Raph fidgeted outside Leonardo’s door before knocking.

He’d seen something on the surface that he didn’t understand and wanted to see if his big brother knew what it was. He would never admit it, but he looked up to his big brother. Especially in times like this where he couldn’t talk to their father.

“What is it, Raphael?” Leo yawned, rubbing his hand over his eyes tiredly. Out of all of them Leo trained the hardest, and he’d spent and extra couple of hours perfecting a new kata with his bokken earlier in the day. He’d gone to bed early and Raph felt a little bad for waking him up.

“I…Uh. Can we talk? I wanted at ask ya something.”

Leo frowned at the slight accent his brother had developed. “Sure.” He pushed the door open wider, and was surprised when Raph double checked that it was shut before they headed over to mess of blankets on the old table Leo used as a bed.

“So what did you want to talk about?”

Raph frowned as he tried to think about how to explain what he saw. He could practically see it in his head, but he didn’t know how to describe it.

“I saw a couple of humans…Doing something.” Raph tried, his eye locking onto Leo’s in the hopes that he might magically know what he was talking about.

“You told father you’d stopped going topside.” Leo seemed to wake himself up as he glared at him. Raph had a bad habit of sneaking off to the surface by himself,  but they hadn’t noticed until about a year ago. Raph had started to develop an accent, and Splinter constantly had to tell him off for using bad words that he’d picked up from the humans he’d listened too.

“I lied.” Raph shrugged as if it wasn’t important. “I didn‘t come here to get a lecture. That‘s why I didn‘t ask Master Splinta.” He fidgeted slightly under Leo’s gaze as he broke eye contact. “Maybe I should just go.”

“Wait.” Leo grabbed his arm to stop him from leaving, it was clear that something was bothering his usually hot-headed brother. “What were they doing?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t have ta ask would I.” Raph snapped, pushing Leo’s hand off his arms. “They was, touching. And pressing their lips together, sort of.”

“Kissing?” Leo offered curiously. “Like the people in Sensei’s stories?”

“Yeah. But not like that. It wasn‘t like,” Raph lent forward and pressed his lips to Leo’s briefly, tilting his head slightly so that their beaks weren’t in the way.  Both their faces darkened slightly as Raph pulled back from the light kiss. “It was more…I don’t know, but I never seen people doing it like this.” Raph had a confused look as he stared at his bothers lips. “I could see their tongues.”

“Eww.” Leo screwed his face up slightly. “Why would they use their tongues to kiss?”

“I don‘t know. But they was touching each other too.” Raph drew his eyes away from his brother’s lips to flick his eyes briefly down his plastron, before looking back at him.

“People touch each other, all the time.”

“People on the TV don‘t touch like this.” Raph pushed his hand between his brothers thighs, stroking the skin between the bottom of the plastron and in-between Leo’s legs.

“S.Stop.” Leo giggled as Raph’s fingers brushed across his sensitive tail. “That tickles.”

Raph grinned, tickling his brother until the two of them were a giggling mess of limbs as they playfully fell into a full blown tickle attack.

“They weren‘t doing that.” Raph laughed, panting as they both slumped back on Leo’s bed.

“Humans, don‘t have tails.” Leo pointed out, turning to look at Raph as they both tried to catch their breath. “Why would they touch down there?”

“They weren’t laughing either. They was, moaning. Kinda.” Raph nodded. “Like Mikey does when he falls of his skateboard.”

“Do you think they were in pain?”

“No. They seemed ta like it.” Raph sat back up, looking down at his brother confused. “Do ya have any Idea why they were doing it?”

Leo sighed,  looking thoughtful. “Maybe we should ask Splinter?”

“No!” Raph’s eyes widened as he shook his head. “Then he’d know I went to the surface.”

“You shouldn‘t have gone in the first place.” Leo shot back, gently shoving against his brother as he pushed himself into a sitting position. “It‘s dangerous.”

“Com’on Leo. You‘d be up there too if you weren’t scared .”

“I’m not scared!” Leo claimed crossing his arms stubbornly.

“Yeah right.” Raph chuckled, but decided not to argue. “Oh! Be right back.”

Raph quickly rushed out of the room leaving a very confused Leonardo to wonder what he was doing.

A couple of minutes later Raph came back into the room clutching a small piles of flyers and posters. “I heard you say you were running out of paper.” Raph grinned sheepishly.

Leo had started to learn origami a few months ago from their father, but it was hard to find paper that was dry enough to use down in the sewers.

“Thanks.” Leo smiled brightly as he took the small pile from Raph and added it to few he had underneath the table.

“Maybe you could ask Donnie what the humans were doing?” Leo offered, forgetting that he was angry at Raph for saying he was scared.

“You think so?”

“If any of us knows, Donnie would.” Leo sounded confident in his assessment. “And he can keep a secret too.” He added at Raph’s sceptical look.

It wasn’t that the hot-head doubted his brothers intelligence, they all knew that Donatello was by far the smartest of the three of them; he’d even corrected Splinter once. It was the fact that their purple banded brother always obeyed the rules and never stepped out of line that made Raph dubious as to whether he would tell on him to their father.

“Really?”

Leo nodded his head enthusiastically. “He‘s kept all the one‘s I‘ve told him.”

“You got secrets?” Raph stared at his brother. Leonardo was the ‘perfect son’, why would he need to keep secrets?

“Doesn’t everyone?” He replied easily, stifling a yawn as his earlier tiredness caught up with him. 

“I guess so.” Raph smiled, watching Leo lie back on his bed.

For a few seconds they sat in a comfortable silence, until Raph stood up and started to head for the door.

“I‘m gonna go ask Donnie” He decided, looking back at Leo only to see that that his big brother was already curled up half asleep.

“Night Leo.” Raph smiled, taking extra care not to slam the door.