::Author's Note::

Hello! Thank you for stopping by to check out this little one-shot. This was written for Connie Nervegas as a response to a Secret Santa event hosted by Stealthy Stories (yes we managed scoring TWO recipients ^_^). It is based on an original character of hers, named Shannon Darling, from her story The Hamato Overture. She has given us her permission to borrow her characters and her setting for this particular story. Before reading this, to better understand the characters invovled, we would encourage you to read that. However, it is a bit of a Raph character exploration and therefore can be read as a stand alone piece. We hope that you enjoy it. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Holidays!

Cheers,
Stoic Harlequin

Love Love, Kiss Kiss

Music was wafting up from somewhere in the bowel of Shannon's residential home. It sounded like chimes and violins, or maybe cellos - Raph couldn't be sure. In fact, he was pretty sure he would mistake an acoustic guitar for a viola, no matter how many times Shannon pointed it out. He might even misunderstand that those were flutes not piccolos...just forget those penny whistles in a symphony too. He could hear her voice in his mind, flabbergasted, by the very thought as he revisited the moments he found, for some mysterious reason, adorable. She might be quirky, at best, in all other areas; but when it came to music, Raph had to admit, she knew her stuff.

Raph watched her as she twirled and swayed to the music in a room that seemed unsuited for his abstract artist. He wondered if the others who were spoken of and famous after death were this zany in life...probably not. He wasn't sure if she was dancing to music of her own make up, in the back of her mind, or if she was actually trying to follow the rhythm of the classical Canon in D beat belting out from some speakers below. Naturally, she set her own tone anyway. The swing of her knee length dress, likely a ballet gown for some version of the Nutcracker retired two decades ago, suited her.

He heard Mrs. Darling's chime like voice laugh, artificially, up the stairs. He smirked and snorted all at once - there was no doubt she wasn't actually amused by whatever elicited the response. Raph wasn't fond of her, it was no secret. Yet the Darlings had Shannon home for Christmas. It never ceased to amaze Raph how much of a token, a trophy, she was to them. They drew her out of her typical living situation to drag her 'home' and keep her holed away for the entire time she was there. He wasn't sure if it was because they were embarrassed and didn't want their 'friends' to see their special daughter, or if it was because they were just that oblivious to her existence.

She spun and spun and spun, her arms flung out to the side and her head tilted all the way back on her neck so her face was pointing the ceiling. It lasted a moment, until Raph saw her graceless socked feet catch one another. He was grateful for his ninja training as he was under her before she'd even realized she was falling. He had her wrapped in his arms, half annoyed by the fact that he had to catch her and half enamored with how she looked with her hair splayed out across her face, hiding the smile drawn across her features under the misbegotten strands.

"I think I'm going to throw up," she chirped with a bright note to her voice as she shook her head to free her face of the web of hair. It only looked messier from there. "I don't want to throw up on you."

Raph didn't believe her for the way she said it and the cheerfulness in her words. She was half laying against his strong forearm. She wasn't really trying to stand up right then but Raph didn't mind. It might earn him a kiss if he held her a little while longer and he was greedy and arrogant enough to think he'd earned it for his heroic show of bravery by keeping her from a spill that would bust her ass on the floor. It was only once she actually paled and her cheeks turned to a soft pink that Raph realized she wasn't lying.

His face lost all expression and he nearly let her fall to the floor in that very second. The last thing he wanted was to have to revisit the cookies and ham they'd eaten on a Hello Kitty blanket that she'd insisted they could pretend was a red and white checkered picnic blanket for their purposes. It was still in the corner, bunched up and with evidence of their stolen meal. Used pork and sweets seemed less than appealing and he reconsidered his victory kiss.

She managed stifling the urge, likely because she'd stopped spinning herself silly. Rather than press his luck, he planted her firmly on her feet and she smiled at him. "Hi, pretty Raph." She wiggled her fingers at him in greeting, as if he hadn't been there for the last three hours at her Christmas party. The event was really one of her parents' doing and meant that she was free for the duration of the festivities without much supervision from the Darlings.

The music below them lulled and Raph was forced to reach out and grab her shoulders, hopeful that the next song would come to life before she went catatonic. He let out a breath of relief as some stupid and overplayed Christmas song followed the pleasant instrumental before it. She giggled at him in his overt display of chivalry and he felt his own dinner bubble up into this throat in faux irritation.

If she had been Mikey, he would have hit her.

The longer she stared at him, the longer he squirmed internally. Normally, she would have gotten distracted by something by now; but for some reason she seemed fixed on him. "Raph?" Her voice somehow had the same chime-like key her mother's did, but it was much more welcoming than that the older Darling woman - the same that would insist that it was Massey-Darling.

He had the overwhelming urge to scream 'WHAT?' at her. When he saw her head twitch, however, like some epileptic dog, toward the same ceiling she'd been staring at, he couldn't help but let his eyes lift reluctantly upward. Raph stared for a long moment, trying to figure out what was so appealing on the white surface. Soon, he felt his shoulders droop and his mouth turn into a thin line as he spotted the bit of green plant taped to the ceiling unceremoniously. "Are you kidding me?" He grumbled glancing back down at her.

"If you won't kiss me, I'll kiss you. It's mistletoe, even turtles have to know about it. Right?" She was beaming and Raph stared at her, blankly. He still had the craving to get a kiss from her for his courageous display of valiance when he rescued her from splattering herself all over the floor.

"No." He lied bitterly.

"Then I'll just show you." She told him with a wide smile, her lips finding their way to his as if she already had her own map there, memorized. It was an act, a sensation, Raph wasn't prepared to turn away. Instead, he welcomed her warmth without much fight.

'Whatever,' he thought as they explored the warmth of each other's mouths, 'I got what I wanted.'