Brothers

Better Late Than Never III

~*~Around Five Minutes Later~*~

                Around five minutes later, Sarah briskly walked outside of the apartment complex, almost throwing the front door open on the way out. The sound of soles clicking on the concrete pavement broke the spell of happiness on the uncle and nephew. They looked up and saw her walk closer when she was about a little less than five feet away from them.

                She walked around Alfred and then abruptly kneeled down in front of the two on the sidewalk, her knees resting on the pavement. The two silently watched the blonde woman as she took off the adhesive backings for one of the Band-Aids, which was a rather large one, one surely to cover the boy’s scraped knee. Holding it with both hands on either side of the Band-Aid, Sarah slowly put it on the scrape, earning a light hiss of pain from the nine year old.

                After a few seconds of waiting while Sarah made sure that the Band-Aid was firmly sticking to the skin around the scrape, Alfred looked down at Steve. “How you doing?” he inquired as a tad bit of worry came in through the back door of his coherent thinking. The blue eyed boy looked up at Alfred with a curious look at first before smiling lightly.

“I’m good,” he replied in a tone that seemed to go along with his expression. Alfred dismissed any thoughts of the boy covering up the fact that he was in pain, apparently, he wasn’t, but his overalls now had a decent size hole in them.

Sarah sighed lightly at the hole in his overalls. She would have to find some sort of fabric to sew to patch up the hole sometime tonight while he was asleep. It would be the only chance she would have, since those were his favorite overalls. Alfred got them for Steve back in April for Easter. He wore them ever since, rarely wearing anything else.

The boy then tried to stand up. Alfred let go him, a little bit reluctantly too, which didn’t go unnoticed by the boy’s mother. The boy then looked down at his battle wound, slowly and carefully bending his knee back and forth and lightly stomping the ground with his left foot. He looked up at his uncle with a pleading expression while smiling lightly. “Can I try again?” he asked.

Alfred’s blue eyes widened behind their glasses, he looked up at Sarah, who was sharing a look similar to the one that he had currently before looking back down at Steve.  A light smirk then crawled onto his face. “Sure!”

~*~

It was well almost four in the afternoon before Steve was allowed to try again. Sarah had wanted him to wait an extra thirty minutes or so to make sure that Steve didn’t make it worse…or open it up again, or get hurt somewhere else. The boy pouted at this, whining about his mother being too worried about him again. Both adults had to laugh at this. Alfred rested a hand on Steve’s shoulder, still chuckling somewhat and told him that she just cares.

The boy said that he knew that…all too well. Sarah laughed a little harder at this, folding both of her hands in front of her. Her brown eyes were twinkling in amusement as she looked down at her boy. She then turned somewhat and saw the cooler behind her. Leaning over somewhat, she took a Coke from the container and handed it to the nine year old.

“Will this make things better?” she asked, snickering lightly. Steve’s pouting face immediately disappeared and he vigorously nodded his head.

“Yeah, Yeah, it will!” he tried jumping up for the bottle, but Sarah held it just out of his reach. After him jumping for it about two or three times, Steve stopped, and began pouting again. His mother chuckled and ruffled his hair lightly before bending down somewhat and handing him the Coca Cola. The boy was practically beaming now.