Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For someone who had been largely MIA over the past few days Hashirama was disgustingly brief in his request for Madara to come over. He hadn’t even offered so much as a single excuse for his behavior beyond a few murmurs about some family emergency and needing to be home while everyone available tried to pull together and help out. What they were trying to help with Madara had no idea since his idiot best friend had talked around himself several times before asking with uncharacteristic seriousness whether he could come over or not.

Of course Madara had said yes because despite the fact that he would never lower himself to actually admitting to it he did miss his best friend, the man he had spent time with nearly every day since they were around twelve years old. When he got there, though, the first thing he was going to do was badger an explanation out of him for the sudden disappearance. Normally Hashirama was blowing up his phone with meaningless texts from the moment the sun rose over the horizon. To his shame it had actually taken until noon for Madara to realize his pocket had been suspiciously quiet all day and fire off a few texts of his own that never got replied to.

The subway obviously had to be extra crowded when he hopped on because that was just his luck. Only a few days of separation and already he forgot why it was always better to take a cab to Hashirama’s neighborhood. Madara buried his face in the neck of his sweater to block out the stench of body odor and other things he didn’t want to think about until finally he was at the stop closest to his friend’s home. The rush to disembark nearly sent him tumbling off the platform and down on to the tracks but he managed to pull himself out of harm’s way by taking a solid grip on a passing stranger’s backpack and letting himself get dragged along for the ride. Only once the crowd had moved on and he was at least semi-free of the bustling masses did he finally dare to move out on his own again, heading for the western exit.

Since Hashirama’s house was still a fifteen minute walk in to one of the nicer neighborhoods, Madara spent the whole time kicking up fall leaves and going over all of his guesses for what the idiot might have been doing in the past few days, everything from spontaneous amnesia to randomly deciding to join a drug cartel and run coke in to another country. Granted, the second one wasn’t very likely since the man was more terrified of his wife’s wrath than death itself and Mito would certainly have a few things worse than death to rain down upon her husband if he decided to get involved with those sorts of seedy activities. Of all the things Madara had ever threatened his friend with nothing would ever compare to an ominous ‘I’ll tell your wife’ and yet he’d never seen a happier couple.

He would almost be jealous if they weren’t so disgustingly schmoopy about it.

By the time he arrived at the right house on the right street there were several leaves caught in his hair and he was cursing himself for not remembering to restrain it before going out in the wind. The door was unlocked so he let himself in and deliberately kicked his boots off in a messy heap, knowing Hashirama would be the one to get in trouble for not reigning in his guest properly.

“Where are you, dipshit?” he called in to the eerily quiet house. Something thumped on the second floor so he headed that way, thinking perhaps that he might not have heard Hashirama’s response.

Al the lights were off, he noticed. Well, not all of them, but enough of them to make him wonder if Hashirama had gotten in trouble again for being unkind to the environment. It gave the whole place an eerie vibe to follow the singular trail of light from the kitchen close to the entrance all the way up the massive sweeping staircase. Really Hashirama had too much money but at least he had a wife classy enough to know how to show it off properly instead of the three tiered bouncy castle Hashirama used to dream of living in.

Once he had climbed all the way up to the second floor he paused to look left and right down the hallway, wondering which direction to try first. He used to think that a house this big was too much space for just the two people who lived here even with a baby on the way but somehow Hashirama always found a way to fill every damn room in this place – and use them all! He even had a whole room just for his stupid plants where he could be found each day watering them and chattering away like it would help them grow.  

Just as Madara decided left was as good a direction to try as any Hashirama popped out of the room right in front of him and shrieked in his face with frightened surprise, probably not expecting to see him there. Startled, Madara shrieked back.

Like idiots the two of them stood there shrieking back and forth until finally Madara could think around the panic enough to clap one of his hands over Hashirama’s mouth, cutting off all sound and plunging the long hallway in to sudden silence. His friend offered him a sheepish look before clawing the hand off his mouth to grin in apology.

“I didn’t realize you were here already!”

“What do you mean ‘already’? I rode the subway, it took forever!”

“Sorry, sorry, I’ve been losing track of time lately. Things have been really…difficult. But I’m glad you’re here. Would you like some coffee?” He sighed and Madara realized the other man did look incredibly tired. “I could really use some myself.”

Grumbling, Madara stepped back and waved for Hashirama to go ahead of him. They wandered back down the stairs and in to the kitchen where his host went straight for the coffee pot. Once it was set up and burbling away he slumped down in to the closest chair, running both hands through his uncharacteristically tangled locks with a harried expression. The bags under his eyes were deep enough to be suitcases and Madara found that sort of offensive; eye bags were his shtick, Hashirama had no right to pull them off so well.

“I meant it, I’m glad you’re here. With Mito as pregnant as she is I’m having trouble dealing with this situation myself and juggling work at the same time.”

“What situation? You’ve been giving me the silent treatment for days, I don’t know what’s going on!”

Hashirama wilted like a flower. “It’s Tobirama. There was an accident at his lab and he’s…” Fear gripped Madara and squeezed tight, choking his heart and closing his throat. Every second that passed without an explanation left him more and more tense until finally he exploded.

“He’s what!? Spit it out!”

“Oh he’s fine!” Hashirama said. “Mostly. He’s in one piece, at least! But the explosion–”

“Explosion!?”

“–burnt his retinas. I know a specialist who owed me a favor and she took a look. Everything should be fine but Tobi isn’t allowed to remove the bandages for a couple of weeks. So he’s effectively blind for a little while, which means he needs a bit of help. He’s staying here with us in his old room and I’ve been trying to take care of him but you know what it’s like when I’m on call. Babies are born when it’s convenient for them, not when it’s convenient for the doctor.”

Madara’s voice was faint as he murmured reflexively, “You’re the one who wanted to be an obstetrician.”

Whatever whining answer Hashirama gave went in one ear and out the other as Madara immediately disappeared inside his own head. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have his sight taken away so suddenly and so completely, the terror that would fill him as he worried over whether or not he would ever see again no matter how much the doctors reassured him. Good eyesight was almost a family tradition. He couldn’t think of a single Uchiha who had ever even had to wear glasses let alone gone blind or something. If he had to choose a sense to lose it would not be his sight. Maybe hearing. He could still read if he didn't have his hearing and learning sign language couldn’t be too hard, he thought. Learning English had been a nightmare but he’d gotten through that well enough.

Eventually he tuned back in to the world to hear Hashirama going on still about how hard it was to be on call while also trying to care for his pregnant wife and how adding an injured sibling on top of that just made everything twice as hard to figure out. The flow of words only stopped when Madara reached out to clap a hand over his mouth again, this time with a frown.

“Get to the point already,” he snarled. Hashirama pulled his hand away and tittered.

“Sorry. I got carried away. I called because I need your help. I can’t be in two places at once and I know you have to work too but you can work from anywhere as long as you have your laptop! Could I maybe convince you to come stay here and…keep an eye on Tobi?”

Madara blinked. “You want me to what now?”

“Please!? Tobirama really needs someone to help him out with things and I already worry for Mito when I’m not around but I can’t just ignore my patients–”

“No, stop.” Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, Madara demanded, “Are you asking me to come stay here so I can babysit your little brother? Have you gone insane?” Of all the stupid favors he had been asked for during their long friendship this definitely ranked among the stupidest.

“Come on, it won’t be that bad! He just needs someone to cook meals and help him get around, maybe entertain him a little bit. It’s not like it would be super hard!”

“Have you forgotten the part where he can’t stand me?”

Waving his hand dismissively, Hashirama laughed. “That’s not true at all! You just need to learn how to read him properly. Believe me, you would know if he couldn’t stand you. He’s not afraid to be vocal about that sort of thing.”

Madara shook his head doubtfully but didn’t bother arguing further. Apparently Tobirama was already here in the house somewhere and he’d always had abnormally sharp ears – useful now that he would need to rely on them a little more than usual but even blinded he was unlikely to spare any sharp words if he overheard Madara talking about him.

A cringe put a stop to that line of thought, bringing him up short and forcing him to take a hard look at the reality of what Hashirama was asking him. Friends weren’t something Hashirama lacked but people he could trust to take care of his precious sibling? After the rest of their family had all been taken by the same sickness a few years back Hashirama had seemed to cling to his last brother like a lifeline, holding tightly as though afraid that if he let go he would lose Tobirama as well. Knowing that he was among the few this man would trust with the last of his family was unsurprising, of course, but still touching.

That didn’t mean he was in any way excited to do this. In all the years they had known each other Madara have gotten no impression from Tobirama other than disdain and distaste. Younger he might be but his brain could outrun the both of them put together and he was always quick on the draw to point out when he thought Madara was doing something stupid – which was pretty much all the time. Even if he thought about it Madara couldn’t think of a single pleasant interaction between the two of them. Usually they just avoided each other as much as possible and left it at that; it was easiest.

“Don’t you have a cousin who lives in town?” he asked as a last ditch attempt to avoid the awkwardness he just knew was bound to come with agreeing to this stupidity.

“We do but she’s out of the country on a work retreat and they weren’t even allowed to bring cellphones or anything. She would come home in a heartbeat if I could reach her – probably more to get out of there than for Tobi, to be honest – but I just don’t have a way to do that.” Hashirama sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve had several coworkers covering my ass as much as possible over the past few days but they’re all just as overworked as I am and they can’t keep this up. Please? Please?” Like an inevitable tide he went for the same old move he’d been perfecting since they were twelve, the infamous puppy eyes, at which point Madara understood that he had lost. He gave a sigh of his own and prayed for patience.

“I’ll need to pack some clothes and shit. And it’ll take a while to get all my notebooks together and grab my laptop. Honestly, you could have asked me over the phone so I could do all this before coming over. Now I’ve got to pay for a cab both ways just to get back here!” Grumbling, he shoved his hands in his pockets and spun around to head for the front door.

“Wait! I can give you a ride home! I’ll just need to run upstairs and let Tobi know that I’ll be gone for a little while so he doesn’t try anything adventurous.” Hashirama paused to wrinkle his nose. “The first night I brought him home he tried to find the bathroom by himself and ended up weeing in the hall closet. I had to rewash all my linens and some of those sheets still don’t smell right when I make the bed.”

