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He spends way too long sitting on the fence about it, tipping back and forth, when he knows what the end of this story looks like. Eventually, Raph gives in, kicks off his blankets and gets out of bed, same as always. He creeps through the hall, trying not to wake anyone up, because they might make things better, but god is it embarrassing. And when he makes it to the kitchen, he grabs the metal bowl that quite literally has his name on it—the masking tape and permanent marker label curtesy of Donnie—and plants himself in the middle of the living room floor.
His stomach hitches, acid burning at the back of his throat for just an instant before it recedes. He’s already been through the mental checklist about a dozen times, but he runs through it again, because it keeps his mind busy. The illusion of being productive. He didn’t eat anything out of the ordinary, or anything he knows might cause problems. He’s not overly stressed about anything. He hasn’t been pushing too hard or neglecting an injury or illness or anything like that. All he can come up with is that his frustratingly weak stomach is acting up again.
Sometimes, he gets up, gets the bowl, and his body takes mercy on him and decides he doesn’t need it. (He has a bowl, his own bowl, because everyone quickly realized that with five of them in the lair and only one bathroom, if someone needs the toilet, it’s not exactly ideal for Raph’s head to be in it all day—or night in this case.) Tonight, though, he can just tell it isn’t going to end well. There’s a rush of saliva in his mouth he has to force himself to swallow back, and his face is too warm. He’s bone tired, eyes ringed dark underneath with heavy lids, and his hands feel strangely clumsy as he adjusts his grip on the smooth, cool metal.
This so isn’t how he wanted to spend his night. Then again, it never is.
Raph has everything cleaned up by morning. The only evidence left behind is the drag in his step. Well, and the fact that all it takes Leo is one kick to the stomach to knock him flat during training.
———
When Raph hears the telltale rattle of wood coming up the tunnel, he kind of wants to die. Briefly, he debates making a break for his room, but it’s a fantasy; he knows he couldn’t make it in time. Or, at least not without losing his lunch, which is exactly what he’s trying to avoid. Still, if he can’t escape and hide away, bashing his head into the wall until he cracks his skull open sounds like a tempting option. Messy, but tempting. Instead, he groans under his breath and squeezes his eyes shut, steeling himself.
His stomach flips when Casey calls out a greeting to Leo and Mikey and tosses his hockey sticks and his bag to the ground. There’s the ambient noise of Donnie tinkering with something in his lab, and for one tenuous moment, it’s all Raph can hope that Casey will go check out the project. Those two are close, sometimes. Donnie can geek out over his engineering while Casey grins eagerly at freshly constructed weaponry.
But, luck isn’t so kind. He hears footsteps getting closer, then feels Casey looming over him. Dread pools in his stomach, but he cracks open an eye anyway. Something he doesn’t want to name crawls hot up the back of his neck. Flushes across his cheeks.
“Dude, what’s up with you?” Casey asks, all blunt force as per usual.
Raph knows what kind of picture he paints. He’s scrunched up in the corner of the room, carapace and shoulder pressed to the cool walls for some kind of relief. He’s hunched over a bowl, sour saliva spit to sit in the bottom of it. His color always goes off, too, when he feels like this, usual green taking on a more ashy hue.
Not exactly appealing.
“Fuck off,” he bites, though he feels too gross to put much heat behind it.
His stomach chooses that moment—because of-fucking-course it does—to lurch dangerously, and he has to stifle a gag behind his hand. Breathing hard through his nose for a minute, he eventually feels it settle a measure and tentatively peels back his hand.
“We tried a new pizza place since our usual one is closed for repairs,” Leo supplies from his spot in front of the tv. Space Heroes is marathoning reruns and Leo won’t miss a moment. “It doesn’t seem like it’s sitting very well with Raph.”
“Thanks, Leo,” Raph mutters dryly, a scowl pressing into his expression.
“Don’t mention it,” he replies, all too satisfied with himself, but in that subtle, righteous sort of way Leo has.
