Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing about intermediate knitting, Leo thinks, is that it's really not all it's cracked up to be.

He finds out about it on a Tuesday – he remembers that because it's the same day Raph always leaves for his new gym, and it's a little easier to breathe when he's not around.

That's a mean thought, and it probably has more to do with Leo than it ever did with Raph, so he tries not to focus too much on that part. They all must be glad when he's gone, too, after all.

Being in the same room as his brother used to feel like lighting up a fuse, and it feels like drowning now, and Leo supposes if there ever was any middle ground there – it's all ash or mud by now.

He's in his room, face lit up by his phone when Mikey walks in.

He doesn't knock, because he never does, and he would've startled Leo if he wasn't so tired. For someone who can't spend five minutes in a room where he's not the center of attention, Mikey can be really sneaky like that. Leo didn't even hear him coming.

His little brother frowns, looks around, then reaches out a hand to flip the light switch.

“Bitch,” Leo curses, raising an arm to cover his eyes from the sudden light. They sting either way, and he winces.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Mikey asks.

“I'm emo now,” Leo says.

It's easier to joke than to tell the truth, which is that lying flat on his back in the dark is the only way to stop the sudden wave of nausea that sometimes overtakes him.

It's probably anxiety, or stress, or something or other that Mikey would have a fancy word for, which is exactly why Leo can't tell him any of this.

But there's something on his face that makes Leo think he sort of knows either way.

They got that in common – both always perceptive and watchful, and the main difference is that Leo never lets that show.

Mikey goes to sit on the edge of the bed, almost squashing Leo's knee in the process, probably on purpose.

“Here.” He extends one hand to Leo, and it's only then that he notices he's holding anything.

It's a small rectangle of paper, all colorful and a little wrinkled. Leo takes it, eyes tracing over the first letters that jump out at him.

'INTERMEDIATE KNITTING CLUB'

“You're joining a new club?” He asks.

Mikey's in a lot of clubs right now, like yoga, and amateur painting, and something to do with pottery, or at least a lot of clay. Hidden City has a lot to offer, and his brother seems determined to try it all.

Or he's just trying to get out of the house as much as possible, which also wouldn't be all that surprising.

“No,” Mikey says. “You are.”

That makes Leo pause.

He looks at his brother, down at the flyer, and then laughs.

“The hell?”

Mikey makes that face, like he always does when he's about to use every ace in his sleeve to make a point. He's the youngest, and he's got those big doe eyes and a bigger smile, and that lets him have his way in more cases than should be possible.

“You're joining that club.” Even now, he's already looking at Leo with some wide-eyed expectation. “We already called them to let them know. You like knitting, don't you?”

Leo stares at the word 'intermediate' for a moment.

He picked up knitting a few years back; something to keep his hands and mind busy during long nights of insomnia, which happened often, even back then. He supposes he's good at it, in the sense that he can pick up most patterns labeled ''BEGINNER'' he finds online and complete them with moderate success.

He likes having hobbies like that. Things he's not particularly interested in. Because then it doesn't matter if he's bad or good at them, or if Mikey thinks his stitching is all wonky, or if Raph always complains he leaves his yarn everywhere. He doesn't care for it either way.

(Leo's really good at lying to himself like that.)

“It's whatever. That's not the point.” Leo sits up, folding his legs to rest his elbows on his knees. “I'm not joining a knitting club, Mike, I'm not a grandma. I got better things to do.”

“Like what, sit in your room all day?” That's mean, and they both know it. Mikey's gotten a lot meaner in the last few months.

“Whatever,” Leo mumbles. He wasn't in a good mood when Mikey walked in, and he's in an even worse one now. “Is that all?”

“Man, why do you have to be like this?” Mikey huffs. Leo pushes the paper into his chest, but he doesn't take it, standing up. “I'm trying to help. I'm tired of you sulking.”

Leo knows he's been sulking. He feels bad, and angry, and bitter all the time, but having it pointed out like this is the last thing he needs.

“Is that all you wanted?” He repeats.

Mikey watches him for a long, long moment.

“Oh, whatever,” he says finally, turning around to leave. “You're impossible to talk to.”

Leo's face burns.

The last few months have been awful, being a leader has been awful. Mikey knows it, and it's not like him to bring it up like this. It's something he'd never say just a year ago, and Leo hates how many things have changed in that short of a time.

He watches Mikey leave, turning off the light as he goes. With a last burst of anger, he yells:

“I don't need my kid brother telling me what to do!”

He regrets it quickly.

He's been fighting with Raph, not Mikey, and he really has no reason to yell at him.

(Though lately it feels like he's been arguing with everyone, about anything. The only reason he hasn't been fighting with Donnie is because Donnie hasn't been leaving his room all that much.

He really is getting impossible to talk to.)

Mikey slams the door shut before he can apologize.

***

Leo ignores the flyer on his desk for two whole days.

A pretty good record for letting the guilt eat at him from the inside out, all things considered.

He would've thrown it away or put it at the bottom of his drawer to be completely forgotten, but he can't really bring himself to. He didn't apologize to Mikey that night, and it felt all too heavy the next morning, like a migraine, where even the sound of his own voice was too painful to bear.

He lets that fester inside, more and more, until he finally caves, because Leo really is getting restless in this house, and because he has nothing better to do, and because Mikey always gets his way.

So he goes.

Mostly just so he can hate it and then tell his brother all about it, or like it and never admit it either way, but say that at least he tried, so his hands are clean.

He goes to prove Mikey wrong, for the most part.

***

It takes him a moment to find the right place, and when he finally does, he sort of wishes he would've gotten lost forever instead.

The lady that opens the door for him looks about his dad's age, but her hearing must not be all that great anymore, because she's basically screaming at him all the way.

“Oh, it's been so long since we had someone young join us.” She laughs, her gray cat ears twitching. “It's so nice to see kids interested in something other than their phones.”

Leo, who's usually more than interested in his phone, nods vaguely.

He's not planning on 'joining' anything, but he doesn't tell her that. He's not above being an ass to anyone for any reason, as he's been discovering those past few months, but he doesn't know her, and it feels below even him.

Besides, she probably wouldn't hear either way.

She loops her arm around his, leading him further in. She's a lot smaller than him; her arms are so thin he's a little afraid he might just break them in half if he walks too fast.

The meeting room sits tucked away at the bottom floor of a small building, right outside a retirement home, which is probably one of the main reasons for its age demographic.

It's bigger than he was expecting, filled with chattering Yōkai and with comfortable-looking chairs set in a semi-circle in the middle; sofas and tables pushed up against the walls. It's all old floorboards and offensively ugly wallpapers, with large windows covering one side, right around the front door.

It looks a little like an old antique shop, and Leo wouldn't be surprised if it was just that sometime back in the day.

“The pottery club happens right before us,” the lady tells him, pointing out one of the tables. There's a large, gray smear over it. Leo has lived with Mikey long enough to know what someone's desperate attempt at cleaning up clay looks like, and why his brother abandoned that particular hobby. “They leave such a mess, I swear. But our boy's always here early to help clean up, we're lucky to have him.”

“Who?”

“What was that, dear?”

“WHO?”

“Oh, right.” She laughs again, leading him to a second door, tucked away in the corner. “He's our 'club president'. That's funny, isn't it? He hates when we call him that, gets all flustered, poor thing.”

Leo doesn't know what kind of person would willingly subject themselves to becoming the president of a senior knitting club, but it doesn't sound like someone Leo could get along with very well.

She reaches out, cracking the door open and sticking her head inside. She can move rather fast when she wants to, Leo notices.

He tries to look over her shoulder. It looks like a storage room, or a closet, and that's about all he's able to make out.

“Usagi, dear?” She shouts so loud Leo can still hear her perfectly well, even from a few steps behind. “Are you in here?”

There's a sudden rustle, the unmistakable sound of something very heavy dropping to the ground, quiet cursing, and a breathless:

“Yes!”

In the next moment, the door swings fully open from the inside.

Leo isn't really sure who he was expecting.

Probably someone fifty years his senior, smelling like old mints and a department store, with thick glasses and a couple of grandkid pictures in their wallet. That seems to just about describe the rest of the club, anyway.

But when the guy turns to look at him, his face seems young, still rounded around the edges, and he can't be that much older, actually.

He's a little shorter (but maybe tall for a rabbit), broad around the shoulders in that way that might've gotten him on a high-school football team, with a killer smile that probably would've let him get away with murder. The eye-crinkling kind that makes every woman want to pinch his cheeks, and makes every man want to call him 'buddy'.

(Leo's smile always makes people say he looks like James Dean, or Kennedy, or someone like that. Never the right celebrity, but he takes it anyway.)

He's handsome in a way that would make some nice girl's nice mother very happy.

“Shoot,” he says, sounding halfway to a laugh. He looks down at his hands, full of boxes that don't look too heavy but are definitely an armful. “Hold on, give me a minute-”

“Oh, I'll take that.” The woman reaches out, and he hands her the boxes with some relief. “I should leave the introductions to you.”

“Thank you.”

“What was that?”

“THANK YOU.”

“Oh, no problem, dear.”

