Chapter Text
Madara stumbles over the doorway, catching himself against Tobirama’s back.
It’s clumsy. Indelicate.
Madara kisses his neck heavily, pressing his mouth and nose under Tobirama’s ear again and again as his arm tightens around Tobirama’s waist. Naked skin pulling across more naked skin, all of the sinew and tan breadth of his forearm secured and snug around the dip of Tobirama’s paler stomach in the shadow.
He’s drunk. His hands have become clumsy, his feet unsteady, and he pushes up against Tobirama like a wave crashing on rock. They both are - Tobirama’s got his feet planted wide, his hand braced on the wall for balance, but his cheekbones are hot with a telltale flush.
Not that they’ve ever been led into an izakaya by Hashirama and come back out sober.
***
“Another!” Hashirama shouts, and Madara grimaces.
The noise of the bar crescendos. Hashirama roars over it, and sake pours, and that awful Nara ale-brew foams over the tops of raised cups. Tobirama looks as outwardly miserable as Madara feels, shoulders hunched in on his side of the table, crammed against the wall. Every so often Hashirama’s braided hair slaps him across the chest as his head swings around, eyes lighting up further at every new face he spots.
That said, there are just as many empty bottles in front of Tobirama as his brother has ploughed through. The Senju must drink their way through winters, for all of them to have such ridiculous tolerance. That, or another genetic quirk of the clan.
He meets Tobirama’s eyes, gazes sliding across each other without catching. If he looks away, stretching his neck, he just barely feels the fleeting weight of Tobirama’s glance on his mouth and throat. His chakra, slipping around Hashirama’s like a stream in a forest, trickling under moss and flowing between roots to find Madara’s and pool at the edges of it.
He’s dressed like he’s a visiting diplomat, haori and hakama neat as a set of new senbon. For all that it’s needlessly prim, there’s something attractive about his choice of clothes outside of combat. Like a scholar, or a librarian if he wears that high-necked black undershirt, which Madara had never imagined liking as much as it turns out he does.
“It’s easy for you,” Hashirama’s saying, and Madara tunes back in. "Everyone calls me the same thing, and that’s that.”
Ah. The new current issue. Which isn’t, to Madara’s disgust, fortifying their defences or sending spies out to embed into other copycat villages; but a debate on how the first Hokage, in his newly created role, is supposed to address other clan heads and nobles. Politicking for the sake of it.
“Uchiha-dono?”
Madara grimaces. “I think that’s just for the daimyo. Don’t go promoting me.”
“How am I supposed to address you? Uchiha-gimi?” Hashirama’s lower lip juts. “The elders won’t approve, no matter what. Contrary old bastards.”
“Madara-sama would be a reasonable bend of protocol for in-village matters. Allowable, given your friendship, but with the honorific use it remains respectful. Uchiha-sama, if you were before the court.”
A spark runs down his spine like a livewire.
“Madara-sama? Madara-sama,” Hashirama tests. It’s nothing like the way Tobirama said it, so quietly and so…
It’s only because he’s drunk, he assures himself, that he so desperately wants to provoke Tobirama to say it again. He can’t take his eyes fully away from the younger man’s mouth, and the red line drawing up from his throat towards it like a guide. Uchiha-sama. Tobirama’s always formal. It shouldn’t make his heart pound.
Tobirama shoots him a quelling look, and Madara’s line of sight to his lips is broken by Tobirama’s enamel cup rising to cover them.
Eventually they’re kicked out - and isn’t that a sight, the God of Shinobi, hope of the Uchiha, and the White Demon being unceremoniously hustled out to the street by a man with more years than the three of them together. The street is still full of life and noise and smoke, but they’re given a wide berth anyways. Inside, they’re all equal - Hashirama can be beaten at cards, Madara can be accidentally fallen against and apologised to with a grin. They can drink and laugh and be laughed with, and maybe it’s why their new Hokage brings them here again and again.
“Ah, otouto -”
Hashirama tugs his brother closer with a hand around his wrist. He’s bigger than Tobirama. Not by much, hidden well under armour and fur, but there’s something much more solid about Hashirama - body, touch, and presence. Hashirama finds freedom when he goes to a bar, to shout and shine bright and laugh loudly among his people. Tobirama melts back into the wood panelling like he’d rather be in the dark of the forest.
