Protostellar

by raendown

Summary:

Protostellar - the earliest phase in the evolution of a new star. It begins with self collapse. And it ends by exploding outward in to light, a new beginning.

Notes:

Had a couple of questions so I'll note here that yes there will be more. I will be publishing a new chapter every Sunday.

Chapter 1

The first time Madara caught a glimpse of Tobirama’s tattoos stuck in his mind for – he would later learn – all the wrong reasons. At the time it never occurred to him to question what they were for or what they might be covering up. With only a year between war and peace and the village existing as little more than a few building foundations on top of freshly cleared land, Madara hadn’t had quite enough time at that point to forget the anger and hatred which filled him every time he caught sight of the man who almost killed his brother. He had zero interest in Tobirama beyond the things they were forced to communicate politely about, things concerning the building of the village, and if he were entirely honest Madara would have admitted that he barely saw the man as human.

Coming upon a fully nude Tobirama taking an evening bath in the middle of the forest had thrown his world out of orbit rather harshly. So surprised that he couldn’t even react, Madara simply stared with wide eyes at the intricate red lines dancing over every inch of the pale white skin normally hidden underneath baggy clothing.

Surely the man could sense him there. He had probably been able to sense Madara coming from the moment he stepped within a five mile radius and yet he didn’t seem particularly bothered that his genitals were covered only by the ripples on the surface of the water. A small tuft of silver hair peeked up above the ripples and followed a line up towards his belly button, where it dispersed to leave the rest of his chest hairless and his intricate tattoos on perfect display.

Rather than react in any way to being discovered in the midst of bathing, Tobirama calmly rinsed out his hair in the small waterfall he was standing under before shaking it out and setting an empty gaze on his unwitting companion.

“Did you need something?”

“You’re naked.”

“Well spotted, Uchiha. Truly the stories of your eyes’ prowess were not exaggerated.”

Madara clenched his fists, waiting for the anger to come – but it didn’t. He was met instead with a wave of lust which came crashing down through him so hard he feared he might be physically swept under the tide of it. Since when did he consider Senju Tobirama as attractive? It seemed a preposterous idea yet somehow all he had in his mind was the desire to follow those red lines with his tongue, to trace them with his fingers and find where they ended, where they started, where they ran together so he could begin again.

Disgusted with himself, he forcibly dragged his gaze up to meet with Tobirama’s curiously blank eyes. It felt as though he were waiting for a reaction before deciding on one of his own. Madara hated the feeling that gave him, like there was something here he didn’t know but Tobirama did.

"You look like you spilled ink all over yourself,” he said, reaching deep for some of his customary snark. Tobirama carefully lifted one shoulder in a thoughtless shrug.

“If you don’t need anything…”

Without waiting for an answer he turned back to the falls, easily presenting his back to an old enemy and ducking his head underneath the water while Madara marveled at the new expanse of flesh revealed to him. He could hardly follow all the swirls and patterns with his eyes but he did note that they disappeared under the water. Senju Tobirama had tattoos on his ass and Madara needed to leave before he did something regrettable with that information.

Knowing his own limits meant he knew that if he didn’t turn away now he would find himself in the water and tangled up in something he really didn’t want to get involved with. Madara spun on his heel and forced his legs to carry him back the way he had come, grumbling under his breath about men with no decency or shame and making himself dark promises to have words with Hashirama about this. Tobirama, with his renowned sensory skills, was supposed to be their first line of defense against anyone who slipped past the scouts circling the land they had claimed. How would it look if he were caught nude in the middle of the forest?

Madara was only worried for the village’s safety, of course. As one of its founders that was simply his duty and Madara was nothing if not dutiful.

The fact that he continued to think of nothing but white skin and red ink the entire walk back meant absolutely nothing.

After that incident things changed very subtly between them. They could hardly have been said to be friends but there was a great deal less open hostility as Madara slowly came to terms with the fact that Tobirama was indeed a human being and not some monster out to consume Uchiha souls for dinner. Perhaps the hardest part about it was reconciling the knot of worry still hidden deep in his gut, the leaden feeling which weighed him down every time he saw Tobirama within a hundred yard of Izuna.

No matter how many times Hashirama lectured him that they were supposed to be the leaders, the example for others to follow, it didn’t stop the nightmares of Izuna dying in his arms. What did help, oddly enough, was the way Izuna and Tobirama appeared to have come to some sort of silent agreement. If not forced to interact they simply pretended the other wasn’t there. Seeing Tobirama’s eyes pass straight over Izuna like so much unremarkable foliage was a balm to Madara’s nerves and, although it still took weeks and months, eventually the instinctual panic faded away.

Without his best reason for hating Tobirama he was left with very little opinion on him at all. In fact, for most of the next two years after that eye-opening moment in the woods, Madara had a great deal of success forgetting Tobirama even existed if they weren’t in the same room together. Sure the man was devastatingly attractive, so much so that Madara was startled he had pulled the blinders so far over his own eyes that he’d never noticed before, but that was really all there was to him. He existed as nothing more than a pretty package around a lightning fast brain equipped with a mouth too sharp for his own good. They knew nothing personal about each other and Madara was generally content to keep it that way.

His complacency was not to last, however.

Two years had seen more progress than he could ever have imagined in their little village and as news spread of their frankly miraculous success at maintaining both peace and prosperity, finally their dream reached the hearts of other clans nearby. Madara had no idea how much his life was about to change when he set out from their new home to meet with the three famously intertwined clans, the Yamanaka, the Akimichi, and the Nara. It was said that where one went the other two would surely follow and Hashirama had been impressing upon him the importance of this meeting going well for weeks now. Even as they caught sight of the delegates awaiting them at a predetermined neutral location, Hashirama was still hissing out of the corner of his mouth, preaching calm and self-control. Madara was questioning his choice of friendships for perhaps the hundredth time when three figures approached them.

Each of them had the distinctive looks of their respective clans and they moved perfectly in sync with one another, a mark of how often they had worked together in the past. None of them had more than the agreed upon number of advisors with them but Madara could feel more than a dozen pairs of eyes on him while they all politely shook hands.

Ignoring the way Hashirama seemed on the verge of tears as he made his greetings, Madara shifted uncomfortably. Despite the fact that he could feel himself being watched from all sides, there was one gaze in particular which felt incredibly sharp, boring in to his skull like a hot knife until it drew his gaze in return. Madara narrowed his eyes as he tried to locate this person. When he found them his confusion only increased.

She had to be over a hundred years old to have that many wrinkles. Either that or she spent every day outside in the sun from dawn till dusk without thought for a skin care regimen. No matter her age, her blue eyes were sharper than a newly forged kunai and they were focused solely on him. Madara wondered if he might have killed someone she loved at some point in the clan wars. He had witnessed all sorts of alliances shifting like turbulent water over the years – part of what made this trio of clans so unique.

They were still staring each other down like challenging predators when Hashirama’s voice boomed a laugh from beside him. Madara hadn’t listened to a word anyone had said.

“Wonderful!” his friend was saying now. “I don’t happen to have my best negotiators with me. If I had known you were already looking so favorably upon the option to join our peaceful gathering I would have brought gifts as well! Would it be too much trouble to postpone our talks until I can have someone arrive tomorrow?”

“If you are referring to your brother then that is more than acceptable. Rumors speak of his intellect and I have long desired to try my own mind against his.” It was the Nara representative who spoke. Madara snorted quietly to himself.

“You have my gratitude.” Hashirama offered all three of them a bow, a gesture which they politely returned, then the Konoha delegation was invited to dine with the others that evening and Hashirama more than happily accepted the offer. The elders who had come with them trailed after their newly elected Hokage like ducklings puffed up with their own importance while Madara brought up the rear with his eyes sliding back towards the Yamanaka delegation.

He searched among them but the old woman was gone. Suspicious, he thought, but not currently the most important thing he should have on his mind. For now his attention should be put towards observing those with whom they would be negotiating tomorrow to try and gather any information he could which they might use to their advantage. Surely they would be doing the same; Madara could only hope Hashirama realized that and would be on his best behavior as he had been reminding everyone else to be. If not he would be getting another lecture on hypocrisy.

“You look sour,” Hashirama informed him bluntly when they had all been seated at a table under an open pavilion. Clearly their hosts had come ready to negotiate. Madara scoffed.

“I’m given to believe that I always look sour.”

“You should smile! This is a happy occasion! And we do want them to like us.”

“No, we want them to like you,” Madara corrected him. “They don’t need to like me. And they certainly won’t like your cold-faced brother if smiles are the deciding factor.”

“Oh don’t,” was all Hashirama said. Ever since their explosive fights had petered out in to quiet disinterest Hashirama had resigned himself to the fact that it seemed his best friend and his brother would never get along quite the way he wished they could. To the relief of both men, he had therefore eased up a great deal on how much he whined at them over the issue.

Madara didn’t say much throughout dinner. Sitting next to a socialite like Hashirama allowed him to foist most of the questions directed his way on to the other man instead, leaving him free to watch those around them closely. The food was well cooked, if under spiced for his tastes, but he was just as glad when the meal finally came to an end and he was allowed to take his leave. After being around so many people all day he was eager to spend a bit of time alone. Taking a walk by himself around the edges of camp seemed like the perfect way to clear his head of the noise which had built up from so much social interaction.

The forest was pleasantly quiet once he made it past the small enclave the four clans had created with their rows of tents. Crickets chirruped their evening song and a light breeze carried the scent of pine trees from the mountains nearby. Step by step Madara felt the tension in his shoulders melting away, leaving him feeling relaxed for the first time since they stepped through the village gates that morning.

If he were secure in their alliance with the three clans looking to join with them he might have dulled his senses just to create the illusion of being all alone in the world. Nothing sounded quite as peaceful to him at the moment then to disappear in to the trees and speak to no one for a good solid week. Unfortunately, duty to his dreams made that an impossibility. Not that he particularly minded putting in the work to make his childhood dreams a reality; Madara only wished that he didn’t need to spend so much time around other human beings to accomplish that.

Almost as though the universe were spitting his own desires back in his face, the moment he finished that thought was the moment he realized that he was not alone out here wandering amongst the silent trees. There was another chakra signature burning faintly perhaps a half a mile to the west. Madara frowned in irritation even as he set his feet in that direction, suppressing his own chakra as he went. Odds were that if he chose not to investigate it would turn out to be an assassin of some sort.

Whether they were looking to assassinate someone from his own party or a member from one of the other clans didn’t matter. Either way it would not look well if he allowed them to slip passed him.

Yet, as it turned out, he needn’t have worried. His mysterious wanderer was only the wizened old crone who had stared at him so intently from where she stood tucked between the Yamanaka and the Nara elders only to disappear when the initial greetings were over. Madara narrowed his eyes at her again now and crossed his arms. He knew what he was doing out here in the woods at night but it still felt suspicious to him to see anyone else doing the same.

“Ah, so old now, so old.” Her voice sounded as rusty as her joints and she leaned heavily on a carved walking stick while she tittered in his direction.

“Yes you are,” Madara agreed brusquely. No point in denying the obvious.

The old woman tittered again and shook her free hand in his direction, beckoning him forward. Madara went reluctantly while fingering the kunai hidden up his sleeve just in case.

“Not me, not me. You’re the one that got old.”

“Hey!” Madara bristled, stomping the rest of the way towards her to shove a finger in her wizened face. “If anyone here is old then it’s you, you old bag!”

“So much older than when last we met.”

“We only met this afternoon, so nice try.”

Her titters turned to dusty cackling that sent shivers racing down his spine. Something about her chakra tingled at the edges of his own in a way which would have felt familiar if he could only identify it. Just the fact that he couldn’t, however, convinced him there was no way he was wrong. He had no idea who this crazy old biddy was.

“I know you,” she said in a sing-song voice. Madara scowled harder.

“You really don’t.”

“I know you.” Her fading eyes narrowed with mirth, deepening the lines filling up the space between her brows, and Madara resisted the chakra swirling just behind his own eyes, denying himself the pleasure of activating them just for a quick scare tactic.

“We’ve never met,” he insisted. “I think I would remember a hag like you.”

Her laugh was corroded and jagged, the grinding of rocks that slowly crumbled, and it made him shudder just to listen to her. She banged her walking stick against the ground with mad glee and cackled over it.

“No, you wouldn’t remember because it was not you who met me but I who met you.”

“That makes no sense,” Madara growled. She grinned, showing off her toothless gums.

“Does it not? Here. Let me show you.”

For a woman of such obvious age she moved faster than he would have expected. Before he could raise his arm to deflect she had reached out and pressed one of her palms against the empty patch of forehead not covered by his unruly hair, her eyes boring in to his the way they had before. Madara’s entire body flinched as the world fell away and he could feel his consciousness getting sucked back inside his own mind.

He found himself in a different forest and immediately he knew that this was not real – or that it was not currently real. Something in him knew instinctively that this was a memory. Not his own memory, perhaps, but as real as one of his own would be. The sky was muted above him and the sounds of an empty forest in the early stages of dusk were loud in his ears, crickets and nocturnal things awakening to herald the ending of the day. As the scene coalesced further he could make out three figures nearby and cautiously stepped closer to investigate.

Whatever he might have expected to find there, it certainly was not an adolescent boy who was clearly a younger version of Senju Tobirama. Despite not having marked his face yet there could only be so many young men with skin that white, eyes that red, who pinched their face in that exact same manner when they were worried. Even more strangely, he appeared to be worried about an unconscious Uchiha whom, upon closer inspection, Madara identified as himself when he too was younger. He had no memories of ever meeting Tobirama outside of the bloody clashes between their clans, not until peace had been made many years after this scene appeared to be taking place.

Over both of them stood a stocky woman with blonde hair and distinctively blue eyes. Yamanaka eyes. Madara gave a start upon realizing that this woman must be the old crone and that this was her memory. She was already old in this time, only just beginning to lose the color of her hair and gather wrinkles, but her movements were still sharp as she watched the two before her.

“But you can heal him,” Tobirama was saying, his voice harsh for one so young. “I know you can. You’re the best healer in your clan, I’ve heard the rumors.”

“Yes, the Senju have always kept a weather eye on their neighbors, haven’t they?”

“Well?!”

“Hmm.” Kneeling down, the woman gave the younger Madara’s unconscious form an impassive look. “And why should I bother to heal him? Neither of you are my allies.”

Tobirama snarled. “And neither are we your enemies.” He closed his eyes briefly and when they opened again his entire countenance had changed, somehow demure. “Please. Please heal him. I will give you whatever payment you ask.”

“If my politics are up to date, your two clans are enemies to each other. Why would you ask this of me?”

“My reasons are my own. Now will you do it or not? He’s running out of time!”

She gave a light shrug but deigned to inspect the wounded body anyway. From his position off to one side, Madara watched himself and noted the way he lay absolutely still. Despite the gathering darkness he was able to see a shine on the grass underneath himself which spoke of heavy blood loss. He also noted that Tobirama’s clothes and hands were covered in blood, almost as though he had been carrying the older boy over a great distance.

“I can heal him,” she declared, sitting upright. “For a price.” Tobirama sagged with obvious relief and leaned forward intently.

“Name it and it’s yours.”

“All I want is information. My people do so love a good secret. Tell me, child, why did you bring him here to me instead of your own clan? What do you care for the life of your sworn enemy? And where did you find him? I admit, I’ll laugh if you tell me you did this yourself.”

Biting his lip, Tobirama looked down at Madara’s still form and reached out only to snatch his fingers back and hold them tightly in his lap as he spoke.

“I found him like this. I don’t know what happened to put him in this state but he was alone and he was dying. You know very well why I can’t take him to the healers in my own clan. They wouldn’t heal him, they would just let him die!”

“And you care because…?”

“He’s my soulmate.”

Tobirama spoke so quietly that he almost whispered the words and yet they echoed like thunder in Madara’s ears. Impossible, he wanted to scream. Absolutely not. There was no way that Tobirama, of all people, could be his soulmate. Nothing about that made sense and yet the young face before him was completely serious, even more so than he usually was, the kind of serious he reserved for when there were lives on the line and there was no time for joking around – like now.

She hummed again, not looking very surprised.

“I can heal him,” she repeated. “But he will probably still hate you.”

“I can bear his hatred,” Tobirama said. Her hands lit up with green healing chakra and reached for her patient even as she gave him an indecipherable look.

“Can you?”

“Yes. I have to. From the moment I figured it out I already knew that I would have to. Bearing his hatred would be nothing compared to knowing that I was the one who allowed him to die. He doesn’t have to love me; he just has to survive.”

“Very well then.”

The memory faded just as quickly as it had begun, the world around him melting and falling until suddenly he was back in reality and the old crone was removing her hand from his forehead, her face split once more in a self-satisfied grin.

Madara couldn’t move. His body was numb and his mind was racing so fast he could hardly identify a single thought before it had rushed past him to make way for another. More than anything he wished he could run, flee from this new knowledge and from the way it fit so neatly in to memories he had long ago set aside as unimportant.

Fingers pressed gently against the right side of his abdomen before he even noticed he had lifted his arm.

“I remember that wound,” he murmured. “My brother found me on the borders of our land and brought me home. Our healers said it looked as though I had already received medical attention but that there were no signs around my body that anyone else had been there.”

“Hmm. Hmm. But someone has always been there.” The crone banged her walking stick again, jolting him back to the present. Attempting to muster the strength to glare at her resulted in little more than a pathetically wide-eyed expression.

“Why did you tell me this?”

“All good secrets must be told to someone,” she said. “And I have held on to this one long enough.”

Before he had a chance to say anything more she was already turning and shuffling away, back towards the enclave. Madara stood still and watched her go, so many questions in his mind it was hard to choose one of them to focus any significant amount of brain power on.

Most of them centered around a general sense of disbelief for this whole situation. For most of his life Madara hadn’t even bothered to wonder if he might someday meet his soulmate. As clan head it was expected that he would eventually marry, if not to produce children then at least to strengthen an alliance. Knowing the weight of his duties far outweighed the chances of finding his soulmate in a clan with whom they were not at war had left him disillusioned with the idea from a very young age. It had been years since he’d even given the issue any thought.

Soulmates were more of Izuna’s obsession. His younger brother had already given himself a reputation as a playboy, sleeping around, loving and leaving, but Madara was the only one privy to his real motivations. Izuna had always been enamored with the idea of finding his soulmate, of one day peeling away a lover’s clothing to find a mark upon their skin which matched the one on his own. He felt no dread over the idea of who it could possibly be, sharing none of his sibling’s fears that they might not be get along. Izuna possessed something which his brother did not: faith.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Madara had faith in many things. He had faith in himself, in his family, in the immutable truths of the world, and although it had taken years to rebuild it he had faith in Hashirama too. What Madara did not have faith in was the idea of a perfect love. How was it possible that there could be someone made for him and him alone – especially if that person was so clearly different from himself?

Could they even stand each other, he wondered? The idea that they might ever be more to each other than indifferent allies was nearly incomprehensible and yet –

And yet he couldn’t seem to get the image of a young Tobirama out of his mind, the resigned look on his face, much too young to be so tired. He had carried the weight of Madara’s hatred even back when Madara had barely known him as more than another nameless Senju face. The way he had reached out only to snatch his fingers back before they could touch was such a simple thing and yet so very revealing that Madara almost felt as though he had witnessed something incredibly private. He felt as though he had been given an insight in to who Tobirama truly was. It was not an insight he had asked for, nor one he knew what to do with.

It took hours before he was calm enough to seek out the tent which had been set up for him but despite the fact that morning was already close at hand he found he still couldn’t sleep. Madara passed the rest of the night staring at the ceiling of his tent, listening to Hashirama snoring a dozen feet away where he was presumably sprawled between his own blankets.

When the sun finally rose he waited until several other bodies could be heard shuffling about before quitting his temporary quarters and making his way to a nearby stream to splash some cold water on his face. Not sleeping generally left him short tempered and for a moment he was grateful that Tobirama would be arriving today as it would remove the responsibility for diplomacy from his shoulders. Gratitude lasted less than a heartbeat before he panicked and realized that he was very not ready to face the man who supposedly bore his soul mark.

Not that he had much of a choice. Tobirama was both the fastest shinobi of his generation and well known for being incredibly prompt. Despite the fact that the sun was only just barely rising over the mountains Tobirama was already present and trading polite greetings with some of the Nara, whom he appeared to be acquainted with already. Madara was left kneeling in an awkward position on the river bank with his face dripping water down on to his shirt while he stared openly.

It hit him again, as it had a truly embarrassing number of times, just how attractive the man was. Tobirama’s silver hair lifted and danced in the morning breeze, already tousled from the journey here. The dust clinging to his armor did nothing to diminish the impressive size it gave him nor the instinctively confident stance he always kept while wearing it. Even the red tattoos crawling out of his collar to end in three prongs across his face added to his sharp beauty rather than detracted from it. He was so attractive that it bordered on unfair. How was Madara meant to concentrate on anything with him running around looking like that when he already had his mind full with last night’s revelations?

“Good morning Maddy!” Hashirama’s voice startled him at the same time a massive hand clapped him between his shoulder blades. Overbalanced by the unexpected blow, Madara nearly pitched forward in to the water before catching himself and affecting a dark frown.

“Never call me that again,” he snarled, regaining his feet.

“Looks like someone didn’t sleep well. A good breakfast should help get you some energy, though!”

His protests amounted to naught as Hashirama wound one of his stupidly thick arms around Madara’s shoulders and dragged him off towards where cooks from all four clans were set up together to pool their ingredients in to several massive cauldrons of hot pot. Breakfast did actually help to settle his frazzled nerves and gave his body a boost of energy to make it through the long talks ahead of them, although he wasn’t about to admit that to Hashirama.

In an effort to draw as much calm around himself as possible, Madara did his best not to allow his eyes to stray over towards where Tobirama was now chatting with a pair of Akimichi women. For the most part he succeeded, barring the handful of times he found himself staring without even realizing it, so by the time they were handing their bowls over to those who had been stuck with dish duty he felt at least halfway back to himself again.

The meeting itself took place around the same table where they had taken their dinner the night before. The representatives from each of the three interested clans all sat on one side of the table while Hashirama and Madara flanked Tobirama on the other side, facing each other three to three even though everyone present knew that it would be the younger Senju who did most of the talking. Ideally he would have had Izuna and Mito there as well, his usual partners in diplomacy. Even Hikaku’s presence would have been appreciated. But with the rest of them out of the village and Hikaku away on a mission, it fell to Mito and Izuna to oversee things at home and ensure their peace remained, well, peaceful. As it was, Tobirama was simply going to have to pull his own weight and hope that the collective intelligence of the Nara and Yamanaka combined with the disarming cheerfulness of the Akimichi wouldn’t be too much for him to handle on such short notice.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the following few hours was defining exactly how their clans would be pledging themselves. Although they had always been separate and never thought of themselves as a single entity, the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi accepted each other as three parts of a bigger whole. The idea of pledging their loyalty to Konoha above their loyalty to each other was a wall in the negotiations which took hours to climb over.

In the end it was settled only by Konoha’s willingness to recognize the significance of their unique symbiosis and make allowances for some slight autonomy. Having these three clans in particular join their movement was important, as Tobirama noted openly. Separately they were each a viable threat on their own. Together they could make for a formidable enemy and it would be smarter to keep them close than to alienate them over petty power struggles. Luckily, Tobirama’s frankness and ability to bend when necessary won them a few concessions in other areas, working together towards a set of accords they could both be happy with in the end.   

Madara hadn’t even realized the passing of time until they all rose from the table and he realized his stomach was staging a raucous protest against his failure to eat anything in the hours since breakfast. Evening had snuck up on them quietly, the lateness of the season sending the sun to its bed when it was barely in to the dinner hour.

All things considered, he thought the negotiations had gone about as well as could be expected. Tobirama didn’t look entirely satisfied but nor did he seem particularly upset and that was worlds better than the results of their conferences with the Shimura clan. In fact, there was even a barely detectable smile hovering around the edges of his mouth while he watched his brother weep and all but throw himself around the other side of the table to drag each of their three hosts in to a tight hug. All three of them accepted the affection with mildly confused looks which Madara sympathized with. Hashirama’s affections were always baffling to him.

Now that they could all be considered allies it would be seen as rude to simply up and leave without a proper lengthy goodbye and the small idle chitchat required to maintain the illusion that they were all nice people. It was, in his opinion, a pointless formality. They were all shinobi and therefore none of them were truly nice people – except for perhaps Hashirama.

It felt as though it took forever to extract themselves and set out on the journey home. Evening had finished laying its blanket across the sky before they were able to leave and Madara grumbled openly at being forced to eat as they traveled. He’d done it plenty of times before, obviously, but it never failed to give him a slight case of indigestion and he resented every time he had to put himself through the tummy ache.

“Why couldn’t we have stayed another night?” Hashirama whined as they tramped along the darkened forest path, shinobi spread out through the trees like fallen leaves. Both his brother and his best friend huffed back at him.

“Konoha was your dream,” Tobirama reminded him. “Shouldn’t you be excited to get back?”

“I know! But this was so much fun! I haven’t really gone on anything like a mission since we first came together to start building the village. It’s been three years since I slept in anything but a bed!”

Madara gave his friend a rough shove. “And how was your back this morning?”

“Very sore, actually,” Hashirama said, the light of understanding burning dimly in his eyes. “Huh. Maybe sleeping outside isn’t as fun as I keep remembering it.”

“Yeah, no shit. Stick to your office and your comfy mattress and leave the actual work to those of us who haven’t gone soft.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Hashirama’s shoulders drooped, as typically overdramatic as always, but Madara hardly noticed. All of his attention had been stolen by the quiet snort Tobirama let out as he turned his head away, presumably to hide a smirk.

