Teenage Baby

Chapter 22

Aaron clucked his tongue. "You said a bad word."

"Alright, alright," Lou said, sighing. "I have a potty mouth and I can't help it. It's bad, so please just don't repeat it after me. And let's not tell Mommy and Daddy."

"Lou? What was that— Oh my God." Mommy stood at the threshold with her mouth wide open and her eyes trained on the broken shards spread across the floor. She sighed, shaking her head. "You could've called me, Lou."

"I thought you were sleeping."

"Just forget it. Aaron's barefoot. Get him socks while I clean this mess."

Lou nodded, and he received a playful swat on his head as he passed by her. Mommy fetched a broom and swept off the mess. It took Lou a minute, more or less, to return with a pair of socks clenched in his fist. He held Aaron's ankle and was about to pull the fabric over his foot, but then he paused, grinning so devilishly that it made the plans in his head way too clear for Aaron to read. Tickling.

"Don't." Aaron quickly jerked his foot away, bending his knee up to his chest. "You're gonna tickle my foot. I know. Please don't. I hate it."

Lou shrugged nonchalantly, a harmless challenging look on his face. "That's what you get for laughing at me."

  "If you do, I'm gonna tell her that you said a bad word in front of me," Aaron said. If Lou liked playful behavior, then he'd give him that. Plus this way he'd figure out if Lou was scared of Mommy or not as well.

Lou raised his eyebrows at his baby's blackmailing, but he wasn't angry—he found it funny, how his baby could become so defensive so easily. Sometimes he thought Aaron needed to chill, but he kinda liked that about him.

When the offended expression on Lou's brows persisted, Aaron realized he'd possibly pissed him off instead. So now was time to cajole: Aaron clasped his hands together in his lap, and tilted his head as he looked at Lou through his eyelashes, innocent and all. "But I wouldn't do that, Uncle Lou," he said, voice low and soft. "Because you're nice to me."

It worked. Lou stood there as he took in how adorable his baby could be: one second a devil and the other an angel. He shook his head, leaning forwards to peck Aaron's temple. "I've always wondered what an innocent devil would look like," he whispered. "And now I know."

Mommy didn't hear everything, but she did catch Aaron whispering Uncle Lou. She smiled at them. "He finally called you Uncle Lou, huh? He called me Mommy yesterday." There was a hint of playful teasing in her tone, but Lou didn't look like he'd taken offense, or like it had bothered him at all.

  "He called me Lou way before, actually," Lou absently corrected and his declaration had Mommy's shoulders slumping. She frowned. How could her own baby could call his uncle by his name before her? Another sharp strike to her heart.

It was when the sudden silence soaked the air for long enough that Lou realized he'd sounded like he was taunting her, and he hurried to fix the mistake: "I mean, he called me just Lou the first time, and it was because I was tickling him and he wanted me to stop. So technically, this is my official first time."

Mommy didn't feel better.

Aaron's eyes skipped between the captors uncertainly. There was a sudden awkwardness to the atmosphere, but then he got distracted when he remembered that Lou hadn't gotten mad at how he'd threatened him.

And now that he thought about it, Lou never really got angry over anything.

Mommy and Daddy were so dominant and aggressive that Aaron would find himself too cautious about his every word and move, because he knew that anything could possibly trigger them. But Lou was so... chill in comparison to his title as a captor. A psychopath. He was the complete opposite of the other two in terms of attitude and behavior, and that subconsciously loosened the tight restrictions they'd put around Aaron, enough relief for him to relax away from threats and touchy creepiness.