While Jude knew that Raphael's family of five lived in the sewers, what she did not expect was the place smelling…nice. She could wrack it up to Raphael's huge hands over her eyes, even if she had a blindfold on. He walked her like a little kid through the tunnels and corridors, and whatever he was wearing - a body spray or something else - it filled Jude's nose and never left. She couldn't quite place it, but it smelled earthy and masculine. She was tempted to turn in his arms and bury her face in his chest to inhale more of it with every step, but resisted the urge.

As they neared the lair - Jude felt they ought to after walking for thirty minutes straight, the merry drawls of Hallmark Christmas music echoed louder and louder. Jude smirked under his hands, her own still around his wrists to steady herself. "Lemme guess. Mikey?"

"Yep," A smile in his rough voice, his hands leaving her eyes and taking her hand instead.

Raphael ignored how holding her tiny, fragile-looking hand in his made his heart flutter in his thick chest, and Jude was thankful the blindfold hid the flush around her ears, but as the scent of him left with his fingers, another replaced it. Unlike Raphael's aroma, this new smell was tangy and overpowering, like fresh candy made too sweet. She whistled, "Smells like someone's making church window cookies." A pang of nostalgia hit her in center mass, and she wasn't at all surprised it knew where to nail her. She covered it up with a cough. "Mikey again?"

"Close." Raph wasn't oblivious to how her voice darkened, and glanced at her, his thumb rubbing hers absentmindedly. "Don usually makes sweets this time'a year, to get away from work for a bit."

"Mm." Jude had met Donnie for those few minutes on Liberty Island, but had not seen him since. If her and Raph were comfortable enough to hold hands like this, a swell of duty compelled her to try to meet every member of his family - which included his father, as well. So far, she knew his brother was the Mr. Fix-It of the family, but she knew there had to be more to him than that. For years, her father had been that go-to person for the neighbors and anyone needing some help. And she knew her old man could have written dozens of books on what they never knew.

"…Still feeling okay about coming to the lair?" Raphael asked, not for the first time. His eyes were still on her, gauging every expression as best he could with the blindfold.

Jude sighed, and for him, she quirked her mouth into a half-smile. "'Course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

That is the question of the hour, ain't it? Raphael had spent the entire night before working out answers to that question. For one, the most obvious, he was a mutant turtle that lived with three other mutant turtles and an aging mutated ninja rat - in the sewer. He wasn't sure that the lair was Jude's Christmas destination number one.

Secondly, after he had come to her apartment to find her drunk weeks ago and after the conversation they'd had, Raphael wasn't sure if he could be near Jude and really look at her without thinking of how much she worried him. He wasn't sure if he'd forgiven her yet or seen her forgive herself for what had happened to her: whether it was her father's death or that elusive earlier thing he intuited from watching her, from watching how she jolted when he accidentally snuck up on her, from watching how she disarmed herself when she came home at night. Pepper spray, then keys, then at last, her .380 glock she kept strapped under her jacket and the twenty-two strapped to her ankle. Something had happened, Raphael figured, that made her so paranoid, and he was about seventy-five percent certain it happened long before her father died.

"Just askin'," Raphael said finally, his eyes averted ahead to the corridor that led to the garage where Donnie and he kept the turtle van.

For a list of reasons that seemed to materialize the moment it happened, Raphael slipped his hand out of Jude's. She tried not to react, but when her fingers were empty of his, she shoved them into her pockets and did her best to pretend they didn't exist. And that they were cold without him.

They turned a corner, and the grandeur of the lair spread out before Jude, whose eyes grew wide. Raphael watched her face with a proud half-smile. Waterslides, music stations where Mikey waved as he mixed out the Christmas songs, a kitchen that the tallest of his brothers was icing cakes in, and the ceiling never seemed to stop. It just went up and up, and Jude could have spent hours staring at the pipes and canopies like they were in a forest of concrete and lead. She let out a low whistle.

"You like it?" He asked, only half-afraid of the answer.

"It's...wow." She breathed, a tattooed hand lifted to comb through her hair.

A voice from behind them caught Jude off-guard. "I'm glad you like our home."

