8.
Dawn arrives.
Hashirama stirs sleepily in his chair. His neck is stiff. He must have fallen asleep at his desk…the light outside the office window is pale and gray. He can hear footsteps. It's barely daybreak and someone is in the office—that can't be right; nobody is supposed to be here yet. Open hours don't start for quite some time. Strange.
Hashirama's eyes snap open. One second he is comfortably hovering between wakefulness and sleep; the next, he's alert, primed, muscles tense and ready. He sits upright in one fluid movement and draws a kunai from his pouch, ready to defend himself. Then he remembers that this is the village office and Madara is here, finally, crouching in the doorway and petting the office cat, and he's supposed to be explaining himself to Madara, not waving deadly weapons at him.
Madara is here.
The cat turns tail and takes off down the hallway. Hashirama's elbow slips off the desk. It's really him! The plan worked! Madara's own face completely drains of all color as he realizes what's going on, and he stands up, knees creaking, and disappears around the door with his cloak flapping behind him, all subtlety forgotten.
"Madara!" Hashirama shouts, practically leaping over the desk in his hurry to get to him before he closes the door. "Madara, wait! I'm sorry about what happened, I was an irresponsible fool, I didn't mean to—to do whatever I did, I…"
The adrenaline is wearing off, rapidly giving way to panic. Now that Madara is actually here in front of him, he doesn't know what to say. They're both standing in the doorway—Hashirama catches the door and eases it closed so it doesn't slam—and a white mist is sliding slowly over the village, turning the abandoned street before them into a vague opaline blur.
It's an astoundingly accurate representation of the lack of mental activity occuring in Hashirama's brain right now. Madara is leaving; Hashirama follows him down the street, jogging to catch up.
"Please wait! What did I do?" he says, dreading the answer. "It must have been…really bad."
Madara's eyebrows are steadily rising. His mouth is the thinnest Hashirama has ever seen it; his jaw is clenched. They round a corner and Hashirama gathers his haori around him, shivering.
"But thank you for bringing me home. And cleaning my desk. And putting me to bed…" Hashirama sighs. "You didn't have to do all that. I'm sorry. Again."
They both stop walking, then. It's a cold morning, and the sky is blindingly gray. Madara searches Hashirama's face in utter confusion, frowning. Hashirama shudders—not just from the cold—and crosses his arms. He can see his breath.
Madara turns away, looking rather lost. He stares up at the sky for a little while, his eyes glazing over.
"I'm sorry too," he says, finally, still looking at the sky, and Hashirama's chest gives a little flutter at hearing Madara speak for the first time in several days. "I didn't mean to stay away for so long. I had meant to come back sooner, but I…"
He trails off, and the crease between his eyebrows deepens even further. He sighs. Hashirama hasn't seen him this tired and lost and confused since the day they signed the truce. He wants to wrap Madara in a blanket and put him to bed, so that they can be even again. But even as this thought occurs to him, Madara is turning on his heel, holding his head in one hand, and continuing down the still-dim street.
"Let me make it up to you," Hashirama insists, following after him once more. He notes, though, that Madara is only halfheartedly trying to run away now.
"No." Madara bites his lip. "No, it's all right. Just—just…"
He goes quiet. They've arrived in front of Madara's house. Madara looks like he has no idea how he got here. He considers Hashirama, who is now hopping up and down gently to restore warmth to his legs—the fabric of his pants is way too thin for a morning as cold as this one—and then he swallows and takes a deep breath and speaks.
"Well, come in," he says, matter-of-factly, and opens the front door.
Hashirama blows into his cupped hands. "Are you sure?"
"Come on, Hashirama," Madara says, so Hashirama follows him.
Hashirama has always thought that if he treads the wrong way in Madara's house, some ancient slumbering beast will awaken from centuries of sleep and rise up out of the floorboards to smite him. Walking in the place feels invasive, sacred almost. Hashirama hasn't been in here for months, but he built it himself, and he recognizes the familiar slope of the walls, the bend that leads to the kitchen—well, barely a kitchen; it's a cabinet and a counter and a dusty kettle perched on a modest hearth. Madara did not want a large house. Hashirama's skin prickles. The structure is familiar, but it feels as if it's been warped somehow.
