Chapter Text
He knew this would happen. He knew this would happen because it always did, so why the hell should he be surprised?
It was a couple of hours past midnight - Perry wasn’t sure of the exact time, but he was guessing it was close to three in the morning. The bar was loud and dim and far too hot. There was hardly space to breathe, let alone drag a drunken, full-grown man across the room and out the door without seriously injuring one or several people.
And yet here he was, attempting to do just that.
“Come on, kid,” he muttered, shouldering a few more people out of the way as he led JD through the crowd. The younger man hardly seemed to notice what was going on; his eyes were hazy and his arm was slung loosely over Perry’s shoulders, his feet meandering lazily across the ground as he struggled to stay upright.
“Put too much ‘tini in my apple,” he complained as Perry continued shoving people out of their way to create a path.
“Of course they did,” Perry grumbled under his breath. “Only you could manage to get completely smashed off of appletinis, y’know that, Sharon?” Pushing past a drunken group of middle-aged men, he let out a sigh of relief as the door finally came into view. The noise was really starting to grate on his nerves, and he didn’t trust himself not to start shouting at someone if they didn’t get out of there now.
He shoved the door open with one hand, the other still occupied with keeping JD from falling flat on his face. “You’re lucky I was here tonight, Newbie,” he grunted, half-carrying the kid down the front steps. “Otherwise you’d be crashing in one of those beer-sticky bar booths that have probably gotten puked on at least twelve times in the past week.”
JD wasn’t listening, and Perry was completely aware of that, but he kept on talking. “If you weren’t so shitfaced, I’d expect you to thank me. Not that you care, but the only reason I’m not shitfaced right now is because I figured I’d end up having to drag you home at some point. And bingo - I was right on the nose!”
“So really, Abigail, you owe me one. I came out here tonight to get drunk off my ass, and instead I’m here, chauffeuring you home. I hope you realize the sacrifice I’m making. I don’t give up scotch for just anyone, y’know, Newbie.” he paused to tug his car keys out of his pocket. “Actually, I really don’t know why I’m doing this in the first place. You annoy the hell out of me when you’re sober, so by all means you should be just as annoying when drunk, if not even more so. Although I guess there’s a definite advantage here since you aren’t talking my ear off about your girly prepubescent problems like you usually do.”
Blearily, JD stared up at him. “Please don’ kill me, but I have no idea what you just said, Per...Dr. Cox.”
Perry sighed. “Yeah, figures. Just get in the damn car, Patty.”
JD nodded and stepped - well, more like fell, really - into the passenger’s seat of Perry’s Porsche. Perry reached over him to buckle his seatbelt, inwardly flinching as JD slumped forward, almost knocking against his arm. He pulled away quickly before they could touch and got into the driver’s seat.
As they drove, he found himself glancing at JD out of the corner of his eye. Surprisingly, the kid hadn’t passed out yet - he was staring out the window, the lights of the city shifting and striping across his face. His eyes looked brighter than usual, and Perry realized with a start that he was crying.
That’s new.
The kicker was this - this was not, in fact, the first time this had happened. Well, okay, not the crying. That part was different. And he had never been quite this bad before, not this level of completely-off-his-ass drunk. But the whole JD alone at the bar, Perry ending up at that same bar and watching as JD progressively got more and more drunk before finally taking pity on him and driving the kid home thing - that had happened, let’s say, about four or five times over the past couple of months.
As much as he hated to admit it, Perry was starting to get worried.
(He would never, ever admit this to anyone, not if his life depended on it, but he’d started to frequent that particular bar on the nights he went out, just in case JD happened to be there having one of his little one-man parties.)
Newbie never remembered anything the next day, either. At least, Perry assumed he didn’t, because he never acted any different around Perry afterwards. He didn’t try to thank him or fall all over him crying or anything, which Perry had kind of suspected would happen after the first one or two times. Instead, he was just as bubbly and talkative and infuriatingly annoying as usual.
Although -
The past two or so months, he had seemed a little bit...off. Not hugely, nothing major or earth-shattering, but Perry couldn’t deny he’d noticed a slight change in the younger doctor’s behavior. He would take longer to respond to questions, emerge from the on-call room with the skin under his eyes looking bruised and shadowy, his eyes shot through with red. Perry wasn’t sure if he’d been eating, either; he never saw him in the cafeteria at all anymore.
(Alright, so he was worried, and he missed Newbie. He did. Not that he’d ever say anything. Not that he’d ever do anything about the things he may or may not be feeling, because he was a walking, talking black hole and there was no way he was going to drag JD into that, no way he was willing to put him through the disaster that was Perry Cox. No matter how hard it got, he would not do that.)
(Just no fucking way.)
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see JD now, tear tracks glittering on his cheeks. Ignoring the tug he felt in his chest, Perry pulled up in front of JD’s apartment and stepped out of the car before walking around and opening up the other door. “C’mon, kid. Let’s get you inside.”
