A/N: I'm back! Sorry I've been away so long! I've had job training, I just moved back into school…things were crazy. But I had time to write! And I know the JW fandom has been dropping off lately but I'm determined to keep pushing stuff out! This one is inspired by a prompt from the awesome kbatter14, who suggested a story set a few weeks after Isla Nublar where Scott and Karen are fighting once more and Zach has to comfort Gray. I love hurt/comfort, I love brotherly fluff, and I love kbatter14 for helping me develop this idea into something I'm very proud of! So I hope you all enjoy and PLEASE leave a review. If you have any ideas, send them to me because I KNOW there's more JW fans out there! Keep em coming!

"I thought you said we were going to try, Scott! This isn't trying!" Zach let out an impatient breath as his mother's frantic voice reached a shrill, fever pitch in the living room beneath him.

"This is the problem with you, Karen. You love to tell me I'm not trying but when I ask what you want me to do you don't have an answer! What the hell do you want from me?" his dad fired back.

"You really are something else," she retorted. "I thought we agreed we were going to give this a shot. For the boys. The boys who are in this house right now!"

"You always do this! Always! You hold them over me like I'm failing them as a dad. You don't think I'm trying, Karen? Dammit I try so hard for them and you never recognize it. They never recognize it."

"Is that what this is about, Scott? You want recognition for doing your fatherly duties? Where were you at Gray's science fair last week? Or Zach's basketball game two nights ago? Is that trying? Is it? They're your sons and you're always at work. Or something comes up. What do you want them to recognize?"

An exasperated sigh. A door slamming shut. Zach shook his head and slumped back against his pillow, staring up at the gray-painted ceiling and trying to drown out the sound of his parents' fight. They had promised to be better. They had sworn they'd give it another go. The trauma of almost losing not one but both of their sons at the same time seemed to have flicked a switch in both of them. He hadn't been so willing to believe them, but Gray had been hopeful. Gray had been genuinely hopeful.

And for about a week and a half, things really were better. His dad came home from work a little earlier and showed up to one of his basketball games—the first time he'd done that since Zach was in sixth grade. He even ate dinner with the family. And his mother held back any biting remarks and tried to sound as warm as possible toward her husband. They were approaching the point where even Zach was convinced there was a shot.

And then it all went to hell again. His dad called from the office at nine o'clock one night after they'd waited up for him for dinner and his mother's face shifted rapidly from confusion to exasperation to hurt to anger. The first round of verbal sparring took place over the phone and neither brother could hear their dad's response but the look of total and complete disappointment and sorrow on Gray's face was enough for the older Mitchell to swear never to forgive their parents again.

When his dad finally walked through the door at a quarter past eleven, his mom ripped into him and the entire thing boiled over so that by morning, Zach found his father asleep on the couch like before. And that had been the end of that. They were back on the phone with their lawyers the following morning. The older son was disappointed but not all that surprised that his parents couldn't speak with one another anymore without yelling. The house returned to the endless cycle of silence and then yelling and then silence that had become the status quo in the months before their trip to Isla Nublar.

A door opening. Round two.

"Will you stop giving me that look?" His dad's voice sounded peeved.

"Like what, Scott? You're being ridiculous! I'm just standing here."

Zach rolled to his side, grabbed his headphones off his nightstand, and plugged them into his phone. His parents' voices were immediately muffled, the sound becoming more of a distant hum than anything else. Their heated words were unintelligible and Zach opened his Spotify app, fully prepared to drown them out entirely with his music when he paused. Gray.

Ever since Jurassic World, all he could think of when his parents fought was Gray's face when he voiced his concern—his knowledge—that their parents were splitting up. All he could see was the eleven-year-old's blue eyes turning glassy, then welling up with tears that Zach had long since run out of. As much grief as he had given the boy then for being a baby, it hurt him deeply to see Gray so upset. Gray was young and hopeful. Gray didn't have enough life experience to understand that there was no way their parents would ever be able to work things out—that their entire marriage really was a mistake. So it still stung him when they fought and it still surprised him when he realized they were divorcing. Every fight just added fuel to the fire and the fact that they promised to try had only given him more hope. Which made the inevitable fallout even more disheartening. The more he considered the injustice, the more furious Zach became. He clenched his jaw, unclenched it, released a measured breath through his nostrils, and moved his thumb that had been hovering above the play button just moments ago.

