The Kitchen Window (pt. 5)
Bayverse! Raphael x Fem! Reader
desc- (vannie's been missing for weeks. when her savior returns her in a broken state, it's your turn to do the rescuing)
warnings - angst, violence, themes of animal abuse, slight nsfw
READ PREVIOUS PARTS HERE - one - two - three - four
It's hard to come to terms with the way you feel about Raphael. When he's not around you physically, he's taking up your every waking thought. It's just so abnormal, the way your paths had crossed and led you to a point where every little thing you do, is in thought of him. To a point where you lay awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking of him, and the nights you get to see him, you come up with almost every excuse to have him stay at your window just a little longer.
Why was this so, so difficult? It was a complicated thing, the situation at hand. It should feel freeing, and light. But with the circumstances of you being a human and Raph being, well⌠Raph, it's stressing you out. Not even the fear of rejection, but what might happen if heâs reciprocating the same feelings. Where do you even go from there?
Raphâs hard to read. You can see the emotions always conflicting on his face, but what heâs thinking is a whole other deal. Even though heâs friendly, heâs closed off. Talking about things that are bothering him just isnât something he does.
On top of this dilemma comes another issue thatâs been eating at your insides.
The first day, you think nothing of it.
Itâs been a long day at work, and she doesnât come to greet you at the sound of an opening door or the shake of her food bowl. Maybe sheâs hiding somewhere, under the couch or your dresser. But youâre surprised to see she hasnât curled up in your bed with you when you wake up the next morning. Vannie always does that. Something couldâve spooked her, but was it so bad that she would hide in fear all night? You canât find the time to look for her rushing out the door to open up shop.
After another day, is when you really get concerned. You practically flip the apartment inside out searching for your cat, opening cabinets, upturning the little furniture you own. All the while calling her name and shaking one of her favorite toys to coax her out. She doesnât come. This was really, really bad. Had you left the window open? Did she slip out of the door when you were leaving for work one morning?
After youâve given up on looking through your home, you turn to the few neighbors you have, knocking on their doors. All of them pitifully shake their heads and tell you they havenât seen her. Most of them didnât even know you owned an animal.
Itâs an empty, hopeless feeling thatâs breaking your heart. She was the only thing you had to come to after a tireless day of work. Every day has dragged on meaninglessly. Youâre slow to close the cafe each night, knowing Vannie wonât be perched on her cat tree in the corner of your living room while she waits for you to step inside.
When you go to hang a âmissing petâ poster, it looks so insignificant in the sea of all the other pictures of lost dogs and cats that are plastered onto the light post. You spend each day tirelessly waiting at the kitchen window for your baby to come home.
One night, Mikey swings by. His usual friendly and excited smile wipes clean off his face when he sees your tired eyes, puffy and red from crying through the glass. You open it, wiping at the snot dripping from your nose.
âWoah, angel.â Heâs leaning down and looking toward you with caution, âWhatâs wrong?â
âV-Vannie,â you have to swallow the frog in your throat to keep from sobbing all over again, âVannieâs missing. I canât find her anywhere.â
Empathy is swimming in his eyes.
âAw dude,â Mikey grabs your hand from the window and gives it a comforting squeeze, âIâm sorry. Didyaâ put up posters and stuff?â
You nod, and squeeze back, with a sniffle.
âHung them up everywhere. Sheâs been gone for over a week. I donât know what to do.â
âIâll tell the bros if you want. Weâll look for her on patrol.â
You sigh, and give him a watery, weak smile.
âThank you Mike. Youâre the best.â
âAnytime sweet cheeks,â he looks down at his phone, âI gotta get going, but donât worry, Weâll find your kitty!â
Mikey blows you a kiss and scales your fire escape.
That night, itâs just a little bit easier trying to find rest. Bless those boys, always looking out for you. The next morning you receive a text from another unsaved number. You know itâs Raph.
[sorry to hear about van]
[iâll find her for you]
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A few more days slug along, before you see one of the brothers again.
Itâs a night youâre supposed to be sleeping, with work the next morning. Instead, youâre laying on the couch, phone being the only light in the dark living room, and scrolling through the hundreds of pictures of your sweet kitty, through tear clouded eyes. A video of her playing with a hair tie in your empty bathtub pulls a sad little whimper from you. You miss Vannie so badly. Itâs been almost two weeks since youâve seen her, and it worries you what sheâs been doing, if sheâs hurt, or an unthinkable other outcome that you immediately shove out of your head and lock the door on anytime it crossed your mind. Lifeâs been full of interruptions lately. This next one shouldnât be a shocker, but it is anyway.
You almost miss the noise. A few seconds later, it comes again.