She walks away, suddenly fast and brisk on her feet. She drops a few boxes on her way, but nobody seems too concerned about that, so neither is Leo.

“Sorry, you caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting you here today. Not that it's bad!” He adds quickly. “We always have space for new people.”

Leo blinks, turning back to look at him.

He gets so caught up in watching people, he sometimes forgets they can see him right back.

He supposes he should smile, so he does, and if the other boy notices it's strained – he doesn't let that show.

“Well, I wasn't really planning on showing up,” he says.

He wanted it to be a little mean, because his mind is already halfway out the door. He supposes not being the only one bringing the average age in the group down by at least a couple of years should make him feel better, but it doesn't.

Usagi laughs like it's a joke, which is probably the better outcome.

“Glad to see you've changed your mind,” he says. He speaks a bit fast, like he's got a lot of things to say all at once. “My name's Yuichi Usagi, but you can just call me 'Sagi, everyone does. Like my great-grandfather, he was a really cool guy. I mean, I never met him, but you know.”

Leo doesn't know.

He met his great-something-mother once, and then she died the same day.

“Okay,” he says, a little lost. It's usually hard to make him anything close to speechless, but Usagi's saying so much, and so fast, that it feels like he's soaking up all the words in the room. “I'm Leonardo.”

Usagi looks at him for a moment, blinks, and then startles, quickly reaching out his hand, like it was some vital step he forgot before and is a little scared to do now.

It's a bit pathetic, but Leo shakes his hand anyway.

He expected his palm to be soft (he looks soft all around, for obvious reasons), but it's worn out and rough, with a strong grip. He doesn't really know what to think about that.

Leo's own hands are dry and hard, covered in old scars and callouses, no matter how much he tries to take care of them, and he notices the way Usagi glances down at them, clearly surprised.

“Are you a farmboy?” He asks when he finally lets go of his palm.

Leo blinks.

He thinks about it for a moment. If that's an insult, it's so strange he can't even bring himself to be angry about it, and that annoys him even more.

“What?”

“Oh, sorry. I just-” Usagi rubs his hands together. He looks a little flustered now. “I am. My family owns a farm, I mean. I thought...”

“Oh,” Leo says. “No.”

That would've killed the conversation with just about anyone else.

“Right!” Usagi laughs again, like Leo just said something funny. “I remember your brother called a few days ago. Said you were really good.”

He hasn't stopped smiling once.

“He said that?” Leo asks.

Mikey didn't believe in 'false but encouraging' compliments when it came to art.

It was one of the few things he's always been overly critical about, and Leo knows he thinks his projects come out lousy, and unoriginal, and 'dull', or whatever the fuck. That's probably because Leo never puts that much effort into them, all things considered, but he really can't imagine how pulling together yarn could be any more 'inspired'.

“Oh, yeah.” Usagi looks a little over his shoulder, maybe making sure all the boxes are being properly dealt with. “He said a lot of things about you, want me to repeat? It was kind of funny. I kept telling him we had space, and we didn't take members based on 'personality', but he kept going on and on about how great of a guy you were. Maybe he just wanted to talk to someone. Sometimes when I need to talk to someone, I call random numbers. Crazy how many people will stay on the line.”

He seems all over the place, mind jumping around like a broken cassette. That reminds Leo a little bit of Mikey, but Mikey is his brother and therefore safe from most of Leo's bitter scrutiny.

“Mikey said that?” Then, for the lack of anything better to say: “Well, that's new.”

For the first time, Usagi's smile falters. He frowns, then looks up, like he's trying to think for a moment.

“Mikey?” He repeats. “I think he said his name was Raph.”

That makes Leo's mind stop in its tracks.

It does that sometimes – when there are too many thoughts, or too many things to consider, and he needs to pull it back by the reins.

“... Raph?” He asks again, just to make sure.

“... Is that not your brother?”

“No, yeah, it's- Nevermind.”

He feels bad suddenly.

Something in his stomach tightens, like it might just tear him up from the inside, and he looks away, because there must be a weird look on his face now, and he wouldn't know how to explain it even if he wanted to.

He fought with Raph that Tuesday.

He doesn't really remember what about, probably something about the mess in his room, or unwashed dishes, or being a lousy leader and almost getting all of them killed.

And Leo said something mean, like ''If you hate me so much, you can just say so'', or ''You're not my fucking dad'', because he says things like this all the time now.

He thinks about Raph that morning, how he looked at him, like he wanted to say something, too, but didn't. He keeps not saying things, and maybe that's why Leo keeps saying too much.

He imagines Raph leaving after that, picking up his phone, and calling to tell a stranger he's a 'great guy'.

He feels like he's going to be sick.

He must look a little pale, or worried, or something like that, because Usagi tilts his head, smiling again.

“You wanna start now? Come on, I'll introduce you to the rest.”

“Sure,” Leo says.

He doesn't really care.

It's the last time he'll see any of them anyway.

***

It is, to Leo's absolute shock and horror, not the last time he sees any of them.

***

He doesn't really know why he keeps coming back.

He's miles below everyone's level, as he quickly finds out on that first meeting, and he hasn't heard of half the plays, or books, or people they keep talking about, and it makes him feel like he started watching a show three episodes in. That is – slightly confused and not all that great.

He gathers his things with a pit in his stomach, and when Usagi walks up to him on his way, a hand on Leo's shoulder, and asks ''Same time next week?'', he only nods, because he's such a good liar he sometimes does it without meaning to.

And then the next week comes, and he's there.

It keeps happening, and he really can't wrap his mind around it.

He tells himself it's because he's bored, or because he can't stand being home most days, or because Raph wanted him to go.

And that last part might be true, to some extent.

They haven't talked about it, and he's not sure they even know he's going, but that might be for the better. He told Donnie, just in case, and that should be enough.

(He tells Donnie all of his secrets because he's so bad at keeping them, no one would ever think to pry anything out of him. And because Donnie is his best friend, but that's beside the point.)

The people in the club are nice enough, for the most part.

Leo knows how to make other people like him without getting to know him all that well, and he's been getting better and better at it. He smiles, and nods, and listens to stories about kids, and grandkids, and awful in-laws, and talks one lady out of disowning her daughter for dating a guy with tattoos, so it's not all that boring. Or at least – better than being home.

Usagi is always happy to see him, in that way that seems way too genuine to really be honest, and he shakes Leo's hand everytime, which is a little funny (unless he's in a bad mood, in which case it's awfully annoying).

He's not a bad guy, and Leo has no reason to dislike him, really, but he also has no reason to holler at Raph every chance he gets, and yet. He has no idea why he does the things he does anymore.

The rest of the club seems to be in love with him, in that way old people always are with young boys who hold the door open for them and stop to say hello, and maybe that annoys Leo a little, too.

He doesn't like being told how to feel.

But Usagi's so friendly it hurts, and he seems so genuinely interested in everything Leo does or thinks, he almost starts to wonder if he's being made fun of in a very strange, round-about way.

Leo's polite but short with him; throwing in just enough snide-marks with just enough sarcasm, to make most people doubt themselves, at least a little. He knows how to be distant without coming off as rude, and how to be cold without seeming like an asshole, and he keeps that leash as long as he possibly can.

Too bad Yuichi Usagi, as Leo very quickly finds out, is annoyingly bad at picking up on social cues.

***

“Hey, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Leo almost jumps, the back of his neck raising in goosebumps. His fingers tense and shift, reaching for a weapon in years of trained instincts.

His hand only meets the air, and his phone falls to the ground with a pathetic, hollow sound.

“Shit,” he swears, leaning down to pick it up.

He's a little glad for it, because that gives him an excuse to finally turn the screen off and stop staring at his messages.

“Is it good?” Usagi asks, a little sheepish, like it's his fault Leo got clumsy.

Why is he so annoyingly ernest with everything, Leo wonders.

“Yeah,” he says, ignoring the new crack running across the screen.

His phone rang after the meeting, and he sat on the bench to pick it up, but then it was Raph, and Leo doesn't even know how that turned into an argument.

Raph asked if he took his tonfā, and Leo said no, because he hadn't, and then Raph said he didn't believe him, which was ridiculous, because yes, Leo's lied to him more times than he could count and stolen from him even more, but this time he really didn't. Raph was using his sai most of the time anyway, so why does it matter where his tonfā are, but Raph didn't seem too happy when he told him that, and said something about 'responsibility', and 'owning up', and 'Dang it, Leo, why are you always like this?'.

He doesn't really remember what he said after that, but it must've been bad, because his brother hung up on him. He tried calling back, but Raph didn't pick up, and then there was a text on his phone saying they can talk when he remembers how to ''act like a person'', and the only reason Leo didn't throw his phone in anger was because he couldn't think of anything equally nasty to text back.

He hates how Raph always talks about responsibility and acting mature but won't stop treating him like he's five years old, and he hates how he never seems to trust him nowadays.

Maybe he'd trust him more if he told him things, like how he knows Mikey took his tonfā earlier in the morning and probably just misplaced them.

He doesn't know why he didn't say that.

(Maybe he just wanted Raph to be angry at him. Making everyone around him as miserable as he feels is all he seems to be doing nowadays.)