With a slight sigh, he sat up and swung his socked feet over the side of his bed, pulling off the headphones and abandoning them on his pillow. He smoothed out his jeans and adjusted his hoodie before opening his bedroom door. There was silence from downstairs now and when he hazarded a peek over the edge of the railing, he saw his mother sitting on the living room couch with a blank look on her face. She glanced up and met his eyes, offering a forced half-smile. Zach shook his head and moved on.

Gray's bedroom door had changed. After the incident, their mother had gone through the boy's bedroom, sweeping every piece of dinosaur memorabilia into a black garbage bag to be taken away at the curb the following morning. Zach had stood, arms folded, shaking his head and demanding to know what good purging the toys and trinkets would do when his little brother had not yet demonstrated any aversion to them. Gray had begged and pleaded and shrieked and cried. In the end, nothing could persuade their mother to change her mind. The toys were gone. The dinosaur footprint decals on the door were gone, leaving stripped paint in their place. The only evidence that Gray Mitchell had ever loved dinosaurs were a few of the books Aunt Claire had sent in the years prior to their visit.

And now the door was shut. Gray never shut his door before. When every other room in the house was locked—his mom crying, his dad fuming, Zach brooding—Gray's room had always been open. The hall was unusually dark without the light seeping in from his window. The older brother slapped on the door with an open palm. "Gray?" he called. There was a small noise—a sharp inhale—from within. "Gray, you in there?" He knocked again, then tried the doorknob. It twisted easily in his hand. Unlocked. "Gray, I'm coming in." He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The room was noticeably cooler than the rest of the house and the curtains were partially drawn, though the waning daylight still filtered in through the curtains, coloring the entire space in a bluish tint. He spotted his brother sitting on the bed, knees curled upwards, face buried in his lap. Every so often, the boy's shoulders would shudder. Zach sat on the edge of the bed and felt the mattress give slightly under his weight. His little brother didn't look up, but the shuddering intensified and the boy let out a full-blown sob. The older brother felt a pang shoot up his chest—a mixture of emotions ranging from heartbreak for his brother to anger at his parents for letting him get his hopes up.

"Hey," Zach murmured softly, laying a gentle hand on his brother's back as another sob wracked through him. He began to rub up and down gently, Gray's green flannel shirt bunching up under his fingers and palm. "Guess you heard all that too, huh?"

Gray sniffled, picked his head up for the first time, and peered at Zach from under his mussed mop of hair, eyes misty. The boy wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his shirt and nodded his head miserably, sinking even deeper into his curled-up position. "They said they were gonna try," he whispered hoarsely, his voice full of betrayal. "They promised they would try."

"I know," the older brother answered.

"They're not trying," Gray continued softly. "All they do is yell at each other."

"I know," Zach repeated.

"Why can't they just get along?" the younger Mitchell wailed, pitching forward into his knees again. This time, the sobs came loudly and openly as the eleven-year-old could not control them any longer. Zach scooted closer to the boy, wrapping both arms around his shoulders and enveloping him in a tight hug. Gray clutched at him almost instinctively and the older brother could feel his sweatshirt growing warmer with his brother's tears. "I-I…just…want…them…to go…back…to normal," he eked out between sharp gasps for breath. Zach couldn't bring himself to tell the boy that for their parents, this was normal and that any other idea of their relationship had been wishful thinking.

"Mom and Dad…well that's them," Zach started, choosing his words carefully. "Remember what I told you on the monorail? That you don't really know?" Gray nodded. "Well they were always that way before you were born." The boy wilted and the older brother could sense he was about to start crying again. "Hold on," he commanded. "Before you start crying again. I'm not done. Because you know what stopped their fighting for a while?"

"Me and you almost got killed by a dinosaur," Gray offered, his tone a mix of earnestness and sarcasm.

"Before that," Zach waved away Isla Nublar like it was a footnote. "Way before that."

"What?" the younger brother sighed.

Zach paused, waited until his little brother's blue eyes locked with his brown, then answered, "you."

There was a flash in Gray's eyes.

"Yeah," the older brother answered the unasked question, poking Gray's shoulder lightly. "You. You were the one who made them try the first time. I remember…well, before you were born they would fight a lot. They didn't think I was listening but I was. But then when they said they were having another baby…Well, all the yelling stopped. And then you came and it was great for years."

