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Jonathan starts awake to sharp pain shooting down his spine like a lightning bolt and finds himself first gasping for breath and then choking on a sob when the inhale sends a stabbing sensation up his back.
“Fuck,” he breathes. The pain is so overwhelming it brings tears to his eyes, and he forces himself to breathe so imperceptibly that his aching body won’t pick up on it. He’d been aware of the pain after the hospital, of course, but there had been other things to worry about—swinging an axe at a monster made of flesh and viscera, performing emergency surgery on an escaped lab experiment, protecting Will and his friends—and even then, it hadn’t been as intense as it is now. Jonathan tries to shift his body; turn his face out of his pillow so he can breathe, but he’s met with a wave of hurt that forces a pained whimper up his throat.
“Mom?” he finds himself calling, his voice shaky. “Mom?” he tries again, louder, and the effort sends another bolt of pain down his spine. Tears roll down his cheeks and he fights another sob. “Fuck. Mom!”
His door bursts open and Will hoves into view. “Jonathan?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”
“Get Mom,” he begs, his cheek still pressed into his pillow. The pain is so strong he’s nauseous with it, and he bites back a whimper.
Concern colors Will’s features. “What’s—”
“Please,” Jonathan gasps, and Will’s gone, leaving him to squeeze his eyes shut and wait, like a child, for his mother to come take away the pain.
And then she’s at his side, frazzled and worried and bone-deep tired, and Jonathan realizes with horror that in the intensity of his injury, he’d somehow forgotten that his mother is drowning in grief.
“Jonathan?” she says, looking him over frantically for any signs of illness or injury. “Jonathan, what’s wrong?”
“My back,” he manages, his voice strained. “I can’t—” and here he finds himself letting out a keening whine as another wave of pain rolls through him.
“He’s hurt,” Will says. His face is blurry in Jonathan’s periphery. “In the hospital, he and Nancy had to fight—”
“You hurt your back?” his mother asks, and Jonathan nods wordlessly as another tear rolls down his cheek and onto his pillow.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s get that shirt off so I can see.” Jonathan’s chest clenches at the thought.
“I can’t,” he tells her. “I can’t move, it—Mom, it hurts, I can’t—” He cuts himself off, forcing himself to take a slow breath. “I can’t.”
“It’ll be quick, baby, I just have to see how bad it is.”
Jonathan sighs and nods reluctantly. “Okay,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing himself.
His mother pulls the hem of his t-shirt up and he hears a sharp inhale as she takes in what he assumes are the bruises on his lower back. “Okay, honey, help me out here,” she murmurs, taking his left arm and moving it gently to get it out of the sleeve. She manages to get the fabric over his head before he whimpers in pain. “Shh, baby,” she tells him, running a hand through his messy hair. “All done. Your back’s really bruised, though. Will’s gonna get you some ice.”
“Do we still have the painkillers they gave me when I—?” Will asks. When I came back goes unsaid. When they’d gotten him back from the Upside Down, Will’s little body had been a patchwork of cuts and bruises, but the painkillers the hospital sent him home with had been too strong for his system; made him so nauseous he could barely move. Jonathan remembers sitting in bed with the kid as he spit bile into their old mop bucket. His heart clenches.
“We should,” his mom confirms, and Will’s out the door again.
His mother runs her thumb gently over the cut working its way over Jonathan’s eyebrow. “I’m sorry, baby,” she murmurs. “I should have noticed.”
“S’okay,” he tells her. “Wasn’t important.”
She furrows her brow; opens her mouth to say something more, but then Will’s back with the painkillers and Jonathan’s so relieved he could sob.
“Gonna help you sit up a little, okay?” his little brother says. Jonathan hums his affirmation, marveling at how grown-up Will’s gotten as the kid helps him ever-so-gently into a vaguely upright position. His spine aches in protest, sending agony up and down his body, and Jonathan finds himself biting his cheek so hard he tastes blood.
“Fuck,” he chokes out again, tears rolling down his face. He’s shaking now, trembling like a leaf, and his mother rubs his arm silently in an attempt to soothe the pain away.
“Here.” Will holds out a pill in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Jonathan pops the pill in his mouth and takes the glass, his hands shaking so violently that Will reaches out to steady them as he takes a sip.
“Good job,” Will says softly.
“Let’s get you lying down again, okay?” says his mother, and Jonathan nods. She helps him back onto his stomach, the side of his head pressed into his pillow, and he breathes a sigh of relief as the pressure of sitting upright is lifted from his spine.
“Got some ice, too,” Will reminds him, holding up a plastic bag of ice cubes wrapped in an old dish towel. Joyce takes it from him and sets it against the small of Jonathan’s back. He recoils a bit at the cold against his bare skin, but settles into it after a few seconds. It’s a welcome distraction from the sharp ache in his back and the vague headache that’s developed around his temples.
His mother presses a palm to his forehead and Jonathan sighs. “‘M not sick, Mom,” he tells her.
“You’re a little warm,” she tells him, brushing his bangs off his sweaty forehead. “And all clammy.”
“Adrenaline crash,” Will chimes in. “You’ve been running around all day badly injured and your body’s overwhelmed. You have to rest, Jonathan.”
