Chapter 1 The Dream

Garu the ninja was sitting in the middle of the clearing in front of his home; his eyes closed, legs crossed in a pretzel-position and his arms resting loosely at his sides as he tried to meditate, desperately searching for that inner-stillness and peace of the mind.

Unfortunately, that had become harder and harder to find lately. ..Ever since the dream...

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Garu woke late in the night, feeling disorientated and confused, gasping loudly as he saw Tobe, his most annoyingly-persistent enemy, lying in his large bed beside him.

The other man had obviously been watching him sleep, which was disturbing enough on its own, but when combined with the fact that Garu always slept naked it became completely unacceptable.

He tried to shift away from him, but only wound up with his back against the wall of his room since Tobe lay on the outer edge of the bed, preventing his escape.

The soft smile on the other male's face shifted into an expression of concern at Garu's strange actions.

"Are you alright, Garu? Did you have a nightmare? Oh, come here, baby. I'll make it go away."

"What?" Garu gasped, eyes wide and mouth hanging open as he stared across the mattress at him in shock, grabbing for the covers and clutching them against himself to conceal his nakedness.

Unfortunately all that did was pull the sheet and blanket off of Tobe, revealing that he was naked as well. Garu's eyes went even wider, unable to look away as his mind froze at the sight of Tobe's strong, muscular, beautiful body.

Wait. Beautiful? What was he thinking? Tobe was his bitter-enemy. And a man as well.

Tobe's eyes lit up with a predatory light as Garu's cheeks went pink with embarrassment while he stared in frozen wonderment at his nudity. Garu's head was spinning from lack of oxygen, so he drew in a shaky breath, to dizzy to protest when Tobe reached out to draw him close against him through the sheets.

He gasped when the other man's lips touched his unexpectedly, a quiet whimper escaping him as Tobe's tongue danced over his lips to invade his mouth with unlooked for tenderness.

Then Garu tensed, a guttural moan wrenched unwillingly from his throat as Tobe's sword-callused hand slipped beneath the sheets to close around his partially erect cock, stroking and squeezing the length gently, making it harden quickly against his palm.

"Nughhh! Oh god..." "Mmmm..." Tobe hummed appreciatively. "That always gets your attention, doesn't it, darling?"

Garu shuddered, whining softly in shame as his disobedient hips started to move in sync with Tobe's strokes.

"Mmm, yeah. Come for me, my Garu. Let me see your release. You are so beautiful when you let go, my love. Give me your pleasure. Say my name..."

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"Tobe!" Garu screamed, gasping as he woke abruptly, sitting up in his empty bed.

He was panting heavily, covered in his own sweat and seed, his naked body flushed and shaking violently, shuddering repeatedly with the aftereffects of his brilliant climax. At first he was mortified, wanting to get up immediately and scrub the evidence down the drain with the hot water from his shower.

But then his mind settled and drifted back into the pleasant haze of the dream, remembering the emotion in Tobe's eyes, the gentle tenderness of his touch, the way that he had softly whispered "my love" in his ear as he had stroked him to his release.

A single tear slid down his cheek slowly as he bit his lower lip, and then his face was buried in his hands as he wept bitter tears of agony, longing for something that could never be outside of his memory...

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Ever since then he'd become like a specter, rarely leaving his home, and never venturing past his bamboo-encircled clearing. Only eating food and drink when he could no longer bear the gnawing-pain of denying his stomach, preferring to be alone as much as possible.

He knew in the back of his mind that the impossible dream was consuming him, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Why should he live when he could never have the man who had somehow become so irrevocably intertwined with everything that he needed in these past four weeks since the night of the dream?

"Garu!"

He opened his eyes reluctantly, gasping when he saw the man of his dreams, literally, standing about five feet away from him where he sat in his pretzel-position.

"I just bet that you thought you had seen the last of me, didn't you? Well, you were wrong! I'm here to fight you yet again!"

Garu shuddered as he felt the intense physical pain of hunger grip him suddenly, smiling at Tobe weakly as his vision started to blur.

"You've come too late," he said hoarsely. "Won't be much of a fight..."

"Why? I can take you on any day!"

"Not... Wasn't talking about you. You're... So strong. Meant me. Not feeling well. So weak..."

Tobe's eyes went wide at his words, his hand slowly releasing the hilt of his sword. "You do look pale, and I haven't seen you in town for weeks. No one has. Not even Pucca. It's not catching, is it?"

Garu shook his head no, desperately wishing he hadn't as his head spun and he started to fall toward the ground. Then he was being held within strong arms, trembling as he stared up into Tobe's, dare he think it?, concerned eyes.

"Then what is wrong with you?"

"Dying," he whispered in answer, reaching up a shaking hand to touch the other man's cheek with quivering fingertips. "Happy that I... got to see you... one last time..."

Garu shuddered in Tobe's embrace, his upraised hand falling back to rest limply on his barely moving chest as he breathed in and out shallowly, his eyelids closing without his permission as he lost consciousness.

Tobe blinked, obviously in shock at Garu's words and his clearly poor, still unexplained, physical state. But then he snapped out of it the way only a well-trained ninja could have, standing up with the younger man held securely in his arms and starting to run toward Garu's home quickly.

"I don't think so, you damned fool of a ninja. You're not going anywhere until you explain just what the hell is going on. And tell me what you meant by that "Happy that I got to see you one last time" crap," he added as an afterthought, sweeping into his enemy's home and carrying him to his small, dimly-lit room to lay him down on the bed carefully.