“What's up?” He asks.

Usagi always stays a little behind everyone to clean and lock up. When Leo looks over his shoulder the curtains are drawn, all the lights turned off.

He really lost track of time.

That happens to him a lot now. Donnie tells him it's because he's banged his head so many times, and he's starting to think there might be something to it.

Usagi looks at him for a long moment, and it's the first time Leo has ever seen him look anything close to this unsure – his mouth tight and eyes wide. They're a pretty color, now that he's looking at them.

“Sorry,” Usagi says, finally, voice fast. “I didn't mean to eavesdrop, I swear, it's just- The walls are kind of thin here, and you were kind of... Screaming your head off. So.”

Ah.

Leo feels his shoulders droop a little. He's been tense this whole evening, and he's suddenly too tired to really care all that much.

“I'll be quiet next time,” he says, which would probably translate into 'I don't want to talk about this' for anyone else.

Anyone else but Usagi.

“Can I sit here?”

“Shit, I don't own this bench. Do what you want.” That comes out a little meaner than he intended, and he winces, hoping that will be apology enough.

Usagi doesn't even seem to notice, sitting down next to him.

“You good?” He asks, reaching out to put a hand on Leo's shoulder.

That's another thing, too; he's so casual with his touches. He's always grabbing Leo's arm, or nudging him with an elbow, or sitting next to him, leaning back in his chair until their knees meet.

He's soft and warm, and it's really hard to be angry about that.

Leo doesn't really care, but he tries his best to at least be slightly annoyed by it, mostly for the principle of the thing.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm good.” He pulls his arm away, snuffling, reaching out to wipe at his face.

He didn't even realize how close he was to crying until now. He must be looking proper miserable, which would be fitting, since that's just about how he feels, too.

“Was that...” Leo waits for him to find a creative way of finishing that sentence, but he seemingly gives up halfway through.

“My brother,” he supplies helpfully. “Don't worry about that. We just scream at each other like that sometimes.” He feels a mean smile pulling against his teeth. “That's what we do.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Leo waits for him to say something like 'I'm sorry', or 'That's awful', or 'You should really try being nicer to him', just so he can get angry about that, too, but it doesn't come

Usagi's quiet for a moment before looking back at Leo.

“Was that the intro to 'Punch Chowder' as your ringtone, by the way?”

Leo blinks.

That's such a weird and unexpected question that he can't help but laugh a little, in that small, breathless way. He's still a little closer to crying than he would like.

“Yeah,” he says.

He set it a long time ago, and his phone stays on silent mode so much he honestly almost forgot about it.

Usagi gives him a smile, the sort that would've gotten him out of a speeding ticket in a small town.

“Dude, those movies rock. I used to watch them all the time as a kid. I think my dad was a big fan or something, we had a million tapes of that stuff in the house.”

“My dad too,” Leo says, a little joke only for him.

“Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't really know, I never met the old man, but I'm guessing they were his.” Leo's smile falters a little. “Teriyaki Shakedown was my favorite.”

“That's a good one,” Leo says, slowly.

Usagi's quiet for a moment. He talks so fast he might just need to take a few deep breaths to keep it up.

Finally, he holds up a hand, the keys to the building hanging from his finger, and he jiggles them, a little too excitedly.

“I gotta give these back to the owner. Wanna come with?”

Leo watches him for a long moment.

“You’re not going to ask about it?”

Usagi blinks, almost puzzled, before some recognition passes over his face.

“About what, your brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?

“No.”

“Well then, there you have it.”

Leo feels a little like he just missed a few steps walking down.

He looks at his own hands, mostly out of lack of anything better to do. He must've been chewing on his nails again, because his skin's bleeding a little. He wipes it with his other hand.

“Yeah,” he says, finally. “Yeah, sure, let's go.”

***

The thing is – Leo's used to not talking about things.

They never do, he and his family, unless Mikey manages to physically force it out of them, and he doesn't seem to be having that much luck with it lately, either.

He and Usagi don't really talk for the rest of that evening, but he walks Leo down to the portal he uses to get home, and he tells him to 'take it easy', all casual and sweet, like they're already friends, and Leo doesn't catch himself in time before replying: 'You too'.

“You're a tough guy,” Usagi tells him the next week. Leo managed to catch him right after the club meeting ended, which was a little hard, since it always seems like everyone wants to talk to Usagi, all the time. “I gotta crack down, like, four more layers before you start to talk about your feelings.”

Leo doesn't think anyone has ever described him as 'tough' before, and it doesn't really feel like a compliment in this case, but he takes it either way.

“Sure,” he says. Then: “And, uhm, thanks I guess? You kind of took my mind off the whole thing.”

He really did.

Leo didn't see Raph for the rest of that day, and he didn't text him back, but that also meant he didn't say anything awful again, and that should count for something.

Usagi blinks at him, clearly a little surprised.

“Really?” He says, then smiles. “Shoot, you're welcome. I recommend myself for the future.”

He's so earnest in everything he says and does, and Leo can't really keep pretending that the thought of someone taking a genuine interest in his ringtone doesn't make him feel more than a little flattered.

Growing up with his brothers, so wholeheartedly honest in all of their optimism, and hate, and excitement, and anger, made Leo particularly allergic to anyone who wasn't.

He hates toxic positivity, and he hates people trying to be funny when they're not, and he hates people who can't stand to sit in their own feelings for even a minute, and the irony and hypocrisy of it all isn't lost on him.

But he's not above admitting his own misjudgment, at least not in this case.

Usagi's a weird guy, and he seems to have a hard time picking up what Leo's putting down, but he's real, and that's hard to come by nowadays. They don't make them like that anymore.

“Look,” he says, finally, looking over his shoulder just to make sure they're alone. “I'm really sorry. For, like, everything. It's been a rough past few months, and I just- Sorry I've taken that out on you.”

Usagi blinks.

He looks at Leo, then down at his own hands, then back at Leo. Whatever he might be looking for – he clearly doesn't find it there.

“Why?” He asks, voice slow and unlike him. “What are you apologizing for?”

“For being an ass.” It did feel like Usagi wasn't really getting that Leo was trying to be mean, but he wanted to assume it was a rather careful play of ignorance. Clearly, it wasn't. “In my defense, you seemed like the kind of guy I don't usually like.”

“Wait, you didn't like me?” There's such honest shock and hurt on his face, like Leo just slapped him on the wrist.

He looks like a kicked puppy, and that's a really hard look to bear. Leo feels his cheeks flush, and he stuffs his hands into his pockets, looking away, mostly just to keep himself from doing something embarrassing, like squeezing Usagi's shoulder or shaking his hand.

“That's a harsh way to put it,” he says. He sort of wishes he would've kept his mouth shut about this whole thing. Ignoring his guilt rarely leads him to anything good, but he was feeling lucky today. “I just thought you were kind of annoying. A little. In, like, a harmless way.”

“... Well, now I'm upset.” It doesn't sound like he's joking, but something on his face softens when Leo looks up at him. “Can you apologize again?”

“I'm sorry.” It's rare for him to say that, and even rarer to mean it, but he hopes it's not showing.

Usagi's mouth tightens, like he's thinking about something long and hard.

“Do you still think I'm annoying?” He asks.

“No,” Leo says, so quickly he almost chokes on it. “Really, I mean it. You were never annoying, I was just a judgmental asshole for no reason. You're-” He stops, finally noticing the smile that's been pulling at the corners of Usagi's mouth. “Oh, you're fucking with me. Okay.”

Usagi laughs and then smiles again, with a lot more teeth.

“Yeah, I am.” He reaches out a hand for Leo to shake, and that makes him grin, too. “How about we start fresh?”

“No way,” Leo says. “You're gonna undo your progress on all those layers?”

It's really hard to keep a straight face when talking to him. Leo doesn't know how he never noticed that before.

“Well, I better get to work then, huh?”

***

Leo's never had a friend like this before.

Growing up with three brothers, there were very few things in life he could afford not to share, and friends were never on that list.

He and his brothers were always stitched together, always following each other's footsteps and stepping on ankles. It was rare for them to do anything alone when they were younger, and even as they got older, people tended to see them more as a unit than as individuals.

(Hueso used to look at him and ask where 'the rest of him' was, and that used to make Leo laugh, until it didn't.)

He considers bringing Usagi back to the Lair or going out for a pizza with all of them, because him and Mikey would get along great, and Donnie might like that he's such a good listener, and Raph would probably get over the whole rabbit thing eventually.

He considers it, and then he doesn't.

It feels like they're further apart than ever before, and it makes him feel so damn alone all the damn time, and the fact that he's the one who keeps drawing thicker and thicker lines certainly isn't helping.

But in this one, singular case – it's for the better. It gives him a good enough excuse.

Because there's a part of him that fears Usagi and Mikey would get along too well, and then he wouldn't really be Leo's friend anymore, because why would he when a better, nicer, kinder version of him is right there.

He fears that Donnie would be unkind, and that would scare Usagi away even more, because it would make him realize there's a big part of Leo that's exactly like that, too.

He fears that Raph would look at him, and somehow Usagi would know that Leo's a horrible brother, and a lousy friend, and that he's so perfectly aware of it, he keeps finding new ways to make it worse.

