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It’s hard to keep track of time when it never applied to the immortal.
It felt like that as time changed the world around them it made it harder to keep track of just how much passes them by. At first it seems easy; the first century of living was simple enough and even the second one was manageable.
Usually by halfway through the third century was when the days were starting to be forgotten. Then the months once they entered the fourth century and then all that they used to know when the year passed was the seasons themselves. Most people who were given immortality might have gone insane at this point. No one would blame them, it can be hard being a constant in an ever changing world.
These two were not most people.
As the centuries passed for the couple, it became easier to handle when they followed their patterns. Going from place to place hunting bounties and getting new bingo books with each passing decade to keep them updated.
The neon lights buzz outside the window and illuminate the room in the old apartment they rented for the next week; a rare rest after a particularly hard bounty that they took on and took them on a wild goose chase. It’s noise and the harsh glow of it makes it hard for him to fall asleep.
Not that it ever really came to him.
Hidan watched as the world had changed; where wars were no longer held on battlefields, where the rigorous training to master chakra is a near extinct practice as technology began to sink its claws into the aspects of being a shinobi. With a special weapon or a flick of a button the ninja of today were far cries from the past.
Yet he didn’t mind. It makes it all the more laughable when he and Kakuzu underestimated their opponents with their old ways. Being immortal afforded them advantages that mortals who continue the old ways wished they could attain.
The bed he lays in wasn’t the most comfortable; it creaked slightly when he moved to get comfortable or when his partn–no when his husband would toss and turn. He wondered how the other was able to sleep so easily…
It wasn’t that Hidan had trouble falling asleep, he slept on hard earth or stone slabs after all, hell he sometimes even fell asleep during a ritual. The problem was he did everything in his power not to. His partner shifted behind him before a large familiar tanned arm wrapped around him with the dark stripes around his wrist and his nails still painted a dark black as he rested his hand over the jashinist’s.
“Mm..Hidan..”
He hated to sleep. Even when Kakuzu insisted he needed to, that even if they are both immortal it was still important to rest. As fingers gently traced over his own as if to silently tell him that the other was there, Hidan closed his eyes.
–darkness. Surrounded by darkness, the smell of his own blood as it dries and caked on his own bottom lip and chin, his skin beginning to stink from the pieces of him buried under rocks and the sound of little creatures scurrying around trying to find them, to find him, to eat the forever regenerating parts—
He held on to Kakuzu’s arm as the memories plagued him ever since the day his husband had come back for him. It may not have been as bad as when he was first pulled out; stitched together by the other, put on bedrest to allow the wounds to heal properly and fed between short bursts of consciousness. He remembered how it felt to feel those hands on him for the first time when he thought for a moment this was a fever dream and what was touching him was some kind of animal trying to devour him again.
The screams he made, how he had tried to claw, bite and fight before he finally returned to himself enough to realize he was back together.
Yet even after all these centuries together he never could shake off the fear that this was all a part of some fantasy. Then when he next opened his eyes he would be in that hole again with no sunlight, no one coming for him…
“Hidan,” Kakuzu sounded more awake now as if noticing the way the other clung on to him, “...Hidan…”
“...I don’t want to sleep…” Hidan admitted quietly as he felt the warm body press closer as the heat emanated through the soft cotton of the pajamas Kakuzu wore, “..I don’t want to go back…”
“You’re not…” Kakuzu murmured as he nuzzled his husband…gods centuries ago if someone had told him the mouthy, vulgar brat partnered with him would become his partner in the most meaningful way he might have just crushed their head beneath his foot. Even in this world of scientific progression and traditions becoming obsolete, they remained side by side.
The Taki nukenin remembered how one of his masked beasts had managed to find hearts. Enough to revive the rest to bring him back to the living after the edo tensei ended. It wasn’t just shinobi who travelled through the area back then.
Hidan stared at where the dim ambiance of the neon lights illuminated the tile floor as he tried not to close his eyes again.
Feeling Kakuzu holding him thought helped. His arms held him firm almost as if it was anchoring him in the present. He takes another shaky breath as the only other known immortal in this world is curled around him like somehow he could shield him from the horrors that still plagued his mind to this day.
“Hidan….I promise you will never wake up back in the place again…that nara fucker is long gone and his kin have dwindled…that forest, that prison you were trapped in have long been uprooted and replaced…” He felt Hidan trembling harder, “You couldn’t be put back there if you wanted to.”
That earned a weak snort, “Like I would ever fucking want to go back to that hell hole.”
At a glance no one would have ever thought they were together. They don’t show much affection in the public eye, and they tend to argue to the point any everyday person would think they hated each other. If their companions from their time in the Akatsuki had been given immortality they might still believe nothing changed between Kakuzu and Hidan.
Here, after many centuries the only comfort the two sought was with each other because no one else in this messed up, ever changing world around them would know the feeling of being an ancient soul trapped in a body frozen in time.