There was this deep penetrating feeling of sinking. Of falling into a bottomless vast well of nothing, the light of home, of Michael becoming a pin point in the distant night sky. The comforting feeling of warmth and love dissipating rapidly, seeping out of every pour evaporating into the ether of the thick inky blackness of the void. And there was this devastating feeling of loss, of losing, of having lost, of being lost. There was this cold razor sharp streak of terror flowing through Ben's body that despite all of his desperate efforts he couldn't help but feel and in many ways give into. Ben's fear becoming as palpable as the feel of his own clammy crawling skin.
He was cold and alone, the world and all of its creature comforts having abandoned him. The taste of Michael's lips nothing more than a memory and one questioned at that. The sensuous feel of Michael's alabaster skin moving back to the dark cobweb recesses of Ben's mind where it took up residence along side the fleeting images of playing with childhood friends. It was a thing blurred around the edges and almost lost to the ravages of time and neglect as all memories eventually become.
The press of Michael's body, the sensation of feeling him close to him in the middle of the night was nothing more than a longed for thing. The darkness was eating away at Ben's diminishing sense of the real, leaving his body in torrents of artic drenching sweat, washing away past, present and future with relative ease.
Ben was floating now naked completely exposed not just physically but emotionally in a pool of thick bile like liquid, and all around him in this stench, this vat of human waste and universal blood letting was him, small and insignificant. The true sense of himself having been eviscerated, having left him behind in a world he'd once inhabited with such joy. A slow moving world in which he was someone's husband and someone's father. A just world in which he was loved and adored on a level never before felt. A righteous world in which he had all he'd ever need of life. This world of love, comfort, and safety was gone replaced by one of sickness and relentless fear. And there was anger as well. An overpowering anger so big and thick and purpleish black that it blotted out the combustible brilliance of the sun.
He was steeped in it, rendered blind, deaf and dumb by it. The body paralyzed by it leaving him flayed and opened to random infections, opportune viruses, vampiric diseases, baring their fangs hissing in his ear, laying in wait ready willing and more than able to devour him whole spitting out the unwanted parts. And there were seldom parts that were unwanted.
Dying wasn't the hardest part. Death was an end of one kind or another, and if religious or a person of faith or spirituality or whatever, there was the possibility of a beginning. Something out there ready to take the place of the fear, anger, hurt and devastation that the body could inflict and endure. The soul being an immortal thing contained haphazardly in this limited fragile vessel. If you believed in that sort of thing. And Ben was finding it increasingly difficult to believe in a higher being as he lay here powerless to move, to reach out and touch Michael, to even have the simple release of a scream.
Death was the easy part. It was a well of silence that made tranquil the transition to the other place if there was in deed another place. It was the blanket of dreamless sleep that enveloped the body giving it solace in the warmth of the earth as it reintegrated flesh and bone back into itself to fertilize itself, recreating itself as it has for thousands upon millions of millennia. Either way it would all be over.
The hard part was this part. The part where you could no longer reach out and touch the ones you loved. Couldn't hear them and have them you. Even if your voice was so small and thin as paper that they had to strain a little to hear you, at least you were heard. Even if it was raw to the point of having to will yourself to talk because of the pain you were heard.
Fingers reaching and never touching. So close, so close. And yet so mercilessly far away.
The mind screaming, the body aching as it tries to arch itself to gain one more inch, because Michael's only one fucking inch away. Then gone in a whisper of movement so small not even detected by the eye, yet devastating. Another inch, more pain, more straining, more wishing and hoping, more love and devastation, more, more, always more no end in sight.
The mind fades the will is raped and spit on and death is so fucking tempting right now. Just to stop it for a minute the torture of it, the uselessness of it, the peeling back of the epidermis one horrific inch at a time. The shrieking hollowness of absence, the need to be, mixed inextricably with the knowledge of vacancy. Knowing full well that this is only a dream the mind has sculpted out of the left over clay of who you used to be, the mold not yet completely destroyed. The power it once held over you not utterly obliterated as once hoped for.
Waking up seems impossible, letting go of it seems wrong in away that boggles the mind and torments the sleeper.
I want to wake up. Is the plea the mind sends out into the darkness.
You can't wake up. Is the reply that comes screaming back at you from the abyss.
Wake up into what? The hope of what will never be. The disheveled promise of forever mixed intoxicatingly with the love of someone you can't always be there for.
Wake up because you love him? What the fuck does that have to do with anything?
Demons come to lunch in this yard boy, and you're the fodder on which they feed.
Suddenly Ben wakes up shouting, his body trembling and covered with sweat. His hair matted to his head.
Michael wakes up and rolls over his smaller body blanketing Ben's as he sooths him. Kisses ways the nightmare, hushes the demons reeking havoc on his husband. He calls out to Hunter who has come knocking on the bedroom door to see what's happened, telling the boy it's alright for him to go back to bed it was just a bad dream. He listens for a moment making sure Hunter is satisfied with the answer and on his way back to bed.
They've been through this before. Ben's had these nightmares before where he either can't reach Michael or he can't find him in the dark. It takes Ben a few minutes to realize where he is, that he's home and safe in Michael's arms. That it was only a dream even though it seems so real at the time. It takes him a few minutes to give in to Michael's touch, to his kiss, a few minutes for him to wrap his arms around the smaller man bring him in close before he returns the soft sweet kisses. It takes him a few minutes to realize that where he was, was just a hellscape in his mind created to try and trap him.
Michael dissolves over him like liquid love allowing himself to melt in the every pore of Ben's drained body. He kisses, hugs, pets and sooths Ben. Raking his fingers tenderly through the damp matted locks of Ben's hair as he wills Ben to come back to him, in this moment where nothing and no one can hurt him. Where sickness and death aren't tapping at the door or window begging entrance.
Michael moves with slow deliberate grace as he begins to make love to Ben. Bringing him back the only way he knows how. Showing Ben that he's in the moment not standing outside of it looking in. He reaches into the night table and retrieves a condom and the lube. He straddles Ben and slowly covers Ben's now pulsing cock in the condom, then he prepares himself and Ben, then he slowly lowers himself onto Ben's rock hard penis.
It's a slow gentle rocking at first just to make sure that Ben's with him, then they lock eyes, and lace their fingers together and the slow rocking becomes a thunderous ride where they're both just holding on for dear life. They're hearts are pounding, hips ramming hard moans filling the room shattering the haunting effects of the night. Then there's an explosion of epic proportions that seems to shake the entire room.
Michael collapses on top of Ben and wraps his arms around him his mouth pressed softly to his ear as he whispers. Repeating the same thing over and over again until Ben closes his eyes holding onto Michael tightly as the words echo in his head.
"I've got you baby. I've got you."