neonleon: <user name="spaceconfessional"> (fight - preparing)
Leo(nardo) ([personal profile] neonleon) wrote2021-09-19 01:58 am

post movie

for [personal profile] supersmashbro

[The day has been exhausting.

That's the real word here. Exhausting. Physically, sure, but emotionally? Unparalleled exhaustion. April, Splinter, and Casey got a van from somewhere that they all quietly piled into, the brothers half carrying Leo in, and the ride back is quiet. Leo's a fucking mess of bruises, some broken bones, busted up face, who knows what else under the shell. Not that anyone else is in stellar shape, but it's enough when April has to take a sharper turn than expected, Leo ends up shifting against Raphael's shoulder while they ride.

He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't make any motion to move away either. He's too tired, too much in the feeling of 'oh god everything hurts make it stop' to try consciously moving himself.

It isn't until April pulls to a stop at one of the larger entrances to the sewer that Leo starts forcing himself to move, pain shooting up his nerves like fire. But he keeps one hand clenched on one of his katana that Casey had returned, the other out... somewhere. He'll find it eventually once he has the strength to portal himself to it again.

But he stops to make sure the others are coming along.]


Almost home, guys. [Maybe if he hopes and crosses fingers, that didn't sound as bad to them as it did to his own ears.]
supersmashbro: (HOW FAR DID YOU GET)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-21 12:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Hindsight is 20/20. It also kicks in after about three seconds, and Raph kinda doesn't know what he expected. It's very on-brand.

He said something and didn't immediately get on it. That's on him. He turned away for two seconds to help Pops down from the van, because last time he saw him before the ride back was--

-was??

Escape pod. Yeah. Obviously. Jeez. It's been a weird dang time.

Bold of Leo to basically swoon meanwhile, wow. If Raph stops to lose two or three years off of his lifespan seeing it in motion, that's simply the cost of doing older-brother business. He was born for this. ]


I'm saying you shouldn't be walking. I was actively saying it!

[ Unbiased evidence! Clearly! That he is right!

Not that it's not like an impressive miracle that Leo is even still conscious right now. ]
supersmashbro: (wow thanks guys)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-22 01:29 pm (UTC)(link)
[ The way he hates every time one of his brothers gets him on a technicality that he can't truthfully disagree with. Betrayed by his own kin. His Little Guys.

Raph isn't vibing with arguing the whole way home. Is the thing. Which is probably all this 'who should and shouldn't be walking' road leads to.

Arguing doesn't work on Leo, like lecturing doesn't work on Leo, like trying to have a heart-to-heart doesn't work with Leo unless Leo is already open to it, and saying I ran into so many walls learning to ride this bike because it didn't come with training wheels, listen to this stuff I learned about how not to run into so many walls doesn't work.

And it's like, it's not even Leo's fault at this point, because Raph is the oldest and Raph knows these things don't work with Leo, and he knows that he can be overbearing, and he knows he has-- issues. With letting stuff go. Snapping turtle joke here.

Anyway, he doesn't want to make it a whole thing right now. Leo's had to handle enough without someone getting on his case right after he saved the world. (Heart-shattering, world-stopping, temporary but very real grief whomst? That's sitting in Raph's chest with everything else he doesn't know how to deal with and can't afford to think about yet.) Last thing he needs is to feel worse. ]


You guys have fun gettin' your pillows all Staten Island-y. I call dibs on first shower.

[ He catches Casey's attention, jerks his head towards Leo very meaningfully. Watches him practically trip over himself to come up on Leo's other side. Mikey might retire to his traditional Raph's Shell villa eventually, but in the meantime the less weight on him and Leo, the better. Raph would have just started scooping up brothers, aches and pains be damned, but he's actually not a hundred percent sure he wouldn't break something no matter how he picked Leo up right now? And Donnie looks like he might bite anyone who tried.

