![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randomweavingAuthor: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
randomslasher
Fic: The Way the World Ends
Characters/pairing: John Dorian/Perry Cox
Rating: R
Description: JD makes a risky call and loses one of his patients because of it. The group does their best to help him through the fallout.
Author's Notes: This is a repost from a fic I did in my other journal, so it's nothing new! Just trying to get everything in one place. :)
For a few days After, they simply let him be. Kelso told the board he was taking a personal leave of absence; Elliot took over his interns and divided his patients between them. He just needed time, they said. He would be okay soon.
But after four days of refusing to leave his bed except to pee, and eating only enough to keep starvation at bay, the Committee was born.
JD referred to it as the Committee because they met at regularly scheduled intervals and discussed his status as though he were a grant proposal in need of tweaking. They usually met in the living room, and discussed quietly (they thought) the only item on their agenda: What To Do About Him. The answer they apparently settled on was a one-man-at-a-time series of interventions.
On the first day, the Committee sent Turk.
JD had expected this. Turk was his best friend, and the most obvious of choices they could have made, saving perhaps Dr. Cox.
But Dr. Cox hadn’t come. In fact, JD had not seen him since The Incident. He did not want to ponder this. He feared the reason was all too obvious.
Turk had been talking for several minutes now; JD could tell by the way his voice was getting a little higher as he neared the crux of his argument. Whatever it was. JD wasn’t listening to his words. The only words he heard now were his own, ringing hollowly through his ears.
Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
Eventually Turk wilted, and left the room looking rather like a kicked puppy.
JD didn’t care.
Your fault.
Later that afternoon he returned. This time he had a pizza and a six-pack. He settled down on the chair next to JD’s bed and cracked open a beer, then took a slice of pizza and slid it onto a paper plate. These he offered to JD.
“You have to eat,” he reasoned.
JD had eaten. Yesterday he’d choked down an entire bagel. He tried to tell Turk this with his eyes.
“You can’t live forever on a single bagel,” Turk admonished him.
JD’s eyes said he could try.
Eventually, Turk left again, and the Committee left him alone for the rest of that day.
* * *
On the second day, the Committee sent Elliot.
This surprised JD a little bit. He had predicted Carla. Elliot was not the most eloquent of the group, and often had the way of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, despite meaning well.
But when Elliot arrived she did not speak. She crawled onto the bed behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding him and humming softly in his ear.
JD thought this odd. Still, it was sort of nice. He relaxed a little, staring at the wall and listening quietly.
But when she finally asked him if he wanted to talk, he did not answer.
She got angry with him, then. She told him he was being self-indulgent and narcissistic and he had to snap out of it. JD’s eyes followed her pacing, his face impassive. He knew everything she said was true.
He didn’t care.
Your fault.
Elliot left soon after. The Committee did not send her again.
* * *
Carla appeared on day three.
He listened as she told him how sweet he was for caring so much, how wonderful he had been. He listened as she said that little girl was lucky to have him as her doctor; he listened as she told him his treatment had let her live longer than they’d thought possible. He listened as she said any doctor would have decided to go ahead with the transplant.
She told him it wasn’t his fault. He stopped listening after that.
When Carla left it was with a decided air of resignation. JD knew why. The Committee had failed.
He didn’t care.
* * *
When JD woke up the next morning he noticed two things.
The first was that Committee has missed their meeting today. JD was accustomed to the routine. They met in the morning, then someone would come in for him in the afternoon and give whatever scripted speech the Committee had worked up that day. He would ignore said someone; said someone would leave. He would wait until it was dark, then leave his room to pee and swallow enough food to silence his growling stomach before crawling back in bed.
But this morning the Committee was absent. There were no hushed voices coming from beneath his door. There was no sound of floorboards creaking as someone paced restlessly across the living room. There was no sound at all, in fact, save the hum of his fan and the gurgle of his empty stomach.
The second thing he noticed was a little harder to pinpoint. Though there was no sound, the world seemed to be holding its breath, and the air was thick with waiting. It only took JD a moment to realize what this meant.
Someone was watching him.
