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How many times, exactly, was he supposed to tell himself he wasn’t allowed to like this man?
Madara tucked his head behind his high collar, eyes cutting away as Ryouji gave him a soft smile, the man’s fingers still wrapped around one lock of Madara’s hair. He gave it a soft tug before tucking it behind one ear, his fingers hesitating in that fashion that always made Madara’s heart skip in rhythm.
Every time. Every single time Madara squashed his emotions back, they resurfaced, ugly and needy and wanting (though he’s certain most anyone else wouldn’t call them that. Love was never a bad thing amongst his clan but Ryouji was so far out of reach he couldn’t help but see it as such). It was yet another battle to grumble at the other instead of lean in to the touch, to tell himself firmly that Ryouji did not, never had, and never would see him in such a fashion.
And it was yet another heart break, small that it might be, to just watch as he stepped back and left. To let him go without telling him the truth, to let this continue to fester between them - a festering that surely only Madara could see but it was there, and along with it grew guilt and the fiercest of needs to know.
But he let him walk away again, off back home and to his own clan, firmly stomping down the feeling in his chest as he did - and having no inkling of the ache that Ryouji hid in his own breast as well.