[Author's Note] This chapter is unabashedly disgusting! Woo!

Chu~!

Sandro woke up slowly out of some kind of soupy and plesant dream, feeling incredibly comfortable. More comfortable than he ought to have been given that it was Thursday, and this would be the last he'd see of Wild till the weekend was over. He glanced to his clock and thought he might as well get up for the day, and join Leo for drills in the dojo before he left for the evening. Practicing with Wild had its own benefits, but it was no substitute for training under a master of nin-

Sandro paused, because something smelled peculiar and his pillow was not under his head. He'd been holding it against his chest like a stuffed animal, almost? Except his leg had been flung over it, too.

He sat bolt upright and threw his blankets aside. Nothing hurt, did it? Not exactly, but there was an unexpected pressure low in his bowels and something was—he touched his tail and then snatched his fingers back, because the underside of it was smeared with translucent, off-white slime.

What. The. Oh.

Sandro leaned forward as far as he could, even as the lower lip of the plastron made it impossible for him to see his own cloaca, or to determine whether it was the source of his present situation. Disturbed, he reached under the reflexive curl of his tail. Was it...? It was. Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew. Congradulations, Sandro, I think you just had your very first wet dream.

And then his shoulders tensed and he lifted his head and his eyes widened in mortification, because he was suddenly irrevocably and absolutely sure he'd been dreaming about Wildcard kissing him. His primitive and reflexive shriek of horror was apparently loud enough that Donatello felt the need to check up on him, and without knocking at that, which led to another shriek of horror and a rapid scramble to cover himself with his pillow, even as there wasn't much to see. The smell was certainly there.

"Tissues! Tissues!" he demanded of a red-faced uncle, who had immediately figured out what had happened, turned away, and called back in a very understanding voice:

"Yup. Got it," as he went to find him exactly that.

Needless to say that despite an hour-long shower and a thorough scrubbing of every inch of his own skin, Sandro still felt a little off-balance, even betimes Leo had departed and Wildcard had safely arrive. He was bracing himself for the first half of the day to feel... weird. On seeing her ecstatic grin, he wasn't even sure how he felt. Could she maybe manage to give him a few hours playing video games until he could... blot out the compromising state in which he'd woken up from his memory?

But if he thought his morning had already been gross and confusing, well it turned out that Wildcard was smiling like a crazy person for a reason, and that—knowing her as well as he did—Sandro really ought to have expected that she'd somehow magically one-up the entire universe. He barely caught a whiff of her, or had an instant to contemplate something was wrong, and then she'd squealed out with maddened enthusiasm:

"I started my period today! Look!" and the hand she showed him was covered in an alarming amount of tacky, slimy, red stuff. "Isn't that cool!?"

Sandro stared at her.

Then his brain flipped the table it had been working at all morning, and wandered off to go take a coffee break. Somewhere off to the side, Donatello blue-screened. Mikey couldn't have said anything if he'd tried. Left bereft of brain and adults both, Sandro's mouth said with surprising lack of distress: "Ya smell like somethin' died."

Wild blinked rapidly, and sniffed at herself, and then started giggling and snorting. "I think need a shower," she snickered.

"Or at least that deodorant stick ya keep stealing," Sandro agreed, doing surprisingly well despite the missing brain. "But first, clearly ya need some help," he took her arm by the wrist, and led her to the sink. He upended a bottle of soap onto her palms. "Scrub. And under the nails, too." She diligently obeyed, and he flicked on the water and glanced down at her. "You okay?"

"Oh, I am high as a kite," Wildcard admitted with flaming-eyes and an ear-to-ear grin. "It happened at the Rec center! Ms. Jane was the one who spotted it and sent me to the showers early, because I'd almost ended up totally humiliated in front of everyone, and then—omigod—I spent two hours in a public bathroom trying to figure out tampons! I didn't even know what the topography was like down there, and Google took me to some highly questionable places when I made inquiry! Though Wikipedia actually has nice technical diagrams; just be smart and don't scroll down to the creepy diseases. And then I had to actually do it and those things go inside a person! INSIDE! Injected like a big plastic and cotton syringe! WHY!? And it makes me tired, too—the period, not the tampon—so I had to throw back three Red Bulls just to not fall asleep! Wee! I'm a firework! Psseewww!"