Whether Tobirama was laughing at Madara’s words or his brother’s reaction, Madara had just had a hand in making him laugh for the very first time and it was such a human reaction that he hardly knew how to process it. Intellectually he had known that they were brothers for as long as he’d known them but it had never truly stuck in his mind how much they acted like it.

Squabbles and teasing and small jibes danced through his mind, all sorts of scenarios he had witnessed and always easily dismissed before. The two men beside him acted just the same as he and Izuna did. They acted like snarky siblings equally as ready to throw insults as they were to defend each other. Madara felt a little bit like slapping himself, both for never noticing in the past and for taking it so hard now that he had. It seemed like such a stupid thing to fixate on yet as Hashirama whined to his younger brother and Tobirama callously filleted him with nothing more than verbal barbs, Madara couldn’t help but mourn for the simpler days when he hadn’t even considered this man a human being.

He didn’t speak much for the rest of the trip. When Hashirama spoke to him he responded and when the patrols needed to be rotated he murmured something half coherent to whoever happened to be standing close but other than that he kept to himself. As a creature of habit, Madara didn’t like sudden change, even the seemingly insignificant changes such as shifting his perception of another person. It always left him feeling off kilter and unsure and there was generally only one thing which helped him combat the feeling.

When they finally made it back to the village in the wee hours of the morning Madara broke off from the rest of them without a single thought for debriefing. The Senju brothers could handle sorting everyone out and making sure the documentation from their fortuitous meeting reached the proper places; he had his own brother to go see.

Izuna was fast asleep, although that was hardly surprising considering the time, but Madara could feel his chakra swirling in to a wakeful state as soon as the front door of the younger man’s home opened. He was rubbing his eyes petulantly when his mattress dipped with the weight of another person.

“Aniki?” he mumbled, slurring the word on a yawn. Madara sighed, tugging at the straps of his armor.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Mmm. Bad mood? Trip safe?”

Tugging his breastplate off and setting it at the end of the bed, Madara smiled down at his sibling, already crawling his way back in to peaceful dreams even as he tried to ask questions. After untying the armor from his lower half and dropping that along with his pauldrons in to an untidy heap, he ran his fingers through Izuna’s hair.

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow,” he promised. “Sleep. There’s a while yet till dawn.”

He waited until Izuna’s breathing had evened out again before allowing his body to softly collapse sideways and burrowing his face in to the pillow. Nothing restored his sense of balance quite like surrounding himself with the only constant in his life which had never left him. The world outside could come and go and Madara would slowly adjust at his own pace – as long as his precious people stayed by his side where they belonged.

Chapter 2

Being aware of Tobirama was strange in more ways than one. It was like finally taking notice of a massive creature which had been standing next to him for years, silent and unobtrusive, and only just realizing how much he had been missing right in front of his own eyes.

Part of it was the physical awareness of him, of course. Madara had already fought and lost against the raw attraction he felt and at least mostly succeeded in packing it away inside his mind in a dark box labelled ‘dangerous’. It was no more difficult to ignore than if he had found anyone else in the world attractive, pleasant to contemplate but not enough to distract his every waking thought. He was far from the only eye candy in the village, though he was unique in his particular brand of looks.

Another part of it was an intellectual awareness. In his lack of care for Tobirama’s existence Madara had failed to truly contemplate was an amazing resource he was in so many areas. Although he had peripherally been aware before that Tobirama had his fingers on the pulse of the village’s inner workings, he’d never truly realized just how many projects and committees and developments he was actually a part of. It seemed as though there was nothing that happened in the village without at least brief input from the younger Senju brother. Tentative questions, carefully phrased to be casual and bland, revealed a gold mine of information floating inside that pretty head of his.

The next time Madara needed gossip he was sending Hikaku straight to Tobirama. For some reason the two of them got along extremely well and he was not above threatening his cousin in to gathering information for him.

Probably the least surprising thing, however, was the influx of pitfalls in the emotional roller coaster Madara had been riding every day of his entire life. He was already volatile and prone to mood swings. Adding the impossibility of trying to decide what to do with the information that Tobirama might be his soulmate was an extra stress he really didn’t needed.

Some days it wasn’t so bad. He frequently circled back to reminding himself that nothing really had to change if he didn’t want it to – and that it never would if he just kept his mouth shut and said nothing about this to Tobirama. On those days he was calm.

But then there were other days when this unwanted knowledge played through his head like a song on repeat and he found himself staring, analyzing, judging every move Tobirama made and comparing it to himself. Even the insignificant details were viciously picked apart. How could all-knowing fate have paired him with a man who preferred early mornings to late nights? Would he really get along with someone who lacked an appreciation for fried foods? Even their favorite colors differed and on the days he spiraled downwards it felt like a sign that they were simply not meant to be a part of each other’s lives, not even as friends.

It took several weeks for the universe to drop an opportunity in his lap, weeks in which the Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi clans slowly began their immigration to Konoha. High tensions were skillfully avoided by having only a handful of families make the move at a time rather than descending as one like an invading force. The existing citizens got used to their new neighbors at a gradual rate and over time came to accept that they would need to share their playground with a few more kids.

And there were indeed a lot of kids. Madara had never seen so many children all in one place. He had been one of the many to scoff when Tobirama suggested that building a playground should be prioritized over other more important structures but after seeing how it was swarmed by tiny feet even before completion he retracted his former scorn, replacing it instead with a sense of wonder. Children, younger siblings, they had been the cornerstone of the dream he shared with Hashirama. Everything they accomplished together had all been in the hopes that future generations would be safer and have the opportunity to enjoy something his own generation never had: a childhood.

Madara had only just barely grown used to seeing a handful of tiny new faces dashing along the streets of the Uchiha district when one of his own came to him with a request which took him entirely off guard.

“You want to what?”

Standing on his front doorstep and digging the toes of one foot in to the ground, Uchiha Kagami looked up at him with wide innocent eyes and the same brilliant smile which seemed to get him in to trouble about as often as it weaseled him back out. He was only twelve years old, a fatherless bastard of a woman who had retired from active duty when she discovered she was pregnant, but Madara could already see many qualities in the boy that made him a true son of their clan.

It was a pity that the circumstances of his birth prevented most others from seeing the same.

“Please, Madara-sama?” the child wheedled. “We asked him but he said he won’t do it unless we have permission from our clan Heads. Torifu already got his uncle to say yes! Please!”

“And did he seem…amenable to this request?” Madara crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the door frame, hoping it wasn’t obvious he was using it to hold himself up. Ever since that old Yamanaka hag had interfered with his life and turned his world upside down, it felt like the universe was shoving Tobirama in his face at every given opportunity.

“Tobirama-sama said he would love to train us. He said we looked like bright kids!” Kagami beamed up at him, clearly pleased with what to him was a rare compliment. “But you need to say yes. Please say yes! I want to be strong like Tobirama-sama so I can awaken my Sharingan and be super famous like he is!”

 “Why him? You aren’t likely to find any help learning fire jutsu from someone with a water nature.”

Kagami danced on the spot, his short body practically vibrating with childish impatience. “He says it won’t be a problem and he has lots to teach me.”

“Hm.” Madara frowned, lifting his gaze to stare unseeing in to the middle distance and disappearing in to his own head while he considered his options.

Allowing someone outside of the clan to teach one of their own could be taken as an incredible insult to his own people. On the other hand it could also be spun as a gesture of peace, proving that the Uchiha had trust in the Senju, and if he played his cards right he might even tuck this away to use as leverage should he need a favor at some point down the road. Being owed a favor was never a bad thing, in his experience.

It would also, he realized, give him a perfect excuse to take a closer look at who Senju Tobirama really was without making it obvious that he had a personal interest in the matter. Five weeks had yet to dull the curiosity no matter how much he tried to tamp it down. Really the only other option was to give in to it and he would be a fool not to take the opportunity being handed to him, practically gift wrapped and free of charge. If Tobirama wished to take on the responsibility of training a child whose own clan had subtly rejected him then Madara would still be well within his rights to insist upon overseeing their training. Should he happen to learn more about the man and put his own wild thoughts to rest, well, it could only be considered a bonus.

“We may be able to come to an agreement,” he said aloud, pausing for a moment while Kagami gave vent to a triumphant howl. “Is he expecting an answer right away?”

“I don’t know! But we can go see him now! Can we? Please? You said yes, right? That sounded like a yes.”

“Ugh, I will retract that yes if you don’t calm down and stop acting like a sugar-high puppy.”

“Right!”

Grumbling to make a show of his reluctance – seeming eager simply wouldn’t do – Madara stepped out and closed the front door, following along while Kagami dashed off down the street.

It wasn’t the first time he had accompanied someone in to the heart of the Senju district, although it was the first time he had gone with anyone other than Hashirama. He was more surprised than he would have liked to admit when their path diverged from his familiar route to take them in the completely opposite direction. Apparently Tobirama had taken the opportunity to put some distance between himself and his brother when the residential areas were being built.

Actually, Madara couldn’t really fault him for that. Friends or not, he wouldn’t want to live in the same house as Hashirama either. Much too noisy; way too much enthusiasm before the sun had risen. He was incredibly close to his own brother but even being related to Hashirama couldn’t make him less overwhelming.

Tobirama’s house was tucked away in a corner, visibly no different from those surrounding it except for the weeds growing up in the front yard where most of his neighbors had planted small vegetable gardens. It was a good idea in a village still trying to find a balance to provide for its ever growing population. Making a note to suggest the same to a few members of his own clan, Madara watched Kagami bounce up the wooden steps and thunder his tiny fists against the front door. Evidently Tobirama must have felt them coming because he stepped out only moments later, closing the door behind himself and looking down at his tiny guest with a hint of amusement.

“Back so soon?” he rumbled. Kagami danced in a circle out of sheer excitement.

“He said yes! Well, sort of yes. He said we needed an agreement but that’s almost like a yes so YES!”

“A shinobi should remain calm in all situations,” Tobirama told him in a demure tone. Kagami went rigid and Madara just barely caught the light of laughter in Tobirama’s eye as he leaned down to murmur, “And you’re very close to dancing on my toes.”

The boy’s face went red but he giggled unrepentantly as he leapt backwards to the bottom of the stairs and raced back to wriggle at Madara’s feet, too full of energy and overloaded with happiness.

“You have conditions, I assume?” Tobirama addressed him directly.  Madara nodded.

“Cross-clan training has never been done before and there’s bound to be a lot of people questioning the situation. You may teach him only if you agree that I may oversee his training sessions whenever I wish and ask whichever relevant questions I see fit.”

“Reasonable,” Tobirama admitted. “Although we may come to disagreements over what either of us deems a relevant question.”

“That’s a problem for future me,” Madara drawled. He watched Tobirama’s cheeks twitch as the man tried not to smile and was promptly forced to smother an odd feeling of triumph which bubbled up in his gut. Just because seeing a smile on that face lately had become as rare as a warm day in winter, there was no need for him to feel all smug about it; it was hardly a groundbreaking accomplishment.

Between them, Kagami did his best to remain calm as he had been asked but it lasted no more than a half a minute, then he was bouncing back over to his new teacher with a golden smile and taking the startled man’s hand between both of his own.

“Come on sensei! Let’s go find Torifu and you can teach us something now!” Before he’d even finished talking he was pulling and tugging to lead them away.

“Sensei…?” Tobirama followed where he was lead with a slightly dazed expression.

Madara watched them go until they were both out of sight only to realize that he was now standing alone in a part of the Senju district where he had no business being. Not wanting to rouse the suspicions of anyone passing by, he took to the rooftops and bounded away to where he could feel Hashirama’s chakra humming away contentedly at home. Since he was already here, he might as well drop by for a visit and possibly wheedle out a free dinner.

It was hardly the first time he had shown up unannounced at odd hours of the day and when he swung in through the kitchen window Mito didn’t even bother to look up from her needlework as she tilted her head towards the door leading to the next room. She did look up when he made to walk across her immaculately clean floors without first removing his sandals and Madara felt no less a man for admitting that he was just a tiny bit afraid of what she might do if he hadn’t immediately hopped over to leave them at the back door.

On his way by he peeked over her shoulder to see what it was she was working on, confused to see nothing more than a series of concentric circles with lines woven through like a spider’s web. Even more strangely, she was stitching it on to a knitted cap that was much too big for the creature growing inside her barely rounded stomach.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Stitching seals,” she said. “If my husband refuses to dress fashionably then he will at least be dressed warmly. These seals will draw from his chakra reserves to keep his head at a proper temperature even in the coldest weather.”

“Huh. Alright.”

It seemed like a lot of effort to go to when he himself had never heard Hashirama complain of cold ears but Madara figured that it wasn’t worth his life to point that out and risk offending her. Instead he merely shrugged and carried on in to the living room, not at all surprised to find his friend tangled up in several different colored balls of yarn. Nor was he surprised by the massive smile which greeted him upon entering the room. Hashirama never changed.

“Your brother wants to teach a child from my clan,” he said as he stepped around the tangled man without offering to help. Hashirama wriggled in a happy sort of way, lending him a disturbing similarity to Kagami.

“That’s amazing news! And you said yes? That makes two children from the other clans who have asked to train with him! I’m so happy I could just cry!”

“Please don’t.”

“Oh lighten up.” Hashirama chuckled at him as he carefully extracted one of his arms and began to pick at the strings looped around the rest of his body.

Madara watched him resignedly. “Do I want to know how you got like that?”

“Nope!”

“Alright.”

“This is what we always dreamed of, Madara. Right? Isn’t it? People from all different clans living together in harmony and peace and prosperity.” Pausing in his movements, he leveled Madara with an intense look more serious than was usually found in his repertoire. “Thank you, my friend. None of this would have been possible without both of us working together. And, I have to say, I’m proud of you for agreeing to let my brother care for one of your clan children. Usually I have to tear up on at least one of you just to get you to play nice.”

Madara was disgustingly touched to have someone tell him that they were proud of him for something – but the sentiment was drowned out by the hot wave of indignation he was much more familiar with. “We’re not children!”

His friend laughed and went back to pulling on yarn.

Allowing Tobirama to train Kagami was a decision he came to regret as soon as the Uchiha elders caught wind of it. He never seemed to remember just how annoying they could be until suddenly they were breathing down his neck and cornering him for yet another meeting full of boredom and irritation.

Their first few objections were at least semi-reasonable. It was rather in character for them to take insult to Kagami by-passing his entire clan in order to seek training with an outsider but Madara was quick to remind them that up until now they had done nothing to hide their contempt for the unknown half of Kagami’s parentage, openly calling him a bastard and doing very little to ensure he was given the same advantages as his pure-blooded cousins.

When they questioned his judgment in trusting anyone outside their clan with the care of any child he reminded them very pointedly that they were now a part of Konoha and that the point of peace was to trust your allies. Traditionalists to a man, they didn’t take that reminder very well but Madara cared little for hurting their precious, delicate feelings. Times were changing all around them and the Uchiha needed to be able to adjust just the same as the other clans did or else they would be swallowed – or worse, cast away like a broken part to let the rest of the machinery run on.

Beyond that their objections grew less and less sensible until one of the elders was grumbling under her breath that she had never approved of tattoos anyway and how could her own clan leader approve training from a tattooed upstart like Tobirama? It was at that point that Madara very firmly ended the meeting by stating that he had already made his decision. As they very clearly had no good reasons for him to overturn that decision, they were just going to have to live with it.

The only thing which seemed to appease them in any way was the agreement Madara had already come to which gave him the right to check in on his young clansman to make sure he was being treated well. As obvious as it was that they were only interested in sticking their overlarge noses in to Senju Tobirama’s business, perhaps to find a little dirt on the most reticent of their ancient enemies, Madara was just glad to have double the excuse for his own nosiness.

It was with the excuse of appeasing his elders that he followed Kagami to the training fields less than two weeks later and jutted his chin defiantly under the raised eyebrow his presence received.

“That took longer than I thought it would,” Tobirama murmured, crossing his arms.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that I expected you to come nosing around several days ago. My congratulations on holding out for this long. Could it be that you trust me?” Tobirama sent him a dry smirk before turning around to dismiss him entirely.

Madara fumed, both at the dismissal and for being so predictable. He had indeed been fighting with his patience in an effort not to seem too eager. His scowl went unnoticed as Kagami bounded forward and skidded to a halt, offering his sensei a quick bow before springing back up with way too much energy for how early in the morning it was.

“What are we doing today?” he demanded. “Are you gonna teach me how to throw a shuriken? Or maybe run like you do!? I can be fast too sensei!”

“Slow down, nugget,” Tobirama chastised him.

From where he was standing beside the man, Madara whipped his head around to stare at him. “Nugget?” He was bare moments away from snickering when Kagami shot him the happiest smile he had ever seen the boy wear.

“Because! Because sensei says I’m like a nugget of gold in a field of coal!”

Madara stared some more. That was surprisingly touching and sweet if he ignored the implied insult to his clan. Strangely, when he looked to the side to find Tobirama clearing his throat uncomfortably, his instinctive urge to jeer and make fun simply wasn’t there. Instead of trying to look inside himself to figure out why, Madara allowed the opportunity to slip him by just this once in favor of a simple grunt as he settled in to watch without comment.

Visibly grateful for the opportunity to sidestep his own embarrassment, Tobirama moved quickly in to demonstrating the proper stance for a set of warm up katas. The two of them went through the exercises several times while Tobirama explained why each of them were beneficial to flexibility, muscle gain, or even chakra control. Madara was slightly ashamed to admit that he’d never bothered to learn the reasons behind his favorite kata. All he knew was that they seemed to work best for him; it had never even occurred to him to wonder why.

It was the surprise of learning something he hadn’t even realized he should know already which encouraged him to follow Kagami to another lesson the next week. When he showed up again a mere two days later Madara had no excuse and so offered no explanation, only raised his eyebrow at Tobirama’s questioning look, daring the other man to tell him he wasn’t welcome.

Truthfully he found it strangely pleasant to see the way Tobirama acted around his two little students. Normally stoic and devoid of much expression, Tobirama seemed to blossom like a flower whenever he had the chance to spend a bit of time instructing Kagami and Torifu, answering their questions patiently and smiling ever so slightly when he was pleased with their progress. Madara also noted that Tobirama’s smiles were the single most potent motivation for either of the children and they tended to double their efforts after being graced with one.

Sitting in on their sessions had other, more unexpected benefits that Madara noticed over time as well. It turned out that wherever Tobirama happened to be was very likely to best hiding spot in the village whenever Hashirama was looking for him and fairly soon Madara began to bring some of his work with him, settling himself in a nearby tree and using the peaceful atmosphere to his advantage. It was also the only place he was guaranteed not to be bothered by his clan elders and that alone would have made spending so much of his time here worth it even if he weren’t finding some other enjoyment from it.

He became so much of a permanent fixture that he wasn’t sure any of the ragtag little trio even remembered he was there on the day a young girl who looked to be the same age as Kagami came crashing through the bushes with tears streaming down her face and a blank, lost expression that Madara knew better than he wished he did.

“Koharu!” Being the closest, Kagami hurried over to flutter uselessly in front of the girl. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Sensei is she hurt!?”

“Give her some room to breathe, nugget.” Tobirama gently guided his student away and knelt down before the girl, his eyes already scanning her form for obvious injuries. She didn’t seem to realize where she was or how she had got here but there were no obvious signs of blood. He had only just opened his mouth to ask if she was alright when she cast herself forward without warning, wrapping her arms about his neck and sobbing in to his fur collar, making him glad that he had worn it today on a whim.

Torifu hovered anxiously to the side, reaching out a hand to pat the newcomer on the back every so often while Kagami danced around the three of them in an effort to peek at her from all angles. Although it took a very long time, eventually the storm abated and Tobirama was able to extract himself to hold the child at length. He gave her another once over just to confirm the diagnosis that she was not actually injured before using his thumbs to wipe the tears from under her eyes. More fell to take their place.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Oh! Koharu! It’s Koharu!” Kagami skidded to a halt when his sensei turned a stern look at him.

“I did not ask you,” Tobirama scolded him before turning back to the girl. “Koharu is it? Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

Her small body shuddered with a fresh wave of sobs. “They’re dead! They’re both dead!”

“Who is?”

“My parents!”

As his two students immediately dissolved in to sympathetic babbles, Tobirama’s face twisted in to an expression of silent empathy. He said nothing when Koharu collapsed back in to his embrace, stroking her hair but offering no empty platitudes. Very likely she would hear enough of those in the days ahead.

“Koharu, that’s awful,” Kagami murmured, trying to stroke her hair too. “I don’t have a dad so…I know how much it sucks.” The poor boy didn’t seem to realize he’d said anything wrong until his friend tore herself away from the adult comforting her and spun around to punch him solidly in the nose.

“You don’t know anything! You’ve never had a dad! It’s different! I had a mom and a dad and I loved them but now they’re gone and they – they’re n-never coming back! Don’t pretend that you understand how I feel!”

“But Koharu–!”

“Stuff it, you idiot!”

“I was just trying to make it better!” Kagami lifted the hand not holding his nose in a helpless gesture but, although he did mean well – Kagami was incapable of meaning anything but well – his friend was clearly not in a state to appreciate his efforts.

With a face twisted by the horrible feelings welling up inside her, Koharu used both hands to shove Kagami away from herself as she screamed, “Nothing will ever be better again! Never!”

As quickly as she came, the girl turned and fled in to the forest, disappearing between the foliage until all that remained of her was the echo of her tears and the blood streaming down Kagami’s face. For a few moments there was utter silence, both of the children doing their best to process all that had happened while both of the adults kept quiet and allowed them to make of it what they would. Death was a topic that all shinobi must eventually become familiar with and, no matter that they had built an entire village just to keep the next generations safe, it still could not be afforded to coddle them. It was a lesson they needed to learn.

Surprisingly it was Torifu who spoke up first.

“Maybe we should go after her?” he suggested hesitantly. Madara snorted, glad that he was too far away for the child to hear his derision.

“That would not be a good idea right now, I’m afraid.” Tobirama beckoned Kagami to him as he spoke, lifting one hand and coating it with a weak glow of healing chakra. Madara had seen him heal bruises and scrapes, although most other injuries appeared to be beyond his skill. Likely all he could do now was numb the pain.

As he’d thought, Kagami came away from his treatment with his facial muscles more relaxed but with blood still trickling down. Tobirama offered him a gauze bandage to hold to the injury and urged him to head towards the hospital for treatment.

“Why can’t we go after her though?” he murmured, not leaving but for once in his life standing completely still.

“Because your friend has lost someone important to her and it would be best to give her some space for now. She will not be as she was before and it may take some time before she can accept what has happened, let alone accept offers of sympathy from her friends.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve never truly experienced loss, Kagami, so you cannot possibly be expected to understand what she is going through right now. Grief is a monster of its own class.”

“But I want to help! Can’t you explain it to me sensei? You can explain everything.”

Tobirama furrowed his brows in a look that was serious even for him, although he couldn’t be said to look displeased, only very deep in thought. After a few moments he very carefully knelt back down before his student, unclasping the collar of fur he had tied around his neck.

“Greif is like this collar,” he said.

Before either of his students or their forgotten spectator could ask what he meant, he settled the fur around Kagami’s shoulders and fastened it so that it would not fall off. Kagami stumbled back a step with a look of naked surprise on his face.

“Sensei, this is heavy! I never thought it would weigh so much.”

“Yes.” Tobirama sighed. “No one ever expects it to be as heavy as it is until they wear it themselves. Greif is a weight that presses down on you until you are forced to bow or to bear up under it. Over time you grow accustomed to how heavy it is and there are days when you almost forget that the weight is there until someone helps to lift it from your shoulders unexpectedly.”

Kagami watched him with rapt attention. Across the clearing, so did Madara.

“Sometimes you forget what it was like to live without grief and you think surely this means that you have healed, surely you are back to what you once were. And that”-Tobirama reached out to stroke the fur, causing the ends of a few strands to tickle Kagami’s skin-“is when the memories brush against you once more and you remember that you will never heal. Not fully.”

“Then…does that mean she’ll never get better?”

“No. She will get better. There will be days when she will fool the whole world in to thinking that everything is okay; there will even be days when everything is okay. But there will also be the days, all the way up until she is old and wrinkled, that she will remember what she once had and she will not be okay. That is what it feels like to live with grief, to lose someone close to you.”

While the young ones tried to process their lesson and Tobirama took his collar back, fastening it around his shoulders with a passive face, Madara crossed his arms tightly across his chest and tried to surreptitiously squeeze out the dark shadows gathering within. Visions of the brothers he had lost danced before his eyes, the mother who disappeared and never returned crowding his memory.

If he were given a month to prepare he was certain he would not have found a better way to explain grief to a child. If he were given a year he wasn’t certain he could have come up with anything to explain what Tobirama had so easily demonstrated: the dark and heavy weight of losing someone precious.

They’d had two other brothers, he remembered suddenly. As clear as though it had been yesterday, he recalled the way Hashirama had been crying on the day they met, mourning the death of a younger sibling, and Madara looked across the clearing now to furrow his brows at Tobirama. The younger man had never struck him as the type to mourn someone so long gone, to linger on his grief. He seemed more the type to bury his memories with the dead and move on.

It appeared he still had a lot to learn about Senju Tobirama.

Seeing as no one would be in the mood to concentrate on their training now, Tobirama sighed and rose to his feet, laying a hand on both of his students’ heads.

