Don't Make Me Fall For You | Raphael x Reader

20 - fEeLiNgS (kinda suck)

The funny thing about humans is that we're pretty ungrateful creatures. There are so many small things in life that we don't think to appreciate until we lose it. You were no different.

Mona Lisa's arrival brought all kinds of little changes that took away various simple things you'd enjoyed in your stay with the turtles. The first one was that you were now sleeping on the couch. The most prominent—and maybe most important—one made itself known at breakfast.

"Where's Raph?" you asked the other three brothers, digging into some pancakes.

"Raph and Mona Lisa went out," Leo explained.

"Oh." You weren't sure how to feel about that. Your relationship with Mona had improved since the initial first encounter. She sincerely seemed apologetic, and both of you were civil enough in your interactions with each other, but there was still some sort of tension between the two of you that you couldn't quite figure out. You did know that at the thought of Raph hanging out alone with Mona, potentially on a date, you felt an ugly bouquet of negative emotions, none of which you wanted to feel. They were dating—it was perfectly within their rights to have alone time together. It didn't even make sense for you to get upset about it at all. There was no reason for you to have silly negative emotions when you thought about them out on a date, like, like, disappointment, or jealousy, or whatever stupid feelings you could be feeling.

You didn't want to deal with those emotions right now. (And possibly, you never would.) Actually, you didn't even wanna think about their existence. Especially not at breakfast. Not when there were pancakes. Pancakes should be savored with delight, especially good pancakes. Which these were. Very good pancakes. Made-with-love-by-Mikey pancakes.

"Hey, wuh ah duh 'igh sigh!" Mikey exclaimed, pulling you out of your somewhat—no, no, definitely—desperate mental rambling. Well, speak of the devil. He finger-gunned you. His mouth was so full of pancakes you couldn't understand him, and you could definitely do without seeing chewed-up pancake. "Now you kah— "

"Mikey, can you finish chewing first or something?" you said offhandedly. "I don't understand anything you just said." And that's kinda gross.

"And that's kinda gross," Donnie added bluntly. You grinned slightly at him.

Mikey seemed unoffended and undeterred. He finished chewing and repeated, "Hey, look on the bright side! At least now you can play video games with me!"

"Of course." Donnie rolled his eyes at Mikey. "Not that there's anything wrong with constantly playing video games—" Hey now, he was starting to sound a little judgemental. "But if you'd like to something efficient with your mind, I'll be in the lab," Donnie called as he turned and headed to said place. You guessed that was an invitation to hang out with him and do, uh, labby stuff or whatever.

"I'll probably be training," Leo offered. "You're welcome to join."

You eeny-meeny-miney-moe'd it out, and eventually settled on spending the morning with Leo. At first you two just trained as planned. Leo was a pretty decent instructor; stern, but not cruel, supportive, and giving only constructive criticism. You couldn't really keep up with Leo, though, so the two of you gave up and headed back to the living room, wrested control of the TV from Mikey and Ice Cream Kitty, and watched Space Heroes reruns. It was definitely amusing to see how much Leo practically worshipped the show, but all the same, it felt odd to watch it without Raph's snarky comments and the two of you teaming up to mock it together. You settled for making fun of it by yourself, much to Leo's indignation.

There was nothing wrong with the morning. Leo was good company, and the activities were entertaining, but all the same, as you sat on the couch with Leo, you couldn't help but suddenly realize how often you spent your mornings with Raph, and wonder if you actually missed him.

                                                                   * * * * *

An hour or so of Space Heroes episodes must have passed, and not much had changed. You were still poking fun at Leo for how lame the show was, much to Leo's mild annoyance.

"[F/N]!" Leo complained. "How dare you! Captain Ryan is amazing! The whole show in general is amazing!" He tossed a couch cushion at you. "Raph must be influencing you!" 

"Somebody say my name?" Raph called from the entrance to the lair. Both Leo and you turned your heads to see Raph striding in, followed by Mona Lisa.

"Raph!" You immediately cleared your throat. Dang, you sounded way too excited. "Uh, hey." 

"Aw, [F/N], did you miss me?" Raph teased joyfully, bounding up behind the couch to lean over you and Leo. Though his words sounded cocky, his voice just sounded...purely happy. Like he'd just played with a puppy. Or maybe a baby space turtle. Gone was the underlying tone of arrogance and sarcasm. It was weird.

You tilted your head back to look up at him. I think I might've missed you. You took in the big smile on his face. Probably.

"You aren't the only thing missing," you noted. "Where's your usual unpleasant attitude? Why are you so happy?"

"Hello, Leo, [F/N]," Mona Lisa greeted, making her way over to the back of the couch to stand next to Raphael. She didn't look uncontrollably joyful, but her eyes sparkled, and she was definitely also in a good mood.

Because of her, you answered your own question in your head. The way Raph looked at Mona Lisa confirmed your hypothesis. You felt a surge of those danged negative emotions in you again.  "Hey," you and Leo responded, you a beat later than Leo, but whatever.

"Well, we gotta train now! Later, losers!" Raph and Mona waved as they started to head to a different part of the lair; presumably the training room.

You stared after them, trying to crush the feeling of dejection (among other things) rising up in your chest. Or pretending that it didn't exist. What feeling of dejection?

"Oh, yeah," Leo chuckled. "Raph's mood always gets a lot better when he's around Mona Lisa -- well, when they're not fighting, that is. She's good for him."

Dangit, the feeling of dejection did exist, and Leo's words just made it exist more, if that made sense. It swelled a little.

"Yeah, I can see that," you said softly, turning back to the TV. "I can see that."

a/n: aHh i'm so sorry this took so long but I haven't watched tmnt for way too long and it's affecting my inspiration

also u kno im a lazy butt so :P

i've seen a few people confused about the abbreviation [F/N], and i know i've never really covered it, so just to be clear, it stands for "first name"

hope you enjoyed!