#for the header. Mostly picked that scene for the mountains honestly

[blagueofchaos]

I made a new header and icon! There were lots of great ones in the tags but I had a Vision and decided to go for it, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. Well, admittedly the edit on the header is a liiittle janky, but that was kind of intentional with the half-baked 2000s-y vibe I was going for, really. Feel free to use them on your blog as long as you credit me :)

[raendown]

A commission for my wonderful wife @berry-doodles​ based on art by her good friend and talented artist Moz! 

Pairing: HashiramaMadara Word count: 3435 Rated: M Summary: No matter what the people around them said Hashirama had never minded the mirror image of himself on Madara's chest. He just wished there were a way he could get that across.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Bosom Buddies

“It’s fine.” The growl in Madara’s voice probably wouldn’t sound much different to anyone else but Hashirama knew his partner better than anyone else in the world. He knew that tone. It very much was not fine. 

“Please don’t be mad,” he begged. “You know it’s never bothered me so why-”

“I said it’s fine!” 

Madara huffed in the sharp silence following his outburst, turning his head away to look out the window. Reanimation hadn’t changed him very much, hadn’t really changed any of the people who found themselves with a second chance at life in this new and confusing future, but the handful of years that had passed since the war ended and the therapy enforced on them all by the sixth Hokage had mellowed his paranoia to a point that at times he almost seemed back to his true self. More and more often Hashirama looked at him and saw nothing but the man he had fallen in love with long before the loss of his sibling had broken him.

Unfortunately that didn’t mean he couldn’t still have bad days and it seemed like today was one of them. Hashirama had never really minded the strange effigy of his own face that hung on his lover’s chest, he did understand it was something Madara had been manipulated in to. Whether that manipulation was ultimately by Zetsu or that young Kabuto or even someone else was still unclear, though that was mostly due to Madara’s own tangled memories of death and rebirth, but the one fact that remained very clear was that he’d never intended to grow a second face on his own chest. It was very strange indeed to Hashirama that no one else seemed able to understand that. Citizens of the very village that Madara himself had dreamed of as a child now crossed the street to avoid him with their eyes drifting inevitably down to the spot where they knew a replica of their first Hokage hid under his clothing. On a good day Madara could ignore such unwanted attention. Not every day was a good day. 

“Why don’t I make us a nice hot cup of tea?” Hashirama suggested in a vain effort to bring his partner away from the front door. The fights when he stormed out always took the longest to untangle. Madara gave him such a venomous look that Hashirama wilted immediately, despondent already at the thought of how long it would be until he could give the man a nice comforting hug. 

“Tea? Tea!? I don’t want your fucking hot leaf juice! Just leave me alone! Every damn person in this village seems to want me to drop dead again and you’re offering tea!?” Pulling at the hair spilling over both shoulders, Madara turned to storm his way towards the front door, growling under his breath as he went. “Not everyone’s head is so empty they can solve their problems with a cup of god damn genmaicha!”

The slam of the door behind him rattled several frames on the walls, photographs that still made them both wonder at just how far technology had advanced over the years. Hashirama stared at one of the frames where it hung just a little off center now and did what he could to breathe through the heavy weight in his chest. Living twice had been hard for them all at times. It was difficult to imagine just how much harder it must be for Madara, his poor beloved Madara, who had gone through so much in his first life and so much more since being reanimated, revived, reintroduced to the pains of a world that never seemed to have any mercy for him. 

But, Hashirama told himself with a touch of determination, there was one mercy that life had granted them both and that was the love they shared. The fact that they had only been able to explore that love now in this strange second chance only made it all the more precious and times like this when the rest of the world seemed so unwilling to understand made it more important than ever to remind his partner that their love would never change. 

He knew just how to do that.

Well, he had an idea of how to do that. Whether or not it was a good idea he would just have to wait and see. 