He rolled onto his back—then barely bit back a yelp.
He had seen Dr. Cox angry before. He had seen him annoyed, amused, contrite. He had even seen him cry. But there was nothing in his experience that could explain to him the expression Dr. Cox wore now.
The older doctor was leaning in his doorway, wearing one of his navy blue Gap t-shirts and an old pair of jeans JD had not seen before. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his head was lowered. He was peering at JD from beneath his brows, his face impassive, and his eyes were darker than JD had ever seen them.
He didn’t know whether Cox wanted to chew him out for letting that girl die, for blaming himself for it, or simply for missing so much work. It wouldn’t matter. He deserved any of the three.
He waited. And waited.
Dr. Cox didn’t move.
JD blinked, wondering if perhaps the specter was simply a hallucination his over-wrought brain had conjured to torment him. Yes, that would make sense. He hadn’t exactly been in the best of places, psychologically. It would logically follow his guilt had finally taken on corporeal form. And what better form than that of the mentor he’d striven so desperately to please for the last six years? What better way to remind him just how much he had failed than to show him all he aspired to have, to be—but never could?
Why not, indeed? If there was one thing JD had proven adept at this past week, it was self torment.
As he pondered whether he should go see if he couldn’t stick his hand straight through the Ghost Cox like you could in all those horror movies, Ghost Cox moved.
JD jumped. He jumped because Ghost Cox had moved rather abruptly, and he was now leaning over the bed, hands braced on the mattress on either side of JD’s shoulders.
JD wasn’t sure, as he’d never hallucinated before, but he was pretty sure Ghosts shouldn’t be able to make the mattress dip and creak like that. He was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to exude body heat like a real person, or give off a faint musk of sweat and antiseptic and some sort of spicy after-shave.
He was pretty sure they weren’t this good at kissing.
JD didn’t move, didn’t react to the passionate onslaught of hot tongue and lip and gentle gliding strokes that explored and retreated, then returned to explore again.
That is, he didn’t react until something in his brain clicked into place, and he realized it was no Ghost above him.
Dr. Cox was real. He was here. He was kissing--kissing JD.
Now he reacted, his hands coming up sharply to the older doctor’s shoulders, shoving at him ineffectually. Dr. Cox broke the kiss but did not move from where he leaned, braced above JD’s body. JD tried to retreat back into his pillow but Dr. Cox followed, keeping their mouths a breath apart. JD tried to meet his eyes but couldn’t. They were open but he was leaning too close.
JD tried to take stock of the situation, but his over-taxed brain wasn’t coming up with anything that could explain it to him. He opened his mouth, then shut it. Then he opened it again.
Then he giggled.
Dr. Cox pulled back a little, and JD could look at his face now. He giggled again, and it was an awful sound, high and hysterical and a little lost. Dr. Cox watched silently. JD felt his control slipping, felt the giggle become desperate attempts to draw in air that didn’t quite want to fill his lungs. He gasped, choking, his hands clenching on Dr. Cox’s shoulders as he fought to breathe.
Dr. Cox moved then, shifting until he lay on the bed, half alongside, half on top of JD. Surprisingly, the solid warmth and weight made it easier to think, and in the next moment JD could breathe again. He drew the air in deeply, held it a moment, then let it out in a whoosh to draw in another, each tasting as sweet as if it were the first time he’d drawn breath in his life. Dr. Cox was still, propped on his elbows and gazing speechlessly down at him. It wasn’t until JD’s gasping finally resolved itself into tears that he moved again.
Now he was liquid, the solid bulk somehow effortlessly graceful and fluid as he drew JD close and slipped a muscled leg between his thighs. One of his large hands left its place by JD’s head and slid down his side, stroking him through the thin fabric of his t-shirt and settling at the waistband of his boxers. That hand wrapped itself easily over his hip, encouraging him to move with the slightest pressure of his fingers.
JD obeyed blindly, straining upward against the warm weight, desperate to feel.
Dr. Cox was kissing him again; this time, JD kissed back, his hands clawing over the broad back as he whimpered and thrust erratically.
