(A/N: 0.0)

All I can say is updates will be much more regular from now on. Back to the two week schedule, folks. It was a very long day and I'm falling asleep as I write this, so please excuse any typos or errors.

OH SNAP ONE MORE THING. I skip a smut scene here, but it's only a little one. More of the same foreplay stuff, nothing impacting. THAT FINALLY OCCURS NEXT, LIKE NEXT NEXT. Swear on my tablet.)

Raphael slept for three hours after the two it took him to actually fall asleep. It was still the dead of night when awareness crept back in, blanketing itself over his brain until he couldn't ignore it any longer. He was damnear afraid to open his eyes, fearing that the world would attack him again, but to his relief his senses were back to normal when he cracked them open, scanning his surroundings with slitted golden irises.

What he saw shocked him. He was alone on the bed, but from his vantage point, the damage was clear and abundant. It looked like a tornado had ripped through the motel room, and an angry tornado at that. There were fist sized dents in the dry wall surrounded by drying red handprints, the old lamp that never got used was bent in an almost ninety degree angle to the ground, and the dresser was on its side, surrounded by splinters and glittering shards of the mirror that had been perched above it.

Fffuck...

Raph exhaled tremulously and grabbed for his elbows, biting down hard on his lower lip to stop a groan when the sheets clung to his tacky, red spattered green skin as he moved. His entire body hurt like he'd been hit with a fucking semi. The energy under his skin was still there, but it was a little tickle compared to the lightning bolts it had been before.

"So you're really awake this time?"

The small shift of air and sound that alerted him to another presence in the corner just before the words filtered into the dusty air was the only reason Raph didn't grab a handful of ninja stars out of his belt and just start chucking them in every direction. Still, he jumped, yelping when his shell banged hard against the window ledge.

Leonardo watched him with a blank, unimpressed expression on his beak from his spot on the floor on the other side of the small room, twirling a random blade blindingly fast between his fingers.

Raph swallowed hard and coughed as the taste of blood caught in the back of his throat. "Fuck ya mean, 'this time'?"

He was horribly aware of how similar that situation was to the one a few months ago, when their positions were reversed and Leonardo was the one weak and shaken in his spot.

Leonardo squinted at him, spinning the blade without pause. "There were false alarms. You'd wake up and destroy something, then pass out again."

Yeah, that much was obvious. The back of Raph's neck boiled with shame. He dipped his chin and dropped his forehead onto his knees to escape the increasingly invasive look Leonardo was giving him. "I...do that?" he mumbled, referring to the ring of puffy swelling circling Leonardo's left eye.

The stony silence he received was all the answer he needed.

"What...what happened?"

Leonardo huffed out a humorless laugh. "What happened was I found you half out of your mind trying to end someone in the gutter, and brought you back here. You kept trying to go home, and when I wouldn't let you leave out the door, you tried to throw yourself out of the window. I was considering dropping you off at a church and letting them figure out what the hell was wrong with you. Eventually I had to restrain you."

Raph flinched away from his blunt words and curled his nails into his palms, trying to force his half soup brain to remember. The restraining part he did recall, but a piece of him insisted that it hadn't been restraining so much as it had been holding, hugging, embracing.

"That kid," he choked, bunching his mask in his fists while bile made his stomach churn sickeningly. "Did I..."

"I don't know." Leonardo said lowly. "I didn't stick around to see." His shoulder lifted and raised in a little shrug, and he turned back to stare at the wall, unconcerned. "He was a criminal, anyway. It shouldn't matter."

"We don't kill," Raph said hollowly. That was the first rule, the only rule that mattered. And he couldn't even follow that one.

"Just members of my clan, apparently." Leonardo retorted. Raph bared his teeth despite himself. That was different.

"Ya don't give a shit about tha rest of them."

Leonardo smirked wryly. "You're right, I don't. There's very little I do care about, actually."

There was no reason at all why that statement should have stung the way it did, so Raph quickly convinced himself that it didn't.

"What was that, anyway?" Leonardo asked after a moment of silence. "I've seen you angry, and that was something way worse."

Raph's hackles rose, and he tensed dangerously. This was not something he was going to discuss with Leonardo, of all freaking people. "Nuthin'. Jus'...lost it for a minute."

