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afreakingdork · 4 months

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Ashes Denote Fire

RotTMNT Leonardo x Reader One-Shot

Tags: Future Leonardo (TMNT), Bonfires, Gift Fic, Short & Sweet, One Shot, Gender-neutral Reader, Mention of Bad Future Timeline (TMNT), Christmas Fluff, Bad Puns, Puns & Word Play

Synopsis: Leon always got strange around fire and you tried your best to avoid the subject, but when Donnie surprises the family with a Christmas bonfire, you are finally party to the trip he takes.

Also Available on Ao3

A Secret Santa gift for Pip!

Merry Christmas, Pip! I'm sorry to say I don't know you well, but I hope you enjoy!

Also stolen away from @morning-sun-brah mwahaha!

Leon always got strange around fire.

Something you would have thought easily avoidable in the city, holidays brought on the cozy imagery in ways you never expected.

You’d catch him often.

Staring at yule logs set on static televisions, slowing down as he passed shop displays with chimneys, or even the wafting flames of a candlelit vigil, Leon would take on that same far away look amongst them all.

If you had known Donnie was going to build an entire bonfire, you might have protested.

Instead, the softshell had ushered the Hamatos to what by all accounts should have been a spooky alley. Turning a wretched glowing corner, he announced his surprise in the form of an utter transformation of the space. Rotting brick done up by Mikey into a scenic forest, lights honeyed the rusted fire escapes and paved the path to the enormous wooden structure already aflame.

The others ran off. There was a refreshment table. There were reindeer games. There was a pyromaniac’s dream that needed tending to.

Then there was Leon.

Bathed in firelight, he’d stood in the crux that hid away this alley.

Amber lapped at his winter coat and his eyes took on that haunted look.

Unlike Scrooge, Leon didn’t need three specters to haunt him.

He’d had his share and more and you moved with him as he approached the flames.

The others tapered off into Hamato white noise and seemed none the wiser as the older slider stopped short of where the heat became nearly unbearable.

Scorching your cheeks, you watched him where he watched dancing light.

It licked at his stripes and cast his lowered lids with something distant.

A hollowed past, the husk of him had been partially filled in the years since.

There were the younger versions of his family.

There was a world that hadn’t been destroyed.

There was you.

It was never enough.

There was no way for him to be truly healed.

How could he?

What he had helped.

Family helped.

Community helped.

You helped.

He’d whispered it to you hundreds of times by now. He was keen on small surprises. He liked catching you off guard. You could be doing the dishes and he’d appear behind you. With a hand to your waist for a sudsy dance, he’d dip you to whisper about the hope you instilled in him.

He was the preacher of such a thing.

Junior was a testament to that.

The intangible concept kept Leon going with a smile on his face amongst any adversity.

It was his gospel and he knew every hymn.

A caroler so infectious no one could turn him away.

Yet here he stood, unseen as he stared at some far away point where he was usually as unstoppable as a concept.

The words came off your lips before you could stop them.

“Where do the flames take you?”

It waxed poetic which was unlike you, but it was the only way you could think to put it.

He might have teased you, asked about being a modern-day Dickinson, but instead you tapped the time traveler. Caught between two points, he spoke for the present from the past.

“These numbskulls’ll know the time Donnie tried to build a fireplace.”

A smile spread under a shaded gaze.

“We were…” Leon sighed loudly, giving into a closed eye body movement that said age had taken the sharpness off his memories. “Tots, musta been. Learned the whole shebang about Santa and had been fed a line or two about how he snuck in, ninja-style, and left behind our gifts.”

You stepped close, afraid to displace his form.

“We were chomping at the whole Christmas bit. Been there, done that trying to catch the intruder and now we were onto something else.” Leon’s hands itched in his coat pockets.

Beyond the bonfire, Leo and Donnie squabbled over something.

“’Santa doesn’t use manhole covers! He uses chimneys!’” Leon did an impression you couldn’t place.

Splinter laughed loud while April told him to say it and not spray it.

Leon chuckled. “Tots coming up with harebrained ideas. So, we have the mystery man using the wrong entrance. Must mean we’re getting the short end of the present stick because the layout’s all wrong.”