His brothers know every single side of him like a mirror.

He's not ready to face that reflection just yet.

He's not ready for Usagi to see it.

***

Three months in, he starts showing up early.

Usagi seems to spend a lot of time around the place cleaning up, or fixing up something for the other clubs, or gluing together posters that look more like free labor for the retirement home next door than anything else.

He's gentle and kind by nature, and it made Leo fear he's being taken advantage of, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. Or at the very least – Usagi looks perfectly happy with it.

But the amount of effort he's putting in makes Leo feel a little bad, in the same way watching someone vacuum around the couch he's sitting on does. Usually that's not enough to actually make him get up, but there's something about Usagi that makes it really hard for Leo to stay away, even if he wanted to.

He feels lonely, and bored, and it's so nice to finally talk to someone who doesn't expect anything from him.

So he comes early.

He comes early, and he stays late, and they talk about shows and movies they've both seen and games they've both played, and Usagi spends a large portion of every afternoon and evening clueing him in on the many cultural references in the Hidden City.

There's a lot of it, and Leo isn't really sure he gets half of it, but Usagi's so effortlessly funny, even when he's not really trying to be, that it's hard not to listen.

“How did you even end up here?” Leo asks him one day. Usagi blinks, then looks down to the small ladder he's standing on. “Running the club, I mean.”

“Oh. I'm not running anything.”

He takes the box Leo hands him, stashing it on the top shelf. It looks ready to topple over at any minute, but neither of them feels particularly inclined to fix it.

Leo started keeping all of his projects in the club room, because bringing them home would probably raise some suspicion and also feels like a generally bad idea all around.

“My aunt's friend asked me to help out with decorations for some event once, and they kind of dragged me into this thing. Felt bad saying no. Besides, I like knitting.”

“You're good at it, too,” Leo says.

He really is, miles better than Leo at least, though that's not much of a compliment.

Usagi grins down at him.

“Thanks. I used to do it all the time with my aunt.”

Usagi lives with her on their family farm, and that's all Leo dared to ask about this particular subject.

“Why'd you stop?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, then stops, like he actually doesn't know himself. “I guess we just got... Busy.”

Leo winces.

That sort of change always hurts.

He would know.

***

It takes Leo four months to finally ask for Usagi's number.

He feels silly in hindsight, because they've been spending plenty of time together at least once a week, and he's Leo's friend, so it only makes sense, but the idea of it somehow made him so nervous he almost threw up on his way.

(Dad's been forcing mint tea onto him to help with 'nausea', and he's been drinking so much of it, it makes him feel even more sick, but it's better than nothing.)

“Sure!” Usagi says, taking Leo's phone to punch in his number. “What do you want me to put the name as?”

“Whatever you want,” Leo answers, all casual, like it's not taking everything out of him to keep his face under control.

He's been catching himself like this more and more – fumbling and awkward. Leo's an expert at keeping a steady mask, and he knows every muscle in his face, and yet, being around Usagi always makes him come completely undone like this.

Usagi's the most honest person he knows, and lying to him gets harder and harder the more he knows him.

Leo gets his phone back with a new number in it, signed under three bunny emojis.

***

The most annoying thing about Usagi is that he's so painfully, wholeheartedly – a good person.

That in of itself wouldn't really matter all that much. Leo knows plenty of good people, like his brothers, or April, or Hueso, or pretty much anyone in this patchwork of a family who isn't him (or Draxum).

But there's something about Usagi, with the way he smiles, and the calluses on his hands from hard but honest work, and his general, awfully sweet, 'Superman' attitude – that makes Leo, to his own horror, want to follow along.

It's how he ended up in a dingy alleyway, with an armful of lizard and cans of cat food, and it's probably how he'll eventually end up dead in a ditch.

“Why are they so cold?” He asks, trying to wriggle his hand enough to get the creature to finally stop chewing on his sleeve.

“Tokage are always cold,” Usagi answers, voice caught somewhere between a giggle. The lizard on his lap seems more interested in licking his face than the food he's holding. “You're lucky these guys don't even stink all that much.”

“They do stink.”

“Trust me, it gets worse.” He looks at Leo with a grin. “Want to keep one?”

Leo winces.

“I'm more of a dog person.”

***

There's a fire escape in the alleyway Leo uses to get home, and they spend hours sitting on it, watching the dark sky and city.

Usagi doesn't spend all that much time on the surface, and he seems perfectly content with only the brief glimpses he gets walking Leo home, which is maybe a little disappointing. New York is a dump, but Leo's proud of it with all his soul, and he's always trying to spin it into a good light.

He promises to take Usagi to see the Statue of Liberty someday, because it feels almost absurd he hasn't yet, and his friend agrees, in a vague sort of sense.

“I don't know, I'm just kind of wary,” Usagi tells him.

He's leaning against the railing, one foot up. The evenings have been getting colder and colder, and Usagi started wearing an old, worn down motorcycle jacket everywhere he goes. It looks about a million years old, and there's a pink, heart-shaped sharpie squiggle right on the left sleeve.

He looks cool.

“What, you're scared of New York?”

Leo shifts where he sits on the stairs, leaning his elbows against his knees.

He wishes he had a cigarette, or something like that.

He never smoked, and he doesn't think he'd actually like it all that much, but it would definitely make him look a lot tougher.

“I don't know, isn't it kind of dangerous?”

“I mean, yeah,” Leo says, agreeably. “But I also got arrested in the Hidden City, like, twice, so you know.”

Usagi's eyes widen.

“You've been to jail?” He says, and then he smiles in that way he always does when he's about to say something very strange but very on brand. “That's wicked. But no, I mean like...” He looks away, face suddenly a lot more serious. “You know what happened a few months ago? I mean, yeah, duh, you live here, so you'd know. Auntie would kill me if she knew I come out here at all after what went down.”

Leo's face grows numb.

He knows what happened a few months ago. He knows better than he ever wanted to.

He remembers that first night after, lying on his back in the medbay, body aching and buzzing with energy.

He felt like TV static.

Leo and sleep didn't always get along, but it only felt fair it wouldn't come that night. Every time he closed his eyes he saw red, and metal, and Karai, so staring up at the white ceiling felt like a better alternative. He thought about everything and nothing at all.

He knew his brothers didn't sleep either, but Mikey was the only one who moved from his place, climbing up onto Raph's bed and curling up behind him.

(Mikey's been having an awful lot of nightmares since the shredder, but he always gets a little better when there's someone there with him. Leo himself spent countless nights sleeping in his little brother's bedroom, an arm thrown over his neck.)

That night, Leo kept wishing he'd do the same.

And he doesn't know why he didn't.

He must've been quiet for a moment too long, because Usagi looks back at him, frowning.

“Hey, what's wrong?” He steps closer, leaning in a little to look him in the eye. “What's with your face? Shoot, is this a sensitive subject?”

“No,” Leo says, and then realizes he doesn't have to lie. “Kind of, I guess.” He wipes at his nose, looks away. “I'll tell you another time.”

And – with some weird sense of shock – he realizes he means it.

***

Leo and Usagi see each other outside of the knitting club more than they do during it now, mostly prowling around the Hidden City, where Usagi seems to know everyone, and everyone seems to know him.

He's well liked, and there's always someone asking him how he's doing, or how things are going at the farm, and Leo doesn't know why he keeps having the feeling that Usagi doesn't really have any friends.

Maybe it's the semi-formal, small talk-ey nature of it all, or how so many of them don't seem to know anything about him other than who he's related to, or the sort of mechanical way he goes about all of it.

Leo's known Usagi long enough to separate his instinctual politeness from an earnest one (and he can't help feeling flattered when he keeps finding himself on the receiving end of the latter).

He supposes maybe that's why Usagi seems just as keen as Leo is on him.

He also doesn't have many people to talk to nowadays.

***

“I didn't know the Hidden City had a movie theater.”

Leo stands on his toes to look over the crowd. The main street is always busy, packed with people, and he supposes that's why he never noticed it before.

“Yeah, it's still kind of a new thing.” Usagi shrugs. “I mean, probably older than me, but some folks are still really against human stuff for whatever reason.”

“Oh, I couldn't live here,” Leo jokes. “Human stuff is the best.”

“Yeah, well, good for you. This town's a bust anyway.”

Leo turns to him, taken aback.

“What do you mean?”

Usagi blinks, then blushes, quickly making eye contact with his shoes.

“Shoot, I don't know why I said that. I like living here.”

Leo looks to the building, then back to his friend.

“Wanna go see what they're playing?”

They make their way through the sea of people, and Usagi grabs his elbow, probably for practical reasons, but it still makes Leo's hands feel weirdly clammy.

“If you could pick a place to live,” he leans a little closer, just so his friend could hear him better, “anywhere, where would that be?”

Usagi's eyes go wide with excitement. That's Leo's favorite look on him.

“Ever heard of Neo Edo? It's like, way in the east, but it's so cool. They're, like, really big on technology, but also tradition, it's mental. You should look it up. My dad wanted us to move there, I think.”

“Really?”