They press their foreheads together, Hashirama’s hand firm at the back of Tobirama’s inclined head. Hashirama’s eyes are closed, crinkled at the corners with a smile. Tobirama’s lashes are low, but his lidded eyes are focused on the ground.
Madara turns his attention to the lilacs climbing freely up the wall between buildings. The air fills with the smell of them in the early morning, completely out of season and blooming anyways. Just like the border forest - and no, he will not call it the Forest of Death - impossibly dense, trees unnaturally spiked and tall. By the time he’s looked back and stopped musing on plants, the brothers have broken apart and Hashirama’s hand is patting Tobirama’s shoulder.
“You’ve done so well.” Hashirama’s smile hasn’t dropped a fraction. “All of your work, otouto - I knew you’d understand eventually. A fine dream, eh?”
“Yes, anija.”
“I’m so proud - and the training fields you drew up - and the hospital-!”
“Thank you, anija,” Tobirama says, blankly. He rocks a little on his heels. It’s possibly due to Hashirama having both hands clinging on to his shoulders now while swaying.
The threat of tears starts to mount, and Madara desperately tries to nip it in the bud. “Is Mito waiting for you? I hope she’s not staying awake until you get home. You know, a new marriage needs…”
Hashirama’s eyes go wide, and thankfully tearless. “Mito!”
Newlyweds are pleasantly easy to distract. Let them occupy themselves with each other, push them back in the right direction when one stumbles off like a lost lamb. Long may it last. If Mito keeps Hashirama at her side for a few more nights a month, there might be enough alcohol left safe in the village provisions by the time winter hits.
He doesn’t recall much of his walk to the new Uchiha head household. Nor when exactly Tobirama circled back around to intercept him, but he can still feel the exact brush of air from Tobirama dropping down from the rooftop to his left and falling into step with a slight inebriated stumble, but without a word.
“Uchiha-sama,” he echoes.
Tobirama snorts.
***
He lifts his mouth from Tobirama’s neck. Pulls him around, face to face.
“Knees,” he grunts, and he’s pushing, Tobirama resisting, both wavering and half-drunk.
Tobirama rolls his eyes, close enough for him to see their whites. His baritone is softened by sake - usually crisp, now dragging out of every syllable. “Will you play at being - at being conqueror now, Uchi-ha?”
He growls, muscles locked at just the moment Tobirama’s go lax. An unskilled win. Tobirama drops heavily - one knee to the floor, then the other, Madara’s hands on his shoulders and the moonlight cutting across his face. As few times as Madara has seen Tobirama like this, he’s watched him wear that same expression on every instance - faintly belligerent, a crease between his brows and a pull at the corner of his severe mouth.
Awful. Lovely. Awful for how lovely he finds it, and how incredulously anyone else would laugh at Uchiha Madara declaring the white demon’s face beautiful.
Tobirama on his knees, though, would be a trial for the most devout priest. He’s tall enough in spine and from knee to hip for his head to be well over the fold of Madara’s obi. Face upturned, too proud to let his chin dip to his chest. Even for his conqueror.
He licks over his dry mouth. “Show me.”
It’s very, very obvious that Tobirama is quite drunk. His eyes blink slower than a cat’s. “I believed that you were supposed to bare your cock at this...part.”
Hearing Tobirama say cock never gets old.
“Mm.” Madara focuses on the shadow of Tobirama’s hardness through his clothes. “I want to see yours.”
Tobirama’s fingers tug at the ties of his hakama, plucking at the knot unsteadily and getting nowhere. He touches the belt like he’s confused by it, unsure how his sober self put the whole puzzle together - then gives up, all at once, and simply lifts his hakama’s hem with both hands.
It’s as attractive - and large - as the rest of him. Heavy between his thighs, thicker around than a katana handle. And seen from just beneath his clothes, hitched up like the silks of a very forward courtesan showing her wares?
“Good,” he manages. His knees feel unsteady. “That’s it.”
