Can you write another short paragraph story about the kids hearing the moms have sex, I just read Mama Trauma and that was the funniest greatest thing ever !
I’m so glad you liked Mama Trauma, anon! It’s one of my faves, tbh. I went in a little bit different direction this time but hopefully you enjoy it just as much! It’s longer than you asked for but it’s still on the short side for me. 😅
Also, thanks for sending this. I don’t usually write the kids, and pretty much never without at least one of the moms but this was actually really fun and reminded me that once upon a time, I actually liked this little gang of hooligans. Sibling commiseration is great!
“Are you okay?” Mariana asked, looking up from her phone as she came through to the living room from the kitchen. Jude was perched on the edge of the couch, the color of his face a sickly yellow. He shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting down beside him, her face soft with concern. Jude stared across the room with glassy eyes.
“I just wanted to get my backpack so I could do my homework.” He sounded far off as he spoke. “I went upstairs to get it and–”
Mariana gasped. “You went upstairs?”
“Oh, no, Jude.” Mariana looked at him with sympathy. “Look, when moms go upstairs right after dinner, they’re either fighting or… well, you know. And you do not want to be upstairs for either one.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Mariana scrunched her nose, looking guilty. “It’s just something we’ve all kind of learned the hard way.”
“How will I know when it’s safe to go get my homework?”
Mariana shrugged as she leaned back against the couch. “I usually give them an hour, just to be safe.”
“I mean, you can go up earlier if you want but do it at your own risk.”
“No, no. It’s fine. I’ll wait.”
At the sound of footsteps in the entryway, they both turned their heads.
“Callie, no!” Jude shouted as his sister mounted the stairs. Callie backed up to the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest and a scowl on her face.
“Girl, I would not go up there if I were you.”
Callie’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Uh, why not?”
She stared at Mariana for a minute. “You mean like…?” she asked, her nose wrinkling and Mariana nodded. “Gross.”
“At least you didn’t have to hear it,” Jude complained.
“Oh, no, buddy! You didn’t!” Callie said, trying and failing to cover her laughter with sympathy. Jude glared at her as she came to sit in the arm chair across from them.
“He didn’t know not to go upstairs when moms go up right after dinner.”
“Really?” Mariana asked and Callie shook her head. “You both went this long without making that mistake?”
“I guess,” Callie said with a shrug.
“Now that I think about it, it hasn’t been happening as often. I guess maybe you haven’t because they haven’t… been… you know…”
“Can we please stop talking about this?” Jude begged.
“Stop talking about what?”
“Moms having sex,” Mariana answered as Brandon plopped down in the other arm chair.
“Uh, yeah, I’m with Jude. Let’s not talk about that.”
“He went upstairs,” Mariana told him in a loud whisper, shielding her mouth from Jude behind the back of her hand.
Brandon grimaced and sucked the air in between his teeth. “Oh, yeah, bud, you can’t do that when moms go upstairs together right after dinner.”
“Yeah, I know. Now,” Jude said to his lap.
Callie pulled her legs up into the chair and leaned forward, looking between Mariana and Brandon. “Wait, so that’s, like, really a thing? This happens enough that you guys just know when not to go upstairs after dinner?”
Brandon shrugged and nodded. “I mean, sometimes they’re fighting, which is still best to avoid. But you can usually tell if it’s a fight when they don’t talk very much during dinner. Or when one of them leaves the dinner table before dinner’s over and then the other one goes up not long after. But, I mean, we’ve all made the mistake Jude did. It’s pretty much a right of passage.”
“More like a fright of passage,” Jude muttered.
The sound of the front door slamming had all four of them watching as Jesús appeared in the doorway, his wrestling bag slung over his shoulder and a sweatshirt tucked under his arm.
“Where’s Mom?” he asked after plucking out his earbuds.
“You don’t–” Jude started then grunted when Mariana elbowed him in the ribs. He rubbed his side and frowned at her.
“Upstairs,” Mariana chirped, a wide smile plastered to her face.
Callie had to cover her mouth with her hand as he gave them a nod and bounded up the stairs two at a time. The four of them sat in silence, unable to look each other in the eye for fear of laughing as they listened.
A pained groan came down the stairwell, followed by footsteps racing back down the stairs. “Seriously?!” they heard before Jesús even made it back down to the landing and they all dissolved into a fit of laughter.
“I hate you!” Jesús declared as he turned the corner and chucked his sweatshirt right at Mariana’s face.
“Ugh.” She dropped it to the floor, her mouth curling in disgust. “Yeah, well, if you were ever home for dinner anymore, you’d have known not to go upstairs.” Her lips pursed and her head bobbed as she crossed her arms on her chest.
