If He Ever Cries (manxman / boyxboy)

Chapter 11

-Chapter 11-

I never imagined I would feel so lost

I never imagined it would be so hard

—Nothing Is What It Seems, Saosin

Adam sat in the cold office alone, holding on to the armrests of the chair. He tried hard to push the shakiness away. He stared down at the folder that had the presence of an executioner and a drop of sweat rolled down his temple. It had been like that for a long time. Actually, just a minute or two, from what many times the clock on the wall had ticked since he entered and sat there.

His sense of time was something he lost grip of a few days ago. He was desperate to make time run faster, and at the same time make it drag the future away from him. He hadn't rushed to ask anything when they called him in. He wished there was nothing to talk about. He wanted them to give him a careless smile and an “everything looks fine” for a goodbye before he left. Nothing-to-talk-about would have been good news. But by being there he was sensing his wishes weren't going to be granted.

He made a conscious effort to stop shaking his leg. Uncertainty is a bad companion.

Always the composed one...The guy with the right words to solve everything, or give it a bright perspective to look from. Since before he graduated, people thought he could deal with his own “issues.” A psychiatrist must know how to deal with his own anxiety—keep it in check. Right? It was, apparently, the obvious conclusion. But how? With a session or two of self-talk? He had come to realize his profession had a huge fault: the inability to analyze oneself objectively.

Vodka did a better job.

The door creaked open, and in came the sixty-something-year-old man. Adam snapped out of his self-imposed torment to face the torment that lay ahead. The man extended his hand to Adam, and Adam shook it without really wanting to. The gray-haired man sat at the other side of the desk. He opened the file. “Mr. Adam Colton?” He scanned over the documents while he waited for Adam to confirm his identity.

“Yes, that's me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles were busy tensing up. He couldn't hide the nervousness in his voice, nor his displease for being there.

About thirty days ago, there was no space to think of consequences when his dick pounded a stranger deep in the ass, with no protection. A beautiful, alluring, and hypnotizing stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. Reason came later—when he got back to the suite and Kaiden wasn't there to cloud his judgment anymore.

There was this ever-present, annoying feeling, that jabbed at him every time the thought of being infected flashed through his mind. Ignoring it didn't work. Almost a month had passed, and the uneasiness was still there, poking him with a bony finger on the center of his chest.

His mind had been playing tricks, making him think every little itch was a symptom.

Then the tiny sore came along. And reality fell over him like a wash of ice water.

Dr. Mackenzie looked him with sympathy. He couldn't go to his uncle and doctor of over 9 years for this. So he went to the other side of the city and found another doctor. An unknown face. And a place where people wouldn't recognize him.

A known face could have eased his heart a bit. The look of sympathy would have been loaded with real concern. But Adam was haunted by shame. He couldn't show himself like this to his father's brother. The man, who knew him well, would figure out what happened by just looking at his face...and that would be the end of him.