A/N: Everything goes downhill from here, oh yes.
Also, I'm sorry to hear that a lot of reviewers have been through similar relationships before. I've never been in an abusive relationship, and I'm sorry that anyone would ever have to go through things like this.
Raising a Hand
by LQ Aredhel
Chapter Five
JD sat up, barely noticing the arm slide off his stomach. He stared straight ahead, not wanting to believe the image next to him. His breathing became harder and he realized that he was having a panic attack.
"Okay, okay, okay," he whispered, trying to get himself to calm down. He slid out of the bed and gasped as sharp pain pierced his lower half. His chant changed into "Oh god, oh god, oh god," and he stumbled into the bathroom.
JD whimpered as he inspected the dark purple hickey on his neck and the bite marks running across his shoulders and chest; they certainly made the slight discoloration on his cheek seem like nothing. The thought wasn't very comforting, and JD closed his eyes, leaning against the sink, and just tried to breathe; his lungs felt like they would explode.
"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," he chanted under his breath. "It's no big deal, you're fine, everything is okay." But inside his head was different: I was drunk, he knew I had too much, he took advantage of me, does this count as rape? Did he rape me? Oh god…. No, there's no way….
He opened his eyes and stared himself down in the mirror. "Calm down," he told himself, taking long deep breaths. "Everything is fine. There is no reason to panic. It's just…it's just sex. Right?"
The door to the bathroom opened and Daniel walked in, completely nude. He looked slightly concerned at JD, who was still breathing like he'd just run a marathon and leaning against the sink trying desperately to cover himself.
"Don't you have work soon?" Daniel asked, walking around JD to use the toilet. JD stared at the open door and pretended that Daniel wasn't using the bathroom right in front of him.
"Yeah," he answered, not knowing what time it was. He fought hard to control his voice, but it came out breathy and high anyway.
"Last night was…wonderful," Daniel said. JD heard him walk up behind him and shivered as his arms circled JD's shoulders. "I've never been with someone so open."
JD didn't know what he meant; some details about the night before were muddled or lost. "I was drunk," he told him in a quiet voice.
Daniel kissed a bite on his shoulder, making him wince. "Yeah, you were pretty messed up, but you were still good," Daniel reassured him.
"You knew I was drunk," JD continued, his voice becoming stronger. "You knew that I was out of it, that I wasn't thinking straight." He shrugged him off and turned around. "How could you do this?"
Daniel looked incredulous. "What are you talking about? So you had a little more to drink than usual, so what? It helped, it made you relax and have fun."
"I'm not gay, Daniel!" JD practically yelled, his voice wavering. "I like girls, I've never even been with a guy before!"
Daniel just shrugged. "Obviously there's a first time for everything." JD felt his throat thicken and tears begin to well up in his eyes. "Look," Daniel continued, his voice raising, "you can't tell me that you didn't enjoy it, because there's obviously evidence of that. And you sure as hell can't tell me that it didn't mean anything to you, because I know you better than that." JD was too shocked to reply. "I know that you have problems with relationships, but ours is perfect," Daniel explained, backing JD further into the bathroom towards the bathtub. "We understand one another the way no one else can; we have a rare gift, Johnny, and I won't let you screw that up!"
"What are you talking about?" JD demanded. "We're friends, Daniel." He knew that his voice wasn't as powerful as he'd meant it to be. Daniel didn't look convinced.
"I can't believe you," Daniel spat maliciously. "You only care about yourself! That's all you ever talk about, all you ever think about. You and your idiot friends who don't even seem to like you! How stupid can you be!"
"They—" Daniel's arms went out, and the next thing JD knew, he was toppling over the side of the tub, the back of his head knocking into the far edge. He looked around dizzily for a moment before realizing that Daniel was towering above him, still talking.
"Don't interrupt me, Johnny, just listen." He began to pace across the bathroom. "They abandon you for weeks just because you're sad. How's that for friendship? Then you're constantly talking about some doctor who is supposed to be so competent and so caring while he hates your guts and insults you every chance he gets! Face it, Johnny, your friends are assholes! They barely like you, and they sure as hell don't understand you; not like I do. I mean, don't we have fun? We watch movies, we talk, we help one another! What more could you possibly want?"
JD stared blankly up at him from his position, sprawled across the edges of the tub.
Daniel sighed. "I have to go to work, and so do you." He looked down at JD's unmoving face and smiled compassionately. "Will you be here tonight?" He frowned when JD didn't answer, and finally lightly kicked JD's dangling foot and stormed out of the bathroom, muttering, "You can be such an asshole sometimes."
