Author's Notes: This is a companion-piece for "His Final Curtain". While not necessarily required in order to understand this one, it may give some insight into both Denise and Drew's actions and moods, as well as Cole's.

Enjoy!

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Drew didn't bother checking to see if Denise followed him out of the bar, too angry (and, admittedly, upset) to really care. He didn't want to end up taking it out on her anyway. He finally glared behind him, unsurprised when Denise was nowhere to be found. So he kept walking briskly, trying to burn off the excess energy and frustration.

For god's sake, it was just fucking MRSA. It wasn't like they could predict hospital-caused infections. They were doctors, not psychics for fuck's sake.

Before Drew knew it, his feet had taken him to Cole's dorm room, which was oddly quiet. Drew was buzzed, but he knew that Cole's room was usually a chaotic myriad of thumping music and yelled laughter. Upon closer listening, Drew finally heard the faint strains of something mellow and folky.

Perfect ammunition.

Drew began to open the door when a pale hand shot out and snatched his wrist. He jumped, ready to start a drunken brawl as he turned.

Denise stood there, her face infuriatingly calm and amused. "Seriously, Drew? You're going to try and blame him?"

"It's better than nothing," Drew replied restlessly.

"You're being such a bitch boy about this."

"What about you? None of your patients are dead."

Denise rolled her eyes, though the glint of alcohol was in her flushed face. She still didn't release his wrist. "Oh, can it already, you baby. Blaming him's not going to make you feel any better. You're just pissed because Cox ripped you a new one."

"Thanks so much for helping me out with him, by the way."

"You're a big boy; at least, I thought you were."

Their argument soon turned to yelling and low-blows, and neither heard the door open from Cole's room. The younger man looked at them blearily and rolled his eyes.

"Guys, people are trying to study, yo!" Cole finally yelled when he found a quiet space to interrupt.

Drew and Denise whirled on him, and he held his hands up in surrender.

"Just sayin, you get me?" Cole asked, his eyes bloodshot and his face also flushed.

Drew looked over Cole's shoulder, recognizing immediately the signs of a psycho-study session following the deaths of patients. Legal pads were sprawled along notebooks, texts strewn over the bed and the laptop glowing impatiently for his return.

"You can't fight MRSA with anything but tetracyclines," Drew pointed out finally.

Cole rolled his eyes. "Look, dawg, I understand what you're trying to say. You do things on your terms, you let me do them on mine." He began to shut the door, but Denise caught it before Drew could.

"He's right, cupcake," Denise sneered. "And none of your fancy text books are gonna say anything different."

Cole let go of the door, continuing to ignore their presence as he settled back on the bed. He picked up a pencil and a legal pad that didn't look completely torn through, balancing a textbook in front of him.

Drew cautiously approached him, noting the seven empty beer bottles that were rolling on the floor, and the eighth open one.

"Got a beer?" Drew finally asked, trying to keep his voice casual.

"Help yourself," Cole retorted absently, looking at something on his laptop.

Denise reluctantly entered the room, wrinkling her nose at the bikini posters that lined the walls. "Interesting décor."

Cole dropped his pencil to his book. "Do you two have a point or are you just here to do another hell week for us lowly medical students?"

Drew sighed and sat on the bed across from Cole. "Look, man…I don't like you," he said bluntly.

Cole shrugged with a roll of his eyes. "I don't like you either."

"But five patients died. And nothing you look up and find is going to bring them back. It doesn't matter what we could've done."

"Patients matter," Cole muttered, his eyes glaring and drunken. They were suspiciously bright. "Would you just leave already, both of you?"

Denise raised a hand. "I second that motion. Let's go, bitch boy."

Drew waved her off. "You can leave if you want to; I'm trying to help a friend."

Cole glared at him. "I don't want your help." He fisted his hands tightly, apparently reigning in a rare flare of temper. "There was no reason those people had to die. We should've treated the cystectomy patient with tetracyclines instead of methicillin."

"We don't want the other bacteria getting resistant to those too," Drew pointed out. "We made the right call. Hell, even Dr. Cox backed us up."

"Well, he's an angry douche bag," Denise pointed out. "Should've stood up to him."

Cole and Drew looked at her.

"Not helping!" Drew snapped.

"Wasn't trying to; I don't want to sit here trying to make nice-nice with Legacy-puss here," Denise retorted peevishly, crossing her arms.

