Sick But Not As Much As Id Like - Tumblr Posts
“It was a gift and a curse to love and to hate so intensely. It was more a curse than a gift, a sweet prank from the gods, the man Madara most hated in the entire world, the man he learned to love so deeply, be the man he worshiped above anything else.”
In the good days, Madara would pray to Izuna, wherever he could be, to understand. That he could never leave Tobirama without giving up his own heart.
In the bad, Madara would look at Tobirama, quietly asleep on his chest, and ask himself what kind of brother that would turn him into.
Pairing: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Rating: M
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1/1
Words: 2011
Language: bad English
CW: VERY unhealthy relationship, mild blood/gore, eye trauma
naah, don’t mind me. just some indulgent relationship study i took off my drafts.
read on AO3 or under the cut! <3
⚠️ I’m not a english speaker, and I haven’t a beta version for this text, so you’ll probably notice some grammar mistakes. I did my best to clean the most I could, but I’m not fluent. My apologies for any major incoherence 😔
* There is a very small reference to Uchiha's centers, mostly implied. I guess the first one on the fandom who came with that concept was KeanBlade, so all the credits at them! <3
There were days where everything seemed to be dark.
There were days where Madara felt they were back to war. Fighting to survive another day, to take a last breath, to see the next blood moon rising up in the sky.
There were days when everything was delightful and sweet like it’d be a daydream. The kids running around with their lips spread on big, lazy grins, holding sticks of Dango and tops, instead of too large steel weapons; their wounds were from falls and stupid street fights, not from sharp, poisoned needles.
There were days when everything seemed to be almost perfect. These were days like today, lazy and lethargic when there was no work to be done yet and the afternoon was wasted on small talks, sprawling together in the engawa, speaking with soft voices. Enjoying the post glow, sunlight heat pleasantly in the early spring.
The sky is already dark, the very last warm sunbeams slipping away through the wood floor, reflecting on the clear water on the koi pond. Uchiha’s compound’s quiet murmur rocked Madara’s lazy nap, a soft wind whistling cozily on the engawa.
The heat of the body tangled with him caught Madara’s attention, as the light glimpsed against Tobirama’s chest and reflected through Madara’s own gapping hakama on Tobirama’s body. A colorful enamel uchiwa pendant tied up against his collarbone proudly, painted with Madara’s mangekyou pattern.
A symbol that couldn’t mean less than the obvious. A proof that Tobirama was taken.
Marked as his; married.
(It still sounded odd in Madara’s mouth—luxurious, making his blood set on fire.
Bitter, though, sometimes. Like funeral pyre ashes.)
Was a… strange combination, him and Tobirama, Madara would easily admit. They weren't— aren’t —that kind of sweet couple like Hashirama and Mito were. They never found comprehension in their relationship, and much less any soft, amorous love. There were no tender touches, no kisses on the cheeks, no holding hands in the dark, or mute twinkling love-sticky smiles—there was nothing but sickness, the darkest of two men born and raised in the war, over the bloody ground of the battlefield.
Sometimes, Madara would look at Tobirama, so calm, so quiet, asleep on his side and his heart would hurt with the if.
If he'd be a better man.
If he could pardon.
If they’d been born in another life, one that wasn’t so violently marked by the pain and spotted with bitter regrets. One that wasn’t so much blood and so much war and so much hate.
If he just could be a little more like his oldest friend and let it go from the hate. Wash clean with water the dirty in his hands, brush away the blood over his nails.
(But you could never just forget a life of nightmares and death, the destruction caused by your hands. All the sorrow and all the pain were memorized forever into your head, the memories blurry by the bloody red of the Sharingan.
He was an Uchiha. A great one. Pureblood.
He could never forget the face of his brother’s murder as he could never let his lover go away again when he held Madara’s heart in his hands.)
The war left behind ugly, open wounds. Left violence, left pain, and left unsaid words. Left mistrust. Left regret.
They were like that. Broken, desperately trying to fill in a hole in their souls that neither of them knew couldn’t anymore be fixed up. The softness they itched to have just couldn’t ever take a place between them—not when they were so twisted, so full within the past to accept the glimpse of what the future could be.
They weren’t good, but they managed to move on.
They would die for each other at the same time they couldn’t stay alone in the same room for more than five minutes. Their bodies danced together in the linens on ends until the crack of the dawn, but when the morning rose up over the window, they couldn’t look anymore eye in the eye without the remorse, the bitter regret from the past burning in their lungs, the taste of ashes heavier than the quiet peace rounding Konoha’s sky in the first hours of the morning.
They worked very well until they didn't, but, still in those worst moments, just the thought of being away hurted deeply.
Because, no matter how fun that thing of souls could be, they loved.
They adored in a way that couldn't be healthy.
As it could be any different, when they were just… them; two broken men trying desperately to keep everything together, trying to stay sane in a peace made over bones and blood, dead-bodies of both Senju and Uchiha still warm when Madara and Hashirama held up hands after sign a dumb piece of paper as if it’d a magical solution to a century bloodbath.
As a broken record, keeping the same past fails on replay, they never spoke.
They never spoke about them, about the kilometric distance between them some days. About the open injuries that still bleed, cuts open. About the world collapsing around them, about how everyone was so deeply determined to ignore all the cracks in the fragile, fresh peace they all fought so hard for.
They never spoke. They fucked until the exhaustion and buried all the problems later, hid the blood inside gloves, and put the pain out onto sarcasm and mockery.
Their love was lug, tired, hard. Was sticky, melting across Madara’s fingers. Was like being constantly pushed up to the limit, broke into a thousand pieces and so glued again, the sharp edges non-sanded.
