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Kohaku finds Madara out behind the restaurant, already on his motorcycle with his helmet on.
“Wait up!” he calls, breaking into a sprint because if he doesn’t hurry, he’s gonna miss his chance. “Get back here!”
There’s a pause, and then the helmet swivels toward him. “Kohaku-san?”
“Who the hell else would it be?” Kohaku grumbles. “Where are you goin’ so soon? I tried lookin’ for you, but you hightailed it outta there like you had a goose huntin’ you down.”
Madara thinks for a moment. “Does that make you the goose, then?”
“What does that matter?” Kohaku scowls. “It’s just a metaphor. Now cut the bullshit and answer my question.”
“I was just heading home,” Madara says, his voice so carefully neutral Kohaku can’t even hope to pick it apart. Damn cagey distant bastard, always keeping him out of the loop. “Is that a problem, Kohaku-san?”
“You’re damn right it is!” Kohaku grabs Madara’s arm, as if he’ll disappear into the night if he isn’t there to hold him down. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Oh?” Kohaku can’t see his face, but he can hear the mocking laughter dripping from his tongue. “You were so busy with all your other friends and Crazy:B, though. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“What’re you goin’ on about?” Kohaku frowns. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice just because I had my friends buzzin’ around me?”
Madara barks out a laugh, but it’s cold. “So I’m not your friend then.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Kohaku plants his feet firmly on the ground, tightens his grip around Madara’s arm. “The hell’s gotten into you tonight, Madara-han? You’re actin’ all kinds of crazy.”
“Nothing at all.” A stupid answer, because Kohaku knows it’s bullshit and Madara obviously knows Kohaku knows it’s bullshit. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I said I was heading home. You’re preventing me from doing that.”
“Yeah, that’s on purpose, you idiot.” Kohaku digs his fingers into Madara’s thick leather jacket to prove his point. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Huh?”
Kohaku wishes to god he could see what expression he’s making right now. “Are you goin’ deaf now? I said I don’t want you to go.”
“I’m busy, Kohaku-san,” Madara says slowly, carefully, not letting any emotion through, “and so are you. You should go back to your friends. And to Crazy:B.”
Kohaku wrinkles up his nose. “They don’t have anything to do with this.”
“They have everything to do with this,” Madara says, and finally Kohaku finds the littlest crack in Madara’s iron wall.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” Kohaku guesses, feeling the crack under his fingertips to suss out the nature of his weird, infuriating behavior.
Madara doesn’t answer, but he does jerk ever so slightly under Kohaku’s grip around his arm. Bingo.
“You’re jealous?” Kohaku repeats, incredulously this time. “What are you, stupid? Wait, I already knew you were stupid. But no, this is a whole new level.”
Madara laughs with his whole body, nearly managing to shake Kohaku off of him for good. “It doesn’t matter, Kohaku-san. Even if I were jealous, that has nothing to do with you or what you should be doing right now.”
“No way.” Kohaku shakes his head. “I’m the only one who gets to decide what I ‘should’ be doing, and I decided I’m gonna be right here. With you.”
There’s another silence, and Kohaku takes the chance to be bold. He takes a step forward and pushes up Madara’s visor with his free hand. Madara clenches his hands around the handles of his bike; Kohaku feels it in his arm.
But Kohaku doesn’t pay attention to that for long, because under the thick helmet on Madara’s head he can finally see his eyes, clear and blue even in the waning light. There’s no real laughter in them; rather, they seem cold and hard, almost anxious.
“Kohaku-san.” It sounds like a warning, but Kohaku isn’t very good at listening to authority.
“Madara-han.” His voice bites back in kind. “Come back inside, where it’s warm.”
Madara doesn’t answer. Kohaku stares at him, unwavering.
“It’s a party, Madara-han, and I invited you specifically. There’s a plate of food with your name on it, and if you waste it you’re disrespectin’ every kid out there who didn’t get dinner tonight.”
Kohaku jumps at the sound of scraping metal, and that finally causes him to let go of Madara’s arm. His heart jumps in his chest, a spike of worry that this is it, this is where it all ends.
But when he glances down, he sees the kickstand holding the weight of the bike. He looks back up, and Madara lifts his hands to take off his helmet.
“All right, Kohaku-san,” he says, that frustrating distance back in his voice despite the lilting tones he uses. “I’ll bite, since you want me there so badly for some reason.”
If Kohaku squints, he can almost make out a sort of watery quality in Madara’s eyes now that they’re free from the helmet’s embrace and the nearby lamplight can dance in them properly. “I do, yeah.”
Madara quirks up a sarcastic grin. “Then who am I to refuse you?”
“A big friggin’ idiot, that’s who.” Kohaku rolls his eyes and pulls on him, practically dragging him back toward the building. “And the reason is because I like you, moron. I didn’t think that was so hard to figure out. Guess I underestimated how stupid you can be.”
Madara laughs again, but it sounds a little warmer, a little closer. “Idiot, moron, stupid? You think so highly of me, Kohaku-san!”
Kohaku scoffs. “And you don’t think highly enough of yourself, Madara-han.”
He sneaks a glance over his shoulder and catches the tail-end of a tiny little smile on Madara’s face. A genuine one, one that doesn’t feel like a mask or a ploy. Kohaku’s heart skips a beat, and then he turns around and pulls the door open, Madara in tow.