Madara burns everything he touches, and Hashirama knows it will end in flames.
He knows , and yet –
"Why do you do this?" Madara breathes. He is straddling Hashirama's hips. The little furrow between his brows that makes him look like a child who has been given a treat and does not know why, the wide red and black eyes that make him look like a creature of the night, getting ready to sink his teeth in and-- "Why do you let me love you?"
Hashirama turns his head aside, chest heaving. The room is dim, and he can barely see the outlines of the worm-eaten desk weighed down with papers and assortment of weapons stashed in a corner. Madara’s moved to the tiniest house in the newly founded village, and there’s nothing in it but a tattered futon and weapons, not even a fireplace to keep the cold at bay.
He swallows, and shudders when Madara's hand comes to his rippling throat. Instinct tells him to react to the danger, everything else makes him stay still and shiver a strangled breath.
"I don't know."
Long fingers trail up to his chin, over his lips. Madara's lips, cold and cracked, press against his own. Their tongues slide against each other, slow and sensuous, and he tastes lust and anger and fire. Hands knot in Hashirama's hair, just this side of too rough, too hard. He tries to push at Madara's chest, but his arms seem tied down by sacks of wet sand and he may as well be resisting a stone wall.
"Does it turn you on to know that you're mine?" Madara whispers against his lips. His breath smells of the wine they had stolen from Tobirama’s stash and shared an hour before. There is bitter mockery in his tone. Mockery and jealousy and just a smear of wild-eyed insanity.
Hashirama has forgotten how to be afraid of insanity; he's lived in it for the past year, since they put an end to the fighting and a beginning to this, whatever it is.
Insanity.
He’s waddled in it, folded it around himself not to ease any pain (what is pain? He hasn't felt it in so long. Why feel it when he can feel Madara’s body against his own?), but because he can, because insanity attracts him like a moth to a flame.
Angular hips grind together, and Hashirama screws his eyes shut and cannot stop the half-sob that is torn from his throat. Stars whirl behind his closed lids and his bones have turned to jelly and he is just a quivering heap in Madara's hands. Madara licks a searing line up his neck, soft long hair tickling bare skin, earning a shudder.
"I'll rip out your heart," he says, his fingers trailing over Hashirama's chest. He digs his chipping nails into smooth, sepia flesh, just a little sting that threatens blinding pain. "Is that what you want?"
"No."
Madara shrugs, "It's what I do."
(I know I know the devil has you by the ankles and you care too much and not at all but –)
"Madara..."
(Child of war who has never known gentleness let me soothe the pain let me touch where your skin was torn apart just let me –)
"Do you think I'm some guardian angel, Senju? You think I'll kiss your hurts to make them all better? Forgive your sins? Add meaning to your empty life?"
Hashirama's voice is weak, as if he is a criminal on trial who doesn't know how to spin a story, instead of the leader of his people and bearer of unfathomable power.
"I never thought that."
( Lies lies lies you thought he was god-sent that he was your reason for living that he'd never screw up your life this beautifully you pathetic fool with stars in your eyes. )
Madara brings his face close to Hashirama's. Their breaths mingle.
"I'm a lot of things," Madara murmurs, his hair forming a veil around them and shutting them off from the world, sharingan spinning and spinning and spinning "but I’m not blind."
He burrows his nails into the tender flesh over Hashirama's heart, and oh Gods, it hurts .
"I'll wring the colours from your life."
That sounds so beautiful , Hashirama thinks vaguely (maybe he is finally going crazy, too) as Madara strips off his pants and takes him in his mouth.
Madara is fire incarnate, and Hashirama allows himself to burn.