JD listened from the tub until he was sure that Daniel had left the apartment. Then he carefully pulled himself to his feet, swaying as he made his way back into the bedroom to find his scrubs from the day before and pulled them on. According to the clock in Daniel's kitchen, he wasn't due at the hospital for another hour, but there was nothing JD wanted more at that moment than to leave. He didn't even bother to take a shower, even though his entire body felt sticky and smelled like sweat and sex...the smell made him nauseous. He ignored it and rode Sasha to Sacred Heart.
JD was still a little dizzy as he approached the nurse's station to get his charts. It wasn't physical, he decided. He was just...shaken. Trapped in his head was an image of Daniel standing over him, yelling...and JD couldn't decide whether he was more upset about sleeping with Daniel, or Daniel's reaction to being rejected. Mostly he just didn't want to think about anything that had happened. That he'd slept with a man...it was just confusing and embarrassing. But, he'd been drunk. It wasn't even an excuse this time; it was true, he'd been completely hammered and taken advantage of...and that made it so much worse.
He couldn't seem to keep his eyes from welling up; he felt betrayed.
Finally, a voice shook JD from his thoughts, and he realized that he'd been leaning against the nurse's station, staring into space for several minutes.
"You're here early, Betty," Dr. Cox said, half-distracted by the chart in his hands. "Finally realized that sleep is overrated? Trust me, I could have told you that." He looked up at JD tiredly and nodded at a stack of five or six charts at the end of the counter. "Those are yours; you can get started aaaaaanytime now."
JD nodded, noting the lack of biting remarks. Dr. Cox was almost talking to him like they were co-workers, maybe even friends. JD allowed himself to feel a little wave of giddiness, before turning to pick up the stack of charts.
"Oh, and Cassandra," Cox continued. It was too much to ask for civility, JD decided, sighing. "You have blood on the back of your scrubs; very attractive" JD turned to look at him, surprised. Dr. Cox seemed to pause, then look up, confused. "How long have you been here?"
Blood?
JD shook his head and chuckled; he knew it sounded really, really fake, but he took the time to come up with an excuse. "I was helping with a surgery earlier," he explained even as he waved and backed down the hallway towards the nearest men's room.
After checking all the stalls for feet and locking the door, JD inspected his head in the mirror, carefully prodding the back with his fingertips. Sure enough, his hair was covered in dried blood, and there was a sensitive lump under his hair. He didn't think about it; he refused to think about it, and instead delicately rinsed his hair and the back of his neck in the bathroom sink until all that remained was a light line of red on the top of his scrubs. Afterwards, a million thoughts raced through his head.
It's not so bad, part of him said. Just a bump, that's all. A tiny nick, not a lot of blood.
Another part of him wondered if his dizziness was actually due to a mild concussion rather than emotional shock. Or a combination of the two.
And what would he tell Dr. Cox if he later realized that JD only arrived two minutes before he saw the blood? How many times a week could he slip and hurt himself?
The latter question made JD snicker; he could fall plenty of times, and Dr. Cox was well aware of that fact. At least he had that going for him.
The questions continued to run through his head as he stared himself down in the mirror for the second time that day. What else would be a problem?
The hickey on his neck was clearly visible; he should have gone home and grabbed a turtle-neck before coming to work. And a shower. There was nothing more JD wanted at that moment than to take a shower and wash away everything that had happened. Why hadn't he taken a shower before coming in to work? He could always take one now, of course; his shift didn't technically start for another half an hour.
And then JD thought of Dr. Cox. What if Dr. Cox got mad at him for not starting work like he'd suggested? What if his mentor had been treating him with less disdain because JD had been working harder? What if Dr. Cox became angry that JD didn't get straight to work? He didn't want to appear ungrateful to Dr. Cox for his kindness. Not that he'd actually been kind...
JD took a deep breath, realizing that he'd been zoned out for a while. And he had to wonder whether it was his normal zoning or the bump on the head.
Deciding to forgo the shower until his lunch break, JD wandered back to the nurse's station and flipped through his charts. If his raised emotional state was anything to go by, today was going to be a long, hard day.
Carla showed up for work a couple of hours later. She took one look at JD's neck and tired eyes before shaking her head. Before he could even say hello, she began, "Oh, no you didn't Bambi. Did you go home with some random girl last night?"
JD opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off.
"You know that's not safe. Oh, don't tell me that you got back together with Danni again, you know that she's no good for you."
"Carla," he finally cut in, "nothing happened last night. I just stayed over with a friend." The hickey, you idiot! his head screamed. Crap.
She looked at him skeptically. "And by friend, I hope you don't mean new failed love interest."
Turk suddenly pulled up next to her. "You gotta 'new failed love interest', JD?" he asked, sounding interested.
