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sissytobitch10seconds · 3 months ago

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Living in a Broken Home

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Grace wakes up late one night and searches for her parents, but she ends up finding something she was never meant to see. Warnings: Perceived cheating, child angst, and misunderstandings/miscommunications Word Count: 7,086 Ship(s): Five Hargreeves/Viktor Hargreeves/Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts

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A/N: So this is based off of something that actually happened to a friend of mine. I was thinking about what had happened in S4 and decided that this would be a fun AU to write. I think that a lot of the problems that happened in the show could have been fixed through polyamory lol

Grace lay completely awake in her bed, staring up at the tiny stars that decorated her textured ceiling. Her papi had helped her put them up last year for her birthday, it was the special surprise that she had asked for while her mum fussed with the younger children. Having her own room was one of the most exciting things about getting older, even if it was scary to think about going to the big school where she got no recess and had to remember so many more things. Mum kept telling her that those things were very far away, but she couldn’t help but let the worry settle low into her stomach and stay there.

About three months had passed since her seventh birthday, which meant that her favorite time of year was just around the corner. All she could think about was Uncle Luther setting things up in the backyard and all of her cousins running around with her, playing on the play set that had come with the house when she moved in and helping her find new ways to use her toys that she had never thought of before. Then she’d get to sit in the living room and pretend to watch TV while she listened to the grown ups talk about things that she wasn’t supposed to hear.

Earlier that day, Uncle Klaus and Aunt Allison had visited with Claire and Minnie, which had been so much fun. Minnie was still just a baby, so there wasn’t a lot that she could do, but Claire was a big girl that was already in high school and she had so many things that she could tell Grace about. They had come over so that they could talk to Uncle Luther about something really boring, at least it had been until the conversation turned to someone named Sloane. Apparently she was a girl that Uncle Luther was pursuing while he went through the space engineering program up at the university near the edge of The City.

Grace had always loved romance, it made her tummy feel all tight and her skin feel buzzy with excitement. She especially liked it when her mum let her watch the romance movies on the television, or when they watched soap operas with Uncle Klaus on their sick days. She especially liked it when they got to do that because her brain would often be so foggy that all she could do was cuddle with her family and watch people that couldn’t get in her life interact with each other. Sometimes the kids at school would say that she had a boyfriend, but she didn’t like it when they did that because having a boyfriend seemed like a very big deal in the shows that Mum and Uncle Klaus watched.

The seven-year-old flipped over in her bed and grabbed hold of her stuffed animal. She could hear the white noise machine going in the twin’s room, though it was a little hard to hear it clearly because Constantina was talking in her sleep again. Grace knew that she could get up and turn on her own music box, but then her mum would know that she was awake and come to check on her. She didn’t like having to explain why she couldn’t sleep. Sometimes it was easy because she’d had a nightmare or things were too loud around her, like when Biji was staying over. There were some nights where she just couldn’t sleep because the loudness was coming from inside of her. Papi understood and helped her, but ever since Tia Marta had told her that she just needed to try harder to go to sleep, she hadn’t been able to tell anyone else about it.

She crawled out of her bed with her stuffed animal clutched in her hand and then crouched down next to the door. Some nights when she couldn’t sleep, she would sit on the top step and watch whatever Mum and Papi had on the TV, it would help her mind feel calmer and she would be able to sleep without her parents knowing that she had been up. She knew that with her uncles and aunts from her papi’s side coming over, without the inclusion of her Tia Marta because she lived all the way in Mexico, there was just going to be boring adult talking.

She leaned closer to the door and listened, waiting for the sound of her papi’s voice. She had been there for long enough that Constantina stopped talking in her sleep before she remembered that Papi was out late that night, working again. He had to work a lot, he had just finished going to school so that he could become a lawyer and so he was transitioning between jobs.

She knew that her parents were having some stressors around money, even if she didn’t totally understand what those were. She knew that her biji often made comments about Papi not being able to give her daughter a good life, which Grace didn’t understand. Some of the kids at school weren’t able to even eat breakfast and had to get special backpacks sent home with them because their parents were in a bad place. She had never gone hungry once in her life, not even when she had refused to eat the curry that her biji had made her because it was too spicy.

