This one's a little jarring, so be careful if you're squeamish.
xxx
He drove five over the speed limit the entire way home. A thousand thoughts buzzed through his mind, flooding his head with too many sensations. What was wrong with Mitch? He was stopped at a red light and cursed the traffic signals, his breath coming in spasms and his heart racing like mad.
"Come on, come on." Finally, he was freed, and he zipped home as fast as he dared. He didn't know what he expected, or if whatever Mitch needed him for was as bad as he thought, but it was almost painful how long it took him to get home. He was grateful he hadn't drunk anything.
Scott pushed the door open, a loud thud ringing through the dark house as it hit the door stop with considerable force. As he sprinted across the living room, he inhaled a shocked gasp as he felt something tangle his ankles, and hit the ground with a grunt. He registered the indignant yowl and the agile body of their ugly-ass cat bolting away, and the racing of his heart calmed a bit.
"Wyatt!" He felt ridiculous. He'd just tripped over the cat.
Scott stood again, and resumed a slower pace as he found the lightswitch. Mitch was nowhere to be found. The kitchen was empty, and he made his way to the bedroom they'd been sharing, his heart racing as room after room yielded no results.
"Mitch!" He called. His throat was feeling tighter. Where could he be? It occurred to him to check Mitch's old bedroom, and threw the door open.
And there he was.
He was sitting on the carpet against his old bed, his knees drawn to his chest and head hidden in his folded arms.
"Mitch, are you okay? You scared me." He'd given a glance around each room as he searched, but had found nothing out of the ordinary. No broken objects, no fires, and he appeared to be unharmed.
The dark head raised, and his eyes were round with terror and wet with tears, "Scott."
"What's wrong?" He knelt in front of him, cupping his face in his hands.
"I don't know why I did it." he murmured.
"Did what? Where are your meds?" He gave a look around the room, then got up to check where they kept his drugs. Something had to be wrong, and OD had been something Scott had considered. But the bottles were still full of pills, and everything was in its proper place.
So what was wrong?
"Mitch, why'd you text me? You said you did something bad. What's wrong?" He had trouble speaking past the lump in his throat.
"I don't know what I was thinking. Please don't be mad." The way he was pleading made Scott's stomach churn.
"Why would I be mad at you?"
Mitch's face turned to one of agonized sorrow, and tears began to brim over, "I just wanted it to stop, but I couldn't do it." His gaunt shoulders were shaking with uncontrollable sobs, "Please forgive me. I didn't mean to." Mitch dropped his head back onto his folded arms.
Something caught the corner of Scott's eye, and he turned toward it. A drop of something had fallen onto the carpet. His eyes followed where the drop landed, upward to where Mitch's hand clasped his elbow, and another drop was about to fall off the tip of his middle finger. Something very red.
"Look." He sat up and turned his forearms upward so Scott could see them clearly.
Both were marked with little stripes of crimson, and blood was streaking the insides of his wrists.
"Did you-" The words wouldn't come. They were stuck somewhere with his breath, caught in his windpipe in a hot blockage. For some reason all the thoughts that were buzzing around his head stopped. He saw blank. Time seemed to freeze as he noticed the small things he hadn't taken in when he'd entered the room: the cell phone that had bloody fingerprints on it, lying on the carpet. The stains on the front of Mitch's shirt. The tiny dots of blood that had landed on the floor.
And the razor blade on the nightstand, stuck to the wood with drying blood.
"Mitch?"
His sobs were choked, his face transformed with a mixture of fear and shame, "I'm so sorry."