Much more easily said than done. Hashirama would freely admit that he had never been the most patient person in the entire world. It would probably be a good idea for him to get a second opinion and who better to ask than the smartest person he knew? Feeling slightly more confident in himself, he finally convinced his feet to move by turning towards the kitchen and heading straight for the plastic device hanging on the wall next to their fridge. Honestly there truly was no end to the technological wonders of the future. His brother picked up the call after several rings. 

“What do you want, Anija?” 

“How did you know it was me?”

“No one else calls here,” Tobirama growled. “Neither Kakashi nor I have many friends and of those only you ever bother to call instead of crashing through our front door without permission.”

Hashirama nodded in sympathy. “Has Gai-san been intruding again?”

“I will ask ‘what do you want’ one more time and if you don’t answer I’m hanging up on you.” 

Obviously he must have interrupted something so Hashirama hurried to ask his questions. He knew only too well the kinds of things his brother might be getting up to and the disastrous results that could come from distracting him. Reanimation had done very little to quell his thirst for knowledge. If anything the experiments he proposed had only gotten wilder in recent years. 

“Maddy’s having a bad day today and I want to show him that everything will be alright, that I’ll always be there for him, you know? And I was trying to think of a good way to-”

“Sex,” his brother cut him off bluntly before he could even finish his sentence. Hashirama spluttered violently. 

“Tobirama!” he exclaimed. “That’s so inappropriate!” 

“He’s a simple man who understands simple gestures. Take him to bed.”

“You-! I-! To say such things to your own brother-!” 

On the other end of the line he could hear a deep sigh. When Tobirama spoke again it was in the same heavy tone he’d used since as far back as their childhood, full of the exasperation that came with believing he was the only sane person left in the entire world. “You want to show him that you care, fine. Make it gentle sex then - if a beast like him is capable of anything gentle. I really don’t want to know. Just wait for him to scream himself out then take your clothes off. He’ll get the hint, trust me. Are we done now? I really was in the middle of something and we did have plans for tonight.”

“Say hello to Kakashi for me,” Hashirama murmured. He listened to his sibling grumbling in the affirmative and then the line went dead without so much as a goodbye. Rather typical. He considered himself lucky Tobirama had even picked up the phone in the first place if he was so busy. 

After hanging up himself he continued to stand there for several moments, staring aimlessly around the kitchen as he turned his initial idea over and over from a new viewpoint. Much as he hated to admit it his brother did have a point. Subtlety had a way of going straight over Madara’s head and hidden messages always had a way of getting misinterpreted. They’d had a lot of fights over simple miscommunications. Of course, considering who he had fallen in love with, he’d known from the beginning that such things were bound to happen with alarming frequency. That didn’t mean he was going to stop putting in whatever efforts he could to prevent them. 

When the right idea crossed his mind it was like a lamp coming on and his entire face lit up accordingly. It was perfect. There was no way this could go anything but perfectly, he just knew it! Knowing that most of his brilliant ideas over two lifetimes had gone straight down the toilet did nothing to deter him because he knew for absolute sure that this was, to date, the best idea he’d ever had.

First things first, he needed to find just the right shirt. With a beaming smile he turned and floated down the hall in to the bedroom he shared with the man of his dreams. There were several options already in his mind, certain pieces of clothing he’d noticed always inspired a particularly hungry look from Madara. One of them had only just come out of the laundry and had yet to be folded which left it right there in the corner of the bedroom where he’d left the basket of clean clothing. Hashirama skipped over to the scene of a half done chore and rooted through the mountain until he was able to pull out a particularly short yukata. Initially it had been an accidental purchase, several sizes down from the one he’d meant to buy, but the way Madara had looked at his legs ensured he would never take it back. Slipping it over his shoulders, Hashirama turned to the mirror on the opposite wall for a first inspection. 

No good. A frown touched his brow as he turned side to side in the mirror. His legs looked as good as ever, that was true, but that was far from the part of his body he would have wanted his partner to focus on. With great reluctance Hashirama slid the garment off and tossed it back on to the heap of clean, unfolded laundry. On with the hunt. 

