Everyone had left for the day and most of the family was winding down for the night. Raphael eased open Sandro's door and leaned in the threshold. Kid looked to be going through his pictures of the day and deleting unnecessary duplicates.

"Hey," Raphael called. "I know ya kinda had a full day today already, but... got time ta talk fah a bit?"

Sandro was a little surprised. "Sure. What about?"

"World of Reptiles."

Sandro turned scarlet. More red than green by a long-shot, a more normal blush than any of the older turtles had. "Oh."

"S'kinda my job as ya dad," Raphael explained, "ta eventually say somethin' or another on the subject. Talk with ya about it."

"It's the digital age," Sandro tried to head him off. "I have the internet."

"Yeah, well, ain't we both in luck Wikipedia ain't got the manual on the 'teenage mutant turtle' bit."

Poor kid panicked. "Uh, look, I-I don't wanna-"

"I know," Raphael said, and left it at that for a second, gathering his thoughts. "S'not exactly somethin' people want to talk about with their parents, but, uh... I'm quite literally the only person there is in the world ta ask who can say anythin' authoritative on the topic. Uh. Well, that or ya mom, but I'm sure that ain't any better."

Sandro looked like life had just given him lemons, and he was hating every tongue-curdling bite of them. "You. You don't have to."

"I know I don't have to, I survived my own da not knowing much about what ta tell me. But figurin' it out ourselves, even just the puberty part... yeah, parts of that were real rough."

Sandro was silent, staring at the ground, still looking completely, like, mortified.

"Look," Raphael cleared his throat. "I know this ain't a conversation you're wantin' ta have, but... uh... I'll tell it like it is. Shit I wouldn't usually say, not in normal everyday conversation, stuff I wouldn't even admit ta my brothers. S'up ta you, kid. You got a question, I'll answer."

Kid was quiet a minute more. Like a full sixty seconds, that type of minute. Then he lifted his head and winced up at Raphael almost pleadingly. "Can this conversation wait another year?" he asked. "I appreciate, and I kinda do get why it's important, even if I'm embarrassed, but the truth is I don't really want to have it yet. I don't even want to think about... that."

"Sure." Raphael lingered, hesitant. "Anythin ya did want ta ask, before I go mark 'awkward talk with Sandro' on my calendar sometime November 2019?"

Sandro chewed the edge of his beak and looked down.

That sort of looked like a 'yes but it's gonna take me a second ta say it out loud,' so Raphael waited.

"You..." Sandro took in a deep breath. "You got a lot taller from sixteen to twenty-one," he blurted.

"Uh... yeah." Raphael had a feeling he knew where this question was headed. "Final adult growth spurt was almost closer ta twenty-two for me. Mikey shot up right at twenty-one."

"And that wasn't... you know," Sandro asked, "a problem?"

"Took, um, took some getting used to." Raphael would have been as red as his bandanna if he hadn't been green to start with, "Have ta realize I was a head shorter than ya mom at sixteen."

Sandro looked up at him in surprise.

"Yeah," Raphael confirmed. "Weighed more! But... she hit her adult height way before us. We age a little slower than humans. We hit full adulthood a little slower, too. And ya ma ain't short."

"But it... worked."

"Well obviously."

"And it still works. It's not like I'm on... on some kind of timer," Sandro concluded nervously, confirming what he'd been worried about: size differences.

The answer to the whole question was kind of important. "Look, um, Sandro... Not gonna lie ta you, and nevah tell ya mom I said dis by the way, but I'd imagine it's a little easier pickin' up the basics before ya got ya full height."

"The basics?"

"How ta start n' how ta finish n' what ta do in between. With the average young person, there's so much unnecessary sexual tension in everything, s'like releasing a wind-up toy, zip, off it goes! I didn't have ta know what da fuck I was doin da first time, just um," cough, "stuffed it all together whatever way it seemed ta make sense. When ya thirty and six hundred pounds, takes a bit more understandin' of the principles. All that said, it ain't somethin' ta be scared of, ya don't have to be in a rush the second ya turn eighteen. If it takes a bit, then just take it in baby steps."

Sandro suddenly frowned at him.

"What?"

The kid shifted slightly in place. "You and mom were both sixteen."

Raphael bristled. "We had no business doing what we did, we was kids."

Sandro continued to frown at him, like he'd just heard something he wasn't sure he was okay with but also wasn't entirely ready to fight about. "It's not like I want to have sex with anyone," he preemptively defended himself, like he wasn't arguing against no more than hypocrisy.

Parenting was hard. Raphael let out a hard breath through his nose. "Seventeen," he growled. "Any earlier and I'mma kick ya tail so hard ya won't be havin' sex again till ya fifty."

The kid considered this and then seemed to feel it was a good compromise between retrospect and reality. "Fair. If, you know, if there even is somebody."

