#Having spent the last twenty minutes thinking about what Tobirama will look like if he does the thing that made Tobirama whine just now | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

raendown · 5 years ago

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Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 1590 Soulmate au: The one where a stripe of color on your wrist shows your compatibility with each other

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Chapter 207

For the most part Madara did his best not to judge people by the colors around their wrist. While it was true and proven by countless studies that people with complimentary colors were always the most compatible that didn’t mean he couldn’t get along with anyone whose color did not set off his own. When he was younger he had picked up the habit from many others around his age of shaking the cuffs of his sleeves back to expose his colors whenever possible, a habit he hadn’t really understood until his mother had teased him for it with a sweet smile. As soon as he realized what he was doing Madara purged himself of the habit and made a point of wearing gloves under his sleeves.

Many had asked to see his wrist over the years, though few had been granted the honor. Where he refused to allow himself to judge others by their colors it followed that he also refused to be judged for the same thing. Gloves covered his wrists and long sleeves covered the moments when an extension of his arm might have exposed the skin he so carefully kept hidden.

It wasn’t until he was a grown man of twenty-seven and the cofounder of a childhood dream that Madara first became curious about what someone else might be hiding. Or rather he became curious about why they chose to hide themselves away. He had always known himself to be an exception and despite all he knew of Senju Tobirama it felt wrong somehow that the other should be the same. Reserved the man might be but he was not standoffish the way he was so often rumored to be. After all the times Madara had seen him training or interacting with his students it was impossible to believe him cold. It took a while to get passed the old hatred but once he was able to see clearly Madara had come to the conclusion that Tobirama simply didn’t know how to connect with other adults.

All of which was to say he had a perfectly good reason to be staring at the man’s wrist until Tobirama caught him and drew his attention with a pointed clearing of his throat.

“Do my cuffs interest you that much?” the man asked in a cold voice. “I can recommend several stores where you might buy such a pair if it will bring your attention back to the documents we’re meant to be discussing.”

“Why do you cover your colors?”

“I beg your pardon?” If possible, Tobirama’s voice seemed to grow even colder.

Madara's eyes blew wide as he realized what he had said aloud and hurried to backpedal. “No, shit! Sorry! I didn’t mean to ask! God, that was so fucking rude. I mean I was curious but I didn’t actually- fuck. Can we pretend I said nothing? Treaty. We were looking over the proposed treaty from Kagerō Village!”

Unfortunately for the sudden wild drumbeat of his heart it didn’t seem like he would be getting off that easily. He really hadn’t meant to be so uncouth as to ask the man such a bold question. A person’s colors were their own business; to ask about them was considered an intimate thing between lovers or particularly close friends. The two of them were neither, though their working relationship had improved significantly since those first few months of butting heads.

“What possible reason could you have to be wondering about my wrist?” Tobirama demanded, the warning in his tone causing Madara to squirm in his seat.

“Nothing nefarious, I swear. It’s just a curiosity of mine. Mine are always covered, though not for the reason most people tend to assume, so I’m always curious about why when I see others do the same. You’ve always got yours hidden so I was just…you don’t have to tell me. Let’s just get back to work like you said.”

Tobirama eyed him closely for a few nerve-wracking seconds. “If you wish me to explain my reasons you will need to reveal your own.”

Of all the possible responses Madara hadn’t expected that one at all. He was prepared for anger, indignation, very likely a great deal of insult. To be faced with the offer of an equal exchange threw him so off balance that he could do no more than sit in silence and gawp for a minute or so. Tobirama, thankfully, did not take further insult. All he did was cross his arms as though to shield himself from scrutiny while he waited in his own silence.

It hadn’t been part of the bargain but as soon as he had his thoughts straight Madara reached slowly for the glove on his left hand and pulled. Supple leather slid across his palm easily to reveal the band of violet that faded in to different shades of purple. He’d always been rather fond of it, pleased that he was blessed with his very favorite colors.

“When I was little I realized that some people judged you before they knew you just by looking at your wrist. As soon as I figured that out I started covering up. I didn’t want to let some natural birthmark dictate who I was and wasn’t friends with and I didn’t want to be rejected by others just because we weren’t optimally compatible.” As he spoke Madara traced the line and found himself holding back some kind of soft, sappy expression. It had been quite some time since he last had someone he trusted enough to discuss these things with. Perhaps trust wasn’t quite the word for how he felt about Tobirama but it was only fair that to gain information he should give some in return.

“I…was not expecting that.” Tobirama looked down to fiddle with the cuff on his own wrist, something almost pained visible in the pinch of his brows as he slid it down in increments. “Not the reason, that makes sense. I suppose I was not expecting your colors to compliment my own.”

“Oh.”

And so they did. With his pale white skin Tobirama could have been gifted with no better colors than the ambers and golds twisting together almost like woven chain. Madara couldn’t help but remember the cloak his mother had worn to festivals when he was a child, only on the most formal events, the way deep indigo silk had felt against his fingers and how the shiny golden clasp had been cool to the touch. To this day he had never seen anything more beautiful. Or at least he hadn’t until he looked between his hand and Tobirama’s only to see that their skin made the perfect canvases for what he was sure would make a brilliant portrait.

Madara didn’t realize quite how much he was staring until the sound of Tobirama’s voice snapped him back to reality.

“The only other person I’ve ever met with colors similar to mine, we thought we were made for each other. She called us soulmates and said that surely the gods must have crafted us specifically to be together. We were young and I was foolish enough to entertain the notion that two people might actually be fated in such a way.” His lips pursed and twisted and Madara realized suddenly that he could understand quite a bit more of this man’s cautious personality, the way he held himself back from so many others.

“I take it that things did not work out in such a way?”

“No. They did not. I think perhaps if I had lost her to the Pure Lands it might have hurt less.”

Such raw honesty was unexpected, humbling, especially so from the man before him. Tobirama took a slow breath in and let it back out just as slowly, clearly affected by the effort of opening himself up in such a manner.

“Would you like to have lunch together?” Madara asked him, bearing the weight of a surprises stare until Tobirama narrowed his eyes in thought. “No expectations. I’ve spent my whole life trying not to judge people by their colors and I’m not about to start now. But…we’re born with these for a reason. We’re apparently compatible in some kind of way and I find myself, for once, interested in following that possibility.”

He waited patiently while the other man tossed the idea back and forth. Finally a very small, almost shy smile appeared and he couldn’t help but notice the way it lit up that usually severe face. It didn’t exactly soften anything, Tobirama would always be made of sharp lines and sharper words, but to know that he was capable of such an expression, such an emotion, added another layer to what Madara knew of him and added to the intrigue. Perhaps it wasn’t fate but thinking of all the things they might not know about each other had Madara wondering why he hadn’t thought to pursue this even before he knew their colors went so well together.

“I think I would like that,” was Tobirama’s eventual answer, words carefully considered and even more carefully phrased.

“Shall we?” Madara indicated the door with one hand.

“And where are we going?”

“Your choice, I should think, as long as you pay your own way.” He offered a cheeky grin and to his surprise when Tobirama rolled his eyes it was closer to the fondness with which he did so for Hashirama than any true irritation.

That, Madara decided, was something he could work with.

#rae writes #soulmate collection #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanfiction

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tobiblack · 6 years ago

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The secret tower endures with the child of wisdom

Hikaku had lived through the Warring States, a lifetime of the feud between Uchiha and Senju, and watching it end. He’d lived through the founding of the first great hidden shinobi village, and two wars, seen the third Hokage take the hat. He’d thought that by this point in his life, there was nothing that could shake him that hadn’t already happened.

He’d just never counted on the fact that Kagami might actually succeed in getting Tobirama Senju’s attention. Or apparently anything involved with that hot mess.

Somewhere, Izuna was laughing at him.

1/2

Hikaku had been peacefully enjoying a cup of tea when his wife threw open their door with an uncharacteristic sharpness normally reserved for Council meetings that ran late because of obtuse Hyuuga. There had been no Council meeting today, which left him a very short list of other causes for his lovely wife’s mood.

One in particular, because Sumiko’s son was just as shameless as his mother.

She’d come back pregnant from a mission, and had refused to bow to their Elders about revealing who the father was, and it had only been Madara stepping in for his second cousin that had let her keep that secret. It was only the fact that Sumiko had no interest in clan politics or leading the clan that had kept her from establishing herself as the closest blood tie to their last clan head as the grand-daughter of Madara’s grand-aunt when they’d been deciding whether to keep the tradition of leader-by-strength or fall back into leader-by-blood.

No one had acknowledged Izuna’s bastard as the rightful heir by blood, afraid that the madness that had claimed Madara would show itself in the child and lead further ruin to the clan.

Instead, they’d turned to him and his wife, the strongest left in the clan without Madara’s bloodline, to lead, but Sumiko’s line still represented a special headache. A special status that left them only answerable to the clan head, even if his wife had never enlightened them to the fact as to not upset the Elders further.

As it was, they were still politely ignoring how one of the Hatake now lived on the edge of their compound with Sumiko, with the end of the war and Team Tobirama moving in together being more important to focus on.

Chikako was still upset with Sasuke just letting his heir move out of his compound because it hadn’t given her precedent to deny Kagami, because he’d escaped the compound as soon as he could when they’d tried to sequester him over his newly-received Mangekyou and had since refused to come back.

Which was made more frustrating since the rest of the team kept running interference – particularly the Shimura – and Sumiko had made her opinion clear about how unless her son proved an “actual” danger, she wasn’t going to keep him inside the compound just because they wanted him to be there.

Then there was how she had come very close to accidentally putting him into Tsukiyomi when as they had been having dinner, they’d been interrupted with news of how Kagami had had the Nidaime’s teleportation seal tattooed on his skin. Like they hadn’t all been ignoring his crush for years now, because yes, they all had a bit of a Thing for Tobirama, but the most forward anyone got was asking for a spar. Kagami had all but shouted how much he cared for Tobirama with that tattoo, made worse by how the whole clan all knew he’d gained Mangekyou from believing the Nidaime was dead.

He put his tea down to pour her a cup of sake, “What did he do this time?”

Her eyes were blood-red, nostrils flaring as she tried to find words.

Hikaku didn’t rush his wife, even if he had the sinking feeling the longer it took her that Kagami had managed to find the one thing worse than the whole tattoo thing, and he was increasingly not wanting to know.

She downed her cup before answering, “Akane’s boy was over by Training Ground Nine when he saw Kagami chasing the Nidaime, red silk in hand.”

He immediately regretted taking a sip of his tea, as it went down the wrong pipe and he spent a minute just clearing his lungs.

“W-what?”

“He’s apparently decided to battle-marry, and frankly there’s nothing I can do to oppose it because he technically has been courting the Nidaime the last couple of years even if we’ve previously considered it one-sided. Not to mention that the only way Kagami will capture the Nidaime is if the man allows it, and everyone knows that, which means the clan will consider the battle-marriage binding. Particularly if he wears the silk tomorrow.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that.

Chikako passed him the sake bottle without a word after pouring herself another cup, eyes caught on the hint of red silk beneath the long sleeve of his right arm, “Drink up, husband. Tomorrow we will deal with this, for now let’s just get drunk.”

2/2

#you can guess who Chikako is pregnant with #:3

It was still dark when something woke Hikaku from where he was tangled up with his wife, a brief moment left to remember how they’d kept drinking until very late, reminiscing on how the Senju were full of deadly pretty people and how there had been bets about their feud one day just ending because of a battle-marriage, before he processed that it was the Nidaime politely standing outside the door.

If perhaps this was the first time this had happened, maybe he would have scrambled up and greeted their revered leader. It wasn’t though, the Nidaime had visited several times before – almost always concerning something with Kagami.

They politely didn’t mention the years he’d been banned by Madara from ever stepping foot in the compound, or how it took the Uzumaki princess a year to create a work-around to Madara's spiteful blood-seal so he didn’t set off every trap built into the ground and walls of their compound. Even if Chikako had had to personally ask her to do so because seals weren’t a Uchiha talent but Madara had grasped the concepts enough to create a ticking time bomb not quite specific enough to differentiate between Tobirama and any Senju period.

Because it was Tobirama – and because this was most assuredly to do with Kagami – Hikaku almost buried his face in his wife’s hair and pretended like his instincts were screaming about the very dangerous shinobi that wouldn’t be stalled for more than a few seconds by the door if he truly wanted inside. He didn’t want to know either way if Tobirama had allowed himself to be caught and was now married into the clan – because by the Sage and his sons, Sumiko and Kagami were already special cases in the clan hierarchy, and as it was, he pretended his wife didn’t go drink tea with the Shodaime’s sons about the headaches involved with special cases in their clans, and now, Tobirama would no longer be those boy’s problem but theirs – or if he’d escaped Kagami and was now requesting – demanding, it was all the same thing with the annulment of an instigated battle-marriage – that Kagami cease and desist before he made him.

Chikako was merciless though, tugging on his ear until he moved away, “Get up and answer the door, I think I have to puke.”

Groaning lowly, he got up and straightened his sleep yukata as much as he could considering there was going to be no hiding that he’d gotten massively drunk, passed out, and had just woken up. Then he slid open the door, and blankly looked at the man who-

Hikaku blinked a couple of times in a lack of comprehension at how Tobirama did and did not look like a man who’d just been battle-married.

There were marks on his neck and upper shoulders and chest where his shirt was slipping and kisses had been sucked into his skin. He was wearing one of Kagami’s shirts – Uchiha fan surely prominent on the back. His hair was going in every which direction, falling into his eyes without his happuri – and this had to be the first time he’d ever seen him without it, in the entire he’d known Tobirama.

He looked content in a way that said he’d found happiness after a long struggle to get there.

He did not look like he’d been ravaged within an inch of his life, like was typical of any Uchiha who married of their own choice, and not for obligation or an alliance. He very distinctly remembered Izuna asking if he’d been beset by a wild animal after he’d married Chikako.

He also remembered how Chikako had chased the little fucker down, making him climb a tree where he’d called on Madara for help, and only got thrown into the pond for his trouble.

Tobirama spoke while he was still remembering fondly of how Izuna had given him a wide berth for a week after that dunking and following lecture about how it was beyond rude to mock a couple together for love about their passion.

“Hikaku-san, Kagami told me that any Uchiha that battle-marries should inform the head of their clan within twenty-four hours of the marriage. As he is currently completely exhausted in our room with our sprog, I took it upon myself to inform you of both.”

While he was glad that Kagami had absorbed something about proper battle-marriage procedure, because the sooner the marriage was known to the clan, the higher the chances the bride wouldn’t be accidentally killed if they weren’t from an ally, he felt like he should still make sure there was no doubt to how binding the marriage was, Kagami didn’t have the best track record about this stuff.

Sumiko may not have told him to be sure he went to her for permission and that he didn’t marry on a whim.

Then he spotted the red silk knotted against Tobirama’s skin just as he processed Tobirama saying something about a sprog. And if he was remembering right, sprog was what the Senju called children-

Tobirama’s gaze drifted to behind him, to where Chikako had come up behind him, “What’s this about you and Kagami having a kid, Tobirama?”

“Only that it appears our children will grow up together, and that a congratulations is in order, Chikako-san.”

Hikaku’s mind stalled, and he didn’t hear anything else that was said between his wife and their new clansman as he focused entirely on his chakra sense, and looking at his wife with it even after the other man had left.

She flicked him on the forehead to get his attention, hand resting on her flat belly, “It appears we’re going to be parents, Hikaku. He estimated that I’m just a little over a month along, but a medic would give a better guess. And you heard right, somehow – I’ll get the details of how from him later when the news goes beyond his team, us, and Lady Mito – he’s going to have a kid with Kagami.”

He kissed her, then held her close, “I can’t wait for our child, Chikako.”

It took a couple more seconds before it processed that Kagami was going to have a kid too.

“Oh my Sage, he’s multiplying. I was kidding when I cursed him years ago with kids just like him, but, oh my Sage, I don’t think I can live through a second coming of him as a kid. And- and it’s going to be smart, fucking hell, it won’t be fooled by the stupid shit Izuna used to convince him of.”

#illusion cast upon the Space-Between-Doors 'verse #Tobi_Black #Alternate Universe - pre-Canon #Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence #Alternate Universe - Tobirama survives #I apparently am very attached to the whole 'Uchiha bride-nap/battle-marry' AU #and added onto the idea #Hikaku Uchiha #Tobirama Senju #Kagami Uchiha #Kagami/Tobirama

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sumigakure · 7 years ago

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Skyfall

To: @modernart2012

From: @pwnie3

Title: Skyfall

Rating: T

Wordcount: 2896

Prompt: Pacific Rim AU. Preference for MadaTobi, but I’m open to any pairing, romantic or otherwise. Doesn’t have to follow the movie

Warnings: Brief suicidal ideation, character death, excessive use of italics

Summary: Madara wakes up and doesn’t open his eyes, because he knows that if he does he’ll roll over and Izuna won’t be there in the next bed over. He feels like the ground has been torn out from under his feet and now he’s just falling alone into empty sky.

Drop, Category II solo, let’s do this, first blow comes, harness cracks, Izuna, Izuna, Izuna get up, “Kaleidoscope Burst please respond”, Izuna’s down, Izuna’s down, IZUNA–

Madara wakes up and doesn’t open his eyes, because he knows that if he does he’ll roll over and Izuna won’t be there in the next bed over. He feels like the ground has been torn out from under his feet and now he’s just falling alone into empty sky.

It feels strange, to not have Izuna there. Even as a little presence in the back of his head, like the way it feels to talk to someone using two soup cans and a piece of string, is gone. He and Izuna have– had always been notoriously strong ghost Drifters, to the point where they could divine each other’s emotions from across a building.

Tears well up in Madara’s eyes, and he presses the heels of his palms into them. His breath starts to shudder in his chest.

“Madara?” a scratchy voice asks, a hand laying itself on his thigh. “You in there?”

He scrubs at his eyes, then opens them to see Touka.

She looks about twice as bad as Madara feels. Her hair is a rat’s nest, her eyes are bloodshot and the bags underneath are deep enough to run a river through. She smiles at him wanly and runs her other hand over the crown of his head. “We didn’t think you were gonna wake up.”

I wish I hadn’t, he almost says. “How long was I out?”

She takes a deep breath and retracts her hand. “It’s been almost a week. Kaleidoscope Burst took most of the damage, but…”

But it wasn’t enough. No matter how much of the kaiju’s attack the Uchiha brothers’ Jaeger took, it wasn’t enough to save Izuna.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Touka sniffs. “You know those old Mark Twos as well as I do. Flimsy harness couplings and all that, right? If anyone is to blame then–” a sob catches in her throat– “then it’s me.”

“Touka–” Madara starts.

“No, I was supposed to check everything in that conn pod, but who thinks to check on the pins holding in the damn harnesses?” She laughs bitterly, then sobers. “I checked the box without even looking because hey, you’d never had trouble with it before, why would you start now and it’s cost me my husband–” she chokes on her words and devolves into ugly, halting tears.

Madara pulls her close. She twists her hands into his hair, identical to Izuna’s except for the sheer volume of it, and bawls into his shoulder.

After a minute or two, she pulls back and takes a deep breath, then gives another little laugh. “Look at me, Madara. A week without Izuna and I’m already falling to pieces.”

“You think I’m doing much better?” he croaks eventually. “I feel like I just saw him five minutes ago and I’m already in shambles.”

“What a pair we make, huh?”

Marshall Uzumaki lets Madara rest, heal, and grieve for a week before she has him back in the ring for another copilot. She supervises him for every bout and Touka, who’s been reassigned from engineering to the command center since Kaleidoscope Burst’s last drop, calls out strikes as they land.

Like it means anything. All twenty-three of the bouts Madara’s gone in the past hour have ended 4-0 in his favor, and by this point the candidate pool is shrinking back into the audience.

Mito is one of Madara’s oldest acquaintances, and even if he can’t speak to her without losing his temper half of the time, he recognizes the look on her face when she leans over to whisper something into Touka’s ear.

“That will be all for today. Thank you for participating. Madara, come here,” Touka says. Madara steps forward. “We think that maybe a test is in order.”

He levels the two women with the most unimpressed look he can muster. “Did I not just spend the last hour doing tests?”

Mito makes an amused noise. “A different kind of test, Madara. Report to the drop bay in an hour.”

“Oh, hells no.”

Inside the mangled remains of Kaleidoscope Burst’s conn pod– the only intact part of her left– waiting and hooked up to her Pons system, is Hashirama of all people, with his little brother looking annoyed as usual behind him.

Madara gestures to Hashirama, looking straight at Tobirama. “Is this-?”

“Is this the test Mito ordered? Yes.” Tobirama looks all too pleased to be plugging someone else into Hashirama’s head. He spent four years Drifting with his brother before Hashirama screwed up his leg and got the Hidden Leaf, the Senju brothers’ Jaeger, removed from duty. “She wants to make sure your head will still let you Drift at all.”

Madara scoffs. “‘Can I still Drift’, of course I can still Drift! Why wouldn’t I be?”

Hashirama pipes in. “Well, saying that you can Drift is like saying that you can do art. It’s a generalization. Just because you can make ice sculptures doesn’t mean you can fold origami worth a damn.”

“Just because you could Drift with Izuna doesn’t mean that you can Drift with anyone else. Mito wants to make sure you’re physically capable of finding a new copilot before she spends more time on the matter,” Tobirama clarifies. “And seeing as how Hashirama is the easiest Drifter we have on site, he’ll be your partner for this exercise.”

It’s for the sake of his age-old friendship with Hashirama that Madara refrains from making a joke about how Hashirama is easy, and he knows that Madara knows exactly what he’s definitively not doing.

He takes some measure of gratitude that at least it’s Hashirama and not some green cadet that’s never even seen a kaiju. Hashirama is familiar, he was the first person Madara ever Drifted with even though he’s not the one that stuck.

“I’ll be observing your Drift from here just in case something goes wrong.” Tobirama steps back to his sleek control panel– which looks oddly different from the ones in the LOCCENT. “Initiating neural handshake,” he says, getting ready to flip switches. “In five, four, three, two, one.”

Hashirama’s memories rush into Madara’s head. Little brother, Mother is gone, new mother, more brothers, Madara, Tobirama, Madara, Madara, Madara, police academy, the first kaiju taking away Father and Itama and Kawarama, the Jaeger program, why is Tobirama here he should be safe at home, Drift compatible, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory, pain and loss, you’ll never pilot again with a leg like that, Mito, command track, oh god Kaleidoscope Burst please respond–

Madara is thrust violently back into his own body with a jolt and knows that Hashirama just felt the same thing.

“Handshake successful. Try waving hello with your right arm,” Tobirama directs.

It works, as every other command Tobirama gives them does. It goes so well in fact that only Hashirama has to listen to what Tobirama’s saying Madara just follows his lead. Hashirama exists in Madara’s head as a long road he’s compelled to follow no matter where it may take him. He’s similar, in many ways, to Izuna. Bright, happy Izuna who was like the blinding, guiding sun on a summer’s day. Izuna’s wedding was on in the middle of summer, Izuna, Izuna, Izuna-

“Right hemisphere out of alignment,” he vaguely registers hearing before he’s disconnected from the Jaeger.

He comes out of the Drift like waking up from a dream, groggy and absent and with a faraway look in his eyes. All he wants to do is sleep and not think about the report Tobirama will be presenting to Mito and how he can guess exactly what it will say. Is capable of Drifting but chased the rabbit in almost record time. Unfit for duty. End report.

