Disclaimer: Scrubs does not belong to me. Light mentions of slash throughout the chapter.

Chapter Eleven: In Differences and In Retrospect

Doctor Cox blinked as a sharp knock pulled him from his fitful slumber. He lifted his head off the pillow to glance over at the clock only to see darkness, and the stream of moonlight from the window hitting JD's naked back.

He let out of heavy sigh as the knocking continued, pushing himself off the bed and grabbing the neglected towel off the floor. He wrapped it around his waist before cautiously reaching out his right hand, feeling around in the darkness for the light switch to the light bulb in the hallway. He flipped it on only to growl when no light came.

Carla stood behind the door when he opened it, a small flashlight pointed straight at his face.

"I've been knocking for almost ten minutes," Carla huffed. Her features softened. "Are you okay, Perry?"

Doctor Cox grimaced, swatting the flashlight from his line of vision. "What the hell is going on?"

"Power outage," she said. "Have you heard from JD? He's not answering his door."

He groaned, glad that it was dark enough to hide his blush. He wiped a hand over his face. "It's very possible that he's sleeping, Carla, but I assure you, as much as he is somewhat of a man-child, the boogeyman stopped preying on him a long time ago."

She directed the flashlight onto his naked torso. "Were you in the shower?" she asked, frowning. "Are the lights working for you?"

"I was, several hours ago, but I whimsically fell asleep as some weary victims are apt to doing after a good twenty minutes of having their life threatened. And no, while I am admittedly a spectacular member of the human species, I--"

Doctor Cox heard more than saw her eye roll. "You can stop ranting now, Perry, it's me," she snorted. "You sure you don't want to talk?"

"To talk? No. Some dinner, if it's available, I can go for."

Carla was quiet for a moment. She sighed softly, nodding. "Okay. Get dressed and come to the suite. We're trying to work something out."

Doctor Cox nodded, shutting the door.

He dug around in his duffel bag for a penlight before returning back to bed, mentally bracing himself. JD had always gone back to his room since this little… tryst had begun, and waking up to him had been more than a little disorienting. He'd focused on the task at hand, though, which a few moments ago was to reach the door without dismembering himself, but now that that was over and done with, he was approaching one of many bridges that he'd been reluctant to cross from the start.

Doctor Cox sighed and sat down on the bed, his towel-clad hip brushing JD's bare side. "Mabel," he ground out, poking the other man in the ribs.

JD snorted in his slumber, swatting his hand away.

He growled and smacked his backside, earning him a startled shout and a drowsy glare. "C'mon, JD," Doctor Cox muttered, "time to go on out there and throw yourself into some parody of normalcy, which of course means you'll have to pretend that you've never experienced the amazing sensation of me between your thighs. And, I know, this is difficult, but--"

"You know this is all passing over my head, right?" JD asked sleepily.

Doctor Cox smirked, giving the other man's hip an affectionate smack. "When does it not?" He shook his head. "Get dressed and get into character, Newbie."

"Where are we going?" he asked, confused.

"The Espinosa-Turk love shack," he replied distractedly. "Carla was knocking on your door, looking for you…"

JD was quiet. "I, uh, I'm sorry, I fell asleep--"

"Newbie," he interrupted quickly, curtly. He took a deep breath, released it slowly. "It's… It's okay." He stood and faced away from him, shining the penlight towards his duffel bag and thus ending the conversation, at least for now. He heard JD leave the bed as he searched for some clothes in the dark, watching his outline in his peripheral vision as he headed for the connecting door - and running into the refrigerator along the way, but heading to the connecting door nonetheless. He snorted.

Doctor Cox slipped into a t-shirt whose color he couldn't exactly make out in the darkness and the khakis he'd put on this morning before leaving his room, still wielding his penlight. He made his way into Carla and Turk's suite and was suddenly overwhelmed by a heavy, aromatic scent.

He sniffed. "Dear God, is that… is that sandalwood? Because if I just walked in on some blackout orgy fun, please allow me to take five steps back and out of this room."

"It was the only candles I had," Elliot said defensively. "The wax is hypo-allergenic…" she trailed off.

"More than I needed to know," he groused. "What's for dinner?"

"I'm working on it," Turk grumbled from the small dining area. "Man, this is gonna take a while and I have no idea how much life is left on this surge protector. It has a battery backup that lasts for up to seventy minutes, but I'm not sure if it's been charged long enough…"

Doctor Cox came forward, staring at Turk and the items strewn all over the dining table in front of him. "Gandhi, pray tell, what are you doing with that coffee maker?"

