Chapter Text
Madara tapped the steering wheel and immediately stopped himself once he realized the nervous tick. A short look to the side showed Tobirama as he had been the last thirty minutes, projecting calmness with a distinct flavor of resting-bitch-face.
“Listen, I appreciate that you jumped in to help me out, but I understand if you want to back out. My family can be a bit much, so ...” Madara cringed at the way his sentence faded.
“I said I would do this. There is no need to offer me a way out,” Tobirama answered coldly.
Oh boy, thought Madara. The silence from before spread again in his car. Visions of his aunts eating Tobirama alive drifted through his mind, and then of Hashirama chewing him out for letting his little brother be abused like this. “Ah, so it might make sense to talk a bit about ourselves? You know, since we’re gonna pretend to date.”
Tobirama turned to look at Madara, for the first time since he had gotten into the car. “You are Madara Uchiha, current managing director of Uchiha Optics after your father Tajima Uchiha decided to step down four years ago. Your expertise is in science and development, where you worked your way up from the bottom in the company after you got your degree in applied physics ten years ago. You are thirty one years old, like to listen to jazz, do not particularly like to travel even though you do if it is necessary for the business. Your closest friend is your brother Izuna Uchiha, who is the vice managing director, though my brother likes to imagine he is it instead. Your lesser known hobby is oil painting, where you recently completed your twentieth work, which is a landscape study.”
When the younger brother of one of his best friends (Izuna and Hashirama were both close to his heart and Madara refused to choose between them) rattled down fact after fact about him, Madara had to blink through the daze and took the sharp turn to the right a bit rougher than was advisable on the not well-maintained country road. Tobirama grunted at the inelegant driving and threw Madara a baleful look.
“How do you know all of this about me?” He stammered, looking at the white-haired man in the passenger seat in between focusing on the road in front.
“How could I not,” Tobirama snorted. “Hashirama is very vocal about the people he loves.”
“But - the oil painting?” Madara wondered. Even though Hashirama always complimented his works, the elder Senju brother never really ‘got’ the art in the way that Madara intended it to. Which wasn’t a problem, his art was not something that Madara made to share it with the world. It was a way to process his emotions mostly. So part of Madara felt like he was a bug being put underneath a microscope with the abrupt way his artistic endeavours had been mentioned like that.
“Hashirama has hung the still life with oranges up in his foyer. I asked him about it,” was Tobirama’s clipped answer.
“Ah,” Madara said dumbly. It was not the work he was proudest of. The fruit in the still life was old and bruised, the kind of oranges you debated for several minutes about whether you could still eat them before you threw them in the trash. When he had been finished, he wasn’t even sure why he had drawn them that way. So when Hashirama visited him in his studio and was enthused about the vibrancy of the picture, he had been eager to get rid of it. To hear that Tobirama had found something worth remarking about in the painting made his stomach feel funny. And Madara couldn’t decide whether it was in a good or bad way.
Then the last turn until the driveway to the house appeared as if out of thin air in front of them on the road.
“Oh shit, we’re almost there,” he muttered. Panicked, he went through the information that he could have conveyed at any point during the last thirty and something minutes. “Uhm, I told them a few years ago that I am gay and most of them accepted it, but a few, particularly Aunt Kaede, don’t really take me seriously? Which was also the reason I wanted to bring someone home for some time, you know, a man. But I also didn’t want to throw someone in just like this. Also, ignore my father when he starts going on about grandchildren, and Uncle Takeshi is really into chess, so don’t take him up on his offer to play if you don’t want to do anything else this evening.”
He rattled down the last sentence as he reluctantly came to a standstill in one of the spots in front of the house. The mansion rose like a sleeping giant from the surrounding forest, in a way that had always made Madara marvel when he was a child. Now, he felt like it was terribly gaudy. But the Senju’s were also old money, so Madara hoped that Tobirama knew that the ancestral family home was not modelled after his own taste.
Tobirama scoffed and looked at with such an arrogant expression that Madara felt stupid for having said something in the first place. “You want me to be here to make your homophobic relatives accept the truth about your sexuality. The goal is to affront people, so stop worrying about dissatisfying them.”
Then the younger man exited the vehicle and straightened his jacket.
“Maybe I just want to make sure the evening doesn’t leave you scarred,” Madara murmured as he trudged behind the white-haired man.
Tobirama turned half back towards Madara, and damn, Madara hadn’t expected the Senju to even hear what he had said. “I have swallowed down countless insults against my own bigoted relatives. Here, you can just tell them afterwards that you ended our relationship due to how rude I was. I will savor this.”
Madara stopped short in his tracks and stared at Tobirama as he pushed the door bell as if he hadn’t just basically declared war on Aunt Kaede.
Do I want out of this, Madara wondered half hysterically. But then his gaze wandered down to Tobirama’s backside. It was a particularly nice backside.
