A/N: Written for Pikacheeka's HashiMada contest. Short and sweet.
Five great lands etch warfare into their hills, filling puddles and ponds with teardrops of the heavens and releasing the aftertaste of rusted blood into the mouths of hungry men. The medical tents flap tattered fabrics through bitter winds, and beneath this roused noise a violent, wretched cry calls for a lost uncle, brother, son. These pleas burn like the recent Katon-scorched, bone-dry earth, and swell with heat unknown to wildfire.
The Senju's fertile soil, their modesty in merchandise and trade, their demands for sprouting plants and towering rice fields – these things are not suited for medical use. You cannot amputate with a cornstalk. Even their kunai, as impractical as one may be in such a situation, are dull from the enemy's flesh.
Hashirama's people already look up to him in ways they have not to any other in six decades, but later, as he scrubs the skin of his hands raw and wills the blood of failed surgeries away, he selfishly wishes to pass his duty to someone else. The control and power is bile in his veins, eerie and twisted, and sometimes, sometimes his frown emerges as it does now, and his own breath chokes him.
That night, underneath a wooden roof throbbing with his own chakra, Hashirama shuts his eyes tight; the dark night hides behind his lids, speckled with bright, white stars, and he buries his face into a flimsy pillow, urging himself asleep.
"Madara, stop this!"
Madara tears heaps of bodies asunder, blood and skin gathering underneath chipped fingernails; yet he does so in dead silence, wearing nothing but the wickedest of smiles — a picture of venery.
"I said stop!"
Hashirama, with ever the resolve, takes a step further, fists a hand into the depths of wild hair, and pulls Madara from the pooling blood and pieces of flesh, closer, closer, until split ends tickle his cheek, and the blood falling from Madara's new eyes splatter onto his bottom lip.
And a gloved hand flies out towards Hashirama's jugular, squeezing tighter as the Senju gasps desperately for air, grasping at that pale, exposed wrist; but his fingers are gentle, naive, and he meets that swirl of the Eternal Mangekyou, mouth pursed but steady, eyes pooled with pity.
Madara throws him aside, and when Hashirama finds himself seated once more, it is in the comfort of his futon, dowsed in a thick veil of sweat.
Even as a child, Hashirama rarely suffered from nightmares. If one were to note the growing bags under his eyes and the weary, aloof nature he'd begun to adopt before the sun has yet to risen, one would surely assume it was simply his clan duties wearing him down.
These dreams are, thankfully, rather infrequent. But they are random, unexpected, and thus fearful. One night Hashirama lies down, indulging in a full six hours of sleep; the next, the wounded call him to action, and if he is lucky the next days are ones to recuperate. But Hashirama's luck wears thin, and sometimes these attacks strike directly after — and these are the worst, for he wakes to the sight of even more blood.
But some nights, just like the first, Hashirama envisions bare skin he'd never laid eyes on, nor ever considered to, and yet the sight entices him. When these nightmare end, he finds himself itching to touch.
"You love this, don't you? The rush."
Hashirama smacks Madara's gunbai with the blunt side of his sword, branches of the Mokuton slithering up and around those leather boots. They parry and skirt around the edges of each attack, eyes alight, veins pumping, and neither man relenting.
"This is a dream. There is no rush—"
"Don't lie to me, Hashirama. You would have broken free, if not for you excitement."
"This is not a game!"
"No?"
So Hashirama lunges forward, blade in hand, landing blow after blow and tearing through that flesh. Blood spurts from Madara's side, robes torn and ragged without their armor, and Madara takes each attack in silence, that frightening smile taking shape once more — halting Hashirama in the middle of his next stride.
He lowers his weapon.
"You can't kill me, even in your sleep. Such weakness is unbecoming…"
"Is that why you haunt me? You want me to kill you?"
Hesitation. "Yes."
Hashirama outstretches his left hand, but with the flutter of a sleeve, Madara has already vanished, and Hashirama lays between the sheets once more, skin bare and ice cold.
"The treaty will arrive at your settlement tomorrow," Hashirama state, calm. His gaze lingers on marred, unclothed shoulders, and drifts to the dip of skin just above the base of Madara's spine. When his friend turns, blood steadily trickles from the corner of his mouth to the curve of his chin, and beneath them the remnants of a familiar torso and a severed head of snow-white hair come into view.
"You want me to hate you," Hashirama murmurs, shaking his head. "If you shove such horrifying visions at me, perhaps I'll stop showing you kindness."
"Or I was itching at some practice with your brother," Madara counters, wiping his lips so crimson red smears on his cheek.
"And yet you want me to touch you. You're taunting me with your nakedness."
"You talk too much."
The smile striking Hashrama's features in that moment is too kind, too gentle, and it burns as a sweltering fire, fraying the edges of Madara's being, the flicker of something dangerous and repulsive growing more and more evident. He does not back away, however, feet firm on the earthless ground, and gives nothing but the flare of his Sharingan and wildly spinning tomoe.
Hashirama extends a hand, but this time, Madara dares to shut his blaring red eyes. The coolness of a fingertip hovers by the heat of his jaw, and already he is sinking into an endless void.
The caress never comes: Hashirama withdraws, voice booming through the walls of Madara's genjutsu with such certainty that a shudder passes down Madara's back, goosebumps rising to the surface.
"Only once we've created our village."
Tanned, calloused hands map out the shivering, bare skin above Hashirama, and in the shadows of the night sky, as Madara rocks and sways his body in need for the very first time, stumbling awkwardly and tumbling down his own precipice well unprepared and breathless, he envisions those many sleepless, dreamless nights with his rival. With every touch, the itching curiosity grows with his own, breathless panting, and yet he does not dare ask Hashirama about them, for that twisted pit of hell is doomed to grow, and if silence is to hinder it, then silence will remain.
But finally, for the very first time, their chakra knows one another as intimately as possible — and that is the most dangerous part.