A few days later, Madara– who hasn’t been asked back to the sparring ring and is completely blaming that on the report Tobirama probably filed– is tasked by a newly-busy Touka with delivering a sheaf of Important papers to the R&D department.

The “R&D Department” is actually just three guys in a too-small room with a tiny budget that mostly gets spent on whiteboard markers, takeout, and weed. After Hashirama started Drifting with Tobirama but before Madara and Izuna got a Jaeger of their own, Izuna used to split his time between flirting at Touka in Maintenance and getting high with the R&D team. Madara used to hear a lot of stories about his friends’ crazy theories and that one time they all got crossfaded and woke up ten hours later having forgotten their own names.

But the budget has been cut down even more than usual this year, and so it’s not three guys anymore. It’s just one, and it happens to be the infuriatingly snarky one with white hair and tattoos that shouldn’t look as good as they do.

Tobirama isn’t paying attention when Madara walks in– he’s shoulder deep in a, well, in something, and his white button-down is discarded across the room in favor of the tank top that shows off real, honest-to-God biceps that he didn’t have the last time Madara saw his arms (granted he had been seventeen to the albino’s fourteen at the time, and knew what would happen if Hashirama even thought Madara had a thing for his brother) and also keeps his clothes from getting stained too bad by all the machine oil.

“Hey,” Madara says to get Tobirama’s attention.

The younger man startles, and in his haste to turn around flings a streak of oil in Madara’s face. He hisses and goes to wipe it off, but Tobirama slaps his hands away with a towel. “Don’t do that, you’ll just smear it.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” he demands. “Be blind for the rest of my life?”

Tobirama makes a frustrated sound and kicks his ankle gently to guide him over to a chair. There’s a sound like a metal hatch closing, probably from the machine he was working on. “Sit down, I have something for this.”

A few moments later, Tobirama starts dabbing a wet cloth over the oil-stained portion of Madara’s face. “If this is acid–”

“If I wanted to kill you, Madara, I have other ways. It’s just something I mixed up to remove oil and grease stains,” Tobirama rebuts.

“Why not just wear gloves?” Madara blinks hard and then opens his eyes wide when Tobirama backs off.

“I’m allergic to latex and this facility doesn’t buy anything else.” The younger man lets the awkward air hand between them for a few moments. “So why are you here?”

Madara fumbles with the sheaf of papers. “Touka asked me to bring you these.”

Tobirama finishes cleaning the oil off his arms and then gives the folder a cursory glance, but Touka has always been bad at labelling things. “Do you know what it is?”

“Something about Burst’s specs.” Madara shrugs.

“Oh.” Tobirama’s eyes widen. “It’s notes about her Pons system. I’ve theorized that her previous engineer made some kind of neural processing magnification modification to the Pons system to enhance the combat abilities of the Drift team.”

Madara is no genius, but he did take an AP class or two in high school (one of them with Tobirama, who had no business being a freshman taking senior-level classes). “Based on what evidence?”

Tobirama swiftly makes his way over to one of four desks covered in so many papers it nearly hurts to look at. He rummages around what’s either the world’s most complex sorting system or just a mess, and after a minute he sounds a victorious shout and pulls a thick file from the bottom of a pile and lays it out on the one clean half of a desk he can find.

“These are neural performance records taken from one of your Drifts with Izuna in Burst,” Tobirama says, pointing to one long scanner sheet of paper, then to a second. “These are records taken of Izuna when he was Drifting in Burst with Touka.”

“Wait, what?”

“It was her birthday and she failed the Jaeger program’s physical but they were Drift compatible and I helped him out with giving her the birthday present to end all birthday presents, okay?” he points to a third record. “This is the scan I took of them from their anniversary Drift a few months later, this time at using the system I have here.” He gestures to the piece of machinery he was tinkering with when Madara walked in.

Madara studies the records. “The performance levels are completely different.”

Tobirama nods. “And this is a scan I took of you and Hashirama the other day, compared to the record I took of him the last time we snuck into Hidden Leaf.”

Again, the performance scores are wildly different. “So you want to prove that there’s something up with my Jaeger?”

The younger man nods. “Yes, and there’s just one more scan I need to prove it.”

Madara bobs his head too. “A scan of me outside of Burst.” He gives Tobirama a Look. “Did you tell Touka to send me over specifically with the specs?”

He nods again. “You’ll be Drifting with me this time.”

Madara lets out what’s definitely not a squawk of outrage. “You want me to Drift with you? We don’t even know if we’re compatible!”

“Please. If you can Drift with numbskulls like Izuna and Hashirama, you can Drift with me,” he scoffs. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m almost as easy to Drift with as Izuna or Hashirama.”

This is different, Madara wants to scream. Hashirama is different, Izuna was different. How long has it been, since he tried to Drift with someone who wasn’t his best friend or his brother?

“Just because we can both Drift with Hashirama doesn’t mean anything,” Madara exclaims. Tobirama let out another wordless noise of annoyance, but before he can say anything Madara interrupts him. “Just because a positive magnet connects with a negative magnet does not mean that two negative magnets will connect!”

“Just put on the damn headset and let me get my results.” Tobirama shoves the headpiece at Madara’s chest.

He grumbles. “I hope no-one believes your results.”

Tobirama is wearing a matching headset as he reaches for a button. “Initiating neural handshake in five, four, three, two, one.”

Mother, Hashirama, a big treehouse, loss, learning, top of the class, accelerated learning courses recommended, he’s too young for this class, why is he here, beat them all out, what’s a kaiju?, Hashirama don’t go, ‘Tobirama why are you here”, Drift compatible, Hidden Leaf, success, saving people, killing kaiju, failure, injury, find a new copilot or find a new job, Izuna, Izuna oh God please no–

If Hashirama’s mind is a path and Izuna’s was the sun, then Tobirama’s can only be described as an endless freefall over a cliff into the sea. Being in the Drift feels like Tobirama is his parachute. Through the Drift he knows that Tobirama views Madara like a chained lion, and he can feel the euphoria the other man knows as he sets the lion free.

Madara comes back into his own mind feeling like he can take on the world and win, in a way that Drifting with Izuna had never provided.

When Madara first entered the PPDC, the team he and Izuna took over from– a pair of women who piloted a wonderful Jaeger named Whirlpool Dawn– told him that there was Drifting and then there was Drifting. Maybe, he thinks, this is what they meant.

He looks over to Tobirama, and finds that the albino’s crimson eyes are just as wide and his face is just as flushed as Madara’s own must be. He watches Tobirama’s adam’s apple bob as he swallows thickly.

“I think we need to go talk to Mito,” Madara hears, though despite being aware of Tobirama’s every move he doesn’t know if the words were said aloud or if he just understood Tobirama’s intentions through the Drift.

“I think you’re right,” he replies.

Two months later finds Tobirama and Madara in matching Drift suits and getting ready to test drop for the first time together.

They had argued for a long time about which Jaeger they would pilot. They went back and forth with their reasons; Hidden Leaf was in better condition, but Kaleidoscope Burst was the newer and safer mech, for example. But before they could come to a conclusion (which many figured would never happen at all) the victorious new head of engineering, an early twenty-something called Sarutobi, informed them that they wouldn’t have to decide at all because he’d gone around them and gotten the all-clear from Mito to combine the two Jaegers.

So here they stand, ready to pilot Konoha Burst under the watchful eyes of Touka, Hashirama, and the entire world. What Sarutobi’s done by combining two defunct Jaegers is unprecedented, and even with a hundred different news crews waiting for the results of the test Madara isn’t scared.

He doesn’t have to look or talk to know that Tobirama is putting on his helmet and raring to go, but he does it anyways.

“You ready to rock the world, Skyfall?” he drawls.

“You know it, Lionheart.”

If you enjoyed this piece, why not take a look at other pieces written by the same author on AO3.

#rated: T #Sumigakure Winter Wishes 2017 #Sumigakure Stocking Stuffers 2017 #submission #sumigakure #rank: b #pwnie3

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shyyynobi · 7 years ago

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Lone Wolf

Prompt: Lone WolfPairing: TobiSaku Rating: M Requested by:   sunrises6….Well somehow, and I’m not sure how but this became rather smutty. Tasteful smut? I’m not even sure if this is what the requester wanted but my mind does things sometimes. My description does say NSFW, so most of my writing is usually on the more mature side of things. Idk what this is, but it seemed to fit the prompt and I like the end result.

xox

The loneliness never bothered him.

The dreary weather, long days and even longer nights were something he was accustomed to. The days he spent nuzzled in the trenches of his village seemed fabricated by now -- like a hazy memory where a blissful happiness felt sinful.

Did he have a purpose?

He couldn’t say he did.

After the death of his family, he couldn’t remain stagnant.

His brother pleaded with him to stay, they could fix the village, together. Hashirama had always been content with their village, he never saw the beauty in traveling — in boarding ships that crossed seas to exotic deserts and forests.

Tobirama, however — didn’t have any ties to that village. The faux piece of land that tethered him to a “home.” Once, when he had a family and a betrothed — he felt content with a full heart in defending the walls of their village.

After their homes had been raided, he couldn’t walk through the streets and farmland without thinking about his lost love, his brother’s, and parents that he couldn’t protect.

So, he supposed he did have a purpose now — protecting those that were too weak to protect themselves. Rather cliché work, but he took comfort in knowing he saved lives. A heroes meta.

His white hair glimmered under the crescent moon, the long, rearing cry of wolves in the distance echoed around the lake. Their songs were comforting to him, it tied him to reality. Were they lost? A pack of wolves would always be better than one.

Tobirama washed off his hakama in the water — the only source of light emanated from the dimly lit moon, even the stars decided to stay hidden tonight in fear of the lone wolf stalking the woods nearby. He didn’t mind the darkness, red eyes pierced through the shadows for any remnants of life — but only the sound of the water splashing on the shore confirmed his loneliness.

The blood washed off of his clothing, it would be a good time to bathe while he was here. It was no hot spring, but in these vast foyers of sacred woods with rocky terrain it would be difficult to find such an accommodation. Still, it had been a few weeks since he had last seen a village — by now he should be reaching Twin Peaks, and the trodden roads within the woods indicated that at the very least this lake sat nearby a trade route.

It took time to set up camp, but he set himself up near the lake, knowing it would be better to press his back to the lake than open the possibility of being found sleeping unawares in the blanketed trees.

The summer months provided a new warmth that settled over the lands, and although he preferred the winter months — summer always reminded him of the days with his family within his village.

Hours later, the sound of a soft, innocent laughter sprinkled itself over his sleep.

The lone warrior woke with a start, grabbing his katana by his side sparingly.

The sound of water splashing startled him and he lifted himself off of the ground, aware of the body playing around in the water in what he could assume was only twenty feet away from him. Covered by a musket of plants and bushes by the shore, he crept low enough to keep himself covered.

The moon hung high over the long hours of the night, reflecting off of the lake.

And to the lone wolf’s astonishment, a young woman played around in the water.

Bare as the day she was born, her breasts bounced playfully as she submerged herself in the water and reappeared, happily lazing around in the cool water. From here, he had ample view of the long tresses of inexplainable silvery-pink hair and the soft expanse of her stomach that led to a soft patch of pink curls at the juncture of her thighs.

He was no stranger to the female body.

But with the water droplets glistening off of her skin, Tobirama had to calm himself from the sudden thought that he hadn’t lain or seen a woman naked in well over two years.

His hakama felt painfully tight.

The white wolf watched her curiously play in the water.

Were there others?   From the looks of it she seemed to be alone, which was odd for a young woman to be this far out from her village at these hours of night without supervision. Which was concerning considering the fact that wolves and preying men would love nothing more than to steal her from the water and keep her for themselves.

She sunk beneath the water then and disappeared. He stayed planted in his seat, ignoring how much of a lech he looked like, peering at her from beyond the bushes. When a few minutes passed by without her bob of pink hair surfacing, he started to move forward — thinking she somehow got stuck at the bottom of the deceiving lake.

Just as he moved past the brush, the magnetic woman reappeared from the water and blinked back the water from her eyes — which he now noticed were a deep, enchanting color of viridian. Like the treetops after a fresh blanket of snow, they reflected the light of the moon while remaining their ecstatic green.

He never felt nervous — not in battle, not when meeting the crowds that greeted him after a successful mission, not when he saw the edges of death.

Yet now, the lone wolf felt like his chest might implode when the woman laid eyes on him at the bank of the lake.

With the curious tilt of her head, she didn’t cover herself — nor did she freak out by the man that was unassumingly staring at her. She should have screamed, should have covered herself, should have worried that he might do something to her that he couldn’t promise he could control.

Instead, she smiled softly.

“You finally decided to join me,” she called out to him playfully.

Little confused him, but this girl was quickly becoming an enigma.

He didn’t say anything, but instead watched her lean back in the water with that bright smile, “I knew you were watching from beyond the brush — I was wondering what it would take to get you to come out.”

His eyes narrowed, “so you faked drowning to get me out here?”

The woman peered at him innocently, “I don’t recall doing such a thing, all I did was try and reach the bottom of the lake.”

Her voice lulled the syllables of her words, he could easily envision her singing to children in her free time with the sweetness conveyed in her words, “—you looked rather peaceful sleeping over there, sorry if I woke you — I enjoy coming out here for a swim every so often.”

She knew he had been here?

“You live near here?” he called out to her, finding himself inclined to learn more.

The mysterious woman motioned towards the woods, “I grew up in these woods — our village is only a mile or so from here.”

“You come out here by yourself? Don’t you know how dangerous it is for a beau—“ he paused, clearing his throat, “for a woman to be out here alone?”

She smirked, pouty lips twisting upwards, “of course I do. Although I hope your speaking for yourself considering you watched me through the bushes, Sir.”

A sharp tongue.

Tobirama could feel himself slowly eb on the edge of embarrassment, “—I wasn’t.”

“I don’t mind,” she interrupted, “I figure you’re a good man.”

He glanced at the way she waded through the water, slowly coming closer to the edge until her feet hit the bottom and she emerged halfway, nothing but the water covering her lower half, “and why do you figure that?” he murmured huskily — finding himself entranced by this strangely exotic looking woman.

“If you weren't a good man you wouldn’t have tried to save me thinking I was drowning,” she stated as if it were common sense.

The water rolled down the expanse of her pretty face, down the length of her slim neck, trailing down her skin until the droplets rolled off pert nipples. He didn’t normally oggle at women, nor did he ever feel inclined to chase after them and use their bodies.

“Are you coming in or not?” she murmured silkily, that doting, playful smile on her face.

He glanced around, halfway wondering if this were a trap of some sort.

Deciphering that no — there was nobody around to steal the small assortment of his camp. Still, there was a scent of her genuine nature standing between them, compelling him to move forward.

Deciding that he would give in to the pink haired siren before him — he set his katana down at the foot of the shore and began undoing his hakama. When the material fell at his feet, he traced the way her eyes sized him up and she gently bit her lip.

He reached her within seconds, tugging her into the water with a playful yelp.  When they emerged from the water, he stared into the expanse of her wide sea green eyes, her smaller body fitting into his sizable frame perfectly amongst the lapping waves of the lake, “—what’s your name?” he had to know.

The young woman traced her fingers up his side, weaving along the lines of his jagged scars and abdomen, causing goosebumps to kiss his skin, “—Sakura.”

Under the moonlight, they spent hours playing in the water and learning about one another, when they found their way to the shore and he rolled his hips against hers, the soft way she mewled beneath him, tilting her head back and he bit at her neck, exploring the expanse of her body to fit with his own.

They came together, hard and fast — her soft cries consumed by his mouth as he grunted his release inside of her, lost in the feeling of her body.

They fell asleep together at his camp, clothes foregone.   The morning arrived at the peak of the distance mountains, the birds chirped their lovely songs — and he woke to see that Sakura was missing, the spot where she had fallen asleep pressed against him vacant. All of his belongings were neatly organized beside him, but she was gone.   For years now he welcomed the stone walled silence. Welcomed the thought of being alone. Forewent the attachment that only led to a path of pain.   

With her sudden absence, he decided then that perhaps the loneliness did bother him.

#tobisaku #tobirsaku #tobirama senju #Sakura Haruno #tobirama x sakura #writing prompt #smutty #smut

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raendown · 5 years ago

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Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 5011 Chapter: 31/42 Summary: Not all wars are fought on the battlefield. Some are fought at the conference table, with whispers in the shadows, or even in the bedroom.

In a world where the Senju and Uchiha traditional lands were too far apart to have ever made them enemies, Butsuma and Tajima are the ones who come together and sign a treaty of peace. Madara isn’t happy to have his life signed away for him in a political marriage to strengthen the bond between their clans. He is even less happy to have Tobirama make assumptions of him from their very first night together. What follows from there is a journey of healing, of learning, and finding the places to belong in the places least expected.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Chapter 31

Tobirama had obviously just finished rinsing off the dishes from his lunch when Madara slammed in to the room, the walls of their house still echoing with how he had slammed the front door open as well. From the calm way his husband reached for a tea towel to dry his hands he must have felt Madara's chakra coming from halfway across the village. Surely anyone with even an iota of sensing capabilities had felt him as he made his way through the streets like an erupting volcano on the move, chakra boiling and spilling around him in a dark miasma of rage.

“I take it whatever meeting you were called to did not go well?” Tobirama asked. They were supposed to have eaten together for their lunch break, a lovely little date that Madara had been the one to set up for once, but plans were interrupted when a runner came to summon him back to the tower. It looked like the other had eaten without him.

“Fucking imbecile!”

“Mm. Not well at all.”

Tobirama’s eyes flickered away to the clock on the wall and Madara guessed he must be checking that there was enough time left of their lunch break to listen to the sort of rant they both knew was just waiting to burst forth. Just a little under twenty minutes was left until they should both be back at the office. Madara had checked. He had a temper, sure, but he wasn’t irresponsible with it. Mostly.

Before saying anything Madara first spent a couple of minutes stomping in circles around the table just to get some of his frustration out, snarling and blistering the air with language so strong it was a good thing Kagami had not chosen today for one of his spontaneous visits. Over the years he’d learned this was a vital step so he didn’t turn such language on whoever he was venting to, not wanting to sound accusatory. When he finally stopped pacing he felt no calmer and desperately cast about for a way to feel so. He solved the problem by stomping over and shoving his face flat against Tobirama’s chest where he released a muffled scream against the warm, solid muscle of his husband’s pectorals.

“Feel better?” Tobirama asked dubiously when the scream was done.

“No.”

“Would you like to tell me what happened?”

“Your father is as terrible a man as mine is!”

Nodding slowly, Tobirama dared to point out, “That is not new information.”

“I knew he was an ass; I didn’t know he was this much of one! Can you honestly believe what he said to me!?” Madara huffed and ground his teeth with indignation until he was pulled up short by Tobirama’s answer.

“Until you tell me what he said I can’t believe anything really.”

Madara paused and took a deep breath. It didn’t help very much. He still felt as though he were on the verge of blasting steam out of both ears when he allowed himself to speak again. “Not only did he imply that pretty much anyone can do my job which means I’m not needed for them but he basically told me that I should be grateful to him for allowing me to focus on ‘less taxing responsibilities’. I’m going to kill him!”

Rather than defend his father – who they both knew did not warrant any defense – Tobirama mirrored his husband’s actions and took a deep breath in through his nose, letting it back out slowly through his mouth.

“Well, in answer to your question: no. I cannot believe he said that to you.”

“I’ve worked damn hard to improve the security teams! Their morale is up, their patrol patterns are tighter, I even worked out a schedule so no one ever has to stay on night duty for more than a couple of weeks at a time! Now he’s basically demoted me to a regular tower lackey and he says I should be grateful!?” Madara snorted and clenched his fists in a pantomime of strangling someone’s neck. “He even had the gall to tell me it would be better if I focused more on my duties as an heir! I know my own damn duties!”

He was gratified to see the clench of Tobirama’s jaw, a sign that he wasn’t overreacting to the situation. If Tobirama was angry enough for it to show visibly in any way at all then Madara knew the insult given him was serious enough to warrant his own rage.

“While I will freely admit that I was upset those projects were given to you in the first place I will also be the first to say that you have more than risen to whatever challenges such duties posed. You make an excellent lead for the security teams. I cannot fathom what he thinks to accomplish by removing you from them.” Tobirama’s brows knit together with a frustrated confusion Madara was not at all happy to clear up.

“Oh I can tell you why,” he spat. “He said, and I quote, that I should appreciate being relieved of such taxing work as I am clearly stretched too thin with all the projects I have taken on with you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Right? That’s what I said!”

Tobirama’s jaw clenched again. “Does he understand the irony that he is working towards the exact same goal as the man he’s trying to undermine with this asinine move?”

“Probably not! He doesn’t think! Neither of them think anymore! It’s like they signed their damn treaty and then threw any collective sense either of them had ever possessed out the window! Some days I can hardly believe my father is the same man pulling such idiotic stunts as he does – and now your father has decided to pitch in to the madness!?”

“No, you’re right. I don’t think either of them see a thing beyond the end of their own ambitions anymore. They built something that the world had never seen before and now they both want to rule over it uncontested.”

“They’re idiots!” Madara shouted.

He was startled to see a bit of humor flash across Tobirama’s face. “Utter fools.”

“Yes! And now their foolery has relegated me to little more than a lackey, a paper pusher. I barely pull any weight on the council now. Fuck, I’m no better than the Akimichi heir who falls asleep in almost every meeting!” The humor was gone immediately from Tobirama’s face and his husband reached out to pull him back in to a tight embrace.

“No. It won’t stand. Who else has little enough on their plate that they can take up all the work you do? Let him flex his authority if he must, this can’t last.”

Madara sighed tiredly as he felt all the energy and fight drain out of him. “But it can. All he has to do is split it up between a bunch of different people. He’ll probably promote that terrifying cousin of yours to my position if he thinks anything like Tajima does. My father accused him of trying to oust the Uchiha, if you’ll recall, and it seems Butsuma has finally decided to retaliate. By doing exactly what he was accused of, I might add!”

The chest he was buried in once more heaved with a sigh to match his own.

“I am so rarely optimistic, anata, will you not let me have just this once?”

“Fine. Oh yay. Gee I can’t wait to be reinstated when Butsuma magically stops being an asshole.”

“Much better. An excellent mood to go back to work with, I’m sure.” Tobirama didn’t exactly sound in high spirits himself but Madara appreciated having the tension broken even if he wasn’t actually ready to be positive.

“I’ll show you high spirits,” he grumbled.

There wasn’t much time left before they needed to leave, barely a few minutes, but no matter how much Madara wanted to spend it cuddling Tobirama insisted that he find something to eat while he had the chance. Seeing as they were meant to attend Hashirama's for dinner that evening Madara did have to agree that it was safest not to leave his stomach too empty. It was always a gamble eating with Hashirama and Mito, their tastes being so varied. One never knew if the meal would be a wonderfully prepared delicacy or some monstrosity they discovered at the market and just had to try. Madara lived in fear of the day they discovered that durian fruits existed.

He returned to the office when break time was over with a full belly and slightly lowered blood pressure, though not by much. Never had he been so thankful of his own habit to bring his paperwork up to Tajima’s office before noon. After the day he’d had he wasn’t sure he had the energy left to deal with his own father’s cold attitude and he definitely did not want to be the one who broke the news that Butsuma demoted the heir of the Uchiha clan without even discussing the matter between them. That was not going to be a pretty conversation, although he didn’t want to get his hopes up that anything good would come back to him after those two idiots went through their latest blow out.