He can tell Madara hasn't been in here for a few days, from the way the floor creaks as they step inside and the drawn curtains hang heavy with dust. The walls are nearly barren. There is a painted wooden mask hanging over the desk, and a small hand mirror on the mantle. This is not a lived-in house. Hashirama is fairly certain that Madara only really comes here to sleep.
"Hold on," Madara says. Hashirama doesn't see what happens, but one second it's gray and dim, and the next second all the lamps are lit and smoke is trailing from Madara's fingertips.
Madara cuts a striking figure in the glow from the lamps, standing there with his long wild hair and his face half in shadow. Hashirama can just imagine boiling clouds of writhing chakra and feathers and beaks and talons bursting from his back, stabbing into the air. With unpleasant distinctness, he remembers the outlandish rumors that used to go around about the Uchiha: that an Uchiha's glare can spoil milk, that they turn into bird monsters on the full moon, that they sharpen their teeth to deadly points and steal human eyeballs and eat their own dead. Hashirama shivers.
"Sit down," Madara says, and Hashirama blinks and the vision is gone, and it's just his friend Madara standing in his lonely house.
Hashirama sits cross-legged on a cushion by the mantle. He's still a little nervous. Maybe Madara has brought him here to kill him and renounce the alliance. But Madara is going over to the cabinet and removing a dusty tin. "Coffee?" he says, a little stiffly, and Hashirama nods, grateful.
The coffee is the instant variety, but it's hot and it doesn't taste bad at all. Madara shrugs off his cloak and hangs it by the doorway, then pours his own coffee and joins Hashirama on the floor. He doesn't look remotely formidable or mystical anymore. He just looks like someone who has not gotten enough sleep lately.
"Setting up camp in the office," he says, and smiles one of his familiar half-smiles and shakes his head. "You may just be more devious than I."
Hashirama smiles back at him. "Mmm. Maybe so," he says pleasantly. "Perhaps it's time to add early morning cat feeding to your long list of infractions."
Madara grins into his coffee cup. Hashirama is too happy to be nervous anymore. Madara's really back, he's really here, and Hashirama's beaming and he can't stop. "I missed you," he says, at the same time that Madara says, "I need to talk to you," so they both pause and gesture for the other to speak first. Neither of them, it turns out, wants to speak.
"I read the noise complaints," Hashirama says at last. "Madara, where were you?"
Madara takes a long sip of coffee before answering.
"Wandering," he says vaguely. "Ashamed."
Hashirama frowns.
"I," Madara says. There is a long pause. "I have to tell you…something." And then he opens his mouth and closes it again and stares down at the floor. He looks like he's about to cry. Hashirama frowns. His good mood is evaporating like a deactivated Susanoo. He can practically see Madara's brain working furiously behind his eyes, and it's painful, seeing him inarticulate and hesitant like this. His heart is sinking. It feels uncomfortable and wrong; it's as if they've taken a step farther apart, as if their alliance—their friendship—is unraveling before Hashirama's eyes. Hashirama cannot lose Madara. He's still too important.
These thoughts come spilling forth in a sort of messy confession.
"Madara," he blurts out, perhaps unwisely, "please tell me if I did something terrible that night, just please let me know, because when you left I assumed the worst and I don't want you to be mad at me, because I really did miss you, I promise. Please just—just let me know what I did so I can apologize properly."
"No," Madara says sharply. His voice cracks, and he clears his throat before continuing. "You didn't…do anything…bad. It wasn't you." He takes a deep breath, lets it out, takes another. Sparrows are chattering outside.
"I wanted to tell you that I missed you too," he finally says, in a great rush. "That's it."
Hashirama has the impression that this is definitely not what Madara brought him here to tell him. But relief is flooding him anyway; Madara isn't upset, Madara missed him, and they're both here in Madara's parlor having their morning coffee, just like they've done a hundred times before.