Usagi never met his dad and barely remembers his mother, but Leo always gets the feeling there are whole people up there in his mind, built up from scattered memories and old things stashed up in the attic. He hopes Usagi gets to keep those images, no matter how false they might be.

“Yeah, I think. He was obsessed with it, had a whole corkboard and everything. Honestly, it kind of looks like one of those conspiracy theory, red string thingy-s.”

Leo looks at him.

“I'm sorry he never got the chance to.”

Usagi watches him back for a long, long moment.

“Yeah.”

The theater is playing stuff they're half-interested in at best and trash Leo's never even heard of at worst.

He tells Usagi they should just sneak in, and he agrees but looks so nervous all the way that Leo secretly buys them the tickets without saying anything when he isn't looking, just in case.

He's smiling and giddy afterwards, like it's the most adrenaline he's had in years.

Leo supposes he can save himself a few bucks next time.

***

Winter in New York is a sad, wet, and cold ordeal.

Leo's a summer person, and the darker months always kill him inside, just a little. This year more than ever.

He's dreading Christmas because he doesn't remember the last time he and Raph were able to spend a whole evening together without it turning into a fight, and he's dreading New Year because there are more things he needs to change in his life than would ever fit on a resolution list.

He's in a particularly foul mood tonight because of a rather nasty encounter with some robbers earlier and because Raph hollered at him right after it.

Which was really unfair, because yes, Leo got reckless, and there's a fresh new bruise growing on his cheek now, but no one really got hurt besides that, and maybe he'd have a much easier time thinking if Raph would just lay off him for once.

He wasn't planning on seeing Usagi today, but he needed to get out of the house after that, and he wasn't asleep when Leo texted him.

He sits on their staircase, hands stuffed into his pocket, and he only looks down when the portal in the wall opens up with a quiet hiss.

He stands to lean over the railing, and Usagi looks up.

Leo grins at him.

“Hey, Superman.”

Usagi's next to him in a second.

“What happened to your face?!” He puts his hands on Leo's mask, turning his head this way and that.

“Easy, easy, I'm fine,” he says, grabbing his friend's wrists to keep him in place.

He really is, for the most part.

Leo and his brothers heal faster than most, and they're generally pretty good at not getting hit, at least in all the important parts, but they all slip from time to time. Raph hates to see them hurt, but things like this come as part of the job.

Leo's probably gotten all of his bones broken at one point or another, there are a few rather gnarly scars on his legs and arms, and he's missing a tooth right at the very back of his jaw. But he supposes Usagi wouldn't really be happy to hear about that right now.

“Are you?” He doesn't sound like he really believes him. “Was it-” He goes quiet for a moment, watching Leo like that could give him all the answers he's looking for. “Is... Are things, like... Okay?”

It takes Leo a moment to realize what he's really being asked for, and when it finally hits him, there's a sudden panic flushing over him.

“No!” He says, so fast it makes Usagi pull back a little. “I mean, no, it's fine! Jesus Christ, man, no, it ain't like that, dude.”

“Well, you can't blame me for asking!” Usagi defends, but he looks more than relieved. “I know things are tense at your house, and this...” He reaches out, pulling the ends of Leo's mask up, then letting them fall over his shoulder. “What the hell happened then?”

Leo opens his mouth to say something about that first part, but then doesn't, because 'tense' is probably the most graceful way to describe it anyway.

“Some guy knocked the daylight out of me,” he says instead. “He was stronger than he looked, I swear.”

“What do you mean 'some guy'?”

Leo quiets for a moment.

There's a lot to explain here, not all of it good, and he's feeling tired, and cold, and there's a growing headache pounding at the back of his skull.

But Usagi's looking at him like he wouldn't push if Leo backed away, and he's probably the best friend he's ever had, and there's really nothing left to lose anymore.

With a quiet sigh, he sits down on the stairs.

And, just like that, Leo tells him.

About Draxum, and his dad, and growing up in the Lair. About the Foot, and then the Shredder, and every painfully annoying bad guy that came in between. About being a leader and how much he hates it, and how he wishes he could somehow change Dad's mind.

Usagi's quiet, safe for a few vague nods or eyebrow raises when the moment calls for it.

When Leo finishes, he hums, raising a hand to chew on his nail, lost in thought.

He looks good when he gets all up in his head like this, and that's about all the positives Leo can bring himself to see in his situation.

At least it's past them now, he thinks.

Finally, Usagi straightens, looks at Leo, and takes a long, slow breath.

“... Lou Jitsu is your dad?”

It's so ridiculous and so like him that Leo has to laugh – the kind that always leaves him a little breathless and Usagi with an embarrassed flush.

“Is that seriously all you got from this story?”

“Well, it was a pretty important part of it!” He defends. Then he looks down again, talking to his knees. “I used to have a crush on that guy.”

“Oh my God.” Leo reaches out to push at his arm, feeling some genuine dread rise up in his gut. “Why would you ever tell me that?”

“Sorry!” Usagi grabs his wrists, because Leo might've genuinely thrown him down the stairs if he didn't. “I just wanted to get that off my chest!”

“Well, now I have to live with it.”

“You'll be fine! You're, like, what?” He thinks about it for a second. “A super-soldier?”

Leo's smile dims a little.

“I'd rather not be,” he says. “Really not all it's cracked up to be.”

Usagi's face grows a little more serious, and he lowers their hands but doesn't let go of Leo's wrists.

“Yeah. Sounds like it.” He runs a thumb over Leo's palm. “I mean, shit, I heard all about that Shredder thing, but you were actually...” Suddenly he looks up, eyes wide and his smile even wider. “What's it like to be a hero?”

“Awful,” Leo says on instinct, and Usagi laughs. “I mean, good, I guess? It feels more like a job title than a feeling at this point.”

“Man, I didn't know I was friends with some big shot this whole time.”

He's doing that thing again, where he can tell exactly where Leo's willingness to talk about a sore subject runs out and manages to change the subject so quickly he barely notices.

He's amazing like that.

Chapter Text

“Wow.” Usagi leans in closer, hand hovering over the sharp edge of Leo's sword. “Does it hurt?”

“What, when I summon it? No.”

It's not really a lie. He wouldn't know how to describe the feeling anyway, even if he wanted to.

Telling Usagi about his life opened up a lot of bragging opportunities, like his sword, or his portals, and Leo takes all of them with a lion pride. Maybe he would feel a little silly about it, if Usagi wasn't taking all of it with such honest awe.

“Can I touch it?” He asks.

They're sitting on a rooftop (a result of Leo showing off his portals earlier), cross-legged and probably dressed a little too lightly for the weather.

“Sure, you can hold it.” Leo takes the opportunity to scoot a little closer for a little more warmth.

“Really?”

Usagi looks at him for a moment, like he thinks Leo's going to change his mind at any moment, before slowly and carefully taking the handle from his palm.

He holds it with surprising confidence, hands steady. He looks like he knows what he's doing, and Leo almost wants to ask him about it.

Usagi looks up at him before he gets the chance.

“You know,” he says, very slowly, “I was going to be a samurai.”

Leo, mostly used to Usagi's general weirdness by now, has to take a moment to process that one.

“Deadass?” He asks, which is probably not the best way to put it, but Usagi only nods.

“Yeah. It's kind of a long story.”

He lowers his hands, resting Leo's sword on his lap.

“Well, I got all day.”

Usagi smiles, but only a little.

“When I was a kid, there was this lady that used to come around the farm a lot.” His voice is quiet, only a little over a whisper. Leo's never heard him sound like that before. “She said she knew my dad, that she was his 'sensei'. I didn't really know what that meant back then, you know, but she would come over and teach me all kinds of stuff.”

“Like how to fight?” Leo points to his sword with a chin. “Seems like you know your way around it.”

“Only a little,” he says, but his cheeks look a little pinker now. “And it was basically a wooden toy anyway. But I think I was good at it.” He's chewing on his nail now, voice a little muffled. “Then one day she said she needed to leave, but I could come and find her to 'prove myself', and then she'd train me into a proper samurai. Man, I cried so much that day.”

Leo doesn't really know if it's appropriate to laugh, but he knows Usagi won't mind it either way.

“Sounds like a lot for a kid.”

“I was eleven. My aunt said she wouldn't let me until I was older, and I bothered her so much about it that we finally agreed on fifteen.” There's a faraway sort of look in his eyes. “Oh, man, I couldn't wait. I was counting away the days and all, had those rip-away calendars. I was all I could talk about.”

There's silence for a moment, and Leo waits for him to keep talking, but he doesn't.

“And then what?”

“And now I'm sixteen.” Usagi shrugs, face painted in something like melancholy, or sadness, or regret. “I don't know why I haven't gone yet.”

Leo watches him for a long moment.

“Do you still want to?”

“Yes,” Usagi says, so quickly Leo doesn't really believe him when he adds: “I mean, I think so. I guess I'm just-”

“Scared?” Leo supplies.

“No.”

“It's fine. I'm scared all the time.”

Usagi grabs onto Leo's sword again, maybe just to keep his hands busy with something.

“It's just... What if I can't prove myself, you know?” He sighs, like this is something he's been holding onto for far too long. “What then? If this is my great destiny or whatever, then what if I can't do it?”

