Another kind of Blackmail
Founders Era Modern AU, which is kind of an oxymoron.
Madara has always disliked desk jobs.
Why? Because he's an Uchiha, and the Uchiha are men of action. Sitting behind a desk is not action. Penning signatures on one-way jail tickets for men who may or may not be criminals may be action, but it does not feel like action. So he hates it. He hates it with the quiet but tense passion with which he hates just about everything else and he particularly hates how his legs feel almost rubbery when he gets up after two-three hours of consecutive work and is that Izuna with a cup of coffee?
There's the matter of how the hell he actually made it into his office, but for now the coffee will do. He gulps it down scalding hot while his kid brother – fresh out of high school – watches with a foolish little smile on his lips.
"Your work is so cool, brother," he gushes, taking the empty cup back. "Is it ok if I visit you more often?"
"How did you even get in?" But Madara already knows the answer. They're Uchiha, after all. Descended from one of the greatest Japanese ninja of history. That blood still seems to run strong, and Izuna has a knack for slipping into places he isn't supposed to be. Madara has found him sneaking into a bar with his friends more than once, but his philosophy runs that if a boy is old enough to make money, he's old enough to figure out what to do with it. Their parents would certainly not think quite that way, but Izuna is living with him for a year and he has his own rules.
When his younger brother looks sheepishly to one side and refuses to answer, Madara sighs and shrugs on his coat, taking one look around the white-specked sharp-cornered office room before dragging Izuna out and closing the glass door behind them. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his coat and talks while they walk down the hallway, clicking with every step.
"You little idiot. Forget how, why, then?"
Izuna shoots him another blinding smile. "I'm free for the whole summer, remember? I want to visit you here, brother. Can I bring you a bento box for lunch every day? They'll let me in properly, right?"
"What are you, twelve? You don't even have a visitor's permit. Get out before the security finds you."
"Aww, I'll even make you coffee! You don't need to hire those pretty-boy secretaries to do it for you. I saw them on the way up, you know. Not bad." His voice is full of the clever kind of cheek that only he can ever get away with and Madara pauses, counts down in his head, resists the urge to strangle his brother. He doesn't mind that Izuna knows he's thoroughly gay because at least the kid is a secretive little shit, but he minds that he feels the need to bring it up every other day.
"So what about it, brother? Come on, you've got swivel chairs and everything. And there's even Western food in the lounge kitchen."
"...Your hours are eleven to one. Show up at any other time and I'll chase you out myself," he relents with a sigh.
-x-
There's one thing Uchiha Madara knows well about his profession.
Lawyers are cruel. It comes with the trades. It's in the fucking job description. He's a normal man outside the firm but here, within these glass walls, he's tossing entire lives around with his imported gold-plated nib pen and every once in a while he goes out to court to see their minds fall to pieces. And he's perfectly fine with this fact.
But what bothers him is a man, one he's known since the age of ten. At ten, the two of them were total peace-nuts, pouring over badly written law dramas and trying to save all of humanity from itself while thinking it to be perfectly lucrative. That lasted all of ten years before Senju Hashirama was sent away to study law in some prestigious foreign university and Madara stayed in Tokyo, brewing in the stench of his own failure.
What bothers him is that Hashirama is still that ten-year-old peace-nut. Walking about with this kindly smile, looking at every case as if the prosecutors were his children and the defendants were his damn grandchildren. As if he's some kind of oriental Atticus Finch who thinks that all the world needs is a good pat on the back and it'll be just fucking fine.
Sometimes, Madara wonders if he could crush Senju Hashirama like he's done with so many other transfers. Crush him using tricks that run through his Uchiha blood because his family was one short-suited murderer after another in the end. Crush him until he's heartless like someone of their profession should be, drag him down to his level so they could just...
Other times, he wonders if Hashirama would consent to the two of them fucking hard against the glass wall.
It's not an entirely lost cause. Hashi's prestious family tries to marry him off every second Monday but Madara has seen him running off to love hotels with men just as often. And he's devoted half his life to repairing their broken relationship anyway and it wouldn't be too far of a stretch. But it still takes over two weeks to convey this fact to Hashirama, who is about as intuitive as a brick wall.
But Madara refuses to bring flowers like most people do because he doesn't want a relationship, he wants to pound seven inches of frustration into the man who's haunted his living dreams for years. He glares across at the other man for around five minutes every day when they cross paths in the hallway, trying to telepathetically convey that he wouldn't be too averse to fierce hate sex on a weekly basis.