Raphael eyed him up and down. "I don't think we'd need ta even have this talk if there weren't already 'somebody.'"

Kid looked back to him in a flash. "It's not like that," he said, face darkening.

"Not yet, I should hope not," Raphael snickered. "But, kid-"

"It doesn't ever have to be like that!" Sandro said with a jump to his feet, like he was ready to fight about it.

Raphael lifted both hands placatingly. Whoa there, easy tiger! "Ya ain't got feelings for ya Mouse?"

"No."

"Don't lie ta me kid."

"I don't have any sexual feelings for her. Nothing."

Raphael wasn't so sure, but he backpedaled as a thought occured to him. "N'what about, like, ya know, just romantic?"

Sandro hesitated, not sure how to answer. Maybe he hadn't expected anyone to decouple the two things from eachother.

"A'ight," Raphael shrugged. "Ain't gonna put words in ya mouth. Didn't have any kind of feelin' ta ya ma at fourteen either. Took me awhile just ta warm up to her."

"It took you time to warm up to her?"

"Ha!" Raphael grinned. "Takes me awhile to like anybody. Not sayin' I was any kind of desirable! Hell, what ya ma sees in me, that I might nevah know."

Sandro frowned. "When... when did you tell mom you loved her?"

Raphael was surprised by the question. Then, embarrassed, he admitted, "Like aftah you was born. When she woke up from the coma."

Kid's snout wrinkled. "When did you tell her you had feelings for her?"

"I didn't," Raph blurted. "My feeling's for your mom was in the vein of 'Raph, ya throwin yaself under a bus wantin somethin ya got no business wantin, when ya best friend an ya brother are both in love with her."

"But then what happened? You got together with her. Obviously."

"Yeah. I left the farmhouse after an argument to go cool off. Figured I'd rub one out in the barn. April followed cause she weren't done arguing, had another bone or two or five ta pick with me about 'my behavior,' and when I finally couldn't take smelling her in the same room a second longer, much less tryin' ta argue back, I shouted for her to get the fuck away from me, fuck off, and go bother Casey or Donnie before I untailed right in front of her. Then she kissed me. And then we fucked ourselves sore in the hay and I asked her WTF just happened afterwards."

Sandro's face went slack and he blinked. "Oh," he said quietly. "Ew."

"Yeah," Raphael grimaced. "And then we had you on the way. Not that we knew that for another couple months."

"It was then!?"

"Yeah, that or later that week I guess. It wasn't iffy at all, your conception. Mutagen woke up and went 'turtle human baby? hold my beer, i done this before.' I didn't even know what a pregnancy test looked like. Donnie did, but all he did was run up ta her and shout 'that's not possible!' as he took it and read from it, and I'm like 'chill don, what could possibly be so exciting about a stick, does she have cancer?' Casey explained it was a pregnancy test, that it said April was pregnant, and then Mike congratulated Casey, who was all like 'don't look at me, I ain't done it!' Mike was like 'doonnnnniee?' and then April just points at me and Leo speaks up for the first time that week to ask super quiet, 'is this reality?'

"Meanwhile I'm just steadily more gone. Just gone. Fixated on the word, 'pregnant' echoing over and over in my head. I'm pretty sure I effectively blacked out about there. Like, I was physically present, and I was awake, but I don't really remember what happened, and I don't think I did anything meaningful or said anything."

"...And this is why I don't have any siblings my own age," it finally all made sense to Sandro, who was staring off into the void reassembling memories of things Raph had previously said. "You weren't even dating."

"Yeeeahhh," Raphael confirmed. "Not gonna lie, probably shoulda planned ta give ya some younger siblings when ya was five and not for when ya was fifteen, but eh... hindsight's twenty-twenty."

"Are you?" Sandro looked up at him. "Are you and mom going to have more kids?"

Raphael hesitated. "You... did say ya'd give ya blessin, but ya was kinda on the spot at the time. Should probably double-check you're okay with the idea."

"I don't want to take care of them," Sandro repeated his terms. "I'm their sibling, not one of your brothers. I won't babysit them, I won't... be obligated to do anything for them. Then it's okay."

"I get it," Raphael told him. "Ya want it to be how it would have been if you'd been born closer together. Then, uh... yeah. Yeah, me and ya mom is gonna give it a shot. Assuming we didn't get baked by too much radiation the last time we ended up in space," he winked, "and you weren't a one-time-only miracle baby, should work about the same."

"Cool." Sandro smiled a bit. "Thanks for talking to me, even if... you know."

"It was as awkward as fuck? Yeah. No problem. I'll still have my calendar marked, 'November 2019, second stage of awkward turtles, humans, birds, and bees conversations.'"

"Don't actually write that anywhere in the Lair," Sandro told him. "Because Wild will somehow see it."

"Ooh. Wouldn't dat be fun."