Raph is beautiful.
Leo's not sure when he realized it, if he knew it for a while and never quite admitted it to himself. He knows that there was a time when he'd lie in the dark and think of Raph, touch himself with quiet, trembling hands. He knows there was a time when he was soft, and scared, and too frightened to put his feelings into words.
Well, he still can't do words, now. But actions...he lives for actions, these days, when Father is rotting in the ground and everything feels too slow and too tense all at once and he has to do something. 
So he does. He straddles Raph as his brother lies gasping on the dojo floor, face blank, eyes drifting. He brushes a hand down Raph's cheek, soft as a feather, while the other hand roughly pushes Raph's legs apart.
Leo wants to be gentle and mean to his brother all at once, wants to worship him and ravage him. He presses his fingers against Raph's beautiful scales, against the marks blooming like ink on water, and moans. Raph moans too, eyes fluttering.
When they kiss, Raph's mouth tastes of sweat and old spit. There are tears trickling down his face, staining Leo's scales. Leo shouldn't think it, but he knows that his brother looks beautiful when he cries, when he can't get away from that.
He sinks into his brother with a soft sight, feeling his head go quiet for the first time in days. Raph presses his fingers into the back of Leo's shell and blinks, long and slow, those beautiful, beautiful eyes awash in light.
 
The first time is an accident. They're sparring the way they sometimes do, when playful taunts and calculated blows cross the line to rough anger and cutting words. Donnie and Mikey have slipped out, not wanting to see it, and it's just Leo and Raph's voice, Raph's cruel, arrogant beauty.
Leo's angry now, angry in that cold, icy way he's been for a while. He wants to hurt Raph and he does, lashing out and bloodying Raph's nose, his face. He keeps hitting and hitting because there's no Sensei here to stop him, because Sensei's dead the way they'll all be if Raph never learns to shut the hell up and listen-- 
He pins his brother down the way he always does these days, because he's stronger than Raph, more ruthless than Raph, hardened steel to Raph's cracked flint. He looks into his brother's eyes and sees defiance there, curled up, waiting for him.
Raph never learns, no matter how many times Leo kicks his ass, and Leo's sick of it. The coldness surges, a blizzard in his veins, and he lunges. He wants to hurt Raph, wants to break him so he'll learn once and for all.
His hands don't feel like his as they shove Raph's legs apart. He's a distant observer, watching a fantasy he's had a million times playing out in a way he never expected (a way he still wants more than anything).
"What the fuck--" He kisses Raph hard, choking down his brother's chest. He presses shaking hands to Raph's pressure points, sending his brother falling like a limp doll.
It's okay, he says with his hands, with his tongue. It's okay, I love you. Shhh. Calm, calm, Raph just needs to be calm for once.
He uses spit the first time. It's not good, it burns his cock, it makes Raph cry. But it's warm, Raph's all warm inside, and it's only when he finally starts feeling warm that Leo realizes he's been cold since Sensei died. The heat snatches him up and carries him away.
Afterwards, he cleans up the blood and cum and carries Raph into the bathroom. He cleans up the wounds he can, trusts mutant healing to take care of the rest. He plants a soft, slow kiss to his brother's forehead, and Raph stares at him blankly.
Leo cries that night the way he's learned to cry since childhood, soft and tight and locked up inside. Never again, he tells himself, and knows that's a lie.
 