Madara blinked twice and then roared with laughter. It did make him feel better to know that his new ward had already made a fool of himself a time or two.

Not wanting to waste a good brew, the two of them sat down and enjoyed the coffee Hashirama had been making before they left. It was nice to catch up after several days apart. Trading gossip as they usually did, reestablishing the bond several people in their lives had dubbed worryingly codependent. When they were finished he took the mugs to the sink while Hashirama trotted upstairs to speak with his brother for a minute and then Madara allowed himself to be led outside and piled in to the stupidly expensive car in the driveway. On the way back to his apartment he made his friend regale him with all the silly idiot mistakes Tobirama had made so far in his adventures as a temporary blind man, laughing without shame no matter how he was scolded for it.

With those images in his mind the next couple of weeks were looking a lot more fun.

Chapter Text

It took a lot of patience to ignore the way Hashirama practically danced back and forth across the living room the entire time he was waiting for Madara to pack up his things. A couple of times he tried to give the idiot something to do to keep him busy and stop the pacing but each time he would get distracted half way through and text Mito to ask whether she had heard any terrible or worrisome noises coming from Tobirama’s room yet. The answer was always no and yet he refused to calm down.

Eventually Madara figured if there was anything else he needed he could always pop home and grab it even if he did have to take a cab. It wasn’t as though he were going to another planet for a couple of weeks, just halfway across the city. Hashirama leapt an alarming number of feet in to the air upon being told they could finally go and lunged for the door without even offering to help him carry his bags. Rather unusual from such a genuinely helpful person but Madara grudgingly admitted that it was sort of understandable right now. Sort of. It was still annoying and he would definitely make sure to mention it later.

After struggling down the hall to the only working elevator in his building and waddling across the underground with several bags dangling from his arms, clothes and toiletries and everything he needed to set up his work station, Madara was in no mood to chat once he finally collapsed in the car again. He spent the ride back across town with his head turned away, huffily watching the city go by while Hashirama blathered on about all the foods Tobirama wouldn’t want to eat.  As if he cared about that. The ungrateful little shit would eat whatever Madara wanted to cook for him and he had better have a ’thank you’ ready. Just because he’d been sitting on some sort of unwanted feelings for the man for much too long now didn’t mean Madara had to be nice or anything, that wasn’t his job. At no point in his life did he remember signing anything that said he had to be nice.

They got back to Hashirama’s house in fairly good time and the first thing his friend did when they walked in was abandon Madara with his bags again to hurl himself up the stairs so he could make sure Tobirama had survived the single hour he’d spent unsupervised. Madara rolled his eyes and muttered evil things to himself as he struggled up the stairs as well, heading for what they always called a guest room despite it being specifically reserved for Madara should he ever wish to stay the night. He even had a picture of Izuna hung up on one of the walls, grinning stupidly and posing with some stupid random statue they had found in an airport just before his flight boarded.

As soon as Madara stepped back out in to the hallway with his well-worn laptop between both hands he could hear a very familiar voice growling in a tone he knew all too well; Hashirama must have just done something stupid. What else was new?

“I am fine, Anija! No! No, just go away, for the love of god! Wha- because I was sleeping! I don’t need anything if I’m sleeping so fuck off!”

“You don’t have to yell, I was just concerned!”  

“No, you were being overbearing. As usual. I know I’m not one hundred percent right now but I’m hardly going to injure myself in my sleep when I’m not even moving!”

Madara snickered openly at the offended rage in the man’s voice. As much as he wanted to agree, he wouldn’t put it past anyone bearing the name ‘Senju’ to hurt themselves in their sleep. Genius status notwithstanding, Tobirama could be just as distractible as his brother and with just as disastrous results, case in point being the time he hadn’t wanted to put his book down on the walk to work and accidentally cast himself off a twenty foot bridge in to the river below. When the voices inside the bedroom quieted to a murmur Madara assumed things to be calming down and turned for the stairs, intending to scout out the living room for the perfect place to set up his work computer and all the associated paraphernalia.

“YOU WHAT!?”

The sudden yell almost made him toss his precious laptop over the railing. Madara scrambled to catch it as the door now just behind him slammed open and Tobirama’s figure filled the doorway.

He probably would have looked much more imposing if his eyes weren’t covered in thick bandaging that ran all the way around his head or if his hair hadn’t been sticking out wildly at all angles. Still an unfairly good look on him. Despite obviously knowing that he wouldn’t see anything he still swung his face from side to side like he was looking around until Hashirama very carefully inched around him and put both hands on his shoulders in a calming manner.

“Now, now! There’s no need to be so upset. He’s here to help!”

“You called Madara here to babysit me!?” The red on his cheeks would have looked quite fetching if the rest of his features weren’t twisted with clear distaste. Madara huddled his laptop a little closer with a scowl. He wasn’t that bad to have around!

“I didn’t say babysit,” Hashirama tried to placate his brother.

“Why can’t Mito help me around?”

Just opening his mouth to defend himself, Madara shut it again and wrinkled his nose. He loved a good argument as much as the next man but he was also well aware that fighting with Tobirama when the sour puss got up to high dudgeon like this usually ended up with him looking like a fool. For once in his life he could afford to be the bigger man here and just bow out to let the two brother argue. Just once though! And these idiots better appreciate his efforts because it was taking a lot of strength right now not to reach over and tug on a chunk of that soft, white, defenseless hair. The only thing stopping him was the knowledge that Tobirama probably didn’t even realize he was standing there and startling him probably wasn’t healthy right now.

“Mito is thirty-four weeks pregnant! She can’t be running up and down the stairs all the time and the stress of being responsible for you just wouldn’t be good for the baby right now, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make it sound like you’re a burden–”

“I’m blind but I don’t know how to be blind. Right now I am a burden.” Tobirama sighed and Madara remembered Hashirama saying that this had all been caused by an accident in his lab. Hopefully this situation would finally impress upon him the importance of actually following the safety protocols he was supposed to use in his job, no matter that he was ‘just close enough to a break through to fuck science up’.

“Well Madara doesn’t think you’re a burden, do you Madara?”

Hashirama offered him a friendly smile but it was the way Tobirama’s head once again began whipping from side to side that had Madara holding in a snort of laughter. “We’ll see,” he murmured.

“Shit,” Tobirama hissed under his breath, the red in his face no longer just from anger.

“Good to know my presence is appreciated,” Madara teased.

“No one in your life has ever appreciated your company as much as you appreciate your own, I’m sure.”

“Ooh snap!” Hashirama laughed until Madara's bitchy stare made him wither and giggle nervously. “What? People still say that, right? It was really popular for a while.”

Trying not to question his choice in friends for the millionth time, Madara removed himself from the conversation and headed downstairs. If Tobirama wanted to complain about him being here then he had no desire to stand there and listen to it. His time was better spent circling the living room and sitting in every available seat one by one to figure out where he’d have the least amount of screen glare while he worked. The couch felt best since it would also be closest to the coffee table where he could spread out his notebooks and set up the external hard drives he’d brought but he had to be sure. In all the years he had spent visiting this home he’d never had to properly set himself up before. It felt weird. Eventually two other pairs of footsteps followed him down at a much slower pace and Hashirama’s voice hailed him from the kitchen, encouraging him to abandon his laptop in front of the space he’d chosen.

A quaint little scene greeted him when he entered the room. Mito seemed to have gained several inches around her waist since the last time he saw her and she wasn’t carrying it very gracefully, legs braced in an uncomfortable-looking manner while her husband used his freakish height to lean around her belly for a kiss. Behind them, Tobirama had been deposited in a chair to face the wall. He probably didn’t much care where he sat since all he needed at the moment was his ears but it was still funny to see him facing the wall like he’d suddenly taken a deep interest in the terrible paint scheme.

“Good, you heard me!” Hashirama straightened and gestured for Madara to come closer. “I thought I’d give you a little tour so you don’t have to go looking for anything later! This is the stove–”

“Fascinating,” Madara interrupted him. From over in his corner Tobirama snorted.

“I’m just being thorough! So, this is where we keep the cups and things.”

Mito patted her husband on the shoulder as she waddled laboriously towards the fridge. “He knows where things are, dear. We’ve been living here for years and he comes over all the time. It’s good of you to worry, though.”

“But what about when he has to cook? He’ll need to know where all the pots and pans and things are!”

“You idiot, I make dinner for you guys all the time when you’re all working late. I do know where all your shit is!” Madara wondered if there was some kind of medical miracle that would let Hashirama give his eyesight over to his brother for a while. Clearly he was the one that needed a two week time out.

Flustered, Hashirama stood there looking around the kitchen as though he’d just realized that was true. Then he jumped when the pager on his hip went off at full volume. After checking it he looked back up with an apologetic shrug. “Any chance you’d be alright to make dinner for tonight? I was going to start cooking but apparently I’m needed at the hospital.”

“Get going,” Madara rumbled as an agreement. He looked away from the awkwardness of Mito trying to kiss her husband without spilling her juice or squishing their poor child.

“Make something tasty for them!” Hashirama called on his way to the front door. “And leave me some leftovers!”

Since no one else was speaking and no one seemed to be trying to leave the room either, Madara supposed both of his current housemates expected him to actually get down to cooking right this second. He listened to the purr of Hashirama’s car starting up again outside the window while he pulled open the cupboards to let his eyes roam over the contents. A quick check in the small chest freezer off in one corner revealed two kinds of fish, three cuts of beef, and a small glazed ham. For the two people who lived here full time. It really was a good thing they were rich if they were going to just let so much good food go bad before they could use it.

Knowing this was probably going to end in a fight, he asked, “Any requests?”

“Salmon,” Tobirama responded immediately.

“Chicken,” Mito rebutted. “And pickles. I want chicken and pickles.”

“A disgusting combination. Unfortunately we don’t have any chicken.” Madara shrugged, putting that idea to rest in his mind. Then he froze when Mito gave him a sharp look.

Enunciating each word very precisely, she repeated herself. “I want chicken and pickles.”

“I’ll order some fast food then, shall I?”

“Acceptable.” Nodding like an appeased queen, she waddled her way over to try and fit herself in to one of the kitchen chairs.