You turn to look at the window. Another small rock clicks against the glass and bounces off onto the fire escape, and it calls you to get up and investigate. By the time you get there, another pebble flies at you, and it makes you flinch. It comes down below from the dark alleyway. You open the window.
You see the huge figure of one of the turtles stepping forward, and in their outstretched hand, is your cat. Her grey fur is soaked with the rain thatâs starting to trickle outside, one ear laid back in fear and confusion.
âOh my god. Raph, you found her!â Like a fumbling idiot, you scramble over the sink and push yourself all the way out of the opening, feet landing lightly on the metal platform. The summer rain immediately hits your hair and skin. Raphael doesnât move. Something feels off.
The way he holds her out into the light, keeping the rest of his body in the shadows. His labored breaths can barely be heard over water tinking off every surface it can reach.
âRaph? Are you okay?â
You watch him. He doesnât want to, you can tell. The way he pauses and then staggers forward on a limp foot makes your eyes widen with concern. He grunts. Then you see the deep red stains that covers his outstretched arm.
Itâs hard to make out his face. Raphâs trying his best to hide it, leveraging the darkness, down where heâs swaying unsteadily.
âRaphael, what happened?â
He just gruffâs out in response, animalistic, and pained.
âCome up here. Please.â
He sighs. The lowering of his arm, with Vannie still clutched safely, indicated his surrender. He slinks forward under the fire escape, and you feel it wobble as he ascends it. Itâs slow, interrupted with strained, deep breathing and huffs of discomfort. Your face contorts from that of uncertainty into dread. Suddenly, youâre not so worried about your lost cat anymore. Raphael steps onto the scaffolding with you. He loses his footing against the slick metal, and his bad leg gives out underneath him, falling to one of his knees. He yelps with a snarled lip, all the while, Vannie held safely against his chest.
His arm isnât the only thing nearly coated with blood. You can see it glinting in the faint light of your kitchen and moon peeking through thin clouds, spattered across the rest of his upper half, running from his nose, and down under his mask, being washed away by the rain. Heâs got new, fresh cuts, almost white from how deep they go into his skin, and dark patches of skin that seem to be bruises.
âYou-â His voice is guttural and hoarse. He swallows thickly, âYou ainât gotta look at me like that.â Raphael spits a little blood from his mouth.
He turns away, instead of answering your question. Vannie claws her way out of his hold and clambers into the window with record speed, desperate to get out of the rain.
Even in this horrendous, battered up state, he has room for jokes. Idiot.
âIâm not kidding, Raph.â You take a step forward to better look at his injuries, gently grabbing his jaw and turning his head to look at you. You canât tell if itâs the rain or tears collecting in his eyes.
Next thing you know, youâre guiding Raphel gently up the staircase to your floor, straining under his body weight while he leans against you for support. He stumbles through the door, tracking rain and dark red into the carpet. Itâs the least of your worries right now. Raph trudges to the tile floor of your kitchenette, and slumps down to sit on his butt. Itâs still dark in the space, but you canât bring yourself to flick on the light, worried itâll hurt his eyes, and even more focused on his countless injuries. You donât even know where to start.
âLetâs get you cleaned up.â
He continues his streak of silence, just looking down at the floor with an empty, tired glare, while you stand to go get a towel and clean wash-rags. The rain drones outside, getting heavier. You donât speak to each other while you dry the rain from his skin, and then gently scrub away the blood with warm water. He allows you to clean him up without quarrel, if it means not having to tell you how he sustained such horrific injuries. Youâre seated on your knees, between his legs on the floor, close enough to feel Raphaelâs breath leaving his nose and cool your warm face, and catch the scent of warm summer rain and iron on his skin. He flinches when the rag dabs over one of the deep scratches above his collarbone.
âSorry,â you look up to see his eyelids heavy, and brow scrunched in a painful expression, âItâs not gonna feel great.â
He knows, of course, and lets you continue tending to the wound with a hand thatâs as gentle as it can be. Itâs quiet, once again. The downpour is happy to fill its space.
Your hands softly graze over each bruise and welt that heâs gained. Each rag is soaked with lukewarm water and the rusted tint of blood, then tossed to the side to be replaced with a new one, until all of Raphâs verdian scales are clear and dry. You donât have a fancy first-aid kit like Donnieâs. Itâs a Tupperware container filled with different sized bandaids and a nearly expired tube of neosporin. It would have to do until his brother could get his nifty, medically inclined hands on him.
This is so intimate. Centimeters away from each otherâs warm bodies, in the dark, while you reach to stick a bandage over a little slice on the side of his cheek. So close it feels like a dam is about to crumble into pieces. You have to speak to keep yourself from doing something stupid.
âYou donât have to tell me what happened,â you say, so quiet, itâs almost a whisper, âBut-â
You pull away to look into his eyes. Theyâre swimming with some intense emotion between anger and shame, a deep green glinting in the soft light.