Jude's gaze panned until she saw Splinter. The old rat leant on his staff, his claws brushing through his beard and he was swathed in sweaters. Prudence straightened her spine, and she felt underdressed. A Breaking Benjamin hoodie didn't seem appropriate to meet your best friend's old-school rat father. She didn't say anything at first, but stepped forward and bent into a bow. Raphael's breath caught in his throat, and as he watched Splinter inclined his head, he wasn't sure if he expected any less from his best friend. Jude knew respect.

"I'm sorry we didn't get to meet at the key to the city ceremony," Jude said, her voice lower with slight embarrassment. "I would've introduced myself, but I had to get home anyway and the boat ride over freaked me out, and…" Splinter's black eyes glittered with amusement, and he shared a glance with Raphael over her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm making excuses."

Heavy footsteps went past her, and she heard Leonardo say, "Try not doing that. You'll do better."

Raphael glared at the back of Leo's head as the oldest of his brothers moved to the kitchen with a sweat towel over his shoulders. Jude's eyes on Splinter's faltered. She tried again, and stretched out a hand to the rat. "I'm pleased to meet you, sir. I've heard a lot about you."

Splinter wasted little time shaking her hand, and smiled at her. "You're doing fine, Jude. You're quite welcome in this household, even if my eldest son cannot remember his manners."

Raphael's eyes widened and a grin spread across his face. He looked over at Leo, who grew very still by the fridge with his hand half-raised for a drink from his water. Jude managed a light laugh. "Thank you, sir."

From there, Jude was molded into the festivities. She was properly introduced to April. At first, Jude had been wary to believe that a news reporter of all people would be able to cover for them, but upon hearing the story of how she knew the boys...Jude knew that the last person to be their betrayer was April. The reporter was a talker, Jude soon found out, and as April gathered from her repeated attempts to strike a conversation with the boxer, Jude was not.

At one point, Jude got up to go to the bathroom, and April huffed a sigh as soon as she was out of earshot. The reporter walked over to Raphael, and said with a frown, "She hates me."

"She doesn't hate you." He said, and attempted to find a delicate way to phrase it, his eyes on his drink. "She's just...different."

"I feel like she's...one of those people that doesn't enjoy the holidays." Michelangelo offered, icing on his upper lip from the cookies he'd been munching on for the past few minutes. Before Raphael could retort, Mikey held up a hand. "I'm just sayin', bro. I've seen Jude before, and she just looks...heavy with something. She say anything on the way over?"

Raphael shook his head, and his eyes sought out the only person that would be able to talk to her without screwing up. Every attempt he'd made to breach the subject of why December seemed to drag her down had led to stutters and neverminds. "Dad, what do you think?"

Splinter's eyes went to the bathroom door where Jude had disappeared. He drank from his eggnog and added a cinnamon stick from a jar. He swirled the stick as he spoke, "You mentioned that she'd lost her father recently."

"...Months ago, but…" Raphael trailed off. The signs clicked, one by one like a crate, and he exhaled. Something cold slipped into his stomach. "Oh."

Splinter nodded slowly, and April covered her mouth, a hand on Raphael's shoulder. The rat said it at last.

"Whatever her abrasiveness may be, I suggest we cut her some slack. This is the first Christmas Jude will have without her father."

…..

Jude was gasping the moment she disappeared behind the bathroom door. Her nails found the sink, and she bent to splash water in her face. She filled both palms with water, and lifted it to her face, liquid spilling between her fingers. She scrubbed a hand down her face, stopping to clamp on her lips.

She won't cry. She won't allow herself to cry. Not with her best friend's family outside the door. She won't make a sound. She won't let them know she's hurting. The barrier that she had between herself and Raphael, the one without which he would know her every thought, wore thin. It was a slender membrane, and it seemed like the fingernails digging into her left cheek as she forced herself not to cry threatened to tear it to shreds. She straightened, and leveled her hazel eyes with the mirror.

Her hair, recently trimmed on the sides and the mop top left long, was wet on the ends by her eyes where she'd washed her face. She looked like she was sweating. She was.

She muttered to herself in the mirror, stared herself in the eyes and tried to fool the woman looking back. "You're okay. You're good. You've got it under control. You're good. He's just outside. He's right out there and you can...you can talk to him. Right? You're good with that. You're gonna talk to that girl out there, that April girl. You're gonna be sociable. And presentable. And you're not gonna cry in here like a little bitch about your dead father and ruin it for them." She sucked in a shaky breath. "You're not gonna ruin Christmas for them."