"Call it what you want, but it wasn't 'nuthin'." Leonardo replied sharply. "I don't think that kid would call it nothing, either. If he could still speak, that is. That was clinical."

Raph raised his head with a snarl, most of it anger but about thirty per cent of it fear. "What tha fuck does it matter ta you?!" he snapped defensively. "Ya ain't my damn psychiatrist. Isn't tha whole reason ya wanted ta fuck with me because ya thought I was crazy?"

He was shivering again, and his skull was throbbing with the same pressure from the night before...oh gods, it was coming back.

Leonardo's jaw squared, and some kind of emotion flashed in his eyes, vanishing too quickly for Raph to read it. He unfolded his legs and pushed himself to his feet abruptly, shouldering his swords and making his way to the window.

Raph's throat went Sahara dry, and all of his anger was swamped by cold dread. More than anything he'd ever wanted before, he didn't want to be alone then.

"Wait, wait-!"

He watched in slow motion as his dumb fucking hand reached out and fucking grabbed for Leonardo's dumb fucking wrist as it passed, like he was a dumb fucking kid getting left behind in the dumb fucking grocery store-

"What-!?"

'Oh my god, what are you doing, let him go what the fucking hell-'

Don't let him leave. Don't leave...

Leonardo was staring at him like he'd lost his mind, but all Raph could think was please don't leave.

"I..."

No other explanation made it out of his mouth. They locked eyes, and the astounded look in Leonardo's brown orbs faded into something unrecognizable but that sent shudders rolling down Raphael's spine all the same.

"You seriously want me to stay?" he muttered, cocking his head to the side curiously. "...Why?"

Raph floundered helplessly for words, his blush and shuddering increasing as they backed up in his mind. Leonardo knew why. He needed to hurt, to chase away that psychotic high, be ripped open, scraped out, remade in the strange wonderful way only Leonardo could do it.

"Ah want..."

Leonardo smiled with the corner of his mouth, still making no move to pull away. "Ask."

At the soft command, Raph felt the last little bit of stubbornness inside him that refused to acknowledge what he had become, what Leonardo had made him, what he had allowed himself to be, crumble away into nothing.

"S-stay."

Leonardo let out a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a laugh. He dipped his shoulder to let his weapons slide to the floor and allowed himself to be pulled back to the bed, shaking his head. Raph was tilting his neck for the kiss even before their knees touched, hissing out a relieved moan at the feeling of lips and teeth suckling and mouthing under his jaw.

"All you had to do was ask." Leonardo breathed, as his nails bit deep and drew blood.

After, they stayed behind, aware that they were touching more than they ever had but too wrung out to care.

Raph didn't shake. The mania was gone- Leonardo had driven all of it out- but his mind wouldn't let him forget about the criminal he'd...

"Still thinking about that kid?" Leonardo yawned, rolling his head around to stare down the length of his body at the larger turtle laying horizontal by his hip. "I can hear it from here."

Raph grunted a half hearted 'shut up'. "Figures it wouldn't matter ta you. Yer evil."

"Mmm." Leonardo hummed. He shifted into a more comfortable position, stretched out with an arm behind his head and his leg curved to rest on Raph's shell. "Words like that are relative."

"Sure." Raph snorted. With his chin on Leonardo's plastron, he had a perfect view of the inside of his light green leg, and the puckered, knotted skin on the underside of his muscular thigh. It looked like an old wound, but with all the time he spent near the other turtle's bottom half, he was a little surprised that he hadn't seen it before.

Then again, beneath his legs wasn't usually his target focus area so much as between.

Raph brushed a fingertip over it without thinking and watched a tiny tremor go through Leonardo's leg. "What's this from?" he hedged, eager to talk about anything else except his own guilt.

"A misstep during training, years ago." Leonardo replied breezily. "Nothing major."

Golden irises shot him a disbelieving look. "Major," he droned. The scar went all the way up to the back of his knee, winding in a semi circle through the tendons. "Looks like somebody tried ta take yer damn leg off."

He felt Leonardo shrug. "Well the leg is still there, isn't it?" he replied rhetorically. "So it was no big deal."