A garland fell and a glowing Raph rose up to fix it.

Leon hummed with another faded thought. “I think it was Mikey who came up with the line. ‘We get a chimney and Santa’ll bring the good stuff!’ No more cast-off gifts for us. We weren’t that dumb. We noticed our gifts weren’t shiny and new like the kids on TV.” He quieted. “TV…”

He since slept with screens on to make up for the years he’d missed rewatching his favorite films.

He had to shake himself out of the stupor. “So, Donnie devises the thing. We collect cardboard for an entire year. We construct the Leaning Tower of Piza and we all drew our stockings on with the care like the song says.”

Casey popped a Christmas Cracker and deemed herself ruler of Yule.

“It was all fine and dandy, but we shoulda known. Mikey hadn’t exactly been quiet about the fire bit. He kept saying, ‘it’s gotta be a real fire or it’s not real!’ We figured he was the youngest, what was he gonna do?” Leon’s teeth appeared as he sounded an error bell from a game show. “Firebug nabbed some matches, knocked out first, woke up when we were out, and snuck around all of us to light the dang thing. Cardboard!” Leon shook his head, his pupils a steady moth to a flame. “Went up like the Library of Alexandria. Poof. One second there and the next gone. Dad was furious. We almost torched the whole lair.”

Mikey asked someone to dare him through a stuffed face.

“Before that though, we got our coal. You know you think fire burns from the bottom, but that’s not true. It’s alive and it wants to escape. It rushes up a structure to get away, but falls like bad wallpaper. It’s alive and it’s fighting. For it’s very life, it just wants to consume. It’s starving, hungry. It does what it has to. It scrounges around and it holds its loved ones close. It makes do with what its got. It creates a new home, a new lair. It rations when food gets low, turning into those glowing embers to conserve. You gotta respect that drive. It’s needs. It wants. It wasn’t its fault that one well timed explosion clipped an old capped off gas line. That in seconds it devastated the colony. That we had to leave. All that hard work. The screams. The burn. It all burns. Us. Krang. It’s another living thing to burn out. Conquered like the rest of us.” His gaze lowered and his sclera reflected ages. “I went back after we lost CPC. Later, to the rubble. You know it was still going? Smoldering little bits were still smoking. Weeks later. Still hanging on. To keep the resistance going. To live again. To keep it up.”

“Leon.” You were clutching his arm before you realized it.

It wasn’t enough to summon him from the fire. “You know the funny thing about ash?”

He needed prompting. “What?”

“I never thought it was from the stuff burned. Don woulda said it was something about laws of the universe and how matter can’t be destroyed, but I never quite agreed with that part.” His head tipped the scales of thought. “I always thought it marked the flames. That’s where the fire was. It was saying, ‘I’m here! I did this! I was alive!’ Leaving it’s mark, long after it’s gone.”

“Like you.” You tugged.

“Me?”

With that your time traveler returned. He always did, in one way or another. You considered it fate. That he’d always return to you.

With levity, he turned to you with a glint in his eye that burned. “And what’s my mark exactly?”

“Here.” You touched his stripes.

“Close, I woulda said it was the one I need to hit for the camera to get my good side.” His smarmy grin shined as he tucked his chin into the webbing between his thumb and finger.

“Uh huh, you’re a certified star.” You looked away long enough to roll your eyes.

“That’s fire, you know.” It was just enough time for him to scoop you up. “Again, close, but I’ll save that one for you.”

“Me?” You settled into his grasp.

“Yeah, I’ll be the tinder and you be the flame since you light up my life.” His brow ridge wagged.

You groaned loudly and protested his mocking smooches. “If anything I’ve got a burning desire to go!”

“’Why did the bonfire leave early!?’” Leon shouted. “You scald me! It was right there! Where’s the lead up!? The craft!? You don’t open with a punch line!”

“Here I am getting roasted instead!” You spoke out of the corner of your mouth, but peeked at him.

Bowled over, you watched Leon field swaths of emotions before he settled on the brightest one and a searing kiss.

