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The scotch slid down his throat easily, the same way it always did. There was a burn, but he welcomed it. Anything to feel something, even if the something wasn’t exactly the most pleasant.
It was still worth it.
And, well, let’s be honest here, he had plenty of practice at this particular brand of self destruction. Of course, it was harder now that he had intimate knowledge of how he could be spending his nights instead.
If only.
Perry missed JD like he would miss his left arm if it was cut off. He still didn’t even understand what he’d done to chase the younger man away so thoroughly.
Had JD simply just had enough of him being an asshole?
Perry wouldn’t blame him—he knew how bad he could behave sometimes—but it just didn’t feel right. JD would have said something if it had been that.
Perry could have tried to fix it.
JD running away the way he had, it hurt more than anything ever had in Perry’s miserable life.
And he really just wanted to understand.
…
The scotch the night before—and the subsequent hangover—hadn’t even remotely prepared Perry for seeing JD in the flesh again, almost six months since the last time he had seen him.
Not that he’d truly expected it to, but he’d hoped that, perhaps, he would be too hungover to care.
It didn’t help that Perry had been late to work. Only by ten minutes, but it was still late enough that JD had had the time to take his customary place at the Nurses desk, a pile of patient charts in front of him, as Carla squawked at him across the desk.
She looked like she was scolding him, and Perry tried to catch what she was saying as he slowly approached the desk.
It was to no avail. As soon as they spotted him, JD paled even further if that were possible. Sweet Jesus, he looked awful. He was pallid and skinny; much skinnier than he’d been six months ago. His hair was still a perfectly coiffed mess, but even that looked like it had been done with less care than usual.
What really struck Perry were JD’s eyes. They were flat in a way they’d never been in all of the years Perry had known him. Gone was the sparkle that had always told Perry that JD was happy.
“Newbie,” he greeted, when he realised that he’d been standing there staring for long enough that the air around them seemed to have thickened with awkwardness.
JD nodded at him, the way that one would a casual acquaintance. “Dr Cox.”
He turned away after a brief smile, as though he hadn’t shattered Perry’s heart only a few months earlier. “I should get to work. Don’t want Kelso breathing down my neck about being lazy after the time I’ve been away.”
He swiped the top few charts from the pile and walked away. Perry watched him go, his heart feeling like it was being squeezed by a particularly vicious boa constrictor.
“Perry—”
Perry shook his head at Carla and then turned in the opposite direction. He needed a minute.
…
Lunch arrived all too soon, and yet, seemed to take forever at the same time. Perry wasn’t hungry, but he grabbed a salad anyway, seating himself in the corner of the cafeteria in the hopes that he would be left in peace.
It didn’t hurt that he had an almost perfectly clear view of JD seated in the middle of the room with his usual motley crew.
Only Carla was missing, and it was just as Perry noticed as much when she dropped into the seat facing him.
“We’re throwing a welcome back party for JD at the bar tonight. Will you come?”
“I don’t think that that’s such a good idea,” Perry replied, softly.
Carla huffed. “Look, I don’t know what happened to him when he… when he did what he did, but I know Bambi. That wasn’t him.”
“Pretty sure it was, actually.”
“I’ve seen him self sabotage almost as often as I’ve seen you do it,” Carla pointed out, rather harshly. “And that wasn’t him. Someone was pulling his strings, and I don’t know who, or why, but I intend to find out.”
“I know you want to make excuses for him, but—”
“Have you seen him?” she demanded, her eyes narrowing angrily. “Dammit, Perry, open your eyes and really look at him. He’s hurting every inch as much as you are over this; probably even more, since the guilt will be eating him up on top of it. You know what he’s like.”
And Perry had seen him, hadn’t he? Couldn’t avoid it, really. And he knew that JD looked absolutely terrible beneath his rather pitiful attempt at presenting a cheerful demeanor.
“What do you want me to do, Carla? I can’t force him to tell me what happened, as much as I wish it was that easy.”
Carla smiled slightly. “Just leave that to me, and if you get any invites to anything in the next few weeks—including tonight—accept them. Capishe?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer, leaving him at the table to pick through the limp salad that he didn’t particularly want as he thought about her words.
Could she be right?
…
The bar was busy, but not that much busier than it usually was on a Friday night. Perry found the group he was looking for easy enough, and he smiled when Gandhi pushed a bottle of beer into his hands as he said something about making another trip to the bar.
Perry spotted JD immediately, a bottle of beer in front of him and an appletini to the side of it—both of them looking completely untouched.
Odd.
He nodded to him and then turned when the Janitor appeared at his elbow, falling into easy conversation. He kept an eye on JD the entire time, and realised that the little shit was pouring his drinks into the plant pot beside him when he thought that nobody was watching.
When it was Perry’s turn to get a round, he placed a tray of shots on the table, and couldn’t resist arching a challenging eyebrow at JD.
JD rolled his eyes, but he knocked back a shot along with everyone else. Perry grinned at him, and, low enough to only be heard by JD, murmured, “Wasn’t sure if I was going to be wasting my money on another drink for the plant. I hope it has a designated driver, the way that you’ve been plying it with alcohol all night.”
JD’s cheeks flushed an attractive shade of pink, and he smiled sheepishly. The look was so familiar, it made Perry’s chest ache, but the moment was ruined when Jordan’s laughter rang through the air.
JD’s lips dropped from the smile, and he looked away, clearing his throat.
Perry frowned, glancing at his ex-wife. They’d been getting on well lately, finally settling into something that resembled co-parents, without any of the extra baggage that came from their unintelligent bouts of sleeping together.
He’d thought about it, after JD left, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. The thought of sharing his bed with anyone else, even for a quick fumble, was enough to leave a sour taste in his mouth.
