Gone

all i'm gonna say is read the description of this one-shot before continuing on...

Mitch regretted a lot of things the second he watched Scott drive off. In retrospect, he regretted even more things, but the guilt he felt in his heart was enough for the moment.

Even though a couple seconds had now passed since Scott pulled out of their driveway, Mitch couldn't quite get himself to move away from his spot in front of the window. And when we finally pulled himself away, he only made it as far as the nearby couch before he laid down, utterly and absolutely tired of, well, everything that had been going on.

He didn't want Scott to go.

He didn't want to get in as many fights with Scott has they had. Post-tour feelings always ran high and always took a bit of a toll on the two. However, this time around, the tour stress seemed to be worse, for reasons Mitch couldn't put a finger on.

He also didn't want Scott to be feeling the way Mitch knew he undoubtedly was. Scott, as outgoing and positive as he always was, was struggling in the days after tour. But once again, in retrospect, he could point out a million things that made it obvious and that made it worse.

He had plans for a New Years vacation, and had even extended them to Scott. He declined fairly early on, which was reasonable, but Mitch couldn't imagine what was going on in his mind when the plans fell through altogether. Mitch wasn't overly happy with the news, and while Scott couldn't have been happy either, he comforted Mitch anyway.

Mitch figured that he ruined any feelings of so called kindness once he tried to make more plans. All he intended to do was to host a New Years party, but that didn't even make it past the idea stage. He quickly figured out that a party would only stress out Scott more, and maybe some time of just the two of them would do them some good.

Only, he began realizing that maybe one on one time wouldn't do anything. His intention was to help, but he didn't fully realize the damning effect he was having on Scott until he heard the words come out of Scott's mouth.

Mitch knew he occasionally needed alone time to decompress, but actually hearing that Scott wanted to be away from Mitch for a while didn't sit quite right in his stomach.

And now the guilt was really starting to pile up.

So now Scott was running off to family for the holidays, as he put it, though Mitch clearly took it as 'for personal space'. Irvine, California was only an hour away, but apparently enough for him.

And Mitch let him go.

It hurt his heart to see him to leave like that. But this was one of the few situations where Mitch didn't know Scott better than he did himself, and he had to trust Scott. It didn't mean he was gonna completely let him be though. Mitch had temporarily lost him enough due to circumstances, no matter how foreseen they were or not, yet he never completely let him be.
And he wasn't about to now.

He'd do anything to get his best friend back.

By the time Mitch pulled himself out of his thoughts, the outside world, and therefore the house, had turned dark. Mitch got himself off of the couch, then stumbled around the main floor until he managed to turn on a light or two. Once he did that, he felt the exhaustion set in. That's all the convincing it took.

Within an hour or so, Mitch found himself laying in bed, his mind still heavy with thoughts about the day. And that's when the feelings of frustration kicked in. Because while he was just sitting here, Scott was struggling. He had to do something. With that in mind, he was reaching for his phone. His next google searches were seemingly random, but they were giving him enough ideas to open up the messages on his phone and to send a handful of texts out.