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There is something about April that makes it impossible for Leo to stop thinking about her.
Maybe it is her hair and how it sits perfectly framing the top of her face. Or her thick eyeliner that brings out her eyes. Or her sense of fashion- simple but stunning.
Something.
It has to be something. He’s seen human girls before, human teens. He’s watched TV with his brothers, ducked away from a gaggle of teenagers on their way to the bodega too late at night and gotten glimpses of the girls there.
Something.
Maybe it is how she was simply unafraid to be herself- loud and angry at whatever threw a full-on ninja star at her head. Maybe it is how she continued on from being dubbed Puke Girl with a brave face. Maybe how she was barely even scared of them when she first saw them.
Something.
Because, if not- why? What made her different from the other girls he’d gotten glimpses of? The ones on the shows and YouTube and and and-
She had looked at him and he’d seen something in her eyes he couldn’t stop thinking about.
He does his best to ignore it. To let the crush remain what it is- his brothers tease him, sure, but nothing more than what he’d do to them, if the situation were reversed.
April is a great friend, and he can take a hint. Prom was the last straw- going as friends made it clear as day how she saw him.
And yet. Something. Something.
Leo stares into the bathroom mirror, trying to figure out what was weird. He tugs his mask tails with a solid yank, making sure the knot is secure. He ends up tugging a little too hard and his face ends up level with the new crack in the corner of the mirror (courtesy of Mondo and Mikey trying to share the sink a few weeks ago).
His face looks… weird. The fragmented view of eye and eye and mouth and mouth layering and stacking and-
Something.
He doesn’t know how to describe it. But it’s weird.
“Leo! Hurry up!” Raph’s knock is heavy on the door and he straightens up quickly.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” He shouts back, ready for their nightly patrol. They’re helping April with her current case, doing stakeouts and keeping an eye out for the TCRI. It’s good- distracting. He’s in his element when he’s running across rooftops, watching Mikey try to grind across railings and Raph attempt to perfect his “running across walls” technique. It’s fun and stupid and reckless and helps stop the weird Something that lingers in the pit of his stomach and bubbles up through his chest like an avalanche when he leasts expects it.
As he leaves the bathroom, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror before he clicks the lights off. He reaches up and flips his mask tails to lay in front of his shoulder, almost like he’s seen the-
Something.
There’s a LGBTQ club at school. He knows of it passively from the posters on the wall and the article April posted about some fundraiser they were doing. It didn’t really click that it was something he could look into until now. April is home sick. He doesn’t technically need to wait around for everyone’s clubs to be over with for the day to head home, but they always walked home together.
It is routine, and he likes that part of his routine.
He considered lingering in their set-aside classroom for the journalism club (technically six members strong, with Raph, Donnie, and Mikey on the list so the club could officially be formed for numbers sake, and some girl named Irma who shows up once in a blue moon to meetings). It feels weird being in there alone, so he decides to wander the halls.
He makes his way to the improv club room, because Mikey had told him he is always welcome to stop by and watch him be “The King of Comedy,” but a few rooms before the door where Leo can practically see the laughter pouring out of, is a cracked open door. One of the only two rooms in the hallway with the lights on, and a single piece of colored paper with “LGBTQ and Ally’s Welcome!” written in alternating colored markers.
Something.
He steps through the door.
The heads in the room perk up, and Leo suddenly needs to turn and leave immediately. He tugs on the collar of his shirt (a nice dark blue button-up, because April said that polo’s were for dads) and waves, “Hi, uh, sorry?”
A kid with bright white hair turns and smiles up at him, showing off braces and copious necklaces, “I’m Renet. She/they. You’re welcome to sit in, no pressure. Anyone is welcome so long as you aren’t a piece of shit.”
Another kid, with a closely shaved head speaks up, “I didn’t know the mutant turtles were gay!”
The girl, Renet, hits the shaved-head kid’s arm, “whatever their reason for coming to this meeting is none of our business, unless they want to share. Don’t pressure anyone, this is a safe place for anyone. That’s the rules.” She turns her dark eyes onto him, and everything is suddenly a lot. “You’re Leo, right? You understand the rules?”
He manages a nod. She gestures to the many chairs around the room, and he sits. Further away from the main group, but close enough. They’re all nice, going back to the conversation he interrupted, but he can barely pay attention.