âI donât know. Some douchebags,â heâs recounting the confrontation in his head, and looks down at his scratched knuckles, âThey were tormentin the poor thing.â
Raph remembers ducking between a few alleys on his patrol that night. Heâs climbing the side of an old warehouse where he usually sticks out, high above most of the city. The fifth floor is occupied with loud laughter and rap music that blares through the broken window. A bunch of men and women drinking and smoking, resting on old furniture and crates that had been left a long time ago. He thinks nothing of it, already trying to continue up the building, until he hears a yowl.
He doesnât want to believe itâs Vannie, that theyâre gathering around and dunking in a bucket of old mop water, but her missing ear and red collar around her neck confirm his worst fears. Sheâs trying to claw her water from their grip, but their numbers and strong tattooed arms overpower her, and they shove her under the surface again.
Raphael is filled with a blind rage that calls him to jump down through the window and threaten them with a loud voice. He recalls the overwhelming sinking feeling in his gut when their numbers grow even larger, jumping down from crates and out of dark corners of the huge room.
âThey had a bunch aâ crowbars. Pocket knives. Shit like that.â He doesnât want to look up at your face. He can already feel the despair setting in your features.
He was overpowered so quickly. Metal bats and steel toed shoes hitting his thick skin, blades cutting, while some of them held him down by his arms and sitting on the back of his shell, plastron pressed helplessly to the concrete floor. He cries out for his brothers, while the group of ruthless attackers steal his weapons and use them to barrade down on him. It was the thought of you crying for your cat that finally pulled him from the floor in a white-hot anger, throwing them off and falling backwards.
It was all a blur from there. Ruthless punches thrown and cracking against their faces. Just his bare, bandaged hands landing blows onto anyone and everyone that crossed his path. Raphael had practically blacked out. Nobody was getting away with it. Even the ones that tried to scramble away became a lost cause if he caught them in the corner of his eyes, dragging them by their legs and hauling them into piles of rotting wood and brick walls.
You watch as he shivers through the memory.
By the time Raphael is through with the assemblage of delinquents, heâs still pumping full of adrenaline and unfathomable rage, heaving out deep breaths with a bloody spittle collecting at the edges of his lips. All were lying unconscious or crying out in pain for their absent mothers, and any who got away were lucky enough to slink into the protective shade of the corners. The edges of his vision are still fuzzy. He can feel his racing heart in his head, and the trickle of blood down the sides of his face and arms. Heâs not sure if most of it is, or theirs.
âI dunno if I killed any of emâ. But I was so fuckin angry.â
Raph scoops up a cowering vannie from the bucket, then turns to her main assailant, trembling on the cold floor and cradling a (surely broken) wrist.
âYou think youâre tough, huh?â He sneers down at the man, who has a blackened eye, âHurtinâ a poor animal who did nothin to ya?â
Raph dumps the dirty contents of the bucket onto him, then kicks his side.
âYouâre a worthless piece of shit, is what you are.â
Afterwards, he opts to take the stairs all the way down, limping on his bad leg, and make the trek to your apartment.
Heâs pulled from his hateful trance, to look at where youâre staring up at him with watery eyes.
Raph seems surprised itâs all you have to say. Nothing about beating her captors to a pulp and leaving them for dead. A tear rolls down the side of your nose. His eyes widen with worry.
âYou saved my baby, Raph.â
âI-I just,â he swallows thickly, âI know how important she is to ya,â
Itâs amazing. The way the room is so dark and yet all of your senses are in tune with how every muscle moves under his thick skin. How heâs expected you to be overwhelmed with fear and push him away from you, with the worry that heâs this angry monster that heâs been hiding. Instead youâre thanking him. That means more to him than he could express. He hates the silence now, hates the way heâs so awkward and how he doesnât know the right way to respond to your gratitude. Heâs adjusting to lift himself off the ground.
âI gotta get back to-â Raphael forgets about going back to the lair. He forgets his lame leg. All the cuts and bruises, and saving Vannie. You forget about the fear of rejection and what comes next. The sleepless nights that have been holding you awake at their mercy. Instead youâre both tuned into the way you lift yourself up on your knees and grab his face and pull him down.
Itâs a short, unexpected kiss that doesnât break past your lips, faces smushed together, like puzzle pieces that donât fit quite right. And then you pull away, both so surprised at it, that at first it doesnât register. On the outside, your hands are frozen, hovering just above his jawline, in pure idiocy at the idea that you just did that. And in your brain, youâre beating yourself senseless, because what the fuck were you thinking??
Raphâs eyes are the widest youâve ever seen them, flicking between your own. Heâs breathing heavy, mouth slack, and the wordless reaction is freaking you out. You swear you can hear his heart thundering under his plastron. Or was that you?