Raph frowned and tapped his fingers on the scar thoughtfully. His eyes caught another line of pale tissue that arched over Leonardo's hip, and he reached up to touch that, too. "This one?"

"A spear."

Raph choked- that wasn't what he expected to hear. "Who tha hell uses spears anymore? Were ya fightin' cave people?"

Leonardo sighed heavily. "There was a small rebellion in the Foot before I came to New York," he explained wearily. "The village I was sent to train in was less... modern, than most places. I put out the lamps before the fighting started, but one of them got relit."

"They tagged ya." Raph smirked.

"They got lucky." Leonardo growled. Then Raph saw the corner of his mouth lift into a sharp smile. "It didn't last."

A shudder that was part horror and part bloodthirsty beast rolled down Raph's spine. It was rare, but every now and again he glimpsed the matching monster inside the other turtle. Just often enough to assure him it was still there. "I'm guessin' that was no big deal too."

He didn't know what compelled him to keep at it, seeking out the various marks on Leonardo's body. It was mildly fascinating. And after a while he didn't need to ask for the stories behind them, they were offered freely. Raph's fingers were as gentle tracing and mapping his body as they had ever been, and every once in a while Leonardo would give a shiver or a squirm in response. Under his skin his muscles flinched faintly at the light touches, ribcage lifting and falling shallowly with his breath.

"Throwing kni-" Leonardo's words broke off into a strangled snort. His toes curled, and Raph looked up to see him smother a smile as he trailed a fingertip over a zigzag under his heel.

Raph squinted at him, then slowly, his lips pulled over his incisors. Mikey reacted the same way, whenever...

"Yer ticklish, ain't ya?" he said gleefully, an evil smile crawling over his features.

"No- ah! Alright!" Leonardo yelped, jerking when he did it again. "Alright, maybe... Maybe a little." He glared when Raph started to laugh at him, and he started to get up. Raphael moved to stop him and pinned him down with his heavier weight.

"Quit poutin', Leonardo." he huffed. Leonardo grumbled sourly, then stopped struggling and let out a tired sigh and a low mumble.

"What?"

"Leo," he repeated, rolling his eyes up to gaze at the ceiling. "You don't have to call me Leonardo all the time. Sometimes... people used to call me Leo. You can." He glanced back at Raph. "If you want." He shrugged like he didn't care, but Raphael suspected he did.

Raph licked his lips and stared as the information sank in. They'd never used anything but true names- they'd never cared to try anything else. Nicknames were a step closer to pet names, endearments. Endearments meant actual feelings, the very opposite of what their entire arrangement was based on.

Too close to what his thoughts had become lately...

"L-Leo." The name fell from his lips tentatively, halted, before he cleared his throat and masked his uncertainty. "Leo. Alright Leo. Guess that makes me Raph ta you then." His eyes hardened. "Call me Raphie an' I'll tear yer lips off."

The corners of Leo's mouth pulled up. "Raph. Huh. Alright." The abbreviation shouldn't have sounded so good coming from him, soft and intimate, a marked difference from the chilly mouthful that was "Raphael".

And Jesus H Christ, did he have to roll the R like that?

"Why'd you stop, Raph?" Leo asked, amusement glimmering in his coffee colored eyes. "It felt nice."

"Huh?" He looked down, and saw that his fingers had stilled in their exploration. "Oh." Raph shook himself to refocus. He resumed, pulling his blunt nails over a v shaped scar in Leo's side. One line was longer than the other, changing into a deep scratch when it met his plastron, right over his heart. A shorter scratch jutted out from the middle, and the whole thing slanted to the right.

They almost looked like claw marks, but Raphael knew better. He could recognize a scar like that with his eyes glued shut.

"Sai." he breathed, and Leonardo nodded once.

"Mine?" Raph asked, unable to stop retracing it. He honestly couldn't remember ever landing a hit this brutal on him, but when the anger took over memory got fuzzy.

"No," Leo responded quietly, sounding oddly subdued. A breath he didn't know he was holding hissed out of Raph's chest, and something like- was that relief?- swept through him.

He realized that he didn't want to be the one that made that mark... to hurt Leonardo that deeply.