With the fall of the evening three weeks after repeating this infuriating strategy, Madara finds himself standing in Hashirama's office, one floor up from his own. It's a horrid place with entirely too much sentimental paraphernalia. Framed pictures of all his stupid foreign friends, awards and medals nailed up in his typically oblivious proclamations of superiority, and is that a Totoro plushie on the far shelf?
"Ah, did you come to visit?" Hashirama is entirely too ecstatic, hasitily waving Madara to the seat before his desk and relaxing in his chair. It's a subconscious thing he does when trying to make people feel at ease. Literally 'lowering' himself to their levels. To Madara this simple action is a knife to the neck and he bristles as he sits, no less determined to get what he came for.
"'Visit' would be a word for it, I suppose. More importantly, you keep forgetting I live three blocks away from you. Broke up with your latest?"
The Senju turns about five different shades of red and averts his eyes, entirely unconcerned with how Madara would know this living three blocks away. His posture melts a little more.
"I wouldn't worry too much," Madara says with a smirk. "He wasn't nearly as pretty as any of my secretaries."
"Don't... you shouldn't say things like that out loud," Hashirama mutters. Suddenly, his eyes take on their rare shade of suspicion, a wordless indicator that he's dealing with someone at his own level. This pleases Madara. "You didn't come here for blackmail did you?"
"I came for a kind of blackmail, yes."
"Is this the kind that involves money?" Despite his words, his tone is still questioning, as if he's saying it just to get the issue out of the way. Even after ten years he still sees his former friend as a closet fellow peace-nut.
"This is the kind that involves your pitifully broken heart and my libido," he replies plainly.
Hashirama has an interesting expression on his face natively found on old men from mental asylums. He brings a finger up to his chin, taps it a few times, then shivers a little. As if trying to wake himself up. And there's this funny little flash of humor on his face before it fades back into its proper state of worry.
"Waitwaitwait are you-"
"Yes. Is there a problem with that?" One eyebrow rises, and Madara tries to emanate every ounce of their former childish competition. "Or are you... conscious about things?"
Hashirama's lips are suddenly pursed into a tight line. This suits Madara perfectly because he reaches over the surface of the polished desk, grips the clueless man by his designer tie, and crashes their mouths together.
-x-
The next morning they're somehow awkwardly tangled in a mess of limbs between the sheets of Hashirama's apartment bedroom with no clue how they managed to traverse the five miles from the firm and not caring either way. Madara planned to quietly slips away but the Senju is like some kind of burr, smearing him with the cloying smell of his cologne. So he stays there. Keeps his own hands to himself. Tries to ignore the occasional remnant pulses of pain and the growing feeling of dread in his stomach.
It takes another five minutes of incessant jabbing for Hashirama to crack open an eye and give him a lazy morning smile. "So?"
Madara promptly bristles. "...I didn't expect that you'd top!"
"Well, you didn't seem to mind at the time."
And these words leave Madara seething quietly because this was supposed to be about him ramming in frustration and instead he vividly remembers squirming slightly, not enough for Hashirama to feel but definitely enough for him to be thoroughly unnerved. He lies still for a few seconds. Then swings his legs out of the bed. Feels the cold September wind slipping through the room's only window to brush over his naked skin.
Just as he's about to stand up and get the hell out and try his hand at top next time, fingers grip his arm. He turns, raises an eyebrow at Hashirama, whose expression can be found more often on the faces of kicked puppies.
"You know, I could get used to this."
"...you had better, Senju idiot."
-x-
When he returns home that day, Izuna is waiting with a lurid smile on his face and a plate of inarizushi in his hands.
"I thought I'd get something to eat on the way back, brother. You're hungry, aren't you? I bet that Senju guy didn't exactly cook for you or anything." He explains at his brother's questioning look, "I tracked your phone when you didn't get back yesterday and saw you at his apartment."
Madara pauses. Why did he agree to house the kid for a year anyway? "Breathe a word of it and you won't be able to breathe anymore," he drawls. After that brief heart attack, he sits down at their two-person dining table, pulls the plate towards himself, and eats almost furiously. Anything Hashirama cooks would have to be poison tested before consumption anyway, and they had been slightly too occupied to contemplate other human urges.
"Can I meet him?" Izuna eventually implores. "He seems so nice."
Thankfully, the kid is silenced by a single glare. But he speaks up again five minutes later.
"But don't bring him over here during the evening, ok? People shouldn't traumatize their younger brothers."
That draws a brief smile from Madara, who quietly puts aside his finished plate and turns to leave. On the way to his room, he pats his brother's head in a definite semblance of partiality.