"Come on, Michael, breath! Hee hee, hoo hoo, hee hee, hoo hoo..."
"I'll 'hoo hoo' you in a minute!" Michael growled between clenched teeth. Tightening the grip he had on Ben's thigh, he yelled, "This is all your fault!"
Feeling more than a little flustered, Ben couldn't help but argue back, "Michael, this was your idea!"
"You're the one who knocked me up, sperm-for-brains!"
Ben opened his mouth, only to snap it shut a few seconds later. There was no way he was going to win this argument. Not while his lover was into his sixth hour of labour. Not to mention the fact that Michael's hand, currently bruising his thigh, seemed to move closer to his groin with each new, and more painful, set of contractions. Nervously eyeing Michael's clenched fingers, Ben decided that if they were ever crazy enough to go through all this again, he was going to wear a protective cup to the labour ward! At that thought, a tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered, "Who's to say it won't be you pregnant the next time?" Panicked, Ben looked down between Michael's legs, imagining the very small opening that would, not-soon-enough, have a very large baby squeezed out of it.
His heart gave a sudden lurch and all too suddenly he found himself disorientated and enveloped in a blanket of darkness.
A dream. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. It had been a dream. To his right, the bedside clock read 3:12 a.m. To his left, Michael lay curled up on his side, sound asleep.
Slowly and carefully turning to his side, Ben studied his lover and tried to imagine Michael's flat stomach as it had been in his dream. But those dream imagines had already started to fade and Ben had to concentrate to keep a hold of them.
Earlier that night, Michael had wistfully entertained the notion that they could have a child of their own one day, suggesting that Ben could carry the baby. But Ben had no doubt at all that if medical science could ever make it possible for a man to conceive and give birth, that Michael would be the first one in line to have the procedure performed.
Easing himself closer to his lover, Ben gently spooned up behind the smaller man and let his arm drape over Michael's side so that his hand could rest on his taut stomach. He found himself disappointed that the dream had ended as early as it had. He would have loved to have seen, if only in dream, the wonder and joy on Michael's face as their baby was placed in his arms. Logically he knew he'd have that chance nine months down the track when Melanie gave birth. But it wasn't the same. As happy as he was at the prospect of being "Uncle Ben", it couldn't match the thought of being "Daddy."
Closing his eyes, Ben tried to bring back every image he could from his dream. With luck, once he'd fallen back to sleep, his subconscious might pick up where it had left off, and he could continue on with the fantasy. He wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl. Or perhaps even twins, judging by how huge Michael's belly had been in the dream! He chuckled softly as another image came to mind. An image of clenched fingers dangerously close to vulnerable flesh. Yes. His dream-self was definitely going to need that protective cup!