Work Text:
You hear the screech of tearing sheet metal before you realize you'd been aiming for your little brother's smart mouth. He's not wearing that smug fucking look anymore, which had been your goal even if Leo had been too quick for you to actually knock it off his face. He's wearing a smaller, very different look underneath.
That expression should have stopped you dead in your tracks, but in the moment, you just don't care. Your blood is still boiling with months of oxidized resentment and tonight's arterial-fresh fury (neither of which do a goddamn thing to melt the ice-spike of terror that has made a permanent home in your spine).
So as you stalk towards him, as Donnie tries to hold you back, the smile is the first thing Leo paints back onto his face, rushed and clumsy as a child's fingerpainting. It's too bright. Crooked. A crescent of bared teeth that doesn't even reach the same ZIP code as his eyes. The blank, unbloodied white makes you snarl in dissatisfaction.
The insolent posture comes back next—scenery scribbled in with colored pencils, cheap copier paper clearly showing through the gaps in the washed-out lines of color.
But Michelangelo has always said that the eyes are the most important part of a portrait, and here Leo is proving it. Lightning quick and with brush strokes too fine to see, the half-lidded gaze is back, dismissive and mocking. All at once you forget how poorly the rest of the picture fits together, and the glimpse you caught of what was underneath it.
Days later, when Leo is finally conscious and coherent enough to make it undeniable that yes, it's you he's flinching away from, your family assures you that it's not your fault. After all, it was the Krang who hurt Leo, who nearly strangled him to death. Nevermind that they used your body to do it, slithered into your brain and used your strength, your rage against someone you'd sworn you'd always protect. You were the one who broke free and stopped them! You're a fucking hero!
They promise that soon, Leo's mind and body will remember what his heart surely couldn't have forgotten: that you love him, and that you would never hurt him.
But you know better.
Because the first time you saw Leo look at you like this—like he's scared of you—was hours before the Krang ever touched you.