"I'm using the metal hotplate to cook our hamburger patties before they get bad," Turk grumbled. "I hope you like your burgers a little bloody." As if to demonstrate, he removed a frozen hamburger patty from a cardboard package near his elbow and slapped it onto the metal plate. It sizzled loudly.

"Oh, great. If we don't die of starvation, we'll die of food poisoning instead," Doctor Cox remarked with a groan.

JD pulled back the heavy curtains, blinking as the moonlight filtered into his dark room. He sighed and sat on his bed, running a hand through his unruly hair.

Things were different, and it scared him. There were times when he couldn't even fathom how far from familiarity he'd gotten over the past seven years, what with Carla and Turk pushing him out of the apartment, and then living in a tent, and then finally living in an apartment of his own. And then Kim had come along, and Sam…

But things were even more different now, and it scared him. He was frightened every time he walked into work, he was frightened every time he made his way back 'home,' he was frightened when Doctor Cox laid him down on his crisp hotel room bed sheets, but after that, it was a whole different ball game. He couldn't believe that he was so tired of being frightened that for a while, he'd completely ignored the ramifications, his thoughts, his feelings on… whatever he and Doctor Cox were doing now.

But today had been different, and that frightened him.

'Hey, JD. Doctor Cox is coming back early… He was held at gunpoint. He was really shaken up, so… Just giving you a heads up.'

He'd stared at Elliot's text for a long while before deciding to wait for him in his room.

There was an air of vulnerability that Doctor Cox had been allowing JD to see lately, when they were both alone, staring at one another and sipping his foul-tasting scotch. JD didn't know what to do with it, just like he didn't know what to do with himself. He felt as though he'd been thrown into a gray area. Everything about it seemed so vague and unfamiliar that he didn't even know what to anticipate, so when things finally hit him, they hit him hard.

It didn't help that Doctor Cox was so... guarded. Once they were lying beside one another, gasping and spent, the walls would go up, kind of like the drawbridge of a castle, being pulled up by thick metal chains - and when it was sealed shut, it really was sealed shut.

But today had been different, and it really threw him off. The hand-holding. And… Doctor Cox crying. There had been a certain bareness to the entire situation, and the fact that for once, they'd been completely naked, well, that added to it, too. JD wouldn't call it romantic, but he couldn't deny that there was some sort of intimacy there, and on all sorts of levels.

He sighed and laughed, shaking his head. He really was a girl.

He put some clothes on before digging through the few duffel bags he'd brought with him. He needed to go back to his apartment soon to sort through his mail and take care of bills and things. But this power outage was different, and he couldn't help but think that it signified that things were getting worse.

Maybe even a whole lot worse.

He found his alarm clock in one of his bags. He put some batteries in and turned on the radio, heading towards the window again for some source of light. He squinted at the dial as he scanned through different radio stations, alternating between AM and FM. There were some clear ones coming in, so that might've meant that not all of Sacramento was affected…

JD headed to Turk and Carla's room, still holding onto the radio. The door was held ajar, the metal piece of the security latch wedged between the door and the door frame. He pushed it open, his senses assaulted by the smell of sandalwood and a loud hissing noise coming from the small dining area.

"Good evening, Bambi," Carla greeted him. "You sleep like the dead," she teased.

JD blushed in the darkness. "Um," he muttered intelligibly. "Yeah…"

Carla sat up as he plopped down on the couch next to her. "You okay?" she asked worriedly, rubbing his back.

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just…" He bit his lower lip. "Things are just grating on me, I guess." He sighed. That was the painfully abridged version, but he just didn't know where he should begin, and what he should omit. Well, he knew exactly what he should omit, but that was a large part of what was grating on him in the first place.

"Yeah, it's all grating on everybody," Carla sighed. "I know this isn't a five or even a four star hotel, but you'd think they'd have a generator or something…"

JD nodded absentmindedly. "How long has the power been out?"

"For almost an hour now, but doing everything by candlelight is starting to hurt my eyes," she replied, rubbing her eyes with her fists. She glanced at the radio. "Anything interesting come up?"

He shook his head. "Nothing yet. Some of the stations are really clear, though, so I'm guessing not all of Sacramento was affected." JD offered it to her. "I'm gonna talk to Turk." He took a seat beside Doctor Cox, keeping his eyes trained on whatever Turk was doing. "Hey, C-Bear," he greeted cheerfully.

