My Janitor

When JD saw the Janitor at the hospital, that was one thing. He was supposed to be there; if JD wasn't expecting him, he would only end up tripped, slipped, mopped, knocked around, or possibly even tied up. He had to keep something of a watchful eye out there, and he didn't even bother hoping to not be tormented on any given day.

But outside the hospital, he put seeing the Janitor on his list of things that were Just Not Fair. The time he had off was supposed to be when he was safe... though, of course, it wasn't as though the Janitor hadn't threatened to come to his home, and it wasn't as though he didn't believe the Janitor would. Still, the guy had to sleep at some point, and he couldn't really devote that much of his life to harassing him... could he?

He edged his way down the aisle, hoping he could stay out of the man's view. It wasn't a particularly large grocery store — JD wasn't even sure it was a chain, and it was almost just a convenience store, really — but the tall shelves weren't impossible to hide behind. As long as he kept moving, staying as far away from the Janitor as he could manage...

But then he remembered that he was there for a reason, and he had shopping to do. He figured he could do both at once, but quickly got lost in what he was doing and forgot about the Janitor completely.

He was holding a half-gallon of milk, three bananas, and a jar of pickles, contemplating the practicality of muffin earmuffs — Earmuffins, he thought. Warm and tasty! — when a hand clamped down on his shoulder suddenly, making him jump. He struggled to keep his hold on everything, but the pickles were taking up most of his concentration — Damn slippery pickle jars! — and the milk slipped away just as he managed to awkwardly catch them between his arm and his side.

"You're going to have to pay for that, you know," the Janitor said behind him, speaking as matter-of-factly as he did at the hospital of his own work. "It's not like milk just grows on trees. Do you not appreciate the gift the cows have bestowed upon us?"

"They didn't do anything! People milked them! Stupid lazy cows," JD muttered. That's not fair, he thought a moment later, scolding himself. Cows never did anything wrong.

"I find that offensive," the Janitor said, following him as he made his way back to the dairy aisle. "You have no respect for my religion."

"You're Hindu?" JD asked with only the barest interest, wishing the man would just leave him alone.

"No. Jewish." JD turned around briefly, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "What? You think Christian cows are the ones giving you all that milk? You goyim — think you rule the world, don't you?"

"I'm not even sure what we're talking about anymore," JD said, grabbing another carton of milk from the middle shelf. He turned to head toward the register, but he hadn't realized just how close the Janitor had been and slammed right into him. The pickle jar slipped from his hands, shattering on the floor.

"You'll have to pay for that, too," the Janitor said, kneeling down in the mess and not caring, apparently, that his pants — Is he still wearing his uniform? He is! — were quickly soaking up the pickle juice. He did care, however, when a stray shard of glass cut his hand. "Oh God. I'm bleeding."

Against his better judgement, JD crouched down, taking his hand. The wound wasn't too deep, but it spread all across his palm and it was bleeding quite a bit. "Yeah, you are."

"I can't stand the sight of blood," the Janitor said.

JD gave him another confused look. "You work in a hospital."

"So?" the Janitor said, as though JD had meant it as as insult.

"You clean up this stuff all the time." JD looked around. "I think they have bandages in aisle four."

"I mostly clean up vomit and feces, actually. Occasionally urine." He got up, still clutching his hand and deliberately not looking at it. "You're a doctor — not a good one, but still — am I going to die?"

"No!" JD shook his head and led the way to the bandages, grabbing another jar of pickles when he passed aisle six. He needed pickles for his MasterPickle Theater night. Pickles, he had discovered, made excellent puppets, and were easily disposable — into his stomach, of course. "You have to have seen at least some blood. I know Mrs. Murphy threw up blood last week."

"That was blood? I thought it was chili."

"And Mr. Dean! That guy who kept itching at his ass-stitches? He bled all over his room."

"I made Randall clean that up."

JD sighed, looking through the bandages. He kind of wished the Janitor would just grab a box, because he was sure that no matter what he picked up or how he helped the guy, he'd find a way to take it as an insult. "The point is, I'm sure you've seen plenty of blood. How can you work in a hospital and not see any blood?"

"You'd be surprised."

JD knew he wasn't going to win, so he grumbled a "whatever" and grabbed a box of bandages, heading to the register as quickly as he could manage. "And, uh, clean-up in aisles seven and... um, dairy."

The clerk gave him a put-upon look and yelled to a man with an apron and a mop. "Yo, Jaime! Go clean up this kid's messes."

"You got it, Claire." He spotted the Janitor, nodding to him as he made his way to the milk spill. "Hey, man."

"Evening, Jaime."

JD thought maybe he shouldn't bother being confused around the Janitor anymore, but he was anyway. "You know him?"

"I know all the janitors around here. We have an annual conference and party. It gets pretty wild." He paused. "Although technically Jaime isn't a janitor, but we do allow his kind in, as long as they are part of Those Who Clean."