"Wild?" Sandro cleared his throat.

"Yes?"

"Thank ya for always puttin' my problems into perspect've for me," he told her sincerely, and gave her a warm squeeze about the shoulders.

"No problem, sweet damsel! Consider it my highest honor!" she posed gallantly. He smirked.

"So ya wanna go train in the dojo 'til that caffeine high comes crashin' down?"

"Yes! Race you there, bro!" She took off like a bullet, and Sandro was glad he'd waited until her hands were clean.

He turned to follow her and caught sight of his uncles watching him with wide eyes and no small amount of trepidation on their faces. He blinked quietly at them and then slowly shrugged, not really feeling much of anything other than tolerant amusement. "At least I'm never bored."

Wildcard made it two hours before her energy tanked like a science fiction sound-effect. Sandro suggested she take a nap on the couch, but the dazed away she stumbled off made him delay in stripping off his own knee and elbow pads so that he could follow and make sure she didn't give up and try to crash on the hallway floor instead.

She made it, but was probably unconscious before he chin hit the center cushion. Zzzzz. Sandro shook his head and then came up to lean over and push both her legs up over the lip of the couch. He took the fleece from over the back of the couch, and shook it out over her. Wild was so small, there was an entire cushion's worth of room to sit in advance of her head, and so that was what he decided to do.

He muted the television speakers and flicked through the less-involved video games. Animal Crossing, maybe? He sat back into the cushions to relax and mindlessly farm cute collectibles. Had he ever seen Wildcard down for the count, before? She'd dosed against him before, but not really slept. He glanced down, raising his elbow a bit that he might better see her. Then he reached over and pulled the edge of the fleece up over her head to dim the lights. His fingers brushed her hair, and then went to linger where the tinge of yellow about her eye showed the bruise had nearly completely healed. His palm settled over the warm shape of her cheek.

Heh.

He pulled his hand out from under the blanket and draped it across her in a companionable embrace, and went back to playing his game with her tucked there.

"So..." Donatello broached quietly as he leaned over the couch to inspect the unconscious nuclear explosion asleep beside Sandro. "You... handled that rather admirably."

"There's a lot of 'just rollin with it' in this friendship," Sandro murmured he filled his avatar's house with yet another tiny, dancing cactus-teapot-thing. "The pace of Wildcard leaves little room for dilly-dally and I don't think she has a maximum setting. At this rate, I'll have grown entirely immune to the element of surprise by early spring."

"That could make you a great ninja one day," Donatello did observe. "Though it's becoming clear why you are... apprehensive about introducing her to April."

"Iunno," Sandro mused, "pack five or six energy drinks into her and she might be able to pave rainbows, expletives, memes, and lewd innuendo all over every conceivable objection to her presence. Mom might not know what hit her."

"Or she'd call Arkham Asylum to ask if they lost any juvenile inmates earlier in the year," Donatello speculated dryly. Sandro gave no indication at all that his uncle had struck close to the mark. Some secrets were easy to keep. "She's cute. Clearly psychotic, but cute." Sandro looked up in surprise, glad to hear her hysteria from earlier that morning had been forgiven. "We grew up with Raph, Mikey, and Casey, so..."

"She even used to play hockey," Sandro mentioned, and Donatello's distaste made him grin. "It means a lot to me that you both sort of like her."

Donatello watched him for a moment and then smiled gently. "It's going to be fine, Sandro. Even if it takes some time, it'll turn out fine." He straightened up from the couch. "Mikey's out on patrol. And so far Leonardo is none the wiser, which honestly doesn't surprise me given how little time he spends outside his own head."

Sandro frowned. "I wouldn't underestimate him. He's out there every single night. He has to be alert."

Donatello opened his mouth to say something, but then apparently decided not to bad-mouth Leo in front of Sandro. Instead he settled on saying something unexpectedly informative: "Raphael's temper always served the interesting dual purpose of keeping Mikey entertained and Leo out of the astral plane. Sometimes it gets strange here without him, like a piece of ourselves is missing." He smiled thinly. "We'll start talking strategy sometime next week." He turned and went to occupy the dojo for a few hours, leaving Sandro alone with some bewildered thoughts.