Growling something low in his throat, Raph lets it go when Casey flops down next to him instead of keeping away like a sensible person. Though, to be fair, Casey’s never been sensible a day in his life. Or, not since Raph has known him at least. That doesn’t keep Raph from cringing a little inside, though, because he’s been on a downward trajectory for the last hour, and god, he really does not want to puke his guts up in front of Casey. It’s bad enough when it’s family, and they’ve been dealing with his stupid, sensitive stomach for years. It’s a whole new level of humiliating in front of someone new.
“Gross. You think it’s food poisoning?” Casey asks, but he seems way too unbothered about everything. He’s lounging back against the wall, arms folded behind his head. Though, he turns to give Raph a curious look, one brow pulled down at the corner in consideration.
Taking a deep breath, testing how far he can push before it comes back to bite him, Raph swallows hard. “Nah,” he answers, “the guys are fine and we ate from the same box. It’s just me.”
For a minute, there’s confusion clouding across Casey’s face, but it dissipates and he shrugs the last wisps of it off. That’s one thing Raph loves about Casey. He’s used to being out of the loop or two steps behind. And he doesn’t have that compulsive need to understand, like Donnie, like Leo. He just… takes things as they are. “Tough break,” he says.
“Yeah,” Raph mutters in agreement, after a long, slow breath, “tough break.”
But the thing is, Casey doesn’t leave after that. He doesn’t go wander off to poke his nose in Donnie’s business, or watch shitty cartoons with Leo, or even play pinball with Mikey. He just hangs out at Raph’s side, like Raph isn’t tipping dangerously close to getting a vivid reminder of exactly what he ate. Like it’s not gross. Like it’s not a big deal.
And sure, that’s how his brothers act now, but they sure as hell didn’t start out that way. Raph can’t figure it out. But, the thought keeps his mind busy while he spits the saliva pooling over the back of his tongue, too nauseous to risk swallowing it.
Time goes slippery in his grasp.
“Dude, go play with Mikey or something,” Raph finally says, acid burning tellingly at the back of his throat. Urgency itches under his skin. His pulse kicks a little faster in his throat.
“I’m cool,” Casey answers mildly, somehow wholly unruffled. “Unless you want me out of your hair or whatever.”
Raph realizes, filtered through stuffy layers of cotton, that he doesn’t. He expects it to hit like a star to the chest—a mess of sparks and bright, bright light—but it doesn’t. It’s stupid and dull and mundane, and even if the room goes hot, or maybe it’s just him, he doesn’t want Casey to pull away from him.
“No,” he answers, quiet, and his mouth isn’t quite working right anymore. He swallows hard. “But I’m gonna puke in about two seconds.” The warning comes out in a rush, stomach lurching into his throat. This time, it sticks there and he gags, only just managing to keep from losing his grip then and there. Hands clench into fists and eyes scrunch closed.
He feels the toe of a scuffed-up shoe nudge his foot, gentler than Raph knew Casey was capable of. That lodges something different beneath his ribs. “Go for it, man,” Casey says, easy as breathing.
Then, Raph gets reacquainted with pizza he will definitely never be ordering again. It burns coming up, and he coughs and chokes for air. The presence of Casey, pressed against his shoulder, makes him burn too, with something like embarrassment, like shame. But, by the end of it, his stomach feels a lot better, and he’ll take the relief, even if his throat stings and his eyes are a little watery from the exertion. Decidedly, he sets the bowl down without daring to look in it and pushes it away with a foot, as far as his legs will stretch. He’ll clean it up later, if Leo or Splinter don’t get to it before he does. For the moment, he just sucks in a few measured breaths and lets his head fall back to rest against the wall, glad to be done with it all. His shoulders go slack, coiled tension finally releasing.
“Feel better?” Casey asks and nudges him with a shoulder. The gentleness from before is mostly gone, and the impact is enough to rock Raph to the side a bit.