Since most of the work waiting on his desk pertained to projects he was supposedly no longer involved with Madara found a petty sort of satisfaction in dropping the massive stack of folders and scrolls on the floor to be dealt with by someone else and turned his attention to more simple administrative matters, things he had been doing since the governing body was first set up and they had all accepted basic duties. Hashirama gave him a questioning look but he was easy enough to distract with questions about dinner tonight.

For the rest of the day whenever someone brought Madara some of the things he should have been working on he cheerfully directed them to the growing pile of work on the floor. In the farfetched event he was actually allowed to continue the duties that were rightfully his it was likely he would regret ignoring them all day but that was a problem for the future, not to be considered right now.

No matter how wide he pulled the smirk across his face, however, it did nothing to lessen the stinging anger of rejection, the hot ball of betrayal for having something he cared about taken away from him without any real reason. Pretending everything was fine wouldn’t fix anything but it was the only way he knew how to deal with such emotions so he forged onward with a grim smile baring his teeth. And he smothered the tiny voice in the back of his mind that told him maybe it would be better if he took the time to work through what he was feeling sooner rather than later. The voice sounded suspiciously like Hashirama anyway and when did that oaf ever have anything smart to say?

Rather than take out his repressed emotions on the most convenient victim, Madara somehow managed to keep all of the insults against Hashirama to himself until his friend returned from dropping off documents to Butsuma. They wandered downstairs together to drag Tobirama out of his office and found Mito waiting for them just outside the building. Madara had only just opened his mouth to let loose at last and make fun of how many times today Hashirama had knocked over his pencil cup when their attention was called back by an unwanted voice.

Butsuma rather noticeably did not look Madara in the eye as he approached, though there was something about the tightness around his mouth that said he was holding back some sort of expression trying to form. Whether that was a smirk or a frown Madara didn’t know. Surprisingly, the man headed directly for his second son.

“Word arrived from the Daimyo this afternoon,” he announced. “His eminence regrets that he was too distracted to thank you and your mission partner properly after the two of you managed to uncover a coup being planned right under his nose.”

“None of us do this for acknowledgement,” Tobirama responded dutifully. The way he spoke gave Madara the impression he was only saying what was expected of him.

“As any shinobi should say. However, his eminence wishes to give his thanks personally as well as an apology for so rudely sending you away while you were injured. He has extended an invitation for you and Izuna to stay with him and attend a proper celebration of your deeds.” If he puffed his chest out any farther Butsuma may have been in danger of sprouting actual feathers to preen, clearly pleased with himself as though he had anything to do with the matter.

Ignoring the way Hashirama tried to thump him on the back in congratulations, Tobirama simply nodded and asked, “When is he expecting us?”

“You are to leave in four days and arrive on the fifth.” Again Tobirama nodded and Madara mentally crossed his fingers that the man would go now so he could begin soaking up as much of Tobirama’s attention as he could to make up for the time they would be apart. Of course, because that was just his luck today, Butsuma had to open his mouth again. “Unfortunately it seems Izuna will be much too busy to attend at the capital. He does, after all, have some incredibly important duties on his hands nowadays. I had thought it would be good if you took your husband along with you to stand in Izuna’s stead.”

That, at least, explained what Madara now recognized as a repressed smirk. It was little more than a miracle that he recognized anything beyond the haze of anger that fell over his eyes and suddenly it became very difficult to smother the instinctual urge to activate his Sharingan.

His temper only worsened when finally Butsuma’s gaze slid over to lock with his own and he could see the light of satisfaction dancing in those beady little eyes. Never in his life had he wanted so badly to punch someone. And considering the swift and vicious nature of his temper Madara really thought that should say something, both for the amount of anger he was controlling and the strength he was demonstrating in not actually throwing any punches.

“Your generosity knows no bounds, father,” Tobirama’s dry tone broke through his reveries and Madara turned to give his husband an incredulous look until he continued. “We never did get a honeymoon. It’s very kind of you to allow for one now. Since Madara's duties have been lightened perhaps we’ll set off a day earlier and take our time on the journey.”

Butsuma’s left eyes twitched. It was the most beautiful thing Madara had seen all day. He’d thought watching his own father’s plans get turned back on him time and again was fun but those incidents had nothing on the petty satisfaction of seeing Butsuma experience the same thing and knowing he couldn’t contradict his son without Hashirama and Mito asking questions. Indeed, Hashirama was already cooing over the idea while Mito granted them both indulgent smiles. Neither of them seemed to notice the tension between the three men all staring each other down with poison in their eyes and their faces held in masks of civility.

“Please send word to the Daimyo that we will of course accept his invitation. If Izuna cannot pull himself away from his work for a day or so to attend to his eminence then we will be happy to do so together. Thank you for letting us know, father, I will use the rest of this week to prepare for my own absence.”

“Right,” Butsuma mumbled. “Be sure that nothing falls behind while you are gone.”

“That goes without saying. Now, if you will excuse us. Good evening.”

Not another word was spoken as Tobirama gently and skillfully guided all members of their group off down the street while somehow also distracting his brother from the fact that their father’s cheeks were turning purple.

Madara wasn’t sure how his husband managed it but within a couple of minutes he had Hashirama and Mito walking several feet ahead of them engaged in conversation about what they had both gotten up to that day, neither looking back to see why their intended guests were lagging behind. Honestly, however, he didn’t care very much about the how when it gave him a few moments to just breathe and cling to the hand that slipped down to capture his own in a bracing grip.

“I’ll kill him,” he whispered.

“Anata…”

“No I mean it, I’m really going to kill him. How dare he?”

“To be honest I don’t blame you. It’s bad enough to remove you from the things you’re good at but to send you away without warning just because–”

“No!” Madara almost felt bad for cutting his husband off but he was just so angry he couldn’t contain himself. “How dare he compare me to Izuna? How dare he imply that Izuna’s work is more important than my own? We perform wildly different functions! I don’t- UGH!”

He’d never so badly wanted to know how the hiraishin worked because right then he would have very much enjoyed the ability to just disappear without a trace. Sometimes the Body Flicker just couldn’t take him far enough. Thankfully he was blessed with the calm rock that was Tobirama, who said nothing about having his fingers squeezed so tight they could both feel their bones grinding together.

“I didn’t think of that but you’re right. It was unfair of him to do that. Crafty as well, though I can’t say for sure whether it was his intention to sow discourse between the two of you.”

“Well I don’t care what his intentions were! That was unfair! And terrible! I am not my brother and my brother is not me and we don’t do the same job so you really can’t compare how important either of us is – and maybe if he didn’t take my fucking job away from me then I wouldn’t be so ‘unimportant’! He can go straight to hell!” Madara snapped his jaw shut when he noticed his voice beginning to rise. They were still in public and no matter what people thought he did understand public decency.

After allowing him a moment to calm himself Tobirama looked around, the corners of his mouth tightening to see the street they were on was still quite busy. “If you would prefer not to be in company right now I can make our excuses to Anija.”

“It’s fine. We’ll make him listen to me bitching too. He deserves it.”

“Mm and what did he do to deserve such an honor?”

“He’s always so bloody happy!” Madara cried, indignant. “It’s not fair! Why can’t I be that happy all the time?”

It wasn’t until they had gone several more steps in silence that he realized there was anything amiss. When he turned to say something else he noticed Tobirama’s face was pulled in to a pensive expression, almost hesitant as he opened his own mouth, words slow and clearly very carefully worded.

“Are you unhappy most days?”

“What? Oh. No, no that’s not- I didn’t mean that. I meant- fuck’s sake every time I think ‘yeah this is good, I’m happy’ one of our fathers does something to kick us down again. I swear sometimes they can smell when we’re happy and they deliberately swoop in to ruin it. I hate them. I hate both of them. They’re old codgy bastards and they need to be retired. By force.” Madara scowled down at the ground in front of them, even angrier than before but now it was at himself for almost giving the impression that he was unhappy after both of them had been trying so hard to build what they had between them.

Tobirama seemed to understand at least, the pensive look slipping away and leaving sympathy in those pretty red eyes. Neither of them said much more for the rest of their walk to Hashirama's house. Madara distracted himself for a while thinking about how good he’d gotten at reading his husband’s expressions. The man wasn’t really much more expressive than he ever had been, still the same blank looking face on most occasions, but it had gotten easier to interpret the micro-changes and even the smallest quirk of his lips became a smile in Madara’ eyes, a certain shine became amusement. It was a testament to how close they’d become and thinking about their relationship did help keep his temper reigned in for now as he kept his concentration on happier things.

When they were only a couple of streets away from his house Hashirama finally turned and blinked behind himself as though only just remembering they were there too. As soon as he spotted them his face broke out in a sunshine smile that only served to reawaken Madara's annoyance.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you two! Mito was just telling me all about her day and it sounded so lovely!”

“Bully for you,” Madara called back. “Not all of us had lovely days!”

Hashirama all but ground his heels in to the dirt, screeching to a halt so he could wait for them to catch up with him and Mito. “Did you have a bad day Madara? Why didn’t you tell me! I would have cheered you up!” At his side, Mito shook her head.

“You were right there when Butsuma-sama told him in so many words that his brother was more vital to this village than he is. Would that make you feel good if he said it to you?”

“Well…I would be proud of my brother?” Hashirama tried. He winced when all three of them gave his sharp looks.

“Obviously I’m proud of my brother,” Madara snapped. “But it’s shitty to compare us against each other as if that means anything. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Its- its- he’s not unimportant but I’m important too, damn it, and your stupid father can’t just take that away from me and laugh in my face about it!”

Eyes wide, Hashirama wilted. “Oh. Yeah. That wouldn’t feel good at all. Wait, what did he take away from you?”

Barely able to contain himself, Madara was almost grateful for the white hand that slapped itself over his mouth as Tobirama very carefully cleared his throat and suggested perhaps they should all go inside to discuss this. That was probably best. If any other words came out of him at that moment they would have been very loud and not at all tasteful. Biting his tongue until he was sure the indents would stay for weeks, Madara stomped off with the rest while they all quietly made the rest of the journey to Hashirama's home.

The moment the door was closed between them and the rest of the world it was like all restraints fell away and Madara stood in the genkan for fifteen minutes shouting to his heart’s content. Sometime during the flood of words Mito and Tobirama slipped away to prepare tea so by the time his words ran out and Hashirama led him in to the living room there was a steaming cup waiting for him next to where Tobirama sat on one half of a spectacularly ugly loveseat. Madara had enough kindness in him to wait until the man didn’t have a cup up near his face before flopping gracelessly down next to his husband and snatching up his own tea.

“I can’t believe he did that.” Hashirama shook his head.

“Can’t you?” Mito asked with sharp words. If he were feeling more himself Madara would have been surprised she had said anything that might even remotely be considered in support of him. They still hadn’t really warmed up to each other even after all this time.

“Well…okay yes, I suppose I can believe it of him.” Ignoring his tea, Hashirama rubbed tiredly at the bridge of his nose. “Some days it’s hard to reconcile the man he’s become with the man who raised us.”

Although Tobirama remained silent Madara was sure he felt the weight of both himself and Mito staring, waiting for his contradiction. It never came and yet they could still see it in his eyes. Butsuma had raised one son, buried two, and forgotten the one he deemed to not require his attention. As much as Hashirama wanted to love the man there had never truly been a father to love in him.

Madara scowled down in to his cup. He almost wished he could say the same of his own. Would it have been better to lose the affection he once so cherished or to never have it at all and feel no loss?

“I’m surprised you’re as calm as you are about all this,” Mito said but when he raised his head he saw that she was speaking to Tobirama, who only hummed and sipped his tea.

“Plotting a murder should never be done loudly.”

She granted him a gentle smile that should absolutely not look so deadly and then lifted one eyebrow. “I agree that silence is golden but I would have expected you to be a little more vocal now that we’re all alone. You did not go without insult yourself, my dear.”

“Your concern is appreciated but I’m fine,” Tobirama deflected while Madara blinked rapidly, trying to remember if Butsuma had said anything bad that he might have missed.

“Calling Izuna’s work too important to set down is an insult to both of you,” she pointed out. “You work more than the rest of us put together some days and he can send you away without a thought but not Izuna? One might begin to think he had changed his mind and decided to support the Uchiha above his own clan.”

“And I’m sure that when he realizes that he’ll be foaming at the mouth with disappointment for himself.” Tobirama shrugged it off as no big deal while Madara did his best to sink in to his own cushion and disappear.

In his anger he hadn’t even realized it but Mito was right. Of course Butsuma would think to send him off now that he apparently had nothing important to do but to pull Tobirama away from the hundred and one projects he always seemed to have a hand in? Any shinobi worth their salt was used to picking up and leaving on short notice if the mission was important enough but an invitation from the Daimyo wasn’t something that came on short notice. Invitations to the capitol were just as full of pomp and ridiculousness as its inhabitants. The Daimyo would have sent word more than a week in advance, which meant that Butsuma had deliberately been sitting on it all this time and just waiting to make his move. It was a miracle he hadn’t waited until the day before if that was his game.

What kind of man, he wondered, would throw his own son under the bus just to toss a petty insult in someone else’s face? Now Madara found himself faced with a new dilemma. He couldn’t decide if he was angrier on his own behalf or on Tobirama’s as the full scope of Butsuma’s idiocy sank in.

His husband must have noticed his stricken look, murmuring quietly from one side of his mouth.

“You were preoccupied and with good reason. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Madara told him just as quietly. “Would you like help planning his murder?”

Tobirama’s quicksilver smile was there and gone in an instant and that was all the answer he needed. He could be a tad blind in his anger but clearly Tobirama understood.

“Guys, please stop whispering. You’re making me really nervous.” When he looked up Madara saw that his best friend was wringing both hands anxiously, clearly not able to hear what they were saying but still under the impression that they were indeed plotting a murder. He knew them both so well.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Madara replied petulantly.

“I didn’t! I asked!”

“Semantics.” Delicately lifting the teacup he had almost forgotten about, Madara sipped at the drink before it could go cold and listened to Hashirama whining at him without any outward reaction.

Finally having the chance to yell everything out of system when he came in the home, Madara found that he really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Chewing over the issue wouldn’t change anything and listening to Hashirama's sympathetic murmurs would only keep him concentrated on feeling down. Distracting the man was as easy now as it had been in the office. With only one sentence wondering about some gossip he’s overheard yesterday he had Hashirama off on a tangent chasing this new topic and although he could tell he hadn’t fooled either Tobirama or Mito he was grateful that both of them let the subject drop as well.

It was a relief to let the mood around him lighten. Madara was happy enough to join the conversation at times but for the most part he tried not to be obvious about leaning in to his husband for a bit of comfort. More and more as the months went by it was starting to feel like their lives were ever-changing in way they shouldn’t be and he realized he was coming to rely on Tobirama as one of the only constants he had left.

When he felt a pale hand slip in to his own for a brief squeeze and then slipping away before anyone could notice their PDA Madara bit his lip. It wasn’t all bad. If all he had left in the world was Tobirama then he was doing alright, he thought.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #butsuma #hashirama #mito #fanfiction

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raendown · 5 years ago

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Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 4307 Chapter: 16/? Summary: Not all wars are fought on the battlefield. Some are fought at the conference table, with whispers in the shadows, or even in the bedroom.

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Chapter 16

They were tired and hungry, their bodies sore, both of them bleeding sluggishly from at least three places each, but Tobirama took a mild sort of satisfaction from the fact that Izuna looked utterly ridiculous with his long ponytail drying in to a stiff cast of mud. He tried not to imagine what his own head looked like but, still, no matter how stupid he looked it could not possibly compare with the hard little tail hanging from the back of his partner’s head.

Chakra flared in the distance and Tobirama struggled up from where his body had almost entirely merged with the thick mud cradling them. Loud, wet suction noises announced his movement and Izuna groaned but did not look up to watch him crawl his way over to the entrance of their hiding spot. He’d told his mission partner they were taking shelter in a cave but in reality he had shoved their battered bodies down in to a hollow area he’d found underneath one of the massive redwoods that made up the forest surrounding the capital city. Their dirty little cavern had only one entrance, easily disguised by stuffing it full of branches and leaves, but in the fog of exhaustion and pain Tobirama realized he’d forgotten to conceal their chakra.

“Abandoner,” Izuna mumbled, barely enough energy left to speak let alone work himself up for a proper accusation.

“I’m not leaving,” Tobirama said. “I’m just- do we have anything sharp left?”

“Your needle?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

A minute of digging brought out the needle he’d used to sew Izuna’s wounds shut. Now he turned it around and dug it in to the wood of the tree, carving a chakra dampening seal in to the root closest to the blocked entrance. Honestly he wasn’t sure either of them even had enough chakra left for someone to sense them without standing on their heads but it was better to be safe than sorry.

When his carving was done he let his body slump back down in to the mud again. Dirty and cold it might be but it was also surprisingly comfortable, something that should probably worry him a lot more than it did. If he had more energy for such thoughts he was sure this situation would seem a lot more serious but right at that moment the only pressing matter on his mind was whether or not he could fall asleep yet and whether Izuna would still be alive when he woke up again.

“How much blood do you think you’ve lost?” he asked. Izuna grunted.

“Dunno. Lots. Probably more than a liter.”

“Ah, you’ll be fine. So long as the bleeding is at least slowing down then we should be able to get some rest before we get the fuck out of here.” Tobirama let his eyes fall closed with a heavy sigh.

Squelching noises accompanied by a few irritable grunts almost convinced him to open his eyes again but Izuna fell still again quickly, clearly giving up on whatever he’d been trying to do. Probably roll over. In the silence that followed it was all too easy to let the dim lighting and the heaviness of his limbs work together to pull him down under the veil of consciousness. Tobirama didn’t so much fall asleep as he did pass out with an utter lack of dignity.

He woke again an undetermined amount of time later. By the solid darkness in their hole he supposed it must be night, although he couldn’t have said whether it was that same night or if they had slept for more than twenty-four hours. Either option seemed as likely as the other. A quick internal scan told him that his body hadn’t recovered quite as much as one might hope but he felt a few steps farther away from death’s door and that was a victory at the very least. It did take a bit of extra effort to free his head from the mud cast that had dried around him as he slept but eventually he was able to haul himself up in to a sitting position and look around for Izuna, forming a weak tongue of flame with a single hand sign.

Covered in dirt as they had both been when they crawled in here, he almost thought Izuna had disappeared so well did the man blend in. It was seeing the faintest reflection on the necklace he always wore that differentiated Izuna from the rest of the lumpy mud. Tobirama fought to free the rest of himself from the dried mess and crawled over to shake his brother in law gently.

No response. Whether that was because he was just too tired or too unconscious Tobirama couldn’t say without a medical diagnosis. Too tired himself to think of a better plan, he figured the best thing to do was for them both to get out of here and at least get some fresh air, maybe dunk themselves in a river if he could find one. Surely all the rain that churned up so much mud would have collected in a few pools here and there. For once the heavy fall rains were good for something other than keeping him awake at night. Breaking Izuna out of his earthen cast took a while with so little strength in his arms and Tobirama had to give himself a few minutes rest before dragging the man’s unresponsive body up out of their hole.

If he hadn’t been monitoring Izuna’s chakra for fluctuations with what little he had gained back himself Tobirama would have suspected it was deliberate that the man chose to finally wake up just as he got them both out in to the open air. After all that hard work he couldn’t decide if he was thankful or irritated to see dark eyes fluttering open and cracking the brown film of dirt that had dried over top of them.

“What in all the bloody hells did I drink last night?” was his first question. Tobirama paused.

“Nothing. Which is bad. Dehydration. We need to find water.” Ironic when last night it had dripped from every surface around them. Autumn was such a garbage season.

“Can I go back to sleep?”

Squinting in the darkness, his light gone out since he needed both hands for all that manual labor, Tobirama wondered if his partner had a concussion after yesterday’s battle. “No sleeping. We already slept. We’re going to find water and I’m dunking you in it.”

Amazingly, Izuna failed to argue with him for the first time since they set off on this god-forsaken mission nearly a week before. If he hadn’t been worried about a concussion before he certainly was now. Up until their track and observation mission ended up in an ambush they barely escaped with their lives Izuna had been questioning his every word and choice, sometimes for no viable reason other than that he seemed determined to fan the flames of his own hatred. It was honestly quite tiring to deal with and if Tobirama hadn’t promised himself he would try to make nice they would have come to blows with each other days ago.

Now there was nothing but silence as he sluggishly worked Izuna’s deadweight on to his own back like a meaty knapsack and staggered forward with lumbering steps. Soft breathing ruffled the few strands of hair that weren’t plastered and dried to base of his neck. For the first little while his only clue that Izuna hadn’t fallen unconscious again was the miniscule fluctuations in his barely-there chakra whenever something caught his interest or a misstep caused pain to flare through both of their bodies. Eventually Tobirama realized his own eyes were drooping as well and if he didn’t find something to distract him he might pass out himself, probably sending them both crashing against a tree.

He didn’t really want to talk about this disaster of a mission, though. The less time spent thinking about yesterday’s ambush the better. Which, of course, left him with very few conversation options so it was no surprise that he turned first to the only thing they seemed to have in common.

“What was he like as a child?”

“Nn?”

“Madara. What was he like when you two were young?”

Silence dragged on after his question to the point when he began to wonder if Izuna were simply ignoring him. Then finally there came a quiet huff of amusement from beside his ear. “He was a dick. Liked to throw me in the koi pond behind our house whenever I was winning an argument.”

Tobirama smiled, almost surprised he still remembered how to.

“A bully, then?”

“No, not really. He just didn’t like it when I was right because he was older and he thought that made him right all the time. I think…he wanted me to know that he would always protect me but he tried to show that by always knowing more, always being stronger, and as a kid that was just really annoying.” Izuna shifted against his back. Tobirama wondered what he was doing for a moment before he realized the man was laughing quietly.

Eager to know more, he prompted his companion to keep going. “Sounds like he was pretty protective of you.”

“He still is,” Izuna mumbled. “He worries over the smallest papercut, he asks if I’m eating right all the time, he’s always reminding me that I can come talk to him if I ever need to. Yeah he can be grumpy and his social skills could definitely use a bit of polish but I’ve never doubted that he loves me. Not once.”

“That sounds nice,” Tobirama admitted wistfully.

“It is. He is.” After pausing for a minute to think he added in a tone that suggested he had almost forgotten who he was talking to for a minute, “You don’t deserve him.”

Whatever reaction he was waiting for, he didn’t get it. Tobirama had hoped they could stretch out the good will for a little longer but he hadn’t bothered to let his hopes get too high. The half-hearted attack was more than anticipated.

“I think I deserve to be happy just like everyone else, although I would agree with you that I haven’t done as much as I should to earn his good will.”

“Damn straight,” Izuna said. He sounded irritated that he hadn’t been able to start a fight.

“You know he would be much happier if we didn’t scream at each other quite so much.” Although he knew the other couldn’t see him, lifting one of his eyebrows in a pointed expression was like a natural instinct.

“Go fuck yourself,” Izuna retorted almost cheerfully. “He would be happier if he wasn’t trapped with you for the rest of his life. Don’t talk about deserving happiness with me. You want him happy? Then let him go. Let him find someone that he actually wants to be with; then he’ll be happy.”

