Hope you guys are enjoying My Unexpected Bad Habit so far! I've decided to plough on with the next chapter, as you all waited so darned long for the last one. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter - I'm going to enjoy writing it!

Chapter Eleven - Tripping

Dr. Cox POV

I wasn't surprised to find Newbie waiting for me in the doctors lounge; I hated using his fear of me against him (oh, who am I kidding, I love it) but ever since those text messages I sent him I felt he needed reminding that I was still above him and wasn't his 'friend'. Far from it.

In the back of my mind there was a little voice (sounding suspiciously like his) telling me to clear up the whole mess of what had happened on the roof, but I can't deny it - I was in denial. As far as I was concerned, it was something that would be pushed into the box in the back of my mind like so many of my childhood memories, labelled under the heading 'Things To Never, Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever talk about or think about again - EVER'. Let me tell you: that box rarely got re-opened. This would be one of those times where it simply would nawt be spoken of again.

I strode into the room and slammed a bunch of paperwork onto the table beside him.

"A random selection of patient histories from 1999 - 2004. Our resident Beelze-Bob wants them put in order of the severity of each case - you get the picture, patients who walked out of here within minutes at the front, deaths at the back. All the other stuff in the middle."

Newbie looked up at me, looking slightly put out. I sighed. "What, Maggie, too hard for you?"

He shook his head. "No, I just… I thought we'd be working with patients or something. Not doing administration work."

I rolled my eyes, frustrated as ever by the mere sound of his voice. "Apparently the local newspaper wants to do a page-long article about the hospital in the last five years - god knows why, we don't want to send all of our patients running - and so old Bobbo is desperately looking for a positive spin on it."

"So…" he thought for a moment. "He wants us to try and prove that patient deaths have decreased or something? That we're getting better?"

"Seems like it."

"I can do that," he said, clapping his hands on his knees as if he meant business. I rolled my eyes again - don't get me wrong here, I like enthusiasm, but coming off of him it annoyed me. Still, the kid was prepared to stay hours (I may have lied about the 'hour' thing… and I sure as hell wasn't going to tell him he was only getting paid for one hour of it) to do boring paperwork, so I would try to be… pleasant. Or at least, not unpleasant.

I sat at one end of the table, he at the other. I took half of the pile.

"Separate all of yours into groups of five, ranging from the severity of the patients condition and outcome," I instructed, flipping through the pages and feeling pretty bored already. "We'll collaborate at the end."

"Right-o." He picked up the first history and began to rove over it with his eyes. I watched him for a few moments, noticing the lines under his eyes from lack of sleep (or stress, couldn't tell which) and how pale he looked. I ignored the slight pang of concern and set to work on my own pile. God I hated Bob… he could have asked anyone to do this - hell, it wasn't the most taxing job in the world. I'd rather attempt life-saving surgery than have to rifle through histories.

For the first hour, we sat in silence, building up our separate piles, almost like a wall between us - as soon as the clock ticked over to 10pm, he looked up.

"Uhhh… Dr. Cox?"

"Whaaat is it Newbie?"

"Can I leave now?"

I glanced up at the papers that had accumulated around him.

"You don't look finished."

He blinked, his eyes confused. "I'm not."

"Then you can't leave yet."

"But…" he hesitated, blatantly weighing up the pros and cons of speaking his mind. I couldn't help but suppress a grin as I saw he was about to make the wrong move. "You said I only had to stay for an hour -"

"If a patient was coding but your shift had finished, would you just leave him?"

"…no…"

"Well then. Shut up and get on with it."

"I -"

"Yes?" I looked at him. He looked at me. For a few moments I was sure he was going to carry on with his whining, but instead he just shrugged.

"Nothing."

"You won't get paid for the remaining hours," I warned him as he started reading a new history. He shrugged again, though his face tightened slightly.

"That's fine. I've got nothing to do tonight anyway." I didn't miss the slightly bitter tone in his voice, and found myself half-pleased that he had no social life and half-annoyed.

We carried on for the next few hours, Newbie occasionally interjecting with random comments about the patients - couple of times I almost replied, but managed to simply contain it and offer a grunt as a reply instead. He seemed to get the picture, quietening and sighing, as if it were some great hardship to have such a lack of respect from me. What did he expect?

Eventually I finished mine, and impatiently waited for him to finish his - finally, he slapped the last one down on the first pile and said a tired, "Finished!"