"I was twelve. I was fighting for my first Rank, the right to be recognized as an Honored Child." Leo continued, reading his mind. "Five on one, easy odds. But there was a Sai user, and he came at me after I'd killed the others. I was tired and he overpowered me. He locked up my practice blades and broke them, nearly killed me." He pressed his palm to Raph's shoulder. "Remember the first time I fought you, when we first met?"

"Yeah," Raph grunted. "Mostly."

"You couldn't break my swords, no matter how hard you tried." Leo recalled. "After that fight with the sai user, after I'd won my Rank, my Father had the swords I use now made for me. They're forged with titanium cores, with diamonds inlaid in the steel edges. To stop that from happening again." He fell silent, and the only sound was their breathing.

Raphael bit his lip. He had no clue what to say to that. He sighed and shook his head. "Guess that was nice of him."

Leonardo didn't reply, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Raph moved on, edging upwards until his fingers plucked at the black and red ribbons constantly wound around Leo's left arm. Instantly, the smaller turtle tensed like a stretched rubber band beneath him. "Stop."

Raph's eyeridges pulled together. "What is that? Ya never take it off, even when we're..."

"None of your business. Let it go." His words were sharper than knives and colder than arctic winds, but Raphael wasn't deterred. He grabbed at the fabric, loosening it before Leonardo pulled his arm up and away.

"Stop!"

But he had already seen. Growling, he snatched Leo's wrist and forced it down, pushing the cloth out of the way as he struggled. The silky ribbons slipped down to reveal more scars, but these were of a very familiar breed.

Short, deep slices marred the smooth skin under Leo's arm, running in both directions like horizontal train tracks. They were perfectly centered and symmetrical, unlike his own ragged hodgepodge of razor marks. None of them were recent, but the ones near the bottom were slightly pink around the edges.

Leonardo had stopped struggling, seeing that it was pointless, and now he was glaring in earnest as Raph took in the sight, slightly horrified. Of anyone, he'd never thought that privileged, spoiled Leonardo would have...

"W-what tha hell is this?" he sputtered, eyes wide. Leo yanked his arm away and gripped at the scars, seemingly curling in on himself without moving his body.

"Old mistakes." he whispered. "Leave it at that."

"Shredda make you do this?!" Raph snarled.

"I said leave it-!"

"Does he?!"

"It's my fault!" Leonardo shot back. "For every failure, there's a payment. With every cut, you learn, until perfection is reached." His tone turned hollow, rehearsed.

As rehearsed as Raph's own "Yeah, I'm fine" every morning, while the washing machine scrubbed all evidence to the contrary out of his bedsheets.

"That's bullshit!" Raph barked. "How d'ya believe that? He's makin' ya hurt yerself! Yer s'posed ta be his son. He's s'posed ta care about you."

This ain't about you. Don't make it about you.

"He does. Everything he's done has made me better, or stronger. He made sure no sai user could ever get past my defences. He groomed me into what I am. Those scars are a small price to pay for perfection. But you wouldn't know anything about that." Leonardo spat, eyes blazing brown fire.

Raph pulled back, steaming. His knuckles itched, and he felt a familiar sensation rising up in his chest, but he fought to push it back down. "I don't, do I?" he hissed through clenched teeth, scrabbling for his forearm guard and shoving the leather down to his hand. He watched with a grim, sick satisfaction as a shocked expression crossed Leonardo's face.

"I wasn't...I didn't-"

"Yeah, I figured that." Raph sneered. "Nobody ever does. Comes from years an' years of being told from the get go that yer a mistake, not really even s'posed ta exist, and yer never gonna become anything, or even have real friends or else ya end up in tha zoo, or under a microscope." He shook his head. "Then growin' up and finding out that yer a total disappointing fuck up in pretty much everything, dumb and crazy and talented at nothing but breaking shit and getting in trouble and makin' people hate ya."

His voice was getting thick at the end, so he stopped and blinked away the burning in the back of his eyelids. He forced out a bitter laugh. "'Least it's easy to hide. Nobody ever looks. Guess the truth's too ugly for em."

"No, they don't." Leonardo breathed. "...but you do."

Raphael shrugged brusquely, not trusting himself to speak as Leonardo's fingers lighted gently on the back of his hand, to the star shaped marks between his own emerald green digits.