If possible, the flush on Tobirama’s cheeks deepens. His knuckles tighten a little, and the bunched fold of his hakama twitches up by an inch. Offering more. Giving as much as he can. He pictures Tobirama’s mouth shaped around his cock, the slick shine of his lips as he gives, and gives of himself - but this, first.
“Stroke yourself. Like you would alone.”
He obediently takes that lovely, long cock in the palm of his hand. Dry, soft skin passing over the space between his thumb and forefinger, slim hips bucking forward helplessly. Tobirama touches himself oddly - a half-grip, no urgency, almost aimless - but maybe it’s all down to the sake. Not that the wine’s affecting how hard he gets.
“Perfect.”
Tobirama’s eyes flutter closed, lips parted.
As incredibly impolite as it would be to ask, Madara almost wants to inquire if all Senju are so big - given that he’s only seen two of them naked in his life. One by choice. If the clan’s fertility gives all their men cocks that drip lewdly at the slightest touch, as well as their litters of children. Or if it’s just the main family line and some good fortune. Possibly too far. There’s no good way to initiate that conversation.
A tiny puddle has already collected between Tobirama’s bent knees, dripping down and pooling clear fluid. The shine of it covers his forefinger where he passes it over the head now and then, pale skin on pale skin. It seems strange that his skin should be the same colour all over, as if the sun never touches him at all. Scars are the only interruption, little silvery lines here and there between deeper, warped pink ones that Madara knows come from burns. All of them old - made and mended years before any shinobi developed the ability to heal with chakra.
“Faster,” he demands. His own cock aches, and he rubs it absently through his clothes.
Tobirama looks up at him - white lashes, hot cheekbones. “I’ll - finish.”
Is he asking permission? He says it like he’s not supposed to - and Madara can’t quite see why, when they both know Tobirama can reach orgasm at least three times in a single night. Is he embarrassed to be so aroused, so quickly?
“Go on.” He licks over his teeth. Something rises hot in him - some heady rush of power. “I knew you were never as disciplined as you pretend to be. Look at you, panting at my feet, not even undressed and trying to spill your seed on the -”
Tobirama chokes. Hard. Veins in his throat standing out as he swallows whatever noise tries to rise from his chest, and comes on the ground between them with a jerk of his hips.
Madara barks out a sudden laugh - more at the look of shock on Tobirama’s face than anything else. The man looks like he’s never come by his own hand before, flush spreading from his cheeks to his neck as he looks up at Madara. His hand is still around his softening cock, holding it loosely, and his breath comes in audible short puffs through his nose. The look on his face is…strange. Not as embarrassed as Madara would have expected, but somehow lost.
“Like an untrained pup. Are you going to leave it for me to clean up, too?”
It’s second nature to poke fun, in the heat of the moment. It’s how he always has been with Izuna, ribbing and teasing and giving as good as he got. He sometimes forgets that not all families have such a relationship. With Tobirama, he often forgets that sarcasm won’t be interpreted well. Or at all.
The colour of Tobirama’s face could rival the uchiwa crest as confusion crosses it and clears away. Then his hands drop to the floor. There’s a beautiful grace in how he performs dogeza, head down and elbows bent. His hands are elegant, fingertips touching in a neat triangle as his mouth meets the floor -
Madara’s far too slow to stop him.
He hadn’t meant it. At all. But he’s standing there in disbelief, suddenly quite a lot more sober, hands half-outstretched and watching Hashirama’s little brother bow low to carefully lick up his own spend from the floorboards. With his hands in front of him, elbows bent, his haori stretches tight across his shoulderblades. The green collar sits low enough to show the nape of his neck, white as a maiko’s paint. A faint charcoal line stretches straight down from his hairline and disappears under his clothes - after a moment, Madara understands that Tobirama must be making the planning sketch for another one of his red markings.
As he stands there, eyes wide, Tobirama’s mouth stays on the ground. The waterline of his lower lip drags for a half-second when his head dips and lifts again with effort. The bob of his throat as he swallows is obvious even from the floor.
Oh, sage.
