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You shielded yourself from the rain that poured out of the sky with your jacket, barely holding back unshed tears as you trekked through the wet concrete jungle. You'd just had probably one of the worst days of your life.
Every little thing that could've gone wrong did, and on top of that you were exhausted and achey. You decided, right as a car drove by and splashed water all over you, that you were done living in a cliche tragedy movie. You needed a distraction.
You entered the lair. It always smelt pretty bad in here, but the people occupying the space made the stench worth dealing with.
You climbed up and down stairs, finding your way to Raph's room and knocking on the door. You stared at the stop sign pasted to the door. After a moment you heard a sigh, and a call from inside. “Come in…”
You pushed open the door, eyes downcast before you lifted them up to look around. Raph was setting down a dumbbell on the floor of his room, glancing back at you and looking you up and down. “Wow… You look terrible.”
“Yeah, thanks.” You sighed, the tone of your voice less playful than you meant it to be. You almost missed the shift in his expression.
You shrugged off your soaked jacket and slipped off your shoes, before walking over to his bed and flopping down onto it. He stood there staring at you for a moment, as if unsure what to do with himself, before stepping closer and hesitantly sitting down on the edge of his bed, facing away from you slightly.
“...What's got you like a wet blanket?” He asked.
“Rough day.”
“Oh.”
It was quiet again. You didn't really think anything of it, but to Raph it was maddening.
“So… Uh…” He started, patting his thighs restlessly, “...You wanna punch somethin’...?”
You turned your head to look up at him, a confused and questioning look on your face. “What…?”
“I dunno. Usually helps me when I’m havin’ a rough day.”
You stared at him silently for a moment. “...No… I just…” your voice cracked. You sucked in some air, burying your face back into the covers of his bed, ignoring how doing so made it hard to breathe. “I just… I-I need a hug.”
He stared at you again. The way your voice trembled with the effort it took to keep yourself from breaking down made something twist in his chest. God, he was terrible with this kind of thing. He didn’t know what to say. “Uhm… Alright.” He shifted, facing more towards you and patting your shoulder, a bit nervously—unsure. “C’mere…”
You looked back up at him, his figure blurry through the tears that found their way into your eyes. You sat up, scooting over to him and collapsing against him. You buried your face into his shoulder, feeling his arms carefully wrap around you, and allowed yourself to finally cry. He stroked your back as you sobbed, his movements a bit sloppy and uncoordinated, but you couldn’t care less.
He awkwardly carded his fingers through your hair (If you have any. Y’know.), blankly staring at the wall. He was so bad at this. So incredibly, embarrassingly, miraculously bad at this.
He was… okay at comfort. Okay in the ‘hit you over the head and tell you to get over yourself’ way. But this was different. He had to be… gentler. It was weird, made him feel weird. So weird.
He’d practiced! He’d practiced being softer. Gentler. Just for you. It was weird and out of his element, but he tried to treat it as if he was taking care of Spike. It was just like that, wasn’t it? It was easy to be gentle with Spike, so surely it would be easy to be gentle with other people when they needed it, too… right?
Of course not. Of course it was nothing like that. People were so much different, and it was so, so hard to be gentle with them sometimes. And by sometimes I mean a lot of the time. But anyways, he was tough. He could manage. He could totally manage. Totally.
He wasn’t at all having any doubts or worries whatsoever right now. Not a single one. Not one about if he was doing this whole comfort thing right, not one about if you deserved better, not one about if you were with anyone else right now, they could probably do a much better job than he was doing. Nope. He was tough. He didn’t worry. Ever.
…If he wore pants, they’d be so on fire right now.
He stayed like that, holding you in silence, zoning out as he got lost in his own thoughts. He didn’t even notice you had started crying until he felt your body tremble with the force of one of your sobs. He froze, looking down at you, unsure of what to do. He decided to just keep petting your head, figuring it was the only thing he could really do, here.
If he knew just what exactly had made you so upset, he may have been able to actually give you some advice, or words of reassurance. But he didn't know a damn thing about what caused you to be so teary today. Would you even want him to say anything? Should he… ask…? (Yes, ask, you idiot!)
He looked back down at you. You'd calmed down a little, now just quietly tearing up against his plastron. He cleared his throat.
“So… uhm… you wanna tell me what, uh, happened…?”
You sniffled, burying your face further against him. The feeling and sight of it made his heart flutter a little.
“I… I don't know, I just,” another sniffle, “It seems like… every little thing has been going wrong today…”
His brow ridges pinched together in worry. “Really…? Like what?”
“Well… I mean… this morning I missed the bus, so- I had to… walk to school… and so that made me late… and I was unprepared for a quiz in one of my classes… I-I tripped over myself during lunch and spilt my food everywhere… and after school it started raining so my clothes and backpack got all soaked- and I think some of my homework is ruined now… and I have this book report due and—”
He cut off your getting-increasingly-more-distressed rambling, patting you on the head.
“Hey… hey, calm down, yeah? You're stressin' yourself out even more.”
You sniffled, yet again, taking a deep breath. “S-sorry… I'm just… exhausted…
He hummed thoughtfully, “...you wanna take a nap?” he asked.
You nodded, leaning a little more of your weight against him. “Yeah, that… I think I need that…”
“Alright.” He nodded, scooping you up and laying back on his bed.
You shifted, making yourself comfortable against him. You let out a sigh, your cheek pressing up against his plastron.
“Thanks, Raph…” you mumbled, your eyes fluttering shut as you allowed yourself to drift off, the exhaustion of the entire day finally fully catching up with you.
“...Anytime…” he whispered back, unusually soft. Unusual… but nice.
The last thing you felt before falling into unconsciousness was the soft brush of a beak on the top of your head, and gentle strokes of a three fingered hand on your back.