Disclaimer: I don't own the WWE or any of its superstars.

A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I hope you like this chapter. This story's going to be a little more sensitive and friendship related than my others, but they'll be some romance and maybe even a little drama, don't fret.

Celebrity Rehab With Jeff Hardy

Chapter 3: Bonding

Day One

"Today we're going to work on an exercise that will hopefully give you an idea of how your peers here see you. We're going to break into two groups and conduct a sort of interview. Find out about the other person, and then you'll tell us about what you learned, and if you think you'd be friends with this person outside of the facility," Dr. Martinez announced the next day at group. Since the sun was shining and it was warm, group was being conducted outside. Free was nervous since this was her first meeting period and she was scheduled for a single meeting later tonight with Dr. Callahan too.

She'd hardly gotten any sleep last night. She wished she was home and she wished she could shoot up. But no, she was stuck in rehab and now she had to work with one of these people she barely knew. Free was on the shyer side to begin with, despite her father being who he was. Coming here was starting to seem like a bad idea. She wasn't ready to kick her habit just yet.

It took her almost three hours to get ready this morning. Even with her OCD, the only thing that was ever particularly time consuming was doing her hair in the mornings. But this morning, nothing was right. She had to change her outfit six times before the shirt finally felt comfortable. Her make up just looked uneven, no matter what she did, but she couldn't go face these strangers without it, so she'd had to wipe it off three times before it looked good to her. Free always brushed her hair meticulously, starting at the left fifty times, then fifty times on the right, and finally fifty times in the back. She wasn't much of a counter, like a lot of obsessive compulsives, but when it came to brushing her hair she was particularly picky. And today it had just been unmanageable.

By the time she'd finally gotten ready, everyone was outside, ready to start group, so she'd just politely asked for her cigarettes and joined everyone else, making herself comfortable with her feet in the pool water. Veronica was nice, and so was Lauren, but she wasn't really in the mood for Lauren's questions about Bret Michaels and Veronica's chipper attitude.

Jeff stood from his seat on the edge of the still jacuzzi and made his way over to Dr. Martinez to get the clipboards and pencils she was offering to all the patients. He was going to ask the new girl if she wanted to partner up. Why? Well he caught sight of some ink on her shoulder blade and decided he liked it, a lot, and wanted to inquire about it.

Jeff walked up behind her and tapped her shoulder as she stood in the small line, waiting to get her things, all while trying to get a closer look at the tattoo that was obstructed slightly by the strap of her tank top. Free jumped, a little startled and Jeff wondered if she was one of those paranoid addicts. He wouldn't be shocked.

Free turned to face the alleged Jeff, who was the only person here she hadn't spoken to yet. Kevin had said he was a loner, and she believed him now after he spent the entire evening yesterday cooped up in the art room. His eyes were a shocking shade of green, and there was a natural warmth in them, covered by a layer of pain and anger. He looked familiar to her up this close.

Jeff ran a self-conscious hand over his fading purple hair, feeling strange under her sad, blue stare. She looked like some pretty, wounded puppy or a beautiful mermaid caught in a net and it bothered him. But he quickly sucked it up and flashed her a small smile. "You wanna be partners?" he asked, inwardly wondering if she thought he was weird because he hadn't even talked to her before this.

If that was the case, she didn't say anything, but smiled and nodded her head in confirmation. She took two clipboards with worksheets on them and pencils from Dr. Martinez and handed one of each to Jeff before briskly brushing past him and going back over to the poolside. Jeff followed, looking at the wet footprints she'd left behind as he went to sit beside her on the cement.

Free wondered if she was the only girl here who found Jeff attractive. He was well muscled and tall and had a nice face. He didn't look like an addict. She couldn't imagine what he'd done to get himself here. But she wasn't about to ask either.

"I'm Jeff, by the way," he said as he adjusted so he was sitting cross-legged. Free dipped her legs back in the water and slowly kicked them back and forth, before looking up at him.

"Yeah, I know. They told me." Jeff rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a little rude for not introducing himself sooner. That wasn't usually like him, but he was just irritable yesterday. Someone who'd been through what he had recently didn't need a reason to want to be alone. "My name's Free."