It would be a cruelty now to tell him that he hadn’t meant for him to do… that. Not when he’s lifting his head, and swallowing again thickly. Not when he’s looking up at him again from an even lower vantage point than before, lips pressed together bloodless-tight. Like Madara’s got all the answers, and this man would debase himself for just one.
Damn it, he’s got no answers.
The rain is falling heavier outside, straight sheets of silver. Treetops dance under the downpour, branches groaning and gutters rushing. The moonlight reflects in the sheen of water over the street, painting the stone and earth bright. All he can hear is the gentle drumming on the rooftop over their heads, melting into the harsh beat of his pulse.
He’s not doing his best thinking right now, but he does manage to put together a line of logic. He doesn’t want this to end here in shame. He doesn’t want to have been the one to humiliate Tobirama so awfully. He doesn’t - and it’s a revelation, this one - want Tobirama hurt by anyone’s hand or thoughtless words.
He crouches down, and his hand cups Tobirama’s sharp jaw.
This was my plan. This was what I wanted, and he did a good job. Simple. Tell him so.
“You’re being so good tonight, Senju.” A slow pass of his thumb over that full mouth. “Pretty thing.”
Tobirama’s shoulders relax, slightly, and his eyes fall hazily back to Madara’s open yukata. Perhaps this moment won’t be remembered as his greatest stroke of diplomatic intelligence. But it’s worked.
A sly and wicked part of him stirs, and whispers. And it reminds him of how his cock throbbed when that pink tongue drew a clean line through milky white on the floor. How his gut twisted and heated at Tobirama bowing so low. The afterimage is burned into his eyes, even without the sharingan.
He kisses Tobirama clumsily.
The younger man makes a small, surprised noise into his mouth, hands fisting in the front of his yukata, and he angles his head to press deeper. He can taste Tobirama’s spend on his tongue, the sake behind it, and with one arm wrapped around Tobirama’s waist he manages to lower them both to the floor smoothly. Bitterness. Warmth. Silk, linen, skin.
They undress quickly. He barely notices his underclothes leave his body, focused on untying Tobirama’s and dropping them carelessly to the side. He glances up from under his loose hair to look for the futon, finding it some three or four yards from them, and gives Tobirama a gentle push in the direction of it. He takes the redirection, flipping over onto hands and knees and Madara has to swallow a groan at the sight - Senju Tobirama crawling to bed could make poets fall mute.
Tobirama’s legs fall open easily for him to rest between.
“Madara,” he mutters. His hands are on Madara’s forearms. “Hold -”
He knows what Tobirama wants. Presses his hands over Tobirama’s biceps - that smooth flex of muscle under his palms, kami, wrapping his fingers tight. Arms locking, he pins Tobirama to the futon, thicker legs twined hot against his longer pair.
Heavy strokes and deep pressure seem to excite Tobirama more than any of the whisper-light touches preferred by the women he’s bedded. It comes more naturally to him, anyhow - they’re shinobi, and allowing his hands to grip harder is easier than reminding them to pet and caress. The first time he’d seen Tobirama bite his own hand during sex to push himself over some invisible edge, he’d been alarmed. Bewildered, watching sharp teeth sink into skin and seeing the marks of teeth already curving up his arm, bruised and red.
Now, he does it for him.
Tobirama groans, tipping his chin up in a sharp stretch of tendons tugging on collarbones jewelled in sweat. Madara lunges and latches, teeth hard on that jut of bone. Fevered, starved, like he could bite and break, crack bone down the middle, suck to the marrow and know the taste of every inch of him.
“Uh-!”
The snarl Tobirama lets out is part pain and part joy. His arms, pinned, can’t push his assailant off or tug him upwards - but his legs wrap around Madara’s thighs and crush their bodies too close for any doubt of his desire to sit between them. Madara forces his jaw to let go, if only to breathe better than a strained panting through his nose. The skin under his lips is wet, reddened, marked with the shape of his uneven bite.
The air itself burns - a simmering heat where their skin touches, where arousal sits in his gut, in the ache of his cock and prickle of sweat at the base of his skull. Madara shoves the weight of his hair over one shoulder, a heavy fall of ink brushing over snow-white. Tobirama turns his face into it, a dark strand trailing over his nose, and makes a rumbling noise as his hips arch up.