Zach was only five when Gray was born but he knew a lot by that time. He knew that his dad was at work all the time. He knew that his mom wanted his dad home more often to help and to spend time with them. He knew that dad probably wouldn't show up to Little League because "things came up" and he knew some colorful words no other kid his age knew because he heard his parents hurl them at one another when they thought he was sleeping. And that was life for Zach at age five. Until the day his parents sat him down in the living room and told him he was going to have a little brother. That was the day all the fighting stopped. Mom and Dad didn't use those words anymore and Dad showed up to Little League games sometimes and on weekends he helped clean the bathrooms and mop the floor.

That was the pattern after Gray was born, too. Dad played with them. Mom smiled and laughed more. For three or four years they kept up the act—no more yelling and screaming. No more crying and doors slamming. At eight years old, Zach was too young to notice the insincerity in his parents' smiles, the rigid body language they carried in one another's presence. He was too young to see the signs that the façade was cracking. But Gray didn't have to know that. Gray was the Band-Aid that fixed his parents' relationship. At least temporarily.

"It's not great anymore," Gray pointed out glumly. His shoulders slumped and his whole body deflated.

"Maybe not," Zach admitted. "But you fixed it for a while, Gray. You really did. They used to fight all the time around me but with you? Everything was happy."

The younger brother tried to muster a smile but it came out more like a grimace. "I couldn't fix it this time."

"Not your fault," the older brother murmured, internally wincing. The story was meant to be encouraging—uplifting even. How could he have miscalculated so badly? "Nothing could have fixed them forever. Not you or me or a dinosaur attack."

The memories of the attack—all the flashes of swooping pterosaurs and snarling raptors and screaming people and sweat and blood and gore and viscera and teeth and claws—were fresh. Raw. Vivid. Haunting. Even now, a few weeks after the incident, Zach had trouble articulating what he saw. He wasn't fully processing it all yet. And from the looks of things, Gray was no more successful than he was. The boy shut himself up in his room a lot, didn't say much to anyone, and barely ate. The school psychologist kept recommending a therapist to him. "You need someone to talk to," she told Zach each time he wound up in her office. The nervous breakdowns were more frequent than he cared to admit—set off by the sudden, shrill bell for class or the mass of people rushing down the hallway between periods or the sound of hundreds of feet pounding up and down the stairs like dinosaur footsteps. It occurred to Zach that Gray didn't have anyone to talk to. No therapist, no school psychologist. All he had was him—since before Jurassic World that had been the case and back then, he hadn't been willing to listen.

"So…how's it been? Since you went back to school, I mean," Zach asked slowly, changing the subject and watching Gray's movements closely to try to get a read on his brother. The boy shrugged. "Sometimes," the older brother continued, "I get panic attacks." That elicited a reaction from the younger Mitchell, who picked his head up in surprise.

"You panic?" Gray repeated incredulously.

Zach nodded. "Oh yeah. I don't tell Mom all the time but all kinds of things make me jump and sometimes I get really bad panic attacks and have to go to the nurse's office."

"Me, too, sometimes," Gray concurred quietly, eyes searching the crisscrossing thread patterns in his light blue bedsheets. "I go in the bathroom." There was a long pause and then he added, "I cry sometimes, Zach. I cry in the bathroom when nobody's in there so they won't see me being a baby." Gray's skinny arms instinctively squeezed tighter around Zach and he pressed his cheek into his older brother's warm side. The teen drew him closer.

Zach felt the worst leaden feeling in his chest at his younger brother's words. The boy was eleven years old. He should be having fun with his friends or playing computer games or worrying about homework and chores and a million other things normal kids worried about. He shouldn't know what a panic attack feels like or have flashbacks of near-death experiences. Gray Mitchell deserved to have a childhood. And between Jurassic World and his parents' war with one another, it was increasingly apparent that he was robbed of that opportunity well before he should have been.

"It's okay to cry," he finally said, acutely aware of how lame the words must have sounded. "Even I can't help it sometimes. And you know what? If anyone thinks you're a baby for crying then screw them!" A few months ago—hell, a few weeks ago—he probably would have denounced his brother crying as childish too. But the reality was that if he couldn't suppress the tears, there was no way an eleven year old could.

There was a long pause and Zach was unsure how to fill the gap. There was so much he could say, wanted to say to the only person who really understood but it was Gray who broke the silence first. "Zach, I'm still scared." His voice was a peep, vulnerable and barely above a whisper. "I know it's stupid but sometimes I'm still scared that it's not over. I'm still scared I'm gonna wake up and we're still gonna be on the island."