Humming a raspy assent in his throat, Raph shoulders back into him, leaning hard against the lean line of scrappy muscle. Casey doesn’t give. It feels good.
“Shouldn’t you be grossed out and scared off by now?” Raph questions, testing his voice. It’s a little raw, but comes through fine.
Casey snorts, then laughs from somewhere deep and genuine in his chest. Raph can feel it. “Have you met me?” he asks. And, fair enough. But when most of the amusement fades out from the air, he chimes in again. “I’ve got a little sister. You don’t even want to know how many times she spit up on me as a baby.”
Then, he grins something wide and toothy.
“I can handle you, no sweat.”
———
“Mikey!” Raph growls through gritted teeth. He’s thrown bodily into the wall for what feels like the tenth time, metal rattling and groaning all around them. Massive, monster wheels eat up pavement at a frenzied pace, ripping through gravel and lurching over potholes all the while. Outside, the city flies by in a jerky blur. Inside, Raph feels like stone trapped in a tin can that’s being shaken around. But worse than the bruises blooming under the skin of his shoulder, or the tender ache just starting to take root at the back of his skull, is the way his stomach flips with every yank of the wheel.
“My bad!” Mikey calls back, sounding entirely unapologetic as per usual. He doesn’t slow his pace either, or even out the erratic path the Shellraiser swerves down the street on.
Mikey takes another turn, nearly missing it altogether and careening into a squat little laundromat. And in answer, Raph’s stomach pitches. All at once, he feels unmoored and unsteady, something nebulous and dizzy robbing his balance out from under his nose.
What’s all the more frustrating is that it shouldn’t even be like this. If Leo hadn’t taken a risk—one even Raph could have told him was a stupid ass move—they wouldn’t be in this situation. They wouldn’t be chasing him down, racing a ticking clock. And better yet, Mikey wouldn’t be behind the wheel. He drives, Raph discovers, like a drunk on a sugar rush, all wrapped up in a cloak of Mikey brand chaos and unpredictability.
Donnie’s stuck in the back tracking the signal on Leo’s T-Phone and calling out directions, and Raph’s on weapons, so that leaves Mikey at the wheel. Which lands Raph right in a world of hurt when it comes to flaring motion sickness.
Somewhere in the quiet parts of his mind, behind the screech of spinning wheels and the jolt of hit potholes, he makes a note to thank Leo more often for not driving like a moron.
Then Mikey stomps the breaks to the floor and throws the Shellraiser in reverse. Tossed forward, Raph braces just in time to keep from smacking into the console in front of him. But there’s acid and bile welling up the length of his throat. It’s on sheer instinct that he manages to stomp it back down, swallowing convulsively, swallowing hard. They lurch into forward motion again, skidding around a turn Mikey must have missed, and Raph doesn’t even have a chance to breathe. Nausea roots hard in the pit of his stomach and pulls up. He’s sweating now, and most of his attention burns away at just trying to keep himself upright. Finding his center is next to impossible with the way they’re driving.
He isn’t sure what gives him away, but Donnie must see how he’s feeling. There’s no sympathy, though. “Raphael,” Donnie bites, strings pulled tight—too close to snapping. “You are absolutely not going to puke in my Shellraiser.” He leaves no room for negotiation, and when Raph chances a glance over at him, the force of Donnie’s glare could punch through Kevlar.
Fingers curled around anything nearby in a death grip, Raph turns to snarl back at him. The effect is definitely dulled by a nauseous hiccup catching in his chest, though. Giving an irritated groan, he’s jolted in his seat again as their tires bump over something; hopefully it’s just a curb.
“If Mikey doesn’t stop driving like a madman, I’m not going to have much of a choice,” Raph huffs.
And that, of all things, actually does the trick.
“Mikey, slow down!” Donnie shouts over the spray of gravel clattering against the Shellraiser’s metallic underbelly. “If you make Raph sick, he won’t be any help getting Leo back no matter how fast you get us there. So take it down a notch.”
