Ben sits and looks at Michael. At the man who he loves beyond words, the man who he never thought he would be lucky enough to find let alone keep. The man who gives him a reason for getting up every morning, a reason to carry on doing every day things which once meant nothing to him. This man who radiates love every time he looks at him with his deep soulful eyes that with one look can take his breath away and take him to places he once only dreamed about. His Michael. His reason for being, his safe haven, a place where he can go to escape everything that is bad in this world.

 Yet, as he looks at him, with love exuding from every pore in his body, with a passion that makes every nerve end feel as if its on fire, Ben knows that he cannot protect Michael from all those bad things that are in the world, no matter how much loves he encompasses him with, no matter how much he wraps his arms around him and holds him tightly from morning till night, because some of the bad things are not actually out there, they are here inside him, waiting for the moment to take everything that he has ever dreamed of away. And it scares him. He sits there and thinks about what scares him the most. Its not having this thing inside him, its not even knowing that one day it will take him from this world and from Michael, the thing that scares him the most is that he could infect Michael.

There he said it, those words that terrify him, that make him wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and breathless, reaching out for the warmth that is Michael, wanting to hold that warmth to him, to let it seep inside him and take these thoughts away to a place where they never have to be heard, to be said, to be imagined. Yet they are here, in his head, screaming at him sometimes, never letting him forget that this could happen. The thought that he could infect this man that he loves with every fibre of his being, this man whose love has given him so many moments to remember, to cherish, to hold on to when things are bad, when thoughts of his own mortality start to crush him beyond belief, this man who has accepted him for who he is, never doubting his love, never expecting more from him than what he could give, but knowing that if he asked, he would go to any lengths, do anything humanly possible to give him what he wants, but the one thing that Michael wants, needs, yearns for, he cannot give him. A future.

That is something that he tries never to think about, a future with Michael, spending year after glorious year with him, watching each other grow old, to sit together and think back to the time they first met, when their eyes met and in that moment they both knew what was missing from their lives, as if every action and deed before that moment never counted for anything, that every word they had said, every thought they had, had no meaning, that they were waiting for that moment, the reason they had been put on this earth, to find each other.

Words. He's always thought that words were his friend, but today, sitting here, they are his enemy. They are bringing thoughts into his head that he's had buried deep away, terrified that one day they would come to the surface and he would have to listen to them, realize that they are real and its seems that this day has arrived, the day of reckoning, the day he has to accept that he could infect this man that he loves beyond words, beyond all reason and in knowing that realize that the word future would never be spoken of again.

Then all of a sudden he feels a change come over him, he doesn’t know why, until he looks up and sees Michael smiling at him, with that smile that lights up his world, that takes away his every fear, his every thought and leaves him with a feeling of being loved. With that smile Michael somehow manages to push away those dreaded and feared words that have been spinning around in his head, for them to go to a place deep down inside him, with the hope that they never come to the surface again. He only hopes and prays that Michael cannot see behind his eyes, inside his head, with that uncanny knack he has of invading his entire being, to know what those words and thoughts were.