Time collapses like a ragged wave. Hashirama opens his eyes and sees hundreds of diamonds shimmering and melting in the sun. Madara's eyes are rimmed with red and darkness, three tomoe swirling lazily inside.
He is the most beautiful thing Hashirama has ever seen.
He is beautiful in the way that hot deserts are beautiful, with mirages of a glistening body of water, or terracotta caves hiding the bones of dead animals bleached by the sun.
They are in the Hokage's quarters. Madara grabs his wrists, wrestling them up above his head and slamming them into the bedpost. Then he ties Hashirama's wrists together and binds him. He is strong and he knows Hashirama is stronger, but in this moment, the First Hokage gives in to him. Hashirama always gives in to him.
"Can you feel me?" he presses his body against Hashirama and holds him there, securing the knot as his hard cock slips up and down the crevice of the older man's ass.
Hashirama pulls and wrenches at his wrists, but watching him struggle is only getting Madara off. He stays on him, pressed against his back, running his calloused hands up and down scarred arms kissed by the sun.
"Don't fight me," he tugs Hashirama's hair. "It just makes me harder."
"Why do you think I'm doing it?"
Hashirama arches his back, grinding farther into Madara and the man meets his ass with a solid roll of his hips, before running his nose up the back of Hashirama's neck and inhaling the scent of his skin.
"Mmm… you smell so fuckable."
Hashirama laughs, "It's my natural charm. Do you love me?"
"No," comes the honest reply.
Hashirama is a fool to love so completely. Tobirama calls it a sickness, bound to his lack of belief in himself and his qualities, out of fear that only someone damaged could love him. Someone who'd throw away his life on a fucking welter of self-disgust, grief and anger. Someone like Madara.
"I don't love anyone," he drawls into Hashirama's ear. "But I want to give you pleasure. Do you hear that? Pleasure. I want to lavish you in it like Dwarven gold, watch your face as you reach the stars,."
He runs his hands to the front of Hashirama's chest, pressing his hard body against his and shifting his hips. One hand moves to the Hokage's neck and the other hand slides lower, Madara's fingers traveling down a battle scarred stomach and farther down to the base of his cock.
"Don't fall in love with me." Madara says, like it's not too late already.
"I didn't fall for you," Hashirama scowls. "You fucking tripped me."
Like enchanted twisty tendrils that wrap around a rose, Madara tightens his grip on the side of his neck and jaw. He turns Hashirama's head at an awkward angle and then slides his tongue inside his mouth. Hashirama moans, leaning back as far as he can to allow him complete access. The Uchiha crashes over him like a wave, and when they fuck, it feels like the sudden entrance into a holy place where he no longer needs to hate his body for its nature, for it's betrayal.
He always gives in to Madara.
:::
Hashirama's wasted so much of his life and so many of his days on trying to save everyone, but then he figures the first step to getting what he wants is having the courage to get rid of what he doesn't.
On the day they sign the treaty and erect the first house of their dream, Madara is shining and lovely like a cheap tinsel halo, hurdling forward and onward, unstoppable and catastrophic. He is wild and beautiful.
Hashirama looks at him, and forgets how to breathe.
:::
The adoration of hundreds is lifeblood. But he's having fitful dreams. He can't breathe. He can't…breathe. You just don't appreciate breathing out of both nostrils until one day that is taken away from you.
"Why d'ya have to wake me?"
"I didn't," Madara says. His eyes are like dark ink, the curving edges unravelling into a spill of red. "Must have been quite a dream."
Hashirama hesitates. "Can you feel it when I dream about you?"
He chugs down some water. "Yes. Look, If you want to go back to sleep you better say something now. It's the last chance you're getting," he smiles his bloodthirsty smile, the only smile he has left, climbing on top of Hashirama.
"Why? You going somewhere?"
"I'm already gone, Hashirama. You just haven't accepted it yet."
"Don't say that."
He can't fucking breathe.
Madara dips his head to kiss him and it feels like oxygen, the future and the past, desire and regret, Uchiha and Senju, Konoha and the world, all rolled into one. "Shit. Fucking breathe, idiot."
"Don't leave me."
Madara caresses his face. "Come on, inhale the future…exhale the past. Don't you ever get a nosebleed from playing God all the fucking time?"
Madara's tongue and roving hands are all over him and his muscles tense and flex under his touch. He grips Hashirama's cock and roughly strokes him. He buckle up into his fist, the build-up is rolling through his spine, churning through his balls, and then it fades as Madara denies him.
"Fuck," he groans. He only ever curses when he's with Madara, the man who taught him how to do it properly when they were still children, "Don't stop. Don't you fucking stop!"
"Relax," Madara murmurs, releasing his dick and sliding his palms up his chest. He turns Hashirama around and mouths his way across his shoulder, nipping and licking down his spine.
Only the sound of their heavy pants fill the room as Madara goes to his knees behind him. Hashirama rests his forehead on the pillow and they make love, slowly, like the thick languid movements in a dream. Then a wildflower emerges in a clearing, sparkling and glittering like a ruby.
:::
He can see ice glistening from fires and hear footsteps falling on ancient stone, and somewhere in the middle he's split in two.
Before and after Madara leaves.
He shouldn't have to rip himself into pieces to keep Madara whole. But he knows the Uchiha loves him, in his way.
:::
If you have ever wandered in a dark, damp forest you know the smell of dead leaves trampled underfoot and grasses soaked with water. But do you know where the wild things grow?
The waters speak of it in hushed murmurs. Hashirama's life is changing again.
They watch the blue-grey twilight over a darkening lake. The forest behind them is cool and black, and he can hear silent wild animals start to peep out from their hiding places to walk in the night. Madara's hair is long and his eyes are crackling with the fire that consumes him. Hashirama is entranced.
"Do you have any regrets?" the ghost asks, swilling cheap alcohol.
Hashirama reminds himself to breathe, "None."
"Hah. I almost believe you."
"Well, maybe one. Does it matter?"
He considers that. "Yes," he finally says, smoke curling from his lips. "What is it?"
"Acting like it was me against you, when it was really just me against myself."
He shrugs. "But to be great, truly great, you gotta be willing to be hated and misunderstood. And you have greatness in spades, Hashirama. But maybe now it's time to mo—"
"I don't wanna move on, Madara. Don't fucking tell me to do things I can't do."
Madara hums, then exhales a puff of fire. "That decision has been made up for you already. I'm gone. It's done. But this village is everything you ever wanted, no?"
Not everything.
"You don't get it."
"Get this," he offers Hashirama the bottle. "When it hurts to move on, just remember the pain you were in hanging on. Free yourself of that, Hashirama. Come on. It's a new dawn."
"Technically it's 9 o'clock."
He smirks. "Right."
"Are you feeling well?"
"I don't know. Why don't you feel me?"
Hashirama glances at him and his smile widens. It's a warm smile, an open smile, and it's a comfort to know that underneath the face he presents to the world, behind that cool exterior, hides a soft warm thing that breathes and dreams and loves like any other man.
"You know it's always been you," Hashirama draws a shaky breath. "Don't you?"
"Mm."
"That's it? I get a grunt? Do I ever even cross your mind, Madara?"
"You don't cross my mind," black eyes sweep over the lake. "You live in it."
:::
Hashirama is drawn by his wild nature, compelled by his fascination with the lovely flowers that grow in empty lots of blood-drenched land.
He runs with them in terror of their ways only to be torn to pieces in the end by the same qualities that attracted him in the first place, his sentimental attachment to the cruel stories that bind him to the past, and never let him go.