Tobirama didn’t answer at first. He forced his legs to continue stumbling on while he let his thoughts settle, unsteady beneath their combined weight yet refusing to give in so easily. There had to be some water around here somewhere, his instincts told him that he was close and his instincts had never lied about water, not once in his life. It was easier to think about how nice it would be to finally rid his body of all the dirt crusting his skin rather than what Izuna had said to him, especially so since it was something he had already spent a great deal of time thinking about and he had come to his own conclusions a long time ago.

“It is the tradition of my clan to allow an arranged partnership to seek divorce after five years. If, when that time arrives, Madara still wishes to be free of me then I will not stand in the way of him seeking his own path.” He wondered if he should make that more clear to his husband or if bringing it up would only remind the man of how trapped he was for the time being.

“Wait, seriously? Just like that?”

“Much as you seem to enjoy painting me as the villain, yes. Just like that. This match was made originally to cement our clans together but I don’t think either of our fathers could have anticipated just how well the Senju and the Uchiha would integrate. Give our people less than a year and I don’t think anyone will even remember what it was that kept them together in the first place. Certainly none of them would turn their heads if Madara and I…ended our marriage.” Just saying it made all the deepest parts of his insides ache but he refused to allow his voice to waver.

“Ha! See! I knew you didn’t care about him at all! You just married him because you were told to!”

“Of course I only married him because I was told to! We’d never met!” Tobirama scowled down the forest path ahead of them. “It’s what I grew up expecting to do. That is how things are done in the Senju clan. We’re told who to marry and then we make it work.”

Izuna scoffed. “Disgusting.”

“Just because it’s different doesn’t make it disgusting,” Tobirama snapped back.

Then he snapped his head to the left and barely held in a whine of longing. Water. He could feel the water in that direction. He changed course without even thinking about it.

“Doesn’t matter what you say, I think the whole practice is gross. But whatever. As long as Madara has a way out of this garbage then I guess I can put up with you for a few years.” Izuna sniffed delicately. He sure had a lot of attitude for someone entirely reliant on the person they were sassing.

“How generous of you,” Tobirama ground out.

A few steps later they closed their eyes to let a few low hanging boughs brush over them and then there it was, the most glorious sight either of them had ever set their eyes upon even in such low lighting. It wasn’t a very large stream, not even deep enough to go over their heads if they sat down, but the burbling water was crystal clear and it was perfect for two exhausted men who could barely stand the thought of keeping themselves upright for a second longer.

Tobirama staggered drunkenly as he splashed in to the center and a few new bruises blossomed on his knees when they folded to send him crashing down with Izuna still heavy across his back. A sigh of near ecstasy parted his lips as cool water rushed over him. It was almost more than he could process just to keep them both from lying flat out and drowning themselves in blissful relief. Behind him Izuna groaned and rolled away, the first movement he’d made for himself since waking up. The two of them splashed and rolled and rubbed at all the most important spots until finally they felt less like they were wearing an itchy second skin, more like they were human again.

“I’m alive!” Izuna declared with his usual dramatic flair.

“And I’m thirsty,” Tobirama mumbled. Blithely ignoring the screaming protests of his muscles, he dragged himself a few inches upstream to where their filth hadn’t polluted the water and dunked his head for a long drink, just barely holding in a moan as his parched throat finally received the hydration it had been crying out for.

He wasn’t surprised to see Izuna follow suit, dunking his face for a few long droughts of water. Then the two of them were left sitting upright in the center of a small stream without the energy to pull themselves back out.

“Well now what?” Izuna demanded. Tobirama blinked at their surrounds.

“Think you can shuffle over to the bank? Looks like the angle would make a decent backrest.”

“Hn. I can try. But if I slip under the water and don’t come up I will haunt you for a decade if you let me drown.”

Tobirama snorted even as he began his own awkward shuffling. “Noted.”

After a bit of uncomfortable maneuvering they were able to plant themselves in to semi-reclined positions on opposite sides, facing each other across the burbling stream. Their gazes locked and Tobirama tilted his head to contemplate the similarities between Izuna’s bitchy face and Madara's bitchy face. He was pleased to note that, while there was indeed a resemblance, there was enough details different that he wouldn’t be seeing echoes of Izuna every time he had a disagreement with his own husband.

“What do you even want from him?”

“Hm?” The question didn’t seem to have a connection to anything they’d been talking about but, then again, Tobirama’s mind felt pleasantly emptied by the bath and the drink.

“My brother. What do you want from him? Why can’t you just leave him alone?”

“It’s strange to me that you assume I must have some sort of alternate agenda in my own marriage.”

Rolling his eyes, Izuna scoffed. “Don’t act like this is a real marriage to you.”

“How is it not real?”

“You don’t love each other!”

“But we could,” Tobirama pointed out softly. “And that opportunity is what interests me. We could love each other.” Speaking so openly about this sort of thing with Izuna of all people was about as painful as he would have expected it to be but he forced himself not to flinch away from the subject at hand. Clearly these were things that the man needed to hear.

And just as clearly they were things he didn’t want to hear. His already taught expression tightened even more until he turned his head to mime gagging in to the river. “That’s bullshit. As if my brother could ever love you.”

It took every scrap of self-control Tobirama had in his arsenal not to react in any visible way to one of his greatest fears given voice. He had barely even given himself much time to come to terms with that fear, that he might have made himself a failure of a husband, that he might be so unlovable that a man like Madara could turn him away even after they had come so far and he had put in so much effort. With every day that passed he grew more and more attached in the way he knew a husband was meant to but without the power to crawl inside Madara's mind there was no way for him to tell if those sentiments were returned.

“He won’t love you,” Izuna declared in an icy voice. “I know my brother. He could never fall in love with someone like you.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Tobirama snapped.

“Someone cold! Someone who doesn’t know him like I do! Someone who doesn’t care about him! Or care about anything!” He opened his mouth to keep going but Tobirama had taken about as much abuse as he thought anyone could be expected to take several days ago and now he finally decided that enough was enough.

“I dragged your sorry ass to safety, didn’t I? You talk about me not caring but I’m the only one between us thinking about how our fighting affects the one we’re fighting over! If you had listened to a word I’ve said for the past week you might have noticed that I am trying damn hard to learn about him – but no! How am I supposed to ‘know him like you do’ if you won’t tell me anything? Do you know what I think, you spoiled fucking child? I think you’ve gotten too used to being the most special person in Madara's life and you feel threatened that someone else might come along and dethrone you!” Turning his head, Tobirama spit downstream to show his derision. “Well let me tell you something, princess. That’s stupid. If Madara falls in love with anyone that doesn’t mean he’ll stop loving you. You’re his brother. So get over whatever dumbass complex you have and let him decide what makes him happy!”

Exhaustion settled over him anew in the wake of his outburst. He could hardly remember the last time he’d said so much at one time outside of the meetings when he gave presentations. Even Izuna seemed shocked in to silence, completely still and staring back at him with both eyes open wide, jaw hanging loose. It was a hilarious and fitting look for his stupid face.

Tobirama lifted both hands out of the water to drag them down his own face. Despite how satisfying it had been to vent all the frustration that had been building over the course of their time together he was more than aware that he had probably just driven an even bigger wedge between them than ever before. Yelling at the brother in law he’d been looking for a way to schmooze definitely wasn’t the way to win himself any forgiveness.

And yet there was something contemplative in Izuna’s silence, a fragile note of tremulous realization. The silence lasted for a long time after Tobirama’s impassioned speech. Neither of them spoke for so long that he actually felt like his body had begun to recover and the current of the river they were still sitting chest deep in had time to work like a gentle massage, rejuvenating him the way falling unconscious for several hours hadn’t. He’d just started thinking about the possibility of moving to find actual shelter where he could bandage both of their wounds properly when Izuna finally spoke again.

“Madara can fall in love with whoever he likes,” he began slowly, “and I won’t try to stop him. It’s my opinion that I don’t think he will ever love you but if I’m wrong then I’m wrong. Just as long as he’s happy.”

“That is all that I hope for as well,” Tobirama said.

“Fine. So here’s the deal. I don’t like you. The way you guys were forced together feels immoral to me and there’s just something about you that always rubs me wrong. But if it’s really stressing him out so much then I guess I’ll just try to visit when you’re not there.”

While that did sort of undermine the point Tobirama was trying to work his way around to he was smart enough not to point that out. Just getting Izuna this far was a greater accomplishment than he’d started to believe was possible and he was no stranger to the concept of quitting while he was still ahead.

“I can live with that much,” he agreed. “We should get out of here. My chakra isn’t quite at the level I need it to be yet so we should probably get some clean bandages on your leg until a medic can see it.”

“Chakra? What are you gonna do, body flicker halfway across the continent?” Izuna snorted.

Smiling to himself as he forced his legs to stand up and wade across the flowing stream, Tobirama hummed agreeably and thought of the new seal he’d been so proud of himself for finally completing. “You would be amazed how far I can reach.”

“Believe it when I see it,” Izuna said.

There wasn’t much he could think of to say in response that wouldn’t cause a fight so instead Tobirama grunted before leaning down to haul Izuna up to his feet. “Carried or walking?”

“Carry me.”

“Lazy.”

“And yet you are going to carry me anyway.”

Tobirama made them both stand face to face so he could say, “My other option is letting you expire here alone in a stream because you are too stubborn to get up and follow.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, quickly turning and ducking down so he could fit the shorter man’s arms over his shoulders and get a solid grip under both knees. Then he stood up and waited for his new burden to shift in to a comfortable position before wading back out of the stream and heading back in to the quiet forest. If not for the distant sounds of wildlife he might actually be a little suspicious of how quiet the woods around them were and how long they had gone without sensing anyone even sort of close by.

Whatever had become of the squad that quite literally ran them in to the ground yesterday, that would have to be a problem for later. For now Tobirama set a course for the brilliant spot on his senses that had to be the capital city and headed out at an easy pace.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Izuna demanded.

“Do you always need something to be complaining about?” he retorted. “Yes. I can feel where the closest dense population is and it’s straight ahead in this direction.”

“Freak. How the hell can you sense that far when you don’t even have enough chakra back yet for a jutsu or something?”

“I was born with my inner eye open, as Hashirama likes to say.” He would have shrugged if not for the weight on his back. Izuna grunted and fell blessedly silent with no more arguments.

Although he had very little trust in the longevity of that silence Tobirama figured he might as well get as far as he could before the bickering started up again. With his gaze set dead ahead and his senses spread out to watch for anyone approaching he let the rest of his mind wander back to Konoha where a warm bed awaited him along with a husband who he could only hope missed him even half as much as he missed Madara.

#rae writes #madatobi #tobirama #izuna #fanfiction

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raendown · 5 years ago

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Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 5631 Chapter: 6/9 Rated: T+ Summary: When his brother disappears coming home from town Madara goes looking for him only for both to end up taken prisoner in a castle hidden by magic generations ago. The candelabras talk, the furniture sleeps, and a great white beast hides himself away in the eastern wing. As he uncovers the story behind this place and gets to know the last small group of ‘survivors’ Madara gradually makes a new home here in the least likely of places.

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KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Chapter 6

“I don’t feel good.” Izuna’s voice rasped with the ache of his latest coughing fit and Madara winced with sympathy.

“You don’t look good either,” he admitted.

He was granted a weak smile for his honesty before Izuna closed his eyes and allowed his body to go completely lax. Madara very gently swept the damp bangs away from his brother’s face, tucking them behind one flushed ear before he went on gently petting the younger man’s head as he had been for the past half hour. As night attacks went this one had been fairly mild but there was never a time he wasn’t worried to be woken in the middle of the night to find Izuna coughing up blood.

The medicine had run out yesterday. Just thinking about it made his heart want to stop inside his chest. Without Izuna in his world Madara didn’t think he could go on. Even the friends he’d been making here in the castle could never be enough to replace the last broken piece of a once happy family. Now here he was running his hands through sweaty hair and wondering if the patron of this place might listen if he dared to send a prayer. When he was young the Great Sannin were nothing more than folklore, bedtime stories that children were never truly meant to believe, but as far as he understood it Lady Tsunade had been watching over the royal family for generations untold until Tobirama’s moping kicked off a hissy fit of her own.

Would she answer the desperate pleading of one random human generations later with no connection to the royalty she once presided over? He doubted it.

“I told you a hundred times,” he mumbled quietly as though to himself. “Without your medicine your condition will only get worse and the only way to get your medicine is in the city.”

“But if I left then I would forget you. I don’t want to forget you; you’re everything I have.”

“Doesn’t matter what you want now, I guess. You wouldn’t make it halfway across the grounds let alone all the way to the city to see that witch of a doctor.” Madara curled his body over the head resting in his lap and squeezed both eyes shut. “Stupid. It would have been better for you to forget me.”

Izuna would have snapped back with something else probably equally stupid if he hadn’t taken such a deep breath in and set off a coughing fit. All Madara could do was hold him through it and squeeze his eyes shut a little more tightly, unwilling to look at the world around him. What use was the beauty and the luxury if he had no brother to share it with? What use was a world in which the last of his family had finally been taken away?

Once the coughing subsided Izuna slipped in to a doze but Madara refused to move more than it took to shift the weight of his head from one leg to the other. If these were to be their last days together he didn’t want to waste a single moment of the time they had left, even if that time was spent doing nothing more than watching the other breathe slowly in and out, counting each rise of that frail chest like a final countdown he couldn’t see the end of yet. Sometimes he wondered how their life would have turned out if their parents had stayed. Would they have enough money to go to a real doctor? Would that doctor have been able to help? Useless questions he couldn’t answer but they were all that filled his mind with nothing else to distract his spiraling thoughts.

Until an unexpected rapping sound brought his head snapping around to blink rapidly at the door.

“Madara?” Tobirama’s voice called through the wood. “Hashirama tells me you did not come down for breakfast. He asked that I ensure you are well.”

“I’m fine,” Madara called back. It would have been more convincing if his voice hadn’t broken on the second word.

“May I enter?”

His first instinct was to hiss and deny entry. This was a private moment, a private matter, and he couldn’t help the urge to hide his poor brother away from anything that might hurt him even by accident. But Tobirama sounded concerned and there was truly no point in hiding this any longer.

When Izuna passed Madara knew he would not long survive his brother. The least he could do was grant Tobirama the closure of knowing that none of this was anyone’s fault but the cruel world they lived in.

“Come in,” he called.

The door opened a moment later to reveal Tobirama’s massive horned head, oddly small looking with the way he was crouched as though to make himself appear as unthreatening as possible. Normally Madara would have loved to analyze and tease him for such a thing but now he found he simply hadn’t the energy for much more than blinking slowly at the guest in their room and trying not to vomit his heart out on to the floor between them.

“Is Izuna unwell?” Tobirama asked as he caught sight of them, his voice pitched low respectfully.

“Yeah. He’s…Izuna has always been sick, for a long time even before we came here. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.” There didn’t feel like an easier way to say it. It wasn’t as though none of the castle’s residents hadn’t witnessed his brother coughing or watching him stagger through the halls when the weakness hit particularly hard but since he kept to their room most of the time and the great bulk of his interactions had been with Hashirama, too easily distracted, they had managed to avoid most questions.

“What aid might I offer?”

Tobirama’s words gave him pause and he found himself caught between touched and choked, forced to speak past a lump rising in his throat. “There isn’t any help you can give. He’s dying. Without his medicine he can’t breathe. And we…he…it’s all gone now. There was only so much in his bags. I guess the time magic doesn’t affect anything brought from the outside”

“Medicine?” Stepping further in to the room, Tobirama’s gaze intensified. “What ails him? We may be able to concoct something.”

“You can’t! Okay? You just can’t! The only healer we could ever afford lives in the city and it’s a full day journey there and back. But the distance doesn’t matter because he won’t go! He won’t leave! I’m stuck here so he refuses to leave too because–” The words cut off as a sob escaped and Madara clapped a hand over his mouth, mortified.

But what did it matter if he broke down? In the end he supposed it mattered very little to let himself be seen as weak. Maybe if he shamed himself his new friends would miss him a little less.

Rather than look at all put off by the mess Madara was making of himself Tobirama took another step closer with his expression pulling down in to deeper concern. One of his hands lifted and for a moment it looked like he might reach out but it dropped again a moment later, consternation in his eyes instead of the pity Madara had expected. His gaze lowered to take in what details he could of the resting Izuna before he spoke again.

“If all we can do for him is to make him more comfortable, is that not also worth the effort?” he asked solemnly. “Please tell me what ailment plagues him. The library here contains many things and although I have never made a study of the subject I know that we have a large selection of medical texts. There may be something we can do.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess I never thought about just making him comfortable. I mean, I’ve been doing what I can but…” Again the words trailed off as they stuck in his throat and the guilt of his own failures threatened to swallow him. Emotions had ever been Madara's biggest foil. “We don’t even know what it’s called. The healer he goes to see has never bothered to give him a name for the condition but I can list the symptoms. Would that help?”

“Immensely.”

“Right, well, the biggest one is the coughing. He coughs a lot and sometimes when it’s a bad attack he brings up a kind of bloody mucus stuff. And he’s just tired all the time, really weak, but he gets night sweats and sometimes he wakes up with a bad fever. Some days he can’t really breathe and he says his chest hurts.” Just describing all of it made his own chest hurt.

Tobirama hummed thoughtfully and nodded to himself, his gaze still locked on the man they were discussing. “I can see that you would rather stay at your brother’s side so I will not disturb you. While you tend to him I will peruse the library for the most reputable texts available. Ah; before that I will send Hashirama to bring you some food. An empty stomach will help no one.” He waited until Madara nodded, unable to find anymore words to respond with, then after a final pause in which he looked as though he wanted to say something more Tobirama turned and left the room.

In his wake the room was filled with nothing but Izuna’s labored breathing and the sound of Madara's blood pounding through his own ears. He was not, however, alone for long. As promised, Hashirama arrived some twenty minutes later with Mito bearing a tray across the width of her spokes floating along behind him. She deposited the food and excused herself but Hashirama stayed to question what was going on, the same concern in his eyes as his brother had worn.

“Tobirama told me only that your beloved Izuna was ill and that you did not wish to leave his side. Is it serious?” As he spoke he climbed up to sit upon the edge of the bedside table where he could look up in to Madara's eyes from the relative height of a small child.

“Yeah, it’s serious.”

“I see.”

Madara turned his head away and resumed carding his fingers through Izuna’s hair. He didn’t really want to repeat his long depressing list of symptoms and he didn’t have a word for what was killing his brother. If Hashirama had more questions he could ask his own sibling. Thankfully his friend chose instead to do what he did best: he babbled. Even when his incessant chatter was met with a resounding lack of response he went on and on about whatever happened to cross his mind and Madara did nothing to stop him. In a way it helped, giving his own mind something to focus on other than this utter helplessness, and he wished he had it in him to express his gratitude for the distraction.

Though he was glad he didn’t have to give voice to such dour thoughts Madara didn’t actually have much hope that Tobirama would be able to dig up anything useful in that ancient library of theirs. Magic had been holding this place suspended in time for decades, probably more than a hundred years. Would doctors that long ago have even known about half the diseases that plagued the world today? Would they have discovered or studied them?

Izuna stirred once or twice as the time passed waiting for Tobirama to return, though he never truly woke. Quiet whimpers escaped and Madara held his breath each time for fear of the whimpers blossoming in to another violent coughing fit. He was relieved both to have his fears proven unnecessary and for the volume of Hashirama's voice as his friend went on with his never-ending speech entirely unaware of Izuna’s near wakings. The normalcy of such chatter also did wonders to help Madara pretend that this was nothing more than a usual day for all of them, nothing to panic about.

Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t immediately and completely riveted on the hulking form entering his room when Tobirama finally returned after more than two hours. Madara stopped himself from belligerently demanding to know what had taken so long only by reminding himself that the journey to the library alone would have taken quite some time there and back even without considering how many hundreds of shelves of books he had seen when he entered the room himself. Just walking around and looking at all the titles would take forever before he even managed to pull any of them down to peruse the contents. Making it back in two hours probably meant that either he hadn’t looked at all of the books yet or he had known exactly which section to go to.

The first words out of his mouth as he entered the room were, “Has there been any change?” When Madara shook his head Tobirama hefted the stack of books between his massive arms. “Let us hope he continues to rest then. I have several tomes here which I found promising.”

Hashirama hopped out of the way so that his brother could set the books down on the end table, clambering up to stand on the headboard instead while Tobirama removed the first one at the very top of the stack and slipped it open to a spot somewhere near the end. For a few moments his eyes skimmed over the words again in silence but before he said anything a disappointed frown appeared between his brows and he shook his head, setting that volume aside.

“My apologies, I must have brought that one by mistake.” As he spoke he was already reaching for the next book and flipping through the pages.

“You did not bring nearly as many with you as I had expected,” Hashirama observed from his new perch.

“No, I did not have the means to carry them all up at once, but I have a list of titles prepared should it be necessary to continue our search.” Tobirama hummed at his new book, turning it from side to side, and it wasn’t until he lowered it with a mildly sheepish look that Madara realized he was attempting to decipher an illustration. “I would be just as happy not to need those, however. So many trips up and down the length of the castle can only lead to exhaustion.”

“You have grown lazy, brother,” Hashirama chuckled.

Tobirama did not deign to respond.

After reading a chapter or two in the new book he’d picked up it too was set aside and deemed irrelevant to the illness they were researching. He made it through two more before Madara began to grumble about not being able to help and Hashirama offered to make a team with him. With his dexterous fingers Madara held the tomes and turned the pages while Hashirama used his familiarity with the fancy hand-lettered pages to read the contents. It made for much slower progress than Tobirama was able to accomplish on his own but it did help them get through a few more books than they would have if they did nothing but sit in silence and watch. Reading had never been a fun spectator sport.

Though Madara did note that there was a certain fascination to be found in watching Tobirama react to whatever he was finding in his own pages, emotions rising freely on his face in a way they normally wouldn’t in conversation. Evidently he was victim to the same habit as Madara. Both of them seemed prone to forgetting the world outside of whatever riveting information they were able to soak up as they read.

Sometime later Izuna awoke for a very brief period and questioned why their room was so full, though he didn’t seem able to pay attention when Madara explained what everyone was doing. He fell asleep again rather quickly. Perhaps just shy of three hours after their collective research binge began, when they were down to the last of the second load Tobirama brought up to go through, it was Hashirama who leaped up on to what passed for his feet and promptly tumbled down on to the mattress at Madara's side in his excitement. Apologies mixed in with excited bubbling as he demanded Tobirama come over to look at the page they were on.

Unable to decipher what the hell he was looking at and recognizing that he probably wouldn’t know what to do with the information anyway, Madara handed the book over easily when Tobirama reached for it.

“Has your brother lost weight since this illness began?” Tobirama asked just when the wait felt as though it would go on forever.

“Now that you mention it, yeah.” Madara blinked thoughtfully. “When he first started getting sick he lost a ton of weight and he’s never really gained it back.”

“Excellent. Has he ever experienced a swelling of the neck?”

“Yes! It was the only time I ever went to town to see the doctor in his place. He said it was because the sickness gave his blood an infection or something. Whatever it was, the medicine helped and the swelling went away. It was only once.”

