loss of simplicity

I've always thought this pairing was beautiful.

Their first kiss happens between two boys, one firm like a sapling tree, the other lithe and impaled with moonlight.

"Oi… Hashi, what are you doing?" Madara shifts, as if trying to pass through the tree that presses insistently into his back. "It's late. I have to go."

The boy in front of him remains fixated, hands braced against the bark on either side of him. Slowly, hesitantly, he reaches forward and slips one hand into dark hair that seems dipped in fine ink, like black water as it slides through the crevices of his skin.

"Do you think that maybe one day, when we rule the village, we could be married?"

Madara's face sours immediately. "Only you could think of something that stupid."

Hashirama smiles. He's young, fourteen, but the brief turn of his lips already has the power to light up the forest clearing with warmth. "But you always go along with my 'stupid' plans." Without waiting for an answer he leans forward and takes his friend's mouth.

Uchiha Madara is not an easy person to kiss. He's vicious, almost. Scratching in a relentless kind of pride, digging slight fingers into Hashirama's arms. He bites back as his lips are kissed, reluctance mixed with a sort of quiet fury. It takes nearly a minute before he calms and rests his hands lightly on his friend's chest, allowing him to do as he pleases. It takes a few more seconds as his tongue slowly learns their game and begins to play.

When this happens, Hashirama smiles and slips his hands around his shoulders more firmly, taking control of the silence in the evening glade, and of Madara's hesitant touches along his waist. He presses their mouths together more firmly, just as he's seen some of the newly married do in the Senju compound. A strange kind of yearning once hungered for, now reified with the form molded against his.

He separates their mouths, allowing a thin trail to form between their reddened lips before slipping out of existence. Madara watches it dejectedly before finally pushing him away.

"Had your fun, now?" He asks mulishly with a glance over one shoulder.

Hashirama smiles. "We can do that again, right?"

"Hmph. Find a girl for something like that," his friend mutters darkly. But the unspoken words hand clear in the evening air, that he wouldn't resist, that he would enjoy it the same. He walks away, and Hashirama, who is fourteen and in love, watches him.

And wonders if maybe Madara could be fourteen and in love too.

.O.

Three years and their childish play is over. The stakes arc towards the sky and their clans begin an irredeemable war, and through this there is only time to eat and fight and mourn. But when the skirmishes clear and the Naka River runs red with blood, when there is a momentary lapse of life for helping others back to life from their desolate state, they have seconds. Minutes, possibly.

"You're getting thin," Hashirama observes, running earthy fingers over visibly slight hipbones.

"They need food for the injured," Madara spits out almost in disgust. He wretches his friend's hands away, stops them from continuing their overly-delicate touch. "Pitiful fools, they should focus more on the living than on the almost-dead. And don't act like it isn't the same with you."

The barest hints of morning sun are the only light he sees by, but that is the only possible sustenance for their secrecy. Now, when the clans sleep before rising to fight. Here, inside the gatehouse of the Uchiha compound. Hashirama ignores the insistent hand, and his finger follows a trail to Madara's chest, over a stiff sternum before dipping inside his mouth. "My brother always takes more food than necessary, and I share with him. I could bring you-"

"No," Madara says firmly as the finger leaves his mouth. "It's bad enough that we're doing this. I don't need to feel as if I were paying you. Just… do it quickly."

He nods. Slips the finger inside and feels his friend's body arc underneath him, fingers clenched into makeshift sheets, lengthening hair strewn around his head. Even in his thin form Madara is the same, strong yet lithe as a dragonfly's wings. He possesses an ethereal kind of form, one that can shift easily between battle-hardened and moonlit.

"Quickly," Madara hisses. But he's already lost in the lapse of time that accompanies their nights. "We fuck so often, this should be second-nature to you by now."

A rough peal of laughter echoes through the dim gate room. Hashirama leans down and takes his mouth gently, amused by the way he strikes back up like a cornered tiger. "The art is in doing it slowly." Even so, he slides his fingers away, takes himself in one hand, and pushes in, reveling in the momentary bliss of the gasp Madara allows to pass his lips.

As every time they find time, it's nails clawing against a firm back and knees pushing against slender hips and fingers that carve a line of languid fire where they touch. It's finding the way to move while masking moans from the Uchiha listeners who might walk by. It's Hashirama murmuring heated things into the ear of the man he thrusts into.

But Madara is quiet. He clamps one hand against a mouth already swollen, holding it tightly as they rock into the sheets. A single beam of light paints a line across his face and highlights red, red eyes.

"Madara," whispered against the curve of his neck, the words skitter teasingly over his skin. "Do you remember what I asked, the very first time?"

"You don't need to talk, too!" He hisses back, mercilessly clawing the back of his friend's legs.

So he doesn't. Hashirama strokes Madara to finish with an unhurried touch and remains silent, bringing one hand over his mouth to bite into as he comes.

They collapse in a pile of limbs on the futon, breathy and wet with exhaustion. But this time Madara does not stand and walk away, does not stumble blindly in the darkness for his clothes, does not even make a move to distance himself. He stays tied up, one lean arm slung across Hashirama's stomach, and looks towards the dark rafters of the ceiling.

"You can talk now," he says at leisure, long after he expects Hashirama to even remember the words.

But underestimation is a great weakness. "Ah! I was going to ask you again, Madara. What do you think of it? After we finish building the village and set the treaties, we rule as partners."

Madara mulls it over silently, squinting in the darkness as if expecting the wooden walls to spew his answers. Finally, he says slowly, "that is acceptable."

At that, Hashirama bursts into a grin and he pulls Madara's face to his. "Really? So you agree to become partners and marry me?"

"Not that way, you fool!"

.O.

But years later, it is Madara who returns.

He stumbles half-blind into the Senju compound and the merciful dead of the night is the only entity willing to mask his presence. Red armor sticks to his chest, suctioned with blood not yet dried. The main house is only a few minutes away, but he knows instead where to walk and his feet take him there, unaided. The same foolish place that had once spurred a boy's dream.

Hashirama is there as he always is, and his deep brown fall of hair now hangs long over Hokage's robes. The moon's light catches the earthy tone of his skin as he turns and stills in the centre of the clearing, kneeling by the water. Its reflections paint ethereal shadows across his face, turning him dreamlike, incorporeal, yet still there, with the quiet kind of force he always embodies.

"You…you returned."

Madara does not reply. It takes every ounce of his strength to portray even a smudge of his glory in injured state but his back is stiff as he walks forwards. Stumbles slightly. Half-runs.

Their mouths meet in a momentary clash of resentment, a once-coveted slice of wonder now handed back with all the reluctance in the world, shakily, in hands long slashed bloodied by duty. Though when his fingers are clenched into Hashirama's long hair and those same hands from long ago are winding across the back of his leg, it passes from thought. "Fine," he breathes in a desperate voice lined with the slow pangs of concession. "Fine."

Review, please. I know HashiMada is a small community, but any sort of feedback would be nice.