Blink

Fragile

And yet, as much as he loves her, as wonderful as she's being, he's still living with his mom again. He's only been home a week and while he's well aware he can't do anything about it yet, he desperately wants his life back. His band. His music. Anything.

Speaking of his life, while Scott's been thinking, Mitch has pulled himself up from where he was kneeling and has resettled on the edge of Scott's bed, tangling his fingers with Scott's on the arm of the chair. He seems well used to Scott being scattered and distracted, and unlike when Scott's an airheaded mess on a normal day, he's been kind enough not to mention it much since the accident.

"Huh," Scott says, intelligently. He can't believe he slept through his dad's arrival. "That's great. How'd y'all convince her to go?"

"I had to promise her my firstborn if I didn't make sure you were fed, watered, and dosed at the right time and that I'd call her immediately if anything, anything at all, went wrong. So you're not allowed to so much as stub your toe because your mother desperately needs a night out." Mitch squeezes his fingers and smiles. "And I desperately need some time alone with you."

That explains the amazing way Scott woke up. He's totally on board with time alone together. "You know, at this point your firstborn has a good chance of being her grandchild, so I'm not sure that promise is much of a threat even if tonight doesn't go as planned."

Mitch smirks at him, lifting their joined hands and kissing along the backs of Scott's fingers. "Pretty cocky assumption there, Scotty."

Scott hums contentedly, turning his hand to trace his thumb along Mitch's cheekbone as Mitch presses another kiss to his palm. "Am I wrong?"

Mitch huffs a laugh, smirk widening. "Maybe not." He nips at the base of Scott's thumb and then stands up, handing Scott the chair remote. 

Mitch helps him up—Scott's happy enough using the remote to lower the leg rest and raise the back, but he tries to avoid the standing assist feature because it makes him feel ridiculous—and then heads into the kitchen. Scott takes approximately a thousand years limping to the bathroom, peeing, washing up, and taking a moment to appreciate his now healthy-looking eye, still-discolored face, and disastrous-looking hair in the mirror before joining Mitch in the kitchen. He's significantly more maneuverable than he was a week ago, but the pain he's still in and the inconvenience of the shoulder fixation and sling mean it still takes an eternity to accomplish anything at all.

Mitch, meanwhile, is sitting at the kitchen table. He's dished out two servings of a casserole that Scott's mom clearly made for them before she left. There's an opened bottle of water next to Scott's bowl and a little line of pills beside it. Scott wrinkles his nose at them as he pulls out the chair and carefully eases into it, leaning heavily on the table with is good arm to accomplish it.

"Nuh uh," Mitch says, pointing his fork at Scott and then the pills. "I swore I'd take care of you perfectly. Don't even start."

Right. Scott sighs and awkwardly gathers the pills into his palm before tossing them back, chasing them down with a few gulps of water.

He doesn't mind the antibiotics or the ibuprofen but he desperately wants to cut back on the Vicodin. However, his shoulder is still excruciating when he moves or breathes the wrong way and his torso and hip still ache whenever he moves at all.  So the Vicodin is a necessity if he wants to do all the moving he's supposed to and prevent atrophy and infection and all that fun stuff. It's just that he truly loathes the side effects. The stuff makes him drowsy, lightheaded, slow-witted, occasionally nauseous, definitely constipated, and while his doctor believes it's all in his head, he also thinks it might be fucking with his voice. Which, yeah, that's not happening. He's got very little left going for him at this point; he's not tolerating an imperfect voice long-term while he deals with everything else. The Vicodin is being dumped as soon as humanly possible.