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Leo is. Confused. To say the absolute least.
Nonono, wait. Endlessly fucking befuddled might be a better way to explain it.
Now, to be fair, Leo is confused and out of the loop plenty of the time; he’s not the best at keeping up with a conversation, he’s kind of stupid, and he spends a lot of time trying to remember the definition to words he would understand a lot better if he could just read them instead of hearing them.
He has a feeling this is something any of his brothers would be a little confused by, though, because Splinter is paying attention to him.
No, he’s not kidding. Like. Wholeheartedly. Leo’s dad is paying acute attention to him, and it’s kind of freaking Leo out.
It started with simple stuff; Splinter responding to his jokes with more than just laughter sometimes, or pointing out ways he’s improved in their little solo training sessions. (Leo wasn’t going to fuck this up a second time. He is going to be a good leader. No matter what it takes.)
And then Splinter asked Leo, wholeheartedly, how he was doing, and Leo kind of froze like a deer in headlights.
Leo cannot remember for the fucking life of him the last time Splinter asked him that.
Before…everything, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked him that, but after he, you know, voluntarily threw himself into a prison dimension with a giant goopy tentacle monster bastard that still haunts his nightmares and the shadows in the corners of his room, they all kind of piled onto the ‘make sure Leo isn’t going to do that ever again’ train.
Maybe that’s why? It’s the only clue Leo has, and it’s the only reason he can think of for why Splinter would be asking Leo how he is, and of course it only took Leo nearly dying of course that’s what it takes of course he can’t just-
Leo beats that boiling, angry part of his head back into the corner it belongs in.
Leo is not an angry person. He is not going to be, no matter what thoughts try to slither their way back up through the garbage disposal he grinds them in on the daily.
(Except for if someone hurts CJ. Leo thinks that’s a fair reason to get pissed, though. Casey turns to Leo for protection, for care, for help, and Leo would frankly rather admit all of the times he’d done something Raph had told him not to do and paid the price than not honor that.)
“Uh,” Leo started, and then blinked. Yeah, real good start there, stellar performance. “Good?” He tried, genuine but still kind of incredibly unendingly baffled, hands slowly raising up at his sides like he was facing down some feral cat or one of those Jurassic Park dinosaurs.
Splinter responded with something Leo didn’t process a single word of, nodding contently and pattering out of the room, ears up and tail swaying; proud of himself, for. Something. Leo isn’t quite sure.
And it just kept happening.
Leo was kind of wary, at first. It was out of character, it was strange, it was weird as hell. Had Leo done something and this was Splinter’s way of trying to weasel it out of Leo by being nice enough that he felt guilty? Did Splinter feel guilty for something? Leo couldn’t remember Splinter doing anything more than being the kind of light, base level (probably hopefully most-likely accidental) mean he always is, but then again, Leo’s memory was never good, and it was even worse for things that hurt.
Leo saw it with his brothers, too, always doing a double take when he’d see Splinter in the living room with Mikey or talking to Donnie or watching something with Raph, but that just made him sigh in relief. If Dad isn’t in his room, he’s doing good, the same way Leo is. He never liked how little time he spent with them anyways.
But Splinter was doing it with him, too. Maybe even more.
Sitting down with him and asking him what he was doing, what he had been up to lately, and listening in a way Leo doesn’t know if Splinter ever really has. Showing him new ways to brew tea like he hadn’t since Leo was 10 and new to it, asking him how he was doing like it was something he’d always done.
And Leo was kind of pissed, because why now, but more than anything else Leo was-not scared Leo isn’t scared it’s fine. Leo isn’t scared because this isn’t something to be scared about and neither is most of the stuff that would. Potentially scare him. If he was scared. No, it just.
It felt like liquid aluminum was crawling down his spine.
It felt like bitter iron in the back of his mouth, alarm bells ringing on high. Leo knows his family like he knows the marks he sees in the mirror every day, and this isn’t something his dad just does.
But Leo watched, and listened, and watched some more, on high alert for a whole week, waiting for something to snap.
And nothing did.
