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Candy Hearts Exchange 2025
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Published:
2025-02-16
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1,822
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1/1
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Celebrate in Your Own Way

Summary:

Madara goes on a top secret info-gathering mission. (READ: Madara visits his sister.)

Notes:

Hello recipient!! I absolutely loved your Enstars prompts, was very glad I was assigned someone who also enjoys Fraught Gen. Fraught Siblings, even! I had a blast writing it, hope you enjoy.

Work Text:

No matter how long Madara spends waiting outside, watching the comings and goings of staff through Maguro's room from a comfortable spot in the courtyard, nothing looks amiss.

Her room looks busier than usual, to be sure, but Madara himself is here because it's Maguro's birthday and he knew the hospital staff would be in and out of her room all day. She plays nice around the staff and they like her - they would be happy to come by for a less grim reason than usual. A group of nurses brought her a pale blue cake to match all the Ra*bits merch she's been acquiring, and if the person being celebrated were anyone other than his sister Madara would have smiled to see it.

As things are, he's been keeping watch for outside visitors all day, because at Maguro's new age the heir to the Mikejima family is supposed to receive a very specific gift.

Madara was supposed to at any rate, and he would love to know if that plan changed when the heir did.

It will probably be a waste of a day, where he won't see or hear anything interesting. His useless sister, wasting his precious time. He'll sleep better if he knows the answer to his question though, so Madara keeps diligent watch until visiting hours are officially closed even though it's boring, then strolls over to his usual tree and climbs the trunk until he can reach Maguro's window, which he knows how to bump in just the right way so it unlatches.

If Madara weren't so tall he'd have to use the front desk like anyone else, but his arms are long enough to reach everything he needs to visit Maguro without letting the staff know. He could go through the front, sure, but Maguro's more comfortable both when Madara's being a rule-breaking bastard and when the staff think he's a deadbeat brother that never visits his dear sweet sister.

Anything that makes Maguro even marginally more comfortable with his presence, Madara will take.

As he makes his jump through the window, rolling towards the door to minimize injury and noise, Madara thinks that the fun part comes now.

Sure enough, as he turns around, a lovely vase full of fresh flowers flies at his face. Madara catches it, redirecting the momentum so it doesn't crash into anything, and gets to see Maguro glowering at him from her bed. The vase is heavy enough that she wouldn't have been able to throw it on one of her bad days and she doesn't look especially pale, so her condition must be about as good as it gets right now.

"What do you want?" she asks.

"Do I have to want something?" Madara asks in turn, as he puts the flowers down on a surface well out of Maguro's reach. "Can't I just be here to wish you a happy birthday?"

"No. You can not."

She says it like both a fact and a command, both a part of his personality and an action she wishes he'd stick to. Maguro loves a double meaning in her insults.

"What about you then, what about some pleasantries for your brother? How've you been doing, how are things between you and the wife, what did you think of Shin Kamen Rider -"

It's the last question that deepens Maguro's glare, "First of all you are no brother of mine, second of all you don't have a wife, and third of all I'm seeing it in theatres next week as one of my gifts. If you spoil me I will, for real, put a hit out on you."

Madara's joke about Scorpion-Aug was going to be so pointed, too. Oh well.

When Madara fails to continue their banter Maguro sighs and opens the drawer on her bedside table. Madara stays still, thinking that surely the gift's not in there, and instead she takes out a little jewellery box, for a ring or earrings of some kind, which she snaps open and shut at him. This would be adorable if it weren't Maguro doing it. She's signalling that she'll throw the box if he doesn't hurry up.

"With all the presents I've got more ammo than usual. Arm's good enough today that I might bruise your face."

Madara kind of doubts that Maguro can throw well enough for that even on her very best days, but he gets the message. More energy does not mean more patience.

"Alright alright," Madara holds his hands up in surrender, then gets the visitor's chair and positions it at the end of Maguro's bed so they can talk face-to-face. The position makes him an easy target for throws, but with the vase out of reach Madara doubts Maguro has ammo that will do any damage. "I'll say it like this: tell me what the 'rents got you."

"Why should I do that?" Maguro is sitting up as straight as she can now, and she's folded her hands in her lap like an elderly dowager. Their mother does that during negotiations, she used to tell Madara the pose projected dignity. "You're the one who came in the back way, I can yell for help at any time."