Grace let out a little whine as her head hit the carpet on her floor. She perked up a bit when she heard a voice that wasn’t her mum’s. Her mum could talk a lot when she got going, which was interesting when she was talking about things like her experience moving from England to America, but really boring when she got going about work. Uncle Five, on the other hand, was one of the most fascinating people that Grace had ever met in her entire life. He hadn’t been around her very much when she was a little, but now that she was seven whole years old he would come over and watch science documentaries whenever Papi and Mum went on their date nights.

She stood at attention once she realized who was sitting in the living room with her mum. She grasped the handle of the door with both hands and then turned it was quietly as she could. She shuffled backwards with the handle clutched in her hands and then slowly turned it back to where it went. Uncle Viktor had been able to hear her every single time that she did that, even though she got away with it with everyone else. The same was true now because the talking downstairs didn’t stop for a single moment.

Grace rushed back to her bed and grabbed hold of her favorite stuffed animal before she returned to where she had been moments prior. She leaned her head down the hallway, checking back and forth to make sure everything was okay. The twins were both still sleeping, her grandparents were totally asleep, and her Uncle Vinny had been away for the majority of the week.

As silently and carefully as she could, she stepped over the space between the carpet of her room and the wood lookalike that made up the floor in the rest of their house. She landed on the colorful woven rug that her mother had strewn through the upstairs hallway, which was the thing that would guarantee her silent safety as she made her way down the hall to eavesdrop properly. Grace stopped when she got to the top of the stairs, where she usually watched TV when she was having trouble sleeping.

Just as she had suspected, her Uncle Five and Mum were sitting on the couch together. Mum was dressed in the same clothes she had been wearing before, comfortable gray joggers and a baggy top that had a band logo on it that Grace recognized from when her mum was listening to music in the car. Uncle Five was dressed in more comfortable clothing than what Grace usually saw him in, he had on a knit black sweater with a cute animal on the front and a pair of matching gray joggers to Mum.

Grace leaned her head against the wall as she listened to what they were saying.

“I’m not lying to you, I promise that actually happened,” Uncle Five chuckled. “Klaus and Diego were always getting up to something when we were kids, I think it’s what kept us going and prevented us from running away. That and Pogo.”

It took her a moment to figure out what he was talking about, but she pieced it together pretty quickly after the first thing snapped into place. She knew that her papi had been raised in a rather unconventional household. Instead of growing up with his parents like mum had, and like she and her siblings were, he had been adopted by a man named Reginald. She knew that he had been cared for by a woman that he had come to see as his mother even though his real mom was somewhere in Mexico, though he wouldn’t get to meet her until Grace was two years old. That woman had been named Grace too, which was who he was named after. Her Aunt Allison and all of her uncles on her papi’s side of the family had come from the same place, including Uncle Five. They had had a very abnormal childhood, apparently, which meant that they had a lot of funny stories that they could tell her mum and her, when she was supposed to be awake.

“I think that Klaus and Diego would have been better off if they had run away, that way they would have gotten in less trouble,” Mum chuckled. She shifted on the couch so that she was leaning against the arm with her legs spread out, which meant that her calves were over Uncle Five’s lap.

“I would be lying if I said that I didn’t contribute at least thirty percent to their bad ideas. What they wanted to do to cause trouble always seemed so mundane and boring to me, but I had great ideas. I would never do them because I never seemed to even be able to get in trouble, but when I suggested it to them then I could watch the activity and what would happen when a normal person got in trouble instead of Reginald’s favorite.”

“Oh, it must have been just so hard for you to be your mean ol’ dad’s favorite,” Mum said. Grace had difficulty telling when her mother, and her Cousin Vinny, were being sarcastic, but she was pretty certain that now was one of those times. Based on the way that Uncle Five rolled his eyes and took a long drink of his soda, she was adding more evidence to her hypothesis.

Grace leaned her head against the wall that she was sitting next to and then stifled a yawn behind her hand. This was the exact reason that she would come and listen to people or the TV when she couldn’t sleep, it made her feel warm and comforted in a way that her music couldn’t. Her eyelids were already beginning to feel so heavy, like se could barely even keep them open.

“If you keep teasing me then we’re going to have to make sure that all the kids are asleep,” Uncle Five said as he leaned closer to Mum. Grace shot upright, worried that he had somehow been able to tell that she was awake the way that Uncle Viktor could when he came to visit.