Leo isn't a selfish lover, really. He tries to use lube, even if he can't always stop himself from hurting Raph in other ways.
He likes it when Raph feels pleasure, both because Raph is beautiful in pleasure and because he wants Raph to feel good. He's always wanted his brothers to feel good, always wanted to take care of them.
Raph screams when he comes, raw and fractured, and Leo has to muffle his mouth or wait until the others are out of the house before he can give his brother any pleasure. His brother's screams ring in his ears afterward, like Raph's spit up pieces of himself for Leo to carry.
Otherwise, Raph is silent, with the exception of the occasional grunt or groan. He doesn't say anything while it happens, not these days. He just looks at Leo as if Leo's a puzzle his brother doesn't know how to solve, doesn't know if he can solve.
To be fair, Leo doesn't know what to say, either. Words feel like weakness when this happens, an opening of doors that will never be closed again. And frightening, too--putting it all into words means stitching together a whole tangle of impulses, acts, secrets into a tapestry that frightens him.
So instead he stays quiet. He dabs at Raph's bruised mouth, he wipes the blood off his scratched-up thighs, he takes Raph into the shower and lets the water run over his skin. He never fucks Raph in the shower and he's proud of his restraint, even if it does feel like a kind of silly thing to be proud of.
Leo takes the pieces of what was broken and puts them back together so carefully, so delicately, you'd never even know anything was wrong. He thinks of kintsugi, gold used to seal up cracks and make something wonderful. Maybe that's why Raph looks more beautiful than ever to him now.
 
"I had a fight with Casey n' April," Raph says. He's standing in the kitchen, arms over his chest. There's a crack in the wall behind him where Leo threw him into the wall the other night during an argument that he can't remember.
"Oh?" Leo asks, soft and delicate. The others are out--the others spend a lot of time out. Leo worries, even though he knows there's no one left who can hurt them. He's strong enough, now, to crush all the monsters before they can so much as skitter out of the shadows.
He's shaved his soft edges away, all the fat and weakness, and there are nights he thinks he's better for it. He is the blade that Father forged him into from the day he could walk, and he's a good one, even if he sometimes cuts deeper than he'd like.
"We were talkin' bout...you." Raph shifts from foot to foot as he stands there, like he can't balance his weight properly. Donnie was complaining to Leo the other day about how Raph keeps skipping out on his medical checkups and Leo promised to speak with him. "They think you're, uh..."
"They think I'm what?" But Leo thinks he already knows. Now that he considers it, he can't remember the last time Casey and April visited, although he knows that the others still visit their place a lot. Leo--doesn't.
"Hurtin' me." Raph crosses his arms over his chest. "It's...s'stupid. I know. But that's what they think."
"And what do you think?" He's not sure what he's asking for--for Raph to scream at him, blame him? For Raph to fall down on his knees and apologize for bringing it up? For Raph have never to have gone to visit them those two, to never have gone up topside, ever?
Raph's eyes drift to the ground. "We, we're family. Sure, we fight sometimes. I fuck up, I make you mad, that happens, that always happens. It's been rough for everyone, y'know? You're my brother, I love you, I wanna make things okay for you. I always have." He hugs himself. "You could never really hurt me."
"And you're my...." He doesn't want to say brother. There are so many other words but Leo can't bring himself to use any of them, to see how Raph will react. "You're mine," he whispers.
Leo takes a step forward, into Raph's space. His brother stiffens, but doesn't pull away.
"I want you to stay here, with me." Leo reaches up and wraps his fingers gently around the back of Raph's neck. "It'll be better for you."
"Kay." Raph sags into Leo's touch, eyes glassy.
Leo jerks into action, slamming their teeth together so hard they crack. He pushes his brother to the floor, feeling Raph let out a soft oomph as the air rushes out of him, and breathes his brother in.
 
