United Love - ON HOLD -

Chapter 10: Family P.1

"I know a song that gets on your nerves, gets on your nerves, gets on your nerves, I know a song that gets on your nerves and this is how it goes. I know a song that-"

"Shut up!" Joshua threw back a hand to smack his younger brother in the face.

"Ow!" Whined Monty. "Leon, did you see that?"

"No." His older brother replied, keeping his eyes on the road. "I only noticed that you had stopped singing, so I assumed the problem was solved."

"Oh. Well, Josh hit me!" Monty frowned. "Wait, did you just say you didn't like my singing?"

Leon hid a smirk. "I never said that I didn't like your singing, I only didn't like the song."

"Oh. Well, I can sing something else instead if you like?"

"You fucking dare-" Josh turned around to face the his brother.

"I think, for the benefit of the six other people in the car, we keep the singing to a minimum." Leon intervened. Maddie sat back in her seat. They were on the way to see some of their extended family, for their grandfathers birthday. Maddie hadn't met any of the rest of their family yet, and was sort of nervous, despite being told by everyone that they were all very friendly.

Unfortunately, their grandparents lived over two hours away, and someone (cough *Leon* cough) decided that they only needed to take  the one car, the big family seven seater, despite having two other cars that would work perfectly well. This meant that the seven of them were subjected to an almost three hour drive in very, very, uncomfortably very close proximity to one another. 

Somehow, poor Oscar had ended up at the very back, squished in between his two youngest siblings. Josh had, against all odds managed to claim the passenger seat, with Leon driving, so the twins were left in the middle. James had fallen asleep less than twenty minutes into the drive, his head resting on Oscars shoulder. Oscar guessed that he still hadn't fully recovered from being ill the other week, and was catching up on sleep.

"Leooon..." Nope, Monty couldn't even go five minutes without interrupting the lovely silence. (bar Leon's nineties rock blaring from the car speakers. After the first quarter of an hour of everyone arguing over music, he had instigated the 'drivers choice' rule. Everyone had thought it rather unfair.)

"Yes, Monty?"

"Are we nearly there yet?" Leon closed his eyes, counted to three, and tried to resist the urge to bang his head on the dashboard. This was the third time in twenty minutes.

"We are roughly seven minutes closer than when you last asked."

"So yes?"

"Not particularly, no."

"But earlier, you said-"

"Earlier was seven minutes ago, and I said that we were were roughly an hour and a half away."

Monty leaned back in his seat and groaned. "It was so more than seven minutes."

Joshua jumped right in, "You're right, it was probably more like eight now." Leon hid a smirk.

"Leon, tell Josh to stop annoying me."

Leon sighed. "Monty bud, I don't think he was trying to annoy you. He was only trying to help."

Maddie looked over to look at Monty's expression. His mouth was hanging slightly open in disbelief. Giggling, she leant her head back on Oscar's shoulder, who had just dropped off.

"Can I have another doughnut?" Monty asked seeming to have forgotten the recent injustice.

"No, wait another twenty minutes, or they'll all be gone by them time we get there."