Maybe later. Easier to keep taking headcounts like this, anyway. Rear guard settles his nerves. Plus whoa, as an additional totally coincidental life hack: it's not that his brother can't look at him if he's plausibly in a space in the group that just wouldn't be sensible for his brother to keep looking at. ]
supersmashbro: (in ENGLISH dangit)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-25 01:08 am (UTC)(link)
[ Raph has already derailed the shower plan. Donnie wants blood and to "swab residue" and "if you get tap water in that eye right now I'm wiping your Nintendogs data, go sit down."

But Raph is the boss of Raph. Raph doesn't want to sit down and think about anything or feel like his skin is crawling or worry about if something is gonna grow back or-- non-issues. Not thinking. Raph is the boss. So he decides to start hauling in pretty much all the pillows and blankets he can wrangle. The living room is going to become public sleeping space. Almost definitely. Teddy bears? Yes. In case of emergency, break out T-Bone 2: the sequel to T-Bone, tragically lost to time in the old lair. He sets that one down for Mikey to grab after he's gotten his arms cleaned and wrapped. Special privilege.

There's a lot of Draxum-calling in their future, probably.

Leo, he sees, has become one with the pre-existing pillow pile. Still breathing. If everything weren't what it is right now, this would be business as usual. It's not business as usual, so it's-- a relief. If there's been a big invisible fist clenched around Raph's heart, it loosens the fingers a little.

Casey is cool. For getting a start on that first aid. Raph doesn't know all that much about him or what he's like, apart from what he'd consider high-risk behavior encouragement earlier on. Which looking back? Should've accounted for that. Apocalypse future. Maybe the kid needs some outlets.

He keeps what he would consider a reasonable, non-startling distance when he drops his bedtime supplies mountain. Startling not necessary. No... accidental looming? ]


If you're gonna nap, you have to tell me or it's entrapment. [ Is it?

Doesn't matter. It's the principle.

Leo's probably not gonna get a good long stretch of uninterrupted sleep until he's out of the concussion window anyway, because of his whole situation, but just in case. ]
supersmashbro: (booooooo)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-28 01:23 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Conscious: check. Noise of complaint: honestly kind of reassuring. ]

It's my job as a big brother to suspect everything.

[ Except when his baby brother is about to self-sacrificially seal himself away in a prison dimension with a big angry impossible to beat outright enemy that'll have a huge grudge to take out on him, assuming that the exploding creepy spaceship didn't kill him first. When his baby brother is about to do all that and probably knows he's about to do that and sends him away first.

Is it even as easy as that, sends him away? Raph's the one who listened. He's the one who left him.

(But who catches Donnie and Mikey if he doesn't listen?

This is the problem, this is the whole problem, this is his whole problem, it's the whole literal nightmare scenario, where it feels like- like picking between everything and everything and everything, all three everythings--)

Maybe he's losing his touch. Maybe he should go back to the blanket quest. Clean some stuff up. Maybe he'd feel more settled by channeling some sharp-edged energy into his surroundings, by going through the rooms, securing the perimeter. Because stewing will turn into spiraling and spiraling won't do anyone any good, and he's not even that bad off, and there's probably a million things on the docket, and, and, and.

Raph fishes out a Preferred Blanket, chucks it on the ground between his blanket mountain delivery and Leo's pillow pile, and carefully flops onto it like he's some kind of big weird guard dog. In sight. In reach.

Because ultimately heavier than anything on the scale is that he hates the idea of leaving Leo in here by himself. If by "hates the idea," one means "briefly thought about that conceptually and it made him wanna gnaw a cinderblock into crumbly little pieces."

Which is, at least, a routine baseline emotion for Raph. It's actually very calming for him. Enough knee-jerk anxiety to pull his attention away from the other billion emotions trying to get processed all at once, but not so much that he can't soothe it just by staying put. ]


I wanna yell at you so bad. You know that?
supersmashbro: (free trauma for everyone)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-28 04:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Raph huffs. Which is like sighing for someone who operates on 110% emotional intensity. It's basically exactly the same.

He tries to gather up some yelling energy. Flexes his fingers a few times. What would it do right now? Heck, where would he even start? All those thoughts he was thinking on the walk home, about the arguing and the getting on Leo's case, the great-granddad versus Pops energy of it all, still very important. ]


Yeah.