When talking about him- she hadn’t called him, well, a him. He could excuse it as her generalizing him with his brothers, but-
She said her pronouns were she/they. He knows what that means- that it is a thing that people could do. He is on the internet, of course.
But Renet- well. There was no way he can phrase this without sounding like a jerk, but they don’t look like a typical… girl. He feels gross thinking that. He’s not going to judge someone for how they look, none of his brothers would. But her voice is a little deeper, and her face wider. She looks a little like he does-
Something.
Something.
The meeting ends, and Renet steps up to him and reinforces that he is always welcome to join, if he wants to. He stumbles out a quick thank you and ducks out, moving towards the improv club room again before Mikey can leave and see him in there.
Not that it is something to be ashamed of but-
Something.
He isn’t sure why, but he doesn’t want his brothers to see him leaving there. He shakes his hands out and reaches up to tug on his mask tails, only to remember they never wore them to school. He flaps his hands up and down and up and down again, leaning against the lockers until Mikey comes laughing out of the club room.
“You okay?” Mikey asks quickly, glancing down at Leo’s hands.
Leo nods, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “yeah, just- uh. That test in math is coming up.”
Mikey sighs solemnly, “the worst part of school is the math. I can’t believe Donnie tested out and then decided to take harder math! Who does that!” Mikey’s rant continues on as they make their way to the front of the school, where Raph is already waiting. Donnie catches up to hear the end of Mikey’s scathing comments, and the appearance of him only spurs them back on. It ends only when Raph tackles him down the sewer ladder.
For a moment, Leo has to wonder if Mikey did that on purpose. The journalism club room was on the second floor, at the back end of the school. The improv club was all the way by the theater- only the LGBTQ club was over there. Leo had no reason to be over there waiting for him. Donnie’s club was closer.
No one noticed, though, through Mikey’s talking.
Or maybe Mikey didn’t notice himself. It’s not like it was anything weird. Leo is allowed to go in there. He’s allowed to meet other people like him-
Other people. Just other people.
Something.
He’s not sure if he has a crush on April anymore.
Don’t get him wrong! He still loves hanging out with her, helping her film her research for journalism stuff, playing video games after school, all of it.
But.
Something.
He doesn’t have a word for it.
He hasn’t been able to get Renet out of his mind.
Maybe he has a crush on her?
That’s really the only answer. Unless he just really wants to be her friend? Or wants to be as cool as she looks? Or- or-
Something.
“Hey, want to go get-”
The curtain to their room opens, and Leo slams the laptop closed, hard enough he worries about breaking the screen. Donnie pauses in the entrance to the room, staring Leo down. He places a completely casual elbow on the laptop and props up his head, giving his brother a big grin, hoping it masks how the guilty sick feeling he’s been choking on since he first started googling today is just about boiling over.
Donnie squints at him, his stupid nerd glasses making his eyes look huge, “what were you looking at?”
“Nothing, Donnie. You know, you’re my favorite brother. And I’d love to go get whatever you were going to go ask if I wanted to go get. That sounds great. Wait out there. For a minute.”
Of course, this is not subtle or sly or anything of that nature. Donnie is at his side in an instant, trying to yank the computer away, but Leo’s grip is iron. Donnie starts yelling at him, saying something about how this was their shared laptop, he better not be weird on there, but Leo’s ears are ringing. Donnie could see-
The stupid articles and the-
The damning quiz he has pulled up, halfway filled out.
There would be no explanation for what’s on there. Nothing he can say that would make Donnie not know -
Nothing.
Something.
He feels the familiar sting of tears in his eyes, and the churning feeling in his gut rising and all he can do is hold tight and say, “it’s nothing weird. I promise- just- please-”
And Donnie lets go, hands up like he’s at gunpoint. Eyes wide, bigger than they should be with his glasses. “Okay, sorry. I- are you good?”
The laptop is safe, tucked against his plastron, and Leo can’t bear to look at his brother. He squeezes his eyes shut and nods. “Yeah, just. Uh. A secret. Please.”
Donnie mimics his nod, and begins to back out, “okay. Well, we’re going to get pizza. Mondo is paying this time. Uh, I can tell them you’re not feeling well? Or that you’ll be out in a minute?”
Leo shrugs, “I might be coming on with something.”
“Okay- uh. Okay.” Donnie steps out of the curtain.
Leo stays where he is, frozen. The curtain rustles once more, but Donnie doesn’t reenter. Just softly says, “you know you can tell me anything, right?”