Mum leaned forward so that they were just a couple inches from each other. It was something that she always did before a wrestling match ensued, which made Grace kind of giddy to see who would come out on top. Uncle Five was taller than her by a couple of inches, but Grace’s mum had always been so good when it came to taking down her papi.

“Don’t tempt me with a good time, you little shitheal,” Mum said. She reached one of her hands up and Grace fully expected the wrestling to start then, so she leaned forward to get a better view of what was happening. She was unable to keep the startled gasp from coming out of her throat when she saw that instead of beginning to pin each other down to the ground, their lips pressed together in a kiss.

Grace placed her hands over her mouth and then sprang to her feet as she rushed through the hallway back to her bedroom. She knew that she wasn’t being as quiet as she should be to avoid being caught, but she was also so worried about what had just happened. She grasped the handle of her door with both hands and then turned it around so that she could press it securely closed. As soon as everything was at it had been when she had been put to bed far earlier in the evening, she scrambled back into her bed and buried herself underneath the covers. She clutched her stuffy close to her chest as she closed her eyes so that she would appear to be asleep when Mum came to check on her later in the night.

Her heart was hammering in her chest like it did before the reading tests since she always knew that she was going to do badly on those. She had seen something she knew that she wasn’t supposed to see, like when she had stayed up too late and seen the scariest movie of her entire life on TV while she was being babysat by Claire. She knew that she hadn’t meant to see that, but instead of it being something that would scare her like the movie was because what she had seen was wrong. She knew in her heart that it was, which was why she was so afraid.

The only person that her mum was supposed to be kissing was her papi. She had seen people that were married kiss people that weren’t their spouse in the shows that she watched when she was having a bad brain day, but that was almost immediately followed by the non-kissing partner getting really upset and then a bunch of drama unfolding. She knew that people who were married were only supposed to kiss each other and no one else, otherwise people would get really mad. Kissing on the lips was also reserved for adults like her aunts and uncles, or teenagers like some of the people on her shows. Her mum had told her that it was romantic and romantic love wasn’t for people her age, it was for people that were old enough to get married or very, very close enough to the age where they could get married.

Mum and Uncle Five were both adults, so they were the age where marriage was allowed to happen and could have romantic relationships and love. Grace knew that Mum and Papi had romantic love for each other, they held hands when they were driving and kissed before Papi left for work and Mum had to bring them to school. She had never once seen an adult person kiss another adult person when they were already in a romantic relationship without there being something else happening afterwards.

She stared at the stars on her ceiling as she tried to settle the fear inside of her. Usually she was scared about things that weren’t real or would likely not happen, like getting a bad score on her science test or tripping and spilling her lunch all over the place when she was eating outside. This felt so real that she could almost see it happening in front of her. She knew what happened when adults kissed each other when one of them was married, she knew that it ended in divorce.

Grace remembered then that one of her friends from school, a girl named Amy, had divorced parents. She had to spend all her weekends in an entirely different city with her dad because her mom was the one that lived in The City. Grace didn’t want that to happen, she hated driving in the car with the twins and she absolutely did not want to have to do it every single week. She wanted to be able to stay in her own home with her bed, and visit her friends on the weekends.

She rolled over on her bed, curling up into the tightest ball that she could manage as she began to cry quietly to herself. She hated her mum for doing this to them, for kissing her Uncle Five when she was married to Papi. She hated her mum for starting the divorce process between her parents when their life was absolutely perfect.

---

Diego was seated in the normal booth towards the back of the little diner. He had one of the menus clasped between his fingers as he toyed with the fraying lamination at the edge. He knew that it would likely make the problem worse and possibly cause problems for Agnes, but he couldn’t help himself. After more of his life than not dating Viktor on and off, he would have expected the nerves to go away.

They never had, if anything they had gotten worse. When he was a child and Viktor was still the most hated sibling next to done, there were barely any expectations for how he should treat the other. He had used that to his full and disgusting advantage, abandoning him several times when they had planned dates or gigs. He had tried to be better as they got older, releasing the the book had broken them up but he had held onto his resentment and anger on his own instead of writing a letter back to his brother like Allison had. Now, he had been given his third chance and he was determined not to strike out.