A knock jolted her from the sink. "Hi Jude, you okay in there?"

Jude coughed and sniffed. She swiped her cheeks and dried her face with the hand towel. She forced a smile in the mirror before she answered. "I'm fine, April. Almost done."

She ran both hands through her blonde hair, smoothed down her sweater. She cleared her throat, and then left the bathroom. She flashed a smirk for April, though she was not sure at all that the other woman bought it. Raphael certainly didn't.

…..

Jude stayed by herself the rest of the night, but not by design.

April didn't attempt to bother her, or at least she thought it was bothering, Jude would have welcomed another chance at conversation. April felt that she had been annoying Jude before, and chose to stay close to Donatello and Leonardo. Leo kept Mikey occupied with sweets, and took it upon himself to keep his little brother from saying the wrong thing to make Jude's night worse. Donnie came by to offer Jude a drink, which was decidedly going to be alcohol. He came back with a beer, and gave her a reassuring smile. He wouldn't push her any more than anyone else. He understood. She appreciated that.

Raphael hadn't wanted to push her either, but like hell if he was going to let her sit by herself. He sat in the empty seat next to her on the sofa, put on the fights like it was any other night in her apartment. He got her another beer and one for himself, and the two of them wiled away a couple of hours in comfortable silence. Their backs to everyone else, Jude had something to focus on, and felt her head rest back. Her hair tickled Raphael's arm as he stretched it along the back of the couch.

Low enough for only them to hear, she said, "Thanks."

"For what?" He stole a glance at her from the corner of his eye. She was biting her lip, her hands laced around her bottle.

"This." She released her lip, her tongue sliding over the bite marks. "My dad and I used to watch the rewind fights every year."

"Shit, I didn't know-" His hand came down from the back of the couch to the remote between them, but she grabbed his fingers before he could shut it off. His words cut off.

"-Hey, hey, it's okay." Jude reassured him, her palm moving under his. The back of the couch was tall enough; nobody would see. "It's nice...I thought I wasn't ever gonna get that feeling back. Just me and him, sitting and watching the fights on Christmas Day. Church windows baking in the oven and a case of beer between us." She smiled and remembered it. She closed her eyes, and he wove their fingers together, squeezed her hand. "We'd watch them all...Jon Jones versus Gustafsson. Griffin versus Bonnar, the first one. Liddell versus Silva. Dad loved Chuck Liddell…"

"Good taste in fighters," Raphael said, his chest warm with her thumb against his. He looked down at his legs, and then over at Jude's. "...I hope you know I'm not trying to replace your dad. For one, I'm way too young and he was probably better-looking."

"You're right," Jude said, and as he started to squint over, she smirked. "You are way too young."

"You're such an asshole," He shook his head, but he was grinning.

Jude chortled, a wry look on her face over at him. "Me? An asshole?" She stage-whispered, her free hand over her forehead. "How ever will I go on? I am positively wounded."

Raphael rolled his eyes, and squeezed her hand. "Nice to know your ever-charming personality is still intact."

"I'm depressed, Raph," She said, "Not dead."

Raphael looked down at her sharply, amazed she would glue her eyes to the TV like she hadn't just said that. She pressed her other palm to his knuckles. She didn't think there was anything wrong with what she said, but...with every second that went by, the words rang in his ears. He glanced over his shoulder. The others were in the kitchen, a large tray of cookies in the middle, and not paying them any mind.

Soon after that, Jude announced that she was headed home. It was early, barely seven-thirty, but she was anxious to get home and to a bed. She claimed she was tired, which was half-true. Raphael knew that she'd reached her limit of people.

"I'm real sorry, guys…" She attempted to explain, her eyes peeking up at the turtles, Splinter and April through her eyelashes. "I'm just...not much for company right now. I'll make it up to you, I swear. I'll buy pizza when Wrestlemania rolls around or something…I'm just…"

"You don't need to apologize," April said. She stepped closer to Jude, and wrapped her arms around the boxer.

April, perhaps more than the turtles, knew what kind of grief it was to lose your father. She held her tight, and it took all of Jude's self-control not to break down right there. Right into April's shoulder, and the shorter woman knew. April knew that Jude was on the brink, and that was her signal to let go. Jude was fighting tears, and sniffled, her head down. When she dared, she rose her eyes to Master Splinter.