He can’t bring himself to nod, but he chokes out, “Yeah. Anything.”
Anything.
Something.
Leo doesn’t know if he believes it. That he could share this with Donnie- with anyone. That it wouldn’t be weird.
Be wrong.
He’s already a mutant turtle. He’s already weird. He already doesn’t think the way most people do, doesn’t talk or act right. Doesn’t move right.
This is just another thing he’s doing wrong.
But Donnie is his brother. Raph and Mikey too. And his dad has proven time and time again that he loves them all no matter what. He just wants them to be happy.
Leo would be happy if this rock lodged deep in his chest would just go away.
One week later, he sets the camera down in the middle of a shoot that was honestly going pretty well.
“Leo! The camera!” April’s brow is furrowed, and she looks like she’s rearing up to start another rant about how to be a cameraman, but Leo cuts her off.
“Can I tell you something?”
It’s easier, he reasons, to tell a friend. A close friend, yeah. Probably the closest friend he’s ever had. One he has a maybe-crush on.
But if she finds him weird for this, whatever, right? He’ll still have his brothers and his dad. And if it goes good with her and bad with them, well, April has always seemed pretty ride-or-die. Her parents have always seemed cool, in the few short moments he’s met them. Worst case scenario he could probably crash with them as he waited for his family to get over their bad feelings about him not being- well- him.
Worst-worst case scenario he’s on his own. He refuses to entertain those thoughts. He’ll be accepted. He has to be. He has to.
Right?
“Oh. Uh, yeah, sure. What’s up?” She hops up on the table between them, legs dangling and crumpling the paper beneath her. April has clearly read his tone, and he’s grateful for that.
The rock in his chest feels so big, it’s weighing him down. It’s like he can’t breathe, and he feels warm and sweaty and the stupid shirt he has on is already tight against his shell but it’s tight all over and-
“What if I wasn’t a guy?” They blurt out.
“Oh, uh-” April starts, but Leo goes on, now that they’ve started they (they isn’t right it’s not quite there but it’s easier it’s easier right now it’s deniable it’s easier) can’t hold themself back.
“I’m still Leo, I think. But I don’t think I’m a guy. Or a person- not in a mutant way! I mean, clearly in a mutant way. Like I’m not a human, never was one. Always been a turtle, always will be. But like, not a guy turtle. Sometimes, well, really all the time, I feel like I’d like to be a girl turtle? Which sounds stupid and is a horrible way to phrase it. I had a better way of saying this I promise, but I just don’t think I like being a guy. Honestly, I really really don’t like it. But I don’t know what to do or how to really say it and-”
April cuts Leo off with a hand resting on Leo’s shoulder. “Leo, are you coming out?”
“Maybe,” Leo answers, as honestly as she allows herself to be.
“Okay. Cool. Thank you for trusting me with this. Do you want to use she/her or…?” April’s hand is still on her shoulder, and Leo lets herself nod. “Can I give you a hug?”
Leo nods again, and is quickly engulfed in April’s arms, warm all around her. It’s not the same sickly warmth that the panic was causing; instead, something safe wraps around her.
She’s holding herself together pretty well, and then April leans back and grins, “I’ve never had a girl best friend before.”
And Leo shoves her face in her hands as she lets out a sob.
April offers to be there with her when she tells her family, but Leo wants to do this on her own. She pulls Donnie aside first, making something up about wanting to race to the bridge again.
It’s a bad lie as it is, but Donnie clearly wants to know been wrong, and Raph is too busy kicking Mikey’s butt at Street Fighter (and getting his butt kicked by Leatherhead in return) to really notice.
They get to the rooftop, and Leo chickens out. She doesn’t let Donnie get a word in before she shouts “Go!” and starts running.
She makes it to the top of Brooklyn Bridge first, sitting atop the towering pillars in the middle. Neither of them have broken a sweat, and Leo can’t help but let the pride of how much stronger they’ve all gotten wash over her.
She hopes the adrenaline will carry her through the conversation, at least. “So.”
Donnie stares at her. “So?”
“So.”
“So.”
She snorts, and then Donnie laughs at her snort, and then they’re both laughing. It’s nice, and it’s just like old times, and it’s so familiar that she just says, “I’m a girl.”
Donnie stops laughing, and stares. He does that sometimes, when he’s focusing. He’ll zone out and think, gathering his thoughts. Oftentimes that means he’s about to say a lot of things about something he’s really passionate about, and as much as Leo teases she does enjoy listening to it. Most of the time.