That had been the first thing he had noticed about Tobirama, Madara remembered now. They had been at one of those networking events where Madara had to chat with a few dozen important people before he could get drunk with Hashirama. Madara had seen Hashirama talking with someone from behind, and the white hair first made him think it was an old guy. The tightest ass in well-tailored suit pants had queued him in that the hair color was misleading about his age. Then Madara had been introduced in Hashirama’s usual over-excited way to his little brother. And Tobirama’s cold manner had been so off-putting that Madara had put the other mostly out of his mind. Until yesterday, when he had bemoaned his aunt’s bigotry to Hashirama.
Oh, there was the one thing he remembered from Hashirama’s occasional stories about his family, Tobirama worked out regularly, doing squats in particular. Which was kind of reassuring, an ass such as this should not exist without any effort. That would just be unfair.
His mother’s measured steps rang out towards the door from the inside, and Madara hovered his hand over Tobirama’s waist. Should he try to make this as convincing as possible? But no, he thought as he pulled back his hand without touching the younger man. Who cared if their cover got blown, he would rather not make Tobirama uncomfortable.
The door opened and his mother appeared, taking in Madara and his unexpected company with her usual poise. “You did not tell me you were bringing company, Madara,” she scolded lightly. “Please come in. I am Mitomi Uchiha, and with whom do I have the honor?”
Tobirama took her offered hand with aplomb and replied, “The honor is all mine, Mrs. Uchiha. I am Tobirama Senju, Madara and I are romantically involved.”
Mitomi’s soft smile was a break from her act as the all-consumate hostess. “How nice that you have found someone, my dear. Now come give your mother a kiss.”
Madara bashfully leaned down and kissed her lightly on the offered cheek. Now he felt bad about this situation. He hadn’t taken into account that he was giving his mother false hope about finally getting over his undateability.
“Please feel right at home, Tobirama. And please tell me should anyone make you not feel welcome.” With those words, she bustled back into the kitchen to organize the caterers.
Madara got two pairs of house shoes out of the closet and as they exchanged their foot wear, Tobirama raised his eyebrow. “Your mother was rather explicit in her acceptance.”
“Yeah,” Madara sighed. “Aunt Kaede tends to make sure to spew her vitriol out of mother’s range of hearing. I know she would defend me, but that’s just... I don’t want to pull her into this if I can avoid it.”
Tobirama watched him for a moment and then something softened in his features. “And your father?”
Madara grimaced. “It might sound weird, but I don’t know? He hasn’t agreed with Kaede, but he also hasn’t said anything against her, and either way I never really got their dynamic as siblings.”
Tobirama nodded thoughtfully.
Madara ran his hand through his hair and immediately got his fingers stuck in a knot. “Shit, give me a moment,” he cursed, feeling his feet turn beet red as he despaired with his stuck digit.
“Stop moving,” Tobirama scolded and stepped behind Madara to carefully detangle hair from hand. His touch could have felt good in his hair if this was not so painfully embarrassing.
“I’m sorry about this,” Madara murmured contritely. “This is just stupid. I should know whether my own damn parents support my sexuality.”
“You can stop your moping, too,” Tobirama added, but there was a playful note to his scolding this time. The younger man stepped around Madara and lifted a hand to his face. The fingers felt hot on his skin as Tobirama took Madara’s chin between his thumb and pointer finger. “Chin up, Madara. We are confronting some bigots, this is not the time to feel sorry about yourself.” Then Tobirama linked arms with him and purposefully strode up the foyer to where the usual noise of dinner parties came from.
Madara automatically followed his lead through the daze that he found himself in. His heartbeat was audible in his ears, and Tobirama felt warm along the side of his body. Was it nausea at what was expecting him in the living room, what could very well be the start of a lasting rift in his family? Or was he defenseless at the pure force of Tobirama that marched him towards finally standing up for himself?
Probably a bit of everything, Madara decided. And a small voice in the back of his mind added that the younger Senju brother was devastatingly handsome with a sort of ruthless intelligence that Madara couldn’t help but admire. Maybe Madara could ask him to go out on a real date after this? Well, provided that Madara would not spend this evening making such a big fool out of himself that he never wanted to see Tobirama again.
They rounded the final corner and stood in the door as one by one the conversations faded into silence. His father, Tajima, his brothers, firstly Izuna and then the twins Mako and Hiroto, his mother’s sisters Akemi and Kaomi, and of course Uncle Takeshi and Aunt Kaede.
Madara opened his mouth, but the words were stuck in his throat. Just before the silence could turn awkward, Tobirama smoothly announced, “It is very nice to meet you. I am Tobirama Senju, Madara’s partner.”
Izuna looked as if he had bitten into a lemon, Tajima was stone-faced, and Akemi and Kaomi exchanged meaningful glances. At least the twins smiled and waved them welcome. And Aunt Kaede looked as if the dirt stuck under her shoe had had the audacity to call out for her attention. Madara instinctively leaned into the hold that Tobirama had on his elbow. The ground felt less firm than it had a minute ago, but something in the reassuring squeeze that Tobirama gave him made him feel that somehow, everything would be okay.