Toby woke up suddenly, a hand pressed to his mouth to stop a cry breaking through. His eyes darted frantically around the bare room, checking to make sure that there really was no one there.

As always after one of Those Dreams, he prepared himself to sit up all night, his knees pulled to his chest as he tried to remember what he had seen. People... no, things! Things dancing around him... laughing and drinking and talking and one pale shadow presiding over it all. Toby couldn't remember who the pale shadow was. It wasn't a woman, though somehow that fact seemed irrelevant. The figure seemed to defy such a classification as if on principle. And that scared him more than he'd ever thought possible.

He stared out the window and wished fearfully for morning. With dawn could come healing. Someone had once told him that, someone he couldn't really place but knew from school. And why had they said that again? Oh yes! It was in those days when the dreams would hit him even in class. And one day that someone had heard him beg the shadow to let him go. A leaflet on child abuse had been pressed into his hand; bespectacled eyes had begged him earnestly to "get help". Get help! Great! Fantastic! But he'd tried that already.

Fingernails raked themselves up and down his arms almost absently, until Toby became aware of what he was doing. A low burning was creeping over his skin, sliding down until it pooled between his legs, tugging and pulling insistently. But he could ignore it! He really could!

Toby opened his blue eyes and stared at the mirror opposite his bed, wondering why he even kept it there. Longish blond hair mussed from sleeping, framing a boyish face with a soft full mouth. Elaine had said he had a mouth made to be kissed. It hadn't stopped her leaving, though.

"You don't talk to me any more," shrill and whiny as a shrew, "You never listen. The only time you pay attention is when we make out. I want someone that respects me, you know, not just wants me to shut my eyes and open my mouth."

Toby could have laughed. He had respected her! But of course she never believed it. She kept wanting things, wanting more than he was prepared to give. He wasn't distant, just awkward. What was he supposed to say to her anyway? He liked her well enough; he found her attractive. But he wasn't going to spend every spare moment wishing she were there so he could tell her all about the time he cried for some unspecified reason when he was an unspecified age. They were fifteen! They weren't meant to be arguing like an old married couple! And so ended his one and only try at romance. He didn't need it anyway.

He turned his gaze back to the mirror showed him a lean, pale body with sinewy arms and a smooth chest. No hair. It made gym locker rooms very deadly, looking like he deliberately shaved his body to remove every tiny hair. He didn't! Maybe it was his mother's genes? She didn't seem to spend heaps of time waxing her legs or anything. Not that he would really know if she… he didn't want to know.

Unmarked skin- made to be touched, made to be felt. His fingers reached up, trailing feather-light fingertips over his shoulders.

His head fell back, glorying in the touch, just the way he liked it. But this was so deliciously perverse. The pale shadow was somewhere in his head, brief glimpses of long, long legs and moon-pale blond hair. Like the dreams where the strange beings left, and it was only the two of them. The shadow would touch him and it didn't matter any more that it was a dream or a hallucination or whatever. It felt so good! And somehow the shadow seemed to smile in a particularly eager way when they did this. He didn't know why. But maybe if he could see. He stroked his neck, deliberately pressing down a bit just to feel his heartbeat pick up in shock. A brief smile at the back of his mind and now he needed to see. This shadow- what would that shadow see him as in those dreams... He opened his eyes and they fell straight on the mirror. He saw himself, then, mouth open and lips wet from where he had licked them. Hands roaming so wantonly.

From that point on his eyes never shut or moved from the sight of his own hands making love to his own body. Writhing on his knees as he finally rewarded his submission with a hand between his legs. Touching... silken soft touching that made him want to cry and beg for mercy because it hurt so bad.

His heart was racing, his head was pounding and the fingers that reached underneath to enter were doing a good enough job that he whimpered his need.

"Faster... please!"

His reflection only showed him how lost he was.

And he was disgusted; he couldn't help it! He was sixteen, damn it! And there was at least one girl in school who would be delighted to do this for him! But here he was, lost in his depravity and watching it.

But another part of him, the dark dormant part that never spoke except in the night, told him he looked beautiful. Hissed pleasure at him until Toby was light-headed and reeling. Shadows flickered. His eyes widened in the mirror. He added another finger to the two inside him and couldn't stifle a moan of pain.

God, it hurt!

But he couldn't stop; he didn't want to! He wasn't sure why but he had no control on his hands. Never had! His eyes were someone else's; his hands belonged to another. And both worshipped him until he was open and vulnerable under their direction.

"More..."

Yes, his other half whispered, so very greedy.

"Tell me..."

The fingers twisted and he bit his tongue to stifle a cry. Why was he doing this? He wasn't gay. He'd never got urges like that with other guys. Shit, his father would kill him if he knew about the dreams, let alone a boyfriend! Toby was so ashamed. He wanted to stop, truly he did. He knew how this would end.

"Please, no..."

A raw silk voice whispered sweet words in his ear. He couldn't understand them, couldn't hear more than the rough murmur of sound.

Shadows lengthened and for a second his reflection showed him a pair of mismatched eyes, one blue and the other tinted brown. He blinked in shock, gasping at the level of lust and then something was inside him, something oh, so very delightful.

Toby's head was rolling on his shoulders, hunched forward to better accommodate whatever it was inside of him. He was flying. The smell of forests and wet earth and his eyes couldn't leave his own reflection. Finally, with a mewl of need Toby fell forward to the mattress and ground his hips frantically against the annoyingly smooth sheets of his bed, trying to work up the friction to give himself one last bout of pleasure.

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In a faraway castle in a faraway land, the Goblin King sat up in bed and sighed heavily, looking down with some moroseness at his now sticky sheets.

Not only had he had to have such an embarrassing situation- as if he were a callow youth all over again- but he had to dream of the one person he'd been trying to forget for fifteen years, ever since that fateful day he'd found out.

Jareth was tired, frustrated and more than a little shaken that he could have dreamt of such an erotic coupling with a child he didn't even know! He lay back down, kicked the covers off, and decided to do something about all of it for once and for all.