Right now, the anxiety that had been washed away by their race is trickling back in, starting in her hands that she begins to flap and then Donnie goes-
“My friend Angel has started using she/they, and it’s gotten me thinking about how I don’t always feel like a boy. So I think I want to try he/they.”
It’s Leo’s turn to stare, mind blank as she tries to process this new information. And then, she blurts out, “you’re stealing my moment?”
She had no idea that was what she was going to say, and it makes Donnie glare at her and yell back, “you don’t get to hog coming out! Anyone can do it!”
Donnie hand goes for her face, pushing her back, and she reacts exactly how fifteen years of growing up with three brothers- siblings, she corrects herself- has trained her. She bites at their hand, and Donnie yelps.
They start fighting, and that rock in her chest erodes away a little more when Donnie cries out (in full dorky glory) “just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean I won’t hit you! It would be sexist of me to treat you differently!”
This does cause her to lose the fight, because laughing and hands flipping wildly in joy when trying to pin down your sibling gives you a distinct disadvantage.
They talk, after. The stars are dull above them, drowned out by the city lights. But that’s okay. They spent a lot of their life only getting glimpses through sewer grates and stolen moments when grocery trips “accidentally” went long. The stars are plenty bright enough.
The light of Donnie’s phone as they start editing a picture of her on top of the trans flag for her contact photo is also plenty bright. He promises to not change the actual icon until she comes out to the others. They look over at her as they save their edit, “there’s this anime one of my friends recommended about a trans girl. Wanna watch it with me?”
Anything.
Leo spends her night curled over her sibling’s shoulder, staring into his phone screen. Their legs dangle dangerously off the edge of the bridge’s pillar, and the phone fares no safer, especially when Leo mutters out a quick joke that sends Donnie snorting into laughter, one hand clutching the phone. The episode is half unwatchable after that, the subtitles hard for Leo to read through the shakiness of Donnie’s laughs. It’s okay, though. She’ll live without fully understanding the plot.
She’ll live.
She tells Raph next, only because she’s pretty sure Mikey wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret. Not out of any malice, he just sometimes forgets that something is a secret at all, and she’d hate for Raph or their dad to find out second hand.
Raph is easy to catch, half-dozing in bed after school a few days later. Donnie’s in the room, headphones on and watching some show or BTS compilation on YouTube, but they’ve known this is coming, so when he sees her enter the room he mutters something about getting a snack and steps out.
And then it was her and Raph.
Tucked away under the small stone archway, her bed is like a safe-haven, so she takes it. Sitting on the edge, but facing Raph, who grows more alert the longer she looks at him.
“What?” He grumbles through a yawn. “Am I in trouble again? Coming in here to ground me, mom?” It’s a playful joke. One they’ve tossed at her countless times; she can’t help how she worries. Can’t help wanting to make sure they’re all safe and not getting into trouble (at least, not trouble she hasn’t deemed safe enough or fun enough to warrant the risk).
This time, no defensive bubble rises in her chest. Instead, the rock shifts.
She asks plainly, “do you know what transgender means?”
“Uh… Is ‘kinda’ the wrong answer here?” He asks, sitting up in bed and squinting at her.
“So, I’ve been thinking and stuff, and I’m a girl. I haven’t told Mikey or Dad yet, so please don’t say anything right away, but I just wanted you to know.” It’s much more precise than how she explained it to Donnie, more certain and set in stone. She can only hope Raph doesn’t find it weird or tease her, because if he says anything mean right now she’ll probably cry and not the cathartic kind she had after telling Donnie and being met with something more than acceptance.
“Oh. Uh, do I have to do anything special?” Raph asks, rubbing the back of his neck.
And it was stupid, it was always stupid to doubt that he’d be mean or angry at this. Because, yes, Raph is hot-headed. He’s stubborn. But he would also kill for any of them without blinking, especially if it was something important. “Not yet, but once I tell everyone else just you know. Use she/her and call me your sister and stuff. I guess.”
“Cool.” He goes to lay back down before bolting back up, “wait. You told me before telling Dad? Or Mikey?”
“...Yes?” She says, hesitating over how sudden this shift was.
Raph hops out of bed and gives her a firm hug, “heck yeah. I knew I was your favorite.” It's warm. Safe, as his hugs always are, even though they’ve grown more and more rare as they’ve gotten older. It’s nice.