Tobirama nodded slowly, the light of triumph shining brightly in his eyes. “Tuberculosis,” he said. “A disease only discovered a handful of years before we were locked in to time. It may have been researched more deeply since then but what information we have should be enough. This tome is invaluable. Every symptom is listed, an explanation of how the body is affected, even an outline for a plan of treating the patient!”

“Wait, a treatment? It says how to make the medicine?” Madara held his breath and moved his hands away from Izuna’s hair to grip the sheets underneath him instead.

“Indeed it does,” Tobirama breathed.

For a handful of moments the two of them hung suspended, incapable of doing anything but staring at each other in silence. In those moments Madara felt only disbelief but it was the happiest disbelief he had ever experienced in his life and he could have stay trapped in that staring contest for hours without a single complaint. Or he could have if not for the bundle of walking exuberance that was Hashirama.

“Oh happy day!” he burst out suddenly, startling them both. “What excellent news!”

“Mmphhh-what?” With an inelegant snort Izuna too was startled back in to the waking world, squinting his eyes around at them all in a way that clearly demonstrated how little he remembered of the last time he had awoken.

“Good morning,” Madara greeted him with uncharacteristic cheer.

Izuna blinked up at him suspiciously. “Are you having a party in the room while I sleep? What the hell is going on?”

“Oh nothing much. We’re all just sitting around and watching Tobirama save your life, that’s all.” The grin on his face felt as though it couldn’t be contained, feverish relief and the high of knowing he may not have to watch his only surviving brother die in front of him all mixing together in to a manic, undirected sort of energy that his body didn’t know how to deal with.

“Gonna need a little more information than that.”

It was Hashirama who happily recounted the tale of all they had been doing as their patient dozed the day away. Surprisingly, Izuna listened to him quietly without interrupting and when the tale was done he very carefully struggled to sit up. Madara hurried to support his frail body until he was able to balance himself on the edge of the mattress and bow his head deeply in Tobirama’s direction. As stunned by this as Madara, Tobirama didn’t seem to know how he was meant to react.

“Thank you,” Izuna told him quietly. “I’ve known for a long time that my death was a possibility in a situation like this where I can’t get my medicine and I’d made my peace with that. But Madara never did. I know you did this for him more than for me and for that I thank you.”

“You should owe me no thanks if my actions were selfish,” Tobirama mumbled. He looked even more confused when Izuna lifted his head to reveal a smirk.

“Admitting your guilt?”

“Of course not!” Tobirama balked. “I did not agree with your assumption, I merely pointed out the inconsistencies!”

Hearing Izuna laugh, even as every other breath came short and interrupted by wracking coughs, left Madara with a feeling like the whole room was spinning around him with happiness. Knowing there was a way to help him without sending him away was a leaden burden off his shoulders and he felt almost weightless in the absence of such long-held dread. Between the options of losing his brother to death or magic neither had been great but now he wouldn’t have to lose anything and the remaining tatters of Izuna’s pride could survive as well, his choice to stay no longer affected with deadly consequences.

Pulling the younger man in to a tight embrace, Madara stole as much of a hug as Izuna would allow with company there in the room. When he was inevitably pushed away he shuffled off the mattress at last and smiled unashamedly as he watched his brother fall in to conversation with Hashirama. It took a minute or so to pull his eyes away but when he did it was to find Tobirama watching him with what he imagined was probably a similar expression to the one he himself was wearing.

“What?”

“Forgive me, I did not mean to stare. It is good to see you so free of worry.” Tobirama lowered his head in a simulacrum of a bow. “You have my deepest apologies for not noticing earlier that something was amiss. Please believe that if I had known I would have offered what aid I could.”

“Yeah, I know that.” Well, he knew that now.

Satisfied with that answer, Tobirama closed the book containing all of Madara's hope for the future, gripping it firmly in one hand and gesturing vaguely towards the door with his other. “It would be best for me to begin straight away. Some time will be needed to gather the ingredients and prepare the brew described herein.”

“Can I come?” Madara asked. “I’d feel better if I knew how to make it myself too. Then, you know, if you’re ever busy…”

“I could never be too busy to care for another life above mine,” Tobirama murmured softly.

Thankfully Madara's gawping was neatly covered by Izuna piping up from across the room. “Wait, hold up, you’re not leaving are you? It gets really boring up here, you know! Now I’m all awake and you’re bugging out on me. Unfair!”

As immune as he pretended to be to such manipulations Madara was admittedly a little torn at seeing the deep pout on his brother’s face until Hashirama suggested that he come downstairs as well for some fresh air. Even if he could not be in the room once Tobirama began to mix what potion was described in the book it would probably do him a world of good to get out of the stale air here in their bedroom. Izuna agreed with surprisingly little fight to be carried down the stairs in Madara's arms and allowed himself to be bundled up in several layers of clothing while Hashirama dashed about the hallways to locate a treasure Madara had never dreamed of.

The wheeled chair could probably be better described as a very small cart but it was just the perfect size to prop Izuna up with a blanket across his lap while Madara pushed him along. With such ease of transport and Tobirama walking ahead to break a path through the snow with his massive legs it was a delight to gift Izuna with his first journey outside of the castle since they arrived all the many weeks ago.

In all the commotion of getting everyone downstairs and ready to go out it was no surprise they attracted Mito and Kagami as well, making the outing twice as meaningful with everyone there together for perhaps the first time. Hashirama and Kagami brazenly climbed in to the wheeled chair with Izuna and were quickly made comfortable riding on his knees while the three of them chattered away like old friends. Or rather while the two of them chattered away and Izuna put in his two cents whenever he could catch his breath to do so. Madara worried for him out here in the cold air but the color in his cheeks and the way he seemed to sit up a little straighter kept any mothering instincts muffled. He looked happy. Bright. Alive. Madara simply didn’t have it in him to disturb that.

When they reached the garden he fetched a shovel while Tobirama dipped his massive hands underneath the snow to suss out which plants were growing where. Despite the magically induced winter time was not actually moving and the plants were as much alive as the pantries were full every morning. They left the three chatterboxes off to one side with Mito hovering over them all protectively and when Madara returned with a shovel he set to work with Tobirama digging out the ingredients they would need. It mattered little what damage they caused since the grounds would repair themselves overnight – which turned out to be a good thing since neither of them had ever spent much time mucking around in garden plots. The prince and the stable boy, quite the pair they made with dirt on their palms comparing root shapes to the illustrations in the book they had found.

It took long enough to be sure they had everything they needed that when they all trudged back in to the minimal warmth of the castle Mito instructed them all to congregate in the kitchen while she whipped up something for dinner before any other steps were taken. Madara's stomach rumbling in agreement reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Which meant that neither had Izuna or Tobirama. In all the excitement he hadn’t given much thought to food.

Eating, however, did not take long at all and before too much time had passed Madara was slipping out of the room at Tobirama’s side, giddy with relief that Izuna seemed content enough to stay and keep letting Kagami chatter his ear off. The two of them seemed to be making fast friends but that was no surprise. It was hard to deny how adorable Kagami was. Something about the innocence of childhood seemed amplified in him, undimmed by the many years he’d been locked in this young age unable to grow any farther. Madara couldn’t help but think that it would almost be a shame to see him move past this stage if and when they were finally allowed to break free from the magic that held them here.

The room Tobirama led him to was not that far away, merely a few doors down. Far enough away not to contaminate any food cooked in the kitchens but close enough for the chefs and the physicians to share any ingredients common between them easily. Madara peered around himself curiously when they entered, trying to envision what this place would have looked like when there were bodies to fill it with bustling activity. In a castle this big there must have been people constantly falling ill or injuring themselves so he supposed the physicians must have been kept fairly busy.

“Help me to clear this station?” Tobirama asked, indicating the spot he wanted with one massive hand. Madara obliged by grabbing the closest rag he could see and wiping off the dust so Tobirama could set down all the ingredients they had gathered.

“Before we start,” he murmured, casting around for paper and something to write with, “I don’t suppose you could read the recipe out to me? We should have more than one copy just in case and I would feel more comfortable if I could read at least one of them. Stupid loopy writing.”

Tobirama did so without complaint, repeating any passages he had to when Madara told him he was using too many of those overly fancy words. When the copy was finally done they both began assembling the ingredients they would need first without needing to discuss which ones they were. They had both just gone over it, after all. Since Tobirama knew where all of the equipment would be he began pulling out mortar and pestle, pots, bowls, and other assorted instruments. While he did that Madara took up the knife he was handed and began dicing some of the herbs taken from the garden.

Since neither of them were overly chatty people and the tasks at hand required some measure of concentration the room was silent around them but for the sounds of chopping or grinding and yet there was a peaceful feeling to it all. Working side by side with a common goal was comfortable. Madara felt nothing more than relief that he wasn’t expected to keep the conversation going when he didn’t feel much like talking.

He did take a moment to pause as he measured out a very specific amount of water to begin boiling away any impurities, sliding his gaze to one side and watching the precise movements of Tobirama’s hands, the care with which he handled every tool. It meant more than Madara could say that his friend seemed to be taking this medicine and Izuna’s illness as seriously as he did. Nothing he could think of would suffice to express how grateful he was but he knew he would have to try anyway. This wasn’t the sort of gratitude that should go unspoken, assumed and implied but never expressed.

“Can I ask you a question?” he mumbled as he struggled to light one of the ancient stoves on one side of the room. Tobirama hummed inquisitively. “Before…I mean before you were even king…what did you like to do for fun?”

“Fun?” Tobirama lifted his head with a baffled expression.

“Yeah. I mean, you couldn’t have sat around all day waiting for your brother to get sick so you could take the throne. From what Hashirama told me you didn’t even want it.”

His friend blinked, his eyes taking on a distant expression. “No, I never wanted to be king. My brother was ever the better man and I was more than content to swear my loyalty to him. Before duty called me to his rightful place I…I actually spent much of my time here.”

“Like, you mean in this room?” Madara asked, gesturing vaguely at the rest of the tables and equipment. He watched a smile bloom on the twisted face before him and wondered how he had ever thought this man a beast.

“Indeed, in this very room. Science was always a great passion of mine. I devoted much of my childhood to studying whatever texts I could get my hands on and when I grew old enough to be trusted with safety precautions I was allowed to visit here and perform experiments of my own design. Nothing brought me more joy than to see the results of my own mind take shape before me.” Wistfulness painted his features but it was the wistfulness of recalling happy memories without quite the same mournful edge that he usually carried.

Madara grinned. “So you’re right at home, then?”

He was thrilled to receive a grin back.

“This is not the most complicated brew I have ever made by far. Now, help me crush these to extract the oil and I will show you how to distill these leaves afterwards. The temperature must be just right.”

Clearly in his element, Tobirama went back to his tasks with a new energy that Madara found he had a little difficulty looking away from. It was good to know that making this medicine would not be a burden. With how easily they seemed to be working together this might actually be an activity the two of them could bond over whenever a new batch was needed.

Yet as much fun as he was suddenly having Madara paused to stare down at the pods he was crushing, a new thought forming as he considered the knowledge that these plants would all replenish themselves in the morning.

“Will the magic reset all of this? Everything always resets with a new day, all of the plants will be back in the field when we wake up, so will the medicine we make disappear too?” He looked over to see that Tobirama had paused as well, contemplative. They traded a wary look.

“Let us hope that there is some mercy left in this magic,” was all the answer he could give.

Madara nodded to him and went back to his work with a new will. Whether the medicine disappeared or not it was still worth the effort to make it. If he had to come down here and make a new batch every damn day then he would and he would never complain. For Izuna he would stay here in this room and boil herbs day and night, would sleep in the room and never see the sun again. He might, considering what he had just learned about Tobirama, even have a little help.

And that was enough to bring a smile back to his face as the two of them worked on with a comfortable silence once more falling down around them.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #izuna #hashirama #fanfiction

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raendown · 5 years ago

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Chapter: 5/9 Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 3534 Rated: M Summary: Walking patrol around a university for mages probably sounded like a wild time but Tobirama has never found it all that exciting. He’s not even technically supposed to be here. When responding to a tripped alarm becomes a desperate attempt to stay alive, however, excitement is the last thing on his mind. All he’s ever wanted is a quiet life alone with his books until he finds himself bound to Uchiha Madara in the most impossible way and finally learns to think about more than just himself - in a way.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Chapter 5

“Can you brush my hair for me?”

Tobirama paused in buttoning up his shirt to give the man on his bed a flat look. “What?”

“I said can you brush my hair for me? I want to look at least halfway presentable and it always looks better when you do it. If I pretend to be polite and say please will you do it?”

“One of these days I’m going to invent a spell that will brush your hair for you. Levitation or something. No, wait, I hate levitation spells. They’re so finicky.” Snatching the brush being wiggling enticingly under his nose, he asked, “Why do you even care what you look like? They’re just dumb adolescents.”

With a satisfied smile Madara turned away from him and settled in to a cross-legged position.

“It doesn’t hurt to take a little extra care with one’s appearance,” he said. “You should try it sometime.”

“Are you calling me a mess?” Tobirama demanded. Just for that he made sure to catch a knot in the thick chuck of locks within his grasp and pull hard. Madara gurgled out a protest.

“Careful with that! I was not calling you a mess!”

Scowling, Tobirama let it slide. He wondered if Madara had noticed the same thing he did when they woke up that morning. The longer they were able to stay apart the less he seemed to be able to sense what the other was thinking and that bothered him more than it should. If anything he should have been celebrating getting a little more privacy back but somehow he just felt oddly alone. It was, embarrassingly, a relief every time they had to touch again and he could once more feel Madara just on the other side of that thin wall between their thoughts.

Pulling the brush a little more carefully – he didn’t really enjoy the echoes of pain their bond fed through to him, after all – Tobirama sat quietly and listened to Madara rambling on about his lesson plans for the day. He didn’t have a lot of opinions to give other than admitting that a lot of it sounded quite boring to him. But then anything that involved sitting still and being lectured on a subject he had already studied would always sound boring to him.

When Madara finally announced that he was satisfied with his own appearance Tobirama nodded and stood up.

“Finally. Now turn around so I can change out of my sleep pants.”

“At least I down have to hold your hand and close my eyes anymore.” Madara turned away as asked and pulled the notes Hashirama had sent over in to his lap.

Tobirama scoffed. Now that was a bit of separation he actually didn’t mind. His partner was right that those first couple of days learning how to function when they had to stay attached were mortifying. Tossing on a pair of pants to match the button down shirt he’d already changed in to, he paused and looked down at himself with a frown.

“I look fine, right?” he asked. Madara was smirking when he turned around.

“Who’s worrying about their appearances now?”

“You got in to my head!” Tobirama reached over to tug on a lock of that perfectly brushed hair. “I can’t help it! We’re rubbing off on each other more and more with every day. Next thing you know we’ll show up somewhere in matching outfits talking in unison. Actually, can we do that? I want to freak out Hashirama.”

Madara rolled his eyes and didn’t answer, though when Tobirama dropped a hand on his shoulder he could feel that the man was at least a little intrigued by the idea.

Since it was well past breakfast by the time they left home there weren’t actually many people around for the first few minutes of their walk. The residential areas were barren, anyone not currently sitting in their first period class probably still sleeping or just getting up, so the two of them held hands with the assurance that there was no one there to see and start rumors from it. It wasn’t until they passed the residential hallways and turned in to the wing where the classrooms began that they let go, instead walking so closely their arms brushed on nearly every step. Still a bit suspicious looking but not enough to confirm any of the ridiculous rumors that neither of them had been seen in days because they were on their honeymoon.

As if that would ever happen.

The twenty minutes it took to get to the right classroom were mostly spent in silence, both of them trying their hardest not to make eye contact with anyone wearing that weird hunger in their face people get when they’re trying to confirm something they think they already know. Madara did nod to some of the students that called out to him. Tobirama didn’t much bother looking around; the only people who ever waved to him were Hashirama, Mito, or his cousin Touka who had left the university after one year of classes, declaring them much too boring. He would have been bothered except that he much preferred it that way. Socializing had never been his strong suit.

Despite knowing intellectually that Madara’s students had missed him, they were both startled to open the door and find several dozen faces staring back at them with brilliant smiles and neatly folded hands, every one of them with their textbooks out and placed at the top left corner of their desks. It was nothing short of surreal.

“Students or thralls?” Tobirama muttered out the corner of his mouth, shrinking away from all the creepy eyes focused on them. Madara grunted and turned to scowl at him.

“They are not thralls,” he hissed quietly. “A bit odd, though, they’re not usually this well behaved.”

One of the nearby students overheard them, apparently.

“We thought we’d surprise you, Uchiha-sensei! Everyone knows how much you like it when things are neat and tidy.” The young man smiled proudly, teeth stretching from ear to ear, and Tobirama tried his best not to think about how cute he looked with all that curly hair and those cheekbones that so closely resembled the man at his side. “I like your new shirt, too!”

“Flattery will get you nothing, Kagami,” Madara told the kid with a note of suspicious in his voice.

“Aw come on, we were just trying to do something nice for you!”

“Do your homework on time for once,” Madara snorted. “That would be nice.”

Kagami, as was apparently his name, wilted and turned away to sulk in the other direction. While his appearance was undoubtedly similar to Madara’s his personality seemed to be uncomfortably reminiscent of Hashirama instead. Tobirama really wasn’t sure what he thought of that. It was a relief to follow his partner towards the front of the room and slip behind the ancient desk covered in perfectly neat little stacks of paper and pens all sorted by color.

If there was one invention he would always be grateful to the non-magical community for it was pens. Sometimes Tobirama still came across an old ink pot in one of his closets and he always shoved it right back in to the mess with a shudder of memory. Normal folk were almost lucky not to live half as long as anyone with magic, saving them the trouble of remembering such dark times as the days when homework was done with quill and scrolls. Keeping track of it all had been a nightmare no matter how many extra pockets he sewed in to his clothing.

Settling himself in to the very center of the staging area at the front of the room, Madara swept his eyes over the class before him with an expression that Tobirama had come to realize meant he was looking for something specific.

“There’s a few faces missing,” he noted eventually.

“Uh, I think the Transformative Spells class last period had an accident,” Kagami piped up from his seat. “So anyone who was there is probably in the infirmary right now.”

“Ah.” Madara frowned, worry flashing through him so strongly that Tobirama felt it even from several feet away, although he let nothing of it show on his face. Without saying anything more on the subject he launched right in to a recap of what they should have been learning over the week while he’d been gone.

While he spoke he moved back and forth across the empty space at the front, stopping at the desk every couple of minutes to reach for a random object or tidy something that Tobirama had fiddled with, anything to use as an excuse for their arms to brush together and reestablish their connection. When he wasn’t getting smacked on the shoulder for messing with stuff Tobirama explored whatever items had been left out in easy reach. He passed over the homework assignments that someone else seemed to have graded – Madara just didn’t seem like a happy face sticker kind of guy – and instead pulled a binder towards himself that had no label at all. In his experience the things that went unlabeled usually had the most interesting things inside.

Generally they were also forbidden or taboo but that only made them more interesting.

First making certain that Madara was focused on his lecture, Tobirama flipped the binder open. His first reaction upon finding nothing inside but lesson plans was of irritated disappointment. Upon taking a closer look, however, he realized that he had accidentally stumbled on to something beautiful after all: Madara’s handwriting.

There hadn’t really been any need for his partner to write anything down over the past few days and suddenly Tobirama mourned that fact. He’d never seen more elegant script in his life. Each letter was a masterpiece, perfectly crafted with a patience he would never have himself. His own writing was usually cramped and rushed as he tried to get as many words on to the page as he could and as quickly as humanly possible. Not once in his life had he taken the time to make anything half as pretty as the lettering in front of him now. Madara’s writing was so nice just to look at that it took a couple of minutes for Tobirama to actually read what was written on the pages.

When he’d seen the title ‘Lesson Plan’ and a date from nearly a week ago he had assumed it would be nothing but a general outline of the material they were expected to cover. He was surprised to see the level of detail this plan included, complete with notes in the margins about which subjects his students were doing well on and could advance quicker as opposed to which they seemed to be struggling with and needed to have covered in more detail.

In all the years he’d spent here at the university – and despite still enjoying his earlier centuries it had already been a lot of years – he’d never known any of the teachers put this much effort in to planning their classes. Although to be fair he had no evidence that anyone other than Madara made their plans so detailed but that only worked as a point in the man’s favor. Tobirama had always assumed that lesson plans were no more than a rough outline, lazy and thoughtless, copy and pasted from all the years before. Knowing they were more than that gave him a little more respect for the position and it only got better as he kept reading down the page.

Underneath all of the technical details was a small section where Madara had penned in a few notes about specific students, who seemed to be having trouble with what and how to help them work through those issues, sometimes a personal reminder that this student or that one had reacted a certain way to his teachings and even suggestions to himself about how to tweak his lecture for the future. It was thoughtful.

Tobirama closed the binder and pushed it away from himself, uncomfortable suddenly and unable to pinpoint why. It was interesting having everything he thought he knew about someone slowly flipped upside down, there was no denying that, but it was also jarring and brought up a lot of introspective questions he wasn’t at all prepared to deal with.

No one liked to think they were so self-involved that they could judge someone else so wrongly.

Madara trundled over to brush against his arm a few moments later and Tobirama tensed, eyes darting up to make sure he’d replaced the binder of lesson plans exactly where it had been before. With the obsessive organization system it would be all too obvious he had touched something if it were even an inch out of place. Luckily for him Madara wasn’t even looking at the desk. He stopped at Tobirama’s side to put a hand on his shoulder and look down at him with an expectant expression.

“I wasn’t listening,” he admitted quietly. Oddly, Madara didn’t even look annoyed. He turned back to the class without removing his hand.

“Take Tobirama here as an example. His natural element is water, the complete opposite of mine, but I have seen him both invoke fire and use fire runes. Can anyone tell me why that’s possible for him?”

“Because I’m just that good.” Tobirama smirked when a handful of students tittered.

“No,” a quiet voice piped up from the back. “It is because fire runes channel raw magic from the closest ley line and do not rely on a caster’s abilities while invocation begs power from the spirits themselves with no magic passing through the one invoking them at all.”

Madara squinted around the room until he found the one who had spoken and then nodded once in satisfaction. “Very good Shino, that’s exactly correct.”

“Good to know they have their basics down,” Tobirama muttered under his breath. “They’re only, what, fifth year students?” He grunted when the hand still resting on his shoulder clamped down extra hard in retaliation.

The lesson went on to a discussion of when it was best to use fire runes over any other options, always easier than invocations though they were also less powerful, and Tobirama let his attention wander off again. He considered going through the desk drawers when he ran out of things to inspect on the top of it but one look from Madara had his hands curling together in his lap. As much as he did enjoy riling the man up he wasn’t looking to become a visual aid by having his hair set on fire. Madara wore sparks much better than he did.

Boredom had set in again long before one of the students casually asked whether fire or water was stronger since the two elements were considered natural opposites. He was in the process of opening his mouth to gleefully suggest they make a demonstration of it when a bell began to chime to signify the end of the period, Madara’s eyes rolling back with visible relief.

His partner called out homework assignments over the sounds of everyone packing up their things and warned them that he probably still wasn’t back on a permanent basis so they should expect their substitute again. While he was busy shouting Kagami made a point of stopping by the front.

“It was nice to meet you,” he said, leaning over the desk to smile at Tobirama.

“Probably. I’m an absolute delight.”

The boy laughed at his joke, peeked over at Madara, then covered his mouth to laugh a bit more. “I’m sure you are.”