He looked up when he saw the other enter and felt his stomach flip madly. He had to make sure that this night went right and that they had a good time or he risked losing Viktor again. The man knew what it was like to be treated decently and wasn’t going to accept the bare minimum, he had to be wooed properly.

“Hey,” he said as he stood up from the booth so that they could great each other properly.

“Hey,” Viktor replied. His calloused hands moved to hold onto Diego’s arms as he stood up on his tiptoes to receive a kiss. Diego felt like the words had been stolen from his mouth when he was overwhelmed with that sensation again, it had been his first kiss and he hoped that he got to continue feeling it throughout his last so that he never had to forget that wondrous memory.

“I swear, every time I see you, your voice gets deeper,” he chuckled as he slid into the booth once more.

Viktor easily copied the motion and then picked up the same menu that Diego had been playing with before. Griddy’s was where they had been going for the past four years, harkening back to when they had escaped the Academy as children and teenagers in an entirely different world. Since Viktor had moved back, they both knew the menu by heart and didn’t need to look at it to order. It was still a soother for both of them to do something with their hands when the date was in the beginning and they weren’t quite sure what standing they were on with one another. One day he hoped that would fade and they would return to the ease that they had in their early days, but he was willing to fight through the awkwardness in the meantime.

“Well, that is kind of what happens when you go on hormones,” Viktor replied with a small laugh and a shrug.

“I wish that we could remember all of our old songs, I would die to hear you sing our entire first album with your deeper voice,” Diego said before he realized what he had said. They didn’t talk about when they were in Prime8s all that much because of how the band had ended and the bad feelings that followed.

“I don’t. I’m so glad that any trace of us other than our birth certificates and social security cards allegedly burned down in the fire from the Boy’s Home,” Viktor gave a dramatic little shudder. “We’ve got the important shit from back then and that’s all we need. No one needs to hear pre-T Viktor squawking out punk lyrics.”

“I’ll have you know that I need that very much in my life. I don’t need it as much as I need you to sing those songs now, but I liked that music. I used to listen to it, you know,” Diego commented. “Before you wrote the book but after I left the Academy, when we were off and on all the time. It was comforting to me to hear it, reminded me of a better time and that you and I were more alike than it felt a lot of the time.”

“I guess so. I just saw it as another failing of mine, but that might have been the Rumor talking instead of me,” Viktor sat the menu down on the table and then ran a hand through his hair. “Now that I’m back in The City we could always try and start up a band again. Would give me more excuses to at your place.”

“The kids already know that I have to leave a lot for work and school, so it would be suspicious for you to be around all the time. Plus I think that my in-laws would kill me if they had to give up even a smidgeon more of their house to me and Lila. If Arjan wanted to start up a punk band, they’d do whatever they could to make sure that his dreams were fulfilled even if they didn’t understand it,” Diego rolled his eyes. They were supposed to be having a nice time together before they had to deal with the chaos that was their siblings the next day.

“Are they still treating you so badly?” Viktor asked.

The conversation paused as the waitress, a new hire that was about their age and a lot surlier than Agnes used to be, came over to take their order. As soon as she had stepped away and they were left in the late night privacy of their booth, Diego let out a long sigh. “You think that they would be more understanding since they had to start their lives all over again when they moved from England to America, but they really aren’t. I passed the bar last month and now we’re looking for jobs for me, but it’s going to be a while before we have enough saved up for a downpayment on a place and find somewhere that we really like. I hate living with them, but it’s the way that things have to be for now.”

“At least Lila is finally listening to you about the way that they treat you instead of turning a blind eye to it because she’s excited to have parents,” Viktor commented. He reached across the booth and took hold of Diego’s hand, rubbing his thumb along the back of the other man’s hand.

“I know how excited she was about having parents back. I mean, I would do almost anything for my mom to actually like me in this world. Instead of whatever it is that she feels towards me, but at least my sister’s cool,” he sighed again.

“That’s better than what I got,” Viktor shrugged. Both of his parents were dead in the new universe, he didn’t get to have a single memory of either one. His mother had killed herself when she was twenty four after getting a gold medal in the Olympics and his father had become a drunk that had died of liver cancer when Viktor turned twenty.