Splinter just asked Leo how he was doing again, and Leo responded, a little dumbfounded, “Fine? I guess?” Because he kind of felt like he was in a bizarro world with a man he didn’t grow up with.
Splinter hummed and asked, “You guess?” Half joking and half worried, and that shocked Leo so much he weasled his way into insisting he was more than fine and then fucking booked it.
Leo is so not used to Dad following up when he gives an answer to that kind of question that isn’t confident.
Of course he’d answered ‘fine’ or ‘good’ or even ‘doing great’ every time Splinter had asked that so far, he wasn’t going to answer with anything else, but he thought he could get away with that.
Leo chewed on the edge of one of his knuckles, sitting cross legged on his bed with the door closed, where he could at least try and think through all the standard-level noise going on in his head.
Splinter is starting to look. Starting to see.
That’s…kind of dangerous.
Something throws itself off of Leo’s shoulders like it’s celebrating in the same breath, excitement trying to ease its way into his heart like a fox creeping into the chicken coop.
He shoots it.
No. No. No. That’s a bad idea.
Instead, he bites down on his knuckle and lets himself think, this could be a good thing.
This could be a good thing.
He really hopes this is a good thing.
And for a while, it really is.
Splinter asks how Leo’s doing, and Leo lies, and Splinter doesn’t press even though Leo sees the knowing glint in his too-wise eyes (always seeing parts of Leo he’s desperately hidden away, always understanding Leo in ways he doesn’t want to be understood, because at the end of the day, Splinter is his father, and Leo can never escape that).
Splinter sits down behind Leo while he’s playing a video game and neither of them exchange a single word because Splinter knows Leo knows he’s there, and Leo doesn’t start a conversation, and Splinter doesn’t start one, either.
(The first time, Leo is stressed as fuck, sure that Splinter is just waiting for Leo to start a conversation, because Leo always starts conversations unless he’s with Donnie because Donnie’s the only person that knows he doesn’t always want to talk and he always has something to talk about anyways on purpose because he is the one that starts conversations and he should probably start talking but the little challenge koco in Frontiers get kind of hard and he can never manage to have any real concrete Thoughts when he’s playing Frontiers anyways but he should really start talking right the fuck now-
And instead, Splinter chuckles and says, “Nice weather, hm?” Which is basically the equivalent of a conversation speedrun.
Leo’s shoulders fall, and he just says, “Yeah,” even as he makes a mental note to ask Donnie if he’s in kahi-hootie-Working With Splinter. For some reason. Leo needs to get to work on that dictionary again whether the definitions make any sense or not.)
The weirdest one is Splinter showing up with new tea to try with Leo, always talking about how he had it when he was younger, and you are sure to like it, you like blueberry and chamomile after all, yes? And Splinter is always right, and Leo hates that it freaks him out a little.
They just talk about tea for thirty minutes the first time, often sitting in silence or making idle chatter every other time, and it’s not awkward, and Splinter isn’t expecting Leo to say anything, and Leo doesn’t expect anything from Splinter anyways because he learned that the hard way a long time ago.
But that’s the thing:
Leo doesn’t expect things from Splinter.
So it surprises him, without fail, every time. Even if he comes to expect it, even if he comes to enjoy it, even if something that’s been scraped raw for years finally starts to heal.
One day, they’re drinking another new blend of tea that CJ got for them when he and April were topside, and Leo is Thinking about it.
And before he can shove the words back down his throat or shut his stupid dumb mouth or think about what he’s about to fucking say, he asks, “Hey, why’ve you been around so much lately?”
Something like regret flickers through his dad’s eyes and it feels like Leo’s heart chips off a piece of itself and throws it into the abyss as punishment. Leo takes a sip of his tea to wash it down. It’s still scalding, and that’s how he likes it when he’s done something stupid. Splinter hasn’t touched his yet. Leo doesn’t know when his tolerance for hot tea overtook his dad’s.
