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It’s three in the morning when a thud causes Joel to shoot awake. At first, he nearly goes back to sleep; assuming it was some piece of equipment he’d been using the afternoon and evening prior. They’d — Joel had, mostly — been working on converting the shed in the backyard into space for Ellie. They’ve not gotten very far yet, hence why her furniture and decor is still in her bedroom. And when he last put away the saw, it was absolutely haphazardly, so he wouldn’t be surprised if it got knocked over in the middle of the night.
Something bugs Joel anyhow, which is why he lifts himself out of bed to see what it was. Half-awake, he recalls that anything that could’ve fallen and made a thud of that volume is downstairs, and would not have come from down the hall. He runs a hand over his face, feet padding against the wood floors as he makes his way to Ellie’s bedroom. No light peeks from any side of the door, so he can rule out the option of her waking in the night and deciding upon spontaneously climbing furniture to jump from.
Joel knocks first, even if he is almost entirely sure Ellie is asleep, because he knows she values privacy. When a handful of seconds pass with no answer, he twists the knob and nudges the door open.
Not counting his discovery — three things pass through Joel’s hazy mind, with a heavy pause between the latter two of them.
The discovery is that Ellie is sprawled out on the floor like she’s just fallen down the stairs. He presumes she fell out of bed — she’s a heavy sleeper, though this has only happened once before. The first thought to pass through his mind is something brutal, a heavy fear buried deep enough for him to ignore it entirely. The fear, in this situation, is irrational, so he quickly skips to the second thought. Which is the word ‘idiot’; the perfect word to describe what and who he’s looking at. The third thought is that he should wake her, assist her back into bed, maybe fetch her a glass of water or something.
So he approaches Ellie’s bedside, kneeling down beside the teenage girl in the floor to gently rouse her from her sleep. Joel chooses the gentle method to start — running his hand up and down her back as he says lowly, “…Ellie.”
She does not budge. Ellie’s t-shirt clings to the unusually clammy flesh of her back, and Joel can’t tell if she’s just overheating and attempting to get away from her blanket mid-slumber, or if she’s feverish.
“Ellie, wake up,” Joel murmurs, changing his tactic to gently shaking her shoulder. She grumbles in her sleep, rolling over onto her back and allowing her head to loll to the side. Joel takes advantage of this, pressing his palm to her forehead; it is equally as sweaty and heated as the rest of her.
”’s so early…,” Ellie mutters, throwing her forearm arm over her midriff. Her eyes do not open — if she’s conscious at all, it’s very little.
”It’s three in the morning. You’re in the floor,” Joel replies, giving a little pat to her shoulder. “You’re burnin’ up, and you need to be in bed.”
Ellie’s response is a tired groan. Her breathing slows and evens back out in mere seconds, and he’s sure she’s just fallen back asleep. Joel sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, and allows this exchange to confirm that she is not going to budge.
”I’m gonna pick you up,” he warns, knowing it’s entirely useless, and she can’t hear a word he’s saying. Gently, he shifts, slipping one arm under her back and the other under her knees. He grunts as he rises to his feet, her head nestled against his shoulder. “Eating god damn rocks, I swear…”
Joel lowers her into bed, grabbing the covers to lie them back over her. He checks her forehead once more, the temperature confirming he ought to go grab some form of medicine to tame it.
So he does; leaving her door cracked while he’s gone for the what-ifs and the just-in-cases. He fills a glass with water first and searches the cabinets second, shoving away useless items before landing on a useful bottle of ibuprofen. It should ward away the fever. He grabs it, the glass, and sets off back to her bedroom.
The door is still cracked, Ellie is still in bed. She’s mildly thrashing by the time he’s back in there, violently rolling over and huffing in her slumber while she kicks the blankets off.
Joel approaches her bedside yet again, setting down the water and the pill bottle. He glances over at her; pouting in her sleep and giving little puffs because, even unconscious, her fever is getting to her. So he reaches for her upper arm and gives her a little shake.
”Ellie,” he calls, yet again, “you got a fever. You need to take some medicine.”
Ellie makes an attempt to swat his hand away, her free arm thrown around her own waist like she’s desperate for warm. It’s ironic, seeing as her blanket is not covering her; falling off the bed as a consequence of her actions. Her face is smushed against the pillow, and Joel almost wants to shift her head a little so she doesn’t suffocate.
As for a verbal response, all Joel gets is an, “Mmmm.”
”I mean it. Medicine, now.” Joel shakes her a little harder — he is not trying to be rough with her; she’s sick for gods sake. He’s just trying to get her awake enough for two seconds.
Ellie groans. Joel thinks he’s finally poked through that thick layer of sleep.
”Are you awake?” he asks, head tilting down a little to get a better angle. To see if her eyes are open or not.
”I’m— ‘m… awake. Damn,” Ellie replies in a groggy grumble. She rolls over onto her back, limbs spread out like a starfish. “So hot in here…”
”That’s your fever,” he informs. Ellie exhales through her open mouth. She doesn’t like being coddled, this he’s learned. She does absolutely need a hand — so he extends one, snapping his fingers once to gather her attention. “Sit up.”
Ellie feels cooperative today. She takes his hand, using it to sit upright in bed. Her fingers run through her bangs, while Joel’s gaze rakes over her messy hair. Messy is an understatement; she’s lost her hair tie by now. Though, he supposes he can’t blame her entirely, seeing as the fever has her tossing and turning.
Instead of dwelling on it; on her; her state, Joel grabs the bottle of ibuprofen and settles a few into his hand so he can offer them up to her, alongside the glass of water.
”You need to drink all of it,” Joel says. He keeps a hand guarding below the glass in case she decides to drop it.