It was like taking a deep breath when you’re drowning in the sea. That moment of agony, when instead of air into your lungs, you’re breathing salty water over the hum of chaos in your ears, desperately trying to reach for the surface; a moment before that silent, awkward peace when you’re slowly losing your conscience.
It was crystal at the same time it was buried. Spotted with too much blood to be cleaned properly.
(Luckily, Madara always liked the flavor of ichor.)
Somedays—somedays like that—, Madara would lay down on their bed and think about how it was a gift and a curse, in the same way, never to forget.
Never forget the moment when Tobirama stabbed his last little brother, face cold and impassive. Emotionless like a demon.
Never forget the moment when Izuna was finally gone, his chakra slipping away from his body as he choked with a last sigh, taken away by the fervor.
It was a gift and it was a curse to see the shy smile Tobirama gave him when he thought no one was looking, the way he shivered when came, the way his whole body shook quietly when he laughed.
It was a gift and a curse to love and to hate so intensely. It was a gift and a curse to love and to hate so intensely. It was more a curse than a gift, a sweet prank from the gods, the man Madara most hated in the entire world, the man he learned to love so deeply, be the man he worshiped above anything else.
Tobirama, Izuna’s killer, the center of Madara’s world. The man Madara needed more desperately than breathing.
Anyhow, in the good days, Madara would pray to Izuna, wherever he could be, to understand. That he could never leave Tobirama without giving up his own heart.
In the bad, Madara would look at Tobirama, quietly asleep on his chest, and ask himself what kind of brother that would turn him into.
Trust his life, his backs, his home, his heart in the hands of such a demon.
Madara’s fingers danced across his lover’s pretty face, tracing the fragile eyelids right above the ice, long eyelashes, the crooked shape of Tobirama’s nose, the softness of his white skin.
The veiled act of intimacy, the vulnerability that meant much more to a shinobi than could be put together in words, weighted on Madara’s stomach. The way that Tobirama didn’t even frown above Madara’s fingers, deeply asleep, but leaned at the touch of bare skin, made Madara’s sick mind turn on the obscurity.
How easy would it be if Madara cut his throat like that? Would he feel it? By what emotion would his pretty red eyes be filled when the blood drained down his lips and he gazed up at his lover watching him choking?
But…
How easy would it be for Tobirama to just pull an eyeball out of Madara’s face, push up the nerves, and leave behind a heavy trail of sticky blood spotting their linens? Would the blood drip on Madara’s porcelain skin, if Tobirama waited for him to lean on his lap as he was used to, past his fingertips right down Madara’s temples, and stretch open his eyelids?
Madara could almost feel it. The pain burning his senses, the viscosity gluing down his eyelashes behind an empty hollow…
And Madara couldn’t raise one finger. He couldn’t hurt Tobirama, no matter what he may make.
He’d never be able to do it anymore, would he?
Oh, darling, no. Not now. Not after the pale shine of the ring in his fingers. After he hiccupped the I do below Amaterasu’s arms.
(That trust. That blind, unconditional trust—that scared Madara more than anything could ever do. That, if…
If Tobirama asks him for it, it would be all Madara’s pleasure to rip off both of his eyes to give Tobirama, wrapped in silk.)
The twisted feeling of his chakra twirling on a dark spiral apparently had grown enough to disturb Tobirama’s senses and woke him up, making a wave of mint-refresh-ocean-ozonium chakra burnt, rising up to tangle around Madara’s body like a shield, as a pair of focusless, dilated red eyes open to stare at him.
“Madara?” he offered quietly a second later, a pinch of worry merged in the roughness of Tobirama's barely awake murmur.
There was a knot swelling in Madara’s throat when he tried to speak, the always proud, smug tone of his voice reduced pathetically at a broken whimper. “I—” he started unfirmly, “my head. I’m too far. I need—make me stop to think," Madara begged quietly, stuffy against Tobirama’s hair.
Tobirama’s eyes blinked open, suddenly getting away from the sleepy haze.
“How do you want me?” Tobirama’s tone was thick, a smoker's voice deep on his throat.
Madara swallowed heavily.
Tobirama probably was still open and lacking by the fuck Madara get on him early this afternoon, and it would be so easy to pull out and slide in, but it wasn’t what Madara needed right now.
Not when he felt like this.
When he needed to feel Tobirama, everywhere. Throbbing on him, burning against his skin, touching where he felt more vulnerable.
“On me.”
Please, now, he did not add.
Tobirama’s quick breath against his neck made Madara bristle, a goosebump running down his backbone. Closing his eyes, Madara felt Tobirama clumsily moving behind him, heat pressed behind his thighs as Tobirama’s fingers fumbled blindly to push down his pants.
His fingers were cold, sleeky with the olive oil he spread on his fingertips, as he pressed in Madara’s rim, thorough and controlled as everything that heartless man did—but his shaking fingertips squeezing his thighs painfully, choppy breath told Madara more than he needed to be told.
The elbow was hard against his ribs.
“The dead don’t speak, Madara,” Tobirama murmured quietly into Madara’s sweaty skin, kissing his neck. Madara scratched bloodlines with his nails on his back, holding Tobirama's body as close as he could, squeezing Tobirama’s shoulders like a lifeline while Tobirama slowly rocked against him, holding Madara’s hips firmly against the mattress.
Madara just could close his eyes, boneless, and pray.
If it was for mercy or death, if it was for the gods or for Tobirama, no one could answer but Madara.
Luckily, good shinobi carry their secrets to the grave.