Frowning now with disappointment, Tobirama turned his eyeless stare in Madara's general direction with a plaintively hopeful, “Salmon?”

Madara leveled him with a sharp look that went entirely unnoticed, though it took him until Mito covered her mouth to hide her amusement for him to realize that. Then he huffed to cover his misstep and crossed his arms.

“I’ll order you a fish sandwich,” he said.

“That’s not the same at all,” Tobirama complained.

“Well it’s what you’re getting. If I’m ordering food for her then I don’t see the point in going to all the trouble of cooking as well.” God only knew that with his luck he wouldn’t cook enough for Mito but the smell of their dinner would give her a new craving. That was not a headache he wanted to deal with.

Leaning back against the kitchen counter, Madara pulled out his phone and opened the app for his favorite junk food place. They had a pretty decent chicken sandwich and the fish sandwich at least looked alright, though he’d never tried it himself, so he might as well get to enjoy his favorite burger at the same time. Knowing the two assholes across the room from him they would both fall on the food like animals as soon as it arrived and leave him to pay.

With that taken care of he was free to stare at the back of Tobirama’s head and wonder just what kind of madness he’d gotten himself in to by agreeing to stay here for a couple of weeks. Hashirama owed him big time for this.

Chapter Text

When he woke there were two main clues to let Tobirama know that his nightmare had at least been polite enough to wake him up after morning arrived instead of in the middle of the night like usual. His first clue should have been the birds chirping happily just outside the window. In actuality it was the sound of Madara tripping over something in the hallway and screaming his demands for recompense at the top of his lungs, blaming Hashirama for whatever it was he’d stepped on.

Brotherly love aside, Tobirama figured the man was probably within his rights to blame Hashirama since his sibling did in fact have a terrible habit of just tossing his belongings about as it pleased him. It was something he’d promised to watch himself for until everyone in the house had both eyes working again so, really, if he had already fallen back in to bad habits then Tobirama was the last one who would step in to defend his honor on this.

Rolling over to one side, he dragged a pillow over his head and sent reluctant and silent thanks to the man outside for waking him in such a way the nightmare he’d been trapped in was cast out of his mind completely, leaving no room to doubt the reality around him. In less than a minute he was lying on his back again with a grimace baring his teeth because the burns on his face had yet to fully heal and, despite being mostly hidden under the bandages, they still hurt when he tried to lay face down. Tobirama sighed up at what he assumed was still his bedroom ceiling. He hoped so, at least. It would be just his luck to spontaneously develop the ability to teleport when he didn’t have his sight to properly appreciate or take advantage of such a power.

Although the ability to teleport out of a situation would have served him quite well the night before while Madara was trying to help him through his nightly ablutions. He appreciated the help getting to the bathroom and having his toothpaste handed over, that sort of thing had been helpful no matter how much he detested admitting it. What he had not appreciated was Madara hesitantly asking if he needed help aiming while he relieved himself. The neighbors had probably heard that screaming match.

Without the ability to see the clock Tobirama’s best guess was that it took a solid five minutes for Madara to stop yelling and stomp his way downstairs, the boom of his retreating footsteps trailed by an exhausted sounding Hashirama. Lying in bed for a while longer would have been nice if there was any chance of sleep returning but after the never-ending darkness of last night’s dreams Tobirama knew it was unlikely he would find any rest. With that in mind he rolled over and slowly got to his feet, shuffling across the carpet with one arm out until he reached the familiar wood of his closet door. It didn’t matter much which shirt he picked out since most of his clothing tended towards the same color scheme; almost all his shirts went perfectly fine with black or tan slacks and that described nearly every pair of pants he owned.

Barring that one plaid monstrosity Hashirama had picked up for him in France that he still didn’t understand the purpose of. What was he supposed to do with plaid pants? Halloween in July?

After he had an outfit picked out and he was reasonably sure the clothes were all on correctly Tobirama inched his way over to the door to step very carefully out in to the hallway. When Hashirama bought this house and he had first picked out the room he wanted to claim as his own, situating himself right at the top of the stairs for an easy escape from his brother’s madness had seemed like a great idea. Now all it did was make him nervous to know there was a death trap lying in wait just outside the door for unsuspecting sightless idiots to go tumbling down to their doom.

Voices in the kitchen downstairs told him that there were no witnesses to see the shame with which he lowered himself to the ground and butt-scooted most of the way down the long staircase. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it standing up, just that it was faster and made him feel a lot safer without the sensation of all that empty space around him. When he had counted out eighteen steps he very carefully pulled himself to his feet and clung to the banister with both hands while he descended the last seven or so, all of which could be seen from the kitchen if someone were to look around the corner at just the wrong angle and just the right time.

It was a good thing he did too because he had only just gone down the last step where carpet became polished wood flooring under his bare feet when footsteps left the kitchen, paused in the doorway, and then rushed towards him in a sudden flurry.

“You should have called for one of us to come help you!” Hashirama’s hands fluttered between his arms and shoulders, trying to find somewhere to support him.

“Nonsense.” Tobirama swatted the flustered hands away and continued towards the other voices he could hear. “I am perfectly capable of moving from one room to the other without hurting myself.”

“You might be but Madara is not,” Mito informed him as he stepped in to the kitchen.

Madara's silence carried a particularly mortified air to it and it said something that he failed to respond to such an easy jab. Instead he could be heard mumbling about eggs and then Tobirama heard the fridge rattle before the smell of – ketchup? That was definitely ketchup.

“I’m surprised that you’re even home right now, brother.” Turning the conversation back in another direction seemed safer than dwelling on the embarrassing events of last night.

“Actually I’m just here to check up on Mito and then I’ve got to go back since I’m still on call and it’s just easier to sleep in the rooms there.” From the ragged sound of his voice Tobirama could guess exactly what he would look like, the familiar manic state he got into when one thirty-six hour shift rolled straight in to another twenty-four hour shift and he barely found time to sleep or eat. Long shifts like these were always the culprit for the times when Hashirama would call him in the wee hours of the morning with strange questions like whether water was considered a beverage or if it was normal for a man to love his houseplants more than his cats. Hospital work came with horrors that some would never guess at.

When it came time for Hashirama to leave again and the two lovebirds started in with their disgusting goodbye habits even Tobirama voted for them to scram and do it somewhere else. He might not be able to see but he could definitely still hear and the wet sounds of his brother making out with his sister-in-law was not the sort of thing one should be forced to listen to when one lacked the ability to seek out some other kind of distraction.

It wasn’t until the same gross sounds of farewell actually picked up again from down the hallway that Tobirama realized he was now alone in a room with Madara and frowned. Blind or no he wasn’t going to just sit here and let someone like Madara run his entire life. He could still do some things. Like getting himself a drink, that seemed fairly easy. Standing up was pretty simple and he remembered hearing the fridge directly to his right, which would mean he’d been seated at the head of the table, so if he turned a sharp ninety degrees and took three steps forward he should find – yes. The smooth surface of a stainless steel refrigerator. Once he was there it was a simple process to open the door and trace his fingers along each shelf until he encountered a familiar shape that didn’t require anyone else to help him.

He made it back to his seat with no problems but he was still running his fingers over the top of his drink to find the opening when Madara cleared his throat.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I get you something else?”

“My brother would have you baby me,” Tobirama sneered, “but I can still do some things for myself.”

“Sure, sure. I just think it’s a little early to be drinking beer.”

Pausing just before he cracked open the can, Tobirama tilted his head down as if to stare at it. “Ah. I thought it was a can of soda.” Still not an early morning drink but he hadn’t wanted to ask for help pouring juice out of the jug. Finding a cup would have been easy enough; knowing when to stop pouring would have been a bit trickier.

“Do you…want a soda? Or…” Madara trailed off and Tobirama pushed the can of beer away from himself with a quiet sigh of defeat.

“I think Hashirama said he made orange juice yesterday.”

A minute later he was cradling a tall glass of juice between both hands while he sat and listened to the sounds of Madara thumping around the kitchen. Pots scraped on the stove burners, butter sizzled over the heat, and it took a bit but eventually he was able to figure out that the rapid thunking noise he could hear was the sound of something being chopped up on the wooden cutting board. Mito usually used her fancy marble one when she cooked, though she also usually hid the good cookware when she was done with it so Hashirama couldn’t ruin anything when he inevitably got distracted while cooking. She had learned her lesson after the Great Pot Debacle six years ago.

Listening to the sounds of whatever Madara was cooking wouldn’t have given him much more information without his nose picking up certain familiar scents. Ketchup had been out earlier, so he assumed that everyone else had already eaten and that Madara was starting over again for his benefit, although he knew he couldn’t just assume eggs just because of the ketchup. Mito’s cravings did need to be taken in to account. Something in the pan spit in a way that sounded very different from boiling water so it definitely wasn’t noodles; his theory of eggs looked more and more likely by the second.

He was proved right when Madara shuffled across the kitchen with dragging footsteps and murmured a warning just before something ceramic hit the table with a muted thud. The smell of omelet was much heavier when it was sitting right under his nose.

“Fork by your right hand, knife just above your left. Two omelets on your plate and ketchup just above it.” Madara mumbled his instructions with the gruff voice of someone trying to act normal when they felt anything but. He probably found the situation a little awkward too, although he couldn’t possibly feel as awkward as Tobirama did having to give up such a major part of his life for several weeks.

The omelet, to Tobirama’s sheer horror, was absolutely delicious. Unlike the slapdash meals the man usually served after another frantic call from Hashirama begging him to come take mercy on them all, this simple breakfast was perfectly cooked with gooey cheese and diced vegetables worked through it for delicious little bursts of flavor. Tobirama almost felt bad for bracing himself to choke down another half-assed meal of microwaved bullshit but he was too busy scarfing down fluffy eggs that he could only assume were as golden and buttery looking as they tasted.

When he was done he wanted to ask for more. Pride kept his mouth shut, hands falling in to his lap after draining the last of his orange juice and setting his fork neatly in the center of his plate. Trying to eat without being able to see his food was an experience that he could only assume looked hilarious from an outside perspective and he didn’t want to give Madara any extra incentive to laugh at him.

“So. What’s on for today?”