She sat and stared at Jeff for a minute and he wondered if he had something on his face. "Can I just..." She reached out and moved the left side of his bandanna down a little, straightening it out. "Sorry," she apologized with a flush. "I'm obsessive compulsive and it was bugging me."

Feeling a slight relief, Jeff chuckled and shook his head. "It's okay. Feel free to do it anytime." Free eased up a little at his laid back personality and smiled at him, her heart beating a little faster than normal. In the back of her mind, she wondered if he had a girlfriend, but quickly pushed the thought aside and glued her eyes to the paper, which looked liked a fill in the blank worksheet you get in first grade.

The two quickly filled in the first space, which was asking for the person's name. "What's your last name?" Free asked Jeff curiously, not looking up from the paper.

"Hardy. Your last name isn't really DeVille, is it?" he asked, amusement evident in his voice.

"No, no. It's Johannesson." Jeff pulled a face and looked up at her, distracting Free from her own paper where 'Jeff Hardy' was filled in the first blank.

"God, how do you spell that?" Free laughed and blushed slightly before spelling out all the letters so he could write them down. Her voice reminded Jeff of a music box. "Do you wanna go first?"

"Sure. Do you want to go back and forth or just ask me all at once then I'll ask you?" Free began feeling itchy and rubbing at her arms, which Jeff took clear notice of. Again, he caught sight of the scabbed and infected looking track marks. Free noticed his stares and crawled back into her shell, trying to hide her arms.

A feeling of guilt washed over Jeff as he realized he'd been caught gaping at the track marks all over her arms. "Uh... sorry. I was just— uh, we'll jut go back and forth." He suddenly didn't want to be around her anymore, feeling too bad about making her uncomfortable like that. What was wrong with him? "How old are you?" he asked quickly, curious about the answer to this question particularly. She didn't look very old, but it would be too messed up for someone young to be stuck in a place like this already.

"Twenty two," she answered quickly, not looking up from her paper. Jeff hesitated before writing, a little shocked at her answer. God, she's only twenty-two and clearly a heroin fiend. It was sad.

"Okay, I'm thirty." Free sighed as she took this information down. That was a big age gap. Oh well, looking for a relationship in rehab probably wasn't the best idea anyway. Very neatly, Free wrote down his age and began kicking her legs through the cool water again. "Occupation?" she read off the paper.

"Pro wrestler," he said casually, and something clicked in Free's mind.

"Oh! I thought you looked familiar. My little brother watches wrestling. I think he has a shirt with you and some other guy on it." She vaguely remembered her brother wearing it around the house, though Free usually kept clear of the living room when wrestling was on. Her brother tended to get rowdy with his friends, attempting wrestling moves off the couch and such.

"Yeah? Must be my brother on the shirt with me. We're both wrestlers," Jeff elaborated, loosening up again.

Free glanced at her paper and saw the family question. "So you have a brother? Family is question thirteen. Who else is in your immediate family?" she wondered out loud. "Might as well get it out of the way, right?"

"Course. I have my dad too. That's it though. My mom died when I was pretty young," Jeff told her, for a reason unknown to him. It wasn't really relevant. Or was it?

Free looked up at Jeff, her blue eyes large and sorrowful, but with a weird glint of warmth and something else unnamable. Her lips were parted slightly and her tongue darted out, tasting the cherry chapstick she'd put on. "My mom's dead too."

Her voice was like air and it made Jeff look up from his paper. He felt a jolt pulse through his body, and at that very second, he knew that he had some sort of connection with this girl. It was the forewarning of some sort of bond and inwardly, Jeff wondered if she felt it too. The look in her eyes said yes.

"It was cancer. I was nine..." Green stayed locked on blue, both afraid to lose this strange feeling of absolute comfort and kinship.

But realizing Jeff was waiting for more information on her mother's death, Free averted her eyes, still tingling from the sudden mold that had just bonded the two of them. It made her feel ashamed to admit what had happened to her mother, being where she was. "I was fifteen. Overdose..."

A sullen feeling loomed between the two at her words. Knowing someone like Phil Brooks, Jeff thought people who'd experienced addiction through family members would try to keep as far away from it as possible. Yet here she was, arms lined with needle wounds.