They drink together in a still semi-uncomfortable silence. Hashirama casts around for a change of subject. There's a wooden pipe in a basket behind the mantle, along with a plain leather-bound book full of what looks like feathers. He must be using them as bookmarks of some sort, Hashirama thinks, and he leans over and picks up the book and holds it up for Madara to see.
"Can I look in here?" Hashirama says.
"Yes," says Madara, looking visibly relieved to have moved on from the previous topic.
Hashirama opens the book to the first page and really does gasp. It's a catalog of feathers: tiny golden and gray ones from finches, black-and-white spotted woodpecker feathers, olive-green warbler feathers with bright yellow tips. Each one is labeled in Madara's neat handwriting. Hashirama slowly turns the pages, fascinated. Beneath a small rosy feather is the inscription Pine grosbeak, December 16; a long tapered black-and-tan feather with a curled tip simply reads pheasant. The next page is taken up by the pristine wing and tail feathers of a peachy-gray dove, arranged with its wings spread wide—"Stray cat got to it, I think," Madara says, peering over Hashirama's shoulder at the book. Hashirama glances at him and is glad to note that he looks pleased.
There is a page of glistening black crow and raven feathers, and several gossamer ones from a starling on the page opposite; Hashirama keeps turning the pages and the feathers are getting larger, crisscrossed with stripes and spots and dappled colors. Kestrel, summer and kestrel, winter are displayed across from each other; a long white feather with thick black bars reads goshawk (immature); a series of inky black teardrop-shaped feathers with tawny streaks are labeled peregrine.
"That reminds me," Madara says then, reaching into his hip pouch and removing two long, mottled gray feathers. "Owls," he says, carefully running a finger across the wisps at the feather's base. He passes the other feather to Hashirama, who turns it over in his hand, fascinated. "The edges are fluffy. Silent fliers."
"How long did it take you to find all these?" Hashirama says, truly impressed. "Unless—" he squints, suddenly shrewd. "They were all stuck in your hair, weren't they?"
Madara smiles faintly and doesn't answer. There are a few thick papers folded into the back of the book, and Hashirama takes them out, curious about their contents. It's the same type of paper he uses to press flowers. This must be where Madara keeps the very exotic birds.
Hashirama unfolds the top paper and musty air wafts towards him. It's not feathers at all; it's a faded charcoal drawing of a familiar boy with black hair. The pointed nose is the same, and the scowl, and the dark eyes and the thin cheeks and the slope of the chin. "Is this you?" Hashirama says. "It's a good likeness!"
And then his stomach turns to ice as he realizes what he's looking at, reads the small signature in the corner of the paper. He turns the page over. There are more. There are a lot more. Madara with a tiny kestrel perched on his gloved hand. Madara, somber and still, in his Uchiha robes. Madara laughing, his hair longer and wilder, perched with his legs crossed on a stony embankment. Madara, wrapped in a cloak, addressing a jumble of smudged and indistinct clan members. Hashirama flips through the papers, watching the young Madara gradually age into the man he knows today, until he gets to the last one—Hashirama is cold with dread—it's jagged and unfinished, and Madara is sitting in an unlit doorway with his hair hanging limply in his face and his head in his hands.
"I forgot," Madara says bleakly, "where I had put those."
Hashirama tears his eyes away from Izuna's drawings and forces himself to look up. Madara's hand shakes as he sets his coffee cup aside on the floor.
"There were more," Madara says quietly. "But they were lost, or burned, or torn up. He was always drawing. I never knew where he got the paper. He used to…steal a lot of things, when the clan wasn't doing well."
He winces as he says the word steal, as if Hashirama doesn't know exactly how desperate the Uchiha clan was back then. Hashirama realizes he's still holding the pile of drawings, and he folds them gingerly back into the book. His fingers are smudged with charcoal.
"He took in a stray cat, once," Madara says. "Did I ever tell you that? He had to be—six or seven years old—but he kept it a secret from our father and fed it scraps and cared for it for weeks. I hated that thing, Hashirama, it was always giving me dirty looks when Izuna wasn't looking—and then one day one of the falcons got to it and tore it apart." He falters, choking on his own uneven breath. "He was so upset over that stupid cat…"
No, you never told me that, Hashirama thinks hazily.
