It was cold. There was ice everywhere, blue and shining brightly in the blinding white sun. Jack couldn't move, not properly. He walked with halted steps, his legs jerking, muscles twitching and knees giving out, hitting the ice with a thunk.
Something roared and it was familiar, but Jack didn't know how.
Everything was blurry and too bright and his heart was pounding because things were grabbing at him, pulling and shaking him and he just wanted them to stop.
Dark figures moved around him in a circle. They kept their distance, save for a few, one that stood in front of him and two to the sides. Those were the things that were grabbing and pulling at him.
He tried to push them off, and the one in front grabbed his shoulders.
"Jack!" he heard and things came rushing back.
The ice burned against the bare skin of his hands. Bring gloves, mom had said, but Jack didn't listen. He never did. You're too much like Bobby that way.
He blinked and squinted his eyes. It was almost like he could see again. The brightness died a little and the blurriness cleared and he saw his brother, his biggest one, in front of him, sitting on his ass on the ice.
His face looked funny, like he was worried about something. But maybe Jack did something to change that, because Bobby smiled at him, a tight pull at the corners of his pale chapped lips.
"Jack," he said again. "You with me, kiddo?"
"I," Jack tried to speak, but his tongue wasn't listening to his brain. It felt thick and foreign in his mouth and the words weren't coming so easy. He felt a hand on his back and knew it was one of his other brothers without even looking, without really thinking.
He blinked again, made fists out of his hands, so cold that he was not even feeling the tips of his fingernails pressing into his palms. "Head," he tried again with eyes closed. It was easier to work on talking when he didn't have to work on seeing things too. "Head hurts."
"I bet," Bobby said, his thumbs rubbing little circles over Jack's shoulders. "Do you remember what we were doing?"
Jack opened his eyes again but squeezed them shut right after seeing how the world was spinning around. "Talkin' hurts. Seein' hurts."
The hand on his back pressed in firmer, more supportive.
"I know," Bobby said. "But you gotta try, OK? What were we doing? You need to answer me, Jackie. It's important."
Bobby's hands left his shoulders and cupped his face. They were bare, but warm. Bobby wore his gloves today, pulled them out his pocket before they... before they went. He didn't want them for cold, though. Bobby never wore his gloves either, except for hockey.
"Hockey," Jack spat out and he heard a sigh next to him. Angel.
"Good," Bobby said. One of the hands left his face, making his cheek feel cold against the light breeze. "Real good. Now open your eyes and tell me how many fingers I got up, yeah?"
Jack groaned at the thought, but he cracked his eyes open anyway, keeping them to narrow slits so the sun wouldn't blind him. Bobby was still in front of him, and he was holding up his fingers. Three-no two. Three. Two. Definitely two. Or three.
"Two and a half," Jack mumbled, and the his eye caught some movement off to the side. "Who's Jer yellin' at?"
Jack couldn't make out the words, but Jerry was a good ways away from them, and he was doing more than yelling. His brother shoved whoever the other guy was so hard that he slid on his skates a long way before falling on his ass with a loud curse.
"The dumbass who checked you," Bobby said, and it took Jack a minute to remember that he had asked a question.
"Checked me?" Jack said, then winced and snapped his eyes shut. His head was pounding and his stomach clenched, churning like he was going to puke. He bit his lips together and tried to take deep breaths through his nose. Bobby would be so pissed. In this position, there was no way Jack wouldn't throw up all over his brother's lap.
Bobby's hands returned to his shoulders and Jack heard the sharp cut of skates at his side, and felt someone-Jerry, had to be-kneel next to him.
"How's he doing?" Jerry said.
"How you think?" Angel said. "Mahone is a fuckin' brick wall and he just plowed him down. We oughta go over there and-"
"Later," Bobby said. "We can deal with him later. We need to get Jack to the benches."
Shit. Jack was getting kind of scared now. Bobby was postponing violence. He had to be hurt bad, maybe even worse than he felt. And that was... bad.
And Jack didn't even remember why. He knew they were at the rink, and Bobby said he'd been checked, and he could figure that was the reason for the splitting pain in his head. But he couldn't actually remember anything after getting in the car and leaning through the front seats for the radio, dodging Bobby's flailing hand and whining so much that Bobby finally gave in and let Jack switch it.
"Jack," Bobby said, his hand squeezing Jack's shoulder. "We gotta move you now, OK?"
Jack grunted but kept his lips shut tight. He felt Bobby's hands move to under his arms and Angel's on his sides. Slowly, they helped him up so he could pull his feet under himself. They stayed on either side of him. Jack may have technically been on his blades, but they were the support system, because he had nothing even close to balance at the moment.
He didn't even move his feet. They skated and he coasted along with them, eyes still shut and doubled over. It made his head swim less than standing straight up, or at least he assumed it would, and who was he to argue with his clearly fucked up skull?
He felt himself pushed to sit on the benches the sat on either side of the rink, and he bent over, his crossed arms pinned between his stomach and thighs.
Someone started pulled at this skates.
"You gonna puke, Jack?" Bobby said from beside him.
It took Jack a while to answer. He didn't want to speak in case he did exactly that, and he didn't want to move his head because it hurt too goddamn much. His stomach wasn't roiling at much as it had been, so he figured talking would be best.