"You're the RA; you don't have any words of wisdom at all?" Drew pointed out, his voice angry again.

"I told you to take care of that emotional BS," Denise shot back. "And we can all see where Sad Eyes ended up."

"He's doing very well in the psych ward," Drew laughed off.

"That kid was six years old!" Cole finally snapped, interrupting them again, his face redder than before and his mussed hair looking tangled as he dragged a hand through it. "He was getting treated for appendicitis; he was going home."

Denise felt her stomach clench when Cole's eyes began to shine. "Oh, please tell me he's not gonna cry," she muttered uncomfortably.

"Get out," Cole snapped at her, and stood to face her. She was a good few inches taller, however, and she faced him head-on.

"Or what?" she retorted with an angry smirk that Drew recognized all too well. Her fists were clenching slowly, and the smile was fucking dangerous in that particular combination of tense anger.

Drew stepped between them then, pulling Cole behind him. "Just stop," he said, unable to keep the anger from his voice as well.

But Cole was having none of that, and he shoved Drew hard enough to have him tumbling unsteadily into Denise, who shoved him back. Drew, now completely off-kilter, fell back against Cole, who lost his footing as well and sent them both to the floor.

Denise swept to her knees easily, glaring at them both. "You're being intolerable, both of you. You're going to be doctors." She sighed, trying to get her own bearings through the adrenaline rush she had been receiving from the anger and the shoving, from everything, because Jesus, her patients had suffered too.

Like the nineteen-year-old who needed a lung transplant after the infection had nearly shot her lungs.

Cole sat behind Drew, breathing hard through his mouth and one of his arms tangled for support with Drew's. His eyes darted between Denise's face and Drew's head, and something began building with clicking notches. He wasn't sure as to the feeling, but he knew with every click that snapped in his head and limbs, the tension grew.

"We're going to be great doctors," Drew spit back suddenly, taking Cole's side because if nothing else, he knew it'd infuriate her and make for great sex later (well, if she got past it enough to put out tonight).

"Not acting like this, we aren't," Cole muttered, wondering if he could reach his mini-fridge from here and get another beer (his had been knocked to the floor when he'd jumped up to look at Denise).

"He's right for once," Denise said, crossing her arms and still kneeling in the floor. She finally eased back, balancing her elbows on her knees. "Okay, god forbid I actually care, but look…what happened over the past week…you can't do anything about it. MRSA is there, and all of know that staph is one of the worst infections that ICU patients can get."

"You don't have to tell us what staph is," Drew grumbled, not backing from Cole's side. "We're not idiots."

"Then I suggest you quit acting like morons, get your tighty-whities unbunched and act like mature adults," Denise pointed out, her tone clipped and angry all over again.

Drew suddenly shot forward, pinning Denise to the floor. She tried to knee him viciously, but Cole grabbed her ankle suddenly and held it down.

"Dude, no kicking in the nads; guy code," Cole said, finally grateful to have something to control.

"Why do you have to be like this? It's hard on any doctor to be in this situation; we're just medical students," Drew said in her face.

Denise finally managed to kick Cole, eliciting a squawk from him, but missed Drew's groin by inches. It was enough to make him wince at the close contact, but then she had him pinned to the wall, kissing him furiously and running her nails down his back.

Cole rubbed his neck awkwardly, and then gingerly pushed at his hip where she'd kicked him. "Look, could you two move this elsewhere and just leave like I asked you to already?"

When they didn't leave, Cole rolled his eyes and grabbed a textbook and his laptop.

"Look, if you're not going, then I am," Cole muttered. "Do a brother a favor and make the bed when you're done."

His textbook hit the floor with a thunk, and his laptop was slid to the desk. Denise shoved Drew against Cole, who hit the floor and grabbed Drew's hips for balance.

Denise shot him a glare over Drew's shoulder, her face unsmiling and level. "You're adorable when you're not acting like a douche bag, you know that?"

Before Cole could come up with a cocky response, her smooth lips were tracing over his mouth and pushing Drew harder into his bruised hip. Cole grunted, fingers tightening on Drew's narrow waist. He felt Drew stiffen between them, alcohol making it entirely too hot and too intense for any more words to be spoken. It hadn't gotten weird (well, as far as weird was at this medical school) until Drew got turned around to face Cole and the younger student felt a different set of lips assaulting his own.