Then, with a sharp cry, he broke apart, and Cox slid sideways, holding him as he trembled and gulped and sobbed.
“She’s dead,” he whispered. They were the first words he’d spoken since he pronounced a week before.
“I know,” was all Dr. Cox said. But the words had more effect than all of the Committee’s speeches put together. Dr. Cox did not try to take his pain from him, did not cheapen it with platitudes. Of all of them, only he understood how much JD needed to feel it.
He pressed his forehead to the older doctor’s chest and burrowed close, wrapping shaking arms around his solid waist. The trembling aftermath of both his climax and his tears made him sleepy, but he did not want to sleep. When he did, Dr. Cox would leave. He understood this as clearly as he understood the unspoken condition that they would never mention this again.
He didn’t mind. Not really. This—the memory of it—it would be enough. It would have to be enough.
But for now he wanted to enjoy this rare closeness. He wanted to feel the warm strength of the arms around him, the bruised tingling in his lips, the little aftershocks of pleasure, the trembling of the muscles in his thighs. He wanted to feel the pain, too, because when he felt the pain he finally knew it for what it was: transient.
Suddenly, he desperately wanted to say something. Something that would tell Dr. Cox how much he’d needed this. Something to let him know how grateful he was that Dr. Cox understood. Something that would sum up the confusing swell of sorrow and love and gratitude that rose in him, choking his throat with tears.
He said, “Thank you.”
Dr. Cox tightened his arms and wound his fingers into JD’s hair, stoking lightly. “You’re welcome.”
randomslasherFic: The Way the World Ends
Characters/pairing: John Dorian/Perry Cox
Rating: R
Description: JD makes a risky call and loses one of his patients because of it. The group does their best to help him through the fallout.
Author's Notes: This is a repost from a fic I did in my other journal, so it's nothing new! Just trying to get everything in one place. :)
For a few days After, they simply let him be. Kelso told the board he was taking a personal leave of absence; Elliot took over his interns and divided his patients between them. He just needed time, they said. He would be okay soon.
But after four days of refusing to leave his bed except to pee, and eating only enough to keep starvation at bay, the Committee was born.
JD referred to it as the Committee because they met at regularly scheduled intervals and discussed his status as though he were a grant proposal in need of tweaking. They usually met in the living room, and discussed quietly (they thought) the only item on their agenda: What To Do About Him. The answer they apparently settled on was a one-man-at-a-time series of interventions.
On the first day, the Committee sent Turk.
JD had expected this. Turk was his best friend, and the most obvious of choices they could have made, saving perhaps Dr. Cox.
But Dr. Cox hadn’t come. In fact, JD had not seen him since The Incident. He did not want to ponder this. He feared the reason was all too obvious.
Turk had been talking for several minutes now; JD could tell by the way his voice was getting a little higher as he neared the crux of his argument. Whatever it was. JD wasn’t listening to his words. The only words he heard now were his own, ringing hollowly through his ears.
Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
Eventually Turk wilted, and left the room looking rather like a kicked puppy.
JD didn’t care.
Your fault.
Later that afternoon he returned. This time he had a pizza and a six-pack. He settled down on the chair next to JD’s bed and cracked open a beer, then took a slice of pizza and slid it onto a paper plate. These he offered to JD.
“You have to eat,” he reasoned.
JD had eaten. Yesterday he’d choked down an entire bagel. He tried to tell Turk this with his eyes.
“You can’t live forever on a single bagel,” Turk admonished him.
JD’s eyes said he could try.
Eventually, Turk left again, and the Committee left him alone for the rest of that day.
* * *
On the second day, the Committee sent Elliot.
This surprised JD a little bit. He had predicted Carla. Elliot was not the most eloquent of the group, and often had the way of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, despite meaning well.
But when Elliot arrived she did not speak. She crawled onto the bed behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding him and humming softly in his ear.
JD thought this odd. Still, it was sort of nice. He relaxed a little, staring at the wall and listening quietly.
But when she finally asked him if he wanted to talk, he did not answer.
She got angry with him, then. She told him he was being self-indulgent and narcissistic and he had to snap out of it. JD’s eyes followed her pacing, his face impassive. He knew everything she said was true.