Madara rolls his eyes. They go over this line of argument every time he comes through the window. "You know they'll never catch me and they'll start to get worried you're hallucinating, which you don't want. Even if you get them to up security on the window I'll just come through the normal way, as many times as it takes for you to talk, and you'll hate the whole whittling down process so much you should just tell me now."

They go through this particular argument every visit and she's never even told the hospital it's possible to get through the window, much less gotten the place to upgrade their security. Madara doesn't think the information he wants today will be the piece that makes her close that entrance off for good. Maguro has kept the window entrance open for many years now, and Madara suspects he'd have to fuck up even more than usual for her to close it. His best guess as to why she keeps it open is that there are only so many ways that Maguro can exercise her Mikejima bona fides when she's staying in the hospital, and negotiating with Madara is one of those ways.

"Alright, so you know I'm not going to call for help," Maguro sighs. "You're still not offering me anything for the information. You can annoy me all you want - if there's nothing in this exchange for me, I can still refuse to talk."

Madara doesn't want to give away how good he thinks his plan is, so he doesn't smile, but he wants to when Maguro brings up that he should offer her something. He knows exactly what Maguro will enjoy, and it's even fitting for a family-to-family birthday present.

"Why my dear sister, I am offering you something!"

Maguro narrows her eyes. She especially hates it when Madara's trying to be playful, and now that they're making faces Madara's able to smile at her.

"I'm offering you the chance for me to listen while you brag."

Maguro looks skeptical, "Why would I want that?..."

"It'll hurt."

Madara lets Maguro really look at him for a moment, to take in how insincere he knows his smile is.

"If you tell me all about what dear mother and father did for you today, you have the chance to reaaaaaally hit me where it hurts."

Maguro doesn't respond to that for a moment. It's one of those moments, a kind of moment Madara still has far too often, where he hopes he's misjudged her.

Then Maguro sits back in her bed, closes her eyes, and describes her day in painstaking detail.

If Madara were to repeat the events of the day, all he'd really be able to say is that even though the Mikejima parents are busy and Maguro definitely will not be allowed home for a few weeks yet, their parents came by and brought her out for breakfast. The breakfast was lovely, they'd gotten her lots of gifts, and arranged perfectly for the hospital-bound gifts to arrive in her room before she got back.

Madara could probably have sat back and closed his eyes himself, keeping an ear out only for the gifts, but in the spirit of making a good faith offer he does listen to all of what Maguro says.

She's not a half-bad storyteller, all things considered. Spending so much time online has made her good at constructing a sentence. She spends a bit too much time lingering on the things she really thinks will make Madara hurt (their parents have come around on tokusatsu as a hobby so they got her a nice Zetton figure, the fish at the breakfast was especially good), but the construction of those parts matters less than the fact that she does, in fact, know what to emphasize to get at him.

Madara lets his discomfort show on his face, even. She doesn't say anything that hints at the gift he was worried about, so he lets himself wallow. That's all he can do, with the deal he's made.

When Maguro gets to her description of being dropped off at the hospital, she looks at Madara and scoffs at him.

"I don't need to go on, I think. You already know the staff were perfectly nice and normal."

She probably doesn't know that Madara was watching all day and saw the staff with his own eyes, but she wouldn't be wrong even if Madara hadn't done that, "Yeaaaah, I coulda guessed."

Maguro sighs, sits back, and doesn't mince any words:

"So that's all?"

Madara nods, "That's all."

Then, with only the warning of her obvious movements, Maguro picks up the jewellery box and tosses it at Madara's face.

He catches it easily, and she glowers as she gestures him toward the window.

"Then get out of my room."

Madara laughs, "Alright, deal's done and fair's fair, I'll be outta here!"

He drops the jewellery box by her feet, puts the visitor's chair back in its place, then opens the window and hops up onto the sill.

"Wait, actually," Maguro says behind him. "There's one thing I forgot."

Madara turns back since she's talking, letting one leg dangle down to the floor again. It's very uncomfortable, which was surely her goal.

Maguro rewards him with her best sneer yet.

"If they had given me the gun, I wouldn't fucking tell you!"

She sticks her tongue out and flips him off for good measure, and there's really nothing Madara can say to that.

He jumps out the window, out into the early evening, and reminds himself for the hundred thousandth time that he was stupid to expect any reluctance from her at all.