Well, not alone. Sandro glanced to where a piece of himself still slumbered, and thought maybe this had been Donatello's way of illustrating that despite any technical misgivings, he understood.

"What are we playing?" was Wildcard's first question as she poked sleepily out from under her fleece. "And, more importantly, does this mean are we fans of the (ironically named) New York Red Bulls?"

"Animal Crossing," Sandro looked down and noticed the sports print on the fleece. "Yeah we have a positively un-American obsession with the Soccer World Cup in this family. How are you feeling?"

"I'll feel much better just as soon as we put that Archaeopteryx fossil on display in our house. You weren't going to sell it, were you?"

"Of course not. Why would we sell our dinosaur fossils? This is my favorite dinosaur! We'll put it where we had the cabana chair, that thing was starting to look trashy with our current decor anyway."

She sighed contentedly and nuzzled back into her fleece. "I knew I could count on you."

"Can I ask you about something?" he asked as he reallocated furniture items and changed the wallpaper. She hummed an affirmative. "Well," He cleared his throat, "If we plan on growing up together from here on out, we kinda have to admit we missed the innocent seven-to-eight-year-old age range. We're starting off as teenagers, and there are some things we can't do."

"Uh, is this about—?"

"—the handful of crotch goo you so proudly presented to me upon entering the domicile?" he queried, and glanced flatly down at her. "Why no Wild, why would you presume that?"

"... Wow, I'm really sorry."

Sandro considered this, because an apology was a step up with her. He turned back to his game with a shrug. "You had a traumatic coming-of-age experience in the middle of a public building, and then had no one your own gender to confide in. You then preserved the gruesome story evidence in the same way as a three year old boy might show off a booger, dead bug, or picked-off scab. Which is proof that you are disgusting and woefully immature, and need to grow up a bit. But," he kept his attention on his game so he could make sure he was saying this exactly right: "The fact that you chose to confide in me is not something I want to sacrifice just because we are different genders. What I'm trying to say is: I'm willing to serve as your proxy sister, when you need one. "

She was quiet for a long moment, as if the gerbils inhabiting her brain had to run about and sort and file everything they had just heard. Then she asked, "The way I'm your brother?"

He nodded. "I'm still going to smack you over the head the next time you're so effing gross. You're lucky I figured out how to handle you today, by the way, or that could have permanently estranged the two unfortunate adults in the room. Like, Donatello, in particular, can be judge-y. We need to work on building you a filter, or one day you're going to end up ruining your chances at winning over the hearts of people you seriously like."

Wildcard was quiet a long moment. "Okay," she said, and she sounded like she really meant it. "You know... you always make the most beautiful arguments."

Sandro smirked to himself, but then was belatedly shocked because something didn't line up quite right. One hand left his controller as he twisted to look down at her. "What?"

"Your voice is always pretty too, and moves around like you are telling an enthralling story," she commented, her gaze long. "Which is kinda funny, since it's still burred and cracks. But it goes back and forth: first sly, then deadpan, next chastising, then soft. And you're bookish and it makes me envious, cause you string words together so perfectly that they all mean something, when mine all just explode out and carry me along with them."

"N-no, you-" That didn't line up with the rest of his experience in this place, in this sewer, between these walls, "It's ya just lemme talk, is what it is."

"Well something else has been bothering me," she transitioned, sounded a little upset. "It's in the same vein of things we can or cannot do as teenagers. You and I touch a lot in a given day. Roughhousing, hugging; we stand very close while learning new kata. I'm presently using your thigh for a pillow and you've done much the same against me. But is that kind of platonic intimacy going to turn inappropriate? Do we have to stop?"

Unknowingly, Wildcard had hit on the crux of the issue he'd woken up with. He paused his game, and sat back, and tried to think of what to do. At last he took a deep breath, and admitted very quietly: "I had an erotic dream about you last night; and it made me feel violated, like someone else was putting thoughts in my head which they thought were natural for a teenage boy, but which I wanted nothing to do with. I don't want you looking at me like that, like I'm even capable of feeling stuff I shouldn't, or like you'd have to think twice about hugging me. I haven't gotten to have a sibling my entire life, and it was like the dream wanted to steal that from me."