Finally, for the first time since Mikey got behind the wheel, the frantic dash through the city streets actually smooths out a little. He’s still nowhere near as practiced as Leo when it comes to driving, but Raph is just relieved to have his organs settled back in his abdomen where they belong. That’s a good step in the right direction. And he’ll take what he can get until Leo’s back safe and sound.
———
There’s a soft glow ebbing down the hall when Raph slips out of his room. Absently, he wonders if Donnie forgot to turn the lights out before he finally threw in the towel on whatever project he was working on and went to bed. But the color flickers from warm yellows to colder, starker greys and blues, then goes red, and that answers that. The tv must have been left on. What Raph doesn’t expect, rubbing at his eyes as he pads quiet and bleary into the living room, is for anyone to still be watching it. But Leo’s caught in the fuzzy glow, sitting about two inches from the screen with his chin cradled and propped up by his palm. The volume’s down low, probably to keep from waking anyone else up. Predictably, there’s the familiar interior of a spaceship onscreen, Captain Ryan sitting at the center doling out orders. With rapt attention, Leo watches it all play out, even though he’s no doubt seen the episode a hundred times. He’s hunched over, like he started out upright but slowly caved in on himself, and he must be sort of out of it, because he doesn’t even hear Raph coming.
Normally, Raph would snort and tease him about sharp ninja senses going soft, but it’s deep into the small hours of the morning where everything feels dimmed and hazy at the edges. So, he lets it go. Instead, he sets a hand, slow but weighty, on Leo’s shoulder and sits down next to him.
“Planning on going to bed anytime tonight?” Raph asks, though he keeps his voice low. It feels wrong to get much above a whisper in the subdued quiet of the sleepy lair.
For the first time since he came in, Leo pulls his gaze away from the grainy tv screen, blinking. He rubs at his eyes with the back of his wrist; they’re pretty bloodshot and probably sore by now. Leo still has his mask on too, though it gets knocked just slightly askew as he rubs a little harder at his eyes before easing up. Knowing it’s got to be more comfortable without it on, Raph tugs at the knot with practiced ease until the mask comes loose, just a strip of fabric in his hand.
Low in his throat, Leo hums an appreciative noise. “What time is it?” he asks, getting a false start, clearing his throat, then trying again.
“Something past four in the morning,” Raph answers. In reply, Leo just groans, dropping his head into his hands. Thumbs rub against his temples, taking small, soothing circles. He probably gave himself a sizable headache, staring at a screen for hours and hours, hunched in the same spot on the floor.
After a few beats, Leo rights himself again, stretching out his arms over his head, then in front of him, and once to each side. There are plenty of pops and cracks, though Raph isn’t sure which joints they come from—just that Leo is going to be stiff as hell when he gets up.
Then he finds himself looking into soft blue eyes that somehow always manage to look warm instead of icy. “What woke you up?” Leo asks, words gentle and familiar. “Bad dream?” he tries in a way that’s too understanding, too earnest and empathetic. Raph wishes Leo didn’t know so well what nightmares felt like. “Or are you just nauseous?”
Huffing a breath through his nose, Raph brings a knee up to his chest, sets his chin on it. The tv goes quiet as Leo easily sets it to mute without even sparing the remote a glance, but it’s colors keep flickering in and out, like a flame in the breeze.
“A little of both, I guess,” Raph answers. And because it’s Leo, because there’s something safe and gently disarming about this little bubble they’re in, he says more. Leo always wants him to talk about it, says he’ll feel better with an outlet for all the things that hurt and fester in his chest. He’s right, but that doesn’t mean Raph likes it, most days.
“It was the spy-roach dream again,” he says, a disgusted shiver rippling up his spine at the memory. Luckily, the details faded fast after he woke up. The whole thing is fuzzy now, dissolving in his mind even if his body still remembers. “Always makes me feel kinda pukey.”