Dropping his bag at the bottom of the stairs, Jesús sneered back at her. “Sorry, Mariana. Some of us actually have lives.”
“Shut up,” she spit back and rolled her eyes.
“At least you’re not alone, now, Jude,” Callie offered, a hint of laughter still in her voice.
“Oh, man, did you go upstairs?” Jesús asked. Jude nodded. “Bro, if they go up right after dinner, you gotta give them at least an hour. Just to be safe.”
“I KNOW!” Jude’s cheeks blossomed red and he flopped back against the back of the couch, sighing. “You know, you guys could have mentioned this any time in the last year.”
“Sorry, man.” Jesús sat down on the step, his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles as he leaned back on his hands. “It’s just one of this things you don’t think about. You just know, y’know?”
Jude groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Do you ever stop hearing it?”
“No,” Brandon said and his siblings shook their heads in agreement. “Eventually, you stop thinking about it but then, when you’re least expecting it, it pops back in your head and you wish all over again that you could bleach your brain.”
“At least now you know, so hopefully it won’t happen again,” Mariana said, patting his shoulder.
“It hasn’t happened to me in years, thank god,” Jesús said.
“It only happened to me once. I think I was like eleven? Twelve?” Mariana shook her head. “I don’t know. All I know is that it was awful.”
“Yeah, well, at least none of you ever walked in on them!” Brandon lamented.
“Oh my god!” Callie covered her mouth again, her face a mixture of amusement and horror. “You did?”
“I was like nine. It was the first year the twins were here. I wasn’t used to sharing the bathroom and someone was in there. So I went to moms’ room to use their bathroom but… I never even made it to the bathroom.”
“Oh god,” Mariana groaned.
Brandon shot him an indignant look. “I was nine! The door wasn’t locked! How was I supposed to know they’d be in there doing… that?”
When Brandon shuddered, Jesús burst out in a full belly laugh that echoed through the entryway while Callie and Mariana both tried to cover giggles. Jude was the only one regarding Brandon with an appropriate amount of sympathy.
With a grunt, Jude dropped his head into his hands. “Can we please talk about something else? I don’t need any more visuals than I already have.”
“Okay, yeah, you’re right. Sorry, dude,” Jesús agreed, though he was still laughing.
“You know what? Why don’t we go, like, get some ice cream or something?” Brandon suggested. “You don’t want to be home when they come downstairs. Trust me. You think hearing it is awkward? Seeing them afterwards, when you know what just went on? That’s even worse.”
Jude’s head popped up, his eyes wide. “Yes please! Let’s go!” He jumped from the couch and darted toward the front door.
“Sure, I’ll come,” Mariana said as she pushed herself up from the couch.“Why not,” Callie shrugged.
“Hell yeah!” Jesús popped up from the floor and grabbed his sweatshirt from the floor, pulling it on over his head. “Hey, can we stop for burgers on the way? I’m starving.”
“We all just had dinner, dummy,” Mariana reminded him and accompanied it with an eye roll.
“Well, I didn’t. Dummy,” he shot back.
“You guys knock it off or neither of you are coming,” Brandon warned.
Ignoring the bickering as she pulled on her jacket, Callie said, “Why don’t we just go to Shake Shack? Jesús can get a burger and we can all get shakes.”
“I don’t care where we go, as long as we just go,” Jude insisted. He was standing with his hand on the door, his eyes darting up the stairs like he was waiting for a ghost to appear.
“Fine. We’ll go to Shake Shack,” Brandon said as he grabbed keys from beside the door.
“What are you doing?” Mariana asked, cocking an eyebrow and crossing her arms over her chest. “Those are Mom’s keys.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m not cramming all you guys into my car. We’re taking Mom’s.”
“Don’t you have to, like, ask?”
Brandon looked at the keys in his hand, then back toward the stairs. “Maybe I’ll just text her so she knows we’re gone.”
“You’re gonna get in trouble.”
“Yeah, well, if you’d like to go up there and ask, be my guest.”
Mariana put up her hands. “Oh, no. I’m not going to. But you know–”
“Jude!” When she turned to face him her mouth gaped open in shock.
“Look, if you don’t want to come, that’s fine. But we have to go so either come with us or shut up and let us go!”
Mariana scanned all of their faces and when she found no sympathy, she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. But when we come home and Mom’s mad, I want it noted that I was the only one who said we should ask.”
“Fine, Mariana. You’re perfect. Duly noted. Now let’s go.” Brandon ushered everyone toward the door.
“You know,” Jesús said as they spilled out the front door, “hopefully she’s in a good enough mood by the time we get home, she won’t even be mad.”
The last thing heard before the door slammed shut was a chorus of groans while Jesús threw his head back and laughed.
gummygunk
stormborns
pixelskylines
turnnoffyourmind