“Madara-sama,” he breathes.
The thrill that darts the length of his spine almost drops him against Tobirama’s chest. And Tobirama must know, demon that he is, because he presses his mouth to Madara’s wrist and murmurs it again, again, again.
“...please, inside me - please, your -”
He drags Tobirama up with a fist in his hair and his breath caught in his throat.
“Begging for cock, Senju?”
Tobirama squeezes his eyes shut. His hands lay open at his sides.
“Is that all you want? Uchiha seed wasted inside you? To take my cock and warm my bed?”
A pained noise - a narrow heel digging into the muscle of his calf - ragged breathing.
“I...”
The thunder breaks, and rain washes through the streets. Past the heirloom lanterns lighting in new awnings. Soaking fresh-dug gardens, ripening the earth. Down the painted red pillars of the village gates and far into the murky forest beyond them. Over the worn paths and tiled roofs of their ancestral clan homes - left silent and fallen still.
He buries his face in Tobirama’s neck, lifts his leg over his hip, and brings them together with a breath.
They burn. One body of flickering heat, in the cold and the dark.
***
When he wakes first, the sun hasn’t risen. There’s heat at his front and soft hair against his cheek and he drifts off again with an easy stretch of his spine. The next time, light draws a line across his hand and digs into his eyes when he blinks them fully open. His mouth tastes like the bottom of a pickling barrel, and sweat prickles the middle of his back
He props himself on one hand, and looks down at Tobirama.
He sleeps soundly on his front, arm tucked under his cheek and back turned to Madara. Fine, white-blond hairs move with his breath along his forearm. His shoulders are broad - nothing on Hashirama, but still well-built and strong. With the futon cover down around his waist, the whole curve of his spine is lit by the dawn light, ribs rising and falling slowly.
For a moment, he imagines wrapping his arms back around his sometimes-lover and resting until they both wake fully; rolling Tobirama under him and kissing him once his red eyes blink open. Maybe with a smile. They’d talk. Go again. Get up only when thirst won out. Walk home together from the tower and do it all over again.
Nice thoughts, and not much more. He doesn’t honestly believe that Senju Tobirama would appreciate anything so tender.
The floors are cool to his bare feet when he stands. Smooth with wear over the years, slightly uneven, with a small gap between boards running the length of the room from the foot of the bed to the sliding door. The air moves sluggishly even with it open, heavy clouds threatening another downpour just above the colourful awnings of the buildings across the street. It smells rich, heavy, thick enough to scoop into an open hand and pour back out.
The irori flickers to life with a murmured katon.
He hangs an old pot to boil, swinging slightly on the hook, and sets about filling his pipe. Izuna taking longer sightseeing excursions - technically, reconnaissance - away from Konoha has left him feeling rather alone in the halls of the rebuilt clan household. But being able to smoke without false, dramatic coughing and wheezing following him around has been one hidden blessing. The pipe lights to a soft red glow against his fingertip, and he carries it in his mouth to the engawa; leans against a pillar, arms crossed, and takes his first draw of smoke and soft morning air. If he outstretched his leg just a little, he’d feel the rain on his bare foot.
If Hashirama knew where Tobirama was at this very moment, whose bed he sleeps in, he’d have to consider taking a long trip after his own little brother.
Hashirama would…
It hits him, unnervingly, that he’s not sure what eternally-reliable Hashirama would do.
He’s always been Izuna’s nii-san. Half-raised him, carried him on his shoulders, cut his hair and taught him kenjutsu until the day Izuna outstripped him with the sword. He’s never heard Tobirama call Hashirama anything other than anija. Vaguely, he knows that the Senju heir and spare were kept apart as children to prevent an easier and more devastating assassination. That Tobirama cared for their younger siblings, and somewhere after their deaths a bridge between brothers was lost. There’s love there, devotion, duty - but not much understanding.