"Thank you for the hospitality, sir," Jude bowed, and then turned to leave. Raphael pulled his coat over his shoulders and told his family lowly that he was going to walk her home.

The walk was almost too beautiful, even that late at night. The snow fell onto their shoulders, lightened her hair and loosened his stern gait. They moved through New York as two people, anonymous as the snowflakes and as comfortable with each other as each tree nestled in Central Park. They moved through that park on the last leg of their journey, and Raphael chose the most silent moment of that walk to finally speak.

"...I should be a better friend." He slowed to a stop.

"What?" She faced him as she stopped too, her breath misting in the air with every exhale. "...You've been a great friend...you're my best friend, I don't get it...why would you say that?"

Raphael pulled her off the path, under an evergreen tree with just enough clearance from the lowest branches to allow his height. His eyes were dark, and earnest. "What you said earlier. That you were depressed, but not dead...it's...Jude, I shouldn't be sitting on my hands when you're hurtin'. I-"

"Raph…" Jude's mouth popped open. Whether it was the cold or the subject, words sifted from her brain as soon as they formed. "...I...shouldn't have said it in the first place. It wasn't fair. You've done everything...You've saved the world, you helped me get back in my career, you've...given me everything. Especially when I don't deserve it."

He let out a long sigh, white mist clouding from his lungs like a smoker. But it wasn't tar in his lungs that made it difficult to breathe. "I'm not saying this right...I never say anything right when I mean it...or need it."

The silence drew on between them, but not the same like when they were walking. This silence was full, loaded, not unlike a gun at all. It threatened to punch holes in their determination not to talk about other times when they had been this close. Jude finally said, "...Why don't you start with what you were trying to tell me that night?"

"You remember that?" Raphael narrowed his eyes at her. "I thought you were too drunk to-"

"No, you didn't ask. You assumed." Jude said, her hair hung in her eyes. "I let you believe it so that I could think about it, and I have...When you texted me, found me drunk out of my skull with three whiskey bottles in my apartment...you told me that I had to have noticed how you look at me." She drew in unstable air, just as she felt like the ground shook beneath them. "Tell me how exactly you look at me. Tell me what's going on here. Be honest with me."

Raphael stared at her, as blank as the white all around them. His arms felt numb and useless at his sides. His heart was a jackhammer in his chest. "Right now?"

"You were falling over yourself all week about not being able to afford a gift beyond the sweater you knitted me." Jude took his hands, which were far warmer than hers. "Give me this. Please."

It was the 'please' that got him. Raphael couldn't refuse her when she said 'please', not that he could any other time either. He searched the ground, the snow on his massive shoes. Hers looked comically small by comparison. "I look at you like…" He met her gaze, finding it pleading and determined. He found his words. "I look at you like you're my best friend, and...fuck, I suck at this. I look at you like you're my best friend, and the only person I've ever...looked at. Like that."

"Like what?" Jude's eyebrows came together.

Raphael's resolve broke. The tension that had been between them for months was jittering in his ears, on his lips, on the tip of his tongue. "Like a guy! I mean, Jesus, Jude, you're really gonna make me say it? I look at you like a guy would. I see you, y'know." He let go of her hands, gesturing to her. "Look at you! I look like turtle King Kong with a shell and you're just…" His eyes fell on her, all of her, and his heart thrummed harder.

Jude's ears were bright red, and she was thankful her hair had grown out to cover them. She crossed her arms, and tried to keep her blushing in the background of her voice. "I also remember you trying to shrug me off when I said I saw you the same way. If you think about me and see me like a guy would, then why is it so fuckin' hard for you to believe I see you the same way?"

Raphael's own cheeks burned now, and he groaned, glaring around the park. "This is unfair as hell and you know it. I'm not like you. I ain't normal and I can't just do normal shit like this. I can't do normal shit like…"

"Caring about somebody?" Jude suggested, exasperated. "Liking your best friend?"

"I can't like you as more than a friend," Raphael said at last. "Don't look at me like that, Jude, I can't."

