Scent of Love - Spin-off one shots

Spin-off 1: Midnight phone calls

A/N

Because I needed this. Yay for self-indulgent stuff. Also, warning for filth. In reasonable amounts;)

Mitch was sure he'd heard it wrong. He must have. There was no way. No.

Eyebrows shooting up in undisguised surprise, he gasped, "Come again?"

"It's just a week," Scott assured him, trying to dismiss the whole thing with a nonchalant shrug. "You won't even notice I'm not here."

Except he did. He would notice every single day when he would wake up in the morning with no one to snuggle up to, no one to whisper sweet nothing's into his ear, no one to kiss a trail down the side of his neck, no one to hold him close. He would notice when a week morphed into a fortnight, and further into a month. He would notice when midnight phone calls no longer came at midnight. He would stay up until one, then two, then three, but eventually the phone calls stopped being late and started being practically nonexistent. That was when he knew it wasn't going to work.

He confronted him once, his tone accusatory when he demanded the answers. All Scott did was tell him he was still at work and sorry and to not wait up. It was 8 p.m. in Sydney. Mitch wasn't stupid.

"I'm glad you're having a career," he said then, words dripping with sarcasm. "But I didn't sign up for this, Scott. I need you here. I hadn't even managed to get used to having you around before they snatched you away from me again. I want to cheer you on, but in all honesty, I can't help being egoistic about it."

"I'm not having a career, Mitch," Scott countered. "I just need to wrap up this project, is all."

"But you already got your certification, the research is complete and they have their results. What else do they want?"

"Mitchy-"

"Don't you dare 'Mitchy' me!" he snapped. "It was supposed to be just one week!"

Silence that ensued only fueled his anger. There came no apology, no "I miss you", not even a stupid reassurance of "I'll be back soon."

His thumb tapped the screen a tad too forcefully and just like that, the conversation was over.

***

Sprawled out on the sofa with his legs thrown over the armrest and fingers intertwined beneath the back of his head, Mitch was having a heated internal debate with himself. It wasn't, obviously, the first time Scott forgot to call him over the last three weeks, and if he was honest, he was starting to get tired of waiting. Staying up until it was too late for him to fall asleep quickly became his daily routine, and even though it seemed to work just fine at first, it was starting to gradually wear him out.

He cursed under his breath and rubbed his eyes furiously. He missed him. He'd tried calling him a few times during the day to apologize and bury the hatchet, but as expected, his phone was turned off, as it always would be when he was working on something particularly important. Disheartened, he moved to push himself up from the sofa with an intention of heading to bed when the vibrations sent his phone twitching against the surface of the coffee table. His thumb slid across the screen carefully, almost hesitantly, and when he pressed the phone to his ear, his heart was racing.

"Hi."

"Hi, Mitch."

He froze. He knew that tone all too well, even if he didn't get to hear it very often these days. Originally, he had been planning to apologize for being a selfish little brat the other day but something was telling him it wasn't an apology Scott was looking for.