Leo's never heard him sound like this before.

Hesitation looks awful on him, self-doubt even worse, and it feels a little like every time he reaches back for his ōdachi, only to find empty air.

He never thought to consider that the view he had of Usagi might not be the same one his friend sees in the mirror, and that sounds so thoroughly, painfully unfair, that he reaches out, grabbing to squeeze his wrist.

“Well, shit, Superman,” he says, “if there's something you can't do, I don't think there's any hope left for the rest of us.”

Being a hero would suit him, he thinks. If Leo sits where he sits, with all his bitter thoughts and angry words – he can't imagine a world where it wouldn't.

“Shut up,” Usagi says, and he somehow makes it sound almost affectionate. “I'm being serious.”

“Me too.” Leo lets his face soften a little, just so he can get his point across. “You wouldn't need to prove anything to me.”

Usagi smiles, but he doesn't sound convinced.

“Thanks. I know.”

And that might be the first time he's ever lied to Leo.

***

“I'm going to kill him someday,” Leo says.

“No, you won't.”

There's a moment of silence.

“I'm really going to do it, 'Sagi.”

His friend sighs, opens his eyes to look at him.

The first days of spring have been treating the city rather kindly, and it's warm enough for both of them to lie down on a rooftop, stretched out against the concrete, which is nice.

It also means Usagi has stopped wearing his jacket, but Leo considers that a necessary sacrifice, and that he might want them to start knitting more 'flowery' stuff soon, and that just seems pretty miserable all around.

“What did you even fight about this time?” He asks.

Leo goes to sit, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“I don't even know. Nothing important.”

It's not really a lie.

They're a broken record at this point, always going over the same ideas, same issues, same emotions.

It hurts, and it hurts that he doesn't know how to stop himself anymore.

It probably started with their last patrol, because that shit was awful and Leo knows it, even without Raph screaming into his ear, and that's exactly what he told him. And Raph asked him why he never trusts anyone, why he always wants to do everything himself, and it's because Leo doesn't want any of them to get hurt, because that would be his own damn fault and he'd never forgive himself, but that's not what he said. He said something like 'You're just jealous Dad chose me over you', and Raph looked at him like he didn't even recognize him anymore.

He didn't even mean it. It's nothing to be jealous about.

Leo knows that by now.

“If it's not important, why do you keep fighting about it?”

Leo would've punched anyone else for this question.

But it's Usagi, so he only looks at him over his shoulder, glaring.

“We always fight about bullshit,” he says. “It's because we can't scream at each other about the things we're actually angry about.”

That would mean admitting it.

Admitting that this is too much for him and that he just can't do this anymore.

And Raph would need to admit this hurt him too, which he's been refusing to do since the start, because maybe it's easier being angry at each other than at their dad.

“It's so fucking stupid. I'm not a leader.” There's something pleading in his voice now that he doesn't really like, but he can't help himself. “It's like they all have this weird idea of me, like I'm this- I don't even know, great ninja warrior or whatever. But I'm not, I'm just not.” He takes a breath, voice shaky. “Big hero moves are more Raph's style, anyway.”

Usagi watched him for a moment, eyes half-closed. There's a certain look that always passes over his face when he's thinking long and hard, and he wears it now.

“You get so old sometimes,” he says, suddenly. “It's like one minute you're you, and then you say something like that. I barely recognize you.”

That makes Leo pause for a moment.

“Funny,” he says, slowly, “that's the first time I've heard that. People usually tell me I'm immature. And that I need to grow up.”

By 'people' he means Raph, or Dad. And Donnie, on one recent, very memorable occasion.

Leo's used to snapping at his family by now, but fighting with Donnie always feels ten different levels of wrong.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says, then blushes. “Well- I try not to be when I’m with you. But sometimes I'm such an asshole, and I couldn't even tell you why.”

“You're always nice to me,” Usagi replies, and he sounds so earnest it hurts.

“Man.” Leo laughs, something small and sad. “You should've met me a year ago. You would've loved that guy.”

Raph used to be proud of him.

Leo knows, because he used to tell him that all the time. He'd throw an arm over his shoulder and pull him into a side hug, and then hold him a little too tight until it turned into the two of them wrestling on the floor, and he'd let Leo win, because he was a good brother, and he used to love Leo so much.

“I like you as you are.”

That's a very careful word change, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

“Even when I get old?”

He meant it as a joke, but Usagi's face softens with something sad.

“... I don't know,” he says, carefully. “I don't think that's a good way to be.”

That makes Leo turn around before he gets the chance to do something stupid, like yell at his best friend.

“Well, I don't really have a choice,” he snaps. “I got the whole team on my back now.”

He does, and he hates it.

He hates being a leader. It's an awful feeling – a lifetime of responsibility sitting right on his shoulders. It makes him feel scared, and tired, and old.

He wonders why his dad would ever do this to him.

He wonders why they ever did this to Raph.

“I'd never forgive myself if something happened to them, but I keep failing them anyway.” He takes a breath, biting on his nail until his anger fizzles out. “I think- I just want someone to take over for me. I don't know. Maybe I do need to grow up.”

He can't see Usagi's face now, but he can have a pretty good guess.

“Well, there it is again.”

Leo sighs. He locks his fingers together behind his head, resting his forehead on his knees.

He feels a little sick, and dizzy, and like his whole world is falling apart, and like it might all just be his own fault.

There's some shuffling behind him, and then Usagi has his arms around Leo's neck, resting his chin on his shoulder.

He turns his head when he speaks, so Leo not only hears but feels every word.

“How old are you?”

“... Sixteen?” He mumbles into his knees. “You know this.”

“Yeah. Do you?”

Leo doesn't have anything to say to that.

***

It takes Leo a while to admit he might have a small, tiny, insignificant – completely innocent crush on his friend.

Which is actually not that big of a deal at all, really, and he's being so normal about it.

He's used to crushing on movie stars, or fictional characters, or handsome strangers that catch his eye.

There used to be a coffee shop on the street they passed by often, and Leo would go there every single day for two weeks straight because of a particular barista. And then the guy got fired or quit (probably because the place was a complete dump that closed a month later), and that just about covers the extent of Leo's previous love life.

It's different this time.

Maybe it's because he actually knows him, or maybe because Usagi might just be the best person he's ever met, or maybe because he somehow makes Leo want to be better, too.

Usagi's easy to love, with that flashy grin and strong hands, and the way Leo always knows when he's smiling just from the sound of his voice. It's like falling into quicksand.

He might've been doomed from the start.

From the first time Usagi shook his hand, and made a bit of a fool of himself, and said he heard he was a 'great guy'. From the first time Usagi called him a 'tough guy' and put his hand on his shoulder, and walked him home like they were already friends.

Usagi had him before he even realized it.

Falling in love, Leo realizes, feels a whole lot like getting shot right in the face.

He thinks he might be going a little crazy, or like there isn't enough air for him to breathe anymore, and he spends countless hours screaming into his pillow over it.

And the worst part of it all, the part that keeps Leo up at night, is that it might not all be one-sided.

That's what scares him the most.

He's so bad at this – at keeping things he cares about close. He holds them too loose, or too tight, or drops them on purpose, because sometimes he can't stand the idea of it. He wants more than he can chew and ends up breaking everything he owns.

But then Usagi says something funny, and it makes Leo want to kiss him until he runs out of breath, and then Usagi looks at him like he'd let him.

Mikey told him once he was 'all bark, no bite', and Usagi laughed when Leo repeated it to him.

“Like a chihuahua,” he said, which might've been an insult if it came from anyone else.

Leo smiled, but only a little in that crooked way, because he was in a bad mood that day, and Mikey was talking about him and Raph almost getting into a fight that morning.

Raph had never hit him before – not like this. But at that moment, Leo wanted him to.

“Sometimes I feel more like a...” He thought for a moment. “What's that angry breed called?”

“There are no angry breeds,” Usagi chided him. “Just bad owners. Besides,” he added, and suddenly he sounded a lot more serious, voice a little hushed. “I'm not scared of dogs.”

And in that moment, Leo felt like they were talking about something entirely different.

***

“Damn,” Usagi says, which just about sums up the whole situation.

They're sitting on their staircase, knees and shoulders pressed close. It's a little warm for this early in summer, but Leo doesn't dare move away.

He's had an awful day – worse than usual, which should really be impossible by this point, and there's a fresh bruise covering his thigh, and he hates that Usagi already had a pretty good idea of what happened before he even said a single word over the phone.

He doesn't like feeling predictable.

“It's not like I wanted to lose that stupid key.” He shifts, crossing his arms over his chest. He feels small. “How was I supposed to know the Foot would be there?”

There's a moment of silence before Usagi takes a very long, very deliberate breath.

“Well, I mean-”

“Yes, I know it's my fault!” Leo snaps. Usagi pulls back, raising an eyebrow. “Sorry. It's just- I know, okay? I know.”

He groans, leaning down to hide his face in his knees.

“That's a good start,” he says, and sounds so genuine with it, it almost makes Leo laugh or cry.

“It's just- When I step back, he tells me I'm not putting in the effort, and when I try it's like-”

“Are you, though?”