I nodded briskly. "Right. Now let's put ours together."

He blanched. "You mean… stay longer?"

"Yup, that's what I mean."

Slowly he began to shake his head, a disbelieving smile appearing on his face. "I can't stay, Dr. Cox, I -"

"- have no social life whatsoever and therefore are just being a pathetic excuse for a doctor?" I knew it was harsh, but I didn't care. I'd asked him to work with me and he would damn well finish the job.

He stood. I admit, I was slightly surprised. "I need sleep. My shift starts at six tomorrow and no offence, but keeping people alive is a lot more important to me than staying here and doing your job for you." His eyes met mine, wary but fixed. I stood too, my voice coming out as a growl I had come to associate with him.

"Sit down, Newbie."

"No."

"I said SIT."

He sat.

"You'll stay as long as I damn well tell you to. This isn't school or college or medical school - this is your job, and when your boss tells you stay late and work, you stay late and work. You got it?"

Silence.

"Newbie, god damn it, you got it?"

He nodded stiffly. I walked around the table and sat to his left, moving my papers round so they sat opposite his, not bothering to look at him. He had really pissed me off. Since when had he adopted an attitude?

Silently we set back to work, collaborating our papers together - more than once I had to correct his placements, chastising him until finally he slammed his hands down on the table.

"I'm tired, okay? It'd be better for the both of us if I just left."

"You're going to stay and shut up. It's only a few mistakes, stop whining."

"But it's not just a few mistakes, is it? If you're so sick of me 'whining', you should've chosen someone else to do this with you." There was a bitterness to his tone and a frustration to his eyes that I rarely heard or saw. I raised an eyebrow.

"I chose you because you're my lapdog, Newbie, not because I wanted to hear you go on and on all night -"

"WHY am I your lapdog?" he said, his voice raised. "Why do you let me tag around with you all day? Why do we see patients together? Why can't you just tell me to leave you alone?"

I stood, towering over him - he had pushed me too close to the edge, again. "I already tried that though, didn't I? You didn't like it last time, what makes you think you can handle it this time?"

He balled his fists up - not as an action of violence, but to simply stem his frustration at me. I felt that old familiar sense of power building up behind my quietly authoritative tone.

"Because this time I won't come running after you so you can play more of your stupid mind games on the 'fragile little girl' that I am -"

"- NEWBIE."

He was all too close to the subject I refused to acknowledge. I knew if he carried on, he'd -

"What, are you going to kiss me again?"

His voice was taunting, upset and aggravated at the same time - it grated on me. Much as it had the first time we had been in here and things had become out of hand. The word 'kiss' scraped over my mind like a blunt knife, hazing my vision slightly - okay, now I was angry.

"Get out."

He stood.

"No. I deserve a damned explanation. You think that sending me a few text messages is going to solve everything? Do you honestly think, that after the way you've been recently, that acting like normal is just going to make it all go away?" His eyes blazed as he looked at me. "It's not, Dr. Cox, and I want you to explain it to me. This second."

I shut my eyes, slowly counting to six before I gave up.

"I'm warning you, Newbie, you need to get out. Now."

"Why?" That taunting tone again. "Scared you'll throw me up against a wall and whisper in my ear again? Scared that maybe you'll get so angry that, for whatever reason, you'll kiss me? Touch me? Rape me?"

Stupid. Newbie. Very. Stupid Newbie.

As my eyes opened again, full of rage and hate and loathing, he seemed to realise he'd gone too far. He swallowed hard, backing away and almost falling over his chair. His mouth worked over words that he blatantly wanted to utter, but failed. I took a step towards him, my own hands balling into fists for very different reasons - this was violent. Gone was the want to overpower him, tease him, make him feel vulnerable and helpless - gone was all of it.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I didn't… I just… you keep -"

"Quiet."

"No but I need to apologise, I got -"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, JD!"

He shut his mouth, his terror palpable.

"Don't you dare go throwing a word like that around. You don't know. You don't understand. You don't get to say that word like it means nothing, like you know what it means, like it…" I stopped, trying to control myself. I was so close to beating him to the floor. "What happened on that rooftop -" damn him, only he would be able to open that goddamned box, "was a mistake. It wasn't meant to happen. It won't happen again. None of what happened… none of it… will happen again."

When he spoke, his voice was shaking. "A mistake? How was it…"

"I tripped."