“I know, Vik,” Diego said softly. He brought Viktor’s hand up to his mouth and then kissed the back of it as a way to reaffirm his words with physical affection. They dropped their joined hands back down the table as the night continued.

They only pulled their hands apart when their food arrived, but by that time the conversation had turned to something a lot lighter. They talked about how the children were doing in school, which was a fun conversation because Parent Teacher Conferences for the next trimester were right around the corner. They talked about how the move was for Viktor, which turned out to be better than Diego had expected. They talked a bit about Five and Lila, but it was always hard for them to do that because their partners weren’t the reason that they were on the date together.

Their meal was finished after almost two hours of them sitting and chatting with one another. They paid and left a hefty tip to thank the staff for putting up with them hanging around for far longer than they necessarily needed to. As they walked from the diner, Diego reached over and grabbed Viktor’s hand to lead him in a different direction than he had originally been heading.

“Didn’t you park the van over there?” the smaller man asked. His brows knit together in the middle of his forehead in a way that was so cute that it made Diego want to bite him. He and Lila had talked about that feeling a lot, apparently they both got it which was part of the reason that they had been so covered in bite marks and bruises when they were in the other universe, before Grace and before the reset.

“I did, but I want to take you on a walk,” Diego replied with a big, cheesy grin.

“I hope that you’re not headed towards Oblivion Park, there is no way in all the universes in timelines that I am going to let you take our date back there,” Viktor shook his head. Diego felt his heart seize in his chest as he remembered their first, and only time, being in that park. He had been so focused on the family that he was creating with Lila that he had completely forgotten about the fact that they had all essentially promised Viktor that they would be a proper family and then abandoned him. It was no wonder that he had disappeared up to Canada the first chance he got, especially since it would help ease his transition.

“It’s not, I promise. It’s this really pretty butterfly garden that I found the other day when I was thinking of places that I could take the kids with Lila. It’s important for us to spend time together as a family, I know Lila worries on missing out on the kids lives now that she’s working,” Diego said. He dropped his hand down to his side and couldn’t contain his giddy grin when he felt Viktor’s hand slide into his own so that their fingers were interconnected withe ach other.

“Hasn’t she been working for years, though? I thought that she started as soon as the twins were nine months old,” Viktor commented.

“She worked part time at the beginning, to get us some more money and give her a chance to talk to adults instead of toddlers. The first two years in this universe were pretty hard on both of us, but it was really unique for her. Apparently there wasn’t great sex ed back in the fifties when she was raised by the Handler,” he chuckled.

“Is that why the kids were born so close to each other? In my humble opinion you both should have been able to tell that you were super fucking fertile with each other. I mean, you and I slept with each other constantly when we were in Prime8s and I never got knocked up,” Viktor shrugged.

“Except for that one time. Which always made me think that the drugs Dad had you on had something to do with it. You were perfectly healthy otherwise, so you should have gotten pregnant at least once with how reckless we were being,” Diego said. It was hard to talk about the miscarriage that Viktor had suffered, since that was the reason that Diego had gone on that mission instead of coming to the show like he should have. He was in too much pain over the future that they had lost in a bloody mess, so he had gone to crack skulls when he should have been supporting his partner.

“Maybe it does. Or are you implying that your swimmers are so good that there’s no way that you couldn’t make a baby with someone by just jacking off nearby?” Viktor asked, raising a brow at him.

“I’m saying that Lila and I weren’t that dumb. We thought that breastfeeding meant she couldn’t get pregnant and we didn’t realize that we would be able to create two babies out of it. We were tired and wanted to be in love again,” Diego sighed.

“I get it,” Viktor replied. He caught Diego’s other hand so that they had to turn to each other and then kissed him softly. “I don’t think that you’re dumb, Diego. I know that the beginning of having a young animal or child in the house is really stressful and thoughts start to not connect the way that they should be. You did the best with the resources that you had and the stressors that had been offered to you.”

He paused their walking when they got to the mouth of the park as he turned towards his partner. He could feel his heart thumping loudly in his chest, constricting his chest every now and again as he was overwhelmed with emotion. His brain was swimming with the happy chemicals that one got when something very romantic or good happened in their lives, which made it hard for him to actually get the words out of his mouth. “You always know the right things to say,” he finally settled on.

