Yeah. Million and a half bunnies, burned-out on writing. I must break the block. Roughly 839 words, not counting this author's note.
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Leonardo has never been quite sure when it began, or how, or who it was that had taken action first. Normally the kind of thing he would pay the strictest attention to, he'd discovered not long ago that his thoughts could be scattered like dead leaves in a high wind- he has always prided himself on control over mind and body, but a meaningful whisper and firm flesh beneath his hands and everything leaks out as if it had never been there to begin with.
He gives himself over to impression, to physicality and breathing and heat; a hazy and euphoric limbo without thought, draped in the need to recover from bitterness.
It is the existence he gives himself over to now, burying his face in the sensitive skin between neck and shoulder, Raphael's legs wrapped tightly around his waist and body meeting him thrust for thrust.
Leo tells himself that this is the last time they will do this, just as they'd murmured a million times before- just as they would murmur a million times more. He'd meant it, the first time he made the promise; Raph had meant it, too. Too complicated. Too much potential damage, too much friction, too much secrecy- they were going to end it before it had the chance to end itself.
It was the right thing to do.
But they continued coming back, time after time, continued diving into what seemed like darkness but ended in explosions of light without fail. Moths drawn to flame, the opposite ends of a magnet, fire and water, passion and calm. Every time they combine, there are bursts of steam, a transfer of emotions that leave Leonardo shaken and drained, feeling as though he's been given an insight and somehow forgotten it.
Maybe, he thinks, he comes back to try to remember, to try to see more than he already does. He pulls in a thick breath, releases it as a soft groan while the legs around his waist squeeze more firmly, eliciting a harder jerking thrust. Raph is different in these times, less insistent, less aggressive- he sometimes reaches up to trail a calloused thumb over Leonardo's cheek, nearly reverent, before falling asleep pressed against the other's plastron.
Leo frequently wishes to see that reverence more often- to see more than contempt in the amber eyes, maybe even something like affection. Raphael, he believes, cannot really hate him.
There has to be something more.
He clamps his teeth down on the dark shoulder heatedly, drawing back at the pained noise he receives in response.
"Sorry." The whisper leaves his throat, tainted with a faint note of sincerity, but he will do nothing to soothe the pain. In the past, he has done far more hurtful things and he would experience worse himself in the near future. Whenever he tries to bring some level of comfort into their nights on his bed, Raphael levels a glare of mixed compassion and annoyance at him and ignores it.
Just as he does now. But Leo doesn't mind all that much. That's the way the other has been all their lives. Remembering even makes him smile and bite down again- the force is gentler, but neither of them will mention it.
These moments, these nights, they are his- his time to be a little selfish and to take instead of give, to be allowed to satisfy the pressuring flames between his legs while Raph becomes the patient one, the one that gives. Leonardo will not feel guilty, nor will the other make him feel so.
He feels the familiar tightening in the pit of his stomach and increases the pace of his thrusts, burying himself in the other with a deep moan.
"Raph, I-" his throat closes off around the statement, but Raphael understands and nods his acknowledgement, connecting their mouths fiercely. It heats Leonardo to the very core, snakes into his veins and for a moment there is nothing but breathing and burning, burning in every pore, every moan, every thrust.
There is touching, tightening, cut-off shouts buried in the flesh of the one beneath him and everything is released in a final, exhaustive moment.
He tells himself this is not his brother, this moaning mass of muscle wrapped around the most personal parts of himself, writhing beneath him and pulling him close as quickly as he pulls back out.
This is a teammate, a rival, his friend, and there is nothing more to be said for their relationship because if Raphael is his brother right now then it makes everything between them wrong. He can survive battles, beatings, bone-breaking training, losing weapons and blood and sleep- but in his heart he knows that if he loses this, he loses everything.
Somehow, what he does in these moments- the experience they'd thought they would never have- has been defining him, pulling him irrevocably into their depths until one cannot be told from the other.
It cannot simply be labeled wrong and stripped away.
There has to be something more.