Re: The woods
Well, this was a fucking disaster, wasn't it? Hell, dysfunctional was an understatement. Whatever tentative glue held this family together, kept them cohesive, seemed to come apart when Iris started wailing on her mattress, and Neil had to bite his tongue hard to keep from telling Sam's father to go shove himself when he started blaming her mother. Okay, so maybe he was starting to appreciate his own parents a little more, because his upbringing had been like something out of a fairy tale compared to this. And when Tess disappeared with the old guy, her husband, or Sam's husband, whatever, the awkward level was cranked up about a thousand more degrees.
Neil's reaction was to pretend he couldn't hear a damn thing, even though the exact opposite was true, and he had to fight to keep from flinching back when Louis trailed his fingers along his arm. Fuck, he was like an attention-starved puppy. "Bring you back?" he repeated, frowning. "Bring you back from where?" As apathetic as his parents had been, he couldn't imagine them just handing Lou over if these assholes decided they wanted him back. Or maybe he just didn't want to imagine them doing that, despite all the childhood hurts.
She might have noticed the missing kids, but he didn't, not really. He had a vague recollection of Sam having mentioned a shit ton of siblings, but there were slightly more pressing issues at the forefront of his attention. Like Louis, who he knew wasn't real, but it was really fucking hard to turn his back on him regardless. He tried to figure out a way to communicate without looking crazy, which resulted in him giving Sam a look, combined with a subtle head jerk towards Louis, as if to say how can I leave? Besides, he had a fucking death grip on him, and shoving him off was bound to cause a scene.
Okay, now he really, really wanted to beat the shit out of this guy. Neil offered a tight smile, but beneath his false charm there was a hell of a lot of self-restraint going on. Maybe he could pay them enough to get Lou and Iris out of there. Tess, too. The fact that this wasn't real was hard to remember, and he was getting caught up in the hotel's little charade. "I'll pay you whatever you want if you let him come with me," he said, and this time he grinned, all smooth and ease. "I've got a lot of money and not much to do with it, you know?"