“It’s almost like I’ve been studying you since we were kids,” Viktor laughed. He caught Diego’s other hand and then stood up on his tip toes so that they could get another kiss. Diego dropped their held hands and wrapped his arms around Viktor’s waist to hold him close instead. There was no rush or lust to the kiss, just pure love and romance in their dancing lips.

This was the kind of thing that Diego needed, what made him feel fulfilled and like he was truly helping the person that he was together with. He loved Lila and their family with his entire heart, but she had never been one for romance. When he got her extravagant gifts or tried to be too lovey with her she would shut down and become very awkward, he could tell that it made her uncomfortable. He adored the dynamic that they had with biting words and playful jabs, but it was nice to be reassured with adoring words and gentle kisses from time to time. Viktor had always given him that and likely would always give him that, which was why he needed him.

---

Grace had barely slept the night before. She had stayed up far later than she usually did, worrying about what would happen to her family now that her mum and kissed someone that wasn’t her papi in a way that only romantic couples should do. She didn’t want them to get divorced, she liked the fact that they were married because it let her have access to both of them whenever she wanted. She didn’t want to have to call her mum or her papi every time that she wanted the other parent when she was at the other’s house.

People began to pour into her house around ten that morning. Uncle Klaus and Aunt Allison brought Claire and Minnie with them, so Grace was able to forget about her woes while she played with her older cousin for at least a little bit. As soon as Uncle Five and Uncle Viktor came over, she immediately felt upset again. She usually liked it when her Uncle Viktor came over because her papi laughed more and they told cool stories about what they had done when they were in a band together. She knew that Uncle Viktor would be sad when he found out that his romantic partner was kissing someone else’s romantic partner, just like they were on the TV shows.

Ten o’clock stretched into the afternoon and lunch was had, but the big meal happened in the evening. Uncle Luther brought a new Aunt for her to get to know, and while Sloane was very nice she was just too nervous to get to know her. As soon as the grill got brought out and the adults, other than Uncle Klaus and Aunt Allison, started drinking beers, she retreated. Claire was texting her friends and playing with the twins, so no one was looking for her.

She scuttled underneath the big tree along the side of the house and watched the neighbor’s dog bring his toys from the porch out to the places in the yard where the neighbor always picked them up from. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them tightly so that she could use that space to hide her face from the outside world. As soon as the air got stuffy, though, she laid her cheek down on top of her knees and just stared out at the world around her. She felt so small and lost under the ever-impending doom of her family breaking apart at the seams.

Grace was so lost in her own mind that she barely even noticed when someone sat down in the grass next to her. “Hey there, little chick,” Uncle Klaus said as he reached out a hand and tapped her knee. He never touched her without asking permission, outside of just getting her attention.

“Do you need the shade to give Minnie her dinner?” she asked, sniffling a little as she wiped at her face.

“No, I came to ask if you were okay. Your mom noticed that you weren’t out playing with the other kids and got worried,” Uncle Klaus explained. “You wanna hug?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. She had barely realized that she needed to cry before he asked that. She felt the lump in her throat and then the tears began to come, coursing down her face. Uncle Klaus wrapped his arm around her and pet her hair gently as she cried. He didn’t even ask her why she was upset, just rocked her back and forth the way that her papi did whenever she had a bad dream. “I don’t want Mum and Papi to get divorced! I’m so scared, Uncle Klaus!” she said once the sobs had gotten so little that she could speak around them.

“Woah there, buttercup! Let’s slow down and talk about this,” Uncle Klaus said. He wiped her face off with a tissue and then balled it up to put it back into his pocket. He brushed some of her hair back towards her braids as he asked, “Why do you think that your parents are getting a divorce?”

“I was too excited to sleep last night so I got up so that I could listen to Uncle Five and Mum talk to each other because Uncle Five always has such cool stories and then they kissed each other!” Grace blurted it all out at once, despite knowing that once other people knew that her papi would hear about it and her entire family would fall apart.

Tears were welling in her eyes as she turned her head towards her Uncle Klaus and saw that his lips had made a very small line. He took a deep breath before he gathered her up in a hug. “I know that was a very scary thing for you to see because you’re learning about the world still, but I promise that there’s a more reasonable explanation for this. Let’s go find your parents and then we can talk about it, okay?”