He didn’t care.
Your fault.
Elliot left soon after. The Committee did not send her again.
* * *
Carla appeared on day three.
He listened as she told him how sweet he was for caring so much, how wonderful he had been. He listened as she said that little girl was lucky to have him as her doctor; he listened as she told him his treatment had let her live longer than they’d thought possible. He listened as she said any doctor would have decided to go ahead with the transplant.
She told him it wasn’t his fault. He stopped listening after that.
When Carla left it was with a decided air of resignation. JD knew why. The Committee had failed.
He didn’t care.
* * *
When JD woke up the next morning he noticed two things.
The first was that Committee has missed their meeting today. JD was accustomed to the routine. They met in the morning, then someone would come in for him in the afternoon and give whatever scripted speech the Committee had worked up that day. He would ignore said someone; said someone would leave. He would wait until it was dark, then leave his room to pee and swallow enough food to silence his growling stomach before crawling back in bed.
But this morning the Committee was absent. There were no hushed voices coming from beneath his door. There was no sound of floorboards creaking as someone paced restlessly across the living room. There was no sound at all, in fact, save the hum of his fan and the gurgle of his empty stomach.
The second thing he noticed was a little harder to pinpoint. Though there was no sound, the world seemed to be holding its breath, and the air was thick with waiting. It only took JD a moment to realize what this meant.
Someone was watching him.
He rolled onto his back—then barely bit back a yelp.
He had seen Dr. Cox angry before. He had seen him annoyed, amused, contrite. He had even seen him cry. But there was nothing in his experience that could explain to him the expression Dr. Cox wore now.
The older doctor was leaning in his doorway, wearing one of his navy blue Gap t-shirts and an old pair of jeans JD had not seen before. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his head was lowered. He was peering at JD from beneath his brows, his face impassive, and his eyes were darker than JD had ever seen them.
He didn’t know whether Cox wanted to chew him out for letting that girl die, for blaming himself for it, or simply for missing so much work. It wouldn’t matter. He deserved any of the three.
He waited. And waited.
Dr. Cox didn’t move.
JD blinked, wondering if perhaps the specter was simply a hallucination his over-wrought brain had conjured to torment him. Yes, that would make sense. He hadn’t exactly been in the best of places, psychologically. It would logically follow his guilt had finally taken on corporeal form. And what better form than that of the mentor he’d striven so desperately to please for the last six years? What better way to remind him just how much he had failed than to show him all he aspired to have, to be—but never could?
Why not, indeed? If there was one thing JD had proven adept at this past week, it was self torment.
As he pondered whether he should go see if he couldn’t stick his hand straight through the Ghost Cox like you could in all those horror movies, Ghost Cox moved.
JD jumped. He jumped because Ghost Cox had moved rather abruptly, and he was now leaning over the bed, hands braced on the mattress on either side of JD’s shoulders.
JD wasn’t sure, as he’d never hallucinated before, but he was pretty sure Ghosts shouldn’t be able to make the mattress dip and creak like that. He was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to exude body heat like a real person, or give off a faint musk of sweat and antiseptic and some sort of spicy after-shave.
He was pretty sure they weren’t this good at kissing.
JD didn’t move, didn’t react to the passionate onslaught of hot tongue and lip and gentle gliding strokes that explored and retreated, then returned to explore again.
That is, he didn’t react until something in his brain clicked into place, and he realized it was no Ghost above him.
Dr. Cox was real. He was here. He was kissing--kissing JD.
Now he reacted, his hands coming up sharply to the older doctor’s shoulders, shoving at him ineffectually. Dr. Cox broke the kiss but did not move from where he leaned, braced above JD’s body. JD tried to retreat back into his pillow but Dr. Cox followed, keeping their mouths a breath apart. JD tried to meet his eyes but couldn’t. They were open but he was leaning too close.
JD tried to take stock of the situation, but his over-taxed brain wasn’t coming up with anything that could explain it to him. He opened his mouth, then shut it. Then he opened it again.
Then he giggled.