JD raised a brow at Carla. "I don't know why she would suddenly jump to that conclusion, but--"
"Maybe because of the huge hickey on your neck and that sad puppy-dog look in your eyes?" Carla explained, giving him that 'caughtcha' look. "You know the rules, Bambi, no talking about ex-girlfriends." She turned her back to him to flip through some paperwork.
Turk looked at him regretfully. "Sorry man. Hope it all works out, though." He hopped down from the counter and wandered down the hall.
JD shrugged to himself; he wasn't going to tell them about what happened anyway, it was too embarrassing. What kind of unmanly man gets drunk and sleeps with his male friend? Plus, getting shoved around wasn't exactly emasculating either. No, he wouldn't tell anyone; it would be better if he could just forget about it, put it behind him.
Speaking of behind him, JD suddenly felt a hand on the back of his head, running through his hair. He hissed and jumped as the hand ran over the sensitive lump, and turned to see Dr. Cox glaring at him.
"I thought so," the older doctor proclaimed, sounding angry. "What's that all about, Lucy? Fall off the top bunk again?" JD gaped at him, unable to gather his thoughts fast enough to spew out an excuse. "That blood was yours, wasn't it? You've been shadow-boxing again, haven't you? Knocked yourself right out of the park, good for you. But Newbie," he grabbed hold of the front of JD's scrubs and pulled him so that their faces were inches apart, "don't you dare lie to me again. I'm not an idiot, and I know when something's going on. If you have a head injury, you get checked out before you come into work with a concussion and risk the lives of all of the patients already in your worthless hands. Do you understand me?"
JD had rarely seen him so focused, so angry. "Yeah," JD stuttered, half-expecting Dr. Cox to punch him if he didn't reply right away. "Okay, I'm sorry."
Dr. Cox released his shirt. "Now go get yourself checked out and don't come back until you're actually fit to work. If that's even possible." He stalked off.
JD turned to see Carla looking at him oddly.
"You hurt your head?" she asked. "What happened?"
JD shrugged and smiled sheepishly. "I fell." She shook her head, sighing, and went back to work.
After being examined by Dr. Beardface (and thanking God that Elliot wasn't the one to do it), JD was declared physically fine and sent back to work. He avoided Dr. Cox as best he could, for some reason feeling horribly guilty for making him so angry when Dr. Cox had been nothing but civil toward him earlier. Normally an angry lecture from his mentor wouldn't upset him so much, and JD had to wonder whether the whole situation with Daniel had somehow made him overly sensitive. He really just wanted to go home and curl up into a ball, and every word that was said to him made him want to cry. Was this how PMS felt? He was just so exhausted and stressed out that when Elliot found him towards the end of his shift to tell him that she had to break their plans, he almost broke down and let the tears flow.
"My best friend from high school is in town and I haven't seen her for like seven years, can you believe it!?" Elliot explained, her words nearly too quick for JD to understand. "I know we haven't hung out in a while, but seven years is a tad longer than a few months, you know what I mean? Look, I'll so make it up to you as soon as I can, but Lizzy's waiting for me. We'll reschedule for this weekend, okay?" She left before he could reply.
Suddenly, as he sat in the locker room trying to work up the energy to take a shower before he left the hospital, Daniel's words from this morning were flowing through JD's mind:
"You and your idiot friends who don't even seem to like you! How stupid can you be!... They abandon you for weeks just because you're sad. How's that for friendship? Then you're constantly talking about some doctor who is supposed to be so competent and so caring while he hates your guts and insults you every chance he gets! Face it, Johnny, your friends are assholes! They barely like you, and they sure as hell don't understand you; not like I do."
And then the tears really did come, because then JD felt the full weight of those words, and he could understand exactly where they'd come from. Daniel hadn't just made those things up off the top of his head; he knew JD, and he listened to everything JD told him, and he knew JD's friends through the stories he heard, and everything he said about them was true. Elliot didn't give a shit whether or not she gave JD the brush off. Carla didn't care that JD was hurt, emotionally or physically, and Turk listened to whatever Carla said. Dr. Cox...he was barely civil only when JD didn't do anything stupid. But he always did something stupid. And none of them cared whether or not JD was freaking out at that very moment because he couldn't figure out whether or not he'd been raped the night before. They didn't care that JD had never felt so horrible, so dirty and lonely, in his entire life, and JD was sure that they didn't give a shit that, as embarrassing as it was, JD couldn't stop crying.
The tears just wouldn't stop, so JD stripped down and showered, letting the water wash away the evidence of his weak moment. He washed away the evidence of the night before; the sweat and Daniel's musky scent and the scattered memories of pain and pleasure that had lingered throughout the day. JD made his mind blank, dressed, and exited the hospital only to find himself standing, once again, outside of Daniel's door.