Grace nodded morosely. She knew that this was the end, her life was going to shatter into pieces and they would never be happy ever, ever again. She didn’t want this to happen, but she also knew better than to fight against adults when they said that they were going to handle a situation. She stood and took Uncle Klaus’ hand as they walked from the side yard back to where everyone else was.

“There’s my little girl! How are you doing, champ?” Papi asked as he scooped her up into his arms and kissed her cheek. When he noticed the way that she was a dead weight in his arms, he asked, “You okay?”

“I don’t want you and Mum to get divorced,” she whispered.

Papi blinked at her like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why would we get divorced?”

“Because people break up when someone kisses another person that they’re not in a romantic relationship with and when adults are married the way they break up is by getting a divorce!” she said. She wiggled her way out of his arms so that she could wrap her body around his legs and hold him in place. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it this morning, Papi, I wanted to keep it a secret so that we wouldn’t have to go between your and mum’s house.”

Uncle Klaus leaned over and said something to her papi that she couldn’t hear, but she assumed that it was an explanation of what she had told Uncle Klaus in the side yard. Papi knelt down in front of her and kissed her forehead, “Come on, kiddo. Mum and I have some things to talk to you about.”

She was once again led around by an adult, this time into the living room with her mum. She nervously sat on the couch as they sat on the ground in front of the TV, facing towards her. She couldn’t keep her body still, she was so scared that they were going to explain something bad to her and then her life was never going to be the same ever again.

“So Papi told me that you saw me and Uncle Five yesterday evening when you were supposed to be in bed,” Mum said. “And you saw us kiss on the lips?”

Grace nodded, trying to keep her tears back. “I did, I’m sorry. I know that I wasn’t supposed to be awake but I wanted to hear some of the stories that he had.”

“It’s okay, baby,” Papi reassured her with a hand on her back. “You know how a while ago Mum and I had to talk to the twins about why they don’t kiss on the mouth to show affection?”

“Yeah, you said that it was only for adult or almost adult people because they were the ones that can feel romantic affection and kissing on the mouth is romantic. That’s why it’s bad that Mum was kissing someone else on the mouth,” Grace replied. She hiccuped before she took a deep breath to calm herself down just like her mum was showing her from the other side of the coffee table.

“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. We had to make things simple because the twins are younger than you and can’t understand a lot of things that you can. Adult or almost adult people have romantic feelings for other adults or almost adults, but each person will feel those feelings different. Romantic feelings are a very special way that they can get their needs fulfilled by another person. When you’re little, like you and the twins are, you get those needs fulfilled by your family. The older you get, the more complicated your feelings become and the more you need. Mum needs some things that only Uncle Five can give her, so we talked about it and I agreed that she could date Uncle Five while also being married to me. That way she can get everything she needs and I don’t have to feel overwhelmed by trying to give it all to her when I’m not very good at that,” Diego explained.

“It’s called polyamory and it’s actually been practiced for a very long time, but it’s something that not a lot of people do nowadays because of the way that romantic love is expected to be in America. Papi has romantic love for two people just like me, he loves me romantically and he loves Uncle Viktor romantically. Uncle Viktor lets him do things that are romantic and big and makes him feel comfortable. But with me, he gets to laugh and raise the two of you and wrestle,” Mum explained.

Grace sat with that for a minute, her brain reeling as she tried to understand it all. “Then why do the people on TV get so upset when their partner kisses someone else?”

“Because they didn’t talk about it beforehand. When Papi and I wanted to explore other romantic partners, we sat down and had a talk with both Uncle Five and Uncle Viktor. We talked for hours and hours before we decided what we wanted to do and we still have big long talks to make sure that no one’s feelings are hurt,” Mum explained. “So we’re not getting divorced and no one is cheating.”

All of the worry and tension that she had been feeling immediately drained from her. She leaned back on the bed and blinked her eyes tiredly. “Feel better?” Papi asked.

“I’m sleepy, Papi,” she mumbled.

“Let’s get you a nap, then. I’ll wake you up for dinner,” Papi said. He picked her up in the princess carry and then climbed the stairs to her room. By the time that he had drawn the heavy curtains, her eyes had already fallen as sleep took over her.

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