Splinter still taps his claws against his tea cup, though, something Leo unconsciously mimics. It makes Splinter laugh, crowing and woody even when it's quiet like it is now, his smile fond and bittersweet melancholy like clay before it’s made into porcelain that breaks the day after it’s made. It takes Leo a moment to realize Splinter is staring at his plastron, at the spiderweb cracks stretching over his heart, and by the time he does, Splinter looks down into his tea cup and hums softly. “Well, you see, my son,” he says, slow and careful, and Leo doesn’t meet Splinter’s eyes because he can’t bear to but he listens and listens well, because Splinter only ever talks like that when he really, really should. “Two of my boys had the silly thought to give their lives in one day, oh, two months ago?” He laughed again, humorless and grey this time.
“Give or take,” Leo responded back, on autopilot. Frozen. That explained so much. He hated it. He tore off a fistful of his heart with purpose this time, crushing it in his hands, the buzzing chatter in his head turning almost bloody in its hate, and Leo itched for his katana to show he still had something, anything. The joke made up for it in the smallest of fractions.
Splinter just nodded, chuckling more genuinely this time, and Leo thawed just enough to raise his cup of tea to his mouth, letting it sit on his tongue. Still scalding. Perfect. “And, well, I came to realize I myself have been rather silly, all these years.” Splinter finally rose his cup of tea to his own mouth and winced before he could even get through half of a sip. He shook his head, and Leo couldn’t help but grin in something like triumph even through the cold shock of icewater Splinter had dumped onto his nervous system.
Leo didn’t respond, and Splinter didn’t say anything else, either. Leo had the gracious thought that Splinter was giving him time, and he shoved down the thrashing, angry thing that insisted he’d taken long enough and the bitter thing that whispered that’s what it took?
He let the mourning, wailing, moonflower-rain-soaked piece of him saying he’s spending time with us because we scared him, he’s scared we’ll die before he can do this, we hurt him we hurt him we hurt him speak its piece loud and clear.
He spoke through it though, prodding for details, because he needed to know more, he needed to know if he meant it and if he was just pretending and if that was the only reason, tone careful and smooth, light blues as he asked, “So just…making up for lost time?”
Splinter laughed again, brighter this time, looking Leo in the eye. “That is the idea,” He said simply, and then looked away again. “But I am aware I can only do so much, to…make up.”
Leo barely avoids scraping his claws against his third favorite tea cup (because the favorite is for when he’s alone and the second is for when he’s with CJ) and barely avoids grinding his teeth until he gets a headache and barely avoids slamming his head into the table to shut up the of course of course of course of course of course of course of course digging its way through his mind until it draws blood from his heart and his conscience and every scrap of pure love for his dad he’s held tight to his chest over the years.
No he can’t. Leo loves him. Splinter wasn’t there, and that wouldn’t change, and Leo couldn’t tell him that, and Leo can’t hurt him more than he already has, and Splinter hurt him, and Leo still remembers waiting outside his dad’s room and hearing him talking to himself about the way Leo clung to his side and chattered with this heart boiling passive aggressive tone and all of the things he clearly hated in himself that were so much like Leo it hurt and the quiet and-
And he remembers soft lullabies and Splinter holding him when he was crying and telling jokes that were so stupid they knocked Leo right out of it (and that’s why he jokes and why he laughs and why he tries to be bright, because it worked, because it works, because he wants to be that) and wisdom and teaching Leo how to brew tea and sitting with him when he was so scared he’d decided hiding in his shell was his best bet and. And Splinter was still Leo’s father.
But Raph came whenever Leo called, and he was always there, always willing to talk. Splinter felt like he was three states away, Raph was just next door. Always standing there with open arms, even after Leo nearly killed him.
The hot and cold collide and something inevitably shatters.
“Yeah,” Leo says before he can stop himself, staring down at the table, “you can’t fix that.”
Leo grips his tea cup a little harder. Shit. Shit. He wasn’t supposed to say that. It was true, though, he’d. He’d promised CJ he’d try to be more honest about how he felt about things.