He was gone a moment later, joining the flood of bodies rushing off to their next class. Luckily for Tobirama’s attention span it was Thursday and Madara only happened to teach one period of class on Thursdays. For years his only social interactions had been the rare occasion he made it down to the dining hall at proper meal times or when Hashirama deigned to stop by his rooms. Even the librarian had stopped trying to pull him in for a chat when he went down to check out more books. He understood that his partner needed to get out more often than once a week but personally his own quota for human interaction had more than been met.

Madara didn’t count as company, not with their minds so closely intertwined that they couldn’t bear to be apart.

When the room was empty and the door snapped shut behind the last student Tobirama eyed the binder of lesson plans before standing up to watch his partner clear off the various things he’d written on the whiteboard. Yet another invention to be grateful to the non-magical community for. Chalkboards were so messy. It had actually taken Mito several years to convince her husband to install them in all the classrooms; not because of any budget concerns but simply because he stubbornly clung to the aesthetic of chalkboard classrooms in the castle which housed the university. Sometimes Tobirama wondered if Hashirama had only taken the job of Headmaster so he could pretend he was still living four centuries ago.

“Learn anything new?” Madara asked after the whiteboard was clean.

“Yes, actually, although I didn’t listen to a word you were saying.” Tobirama dragged his eyes away from the binder of treasures and pulled as innocent of an expression as he could manage. It had exactly the desired effect of making the other man roll his eyes.

“How–? No, never mind. I don’t think I want to know what you think you learned if it wasn’t anything from the class.”

Tobirama cocked his head to one side and noted that it seemed Madara was getting to know him as well as he was getting to know Madara. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing but it wasn’t really something he could stop so he simply allowed the thought to pass him by.

Standing up from the desk at last, he made his way over to stand next to his partner and weave their hands together with a sigh of relief that Madara immediately echoed. All the small excuses for brushing together had been the only thing that kept him sane throughout the past hour and they had another twenty minute walk ahead of them until to make it back home. It was good to know they could separate now but it was still better when they didn’t have to.

“I used to hate you,” Tobirama grumbled, personally offended that he couldn’t say he still did.

“Yes and I still have no idea why.” Madara lifted one arm like he meant to cross them and then awkwardly aborted the motion after he realized he couldn’t with his other hand occupied. “I’m lovable! Your brother always says so!”

“Hashirama’s opinion doesn’t count, he loves everything that breathes in his general direction.”

Madara puffed his chest up to argue back and then deflated almost immediately. “Or things that don’t breathe. I caught him naming all the flagstones in the front courtyard once,” he admitted. Tobirama closed his eyes to block out the exasperated shame.

Together they puttered around cleaning up the classroom and putting away all the things Madara had used to demonstrate whatever he’d been talking about. As much as Tobirama normally couldn’t care less for having everything put away so long as he remembered where to go find it again later – laughable considering he never remembered where anything was – he found himself pointing out things that were still out of place and dragging Madara along behind him as he popped over to put something else away.

Once everything was back where it was supposed to be and all the books on Madara’s desk had been set at right angles again they were free to head on back home at last. Madara spent most of the walk making a case for why they would go back to class again the next day, whining that Fridays he only taught two classes and that it wouldn’t be too much different than just one class, especially since they were hours apart. Tobirama mostly let his wrinkled nose make his opinions on that known. It wasn’t the classes he objected to in particular, just the upset to his daily routine. Ever since this whole thing began his life had been steadily changing bit by bit, again and again, and all he wanted was to find a little equilibrium again.

Finally turning down the hallway where their rooms were located and finding Uchiha Izuna leaning against the wall with both hands in his pockets certainly was not a path towards finding his equilibrium. The mental connection between him and his partner lit up with startled happiness at almost the exact same moment Izuna looked down to see that they had once again linked hands as soon as they were out of the public eye.

“What the fuck Aniki!?”

Tobirama closed his eyes and prayed for patience. Hopefully the gods would see fit to send enough for both of them.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanfiction

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raendown · 6 years ago

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Pairing: MadaraTobirama Chapter: 5/18 Word count: 1956 Summary: When Tobirama is exiled from the Senju clan without warning, without even the chance to plead his case, it feels like his life is over. What does he have to live for now without his older brother to believe in him? Captured by the Uchiha in his moment of weakness, Tobirama slowly learns to live again with the last people on earth he would have ever expected to care for - or to fall in love with.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI in the blog header!

Chapter 5

The seals on his wrists were hasty and clumsy, no sophistication in the symbols. They were drawn in the fashion of someone copying an image without truly knowing the meaning behind it. Someone in the Uchiha had clearly gotten their hands on some kind of chakra suppressant seal to use as an example but it was obvious that none here were masters of the art. Any self-respecting seal master would have cried themselves to sleep at just the thought of having their work bastardized as much as the mock cuffs that had been forced upon him the moment he woke up after his last visit from the two brothers.

Not to say that they didn’t work. Sophisticated or not the seals accomplished what they were meant to. He could feel his chakra seething just under the surface, boiling and rolling and crashing against the barrier they made like water breaks against a cliff, but they were sufficient to keep him from releasing anything and thus he remained powerless. Maybe if he hadn’t spent the last month motionless and flopping about on the floor letting his muscles atrophy then he might have been physically strong enough to think about another route for escape. Hindsight had always been a bitch.

All things considered, though, his situation wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. He had expected his jailors to drive him hard with impossible tasks but Madara hadn’t lied when he talked about hauling laundry around. It earned him all sorts of different looks, from curious to barely concealed distaste, but he supposed he could understand that. He too would have stopped to stare upon seeing his ancestral enemy waltzing through the compound to go wash clothes in the little stream running through the western quadrant. Knowing he would have done the same did not stop him from making each trip with a stiff back and a constant frown of discomfort, hating the feeling of so many hostile eyes on his back. It seemed a miracle that no one had yet tried to attack him while he was vulnerable. Whether they refrained because Madara had warned them to leave him unharmed or whether they all simply enjoyed seeing him lowered to this state had yet to be determined.

Tobirama hurried back to the Head family home as quickly today as he had every morning for the past couple of weeks. Working for Madara wasn’t so bad as long as he was able to keep his pride in check. And doing that was easy enough when he reminded himself that he was literally nothing now, no clan name to back him, no authority to wield. Honest work was about the only option he had left, though if he had found honest work anywhere else he would certainly have expected to be paid for it, but even if he would hesitate to admit it he was grateful in a strange way for a break from the horrors of the battlefield. So far the work he had been given was mostly house chores and it was a novel thing not to wash blood from his skin at the end of every day.

Letting himself passed the front gate of Madara’s home, Tobirama first made his way around to the backyard to hang the clean clothing up to dry. When the line was full and his basket empty he went in through the back door, eyed the dishes in the sink, and then dismissed them in favor of wandering down the hall towards Madara’s office. Easy his duties might be but some of them were still abhorrent. That particular chore could wait until the end of the day when he could get rid of them all at once.

Madara’s office was cushier than his own workspace had been in the Senju compound, one corner of the room piled high with pillows in case the man was too tired to crawl down the hallway to his bedroom at night, the other wall lined with squat bookshelves and ancient weaponry hung like decorations above. Tobirama made his way straight towards the pillows to flop down and stare morosely at the man kneeling at his desk, right under the window where he could make full use of whatever daylight came filtering through the protective mesh screens.

“Done?” Madara asked, not lifting his gaze from whatever he was reading.

“Clearly,” Tobirama drawled in return. Then he sank further down in to the pillows and closed his eyes to sulk pointedly.

“Hmm, that was quick.”

“Didn’t feel quick. Why do your clothes always require extra scrubbing?”

Madara chuckled. “I make sure they’re extra dirty just to frustrate you.”

Even if he knew that wasn’t true, it still sounded enough like something he would do that Tobirama gave a low noise of disgust. Actually he had noticed it was really Izuna’s clothing that always took longer to clean and from the dirt stains in certain places he suspected a harsh training regimen as the culprit. He hadn’t yet found the courage to ask whether his rival had always trained this often or if it was a newly developed habit; he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. Was he supposed to feel guilty about how much damage the man could do in battle without himself there as a shield, an equal force to cancel out the deaths either of them were capable of causing in a single encounter?

As if sensing his thoughts spiraling downwards again, Madara grunted from across the room and Tobirama opened his eyes just in time to catch the scroll that had been tossed at his head.

“You’re supposed to be a genius, right? Here’s your next chore.”

When he opened it to find columns of messily scrawled numbers he lifted one eyebrow with conflicted reactions warring inside him.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to let the prisoner do your accounting?” he asked. Madara waved his question off with one hand, still engrossed in his own work.

“There’s no names on there to tell you who our suppliers are, no locations to give away. It’s just numbers. You’re a scientist, shouldn’t you be good at numbers?” The man shrugged carelessly. “Reckon the columns and you can take a break. Just make sure you’re back here to cook dinner.”

“Seriously?”

“Like I said: they’re just numbers. What harm could you do knowing how much we spent on food the past few months?”

Tobirama held his breath, unrolling the scroll to take a second look. There was a lot of damage he could cause with these numbers, actually. Many people would pay handsomely for even small information like this; he could think of a dozen different weaknesses he could assume from just food budgets alone. He would have liked to say he could buy his way back in to the Senju’s good graces by providing them with inside information but he wasn’t that stupid. They weren’t that easily bought, as much as he wished suddenly that they were. Since the scroll in his hands was as good a distraction as any against such musings he buried himself in the task given to him without complaint.

It was oddly nice to be given something to do that used his brain again after so long. Working out simple arithmetic wasn’t exactly a challenge but the routine calculations were time consuming and it was better mental exercise than wondering what he could add to his detergent that would make the laundry a little softer once it dried.

When the damnable seals had first been applied to his wrists and he realized Madara was serious about putting him to work he had thought perhaps they intended to take advantage of his mind. He’d been infamous from a young age for his genius and his knack for creating new jutsu, new weapons, and for the sealing skills he had cultivated with the aid of books sent to him by their Uzumaki allies. As much as he appreciated not being forced to bring those skills to bear in a war that would inevitably find its way to the people he once loved, household chores did get boring after a while. Being asked to help with the accounting was almost like Madara was granting him a treat for good behavior.

He avoided mentioning that in case the fool grew contrary and took it away.

Although it only took him twenty or so minutes to work through the entirety of the small portion he’d been given, Tobirama neglected to mention he was finished for another couple of minutes, taking an opportunity to quietly study the other man in the room. Madara was more of a mystery to him every day. The most Tobirama had ever known of him before was a screaming battle persona and the exaggerated memories Hashirama liked to wax poetic about every so often. He had expected his time under the man’s thumb to leave him bone-weary at the end of every day from bring run in to the ground with work; he had expected to be humiliated and degraded, to have his temper tried at every turn.

Reality was much harder to wrap his head around. Madara was calm in the moments between the never ending string of disasters that made up his life. For making such an impressive figure in battle he was incredibly goofy in everyday life. He woke with his hair sticking out at funny angles and walked in to walls before consuming his morning coffee. He sat down on pins the clan children left on his cushion and hung his body out the window to shout at them without a care for how it left his rump on comical display. He tripped on rocks and absently stabbed people with chopsticks while making gestures and even stood on his own hair sometimes when he tried to get up from his desk.

But in the moments around those, when he was still and there was no one to disturb him, he was as calm and poised as any clan head should be. Under the screaming and the wild mane there was a good head with a smart brain. Beneath that lay a bleeding heart that gave in to a good set of pleading puppy eyes faster than Tobirama had ever seen.

Had he been captured by any other clan at odds with the Senju, Tobirama knew very well that most would not have taken the time to hear his story let alone believed him enough to look in to it themselves. And even less would have seen any point in keeping him alive once they realized that he could be of no use as a bargaining chip. Maybe Madara really did just want a slave to keep his house clean and his yard tidy but he was a kinder master than Tobirama would have found in anyone else. If he had been given the option to choose his own path he would have chosen death in an instant. But if he had to choose his own captivity, as much as he hated to admit it, he would choose Madara a hundred times over.

At least, based on his experience so far.

Warm and comfortable in the mountain of pillows he had sunk his body in to, Tobirama never noticed he was falling asleep in the midday sun until his eyes slid closed and he was already gone. The scroll of accounts slipped from his fingers to roll gently across the floor and bump in to Madara’s knee but Tobirama was not awake to see the soft look in those dark eyes as his greatest enemy sat and watched him sleep away the afternoon.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanfiction

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raendown · 6 years ago

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A gift for @copyninken because this madness is your fault.

Sequel to What I'm Selling Ain't Cheap (Context Is Everything), which was also your fault.

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Rated: T+ Chapter: 1/7 Word count: 1534 Summary: Now attending the university here in their hometown as he begins his Master's, Tobirama develops a problem with falling asleep in the strangest of places. Madara, poor innocent never-deserved-any-of-this Madara, gets mistaken for a mattress one too many times. All he wanted to do was focus on his career but instead he finds himself forcibly tasked with herding his secret crush towards better sleep habits. It's driving him up the wall.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI in the blog header!

Free Student To Good Home (Not House Trained)

Chapter 1: A Lap To Call Home

Madara didn’t so much as flinch when the front door slammed shut behind him with an echoing bang but he did pause to wince at the sound of wooden picture frames rattling against the wall. If any of those dropped he would never hear the end of it from Mito. He would prefer not to get banned from his best friend’s house, especially considering how many nights he showed up with his head too full of the world’s darkest realities, nights when he needed Hashirama’s stupid smile to remind him that everything was okay.

Voices drifted out from the other room but Madara ignored them, making his way to the den instead and throwing himself moodily down on the couch. It was a good soft couch with wide cushions and no judgements about the three extra pounds he was pretty sure he’d gained this month. Today’s shift hadn’t quite been filled with as many horrible gruesome things as he had seen in the past few years but it had been stressful just the same and all he wanted to do was relax in a place where he knew he would be safe yet not alone. Maybe later he would work up the energy to call Izuna and berate his brother for moving halfway across the country. Honestly. Who did that?

All of his brothers had done that. Madara himself was the last of the Uchiha siblings left in their hometown. If it wasn’t for Hashirama taking him in during college he probably would have followed them out of sheer loneliness no matter how much he loved this city.

The wave of fondness that was about to roll over him crested and washed back in the opposite direction when he heard his best friend’s voice stage whispering much too loudly from the other room.

“Shhh we should be quiet. He’s had no sleep and you know he has a gun.”

“The safety is on, you moron,” he called out, voice muffled by couch fibers. “But I’ll take it off for you!”

He didn’t realize his own innuendo until he heard Mito snickering away in the kitchen. Then he was thanking his lucky stars that no one was here to watch his attempt to suffocate himself with tacky upholstery. Disgusting. As if he would ever touch that big moose, not with a ten foot pole and three pairs of rubber gloves! Madara liked to think he had more refined taste than that.

Of course, his tastes included an oblivious albino who frequently tortured him with too-familiar contact and yet never seemed to understand what kind of havoc he was wreaking on poor Madara’s heart. So there was that. The memory of the first time he’d visited Tobirama at university two years ago was still vivid in his mind, how he had been used as a glorified electric blanket and then discarded immediately after he was no longer needed. It had never seemed to occur to Tobirama that what they were doing was basically cuddling and could be interpreted as romantic. All he’d cared about was staying warm while the heater wasn’t working.

“Don’t be silly, sweetheart, Madara would never really shoot me!” Hashirama sounded much too confident for a man who had only just been worrying about the presence of a gun. Madara grumbled to himself as he reached down and fumbled at his hip, unclipping the holster and pulling out his standard issue pistol.

He reveled in the terrified squeak that drifted out of the kitchen when he pulled back the slide to cock his weapon. There wasn’t even anything in the clip but Hashirama didn’t need to know that.

The sound of the front door opening and closing again had him dropping the gun to gently slide it underneath the couch so curious fingers wouldn’t find it. Having finished his bachelor’s degree last year, Tobirama was home now where the local university had a program he approved of to begin his master’s. Supposedly he had his own apartment but Madara wasn’t truly sure he lived in it. Actually, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain where the man lived at all. The deeper he got in to studies the worse his sleeping habits had become and ever since Tobirama came home Madara had been finding him sleeping in the strangest places around town on a worryingly frequent basis.

Like now as the zombified form of a pale Senju shuffled in to the room with his eyes barely open, his feet leading him unerringly towards the couch that already had someone sprawled out across it. Tobirama had enough awareness left to turn and sit down properly like a real human being. He did not, apparently, have enough to notice that he was sitting on top of Madara.

“Get. Off. Of. Me.”

In his peripheral vision Madara could see Tobirama lift his head and blink around himself foggily. When he didn’t see anyone his eyes slid shut and his body toppled over sideways, almost seeming to melt on to the body underneath him.

“Warm,” he mumbled absently.

“Tobirama, what the fuck?”

“Shhh, couch. Shhhh. Sleep now.”

And then he was gone, passed out between one breath and the next. Madara wondered if the screaming he could hear was coming from himself or it if was just inside his own head.

No matter how he squirmed or wriggled it did nothing to dislodge Tobirama’s tired form. He wondered how long the idiot had been awake for this time. Twenty hours? Thirty? How many projects could he really have to work on? At least now he was doing only his own homework and not completing other people’s assignments for petty cash like he had when he was off doing his bachelor’s.

Finally Madara gave up and let one of his arms drape down to the floor, his eyebrows bunched together in confused desperation. He hadn’t really planned to stay all that long. Mostly he’d just wanted to come sulk around the place until Hashirama offered to feed him so he wouldn’t have to eat dinner alone in his own too-big apartment. He hated the way the whole place seemed to echo every time he so much as breathed. Izuna used to live there with him and he’d liked things just fine until the traitor moved out west.

Hashirama found him a couple of minutes later, cooing softly when he spotted his sleeping baby brother and then gurgling in shock when he spotted Madara underneath.

“What…are you doing?” he asked slowly, drawing the words out until they could be considered vaguely threatening.

“Don’t stand there like an idiot,” Madara growled. “Help me! I don’t even know what’s happening right now, he just sat down on top of me like I was part of the couch!”

“Hold on, you want me to move him?”

“Yes!”

Hashirama backed away with both hands held in front of himself protectively. “Oh no. No way. The last time I tried to move him while he was sleeping I lost a chunk of my hair. It’s still growing back! My braid looks all lopsided when I go to bed!” He pouted while Madara stared at him incredulously. Partly because he was being dumb and partly because he’d been wondering why that one chunk of hair was shorter than the rest; he had not suspected Tobirama as the culprit – although he really should have.

“Well what am I supposed to do?” he demanded incredulously. “Just lie here until he wakes up?”

“I think that’s the safest option. Should I bring you both a blanket?”

“No! No wait! Hashirama, get back here! I don’t want a blanket, I want to go to sleep in my own bed without one hundred eighty pound of albino on top of me! Hashirama!” Yelling, he discovered just then, was not half as fun when he had to whisper at the same time.

Unfortunately Hashirama had no sympathy for his plight and Madara was smart enough to be afraid of how Tobirama would react if his precious rest was disturbed. A blanket was fetched, a pillow was maneuvered under his head, and Madara resigned himself to lounging in his best friend’s house for much longer than he originally intended to. His head was at least facing the right way at just the perfect angle so he was able to entertain himself with whatever happened to be playing on the television at the moment.

Hashirama even set the remote on the floor where his arm could reach it.

It took an hour or so of rotting his brain but eventually Madara nodded off himself, more comfortable than he thought anyone had a right to be while they were squashed under the weight of another person. When he woke he was alone on the couch, blanket crumpled by his feet and no trace of Tobirama but for the lingering scent of ink and paper. A quick look at his watch told him he’d slept through the night and was due back at work in two hours, just enough time to rush home, shower, grab a bite to eat, and change.

He spent the entire two hours wondering if he’d dreamed the whole thing up.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #hashirama #mito #fanfiction

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raendown · 6 years ago

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Pairing: Madara Tobirama Chapter: 2/7 Word count: 1991 Summary: Now attending the university here in their hometown as he begins his Master’s, Tobirama develops a problem with falling asleep in the strangest of places. Madara, poor innocent never-deserved-any-of-this Madara, gets mistaken for a mattress one too many times. All he wanted to do was focus on his career but instead he finds himself forcibly tasked with herding his secret crush towards better sleep habits. It’s driving him up the wall.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI in the blog header!

Chapter 2: Vagrancy With Style

Right up until ten minutes after his lunch break ended, Madara’s day was going fairly well. He’d made two arrests and one of those was a man whom he had stopped from becoming a murderer, talking him down from stabbing someone who had offered him insults after too many beers. On top of that he’d been able to take his lunch break on time and managed to finish his entire sandwich before a fight erupted in the cells that he had to split up.

He and his partner were milling around the station doing some routine paperwork when one of his fellow officers called him over and waved the desk phone at him.

“Call for you, Uchiha.”

“From who?”

“Dunno. Asked for ‘that idiot Uchiha’ and no one calls your cousin that. Shisui’s too nice to people.” The man grinned until Madara sneered and grabbed the phone away from him.

Then he stopped laughing when Madara’s foot connected with his chair and rolled him halfway across the bullpen.

“Officer Uchiha speaking.”

“Where are you?” A familiar voice demanded. Madara took the phone away from his ear to give it a funny look, wondering if he was hearing things.

“I’m…at work?”

“Ugh.” Even through the phone no one was quite able to express disgust the way Tobirama did. “Useless. I need to sleep.”

With that he hung up and Madara was left staring the receiver again as though it might provide some answers as to what the hell that was all about. He hadn’t seen the other man for a week, not since that very weird incident at Hashirama’s place that he was still half certain had all been a dream. Nothing in that phone call had made sense but he didn’t have Tobirama’s number to call back and demand clarification.

Shisui gave him a questioning look but Madara waved him off. He didn’t know what the hell was going on either and he didn’t feel like fielding questions he had no answers for.

He gave some thought to sending Hashirama a quick text over the next couple of hours but he wasn’t even sure what to ask or how to put in to words the strange phone call he had received. It had undoubtedly been Tobirama on the other end of the line, there was no mistaking that delicious growl of a voice, but beyond identification he was stumped. If Madara could think of a single reason the man might need to call him then perhaps he might have a frame of reference for guessing what the hell he wanted.

Ultimately he ended up forcing the issue out of his mind because it was much too distracting and he wasn’t getting any of his paperwork done. There were arrest reports to be filled out, case files to be updated, endless paper to waste, and he only had so many hours in each day to do it all. Shisui was drooped over the desk facing his and watching his partner undergo the same punishment was just enough motivation to keep himself going whenever his fingers began to cramp from all the writing.

With only twenty minutes left to go before sweet, sweet freedom the doors to the bullpen opened and Madara was forced to rub his eyes just to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. A questioning look at the rookie heading towards him leading another man in cuffs earned him a shrug.

“Picked him up for vagrancy,” Asuma explained. “Told him a week ago that was the last time I’d look the other way if I found him sleeping on a park bench.”

Madara gurgled, prompted Tobirama to raise his head at the familiar sound.

“Oh. There you are.”

“Tobirama,” he growled. “You were sleeping on a park bench!?”

“You know the guy?” Asuma asked. Madara pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Unfortunately. Can you just let me handle this one, Sarutobi?”

