Not Mine

~Part 12~

     Alex slowly backed away from Tuck as he crawled closer. J grabbed Alex's arm, "Hey! I'm supposed to be helping you! Not having you run away!" He kept hold of Alex and picked up Tuck with his other hand then slowly brought Tuck closer to Alex.
     "I-I-uh-" he gulped, "Right..."
     "How about this. To start, I'll just put Tuck down in your lap, and you can go at whatever speed you want, maybe eventually pick him up?"
     Alex nervously nodded and J put Tuck in his lap. Alex grabbed J's arm and held it tightly in fear, trying to calm himself down.
     Herc walked outside to see how they were doing, but only saw J leaning against Alex, Alex grabbing his arm, and Tuck in Alex's lap. He slowly backed into the house again and ran back to everyone else. "Guys, I think something's going on..."
     Laf, who was teaching a new game to John and Philip, looked up at him, "What do you mean 'something'?"
     Herc slightly pointed towards the front yard where they were. Laf got up and looked out the window, to see the same thing Herc did, "Oh.. Awwwww."
Everyone else went outside, quietly so they wouldn't disturb them, and headed off on a small road trip.
     He went back to Philip and John and asked if there was anything else they wanted to do, to which John quickly replied, "Wrestling!"
     "You sure about that, mon ami?"
     "Don't know French but yeah!"
     "Alright... 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-"
     Before he could finish the countdown, John was on top of him.
     "Heyyyyy, do you not know how to count?" He flipped them over so he had John pinned down, then Philip came over and tackled Laf off. Philip did a somersault over Laf, which made his shirt pull up, and showed the wrap around his stomach.
     "Oh- what happened there?" Laf looked at Philip and saw the wrap, which had some blood coming through it, from not being payed attention to since the hospital.
     Philip quickly pulled his shirt down and answered, "Oh... It's nothing, just an accident.."
     Laf stood up and called for a timeout for wrestling, "Just an accident? Mon ami, there is blood coming out of your stomach..."
     John, who hadn't seen it yet, looked over and got a little shocked, "Philip! You said it would be fine in a couple days! Go sit down, I'm gonna change the wrap and check on it."
     "N-no, it's fine... Really.. I'm fine?" He said the last part like a question, even though it wasn't supposed to be.
     "No, you're not fine, sit down. Lafayette can you watch over him while I get stuff?"
(Everyone else is out shopping now from the trip besides Alex and J being in the yard, so that's why no one else is doing anything)
     "Of course! Okay Philip, let's just get you to the couch and you can rest..." He tried pulling Philip over to the couch, but Philip broke free,
     "No, I don't need to rest!"
     "Yesssss you do, have you even seen your stomach?"
     "Okay fine I'll rest.. No, I haven't, because it hurt too much last time for me to even think about looking at it..." He walked over to the couch and sat down, waiting for John to come back with everything.
     A few moments later, John came back with a wet washcloth, a towel, a dry cloth, like the one that was under the wrap right now, and a new wrap.
     Laf sat down next to Philip to make sure everything was okay. John unwrapped Philip's current wrap and slowly removed the blood-stained cloth, "Holy crap... This doesn't look good."
     Philip was biting his lip in pain when Laf asked, "What is it?"
     "I think we need to bring you to a hospital, Philip... This might be infected... I'll finish this for now just to try to help, but we really should."
     John started cleaning it off, which made Philip bite his lip harder. Laf noticed and quickly took his hand, "Here, just squeeze my hand instead, it'll cause less harm to anyone."
    Philip started holding Laf's hand with all his strength, and moving around a bunch from the pain.
     "Philip, calm down, I can't focus on this when you keep moving everywhere," John continued cleaning it.
     "A-are you al-almost do-done- th-this hurts... a lot..." Philip tried stopping himself.
     "Just hangggg on, this shouldn't hurt as bad." He lightly dried it off with the towel then put the cloth over it, "Okay Lafayette, can you help me wrap this around?"
     "Sure," he helped get the wrap around Philip then stood back up and faced Philip, "So.. 'NoT thAT BaD'?"
     "Shut up Marie-Joseph," he snapped back.
     Laf quickly backed away in shock, "H-how... H-" He took a deep breath, "D-did yo-," another breath, "you... kn-kno-know..."
     "hOw dID yoU KNow?¿..." John mocked him.
     "Shut up Hamilton-Reynolds," he said in the same tone as Philip did earlier.
     "Do-don't call.. call m-me th-that..."
     "Well then, what am I supposed to call you?"
     "Ne-never m-mind...," John was curled up on the ground on the verge of crying.
     Philip saw him and tried to run over to tackle Laf for doing that, but tripped on the way and face-planted into the floor.
     "Okay, look, Philip. I forgive you, okay? Just confused how you knew... But right now we need to comfort John... I went too far... This is my fault..." He helped Philip up and went to sit next to John on the floor. Philip sat on the other side of John and leaned against him. John couldn't hold back his feelings anymore, and started to cry, which led to Philip and Laf both hugging him, trying to calm him down.