JD nodded but didn’t speak. The tears were still coming, faster now, coursing down his face. He gripped Perry’s shoulder as he stepped unsteadily onto the sidewalk. Perry helped him to stand up straight (decently straight, anyway) and began to walk him toward the door.
“We’re taking the elevator,” he informed him as they pushed through the front doors. “If you tried to go up the stairs in that state you’d break your legs and my back, probably. And I don’t care how drunk you are, Cathy, I’d sue the shit right out of you.”
Despite that delightfully witty comment, JD didn’t laugh, or even smile. He just angled himself toward the elevators and let Perry help him over walk in that direction.
As he pressed the button and they waited for the elevator, there was silence. It was only when the doors opened with a ding! that JD looked at Perry and said in a crumbling voice almost too quiet to be heard, “I remember the other times.”
Perry froze, one foot in the elevator. “...what?”
“The other nights,” JD slurred slightly, pulling Perry fully into the elevator with him. “I remem’br. You took me home, every time. I’ve been totally wasted an’ you took me home. Why?”
He felt his face go blank, turn guarded. “Why what, Newbie?”
“Why’d you do that? You don’t have to take me home. You could just leave me there…” his eyes started to slip shut, but he struggled to keep them open, struggled to keep looking at Perry.
“No,” he said sharply, looking anywhere but JD’s face, “I couldn’t.”
“But why -”
Perry interrupted him, his tone cold and clipped. They had reached JD’s floor, and he was again half-carrying the other man as they staggered down the hallway to his apartment. “You need to go to bed, Newbie. Drink some water. You’ll need it tomorrow morning.”
“But -”
“Go,” he said, trying hard to keep his voice from breaking. This needed to end. JD needed to go home and then he needed to leave right now, before he did something he’d regret, before he gave in and said all the things he knew he had no right to say.
But JD wasn’t going inside. He was just leaning on the door, staring at Perry with eyes that were impossibly blue and unfairly big. He looked like a kicked puppy.
“Would you please just save us the time and spit it out,” Perry finally snapped. “You’re drunk as all hell, JD, and if there’s something you want to say you may as well say it and then go to bed already. It’s not like you’ll remember this tomorrow.”
(But was that true? He’d remembered the other times, apparently. All Perry could do was cling to the tiny shred of hope that this time JD would be too drunk and that all this would just slip away when he woke up.)
As he stood there, waiting for a reply, there was a change in JD’s demeanor. His eyes widened even more (because apparently that was possible by some mistake of nature) and his lips parted slightly, giving him the general air of someone who had just walked in on their lifelong celebrity crush lying barely clothed in their bed.
“You called me JD,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper.
(Fucking hell. He had, hadn’t he?)
Perry avoided his eyes. “Might have, yeah.”
That had probably been a mistake. When he looked up at JD and saw tears welling in his eyes again, he knew it had definitely been a mistake.
“Look, Newbie,” he said, not even trying to hide the panic seeping into his voice this time as he started to back away. “Just go to bed. I’m leaving now, just -”
“I’m in love with you.”
He froze.
Every single muscle in Perry’s body seemed to have short-circuited. He was halfway turned around, facing in the direction of the stairs, but he could still see part of JD’s face out of the corner of his eye. Newbie had the strangest expression on his face; he looked aghast at the sentence that had just come out of his mouth, but there was something else there too. What was it - anticipation? Anxiety?
That was when it hit him, and when it did, Perry nearly broke down right there.
It was hope. JD looked hopeful.
Perry could feel his chest caving in as he turned around and said, in an cool and controlled voice, “Go home, Newbie. We have work tomorrow.”
He turned away before he could see the other man’s expression.
Perry Cox felt cataclysmic. He felt like a natural disaster. A walking tsunami.
He walked away, down the stairs, out the doors, into the deadened street. He sat in his car for a good fifteen minutes, just staring, before finally turning the key in the ignition and driving away. His mind, his chest, his stomach, everything in him flipped between feeling empty one moment and decimated the next. It was too much, but at the same time, never enough.
A natural fucking disaster.
Perry tried to push away everything JD’s last sentence had dredged up. He tried to lock it away in a box, neat and orderly, like he almost always could with situations like this - situations he’d give anything not to face. He’d gotten so good at it over the years that it was almost sad.
(It was definitely sad.)
But this? This, he couldn’t lock away. This was the end of everything, probably. Because for the first time in his life, Perry had absolutely no idea what the hell he was supposed to do. He wasn’t in control. Maybe he wouldn’t be ever again.
He had no idea, no fucking idea, what to do.
And still there was JD’s voice, sounding like a broken bone, pulling everything out of him and laying it out in the open where it was impossible to hide from it anymore.
(Why did he always have to be so hell-bent on destroying himself?)