Something goes soft in Leo’s face. “Are you gonna be okay, or do you want me to get you something?” he asks. Always the worrier.
But Raph waves him off, dismisses with a shake of his head. “Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to get out of bed for a minute, that’s all.” With the fading of the dream, the nausea died back too. His stomach still feels a little off, but it’s nothing to make a big deal over. And he’s sure that, in a little while, he’ll be past it.
Leo nods something understanding, then leans back on his hands. For a while, minutes stretching past, the quiet and the colors wash over them. It feels comfortable and easy, just touching some old sense of nostalgia sitting dusty in Raph’s chest. Memories drift in and out, fuzzy feelings and vague shapes or colors. But he feels like this used to happen, way back when he was much littler. Him and Leo, late nights bathed with warm tv glow, upset stomachs and scrounged ginger tea. Large, safe hands carrying them both to bed while he dozed in and out. He can nearly feel the ghost of it all, the taste of ginger spice mellowed with honey blooming over the back of his tongue. Warmth like sunshine flowing through his chest.
“I’m glad you’re up with me,” Raph finds himself saying, murmured quiet into the early morning.
Leo looks at him for a minute, eyes going soft before they narrow and squint a little, searching for something. Though, Raph doesn’t know what. “You know you can always wake me up, right?” he asks, and there’s just the slightest knowing edge to his tone. Like he thinks he’s on to something. “If you don’t feel good, or even if you just want someone to sit with. I won’t be mad.”
He’s so gentle sometimes that Raph doesn’t know what to do with it. Doesn’t know where to put this genuine, earnest kindness when he’s so used to blade edges and blacktop and the sting of blood in a cut. It’s easier to brush it off, to look away from the forest pool blue of his eyes and pretend like he doesn’t feel it.
Tonight, Raph breathes deep. “Thanks, Leo,” he says and means it all the way down to his bones.
———
He’d managed to shove it to the back of his mind. That subtle feeling of off, of wrong. It was easy enough to forget if he kept himself busy, kept himself distracted.
But now, it’s rising back up in full force. Hurriedly sidestepping Donnie’s lunge, he makes his way carefully across the dojo. With his eyes trained on Donnie, he easily slips into a familiar circle step, and he’s mirrored stride for stride. Normally, he’d never give up ground like this. He’d punish Donnie’s whiffed swing with a retaliating strike of his own, but right now, he needs the breathing room. The slight bit of nausea that has been dogging his heels since breakfast, cast aside easily enough, has flared into something overwarm and bright. It pierces straight through any attention he can spare the sparring match, cutting his focus to ribbons and stealing it away.
No doubt Donnie can tells he’s acting strange. Though, taking measured steps for every one Raph does, he narrows his eyes across the gap. Raph knows that face. It’s him running scenarios, picking at answers and solutions. Trying to work at a puzzle. Clearly, he knows Raph’s acting out of his usual demeanor, but he thinks it’s a trick, a strategy. Something to be figured out and exploited.
The only thing Raph is strategizing is how to keep what he ate inside his body where it belongs.
His pulse lurches faster when Donnie shifts his weight back, readying to charge and strike. Grip tight on his sai, he steadies back on his heels. Then as soon as Donnie moves, comes hurling into his space with a spin-blur staff sweeping for his feet, Raph takes his chance to end this fast. Lurching to the side, he dodges the worst of the strike; he only winds up with a stinging smack on one heel rather than having his legs pulled out from under him. Keeping up momentum, he swings around behind Donnie and hooks a sai into the top of his shell. Breathing too hard for a short match, he yanks down hard. He only has to get Donnie flat on his back, then he can go sit on the sidelines while his other brothers duke it out. He’s done it a hundred times before. Simple enough. No need for things to get messy.