“Come. We’ll pass by the tower and ask my brother to fix up your nose, Kagami, and then I think we would all feel better which a bit of lunch in our bellies.” After a moment of hesitation he looked over his shoulder to where Madara was perched. “Open offer.”

Nearly falling from his branch in shock, Madara covered it by slipping down and trailing after the sad little parade Tobirama and his students made.

Lunch was mostly quiet but despite the morbid scene they had all just witnessed Madara took an odd sort of comfort from sitting beside Tobirama in something close to resembling comradery. He resolved never to let Hashirama find out about this, however; he didn’t want to have to listen to his friend cry over it as he surely would. Three and a half years after their two clans had come together and only now were the two of them finally learning to get along properly.

Madara eyed the man beside him and before he could stop the thought he found himself wondering about the mark on his own skin and the tattoos which covered Tobirama’s.

He wondered why he cared that he might never have the chance to see if he could truly find himself hidden among twisting red lines. 

Chapter 3

No one was really surprised when Tobirama’s team of two grew to three after the incident Madara had witnessed. Orphaned so suddenly and without a strong clan of her own to help find her way, Koharu turned to the first strong adult figure who had proven he would care for her. Considering he was still expected to pull his weight and fulfil his duties to keep the village running, he did pretty well raising three wayward kids without letting any of them feel forgotten in any way.

Although it wasn’t strictly necessary – hadn’t really been for quite some time – Madara continued to sit in on their training whenever he needed a bit of uninterrupted time to himself. The only thing different now was that on the days Tobirama took his kids out for lunch or tea afterwards he began to invite Madara along. The Akimichi and the Utatane both regarded him warily at first, no doubt having heard terror stories of him from their parents, but after a few meals in which he did little besides ignore Kagami’s chatter and haltingly converse with Tobirama they eventually got used to him.

There was a time when he would have been insulted not to be seen as a threat by young children he could squish like little bugs. On the day he realized that he actually felt a little warm to have their trust he dragged Izuna out to the nearest practice field right away and beat the stupid mushy feelings back by sheer force.

It seemed the most natural thing when Torifu showed up to practice one day with another little boy wandering after him wearing a hopeful expression. Hiruzen was the heir of the Sarutobi clan and the son of Sasuke Sarutobi, a very well respected man even though they had only joined Konoha’s peace a mere month after the Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi. The boy turned out to be a quick learner, a proper son of his line, and Tobirama welcomed him in to the fold as easily as he had all the others.

Madara watched it all happen with a shaking head, glad of the distance he was allowed to maintain.  He was prepared to admit to himself that he was impressed with how well Tobirama handled all those children but it wasn’t something he himself wanted to get involved in. Kids had never been his forte. Just because his lifelong dream was to protect them didn’t mean he wanted to help take care of them. Building a village was enough in his books.

And he was certain their parents would object to him setting them on fire, even if it was in the name of learning.

He did find a certain amount of pride, however, in his observation that the child Tobirama seemed closest to was a member of his own clan. Although the man was fair to each of them and never showed favoritism when they were all together, it was Kagami who could be found poking around his office in the tower, Kagami whom he most often escorted home, and Kagami who Madara frequently had to drag away from Tobirama’s house on the fringes of the Senju compound as he was marching his way over to do today.

Dragging the wayward child home wasn’t technically his duty but after passing by a few clansmen gossiping about the situation Madara figured he might as well gather his own proof that there was nothing untoward happening before anyone else thought to. Honestly, he wondered, what did they even think was happening when those two spent time together?

Oh no, education and a proper role model. How awful.

He was admittedly a bit surprised when Kagami answered the door instead of the actual resident, although not much. Most likely Tobirama had felt his chakra approaching and sent the boy over.

“Madara-sama,” Kagami greeted him. “Am I in trouble? Is sensei in trouble? But we didn’t even do anything!”

“Calm down. No one’s in trouble. I’m setting rumors to rest, if you must know. Am I to be allowed in this time?”

“Sensei! Can he come in?” A muffled voice called back from somewhere deeper in the home, prompting Kagami to beam up at his clan head and wave him inside. “I’m helping sensei look for one of his old sword. He says he’ll let me train with it! So cool!”

Madara couldn’t say he had ever given much thought to what the inside of Tobirama’s home would look like. Before peace was made he might have imagined walls dripping with weaponry and the heads of his enemies mounted on pikes in every corner. After getting to know him slightly better over the years, if asked, Madara would probably have guessed that Tobirama’s home would be clean to the point of sterility, everything in its place and obsessively organized just as his desk was in the Tower.

What he never would have guessed was exactly what he found: a mess.

Actually, ‘mess’ did not properly encapsulate the disaster he found inside. There wasn’t much room to move between the massive stacks of books and paper, flammable material as far as the eye could see. Strange, he thought, for someone who spent so many years at war with a clan of fire users. He spotted Tobirama down the hall, weaving through the confusion with practiced ease, and made his way in that direction as carefully as possible; a single foot out of place could bring down a veritable landslide of parchment and he really didn’t want to listen to the yelling.

Kagami, he noticed, was bouncing ahead of him with a practiced effortlessness. Clearly the young lad had visited his sensei often enough to grow familiar with the maze he lived in. Madara wondered if the visits were solely educational in nature or if Kagami was the only one willing to come in here to pull Tobirama’s head out of the ink and back in to the real world. Anyone who lived like this clearly didn’t have very many visitors.

“Did you leave it in your room, maybe?” Kagami asked from where he stood in what might have been a kitchen if not for the five heavy tomes resting in the sink and the open, unplugged fridge filled with oddly shaped bits of machinery.

“Of course not,” Tobirama said. “My room gets a bit messy sometimes; I’d lose it in there.”

Both eyes twitching, Madara wrestled with himself not to comment on that statement. He forced himself to simply forge ahead until he had joined Tobirama in the main room then stood as still as possible to avoid upsetting anything.

All around him was just more of the same. Books stacked upon books, folders and binders and mountains of loose paper. Inkwells and brushes dotted the chaos at random intervals, often stuck inside empty beakers or shoved between the gears of odd sculptures or figures or – actually Madara had no idea what those things were. Curiosity itched under his skin but in order to get to any of them he would need to stick himself to the wall with chakra just to avoid making a mess.

Well, more of a mess.

“It’s not in the pantry,” Kagami said, sticking his head around the corner. “But I did find those explosive tags you said went missing.”

“Well, that’s something.” Their host didn’t look all that concerned about explosives having been lost or discovered in his home. Madara’s eyes began to twitch again.

“This place is…full,” he caught his own outburst just in time. “What is all this stuff?” Up on his toes to feel around the top of a bookcase, Tobirama cast a preoccupied gaze around the room.

“Research projects. Notes for my experiments. Paperwork for the clan. Technically I’m Head now that Brother is Hokage, although our people still bring their issues to him anyway out of habit. He’s nicer, I suppose.” He shrugged and dropped back down to his heels before moving over to another bookshelf and reaching up to search on top of that one.

Despite the fact that he agreed with that – Hashirama was indeed the more cheerful of the two siblings – it didn’t sit quite right with Madara how casually it was said, as though it was only natural and correct for his entire clan to pass him over for a duty that should belong to him. And for such a trivial reason as well! Madara was well aware that most of his clan preferred Izuna’s company to his own yet none of them had ever hesitated to come directly to him with their problems.

He was pulled from his thoughts by Kagami squawking in panic and disappearing under the collapse of an overloaded bookshelf. Tobirama watched with a passive eye.

“Anything hit you on the head?” he asked mildly.

“No. But I found my kunai holster!”

“We’ve been looking for that too,” Tobirama directed his statement to Madara, who slowly shook his head from side to side.

“How can you live like this?”

Pausing to give him a look of confusion, Tobirama shoved his arm in behind a bulging cabinet stuffed with binders. “Live like what?”

“In this mess! There’s no room to live in here!”

“Ah. Well, I do little with my time besides work, so I suppose that would explain it. I don’t have much else to give my attention to. Aha!” Lighting up with a quiet sound of triumph, he extracted his arm to reveal the sword held in his grasp. It was covered in dust but underneath the dullness of neglect was a well-preserved scabbard covered in old scrollwork and a hilt which tugged at some very uncomfortable memories in Madara’s mind.

Kagami’s head popped out of the mess at his teacher’s exclamation, holding both arms up and letting out an excited, “Woohoo! You found it! Now I get to learn super cool sword moves!”

Madara crossed his arms and hovered at the edges of the room while Kagami chattered on about all the things he was going to learn and Tobirama produced a rag from who-knows-where to clean off the treasure he had unburied. Something about the other man’s words bothered him, although he didn’t fully understand why. He didn’t even understand why any of this mattered to him at all, actually. It seemed that somewhere along the lines of his curious observations he’d been dragged in to the vortex that was Senju Tobirama and begun to care almost without noticing.

Waiting for a moment to speak took a while. Kagami was a fairly excitable kid on the best of days and being promised extra training from his favorite person sent his energy levels through the roof. His younger clansman was already dancing around what small amount of space was available, swinging an imaginary sword at equally imaginary enemies and crowing with triumph every time he slayed a new victim. Another stack of books wobbled dangerously when he bumped them with his hip, forcing Kagami to abandon the slaughter and wrap both arms around them. When the coast was clear he stepped away to look back and forth between the two adults with a sheepish smile.

“Perhaps you should be more careful in someone else’s home,” Madara grumbled.

“I’m gonna be an awesome shinobi and grow up to be a hero! I’ll be able to kill anybody I want!”

“That is not how I would describe a hero, nugget,” Tobirama gently reprimanded his student. He handed the now clean sword and scabbard over then wound his way towards the next room as he spoke over his shoulder. “Simply being stronger than your opponents does not a hero make.”

Madara couldn’t help but privately agree with that. If strength were all the qualifiers needed then there would be heroes innumerable roaming the land, keeping the people safe. Wars would be a thing of the past.

“Well then what does it mean to be a hero? I thought it was just…you know…being super strong and saving the day and…maybe there’s a damsel in distress?”

“You’ve been reading too many of my brother’s novels. I thought I told you to just set them on fire if you found any in here.”

“I know! I know! You didn’t answer my question!”

Tobirama paused in the doorway and turned halfway, although he did not look up. His eyes turned distant as he contemplated how to phrase the answer his student wanted and Madara frowned, surprised that he was actually giving it so much thought. It was a simple enough question.

“A hero is someone who moves forward, I suppose. Not just a person who is strong, without fear or doubt, but a person who goes on in spite of those things and gets the job done anyway. Bad people can feel these things too but what separates a hero from a villain is that, at the end of the day, the hero’s actions will have made the world a better place - even if only in some small way.”

Finished speaking, he reached out and pulled something off a random pile as though to pretend the conversation had never happened and make himself look busy. Madara continued to stare while Kagami bounced up on to his toes and clasped his hands together.

“So just like you, sensei! You’re a hero!”

“No.” Tobirama’s voice came sharp, dropping a startled Kagami back on to his heels. “A hero succeeds in his efforts to make the world better. If they weren’t able to do the right thing then the world would not remember them so fondly. I am no hero; I’m just me.”

“Well you’re my hero,” Kagami retorted stubbornly. Tobirama lifted his head finally to stare at his student, eyes wide with something uncertain in their depths. Madara watched the man shift uncomfortably and wondered just what was going through his mind. When at last he spoke again it was in a quiet tone, his words shadowed by whatever dark thoughts were clouding his expression.

“Perhaps you should find a better man than me to call your hero, nugget.”

Cautiously, almost as though he were questioning his own movements or expecting to be pushed away, he reached out one of his hands and laid it gently atop his student’s head. Immediately Kagami lit up like the northern lights, happy to have even a scrap of affection from his chosen role model. Then Tobirama turned back to the doorway and slipped off in to the next room.

While his student resumed his game of make believe, now fully equipped with an actual sword, Madara wondered if he would ever learn something new about Tobirama which did not surprise him. Around every corner there seemed to be some new bit of information which threw his entire understanding of the man out the window, forcing him to look from new angles. How had he gone from pretending this man didn’t exist just to keep the peace to getting so attached that seeing Tobirama down made himself feel down as well?

Setting that thought aside to dissect later, Madara watched Kagami bounce around until he was forced to step in and stop the boy from enthusiastically chopping a wooden cabinet in half with his new sword.

“That is not a toy,” he admonished. “Certainly not something to be played with indoors.”

“You’re right! I’m gonna go show Torifu!”

“Use the practice dummies, if you must, but under no circumstances are you and those friends of yours to start mock sword battles until you have at least some instruction on how to wield that thing.” Madara glared until Kagami nodded, obviously disappointed that his plans had been seen through so easily, but the boy was smiling again in an instant while rushing towards the door.

“Bye sensei! Don’t forget to go get dinner!”

Tobirama’s voice mumbled indistinctly from wherever he had disappeared to. After watching to make sure that Kagami made it out of the house without further incident, Madara very carefully picked his way over to the doorway where Tobirama had disappeared and looked around until he had located his host.

He found the man rummaging through the massive amount of paper covering what might have at one point been a dining room table. Even underneath the table there wasn’t any space, all of it filled up with stacks of books on subjects ranging from the cardiovascular system of the human body to the topography of the Land of Iron. At the moment Tobirama seemed to be most interested in shuffling stacks of parchment from side to side and peeking in behind them all.

“Did you chase my student away?” he asked. Madara huffed.

“Of course not. This isn’t my home to chase someone out of. Although I can’t see why you let him bother you in your personal space so often.”

“I only have so much time before he outgrows me. Call me sentimental but I prefer to enjoy what time I have.” Tobirama shrugged and moved another pile, wrinkling his nose when he didn’t find whatever it was he was looking for.

“Sentimental? You?” Madara snorted. “What do you mean outgrow you?”

He noted the way Tobirama’s movements stuttered and the way he seemed to almost be making a point of not looking back at his guest, answering in a quiet voice. “They all do eventually – outgrow their teacher, that is. Someday I will have taught him all that can be learned without practical experience and he will have no more need of me. It happens with all students; nothing to make a big fuss over.”

“Well it’s not as if he’s never going to speak to you again once he no longer requires a full time teacher.”

“If he follows the pattern of my other students, it is more likely than you think.”

“Other students? What other students?”

“Before the village was formed it was one of my duties to train the younger generations of my clan. Now with less people needed on the front line so much and patrols split between all of the different clans there are more people available to teach the children. I have other things which require my attention so that duty no longer falls to me these days. Kagami and Torifu’s request that I take them on as students was quite unexpected.”

There was something in the way he spoke, a careful detachment which Madara recognized all too well, that said Tobirama cared a lot more than he was trying to let on. Suppressing emotions was something he was very familiar with and he happened to know that it usually went hand in hand with pain – the desire to hide it or to hide from the possibility of feeling it.

“Are you telling me that none of your previous students ever visit you? Speak to you? Seek your opinion on something?”

“Why should they? I am no longer their teacher.”

Madara frowned at him, irritated and offended in a way he preferred not to examine. With a huff he reached over and caught the back of Tobirama’s shirt, hauling him up out of the paper maze he was half buried in, shifting his grip to the man’s sleeve and turning for the entrance hall.

“Come on. We’re leaving.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You can beg all you like but you’re still coming with me.”

“Where are we going?” Tobirama seemed suspiciously willing to go where Madara was leading him and that was just another thing which Madara prudently choose not to focus on right now. When he answered with little more than a typical ‘you’ll see’ and received no more protests it spoke to a strange sort of trust which he wasn’t sure he had earned, let alone deserved.

Nevertheless he refused to hesitate now that they were already stumbling out the front door. Several streets away Madara noticed that he was still holding Tobirama’s sleeve and that his companion hadn’t said anything about being dragged around basically by the hand. He did his best to convince himself it was only that the shock had rendered Tobirama speechless because the thought that it could be for any other reason made him feel a confusing combination of hot and cold he couldn’t even begin to decipher.

Knowing how jilted and awkward he sounded whenever he tried to make pointless small talk, Madara opted not to say anything until they had made their way across the village and deep in to the heart of the Uchiha district. He finally allowed them to come to a stop in front of a little bakery marked by a sign with a picture of a pie burned in to the wood rather than carved.

“I hope you like sweets,” he murmured, tugging once more to drag the other man in with him.

“Not most of them,” Tobirama replied in a distracted voice. “What are we doing here?”

“Susumu-baa-san!” Ignoring him for the moment, Madara slammed the door of the little bakery open and hollered in to the empty looking interior. “Susumu-baa-san! I’m hungry you old bat; feed me!”

From behind the counter there came a sweet little chortle. “Oh ho ho, hungry are we? I’ll feed you burnt pie shells if you don’t stop calling me grandmother!” As soon as she had finished speaking her head popped up from behind the counter and Madara had a moment to thoroughly enjoy the stunned expression on Tobirama’s face.

Susumu was the tiniest woman Madara had ever met, diagnosed with a form of dwarfism he had never learned to pronounce, but he had yet to see her let that get in the way of living her life. Her confidence was as big as she was small and she wasn’t above using her size to let people underestimate her, usually followed quickly by putting them in their place with more violence than should ever be possible from someone no taller than a child who hadn’t hit double digits yet.

“Oh and who is this little morsel you’ve brought with you?” Susumu hopped up on to a little stool to lean over the counter, narrowing her eyes at a flustered-looking Tobirama. “Unless these old eyes of mine deceive me, you must be Senju Tobirama! What in sage’s name is a delightful little snack like yourself doing hanging around with a soggy old crust like Mada-kun?”

“I am not a soggy crust!”

“Uh…” Tobirama blinked, clearly unsure how to react to being called a snack. Luckily for him, Madara allowed that one to pass without making a big deal about it.

“Susumu-baa-san was my sensei when I was young. Everything I know about warfare she taught me – painfully, I might add.”

“Ay, you bled more than a few times under my tutelage Mada-kun but you never once died, did you?”

“Didn’t I tell you to feed me, you old bat?”

While Susumu waved a thick wooden spoon around threateningly and Madara dodged, both of them spouting vitriol even as they grinned openly at each other, Tobirama could do nothing but stare at them. Madara allowed him a few undisturbed moments to let the reason he had brought the man here sink in.

Not everyone forgot where they came from once they reached the top and not all students abandoned their teachers once they had learned all they could. The Uchiha were taught to venerate their elders and the teachings they had passed on. After all, without those teachings the next generation would not survive passed their first enemy encounter and there would be no one left to carry on the Uchiha name. He wanted Tobirama to know that Kagami would never outgrow him, even if all his other students did, that the boy he had chosen would always choose him in return. Putting that in to words, however, would have mortified them both. Showing him was much easier.

As they bickered Madara watched his old sensei disappear behind her counter, ducking inside the glass case for a few moments and coming back out with a tray of goodies. Tarts and muffins and gourmet donuts all rested against each other, each in several delicious looking flavors, and the second it hit the wooden countertop Tobirama snapped out of his daze to zero in on one side of the tray.

“Looks like someone knows exactly what he wants. Good, good. I like that.” Susumu slid the goodies closer and produced two small cardboard containers. “Well go on then, take a few.”

“How much?” Tobirama asked carefully, his eyes not moving from his target. She snorted at him.

“Don’t insult me. You’ll take them for free, of course.”

“Are you certain?”

Madara snatched up his own container and went straight for the sourdough donuts. “Quit acting like you’re a polite member of society and just take some free food, Senju. Don’t you know how to take advantage of old ladies?”

He grinned and dodged another swipe from Susumu while carefully noting that Tobirama choose the blueberry flavor of both tarts and muffins, avoiding the donuts altogether. Why he might need that information was beyond him but he still took a moment to tuck it away in the back of his mind before clapping his hand down on the man’s shoulder and looking over at his old teacher.

“Always a pleasure,” he told her smugly, rattling his box of donuts. Susumu huffed and waggled a finger.

“What a rotten boy, using a Genteel lady for food like this. You owe me a nice evening out for tea. Come by sometime when you actually have time to talk to this lonely biddy!”

“Genteel. Ha.” Still, Madara hitched up his spoils and acquiesced with a nod, steering Tobirama out of the bakery as he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll bring you tea sometime next week, sensei. Probably after my meeting with the elders. You can listen to me rant about how annoying they are.”

“I look forward to it, brat.”

He shook his head and pushed Tobirama out on to the street, immediately ripping open his box to liberate one of his favorite treats. Susumu was infamous among their clan for her ferocity in battle but she was also well-known in more than one marketplace as an incredible baker. Rather than taking the time to savor it Madara shoved the whole thing in his mouth and groaned at the taste, chewing it with relish as he led the way back through the streets of his clan’s district.

At his side Tobirama remained silent until they reached the gates leading out in to the rest of the village, where both of them paused a little awkwardly.

“Why did you bring me here?” his companion asked. Madara huffed.

“If you can’t figure that out then you’re not half the genius everyone seems to think you are.” He sent the man a smug look, unrepentant in the face of the flat expression he got in return.

After the flicker of irritation had cleared Tobirama gave him a slow nod of thanks, holding his gift tightly in both hands, and Madara had the impression that the man was resisting the urge to bow formally. Just the thought of such a gesture from this person was embarrassing enough to make him avert his gaze.

Neither of them bothered with goodbyes as they went their separate ways. Satisfied that he had seen enough today to put his clansmen’s worries to rest, Madara turned towards home to enjoy the rest of his afternoon in the comfort of his own living room. The next time someone pretended to be worried for Kagami’s safety he would have his own testimony prepared and waiting to disprove their claims; if they wanted to stir trouble with people they were supposed to be at peace with then they were going to have to come up with something better than their usual obvious lies.

Relaxing was not to be, however, as he walked in to his living room only to find Izuna there with a bowl of grapes and one of Madara’s novels open across his lap.

Having lived in the same room for their entire childhood, the two of them had both been ecstatic to each have separate homes when the village was first built. Being able to claim so much space as their own had sounded wonderful to a couple of boys who barely managed not to run each other over every five minutes and at first it had been just as wonderful as they always imagined.

Within a month they were both lonely. Neither of them had ever learned to live on their own and as much as they had hated living nearly on top of each other before it was just as hard to live without each other. But there were still times when Madara wished he had the heart to insist upon his own privacy; times like now when he could see the tension in Izuna’s shoulders which told him that the younger man had been lying in wait for him. Whatever it was, he regretted that his good mood was likely about to be ruined.

“I’m not sorry for whatever I did and I am definitely going to do it again,” he announced without preamble, marching through to the kitchen to put his donuts away. No response came. When he came back in to the living room Izuna was still sitting there with his bowl of grapes, popping one of them in his mouth with absolutely no expression on his face.

“Well, it’s not so much something that you’ve done as something you’re doing. And I don’t need you to be sorry, I just need you to explain.”

“Explain what?” Madara sank cautiously down in to his favorite armchair.

“What is going on between you and Tobirama?”

Struggling to keep his face straight, Madara ground out, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you could be implying. What do you mean by ‘going on’ between us?”

“Brother, don’t play dumb. It suits you too well.”

“Hey!”

Izuna shifted the bowl of grapes so he could lean forward and pin Madara in place with both eyes. “Nii-san, what are you doing? You’ve been spending all your free time with him lately and I don’t think you realize how often you’ve been bringing him up in conversation. It’s like you’re obsessed.” He paused to bring his ponytail over one shoulder and tug anxiously at the end. “I’m not judging or anything, I just want to know what’s going on before the rumor mills spit out the wrong conclusion. Are you two…dating?”

“What!? Dating!? Me and Tobirama dating? How could – that’s not even – why would you–!” Madara continued to splutter as Izuna regarded him thoughtfully, sitting back once more to shake his head.

“Oh shut up,” he said. Madara’s jaw snapped shut.

“You can’t just say things like that to people without warning!”

“Answer the question properly, Nii-san. What are you doing with Tobirama?”

Lifting one finger as though to make a point, Madara hesitated before dropping it again. “I have no idea.” When Izuna gave him a stern look he scowled back. “I don’t! Look, I found out something important that I didn’t know before and it made me – let’s say curious.”

“Curious enough to start spending your every waking moment with an asshole like Senju Tobirama?”

“He’s not an asshole! Don’t look at me like that! I’m a grown man and I am allowed to change my opinion if I uncover new information on the subject!”

“Ugh. You’re starting to sound like he does when he goes off about all his dumb experiments.”

“Tobirama’s experiments are for the betterment of this village and everyone who lives in it – including you! So you would benefit from improving that negative attitude. I have it on good authority that the jutsus he invented have saved your life on more than one occasion.”

Izuna peeled back his lips in disgust and looked away from a moment, avoiding that accusation altogether. He couldn’t refute it anyway; he was the one who had come home griping about how irritated and disappointed in himself he’d been for needing Tobirama, of all people, to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. It seemed he didn’t appreciate the reminder.

Once he had composed himself Izuna turned back to his brother and made an effort to speak more calmly, less like he was making any accusations of his own.

“Alright let’s just break this down to the bare bones then. Would you say that it is still true that you hate the guy?”

“No.” Madara answered quickly enough to startle himself and flushed but straightened his back to face the next question bravely.

“Would you call him a friend?”

Giving that a serious moment of thought, Madara breathed, “I would, yes.”

“Okay. Weird, but moving on. You deny that you two are dating but…would you like to?”

Madara stared at his younger brother and worked his jaw soundlessly, unable to answer. His brain ran a mile a minute as all the things he had been trying not to think about and putting off to deal with later came rushing back to him all at once, the protectiveness and the empathy he had been ignoring because he wasn’t ready to deal with what it might imply. Not too long ago he’d been marveling over how attached he had become but facing the truth of that now was more terrifying than he’d thought it would be.