JD handed Claire — who was still glaring at him — the payment and immediately opened the bandages, grabbing the Janitor's hand and getting to work. "You'll need to take this off and clean it off when you get home. It doesn't look like it'll bleed for long, and it probably won't get infected or anything, but—"

He stopped. The Janitor raised an eyebrow. "But what?"

JD wasn't sure it was really safe for him to say it, but he was a doctor, and, personal tormentor or no, he had a moral obligation to help anyone he could. "Just... I'll look at it for you tomorrow at the hospital, okay?"

The Janitor almost looked touched. "You'd do that?"

JD looked unsure, but nodded. "Of course."

"Maybe you're not so bad," the Janitor said, clapping him on the shoulder.

With the hand he'd cut.

He winced, clutching the hand to his chest. After a moment, he narrowed his eyes at JD. "You did that on purpose."

Knowing there was no way to win, JD hurried out of the store as quickly as possibly, hugging his bag of groceries to himself.

---

"Did you know the Janitor's Jewish?"

"Really?" Elliot asked, looking up from Ms. Vance's chart. "I thought he was Taoist."

JD shrugged. "It's possible he was lying."

"About being Jewish?"

"About both, most likely."

Elliot rolled her eyes. "You don't give him enough credit. He's actually very sweet. And who lies about being Jewish, anyway?"

"The Janitor."

"You know, he's probably ethnically Jewish. You know, like his parents and grandparents were all Jewish and he's got all the tradition and stuff there? And then maybe he converted to Taoism himself. Finding his own path, you know."

JD shook his head. "I met his dad. Or... possibly his dad, anyway. I'm pretty sure he wasn't Jewish."

"How do you know?"

JD put down his clipboard, making his patient wince. "Sorry, Mr. Lewis. I forgot about your sensitive kneecaps."

"Just watch the clipboard in the future," Mr. Lewis moaned.

JD turned back to Elliot, giving her his Disbelief Face. "Elliot, the Janitor is a psychopath, and I'm pretty sure he wants to kill me."

"Well, now you're just overreacting! I've been on a date with him. He's very gentle." She held up her pen, eyes going wide. "Maybe he just has a crush on you."

"What?" JD scoffed. "I don't think so. Near-death experiences aren't very romantic."

Then he started imagining it. His wedding to the Janitor would end with a falling anvil instead of a kiss. Their honeymoon would have explosives, and their kids (adopted from China, and all adorable little girls) would greet him when they came home from school with poisoned blow darts and then make him guess which of ten vials contained the antidote.

He shook himself out of the daydream, muttering, "Damn ninja death-children."

"What?" Elliot asked.

"Nothing."

---

"...and Elliot said she thinks he has a crush on me." JD pouted, leaning against the nurse's station. "How could she even think that? He had a crush on her, and he was actually nice to her."

"That's true." JD could practically feel the "but" that was coming. "...But, on the other hand, Elliot is a girl."

JD narrowed his eyes. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Carla said slowly, making sure her voice was just soothing enough to keep him from overreacting without seeming condescending, "that sometimes men who don't want to accept their sexuality overcompensate when dating women — whether they're actually attracted to them or not — and react negatively toward the men they like."

JD stared, then shook his head. "That may be, but I still don't think the Janitor feels anything but loathing for me. He probably wants to eat me or something."

"Or something," Carla agreed, smirking. She gave JD a pat on the arm. "Trust me, Bambi. You know I have a sixth sense about these things."

He did. Curse her eye for lust! But it had to be off, just this once. There was no way the Janitor liked him, not in any way and especially not in a like-like way. "You're crazy. The Janitor isn't Jewish!"

"What?"

"I mean gay."

---

"...so apparently both Carla and Elliot think the Janitor has repressed sexual feelings for me."

"No way, man!" Good old Turk. At least he had some sense. "I mean, really, for you?"

Damn Turk. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Turk held up his hands defensively. "Just saying, JD — the guy's really into his job, and you do have a tendency to cause messes."

"I do not!"

"You sort of do. And didn't you stick a penny in one of the doors on our first day?"

"No, I didn't!"

"Well, then... maybe the guy does have a crush on you."

"I hate you."

---

"...and no one believes he wants to kill me. They all think he wants to have sex with me instead."

Dr. Cox was kind of his last hope for reason, because he was always reasonable. Of course, he also tended to hate talking about personal matters. "Marilyn, I am going to say this as simply as I can in the hopes that I can leave some tiny impression on that whoopee cushion you call a brain: Leave. Me. Alone. I don't care if the big bad Janitor hasn't been returning your calls and that makes you cry yourself to sleep with a box of chocolates every night. I don't care that your parents and friends don't understand your oh-so-special relationship. I don't care that no one believes you when you say he's coming back, because he loves you just so much you could hurl yourself off of a cliff with him because it would be so romantic. And I re-he-heally don't care that you are such a giant closet case that you've actually managed to become even more repressed than that pigtail-pulling moron and can't even figure out why he's singled you out for his 'special treatment.' What I do care about is whether or not Mr. Peterson has anything that's going to kill him, so if you could do your job and get me the results of his blood-work now, well, that'd be just fantastic."