She tilted her head back and looked up at him with furrowed brows and gleaming, intelligent eyes. After a moment, she slowly asked, "You feel your own dream was gaslighting you?" Sandro hadn't heard that terminology before and wasn't sure how to answer. "Has someone ever done that to you for real?"

"What's it even mean?"

Wildcard propped herself slowly upright, and scooted close to talk with him at an equal level. "To 'gaslight' someone is to manipulate them into doubting their perception of reality. You de-legitimize their beliefs, using denial, misdirection, charged words, and convenient misinterpretations of the truth. It can be done unintentionally, by people who are very good debaters and have strong opinions or agendas. I only ask because it sounded unusual to have such strong feelings of anger towards the relatively mundane problem of getting a boner."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Cut it. Your comments about needing Google's assistance earlier in the day revealed you aren't as lewd as you pretend."

"Shell!" she recoiled with a hard laugh and a reddened face, and slapped her hand over her mouth. "Eh-heh. Um. Shit. Well, I get by on bravado. You sound disgusted with yourself. Would you be disgusted with me if I were the one confessing to odd dreams or—even one step further—developing romantic feelings for you?"

He frowned, looking down at his controller. Then he quickly shook his head. "No."

"San, I think you are too hard on yourself. Dreams are dice. They are not prophetic, and they don't come from deep within. And, furthermore, the inside of someone's head should already be a safe place to assemble weird thoughts, reflect on them, and discard them without judgement. I get the sense you are scared things will change, and to be honest I'm kinda worried people might treat us differently based on their expectations; but if you promise not to pull away from me in a fit of psychological constipation..."

"...then we can probably trade loads of unnecessarily awkward conversations in exchange for keeping our ridiculously over-clingy friendship?" Sandro completed wryly. Hazel eyes gleamed at him. He smirked, thought about this for a bit, and then lifted an arm. She snuggled in against the side of his plastron, and he draped an arm about her. She shared her fleece.

"I need you, by the way. You're my family." She stole their controller and un-paused the game. "Totally independent of whether I want to snog you or not."

He folded both arms around her and gave her a long, tight hug.

Mine.

Sandro, who for whatever reason didn't want to train alongside Donatello in the dojo today, suggested they go to the exercise room, a circular and well-like chamber outfitted with equipment such as a pull-up bar, a sizable assortments of weights, and punching bags. The room lacked for the same level of Japanese decor and had it's own boombox, but someone had cut Japanese sigils into the concrete, and the floor sported a familiar rug.

The chin-up bar was placed high, and Sandro gave Wild a boost up to reach it. She'd taken his suggestion of researching calisthenics to heart, and had some maneuvers to show off. He sat down on the bench beside the punching bag, and watched her as he pulled on gloves to protect his knuckles.

"Can I ask a random question?" she asked as she climbed her feet up the wall and hooked her knees around the bar.

"Hailing frequencies open," he stood to have at that punching bag.

She stretched her arms and cracked one shoulder. "Do you wear the most clothing of all your turtle family members?"

"Ayup. But I've always had access to clothes, and they haven't." He paused in pummeling the bag. "Wait a minute. If today is awkward topic day, there's something I should bring up with you." She was doing one-hundred-and-eighty-degree sit-ups, which was very impressive. "Don't go looking for my tail."

"Why not?" she wondered innocently.

"Aside from it bein' below my waistband, under the lip of my shell, and anatomically associated with my ass? Hmm, I wonder." But he thought better of this approach, and reached behind himself, and then walked up to her. "Here." He drew out the lower two-thirds of his tail, all scutes and spikes. "Satisfied?"

Hazel eyes went wide, and she unfolded herself from the chin-up bar and dropped to the ground. "It's a tttaaaaillll...!"

"I'm glad I thought to do this now instead of waiting to get it yanked on one day. Yes, Wild, it's a tail."

"Can I... can I touch it?" she wondered, clearly in awe.

