Pieces of Him

Promises at a Deathbed

Hey guys!!

Sorry for the super long hiatus. :(  Writer's block and AP Bio is killing. Hope you enjoy this part. :)

Drew's POV

"Cory, what the hell were you thinking?" Drew shook his head in exasperation, wishing his friend wouldn't always get into so much trouble.

Cory stayed mute.

Drew gave a cursory glance to Cory's own injuries- of course Mason hadn't gone down without a fight- and silently went to the medicine cupboard. Standing in front of it, he was thankful for his studies in med as inside were piles of pills, bottles of colored liquid and all different types of bandages that he rarely used. He took out what he needed, double checking to see if they were still safe to use, and handed them to Cory, who accepted them with a nod of thanks.

Drew ran his hand over his face: a signature move when he was tiredly upset. Drew could only just imagine how Cory was feeling. To have your girlfriend cheat on you to get revenge was a whole other story compared to your girlfriend dying. At least you knew she didn't want to die, that it wasn't a planned move. Even when it was someone you didn't exactly like, it still hurt to be betrayed.

If Drew knew Cory, and he did, Cory would be going over exactly what happened in his head. Thinking about Mason. About Melissa. And Drew rather hoped, about why Cory was dating Melissa in the first place.

Stupid stupid stupid Cory. To be stuck with that... that... bitch. That was it. He was going to take his own action. Screw whatever Cory said. He deserved better. Melissa deserved worse. Period.

He looked at Cory reflexively, who seemed a million miles away. Drew bit his lip in worry and entered his room, taking out a piece of paper and a dark blue pen as he went.

Cory's POV

Drew looked a bit troubled and, though it frightened him a bit to say it, calculating. Drew was the advice-giving, better tempered one, and basically the better part of Cory. Cory was always the more impulsive one, the reckless one, though Drew was by no means less of a lover of improvisation.

Cory nursed his wounds absentmindedly, still staring at the door Drew had closed carefully behind him. His heart ached. It wasn't only the Polaroid image.

Of course Melissa had asked Cory to buy a Polaroid camera instead of the stuff she'd asked him to buy originally. She knew it would hurt the most if something he did was the downfall of their relationship. Cory knew it was his fault. If he hadn't provoked her at the party. If he wasn't so drawn to the girl. If he didn't try to deliberately piss Melissa off at every opportunity he got...

What drove the pain even deeper was that the images had gone up online and when people had asked if Melissa and Cory had broken up, she had answered with a blithe yes and the additional information that she was with Mason now.

Cory had hated being with Melissa, being practically bound to her, but now that she was like this towards him, he had no idea what to think. It wasn't that Cory missed her, but the fact that Cory couldn't face the fact that he and Melissa weren't together anymore. So many times he had asked himself why he was doing this, especially since it dealt him so much crap and he always came to the same answer:

Because his dad asked him.

A few months ago...

A rather unshaven Cory laying on a worn dirty couch in a bare hospital room. Faint dusty light streaming through the closed curtains. Tubes sticking here and there, weaving together, trying to form some sort of miracle that was unlikely to happen. A man lying like a centerpiece in the middle of the tangled web.