He hits Raph because he can't hit Splinter, can't scream that I was too young, too young for any of this. He hits Raph because he can't hit Shredder, or Bishop, or any of the other assholes who've fucked their lives up over the years. He hits Raph because when his brother's face is smeared with blood enough, it looks almost like Leo's own. He hits Raph because there's a storm in Leo's skin that's been building for a lifetime and it needs to get out, get out. 
He hits Raph because Raph is insolent, and foolish, and arrogant, and a source of so many of Leo's problems since he could remember. He hits Raph because Raph is beautiful when he bleeds, when he cries, when he breaks, when bruises turn him the lovely blue of Leo's own mask.
Raph is beautiful when crying out in pleasure and sobbing in pain and falling limp into Leo's arms, clinging onto him like a drowning man. Raph is beautiful in a way that scares the shit out of Leo, only he's Fearless so that means he keeps going anyway.
There's not much beauty left in Leo's world these days and he won't lie and pretend that he hasn't been pushing a lot of what's left away. He doesn't spend as much time with Donnie and Mikey, not anymore, doesn't go outside or watch TV or even meditate all that much.
It's just Raph, Raph, Raph, Raph's eyes and skin and tight, clutching insides, fracturing like the window Leo has to break to get air into a hot, trapped room. Maybe the word obsession would be a better fit, but Leo prefers addicted.  
He wants to hoard Raph all too himself, keep him warm and safe and close. Without it, without Raph, Leo's not sure what he would become. Then again, he's not sure what he is now, not really. Not enough that he's willing to put words on it.
It's not just Raph, of course, but Raph is at the center of so many things, Raph is where so much of his love and anger and fear and fury congregate, and most importantly, Raph is there, always there to take the blows and the bites and the fucking.
Raph loves him without end, he's Leo's port in the storm. Even if Leo thinks he might be the storm, and on the verge of smashing Raph and everything else to pieces. 
But now, at least, things are quiet. The air in the dojo is heavy with the smell of their sex and Raph is curled up in Leo's arms crying, trembling. Leo strokes the back of his head and rocks him back and forth, nice and slow, the way he used to do when Raph was little.
There are ropes connecting them, tangles of red and white tangled between their thighs. It makes Leo think of the old legend of crimson threads binding lovers across time and space. The image soothes him, helps him remember how to take deep breaths as he holds Raph tight.
I love you, he mouths into Raph's shoulder. Raph's whole body ripples, a shudder that seems to go on forever.
 
Leo is on his knees on the dojo, thighs sticking. head ringing, as people scream and shout around him. He doesn't remember, exactly, what happened.
He thinks he was angry. He thinks he was feeling cold, and desperate to be warm. He thinks he was feeling particularly angry today, for one reason or another. He thinks that he might have been curious, maybe, to see just how far he could push Raph, how very beautiful he could make Raph become.
And, well, Raph is certainly beautiful. He's still beautiful as he thrashes dazedly in Mikey's grip, half-conscious, arm hanging limply at his side.
"Let me go," he rasps. "Let me go, fuck, you don't understand--" Mikey grits his teeth and starts to drag him away, inch by painful inch.
A bo staff waves in Leo's face. Donnie is standing in front of him, face blank and half-insane with fury, looking at Leo like he wants to tear him apart. Instead, he restrains himself--scared, maybe, of losing the fight once Leo pulls himself together, or that he'll get the advantage on Leo and won't be able to stop hitting until Leo isn’t moving anymore.
Leo reads his brother's lips carefully; Donnie's talking about leaving, never coming back and leaving Leo to rot. Something something we don't need you anymore, you sick fuck. 
Foolish, of course--they'll come back, they always will. They can't survive without each other, without a leader to keep them in line, or a sewer to keep them safe. April and Casey can talk a good game but it won't ever be enough. Maybe it should be, maybe it would be better that way, but it won't.
"You're acting stupid," Raph yells at their brothers, writhing in Mikey's grip. "You're acting so fucking stupid, you..." He sways, eyes unfocused.
Donnie lets out a sob and turns away, stomping over to help Mikey with Raph. The two of them wrestle out of the dojo, his feet dragging over the bloodied, sweat-slick floor. His scent trails behind him, thick and heavy with inescapable truths, and Leo takes a deep, slow breath.
"See you soon," he calls to Raph, and his brother twists his head over his shoulder with an unreadable expression. Then the screen door slides shut, feet clattering through the lair and up into the unforgiving light.
Leo settles back on his hands and knees, props his head against the wall with a sigh. He doubts he'll have to wait long.