💙

Here's the Emily Dickinson poem that inspired me:

Ashes denote that Fire was —

Revere the Grayest Pile

For the Departed Creature's sake

That hovered there awhile —

Fire exists the first in light

And then consolidates

Only the Chemist can disclose

Into what Carbonates.

#rottmnt leo x reader #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt x reader #leonardo hamato #leo x reader #future leo #future leo x reader #rise leo #rise leo x reader #rottmnt leo #rottmnt #rottmnt leonardo #me #fanfiction #my fanfiction

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fanfic-inator795 · 4 years

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Hippoworm Holiday drabble: Novelty Carols

((Some pre-dating/still in the just-besties-it's-complicated phase Hippoworm. This idea popped into my head at work yesterday and I just HAD to write it out, lol. Enjoy! ^v^ Also you can read my other RotTMNT holiday drabbles here))

“Come on, come on!” Warren gritted his teeth, shoving his tiny hands right up to the car’s heater and wincing at the cold air that was still blowing out. They really needed a new car…

At the very least, Hypno’s old van was reliable enough to get them to gigs - one of those gigs as of late being Run of the Mill Pizza. They maybe weren’t as popular as that exploding goop guy, but yokai families seemed to like a famous hippo-magician and his worm man-magical assistant well enough - enough to help them pay their rent, at least.

Usually they would have stayed and had dessert after their performance, but that night four certain annoying teenage-turtles were at the pizzeria as well, and Warren knew he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his cannoli while listening to their antics. So Hypno volunteered to get them dessert to go while Warren started the car.

Speaking of which, he could finally start to feel heat coming out of the old air vents. Warren sighed, letting the hot air wash over his nearly frozen body. Worms didn’t have much body heat insulation as it turned out (just another ‘wonderful’ thing about being stuck as a worm…), but at the very least Warren had managed to sew together a decent mini sweater for himself.

Relaxing now, Warren started to hum to himself, not even realizing he was doing it at first. Not many people of New York might have known this, but along with being the best and undoubtedly most handsome news anchor, Warren Stone was also a pretty talented singer. Thinking back on his old life, he could remember many Christmas office parties where he had graced his co-workers with his talents by singing carols.

Maybe it wasn’t something he did all the time, but singing was certainly a fun past time. ...However, participating in singing Christmas carols and humming them just because they were stuck in your head were two VERY different things. “Ugh…” He might have tried turning on the radio to find something to drown the holly jolly tunes out, if not for noticing the now-open portal and his hippo roomie/bestie (and secret crush) walking out of it. His gaze softened as Hypno got into the car.

Hypno shivered. “Dreadfully cold out there! Oh, I got you a coffee,” he said, slipping the cup into the cup holder, “Double expresso with a hit of chocolate and cream.”

Warren’s smile grew, touching the warm cup. A lot of people might have had a bad habit of forgetting about him, but when it came to all things Warren Stone, his hippo roomie had the memory of an elephant. “Thanks, Ron.” Using the straw Hypno had also provided for him, he took a long sip before grabbing his cannoli from the bag.

As the two of them quietly enjoyed their dessert, the warmth of the car and (of course) each other's pleasant company, Warren started humming again. Hypno didn’t mind humming but… the song Warren had chosen did make him pause. “Warren?”

“Hm?” Warren said, mid-chew.

“What’s that you’re humming?”

“Mm-” He swallowed. “Oh, some Christmas song I can’t get out of my head.”

“I figured as such but which song is it?”

“Ugh, one of the novelty ones that they always seem to play,” Warren answered, waving his hand a bit, “I don't know, something like ‘Want a Hippopotamus for Chris-’”

He stopped, and closed his eyes as his face turned a shade pinker. He did manage to keep from facepalming, though for once part of him actually wished for something to randomly fly out of nowhere and cut him in half.

Hypno gave him a bit of a cheeky smile to try and cut through the awkwardness. “You know if we’re being completely honest, I’m actually quite flattered!”

“Ughhh…” Warren sunk deeper into his sweater as he groaned. Hypno chuckled as he leaned over, patting his partner's back and nuzzling his poofy hair a bit.

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #hippoworm #warren stone #hypnopotamus #my writing #drabble

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