Soul-bound

15. Fire and wood

Outwardly, I radiated calm.

That came with age, I'd noted; the ability to display one facade even if the state of your insides was something else entirely.

I couldn't help but feel sentimental. The vast wall around our village was the same. The wooden gate was the same.

As I approached, my scythe and shield on my back, no armour, I could sense the presence of a thousand men waiting for me inside the gates; he must have heard I was coming, and prepared to defend his village. A thousand men was nothing to stop me, I knew, and he knew. But I figured it meant that he knew that it would be enough with him and a thousand men to stop me.

He must have gotten stronger.

But I didn't need to be stopped. I hadn't come for the destruction of the village.

The gate opened up and out he came, a tiny figure against all that wood. It was fascinating to think he had created all of this with his bare hands.

I was nervous. So, so nervous.

He was in armour, but bore no sword. He approached me slowly, his hair once more reaching his waist which saddened me for some reason. It was as if he'd cracked off a piece of me from himself. He was wearing black, which was unusual for him, but I liked it. I liked it on him.

"Hi", he said.

There was hesitation in his eyes, but no hostility.

"Hi", I said. "I..." I swallowed. This is it. "I came come."

He frowned.

"Why would you do that now?"

I was trembling. I realised then that even if I was afraid of rejection, I had expected him to take me back with open arms. I gritted my teeth and hissed, hiding my face in a gloved hand.

"Because I'm done, okay! I'm done. With all of it. I have more power than any other man. It's useless to me! Useless unless I have something I love to protect with it! And that is the village, and it's its people, and it's..." Hashirama waited patiently. "And it's you!" I changed my voice to a whisper. "It always has been. Ever since I was twenty. And if you're going to reject me then fine! I can live with that! But I can't live like a rogue anymore."

"You speak as if I've forced you to live as a rogue. Nobody has."

"I have", I said. "I have forced me."

Hashirama was quiet. He was quiet for a long time, a stern expression resting well on his face.

"It will take a long time for the village to accept you back", he finally said.

"I don't care", I said. "I don't need them to accept me in order to protect them. I need you to accept me."

An eternity passed.

And just as I was about to give up and leave, Hashirama, my former best friend, took a step to me, put a hand on my face and kissed me.

"Mmm..." I said in surprise.

And in that moment, an explosion of happiness and relief went off inside of me, an explosion that was so big I thought that this, this was what finally would kill me.

Hashirama backed me up against a tree trunk, then turned me around so I had my stomach to it, pinning my hands up against it. He placed his lips on my neck, and I couldn't help but crane my neck to his lips, my every muscle fibre obeying his kisses.

It was so different, I thought, so serious, so real. Doing someone as a grown man. I thought about the pure danger I could be in as he locked my wrists to the tree trunk by creating handcuffs out of wood which fastened me to the bark. It would be so easy for him to lift his sword then, shove it through my back and into my heart or, if he felt morbid, stab my stomach to allow me a slower, more painful death through the leakage of stomach acid through my body, until the acid had corroded though my aortic walls to cause me a sudden death through immense blood loss.

It was about trust, I thought as he pulled down my trousers, biting my shoulder as he put his leaking tip to me. It was about trust to let a man put you in a dangerous situation willingly. It was about trust to allow a man inside of you without even a fraction of preparation. It was about trust to allow the man to cause you pain, a pain that with slow, rhythmical movements would turn to pleasure.

He spoke to me. I was moaning like a man possessed but he still spoke to me. I had to concentrate to catch what he said.

"I have dreamed about you coming back for so many years", he murmured. "So many years."

"It doesn't need to be a dream", I whispered.

Hashirama pushed his fingers into my mouth with a force I didn't recognise, bending my mouth open. I whined.

"Shut up", he murmured into my ear as he kept taking me.

We became one. For the first time, we well and truly became one, fire and wood burning together, as it had always been meant to be.

"I love you", he murmured into my ear when he was done. "You're a stranger to me now, but I love you."

"I love you, too", I said back.

It was the first time we had said it to one another, together.