“I’m resting,” Jonathan tells him.
“Yeah, for once,” Will shoots back. There’s a bite to his words that Jonathan doesn’t know what to do with. “And it’s not actually rest when it’s only happening ‘cause your body’s giving out on you.”
“I was a little busy—” he tries to defend himself, but Will cuts him off.
“You can’t even move!”
“There were monsters—”
“That’s not the point!”
“I don’t wanna fight with you—”
All of a sudden, a scream rings out from across the hallway, and Jonathan remembers, with a start, the newly-orphaned girl currently sleeping in his mother’s bed, who’s surely been startled awake out of a nightmare more horrifying than he can possibly imagine.
Joyce curses, rising to her feet. “Jonathan, I’m sorry—”
“Go,” Will tells her. “I’ve got him.”
His mother nods; leans over to press a kiss to Jonathan’s forehead. “Feel better, baby,” she whispers, and then she’s gone.
“I’m sorry,” Will murmurs after a few seconds. “I don’t wanna fight either. I just want you to take care of yourself. Stop worrying about everyone else for once.”
“I have to worry about you,” Jonathan tells him, half a smile flitting across his lips. “It’s part of the job description.”
Will furrows his eyebrows. “It’s not supposed to be a job,” he says gently, and Jonathan’s heart plummets.
“That’s not what I meant,” he clarifies. “It’s not—you’re not just a job to me, Will, I don’t—”
“Shut up,” Will says softly. “I know that. But you’re still a kid, too.” He swallows. “Sometimes I think you forget that.”
Jonathan doesn’t know what to say to that. Will sighs. He reaches a hand out to brush his brother’s bangs out of his face, resembling their mother so vividly for a moment that Jonathan’s breath catches in his chest.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Will asks. Jonathan considers. He thinks the painkillers are maybe starting to kick in a little, and the pain’s backing off enough that his mind feels a little sharper, able to identify the individual parts of his body that are hurting.
“My head,” he says. “Got hit, like, a lot.” Unlike his back, it’s actually starting to hurt more, if he thinks about it. So maybe the painkillers aren’t doing shit.
“Okay,” Will says, his face lined with worry. “I have to check you for a concussion, okay?”
Jonathan groans. “You don’t even know how to do that,” he argues, and Will rolls his eyes.
“We have to check Steve, like, every year,” he says. “And Dustin and I got a bunch of first aid books from the library last winter. I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh,” Jonathan says, feeling a little dumb. Sometimes he looks at Will and still sees the little boy who came back from the dead. Even when his mind’s not clouded with pain, he has trouble remembering that his baby brother is growing up.
“I have to turn on the light,” Will explains. “So I can see.”
Jonathan nods. Will twists the switch on the lamp at Jonathan’s bedside. Jonathan squeezes his eyes shut as light floods his bedroom.
“I need to see your face,” Will says, resting a hand on the back of Jonathan’s head. “Both of your eyes, okay?”
Jonathan hums his affirmation, letting Will take his face in his hands and turn it away from the pillow. He whines a little at the stress it puts on his spine, and Will winces. “Sorry,” he murmurs. He runs his thumb over the cut above Jonathan’s eyebrow.
“You’re a good little nurse,” Jonathan says. Will huffs a laugh.
“Not little anymore,” he reminds his brother. “You know I’m almost as tall as you now.” He helps Jonathan rest his head on his pillow again. “Your pupils are a little big, but not too bad. Is your vision blurry at all?” Jonathan shakes his head and winces when the motion makes him a little dizzy.
“Okay,” Will says. “Do you feel nauseous?”
Jonathan hums. He does feel a little queasy, but it’s manageable. He shrugs one shoulder. “Dunno,” he says. “Kind of, but not too bad.”
Will nods. “Okay,” he says. “Let me know if it gets worse, yeah?”
Jonathan’s not used to this, to Will acting as a caretaker instead of someone who needs to be taken care of. It makes him feel a little nauseous, honestly. But then again, maybe that’s the concussion.
“You don’t have to take care of me,” Jonathan tells him. Will frowns.
“I don’t have to do anything,” he points out. Softer, he asks, “Why do you have so much trouble being cared about?”
Jonathan finds himself suddenly at a loss for words. He swallows. “I don’t—” he starts. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice rough. “It’s not your job.”
“It’s not yours.”
Jonathan sighs. The painkillers are kicking in now, and it’s getting harder to keep his eyes open. “Sorry,” he says. “I can’t—” He blinks. “I can’t think straight. I think I’m gonna fall asleep.”
“That’s okay,” Will tells him. “We can talk later.”
“Can you—” Jonathan starts. His brain’s having trouble catching up to his mouth, and he blinks hard before speaking again. “Stay. You should stay.” He moves over in bed slightly, only wincing a little at the pain it sends down his spine. Wordlessly, he pulls back his comforter to motion for Will to join him.
He does; climbs into bed beside Jonathan like he's a little kid again, and it’s so comforting that Jonathan has to blink back tears. “I love you,” he says.
“I love you too,” his brother assures him. “Sleep tight,” he says, and that’s all the permission Jonathan needs before he gives into the fatigue and lets the painkillers send him off to sleep.