Itâs then that he grabs you right back and pulls you in for a much more calculated, breathless kiss. You lean into it, desperate and nervous, and grabbing the tails of his bandanna to bring him as close as possible.
This was happening. It was a thing.
You and Raphael sitting on the kitchen floor, with his shell pressed into one of the lower cabinets, and borderline making out. What would your mother think?
Youâve always been used to Raphâs soft touch, anytime heâd fist bump you through the kitchen window or brush past your arm. That was not him now.
His huge hands are tangled in your hair and at the nape of your neck, and heâs drinking you in like water. Youâre pressing him further into the cabinet door intoxicated over the way your teeth and noses slightly graze past each other. His tongue slipping into your mouth makes you shudder and you huff. Raphâs easily pulling you up into his crossed legs.
This gentle giant was no more, firm and intentional with every move he makes. He doesnât shy away from moving further into your touch and kissing you deeper. You can feel his mouth curl into a smile when you gasp. Your hands are everywhere. traveling up the tough texture of his plastron, to his beyond muscular shoulder, where one roughly grazes over a bigger cut. Raph pulls away with a hiss.
âSorry!â You squeak out. Itâs the first youâve spoken since kissing him senseless. He winces but the recovery is swift, and he looks up at you with pupils blown wide, black eating away at their beautiful color, fluster evident at the warm tint to his face.
âNothinâ I canât handle, sunshine.â
The nickname makes your stomach do a summersault. You smile, out of breath.
Stupid! What the hell is wrong with you?!
âYou kiddinâ me?â He laughs, âYouâre fuckinâ gorgeous.â
His voice is a low growl, and he pulls you in once again by the back of your head. Back to it, I guess.
If the window hadnât been open, it would surely be fogged up by now, with your heated breaths floating up from the cool floor. This was great.
Unanticipated, and weird, but just so great. You have to push off of each other to stop from going any further than you already have, both sweaty, breathing heavily and grinning like you just won a Grammy. It takes a while before one of you can catch your breath. Raph nudges your shoulder.
âYouâre my first kiss.â
He flashes you a five star grin with flared nostrils. You match it. It shouldnât surprise you that much, but it does anyway.
âYeah?â He nods, âWell, youâre my first good kiss.â
You see the pride roll over Raph in a wave.
You shove his face away playfully when he gets close.
âNow that I think about it, it was mediocre.â
The turtle ruffles your already disheveled hair.
âWhateva. You loved that shit.â
Oh you did. The evidence of him enjoying just as much is the prominent arousal just under his naval, and youâre trying to avert your view. He catches it and his eyes blow wide, trying to quickly readjust the way heâs sitting.
âAh! Heh-uhhh-â Raph coughs into his fist, and then drags an open palm down his face in immense embarrassment, âSorry! Sorry. I should probably, uh, get goinââ
It makes you giggle like a teenager. Raphâs bad leg hasnât crossed either of your minds until he tries to lift himself from the floor and it gives out under his weight again and he shouts.
âThereâs no way youâre getting back to the lair on that. Somethingâs probably broken.â
âYeah, no shit,â he snorts. You jump to his aid, slipping your arm under his for support and help raise him off the ground.
âYouâll probably need to stay here for the night, until Donnie can check you out.â
The thought of having a sleepover with the guy you just sucked face with for 20 minutes is so exciting.
âAre ya sure?â Raph sounds unsure while you guide him down onto the couch.
âYou can sleep here. Iâll text Don to come over in the morning.â
He lays back onto the cushions and lets you grab him a blanket and pillow from your room, tucking him in and placing a light kiss on his red-banded forehead. You slide down onto the carpet to be eye level where Raphaelâs head is snuggled into the pillow.
Vannie meows, the first youâve heard from her since she came in through the window. Her tiny head peeks over the back of the couch. You both watch with soft smiles as she curls up, purring, on Raphâs chest.
He flinches a little when your hand slips into his larger one and gives it a squeeze.
âThank you for bringing her back to me.â
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The next morning, Donnie has successfully picked the lock to your front door, heeding to your late night text. He does a double take, and then snorts with an incredulous smile, seeing you passed out on the floor, his older brother on the couch and Vannie still sleeping soundly on top of him while he snores.
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BAM, YOU GET A BIG OL' KISS
HERE'S PART 5 EVERYONE!!! I SINCERELY APPRECIATE ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT AND PATIENCE ON THIS PART, I REALLY STRUGGLED WRITING IT LMAO đЎđđ
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I really do not deserve such incredible support from all of you wonderful folks đđđЎđ
I'm not sure if I'll add another part, which will most likely be a little epilogue, but PLEASE LET ME KNOWWW !!!!
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