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Madara didn't really need Obito anymore.
He would've liked to say that he'd never needed him, but it would've been a barefaced lie. (On the occasions when he did lie to himself, it was done expertly enough that he never noticed.) He had never wanted to leave his dream in the hands of another - he must be the one to make it real. He was the Saviour, no one else. But he had been betrayed by his own body, trapped in the cage of his own wasted flesh. There had been no choice; he'd had to pass the mantle along, if only temporarily.
He'd assumed that there would be very little time between his planned revival and the realisation of his ultimate goal, so Madara hadn't foreseen that he would be spending any significant amount of time with the one he chose. And he hadn't given much thought as to what Obito might grow up to be like. As a boy Obito had been loud, over-excitable, and naive, reminiscent of a dog that still came to its master with a wagging tail even after it had been kicked. (Madara didn’t care for dogs.) But afterwards, when his little girlfriend had tragically died, he’d been serious and driven, putting his all into everything he did.
As a man, Obito was fascinating.
He was intelligent, pragmatic, cunning. On the surface he was utterly cold-blooded, the perfect shinobi. But he'd worn those masks of his for too many years. With his face out in the open, sometimes things would slip through his façade before he caught himself and hid away once more. The way Madara saw it the two of them were remarkably similar, with the main difference being that he had stopped being angry at the unfairness of the world a long time ago. There was no point. Madara had moved beyond anger, beyond despair even. Obito on the other hand, was always angry. If confronted he would surely deny this, and echo Madara's teachings on the matter without truly understanding them. Rage and resentment still boiled under his skin.
It was perhaps childish of him, but Madara wanted to make him crack one day, and see the beast within in all its glory. It would be spectacular, he was sure. Obito had become a powerful shinobi. Fighting him would be fun. But in the meantime, Obito continued on pretending that nothing could affect him, and prudishly avoided Madara's attempts to goad him into a spar. Boring.
At least the sex was decent.
They were in Obito's bed because it was the only one in the hideout, even if he hardly ever slept in it, and fucking on stone floors and stone tables and against stone walls had quickly lost its appeal. It wasn't really big enough for two people, but growing a bigger bed frame with mokuton and going out to some town to get a bigger mattress and bigger blankets implied a level of pre-planning and—dare he say—domesticity that was laughable. They made do with what they had, and the small bed saw increasingly frequent, vigorous use.
Madara was still panting as he came down from his high, feeling boneless and drugged with contentment. He closed his eyes and let his face rest in the crook of Obito's neck, determined to make the most of it. Obito lay under him with his knees bracketing Madara's hips and his fingers digging into his shoulders. He loosened his grip now and swept one hand through the sweaty tangles of Madara's hair to trace lazy patterns between his shoulder blades. Right over his spine, where one good stab could finish him off, if Obito's chakra had recovered enough from his orgasm to be put to good use. Part of him hoped Obito would try it, but the rest of him was content to enjoy his afterglow in peace.
They stayed in this position for what seemed like ages but was, in reality, probably just a few minutes. His breathing returned to normal and the perspiration on both their skins was rapidly cooling, but Madara made no attempt to move yet.
Beneath him, Obito's chest heaved in a silent sigh. "Madara."
Madara could feel the rumble of his voice as much as he could hear it - not an unpleasant sensation. "Mm?"
“You’re heavy you know,” Obito complained, his words slow with drowsiness. "And you're still—"
"Inside you?" Madara finished for him, his lips curling into a lazy smirk against Obito's neck. As if he wasn't aware. When they first started fucking Obito had an annoyingly fragile sense of masculinity that Madara had absolutely no patience for, but he had soon disabused him of the notion that being penetrated was a loss of power. Just the opposite actually: he suspected Obito had first allowed himself to be taken in an attempt to regain control over a situation he’d never had a handle on to begin with.
"Yes," Obito replied, after a moment's pause. “That.”
“Hm, convenient, isn’t it?” Madara nipped at the junction of Obito’s neck and shoulder, where his body was divided between human skin—salty with sweat and flushed pink from their exertions—and the artificial material developed from Hashirama’s cells. This other flesh was cooler and harder to the touch. If he were to sink his teeth in right here, his mouth would be flooded with a mixture of blood and sticky-sweet sap heavy with chakra that left a blaze of green behind his eyelids.
“Off,” Obito insisted, shoving at him until he complied. Madara let out an aggravated sigh and untangled their limbs, hissing with displeasure at the sensation of chill air on his dick now that it had left the snug grip of Obito’s warm body. The bed was too small for a pair of grown men to lay side by side on their backs without one of them falling out, and he had no intention of gathering up his clothes off the cave floor and going elsewhere just yet. There was nothing to do for any of the irons he had in the fire at the moment but to sit back and wait, and another fuck or few seemed as good a way to pass the time as any.
Obito must have felt the same way. He stretched with a soft groan and rolled onto one hip, facing Madara. His successor was a prickly, untrusting creature, Madara thought with faint amusement. Unwilling to turn his back on him at a moment of rest yet not complaining when Madara had him on his hands and knees. Much. A bit of tussling definitely added to the mood in his opinion, and Obito could’ve easily slipped away if he didn’t like it.
It did bother him a bit sometimes, how frequently his mind seemed to drop into the gutter lately. As a young man he’d had healthy, but not excessive, appetites. Weak-minded fools lost themselves to earthly pleasures, and he’d always prided himself on his self-control. Until him, of course. (Then the illusion of having any control over his own desires had slipped away, leaving him feeling exposed and vulnerable.) But as he’d grown old such matters had been far from his mind; his body had lost interest and the capability for such things and he was better able to focus on achieving the infinite dream. Then he’d been resurrected into the prime of his life and suddenly found himself with a young, healthy body that was entirely functional again and his libido had once again reared its head. Damned hormones.
But he saw no harm in playing these games with Obito. He’d started it after all, clumsily trying to seduce him because he seemed to think it would give him a hold over Madara. The notion was so amusing that he’d gone along with it, and why not? It was always prudent to kill two birds with one stone.
Obito blinked at him, looking relaxed and deceptively unguarded, but the fact that his eyes were once again red with the Sharingan gave it away. Madara knew his own were also active, using them being something that was as instinctive and effortless as breathing for them both. The tomoe in Obito’s eyes twirled lazily as he ran his gaze down the length of Madara’s body. “You’re not hard yet,” he stated. “You must be getting slow in your advanced age.”
“Good things come to those who wait,” Madara replied glibly. “Do you feel empty without me?” He bit back a smirk as Obito’s cheeks flushed darker. He was much less uptight than he’d been to start with, but still so easily flustered.
Obito scowled at him, and squeezed Madara’s balls in retaliation. “You talk far too much, it’s not attractive.”
“Is that right."
“Your mouth could work better for other things.”
“Oh really? Well, why don’t you show me what you mean…”
-x-
Madara didn’t really need Obito anymore.
But he may have wanted him.