“Hm? I don’t know about you but I’ve got work to do.” Madara's voice came from over by the sink despite not having made a sound after dropping off the eggs. Had he been intentionally making his footsteps noisy before?

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I can’t really do much right now. Hashirama’s been keeping me entertained and now that he’s run out of sick days to use–”

“Yeah, I don’t get sick days. Being self-employed means I have to work extra hard for my buck. I don’t have a boss to whine at when I need a bit of extra time, all I’ve got is pissy clients who think websites are as easy as ‘just make it more red’.”

Tobirama frowned in his direction as best he could. “Well what am I supposed to do then?”

“Don’t care,” was his answer. What a dick.

Actually things didn’t turn out half as bad as Tobirama thought they would. He followed Madara to the living room originally in the hope of annoying the man in to entertaining him somehow but within ten minutes he found there was no need, he was plenty entertained just listening in. If you had asked him before their conversation over breakfast he probably wouldn’t have remembered what the man actually did for a living since most of the time he tried not to pay too much attention to idiots. Even knowing the broad scope of what he was doing – something to do with web design he was pretty sure – didn’t really help though since Tobirama had no idea how coding worked. Coding was for nerds.

Yes he did realize the irony of a scientist calling anyone a nerd, thank you. He also didn’t care.

Listening to his companion now didn’t exactly help him understand what the big deal was with coding a new website from scratch or why it was so hard – but it did help him understand that it was, indeed, very difficult. Why else would Madara have kept up such a constant stream of profanity and complaints under his breath as his fingers ticked and tacked over the keyboard in an endlessly stuttering stream?

“Fucking semicolons,” he heard from across the room and wondered in what situation a semicolon could ever induce such rage. “Red. Needs to be more red. Too pink – rose? No, pink. White text won’t look good on that, asshole doesn’t know what he wants. No one will be able to read – black. It should be black. Where the fuck is the semicolon I swear to fuck I know you’re in here!? Oh. Oh I put a comma.” Madara heaved a sigh so deep one would think he’d just been informed of a close friend’s death and if Tobirama’s eyes were in working condition he would have been staring unashamedly.

Rapid typing filled the air as Madara continued murmuring to himself and the longer they sat there the lower Tobirama sank in to his seat as he realized he really didn’t care what the man was saying as long as he never stopped talking. Horrifying as it would be to admit, he couldn’t believe he’d never noticed what a great voice Madara had. Usually he checked out of the conversation mentally almost as soon as Madara opened his mouth since they had never been friends and he’d decided a long time ago that they would never get along, hadn’t even bothered to learn much about him other than the fact that he was loud and brash and the worst enabler for Hashirama’s bad ideas. He would have to start paying more attention in the future because apparently this idiot had a voice on him.

Deep and rumbling when he muttered under his breath, smooth in an oddly debonair sort of way when he used his cellphone to call the customer whose project was giving him so much grief. Tobirama was so distracted by just listening to the cadences of Madara's voice that he almost didn’t bother paying attention to what he was saying to the other person.

He was being nice. It was weird, completely flipped from the way he spoke to everyone else.

When it became obvious that the phone call was going to last a while as Madara hammered out details with his customer Tobirama rose from his chair and very carefully made his way to the stairs so he could go back up to his bedroom. Thinking of his brother’s best friend in any sort of way that even came close to positive was just weird and if he couldn’t drown it out with words on a page then he was going to lay his head next to his radio and drown it out with music.

That is, if he could remember how to use the radio next to his bed without looking at the buttons. Every five minutes it seemed like he was discovering yet another thing he’d never realized he did without paying much attention. Was the on button for his radio on the top or the front? Which preset wasn’t set up with Hashirama’s stupid pop stations?

Why did losing his sight have to be so bloody annoying?

Chapter Text

Getting ready for the day ahead of him was filled with patterns so ingrained that Tobirama didn’t bother to question some of them until someone else did. Things like why he even bothered to slip his phone in his pocket when he knew full well the smooth touchscreen would be useless to him.

Sitting and listening to the tinny sound of his ringer, he felt he could understand a lot better now why so many people at work glared whenever his phone rang. That was, without a doubt, the single most annoying sound he had ever been forced to sit through without being able to do something about it. He could remember picking that tone because it was the most likely to cut through the fog of concentration while he was working but now when there was nothing else for him to do but sit and listen? If he knew where it had landed after he’d thrown it Tobirama knew he would only throw it again and hope for a more spectacular landing.

“For the love of fuck!” Madara's footsteps were almost welcome as they stormed in to the room. “Pick up your fucking phone, Senju!”

“I can’t, you asshole.”

Dead silence followed for perhaps two full seconds until it was broken by another tinny ring.

“Oh. Right. Do you want me to accept the call for you?”

“Anything to get whoever that is to stop calling.” Considering the tenacity of the caller, Tobirama was pretty sure he knew who it was. His guess was confirmed when Madara snorted from over by where his desk would be.

“It’s Izuna. Should have known. Here – what do you want, you little shit?”

Muffled laughter played back and Tobirama couldn’t help but smile at the sound of his best friend’s voice. “So it’s true! Old Tobes must be in trouble if you’re answering his phone for him. Give me to him! I want to see his stupid face!”

“Ugh. Here you go, Senju. It’s a video call so if you really want to frustrate him then keep it pointed at a wall.”

Angry chittering told him where the phone was without having to ask and Tobirama was still smiling reluctantly as he reached out with both hands for Madara to slip the device between them. He did consider facing it towards the wall but he didn’t really want to drive away any possible form of entertainment that would last longer than it took to fail at meditation again. So he offered Madara a grateful hum and did his best to situate the phone screen so it was pointed at his face

“You look like you got attacked by a mummy,” Izuna told him.

“Thanks, you look great too.”

“You can’t see me, you dumb fuck.”

“And it’s the best look I’ve ever seen on you.” Tobirama grinned wider, already feeling better about his situation than he had in days.

Izuna called him all sorts of names, smooth voice turned shrill with offence, but eventually he calmed down enough to speak like a normal human being once more. “One of your buddies at the lab emailed me and he sounded really freaked out, blah blah blah, emergency contact. I just called to see if you melted your whole face off or something.”

“Just retinal burns. And maybe a few on my skin. Nothing that won’t heal.”

“Aw, look at you being all brave!” Izuna’s voice snickered.

Tobirama resisted the urge to roll his eyes, knowing the motion would be neither comfortable nor visible. “You know damn well that if you hadn’t trekked off to who-knows-where on this stupid ‘finding yourself’ journey you’d have been right there in the bed next to mine weeping about losing your own sight too.”

“I think I’ve pulled your ass out of the fire enough times, I’ve earned the right to laugh at you from afar.”

“Fair enough.” And it was. Rivals from the day they met, best friends shortly thereafter, Izuna had covered for him without question countless times when his enthusiasm for science outweighed his common sense.

“So what’s my brother doing there? Did Hashirama call him over to babysit while he’s at work or something?”

“Or something,” Tobirama growled. “He called your brother over to stay with us for two stupid weeks. I tried to tell him I was just fine as long as I can call Mito for help but he’s had her on bed rest for almost a month already.”

Even without being able to see him Tobirama knew Izuna would be cringing. “Crap. How are you holding up with that?”

He took a moment to think about it for a moment, shifting the phone in his hand until he remembered that Izuna was on video call and the movement was probably making him sick. Just for good measure he gave it a good shake and gave a quick smile when he heard the man screaming for him to stop.

“I guess it’s been fine so far. Did you know he talks to himself while he works?”

“Yeah.” Izuna made a sound that was either an imitation of a dying whale or an unholy combination of sigh and groan. “Coding is an absolute bitch. I don’t know where he gets the patience for it. But he loves it, don’t let his grumbling tell you any different. He can lose himself in those dumb ass strings of letters the way you lose yourself in testing a new theory.”

Tobirama frowned. “Huh.” He wasn’t really sure what to do with that information or with the fact that the mental image of Madara poring over his computer with a little frown of concentration was somehow endearing. Best to just ignore it.

“So that’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say about your babysitter?”

“I don’t know. He’s a good cook? He thought ‘help me get to the bathroom’ meant he had to hold my dick for me while I take a piss?” Tobirama regretted mentioning that as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

After reluctantly entertaining his friend with stories of the single most embarrassing moment in his entire life, Tobirama made a point of turning the conversation around and asking how things were going on Izuna’s end. They caught up on all the places he had seen, all the people he had met, trouble he had found himself in and how he managed to escape it. Life hadn’t been quite the same since school ended when Izuna realized he had no idea what he actually wanted to do with his life and decided to solve this problem by packing a bag and setting off to see the world. Their long stupid phone calls were always long and stupid but it was a lifeline to a more normal existence where neither of them ever had to admit that they missed the other.

They talked for so long that Madara popped his head back in to the room to inform Tobirama that lunch was ready, startling him in to dropping the phone over the edge of his bed. Izuna screamed at the carpet until Madara shuffled in to pick him up and growl something under his breath.

“Want me to hang up on him?” he asked.

“Please,” Tobirama nodded. Then he raised his voice and added, “I was tired of talking to him anyway!”

“Bitch little blind boy!” Izuna’s voice called back, infused with as much love and care as had ever existed between them. His words were followed with the distinct blipping tone that said Madara must have ended the call as he’d threatened to without so much as a word of goodbye.

The sound of something being set down on his desk came almost in time with the sound of Madara clearing his throat before he asked, “Are you coming down for lunch?”

“Yeah,” Tobirama murmured. He waffled indecisively for a moment before setting his pride side in favor of curiosity. “Help me down the stairs?”

“Uh, sure.” Madara sounded surprised by the request and with good reason. The majority of his offers to help had been met so far with a scowl and Tobirama’s insistence that he could manage just fine – usually followed by an embarrassing failure to do whatever he’d been trying to accomplish for himself and a frosty silence when Madara had to help him anyway.

Clinging to anyone other than Hashirama felt weird but Tobirama did notice that he felt oddly safer with one arm hooked around Madara than he did clinging to the banister. Where the banister was solid and immovable it had the disadvantage of not being able to reach out and stop him when his feet went out too far. There was also the fact that a solid warm arm felt much nicer under his fingers, not exactly ripped since he’d never seen Madara work out a day in his life but still well-muscled and sturdier than expected.

