(d)
I love you, Madara.
I really love you, Madara. I love you so much.
He casts one last look back at Hashirama's sleeping form and he does not kiss his forehead as he leaves, because what is the point if Hashirama can't agree to it too, can't experience it with him.
Hashirama is killing him.
7.
Hashirama wakes up to a single ray of dazzling late-autumn sunlight catching him directly in the left eye, and finds that he has no idea how he managed to get home. There is a gaping hole where his memories of the previous night's activities should be, and someone has tucked Hashirama so securely into his own blankets that he thinks he could stay bundled up on his futon like this for the next six years. These two things Hashirama realizes in unison, and he licks his too-dry lips and experimentally turns his head to one side, so that his face is out of the sun. There is a jolt of incredible pain against his temples and he gives a halfhearted groan and assembles his limbs into a sitting position and resolves to assess the situation more thoroughly.
His solitude feels like a real physical presence, hanging over him like an overlarge shadow, pressing in on his chest until breathing is nearly a chore. He remembers the bar, and he remembers Madara appearing, and then absolutely nothing.
Madara brought him home, Hashirama thinks, in a moment of nearly divine inspiration. And Madara must have put him to bed. All of this he has no memory of whatsoever, but he remembers losing Tobirama at the bar, and he definitely remembers Madara arriving soon after.
Relief floods him, followed by nearly palpable sadness, no doubt amplified by his headache. Madara brought him home and—and then he left. He's so far away now, all the way at his own house, and the amount of effort it would take to get up and dress himself and go and find him is nearly more than Hashirama can bear to think about. He wants Madara to step through the doorway from the sitting room and say, good morning, Hashirama, or even I hope you're not still drunk, Hashirama, or, more realistically, Good, you're awake, now you had better thank me for dragging your sorry ass home after last night, Hashirama. He just—he really misses Madara, all right, he misses their banter and their quiet shared smirks and and the way Madara's eyes light up across the conference table when Hashirama makes faces at him during meetings.
When Tobirama stops by to check in on him several hours later he's sitting around in a nemaki, teasing a rare snarl out of his hair and slowly gathering the will to move.
"I told the planning board that you're still ill," Tobirama says, bringing him a glass of water from the sink. "Although, looking at you, I suppose that isn't terribly far from the truth."
"Thank you," Hashirama says quietly. It takes several tries for his voice to work, and clearing his throat sends a dull throb of pain through his head.
Tobirama looks very much as if he'd like to say something, but he reconsiders at the last second. He fiddles with a loose thread on his sleeve. They are both silent for the better part of a minute.
"Have you seen Madara?" Hashirama says abruptly, his heart giving a strange leap as he says the name.
Tobirama's nostrils flare magnificently. Hashirama groans.
"Well," Tobirama begins, crossing his arms so tightly that Hashirama wonders if he'll ever be able to get them undone, "I personally haven't. According to the noise complaints, however—of which there are several, waiting for you in the office—some time after he dropped you off here, he returned to the bar, got flaming drunk, shouted at sixteen different people, and then vanished around dawn. Have a word with him when you're feeling up to it, will you? He's getting out of hand."
Amidst the headache, Hashirama feels a vague hot fear rising in his throat. Madara—Madara does not drink. He didn't drink the night of the peace treaty. He didn't drink the day of the alliance ceremony, and he didn't drink the day Konoha opened its gates for the first time. If there's anything Madara fears, it's the loss of control. Hashirama knows this. He needs to know where everything is; he needs to know exactly what he's doing now and what he's doing next; he needs constant regularity and influence and order, or else he spirals into—well, whatever you'd call this, Hashirama supposes. Madara making a conscious choice to relinquish control over his senses—this is not good.
Tobirama is still standing there with his arms crossed, surveying Hashirama's face. "At least he had the decency to bring you here," he says. "When I went to get you last night you both had already left."
Hashirama's stomach turns over. After he blacked out, did he say something…terrible to Madara last night that somehow drove him past the breaking point? Did he—do something? Is this somehow his fault?
"I'll drop by the office in half an hour," he says resignedly, massaging his temples, "and see if he's there." Tobirama's frowning, but he seems reasonably satisfied. He closes the door with surprising gentleness as Hashirama slithers off his futon and seizes the edge of his desk for support.
Hashirama's eyebrows shoot up and he laughs. The desk—Madara must have cleaned his desk before he left. A month's worth of scattered papers are now stacked in neat piles, each one organized by date. Scrolls are in their bin. His brush pens are pristine, looking cleaner than they have in years. He left the ink spots on the wooden desk, though, and the wobbly chair is still propped up with a folded scrap of paper. Hashirama feels a sudden surge of affection for Madara, and then another pang of worry.
What on earth did he do last night, to put Madara in such a state?
Madara isn't at his house that afternoon, and he isn't at the office, either. Nor is he there the following day, or the day after that. He asks an exasperated Tobirama, who can't detect his chakra within the boundaries of the village.
"He's not gone," Tobirama reassures him on that third morning, more irritated than usual because he's catching Hashirama's flu. "He fed the cat. He must have come early this morning, before anyone else was here."
Hashirama looks. The office cat emerges from around the doorway and slinks around Tobirama's ankles, sated and purring. Tobirama deposits his mountain of paperwork on Hashirama's desk, blows his nose, and leaves.
It's like a constant ache. He wants Madara to want to be with him. He wants Madara's respect and admiration; he wants to see Madara smile and know that it's his doing, that it's Hashirama who softened his face, made those smile lines appear around his eyes, made him laugh—he remembers Madara's wheezing laugh and another heavy feeling of loneliness settles in his chest, putting out roots that tangle around his heart.
Madara's hard to pin down, hard to encapsulate, which makes him that much more interesting, and the only thing Hashirama wants right now is for Madara to reappear so that he can apologize for whatever he did that night while he was drunk. He remembers back when they were just two children on a riverbank, how sometimes whole months would go by and they wouldn't see each other. Hashirama can't even imagine spending a month apart from Madara now. It feels wrong, it's just—it's him and Madara, they've been together since the truce and now they're not.
At least he knows Madara's not dead.
"Sorry I'm late," Hashirama had said, a long time ago, by the river. He could just see the back of Madara's head through the trees. Madara looked up and turned around, relief flooding his face.
"There you are, Hashirama," he said, determinedly casual. "I knew you hadn't gotten yourself killed."
"Never!" Hashirama had called down breathlessly, skidding down a steep spot on the riverbank and landing with his arms outstretched before Madara. His errands for Butsuma had taken longer than he had expected. He noticed, privately, that Madara looked like he had been crying.
"I'm sick," Madara said quickly, as if he had read Hashirama's mind, and gave a great sniff to demonstrate.
Hashirama smiled rather deviously. "Oh," he said. "Then we had better not go swimming at the cave today. Might be too strenuous."
"NO!" Madara shouted. "I mean, I'm mostly better. I think—" He gave an experimental cough. "I think that was the last of it."
Hashirama grinned. "Hey!" he said. "Let's make a secret code to communicate! That way you won't have to worry in case I don't show up." (Although he would never admit this to Madara, he had in fact cried for the better part of an afternoon when Madara didn't turn up at the riverbank several weeks ago.) "Stack two stones at the spot if we're alive, and—"
"And one if we're dead?" Madara had laughed.
Hashirama steels his nerves and resolves to talk to Madara in the morning, early. A plan is already forming in his head...he'll sleep in the office, at the desk, and Madara will come in to feed the cat and they'll have to run into each other, then.
He will apologize to Madara, for…for whatever he did that night.