wanna tell you.”
Raphael sighs heavily and hears his breathing catch as a sob breaks out. He swallows it down, he wipes the stupid tears, and he frowns as he stares at Leo with determination.
“Promise you’ll get up. If you do, I’m gonna tell you.”
He won’t.
Drip, drip, drip.
Raphael gazes at him, sitting inches away from Leo and counting the constellations on his skin. He’s started to make up shapes, like what humans do with the stars, but Raph thinks the birthmarks on Leo’s face are more interesting than the night sky peeking from the window.
“If I tell you, will you say it back?” He says, suddenly.
It’s dark out, the moon is high up and the town house is dead quiet. Even Donnie fell asleep— Mikey told Raph he covered the big guy with a blanket after finding him collapsed on his makeshift lab desk, while doing his rounds of kiss-and-hug-goodnight around the farm house.
And in the lonely evening Raph says words that are meant for Leo and Leo only, pretending he can hear them yet hoping he doesn’t.
“Will you think I’m a weirdo? Probably. Your eyes would go wide like they do when you’re flustered and you’ll go, aaaahhh, uuuuhhh, for a solid minute before you reject me in that annoyingly gentle way you reject Mikey when he wants to play card games. That’s what you’ll do.”
He almost says it with anger, like he’s resenting Leonardo for the scenario he’s weaving in his own head.
“And then you’re never gonna go anywhere near me again, gonna think every high-three or every hug is some weird shit. Gonna act all weird with me.”
Raphael grimaces, frowns, stares at Leo with a judgmental gaze.
“You’d probably be right to do it, too.”
He slumps his shoulders with a sigh before leaning on the lip of the bathtub again, resting a hand on Leo’s plastron to feel his breathing.
“I love you.”
It comes out as a whisper, soft and scared. Broken.
“I love you. I’m sorry.”
Raphael cries without sobbing, too tired for his body to rattle as the tears trail down endlessly.
Drip, drip, drip.
It’s morning and Raph can hear the birds chirping and his brothers training in the front yard. He hasn’t slept much, there’s no angle or position that makes even napping comfortable on an uncoated chair, leaning over a bathtub.
Raph feels like only about a minute passed after his confession, but he knows it’s been hours. His tear-streaked cheeks have dried and his eyes ache from crying, but he still doesn’t take a moment to drink water, to eat. April brings him an apple at some point and Raph mutters a thanks before taking a single bite into it. She gently pats his back and leaves, closing the door behind her, and Raph sets the apple on the floorboard.
He can hear his brothers sparring with Casey and there’s a hint of resentment in his chest— how can Donnie take a break? How can Mikey have fun? How can Casey and April rest? Raph wants dearly to hate them but deep in his heart he knows he’s the one who’s wrong, sitting on his ass waiting for miracles to happen, confessing messed up feelings and hoping the universe will take pity on him.
Raph looks at Leo as he’s bathed by the morning sun. He glistens with it, always has, the green of his skin turning a silken olive whenever the sun touches it. It’s such a rare sight— they only left the lair at night, only saw each other under fluorescent light bulbs. Raph never thought anything did Leo’s beauty justice like the sunrise did.
They were all supposed to look the same, all the same species, after all, but Raph thinks humans are just as similar to each other, too. Donnie is taller, Mikey has freckles all over, and Leo…
Leo looks like the sun kissed his skin and the ocean kissed his eyes.
Raph frowns deeply. His eyes, god how he misses them.
And that stupid smile Leo has when Space Heroes is on TV, no matter how many times he watched the shitty show, and his shit-eating grin when he wins a spar, and…
Raphael feels himself choke up again. He leans over Leonardo and stares intently at his face, before gently, softly placing a kiss to his lips.
“I always wanted to kiss you when you looked dopey, watching that dumb Space Heroes show you liked. Your eyes always looked so pretty when you did. I don’t even remember what the damn plot was.”
He sighs again, clenches and releases his jaw to try and relax. He closes his eyes and rests his head on his palms.
“This is so fucking fucked up. I just want you back.”
Raphael takes deep breaths and counts to ten. He can’t keep breaking down like this, his brothers need him, too, not just Leo, he can’t let this ruin him, not like this, not over feelings he shouldn’t even have—
“That’s… gonna make the next marathon… a little awkward…”
Raph raises his head and he feels underwater. It’s a voice that’s broken, bruised, hoarse to no recognition— but he’d know it anywhere, could pick its whisper out of a screaming crowd.
And then when he turns to look at their source, there they are, Leo’s eyes. Deep ocean blue and shimmering under the sunlight as Leo looks straight at him.
“Leo…” Raph mutters. His brother is stirring, grimacing as he tries to move his body. “Leo! Fuck, I gotta—”
“Raph, wait…”
He doesn’t hear it, he stands up and knocks the chair over. “Guys, come here, quick!”
Raph is about to run to the door, but Leo grabs his hand with a strength a man just awoken from a coma shouldn’t have. “Raph…”
“I’m here,” he says, immediately turning around to squat beside him. He tries not to think about what Leo heard, about what he replied to. Tries not to think about what Leo remembers from when he was asleep, if he remembers at all. “Don’t move.”