Actually Tobirama sort of hated how much he didn’t want to let go when they reached the first floor. If ever there was a sign that he desperately needed to get back in to the dating scene it would be the act of subtly feeling up Madara, of all people, and actually enjoying it.

“It’s just onigiri for lunch, did you want to eat in the kitchen or the living room?” The question snapped him out of his thoughts and provided a very welcome distraction.

“Living room. Wait, is Mito around?”

“She took her food out on to the back deck.”

“Excellent, then she’s not around to yell at me. Lunch in the living room.”

Tobirama slowly started to grin until Madara’s voice dryly informed him, “Truly you live right on the edge.”

“Shut up, Uchiha,” he grumbled, turning away and heading in the opposite direction to get himself situated in his favorite armchair.

When Madara came back from the kitchen he shuffled each step on the carpet and Tobirama held both hands out in the direction of the noise, happily receiving the plate that settled carefully on to them. He barely listened to his companion telling him there were four onigiri in a square around the plate before he had settled it in his lap and snatched up the first one he could get a grip on, suddenly ravenous now that he had food right in front of him.

Until he was halfway through his third onigiri Tobirama didn’t pay much attention to anything else, too focused on shoveling food down his throat and wondering why he hadn’t eaten more at breakfast. When he finally slowed down enough to prevent himself from getting indigestion, however, he noticed a distinct lack of mumbling or typing. Either Madara was staring at him or the man was reading something. Whatever the case, it was odd for him to be so quiet and Tobirama felt all but compelled to fill the silence.

“Does he ever call you too?” he asked. The long pause before he got an answer almost made him worry he had somehow hit a sore spot but Madara dispelled the idea quickly enough.

“Sometimes, yeah. If it’s been a while since he checked in last then I call him just to make sure he’s not lying in a ditch somewhere.”

“Or breaking in to another brothel.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Madara sounded exhausted just remembering that fiasco. “He’s been a selfish little prick his entire life; I can’t imagine what possessed him to suddenly go hero mode for a brothel full of girls who didn’t even want to be rescued!”

Tobirama nearly choked on his rice laughing. “He is a selfish little prick, isn’t he?”

Actually it surprised him that Madara could admit that to someone else. To each other’s faces they were as volatile and argumentative as any other pair of siblings in the world but when speaking to anyone else Madara had a habit of taking the whole protective big brother thing to an entirely new level, refusing to allow so much as a single bad word spoken about his precious little Izuna. It wasn’t quite the way Hashirama pouted and cried at anyone who said something mean about Tobirama and everyone knew Izuna certainly did not return the protective favor. Selfish indeed, he had no problem letting people bad mouth his older sibling.  

“I should have known he still called you too,” Madara said when they had both stopped snickering.

“You jealous, Uchiha?”

“Not really.” Oddly enough, he even managed to sound like he meant that. “Izuna will call who he wants when he wants and there’s not much I can do about it. As long as he’s still healthy and happy out there there’s not much I want to do about it. He’ll settle down somewhere eventually.”

“I suppose.” Tobirama furrowed his brows and stared off in to the nothingness around him.

Madara wasn’t someone he would have ever cast in the supportive role. That was more the kind of thing he would have accused Hashirama of – or even himself in some small shades before their younger brothers passed away. It took a great deal of effort to turn his mind away from making some sort of cheesy joke about how not being able to see had really opened his eyes to the man across the room. Being temporarily blind did not mean he had also temporarily lost his taste for proper good humor.

“He hasn’t called in a few weeks though,” Madara distracted him just in time. “I imagine he’s got a lot of things he tells you that he wouldn’t tell me about. Care to gossip?”

“To make fun of Izuna? I can always lower myself to gossiping for that.” Tobirama smirked and ignored the little flash of triumph at knowing he’d made Madara laugh.

Over an hour later he surprised himself with the grudging admission that he was having just as much fun talking to Madara as he usually did with Izuna, a high honor considering Izuna was such a prominent name on his very short list of actual friends. Not that such a title spared him from the full brunt of Tobirama’s acerbic nature. It was startling to realize that Madara, whom he’d always thought of as a thoughtless oaf with little to no sense of humor, appreciated his wit as much or more than Izuna did. Their conversation dared to border on pleasant and held his attention just enough that he completely missed the sounds of Mito wandering through the room several times.

She made sure to tell him later – several months after the fact – that the open expression of joy on his face had been easy to read even with the bandages covering his eyes and added smugly that Madara seemed almost captivated by the sight each time he smiled. At the time, however, all Tobirama knew was the blank nothingness around him and the sound of Madara's laughter pulling him in until the hours of the day almost seemed to melt away from them unnoticed.

Quite like the warmth building in his chest, an unfamiliar feeling that he gave little thought to beyond pushing it aside to concentrate better as he continued to listen to Madara speak.

Chapter Text

In his own apartment Madara rarely indulged in the poor habit of midnight snacks. Partly because the heating was crap and it was usually too much trouble dragging his poor feet across the freezing cold tiles just for a bite of leftover chicken but mostly because he was also much too poor to keep extra food stocked for a fourth meal every day.

Staying in Hashirama’s stupid mansion, however, came with more perks than just the pretty face that finally seemed to be warming up to him, perks like top notch central heat that actually worked and a fridge that was kept full at all times. Madara passed over the juice and fruit Hashirama insisted on keeping and went right for the leftover chocolate pie hiding close to the back. It boggled his mind for a moment that anyone could be stupid enough to leave a poor defenseless chocolate pie all alone where inquiring stomachs could find it.

Then he stood up and the triumphant expression drained from his face as he was met with the bloated face of a very pregnant woman. Mito flicked her gaze between him and the dessert in his hand. One eyebrow raised and Madara could almost feel the blood freezing in his veins.

“Share?” he bartered desperately. For a moment he thought she might bite his head off for the mere suggestion but it passed and she nodded, snatching the pie away to waddle over towards the table. Madara breathed a sigh of relief as he grabbed two forks.

He parked himself in the chair opposite her massive bulk and slid one fork over, immediately digging his own in to the exposed part where someone had already cut out several pieces. Both of them moaned in appreciation at the same time. If he remembered later he would have to ask where they had bought this because he’d never tasted better chocolate in his entire life. It was positively decadent, definitely something he would have to avoid the next time his bathroom scale guilted him in to another stupid diet.

They had inhaled more than half of what was left before Madara shifted in his seat uncomfortably and looked up to find Mito watching him with her sharp eyes narrow and thoughtful.

“Wha’?” he asked through a mouthful of chocolate mousse.

“You wouldn’t happen to know Tobirama’s favorite color, would you?”

“Um, blue. Shouldn’t you already know that?” He took a turn raising one eyebrow but Mito only blinked at him and daintily polished off another bite of pie.

After dabbing a bit of cream from the corner of her mouth she asked, “His favorite season?”

“Fall?”

“Hobbies.”

“Other than science I guess he likes to read and I think Hashirama mentioned once that he’s taken to tinkering with small mechanical things in the garage. Maybe he’s taken up engineering in his spare time or whatever, I don’t know. Why are you ask–”

“How does he take his coffee?”

Scowling now, Madara changed his grip on the fork to a more threatening one and answered out of spite. “Trick question, he hates coffee but he enjoys tea of almost any kind except mint.”

“And why is that?”

“Because he’s allergic to mint.”

Mito stared at him with no expression for a long time. Slowly a grin not unlike a smug fox tilted the corners of her lips but she said nothing, only dipped her fork in for yet another bite of chocolate pie and whipped cream. When he snarled in frustration she laughed unapologetically.

“Was there a point to this weird Tobirama trivia game?” Madara demanded.

“You’ll do just fine,” was all she said.

“I hope Hashirama puts another child in your belly so you have to do this all over again for another nine months.” Half asleep and with his brain full of chocolate, that was the best curse he could come up with at ten past midnight. Mito looked duly horrified by the notion though so he counted it as a win in his favor.

Since his snack buddy didn’t seem very open to explaining what the point of all her weird questions was Madara figured the best thing to do was head back to bed before things got even stranger. With one last massive bite shoveled in to his face he stood up, dropped his fork in the sink, and flipped Mito the bird on his way out of the room. If she found that offensive, well, the only weapon she had at her disposal was her own fork and he felt pretty safe that a pregnant woman with such fastidious habits was not going to give up the ability to gorge herself on chocolate pie. He turned his back to her and let the kitchen door stand open between them as he headed for the stairs.

Eating all that chocolate left him feeling disappointingly awake. As he trudged up the steps he made a mental note not to indulge in so much sugar next time because he was fairly sure it was going to be at least an hour before he managed to fall back asleep and since Tobirama had a habit of waking up pretty early he needed to get all the sleep he could now before a hungry albino started trying to find things for himself in the kitchen again.

At the top of the stairs he paused to yawn, tired but not sleepy yet still victim to the demands of his body, and it was that momentary break in stride that kept him in place just long enough to hear the ragged gasp from the other side of Tobirama’s bedroom door. For one horrible second he thought he might have overheard something to fodder his own nighttime thoughts and taunt his memories for months to come. The sound that followed after had the blood draining from his face and his hand reaching for the doorknob without thought.

It didn’t matter who was on the other side of the door, any human with a shred of empathy would react the same way to a scream as filled with terror as that one had been.

Madara burst in to the room only to pause and stare in shock at the sight of Tobirama clawing at his own head. It took precious moments for him to recover and by the time he stepped across the room the bandages covering Tobirama’s eyes had almost been torn clean off.

“Stop! Tobirama, stop!”

“Ma-Madara?” The man froze – well, he stopped trying to tear at his face. His body trembled like a leaf in the wind and his chest heaved with deep terrified gulps of air. His hands made fists in Madara's sleeves with the desperation of a man clinging to his only lifeline. When he spoke again his voice cracked and shook, quiet in the way of terror. “Madara, I can’t see.”

“I know. But you can’t take off the bandages until your eyes have healed.”

Taking a chance, he slowly sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to decide how he felt when Tobirama leaned in towards him, a floundering man looking for safety wherever it was offered.

