Stonathan ❤️

137

NOT MINE!!

all credits go to dustyirish on ao3

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes

~ The Rolling Stones

"Oh god, how could I have forgotten about the spinach?"

Steve's head shot up from where it was resting on Jonathan's thigh. Guilt clawed its way a little deeper into his gut. The real question was : how the fuck could he have dozed off?

Joyce laughed; a wild, bewildered cackle that bounced off the walls of the ICU, where the only sounds up until then had been the soft, persistent beeps of the heart monitor and the whoosh of the machine that was breathing for Jonathan.

Steve turned his head to look at Joyce. It was a slow, unreal process - he felt like he was moving underwater. She was in a chair by Jonathan's head, holding his hand to her face, brushing her cheek softly over his knuckles.

"It was the only naughty thing he ever did. Will could be a little hellion sometimes," she remembered fondly "but not my Jonathan. He was such a good baby, so, so sweet. He'd just snuggle up, right against my heart, for hours." She patted her chest with her free hand. "We'd just cuddle, his tiny fingers wrapped around mine ..."

She paused, visibly battling back a sob.

Steve wanted to say something to comfort her, anything, but he had lost that right. He was the reason they were stuck in this horrible place, the reason Joyce was sitting across from him, steadily losing her mind. He hadn't been fast enough. The only time it had really counted, and he had failed utterly.

Joyce pulled herself back together and continued. "Lonnie loved spinach, absolutely loved it, wanted it with every damn meal. Maybe he thought he'd turn into Popeye, who knows. But eventually, I had to stop giving it to Jonathan. Whenever Lonnie'd start to get snippy with me at the dinner table, Jonathan would snatch a handful of spinach off of his plate, shoot Lonnie a look, and then shove it right down the front of his diaper!"

Joyce put a hand over her eyes and let out a series of strangled chuffing noises. Steve couldn't tell if she was laughing or weeping or both. He doubted she knew herself at this point. "I swear he knew it would shift all of Lonnie's anger to him. Two years old, and he was protecting me even then."

Steve's nails bit crescents into his palms as his fists clenched. 'Protecting'. There was a hell of a word. Jonathan had managed more as a toddler than Steve could as a grown man. His chest tightened, drawing breath becoming a struggle.

Hopper had taken Will home; now it was just him and Joyce.

Waiting.

Jonathan looked so perfect, lying there in the bed. No injuries besides the mark on his leg where the monster had grabbed him, injecting its poison. It was shutting Jonathan down, destroying cells, and nobody knew how to stop it.

Steve and Joyce both jumped as the door opened. A doctor came in and checked Jonathan over. He took a pulse, peered under his eyelids, listened to his heart, then turned to Joyce.

"He's going."

Two words. Perfunctory, almost bored. The doctor looked like he might say more, then changed his mind and left. It was a good thing. If he would have dared to speak again, Joyce would have clawed his eyes out.

She was on her feet now, furiously pacing the small room : over to the wall, pounding with her fists; then to Jonathan, lovingly touching his face and murmuring his name, then back to the wall to rage.

Steve wanted to go to her, to give her a warm chest to muffle her screams against instead of cold plaster, but he was literally drowning in unshed tears. He had been choking them down since he had pulled Jonathan out from beneath the fucker's corpse, since Jonathan had smiled up at Steve and then began convulsing in his arms. Steve had been fighting off the emotions, terrified of making it all real, swallowing the truth, and he had finally run out of room. Reality rushed back on him in a bitter flood.

His vision went gray, and he felt a gentle hand pushing his head down between his knees. Then Joyce was embracing him from behind, rocking him as he sobbed and retched into a wastebasket, being more tender with him than his own mother had ever thought of being, all while her son was dying four feet from her.

Jonathan was dying.

Sixteen hours earlier they had been in their kitchen, Jonathan attempting to make breakfast, Steve attempting to distract him by any means possible. Jonathan would normally push Steve off, half irritated, half laughing. That morning, however, he had turned in Steve's arms, opening to him, letting the eggs burn to a crisp while he kissed Steve senseless. Steve had flung the scorched skillet into the sink and dragged Jonathan back to the bedroom. Jonathan had moved so sweetly inside him that last morning, filling him completely, his eyes telling Steve that he felt it, too. That they were both dreaming of things that two guys from a small Indiana town had no business dreaming about.

And the dream was ending here.

"I knew that when he finally fell in love, he'd love with everything." Joyce spoke softly into Steve's hair. She hugged him tighter. "He can't say it, so I'm saying it for him : Honey, no matter what - this is not your fault."

It was a wonderful lie. Steve wished to Christ he could fool himself into believing it.

The monitor beeped on, the machine rhythmically whooshed, the silence grew deafening.

Joyce could stand it no longer, and with a frustrated cry she climbed onto the bed and lay beside Jonathan, head on his chest, arm hugging his waist. She reached back for Steve with her other hand, beckoning to him. He let her lead him up onto the other side of the bed, scrunching into three inches of space to hold Jonathan close.

Joyce wrapped her fingers around Steve's wrist and looked at him, eyes red-rimmed and haunted, but defiant. "We're not letting him go anywhere."

The seconds ticked by, the nurses came and went, another day dawned and the two of them held on.