From his spot on the sofa Izuna watched his older brother struggle, his frown growing more and more concerned by the moment. Madara wasn’t sure whether it was concern for a sibling’s health or consternation that there might actually be romantic feelings for the man who almost kill him but he didn’t want to know.

Eventually Izuna’s curiosity because too much for him and he asked the one question Madara had been hoping they could gloss over.

“What was the thing you found that made you so curious?” he asked. Madara breathed deeply and met his eyes, allowing his most precious person to see the conflict within him.

“He thinks we’re soulmates. Tobirama might be my soulmate.”

Izuna’s jaw nearly hit the floor and Madara thought silently that, even after all the time he’d had to get used to the idea, he still sort of agreed with that sentiment.

Chapter 4

Notes:

Good thing I have an alarm set on my phone because I'd forgotten I was supposed to update this today. Whoops.

After the talk with his brother that night, a conversation which lasted well passed the midnight hour, Madara wasn’t sure if he was less confused or not but he certainly did feel calmer. Hashing things out with his sibling always had a way of helping him regain his equilibrium.

Finally facing the fact head on that Tobirama might be his soulmate also left him feeling much more open to the concept and it showed in the way he interacted with the man. Tobirama himself seemed to notice the shift in their strange relationship, although he obviously had no clue what had caused it, but Madara noted that he also made no mention of it. In fact, Tobirama had never once questioned him as he very gradually steered the two of them closer and closer together

As much as he appreciated not having his actions questioned, it did make him wonder what reasons were behind the other man’s silence. Was he hoping that if he didn’t question things they would continue to grow closer or did he simply see nothing to question at all? If he could be friends with Hashirama then it wasn’t all that big of a leap for him to be friends with Tobirama as well if one discounted the bad blood surrounding his rivalry with Izuna. But he did wonder if the other had any specific hopes or expectations for their relationship – romantic, platonic, or otherwise.

Whatever the case, Madara decided that it was better not to rock the boat for now. At the moment things were more peaceful than ever between them and he would prefer to keep it that way for as long as possible. There was also the small detail of the curiosity growing inside him with every hour they spent together, hungrier by the day to learn more and more about Tobirama. It was like an insatiable flame he didn’t want to put out. There was no harm in getting to know each other, he thought, nothing wrong with making new friends. And the more time they spent together the more something inside of him asked if it would really be so bad for something more to grow between them.

Now that Izuna had put the idea in his head it refused to be ignored but it wasn’t as scary as it might have been a mere year ago. For most of his life he had regarded Tobirama as little more than a monster. Now that he had gotten to know the man Madara felt drawn to him in a way he’d never experienced before and it was a strangely addictive feeling, every moment spent together a pleasant warmth or muted thrill.

Perched in the same tree he’d been occupying for months now, Madara observed the gentle way Tobirama led Torifu through a set of hand seals and the firm manner in which he reprimanded Koharu for not paying attention to her own. The relationship between the two of them was not the only one changing in subtle ways. Ever since he’d taken the other to meet with his own sensei, Tobirama’s teaching had become different in a way Madara simply could not put his finger on. It was somehow more relaxed though he remained as strict as ever, somehow more confident though he had never lacked for such before, but no matter the words he used Madara was able to say one thing with confidence. The little ragtag group below him was more than a motley crew now; they were a true unit.

“Perhaps if Madara would be so kind as to join us for a demonstration?” Tobirama’s voice broke in to his musings, drawing his attention over to see Kagami looking up at him with big shining eyes.

“Mn? What do you want, nugget?”

“Only sensei gets to call me that!” Kagami’s shiny eyes disappeared beneath furrowed brows and a shaking fist, which Tobirama pushed down with a shake of his head.

“They wanted to see what happens when my Water Dragon meets an Uchiha Grand Fireball, which my student here has not yet mastered.” He patted Kagami on the head with just enough force to cause the boy to stagger without taking his eyes off of Madara.

“I would be interested in seeing that myself.”

Madara hopped down from his favorite branch and walked over to scrub his own knuckles in to the top of Kagami’s head, enjoying the squeals. It had been a long time since he’d been able to do the same to Izuna and he’d never realized how much he missed such childish acts of sibling violence.

“Just a demonstration of the jutsu then or were you inviting me to spar with you?”

“You think you could beat me?” Tobirama quirked up one side of his mouth. “My brother and I have very different fighting styles. I don’t know if you could handle my speed.”

“I can handle anything you have to offer.”

Only after the words were already passed his lips did he realize the double entendre and it took effort not to flush in embarrassment as he realized he was almost flirting – accidentally of course. His salvation was in the way Tobirama twitched visibly, dropping the subject immediately and averting his eyes.

“A question for another day, perhaps. For now just a quick demonstration should do well enough.”

“Hn.” Madara did nothing more than grunt in reply, not trusting himself to speak again lest his mouth allow any other traitorous words to slip out.

Before they could do anything they had to wait while the children all scrambled out of the way, retreating to the edges of the forest lining their favorite practice field and hunkering down like a row of attentive meerkats. Then they had to wait another moment as a scuffle broke out between Hiruzen and Koharu which ended with the later punching the former in the arm.

After backing up to an appropriate distance, the two of them took stance and Tobirama signaled for him to do his part. No thought was needed to go through the seals; Madara had been throwing Grand Fireballs since he was half the age of these mites and the process was well carved in to his muscle memory by now. He gathered his chakra, brought hand to mouth, and sent a massive sphere of fire rocketing across the field. Tobirama hadn’t mentioned how big he should make it but he knew the size Izuna usually preferred and so he went with what he knew would at least be familiar. If the man couldn’t handle it then he would not have survived for so long.

Tobirama reacted instantly, as a shinobi of his caliber should. His own seals were much less flashy but no less rote and in seconds he was dragging water out of thin air to create a long sinuous dragon. The creature’s maw opened to catch Madara’s fireball like a tasty snack, sending clouds of steam exploding in all directions, and almost against his will Madara found himself laughing with delight. He might not be the genius at inventing them that Tobirama was but he did enjoy pitting two jutsu against each other just to see what might happen.

Clapping erupted from their spectators. Torifu seemed like he was trying not to look frightened while Kagami had his chest puffed out with family pride. Hiruzen had a look of focus on his face, studying the jutsu with more interest than a boy should have who had been born with an earth affinity. Madara would have given them a smug look if he thought they could see him through all the steam but as it was the only reason he could see them was his active Sharingan.

“Thank you for your help,” Tobirama’s voice told him from several meters away. When Madara looked over at him his companion was staring in the right direction at least, if not at exactly the right spot, no doubt relying on his senses at the moment.

“I could have made it bigger,” he felt compelled to point out. A chuckle answered him.

“Yes, I’m sure you could.”

He meant to make some other snarky reply to that but his enhanced vision spotted something then which captured his attention: a head of dark hair and two beady little eyes peering out at them all from inside a bush at the edge of the field at Tobirama’s back. With the steam still clearing he was sure no one else had spotted what looked to be yet another child – and it was obvious that they in turn could see nothing either.

As Madara narrowed his eyes in that direction, a small head popped up to reveal a young boy with a scar on his chin glaring hotly in the general direction of their group. Using the cover so conveniently provided, he made his way over to where Tobirama could see him and spoke in a low voice that was further muffled by the other children’s excited chatter.

“Were you aware that we have another spectator at the south end of the field?” he asked. Tobirama’s lips turned down from the pleased smile he had been wearing and melted in to a pinched expression.

“Yes. I’d been hoping he would leave on his own.”

“And who is ‘he’?”

Tobirama ran a hair through his hair, ruffling the now damp strands and creating a startlingly attractive effect which Madara couldn’t help admiring. “A child of the Shimura clan. He’s requested that I train him with the others and is not taking my ‘no’ very gracefully. Everywhere I go these last few days he follows and demands I reconsider.”

“I assume you have a good reason for denying him?”

“The others asked; he demanded. At first I was making a lesson of waiting until he learned to ask more politely. But from the few short conversations I’ve had with him since then I’ve picked up several bad feelings which cause me to hesitate further. I hate to think ill of any child but there is…a darkness in him that makes me wary.”

“Giving up on him before you’ve even tried?” Madara asked. “That doesn’t seem like you. From what I know of you, you seem more likely to train him just to turn him towards the light, as it were.”

“Normally yes, that is an uncomfortably accurate description of what I might do. I almost said yes when he asked me, no matter how rude he was, just on looks alone. His scar; it looks a great deal like the scar one of my brothers used to have. In a different place, perhaps, but close enough that when I looked at him I very nearly saw Kawarama.”

Madara blinked. He never would have expected Tobirama to share such an intimate detail with him. Not even Hashirama spoke much of the brothers he had lost, not since the time Madara found him crying over one of them on the day they met. Despite the subject matter he felt a little swell of pride for being trusted with show of vulnerability like this. He knew all too well how reticent Tobirama tended to be even amongst his precious people.

As the steam began to clear at last he leaned in closer, taking final advantage of their fading cover. “I have never told him, he was too young to remember, but Izuna is the absolute spitting image of our eldest brother. If you say that you have good reason to deny the child then I believe you.” He smirked at the other man’s startled look.

“Thank you,” Tobirama told him, stretching out the syllables as though unsure what else to say and trying to fill up the absence of other words. He was saved by his students leaping to their feet and pointing across the field.

“Hey it’s Danzo!”

“Danzo! Hey! Over here!”

“What are you doing in the bushes?”

Rubbing at his nose tiredly, Tobirama heaved a quiet sigh, clearly annoyed that he would have to deal with this child yet again. Madara snickered mercilessly.

“You have too many admirers these days,” he said. Tobirama narrowed both eyes at him.

“Go set something on fire, Uchiha. I do not have admirers. I have prospective students.”

Students who were, at the moment, charging across the field to meet their other friend halfway and chatter at him like excited ducklings. Their voices all jumbled over each other and Kagami bounded around the edges of the group with his never-ending energy while the newcomer stood in the center of them all with a petulant scowl.

Madara happily used their distraction for a little extra time to tease his companion.

“Don’t tell me you don’t see how many eyes follow you on the streets?” His smirk widened when Tobirama’s snort of derision was ruined by a light flush.

“You mean when I walk by the members of your clan and they watch me suspiciously just in case I try to stab them once or twice in passing?” Tobirama lifted an eyebrow, to which Madara tutted playfully.

“Of course not. I’m referring to the men and women who stare at your ass every time you come to work without wearing your armor.”

“I–! No one is staring at my ass!”

Laughing and stepping passed the man, Madara clapped him on the shoulder and murmured, “If you say so. Good thing, if they’re not. I’d hate to have to beat so many people off of you.”

Then before he could flush at his own words he hurried away towards the edge of the field to hop back up in to his favorite tree and observe from afar. Any amusement he took from seeing the way Tobirama had frozen in place was tarnished by his absolute mortification. He had no idea what possessed him to flirt so openly all of a sudden, nor where he’d gotten the confidence to be so blatant about it.

He hadn’t even decided for certain whether or not he wished to pursue a romantic relationship. Certainly the idea was there and there were arguments to be made for the possibility but he hadn’t intended to be this overt with his flirting until he had at least figured out for certain where he stood himself. In fact, he hadn’t meant to flirt at all yet here he was for the second time today wishing he could just burrow back in to the bark of the tree and disappear.  

Eventually Tobirama appeared to gather himself, clearing his throat and subtly glancing side to side as though checking to make sure no one unexpected was there to witness his behavior. Then he turned to deal with the gaggle of students who really should be training rather than socializing. Madara watched from afar as he got the group’s attention and said something which sent Kagami and the others back to the other side of the field where they all returned to their exercises with hand seals. Then Tobirama turned to the boy Danzo and both of their expressions darkened rather rapidly as they spoke until the boy stomped his foot and began shouting.

“But you’re teaching them! It isn’t fair!”

Whatever Tobirama said it was too low for Madara to hear but it did nothing to appease the child.

“You have to train me! How else will I become more powerful!?”

From his perch Madara scoffed. Power was only ever half the battle and those who whined for it in such a manner never seemed to understand that. It wasn’t just about how strong a man was, it was about what he did with that power that made him great. He himself might not be considered the best of men but he could say without lying that he had tried to never use his power for anything he did not see as right – at least, within the dubious moral code of a shinobi.

Even without being able to hear the man Madara was able to read Tobirama’s body language loud and clear as he shifted from mildly annoyed to completely closed off. Whatever he said must have been a dismissal, judging by the child’s reaction.

“Don’t send me away! I can be good enough! Let me prove to you that I can handle the power!” Danzo had only just finished speaking when Tobirama’s chakra flared, causing him to flinch and cower away. Even the other student stopped the training they had only just resumed to stare over in awe and Madara, too curious not to, rerouted a portion of chakra to his ears to briefly enhance his hearing.

“I find you cruel and cowardly and I will teach no student who desires power over reason. Power without reason leads only to madness and tyrants – and I have seen enough tyrants in my lifetime. Leave, Shimura, before I remove you myself.”

“But–!”

“Or perhaps speak with your clan head?”

That shut the boy up. With a rough scream of impotent rage he turned and fled in to the forest, chakra lashing wildly about him, entirely uncontrolled. Madara tracked his signature until it was clear that he truly meant to go then sat up straighter and assessed the situation below.

Normally a man whose temper tended to show itself in barbs of sharp ice, seeing Tobirama flare up enough for him to raise his voice to a child was a rare sight, one which obviously left a gloomy pall over the entire clearing. Just as Madara began to wonder if he should suggest ending training early that day, Tobirama beat him to it by sending his student off with a tight voice and instructions to finish their exercises at home.

He sat still and continued to observe until the students had all left and only Tobirama remained, alone in the middle of an empty field. It seemed such a shame to let someone so small ruin his day when he had been in such a good mood before.

With that in mind Madara hopped down yet again and called out, catching the other man’s attention and drawing him in.

“I’m not likely to be a very calming influence but if you would like some company I have nowhere else to be today.” He tried to offer what he hoped was a pleasant smile and was rewarded by some of the tension seeping out of his companion’s shoulders.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Not a clue. What do you usually do to calm down from one of your snits?”

Tobirama gave him a flat look and rolled his eyes before responding. “Go and tinker in my lab, usually. I find the immutable logic of science very calming in times of distress.”

“Huh. Well, so long as you promise not to blow me up or slip me some poison then I suppose I must demand that you show me around your lab. Five hundred yen says you’ve got at least one biological weapon in there somewhere.” He grinned teasingly, shoving at Tobirama’s shoulder to turn him around and head back to towards the village proper. After a quiet hum of thought, the man replied.

“Brother did step in last night to drag me to bed. Sage only knows what he might have touched when I wasn’t looking. You might be more right then you think.”

Madara laughed as they walked but it was edged with nervousness. He had a lot of firsthand experience with the kind of disasters Hashirama got involved in by touching things he wasn’t supposed to. It was always an accident and he was always very sorry but that never made it any easier to clean up afterwards.

The lab, when they got there and Tobirama undid the seal, was as neat as the man’s house had not been. Every ingredient, beaker, and brush each had their own place on the meticulously organized shelves. Diagrams of all sorts covered the walls and the only rug in the room was in front of the door for wiping the mud off one’s shoes.

“Home sweet home,” Tobirama announced dryly with a perfunctory wave of his hand.

“You’re always working on something in here,” Madara pointed out. ”What horrors have you been cooking up lately?”

It was the right question to ask. Within no time at all Tobirama seemed to have forgotten about the incident with that Shimura child as he sank his mind in to science instead, clearly thrilled to have a willing ear to talk to about this stuff. Madara had seen him try to explain something to Hashirama before and his friend’s eyes had glossed over within half a minute, smile frozen in place as he tried valiantly to keep up but failed. Although he himself wasn’t doing all that much better, Madara at least managed not to look quite that lost and occasionally ask a few questions, to Tobirama’s delight. Even the slightest interest in his work was probably hard to come by outside the Nara clan.

Even without understanding much of what his companion was talking about Madara still found that he was enjoying himself. The enthusiasm with which Tobirama spoke wasn’t something he’d seen before and he enjoyed simply watching the brightness of those deep red eyes, the animated movements of his hands, the absent way he continuously brushed a single lock of hair away from his face only to have it fall back down in front of his eyes.

From what he did manage to pick up out of the man’s chatter, it seemed Tobirama had been working on the explosive tags currently in circulation and trying to improve them in some manner. He caught something about the shape of the seal – or maybe it was something about what the seal could contain. After that he understood that they were talking about explosions but got lost somewhere around “500 kelvin”, whatever that was. When Tobirama started picking up vials to show him the contents he felt a little better for knowing at least this.

Any Uchiha worth their salt would recognize explosive compounds of all sorts.

It was when Tobirama lifted a bottle of acetone to explain the simple explosive mixture he could make with that and one other ingredient, just another rambling story about his adventures in science, just another moment in the day, but that was the moment when Madara looked at him and felt everything fall in to place. He looked at the open, unselfconscious smile on Tobirama’s face and realized that his heart had already made a decision and was only waiting on the rest of him to figure it out.

He’d been falling in love for weeks now and apparently this was the time he chosen to finally figure it out. A part of him was a little exasperated that it wasn’t a more romantic moment but the feeling passed, pushed aside by the rising awe.

Tobirama looked up at him and he realized that the man had asked him a question, looking up curiously when he received no answer. If he were polite he would stammer out some kind of non-answer and hope for a repeat of the question. Unfortunately he was not a polite man and all he wanted to do at the moment was stare at the poor sod he had chosen to attach himself to without even realizing. Tobirama blinked at him and tilted his head, setting Madara’s heart to fluttering with inexplicable fondness. Had he always found such gestures so adorable and only repressed the thought until now?

“Ah, I suppose I got a little carried away, didn’t I?” Tobirama murmured, fiddling with some other new vial now. He held it as carefully as though it were made of diamonds and stared down at it while grinning wryly. “You could have stopped me a while ago; I know how I get with these things.”

Madara gave no answer still. He wondered if this was what love felt like for others, a sudden all-consuming rush that took over his thoughts until he could concentrate on nothing but this amazing discovery. He might not be a fan of change in most factors of his life but he was also a pure-blooded Uchiha. Once an Uchiha fell in love they had a tendency to throw themselves in to it wholeheartedly, no hesitation and no apologies. He could quite clearly feel the same reaction coming on fast.

When Tobirama looked up at him again in concern he took a step closer and lifted a hand to frame the man’s face, ignoring the baffled expression in favor of stroking the slashing line of his tattoo. His eyes dropped to watch the tongue that darted out to lick nervously at Tobirama’s lips and that was the last straw that broke his resolve.

He relished in the gasp Tobirama gave as he leaned down and pressed their lips together, distantly amused by the way the other stiffened with surprise. It felt almost like relief, like something inside had been waiting desperately for him to figure it out and finally do something about it, and he was very nearly overwhelmed by how soft and warm Tobirama was against him.

A crash and the sound of glass tinkling made them both jump, breaking the moment before he even had a chance to really sink in to it. With a soft curse Tobirama snatched up a nearby rag and knelt to start wiping up whatever liquid had slipped through his fingers. Madara watched him, preening, smug that he had managed to distract the other enough that he’d dropped one of his precious ingredients – quite a feat considering how protective he was of everything in his personal lab.

With his eyes intently focused on the mess he was cleaned, Tobirama mopped up the slightly acidic compound with a rag and used a minor water jutsu to rinse the floor so he could wipe it again. The glass shards he gathered up and removed to a nearby trash bin before going to wash his hands. Madara watched the tension in his shoulders as he turned off the water and fell still.

“You didn’t get any on you?” Tobirama asked quietly, voice directed to towards the sink.

“No.”

“Good. That’s…good.” Pale fingers fiddled with the edge of the countertop, clearly reluctant to turn back around, and it made him smile wider with a rush of affection.

Madara made his way over, doing his best to hide the growing smirk when Tobirama instinctively turned to peek at him and revealed the faint blush on his cheeks. He slipped two fingers under the other man’s chin to stop him from ducking away and leaned in closer until their breath mingled, warm and sweet on each other’s lips, and only when it looked as though Tobirama were gathering himself to demand an explanation did he kiss the man again. All the fight drained away instantly and Madara gave a low hum of satisfaction as the body in his arms practically melted against his chest.

He took his time, keeping their kisses languid and slow as he allowed himself to explore the sensations at his own pace. If his companion had any doubts about whether he had meant to do this before then he hoped they were dispelled now as his hand skimmed up Tobirama’s sides and back down to settle on his hips.

A light chuckle escaped him when they parted and he saw the blissful, almost drunken expression on Tobirama’s face. It cleared quickly in favor of an embarrassed scowl but Madara didn’t mind. His fingers tightened their grasp on the man’s hips as he lifted his chin for one more kiss.

“My apologies for interrupting you,” he purred. “Please do go on.”

“Well that’s – um – I shouldn’t bore you with any more of that. I know it’s not really half as interesting as I think it is.” Tobirama swallowed, his eyes darting down to Madara’s lips and then away again. Stepping back and allowing him to escape for a moment, Madara scoffed.

“I have never found listening to you boring.”

“Right.” It didn’t look like Tobirama believed him but he also didn’t say anything to the contrary. Whether he believed it or not, however, it was true. Even during the years when Madara had seen this man as barely a human – and how far away those days felt to him now – even then he couldn’t say he’d found himself bored when listening to Tobirama speak.

In fact, he could honestly say it had frustrated him more than once that he found himself fascinated by something Tobirama had said or the way he had phrased something, angry at himself for being interested in the opinion of someone he was supposed to hate and irritated that he wouldn’t be able to seek out a deeper conversation about whatever had caught his attention. Ever since Madara finally learned to see him as human and slowly came to accept the strange need inside him to grow closer he found himself only more and more fascinated. Tobirama was, after all, a genius. He had many fascinating things to say.

Madara watched with an air of amusement as Tobirama puttered about the lab, fiddling with things just to keep his hands busy and murmuring broken half sentences in his distraction. It was clear that their kiss had thrown him off-balance. Eventually he settled at a station with several notebooks stacked together and many rows of jars, vials, boxes, even a small bag of what looked like balloons. Madara waited until the man had fallen mostly still again before slowly wandering in that direction himself.

“What’s all that?” he asked, eager to keep his companion talking. Tobirama pulled one of the notebooks over to himself and opened it to flip through the pages aimlessly.

“I’m designing a part of the course the academy will be using as part of its standard curriculum. Up until now the only common knowledge between clans – or even within the clans themselves – has been battle skills.” As he spoke his voice grew more confident, slipping back in to a role he was familiar with. “A more well-rounded view of the world can help in the most unexpected ways so the idea is to have every child educated on at least an introductory level across a wide range of subjects.”

“You just want the children to play with your science.” Madara grinned, a predatory light in his eyes that went unseen as he crept up behind his now distracted target.

“A little science never hurt anyone. I’m trying to design experiments that will be fun to a younger mind but can still be used as an educational tool.”

His fingers stopped flipping through the book to fiddle with one of the pages and Madara took his opening without a second thought. Stepping closer, he slid both arms underneath the other man’s and laid his palms innocently on the work table, bracketing Tobirama in and resting his chin on one shoulder.

Tobirama froze like a startled deer and Madara could feel his breath stuttering, his body shivering.

“What’s this one do?” he asked, lifting one of his hands to tap at the open page before returning it to the table top. Then he waited patiently as Tobirama fumbled his way through a few indecipherable noises before choking out an answer.

“It’s an experiment on energy transfer using bouncing balls. Um, it-its science and the kids get to play while they learn and they can-they can use the knowledge in some battle tactics as well so it does have real life applications.”

“You’re stuttering,” Madara pointed out mercilessly. “Is there something making you nervous, Senju?”

“No!”

Even from his current angle Madara was able to appreciate the pout on Tobirama’s lips. For a moment he regretted placing himself where he wouldn’t be able to steal another kiss without convincing the other man to look his way. He appeased the desire by pressing closer until the curve of Tobirama’s ass fit in to the cradle of his own hips, resting together like two puzzle pieces.

Another shudder passed through the younger man’s body and Madara wasn’t exactly surprised when Tobirama capitulated so easily to his teasing.

“What is this, Madara?” Tobirama asked him quietly.

“Be more specific? What is what?”

“This. You kissing me and this – this – whatever this is that you’re up to right now.”

Madara had to turn his face down and hide it behind the shoulder he was resting on to conceal his smile. “Stuttering again. You are nervous. One might almost think this meant something to you.”

“Answer the damn question or get the hell out of my lab. If you’re playing with me with this shit then you can go ahead and stop coming to training as well. I think I’ve more than proven my trustworthiness to train your clan member and I don’t appreciate–!”

“Whoa, calm down!” Chuckling, Madara brought his hands closer to encircle Tobirama’s waist and hold them both tightly together. “No one is playing any games, you have my word.”

“You kissed me.” Tobirama’s voice sounded oddly small and confused. Madara held him tighter.

“I did. And I plan to kiss you again. In fact, I plan to kiss you as often as you will allow me too.”

“Asking you questions is like talking to a stubborn toddler, did you know that? Quit being vague and just tell me what the hell you want from me. And don’t say kisses; that is not a proper answer.”

Hiding another smile, Madara nuzzled in to the man’s neck this time as a wave of fondness warmed him. “Very well then. If blunt is what you want then blunt I shall be. I find your body attractive and your company pleasant and I would very much like to take you on a date with the intention of beginning a relationship. Was that the sort of answer you were looking for?”

“Oh. I – yes.”

With a shake of his head and a hum of acknowledgement, Madara opted to say nothing else to give his companion a moment to collect himself. Since he wasn’t the most merciful of men, however, he entertained himself by laying soft kisses against the neck he had just been nuzzling in to and lightly scraping his teeth across soft skin. Tobirama groaned softly under his ministrations.