Uncomfortably, he recognises that if he knew a man had put Izuna to his knees and done half of the things he himself has done to Tobirama, he’d kill him. Burn his cock off and crush his throat with his hands and kick the remains off Hokage Mountain to splatter in the main street. If, of course, Izuna didn’t do it himself.
On every battlefield he can remember, he’s always kept an eye on his brother. Stepped between him and a hundred kunai, and would do it again in a million lifetimes. Since that day on the river all those years ago, he can’t recall ever seeing anyone shield Tobirama with their own body. He’s just never seemed much like someone who…needed protection.
“Forgive my intrusion.”
He blinks, and lowers the pipe.
“Morning.”
Tobirama stands in the doorway between corridor and kitchen, yukata belted tight and haori drawn up around his shoulders. His hair has been reasonably tamed by his fingers - but the bruise under his jaw betrays his composure and how he’s spent his night. In Madara’s imagination, he runs his finger along the flat collar of Tobirama’s clothes, dips down under it to the heat of his skin along his jugular.
It would be a more seductive picture if he didn’t look so severe. Somehow he left soft, warm Tobirama in his bed, and found this stiff, formal shinobi in his kitchen before he could even finish his pipe.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to share this morning with the man whose legs he spread open last night - but that nothing about it comes easy. Tobirama doesn’t help, either. Standing there, waiting and cold in a way that sets Madara’s teeth on edge.
This is always the part he’s bad at. Where he’s too sober to move on simple, stupid instinct. Too protective of his own private space to be any good at playing host. Uneasy, when he’s sobered up and sat alone and started to think far too much about their relationship, the cruel things his mouth says and his hands do unbidden when he’s got Tobirama undressed in front of him - and the damnable fact that Tobirama doesn’t even protect himself from him .
He makes a strong attempt.
“There’s water heating on the irori. You could have tea with me.”
…perfect.
People raised the way Tobirama was don’t fidget. The way he plucks at his own sleeve must be a thoughtless habit born of a perfectionist nature. Yes. That sounds more right.
“I…ought to attend to the hospital recruitment meeting. The proposed heads of department have to be reviewed.”
“You’re hardly fit for that.”
Tobirama stops picking. His voice is very level and not much else. “We do not have many candidates willing to take this task on.”
He gets the sense that he’s quite seriously insulted Tobirama. Replaying his words, he sees it, winces, and tries to think of how he can explain himself. That he meant Tobirama must have a splitting headache to match his own after last night and needs rest, not that he’s - not that he isn’t good enough, damn it. That he’s not capable, after doing all the real labour of building Hashirama’s fantasy village.
“I must decline your offer,” Tobirama says stiffly. “Thank you, Uchiha-san.”
Shame catches his gut like a fishhook. “Senju -”
The door slides shut hard enough to shake dust from the rafters.
He takes a long breath, and blows out smoke forcefully.
That’s it, for the next few weeks. Tobirama will spend a few days in sullen silence and foul humour, things will eventually return to a normal balance of careful politeness. And then some spark will catch into a flame and he’ll find himself tumbling into bed with Tobirama all over and getting stonewalled in his own kitchen come morning. Every time.
If Tobirama hates sleeping with him so much, why does he never turn him down? Why does he push into Madara’s touches with so much longing, if it makes him feel all of this shame and anger? It’s like the Tobirama he holds at nightfall and meets in the daylight are two different people, and it’s starting to make his head spin. Alcohol alone isn’t even enough of an explanation, unless Tobirama has some kind of personality-suppressing seal that only sake can unlock.
Madara curls his arm around his knee, and rests his chin on his forearm. Gloomily, he stares out over the raked garden and beginnings of a pond filling up with rain before he’s had the chance to dig out the right shape.
He likes sleeping with Tobirama. He likes the man. He’s not sure if he enjoys the way it makes either of them feel after. He doesn’t much care for the person he is when he’s drunk, hard, and holding Tobirama down - the man who laughs at Tobirama, stands over him, mocks his willingness to do anything he asks for. The one who lets that little voice whisper and whisper until it’s almost shouting.
The smoke has almost stopped curling from his pipe. The stone circles of the garden gleam wet in dawn light, and he thinks of bowed heads and a mouth against his wrist.