By the time Perry turned back to JD, the polite look was back on his face, and he was nodding to whatever Barbie was prattling on about.
Perry sighed, and leant back across the table, sitting back in his seat. For just a moment—just a split second—he’d had his Newbie back.
If nothing else though, it had proven that something beyond what Perry knew about had happened. He just had to figure out what.
…
What followed was a series of events arranged by Carla, in which every time, Perry noticed that someone was missing. He tried to ask her what she was doing, but she’d just waved him away and told him to turn up.
Nights at the bar, dinner parties, even two move trips that Perry had automatically despised because JD wasn’t sitting beside him, his head on Perry’s shoulder as he snarked about the movie on the screen.
The only people that were at every single one were Perry, JD, Carla and Turk. It was only when Jordan wasn’t invited to a dinner party did Perry notice the difference.
JD seemed freer. Still not himself, except in tiny moments that Perry treasured, but he kept less of a hold on himself than he had been doing, even smiling widely at Perry across the table when he made a quip about Barbie.
Carla didn’t even need to say anything to him as he got ready to leave. She just arched her eyebrow at him.
And Perry knew that she had realised what he had.
Jordan was the cause of whatever had happened six months ago.
…
Perry poured two equal measures of the amber liquid he preferred and handed one of them to Jordan as he sat down on the sofa beside her. Jack was napping in his carseat, and Perry glanced at him before he looked at Jordan.
“What did you say to him?”
She blinked. “I can usually follow your nonsense better than this, Per, but I’m going to need more than that.”
“JD. What did you say to him that made him leave?”
“What makes you think that I—”
“Jordan.”
“Oh, fine,” she huffed, not even seeming to care as he smirked at him, rolling his eyes with disdain. “I told him that if he didn’t leave you, I’d keep Jack away from you.”
Perry bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from showing any emotion, but he didn’t think he’d ever wanted to throw a glass at the wall more.
“I didn’t expect him to actually leave,” she admitted, shrugging slightly. “I didn’t think he had the balls to, honestly. I thought that he would run to you and tell you all about how I was being a big bad witch. I was kinda impressed.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I was bored,” she replied, like it was obvious. “Besides, I did you a favour, really.”
Perry took a sip of his drink, his temper hanging by a thread. Only the presence of his son in the room kept him from shouting.
“How do you figure?”
“If he can run away because of something as stupid as that, then he’s not worth the hassle.”
Perry nodded slowly, and then put his glass down on the table. “I always knew that you were sadistic, but this… do you really hate seeing me unhappy? Did it burn you that much, that you had to destroy it?”
“Oh, man up, Per. If you wanted him so bad, why didn’t you fight for him? You’re blaming this on me because it’s the easy option, but—”
“You can leave now,” Perry interrupted, his voice flat. “I’ll hand Jack off to the Nanny in the morning.”
“Per—”
“Bye, Jordan.”
She huffed, but eventually, she nodded, draining her glass before she stood up.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, as she reached the door. “I wouldn’t do it now.”
Perry nodded silently. It wasn’t worth a lot, he mused, as she shut the door behind herself. But maybe it was something.
…
“You should have told me, you know?”
JD startled visibly, turning his head to see Perry walking towards him. They’d both finished their shifts, but Perry had noticed JD heading for the stairs, and had followed behind him at a more sedate pace, finding him up on the roof.
The setting sun behind him framed him beautifully.
“Told you what?”
“What Jordan said. What she threatened you with,” Perry elaborated softly, as he walked over to stand beside JD. “We could have handled it together. You didn’t need to leave, Newb.”
JD seemed to sag where he stood, a lost look on his face. “How did you find out?”
“She told me. Well, after I asked, anyway. Carla has been helping me work out who was the person to send you running. Seems obvious now that I know it was Jordan, she-devil that she is.”
“I wondered about all the dinner parties,” JD admitted. “Not that I was ever going to complain about them, but… it did seem a little bit weird.”
Perry nodded, shifting his hand just slightly so that he could hook his pinky finger around JD’s. JD glanced his way, blushing slightly.
“That you would ruin your own happiness so that I could continue seeing my son is… something. But JD, you have to realise that by taking yourself away from me, I’ve been nothing but miserable.”
“I’m sorry,” JD whispered. “I didn’t know what else to do. She said that if I told you, or if I ignored her, that she would drag you through court, and that was the last thing you needed. And Jack needs you. So when the opportunity came to go to London for twenty weeks, I just took it.”
“He does need me,” Perry agreed. “But I need you.”
JD nodded, his lips downturned. Perry nudged his shoulder with his own.
“Wanna go and get some food?”
“But what about—”
“Jordan isn’t going to do a damn thing,” Perry said.
“Yeah, but… I hurt you. You probably shouldn’t want anything to do with me,” JD pointed out, sadly.
Perry couldn’t deny that, even if only in his mind, that the exact same thing had occurred to him, but it had lasted for barely a second before he’d discarded the idea.
He loved JD, and he knew that the motive hadn’t been malicious; quite the opposite, in fact.
“If you need forgiveness, Newb, then I forgive you,” Perry replied, softly, reaching out to stroke his hair. “You’ve gotta learn to talk to me, you hear me? If anything like this happens again, you come and tell me. We can deal with the consequences together, okay?”
JD nodded, and then turned to face Perry properly, taking half of a step closer. “Can I have a hug?”
Perry smiled and tugged JD into his arms, bliss settling over him as JD practically melted against him, his arms clinging tightly around Perry’s neck.
Exactly where he belonged.
“I missed you,” Perry murmured into JD’s ear.
JD nuzzled impossibly closer. “I missed you too.”