“Why can’t I see?” he whispered. “Everything’s dark. I don’t like it, turn the lights on.”

“It’s just the bandages. You’ll see again, I promise.”

“I don’t like it!”

“Tobirama…it was just a dream.” It was only a shot in the dark but he could tell he had guessed right when the man’s breathing slowly began to even out, though the grip on his sleeves did not lessen in the slightest. Madara struggled to keep his own voice calm and even as he murmured again, “It was only a dream. You had an accident in your lab and there are bandages over your face but you’ll see again when they come off, okay? I need to fix them now so that you heal properly.”

With slow movements, telegraphing his intentions as much as he could despite having already verbally announced them, Madara raised his hands to pluck at the bandages around Tobirama’s head. He frowned at the shudder under his touch but continued on setting things back to rights as quickly as he could.

His unwilling patient remained still throughout the process, though he got the impression that it was less out of any sort of good behavior and more because the man was afraid of making anything worse. Still, Madara appreciated that things weren’t made more difficult than they had to be, happy that his efforts didn’t seem to be causing any additional pain. When he was finished he lowered his hands in to his lap and studied the expression staring back at him. Tobirama licked his lips nervously but he was shaking less and less by the minute, an excellent sign. Hopefully the nightmare had lost at least most of its grip as he came to realize that he was awake now and not caught in whatever horrors had visited him in his sleep.

“Thank you.” He spoke so softly that Madara would have missed it if he hadn’t already been staring shamefully at pale thin lips.

“It’s fine. I don’t think you could have tied them back on very well yourself.”

“No,” Tobirama said. “I mean…with the- you know. Thanks.”

“Oh. Right. That was, uh, no problem either. Everyone has nightmares I guess and nobody likes them.” Madara resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably.

Before he could ask whether he should leave or not Tobirama blurted out, “I was dreaming about being blind. About never seeing again. Ever since the accident I keep having these dreams where the world is an endless void and I know that I would see if I could just open my eyes but I can’t and somehow I just know that there’s something in the darkness with me. I try to run but then I trip and it’s always getting closer and then I wake up and I forget why I can’t see.”

“That doesn’t sound fun,” Madara said.

It took Tobirama a minute or so and several mixed expressions to reply with a flat voice. “No. It isn’t very fun at all.”

Both of them paused in awkward silence until the barest shadow of a smile crossed Tobirama’s face and Madara found even he could breathe easier just at the sight of that. Genuine smiles were already a rare commodity from the younger Senju brother; seeing even a hint of one here in the middle of the night was like a great glowing neon sign that everything would be fine. Eventually, at least.

“You’re okay now?” he asked. Immediately he regretted the question as the smile faded and Tobirama shifted uncomfortably, his fingers flexing and tightening where Madara hadn’t even realized they were gripping his sleeves again.

“Sure,” he mumbled. “I guess there’s really no point in dwelling on something stupid like a nightmare, right? It wasn’t real. I’m an adult. I can deal with it.”

After waiting a minute to think of a good response all Madara could come up with was, “Alright then.”

When he moved to stand up, however, Tobirama refused to let go. Or rather his hands did. There was a distinctly awkward set to his shoulder that said he was embarrassed by his own actions yet couldn’t convince himself to let go when he should have. Half standing with his back bent over, Madara cleared his throat and carefully lowered himself on to the mattress again. Tobirama turned his face away to speak to the wall.

“I mean, obviously I can deal with it. But you don’t have to go. If you don’t want to.”

“Guess I’ll stay then.” Madara wondered if Tobirama picked up on the fact that he had just openly admitted to wanting to stay, the first bare-faced hint with no effort to hide it that he was interested in pretty much anything Tobirama wanted from him. Unfortunately it was more likely that Tobirama thought he was only staying out of pity or just to be nice. Which he supposed still sort of worked out in his favor, in a way. It couldn’t hurt to show himself to be capable of doing nice deeds for others or as a caring human being rather than the selfish man-child people usually thought of him as when they saw him spending too much time with Hashirama.

“Don’t just stay because you think you have to,” Tobirama mumbled, confirming his theory even as he seemed to unconsciously pull Madara's arm closer.

Carefully not making any move to separate them, Madara smiled even though he knew the gesture went unseen. “Who wouldn’t want to sit up at midnight and talk about the terror of our own inevitable crushing humanity that we all experience in our nightmares? Fun times.”

“Oh sure, that sounds like a fun time to you.”

Both of them snorted in quiet laughter and Madara hoped to all the gods listening that his thundering heartbeat wasn’t echoing around the room as loudly as it was in his ears. He did his best to come up with interesting yet calm things to talk about and he was thrilled to succeed in keeping Tobirama’s attention all the way up until the man began to flag and slowly drift off. Without being able to see his eyes drooping Madara was actually a little confused when between one slurred sentence and the next he simply stopped responding.

Getting the other back in to a comfortable position lying down was a bit difficult to do without waking him up and Madara feared that his unsteady breathing would ruin everything as he tried not to think too hard about how nice it was to hold Tobirama in his arms even in such a creepy yet necessary way. It took a few extra minutes to work his way out of the iron grip that remained on his sleeves even now that Tobirama had fallen asleep but once he was finally free it was just a matter of keeping his steps as quiet as possible until he was able to slip out of the room.

Where he came face to face with Mito. She was puffing like a bellows, clearly resting after having fought her way up the long staircase, and she did not look impressed to meet him in that particular spot.

“How was your pie?” he asked in a flat voice.

“No sweeter than whatever midnight delight you just came from.” Her expression didn’t move an inch but the ice in her gaze was enough to have him squirming in place until finally he broke with a snarl.

“I’ll help you back to your room,” Madara ground out, “and explain; though it’s not my place to say much.”

Both of her eyebrows lifted but by the time he had indeed helped her back to bed and told her what he had actually been doing in Tobirama’s room she was waving him off with a much more sober look on her face. He hadn’t told her any specifics about what Tobirama’s dream entailed but it was clear she had a few guesses that were probably fairly close to the mark.

Despite the weight of Tobirama’s fears pulling at his mind, however, Madara was still in a pretty good mood when he finally crawled back in to his own bed. When he closed his eyes all he could see behind the curtain of his own eyelids was that tiny shadow at the corner of Tobirama’s lips. A genuine smile in a moment when he’d needed it most and it had been Madara that gave it to him. Long before he fell asleep that night Madara was already dreaming, lost in a fantasy word where he had stayed in that room and laid his head down on a different pillow.

Chapter Text

Having fingers prod at his face had never been Tobirama’s favorite thing. Not being able to see those fingers coming made it several times worse and the only reason he hadn’t swung his fist out to throw a punch on reflex was the sound of his brother’s voice in the background keeping him calm. There were still a few close calls but at least one of them had to stay calm and he had long since resigned himself to the knowledge that it would always be him.

“Everything seems to be healing very well,” a feminine voice spoke from much too close for comfort. “There’s no scarring on your face that you haven’t put there already–”

“They’re tattoos, Dr. Haruno.”

“No, they’re colorful scars. And they’re on your face. But I digress; the burns here all look like they’re healing very nicely and if you haven’t experienced any undue pain or discomfort then I have every reason to believe that your vision will come back just fine when we remove the pads.” Finally the fingers let go of him only for Tobirama to flinch violently at the sudden sound of clapping.

From the corner he heard a quiet, “Oops. Sorry Tobi.” It took effort to resist the urge to roll his still delicate eyes.

“Thank you, Dr. Haruno, you have been most kind.”

“My pleasure,” she told him. “You’re a much calmer patient than I usually have to deal with. A lot of people get rather squirmy about having their sight taken away.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he drawled. She chuckled and he used the sound to track her across the room.

The rest of his appointment was fairly short, just a few reminders to be careful about his face until they could finally remove the bandages and a couple more questions to make sure he understood what to do in the slim chance that his vision did not return as expected. When he left Dr. Haruno dryly informed him that she was waving and it lightened his mood enough to keep him from dwelling on the uncomfortable possibilities of never-ending darkness.

Clinging to Hashirama’s arm as they moved through the hospital and across the parking lot was embarrassing and awkward but it was much faster than trying to feel his own way around. The battle between his pride and his practicality had been an ongoing one for the entirety of this tiring process but it seemed in public his practicality won. Getting away from other people faster was better when he knew they were going to be staring at him no matter what he did. Not that he could blame them for staring. Who wouldn’t double-take at the sight of a man waltzing around with half his head bandaged like a Hollywood mummy?

He had feared that without being able to stare at the world going by outside the only thing to occupy him during the drive would be Hashirama’s annoying radio stations but, to his delight, he realized that it was actually that much easier to simply disappear in to his thoughts while his brother’s voice washed over him, nattering on about one of the patients he had dealt with a few days before. It wasn’t that Tobirama disliked listening to his brother or didn’t care. Rather it was that he knew patient confidentiality was very important and he knew Hashirama was expecting him not to listen and so used times like this to vent about feelings or release any pent up tension that he had been carrying around. It was therapeutic for them both, actually, since it allowed Tobirama a break from social requirements.

Madara was just serving lunch when they pulled in to the driveway. Hashirama made sure to see his brother safely in to the kitchen before scurrying up the stairs saying he wanted to fetch Mito so they could all sit together with their meals.

“Homemade pizza,” Tobirama heard their chef’s voice murmur after shuffling footsteps stopped just beside his right shoulder. Ceramic thumped gently against wood when Madara set the plate down and admitted, “I kind of flubbed the crust so use both hands or else you’ll end up wearing it, it’s not as firm as I meant it to be. I was going to make soup but I didn’t want you to knock the bowl or something.”

“We won’t have to worry about that for much longer.” After a long car ride back from the hospital Tobirama finally allowed the excitement to sink in, feeling his way along the edges of his plate until he found the crust edge of his lunch. “Doctor says everything seems to be healing just fine.”

“Is that so?” Madara hummed and the distant note in his voice had Tobirama pausing just before he took a bite.

“What, you were hoping I’d stay blind forever?” he demanded.