“What?”

“Are you really trying?” Leo straightens, turning to look at him. “Don't look at me like that.”

“I'm not-”

“I know what it looks like when you're trying, and I know what it looks like when you're just half-assing something 'cuz you think it's dumb.” Usagi shrugs, all casual, like it's not completely terrifying how clearly he can see through Leo's bullshit. “Don't think I didn't notice your stitching on that last bucket hat.”

“Bucket hats are stupid,” he says. “And they make my head look big. You think I'm not trying with this? I just can't do it, that doesn't mean I'm not trying.”

Usagi closes his eyes, leaning back, head resting on the stairs. He's got his hood on, but it still looks rather uncomfortable.

“What do you think?”

Leo doesn't think anything.

He couldn't explain half of the things he does anymore. It feels like he's been watching his life only in hindsight.

“I think you're a dumbass,” he says, because he's run out of proper arguments.

“Harsh.”

They don't talk for a long moment.

It's a nice evening, all things considered, the kind where just two years ago he would've dragged his brothers out of the Lair, and they'd eat pizza on some high rooftop, and talk about some new video games and movies, and argue about whether or not they suck.

Leo wishes he could get one more night like that.

He never really appreciated it when he had it.

“I just think-” He says, finally. “I don't know. Sometimes I just wanna get out of here. Hop a train like in those old movies.” He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees.

“I'd go with you,” Usagi replies.

“Nobody invited you, but sure.”

Usagi laughs. That's the best thing about him – he never takes Leo too seriously.

“Where would you go?”

“I don't know,” Leo hums. He closes his eyes for a moment, feeling the wind on his face, and tries to imagine he's somewhere else. Cold desert night, an ocean breeze, frostbite in the mountains. “Anywhere, really.”

“Anywhere is good.”

Leo wonders what that would be like. To walk for miles with his friend, wash their faces in a cold river, fall asleep curled next to each other on a rattling train.

He'd hate living like that; he knows himself too well to even entertain the idea. But in the quiet of his own mind – anywhere with Usagi would be good enough.

“Would you really?” Leo asks.

“What?”

“Would you really run away with me?”

Usagi smiles, his eyes still closed.

“Yeah. I think I would,” he says honestly, because he never lies, not to Leo.

Leo feels his face flush at that, and he says, mostly just to keep his mind busy:

“Maybe the countryside. I've never been.”

“I've been,” Usagi says. “It's really not all that. I mean, I love our farm and all, it's just-”

“You wanna get out, too.”

“... Yeah. I guess so.”

Leo opens his eyes.

He's never been outside of New York and Hidden City. He thought a lot about that in the few days after the Shredder, because he thought about a lot of things during that time.

They were all exhausted, roughed up all around, and it was the first time Leo had seen his dad put his foot down about something in years. He barely let them leave the medbay, even after Leo, Draxum, and Donnie all assured him their test results came out fine, and they got off with only a few bruises and sprains.

It was annoying, but Leo understood it, in a way. They had a few close calls before, but this was by far their closest.

(And then Dad made him the leader, and Leo stopped understanding him at all.)

It made him think of worst-case scenarios, and how any of them could've died that night without ever seeing the world, or getting on a plane, or going to a concert, or doing much of anything, really.

Dying a young hero sounded like an awful way to go.

He hoped then silently, that if it had to be any one of them – it would've been him.

Leo doesn't want to die, but losing his brothers would've killed him just as much.

“I wouldn't, tho,” he says. “I wouldn't leave them. I can't.”

Usagi opens his eyes to look at him; really look at him.

He's so handsome like this; stretched out on metal stairs, arms crossed over his chest, like he doesn't care about anything or anyone in the world other than Leo.

He wants to tell him just that and then quickly abandons that idea.

“Your brothers?”

“Yeah,” he looks away. It feels like he might go sun-blind if he doesn't. “I'm nothing without them.”

Usagi's quiet for a moment.

“Man, look at us.” He sighs finally. “We're both such cowards.”

Leo shifts, lying down on the stairs right next to him. It's not as uncomfortable as it looked.

“I guess so.” He nudges Usagi's knee with his own. “I'd visit you, you know? If you went to find that sensei. I got my portals.”

“Oh, I don't wanna talk about this right now.”

“You never do.”

Usagi winces, then turns his head to look Leo in the eye. His face softens.

“You know, I don't think you looked bad in that hat.”

Leo laughs.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I think you'd look good in anything.” He grins. “You got that movie-star look.”

Leo blushes but pretends he didn't.

“Well, it's geneticts.” Usually, he's all bravado and big ego, but he can't help feeling a little flustered now. “You're not too bad yourself, Superman.”

Maybe he says that too gently, or with too much honesty, because Usagi's smile falls away suddenly, eyes wide.

“Shit,” he curses, very softly. “Leo, you're-”

He never got the chance to finish that thought.

Leo's phone, always on silent except for whenever he could actually use it, rings so suddenly he flinches, hitting his head on the step above.

“Ow,” Usagi says for him.

“Fucking hell-” Leo sits, fishing his phone out of his pocket, picking up with a lot more anger than he intended. “What?”

He listens for a moment.

“What?” He frowns, voice softening. “What do you mean there's a weird kid in the Lair? ... What do you mean you brought him there? April, what-”

She hangs up before he can finish.

Leo stares at the screen of his phone until it goes dark, then sighs.

“I have to go,” he says.

“Sounds serious.”

He turns to look at Usagi, and the moment is gone. This time, it really felt like... Something.

Leo curses at himself, silently, in his own mind. But then Usagi smiles at him again, and he tells himself it's not all bad.

There will be other moments.

They have time.

***

The thing about almost dying, Leo thinks, is that it's a lot less graceful than everyone makes it out to be.

He's barely present the first time he wakes up – mind hazy and mouth full of cotton.

When he breathes, his chest is heavy and his arms feel numb, or maybe they always had, or maybe he never had any to begin with.

He can't remember.

He thinks he might be ill. Maybe he worried himself sick so much this time that he passed out, or maybe it's rat-flu season again, though it might be too early in the year for that. Or too late.

When he thinks about it, he can't really remember what day it is, actually.

He goes to reach for his phone to check it but then remembers he doesn't have his arms, so he just lies there instead, staring up at the ceiling.

He's not really sure where he is exactly, but there's some vague recognition at the back of his mind, classifying the room as 'not-his-room-but-home', and he supposes that will have to be enough for now.

He looks to the side, mostly because his head feels a little heavy, too, and his gaze falls to the chair standing right next to his bed.

Raph looks a lot younger when he sleeps, Leo thinks. He's usually always frowning, or wincing, or sighing, but his face looks soft like this, cheek resting against his knees.

“Raph?” Leo says, mostly just to feel around the name in his mouth, and he quickly regrets it.

There's a shuffle and a chair scraping against the floor, and Raph's standing, leaning over him, before he finishes his sudden coughing fit.

“Easy,” he says. “Do you want water? You should rinse out your mouth.”

He says something else, a lot of things actually, but Leo isn't really listening anymore. He does what he's told, because whatever Raph says is probably right.

Raph always took care of him when they were kids, even when Leo got the flu and wouldn't stop sneezing on everything, which was pretty gross, even for their standards.

Leo trusts him with this. He loves him a lot.

He wants to tell him that, but his tongue keeps sticking to the roof of his mouth, and he can't quite find the right words. It's not that important anyway. Raph already knows.

“You should go back to sleep,” he tells him when Leo starts listening again.

Leo wants to nod, but then doesn't.

He feels like he's missing something but can't quite wrap his head around it, like trying to grab something through a computer screen.

“Are you...” He thinks about it for a moment. His mind feels heavy.

“Hey, don't get up.” Raph reaches out, and by the time he puts a hand on his chest – Leo's already forgotten what he was going to say. “Draxum worked hard on these stitches."

“That's nice,” Leo mumbles.

He doesn't remember closing his eyes.

***

When he comes to again, he's a lot more awake and in a lot more pain.

There's a headache starting right at the back of his neck, and his eyes sting when he opens them; the lights too bright, too warm, too loud.

He groans, tries turning to the side, then hisses, his arm crawling with sudden pain.

“Shit, Leo, could you stop moving for, like, five minutes?”

“You're gonna get yourself put in a medical time-out again.”

He knows these voices.

It's a struggle to move, a struggle to focus his eyes, but when he finally does, it's all familiar faces, grinning down at him, like he just told the funniest joke in his life. With the exception of Donnie, because Donnie always seems to consider Leo's general existence one less reason to smile.

“Did I get hit by a bus?” He says.

Or tries to, at the very least, but his mouth feels so dry and raw, it more or less comes out as just: 'bus'.

“You sound like a crow choking on a lizard,” Mikey tells him, very helpfully.

He's already sitting on Leo's bed, pulling his legs up onto the mattress next to his knees. He reminded Leo of a cat sometimes, with how attention-starved he was. And with how hard he could bite.

“Your vitals look better,” Donnie says, like that tells him anything.

He's watching the screens next to the bed. Sometimes, it feels like his brother might just keel over and die if he's not staring at a screen at any given moment.