Leo does not look up. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he absolutely does not fucking look up because he can’t handle seeing the look on his dad’s face right now, not with claws already sinking into his heart and tearing it to pieces in a vain attempt to match the pain he’s inflicted. The angry thing has been let out, though, clawing through and tearing and lighting a match.
The moonflower hurt snuffs it out in an instant, because he can’t hate when he knows he’s hurt someone he loves, he can’t hate someone he loves. He can’t hate his dad, no matter what.
So he curls in over his tea cup a little, shoulders hiking up, and grimaces. “Sorry,” he says, slow and genuine and careful the way he always says it. Saved for when it matters, when he needs it, when he’s probably torn his dad’s heart out even though he’d done his best to raise him, even with how hard his own life was before they were all just thrown at him like spare dishes to keep clean and not children. “I shouldn’t-I shouldn’t have said that.” He lets go of the tea cup, grips the table instead, gives his claws something to dig into. He grips tight enough that the base of his claws start to ache, and it’s not even the beginning of enough to make up for what he just did. “I don’t-you can’t,” he said again, claws boring holes into the wood. “I love you.” Desperate. He needed to know, above all else. That Leo hated hurting him. That he didn’t want to.
“I know,” Splinter interjected, soothing, sympathetic. Not scathed, or hurting.
Leo loosened his hold on the table just enough that it stopped hurting, and took a slow breath in. Gathering his nerves and his thoughts and the vaguest understanding that his family wanted him to be honest, sometimes. Something Donnie had told him when he was still out of it in week one in the medbay, something Mikey kept telling him.
“The guys,” Leo started, gaze resolutely fixed on the holes he made in the table the last time he gripped it like it could get him to stop being an idiot and shut up already if he pierced enough holes in it. “Donnie. Mostly Donnie. I know it means a lot to them. And it means a lot to me too,” Leo clarified, because it does, because the effort was there, because Splinter was trying and that meant something, because he really did enjoy talking to him and sitting with him and drinking tea with him. “But that’s not-you can fix that, for them.” Leo stood, turning to the wall quick enough that he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of Splinter’s face. “I think mine’s just all scar tissue by now.”
And he turned, and left, and Leo felt Splinter’s eyes on the back of his shell as he walked as fast as his stupid busted knee and his strained right leg could take him, brain so tangled up in its own self-hate and panic and anger that it just sounded like static. It tasted like his skin’s shade of green on the back of his tongue, but more sickly, bitter copper in his brain stem like the blood in his mouth the day he ripped his family’s heart out.
Leo’s room is maybe twenty strides from the kitchen and he doesn’t remember a second of walking to it.
He closes the subway car door frantically behind him, quick but careful enough that it clicks close instead of slamming, and falls onto his side in his bed, drawing his knees up to his chin and hiding his face in them.
What the hell did he just do?
No, what the hell is he doing?
He keeps being honest lately. Casey asked and Leo would do anything for Casey, and Casey asked partially because he doesn’t like watching Leo lie when he can tell he’s lying because unfortunately for Leo the kid grew up with an older version of him so he knows all of his tells, and Leo doesn’t like hurting the people he loves, but that’s what being honest does. They always say they want him to be honest, but he can see the hurt in their eyes. Lying is so much easier. He’s used to that. He’s used to Splinter being distant and he’s used to hurting silently and he’s used to lying and he knows how not to hurt them. He knows how to dodge his way around everything that could hurt them, his doing or not, but the obstacles are all moving. They’re all changing. He doesn’t know how to be honest without hurting them. He doesn’t know how to be honest.
He doesn’t know what to think of that.
Someone knocks at his door.
Leo bolts up quickly enough that he gets a little dizzy, checking for tears and hastily pitching his tone to as close to normal as he can get it. “Yeah?” He calls.
“Blue,” Dad replies, and Leo freezes for a moment before scrambling off of his bed, stopping just short of his door, a hand held out just a few inches away.
Leo heard Splinter’s voice, laying there upset and tearing himself into bite sized pieces for the guilty parts of him to eat, and he’d nearly thrown the door open on instinct.