It took a few minutes – surprising considering how quickly Tobirama’s mind ran most of the time – but eventually he felt the other shifting in his hold and a hand came to lie atop both of his own where they were crossed over Tobirama’s belly.

“So. A relationship.”

“Mm.”

“I would be…amenable to that.”

“Hnn.”

“Did you use up all your words, Uchiha?”

“I prefer to listen to you. Go on; you were telling me about the experiments you’re designing?”

Madara felt a surge of triumph when Tobirama finally leaned back against him and resumed speaking in a quiet voice. He hadn’t truly doubted that the man would be interested, although that had worried him somewhat, but he had been a little concerned about how convincing he would be that he was serious in his own interest. It would be only too easy for Tobirama to assume he was having a laugh or even trying to be cruel, pretending to be interested just to tease.

Well, he did like to tease but not in that way. His teasing was usually in the form of insults laced with hidden compliments or even the fun kind of teasing which usually happened in the bedroom and resulted in both partner’s being very satisfied. But Madara was honest enough with himself to admit that he did have a streak of cruelty in him for those he disliked and it hadn’t been that long ago when he’d been making no secret of his dislike for Tobirama. It was actually a little surprising how easily he was able to convince the man of his intentions.

Setting those thoughts aside, Madara deliberately refocused himself on the moment happening around him. He listened to his new partner babble on and get himself excited about science again, then when the warmth in his chest grew unbearable he pulled Tobirama around to face him and dragged the man down to kiss him again. Having to stand up on his toes just to reach was beyond Madara’s dignity.

For now.

Chapter 5

Notes:

Thank god for alarms. I forgot again. The days of the week mean nothing to me anymore.

Of all the wonders they had managed to accomplish in this beautiful new village, the first of its kind and a glorious combination of the best minds from multiple prominent clans, Madara would have thought that having good coffee in the office was a simple thing to expect. Instead here he was staring in to a cup full of what resembled sludge more than coffee and tasted like it too. He would have been better off drinking his own half-burnt concoction at home.

Hashirama sat across from him, happily sipping away at his own mug without seeming to realize what he was drinking. Maybe his taste buds had finally stopped working after so many years of being subjected to Mito and Tobirama’s experiments in the kitchen.

“Wonderful morning, isn’t it?”

“Hn.” Madara grunted, shuffled down in his seat and trying to be subtle about checking the doorway of the conference roof again. He could feel Tobirama’s chakra just outside and wondered what the hell was keeping the man.

“You’re looking particularly cheerful,” Hashirama noted. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

Shifting his gaze to his best friend, Madara weighed his options. If Hashirama knew about his blossoming relationship he would probably be blubbering with joy rather than calmly nattering over coffee so it was safe to assume Tobirama hadn’t said anything to his brother yet. After only a handful of quiet dates and nothing more risqué than heated kisses or wandering hands, it wasn’t so surprising that neither of them had seen fit to make a big deal out of it yet.

Which meant Madara was free to be as obnoxious as he wanted and Hashirama, the oblivious fool, would suspect nothing. Excellent.

“I had a wonderful evening last night making out with your brother behind that new restaurant in the marketplace. He’s got magic fingers, that one does.” Not a single expression touched his face as he spoke, nor did he give his voice the slightest inflection. As he suspected, Hashirama did nothing but roll his eyes and wave the statement away with one hand.

“Fine! Fine! If you don’t want to tell me then I can just go ask Izuna.”

“As if he’ll tell you anything more. Izuna hates you.”

“Excuse you, Izuna loves me!”

“He’d love you more if you didn’t insist on trying to hug him all the time. No means no, idiot.”

Madara snickered as his friend drooped with comical depression, making a mental note to warn Izuna that their Hokage would be on the warpath now, determined to make friends whether the younger man wanted to or not. It would be good for both of them, at least. Izuna needed to start speaking with more people outside of their clan or he would never be able to integrate properly. Even now his brother still struggled with the idea of clan before village and Madara blamed it on the fact that he rarely spoke with anyone not wearing an Uchiwa fan.

Both of their heads lifted when Tobirama came in to the room at last, his attention still focused on the woman walking at his side. Her marked cheeks and deliberately bulky shape marked her as an Akimichi but it didn’t really matter who she was. What mattered was the fawning expression on her face. Madara narrowed his eyes and tracked their movements as the woman put a hand on Tobirama’s arm to stop him and said something which made the corner of his mouth quirk up. It wasn’t quite a smile but it was close enough for Madara to huff and continue to watch closely until Tobirama broke away to come sit next to him.

As soon as the younger man caught sight of his expression he tilted his head questioningly.

“Later,” was all he said, deliberately packing his own emotions away to concentrate on the meeting.

Hashirama spoke at length about the other clans of the area to begin with. As the village grew and became a stable base of massive political power, they were receiving word from more and more places interested in alliances. Discussions about which of the small hamlets should have their protection or which clan should be allowed to discuss emigrating to Konoha tended to run on forever, heavily colored by prejudice and each clan’s personal experiences.

From there they moved on to even more boring subjects, though they were also even more necessary. The Nara, with their vast medical knowledge, wished to expand the hospital while the Sarutobi clan Head thought it was more important to expand the availability of electricity to the general public. Almost twenty minutes of arguing went by before Hashirama quietly asked why they couldn’t work on both projects, prompting the two clan heads to stare at him with unreadable expressions and Madara to roll his eyes.

Several other issues were brought up, discussed, resolved, or assigned further investigation until they came to the final issue on the itinerary and Madara tried to be subtle about turning his body to face Tobirama as the other man stood to address the room. His face had a very serious expression for a man talking about renewing contracts for the wheat grown in Wind Country, a little frown of concentration folding his brows inwards as he spoke about supply routes and price caps. Madara wanted to draw his thumb along that tiny wrinkle and smooth it out until it became a smile instead.

Keeping his hands to himself wasn’t the most difficult thing he’d ever done but it was still annoying not to be able to reach over and play with the hems of Tobirama’s sleeve. It seemed to startle his partner how tactile he could be but Madara supposed that someone who had never had the chance to witness an Uchiha relationship in a private setting had every right to be surprised. His people were very loving but also very private. Now that he had finally worked through the maze of his own emotions he saw no reason to be hesitant about expressing them in an appropriate setting – and pressing Tobirama up against one of their desks after this endless meeting sounded like a very appropriate setting to him.

When his partner finally sat down again Madara stretched out one leg until it rested against Tobirama’s, pushing lightly against it for no other reason than to appease himself with a bit of physical contact. After a moment of hesitation the gesture was returned and he hid a smirk by draining the last sip of coffee still in his mug.

Hashirama’s closing remarks went mostly over his head; he didn’t need to listen to a summary of what they had just went over, especially when he knew he would receive his copy of the minutes anyway. Madara drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair until finally they were dismissed and he stood to leave without waiting to exchange pleasantries with the other clan heads. A quick glance caught Tobirama’s gaze and he knew the other would follow after.

Only a minute or so after he made it to his office and dropped his empty mug on to the windowsill he heard the door open then close and felt the presence of Tobirama’s chakra, soothing and calm like the waters he so easily manipulated. His partner grunted in amusement when he was hauled forward and backed in to the desk without so much as a greeting.

“Hello to you too,” he managed to get out before Madara was distracting him with urgent kisses, fingers in his pale hair gripping just tightly enough to perhaps be a little possessive.

“Do I have something to be worried about?” Madara asked teasingly in the moments in which he pulled away to breathe. He received a curious sound and nipped at the lips searching for his own again. “The woman,” he elaborated.

“What woman?”

“That Akimichi woman.”

Tobirama leaned back to stare at him. “Are you jealous?”

“Every time you take your eyes off me,” Madara freely admitted. “I’m hardly going to claw her eyes out but it does make me feel a little territorial watching you get cozy with someone else.” He felt a wave of affection go through him as a little bit of interest dawned on his partner’s face.

“Oh?”

“Mm.” He bent his head to press soft kisses against Tobirama’s neck, thrilled when it arched deliciously to receive his affections. “Perhaps I should leave a mark or two. Here. Or maybe here. Then anyone who looks at you will know you belong to someone. To me.”

Instead of replying Tobirama only dropped his head back farther and released a shaky breath, letting him do as he pleased without complaint. Madara nipped him softly and drew his tongue across the fluttering pulse so trustingly exposed to him. Unfortunately leaving hickeys wasn’t exactly the way he wanted to alert his best friend to the fact that he hadn’t been joking earlier and so, with a heavy sigh, he pulled away before he could be tempted to follow through on the desire to leave his mark where everyone would see it.

He smiled when Tobirama huffed in disappointment and stole another kiss before pulling away a bit further, trying to keep his tone casual as he asked, “Who is she anyway?”

“The wife of their clan Head. She was filling in for him while he dealt with some internal issues.”

“Ah.” Which meant that she would not be a regular fixture at their meetings and he would not have to allot any energy to reigning in his jealousy whenever he saw her close to what was his. Relieved, Madara pressed them back together. “Until you told me yourself, I never realized Hashirama had passed leadership of your clan to you – in name at least. I wonder if any of them have ever realized that’s why you attend those meetings.”

“Likely not. As you said, it’s really in name only. I have no functional purpose.” Tobirama shrugged and Madara frowned but resisted digging further. He should really have a conversation about that with Hashirama but now wasn’t the time for it.

“What’s on your schedule for the rest of the day?” he asked instead, letting the issue go for the moment.

“Drafting that proposal Hashirama wanted me to do for the Public Relations Committee. Meeting with your brother to go over the security teams. Yelling at the idiot who misfiled the documents I sent over to the cipher core. Training with my students later this afternoon.” A whimsical smile touched his face. “At some point I need to do my laundry.” Madara snorted.

“Well I’m not helping with the last one and I have my own duties to attend to while you do yours but – training. In the usual place, I presume. I can make time for that.”

“You just like watching the children trip over themselves during taijutsu practice,” Tobirama accused him.

Madara laughed and didn’t bother to deny it. “I also enjoy watching you.” He laughed again when Tobirama turned his head away and attempted to not look as flustered as he clearly felt. Even the slightest compliment never failed to rattle him and Madara shamelessly piled them on whenever he could get away with it.

Of course, half the time they were wrapped up in teasing jabs so he wasn’t sure those counted but that was just who he was and Tobirama never seemed to mind.

He dragged the man in for one more fiery kiss that left him reluctant to go take care of his own duties. Eventually he managed to pull himself away and allowed Tobirama to head off to whichever task he had first on his mental checklist. Madara couldn’t help but find it sort of endearing how organized the man was with his time, both personally and professionally, and how he sort of herded the village along towards a progressive future like a very tired cat with a bunch of noisy ducklings.

Surprisingly time went by fairly quickly for him that day. Between dealing with a few disgruntled clan members and researching the subject of an upcoming mission he managed to stay busy enough that his thoughts barely had time to wander. Even more amazingly, he managed to beat Tobirama to the training field and had only just settled himself on his usual perch when a child he didn’t recognize came wandering out of the trees, looking around dubiously and pushing at his glasses. Madara blinked down at him and waited to see if he would get noticed up in his tree.

When Tobirama arrived he was proceeded by his group of students, all of whom made unholy noises of glee at first sight of the nervous boy awaiting them. Each of them plowed forward to surround the newcomer, chattering away on top of each other as usual. Tobirama’s eyes flicked up to meet with Madara’s in a silent question but he only shook his head. He wasn’t sure what the boy was here for –although he was sure he could get it in one guess.

“Don’t be shy,” Torifu exclaimed loudly. “You’ve just got to ask him!” He turned the boy around with a shove against one shoulder and patted the other encouragingly. Tobirama lifted a curious eyebrow while the boy straightened himself and cleared his throat.

“Senju-san, you are lauded as an exemplary shinobi and your tutelage comes highly recommended. I would be honored if you would accept me as your student.” He finished with a bow and Madara was glad that he was sitting far enough away that no one could hear him scoffing quietly.

“You would, would you? Hm.” Tobirama tilted his head with an intrigued expression. “Alright, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“That’s not fair!”

At the same time as an enraged voice broke in to their conversation, yet another small body tumbled out of the bushes across the field. Danzo, if Madara recalled his name correctly, bolted over to swing a fist at Tobirama’s midriff, clearly frustrated when the blow was easily blocked.

“You bastard! Why!? You’ll teach all of them but not me!” His small face was dark with anguished fury but Tobirama regarded him coolly.

“I am not in the habit of repeating myself. My reasons have been explained to you. That you continue to whine like a toddler denied a new toy does nothing to sway me in your favor.”

“Just tell me what he has that I don’t! He’s a nobody, a nothing. I have to prove myself but he gets accepted without question!?”

Only when Tobirama’s face pinched even more tightly and his hand reached out to pluck something off the side of the boy’s neck did Madara realize why none of them had noticed another presence in their midst. As soon as the square of paper peeled away from his skin a wave of black chakra rolled across the clearing, filled with malice and discontent. Madara was uncomfortably reminded of himself in his younger days when he had watched his sisters get cut down before his very eyes.

Leaping down from his perch, he made his way across to stand at Tobirama’s side. It was unlikely that anyone that small and untrained could get passed his partner’s impeccable defenses but the feel of that clouded chakra next to Tobirama made him nervous anyway. Still, he couldn’t help but pity the child a little. He likely wouldn’t have handled such a rejection any better at that age.

Tobirama said nothing about the protective stance he fell in to, busy eyeing his students with a promise of death in his narrowed gaze.

“Now where would he have gotten one of my chakra suppression tags?” he ground out between his teeth. Before him, the line of youngsters cowered and shuffled their feet. Hiruzen was the one to speak up.

“All I did was show them to him sensei, I swear! I promise! I didn’t know he kept any!”

“You and I will be having a long talk about responsibilities and situational awareness later, Saru.” He spared one more glare for his student before turning back to the angry little face staring up at him expectantly. “As for you, I believe it is time I had that talk with your clan head. You will learn to accept what answer you are given.”

Watching the twist on the boy’s face and the way his fists clenched hard enough to dig fingernails in to skin, Madara hummed thoughtfully. “He reminds me of me,” he murmured from the corner of his mouth. Tobirama sent him a withering look.

“Then you train him. I will not trust lives in to the hands of someone who so clearly cannot follow orders.”

Madara jerked his head back to stare at his partner. Him, train a child?

It was a ridiculous thought but he didn’t have time to say so before a hand had closed around the end of his obi and tugged to draw his attention downwards. Danzo stared up at him with steely determination in his eyes, droplets of blood smeared on his palm.

“Will you!?” he demanded. Madara opened his mouth but nothing came out. It snapped shut again to allow him a moment of thought.

“Interesting.” He was aware of everyone watching him as he slowly circled Danzo but paid them no mind. “You’ve made such a fuss about having Tobirama as your teacher but you so easily turn to me in his stead?”

“You’re stronger,” Danzo replied bluntly. Madara barked out a laugh.

“In some ways yes.” By the look on Tobirama’s face he was probably going to have to make up for that later but it would hardly be the first time they had bickered over something so he plowed onward. “I will not be as kind a teacher as him. Nor do I have any experience teaching children. This will not be a comfortable experience for either of us.”

“Noted.” The boy puffed himself up and jutted out his scarred chin, doing his best to look tough. Madara did nothing to hide his amusement. Coddling this little sprout was definitely not on his agenda.

A brush of fingers against his own brought his attention back to the man at his side. Tobirama was looking at him with something unidentifiable in his eyes. “Are you certain? I seem to recall a conversation about how little you are able to stand children. Isn’t that why you hide up there in your tree most of the time?” Madara wrinkled his nose in offense.

“I am not hiding,” he protested. “Might as well, to be honest. I’m here anyway and the little bugger won’t leave it alone until he gets a bit of training. I was just as bull-headed and hot-tempered myself.”

“You still are,” Tobirama told him flatly.

“Eat me.”

He very much hoped none of the gathered kids understood the look Tobirama gave him in response to that. No words were needed yet he felt the back of his neck heat up with a combination of mortification and instant arousal. Luckily he was saved by yet another of their students interrupting. The boy who had joined them just today pushed at his glasses and glanced back and forth between them, calculating and thoughtful.

“I mean no offense, Senju-san, but if Uchiha-san is also willing to give lessons then I believe I would benefit most from his instruction. That is, if Uchiha-san is willing to take on more than one student.”

Madara blinked. “Let me torture one small human and see if it survives before I take on another.”

“Very well.”

“Perhaps if you introduced yourself?” Tobirama ventured, the tone of his voice both amused and slightly offended.

“Ah, yes. I am Mitokado Homura. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” He bowed a second time and Kagami snickered, waving cheekily when Homura gave him a sour look.

“Right. Well. Madara, if you and your student don’t mind, the rest of us will be over there running drills. Saru, you’ll agree to being my guinea pig for the day, won’t you?” The man’s smile bared all of his teeth at once and looked anything but friendly. Hiruzen swallowed thickly but followed along with the rest of them as they all retreated to the far side of the field.

Madara and Danzo were left alone to stare and size each other up. He didn’t look like much, just a scrawny kid with a chip on his shoulder and hair falling in his eyes, but Madara supposed that no child had ever looked half as impressive as they wished they did.

“I didn’t really think this one through.”

True to his word, however, Madara did his best to pass on a bit of knowledge to his new protégé. Luckily he had spent many hours observing Tobirama at this same task so he had at least a vague sort of idea where to start. After a few tests to determine the boy’s current skill level he shamelessly stole a few of Tobirama’s earlier lesson plans to implement for himself. They didn’t run quite as smoothly for him, obviously, but he hadn’t really expected them to. He considered it a win that Danzo seemed content to study with him no matter how bad he was at explaining certain concepts.

His partner was a big fan of explaining the reasoning behind something. Madara preferred the ‘learn this because I say so’ method.

It took a few weeks in which he slowly came to regret losing the time he’d been able to simply sit and watch whatever Tobirama was up to but eventually Madara felt a little bit like an actual teacher. If in the meantime he also stopped by a certain bakery to get a few helpful tips from a certain old woman that was his business and no other teachers needed to know.

Just as he began to feel like he was getting the hang of things he found himself saddled with two more children and a surprisingly effective dose of puppy eyes from Tobirama.

“You want me to what?”

“We won’t be gone long.” Tobirama looked over his shoulder to where all six of the youngsters were gathered in to a little group, three of them nearly vibrating with excitement with the other three looked on with naked jealousy. “The Educational Board is trying to figure out the proper size of the teams for when students graduate from the academy, once it’s finished. A three man team seems to be the popular vote but they want a few examples of how well the teams will function.”

“So you want me to babysit some of yours while you’re gone,” Madara guessed. Tobirama rolled his eyes but his mouth was smiling.

“If you wouldn’t mind. They could train on their own for a few days but Koharu has a tendency to start getting creative whenever my back is turned and Homura sort of worships her so he’ll do whatever she tells him to.”

Remembering the trouble Izuna used to get up to without proper supervision, Madara sighed. “You owe me,” he insisted. He watched Tobirama check to make sure they weren’t being watched at the moment then jumped a little when the man stepped closer to run a finger down the front of his abdomen.

“And what, precisely, do I owe you?” The look on his face was positively wicked and Madara’s throat went dry at the sight of it.

“Should we be talking about this with them around?”

“They can’t hear us.” Tobirama smirked, not oblivious to the effect his question had. “So? Name your price, Uchiha, before I leave and you lose your chance.”

“Dinner!”

It was only one word and he nearly fumbled it, although that wasn’t what had Tobirama giving him such a strange look. “Madara, we have dinner all the time. You do realize what I just…what I meant, right?” Madara had the urge to smack himself across the face.

“Yes, I do. I meant a more private dinner. My house. I’ll make sure Izuna doesn’t disturb us. You bring a bottle of plum wine?”

“Ah. Yes. That sounds – yes. We should only be gone a day or two. I’ll hold you to that invitation.”

“Please do.” For a moment the two of them just stood there grinning at each other like a pair of love struck fools until Tobirama stumbled under the sudden impact of a small body colliding with his. Kagami gave a terrible sounding war cry and demanded to know when they were leaving. Madara waved away the apologetic look his partner flashed him and wished them a safe trip.

When he turned back after watching his partner leave he found three sets of eyes staring up at him expectantly and sighed despondently. Ready or not, it was time to be a responsible adult.

Surprisingly things went much better than expected. He’d learned more than he thought he had about Koharu just from observing previous training sessions and Homura, as he’d been told, pretty much followed along with anything his friend did. From observing the way they all interacted it was easy to see that Koharu enjoyed being the little ring leader of their gang while Danzo, the sneaky little shit, enjoyed pulling the strings in a more subtle manner. He didn’t need credit as long as Koharu eventually decided to go along with his ideas, even if she had to be convinced they were her ideas in the first place.

Honestly Madara was kind of proud of such underhanded tactics.

Tobirama and his trio were gone for six days in total, long enough for Madara to begin to worry but also long enough for him to grow grudgingly attached to his own temporary team. He brought the kids with him to the gate when he finally sensed a familiar chakra just outside the village as evening began to fall. He was amused to see the way all four members of the returning team looked ready to fall asleep on their feet.

Always a stickler for duty, Tobirama made sure his kids signed in at the village gates before throwing dignity to the wind and unashamedly flopping his body over Madara’s shoulder with a heavy groan.

“Don’t move, I’m having a nap right here,” he declared. Madara bit his lip.

“You do know that anyone walking by can see us right now?”

“Don’t care. Exhausted. Just let me sleep, please.” Tobirama’s body melted further in to his own and Madara gave in to the urge to wrap his arms around the poor man’s tired body, patting the back of his dusty armor sympathetically.

“I supposed dinner can wait for another day. What do you say to crashing at my place?”

Tobirama grunted in to his shoulder. “I really thought the first time I slept over at your place would be the first time– nnh. Nothing. But I’m likely to fall asleep the second I get horizontal right now.” Madara laughed, grateful his partner couldn’t see the flush on his face.

“Let’s get you in to a bed then. You can tell me what happened tomorrow.”

Since the kids didn’t look like they had much more energy than their sensei, Madara instructed his own team to help the others home before setting off towards the Uchiha district, shifting Tobirama so he was ducked under one arm and supporting the other’s waist as they went. His stomach fluttered at the way Tobirama closed his eyes and let his head fall back, placing his entire trust in the man guiding him. Even among close friends it took a lot for a shinobi to be that comfortable with someone.

The walk home was slow going and Madara did his best to ignore all the strange looks they were getting. Seeing them walk places together was hardly an uncommon sight as of late but seeing Tobirama in such a ragdoll state was uncommon no matter who he was with. Madara was a little surprised with himself when he realized how protective he was feeling; he didn’t want anyone to see his partner looking so vulnerable.

It was a relief to finally open the door to his own house and usher Tobirama down the hall. Getting his armor off was a struggle, if an amusing one, as the man began dozing off while Madara was still working at the clasps of his pauldrons. His head lolled forward to rest against the belly in front of him and he groaned irritably when it came time to slide his breastplate over his head. The moment he was free of his armor and no longer receiving support to keep him upright, Tobirama flopped backwards across the bed in a graceless sprawl, hair fanning out around him and face already slackening with sleep.

“Don’t you dare,” Madara grumbled. “At least wait until I’ve got your head on a pillow.”

“M’tired,” Tobirama whined in protest, blindly swatting at him.

“Then get up on the bed properly and you can sleep for as long as you like.”

His mumbles were slurred and meek but eventually Madara was able to convince him – with a few kisses dusted across his cheeks – to shuffle up on to the mattress and roll underneath the blankets. A sleepy whisper so quiet that Madara almost missed it asked him to come lay down too and he bit his lip to stifle his reaction. How was anyone supposed to say no to that?

Of course, Tobirama had already fallen asleep by the time Madara settled down on to the mattress beside him but that didn’t stop him from spending a few minutes simply lying there, carding his fingers through pale hair. Who knew when he would have the chance to see this again?

Eventually he did get back up. The day wasn’t over for him and Tobirama was hardly going anywhere; he’d still be there when Madara did want to go to bed. It took willpower to drag himself away, though. The first thing he did was cook himself the dinner he’d been planning for once training was done, scarfing it down with gusto after not eating for most of the day. Afterwards he retreated to the living room with the proposal he was supposed to be going over. Technically it was Hashirama’s paperwork but the idiot had been fobbing off duties left and right as Mito drew close to her due date. Understandable but still annoying.

Several hours later the moonless sky was black outside the windows and Madara was yawning so hard he feared he might dislocate his jaw but the paperwork all seemed to be in order, which meant that he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. Looking forward to sleeping in the next morning, he stumbled down the hall and in to the bedroom, stopping at the end of his bed to smile foolishly at the sleeping man within.

It felt a little strange to take off his clothes with Tobirama right there even if he was fast asleep. Madara changed in the bathroom and gave his teeth a perfunctory brushing before stumbling back out and carefully crawling underneath the blankets to wrap himself around Tobirama’s body. The warmth of another person lulled him to sleep fast enough that he barely had time to appreciate the wonderful scent which had flooded his bed before he was lost in the land of dreams.

Chapter 6

Soft kisses across his brow and clever fingers mapping out his chest were the two things Madara’s senses became aware of first as he rose back in to the waking world. Tobirama’s chakra flowed calmly next to his own and the world was overlaid with the slightly stale scent of his partner, welcome even if it was a little off-putting. A low hum rumbled up from the back of his throat as he cracked one eye open to mock glare at the man grinning down at him.

“I could have slept longer,” he groused half-heartedly.