"Mirror?"

He swallowed hard. "Didn't like what I saw lookin' back." He turned his head to watch as Leonardo's hand moved to his shoulder again, and saw a matching set outlining the other male's knuckles.

"I can relate."

Raph looked him fill in the face, and saw the apology in his expression, regret and more understanding than he wanted to deal with. His anger sputtered and died as quickly as it began, and he sighed heavily, letting his eyes close.

"We're fucked up, ain't we?"

Leo matched the tired noise. "Probably." They didn't talk for a while. The moon sank lower in the sky, giving ground to the incoming sunlight.

"Raph..."

Raph opened his eyes. Amber met brown.

"I'm sorry. I was wrong."

"Don't gotta apologize. I guess I...shoulda stopped when ya said stop." he mumbled.

Leo's mouth quirked. "Was that an apology?"

"Don't get used to it," Raph rumbled darkly, and Leo smiled -a real smile, not a smirk- and chuckled.

And something odd and completely unwanted and uncalled for happened.

Raphael really looked at Leonardo.

He didn't just see him, like he'd done so many times before, something to tear open and apart to devour. He looked, and it was like wiping fog away from a window. Little things started jumping out at him- the black and gold flecks sprinkled through his irises, the small knots of extra joint tissue on the sides of his wrists, a tiny, tiny chip in the top plate of the plastron. Barely there freckles under his jawbone. A black scorch spot on the tip of his tongue.

Small, stupid shit that no one would notice, but that he suddenly couldn't believe he'd ever missed. With each dumb little detail, a low, bubbly feeling drew tight in his gut, unlike arousal or anything else he could remember experiencing. It kind of hurt, to be honest.

He didn't remember who initiated the kiss, only that one second their mouths weren't touching and then the next they were. But after a minute or so it was still just a KISS, not a hormone fuelled grope fest, not evolving into anything nasty or invasive. No bites, no blood, no pain or anger.

And it scared the living hell out of him.

This wasn't what he was used to, what he'd come to expect. This felt like...FEELING, like emotion. Like they actually gave a damn. It was slow and considerate, nothing like their previously quick, dirty embraces, a selfish exchange of take and barely give.

It would have been so easy to deepen it, fill it with hasty, half baked passion and sloppiness, and write it off as another lead off into a night of animalism. But no one did. To Raph's horror, he wasn't just sitting through it, he was FURTHERING it, instigating more, and he couldn't stop it. He felt himself brush his lips over Leo's; once, twice, licked at his lower lip just to feel the fullness of it against his tongue, remembering how it puffed up when Leonardo bothered it or got really in the mood. He knew when he caught the scorch mark because the taste of slightly burned green tea flooded his mouth, and right then it was the most delicious thing ever.

He felt the slide of their skin, Leo so warm where he was usually a few degrees cooler than normal. He felt their hearts pounding against each other as though a double layer of flesh and bony plating weren't separating them, felt their knees bump and hook like parts of a chain.

Leo's low hum was more a vibration than a sound, rippling through his jaw and down his spine.

He felt all the places between them, pockets of nothing and air where their bodies didn't touch, and he hated them, wanted to fill them in until they didn't exist anymore. The tightness in his belly rose up and up and just when he thought he was going to puke, it broke through his chest, dissolving into warm shivers that went all the way up his brainstem.

It felt like...happiness. Right then, for that second, for at least the duration of that breath, he felt...happy.

It ended much too late and much too soon, with a soft smacking sound as their mouths disattached. Raph blinked slowly, dizzy, punch-drunk, almost like he'd been smashed in the head with a bat but without the pain. He gazed down at Leo, his face unguarded now, filled with so many emotions that Raph couldn't catch them all. He mumbled something that, through the blood rushing in his head, Raph didn't catch, but he read the word on his lips, foreign but horribly recognizable.

The warm shivers morphed into icy needless and tore backwards through his veins, forcing him up and off Leonardo as his gorge rose.

"I- I g-gotta-" he choked, kicking away and scrambling for his possessions. He couldn't bring himself to look at Leonardo, didn't want to see what was there. He'd lose it, lose it all.