Only Donnie doesn’t yelp and tumble onto his back in a mess of gangly limbs. Instead, he just sways and his staff clatters to the ground, ringing loud off the walls of the dojo. And for one chilling second, Raph’s hurry, his uneasy stomach, is all forgotten. He swallows hard against acid on the back of his tongue, sure he’s fucked it all up and taken things too far again. He pulls his sai back, desperately hoping he didn’t puncture anything important.
Then he sees it. Donnie’s devious, shit-eating grin shot over his shoulder.
With free hands and a free moment of hesitation on Raph’s part, Donnie makes his move. Long fingers lock tight around Raph’s wrist, then the whole world lurches and spins. Flipped over Donnie’s shoulder, his shell hits the ground with a loud crack. It jostles the breath from his lungs, leaves him gasping, but it doesn’t hurt any worse than a bruise. Still, cracked scutes or banged up shoulders are the last things on his mind. Head spinning, he clamps a hand over his mouth, glaring venom up at Donnie as his vision comes back to center again. A foot plants hard in the center of his plastron, trapping him against the floor.
Against the pride raging at the confines of his ribs, Raph doesn’t thrash or flail or try to get loose. He’ll swallow a bruised ego if it means he can swallow back the bile sticking in the back of his throat. Donnie’s teasing and gloating might be insufferable, but the worry it will be swapped out for if he loses his lunch here is all the more suffocating. Face pinched, Raph gives. He can’t stomach the concerned glances, the ‘why didn’t you say anything’s, the gentle guilt in Donnie’s eyes.
It’s miserable, but he can handle the victorious, delighted laugh that rings through the air. “I finally did it,” Donnie says, still staring disbelievingly down at Raph, pinned helplessly under a foot. “I actually beat you!” All at once, that shock turns to boasting glee. “Who’s the B team now!” Donnie cheers, face lighting up even as something mischievous turns his eyes sharp.
As much as Raph would love to fume and bite his head off for that remark, he still feels sick, nauseous in that urgent, familiar sort of way that tells him he better not risk hanging around any longer.
“Woah, nice moves, Dee!” Mikey cheers from his seat at the sidelines.
Very pointedly, Raph ignores him and instead shoves hard at Donnie’s foot planted on his abdomen. He can’t help but admit, it’s a little satisfying seeing Donnie flail to keep from falling flat on his face. Still, he doesn’t really have the time or presence of mind to enjoy it. On his feet as fast as he can be, he storms off in a beeline for the door.
“Oh, real mature, Raph,” Donnie calls after him.
“Come on, don’t be a sore loser,” Leo chimes in, but the mollifying shape of his words bend under the stifled laugh in his voice. And just for that, Raph flips him off on his way out, taking a sharp turn towards his room.
“Raphael!” He hears the displeased sound carrying behind him but he leaves it be. If Splinter is genuinely mad about him bailing in a huff, he can explain himself later. Preferably sometime when his stomach doesn’t feel one wrong breath away from coming up his throat.
Maybe it’s not his best move to break for his room instead of the bathroom or the kitchen where there’s something to puke in that doesn’t require a massive amount of clean up. But, sitting down on his bed, he isn’t about to change his mind now. Tipping his head back to rest against the wall, he closes his eyes and tries to breathe slow and steady. After a bit, it starts to help, tension uncoiling from his shoulders as the nausea abates back to the unpleasant but harmless fog clinging around him since this morning. A relieved breath stirs from deep in his lungs. There’s not much that feels better than a dodged bullet, in any sense of the word, literal or figurative. Even if it came at a price, he’ll take it.
(The next time they spar together, he makes sure to kick Donnie’s ass straight to the floor, just to remind him who’s really number one around here.)
———
Parking in the bathroom is a familiar routine at this point. What’s not so familiar is sitting perched on the edge of the tub instead of crouched in front of the toilet. Letting go of a quiet sigh, Raph taps his heel in a steady rhythm while he waits, a scratched blue mug warm between his palms.