“Nonsense,” Tobirama said. “It’s almost noon.”

“Would have been nice to sleep till noon.” In direct contrast to his words, his hands reached out to wind themselves in to the other man’s hair and pull him down for a slow kiss, one which he took a few moments to enjoy before pushing Tobirama away. “You taste awful. I should have made you brush your teeth or something before letting you collapse.”

His partner laughed and bussed him on the cheek noisily then sat up, stretching both arms above his head until his back creaked audibly. Madara enjoyed the show from where he was still curled up on his side and only moved when his stomach rumbled.

“You must be hungry, not grabbing anything to eat when you all got home. I’ll make breakfast while you freshen up? There’s an extra toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet and if you don’t use it then I’m not kissing you again.”

Tobirama laughed again. He reveled in the sound of it while slipping out from between the sheets and padding out of the room towards the kitchen. Just as he stuck his head in the fridge he heard the shower turn on down the hall and had to close his eyes against the images that struck him. He knew exactly what Tobirama looked like wet and naked, although he hadn’t seen anything inappropriate that day in the forest, but the memory was enough to rock him back on his heels with want. Suddenly it was all he could do not to follow the sound of rushing water and show his partner how best to utilize the space in his tiny shower stall.

Out of the handful of relationships he’d managed to bungle over the years, he’d never quite taken his time the way he was with this one. It seemed like something Hashirama might say but he found that it actually gave everything between them a bit more meaning. When they kissed he knew it was an expression of how they felt and not a hurried means to an end, base lust building in to a fiery burst only to peter out and leave them with nothing but ashes. Something told him there would be no burning out for them.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t extremely interested in tracing those hidden lines on Tobirama’s skin with his tongue. Just thinking about it distracted him enough that he nearly sliced off a couple of fingers as he took the rind off a large wedge of cheese and thereafter Madara very firmly pressed those thoughts away from himself. He could think about that when he wasn’t wielding anything sharp.

Breakfast was already portioned out on to two plates when Tobirama wandered in to the room looking much more human than he had the night before. Madara eyed him suspiciously before leaning over for a kiss, happy to find that he had indeed brushed his teeth.

“So,” he mumbled after they both took their seats and fell upon the omelets like starving beasts. “Should I assume things went terribly wrong on your mission? All four of you looked like dead men walking.” Tobirama snorted.

“I lay the blame for that solidly at Kagami’s feet.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

Giving another amused snort, Tobirama continued. “It was only supposed to be a delivery run, something you or I might have done alone at that age. His natural abundance of energy is what got us in to trouble.”

“Oh no,” Madara groaned. “If I remember correctly you were passing through Taki territory weren’t you?”

“Exactly. Despite my warnings Kagami had trouble keeping his volume down and we ended up attracting some unwanted attention. If I were alone it wouldn’t have been much trouble but there were enough to make me worry about someone flanking me and going for them instead. They’re not ready for that sort of encounter. I tried to dodge their attention by rerouting through Kusa but we ended up running all the way back with them on our tails right up until we were an hour away from the village.” Tobirama scrubbied both hands down his face as though reliving the exhaustion and Madara frowned.

“They chased you back in to Fire territory?”

“Yes. I’ll need to speak with my brother and find out who was supposed to be running border patrol in that area. They’re meant to be available to prevent this kind of thing. If one of our shinobi are returning home injured then I want them to have a fighting chance to make it home.”

Madara nodded emphatically and rose to bring their dishes to the sink for washing later. Then he turned back to the table and hauled Tobirama up out of his seat, meeting him in a heated kiss that curled his toes and drew a moan from the younger man. He drank in the noise like fine wine. Even the tiniest sounds from such a reticent man tasted sweeter than any ambrosia and Madara wished he could memorize noise the way he could memorize sights.

Fingers sliding around his hips made him shudder and arch up in to the body before him. His own hands slid around in to pale hair, holding tightly, pulling hard enough to earn another moan but not hard enough to cause pain.

“Welcome home,” he whispered breathlessly. Tobirama’s arms tightened around him.

“I certainly do feel welcome,” he rumbled in return. Madara kissed him again.

Somehow they ended up across the room, although he didn’t quite remember the journey nor did he really mind the feeling of the counter digging in to his back. What mattered was the warmth pressed against him from the front and the broad palms dragging up and down his sides. One of his legs had snuck in between Tobirama’s and was slowly inching upwards. Any higher and the other man would be riding his thigh – not a thought he was against in any way.

Tobirama seemed to think differently, pulling away from him with reluctance clear in his expression. Madara whined and tried to pull him back in and Tobirama came to him easily, sighing against his mouth.

“I’ve been away for six days,” he murmured between kisses. “There will be a literal mountain of paperwork waiting for me in my office.”

“A good excuse not to go in.” Madara offered a cheeky smile and then nibbled on Tobirama’s bottom lip.

“Nnngg. Stop. If you keep me here any longer I’ll never leave.”

“Forgive me if I don’t see the downside to that.”

“Brother. Mine, yours, either. One or both of them will come looking for us eventually and I have no intention of being caught with my britches down by one of those hooligans.”

Huffing with disappointment, Madara finally stopped fishing for more kisses. Then he smirked and tightened his hold one last time just to ask, “So does that mean if I convinced you to stay then I would get to see you with your britches down?”

Tobirama flushed and glared as he pulled away entirely, retreating to the bedroom to gather his armor. Madara was still patting himself on the back smugly when the other returned but apparently he’d given up his right to a goodbye kiss. He chose to take that as a comment on how tempting he could be. Tobirama was halfway out the door when Madara hurried to stop him for one more thing.

“Just how busy are you going to be over the next few days?” he asked.

“Very. Extremely. I’ll probably make brother cry at least twice. Why?”

Smiling briefly at the coldness of that last statement, Madara sidled closer. “Too busy to come over, then?”

“Probably. For a few days, at least. I didn’t plan to be away for this long and we both know that no one in the tower likes to step up to do more than they have to. You had something planned didn’t you?” He looked apologetic at least but Madara swept that aside and heaved a purposefully overdramatic sigh.

“Ah well then. I was hoping you might have the time to come by for that dinner we didn’t get.” He flashed a wicked smirk which bloomed in to a full blown laugh at the way Tobirama’s entire body quivered.

“Killing me,” he heard his partner mutter and he turned away and stomped off down the street.

At least he knew he wasn’t the only one suffering in this situation. That was something. 

Having finished the biggest project currently on his plate last night, Madara was free to wander in to the tower in his own sweet time that morning. It was just passed noon when he arrived, perfectly timed so that Hashirama was out to lunch and therefore out of his way, leaving him with a peaceful atmosphere to settle in to. He noted Tobirama’s chakra flitting from place to place in a never-ending rush and pitied the man. Some thought was given to offering his help but he knew that most of their work didn’t overlap; he’d be more likely to mess things up by walking in blind.

Puttering away at the other projects he was working on filled most of the day until a couple of hours before dinner time, when he found himself wandering out towards the training fields by sheer force of habit. All six youngsters met him there with curious faces and a hundred different questions about Tobirama. Once he assured them their sensei was fine they continued to stand there and look at him expectantly, bewildering him until finally Koharu spoke up.

“So, you can still train with us though, right?”

“I suppose I can,” he responded, a little bemused by the idea that they wanted to keeping working with him even now that they weren’t under instruction to.

His plans for dinner a decided bust, he filled his evening instead with terrorizing small children in the name of education. By no means could he be considered an excellent or soft teacher but they did learn something by the end of the day. Even if it was just to learn that when he said to duck he meant duck, that still counted in his books. At least if the three who hadn’t been here were ever subjected to his company again they would know what to expect from his style of ‘imparting wisdom’.

Afterwards Kagami walked back with him, uncharacteristically quiet for a quarter of the way until he tugged on Madara’s sleeve and tried to soften him up with a dose of puppy eyes.

“Is sensei really okay or were you just doing that grownup thing where you treat kids like they’re stupid?”

“He’s fine. Busy and soon to be very tired all over again but physically fine.”

“Oh good.” Kagami looked down to inspect his toes sheepishly. “I know it was my fault that those people were after us and we couldn’t stop to rest and it made everyone really tired and I feel bad!”

“It’s good that you recognize that,” Madara said. It simply wasn’t a part of his personality to soften the blow any more than that. He was proud of his kin for recognizing the mistake he’d made and to excuse him in any way would cheapen that admittance.

Nodding absently, Kagami fell silent for the next couple of blocks. Madara watched him from the corner of one eye until an idea came to him. He had no idea what put it in his mind but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up, something that needed to be done anyway and a little apologetic catharsis wouldn’t hurt if it were dragged along as well.

“Perhaps you could make it up to him, though.” Kagami looked up at him and he carefully did not grin as evilly as he wanted to. “You could do something to make his life a little easier.”

“Like what?”

“Oh I don’t know. I suppose you can’t take up any of his duties. Maybe if you cleaned something for him?”

“I could clean his house!”

Madara subtly clenched his fists in victory. He was getting pretty good at this manipulating kids stuff. “That sounds like an interesting idea. His house does need a bit of attention. Sounds like quite a project though, are you sure you can handle it?”

“Huh. Yeah, it would be hard to do all that on my own. Sensei has a lot of stuff.”

“Understatement of the year.”

“But I can’t ask the other guys to help me; I should be making it up to them too!” Kagami reached up to tug at his curls in frustration and for a moment Madara wished he could go back in time to when his biggest troubles had been as simple as not wanting to hurt his friends’ feelings. Not that he’d ever had many friends.

Tapping his chin with one finger, he made an exaggerated face of thought. “What if we phrased it like a training exercise? Just like how the academy will be training its students in a wide variety of areas, we could call this training in how to deal with the bureaucratic side of things. Oh, yes, I like this, this is good.” A wicked chuckle escaped him as the plan formed more and more fully in his mind.

Doing Tobirama a favor, helping Kagami work out his guilt, and torturing their six little buggers all at the same time? He’d never come up with a better plan in his life. Amazingly, Kagami lit up like fireworks had gone off inside his mouth.

“Great idea! If you tell them to do it then I’ll have lots of help and we might even be able to get something done! And, you know, there’ll be someone to rescue me if I get buried again.”

Madara snickered.

Even more amazingly, the plan worked. When he called for both teams to meet him at the usual spot the next day they all arrived promptly, expecting a training session without questioning why it was him. And when he told them his half-assed reason for them to be cleaning out Tobirama’s stupidly messy house they not only swallowed it but traded looks as if to say ‘well someone had to do it at some point’. He was glad they shared his opinions on the state of his partner’s home, if nothing else.

Sneaking passed the wards around Tobirama’s house was a lot easier than he’d thought it would be. Not because he’d suddenly developed an intuitive skill for sealing but rather because Hashirama caught their group much-too-casually making their way through the Senju district when he happened to know his brother wasn’t even home. Anyone married to an Uzumaki was bound to pick up a few things about sealing. Hashirama disabled the wards, waxed poetic for nearly twenty minutes about what a touching gesture they were making, then insisted on adding his own hands to helping.

“You know,” Madara grumbled at him as they all paused to take in the chaos inside. “If you really want to be nice to your brother, you could have helped him with his paperwork. I don’t know anything at all about his current projects but I know you do.”

“I would rather drown in his kitchen sink,” Hashirama told him with aplomb.

“His kitchen sink is full of books.”

“Exactly.”

“You hate reading.”

“Exactly.”

After staring at his friend for a long moment with a blank expression they both burst in to a fit of unmanly giggles and Madara was forced to be extra gruff with the kids to salvage his reputation.

They settled on keeping the kids split in to their two teams with Hashirama standing in for his brother so they could tackle two rooms at a time. With how little space there was to move around it looked more like a bucket line stretching through the kitchen and down the hallway but it worked and that was really all that mattered. They did have to make the mess worse in order to make it better, at first. Luckily even Tobirama’s chaos was organized and it was easy to make separate piles based on the content of the papers or books or whatever it was they dug out of the mess.

Once Torifu uncovered a stash of blank scrolls things got a lot easier. Hashirama spent the next little while inking out several storage seals so that they could store away a few of the larger stacks of heavy research texts. Since Kagami was supposed to be the one apologizing for messing up on his first mission, Madara pressed him in to service as the poor sod who had to sit on the floor and fit paper in to binders after they organized them. At some point they did manage to uncover a chair but without a table to spread his binders out on there wasn’t any point in him getting up and down every time he had to switch between them.

It took hours, a quick break for lunch, then many more hours before they called it quits for the day and at the end of it all they had really only managed to clean out the kitchen, the main hallway, and a small little alcove in the living room. Even then, they hadn’t bothered to deal with any of the cupboards or bookshelves since that mess was at least contained for now. Their main goal was to take back the floor space so Tobirama would have a home to actually live in rather than just a storage box for all his work and a bed to collapse in.

Madara might have also had other, more personal goals in mind but he didn’t feel the need to share those with any of his helpers.

The sky was dark as they all trudged home afterwards with sandy eyes and noses full of dust. Hashirama was the only one with any energy left, enthusiastic about coming back to do it all again the next day, to which Madara raised an eyebrow.

“Should you take another day off tomorrow?” he asked dubiously. “The idea here is to take a little stress off of your brother’s shoulders, not add on to it.”

“Ah. You have a point.”

Hashirama drooped sadly and Madara patted him on the shoulder. “Next time I break in to someone’s house with good intentions, I promise I’ll invite you along.” He shook his head as Hashirama perked back up again.

“You’re such a good friend!” he beamed and Madara waved, thinking the conversation over, himself free to leave. “Actually, can I talk to you?”

“Now? You’ve had all day to talk and you want to talk to me now? I want dinner.”

“I know but I didn’t think this was something to talk about in front of all the little ones.”

With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, Madara turned his head to watch his students all straggle around the corner in a loose group. They looked tired but still cheerful after their day of work. Danzo in particular had been reluctant to do anything that would help make Tobirama’s life easier but after being told it was an exercise in bureaucratic organization he went along with his eyes narrowed suspiciously. Madara was secretly convinced that he had only stayed the whole time because he thought he might uncover some sort of delicious training secrets in the mounds of information they were digging through.

It would have been worrisome if Madara thought the kid could interpret any of it but what notes weren’t written in coded shorthand were so complicated that Madara himself barely understood them. He wasn’t all that worried about a twelve year old using them for anything devious.

Once all of them were out of sight he turned back to Hashirama and leaned against the gate marking the entry in to the Senju district. Rather than speaking he merely raised his eyebrows expectantly; Hashirama got the point.

“We all know how the rumor mills can be, blowing things out of proportion, so I wanted to talk to you about this and get the truth before reacting.”

“Amazing. You actually used that thing inside your head?”

“Hey! Don’t be mean! This is serious.”

“Fine, fine.” Madara waved one hand casually before folding them both over his chest. “Go on then.”

“Did Brother really spend the night at your place last night?”

All thoughts of remaining casual went up in smoke as his spine stiffened and his fists clenched in surprise. Madara swallowed to clear his throat and admitted in a cautious tone, “He did.”

“So does that – I mean there’s rumors that you guys have been seen going out on dates but I didn’t really pay attention to that because I thought ‘no way’. Have you? Are you? Madara, are you dating my brother?”

“If I say yes will I get to keep my head?”

“How could you guys not tell me!?”

Suddenly very thankful for the gloves which hid his sweaty palms, Madara shifted his weight off of the gate post and shuffled it from foot to foot. “Can you blame us? You’re nosey at the best of times. We just wanted a little privacy to catch our bearings first.”

When Hashirama moved towards him his first reaction was to flinch away but his friend only took him by the shoulders and stared at him with both eyes comically wide, expression intent. If only they could convince him to keep this level of focus during meetings the village would run much more smoothly and they would all have a lot less headaches.

“Does that mean yes? You guys are dating? Oh wow I just knew that you two would get along once you finally tried to play nice with each other but I never would have expected this! It’s amazing!” Fat tears were already forming at the corners of his big brown eyes. Madara shoved him away in disgust.

“Get off of me you big baby. Yes, we’re dating. No, we don’t want you to make a big deal about it.”

“But this is a big deal! Really big! I’m so happy for you two!”

“Alright, okay, there’s no need to be all emotional and stuff. Save that for your wife. I’m going home.” It took a couple of quick movements to dodge around the attempted hug but he did manage to escape without getting trapped in Hashirama’s arms. Actually he was kind of proud of that. Usually he didn’t get away without at least one bear hug and a wet patch on his shoulder.

Hashirama was wiping his eyes when he called out, “Wait!” which had Madara turning back to him, exasperated and wary.

“What now?”

All levity drained away from the other man’s face to leave him with a deadly serious expression rarely seen off the battlefield. A chill ran down Madara’s spine at the dangerous promise behind those eyes.

“Don’t hurt him, my friend. You know I consider you like a brother but Tobirama will always come first and I will protect him if it becomes necessary.”

“A-ah. No. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. He means a lot to me too.”

Like a switch being flipped, Hashirama suddenly let out a booming laugh. “Good! That’s good to hear! And so sweet of you, Madara! Please just one more hug, I’ll make it quick I swear!”

Madara ran for his life. Behind him he could hear the fading sounds of happy laughter but refused to look back in case his friend decided to chase after him or something equally stupid. He was happy too but you didn’t hear him yelling about it at the top of his lungs on a public street. Unlike some people, he had a little more decorum than that.

Once he had dashed across enough rooftops to be reasonably certain Hashirama wasn’t right on his tail Madara dropped down on to the streets and continued walking like a proper member of society. Evening was his favorite time for a walk, be it for purpose or leisure. He enjoyed the cool air and the lower noise levels as most people drifted indoors to end their day. Combined with the soothing sound of the crickets native only to this part of the Land of Fire, it made for an incredibly soothing atmosphere that he took some time now to appreciate while walking home.

It turned out to be a good thing he did. Before he even made it up his front steps he could feel Izuna somewhere inside the house, probably rooting through his kitchen to deplete his food stores for the hundredth time. He would probably be angrier about it if he didn’t do the same thing in return on a regular basis.

As he’d thought, he found the younger man holding the fridge door open and staring inside with a bored expression, two cookies already warring for space between his lips. When he looked over to see his brother he could only blink and offer a muffled greeting which sprayed crumbs all over the floor. Madara wrinkled his nose in distaste, already reaching for the broom and shoving it in to Izuna’s hands as he shoved the man away from the fridge.

“Quit snacking and you can eat some of whatever I make for myself,” he grumbled. Izuna brightened and made a happy sound as he went at the crumbs with loose jaunty movements. “Did you need something or are you just bored on your own tonight?”

“Didn’t feel like eating alone,” Izuna managed to say around his mouthful, still frantically crunching away at his cookies.

“You are…disgusting. How did we both grow up together and yet both develop such different table manners? If you drop any more out of your mouth I’m going to make you mop my floors.”

Izuna’s eyes crinkled but he refrained from saying anything else until he swallowed. The motion looked almost painful – probably was, trying to swallow two cookies at once – but he did nothing but squint and make a face while searching for the last few crumbs with his tongue. Finally he smacked his lips together with a sigh of satisfaction and collapsed in to one of the kitchen chairs.

With barely a glance Madara was able to identify the expression that settled on his sibling’s face and he sighed, irritated to have been caught so easily for the same thing twice in one day. He knew very well that if he tried to beat around the bush it would only intrigue the other more and make it worse for him. The best thing to do was to give in and get it over with as quickly as possible, no matter how annoying it was to have everyone else sticking their nose in to his business like this.

“Go on then; I know that face. You’ve been listening to the gossip circles as well, I take it?”

“I may have heard a few interesting little tidbits here and there. For instance: did you know that you and old Tobes were caught having sex on top of the cliff? Right on top of where they’re carving out the Hokage’s face. Naughty, brother, very naughty.” Izuna waggled one finger back and forth while Madara gaped at him.

“We did absolutely nothing of the sort,” he protested.

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

“It’s true! We haven’t even had – uh. Nothing. Go away, you’re uninvited for dinner as of now.”

Ears burning, Madara spun about to face the counter. Whatever happened to be in his hand at the time was thrown down to be vigorously diced in the hopes that venting his frustration would also erase the blush on his cheeks. Behind him, Izuna let out a low whistle.

“You guys haven’t done the deed yet, huh?”

“Shut. Up.”

“Nothing at all? So I guess the rumor about him spending the night here last night wasn’t true then.”

“He did.” With nothing left to chop, Madara looked down to see he had just ruined a perfectly good eggplant. He’d meant to bake that. “We just didn’t, you know…do anything. He just sort of came home and collapsed. It was a hard mission!” The last was delivered with a heavy tone of defensiveness even though he knew his brother wasn’t one to judge that sort of thing. Just because relationships weren’t for him didn’t mean Izuna wasn’t supportive of Madara’s desire to settle down.

Drumming his fingers on the tabletop, the younger man was quiet for a few moments. “I would say I’m surprised but I’m sort of not. You always did like to take your time with important things and – don’t hit me for it but – Tobirama’s never struck me as particularly passionate.”

Madara paused and turned to frown at him.

“He’s very passionate.”

“Really? Because he’s always seemed too reserved to me. The only time I’ve ever seen him let loose is on the battlefield and even then you hardly know what he’s thinking.”

“Just because he’s a private person doesn’t mean he can’t be passionate.” Madara stepped over to the fridge and swung it open to find something he could use to salvage his eggplant. “You don’t see me singing your praises from the rooftops but have you ever doubted that I care?”

“Alright, fair point.”

“It’s not that we don’t want to. Or haven’t, er, tried. It’s just–”

He was cut off by Izuna’s snickering. “Couldn’t get it up?”

“Fuck you!” Grabbing the closest thing at hand, Madara flung half a stick of butter at his tittering sibling, satisfied to see it make contact with one cheek and leave a nice greasy splotch. Unfortunately he’d been throwing things at this idiot for long enough that Izuna merely reached for a napkin to wipe it away, still smirking widely.

“Sorry, sorry, go on.”

“Hmph. I was going to say that we just get…interrupted. We’ll get there, I’m sure.”

“Probably. Although when you do I would prefer if you tried not to be too obvious about it. You get that stupid weird sex face in the afterglow and I don’t really want to know any more about your sex life than I already do.”

“I do not!” Madara yelled hotly, fingers itching for something else to throw. He staunchly ignored the other man when Izuna started laughing again.

The subject was dropped there and, despite them finding several other things to bicker about, dinner was quite a pleasant affair. Afterwards they brought tea out on to the back veranda and chatted while Madara tended to his weaponry, checking for any nicks they might have picked up during training and sharpening the blades that were starting to grow dull.

When the tea ran dry Izuna brought the pot back inside, casually announcing that he intended to stay in the spare bedroom. Madara waved him off. He stayed outside to enjoy the evening by himself for a while as he finished oiling the last of his blades. Once that was done he made certain they were all stored properly and cleaned up whatever small messes he had made before heading back inside as well. There he scowled to discover that Izuna might have brought their dishes in but he hadn’t washed them. Luckily two cups and one pot didn’t take long to clean.

He was snug in his bed ten minutes later and asleep within fifteen. Even though he hadn’t done much physical labor, just tediously wading through an ocean of paper, he still felt a bone deep exhaustion that pulled him down under almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

If he dreamt then he wasn’t aware of it, struggling back up out of sleep what felt like moments later but was probably something like a few hours. The room was dark with only the window providing a few rays of moonlight by which to see the hulking figure hovering over him. A dazed smile stretched across his lips and he reached out without thinking.

“Did you clean my house?” Tobirama’s voice demanded, rough and grating yet somehow amused.

“Mm. Made the kids do most of the work.” At the time it hadn’t occurred to him what an invasion of privacy it was. It occurred to him now. Years of shinobi work had inured him to the finer points of what was legal and what wasn’t and he realized that what he saw as a nice gesture might be taken as a major violation of personal space. His eyes blinked furiously as he came just a little more awake, worried how his partner would react.

He certainly wasn’t expecting the soft kiss he received but he also wasn’t complaining about it. Apparently his partner was as bad at being a regular human as he was.

“Good plan,” Tobirama mumbled. “Young. More energy. They can work longer.” With a groan he rolled off of Madara’s hips and curled up in the space next to him, resting a head on his shoulder. Madara smiled in to the darkness.

“What time is it?”

“Four in the morning.”

“And you just left the office now, didn’t you?”

Tobirama grunted wordlessly, nosing deeper in to Madara’s neck. “Longer hours means more work done. More work done means more time with you.”

Something warm and light settled just behind Madara’s ribs where his heart would sit.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered, wrapping both arms around Tobirama’s shoulder. His partner didn’t reply.

When he woke in the morning he was alone again and the sheets were cold despite the early hour of the morning – but there was coffee still warm in the pot and Madara was touched to see a plate of rice balls waiting for him in the fridge. Izuna asked if he’d been cooking in his sleep. Madara refused to answer that, just as he refused to explain the dopey grin which hung on his face until he left the house to tackle a new day.

Chapter 7

Four days of dust and sprained wrists and whining children was the final cost of transforming Tobirama’s house from a glorified storage unit in to something resembling an actual home. Since they were bright kids, it only took half that time before their students figured out they were being used for free labor and that Madara’s excuse of a bureaucratic training exercise was completely bogus. Luckily for him most of them loved their sensei enough to keep working simply for knowing it would make his life easier.

Madara suspected Danzo kept working only because Hiruzen did. Already there was a rivalry growing between them which, considering the unhealthy fixation from one side and the cheerful oblivious competitiveness from the other, reminded him a little bit too much of himself and a certain wood-for-brains idiot.