He blinked. I blinked back at him. I sure didn't mean to say that, but as soon as I did, the tension in the room seemed to fall away. Even as the kid began to grin, merging into laughter, even as I found myself half-smiling at my ridiculous answer, I could feel the tension slipping away like dust. For minutes, we both stood, metres apart, grinning and laughing - he kept stammering between laughter "you tripped?!", making me laugh more, making the reality of the situation slip away with the tension.

Slowly the laughter died down, bringing back the unwelcome silence. He found my eyes again, despite my wanting to stop him from doing so, his gaze full of questions and confusion. Clearly he didn't believe me - and why should he? I didn't even mean to say it, let alone have him believe me. I shook my head, running my hand over my face.

"It's not -"

"I know you wouldn't hurt me. Intentionally." His voice was thin, child-like, vulnerable - just like I'd once wanted him to be. I wasn't sure I believed him.

"Yes I would," I said quietly, making sure that he saw the truth of it in my eyes, hearing the truth of it though my lips. "I would hurt you Newbie. And it's for that reason and that reason alone that I tried to separate you from me yesterday."

He frowned, still confused. I sighed.

"I can't explain it properly, kid, but all you need to know is that I'm not your friend. I'm not looking out for your best interests. I won't pretend to either."

He began to nod, but then started shaking his head.

"So why do you always give me advice? Why do you help me?"

"I help you to become a better doctor, not a better person."

His hands clutched as his scrubs.

"But… to me, they're intertwined."

I relaxed my fists. "Then you need to work at separating the two. Otherwise you'll just make yourself miserable. You can't have me as your boss and your friend at the same time, it just doesn't work like that."

"Why can't it?" His voice was still pathetic, still weak, still full of child-like innocence. It was starting to annoy me, more for the fact of how it was really making me feel.

"It's just who I am. I can't… I can't care about you as a doctor and as a friend, because that's twice the amount of caring -" I sighed, irritated at myself for not being able to describe it properly. "I don't look at you that way. I look at you as the kid who works beneath me and whose screw-ups I need to fix."

Really?

There it was again, that voice that sounded like Newbie's in the back of my mind - I shunned it, determined not to listen to it.

"So what screw-up were you fixing last night?" His voice trembled - I looked at him again, seeing his body rigid, his eyes wide, leaning back slightly as if to avoid the reality of his question. I understood; I wanted to do the same.

"Newbie…"

"Please," he whispered, his eyes shimmering unnervingly. "Please, tell me. Help me. Help me understand."

I laughed, but it was all wrong. "I can't when I don't even understand."

Our eyes met again - the look in them was all too familiar from last night, and all at once I was pulled back into the memory, that 'click' that I had been forced not to ignore, the 'click' that I could feel coming again.

Don't you dare surrender to it again. He is a doctor, that's all. He's just another doctor. Another annoying fly on your windscreen that you need to wipe away.

Slowly, hesitantly, I watched as he shuffled slightly closer, his eyes fixed on mine. I fought the urge to step back - it would be a show of weakness. He kept moving forward, closer and closer until I could smell that stupid lavender shampoo, that masculine scent hidden behind it. I could hear the hitch in his breathing, see how dark his eyelashes really were, the dark circles under his eyes clearer than any other time before. Finally, I saw the delicate veins in his eyes, the strands of colour in his irises, the unmistakable glow of another 'mistake' in him.

His pupils dilated.

Get out of the way. Now.

"Newbie."

It was meant to be a whisper of warning, something to make him back away, but instead he closed the distance, his very soft, very warm lips very lightly brushing against mine - I could feel the shaking of his body from it, the nerves in his lips beating against mine, the stunted breathing - my eyes stayed open, as did his. He was watching me, looking at me for my reaction, fear and submission in them so strong that it sent a shudder down my spine; he didn't move, left his lips where they were -inviting me to make a move.

Very, very slowly, I moved forward so that his lips were properly on mine, fitting over them, familiar like my Red Wings jersey on a cold day. Gradually his eyelids fluttered shut, the little veins on the delicate skin oh-so-clear from where I was standing - this tiny vulnerability made me realise just what was going on, made me realise that I had let him do this - almost as if reading my mind, he pulled back, his face still close to mine, his eyes flying open and fixing on mine.

"What was that?" I whispered harshly, trying to ignore the overwhelming feelings in my stomach and lower, trying to ignore that once again, things were changing - when I really didn't want them to. I didn't need this.

He looked at me, vulnerability radiating from him as he said the simple words,

"I tripped."