He probably just had.

"Wait-wait-"

No no no no NO.

He felt a hand land on his carapace, and panic flared like a siren in his brain, everything screaming at him to ESCAPE NOW.

"Let me go!"

"Raph-!"

"DON'T TOUCH ME!"

He didn't look back as he reached around and batted Leonardo's hand away, or when he shoved his body as quickly as he was able out the window. He didn't want to hear the stunned gasp, see the hurt, confused expression. He pounded across the motel roof, not caring if he was seen, summer gusts raking frigid talons down his overheated limbs.

He kept seeing that moment replayed in front of his eyes, that silent, whispered word that had just ruined everything.

Aishiteru.

BASTARD!

He wished he didn't understand. He wished he didn't know Japanese. He wished that language was never invented, he wished that word didn't exist.

Aishiteru.

The urge to puke was for real this time, a sour burn in the back of his throat. His mind was a whirlwind of knives and pain and fear, he didn't even remember how he got home, or how long it took. Raphael only wanted to be as far from Leonardo and that motel and that word as he could possibly be.

Aishiteru.

Kicking his door closed was the last thing he could do before dropping to his knees and purging his guts up into the trashcan by his hammock. His throat was on fire and his vision floated on the tears filling his eyes and he couldn't, wouldn't let them fall. He wrapped his arms around his torso and gagged and spat until there was nothing left to lose, and hard shudders were making his teeth rattle in his skull.

Aishiteru.

No, no. That was not what this was about. This was not about pet names and slow kisses and meaningful looks.

You can't have this, you can't have this.

Aishiteru.

This was cheap, fast, dirty, convenient. Uncaring. Not THAT. Anything but that.

Aishiteru.

Frenzied, acidic bile still clinging to his chin, Raphael ripped open his drawers and searched for his razor, fumbling with the catch until the silvery blade sprung free. He knew he looked like a junkie readying for a fix as he shoved his armband up once again, pressing the glittering surface to his skin.

Aishiteru.

He gasped when it sliced home, and the shining edge was cut by the spurt of blood from his arm. He waited for the panic to fade, for the comforting numbness to set in, but it didn't, and that was terrifying.

Aishiteru.

He wasn't going to do this, get sucked in any more. He'd already been sucked in enough and now he saw that. This feeling wasn't love (no no no, every -letter- deserved- a- line). Love was for fairy tales and chick flicks, pretty people with pretty lives.

Love wasn't for a freak who lived in a sewer and made people scream and slept in his own blood and dreamed about hurting his own family. Love was for good people, not monsters- beasts- like him. He'd resigned himself to that a long time ago. He wasn't supposed to want-

I don't.

Love was just another thing to get destroyed, ruined. Inevitable, undeniable. Just like he'd ruined this. It was a miracle it had lasted this long.

Congratulations, dumbass. You really fucked it up this time.

He didn't love Leonardo, and Leonardo didn't love him.

Who would? Look at you.

He didn't need to look. He knew it was true. He couldn't even do a meaningless hook up right. He had to end this, quick fast and in a goddamn hurry. He would not, could not let himself believe that he wanted love, or needed it, or deserved it. He'd never have it, so there was no point.

The next time he saw Leonardo he would do what he did best- ruin and hurt. He'd hurt Leonardo so badly they'd be enemies all over again, and this whole misguided mistake would be a thing of the past.

Raphael dropped his blade only when his fingers were shaking too hard to hold it firmly any longer, slippery with blood. He clambered into his hammock and lost the energy partly through, hanging half in and half out. He curled up against the misery, almost as if to shield himself from the inside against the agonizing surges of WANT, of NEED. Of fear.

But he still felt Leonardo's lips on his own, soft and inviting. Every beat of his heart sent pain ripping through him.

Aishiteru.

Love you.

It took everything in him not to cry from the ache of wanting, and knowing he could never ever have it.

(A/N: Oh dear, how cruel am I. Don't fret though, salvation is coming. I wish FF was like Ao3, there's a perfect gif for this situation I want to show you guys XD

Also, the name thing in this chapter was meant to be really significant. If I accidentally had them calling each other by their nicknames before this, PLEASE tell me for the sake of any new readers.)