Dr. Cox pulled back a little, and JD could look at his face now. He giggled again, and it was an awful sound, high and hysterical and a little lost. Dr. Cox watched silently. JD felt his control slipping, felt the giggle become desperate attempts to draw in air that didn’t quite want to fill his lungs. He gasped, choking, his hands clenching on Dr. Cox’s shoulders as he fought to breathe.
Dr. Cox moved then, shifting until he lay on the bed, half alongside, half on top of JD. Surprisingly, the solid warmth and weight made it easier to think, and in the next moment JD could breathe again. He drew the air in deeply, held it a moment, then let it out in a whoosh to draw in another, each tasting as sweet as if it were the first time he’d drawn breath in his life. Dr. Cox was still, propped on his elbows and gazing speechlessly down at him. It wasn’t until JD’s gasping finally resolved itself into tears that he moved again.
Now he was liquid, the solid bulk somehow effortlessly graceful and fluid as he drew JD close and slipped a muscled leg between his thighs. One of his large hands left its place by JD’s head and slid down his side, stroking him through the thin fabric of his t-shirt and settling at the waistband of his boxers. That hand wrapped itself easily over his hip, encouraging him to move with the slightest pressure of his fingers.
JD obeyed blindly, straining upward against the warm weight, desperate to feel.
Dr. Cox was kissing him again; this time, JD kissed back, his hands clawing over the broad back as he whimpered and thrust erratically.
Then, with a sharp cry, he broke apart, and Cox slid sideways, holding him as he trembled and gulped and sobbed.
“She’s dead,” he whispered. They were the first words he’d spoken since he pronounced a week before.
“I know,” was all Dr. Cox said. But the words had more effect than all of the Committee’s speeches put together. Dr. Cox did not try to take his pain from him, did not cheapen it with platitudes. Of all of them, only he understood how much JD needed to feel it.
He pressed his forehead to the older doctor’s chest and burrowed close, wrapping shaking arms around his solid waist. The trembling aftermath of both his climax and his tears made him sleepy, but he did not want to sleep. When he did, Dr. Cox would leave. He understood this as clearly as he understood the unspoken condition that they would never mention this again.
He didn’t mind. Not really. This—the memory of it—it would be enough. It would have to be enough.
But for now he wanted to enjoy this rare closeness. He wanted to feel the warm strength of the arms around him, the bruised tingling in his lips, the little aftershocks of pleasure, the trembling of the muscles in his thighs. He wanted to feel the pain, too, because when he felt the pain he finally knew it for what it was: transient.
Suddenly, he desperately wanted to say something. Something that would tell Dr. Cox how much he’d needed this. Something to let him know how grateful he was that Dr. Cox understood. Something that would sum up the confusing swell of sorrow and love and gratitude that rose in him, choking his throat with tears.
He said, “Thank you.”
Dr. Cox tightened his arms and wound his fingers into JD’s hair, stoking lightly. “You’re welcome.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 12 Feb 2007 08:27 (UTC)JD always has had a way with words, hasn't he?
How do you guys rock as hard as you do?
no subject
Date: 12 Feb 2007 13:06 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Feb 2007 01:59 (UTC)--Alissa
no subject
Date: 13 Feb 2007 03:32 (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Mar 2007 16:00 (UTC)I like this story. Missed, somehow, the first time I read it, that there was any sex going on, but that's just me reading too fast. It was interesting, though, how JD's orgasm read seamlessly as JD breaking down and crying.
::ponders::
Anyway. I love how this is third person but very much in JD's voice. Love how Dr. Cox takes care of him. Just lovely. Is it canon, the loss of the patient? I'm only five episodes into the first season, so ... yeah.
Beautiful. But really, that's what I've come to expect from you. ^_^
~m
no subject
Date: 3 Apr 2007 17:33 (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 May 2007 00:45 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 Jul 2007 21:57 (UTC)Sniff Good Fic though.
no subject
Date: 28 Mar 2008 16:21 (UTC)Choose on of them:
Amazing, Wonderful, Brilliant, Fantastic, Luscious - everything works.
no subject
Date: 18 Jun 2008 07:29 (UTC)