"Maybe," he blurted out. He cracked his eyes open, seeing Jerry kneeling before him and unlacing his skates. "Don't think so."
Jack's eyes weren't running from the light anymore, so he took a look around. Angel was his other side, already tying his shoes, and when he finished he tapped Jerry on the shoulder and they switched places.
"Warn me before you start to spew, alright?" he said with a smile, and Jack almost laughed if he didn't think it would hurt his head.
Out on the rink, the players from their pickup game were slowly filing away. A few went past them, and Jack sort of recognized them as their teammates. The others wisely exited on the opposite side.
Jack wondered which one hit him, and if his face would be recognizable this time next week.
Shoes on, Jack was actually able to walk, and they started towards the car, his sneakers digging into the hard packed snow and Bobby's arm under his for support.
There were almost there when Jack stopped. Either Bobby was a mind reader or Jack had pulled a cliche and actually turned green, because his brother had him in front of one of those stupid "decorative" beds full of dead plants just as his breakfast crawled up his throat.
Stomach acid and mom's pancakes and the Snickers bar Bobby had passed him in the car ("Why you always giving him candy? I don't get no candy." "He's ten, Ang." "I'm almost thirteen!" "Don't chew with your mouth open, fairy.") all came out and splashed on the frozen dirt. It burned his throat and his mouth and his nose and he retched again and again, his stomach clenching so hard it hurt.
Bobby was there the whole time. No words of encouragement or shushes or "it's okay"s, just a hand on his back. Before long, the retching stopped and Jack kneeled there, shaking, strings of puke-laced spit and snot dripping from his mouth and nose.
"Finished?"
Jack nodded, spit, and Bobby wiped off his face with one of the gloves he had stashed in his jeans, tossing it down in the pile of vomit without a second thought.
Bobby helped him shakily to his feet, and Jack slid into the back seat next to Angel who fastened the seat belt over his lap while Bobby ran around the front of the car and hopped into the driver's seat.
Jack rested his forehead against the cold window, watching the frost disappear and savoring the way cool droplets of water formed on his skin. It was almost enough to distract him from the pounding pain in the back of his head.
He closed his eyes as the car started moving. He didn't want to be sick again. Bobby was a pain in the ass about making a mess in his car. It didn't mean that he kept it clean, just that each and every one of the soda cans, fast food bags, and grocery sacks came from Bobby himself, not any of his "filthy little brothers"
He felt a hand shaking his shoulder and he grunted.
"Yo man, no sleeping," Angel said, shaking his shoulder a little harder. "Open your eyes."
Jack grunted again, but flicked his eyes open, casting a glare that was weaker than he liked towards Angel.
He looked out the window and frowned. He didn't recognize the street they were driving down, and he didn't think that had to do with his head.
"This isn't the way home," he said, his voice quiet but audible in the silent car.
"Not headed home, Jackie."
That just confused him even more. If they weren't going home, how would mom baby him and make his head better? She was good at that. She could always make him feel better, bringing him bowls of soup and cool cloths to go over his skin and making sure he was the one with the remote.
"But mom..." he mumbled, still trying to wrap his head around the concept.
"She'll meet us there," Bobby said, and Jack didn't like that tight tone in his voice, or the way his knuckles were going white around the steering wheel.
"Meet us...?"
Bobby cleared his throat. "Hospital, kid," he said.
His eyes went wide. "No," he whined, dragging the word out and not caring one bit if he sounded more like a ten year old than a thirteen year old. "Just take me home, Bobby. Mom can-"
"Take you to the hospital," Bobby said. "And then chew my ass for not taking you to the hospital first. No arguing, fairy. You hit your head damn hard."
Jack groaned and rubbing his hands over his face. He wanted to cry, felt the sting of tears in his eyes, but held them back. That made the pressure inside his head worse, so he closed his eyes again and rested against the window, trying to let the smooth motions of the car relax him.
He hated hospitals. Hospitals were always places where bad things happened. The last time he had been in a hospital was to have some stupid, embarrassing examination done for Kevin's trial, and the time before that...
He didn't talk the rest of the ride, didn't open his eyes except for when Angel poked him in the shoulder and reminded him not to fall asleep. Jack didn't know why he couldn't. His head hurt, and sleeping would help a lot right then.
But Angel and Bobby (mostly Bobby) said he couldn't, so he didn't, instead focusing on the cool window on his forehead and the burn still present in his throat and nose every time he breathed in. His mouth tasted like shit. Jack hoped the hospital could fix that at least.
Angel shook his shoulder.
He opened his eyes and saw that they were parked outside of a set of sliding glass doors blaring "EMERGENCY" in bright red letters. He briefly wondered why he didn't notice them stopping, but decided that it wasn't important.
"Park it, Ang," Bobby said, stepping out of the car, closely followed by Jerry and Angel. "Scratch my baby and I'll kill you."
Angel slid into the driver's seat while Jerry popped open Jack's door. Bobby was at his side without a pause, hand on his arm and helping him stand.
The door shut behind him with a slam, and the car pulled away while Bobby and Jerry walked him inside.