Coincidentally, four days was also how long it took Tobirama to catch up on the paperwork which had piled up during his unexpectedly long trip. He arrived home a couple of hours after lunch with bags under his eyes from working too much and sleeping too little but still with a good amount of energy in his step, smirking in amusement to see seven dirty bodies all trooping out of his home with bandages over the papercuts on their fingers and cobwebs in their hair.

“How goes the cleaning of my shame?” he asked, coming to stand at Madara’s side, just close enough to brush their fingers together in that subtle way which might look like an accident to the casual observer. Madara knew better.

“All finished.”

“Finally!” Torifu groaned, rooting through the satchel at his hip to pull something from his endless snack supply.

Tobirama granted the boy a brief smile. “Excellent timing.”

“Are you done too sensei?” Kagami leapt over and bounced a circle around his teacher. “Does that mean you have some time now? So you can train with us again? How about now? Can you train for a bit now? We’ve missed you, sensei!” It was easy to see the moment of stunned surprised which Tobirama did his best to smother, touched yet trying not to show it.

“I suppose I could, yes.”

“Woohoo!” Immediately Kagami latched on to his wrist and leaned back on both heels in an attempt to drag him away at that very moment. His attempts didn’t so much as budge Tobirama but they did amuse him.

“You’d better go with him or he may try to pull your whole arm off,” Madara chuckled.

Sending him a quick grin, Tobirama finally deigned to follow along to where Kagami was trying to lead him. Hiruzen and Torifu let out matching whoops of excitement while Koharu quietly raised one clenched fist of triumph. Madara watched all of them with something like pride in his chest. Seeing how much these little buggers adored their teacher warmed him, filling him with the same happy glow he had felt the first time he’d seen a Senju child and an Uchiha playing together.

All eight of them trooped their way over to the same old training ground as usual. Madara had noticed that others had begun to avoid this spot in the afternoons in anticipation of Tobirama and his passel of youngsters kicking up some sort of trouble. It was probably a good idea. The moment they all exited the tree line the children rushed forward in a tight group, nearly tripping over each other’s feet in their haste to fight for the perfect spot where the shade still reached but left enough room for one to move around during exercises. Tobirama watched them with his eye crinkled happily.

Standing slightly apart from his peers after the initial rush calmed down, Danzo eyed them all darkly before turning up his nose and stomping back over to Madara’s side. Koharu watched him go thoughtfully. When she turned to look at Homura the boy met her eye silently, neither of them saying a word as an entire conversation passed between them, then they both nodded decisively.

“Let’s see if you’ve all been doing the chakra exercises I asked you to work on while I was gone,” Tobirama announced, lifting one eyebrow challengingly.

They had, in fact, gone through the exercises he had asked them to. Madara had pulled no punches in letting any of them know exactly what they were doing wrong but he also hadn’t hesitated to offer advice on how to improve. After ensuring they were all up to snuff on their chakra control Tobirama had them run through a set of kata to warm up before asking them all to demonstrate the taijutsu they were also supposed to be working on. Torifu and Kagami had both made surprising advancements over the past few months, improving much faster than expected considering their usual level of concentration for any given task. Koharu was a vicious little thing, throwing herself wholeheartedly in to learning anything she could about hurting other people. Hiruzen wasn’t much for taijutsu; he often paid more attention to ninjutsu lessons.

Eventually Tobirama seemed satisfied with how well they had been keeping up, although that hardly meant they were all done for the day. Madara watched his partner as much as he could without seeming inattentive to his own student. He did pay enough attention to Danzo to notice that the boy was also eyeing the others across the field with something like jealousy in his face. Clearly it wasn’t for whom they were taught by, the kid had already declared he wanted nothing more to do with Tobirama, but rather it seemed to be the social aspect he was jealous of.

They had a team and he didn’t. Madara wondered if he wasn’t a little bit lonely, though it wasn’t likely he would get an admission on that if he asked.

With that in mind, he did his best to run the boy ragged in the hopes that it would keep him distracted enough that he didn’t have time to think about other things. For the most part it seemed to work and Madara didn’t bother to hide the pleased expression on his face when he saw Tobirama peeking over to check on them.

Despite the children’s wishes, training only lasted a few hours. They were visibly flagging with exhaustion yet still they begged their sensei not to go. Tobirama chuckled at them and assured them all that he wouldn’t be anywhere near as busy for the foreseeable future so it wasn’t as though he were going to disappear again. Hiruzen ducked away from having his hair ruffled but Kagami stood absolutely still and glowed under the affection. Absently murmuring to Danzo that they should wrap it up as well, Madara watched suspiciously as Koharu and Homura traded their meaningful glances again.

He didn’t have a chance to bring it up, however. They beat him to it.

“Sensei?” Koharu clasped her hands primly in front of her as soon as she gained her mentor’s attention. “We wanted to talk to you about something.”

“I’m listening,” Tobirama responded curiously.

“We – me and Homura – it’s just – sensei, you know that we love training with you. But we’d like to train with Madara-sensei from now on instead.”

“Oh?”

Madara’s eyes widened in surprise but his own reactions could wait for a moment; his gaze snapped over to Tobirama first to see how he had taken that statement. He knew his partner still carried the hurt of so many students forgetting all about him when they felt they didn’t need him anymore.

Rather than hurt, however, there was nothing in Tobirama’s face but stunned pride. He looked happy instead of insulted and Madara sighed with relief, immediately slipping back to curiosity.

“Hm. May I ask why?” Tobirama asked. Koharu stood up impossibly straighter and hurried to explain.

“We’ve learned so much from you and we do love training with you. It’s just that Madara-sama’s teaching is more suited to us, I think. And we wanted teams. Homura and I talked about it and we agreed that it would be much more motivating if we were split in to two teams all the time. Like rivals!”

“I see. You two have put quite a bit of thought in to this.”

“Y-yes sensei!”

“Have you spoken to Madara about this, by any chance?”

The whole group turned to look at him and Madara knew it was clear by the look on his face that no one had mentioned this to him. He hadn’t heard so much as a whisper about the possibility of him keeping the extra kids. The fact that he’d been entertaining vague wishes to do so was a complete coincidence, a surprise even to himself and something he hadn’t so much as mentioned to them.

“No. We, er, haven’t asked yet,” Homura answered as he pressed his glasses up his nose. “Koharu is right though. My time with you has been short and I have enjoyed your lessons but I feel Madara-sensei has a teaching style which will benefit us more.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Madara asked, amused. His partner raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’re always here anyway,” he pointed out with a shrug.

Cautious, Madara stepped closer and asked in a low voice, “You’re sure you’d be alright with it?”

“I’m fine.” Tobirama’s lips quirk up in a faint smile. “That they wish to be placed in your care speaks highly of you and they – you heard what they said, I don’t need to repeat it.” And Madara understood because yes, he had heard what they said. They weren’t coldly abandoning him and leaving him behind like all those who came before him, they were seeking the best situation for themselves yet still making certain he knew how much they cared for him. Madara took a deep breath.

“Well then. I suppose I might as well.” The words were hardly out of his mouth before Koharu and Homura shared a high five and Hiruzen pumped one of his fists in the air.

“Woo! Team rivals! We’re gonna kick your ass!”

“Language,” Tobirama reproached him mildly. Hiruzen grinned sheepishly.

Pitching his voice even lower so that they wouldn’t be overheard, Madara leaned in again to murmur in Tobirama’s ear. “Are we done here? I think I deserve to have you to myself for a little while now.”

He was amused to see the faintest hint of color touch stain the back of the man’s neck, almost entirely hidden by his collar and only visible because Madara had leaned in so close. The two of them sent the children off to celebrate on their own and retreated from the training grounds before anyone could protest or hold them back with other questions. Madara steered them towards Tobirama’s house for no other reason than to gloat over the success of several days’ worth of labor.

The walk back to the Senju compound was pleasant, quiet in the gathering evening and interspersed with lazy conversation. Madara found himself in a slightly whimsical mood, admiring the way Tobirama’s skin almost glowed in the darkness, but when he mentioned this he laughed at the vehement protest from his partner. Compliments were unfamiliar territory to the both of them. Being raised on the battlefield inured them both to acknowledgements of their skill yet left them strangely innocent of how to properly accept a more personal compliment. Madara delighted in knowing he had successfully embarrassed the other man; it was a good look on him.

Upon arriving Tobirama took one look at his kitchen before creating a clone and sending it off to fetch them something for dinner. Cleaning out the fridge and actually plugging it in didn’t magically fill it with food. They ate at the dining table while Tobirama told Madara the story of how his mother had actually brought the table with her as part of her dowry when she married in to the clan, showing him the carvings which depicted the history of the Hatake clan.

“If the two of you are so closely related then how come we haven’t got the Hatake clan in the village yet?”

“We haven’t found them,” Tobirama replied with a cheeky grin. “The Hatake are nomads, following wherever the hunt takes them. Some of them may wish to settle when the offer is made and others may not so we might end up with only a part of their clan within the village.”

“Fascinating. I never knew that. That would explain why we could never pinpoint their actual territory. The always just seemed to show up in random places.” Madara wrinkled his nose with distaste. The idea of constantly living on the road and never having anywhere to put down roots – never having anywhere to say he truly belonged to – was not to his tastes. Leaving the traditional Uchiha lands had been difficult for just that reason. The very earth itself held the history of generations of his people.

After dinner Madara walked his partner through the living room and showed him the system they had used to organize all the things they had sealed away for storage. Once the floor space had been reclaimed they had even gone so far as to breakdown the contents of the overflowing cabinets, leaving only the bookshelves as they were. Now the walls were lined with endless scrolls, each of them labeled in childish writing to advise of the contents therein.

Stopping to put his hands on his hips and look around at it all, Tobirama appeared a little bemused.

“It still boggles the mind a little that you thought to do this, let alone that you actually accomplished it. You all put in so much effort.” The man shook his head lightly while Madara looked around as well.

“How did it ever get this bad?” he asked. Tobirama sighed, rubbing the base of his neck. Bemusement slipped away to become faint discomfort.

“By the time I noticed the mess getting out of hand I’d stopped caring and it just sort of swallowed me over time. I think it started with leaving all my research out instead of packing it away as I should have. No one ever comes here but me and so I figured there was little point in tidying away things I was only going to need again the next day. And then of course I probably got distracted with another project and left out the first one with every intention of going back to it.”

“You do have a tendency to take on too many things at once.”

“Mm. Before I knew it I was up to my eyebrows in parchment and books but, really, there was little point in caring about it. As I said, it wasn’t as though anyone were going to come in here and chastise me for it.”

Frowning, Madara’s eyes shifted towards the north wall of the room. Just across the compound in that direction lay another home he had been in more than a few times. “What do you mean no one ever comes here? Doesn’t that useless brother of yours visit?”

“No. He has a new wife to worry about – doubly so since she got pregnant – and an entire village to run. Brother is busy.”

“Too busy to visit his own sibling? Izuna and I separated when we moved here too but we’re still under each other’s feet more often than not.” He was nearly offended on his partner’s behalf, already mentally drafting the lecture he would be giving Hashirama later. “Useless tit, he is. Busy – pah! We’re all busy. You’re supposed to make time for your important people.”

“You’re more upset by this than I am,” Tobirama noted, muffling a huff of laughter by turning his head away.

Madara grumbled and reached out to pull Tobirama in to his arms, mock scowling at him with exaggerated seriousness. “Of course I’m not. What would I have to be upset about? I don’t even like you.”

“Oh no, not at all.” His partner raised his brows pointedly.

“Nope.” Sliding his hand down, he framed the other’s waist and held tight. “I don’t at all want to kiss you right now.”

“A ridiculous thought,” Tobirama agreed.

Madara did it anyway.

It wasn’t a very serious kiss at first, both of them laughing like naughty children with their lips mashed together awkwardly. Only after Tobirama playfully nipped at him did Madara feel the amusement draining away, a great deal more interested in what they were doing now. His thumbs rubbed small circles on the hips under their grasp and he tilted his head to get a better angle for a much more serious kiss. Tobirama’s hands slid down his chest, mapping the grooves of his muscles as they went, and he shuddered.

“You know,” he murmured, catching the younger man in yet another kiss. “I’ve been very patient, trying to get you all alone for quite some time now.”

“So you have.”

“And now here we are, all alone.”

“We are, aren’t we?” Tobirama’s voice came out breathy and faint despite his obvious attempts at sounding a bit more casual.

Madara leaned in to lick a stripe up the side of his partner’s neck and whisper in his ear. “We uncovered quite a comfortable looking bed when we were cleaning out your room.”

He needed no more words than that. Tobirama was already pressing against his chest to encourage him to walk backwards, across the living room and down the hall. Heat built slowly between them as they moved but it had none of the frantic edge Madara expected it to after taking so much time to get here – if they were indeed taking the step he thought they were. Instead it was a comfortable warmth, a well-fed fire in no danger of burning out like some fragile candle wick. As he was walked backwards through a doorway and the insides of his knees stumbled up against something firm, Madara grinned and gave himself over to the flame.

They didn’t so much tumble down on the mattress as they did chase each other on to it, Tobirama crawling on top of him while Madara tried to drag him close enough that their bodies might merge together as one. Fingers traced the hem of his shirt and when they slipped underneath he sighed almost with relief at feeling the other man’s skin against his own. Warm tingling followed in the wake of whatever patterns they drew across his abdomen, enough to distract him from his attempts to swallow Tobirama’s breath for his own.

Sparks lit behind his eyes and a quiet noise escaped him with those questing fingers found his nipples, circling and pinching, pulling gently only to twist clockwise, and Madara arched his back against the line between pain and pleasure. He felt a quick puff of air on his cheek a split second before Tobirama’s lips pressed against the same spot, lavishing his face with kisses down the line of his jaw, his brow, his temples, even the very tip of his nose. Only when he gave a needy whine did the other come back to him and steal the breath from his lungs with yet another searing kiss that threatened to melt him from the inside out.

If they did nothing but this for the rest of their lives he would die a happy, fulfilled man in want of nothing. The world outside of the room faded away, time itself pausing to create a bubble of perfect isolation for just the two of them to exist together and Madara could wish for nothing more than for this moment to stretch out in to forever.

When Tobirama arched his back under the rake of Madara’s nails he was beautiful, a porcelain work of art come to life just to weave his fingers in to Madara’s hair and crash back down upon him. He made the most alluring noises as he worked both of their clothing open and gasped unashamedly when two hands reached around to palm his ass and grind them together. Already both of them were hard as rocks, more ready for this than they had been for anything else in their lives.

Unhurried, they rolled their bodies against each other as Tobirama’s shirt was slid down his arms and tossed away with little care. Only when Madara opened his eyes for a moment and caught a much larger flash of red than he anticipated did he remember the tattoos his partner had, the ones which had caught his attention and begun their journey so long ago.

Before he could allow himself to be swept under the tide of sensations again, he rolled them both over to sit astride Tobirama’s hips, following the patterns with his fingers just to watch the arch of that porcelain body once more. He bent to taste them with his tongue, alternating between tracing the lines and suckling gently at the points where they met. Underneath him Tobirama groaned softly and tugged at his hair again.

“Come back here,” his partner whispered and Madara went without questioning it.

He allowed his own shirt to be removed before pulling their mouths back together while his hips rolled and bucked as much as they could, enjoying the friction even if it wasn’t nearly enough to do more than fan the flames of his arousal. A muffled noise escaped him when Tobirama cupped his bottom, palming the flesh and digging fingers in to draw him impossibly closer. There was nothing quite like the feeling that his partner could not get enough of him and he did his best to communicate the same in kind with the way he could not stop touching every inch of the body beneath him.

Tobirama’s tattoos were endlessly fascinating. Madara promised himself that someday soon he would take to time to map each line, memorize them with touch and tongue before committing them to memory with his eyes. For now, however, he had other priorities. Clever fingers tugged open the fastenings of his pants, slipping inside just to tease before pressing the hem down. Actually removing them required him to roll off of his partner and perform a slightly awkward shimmy but he was mollified to see Tobirama doing the same beside him, leaving them both clad in nothing but their traditional fundoshi.

It amused him to know that neither of them had quite caught on to the fad for newer undergarments, preferring comfortable habit over innovative shapes.

When Tobirama rolled over top of him and crawled up his legs, Madara parted them to allow the other man to settle comfortably between his thighs. His heels dug in to the back of his partner’s calves and he used the leverage to roll his hips again before reaching down to play with the ends of the ties keeping the last piece of his modesty in place. Tobirama’s eyes fell to watch with rapt attention as Madara pulled those ties lose.

As he exposed himself to the other’s eyes and preened under the hot gaze devouring his body, Madara used the momentary distraction to reach for the little strip of material tucked in to the side of his partner’s fundoshi. Pulling on it caused the twisted material to unravel and then Tobirama wasn’t the only one staring. Suddenly he was glad that the other man had a habit of staying covered up as much as possible; if he were to walk around the village with even half of this glorious body exposed he would have the entire population lusting after him. Madara simply didn’t have time to beat off that much competition.

So much skin against his own was bliss when Tobirama fell back down upon him. Madara welcomed him with open arms as they both explored; kissing, touching, tasting, murmuring broken half-words in to heated flesh. The muscles under his skin coiled anxiously as he felt those loving caresses pause on the worst of his scars as though a little bit of tender affection might wipe away the ghosts of his sordid past. For a moment some sort of thought nearly surfaced through the fog drifting over his mind when it seemed his partner was lingering on one particular scar near his belly but it was fleeting and the thought escaped him again before it was even clear what he was trying to think about.

He held his breath when Tobirama began to slowly move down his body, nipping and licking as he went. Fingers brushed against the aching hardness between his legs and he gave an almost startled cry, his back arching off the mattress in response, then huffed when he heard his partner chuckle at this reaction.

Madara very much meant to grumble at Tobirama for laughing at him but it was hard when his breathing stuttered with every brush of lips closer and closer to his straining erection. He tried to raise his head and look down the length of his body to watch but a single glimpse nearly overwhelmed him and he dropped his head back to the pillow again, eyes closed as he groaned softly. By the time he felt a hot mouth closing over his tip he was already quaking and the incredible sensation of Tobirama slowly working down his length only melted his brain further, set his nerve endings on fire while his fingers desperately clutched the sheets beneath him.

He absolutely felt it when Tobirama began gathering a small amount of chakra but what struck him was how little he cared. How far they had come, he thought, for him to have such trust in a man he had once despised the mere thought of.

It was still a shock to feel something cool and wet press against his entrance. Leave it to Tobirama to come up with a jutsu just so he won’t have to go searching for lube when he needed it. It was pretty handy though. Madara felt his jaw dropping open and his throat contracting around a loud, drawn out moan as two thin fingers pressed in to him at the same time that a hot mouth sank down on his cock yet again. The combination of sensations was almost overwhelming.

Almost. Definitely a close call.

Even around the harsh sounds of his own breathing and the needy whimpers he could hardly believe were his own, Madara still found the will to concentrate on analyzing every movement his partner made. He memorized the way Tobirama’s fingers slid in to find their place inside him, clenching his hole in a half-hearted effort to keep them there. He gave what little concentration he had to the perfect suction around him as those sinful lips pulled away to lay kisses around the base of his cock, running down to lavish attention on his sacs like a damn tease.

As a third finger joined the first two, curling upwards in search of that bright spot inside him, Madara thrashed helplessly and pushed himself down on to the intrusion. He could feel every callous on the other man’s fingers and the way they strained to widen his entrance. He could also feel their faint trembling, though his partner pulled his mouth away to speak before he could think much about it.

“Do you know what you look like right now?” Tobirama murmured, lips dragging against the hairs at the base of his now neglected erection. “I wish I had your eyes. What I wouldn’t give to remember this for the rest of my life, you writhing for me on nothing but a few fingers.”

“Nngg!”

“Speechless, mm? How rare. I wonder what it would take to give you back your words.”

Just as he finished speaking he twisted his fingers to find the prostate for the first time, forcing Madara to cry out. At the same time he turned his head to mercilessly drag his tongue up the side of Madara’s cock and chuckled deeply at the shudders he earned in response.

“I’ve imagined you like this so many times, tried to picture what you would look like spread out for me, how you would taste on my tongue, what it would feel like to be with you this way.” Having found that spot he was looking for, Tobirama aimed straight for the prostate again when he added a fourth finger. “You’ve been a terrible tease lately, although I suppose you can’t be blamed for all of the waiting. Have you been as impatient as I have?”

Madara swallowed thickly, unable to answer even if he had the words to do so at the moment. The discovery that Tobirama was apparently a dirty talker in bed had robbed him of what little breath he had left in his body. It amazed him that such a reserved man could have the confidence to say such filthy things.

“Ah, you did mention your patience earlier so it seems that you have indeed been waiting for this as eagerly as I. Did you picture yourself riding me? Bent over the end of the bed for me? Those would both be very nice, I admit, but I have something else in mind for you right now.”

“Gods,” Madara gasped, mildly surprised he was even able to speak. “Trying – hah – to kill me!”

“Only in a good way. Should I tell you what I’m going to do to you?” Tobirama laid a trail of open-mouthed kisses up the length of his abdomen, holding his weight up on one hand while the other continued to work Madara’s hole without pause.

“Fuck, yes, yes tell me, fuck Tobirama…”

If breathing had been difficult before it was twice as much so now with his blood boiling in his veins. Every inch of his body was on fire under the heat of Tobirama’s gaze and the words that scorched themselves in to his memory. Madara keened when the fingers abusing his prostate refused to let up and Tobirama’s mouth found the center of his chest before murmuring against his skin.

“Beautiful. I want you on your back for me, love. I’m going to stay right here between your thighs and make a home inside your body until I forget my name for calling yours. I want to feel you surrounding me in every way possible and I want to drown myself in you, your scent, your body, your voice. I’m going to make love to you and ruin you for anyone else’s touch.”

“Sage preserve me…” Madara heard his own voice but he didn’t remember speaking.

He didn’t care, either, as the fingers inside him slid out completely at last, dragging along his slicked inner walls so that he writhed for every inch until he was finally empty. Tobirama’s voice hushed him as the man shuffled up the bed to kneel between his open legs, hands gripping the undersides of his thighs to spread them wider and admire the reddened dripping mess he’d created.

Before Madara could even get back enough breath to yell at his partner not to be so embarrassing, the moment had already ended and Tobirama was lining himself up with his entrance, pressing in with a steady pressure that rolled both of their eyes back in their heads.

If he were a civilian man less trained in the need for constant vigilance Madara knew it was likely that he would be howling, scraping his throat on endless screams of pleasure for how perfectly right it felt to have Tobirama slide in to him like a man finding home for the first time. As it was, sulfurous cursing hissed through his clenched teeth in a continuous litany as his passage was filled more and more until finally Tobirama was fully seated within him and for a moment both of them paused, letting the moment hang in utter stillness around them.

Then Tobirama was slowly pulling away and Madara whined until he returned, the missing puzzle piece to his own completion sliding in to place again and again until he thought he might have slipped in to his own Tsukuyomi, so great was the pleasure. If he happened to die right here, right now, he would die in the paramount moment of his entire life.

“Sweet sage, you feel perfect,” Tobirama panted, curling his body over Madara’s as much as he could until their sweat-slicked skin brushed and slid, Madara’s cock trapped between their bellies and teased with just that precious bit of friction on every thrust.

Crossing his legs behind Tobirama’s back, Madara dug in his heels to try and pull the man closer, to encourage him to thrust harder, anything at all. The only thoughts in his mind were Tobirama’s name and an endless litany of more, more, more. His ankle burned where the mark he’d been born with pressed against the other’s skin but he paid it little attention as he clung to his lover and held on as though he might ascend to heaven without the anchor of Tobirama’s weight.

Fingers found their way in to his hair, pulling at the strands to make him gasp before familiar lips sealed themselves over his own to drink in the quiet sounds he couldn’t contain, escaping in breathy exclamations each time he was filled, made complete. If there was a soul left in his body he wanted to give it away in this moment. He wanted to give everything of himself, lay it all at Tobirama’s feet and allow the other man to possess him in a way he’d never expected he would have the freedom to allow. Peace had given them both so much and it gave to him now, finally, the chance to let himself belong to more than just his people. Madara arched in to Tobirama’s body, using his own to convey that gossamer desire, delicate and hard to grasp, impossible to say with words alone, that he would chase this one and only selfish desire until the world burned around them.

He lost himself in their rhythm, unable and unwilling to keep track of time with Tobirama moving inside him in such a perfect way. Each brush against his prostate brought him higher and higher and it felt like an eternity of mindless pleasure before he felt his body quaking with imminent release. Something in his movements must have become frantic and given him away because he felt the hand in his hair sweeping down to soothe him with broad strokes along his side.

“I need – Tobi I need – hah!” There was no breath in him to finish his panting attempts at conveying what he needed but it wasn’t necessary anyway. Tobirama hushed him with a forehead pressed against his own.

“I know,” his partner gasped, hips moving faster at just the perfect angle.

“Can’t – I need – Tobi, please? Please…”

“Kami, say that again. Beg me again.”

Madara whined low in his throat and swallowed convulsively before writhing and blurting out, “Please!”

It was all he needed. Tobirama’s hand slid between them to take him in hand and Madara shuddered violently under the too-bright sensations washing over him. He rocked himself down on to the cock filling him almost violently as he approached that knife’s edge and then his entire body went rigid as he fell over it, coming with a violent noise grinding out between his teeth.

Only a few moments later Tobirama’s voice grunted in his ear and if Madara had any willpower left in him he would have cried out at the final violent impact against his oversensitive prostate before his lover finally went still, filling him in yet another way. Although his channel certainly wasn’t built to be sensitive enough to feel the essence spilling inside him, he still shivered weakly to know that he would be stained for days, inside and out, with the marks of their joining.