The rookie gave him a disapproving look but released custody all the same. Madara sneered at him thankfully – an expression only he seemed to be able to master – then took Tobirama by the arm and dragged him over to the desk where they had at least a modicum of privacy.

“What the fuck?”

“It isn’t my fault you weren’t available,” Tobirama insisted. “I need to sleep, Uchiha. Now take me home.”

“You are hardly in a position to be making demands here.”

“We both know you’re not going to actually charge me with anything so let’s just go and not bore ourselves with any unnecessary theatrics.” He looked perfectly calm and unaware of how utterly frustrating he was being as he lifted one eyebrow and swanned off back towards where he was led in. Madara could feel his face twitching, confirmed by the way his partner was laughing at him without bothering to hide it.

Stomping his feet on the way passed, he snapped out, “I’m leaving early.”

Then he rushed to follow after the escaping Senju, rightfully wary of what might happen should he let the man out of his sight for more than half a minute.

He had assumed by ‘home’ Tobirama was demanding to be given a ride back to his apartment but they were halfway there when he was casually informed that Hashirama’s house was in the opposite direction and asked – in a very insulting manner – if he still needed directions after all these years. Sometimes he questioned his own taste in men. Why did he have to develop a lingering crush on the one person who pressed all of his buttons so frequently?

Probably because he actually sort of liked the rhythm of their bickering relationship. Not that he would ever admit to that.

No one was home when they trooped inside Hashirama’s house but they’d both been given keys to the place years ago so neither of them wasted time wondering if they were unwelcome or not. Madara had every intention of heading in to the kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee but instead he found two hands planted behind his shoulder blades to steer him towards the living room.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he asked. Just to be contrary he dug his heels in and leaned back against the one pushing him. Tobirama blew on his ear in retaliation, trilling in satisfaction when he jumped and accidentally made it easier to push him around again.

“I have told you more than once: I need sleep. Your brainless officer interrupted me while I was trying to do so.”

“Asuma isn’t ‘my officer’,” he protested. “And I still have no idea what any of this has to do with me.”

“Take responsibility for the beast you created!”

One final shove toppled him over and Madara landed face down on the couch. He had enough time to wriggle over on to his back before Tobirama was crawling over top of him and flopping down, face buried in his rapidly heating neck and arms dangling loosely around his chest.

“Senju, WHAT THE HELL!?”

“Do be quiet, mattress.”

“I am not a mattress! What is the meaning of this?”

Tobirama patted him softly. “Hush. It is sleep time now.” It was just startling enough that Madara spent a good three minutes simply lying still and wondering what he had done in a previous life to deserve such torture. Surely he couldn’t have done something terrible enough for this. Or if he had then he really thought serving the public as a police officer in this life should have made up for it.

“You have three seconds to explain what is going on or I am throwing you on the floor and telling Hashirama to have you checked in for a psych eval.”

“Rude,” Tobirama mumbled against his neck. “I haven’t slept so well in months as I did when I mistook you for a part of the couch.” He ruthlessly ignored Madara’s offended squeaking. “Now you’re just going to have to take responsibility. I need more sleep. You’re going to lie still and let me do so.” The ‘or else’ was not spoken but it was heavily implied in his tone.

Madara chewed on that for a few moments. Then he finally allowed the muscles in his body to relax, signaling defeat, and his unwanted blush kicked it up a few notches when Tobirama snuggled in that little bit closer, making himself as comfortable as possible.

“Such a warm mattress.”

“Oh shut up.”

It felt like only an instant later that Tobirama was asleep and breathing softly against the nape of his neck where he was embarrassingly sensitive. No matter how he tried to shift or twist it didn’t move the lump on top of him, only earned him a handful of fingers clawing at his chest to keep him still. Since he didn’t want to have all his precious hair shaved off the next time he fell asleep without locking his doors, Madara did eventually give in to his fate and lie still, hoping he would at least doze off again himself to pass the time.

He contemplated spontaneous combustion when Hashirama came home from work.

The sheer amount of heat gathered in his own face could probably be labeled a fire hazard but Hashirama wasn’t looking at his face. No, the man was looking at where his little brother’s face was mashed against his best friend’s neck, mouth buried in a spot that usually only lovers paid attention to and one hand fisted in the front of his shirt to prevent him from escaping. Madara counted his own breaths just in case these were his last.

“Accidentally fall over on top of you again, did he?” Hashirama asked, tone perfectly innocent but for the edge of threatening steel hiding underneath.

“No. He pushed me.”

“Hmm. Is that so?”

“It’s true!” Madara did his best to convey the urgency he felt while constrained to whisper yelling yet again. “One of the rookies picked him up for vagrancy. He was sleeping on park benches again. So I was going to take him home but he made me take him here instead and then he pushed me down and I swear I had no part it this, alright!?”

Hashirama twisted his mouth to one side. “Are we sure he even still has his apartment? It’s like he never goes home.”

“Well where the hell would all his clothes and shit be if he didn’t?”

“Oh…right.”

“Can you just help me please? I didn’t really plan on spending my off hours stuck on this stupid couch again!” Madara tried to imitate the other man’s signature pleading puppy look but he was frustrated to be denied with no hesitation.

“Nope, sorry. It still isn’t worth risking my good looks. You could probably use more sleep yourself anyway so just enjoy it, right? I’ll bring you some dinner if he still hasn’t woken up when it’s done!”

“Wait! No – get back here!”

Hashirama waved without sympathy and trailed off in to the kitchen, presumably to make sure he had dinner ready by the time his wife got home. As much as Madara wanted to be angry at him for being a big fat abandoner he had to admit that he probably would have done the exact same thing in this situation. All he could do now was lie still and hope Tobirama didn’t sleep for too long because if he took a long nap now then it would throw his entire body clock out of order and he’d be yawning all through tomorrow’s shift.

Five minutes later he realized that Hashirama hadn’t turned the television on for him and he couldn’t yell out to get the man’s attention. He managed to remain still for the hour it took until someone brought him dinner but he spent the entirety of it planning revenge against all of them, one way or another.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanfiction

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raendown · 6 years ago

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I was matched with @mantykora14 (whom I can not tag still) for the @madatobiremix challenge! Fun! I did a remix of their story What Not To Do In The Office.

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 3223 Rating: T+ Summary: Madara has a habit of looking without properly seeing - although he does really like what he's seeing.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KOFI

Blind Observations

There wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary about Tobirama’s ass – if you left aside the fact that it looked as though it had been sculpted by the gods themselves. All things considered, however, it was still attached to the most annoying and stuck-up prick that Madara had ever had the displeasure of knowing so it wasn’t as though he planned to do anything with this attraction he had. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t shamelessly check out Tobirama’s posterior so long as the idiot was going to flaunt it so easily around the work place. After all, a man had to take his pleasures where he could find them in this world.

Sliding a little lower in his chair, Madara tilted his head to one side and let his eyes roam down the natural path laid out for him by the seam of Tobirama’s deliciously tight pants. Bent over the Hokage’s desk to mark something on the map spread across the top, he was in perfect position to give the rest of the room a little show. Izuna was much too busy inspecting his nails with boredom and Mito had given her attention to the folder of intel they were all discussing. Neither of them seemed particularly distracted by Tobirama’s ass, which Madara could understand; it was a little disappointing that his favorite eye candy wasn’t worth the trouble of bedding at least once. It would have been nice to sink his teeth in to those perfectly sculpted muscles but the screaming protests it would take to get there turned him off the idea every time he revisited it.

When Tobirama straightened at last just to berate his sibling for some ridiculous statement or another Madara mourned the loss of his wonderful distraction as the younger man’s shirt slid back down in to place. Then he made sure to rearrange his expression so that by the time the object of his gaze turned around there was no hint that he had spent the last ten minutes fantasizing about what he could do with those pale cheeks.

“Mito, my sweet, where did the file say they were first spotted?” Hashirama asked. His wife flicked back a page to check before looking up with a small smile.

“Your brother is right. They were spotted closer to the eastern outpost, not down by the ravines.”

“Hmph.” Sitting back with a pout for having been proved wrong, Hashirama crossed his arms to glare at the map.

Madara was thrilled to see Tobirama roll his eyes and bend down again to reach across and point at the spot they had just been arguing over for so long. While it was annoying that this stupid conference was apparently going to be derailed yet again for another pointless disagreement, at least he had something nice to look at while he waited for order to reassert itself.

Or for Mito to get tired of the bickering and set them all back on track with only a few sharp words.

Sparring with Tobirama had several benefits which, in Madara’s mind, far outweighed the downsides of having to spend any time in the company of someone so insufferable. He wasn’t exactly going to be thanking Hashirama for forcing them in to this stupid exercise in learning how to get along but he also wasn’t quite as upset about it as his friend might think.

For one, Tobirama’s sparring outfit left a great deal more skin exposed than his usual attire and the longer they traded blows the more the material stuck to him in a manner which left very little to the imagination. Madara could easily picture this image of a sweat soaked panting Tobirama transposed on to the image of his own bed where the flush on his cheeks would be from a very different kind of strain. He imagined the narrow-eyed look of hyper focus would probably stay the same as well and, honestly, he couldn’t say that didn’t appeal to him all the more.

He was also a fan of the treat which was watching Tobirama’s muscles shift and flow as their limbs struck out against each other. Just watching the man spin about for a roundhouse kick and getting that split second view of his flexing ass was more than worth the pain of a heel connecting solidly with his solar plexus.

Even the vicious smirk parting those pale pink lips and baring sharp teeth was attractive somehow. Madara felt his eye twitch when he finally noticed how badly he had allowed himself to be distracted by his opponent’s physical features. Clearly Tobirama wasn’t aware of his thoughts but it still wouldn’t do for Madara to allow himself to be bested, not by him. Tightening his fists with renewed determination, Madara drove forward with intent to disable, if not maim.

There might be some kind of attraction there but Hashirama was mad if he thought they could be forced to get along by being made to fight each other. Stupid backward logic, that was.

Public bathing had always been an uncomfortable experience for Madara. Prancing about naked and defenseless with so many other people around, most of whom he had never met, always left him tense during an activity which should have relaxed him. Modesty wasn’t a big problem but feeling a stranger’s eyes on him made him question whether they were admiring his figure or plotting an attack. When possible, he avoided the public baths.

He was very glad that he had not been able to avoid such an outing today. In fact, if this was to be his reward then he would need to give some serious thought to making a new habit of accepting Hashirama’s offers to go together. Madara wondered if there was a way to ask whether Tobirama usually accompanied his brother or not without arousing suspicion.

Observing without getting caught was, for once, incredibly easy. It seemed Tobirama was very used to the hungry stares that followed him as he waded in to the hot water to find a place where he could get comfortable and close his eyes. Hashirama remained as oblivious as ever while he chatted away, complete ignorant of the way Madara’s gaze had yet to leave his brother’s naked body. Miles of pale skin lay stretched out on delicious display, slowly turning pink from the heat of the water, glistening with the steam hanging in the air, and Madara drank it all in with relish.

Try though he might, he couldn’t think of a single thing he did not enjoy about Tobirama – physically at least. Everything from the angular fall of his hair to the faint scars of battle were attractive. Madara tilted his head to one side and tried to imagine what sounds the man might make it he were to sink his teeth in to one of those rosebud nipples, notably small for a man his size but perfectly bitable.

Before he could take the thought much further he jerked as one of Hashirama’s wide hand gestures splashed water in to his face. He turned to his friend with a scowl, annoyed at having his fantasies interrupted.

“Watch it!”

“Oops! Sorry Madara.” Hashirama beamed at him in apology, to which he scowled even deeper.

“I specifically put my hair up so it wouldn’t get wet. I just wanted a nice relaxing soak and now you’re splashing me!”

“But it was an accident!”

Sometime between the crocodile tears and the begging for forgiveness Madara looked over to see that Tobirama still had his eyes closed but his lips were stretched out in an amused smile as he listened to their bickering. He looked vastly different without the frown which seemed to appear by habit each time the two of them were within a dozen feet of each other. Actually it was quite a lovely effect, softening his features until he looked more amiable, almost inviting. Madara wondered idly how much effort it would take to see that smile again – solely for aesthetic purposes, of course.

Not that he had any intentions of putting in that effort. What did he care if Tobirama smiled for him or not? The thought was a distracting one, though, and Madara regretted allowing his attention to waver when Hashirama managed to splash him for a second time.

Listening to a bunch of puffed up halfwits yammer on about things that really shouldn’t require this much deliberation was boring. Madara felt absolutely no guilt in letting his mind wander away from the council meeting going on around him to instead focus on something much more interesting.

As he always did, Tobirama sat across the table with a scroll open before him and his hand dancing across the page as he recorded the minutes of their meeting. He hadn’t lifted his eyes in probably close to twenty minutes or even opened his mouth to make one of his usual sarcastic comments. Very likely he wished he could tune out of the proceedings as well and Madara smirked to know that his nemesis was also trapped listening to boring old men squabble like children.

Dressed in the boring vests Hashirama had okayed as the standard uniform, most of his body hidden under the wood of the conference table, there wasn’t a whole lot for Madara to stare at and fantasize about today. Yet somehow he still found himself captivated watching the elegant way Tobirama’s fingers manipulated his pen. For a man he had incredibly beautiful hands, long delicate fingers and smooth palms, soft despite the callouses every shinobi earned in their early years. His nails were all neatly trimmed down and cleaned and Madara blinked slowly as he imaged sucking two of those fingers in to his mouth, swirling his tongue around them and hallowing his cheeks.

Fifteen minutes later Madara was startled out of his daydreams by a fist slamming down on the table in irritation and it was hard to say what he found more disturbing: that he was still staring at nothing but Tobirama’s fingers or that the sexual nature of his thoughts had slowly cooled to become a contemplation of what they would feel like wrapped up in his own.

Ridiculous, he grumbled silently to himself as he wrenched his eyes away. No force on earth could ever make him actually want to hold hands with that beast.

The only time he could choose to be distracted that might possibly be worse than this would be if they were right in the middle of battle. Listening to Tobirama recap troop movements and known jutsu specialties less than half a mile from the targets they were about to be in battle with was also a bad choice. Not knowing this information could get him or the people around him killed.

Still he couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from the top of the man’s head. Today’s weather included a healthy breeze which entered the cave they were using as cover in fits and starts, barely reaching farther than where Tobirama stood in the entrance as he spoke to them all. Each time the wind reached him it lifted his hair and tugged at the frosted locks. He didn’t seem to notice – or if he did then he didn’t care – but Madara found himself fascinated by the effortlessly tousled look reminiscent of someone who had just gotten out of bed. Watching his hair lift and dance was mesmerizing. It made him wonder if those locks would be soft to run his fingers through.

“Uchiha do I have something on my head?” Tobirama’s drawling sneer brought his eyes back down to meet the irritated glare aimed his way. “Or are you deliberately not listening because you wish to put your comrades in danger?”

“Fuck off. I’m listening.” Madara crossed his arms and glared back, embarrassed to have been caught staring. Like hell he would admit to it.

“Go on then, repeat back to me anything of what I just said.”

“I am not a child, Senju. Just keep talking!”

Tobirama huffed and rolled his eyes, turning to face more towards the other shinobi with them in a very subtle snub. Rather than take further offense, Madara made certain that no one was looking his way before allowing his eyes to slide back up in to Tobirama’s hair, though he did make sure to keep his ears open this time.

It wasn’t his fault the stupid man was so pretty. Actually, now that he was paying attention he realized that Tobirama also had a very pleasant voice as well; it rumbled from somewhere deep in the chest, the kind of voice built for dramatic statements and momentous words.

Madara smirked to himself. No wonder their whole clan was so prone to drama.

It took several more incidents like these before Madara realized the precarious situation he had managed to get himself in to but by then it was too late. He stared shamelessly whenever Tobirama stretched before a spar, he riled the other up just to listen to the cadences of his voice while he yelled, and it wasn’t until he realized that he was spending his off duty hours seeking the other out just to stare wordlessly that he finally came to terms with what was happening.

Lingering at the edge of the field where Tobirama was currently running his students through several drills, Madara suffered a minor breakdown as the thought occurred to him at last.

“Fuck. Fuck me and fuck it and fuck everything,” he whispered frantically under his breath. “I have a crush on him!” Madara tugged at his hair and spun around to face the opposite direction in case the man he’d been observing happened to look over and wonder at the source of his panic.

Stomping away back towards the village proper, Madara wondered how the hell he’d gotten to this point without even realizing it. It was just supposed to be a healthy bout of lust, nothing more than admiration for another man’s well-shaped body, something to fuel his fantasies but certainly nothing he had ever planned to pursue. Now he realized that somewhere between staring at a fine ass and smiling at sharp dry wit he had developed actual feelings for the worst possible person.

What was he supposed to do with these feelings? Surely he couldn’t tell the man – and kami forbid Hashirama ever find out. He shuddered to think what kind of terrifying reactions his friend would have to knowing about this situation. Either he would deliver the world’s most threatening older brother speech in history or he would enthusiastically air Madara’s dirty laundry to the entire village at top volume. Both of those options sounded awful. Clearly the best thing to do would be to keep to himself, avoid as much contact as possible, and hope that this temporary madness passed quickly.

Tobirama’s laughter echoed through the trees behind him and Madara swallowed thickly when he realized he wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back just so he could listen for that sound again. He was in deeper trouble than he’d thought.

“Are you ever going to do something about that?” Tobirama’s voice sent Madara jerking upright in his chair. By the time the other turned around there were no signs he had been staring at anything but his own paperwork, certainly not the delectable rump exposed when his current project partner bent over to grab whatever he had dropped.

“What are you talking about?” he grumbled, hearing the exasperated sigh but refusing to look up.

“That thing you do where you stare at my ass. Are you ever going to do something about it or am I supposed to keep pretending I don’t notice?”

Madara’s jaw clicked painfully as it fell open with shock.

After a long wait with no response Tobirama lifted one eyebrow in a judgmental manner and turned away again, digging through the papers he’d been trying to sort out before. Madara was glad to be given time to think. He’d only just accepted the fact that he had feelings for this asshole and suddenly he was expected to know what he wanted to do with those feelings? That was way too much pressure to spring on someone without warning!

Truthfully he knew exactly what he would want to do with this unexpected crush but the option of making it disappear hadn’t exactly been working out and the option of having it returned hadn’t seemed very likely either. Until now.

“Would you let me do something about it?” he asked cautiously. Tobirama didn’t so much as glance up from the papers he was looking at as he responded, infuriatingly casual.

“I think that depends on exactly what you were to do. And how often you wish to do it.”

“Don’t be filthy! That isn’t what I meant!”

“No?” Tobirama did look up at him then with a genuinely confused expression and Madara sank down in his chair as he realized that the other man probably thought he was only interested in sex.

Grunting darkly, he averted his eyes. “Hn. Never mind. Forget it.”

“I will do no such thing. What else could you possibly be staring at me so often for? Unless you – oh.”

“Shut up!” Shoving his chair violently away from the desk, Madara stood up and scrambled towards the door. Tobirama beat him there. Just before his hand reached for the brass door handle an arm appeared to block his way and Tobirama was there in his face with a stunned expression.

“You like me,” the man said, eyes widening with surprise.

“I said shut up! Get out of my way!”

“Sage above, you do like me.” Tobirama’s face split in to a wide grin and Madara snarled. He didn’t need to be mocked for this!

A scuffle in the doorway wouldn’t exactly be his most dignified moment but Madara was more than prepared to go through with it if the other man didn’t move in the next three seconds. It was much more preferable than the idea of remaining here just to listen to Tobirama making fun of him for something he had no control over.

His half-baked schemes for escaping were foiled when the other man abruptly stopped laughing only to lean forward and pin him against the wall with a fierce kiss and the only thing Madara could think was that he’d been pining for no reason, apparently. Even worse, he had apparently somehow been obvious enough with his physical attraction to catch Tobirama’s eye while at the same time subtle enough with his developing feelings that he himself hadn’t even noticed.

“You like me too,” he accused, murmuring against Tobirama’s lips, unwilling to separate them so soon.

“I have a certain lack of hatred for your very existence. And I could probably be talked in to a date given the proper motivation.” Both of them were grinning, though Madara paused to huff in mock offense.

“Should I bend over so you can check out the goods?”

Tobirama laughed until he was hauled back down for more kisses. Madara took that to mean he would be allowed to stare at the man’s ass whenever he wanted from here on out – among other things, of course.

#rae writes #madatobiremix #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanfiction

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raendown · 6 years ago

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Back on the horse and ready to ride! Woo! I’ve missed writing these.

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 1744 Soulmate au: The one where the last strong emotion your soulmate experienced is written on the back of your wrist

Follow the link or read it udner the cut!

Chapter 121: Madara/Tobirama

Madara picked up the habit of wearing gloves when he was fifteen years old. It wasn’t so much a desire to protect his hands, already calloused by years of holding various blades, as it was a desire to protect the nebulous being out there in the world somewhere. It was a personal decision that his soulmate had felt enough pain without the world knowing about it for hours afterward. Madara wore gloves to cover the letters on the back of his left wrist which displayed the most recent strong emotion his soulmate had experienced, already weary of seeing the word ‘PAIN’ written there so often.

Covering the area did nothing to stop himself from peeking underneath several times a day. Each time heat flared in his wrist Madara took a moment to peek under the hem of his glove, smiling or frowning as the word changed. His favorite was seeing ‘EXCITEMENT’ stamped across his skin for hours at a time. It became a favorite game of his to try and guess at what his soulmate could be doing.

No matter the various words that came and went, his least favorite remained bearing the word ‘PAIN’. It worried him trying to guess what kind of hurt his other half could be experiencing. Was it emotional pain or physical? It happened frequently enough that it could just be the typical injuries of a shinobi’s life but it could also be a civilian in an abusive situation. Madara had spent hours agonizing over what the exact difference was between ‘pain’ and ‘hurt’ and whether he should worry for them or not.

He was twenty-five years old when he discovered his soulmate in a manner most unexpected. Battle was not a time for him to be paying attention to things like his soul stamp; on the rare occasion that he even happened to notice it changing while he was engaged in battle, he tended to ignore it. He ignored it now, barely even registered it as he watched his baby brother come within a single inch of losing his life. Standing as still as a frozen rabbit, Izuna stared at the blade which had come to a perfect halt less than an inch from his eyes, aborting the motion that could just as easily have run him through. Across the field, Madara heaved a breath and stumble forward on shaking legs. His brother was all he had left. To come so close to losing the younger man was enough to shake him, mind and body, like he had never been shaken before.

In that moment it mattered very little to him why Tobirama had spared Izuna’s life, only that he had. The Senju had already lowered his blade by the time Madara made his way there to drag his sibling in to his arms and hold him tightly. And by the time Madara looked up Tobirama had already turned away, willingly showing his back to his two greatest enemies, and brushing passed his own brother without so much as an explanation.

“This would be your chance to offer peace,” Madara heard him say in a dry tone.

Hashirama was startled but he wasted little time following that advice, offering his hand in friendship and peace as he had so many times before. What made this time different was in the way Madara watched Tobirama walking away, his sword sheathed without having tasted Izuna’s blood, and saw the rekindling of his childhood dreams. Accepting Hashirama’s hand felt as momentous as he’d always thought it might and yet, stupidly, he found he could not keep his concentration on the man before him. Madara’s eyes slipped away to roam over the Senju forces, gathering behind their leader with a motley collection of reactions to what was happening.

