#to clarify i consider this a platonic izu&tbrm relationship

[bansenshukai]

a little drabble -- izuna&tobirama fake engagement (907 words)

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“Senju!” Izuna yells as he slams open the door.

Tobirama looks unfazed– he doesn’t even look up as his brush glides against the inkstone before returning to make a row of barely-legible characters. Izuna doesn’t bother to check what he’s writing; he’s seen enough to know that it’s fuuinjutsu, and he has no interest in ever touching sealing theory or the minutiae of minor tenketsu control.

“Uchiha,” Tobirama replies. “Is there a reason you’ve come to bother me outside of my working hours?”  His voice is as cold and unreadable as always, and even though Izuna knows he needs Tobirama’s cooperation, he can’t help the little flare of rage that spikes at the complete indifference Tobirama displays. 

Izuna pulls the fan from his sleeve and tosses it on the desk, where it barely avoids smearing the scroll Tobirama’s working on. Tobirama’s brows furrow just the slightest, and he reaches for the fan.

“We’re getting engaged,” Izuna tells him haughtily, injecting every last drop of Uchiha pride into the steel of his spine, willing Tobirama to agree easily. “That’s the courting fan my father gave my mother to commemorate the start of their relationship.”

Tobirama stares at the fan in his hand without blinking. It’s an old thing now– Izuna had to dig it out of storage, since Father had hidden it deep away after Mother had left. Still; it’s richly patterned and printed on the finest Ame silk, and the gold beads dangling from the teak frame are worth over two months of civilian wages, even if the rest of it is hideously old fashioned.

“Why would you give me this?”

“To get engaged, Senju, did you not hear me the first time? I thought you were supposed to be a genius,” Izuna retorts. It’s a petty and stupid thing to say– he knows firsthand how much of a genius Tobirama is. 

That goddamn Hiraishin. No shinobi should be capable of creating an entirely new branch of fuuinjutsu– he’s heard Tobirama claim it’s ninjutsu, not fuuinjutsu, but the base of the technique is rooted in seals. If you need Uzumaki Ryo’s Compendium of Fifth Order Seals and Runes to decipher it, it’s fuuinjutsu, no matter what semantics some stuck-up Senju wants to claim otherwise.

Tobirama just looks at him. “Why?”

Izuna narrows his eyes. “Why are you asking questions– so ungrateful, after everything the Uchiha have done for Konoha, don’t you think you owe it to us to just say yes to a simple request? And you owe me personally. The humiliation I had to endure, after my mortal enemy forced his way into our clinic and shoved his chakra through my stomach with all the manners of some lowborn farmer who’s never seen an etiquette book in his life–” 

“Should I have not saved your life,” Tobirama says flatly. It’s barely a question, so Izuna doesn’t deign to treat it as such.

“What good does saving do anyway,” Izuna mutters bitterly. “Saving. Hah. Do you see yourself as the Uchiha’s righteous savior, come to save our clan from its barbarous leader and archaic traditions? It feels good doesn’t it– having our clan fall over themselves to grovel at your feet– woe is me, I’m Senju Tobirama and I receive too much praise from my former sworn enemy!”

Tobirama continues to give him that even, lidless gaze; devoid of blinks. It’s rather like a snake– he thinks snakes would have suited Tobirama as a summons, low-bellied and conniving little creatures they are, but of course he has tiger summons instead. It’s things like this that make Izuna skip the evening prayers at Ameratsu’s shrine. If Senju Tobirama gets to have the greatest of all cats at his beck and call, there is no higher power in this universe.

Izuna glares. “It’s a cover. A distraction. A ruse. With the rumors about your older brother and mine, we need to give them a bigger fish to fry. Metaphorically.”

“I can catch any size fish you’d like to eat,” Tobirama tells him absently, and picks up the fan, tucking it into his desk. He turns to the side to pick up a kunai, evidently done with the conversation.

Izuna gapes, unable to believe the sheer gall of it all– is Senju ignoring him– how dare he– and he hadn’t even bothered to return the fan–

And now there is blood, beading up in shiny droplets where Tobirama has used the kunai on the back of his hand.

“If you’re performing a blood sacrifice to get me to leave your office, you could just ask instead.”

Tobirama doesn’t respond. He dips his thumb in the blood, presses it on a blank sheet of paper and flares his chakra through it, then picks it up and hands it to Izuna.

Izuna stares at it. “Senju, why did you just hand me your trash? I’m not your personal maid, surely you can afford to hire someone.”

Tobirama has returned to writing his fuuinjutsu scroll. “Engagements run both ways, Uchiha. The fan is your token, that paper is mine. A blood seal is the Senju tradition. Announce it as you wish, that seal cannot be forged and will do away with any who doubt your word.”

Izuna tucks the piece of paper away in his pouch. “What a barbaric tradition,” he mutters, and makes sure to leave the door slightly open on the way out.