Sick Days and Missed Calls

Finis

Veronica let herself into J.D's house, her heels clicking against the hard floors. She had waited for J.D to take her to school, and then she had waited for him at school, and after, and still he didn't show up. She set down her things near the entrance, slipping off her shoes and padding down the hall towards the kitchen where she heard someone poking around.

Craning her head around the door Veronica saw J.D sitting at the bar, his back turned to her. He had a row off prescription medication lined in front of him with a piece of dry toast and a cup of something blue and chemical looking. Veronica didn't need any further prompting before coughing to warn him of her presence and walking in, grabbing the strange blue liquid. It looked worryingly like a cleaning product and she brought it to her face to smell, surprised to find that it was in fact blue gatorade.

"I didn't know you liked this stuff," she said easily, as if not having checked for poison and sitting down at the bar next to Jason, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl and biting into it with a crunch. "And why, may I ask, weren't you at school? I waited all day for you."

J.D was looking at her curiously, with an odd, glassy look in his eyes that she almost recognized but couldn't place. He blinked a few times, as if making sure she was there, his normally cool attitude somewhere lost inside the child which had just made itself known.

"I tried to call you," he said by way of explanation, sipping from the blue tinted glass. "And I don't like this stuff," he added, cringing as he swallowed the chemically altered sugar water. It burned as it rushed it's way down his stipped-raw esophogis, sloshing as it reached his stomach. He could feel it, and it wasn't an entirely comfortable feeling.

Veronica watched him carefully, looking him over and checking for visible injury. Why hadn't she gotten his calls? Why was he acting like some kicked puppy, instead of the somewhat sociopathic and anxiety ridden near-man she knew and loved?

After his father left it became clear that that wasn't the only thing holding him back from sympathy and easy love, or much feeling in general. He was kind to her, most careful with her. He made sure never to play rough, never to bite too hard. With other people though...it had become more and more clear that he lacked the ability to easily put himself in other people's shoes, or even imagine emotion for anyone except Veronica herself. She had listened to him rave about killing people, about tearing them apart if they hurt either himself or her, and she had rubbed his back as his own emotional urges tore him apart from the inside. He would never do what he wanted to do, he knew that. She knew that. It still gave them both quite a scare.

After a little convincing they brought it up with his therapist who came to the conclusion that he was a sociopath in some form, though there was definitely a scale and he was on the lower part of the spectrum.

Now that tendency was no where in sight, and instead he looked genuinely scared. It had been a while since she had seen him look that way and it broke her heart a little bit. Tore at her soul. Leaning forward she put her arms around him, letting him rest his messy-haired head in the crook her her neck.

"What's the matter? Why weren't you there?"  she asked him, kissing the top of his head and looking over his shoulder. "I'm not mad, J.D, I just need to know why you're acting this way." She heard a low chuckle in response, and the feeling of someone wrapping their arms around her waist.

"I'm just a little under the weather, darling," He soothed, brushing her worries away with his cool and artfully sarcastic voice. "Nothing a little gatorade and some heavy duty drugs can't handle," he mumbled, almost teasingly, gesturing with one arm towards the slew of orange bottles. Veronica went about reading the little labels; One for fevers, one for coughs, one to calm him down, another to counteract the side effects of the latter, and a few to calm violent or inappropriate urges.