The older brother understood. Most times, he felt the same way. The last few weeks had been a haze—like walking through some lucid dream. The threat of Indominus or the pterosaurs or a million other creatures and scenarios still loomed over him like a specter, giving him goosebumps each time the thought struck him again.

"It's not ever gonna go away, is it?" Gray asked hopelessly.

Zach's grip tightened around his little brother's side and the teen rested his chin on the boy's head, staring at the partially-shut bedroom door for a long moment. "Of course it will." But he didn't know. He honestly had no idea if it was ever going to go away. It sure didn't feel like it right now. Right now, days were an endless litany of just gotta make it just gotta make it just gotta make it and loud noises and trying to conceal how startled he really was and forced smiles and even more forced laughs at dinosaur jokes and intrusive questions and nights were a never-ending stream of heart-pounding, cold-sweat-soaked, screaming-in-his-sleep nightmares that woke him up in a panic, made him sit up and try to catch his breath.

Either Gray was smarter than that or Zach was more transparent than he thought he was, but either way the effect was the same—the boy didn't buy his brother's reassurance. "What if it doesn't?" he asked, thin fingers plucking listlessly at a loose thread on the comforter, working the blue string out of its seam.

"It's gonna go away," Zach said more firmly. He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince more—himself or his brother. "It has to."

"Mom and Dad said they were gonna stop fighting and now they are again," Gray pointed out. It always ends up about Mom and Dad fighting. "That's never gonna stop either, is it?"

The older brother let out a dejected puff of breath. "I dunno, Gray."

"They're not gonna stop fighting and they're still gonna get a divorce. I don't want two of everything, Zach! I want one house and I want everyone to be in it. I want Mom and Dad and you!" Gray's sniffling had devolved into a hoarse whimper and a sob bubbled up from deep within the boy's throat. Zach's arms encircled him more tightly and Gray felt his older brother rocking him back and forth. "I don't want them to get a divorce," he repeated.

"Everything's gonna be fine," Zach tried to reassure him.

"What if they wanna split us up?" the boy asked suddenly, small fingers closing tightly around his brother's arm in panic.

The older brother furrowed his brow. "What?" The thought had never occurred to him. Not that he thought his parents would actually force the two of them apart. They were by no means good at being parents but they weren't that bad either. And besides, never in a million years would he let that happen. He would sooner go back to Isla Nublar with Gray in tow and face whatever dangers lurked there than let that happen. He would follow Gray to the end of the world if he had to. "Why would you say that?"

"This girl at school's parents got a divorce and her dad took her sister and moved to Kentucky," Gray replied.

"Well that's stupid," the older Mitchell answered. "Mom and Dad aren't gonna split us up, okay? I won't let them even if they try."

"But what if they still want to?"

"I won't let them! We'll think of something if it comes to it. Aunt Claire and Owen will talk them out of it. But they're not gonna split us up, Gray. Nothing is gonna split us up." Zach drew back, his dark brown eyes locking with his younger brother's wide blues. "Gray, we survived Jurassic World. The dinosaurs couldn't split us apart. Not Indominus Rex, not the mosasaurus, not the raptors or those bird things or the anky-whatevers."

"Ankylosaurs," Gray corrected, an amused smirk spreading over his features despite himself.

"Not those either," the elder brother returned the smile. "If dinosaurs couldn't separate us, there's no way in hell I'll let anyone else do it either. Will you?" Gray shook his head no in response. "Remember what I told you on the island?"

"We're brothers," Gray replied.

"We're always gonna be brothers," Zach told him, pulling the younger boy into a tight embrace once more. "And I won't let anything happen to you as long as I'm here."

"Me either," Gray wrapped his arms around his big brother's neck and reclined his head on Zach's shoulder. The house fell silent, the brothers' even breathing the only sound filling the space. For the first time in weeks, Gray Mitchell felt that everything really would be alright.

"I love you, Zach."

"I love you too, Gray."

A/N: I must say I'm very happy with this one. I hope you folks liked it too! I have some more stuff on the way, so keep your eyes peeled if you love Jurassic World as much as I do! Again, huge shoutout to kbatter14 for all the help in making this story possible! Let me know what you thought, everyone! I know there's more JW fans out there and I wanna hear your voices!

FYI, the title comes from the song "Brother" by Mighty Oaks, which has heavily inspired a lot of my JW Zach and Gray fluff so if anyone wants to give it a listen, I highly recommend!