"Well this or thereabouts isn't private. But don't pull. And I don't want to hear any innuendo, period." He experienced a brief moment of panic as he handed the limb over to her, because he'd seen how vigorously she'd pet Lady Smiles-A-Lot, but apparently Wildcard appreciated this was both attached to him and a little more intimate than other parts of himself.

"You know," she murmured as she had a look, "I don't think I had any idea what a turtle tail looked like."

"Well you wouldn't have, if you'd only ever seen a red-eared slider. Their tails are like little pins. This is stout, I guess, more of a snapper or green sea-turtle tail or something."

"It has a row of spikes, like it belongs on a dinosaur," she disagreed, turning it gently over to find the pale underbelly. "Though I guess the rest of your spine decided to fuse into a shell, so hey it can look like whatever it wants. Is it conical, or...?"

"Sorta wedge-shaped," he reflected.

"Do you stuff it down a pant leg?"

"It curls underneath me."

"Does it like me?"

Sandro glared at her. I said no—! She raised her brow and showed it to him, because it was clearly wrapped around her wrist. He sighed. "Okay, fair. I can control its general movements, but its reflexes are somewhat involuntary. It likes to curl up, like a monkey tail or turtle tail—I suppose?—but really more like it skipped a few ancestors, had an identity crisis, and decided it belonged to a seahorse."

She snickered and gently detached it to offer it back to him. "Well I think it is as suited to you as either arm, either leg, the shell and plastron, and that handsome face," she told him, and he felt a little bashful (though glad she hadn't described it as 'cute' or something). "Thanks for giving me a heads-up not to touch anyone's tail, it's totally something I would have done."

He tucked it back behind himself. "Yeah, that had dawned on me."

"I'm only boringly human," she said with a cross of her arms and a furrow of her brow. "It doesn't seem fair I stick my hands all over you because you're not. Now I've gotten to touch your face, your shell, and your tail. But I have nothing to trade within the bounds of the appropriate... Do I?"

Sandro stilled and glanced slowly back up at her. "Ah..." He looked away. "Never mind."

"No, wait a minute, I'm listening. What do I have that's as exciting as a shell?"

Sandro shifted his weight awkwardly. "Your hair," he said at last, with a wince. "Would that be weird?"

And that was how Donatello found the two watching videos describing how to french braid hair, with Sandro sitting on the kitchen table behind her, leaned over her with his fingers buried knuckle-deep into blonde curls.

"This is a lot harder than it looks," Sandro realized, because he'd yet-again gotten it all horribly wrong. He decided to start from scratch and released the hair and mussed it out. She raised her chin and he grinned, giddily pawing curls back from her temples and forehead, and scratching through he roots to straighten the strands. "You look like you're going to fall asleep," he teased.

"I might, actually," she hummed. "I can't believe you went three months wanting something as simple as to touch my hair and didn't say anything."

"I had no idea anyone liked having their hair played with," he complained. "How could I possibly know that? Does it look like I have a wide variety of people to randomly learn that information from?"

"You could have asked your mom, right?"

"Arg. Oh, shut up Wild, it felt weird to ask!"

"Pff, well, I'm falling asleep to the world's longest scalp massage," his companion cooed blearily with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Carry on with your blunders, my sweet innocent terrapin, carry on."

He laughed, and started pulling the hair into a lattice of pieces again. "Laugh it up, fuzz-ball, I will master this before the day is out."

"Here," Donatello said, surprising both of them as he came up beside where they were sitting. "Like this."

Sandro thought Wildcard might die from joy at so much attention, but he himself looked to his uncle in bafflement. "What do you know about hair?" he wondered.

"I am your mother's best friend, Sandro," Donatello reminded him with a youthful grin the boy wasn't accustomed to seeing on him. "I happen to know a great many things. Including..." He leaned over and pushed a small box into Wildcard's hands, and she came rapidly awake to take it.

"What's this?" she wondered. "It smells of flowers."

"Herbal sachets to alleviate the symptoms of the feminine situation you confronted us all with this morning," Donnie quipped as he showed Sandro how to structure the braid. Wild sank into a cloud of embarrassment she absolutely deserved. "Put them in eight ounces of hot water, and don't take more than one a day." Wild mutely covered her face and Sandro snickered to note that even her ears had gone red.