Ellie’s brows furrow the moment she pulls the water away. ”What, right now?”
He shrugs in reply. “Before you go back to sleep. You have a fever, you sweat. You sweat, you dehydrate. Water helps.”
Ellie huffs, hunched over with the glass held between her hands in her lap. The water causes the glass to condensate. It’s cooling, helping.
For a moment, neither of them say nothing. Joel won’t leave her room just yet and Ellie’s not going to tell him to leave. Her head droops, and he raises the glass back to her mouth to keep her awake, because he’s not going to call her out on falling back asleep.
”If you don’t feel better come morning, I’m not gonna make you go to school.”
Ellie hums into the water. His hand migrates from the cup to her shoulder. “…Thank god,” she jokes.
”As long as you don’t go acting like you’re still sick to stay home,” he includes, tilting his head.
”Man…” Ellie mutters, feigning disappointment like that was the one thing she planned to do. In all honesty, her main focus right now is going back to sleep.
The cup is mostly empty. Joel won’t make her stay awake any longer if she can obviously hardly hold her eyes open. “Get some sleep,” he says, borrowing the glass from her. “I’m gonna refill this for you. You should feel better in a little bit.”
*
Morning comes peacefully. Joel has no alarm, but he’s not going to tell Ellie his intentions were to let her stay home from the start.
Ellie wakes up first, hearing wind affecting the wind chimes, and the birds outside. She doesn’t hear any noise from the rest of the house, so she assumes Joel is asleep and she’s waking up too early.
To be quite honest, natural is not the way she wakes. It’s not a soft rise from bed at early hour of nine in the the morning. It’s a fever dream so violent, she swats the water-filled glass off her nightstand in the middle of it. The shatter is what wakes her.
So, Ellie is still feverish, and hardly awake. Her heart pounds, a lingering feeling from her body shooting up in bed at the crash. She thinks, fuck, there’s a broken cup all in the floor. And she thinks, I need to clean this up. So she lifts herself out of bed, alive enough to steer her steps away from the broken shards scattered across the hardwood floor. The one thing she does not think is, I’m really fucking sick, and it’s a really fucking stupid idea to try and clean this up. But Joel is asleep, and she’s unreasonable. So she sways her way downstairs, her breathing being quiet little huffs.
Ellie grabs a towel, because she doesn’t find the broom within the ten seconds she spends in the kitchen. Then, she sets off to her bedroom.
Once she’s there, her brightest idea is to kneel beside the scattered glass and sop up the water in the floor with the towel. Then, use said towel to transport the glass to the trash can. Easy enough.
Ellie executes her plan fine. She kneels, sops, and starts grabbing the little pieces and setting them into the wet towel. She shifts, leaning on her left hand to assist herself in cleaning it all up.
Well, she miscalculates, and the tip of her middle finger meets sharp edge. She winces, swears under her breath, then proceeds to stare down at the not-very-deep-but-still-an-issue cut.
”…Ellie.”
Her head lifts, glancing up towards the doorway. She swallows. “…Hi.”
“What’s goin’ on?”
”I dropped the glass,” Ellie says matter-of-factly, her bleeding finger dripping down to the back of her hand. She says dropped, because it’s quicker than telling him her fever resurfaced, gave her a nightmare, and caused her to smack the glass so far off her nightstand that she’s cleaning glass all the way down at the foot of her bed.
Joel’s jaw twitches. He wants to say something like why didn’t you wake me up or it’d be safer for you to let me do this, but the words never surface. But she should not be doing this, definitely not, so he’s going to take over no matter what he replies with. Eventually, it’s a quiet, “Let me.”
However, when he tells her that, he doesn’t mean the glass; because she is bleeding first and foremost, and is in need of care above all else. So he gently helps her up, lying a hand on her back to guide her to the bathroom.
”What about the—,”
”Ellie.”
”…Okay,” Ellie responds, her uninjured hand hovering — cupped below her bleeding one to keep from getting blood everywhere.
Joel gently grabs her hand at the wrist, turning the sink on and lowering her finger under the running water to cleanse the cut.
She winces, because it’s pressure on an open cut. Who wouldn’t. “Fucking… Jesus…”
”It’s better than alcohol,” Joel mumbles. He steps away to dig out the first-aid kit in the cabinets that is not a first-aid kit at all. It’s a clean rag and a heavy-duty bandaid.
Softly, he pats the wound dry. A tender touch to ensure he’s not hurting her. It is, in fact, better than alcohol. She supposes he would know best when it comes to what hurts less with dressing wounds, considering it wasn’t that long ago that she was stabbing him in the stomach with a sewing needle and thread. He lived, though. She will, too.
Ellie’s face twists up at the touch of the cloth, eyebrows furrowed while she stares into the cut. She’s had worse, yeah. Bites from infected and a cracked rib. But this… it’s incredibly far from that. She’s not fighting runners in a mall with her best friend or fending for herself in the dead of winter. She’s merely being patched up by Joel in a house — a home, their home — after breaking a glass and it’s okay. So she can find the cut gnarly if she wishes, because it’s so incredibly different from watching an impaled man and looking at the injury day in and day out.
…
”…I get you back to bed, and you don’t worry about the cup.” Joel peels the plastic off of the bandaid. “You take more medicine, and you go back to sleep. Okay?” He requests. But it’s more like he’s telling her. No worrying about the cup, because she’s sick as a dog and it’s not her problem to worry about. Especially if she’s the problem to be worried about.
Ellie nods, watching him circle the bandaid around her finger and connect the adhesive at her nail bed. And they’re fine. He’s fine, and most importantly — to him — she’s fine, because all they need is a bandaid.
”…Okay.”