He expected Tobirama to collapse to one side after expending so much energy but instead he found a face burrowing in to the crook of his neck as the warm weight of another body pressed down comfortingly on his own, completely still now. Stupidly, it took Madara a few moments to realize that it was nothing more than a simple hug. His mouth turned up in a tired but blissfully fond smile and he looped his arms around Tobirama’s shoulders in return, holding as tightly as his exhaustion would allow. Tobirama rewarded him with languid kisses along the side of his neck.

“Stay,” his lover murmured against his skin. Madara huffed.

“Do I look like I’m ready to hop up and go for a run?”

Tobirama nipped him in reproval then pulled away and looked him in the eye, something untenable hiding behind the affection in his eyes. “Stay,” he whispered again.

“I can hardly go anywhere with your weight on top of me,” he pointed out. When Tobirama blinked and the brightness of his eyes faded ever so slightly, Madara realized his mistake immediately. “And I wouldn’t want to. There’s nowhere else I would rather be.”

That, at least, was the right thing to say. How strange it was to consider that Tobirama might still be at all unsure about their relationship. Madara closed his eyes and sank back in to the pillow beneath his head, promising himself that tomorrow he would do something about that. For now he was too exhausted to do much more than sigh contentedly – then hiss when Tobirama slowly pulled out of him.

Cleaning themselves up took the last of his energy. He was halfway in to a dream already by the time Tobirama slid in to the bed and curled around him, arm wrapped around his chest and clammy palm placed against the beating of his heart. Warm breath still not quite back to normal puffed against the back of his neck and drew a smile from him as he burrowed backwards as much as his languid muscles would allow, tucking his head under Tobirama’s chin.

“Ugh. Hair.” Madara grinned as he listened to his lover spit out gobs of wild Uchiha mane. Tobirama huffed at him. “We’re braiding this beforehand next time.”

“Where’s the romantic spontaneity in that?”

“I don’t need romance, I need a hairless tongue.”

“Heh. Gross.” Madara snickered weakly in to his pillow, eyes still shut, drifting in and out of consciousness.

The last thing he was aware of was the press of lips against the base of his spine and murmured words spoken too low for him to hear, soothing him in to a calm and comforting rest.

Chapter 8

Madara woke to fingers tracing the lines of his torso while a tongue danced along the seam between his leg and his belly. He came awake as quickly as any good shinobi was capable of, laughter on his lips and fingers winding in to white silk hair.

There was none of the momentous awe of the night before, just a fun morning romp in which they took turns pressing each other down beneath the sheets and praising the other’s mouth, but that wasn’t to say there was even an ounce less passion. By the time Tobirama stumbled his way off the mattress and shook out his hair like a dog Madara’s entire body was lax enough with pleasure to tempt him back in to sleep.

Instead he rolled on to his feet and followed along as Tobirama padded towards the bathroom. Once inside he rather carefully avoided looking at his own face in the mirror, not at all interested in seeing whatever dopey, blissed-out morning after expression he might or might not be wearing. After rinsing his mouth out and splashing his face he stepped aside to allow Tobirama access to the sink, tucking himself up against the younger man’s back and resting his chin on one shoulder. While his partner fiddled with organizing his shaving kit Madara used the mirror for a better purpose, wrapping his arms around to trace the never-ending lines on those beautiful tattoos.

With so many different shapes it was hard to decide where the start. After a moment of simply mapping the lines of a perfectly sculpted abdomen, he started at the bottom and wound his way upwards slowly while Tobirama went through the motions of removing his morning scruff. By the time all hints of a beard had been scraped away and any remaining shaving cream had been wiped off Madara had reached the pectoral area, idling his finger around the outside of the sunburst right over top of a rising heartbeat. This was perhaps his favorite of the massive tattoo collection. Something about it drew his eye like a moth to a flame and he had actually traced the outline three times, his partner’s heartrate increasing with each pass, before he figured out what it was that called to him so.

His fingers paused when the thought struck him how familiar this shape was. Dimly, he commended whoever had done these tattoos for getting the color just right, a perfect match to the mark they were covering up.

The sunburst under his hand was no sunburst at all – or it hadn’t been before the tattoo was laid over it. Madara had been born with a mark on his ankle which resembled five Sharingan tomoe chasing each other in a circle. Tobirama’s tattoo artist had exaggerated each tomoe until they bled together and formed five arms of flame instead, visible and hidden at the same time. He had seen this before, he realized. The day that had set him on the path to where they were now, when he came upon Tobirama bathing in the forest, he had looked directly at the match to his own soul mark and not even known.

As the thought sunk in, reality returned to his awareness and Madara realized that he had gone completely still with his hand pressed against the mark, skin burning against his palm while the heart beneath thundered and skipped. He raised his eyes to see that Tobirama was frozen in place. Of all the reactions he had expected to find he had to admit that fear wasn’t exactly a surprise. Tobirama’s face was turned away, his eyes staring in to the mirror at the hand on his chest with an expression bordering on naked panic.

Very gently, Madara removed his hand and reached up to take hold of the man’s chin, turning it until hesitant red eyes met his own in their reflection.

“I didn’t need a soul mark to fall in love with you,” he said quietly. “Yes, I had an idea of the possibility, I knew that you thought we were, but I had no proof and honestly it didn’t matter after a while.”

“You–” Tobirama released one shuddering breath and took another, his eyes darting away and back.

“Are you alright?”

“You love me…?”

Madara blinked, a slow smile growing on his face until he felt his cheeks might split apart. “Yes. I do.”

“Oh. Well. Me too. I – you too.”

“You were so eloquent last night and now you have no words. Very interesting.”

“I love you too, of course I do.” Tobirama’s voice was so quiet he might as well have been whispering and there was more emotion in his eyes at that moment than some people could hope to experience in a lifetime, so many different ones that Madara couldn’t name them all. “I wanted to tell you…”

“No, I understand why you didn’t. It was a good strategy.” Perhaps a civilian would have thought how unromantic it was to strategize the relationship growing between them but they were both shinobi, trained to think in strategies and war plans from the day they could walk, and Madara could hardly fault his partner simply for being who he was. More than anything he thought it was smart.

Romance could maybe come later. Maybe. He wasn’t very good at that and something told him Tobirama wasn’t the type to bring him roses and chocolate.

There were, however, a couple more questions he needed to ask before he allowed the uncomfortably emotional topic drop in favor of the gruff acceptance they were both more used to.

“How did you know?” he asked. “That I was your soulmate?”

“Actually it was thanks to Izuna. He was particularly energetic on the battlefield that day and I myself had only just returned from a rather strenuous mission; I was having difficulty remaining alive, to be perfectly honest. He knocked me to the ground and at the same time Hashirama caught you in some of his Wood Style vines. Izuna held me down and said something about taking one last look at the world before he killed me.”

“Ugh. He always did have a flair for the dramatics.” Madara closed his eyes to let the wave of exasperation roll over him. Then he opened them again to fixate on Tobirama’s face in the mirror while his lover continued his story.

“Yes but it was to my benefit that time. The two of you were directly in my line of sight and it was mere coincidence that I happened to glance at your ankle – actually I think I was analyzing your stance out of habit. Either way, Anija’s vines had torn the wrappings on your ankle and exposed the mark.” Tobirama’s eyes were distant, sunk deeply in memory. “I was so startled I very nearly did die as Izuna planned. Only instinct saved me but I almost died several more times in that fight because I kept trying to catch another glimpse of the mark. I was convinced I’d seen wrong.”

“Well. I’m not sure what I was expecting.” Madara smiled and tucked himself in a little closer against the body in his arms.

He had almost expected some grand tale about how Tobirama had found him dying and been moved to mercy upon discovering his mark. Instead it was no more than the confusion of battle which had begun their journey and in some ways he thought that was much more appropriate for a story like theirs. Even as they strove to kill each other, already their two clans were making accidental headway towards peace. If anyone ever told Hashirama about this the reaction was likely to be unbearable.

“Second question,” he murmured. “When did you plan to tell me? On our wedding night?” He lifted a teasing brow, amused to see Tobirama’s cheek flush a pretty shade of red.

“I don’t know. As I said, I wanted to say something but there was always something that stopped me. At first I didn’t want to scare you away. Then I didn’t want to upset the strange balance we had found. And then you kissed me and I was so caught up in the fact that you would even be interested without knowing about all this that I didn’t want to say something and have you accuse me of…I don’t know. Lying? Tricking you somehow?” Tobirama shrugged.

“You worried that pretty head of yours for nothing.”

“Pretty,” Tobirama scoffed. “If anything I would be handsome.”

Madara laughed and stepped away so that he could spin his partner around and press their mouths together. A contented hum escaped him when he felt fingers winding in to his messy bedhead, encouraging him to tilt his head to one side for a better angle. He could think of no place in the world he would rather be than right here in this room, with this man, lazily trading kisses as though they had no responsibilities waiting for them.

If they’d had the time Madara thought perhaps they might have spent the entire day simply standing there and melting in to one another. Unfortunately – or so his thought was at the time – they were interrupted by a rapid banging on the front door and then the sounds of thundering footsteps through the house.

“Brother come quick!”

There was just enough true urgency in Hashirama’s tone for both of them to bolt out of the bathroom and meet him in the hallway, wrapping towels around their naked hips as they went. Hashirama might be aware that they were together but that wasn’t any reason to be throwing propriety to the wolves. If it were that much of an emergency his chakra would feel very different.

He did look fairly panicked when they saw him, though. Tobirama opened him mouth, paused, and then frowned dubiously.

“You’re a clone.”

“Baby!” Hashirama’s copy blurted. “Mito! And a baby! Coming! Now!”

“Mito’s having her baby?”

The clone nodded frantically. Its creator was clearly worked up because in the next moment he lost control of his chakra and the clone had time to squeak in dismay before turning to solid wood, toppling down on its front with a loud hallow thunk. For a heartbeat both Madara and Tobirama simply stood there looking at it. Then Tobirama jerked like he’s been hit with an electric shock and gurgled, “Baby!”

Madara had trouble throwing on his clothes he was laughing so hard. It didn’t help that Tobirama was impatient enough to tug them in to place for him, all the while with his features rapidly shifting back and forth between shocked awe and embarrassed irritation.

And because Tobirama was related to Hashirama, just as excitable at times although he was usually better at hiding it, his lover took them both to his brother’s house with a completely unnecessary hiraishin that used way too much chakra. Evidently his infamous fine control slipped in the face of new life. Madara thought that was rather adorable, actually, and he knew he would be teasing his partner about it later. Who would have guessed that such a scary face was capable of such messy expressions?

“Hashirama?” Tobirama was calling, striding through the house as though it were his own.

“Bedroom! Hurry!” Their Hokage popped his head in to the hallway, hair pulled back in to a low tail and still wearing his sleep yukata. “The midwife is already here; it’s all happening so fast, Brother!” Faint cries of anguish spilled out of the doorway after him.

“Calm down. We just need to stay calm.”

Despite his own words it was clear that Tobirama too was struggling to stay calm himself. Madara had to put one hand in the small of his back and guide him in to the room as it seemed his feet had rooted to the floor, his face clouded with the detached, panicked awe which usually befell the father of the incoming child rather than the uncle. Sometimes it was easy to forget just how much this man loved children. If there was anyone in the village who cherished the next generation more, Madara had not met them and did not want to.

As soon as they were inside the bedroom the sound of dark swearing at high volumes crashed against their ears. Obviously there had been a few silencing seals set up about the room, probably to keep the neighbors from worrying or calling the authorities, and Madara found himself just that little bit extra terrified of his best friend’s wife. He’d never heard anyone curse with such black intensity before. The fact that she was doing so loud enough to spill over the edges of the silencing seals was just a bit scary when he’d thought only Hashirama had enough raw chakra to do such a thing. Mito’s hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, her face scrunched in pain, and the young medic at her bedside looked ready to faint from the punishing grip on her fingers.

“I’m back my sweet!” Hashirama crooned, hurrying forward to relieve the medic and take her place. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by his wife’s grip but he was a walking tree stump anyway, not nearly so easily crushed.

“Get this fucking thing out of me right now! I swear to kami Hashirama if you do this to me again I will make you bear the child!”

All he did was beam brighter. “Again? More kids!?”

Madara would have dropped his face in to one hand with exasperation if he weren’t so busy making sure his partner didn’t fall over in a dead faint. It should have been impossible for someone with skin that white to go pale but somehow Tobirama managed it. Actually it was a little impressive.

“We are ready, yes ready,” a muffled voice said from between Mito’s open knees. “Come out little one! This world needs new lives to guide it.”

“They’re having a baby,” Tobirama mumbled inanely.

“Imagine that.” Highly amused at his state, Madara smirked – doubly so when he didn’t even get a raised eyebrow or a swat on the arm for his sarcasm like he normally would.

“Right now. Baby. Should we be…watching this?”

Madara snickered. “I know what you mean. I didn’t think I would ever see that part of a woman.” He winced when Mito screeched extra loudly, her eyes finding his like deadly senbon for a single heartbeat before closing against yet another wave of pain.

“No, not that. I mean…its new life. Should people like us be here for something like this? People who bring death like we do?” Tobirama’s words had him swaying on the spot and clutching the younger man to him even tighter.

“Don’t you think that’s exactly why we should?”

“One more push!” the rusty voice of whom they assumed to be the midwife called out, head bowed to give her full attention to her duty. “Hello little one. That’s it, come come little one. Come here now. Your mamma is very tired, let her rest. Ah and here, here she is! Rest, Lady Senju.”

With a massive expulsion of air Mito uncurled her body and slumped back against the pillows, chest heaving in exhaustion as the muscles throughout her body went slack and shivery. Barely a few seconds had passed before she cracked one eye open and reached weakly towards her feet to demand, “My baby. Give me my daughter.”

“First we clean and then we hold.” When the midwife finally lifted her head Madara very nearly choked on his own tongue. He knew that ancient face, those piercing blue eyes. Busy as she was with snipping the umbilical cord to separate child from mother, her eyes still found a moment to lift and meet with his own, pinning him in place with an almost mocking silent laughter. “Here we go. Treat a new life gently and gentle they become, yes?”

Tears were streaming openly down Hashirama’s face as he watched his newborn child be placed in the cradle of his wife’s arms. He’d never looked happier, more proud. Not usually a man given to overwhelming displays of pride, his spine was ramrod straight with it now as though this were the paramount moment of his entire life, more so than making peace between warring clans or building the village many had called a fool’s dream. In contrast, his prideful wife looked small and wrecked by her efforts, soft along the edges she usually kept sharp, and she had never appeared more human to Madara’s eyes as when she first drew a trembling finger along the curve of her new baby’s soft head.

Hashirama looked up to wave them both closer, wanting to share his joy with others like always.

“Come meet your niece, Tobi!”

“My–? Oh. Are you sure?” Tobirama shuffled forward only when Madara pushed him, hanging back himself because – miracle of life or no – babies still weren’t really his thing.  He was content to watch his partner stumble over to stare at the baby while Hashirama babbled excitedly in his ear.

While the others were all distracted Madara himself turned to see the ancient woman who had delivered the baby watching him, wiping her bloody fingers on a rag. It was almost hard to tell through so many leathery age lines but he thought he could see deeper crinkles around her eyes scrunched up with mirth, no less clear for her old age. Her withered lips were turned up at both corners in such a way he almost expected her to start cackling without warning – and then she did, albeit quietly so as not to disturb the happy family.

“All good secrets must be told to someone. I see you have shared yours. Yes, shared it with his neck I see.” She cackled again when Madara flushed, pulling his expression down in to a dark scowl to hide his embarrassment. He’d barely even noticed the hickey peeking out above Tobirama’s collar.

“Shut up you hag.” He crossed his arms and looked away, returning his eyes to the happy scene in front of them while she went about cleaning the birthing area, laying out fresh towels and removing the ones coated in fluids. When he was sure that her eyes were not on him he whispered, “Thank you.”

“I asked no payment nor thanks. Secrets are their own reward and I have known several times my own share of secrets. However, I have some advice for you.”

“Hm?” Madara felt her piercing blue eyes land on him once more and returned the gaze from the corner of his own.

“Keep not your own. Secrets are lies and lies fester, grow, become many and all. Leave the secrets to those who are raised to keep them.” Both of her brows lifted and he mirrored the expression without thinking, a habit more than a true reaction.

She didn’t wait for him to respond but instead cheerfully announced that the Lady Senju must allow someone else to hold her baby while she passed the afterbirth. Mito handed her daughter over with reluctance carved deep in to every tired line on her face. It took both men beside her murmuring soothing words of comfort and promises that she would be safe before the small child finally passed hands. All of them could see that she was nearing her limits anyway, ready to fall asleep at a moment’s notice; it would be much safer to have the child out of her arms before that happened.

Hashirama was thrilled to hold his daughter, of course. He cooed and cried over every inch of her in such detail Madara was sure he would be able to replicate her image in his sleep just from hearing about it. They listened to the man’s raving about the many plans he had for her future until, to the amazement of all, Hashirama settled the babe in to a nervous Tobirama’s arms after barely fifteen minutes had passed.

“What if I drop her?” Tobirama asked, a little wild around the eyes.

“You’ve held a hundred babies and never dropped any of them, Tobi, you’re fine.” With a little laugh Hashirama carefully extracted his hands to leave his brother staring down at the precious bundle cradled in his suddenly rock steady hands. The look on his face was so full of wonder that one might almost think he had just been handed the answers to every scientific question he could ever ask. Madara felt a strange sort of lethargy settle over him just watching, like he could stay trapped in this moment forever and be perfectly happy with never moving forward.

Hashirama gently kissed his wife on the top of her head, petting her sweat-soaked hair and getting a sleepy smile in return. She seemed much calmer about not holding their child now as she slid closer and closer to passing out, her arms too weak to even lift from the bed. After making certain that she was comfortable Hashirama quietly padded over to Madara’s side and broke through his reverie by wrapping one arm around his shoulders, squeezing just that little bit too tightly for it to be comfortable – on purpose, of course.

“This is what we always dreamed about, my friend.”

“Babies?” Madara asked skeptically.

“Happiness! Just look at them.” It was a superfluous statement considering how neither of them had taken their eyes off the happy scene by the bed. “This is what we dreamed about for so long. Our brothers are safe, our people are at peace, and us! We’re building our own families. Can you believe it?”

“I can’t believe you’re not still crying.”

Squeezing a little tighter, Hashirama laughed. “You’re a good friend, Madara.”

“And you are a crappy brother. Just because your family is growing doesn’t mean you can forget about the ones who came first. Go visit your brother sometimes, you jack ass. I can’t be his entire social circle all by myself.”

“You’re right!” Hashirama drooped. “I’ve been paying so much attention to Mito and he’s always been so self-sufficient…”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t get lonely.”

Madara shook his head but the angry words he’d been preparing to throw at his friend just wouldn’t come. Now wasn’t the time for lectures and anger, even he could see that. With a great deal of reluctance he let the issue go, thumping Hashirama hard on one shoulder and calling it even for now. His friend perked up and offered him yet another smile bright enough to light up the entire room.

“But things are turning out alright, aren’t they?” Watching the careful way Tobirama was inspecting his newborn niece’s tiny fingers, Hashirama sighed happily. “I have a daughter. You and Tobi found each other. You took students! I cannot express how proud I am of you, my friend. Out of all of us, I think you have come the farthest.”

“You’re getting in to that ‘too mushy’ territory and I’m going to leave if you sink any deeper.”

“Don’t be like that! You really have grown! Even Tobi says he’s proud of you.”

“He…does?” Madara blinked in surprise and took his eyes off of his partner for the first time to stare at his friend in surprise. Somehow he always seemed to forget that the two Senju siblings had a habit of seeking each other out for small bouts of conversation during the work day. Of course, Tobirama usually used the excuse of conferring on some report or project or something but underneath that it was obvious, if you looked properly, how much he just wanted to see his big brother.

Grinning like an idiot, Hashirama nodded enthusiastically. “He told me so himself! Well, okay, he was muttering to himself after I said something about how well you were doing with your students but I heard him say it!”

Returning his gaze to the man across the room, Madara sighed and tried to fight back the heat rising in his cheeks. It was just like his partner to hold those kind of things inside, to feel them and not say them, especially when until this morning he had still questioned how invested Madara was in their relationship.

“Right,” he murmured faintly for lack of anything better to say. Wanting the attention off of himself, he asked, “So how goes the mission to befriend Izuna?”

“Oh! He accepted one of my hugs without any swearing last week so it’s going very well!”

“Wow. That’s…yeah that’s actually pretty good headway.” Madara chuckled, knowing that most of that progress was only his brother giving in to the inevitable. Once Hashirama got an idea in his head it was nearly impossible to shake him from that self-imposed mission. Still, it would take at least some degree of acceptance for Izuna to stop swearing at him every time so it seemed such dogged persistence was paying off at last.

Hashirama nodded happily. “See? Everything we ever wanted is coming true bit by bit and I couldn’t be happier. Thank you for helping me make this all a reality.”

“Ugh, you’re getting mushy again. Go play with your new baby.”

Instead of being offended by his gruffness, Hashirama gasped like he hadn’t been thinking of doing that this entire time and took off like an arrow loosed from a bow. He appeared at Tobirama’s side faster than a body flicker could have managed and immediately began making grabby hand motions rather than asking to hold his child like a regular human being. Though clearly reluctant, Tobirama handed his niece over to her father and retreated slowly to allow the new family a few moments alone. Every inch of his body telegraphed his desire to slither forward again and stare at the baby some more but he managed to control himself and backed away until he reached Madara’s side.

Leaning over until their shoulders were pressed together, Madara discreetly wound his arm around to press a hand against the small of Tobirama’s back, as supportive as he could manage to be with so many other people around.

“Now taking bets on how long it takes him to cry again,” he murmured from the corner of his mouth. Tobirama snorted.

“Probably less than a minute.”

“You think he’ll last that long?”

“He’s trying to be strong for Mito,” Tobirama pointed out. “I don’t think he’s realized she fell asleep.” Madara snorted.

The two of them lapsed in to silence as they watched and waited and it wasn’t quite a minute later than Hashirama broke, fat tears of joy rolling down his cheeks as he leaned down to show Mito the baby’s tiny little toenails, crying harder upon seeing her slack features. As much as they were both very used to the sight of him sobbing with joy it was still touching to see someone they cared about at such a happy moment in his life.

Peering to the side without turning his head, Madara observed his partner, trying to compare the man he saw now to the way he used to see him before his misconceptions had all slowly been disproved one by one.

“Tobirama?”

“Hmm?” The man in question hummed curiously without looking over.

“You’re happy, right?”

“What?” Brows pulling together in confusion, Tobirama turned to look at him now.

Madara flushed but continued anyway. “Hashirama. He kept, er, going on about how this was where we all wanted to be and…you’re happy with this right? Where you are? Us?” He wanted to cringe for how awkward his words sounded even to himself but was immediately mollified by the bemused smile Tobirama gave him.

“Happy isn’t quite strong enough of a word,” his partner told him quietly.

“Ah. Right. Good.” Madara nodded and drew a slow breath in through his nose. For some reason his heart was thundering against his rib cage but he tried to ignore that.

“You?”

Gnawing viciously on his lower lip, Madara took a few moments before answering because Tobirama was absolutely right. Happy wasn’t nearly strong enough of a word to cover how he felt. Pressing his palm tighter against Tobirama’s back, taking strength from the warmth he could feel through the hastily thrown on shirt, Madara dropped his gaze to stare at his toes while he spoke.

“When I was old enough to understand what soulmates and romance were I asked Susumu-sensei how I would know if I was ever in love. She said it wouldn’t feel like a beginning and it wouldn’t feel like I had reached my goals like an ending of some kind. She said I would know that I was in love when it felt like I was smack dab in the middle of my own story with the beginning behind me and all the best parts still to come. And…I feel like that with you now.” He cleared his throat gruffly against the influx of emotions as he concluded, “Yeah. I’m happy. I found my soulmate, my brother is here, my best friend is here, and I have three little students to torture until they find the middle of their own stories. Life is just fine.” 

“Oh. That’s…wow.”

“Shut up.”

Tobirama chuckled and leaned over to press a soft kiss against his temple. Madara noted the midwife glanced over at them and grinning that stupidly sharp grin of hers, making him shrink with embarrassment. Feelings were stupid.

“In the middle of our own story, huh? I like that.”

“You would, wouldn’t you bookworm?”

“Hm. I’m a little surprised you haven’t broken out in hives yet from all these emotions. What do you say we go find an empty field and spar after we leave here?”

“Will sparring be the only thing we’re doing?” Much more comfortable now that they had moved back in to territory he was familiar with – bickering or flirting, it was so hard to tell the difference these days – Madara lifted his face back up to grin suggestively.

Tobirama leveled him with a hot look that made him really hope the midwife wasn’t still watching. “That depends on how good you are.”

“At behaving or at fighting?”

“Do you want me to tell you you’re being a good boy, love?”

Spluttering with indignation and untimely arousal did nothing to detract from the fact that this was still quite possibly the best day of his life, nor from the delightful reward of Tobirama’s ringing laughter, even if it was at his expense. Madara couldn’t possibly think of anything that would make him happier at this point. All that was left now was making sure Tobirama felt the same for the rest of their lives.

Notes:

Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck around for this journey! ^^ All your comments have fueled my energy and made my days so much brighter! Can't believe the story is already over!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of MadaTobiWeek2018