[ Yeah, Leo will be here, yeah, Leo's probably not gonna be on the move for a while. Yeah he thinks he does want to yell? Yelling happens with most of his feelings, so it's a safe bet. Yeah, yeah, and yet.

Raph makes a frustrated noise and runs a hand down his face, and whether or not that's a little bit painful is his business. ]


I love you. [ He found a slight percentage of yelling energy after all, and he's applied it.

There's a world where Leo's not here. There's a world where he's gone and none of them said it in the moment. Technically that was this world for a couple of minutes. ]


Don't you ever do that to us again.

[ Raph would feel around for a blanket or a teddy bear to throw, for emphasis, but dare he say, even a thrown bear might not be ideal with all the bruising. Not with as hard as he usually throws, anyway. ]
supersmashbro: (we want ANSWERS.)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-29 07:56 am (UTC)(link)
[ "What was I supposed to do," he says. "Hopefully," he says. The tone of it all.

Ugh. Teenagers.

Raph refuses to let the fact that he too is a teenager surface in his mind palace. It wouldn't serve him right now. ]


Hope-nothin', sassyshell! Won't. End of sentence. You think Raph won't come over there and give you the most medically unsound noogie of your life?

[ He absolutely will not, for myriad reasons. One of them being that it would just end up being a non-noogie-shaped very careful hug, which he has no issue with, apart from the fact that he'd have gone over there with noogying intent.

In hindsight, the fact that he simply chooses to not acknowledge the world-destroying first half because he gets it makes Raph feel a way. Mad. Extremely, viscerally sad. Terrified. So several ways.

He fishes around for a bear after all, but it's just for personal reasons. ]
supersmashbro: (a chill normal dude)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-29 12:17 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Exactly. A hundred percent. No kaiju-sized dinosaur war races or government agencies trying to catch them for experiments or mystic time cops turning them into fugitives on the run through multiple realities until they pull another world-saving stunt and get pardoned. It's all weirdos who mutated and got really amped up about how they think they deserve to do petty crimes now.

In the meantime, this explains why Captain Cuddles was nowhere to be found when Raph went around grabbing blankets.

Scientific fact: hard for a turtle to look appropriately stern when he's very relieved to be accepting a teddy bear. Raph is not immune to that struggle. The relief wins out.

And it's such a Leo move to say that like it's so obvious, like it wasn't even a whole active thought he had, that Raph would want this and Raph would end up nearby sooner over later, which is like. Infuriating. It's fondness so intense he feels like it could crack his chest open. He exhales, hard. ]


...

Gimme thirty seconds. [ A nice reasonable amount of time in which to de-scramble and then try to have an actual Talk About Things with his little brother, who he loves very much.

Lying on the floor with a stuffed animal doesn't make his problems disappear, but it also never makes them worse. It's good to just-- have something familiar sometimes. Squeeze, on and off, predictable rhythm.

They're still his hands. They only do what he wants them to do.

Everyone is here and everyone is safe. They're all close enough to keep that way. They'll take care of each other.

They got through the scariest, hardest parts. Now it's down to the just scary, just hard parts.

Scary and hard are easy. You just run into them until they're done. ]
supersmashbro: (que)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-30 12:31 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Forty-five seconds is practically a whole vacation. Apart from that quick stretch of time earlier, the uncomplicated little bubble that popped up where something big was over and he had all three brothers in his arms, it does Raph more good than pretty much anything else has so far. More than blanket quest, more than a normal non obsessive amount of headcounts.

Forty-five seconds to breathe is something that can be so personal.

Leo doesn't open on a question that he's expecting. Not that he guesses he was expecting any particular super specific questions, if he's honest, but.

It's kind of a big question.

Raph hesitates. Looks away for all of two more seconds. ]


The radio cut when the portal did.

[ Which is, of course, not strictly a direct answer to the question. ]
supersmashbro: (poor dad)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-30 03:00 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Of course he's relieved. Of course he is.