“Are you intentionally forgetting Donnie here?”
The hug is dropped as Raph steps back, a frown on his face. “...No.”
“What a cruel brother.”
“Hey! I’m not mean! I’m the best!”
She tosses a quick, thickly sarcastic “uh-huh” over her shoulder as she steps out of the room. “Enjoy your nap.”
She goes to Mikey right after, emboldened by the warmth of her brother's arms around her. Mikey is in the living room, standing on top of the coffee table and clearly recreating some joke or other from his Improv club that doesn’t pan out as well, second hand and far removed from the situation, but Dad, Wingnut, and Leatherhead laugh anyways.
Mikey see’s Leo in the doorway and grins, “Wait- Leo, let me set it up for you-”
“I saw it from here. It was hilarious, dude.” She stops him before he can get going again. Maybe another time she would have watched the joke a second time, but she wants to get it over with.
Doesn’t want to keep it in anymore.
“Do you have a moment?” She asks.
Dad looks over, “everything okay?” His concern is clear, and she thinks she’ll be ready to tell him soon. Not before she tells Mikey. This just. It feels like something you tell your siblings first. They’ve been through everything together, and she trusts them all in ways none of them can trust their dad. It’s just how things are with siblings.
“I’m good. Just forgot to write something down for class and wanted to check Mikey’s notes.” It’s a bad lie- she’s still not good at it. Luckily, their dad doesn’t understand how school works too much, so doesn’t question her asking Mikey for his notes. It’s usually the other way around. Or asking Donnie. Or texting April. Or just deciding it wasn’t important stuff anyways.
Mikey is right behind her, barely into the adjacent sewer tunnel before he’s asking, “what’s up? Secret mission Dad can’t know about?”
“No, just. Well, kinda. A secret yes, a mission no. Unless you count not telling anyone before I do as a mission.” It’s vague, and Mikey clearly hates that, if the way his beak scrunches up and he slumps onto her.
“Come on dude- you know I can’t keep secrets, even ones from my brothers. My blood brothers-”
“I’m not your brother.” Which is not the way to phrase it! Mikey steps back, and she quickly fishes for damage control, still speaking quietly even as she tugs him a little further down the tunnel, cognizant of how it echoes. “I’m your sister. I don’t know how much you know about people being trans, but-”
“You’re trans!” Mikey practically shouts, and she’s quick to slap a hand over his mouth. He licks it, and it’s years of being the eldest that help her keep her cool and keep the hand there. She feels more than hears his next, almost awed, “that’s so cool.”
(A few months later, Mikey finds her in the kitchen late at night. Bebop and Rocksteady are asleep on the couch, loud snores masking his feet until he practically sneaks up on her. It’s raining on the surface, and their ever-leaky pipe brings a gentle drip-drip-drip to the ambiance of their conversation.
Mikey tells her about the new transfer in his history class. Some scrawny kid named Woody who comes to school every day smelling like pizza because his family opened a new restaurant in the city. She can tell he’s blushing, even in the barely-there orange light of the string lights in the kitchen. He talks about how cool Woody is, how he’s funny and hasn’t once been weird about him being a turtle. He goes to Improv and doesn’t even do jokes- he just watches and Mikey swears he laughs the hardest at his jokes. But Mikey doesn’t know what to do. Because Woody is a good human, and Mikey doesn’t know if it’s okay because even though she is still crushing (half-crushing? She still doesn’t know) on April it’s gotten nowhere and-
And she wraps her brother into a hug and tells him that if Woody breaks his heart she’ll get to him before Raph can.
And when Mikey tells Donnie and Raph the next day, she joins in on the endless teasing that ensues. It’s what siblings do).
Their dinner table is more packed than it ever was in their first fifteen years of life. Mutants squeeze together, shoulder to shoulder, as Bebop and Rocksteady talk about an apartment they’ve been looking at, and Wingnut has a college with on-campus housing that may be willing to give a good scholarship out. April is cramped between Raph and Mondo, who is attempting to get a word in about how college degrees aren’t helping anyone anymore.
Donnie turns their head and smiles at her, hand coming under the table to hold her flapping hand still with a squeeze. She returns it twice as hard, and says, “I have something to say.”
Mikey grins over at her, giving two very obvious thumbs up, and April places a hand on Mondo’s shoulder to get him to quiet down.
Whiskers twitching, Dad looks up at her, “something up?
Something indeed.