DAY 2
Prompt: Society
Summary: While a Senju recognized love, they could not utilize it; but an Uchiha understood love even when they could not recognize it, and once they put a name to their feelings, even in the silence of their own thoughts, they could not escape.
A/N: I found the excuse to weave headcanons into a drabble and took it. Rated M I suppose, though the nsfw is more of the implied, sensual variety.
The Senju have planted rice fields every spring since the dawn of time. The women learned to pick and pull before they learn to provide meals for their husbands; the men, in the brief silences of war, set fires to the crop fields between each cycle. Members crowded around and watched, pleading for the gods to bring good fortune to their lands, while the men controlled the direction of flames with their roaring Suiton. As a child, Hashirama sat dutifully on the sidelines. He would not participate, would not pray: he meditated.
In the winters before his Mokuton bloomed to perfection, when food was scarce even for their clan, Hashirama meditated. He could not weep for those who starved, especially for those of other clans, and for a family who boasted about the abilities of the heart, he learned quick that they were liars. And through their lies, he learned one other truth: Hunger itself starved a Senju slower than their limitations on love. They could not live without it, and yet they could not live with it in war, so they stuffed themselves full of rice instead of feeding themselves properly. The symptoms grew from the fraction of a second, and from then on, would not stop until they were dead or broken. The Senju recognized love, but they could not utilize it—only toss it aside for aspirations.
Hashirama loved to believe he was different. He prided himself in his uniqueness, his sunshine smile, his dazzling words. The thoughts he put on paper, in free verse or stanza, reflected the deepest desires of his heart. But he realized—as any romantic realizes at some point in his aching life—that love was his poison, and that no Senju could understand it.
To give his heart away, he gave in public. He relished the lingering looks of his people, no matter how skeptical, when he walked a little too close to Madara Uchiha. During council, when stuffy men spent hours upon hours debating which clan would go where, which fields would serve what purpose, how far they should stretch their territory, he would question Madara before anyone else, with much more vigor than anyone else, and wait patiently for an answer. If Madara chose to grace him with a morbid joke, Hashirama would respond with a boisterous laugh that echoed for all to hear, as if to say look, look at him, look how funny he is, look at how magnificent and inspiring he can be, just give him a chance, please, a single chance and you'll see everything I see, you'll all understand!
As the night sky clung to their bare skin and each breath left storms in their wake, Hashirama touched the side of Madara's cheek, fingertips lethal, and caressed him with promises of a love that would last an eternity. He mouthed tender kisses into that moonlit, fire-ridden skin, and sucked in each shadow with eagerness, as if to share the burden of darkness. But the more he consumed, the more he hungered, and when sunlight decorated the streets of Konoha, his fingers found Madara's hand, bare callouses against leather. He slipped through the gaps, felt the twitch and flinch, the rugged jerk backwards, and gripped him tight, with all the strength and certainty of a warrior.
Madara twisted apart. His Sharingan bled to life, black tomoe frozen in place, but Hashirama met his gaze in silence, staring with an intensity that shielded judgement from the passersby. Or so he had thought. But in the coming days, Madara walked at a distance, snapped in the silence of council meetings, and spoke at a low, mocking tone. If he was found at their cliff side, it was not to make love: he visited alone, with the war of his own thoughts. They did not speak personally, and if they shared a conversation of duty, it was clipped and strangled at the core. Hashirama could not say precisely how long the silence stretched, as it blurred into one line of frustration and impatient patience, but he recalled the haze of the afternoon when Madara confronted him, pinned him to the windowpane, disrobed him of what ridiculous layers he could, and ravaged him in the Hokage Tower for anyone who glanced through the window to witness.
Madara finished before Hashirama had the chance to start, but he did not mind. He said as much—assumed he was forgiven, that they could discuss the upcoming summit, and perhaps they could vacation at one of the springs, just the two of them.
I'm leaving.
He didn't question it. Of course it would not be good to linger in the office—what if Tobirama stumbled in, sometimes he turned off his sensor abilities, that's what he said.
It was a lie Hashirama learned to tell himself well.
While a Senju recognized love, they could not utilize it; but an Uchiha understood love even when they could not recognize it, and once they put a name to their feelings, even in the silence of their own thoughts, they could not escape. To make it tangible was suicide, and Madara could not yet afford his death, so he shunned what light he could and left the dawn after next.
Hashirama meditated. He sat atop their cliff until the ache in his heart subsided, and on the days when it would not, he wrote in his notebook until he was too numb to weep. Blobs of ink would spell out his heart—if he was frustrated or shattered or full of self-hatred and regret. And he constructed the perfect balance in his mind, or so he thought, where he could work with a smile and endure the worst.
Hashirama continued walking the village streets, distinctly alone; but sometimes he felt that presence, those eyes, and he would turn and reach with his hand. It was always someone else. The wrong eyes, the wrong hair, the wrong lips. The wrong crinkle or dimple or breath. Yet it was always the same walk: a dance in the shadows, haunting him with a hunger he could not sate. He died a fortnight before he turned fifty, a blade in his starving heart, and shortly after the last spike of his chakra, moonlit fingers came to dance in the grays of his hair one last time.
In the shadows.
