This time was different.

The first time we had made love, we had been so young, Tobirama and I. This time was a far more adult occurrence; we had both matured, Tobirama by being alive, me by being dead. It filled he with a desperation that maybe belonged far more in our world of the dead, rather than in the world of the living.

He laid me down carefully on my back, and I could hear how he put one hand on either side of me, could feel him looking at me hungrily by the way he was breathing.

"Tobirama..."

He kissed me again, and from then on out, I gave myself over to him completely.

He guided me with a gentle but firm hand, being my eyes, murmuring into my ear what he would do with a dark voice that made me shudder, made me a wet, sweaty, moaning mess for him.

"Calm down", he said with his kind, raspy voice but I couldn't.

When he penetrated me while I was on my back, I screamed, and he laughed in pure ecstasy. He thrusted slowly but harshly, going in all the way to the shaft with each thrust, grunting hotly each time. I grabbed his neck, pushed him closer. When it wasn't enough anymore, I turned around on all four so he could reach better, and he slid in as if I were butter and started thrusting like a madman, grabbing my waist in a way that would leave scars, and I screamed to the stars not because I came, but because he came, saying my name over and over.

He was so eager; he hadn't even finished coming when he pulled out and turned me over.

"Tobirama, what... Ahh!!"

Before I even understood what was happening, he had opened his mouth and taken me in. He blowed me off like someone possessed, and the sounds he made... I grabbed his hair as he was bobbing his head. My thighs started to cramp, press inwards, but he put a firm hand on them, forced them open, and the inability to escape the millions of sensations this man's lips and tongue created for me was enough to make me come as well.

He laughed as I spilled into his mouth, but he didn't stop sucking me. When I was done, he slowed down, and I grabbed his chin, brought him to me. I didn't allow myself to be sad I couldn't see him; instead, I imagined him with my cum coming out of the corners of his mouth.

"Does he spit or swallow?" I teased.

He did neither. Instead, he kissed me, mouth full, let me taste myself.

I tasted of him.

We found a cave, him and I. It reminded us somewhat of our own back home, providing us with a small indoor lake, but as opposed to our cave, the source of water came from without, rendering the place quiet still, and the roof was entirely open, enabling us to pass our remaining days with the passing of the sun.

Each day was accompanied with the dread of not knowing how much time we had left together. The war could end now, or within a year. But that dread was, at least somewhat, drowned by the immense growth of love between us. For each time I told myself that this was it, that it wasn't possible to love him any more than I already did, I was proven wrong just by waking up the next day, either in my lover's arms, or him in mine, and realising that I could.

We spent the days in familiar patterns, creating a routine for ourselves that mirrored the life we could have lived that we no longer mourned. We woke up with the sun, we made love, we bathed, Tobirama fished while I listened to the splashes the hunt created, and then I grilled the fish while he was close-by, either napping or just watching me, but always with a hand on my thigh or his leg against mine so I could feel him as I couldn't see him. We ate together. We trained with our swords until I learned to battle blind with his soft but firm guidance, always ending up on the grass kissing hungrily. We made love again.

But the best part of my day was at night, when we went to bed together, beds we had created of branches of soft spruces, huddled close, not one of us holding the other but face-to-face, and we talked. For hours upon hours, until we slowly drifted off to sleep without noticing. Tobirama told me about his life. I told him about my thoughts from the moment I had been reanimated until he found me. We talked about politics, about our families, about things couples were expected to talk about, and revelled in the normality of it.

I had never been so happy.

When the end finally came for us, we didn't know how much time had passed. A month? Several? Had it been a year? Time became elastic when you were dead. But whereas I had hoped I would feel calm when it happened, that all worry would be washed away and I would feel confident in my disappearance and only be happy for the glimmer of a life together we had gotten, the opposite was true; I was devastated.

It was a night when I learned the moon stood high in sky because Tobirama always described the night sky to me, every night. We had laid down next to one another in the cave, huddled close despite the almost tropical warmth of the night, preparing to sleep but not able to get enough of one another, him looking at me, me feeling him.

And I noticed that flakes were falling off Tobirama upon touching his face.

"Tobirama..." I whispered, my heart starting to pound.

"I know", he said, and I could hear both the smile in his voice and the tears on his face. "It's happening to you, too."

"How..." I swallowed. "How fast?"

"Slowly", he said. "We still have a couple of hours.

A couple of hours... I wanted an eternity. I wanted several eternities.

"I'll miss you", I whispered.

"Oh, my love", Tobirama said warmly, taking my hand, kissing it. "You won't have to."

He leaned forwards and kissed me, but nothing more. In that moment, that felt perfectly enough. He held me to his chest, and I snuggled as close to him as I could, listening to his heartbeat that was slowly fading away. At some point, I felt that half my legs were gone, as well as my shoulders and half of my forehead, and I tried to imagine what the scene looked like from above; flakes of our bodies and souls evaporating in the air, where the hot breeze made them intermingle, then disappear to the great beyond together.

At some point, we fell asleep together. At some point, we became just a pair of arms holding one another. The last bit of us that remained were our hearts, next to one another, beating together, perfectly synchronised, until they finally disappeared as well and we died simultaneously, a dream that Tobirama hadn't even dared to dream.

The valley was then empty, no trace of us, just the cave and it's pond and it's open roof where the moon shone in on the absence of us and the absence of our love.

End.