"But—"

"Ah-ah-ah! Shut it." And then he left, and JD pouted all the way up to getting Mr. Peterson's test results back.

"I am not repressed."

---

"...and so even Dr. Cox thinks he's gay and in love with me. Or maybe he was just doing his usual insulting-me thing, but I can't be sure."

Coma patients were really good listeners. Mr. Putnam never told him the Janitor had designs on him.

Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one listening. "Insulting you? Sounds like fun."

JD spun around, nearly falling backwards over Mr. Putnam. The Janitor stood in the doorway, leaning against his mop. "How much did you hear?"

"Someone may or may not be insulting you. Personally, I hope he is." He stepped forward and stuck out his hand, still bandaged. "Hand time, doc."

Phew. JD really didn't need the Janitor, of all people, to know he'd been talking about him all day. Well, not all day — he'd done other stuff. Doctor stuff. "All right."

He unwrapped the Janitor's hand. The cut hadn't been bad, and it was already scabbing over. Really, he normally wouldn't have bothered looking, but it was the Janitor, and he figured that maybe, if he was really nice...

Nah. The guy never let up. But it would prevent him from using the hand against him... more than he already was sure to, anyway. "It looks fine. Just leave it alone so that it can heal and you'll be okay."

"Kiss it."

JD's head whipped up, and he stared incredulously at the Janitor, mouth open. "Sorry, what?"

The Janitor sighed, as though asking for a doctor to kiss his hand was a perfectly normal and reasonable medical procedure. "Mom always kissed my cuts and bruises to make them feel better. Kiss it."

"I— there's no medical information to prove that kissing a cut actually—"

"Kiss it."

JD brought the Janitor's hand to his lips, wincing slightly at the strong smell of disinfectant on it. "There. Better?"

"I knew you were gay."

JD stared, mouth open again. "I— but you—!"

"You kissed my hand. That's gay." The Janitor picked up his mop and swung it over his shoulder, hitting JD in the face in the process. "I've gotta go. I've got bathrooms to not clean, vomit to mop up."

JD stared for another moment as the other man left, then turned back to Mr. Putnam. "He's not a nice man."

"By the way..."

JD jumped, turning around again to see the Janitor sticking his head in the door. "Have you been just outside the door since you left?"

"Maybe." He shrugged. "Anyway, I thought I should tell you that your friends were right. I think I am repressing my sexuality."

Damn sneaky Janitor.

---

JD was halfway through his shift before he saw the Janitor again.

I really shouldn't have expected anything, he reflected from his position on the ground. He raised a hand to his nose, which had just hit the wall. Yep, he was bleeding.

He rose carefully, holding onto the wall and trying not to slip again on the over-waxed floors. The Janitor stood a few feet away, smirking.

"Ha. You're bleeding."

"I thought you were afraid of blood," JD said irritably.

"I meant my own," the Janitor explained, looking almost offended. "I mean, for God's sake, I work in a hospital. I see blood all the time."

JD suddenly felt very weary. "Look, you've got me for the day, so can I just go now?"

"Oh, I'm not done with you yet."

Before he could see it coming, the Janitor grabbed him by the front of his scrubs, shoving him into his tiny little office. It was empty of other people, but the lights were on, and JD could see that the poster of his face was still there. The door closed, and he turned around to see the Janitor waving a key around before dropping it into his pocket. "Oh, God. Are you going to kill me?"

He looked like he was considering it for a moment, then shook his head and set his mop aside. "Nah. Not today."

He took a step forward, and then another and another until he was flush against JD, the doctor's back pressed against the wall. "What are you—?"

And then the unthinkable happened: the Janitor kissed him.

JD barely had a chance to process it before there was a hand down the front of his scrubs pants and — Oh my God! — inside his boxers, stroking him quickly and roughly. He moaned, and then there was a tongue in his mouth, matching the hand for speed, and the Janitor's other hand was in his hair.

JD's first thought was that maybe he was going to die anyway.

His second thought was that he might possibly be repressing something, because it really wasn't all that bad. The Janitor was a surprisingly good kisser.

As he relaxed, he began to rock his hips forward, moaning a little more eagerly. His hands went up to the Janitor's shoulders — his surprisingly strong, manly shoulders — and he raised his leg slightly, rubbing against what he was pretty sure was the Janitor's own hard on.

And then it ended.

They key came back out, the door was opened, and he was shoved out, still flushed from the impromptu make-out session, still hard from the hand in his pants, his nose still dripping blood. He quickly straightened his clothes out and turned to the Janitor, who stood in the doorway, leaning against his mop again. "What was that?"

The Janitor shrugged, and then smirked. "Have fun finishing your day like that." He nodded in the direction of JD's crotch, and then slammed the door.

JD stood there a moment, and then realized he was being paged. He groaned and made his way to Mrs. Little's room, thinking hard about wrinkled old ladies in bikinis and not at all about the Janitor and his large, sure hands.

And definitely not about how right Elliot, Carla, Turk, and Dr. Cox had been.

Damn evil Janitor.