And Leo had still told Splinter he couldn’t make up for what hurt he’d done. Leo had still been honest with him.
Leo loves his dad, and he hurt him.
“Yeah?” He says again, and his voice cracks down the middle this time, sitting on the floor in front of the door of his room with his dad on the other side, and he reflects that the last time he did this he was 7, crying over hurting Mikey’s feelings.
Back then, Dad told him it was an honest accident. That if he apologized, and he made up for it, then that was what mattered.
Leo always made up for it when he hurt the people he loved.
He just doesn’t know how to make it up to his dad.
Maybe step one is listening, though.
Maybe step point-five was being honest in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” Splinter said, slow and deliberate and earnest the way Leo says it, voice hurt but in the sympathetic way, the fall leaves thinking of the bare branches of winter. Leo’s eyes widen at the way he says it, the careful tone of it. “And I mean that in the way you mean it, Blue,” Splinter laughed, but it was old and warm and soft, like mahogany instead of birch, the way it is when he’s comforting them and when he’s telling stories and when he’s being Dad in a way he isn’t sometimes.
Something in Leo uncoils, not quite like a flower blossoming, but like a spring that’s finally unwound, like a tendon finally relaxing, like flowers that only bloom at dawn with the dew. “You mean it?” Leo finds himself asking, like a desperate reflex, begging, his forehead pressed against the door of his room. Like this is a spell and he’s going to snap out of it. A final test to see if this is real. If Splinter hears him, then maybe it is. Maybe Leo’s dad really followed him and apologized. Leo hurt Splinter, and Splinter hurt Leo, and maybe, maybe, it was alright.
“Of course, Aoi,” is Splinter’s reply. A reply. This is real and Leo’s dad is still here for him and it’s such a soft reply, too, that nickname he only uses when he means it.
Leo hiccups, and abruptly realizes he’s crying, forehead still pressed against his door and hands clenched tightly in his lap.
“Ok,” Leo sniffles back, quiet and weak, and nods to himself, wiping the tears on his right cheek and saying again, “Ok. Um. Thank you.” A little more solid this time, but just as quiet, still the rose’s thorns poking at him.
Splinter laughs back, mahogany and yellow starlight this time. “There is nothing to thank me for, my Blue.” He paused, and slumped against his door a little further. Right. Right. Nothing to thank him for. Because Splinter is Leo’s dad, and he’s here for him now even if he wasn’t. “I may not be able to make up for everything, but…I am here for you. If you need me.”
“Ok,” Leo echoes, still quiet. A little childlike, but that was fine. With his dad, with Raph, that was ok. He could crack, just a little. They’d hold him together. They wanted to. Splinter followed him to his room and Raph always thanked him for being honest, and Casey asked him to be, and Mikey always beamed at him when he was over whatever Leo had said, and Donnie would always pause the teasing to point out his bravery. All of them genuine, every time.
Leo hates hurting them. He hates it more than anything else. He’s tried so hard to figure out how not to hurt them, because he hates being hurt, the way it digs into his skin and anchors into his heart and just stays there. The way his wounds never really heal, always turning into scar tissue.
But Leo is willing to hurt for them. He’s always willing to hurt for them.
He just didn’t think it went both ways.
“If you need me,” Splinter starts again, that birch brightness to his voice again, like all was well-maybe because it was, maybe because nothing really was wrong, maybe because Leo had hurt his dad and that was ok because everyone hurts the people they love sometimes (something Mikey kept telling him, something he had trouble keeping in his head)-”I will be in the living room watching a show with Red.” He chuckled, easy and bright, his voice trailing off as he walked away from Leo’s door, a light to his voice that Leo remembers missing in Splinter’s worst weeks.
Leo lays there against his door for a little while longer, thinking about love and hurt and honesty and how much he loves them. How much they all, evidently, love him.
He eventually trudges his way back onto his bed and lays flat on his plastron, his chin resting on his pillow the way it always is when he’s sleeping on his own.
He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t dream, but he does doze.
And all the chatter in his brain echoes is starlight, mahogany, and his favorite blue hydrangeas.