You Stress Me Out (BoyxBoy)

YSMO Chapter Eight

Editing & formatting this in my office has singlehandedly convinced me I am going, expeditiously, to the deepest pits of Hell. No privacy screen, no dimmed lighting. Just me, my 100% brightness setting, and the eyes of god & men watching me italicize sex scenes at my desk.

Please enjoy 🙏

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I don't know what's wrong with me. My brain must be ruined. How could I possibly have agreed to work with Nixon knowing full well that it's gang related? And not just like a little, small one either. No, how could I possibly be so lucky? Apparently, according to Nixon, they're working on spreading internationally – inter-mother fucking-nationally!

I bury my face in my hands and try to breathe around the millions of thoughts streaming through my head. I can't even focus. There are just too many fucked up pieces of the puzzle to focus on at once.

Luca is essentially part of the clean up crew. And I get to sit around with him for a week, just watching him beat the shit out of kids. Students who, for all intents and purposes, are striving to join him and are fully aware of what the school's main purpose is. I groan, clutching at my head, trying to force it to stop its relentless spinning.

Why couldn't he just be a normal guy? A sweet little car thief with a penchant for stealing older men's hearts. I'd be fine with that. It is by far better than anything I was told at that mockery of a dinner.

I need you.

My fingernails bite into my scalp. No, no. No! He doesn't get to just say whatever he likes and immediately get off the hook. He's part of a gang – an actual gang! A weirdly cheerful, we keep guns on our walls as a form of eclectic decoration, gang.

And yet, I could do nothing with him standing right there in front of me. In fact, I did the opposite of nothing. He asked me if I would help him, and I agreed.

I looked him dead in the face and said yes. There wasn't any hesitation. As soon as he opened his mouth, it was over for me. It didn't even matter to me that his previous doctor had died. It didn't matter that I could faintly hear his boss, the principal, slurping at a spoonful of soup somewhere in the distant halls. It didn't seem ridiculous at all to me. In the moment, it felt like nothing else mattered. Not my past or his. He was just Nixon. He was asking me to treat his wounds. And I said yes.

I seethe, hurling my couch pillow at the far wall. It flops unsatisfyingly to the ground and just lies there, looking as limp as I feel.

How could I do this? I know what gang activity is like. I have seen the resulting wounds, have treated the gun holes left behind. I know the statistics, the facts. I have heard the patients' stories first hand and read their files. It haunts families and communities like a living, breathing thing, tearing at their ties and picking at festering wounds until it looks like they'll never stop bleeding.

I am a certified doctor, healing people is what I am supposed to do. But how am I supposed to sit back and watch teens be dragged into that kind of thing? How am I supposed to watch him?

Nixon is not at all how I thought he'd be. And every time I think I'm starting to figure him out, he just yanks the carpet out from underneath me. From what I can tell, his own boss doesn't say no to him or restrict him. He's a wild trump card that evades every attempt to tie him down.

Sighing under my breath, I flop back against my couch, my head falling to rest on it. There's nothing I can do at this point, I know it. I'm going to see him, and I'm going to forget I have a problem with this in the first place. He'll greet me, smile at me, and all my rationale is going to fly away just like that. There's no other future I can see for me at this point.