"Vanilla Bear, hey," Turk said with a grin. "We've all been kinda MIA, huh?"

JD gave a gloomy nod. "Yeah." He noticed just what his best friend was doing and he gave a nostalgic half-smile. "Are you cooking hamburger patties on a metal hotplate?" he asked excitedly.

"Yeah, man," he laughed. "I don't know how long the surge protector's gonna last me, dude. I probably haven't charged it since the last time we went camping."

JD frowned. "You mean the time we camped out at Toys 'R' Us to get first dibs on the X-Box?"

He grinned. "Yeah." He shook his head. "I can't believe you shoved that kid, dude."

"He started it!"

Turk laughed, still shaking his head. "V-Bear, I've really been meaning to talk to you," he said in a low voice, "but it's either we're both at work, or… Is something wrong, man? 'Cause you've been in your room a lot lately."

JD felt himself flush, and caught Doctor Cox looking away. "Yeah, um, I've been kinda down," he muttered. It was the truth - just not really the whole truth. "My job with Doctor Coleman is really getting to me. I mean, I know we're not supposed to talk about it…"

"Yo, me too," Turk said in a hushed whisper. "I guess we're not allowed to disclose patient information or something, but aw, man, yesterday, it was horrible. I thought that the CDC was giving everyone an equal opportunity to be treated, but the other night, we had to refuse this guy 'cause he had no insurance."

JD's eyes widened, and even Doctor Cox glanced back to passively participate in the conversation. "What?"

"Yeah," Turk murmured, biting his lip. "I mean, they stabilized him and he was pretty dehydrated so they put him on a dextrose drip, but after that, they sent him away… Last I heard, he was going to try for the free clinic, but I don't know how much they can do."

He gave a melancholy nod. "I'm getting pretty phobic in the clean room Doctor Coleman assigned me to," he said with a shudder. "It doesn't help that he doesn't go in there with me anymore. He helps me into the suit and he tells me when to come out, and after that he hoses me down with that cleaning solution, but that's about it. And it's all really fishy because I'm only given that task, and even though there're a lot of instructions and I gotta be really meticulous about everything, that's all they've told me since they pulled me in. He even said to me in the beginning, 'This is your job right here. Let the CDC and USAMRIID take care of everything else.'"

Turk nodded at Doctor Cox. "I heard that they pulled you in, too. What are they having you doing?"

"Ambulance duty," he replied with an eye roll, "but it's more like babysitting. We go off to patients being quarantined in their homes… I tried to get them to take me to the preschool, but apparently eleven blocks that-a-way is the district cutoff for my particular team. I'm thinking they did that on purpose, that and the fact that out of everyone in that division, I'm disallowed driver duty." He shrugged.

"Kelso's probably unhappy about losing all his regulars," Turk snorted, using a fork to flip the burger.

Doctor Cox barked out a laugh. "Last I heard, ol' Bobbo's retirement's been put on hold until this entire thing blows over. He's pulling double shifts in the ICU with everyone sectioned off."

"Yeah, and Carla's been complaining that the nursing staff is getting the brunt of it," Turk said with a shake of his head.

"Next time you're in the labs, you should ask Franklyn to give you a peek at the virus," JD said quietly. "It's like nothing I've ever seen before. They hauled some really fancy equipment in there, too."

"Yeah, no way," Turk snorted. "I've already got my perpetually suited self up to my elbows in the stuff. I don't wanna be anymore intimate with it in any other way at this point. I even stopped watching the news 'cause I don't wanna know what type of crap they're saying."

"Apparently a load of bullshit, according to the scrawny guy who held me hostage today," Doctor Cox remarked, his gaze averted from the both of them. "They're certainly feeding everyone the worst entrée they can dish out if it was able to drive a man like Mr. Chen to walk into the only institutionalized safe haven in Sacramento with a handgun in his pocket."

JD's eyes widened. "Mr. Chen?" he hissed.

"Yeah." Doctor Cox said, staring at the other man expectantly.

"Dude, if you know something, say it," Turk pressed on.

"I shouldn't," JD muttered.

"Oh, screw it, Newbie," the older man said. "The three of us were pulled in by the CDC, and if you really think about it, everything is gonna slip out of their control anyway. There are far too many people in that hospital who know about what's going on now. Something is bound to escape, and I do mean that literally and figuratively."

"Rose Chen," he said quietly, raising his gaze to Doctor Cox's for confirmation. At his nod, he went on, "She's been my patient."