"Even if every possible sign says that we do?" She asked, her eyes stinging as her shoulder blades rested against the bark of the tree. "I think we're both capable enough martial artists to ward off any danger that comes our way. If they target you, I'll run them over. If they target me, you'll rip their arms off."

"It ain't that easy," Raphael closed the distance between them, his heavy hands on her shoulders and his heat permeated her coat. His face was worried, paranoid, and human. "You're human. I'm not. I can't take you for picnics in this park in the daytime. I can't take you out for dinner. I'm flat broke and you're a prize fighter. I'm a nobody that lives in the sewers. Any guy with half a brain and eyes that work would want you, Jude."

"And if I did take someone else, what would you do? Could you honestly say you wouldn't mind?" Jude countered, holding back hot angry tears with all she could. Raphael saw them, and he frowned.

"...It'd drive me insane." He held her face, and pressed his forehead against hers.

Jude covered his fingers with hers. "And no one in this world is good enough for you, in my eyes."

"You're good enough…" Came his voice rumbled from his chest, quite as distant thunder. "But this is the way it is. We can't change it." He sighed, and pressed his scarred lips to the space between her eyebrows. "I should never have gotten rid of the purple ooze."

Jude couldn't find it in herself to verbally disagree with that, but she whispered anyway. "No use talking about it now…" She put some space between them, resting her head back against the tree and looked up. She smirked. "Raphael?"

He had just put a hand on his hip, and rubbed his eye. "Yeah?"

"Don't wanna alarm you, but...someone's hung mistletoe on that branch." Jude pointed, and his eyes followed.

Raphael's palms, even in the cold, grew to sweat. The coat seemed too tight then, and he looked from the mistletoe to her. Jude peered up at him with something he couldn't place, and reached out. She caught one of his belt loops, pulled him in slow, and gave him plenty of time to stop her. He didn't. His lips parted, and as he had often, his eyes darted to her lips. To the ring pierced on the left side of her lower lip.

Jude tasted his breath as he bent, curled around her, and his open coat provided her a curtain of heat. He enveloped her, one of his arms wound around her waist. He felt feverish, like he was burning alive where she touched him - nails of one hand digging into his hip, and the other on his broad chest. Light-headed, he shut his eyes. "Jude, I…"

"I know, I know." She said. The sadness in her voice cut him in the one place his shell didn't protect. "Just this once."

The ring pierced into her lower lip felt chilling against his mouth, and every part of him tensed. He tensed like this for battle, for sparring, but he had sparred often enough with Jude to recognize her as a capable opponent. He tugged her even tighter against him with the arm around her hips, and he kissed her as if not touching Jude Ellis suffocated him. And if he were honest, he'd admit that it did. His fingers raced up her back and into her hair.

Jude had been drunk several times in the months she'd known him, but now she really knew the meaning of intoxication. She ran her tongue along his lower lip, and he drew back for a second. At first she thought she'd done something wrong, and opened her eyes only to look at him with confusion. Raphael seemed dazed, but then leaned in. His top lip touched hers and his eyes slipped closed as he timidly slipped his tongue into her mouth. His mind raced as she met him, tilted her head to kiss him harder.

He shouldn't kiss his best friend like this. Mistletoe kisses were short and sweet in the movies he'd seen. A peck on the cheek, a quick kiss on the lips. They weren't supposed to be making his head swim, and his blood sing, and his skin feel like it was melting the snow. Jude's only regret was that she hadn't done this sooner, that she hadn't the nerve. He tasted like beer and church window cookies, and touched her like he would never get another chance.

Her mouth came away from his, but she didn't stop kissing him. He had to come up for air, and gasped as she held his throat between her palms, pressed reverent kisses down his neck. He panted. "Jude...Jude, Jesus, you're…"

She laughed against his skin. "Need a breather?"

"Didn't say that, short stack," Raphael joked back, his cheeks flaming. He leaned back, and glanced down at her. "It's...just hitting me that this is my first kiss."

Jude grinned up at him as she rested against the tree. Her foot hiked up on the bark. "Merry Christmas, Raphael."

A smirk quirked his lips, and he lined his body with hers. His mind brimmed with ideas of what to do about that smug look on her face. "...If...if we did this, if you and me was a thing...we could keep it a secret? Just between you and me. As far as anybody else knows, we're just friends."

"Best friends."