It takes a minute for Leo to catch his breath, eventually shifting to lean back against the opposite wall. Eventually, Raph offers him the mug with little more than a nudge on the shoulder to get his attention. The comfortingly warm spice of ginger wafts on the air, and Leo takes a deep breath of it, then takes a sip.
Setting the mug aside, he meets Raph’s gaze.
“Thanks, Raph,” he says, heartfelt despite the scratch in his voice.
Without a second thought, Raph just waves him off. “Don’t sweat it. It’s just tea,” he says. Honestly, he wishes he could do more to make things better; they all do. But no one knows better than him that sometimes, you just have to wait these kinds of things out.
Leo hums a considering note, then he goes quiet. And just for that, Raph almost doesn’t want to bring it up. There’s a fragile sort of peace in the air, Leo’s stomach settled enough, and no one’s felt much peace lately. Still, turning a blind eye won’t help anything, even if it’s easier. Better to just rip off the bandaid. That has always been Raph’s style, and even if he’s learned a little more tact over the years, some things haven’t changed.
“I talked to Donnie. He says you’ll keep getting stomach aches until you stop stressing yourself out so bad,” Raph says. It sounds too loud in the quiet. So does Leo’s answering sigh.
“I’m working on it,” Leo says in that reassuring voice that means he totally isn’t. They’re just nice words, meant to keep people from worrying.
“Yeah, right,” Raph scoffs. Even still, he shifts off the tub and knees Leo in the shoulder to get him to scoot over and make room. Sliding down the wall, he plunks down next to Leo and slings an arm around his neck. He’s used to a headlock coming after that, but he keeps his hold loose and easy this time.
“We’re a team, yeah?” he asks. And, of course, Leo’s nodding in an instant. Even if, after a second, he dials back the enthusiasm and clutches at his stomach. “Then quit acting like a sensei and start acting like a teammate already,” Raph says, firm. He catches Leo’s gaze, the slight flicker of uncertainty in those warm eyes.
As soon as Leo opens his mouth, Raph knows it’s self-sacrificing bullshit that’s about to come out. Leo’s always been like that. “You know I’m the leader. I’m in charge, and I need to do everything I can to make sure you guys are safe, and—“
“And nothing,” Raph huffs, sure he’s already heard enough. “You running yourself into the ground, making yourself sick, isn’t helping anyone. You know, Donnie and Mikey are worried about you. I’m worried about you,” he admits, only because it’s a small, gentle moment. Because Leo does make him feel safe, as much in the blaster-fire and screeching metal of a fight as the conversations that used to make his skin crawl with their open honesty. They still do, sometimes, but he’s working on it. They’re all working on something. He just needs Leo to work a little harder on not working himself so hard.
For a long moment, the words just hang in the air. Eventually, though, something in Leo’s face softens. “You guys don’t have to worry about me,” he says gently. He threads his finger’s with Raph’s, hand resting against the top edge of his plastron. It’s a comfortable little thing; Raph can’t remember the last time they held hands like this. He isn’t sure when he outgrew it.
“It comes with the territory of being brothers,” Raph says with a shrug.
Leo smiles, then. It’s a small thing, thin and wan, but it’s real. Raph can always tell, because Leo’s an awful liar, but the warmth in his eyes now isn’t fake.
It might be on the dingy bathroom floor, but Raph still basks in the moment like sunshine. Life has been stormy, so he’ll take any break in the clouds he can get. They sit, shoulder to shoulder, comfortable in the quiet. Every so often, Leo sips at tea slowly going cold and Raph rocks a foot on his heel, watching the time slip by.
“I really will try to chill out,” Leo promises after a while, voice breaking up the quiet. “Trust me, I’m happy leaving the nausea to you.”
Raph rolls his eyes, but he smiles too. “Thanks,” he says, dry, and Leo huffs a small laugh. That feels warm and sunny too. Maybe there’s hope for Leo yet.