"I heard they're doing dialysis treatments now," Doctor Cox said. "How's that working out?"

"It's not," JD muttered. "The virus is too fast. The blood goes through the machine, but it seems like the virus is touching upon unaffected blood cells as quick or maybe even quicker than the dialysis process. So once the clean blood makes its way back into the body, the immune system doesn't even stand a chance. The virus immediately attaches itself onto the clean cells. Every single organ in that girl is degenerating. Every day, she's getting worse and she's showing signs that she's just about ready to bleed out. We tried treating her without putting her into a coma because for some reason, that puts the virus in a dormant stage. And the reason why the specialists are so averse to that is because it's hard to detect when it's dormant. At least, that's what I gathered…"

"Gandhi, do you remember when you operated on Lambert and you said that the corticosteroids were working? Are any of your patients being placed on those?"

JD and Turk frowned and shook their heads.

Doctor Cox stared. "What the hell? What the fuck are you doing?"

"Anti-cholesterol and fungal drugs," JD said. "Why wouldn't they use corticosteroids if it even showed some hint that it was working? An increase of white blood cell count, visible improvement, anything."

"I think they're trying to focus on the whole neurological facet," Turk said quietly. "It doesn't seem like they believe that the immune system can just shut down like that all by itself."

"I guess that'd make sense if we had more time," Doctor Cox said between clenched teeth. "Especially if they went crazy and pumped all the medicines they could find to see if any of them were working in the first place."

"But they'd have to wean them all off if one of them did start working," JD said with a frown. "I wonder how much recovery time the virus would need to bounce back, if it even can."

Doctor Cox looked at JD. "Are you allowed to look at the intravenous drips?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I gotta keep track of everything that goes into that girl."

"Try to remember everything they put in her. Everything. The anti-fungal drugs, the anti-cholesterol drugs, the supplements."

"Why?" Turk asked.

"If we ever need to get out of here, at least we know what has the potential to work," Doctor Cox said.

"You guys?" Carla called out before raising the volume on the radio.

All three of them glanced back at her. She was alone on the couch, clutching the radio to her chest.

"What?" Doctor Cox demanded.

"Just listen," Carla told them.

"…blackout due to an abrupt wave of vermin occupying the manholes. Not only are they gnawing on everything they can find, but aw man, the National Guard sent some of their guys down there, and whew, it looks like they're heading towards the water systems, Benny. There is no news yet on whether these rodents are infected, but I think it's in everyone's best interests to stay on the precautious side until this eases up. Drink bottled water or scotch or something, just stay away from the tap…"

Doctor Cox snorted, standing from his seat.

"Where are you going?" JD asked, slightly alarmed.

"You heard the man," the older man said with a wry grin. "I think it'd be in our best interests to knock back a couple of tumblers."

"I guess liver disease is the better way to go at this point," JD said with a resigned sigh.

JD laid in bed with his flashlight pointed at the ceiling, tracing over a crack in the plaster with the small beam of light. He heard the connecting door open, and dragged his eyes in that direction without lifting his head. "Doctor Cox?" he slurred softly as his mattress sunk under the other man's weight.

"Yeah?"

JD directed his gaze back onto the ceiling. "Fuck me?"

"Really?" Doctor Cox asked, sounding almost startled.

He closed his eyes and nodded. "Yeah." He felt the older man's lips on his neck as he straddled his waist, hot hands sliding underneath the fabric of his t-shirt.

"You got any lube, JD?" Doctor Cox murmured into his ear, his breath warm against his skin.

JD shivered, sitting up. He pressed an openmouthed kiss to Doctor Cox's mouth before pulling away slightly. "Yeah." He leaned back and extended his hand, pulling open his bedside table drawer and digging through it.

"Didn't think you'd think this far ahead, Newbie," Doctor Cox admitted, pressing a drunken kiss to his forehead.

"Yeah, well," JD murmured as he pressed the bottle into the older man's hand, "seems like I've been thinking of a lot of different things lately."

Doctor Cox reeled back to glare at him in the darkness. "I'm going to penalize you like you've never been penalized before for that near sentiment-ridden comment, Aubrey." And then he smashed his lips onto the younger man's, reaching between them to tug open his jeans.

TBC...

A/N: This was a lot longer than I intended it to be, but it all works out 'cause I won't be able to poop out another chapter until maybe the end of my semester. Or earlier, it depends. Thanks so much for sticking around for this, you guys! It's been a fun ride thus far.