“Should we wake up dad?” Raph asks.

“He's been up all night,” Mikey replies. “Give him a minute.”

Dad shouldn't be staying up so late into the evenings; it's bad for his blood pressure. Leo keeps telling him that, but he never listens.

He flexes his fingers. His arms (both of them) are still right where he left them, which is probably the best news he's gotten so far, and he feels a little hazy around the edges, his mind losing track.

He thinks he might've been sick, or maybe he still is, but this feels like a whole lot of fuss over something like that.

Raph's watching him with a strange look on his face. Leo hopes he's not angry at him again.

“What's happening?” He asks, coughing to clear his throat. “Someone died or something?”

The room goes very quiet, very suddenly.

His brothers exchange looks, the kind they always think Leo can't notice for some reason.

Leo knows his brothers, and he knows all the different sorts of silences they create, and this kind never means anything good.

Mikey's eyes go wide.

“Huh?” Leo asks again. “What's wrong? Oh, baby, don't cry.”

He reaches out, arms tingling and clumsy, petting at Mikey's shoulder placatingly. He can never stand to watch his little brother break down like this, even if he's still not really sure what's happening.

Mikey sniffles, wiping at his face.

“It's okay,” Raph says, and it takes Leo a moment to realize he's talking to him, not Mikey. “They banged you up real good, but it's all over now. You'll pull through.”

“You should see the other guy,” Mikey says, then sobs.

“Who?” Leo asks.

And then he remembers.

When he was six years old, he fell off their kitchen counter. He shouldn't have been climbing it in the first place, and it was mostly his own fault in hindsight, but he still remembers that first moment of losing grip, his whole body heavy and numb.

He remembers hitting the ground.

“Oh,” he says.

He wants to say something more, but his throat feels very tight all of a sudden, and he fears if he tries to, he might just choke on the words.

“Hey, hey, it's okay.” Raph steps a little closer, putting a hand on his shoulder. There's a bandage taped over his eye. Leo doesn't know how he didn't notice it before. “Breathe.”

“Your heart's going really fast,” Donnie supplies, as if Leo somehow didn't know.

He closes his eyes, and it's a bad idea, because he sees blood and glowing eyes, and tastes copper on his tongue, and it's all red-

He opens them again.

“I-” He swallows, hard. “I'm sorry.”

Raph's face softens.

“You're-”

“No!” He didn't mean to yell. “I'm-” There are millions of different thoughts running through his mind, and when one of them finally hits him, it takes all the air out of his chest. “I- I gotta call him.”

His mouth feels so numb he's actually not sure he said it out loud, but he must've, because his brothers all frown at him.

“Who?”

“My friend,” he says quickly. “From the knitting club. I gotta call him.”

Raph and Mikey look at each other, then at Donnie.

Donnie pointedly looks away.

“Knitting club?” Raph's face softens. “You actually went there?”

“Yes,” Leo says, as fast as he can manage. “Yes, I have to call him, I have to.”

He's getting anxious now, because Usagi doesn't come out to the surface without him, so he must be okay, but what if, and all his brothers are looking at him like he's being the weird one here, and why is no one listening to him-

“Hey, hey!” Raph finally says, putting a hand on Leo's chest to push him down. “Okay, okay, easy. Lay down, and I'll go grab your phone, alright, baby blue?”

It's been ages since anyone has called him that.

He takes a shaky, unsteady breath and nods.

***

His phone has a lot more cracks on the screen than he remembers there being, but he can't bring himself to care right now.

He wants to chew on his nails, but he can't quite bring himself to hold up his hand that high anyway.

He dials the number, pushing his phone into the space between his cheek and shoulder to hold it in place.

It only rings twice.

For a moment there's silence on the other end, before a very quiet, very shaky:

“Leo?”

He grins.

“Hi, Superman.”

***

“You fucking idiot,” Usagi says, so close to his ear he might as well be screaming. “I thought you were fucking dead.”

He doesn't swear often, but he hasn't stopped since he walked into the room. He hasn't let go of Leo either, his arms wrapped around shoulders, face pressed into the side of his neck. Leo doesn't really mind, since he hasn't let go, either.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

He feels like that's all he's been saying for the past three days.

It took that long to finally convince his family he was ready for 'visiting hours', and trying to explain why none of them had ever heard about Usagi before took most of that time.

They didn't look all that convinced, and Leo can't blame them. He couldn't really explain himself.

But he's here now, and every part of Leo's body hurts, but he'd rather die than let go now.

“Don't apologize,” Usagi says. He puts his hands on Leo's shoulders, turning his head to kiss him on the temple before pulling away, but just a little. “I was so worried, dude. I called Raphael, like, a million times, but it all went to voicemail.”

Leo deflates a little.

“Ah, yeah. His phone got totally busted.”

He didn't get the chance to look at Usagi properly yet, since he got tackled almost immediately, so he takes his time now.

He's dressed all soft: cotton shirt and black shorts, all a little worn down, like he didn't even take any time to change when Leo called him to let him know he can come over.

He got here in less time than Leo thought possible, so that might as well be the case.

(Donnie met him outside of the Lair and walked him all the way here.

Leo wonders how that went down.)

He must've noticed Leo looking, because he smiles, eyes crinkling.

He looks good.

“Man,” Usagi says, maybe mirroring his thoughts. “Look at you.”

He reaches out, tracing the bruises on Leo's face with his fingers. Leo closes his eyes.

“Does it make me look tough?”

“More like you got run over by a truck.”

“I don't know, that sounds pretty metal.”

It's so easy to just talk to him, like his whole life didn't collapse in on itself just a few weeks ago, like he didn't almost cause the world to snap in half, like he didn't almost die.

Leo opens his eyes to look at him.

He's so pretty it hurts.

He takes a breath, but it comes out too fast or too shallow, and there's a frown forming between Usagi's eyes.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Leo reaches out to cup his face, smoothing over the soft fur on his cheeks.

He thought about him, back in the Prison Dimension.

He thought about a lot of things then, and remembering it all feels like trying to hold an entire ocean in his palms, but he knows he did.

About Usagi, and the last time he saw him, and how he looked in the yellow streetlight, and how he never did what he wanted to do for so long now.

He wondered if Usagi would keep the club running if Leo were gone. If he'd keep showing up every week, with that same smile, and have perfectly pleasant conversations about nothing, and sneak into movie theaters, and never leave the Hidden City ever again.

He hoped not.

“What's wrong?” Usagi asks, putting his hands over Leo's.

What's wrong, Leo thinks, is that he's still here.

In this country, in this city, on that farm.

That he talks to all those people who don't care about him, that he wastes his time on meaningless things just to do something, that he never dares to ask all the questions he has.

“You need to get out.”

Leo's voice sounds hoarse, quick, like it's taking everything out of him to get this out.

Maybe it is.

“What?”

Usagi goes to pull away, eyes wide, but Leo grabs onto his shoulders, holding him in place.

Leo went home that last evening on their stairs thinking they had time, and was almost proven wrong.

“Out of the city. Out of Hidden City, out of that farm,” he speaks fast, running out of air, because he's scared he might not be able to take another breath. “It's killing you, I know it is. You should go. Find that sensei of yours.”

“Wow,” Usagi traces over Leo's arm, from his wrists to his elbows. “Leo, slow down.”

“I can't just watch you waste your life like this anymore.” His heart beats fast in his throat, and he feels like he might choke on it. “I know you're scared, and I'm scared, too, all the time, but you have to.”

“Okay,” Usagi says, but it sounds more like he's just trying to calm him down.

Leo needs him to listen.

“You could do much good out there, I just know it. Like a proper hero.” Like the morning sun, like a hopeful song, like the northern star. “I love you so much.”

Usagi's eyes go very, very wide.

“Leo,” he says, very slowly. “I-”

He doesn't let him finish.

Leo's first kiss is a desperate plea.

It's bad and it's clumsy, and he has everything to prove and nothing to lose.

It's every promise he ever made and kept, and every lie he never told, and every awful, painful moment he spent wishing for something more.

Then Usagi's putting his hands on Leo's face and kissing him back, and it's like every moment they wasted because they thought they had time, and every step they didn't take because they were scared, and every word that made them feel twenty years older.

Usagi pulls away for a moment, looking Leo right in the eye.

“I love you, too,” he says, like he needs to before anyone dares to think otherwise. Leo puts his hand on the side of his neck, just because he can, tracing the back of Usagi's jaw with a thumb, feeling every word when he repeats: “I love you.”

“Will you go?” Leo asks because he has to know, and Usagi laughs, and Leo realizes that he really did mean it when he said he'd run away with him.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes. I'll go.”

“Okay,” Leo breathes out.

“And you'll stay.” He leans closer, their foreheads touching. “Talk to your brother. Tell him everything you've been telling me.”

Leo’s jaw tightens.

He wouldn't know where to start. He wouldn't know how to stop.

But Usagi smiles, something crooked and not all that perfect, and entirely honest.

“Don't worry,” he says. “I'm scared, too.”

Kissing Usagi, Leo realizes, makes him feel real, and brave, and young.

To Usagi, Leo has never been anything other than just that.