He sort of expected some kind of snarky response but all he heard was a low sigh just barely audible under the sound of another chair scraping away from the table. “I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

It took a lot of effort to clamp down on the instinctual snap back about putting other things in his mouth. Maybe he should stop talking to Izuna so much if the idiot was rubbing off on him enough to have him spewing unintentional innuendos. Tobirama shook the thought away with purpose and tried not to pay too much attention to the images rising up in the back of his mind. Definitely not something he should be thinking about with Madara – or anyone, really – right there in the room with him. Also not something he would have even considered thinking about before losing his sight and being forced to learn a bit more about the man. Truly a worrisome development.

They ate in silence instead of the easy conversation they had been slowly falling in to over the past couple of weeks, Tobirama using the silence to puzzle over what could have Madara's knickers in a twist this time. After what felt like much too long Hashirama finally returned with Mito, who was humming under her breath of all things, and the two of them easily picked up the conversation that had lacked in their absence. For the most part Tobirama listened with one ear, still more interested in figuring out what Madara's problem was. He did pay a little more attention when Hashirama clapped him on the back without warning and he nearly face planted in to his second slice of pizza.

“Anija!” he snarled. “I can’t fucking see yet you imbecile!”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry Tobi! I’m so sorry! I don’t- I forgot!”

“Forgot my ass! Mito, get him for me!”

“With pleasure, my dear.” Mito’s dreamy voice was followed quickly with a yelp, though he hadn’t heard any sort of impact. It didn’t actually register as all that strange until he heard Madara's reaction.

Shoving his chair back with a noise of disgust, the man declared loudly, “If you’re going to be doing that sort of thing at the kitchen table I think I’ll just eat later. I seem to have lost my appetite.”

Whatever he had seen, Tobirama felt it was safer not to ask.

He also felt it was probably in his best interests to leave the table as well. Part of what had driven him to move out of such a lush home in the first place had been the sickening levels of cutesy canoodling those two got up to even when there were other people in the room. Just because he couldn’t see it didn’t mean he was comfortable sitting around and letting it happen right next to him. Following after his current conundrum seemed like a much safer option.

Madara's footsteps faltered halfway to the living room, presumably when the man noticed he was being followed, and it was the way he waited to make sure Tobirama got where he was going alright without offering unnecessary help that finally clicked all the pieces in to place. He sank in to the chair he had found all on his own mostly because gravity pulled his stunned body down on to the cushions with a little too much force. It might not be the same bee that Madara had up in his bonnet but Tobirama found himself floundering a little in the face of what he’d just realized.

Getting his sight back was all well and good but healing a little faster than everyone thought also meant that Madara would be leaving a little earlier than everyone thought – and Tobirama wasn’t ready for that.

Of course, it wasn’t like they would never see each other again. Madara would always be his brother’s best friend and despite neither of them officially living in this home they did manage to cross paths here with startling frequency. He still didn’t like it. For reasons he was not yet prepared to admit he wasn’t quite ready for Madara to leave because Madara leaving meant that everything would quickly fade back in to how they had always been. The two of them would rarely talk even on the occasions they did run in to each other and Madara would spend his energy focusing on Hashirama rather than the unwanted little brother tucked in to the background of whatever shenanigans they got up to.

It felt like a loss even though he knew he had no right to feel that way. Madara had always been and always would be Hashirama’s. Had probably been born with a photograph of Hashirama stapled to his forehead, already screaming the idiot’s name. If Mito hadn’t come along Tobirama would honestly not have been surprised to see the two of them get married someday despite their continued insistence that they only saw each other as friends.

Now here he was sticking his heart in the middle as though he hoped to belong.

“What are you doing?” he asked, frantically searching for anything to distract him from looking too closely at the places in his heart that were never meant to open up.

“I just have a few touch ups left to do on this project before I send it off to the client. There’s not much to fix and I do have until the end of next week but it never hurts to get an early start in case any new bugs crop up. They have a tendency of doing that.” Something in Madara's voice suggested his words were followed by a shrug and Tobirama wasn’t sure how he felt about knowing that without seeing it.

“Read to me,” he blurted. “I’ve got nothing else to do and I don’t want to spend my afternoon all bored. Will you…read me a book or something?”

Startled silence hung between them for a few seconds until finally Madara said, “Sure? I guess. As long as you understand that I’m going to find the most terrible, awful, crappy novel this house has to offer and probably make you sit through one of Hashirama’s romance mysteries.”

“That’s fine,” Tobirama muttered. Anything to keep the attention with him but not on him.

True to his word, Madara did actually rummage through five different bookshelves in four different rooms, all while Tobirama trailed along behind him just to listen to him crow over the hilariously bad literature and boring science or medical texts, until at last he began to laugh so hard he sounded in danger of giving himself a hernia. It took several minutes for him to calm down enough to say what he found so funny. Every time it seemed like he was about to calm down he would start reading the book summary and fly off the handle yet again.

For the first time Tobirama regretted letting his eyes pass over all the terrible books sitting around, never sure if they belonged to Mito’s secret shameful hoard or Hashirama’s utterly shameless collection. He was all but bouncing on the balls of his feet when finally Madara calmed down enough to speak properly.

“It’s – oh my god – this is the stupidest sounding shit. It’s called ‘Seduction in the Suna Desert’ and th-the little blurb on the back says ‘When a tall drink of water steps out of the desert heat like a tasty mirage, it looks like all of her problems will be solved. Until Harue realizes that she’s accidentally discovered a werewolf’s den in the least likely of places. Will she stay and be mated against her will? Or will she escape and leave behind that tall drink of water that just won’t get out of her head?’ Oh sweet lord this is such utter crap!”

“They actually read that shit?” Tobirama shook his head and despaired that he could be related in any way to two people with such awful taste. “I’m disowning them both.”

“We have to read this,” Madara declared.

“No! Find something else, I beg you, before you melt out my brain with that drivel.”

A firm hand took hold of his own and before Tobirama could properly register how warm Madara's fingers were they were pulling him around and back towards the living room. “Yes, this is happening. You were the one who wanted entertainment! Well I find the idea of making you listen to this very entertaining. Hashirama always says you should take breaks from all the science!”

He wanted to protest that taking a break was not synonymous with halving his own brain cells with dime store romances but the grip on his hand and the laughter in Madara's voice was just distracting enough that he found himself seating on what was probably the living room couch with Madara pressed up against his side a few minutes later. Luckily the opening chapter of ‘Seduction in the Suna Desert’ passed in one ear and right out through the other without a single word sticking in his mind but that was mostly because he couldn’t focus past the sounds of Madara's voice. When he wasn’t screaming the man did have an absolutely incredible voice to listen to.

Two chapters later Tobirama still wasn’t listening to the actual story, more focused on the way his narrator kept cracking up and injecting his opinions on the source material, and the longer he sat there the more he realized that he was much more screwed than he thought. Madara didn’t seem to notice that they were slowly inching closer and closer as Tobirama slid farther down in to the cushions. Or if he did notice he didn’t say anything. Whatever the case was it was better for him to stay silent on the matter so that the panic attack beside him could go on in silence as Tobirama wrestled with an unwanted truth.

It appeared that he had developed feelings for Madara, someone he had hated for many years until his sight was taken away and he was forced to look at the man in other ways. This was more than just unexpected. This was an unprecedented disaster just waiting to happen.

And only he stood to lose anything when Madara left.

Chapter Text

Madara watched the steam wafting above his coffee mug without really seeing it. Even now two weeks after he had packed his things and gone back to living alone in his apartment he still found himself wondering sometimes if Tobirama ever took a moment to appreciate the little things like this. Did he ever sit and watch the steam rise over a hot drink just to admire the shape of the dancing curls? Did he stop and watch the way sunlight filtered through a half-shuttered window or admire the colors to be found in a bird perched outside the window?

He would know if he asked, of course. The trouble was that when he left a wall seemed to have dropped down between them and thrown their non-existent friendship back in time, bringing them right back to how things had been before the entire lab accident fiasco happened. A couple of times he had tried to speak with Tobirama but both efforts had been met with hesitant glances and reserved speech. Clearly whatever ground he thought he’d covered had existed only during that time of desperation and Tobirama had no intentions of building on any of that now that he didn’t have to rely on others for survival anymore.

A light flick on the end of his nose brought Madara out of his trance to scowl across the table at Hashirama, who smiled back with a wistful look in his eye like he knew his presence had been forgotten despite being seated at his own kitchen table.

“Still feeling down?”

“Go to hell,” Madara grumbled half-heartedly. Instead of deterring him the sour attitude only seemed to encourage Hashirama.

“I wish there was something I could do to cheer you up. You’ve been in such an awful mood for a while now and…well…don’t be mad but I think I know–”

Madara nearly upset his coffee trying to leap across the table and clap a hand over the idiot’s mouth. “Don’t,” he warned. “If you say one more word of what I think you’re about to say then know that I will pull every hair out of your head one by one.”

Unfortunately Hashirama did not heed that warning, pushing the hand away with a sympathetic pout.

“You never got over him, did you? I mean, I always knew you had a crush on Tobi but you never did anything about it. You had the perfect opportunity to do something while you were here but it’s been two weeks and nothing’s happened so I thought for a while that maybe you actually got over him. Guess not.” Fiddling with his own cup, Hashirama gave the coffee a wry smile. “I was always kind of hoping one of you would get your head out of your ass and pursue the other. You guys dating would be like a dream come true.”

“How?” Madara wondered if the heat in his face was actually steaming the air around him. It sure felt like it. He’d never realized his feelings were so obvious that even Hashirama could pick up on them.

“My best friend and my brother falling in love? How could that not be a dream come true? It would be amazing! You would finally be a part of the family for real and I would see both of you more often and you’d both be so much happier!”

“Hmph. I don’t think Tobirama would be in any way happier if he got stuck with me.”

With his mouth twisted downwards and his brows pulled together Madara lifted his mug to take a sip of coffee. Then he nearly spat it back out, startled by the unexpected voice that spoke from just behind him.

“You and I have always had different opinions on many things.” Tobirama’s expression was impossible to define when Madara snapped around to stare at him with horror rising in his throat. “It seems to me this is just another one of those things.”

“How…how much of that did you hear?”