Who in their family wouldn't be, right? If they thought nothing got through. That at least their family didn't hear whatever awful stuff happened, at least they weren't there to see the worst. He knows the thought. He doesn't want Leo to know the thought. ]


You mean just worrying. [ Which is supposed to be Raph's job. Rude.

(He should've pushed back when Pops first put Leo in charge. He should've put his foot down, he should've asked him to wait for a while, because Leo is his kid brother, he's a kid, it's Raph's job to watch out for him, so he should've argued it, should've figured something out, a way to talk to Leo about this stuff that wasn't breathing down his neck, or trusted him more or trusted him less or should've, should've, should've--

It's not about him. It's not about him.)

Raph hauls himself closer with a grunt, solely for the sake of being closer to the brother consigned to his pillowy fate. He can't simply scoop Leo up and hug him until they're forced to separate, at least not without some medical safety risks? He's not totally sure. Better safe than sorry.

But he can sort of curl half-around the pillow pile and nudge Leo's dumb flopped-over hand, and press his forehead to one of the bottom-tier pillows like it's basically the same thing. ]


This whole operation falls apart without you in it.

[ He's gonna have to tell him. That it happened. The mind-meld stuff. Some wrenching desperate scramble for anything that managed to work. It's the responsible thing, and the fair thing, which means it kinda sucks to need to do it.

Can't outweigh the benefit of being able to tell Leo he can talk about it, though.

Just a matter of figuring out how to start. ]
supersmashbro: (baby boy. baby)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-30 11:40 pm (UTC)(link)
[ In hindsight, Raph will own that one. What if he didn't surprise the resident turtle who just nearly got beaten to death in the prison dimension, actually. File it away in worried big brother notes, some of the only notes that he's ever kept diligently.

All things considered, probably not personal. All things considered, probably not in a position to be offended if jerking away was a little bit personal. He doesn't have free space to spare for that anyway.

Leo's starting fumble to the question drags out a quiet amused noise in spite of everything. The question proper is both valid and hard to pin down an answer on. Raph vibes on it for a while.

To know that he's safe to be around long-term, that he ripped everything terrible out of himself or burned it away and it's not waiting to grow back. To know a hundred percent for sure that everyone is gonna be alright. To get April home safe.

To fill in some of the gaps he's working with.

Some floor time with Captain Cuddles, which Leo did already make an important contribution towards. For Leo to simply not be out of sight again until he's forty years old? Maybe.

A good cry. But that's for later.

Nothing he can't deal with. ]


I gotta talk to you.

[ Understatement is a vital ninja skill. ]
supersmashbro: (baby boy. baby)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-01 05:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Well, he doesn't sound not here for it. Awfully casual. But casual's always sorta been Leo's comfort zone. At a certain point, Raph needs to stop being surprised about it. Leo got mutant oozed and hogged all the face man.

It makes it hard to get a read on him. He knows him, he loves him, but they speak different languages sometimes. Usually about really important stuff. In other news, the sky is wet, the grass is blue. That's not right. Whatever. Raph knows what Raph meant to think.

There's a lot he wants to get into. Thinking about it. Like, he touched on the most important things, the "I love you" and "never do it again" and "it falls apart without you." It wouldn't hurt to really drill those in, though. He definitely needs to lay out that there was no hero move to what he did at all, just him being the most terrified he's maybe ever been in his life. Needs to-- not put off the Responsible Disclosure, because it'll be easier on Leo to know what they know, and everyone isn't gonna be busy in other rooms forever.

But first, maybe something he knows from experience is probably a Leo-need right now, not simply a want. ]


It was some big mystic portal energy thing. Mikey's arms. I mean, you probably picked up on that. But I guess he can just do that now? Rip through dimensions?

[ He never got the memo about it. Not that it was a bad thing to have suddenly on the table, at their lowest. ]

It kinda-- ate at him. Started to. So me and Donnie hitched up, took some of it on. Between Dee and Draxum, we'll probably know what the situation is pretty fast. What's gonna help him most. He can boss the rest of us around about bein' his hands for a while. Take it easy. [ And if Draxum has to go out and do some villain-adjacent activities to secure things that will be helpful, well, they're all on lair lockdown for the foreseeable future anyway, so they wouldn't know about it and wouldn't be looking if he did.