They hear footsteps running up the stairs and Leo looks at the door, looks at Raph.
Then Leo pulls him down by the tassels and places a quick, chaste peck on his lips. It’s so fast he barely registers it, but even when Leo pulls away Raph can still feel the buzzing on his lips.
Raphael can’t hear when the others walk into the room, can’t answer their questions as they burst in and immediately surround them both. He looks into Leo’s eyes and they look back and there’s a whirlwind in his head as everything feels so far away, so removed from this one moment Leo tugged him into. There’s an intensity in Leonardo’s eyes as they bore into Raph’s, and it’s Mikey who breaks their eye contact when he launches himself to hug Leo, crying as his brother chuckles with a wince.
Donnie shoves everyone aside to check on Leo’s vitals, check his bruises, his broken bones. Raphael stays the whole time, staring at the ground he’s become so acquainted with, just so he can listen to Leo’s voice as Donnie harasses him with questions.
“No, Donnie, I don’t feel any pain… yes, I remember everything… no, I don’t remember any dreams… yes, I can feel your touch…”
Raph fiddles with his thumb, feeling his cheeks heat up.
Leo’s voice is all that registers in his brain.
The day goes by in a whirlwind and Donnie monopolises Leonardo the entire time.
It’s not like Raph wanted alone time with him, or whatever. There’s no reason for him to want to be alone with Leo… at all. He just gets his ass kicked during training, blames it on being rusty, mocks Casey a little and then retires for dinner— all the while staring daggers at the barn-lab where Donnie is keeping Leo captive.
It’s for tests, it’s for exams, it’s to ensure his health is stable. Raph knows that, but there’s an anger that corrodes him at the thought that he spent days beside Leo and now he’s ripped from him, just like that. The only reason he didn’t kick Donnie’s ass for kicking him out of the barn was due to Leo’s own request to leave them, “You’ve taken care of me for long enough, Raph.” Like he knows anything. He doesn’t know shit. Doesn’t know the days and nights of spiralling into fear and anxiety, the constant checking of his pulse and vitals, doesn’t know how it felt like for Raph to see him lying down limp and cold for so long he forgot how Leo’s voice sounded like, how his smile and his eyes looked like.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. Raph touches his lips with bruised fingers and remembers how cold Leo’s own lips felt on his. Both times. Both times.
Raphael uses a tree as a punching bag for a couple hours, until April drags him and his bruised up knuckles away.
When Leo walks into the living room the sun is setting and Mikey and April have concocted something akin to dinner. He’s welcomed with more well wishes, a light meal for his tender stomach, and Donnie helps him on the couch.
“I can at least sit, Donnie,” Leo sighs. He doesn’t like being treated like he’s made of glass and Raph can hear it in his voice, even when he says it gently.
“I don’t care what you think you can do, Leo.” Donatello doesn’t mess around, he brings the plate of food for him too, places it on Leo’s lap. “Your body will need time to recover all its basic muscles and functions at full power. To you it was a cat nap, but it’s been months. Your muscles are atrophied.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leo says, and it sounds like his dismissive, rolling-his-eyes tone, but Raph can hear the sharpness under his tone.
Raph doesn’t look at him.
“Dude,” Casey starts, the little shit. “You stayed day and night beside Leo and now you won’t even sit next to him?” He’s not judging, he’s mocking. Raph wants to kick his nuts in.
Everyone suddenly stares at him— including Leo, who still looks so frail it hurts, but his eyes are as wide and piercing as always.
Raph stands up with a scoff. “Whatever, I’m going to my bedroom.”
Mikey calls him back with a morose little voice, because they are watching Space Heroes and he wants to watch it with the whole family again, but Raph doesn’t wanna hear it. He slams the door of a random empty bedroom behind him and slides down the frame.
What the fuck was that?
Raph replays the moment in his brain over and over— Leo kissed him, right? That wasn’t his imagination, right? Donnie said to him at some point that sleep deprivation could cause hallucinations, and Raph ponders for a long moment how long he hasn’t actually slept. Does it only happen if they don’t sleep at all? Does it still happen if they catch some shut-eye?
Raphael feels his heart beating fast, feels his chest constricted, his shell feels suddenly too small and he wants to take it off like it’s clothing.
Then there’s a knock on the door.
“Occupied!” He snarls.
“It’s me, Raph.”
He feels the blood drain from his face when Leo speaks, and Raphael wonders if turtles can survive a fall from a 2-story tall window as he stares at the curtains across the room, moving with the breeze.
“Open or I’ll keep standing here, on my bruised feet, on my broken legs…” Leo goes on, the dumbass. When Raph finally stands up and opens the door, there’s a cheshire smile on the idiot’s face.
“What do you want?”
Leo walks in silently, leaning on the cane so his limping doesn’t have him collapse, and then sits on the bed. It’s a miserable sight— Raph’s Fearless Leader shouldn’t look this vulnerable, this weak. It feels wrong to watch him wince at the effort it takes to walk, to sit, to bend his knees.