“Let’s talk somewhere a little more private.” That was really all the answer he needed to know that his doom had found him and most likely by the end of this conversation he would need to move far away to another country just to escape the pure shame of his own revealed feelings.

Hashirama watched them both with shining eyes that almost managed to cover the deep bags he was still sporting from his most recent long shift. Madara hoped those stupid eye bags stayed. The idiot deserved to look just as tired and grumpy as his best friend always did for sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong and opening his big fat mouth where apparently others were around to hear them. Next time he told Madara some of his dumb secrets they were getting shouted from the rooftop with three different megaphones.

Following Tobirama out of the room felt more akin to following an executioner to the guillotine for his own beheading. He already knew Tobirama wasn’t interested, he’d just said it himself, so he wasn’t sure why it was necessary for them to even have this conversation when it was going to be nothing but painful for him. Actually that was probably why. He had dared to catch feelings for the wrong person and now Tobirama just wanted to make him suffer. What an asshole. Why was Madara in love with him again?

It probably had something to do with the surprisingly soft look in Tobirama’s eyes when they made it up the stairs and in to the man’s room. The sound of the door closing behind him almost made Madara flinch – or it would have if he weren’t captivated by his first up close look at those beautiful red eyes since the bandages had finally come off.

“Not that I will ever say it to his face but sometimes Hashirama actually manages to be right about something.”

“I don’t…what?”

“Like he said, you had the perfect opportunity to make a move and then you never did. It would have been nice if I didn’t have to do all the work myself.”

“What are you talking about?” Madara crossed his arms over his chest defensively and held tight, hoping that in doing so he could prevent his thundering heart from leaping straight out of his chest and laying itself in Tobirama’s pale, perfect hands.

Now that his head was no longer half mummified and his eyes had been declared free and clear with no complications from the retinal burns, Tobirama’s expressions were in full view and more potent than ever. Having the chance to appreciate them in such glorious detail, however, did not help Madara read them. What was he supposed to do with that tiny smile or the light in those eyes that could almost be described as soft? If panicking was the answer then he was already on top of that but he was reasonably sure that wasn’t actually what he was supposed to be doing at the moment.

“I’m a little ashamed to know that Hashirama picked up on your feelings yet I somehow failed to do the same,” Tobirama said. “That would have been nice to know two weeks ago when I was struggling with thinking the opposite.”

“Do you know how frustrating it is when you continue to talk in circles without making any sense?” Maybe if he scowled hard enough Madara could grump his way out of this mortifying conversation. Or, judging by the amusement on the other man’s face, maybe not.

Shrugging unapologetically, Tobirama answered with a simple, “Yes.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because I enjoy seeing you flustered.”

“Oh fuck you!” Madara's scowl doubled in irritation immediately. Not only had he been shamed but now he was to be mocked for it!

Tobirama assumed a thoughtful expression, unfazed. “For years it was just because I thought it was funny. Getting you all riled up was always so easy but you never reacted the same way twice. It was like a game, I suppose, although I realize that’s cruel to say. You fascinated me. When I lost my sight and had to rely on other cues around me I learned more about you, though. Now it’s different.”

“Different how? Fun new blackmail!?”

“No, nothing like that.” Tobirama took a step closer and his smile became a frown for a moment when Madara took a step back to match. “Before I just thought – well, unflattering things that I don’t need to go in to. Now that I know you a little better I can always see why you get flustered.”

Well that didn’t sound very good at all.

“You think you’ve got me all figured out then, huh?” Madara desperately hoped not.

“I know that you’re offended and blustering now because you’re trying to protect yourself. Which is largely unnecessary since I have stupidly fallen in to the trap of developing feelings for you as well.”

“Come again?” His eyebrows shot up so fast he worried they might never come down. Obviously he must have heard that wrong.

Or maybe he hadn’t. Tobirama was smiling again when he took another step forward, this time reaching out to catch Madara by the buttons on his shirt so that he couldn’t back away. “I said that I like you too, if I must lower myself to using such childish language. After you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor you should take me out for dinner sometime. I like sushi.”

It would have been a lot easier to respond if Madara could just convince his brain to process anything past ‘I like you too’. If he had listened correctly then he was pretty sure he’d just been told that Tobirama developed an interest in him while they were stuck in the same house together for two weeks, in which case he would like to speak with life’s manager about some issues he had with that. All the time he’d spent convinced that shoving him in to a limited space with a man that already hated him would only make said man hate him more? Wasted effort. Someone was going to hear some complaints about this.

Probably Hashirama.

“If sushi isn’t your style we can go somewhere else,” Tobirama murmured, clearly aware of what had shocked him in to silence but still teasing him – albeit much more gently than he would have a month ago.

“No that’s…fine. Everything’s fine. I’m great. You’re good.”

“Ah, I see.” The fucker was laughing at him.

“You’re a dickhead,” Madara informed him. Just in case he wasn’t already aware. His hastily cobbled insult had little effect, however, other than earning him a roll of pretty red eyes.

Using the hand still firmly grasping the front of his shirt, Tobirama pulled them in closer together. “Yes. And you like me that way, apparently.”

With that he leaned in those last couple of inches and Madara was somehow even more startled by how gentle their first kiss was. In his mind he had always pictured at least mild savagery, probably due to Tobirama’s habitual hatred of him over the past couple of decades. But this wasn’t at all like he had imagined. This was slow and indulgent, the press of lips and the drumming of his own heartbeat, fingers sliding up his neck to cup his jaw until he very nearly embarrassed himself with a needy whimper.

The kiss ended slowly, naturally, and much too soon. When Tobirama drew his head back Madara followed him and took another kiss without shame. He had waited long enough, damn it. Clearly he deserved more than just one measly smooch! Even if it did immediately rank in the top ten kisses he’d ever had in his life.

“You owe me big time for making me think you still hated me again,” he growled against Tobirama’s mouth, hesitating when his words drew out a small sigh.

“In my defense I had no idea that you felt this way about me. Making you think I hated you was not my aim; all I was trying to do was put a little distance between us until I could get my own feelings under control.” Tobirama at least had the decency to look vaguely apologetic, if not regretful. “A waste of time, evidently. If I’d known how you felt I would have cornered you in a hallway ages ago.”

Madara paused to swallow thickly. “Cornered me in a hallway, huh?” Then he shivered under the dark look Tobirama leveled him with.

“For nefarious purposes, I assure you.”

“Could a bedroom possibly count as a hallway in any sense?”

“I suppose I could make due.” Tobirama was smirking when he pulled them together again and Madara could feel his eyes rolling back in his head with pleasure. Innumerable times he had dreamed of tasting that smirk for himself and now he was delighted to discover that the reality was so much better than anything his meager imagination had been able to come up with.

Not the actual physical taste, of course. Tobirama tasted mostly like some inferior brand of green tea. Rather it was the sensations, the perfect pressure of their lips and the thumb that traced along his jawline, the soft spikes of hair trapped between their faces and the way Tobirama leaned in to him as though he too was eager not to part. It was the triumph of finally having the affection of someone he had yearned after for so long combined with the heart-warming knowledge that he was wanted, he was enough, and he hadn’t even had to change anything about himself to earn that.

Their foreheads nearly collided in their haste to separate then as the silence of the house was rent with a sudden high pitched scream. Mito’s voice echoed up to them from the first floor with all the force of a hurricane preparing for destruction.

“HASHIRAMA!” A familiar voice shook the very walls around them and Madara pressed one hand to the side of his head to calm the sudden ringing in his ears. “This is so much more water than you led me to expect! Get up here now! If you don’t want this child to be born in a bathtub then start the fucking car!”

“She really has a pair of lungs on her, doesn’t she?” he asked. Tobirama blinked stupidly back at him.

“Baby.”

“What?”

“She-she’s having the baby.”

Madara paused. “Oh shit. She is, isn’t she? Oh shit! Tobirama, I don’t know how to help with a baby!”

“Neither do I! That’s his job!”

“What do we do!?” he demanded. Tobirama flustered for a few moments before Hashirama’s suspiciously calm face popped in to the room on his way to the stairs.

His smile was just a little too calm as he jangled his car keys. “Tobi, be a dear and start the car for me, would you? I’m more than certain it’s too early to head out but let’s not upset her any more than we have to. The worst that can happen is we have to turn the car back off for a while.”

A light underhand toss sent the keys flying through the air for Tobirama to woodenly snatch them just before they hit him in the face. Hashirama turned away without watching to see that his keys made it to their intended recipient; he was gone from the room a moment later, taking the stairs down three steps at a time. As soon as he was out of sight Madara and Tobirama looked back to each other with equally horrified expressions.

“I don’t want to go out there,” Madara confessed.

“Me neither. They probably expect us to come help somehow though.” Even as he said it Tobirama scrunched his nose up with distaste for the idea.

“Do you think we could make a run for it?”

Tobirama paused to give that some consideration before he slumped. “Can you imagine what she would do to us when she caught up to us later? I’d rather keep all my bones intact, thanks.”

“You’re right. Ugh. We should just get it over with.” Madara winced as Mito’s screams of pregnancy-induced rage echoed through the house again.

Both of them sighed with reluctance before turning to look at the door leading out in to the hallway, listening to Hashirama’s voice as he shouted to make himself heard over his wife’s panicked shrieking. It was like the stress of the situation had caused them to switch personalities somehow. Never had either of them appreciated more just how good Hashirama seemed to be at his job. Eventually Tobirama drew in a deep breath and boldly stepped towards the door with the same brave air he had worn about him as he tried to navigate the world without his eyes for the first time.

It wasn’t until he’d made it a couple of steps away that Madara realized Tobirama had woven their fingers together and was now pulling him along behind. Not even the knowledge of the horrible beast that lay waiting at the end of their short little journey was enough to stop the foolish smile from spreading across his face, a dopey sort of happiness falling over him like a protective shield against Mito’s continued angry shouting. When the madness calmed down and they had a few moments to themselves after they finally took the new mother-to-be to a hospital he would have to find the time to call Izuna and gloat.

His brother may have been the one to leave home on some hare-brained quest to find himself but, as was right and proper, the older brother had beat him to the punch. It was Madara who had found himself right here with the man he’d set his heart on several years ago.