Half an hour later he must have gone through almost every item of clothing he owned trying to find the perfect one with very little success. So many of them highlighted different parts of himself and yet as he rejected one after another he slowly began to realise that what he was looking for might not be possible with his current options. Now that was a quandary. His plan for showing Madara how loved and wanted he was wouldn’t work at all if none of the clothes they owned would show off the right bits in the right way! 

In a fit of petulance Hashirama pouted and struck his hand out at whatever was closest, not so much in an attempt to cause destruction but more out of some childish need to punish their wardrobe for not going along with his needs. He squawked with immediate regret when a box hidden in the back of their closet came dislodged and tumbled down on to his head as though in retaliation for such violence. Several haphazardly folded shirts all spilled out over him like a rain of cloth until there was little for him to do but stand there and laugh at himself for acting so silly. With a smile Hashirama put both hands on his hips and grinned at whatever had draped itself over his eyes, unable to see anything but suddenly finding himself in a much calmer state. 

Then he reached up to pull the item off his face and froze. It was perfect. Of course! Now that it had quite literally hit him in the face the memories were coming back; this shirt had been the first Christmas gift Tobirama bought for Madara a few years after they had all been released to live their second lives. Hashirama was sure his brother thought he was being subtle with this kind of malicious compliance, buying a gift for someone just because he’d been asked to, but from the look on his face after the wrapping was torn off it had been easy to tell this gift was meant to be hated. To be perfectly honest Hashirama was a little surprised the garment had even survived to be shoved in to a closet rather than shredded at the first opportunity. A most fortuitous anomaly. 

Not wanting to waste a moment of time, he clutched the sweater a little closer and turned to dash out of the room - only to promptly trip on all the clothing he’d strewn about their bedroom floor. Perhaps he should clean up this mess before fetching the scissors. Repairing his beloved Madara’s bad mood would be for nothing if the man saw this mess and flew in to a rage all over again.

Barely more than an hour later Hashirama had only just put the finishing touches on his surprise when he heard the front door open. It took all of his meager restraint not to go thundering down the hall to drown his partner in love and apologies; he knew from experience how much better it was to simply let Madara return home at his own pace, temper as whimsical as the cats he was so fond of. Trying to smother him the moment he stepped in the door was always tempting but never ended very well. Instead Hashirama fiddled with the hem of his shirt to make sure it was perfectly in place and looked around the bedroom one last time to make sure he’d put everything away. Of course, because his luck was just like that, he spotted several things still littering the floor that he must have looked over in the initial rush to clean up. 

A tiny squeak escaped him when Madara’s footsteps came thumping down the hall. There was no time! He needed more time! Like a man possessed he lunged across the room to toss what he could in to the hamper and promised himself that he would do the laundry tomorrow so no one ever had to know there was anything hidden in there. Just as he heard the footsteps pause on the other side of the bedroom door he realized he was out of time and strove to find a natural position to stand in with whatever happened to be left in his hand - a cup, apparently. What a clean empty cup might be doing in their bedroom was beyond him but he was grateful it wasn’t something more strange. The door opened and without any better ideas Hashirama simply stood up as straight as he could and schooled his features in to a calm, welcoming smile, hoping against hope that the panic crashing around in his chest wasn’t showing. 

Keeping still as the door slowly opened inwards was among the most difficult things he’d ever had to do in his life. The look on Madara’s face when his lover spotted him made the effort very worth it. 

“What. Just. What is that?”

“It’s technically your shirt,” Hashirama confessed. “I didn’t think you’d mind me making some alterations.”

“No I don’t give a fuck about the shirt. It’s horrendous. Your brother knows damn well how much I hate this ‘ugly christmas sweater’ bullshit. I meant what the hell is that on your tit!?”