Yes, her dad had told her he didn't want her to go through everything he had with his addictions, but he really meant to say he didn't want her to end up like her mother, dead and buried because she was a junkie. Sighing lightly, Free glanced back up at Jeff, who was intently watching her feet make small ripples in the pool water. "Anyway, it's just my dad and my half brother," she finished, her voice sad and soft.

It bothered Jeff. He didn't like the sorrow laced in her voice. This was going to be the one person who made a difference in his recovery, he could see that already. And he wanted to be the one person who helped her through hers. He would finally be able to have a friend to talk to who actually understood what he was going through and didn't judge him for it. And he would help her; listen whenever she needed to talk or just give her a shoulder to cry on. This was going to be a real friendship, an unbreakable one.

Jeff had never connected with anyone like this before, apart from his brother, but that was in his blood. She was so young and Jeff felt the strong urge to help her before it was too late. They could work together to overcome their problems. And eager feeling rushed over Jeff and he was motivated to finish this worksheet, not to get this over with, but to find out more about Free. "Where are you from?"

"I live in LA, but I was born in Seattle. I lived there until my mom passed, then I moved to LA with my dad." Free felt special under the interested gaze of Jeff. He was actually listening, writing down what she said only after she'd said it, making sure to give her his full attention as she spoke.

"Okay. I'm from Cameron, North Carolina. Born and raised."

Seattle and LA weren't exactly unknown places, but she'd never heard of Cameron before. "What's it like there?"

Jeff smiled, happy to talk about his hometown, the place where his roots were. "It's not a very big town. Lots of woods. Everyone there already knows me and Matt though, so we don't haveta sign stuff every time we leave the house. Oh, Matt's my brother, by the way."

Free nodded, having gathered that on her own. A sudden feeling of boldness overcame her, and before she could stop, she'd already started. "Can I ask you something personal?"

Normally, Jeff wouldn't answer a personal question from someone he'd just met, but he'd confide anything in her. He knew she wouldn't make and judgments or spread any diseased ridden rumors. He could just tell. Jeff tilted his chin up at her, encouraging her curiosity. "Why are you here?"

Jeff's eyes scanned his paper. Nope, that definitely wasn't on it. But he looked back up into her big, sky colored eyes and was compelled to spill his guts, but refrained from breaking down in front of this girl he'd just met. "Well, a few years back I had a drug problem and went to a different wrestling federation; I'd been in the WWE... or WWWF. I don't know how much you know about wrestling," he chuckled nervously.

"I know what the WWE is. And The Rock. That's about it. My brother talks about it but it kind of goes in one ear and out the other" she admitted.

"Oh, well, anyway, after I left the WWE, I got better, with a little time, and went back. Everything was goin' good for a while until they wanted me to get real crazy in the ring. I did it, of course. I love bein' the guy who jumps off of anything onto anything. But it started fuckin' my body up real bad. We have this... wellness policy at work. I started takin' pain killers I didn't have a prescription for, had a random drug test, and got suspended." Jeff shook his head, recalling the moment with shame. Why had he been so stupid? "I didn't haveta come here, but this is my last chance with the company, and I don't wanna screw it up again. Plus, I think I need to prove somethin' to my dad and Matt. I think they're pretty disappointed in me."

Free didn't speak for a minute, not positive what to say. "Wow..." is what came from between her soft, tinted lips in a whisper. Then she shied away a little, curling up and pulling her feet from the water. "You probably don't need to ask why I'm here..."

"I'd rather hear you tell me then make my own assumptions," he said honestly.

Free looked surprised at this and opened up again, fingernails going to her mouth as she began speaking. "I'm a heroin addict. It's all I think about and there's just never enough of it. I just don't wanna end up like my mom..." Tears began swelling in Free's already flossed eyes and Jeff's heart ached. He itched to place some kind of comforting hand on her shoulder or leg, but didn't want to scare her off. What id her OCD had it's qualms with being touched?

"Hey, let's talk about somethin' else, okay? You just got here, I don't wanna be makin' you all upset already," he said with a crooked smile, trying to make her feel better. He was no therapist and he didn't know what he should be saying. And he definitely didn't want to say the wrong thing.