Cole jerked against the wall, and instinctively brought his hands up from Drew's hips to shove him back. Denise grabbed his hands before they could land, bringing them back down to their original spot. Cole stiffened further, trying to ignore the swipe of arousal beginning to heat in his chest and stomach even as he pushed forward to get more contact.

Drew grunted in surprise, hands dropping to pull at the hem of Cole's shirt.

"Now that's hot," Denise ground into Drew's ear, urging him forward and racing her hands beneath his shirt.

"What the fuck is going on?" Cole asked, his eyes owlish and still shot with drink as he jerked back, head thumping against the wall.

"Would you just shut up for once and leave it alone?" Drew grumbled and kissed him against just to shut him up.

Cole watched through hooded, buzzed eyes as Denise bit at Drew's neck, Drew's face far too close to his own and hands racing in all sorts of places they shouldn't be. Cole drew his hands up Drew's chest, feeling hard muscle and flat planes where soft breasts and rounded skin should've been. His skin was overheated, hard, and all sorts of wrong flooded the room as Denise's hands bumped into Cole's own, and helped Drew pull at shirts and clothing.

Papers and textbooks flew as Denise yanked the top comforter from Drew's bed, sending everything to the floor as the three of them rolled around on it.

There would be time enough later for freaking out, for the inevitable hazing that Cole would have at both their expense. Time enough later for Drew and Denise to make his life a living hell the first and last time that sort of blackmail would happen.

Cole decided maybe he wouldn't do it at all, because Lucy, for one, was just not as good as the three of them together. Secondly, there was trust flying around the room in a heavy, tense sort of wave, and Drew was pretty sure that none of them wanted to lose that between the three of them. Lastly, the release of tension, anger and death was palpable as Denise walked them both into the sheer comfort that being physically close could offer.

They didn't speak as they lay in the bed later, Drew snoring quietly on Denise's chest and Cole wrapped around them both. Denise lay awake, watching them both and running her fingers through the two different textures of hair.

Drew's soft snoring stopped abruptly, and he raised his head to meet Denise's gaze head-on. "What brought this on?" he asked quietly.

Denise shrugged, twisting her fingers around Cole's curly hair. "He really is adorable when he's not being an idiot." She gave Drew a side-long glance. "Not like you were complaining."

Drew's face reddened in the darkness as Cole's arm, slung low on his hips, tightened and he felt the flat expanse of a male chest curl closer to his back. "I wasn't," he finally muttered, leaning his head to rest on the pillow.

Denise waited till he was asleep to drift an arm over his shoulders and gently brush Cole's arm in sleep. She leaned her head on the pillow, picking her lip with a thumb and first finger as she thought about the night. It was an old habit, picking at her mouth, and she tangled the hand into Drew's hair this time just to quit doing it.

She finally fell asleep without solving much of anything, decidedly against trying to sort anything out but the fact that they'd been released, taken away for a brief moment from death, doctoring and god knew what else was on their shoulders at the moment.

When Cole woke in the morning, Drew was still there, but there was no trace Denise had ever been in the room.

Well, except for the footprints in the shaving cream that now covered his room, his notes and everything in between. Drew was sporting a shaving cream beard and honey all over his feet. There was a raccoon pawing at the window.

Strings were everywhere, though it looked like Denise had torn through half of them just to get out, and it looked like she'd snagged some of Cole's clean clothes since hers were strewn about the room, if the open dresser drawer were any indication.

There was a bucket hanging by the door, and feathers stuck everywhere by the jamb of it. It looked very much as if a chicken had been de-feathered and then de-gutted in the same place, what with the honey and ketchup in the floor. Mustard had been squirted on the walls as well. The only thing that looked as if it'd been spared was his laptop (which he'd find out later, someone had changed his password and he couldn't figure out what it was to save his life).

Cole looked around in horror. Someone else had been in the fucking room. Someone must've seen them.

And all of his scrubs were fucking covered in something that looked suspiciously like fucking horse crap, and god knows it probably was, since it smelled like it too.

Drew was still snoring lightly beside of him on the double bed, and Cole glanced at the clock.

The alarm clock that had been turned off by whoever had been in the goddamn room.

Fuck.

xxxxFINxxxx

Author's Notes: So, this started out as a simple companion-fic to "My Final Curtain", but I think it's just asking for another chapter, like an addict asks for another hit, grawr. Let me know, folks.

xxElisexx