Work Text:
Domestic
“At this point,” Tobirama drawls, hands some notes to the waiter and then waves him off with a flick of his wrist, “I’m surprised the two of you haven’t clocked on to this… domestic, housewife thing you have going on.”
Hashirama, surprised, asks why.
“Well,” Tobirama says with a heavy sigh, “the only thing you do all day is prepare meals, read some blogs and go brunching. And then he comes home and he pays the bills. It’s disgusting.”
Hashirama goes red in the face and mumbles something under his breath.
“What was that?”
“I make him coffee in the morning, before he wakes up.”
Tobirama, with his glass halfway up to his lips, pauses, and cringes. “Jesus, brother, pull yourself together.”
-
There’s a routine that Hashirama follows every morning, without fail.
He wakes up at precisely 6:45 am, takes a shower and turns on the coffee maker. Then he spends half an hour carefully preparing croissants, and puts them in the oven to bake.
By then it’s 7:30, at which point he can hear his roommate’s alarm go off. Madara usually doesn’t wake up then, and instead goes back to sleep instantly. The alarm is just the notice Hashirama needs to serve the coffee in their favourite mugs – Hashirama’s quite partial to his Adventure Time mug, whereas Madara will never admit it but his favourite is the Batman mug.
About ten minutes after Madara’s alarm goes off, Hashirama cheerfully walks into his room and pulls open the blinds. Madara, as usual, glowers and calls him an infidel, throwing an arm over his eyes to shield himself from the light.
The next step is the step Hashirama secretly calls unstoppable force versus immovable object. He pulls on Madara’s exposed arm, very, very slowly pulling the man out of bed, and considers it a job well done when Madara either gives up or ends up sprawled on the floor.
Hashirama then returns to their kitchen and pulls out the croissants, letting them cool while the two of them sip their coffee – black for Madara, but Hashirama likes adding hazelnut milk to his – while Hashirama makes idle chit chat as Madara pretends he’s not listening. (Which, he might not be. Hashirama likes to think that he does, though, because the cues are there – an absent nod of the head if he agrees with the subject at hand, a disinterested glance out of the window when he doesn’t.)
Then Hashirama eats three croissants while Madara showers, and then their day diverges from there – Madara puts on a suit while Hashirama calls him a cab (no room to park a car in their neighborhood), and then Madara heads out with a semi-annoyed move out of my apartment, you vagrant and a wave of his hand.
After Madara’s gone, Hashirama cleans up, and after that he does whatever he wants to do. Usually he starts off with a few job applications, and when that’s done, he scrolls through some blogs. Before lunch he gets bored, and at that point he starts sending texts to whoever might be free to meet up for lunch. It’s usually Mito. Sometimes, Tobirama can make it. Once, remarkably, Hashirama ran into Izuna who, oddly enough, offered to buy him lunch. (That one had been strange; Izuna kept eyeing him with amusement and Hashirama wasn’t sure if Izuna just thought he was funny or if he was laughing at him for some mysterious reason.)
The rest of the day goes on in a similar fashion, until Madara returns at around six and Hashirama’s just gotten started on dinner. Madara gets undressed and puts on some more comfortable clothing – which he determinedly argues is not athleisure no matter how much Hashirama points out that it’s exactly what it looks like – and then takes a seat at the kitchen counter, probably rambling on about something his boss did (who is, hilariously enough, Izuna). They talk over dinner, and once they finish Madara gathers all the plates and cleans them up.
Generally, they watch TV shows or movies afterwards (or, rather, Hashirama does, while Madara keeps his nose in whatever book or article catches his attention), with Madara at one end of the couch and Hashirama sprawled on the rest of it, feet usually resting on Madara’s lap.
This routine of theirs began when they first met in college, when Madara was busy with his dissertation so Hashirama often made coffee and got takeout for them. Moving together was just easy, because neither of them had a job at the time and finding cheap accommodation was tricky.
“Now, you see, I get the logic of that,” Tobirama interrupts Hashirama. “Helping each other in a time of financial difficulty? Sure. But what you’ve got going on now is oddly domestic. I’m almost expecting the two of you to get hitched in Vegas at one point and tell no one.”
Hashirama makes a face. “Sorry to rain on your parade, but we wouldn’t do that. I don’t think Madara even likes Vegas.” Then he pauses, blushes, and says, “I see what you mean.”
Tobirama makes a half-amused half-disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Continue, then.”
It’s just that falling into this rhythm with Madara was so easy. The two of them got along so well, what with Madara’s not-really insults and Hashirama’s remarkable ability to not take anything personally. They’re each other’s best friend. Hashirama’s not sure Madara would have allowed Hashirama to mooch off him the way he has been doing if they weren’t. And besides, Madara’s one of the people Hashirama feels he truly understands, and he couldn’t even imagine his life without him. It’s an inconceivable thought.
By the end of his tirade, Hashirama slumps in the bistro chair and drinks the last of his lemonade. Tobirama is eyeing Hashirama oddly, fingers tapping out an uneven rhythm on the table. “I see.”
Hashirama slurps through the straw. “What?”
Tobirama shakes his head, and mutters, “Inconceivable. Of course.”
“What?!” Hashirama asks again, defensively.
“Nothing important,” Tobirama replies smoothly. He takes a look at his watch (which Hashirama knows has run out of batteries but Tobi insists on pretending it works) and says, “Well. We’re not all unemployed; my lunch break is over. I have to go.”
“You don’t have to be mean about it,” Hashirama pouts, but smiles at his brother as he’s leaving. “Hey, thanks, Tobi.”
Tobirama looks at his brother with scrutinizing eyes, and says, “I hope to God this will make sense in your head soon, too.”
“What will?” Hashirama asks, clueless.
Tobirama shakes his head in amusement, a small smirk on his lips. “Maybe not. See you around.”
-
Madara gets a lunch break, too, but his office is far away from his shared apartment with Hashirama. So his lunchtime tends to be spent with his boss and brother, who unfailingly orders the most oniony of dishes, which is unpleasant for anyone who has to come in contact with his breath.
Madara’s upper lip is curled slightly in disgust as he watches Izuna inhale his food, while he works his way through his own dish. Their lunch is spent in silence. Except it never is that simple, because Madara is Izuna’s older brother and Izuna is a nosy little prick.
While it’s true, they don’t talk much during lunch, Madara almost always has to deal with Izuna’s curious eyes whenever he gets a text, or a call, or even when he’s just sitting there trying to enjoy his break. By the end of it, Izuna always breaks and begins firing rapid questions.
The questions probe into Madara’s life with Hashirama – and Madara ignores that whenever Izuna puts it that way he gets butterflies in his stomach – and the conclusion is always you should tell him.
I know I should, Madara gripes back.
He’d be into it, Izuna would say, draining his glass of water. You’re already basically married.
Madara rarely allows the conversation to go that far, but when it does he throws his briefcase at his brother.
And after work is done, he gets to go home and bitch to Hashirama. Never, of course, about why Izuna’s pissing him off. And then, when Hashirama’s watching TV with his mouth parted in that stupid trademark look of his, Madara pretends to be deeply engrossed in whatever’s up on his tablet screen, when he’s really, really focusing on not putting a hand on Hashirama’s shin bone just to have it there.