Trying to be uber-romantic. Ugh. It's hard. I'm much better at being snarky and perverse. Somebody yell at me if the rating should be upped because I'm going to try to stay within the PG-13 category. But I might not succeed.

Emma lived in a one bedroom apartment. No, not a one bedroom. A one room apartment. There was a small bathroom attached, but Leo thought this barely counted as a room. She had no couch and so he spent most of the time reclining on her bed, held up in her pillows, watching her move about the room, like a lovely ghost.

The curtains were open on the night covered river as the ferries and boats drifted past. He could almost imagine that they were in the same spot two hundred years ago. She was lit by an oil lamp near the window and she glowed in the soft yellow light. A thin breeze fluttered her hair as she put a CD in her player.

"Close your eyes and listen," she said.

He eagerly obeyed, closing his eyes and listening to the quiet music that always made his breathing quicken for some reason. But most of all, listening to her silent footsteps as she came closer.

Her soft weight settled next to him and couldn't resist opening his eyes again to see her, reclining next to him.

"Your brother hates me," she said, putting a hand on his stomach.

Normally, he would have tried to cast Raph in the best light possible, but punching someone in the face for no good reason was pretty indefensible. His cheeks glowed as she gently rubbed his plastron.

"I'll talk to him about it." He would try to talk to him about it, but he was sure he would end up beating him over it. Or vice versa.

He knew she wanted to kiss him when she looked him over with her black eyes. They were almost too black. Like they weren't real. That's what he liked best about them.

It had been a month since he'd found her sitting in the alley a few blocks away from the docks, holding her ankle. She'd slipped on her home from a walk along the river and twisted her ankle. He'd watched her from the shadows for a few seconds, calculating the best possible outcome for both of them. He was about to turn and leave when he heard her voice calling after him. Her voice was so soft that it made his nerves freeze and he had to help her, just to see her closer.

"Why didn't you run when you first saw me?" He laughed at himself. He was such an idiot. But enjoyed feeling like an idiot around her.

She brushed his cheek with her hand and said, "It would have been hard when I couldn't even stand. But I wouldn't have run, even if I could."

"Why?" Her mind was a like an endless garden of amazing secrets to him and he could listen to her talk forever. He felt small and wide eyed, like a new student, drinking in its lessons. "You didn't notice that I was green and carrying katanas?"

"Should I have?"

She sat up, looking down at him and said, "I wasn't afraid of you. I've seen more in my life than you might think. It takes more than you to frighten me. You seemed cautious. Like you were afraid of me. Imagine that. You afraid of me."

"What do you think now?" he asked."And don't say that I'm perfect."

She furrowed her forehead curiously. "Perfect? You're beautiful and graceful and strong. Oh, you're far from perfect. Why would I want someone perfect? What a hollow compliment. The scars and the dirt and the suppressed power. That's what it is important in you."

His face burned at the compliment. If it was a compliment.

Emma bent down to kiss him again and just as she was close enough to touch his lips, his phone went off. He automatically reached for it, pulled it off his belt and answered without looking at the screen, his mouth still inches away from Emma's, breathing in her breath.

"Hey, guess what we found?" Mikey said. "A little girl's bike."

She climbed into his lap, her weight pressing into his pelvis. He gasped loudly into the phone.

"Hey, what was that?" Mikey said. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. What are you doing?" His words were one long syllable. Emma's mouth was creeping down his throat.

"Will you ride the bike when you get home?" Mikey asked. There was a loud crash as he tossed some garbage aside. "I bet Don that you would."

Leo closed his eyes and nearly dropped the phone as her lips worked against his neck. "Yeah, okay. Great. Let's do that. Good idea."

Pause. "Are you okay? You sound like somebody recorded your voice and sped it up. Hey, we're going over to the hospital soon. I hope we find another wheel chair. I want to have a wheel chair race. That'll be so cool…" Mikey paused at Leo groaned indistinctly. "Are you sure you're alright? You can call back if you're being attacked, you know. I told you that you don't need to be that polite to me. But Master Splinter wants you to come home early remember. You have those new katas tomorrow morning."

"What?" His attention was immediately drawn from Emma's fingers, which were roaming over his body, to the new and difficult lessons to be faced tomorrow. Lessons. Ninjitsu. Family pride. Honor. Forbidden. Emma. "I'll see you tomorrow. I mean, tonight. I'll be there soon."

"I'm in a dumpster so…"

Emma sat up straight, leaning away from him. He knew she wasn't happy.

"Good. Keep that up."

"Huh? Stay in the… you're delirious, aren't you? Don, save those 'Good Housekeeping's for me."

Emma climbed off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. He followed her with his eyes and hung up on Mikey as he started babbling about a rat in the alley he was sitting in and how it had a striking family resemblance to their father.

He knocked lightly on the bathroom door. There was no response. "You know that I can't. I'm not even sure if it's possible." Why did he say that? Maybe she didn't want to. That was wrong of him to be so presumptuous. "I'm needed at home. I have a duty to my family."

There was no answer.

"I'll call tomorrow." Should he tell her he that he loves her? His chest tightened and he wondered if he was about to have a heart attack. Leo took that as a sign that it was a bad idea. He gathered his katanas from near the bed and left.

*****

"Sometimes I think Leo's like a sports car," Mikey said as he folded up his cell phone, sat down in the dumpster and watched Don dig through garbage bags.

Don tossed away a sack full of dirty diapers. "How's that?"

"He's like a sleek blue Ferrari. And no matter how fast we go, we'll never catch up because we're just Hyundais."

"Some Hyundais are fast."

Mikey shifted so that he wasn't sitting in the wet bag that he'd chosen as a cushion. "Well, we're slow ones from the 80's. And Raph is like a big red Mac truck and he never goes very fast because he can't take corners because of his wide turning radius. He has the power, just not the drive."

Don pulled out several "Popular Mechanics" issues and tossed them out of the dumpster and into the keep pile. He said, "I want to be a Delorean. One with white wall tires and a Mr. Fusion like in 'Back to the Future,' then."

"Sure, you can be a Delorean. And Leo's always going ahead of us and we'll never catch up, even though we all keep traveling behind him. Of course Leo's the first to like a girl. He's first to do everything. I'm last."

Don sat down to flip through a soiled "National Geographic." "I don't want a girlfriend. It sounds terrifying. I have enough to do anyway. Does it bother you?"

"No, I don't want one. It's like he's trading us all in for a newer model. Why does he get all happy to see her? He's only known her for a month. He should love us better."

"I'm sure he does. Didn't we just have this conversation in reverse earlier? Do we need double sided tape? Can't hurt to keep it, I guess." It plunked on the pavement.

"And did you see how she bossed Leo around? Nobody's supposed to boss him around. He's the bossy one. I'm mad. I'm mad on his behalf. I take umbrage vicariously for him."

Don jumped out of the dumpster and Mikey followed, watching him idly and not helping in the slightest. Don said, "We'll just keep traveling behind him at the speed we're supposed to go. There're speed limits for a reason. I think he tries to be too grown up, you know. And Splinter's right. He isn't ready for anything like that. It's easy to forget sometimes that three years ago you were still wetting the bed, Raph was still too short to reach the top shelves, I hadn't talked to anybody outside of our family and we all still played with toys. Leo still has his action figures."

They picked up their haul and went home, making ridiculous bets on whether or not they could get Leo to ride the pink girl's bike.