No matter how he looked he could not spot Tobirama again. It should have been easy considering the man’s coloring yet no white hair remained beyond an elderly Senju woman still incredibly spry for her age. Madara frowned, wondering why the one to whom they owed a chance at peace would disappear so quickly. Most people would have stuck around to receive their accolades and he’d always thought of Senju Tobirama as the kind of person who wanted recognition for the things he did.

Granted, he was basing that opinion on little more than battlefield observances and patchy bits of shoddy spy work, but he was allowed his opinions even when they turned out to be wrong.

Hashirama was halfway through a speech about finally bringing an end to the senseless violence when Madara gave in to habit and peeked under the hem of his glove, changing the course of his own future in the process. His entire body froze upon seeing the black letters stamped across his wrist. ‘MERCY’ they read. Hashirama’s voice faded in to the background as Madara stared hard at his own skin.

Was mercy even an emotion? He’d never seen anything like this on anyone else’s soul stamp but then he’d also never seen anything quite like the clemency Tobirama had displayed a mere handful of minutes ago. The coincidence seemed too great for him not to consider the obvious and yet the idea was too fantastical to possibly be true. Senju Tobirama, his soulmate? The younger brother of his best friend, his own younger brother’s greatest rival, the one to whom he attributed fault for that day by the Naka River – it couldn’t possibly be true.

There was little to do but wait and see now, since Tobirama appeared to have quit the field and it would look extremely suspicious if the Uchiha clan Head suddenly bolted for Senju grounds without first making certain that peace had indeed been established. Not knowing things had always chaffed at him but Madara was no stranger to being denied. He made himself stay put and listen to Hashirama’s now weepy speech, responded with a few blunt words of his own, and then led his people home. He could be patient when he needed to.

Over the next few days Madara kept a close eye on his wrist, watching the letters as they danced between several different emotions such as ‘WORRY’ or ‘IRRITATION’, though the most common seemed to be ‘EXASPERATION’ which, if this was indeed who he thought it was, seemed completely understandable. If he had to live with Hashirama then he would probably feel exasperated a great deal of the time too.

He wondered, as he had for years now, what emotions were displayed in correlation with himself. Mostly he felt anxious, impatient, perhaps a little excited. Trying to picture those words on Tobirama’s wrist only made him wonder if he had ever taken notice of the other man’s hands before. When he thought about it he couldn’t even remember if Tobirama wore gloves or not.

It felt as though it took forever for their clans to meet for the first peace talks in generations – and Madara wasn’t sure exactly what he felt upon discovering that Tobirama wasn’t present. What he wouldn’t have given to see his other half’s wrist at that moment just to be able to define the unholy mix of reluctant disappointment, irritation, and – strangely enough – relief. Paying attention for the rest of the meeting became a struggle as his hands fiddled constantly with the gloves covering them.

Tobirama did not show up during the second round of peace talks either, although Madara did manage to subtly extract an explanation from Hashirama as to why. Apparently the two brothers had both agreed that it would be better for Tobirama and his quick temper to stay away until peace between their clans was on firmer feet. Madara scowled, more intrigued by that single sentence that he should have been.

Only on the third time their clans came together, the official signing of the peace treaty agreed upon by both parties, did Madara finally lay eyes on Tobirama once more. Irritatingly, the other man seemed more interested in staring down Izuna with narrowed, wary eyes than looking at anyone else. Madara huffed and refused to pout despite the urge to do so. He thought he’d done a perfectly good job of hiding his own childish behavior until he heard Hashirama hum curiously and the entire table was treated to the sight of Tobirama’s wrist, just barely visible with the way he’d crossed his arms, darkening with the word ‘JEALOUS’.

“I am not,” Madara growled hotly. Then he froze as several pairs of eyes swiveled over to stare at him.

“You’re not what?” Izuna asked him in a bored voice. “No one was even talking to you.”

“Uh…” He stared back at his sibling, eyes wide and brain empty. Some part of him was convinced that if he just kept his eyes on Izuna and didn’t look at anyone else then they wouldn’t see him either. Or at least that’s what he was hoping.

He didn’t count on Hashirama.

“Are you jealous?” His friend cried, probably loud enough to be heard in the Land of Wind. “Are you Tobi’s soulmate!?”

“Brother, do be quiet,” Tobirama murmured. Madara dared to peek over and saw two things which both caught his interest. Firstly that the other man had the slightest hint of color on the tips of his ears, the effect of which was very becoming. Secondly that his wrist was now stamped with ‘EMBARRASSMENT’ and if that didn’t cement his opinion that they had to be soulmates he didn’t know what else would.

Heat burst on the back of his wrist and, unable to resist, Madara peeled back the hem of his glove to peak underneath at the new letters which had just appeared. There were many words he might have expected, plenty of others he could have understood in this situation. Instead his head lifted and he goggled across the table to watch Tobirama’s ears turn a single shade darker. So distracted was he that Madara didn’t notice Izuna leaning over to see what had caused such a reaction from him.

“Intrigued? Your soulmate feels–? And it’s–? Ew! You two aren’t actually thinking about this are you? We haven’t even signed the peace treaty yet, brother, keep it in your pants!”

The table around them exploded with voices all shouting over each other but Madara had eyes only for the tiny smirk on Tobirama’s lips and the hint of curiosity in the gaze locked on to his own.

#rae writes #soulmate collection #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanfiction #naruto shippuden

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raendown · 7 years ago

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Obligatory Christmas fic! Merry Christmas everyone!

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 4004 Summary: Madara has detested Christmas since he was fairly young, just not for any reason that he cares to broadcast. This year something special happens that just might endear him to the season a little more.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

We Wish You A Happy Something

From the very second he had stepped inside the well-lit Senju household his mood had plummeted even lower than it had been for the entire week leading up to this. Everything in here was covered in disgustingly festive red and green patterns, tacky fake snow, and seizure inducing flickering lights. Madara held his arms close to his body as he carefully picked his way down the hall, trying not to touch anything lest the fabled ‘spirit of Christmas’ rub off on him.

This was, without a doubt, his least favorite time of year. Usually he got away with holing up inside his rather spacious midtown apartment, reading books and staying snuggled up in bed until evening had come again, pretending it was just any other day off work. Not this year, though. This year Hashirama had told him in no uncertain terms that he was expected to arrive at this house the night before so he could wake up with the Senju family for Christmas morning. Apparently his friend had even contacted Izuna and his brother would be arriving with Touka in the morning as well. Terrible. If this got any more cloying and Christmas-y Madara was likely to set fire to whatever was closest to him.

Stepping in to the den, he sneered at the perfectly made up tree in the corner. It could have been plucked straight out of a catalogue; a sure sign, if any, that Hashirama had had no part in the decorating process. Presents filled the space beneath the lower branches of the large spruce and he cast a critical eye over them all. Hashirama knew damn well how he felt about this particular holiday so he truly hoped that his friend wasn’t expecting him to bring any presents. He hadn’t bought a single Christmas present since he was about fifteen years old and he had no intention of breaking that streak now just because he’d been dragged unwillingly out of his annual seclusion.

“You made it!” a familiar voice crowed from the top of the staircase to his right. Madara scowled as he tilted his head back. Hashirama was thundering down to greet him, Tobirama trailing behind at a much statelier pace.

“Did you think I’d get lost or something?” he growled, stomping by without meeting his friend at the bottom of the stairs. “I’ve only been here a few hundred times.”

“Hey, wait! Wait for me Madara!”

Instead of listening he made his way further down the hall to where he knew he could find what the Senju called their leisure room. The actual living room was mostly for show and for holiday gatherings. The leisure room was where the big TV was mounted on one wall, an antique pool table placed close to another, and it was here that they spent most of their time when Madara came to visit.

Without waiting for permission – they’d been friends so long he was practically family, he hadn’t needed permission in years – Madara turned the television on and began surfing channels until he landed on the first movie he found that wasn’t Christmas themed. Pay-per-view, of course, before he was just grouchy enough to make Hashirama pay for this indignity in any way he could. He heard the two Senju brothers banging around in the kitchen until Mito’s voice chased them both out and they joined him on the enormous sofa to watch his movie.

He didn’t take much special notice when Tobirama got up and started rummaging around in the liquor cabinet beneath the window. They were all adults here and it wasn’t all that out of the ordinary for the younger man to indulge in one or two drinks on occasion. When he hauled out an entire bottle of what appeared to be flavored vodka, however, he suddenly had Madara’s undivided attention. Something else was pulled out of the cabinet as well but it stayed hidden within his hand as he wandered over to the television and began to fiddle with the pointless artsy wall decoration hung just over top. Disturbingly, Hashirama began to clap his hands like a child.

“Yay! Starting early!”

“I feel as though I’m going to regret asking this,” Madara said slowly, “but what is starting early and what exactly does he intend to do with that much alcohol?”

“Christmas tradition!” Hashirama scrambled off the couch and nearly dove headfirst inside his own cabinetry, coming out with a tall bottle of whiskey that he toted back with him to the spot he’d just vacated.

“The movie hat game,” Tobirama clarified as he resettled himself farther down the couch. “Happens every year at Christmas. You hang a small hat above the television so that it dangles just within the screen. Every time it lines up so that one of the characters on screen look like they’re wearing it, you take a drink.”

“We usually play with Christmas movies but this one works too!” Hashirama was unscrewing the top of his whiskey already, pouring it in to a glass that Madara hadn’t even noticed him procuring.

“Care to join in, Uchiha?”

Tobirama sat forward again just far enough to raise one thin eyebrow down the way at him mockingly. Madara scowled and crossed his arms.

“No, I believe I would rather keep my dignity intact, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.”

Four hours and partway in to the third movie, Madara was extraordinarily grateful that he had decided to abstain. Just observing the two idiots next to him was more entertainment than the movies, distracting him well enough so he didn’t even mind that the third film was actually a Christmas-themed one. Mito had brought dinner in to them all, resigned look on her face when she spotted the open bottles, but it seemed even having food in their bellies wasn’t enough to combat the incredible rate at which the two brothers were consuming their drinks.

Watching Tobirama slide farther and farther down in his seat like his body was slowly liquefying without him noticing was quite the experience. The younger man was typically a fairly stiff and proper person, or at least he seemed so whenever Madara was around, and seeing him so loose and uninhibited was a big change. By halfway through the second movie he’d begun to cheer obnoxiously along with his sibling every time one of them spotted that stupid hat he had hung up aligning perfectly with a character’s head. Then the two of them would pour themselves another shot, both of them tossing it back like old pros. Madara had never even seen Hashirama take a shot before, let alone his stiff-necked baby brother.

He had seen Hashirama drunk by other methods, however, so it was no surprise to him when the only thing which changed about his friend’s behavior was that he lost all control of his volume and by the end of the night he was communicating only in slurred shouts. Tobirama’s transformation was more fantastic – as well as more unexpected. After the first few shots he never seemed to stop smiling and he appeared to have been attacked by a case of the giggles.

As typical of drunk people, neither of them were very aware of their own limbs after a while and Madara was dodging wild gestures long before Hashirama finally gave in and allowed Mito to lead him to bed. He was left alone with Tobirama, who couldn’t seem to stay upright in his seat, wondering for the hundredth time why he had let himself get bullied in to coming here tonight. He hated Christmas, wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, and for the past few months he had hated coming over to his friend’s house for any other reason as well. Here was where he would run in to Tobirama and find himself in awkward situations like this one.

It wasn’t as though he hated the younger man, just that he had no idea how to communicate with him now that his heart had developed the habit of trying to leap in to his throat every time they were within ten feet of each other.

“What…what time’s’it?” Tobirama slurred. Madara shook off his stupor and glanced over at the fancy clock hung up across the room.

“Just passed midnight,” he grumbled. It had officially been Christmas day for a whole nine minutes so far. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. To his surprise, Tobirama slumped down a little further and looked dejected.

“Aw, I missed it then. Oops.”

“Missed what?”

Tobirama squirmed around but never managed to sit up properly so he gave in, look up at his house guest with a sheepish smile as he said, “I didn’t get a chance to say happy birthday. M’sorry.”

Madara gaped at him, jaw nearly coming unhinged in his shock. If he’d had to guess he wouldn’t have thought Tobirama was even aware that his birthday was the twenty-fourth of December and he certainly wouldn’t have expected him to care enough to give him well wishes for the day. No one had so much as wished him a happy birthday in years, getting caught up in the holiday spirit instead, and over time it had fostered a hatred for the season in him as he felt more and more ignored, unappreciated, and unimportant.

“Thank you.” It was all he managed to choke out, although he wanted to ask how the hell Tobirama had even known. The younger man smiled goofily.

“D’you want your present?”

“You got me a present? A…a birthday present? Not a Christmas one that’s just been repurposed at the last minute?”

“Mhm.” Nodding enthusiastically, Tobirama began the struggle to sit up again. Madara watched him in shock for a moment before realizing that maybe he should help a bit. Once his companion was upright he bolted off the couch with more energy than Madara had seen him do anything that wasn’t related to his beloved science. “C’mon!”

Curious and still reeling a little from the shock, Madara followed as he was bidden. He flicked the television off as he passed and trailed behind with his hands at the ready to catch his stumbling guide while they made their way down the hall, up the stairs, and in to a bedroom he’d never had occasion to go in to before. He’d certainly spent some time wondering about it though. Tobirama’s room was as obsessively neat as he would have expected it to be, although there were less books than he would have thought. Actually it was a bit sparse inside, almost giving him the impression of a guest bedroom but for the very few personal touches here and there.

Tobirama led him to a closet and opened it to reveal the top shelf that had been largely taken over by a good sized heap of gifts all wrapped in different papers and boxes.

“D’you just want this year’s present?” the younger man asked him in a confused slur. “Or do you want…like…all of them?”

“All of them?” Madara breathed. Tobirama smiled widely at him over one shoulder.

“I buy you birthday presents every year but you never come over so I can’t give them to you. Going over to your house to deliver them would be weird; I don’t want you to think I’m weird. Well…you already do but I mean, you know, more than that.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled faintly, feeling like he might fall over from the shock. “Can I open all of them?”

“Sure!”

He had to stop Tobirama from just sweeping them all on to the floor with his arms, unsure if there was anything delicate or breakable in any of the packages. Instead they brought them down one or two at a time and piled them on the floor so they could both sit down as well. Looking them over, Madara noted that all of the wrapping paper was distinctly birthday themed, covered with balloons and cakes with not a single holiday pattern to be found, and it touched a place inside him that he had tried so hard to close away from himself.

Something else he noted was the tags. Flipping them all over with care, one by one, he could easily tell which present had been for which year by the little messages written on them. Happy 23rd Birthday, Madara read the one by his foot. By his knee there was one which read Happy 26th Birthday, Madara. Nothing wild or personal of course, that wasn’t Tobirama’s style, but it was more care than anyone had shown for Madara’s special day since he was a child and his family had collectively decided that he would be getting combo presents meant to celebrate both Christmas and his birthday at the same time.

Which he’d always found incredibly unfair. Everyone else got separate presents for the two different occasions. Why should he get treated any different just because of an accident of birth?

Fingers gently ran over each and every package as Madara looked over his tiny hoard. He felt like if he spoke right at that moment he might crack open and spill some embarrassing parts of himself out over the carpet so he simply kept quiet and poked around until he found the gift meant for this year. Multicolored party hats adorned the midsized box and even though the pattern was cheesy he found he didn’t want to rip something so obscurely precious. He did want the present, though, so he did it anyway.

Inside there was a leather case with no outward clue as to what it contained. Undoing the clasps, he lifted the lid and nearly started to cry. Since when did Tobirama, of all people, know him so well? He wasn’t even sure even Hashirama would remember his obsession with ancient weaponry enough to buy him such an amazing gift. The old style blade – a kunai, his mind supplied automatically – was perfectly preserved and intricately carved. It was crafted all out of one solid piece of metal with strips of cloth around the handle to make the grip more comfortable and from just a single glance he could tell how expensive this must have been. He’d been looking for a kunai to add to his collection for a long time and never come across a piece he could afford.

Glancing up, he saw the casual way Tobirama was sprawled out next to him. He looked utterly relaxed, as though his gift wasn’t the single most meaningful one Madara had ever received, probably too drunk to realize what this revealed about him. A gift like this meant that he paid attention to Madara enough to know just what to get him that would be appreciated; it meant that he knew Madara much better than their slightly distant way of tip toeing around each other would have made one assume.

“It’s incredible.” Madara traced the edges of the setting the blade was held in, not touching it with his bare fingers. He never touched any of his collection with bare skin. “Where did you find this?”

“Kirigakure.” His head snapped around to stare at the younger man with both eyebrows shooting upwards, but Tobirama only shrugged. “I know, right? That particular style of blade wouldn’t have been used by their early civilizations so it must have been brought over by some explorers or traded in a war or something. Cool right? I saw it and I remembered you telling Hashi about the one you’d wanted to buy that you found in Suna and I thought…why not?”

“This must have cost you a fortune,” Madara said quietly. Since when did anyone other than him know anything about the history of weaponry? Everyone else always seemed so bored when he tried to talk about his collection. Tobirama shrugged and said nothing. “No don’t shrug. It’s not – this isn’t – this means something.”

“Okay fiiiine.” With a groan Tobirama rolled his eyes and crawled over to resettle himself at Madara’s side, throwing one arm around his shoulders and placed one finger against his own lips. “Just don’t tell yourself okay? You can’t know The Secret.”

“Secret? What secret?”

“No! You’re not supposed to know!”

Madara took a deep breath, looked towards the ceiling for patience, and assumed a very serious expression. “I promise I won’t tell myself.”

Tobirama looked at him for a moment, then beamed sloppily. “Good! ‘Cause you’re pretty smart so you’d probably figure out that me buying you presents all the time is a pretty big clue that I’m in love with you.”

Freezing in place, Madara blinked twice and surreptitiously pinched himself just to make sure he was actually still awake. When it became clear that he wasn’t dreaming and that Tobirama had indeed just drunkenly mumbled what Madara thought he had, time seemed to pause for just a few moments as the entire universe shifted on its axis. He looked around at all the presents piled in front of him and wondered how the hell he could have missed something like that for as long as he did. He himself had only started to notice the man at his side in that way over the last few months. If the presents were supposed to be his clue, it was clear that Tobirama had looked at him in this manner for quite a long time.

“Can I open the rest of them?” he asked faintly for lack of anything else to say, not ready to deal with the feelings crashing around inside his chest. Tobirama nodded and dropped the arm from around his shoulders so he could crawl forward to grab one for the birthday boy.

Just as this year’s had been, each present turned out to be incredibly thoughtful. With them all conveniently labeled to show the year they had been meant for, he was able to match them all up with interests he had indulged in in the past that would have made them excellent gifts at the time. His twenty-fourth birthday present was a model of the main character from his favorite new TV show that year. His twenty-fifth was a watch with a simple congratulatory message engraved on the back which would have celebrated him getting hired at his dream job.

As he unwrapped more and more gifts, Madara actually felt himself getting a little misty-eyed to his own mortification. Not wanting the other to see such a blatant display of emotion, he kept his head down and his eyes on whatever he was opening or admiring at the time. Because of that he failed to see how tired his companion was getting, the alcohol and the late hour both taking their toll until at last he dropped his head on to Madara’s shoulder with a content little sigh of exhaustion.

“Are…you okay?” Madara asked.

“Tired,” the other mumbled shortly in to his collar. Madara smiled.

“Let’s get you in to bed then. You should change first, though. Where’s your pajamas? Lots of presents in your closet but I don’t see many clothes.”

“Course not, they’re in my suitcase.” Tobirama waved a vague hand over at the corner of the room and when Madara looked he did indeed spot a suitcase laying there with the top flipped open.

“Why do you have a suitcase? Don’t you live here?”

“No. Haven’t lived here since I was nineteen.”

Deciding that he couldn’t concentrate on all these revelations and convince the sleepy drunk to change at the same time, Madara said a mental ‘oh fuck it’ and hauled Tobirama over towards the bed in the clothes he was wearing. Every time he was here Tobirama was as well, lounging around, sometimes joining the conversation and sometimes not. It was only natural to assume he lived here since he never seemed to leave.

Once the younger man had been plunked down on top of the covers and he was weakly wriggling around, trying to pull them over himself, Madara looked at him with a curious expression.

“If you live on your own how come you’re always over here, then?” he asked. Giving a quiet huff of triumph as he finally managed to sausage himself in the top cover on the bed, Tobirama closed his eyes and nuzzled the pillow.

“My apartment’s lonely,” he mumbled sleepily. “There’s no one there. I don’t like it.”

Madara swallowed thickly. “Ah. I see.” And he really could, in a way. His own apartment seemed to echo some days in a way that really brought home how lonely his life was. Hashirama was practically his only friend and on the days neither he nor Izuna was available, there wasn’t much for Madara to do but sit at home and entertain himself.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, pitching his voice low. Tobirama hummed and didn’t answer. Madara made a quick trip to the bathroom to grab a cup of water and a couple of aspirin then returned to lay them on the small table next to Tobirama’s bed. The pale man wasn’t quite asleep yet but it looked like he was ready to drop off any moment. After observing him for a few seconds, Madara made a spur of the moment decision and crawled on to the bed next to him, slipping under the sheets and laying his arm around the other’s waist.

“Hng?” The sound his bedmate made wasn’t really a word but it had a questioning note so Madara answered it anyway in a low whisper.

“Can I sleep in here tonight?”

“You wanna trade beds?” Tobirama asked in a sleepy murmur. It was a surprisingly innocent assumption, delivered in a more adorable voice than many would assume him capable of.

“No, I’d like to stay here with you if you don’t mind.”

“Like a sleepover?”

“Sure. Yeah. Like a sleepover.”

“That sounds nice.” Tobirama yawned and squirmed back to rest more closely against him. “You’re warm.”

Madara didn’t say anything to that but he didn’t need to. A moment later his companion had fallen asleep and he was left shaking his head in wonder. It was amazing what a little (or a lot of) alcohol could do to change the way someone acted, revealing secrets that had evidently been well-hidden for years.

Although he was almost unable to believe he was doing so, Madara found himself for the first time in his life blessing the existence of Christmas traditions. If Tobirama hadn’t been drinking, who knew if he would have revealed the secret stash of presents he’d apparently never had the courage to deliver to their recipient? All week he’d been dreading tonight and tomorrow morning when he would be surrounded by Christmas cheerfulness as his birthday was ignored for yet another year. Instead he’d gotten the best birthday gift he could have possibly imagined – and he wasn’t referring to the actual presents themselves.

Despite not having consumed any drinks himself, Madara was also fairly ready to sleep. Getting to do so with his arms around the man he had a massive crush on was an extra bonus he hadn’t anticipated but he certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. No reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.

In the morning both of the Senju brothers would probably regret drinking so much. Opening all those gifts under the tree was probably going to be a quieter affair than he’d would have expected considering how hungover they were both likely to be. Likely he and Mito would spend most of the morning shaking their heads and looking smug – though he thought he probably had more reason to be smug than her, all things considered.

Before he dropped off to sleep Madara wondered if Tobirama would remember any of this when he woke up or if he would awaken on Christmas morning to find the man he was in love with ‘somehow’ in his bed. A holiday miracle indeed. Either way the morning promised to be surprisingly fun.

Maybe – maybe – Madara could be talked around to getting in to the Christmas spirit after all.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanfiction #naruto shippuden

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