Leo is staring ahead, at the other wall, and Raph slowly closes the door when Leo taps the mattress beside himself as an invitation.
Raph doesn’t want to fucking sit down.
He sits down.
“Shouldn’t you be like, I don’t know, eating? Resting? You’re probably sick of me, subconsciously or whatever.”
Leo chuckles but there’s a tension in his shoulders and Raphael wishes he could snap his fingers and do away with it all as much as he wishes he’d be the one in a coma instead.
“And what about you? Aren’t you sick of me?” Leo asks.
He looks at Raph with such tenderness in his eyes and Raph immediately drops his gaze to his own feet. “Yeah, kinda. You were pretty boring when you were asleep.”
Leo laughs. “I bet!”
The silence is awkward, it eats at Raphael from the inside, feels like mould settled in his lungs and made it hard to breathe. He thinks he’s wheezing, his heartbeat feels too loud, his breathing louder. He just wants to be alone and forget the last three months ever happened.
“Raph—”
“Don’t.” Raph interrupts, and takes a deep breath before he continues. “Just… pretend nothing happened. You didn’t hear shit. We already got too much going on anyways, I don’t want you to humour some weird, fucked up—”
“Raphael,” Leo starts again and there’s a warm hand resting atop Raph’s shaky fingers against the mattress, and it’s so comforting it makes him angry. Leo sighs heavily before he speaks again, “Thank you for staying beside me the whole time, for watching out for me. You have no idea how comforting it was to feel someone’s touch and hear someone’s voice while I was out.”
Raphael’s stomach sinks and he feels nauseous. He turns to Leo but his brother is gazing downwards.
“You heard it. All of it.”
It takes a long moment before Leo nods, and his face isn’t that of anger or disgust but the fact that Raph can’t decipher it makes it somehow worse.
The silence stretches as he stares at the blank wall and feels his vision lose focus over and over. Leo’s hand is still on his but the skin where his brother touches feels numb. There’s no comfort in this, there’s no warmth and the relief of Leo’s awakening is almost overtaken by the dread of what this will do to their relationship— to their family.
“I’ll leave,” Raph starts, brain working too fast for his mouth to cooperate, to voice the thoughts that make sense. “I’ll just… go away, become a hermit. You don’t have to deal with me anymore, you can just tell the others I died or ran away or—”
Leonardo reaches a hand to touch his cheek, to pull him over, to inch him closer, and Raph doesn’t have the means to think or speak or push away before Leo kisses him again.
His lips are warm this time and his beak scrunches up softly against Raph’s as he presses in harder. Leo has two hands on his face, holding him by the cheeks like he’s scared Raphael will turn heel and run— and Raph wants to, probably would, but he’s frozen by the feeling of his brother’s lips on his own and the way Leo’s eyes shut softly when he’s kissing, the way Leo’s brows pull in the middle like he’s concentrating hard, the way his fingers shake slightly on Raph’s cheeks.
When Leo pulls away, he’s still holding Raph’s face captive and there’s a determined look on his gaze.
“I don’t know where to go from there,” Leo murmurs in that hoarse new voice of his. “But… me too.”
“What?” Raph mutters out dumbly.
“Me too, Raphael. I do, too.”
Leo smiles softly and it takes several seconds for Raph to understand what he means— and then he does, he gets it, and his eyes widen and his brain seems to crash.
“...You heard it all.”
“I said I did.”
“I feel so pathetic.”
Leonardo chuckles and it makes Raph’s chest flutter so hard he has to hold back from shaking. “I think it was sweet.”
“I thought you were gonna die.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t. Are you?”
Raph wants to say, no, fuck you, you should’ve died so I wouldn’t have to deal with this humiliation, but he just nods dumbly, jaw still dropped and cheeks warm with fluster as he stares, and stares, hoping he will memorize the way Leo’s eyes wrinkle under his mask when he smiles until his cheeks dimple.
“Are you looking at my pretty eyes?” Leo asks with a shit-eating grin.
Raph grimaces, “You’re lucky you’re still half-dead or I’d kick your ass right now.”
“Ouch!”
He can’t help the smile that tugs at his lips when Leonardo laughs. Laughs, loud and beautiful and endlessly annoying. He missed his brother’s voice, his laughter, their bickering… Raph looks at him and feels like time has stopped. He places a hand on Leo’s plastron without thinking, to feel his chest as he breathes. Leo looks from Raph’s hand to his face, and before Raphael can pull away in embarrassment, his brother holds his hand right there and laces their fingers together.
There’s a closeness to the act that feels more intimate than a kiss, just their fingers laced as he feels Leonardo breath, as he counts each breath like it’s sheep until his own heart settles. Raph thinks he might cry, but he leans over instead and steals another kiss, just to see if he can get away with it.
Leo kisses back, and the knot in his chest unravels into a gentle flutter as Raphael lets it sink in that his brother is back.