Smiling brightly, Hashirama couldn’t help looking down to admire his own handiwork. The kitchen scissors almost hadn’t been enough to cut through the thick wool of the shirt but with a little patience he’d managed to cut out a large enough hole to display the entire right side of his torso while keeping the rest of him covered. Sheer luck took most of the credit for his discovery of Madara’s kink, how quickly he could be riled up by the sight of Hashirama flashing just a hint of the goods while keeping the rest of him mostly covered, but playing to his partner’s tastes was only half the plan. 

The other half he’d drawn on with a marker. Or rather he’d made a clone to do it for him so he wouldn’t mess anything up drawing on himself at such an awkward angle. Perfectly round and a lovely dusky brown, his right nipple was just the perfect shape to draw a little frown and one narrow eye. Surround the whole thing with spikes of messy hair and it was a perfect image of his partner if he did say so himself. 

“Oh this?” Hashirama shifted in his weight and hoped it looked casual. “Well sometimes I get lonely when you’re not here so I thought it might be nice if you were with me all the time. Actually I was thinking of making it permanent. You don’t mind, right?” Under the emotions he’d never put much effort in to controlling Hashirama did, in fact, have a working brain. No matter what his brother thought. He knew exactly the weight his gentle smile carried, knew exactly why Madara looked as though he’d just been brought up short like a runaway horse. 

“Mi-? N-no I don’t...mind…” His partner looked away with a frown and a splash of red growing across both cheeks. 

“Excellent!” 

If only there were something in the cup for him to oh so casually sip at. Hashirama waited patiently for those beautiful dark eyes to finally make their way back to him. Then he watched with very little surprise as they trailed their way slowly down the length of his body, staring either at the gesture he’d drawn on to his own chest or at the hem of his shirt where an inch or so of skin was peeking out, a hint at the naughty things hidden just above. 

“I hate you,” Madara told him in a weak voice and that was exactly what Hashirama had been waiting for. After setting the cup aside he moved across the room to frame the other man’s face. 

“No you don’t.”

“Hng. Do too. I hate you so much. You’re...awful. And terrible.”

Leaning in slowly was enough to prove to them both that Madara had no intentions of pulling away even given the opportunity to do so; it made the victory of a slow deep kiss that much more delicious. When Hashirama pulled away he bent his neck to press their foreheads together instead and allowed himself a moment to simply breathe in everything that was Madara. 

“I love you too,” he murmured because he knew what his partner was trying to say. Words were nice, he would of course adore being buried under waves of flowery words every day, but he’d never really needed them to know how his partner felt. 

For a long moment he got no response. The two of them stood in the doorway of their bedroom with their eyes closed and swayed to the beat of their own hearts. 

“Thank you,” Madara broke the silence eventually in a voice so quiet it was barely there. With tears in his eyes Hashirama bent for another deep kiss. 

“Don’t you want to unwrap your present now?” he hinted. 

The gratitude in Madara’s eyes was as obvious as the relief but Hashirama knew better than to comment on either. Instead he opened his arms and smiled happily when his partner stepped in to them as easily as a puzzle piece sliding in to place. When they undressed together neither man so much as glanced down at the immoving effigy attached to Madara’s chest, all of their attention reserved for naught but the task of chasing pleasure together, savouring the happiness it had taken them more than a lifetime to find. 

Others, Hashirama knew, would always say what they wanted to about the choices his partner had made so many years ago, and although the man preferred not to show it he knew those words would often cause pain. But there was nothing he would like more than to spend the rest of his years on this earth  soothing the wounds that others made and proving to Madara that his opinion mattered the most - and that his heart would always be filled with nothing but love. Whatever mistakes they had both made in the past could stay there as far as he was concerned. He would stand by Madara’s side through it all no matter what the people of this village thought about it and he would proclaim his love to whoever would listen as many times as it took for that to be clear. 

Later as they lay blanketed in evening shadows, Hashirama pretended sleep just to feel the caress of rough fingers tracing the ink upon his chest and knew that when this life was done he would die with no regrets.