Raph idly scratches at the floor a little bit with his thumbnail. There's something meditative about it. About feeling it. If he's honest, there's also a tiny bit of a selfish comfort to laying out a status report. Like a mental checklist to ward off worst case imaginings, only saying it out loud. Another form of doing headcounts. ]


Donnie's banged up. Big hit. Rough landing. I think he's movin' alright, but he's kinda cagey, even for him. I dunno if it's a stress thing or what. So maybe don't poke the bear too hard when he's fixin' you up. [ Because 'fixing up' sounds better than 'assessing how much of a jigsaw puzzle you are right now.' ] Pops and April and Casey look way tired, but they seem solid. Nothin' a nap on the good cushions won't help. I mean, I'm guessin' with Casey, I don't really know him. I feel like a nap wouldn't hurt the guy.

[ Pops and April always have good cushions dibs. Casey can have third dibs because he's a guest. Or possibly lives here now? That's a later thing to figure out. For now, he can have some guest privileges as a treat. ]

We're all here. We're good. You did good.

[ Obviously apart from the stuff he yelled about already, which he was totally the most right about and not biased about at all! Source: he said so. Obviously. ]
supersmashbro: (baby boy. baby)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-03 06:15 am (UTC)(link)
April's probably got leads on how to reach 'em. Could start there.

[ Humans are supposed to be into family plans for disasters, aren't they? He hopes so. If they gotta ninja buddy system escort her home or to a meetup spot safely, so be it.

"Figure Casey's situation out tomorrow" is a good plan. In his opinion. A little bit because it's nice to know he didn't miss out on like, any "yeah of course you can stay here with us or whatever" developments.

Would've been a weird night if they got to that mid-alien-invasion, but you never know. ]


And we always got somethin'. Leftovers. Like a hundred boxes of noodles. [ Many already open and only half-full even though some are the exact same types of noodle, for reasons beyond Raph's comprehension. ] We can do food. It just won't be anything fancy.

[ But he doubts Leo's really fussed about comprehensive and fancy as much as doable. Two steps ahead thinking about stuff. Raph doesn't mind being those couple steps back, honestly.

He hesitates. ]


Anything else on your list, boss man?

[ Raph's ready to big brother, right-hand turtle do his best to round up whatever Leo needs rounded up, but also he knows he's kind of pushing off the hard topic. If he keeps on that, Leo might hear it from Mikey or Donnie, which could be... messy. Messier? Maybe be mad that Raph didn't tell him first even though he asked him about it more or less directly.

Raph's always had problems with that. The breaking not-exactly-great news. ]
supersmashbro: (u could all end up DEAD)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-03 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
[ They'll have to rely on the non-turtle fam to make the noodle dream a reality. Or, pending nap status, Mikey can Ratatouille Raph around and simply force him to do better.

He just doesn't see the need to evolve cooking skills past the complexity level of "I have sometimes in the past made grilled cheeses or boxed macaroni." For reasons only partly related to having hands so big he can palm their dad like a basketball, and the complications therein.

But. Okay. Rip the band-aid, Raph. That's your opening. It's as much of a brotherly duty as any other, aka a privilege not to be taken lightly.

Boss Brother absolutely gets a snort, though. Dork.

(He misses being a bunch of dorks. Sneaking into pools and gardens and arguing about stuff that doesn't even matter. He misses when being scared of what else they might lose if the next Shredder-sized thing cornered them again didn't take up so much space.

He doesn't know how a person works on balancing that, but maybe he should start trying harder. After this stuff starts settling down, anyway.) ]


There's, uh... there is somethin' you should know. And you're not gonna like it. [ Nailed it, nailing it, definitely the reigning champ of being good at giving his brothers news that they will almost certainly hate. ] I think it'd be worse not to tell you, though. So. I'm gonna offer you Captain Cuddles for emotional support first. If you want him.

[ Touching Leo unannounced seemed like a bad time. In general. It's no hardship to forewarn that he's about to hold a teddy bear up to the pillow pile. ]

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