Madara never brings up Izuna. He never talks about him. He hasn't given any indication that he ever had a younger brother since the day they fought each other for the final time, the day before the truce. And now—Madara is laughing, and crying, and looking up at Hashirama with his brow furrowed and tear streaks under his eyes.
"He was so small," Madara continues, voice wavering. His cheeks are wet now, and he is not wiping it away. "We used to laugh—used to say he had hollow bones. He was—" He bows his head slightly. A teardrop lands on the floor between them. "He was my weakness. And now…now—"
Madara buries his head in Hashirama's shoulder and cries.
"You didn't have to tell me all these things," he says quietly, in Madara's ear, and puts his arms around his best friend.
"I know," Madara whispers. "I wanted to."
Hashirama tries to pour all his respect and admiration and burning pride into the hug, somehow, so that Madara can feel it too. He's taking these great shuddering breaths and his arms are wrapped around Hashirama's neck and his hair is tickling Hashirama's chin. He's warm, shockingly so, and they are so close together, breathing each other's air—Hashirama's shoulder is wet—but Madara is solid and real and alive, right now.
There is—there is much more to Madara than the encounters Hashirama has had with him. Their paths have crossed over and over in the past and they are together now, walking the same path, but there is so much more of Madara's life that Hashirama hasn't seen. He has had other people in his life—his brothers, the rest of the clan—something that Hashirama only ever got glimpses of. Now here is the evidence, right in front of him, and it strikes Hashirama once more just how miraculous it is, having Madara by his side after so long, the very same Madara from all of Izuna's drawings. He wants to know Madara's story; he wants to know every last detail, and he wants to absorb all this knowledge and have it spread throughout the village—he wants everyone to see Madara the way he does.
He loves how Madara puts cream and sugar in his coffee when he thinks no one is looking; he loves Madara's sad smiles and the little wrinkles around his eyes and the way he goes completely still and stares into the distance sometimes, as if he's frozen in space and time. He loves Madara's scratchy laugh and his proud self-assured walk and his squinty frowns; he loves Madara's pale neck and his tangled dark hair and his pointed nose and his strong shoulders, and, yes, he even loves Madara's stark, unnerving house, and all the strange power contained within it. He loves Madara's book of feathers; he loves his worn tunic and his dusty sandals and his dark gloves and his long black eyelashes. He loves Madara's powdered coffee in a can because it's the cheapest kind and he's not used to having money, now that the Uchiha is no longer a strictly mercenary clan, and Hashirama wants to take Madara out to dinner at a really good place and watch his face light up when the food arrives—
—and he thinks maybe, maybe, he'd like to know what it's like to kiss Madara.
The instant this very dangerous thought crosses his mind, an onslaught of revelations hits him like a sack of flour. All sorts of possibilities are opening up. He could—he could kiss Madara's lips, the corner of his mouth, the line of his jaw, the sharpness of his cheekbones, his forehead, his lovely snarled dark hair…
Oh.
This part Hashirama says out loud, to himself, still entwined with Madara on the floor. His heart is thumping in his chest. He can feel his face getting hot. Then, without any warning, Hashirama realizes that he is hard, right now, with Madara half on top of him, practically sitting in his lap. And—and Madara is still crying onto his shoulder and Hashirama does not need this; he's supposed to be giving emotional support, not concealing a badly-timed erection—but the realization that Madara could potentially discover what's happening between his legs somehow makes him even harder and his traitorous dick gives a significant twitch and Hashirama has to quickly draw back and rearrange his limbs into a more innocent position. Madara follows him, unconsciously, vexingly, as if he's drawn to him somehow.
This can't possibly be happening. He's just settled things with Madara; Madara will be beyond pissed if he throws this wrench into the ordeal—
Oh but he could kiss all the way down Madara's chest, trace the scars that he knows are there underneath his tunic: slash marks from countless swords and kunai, and long thick rope-like marks from Hashirama's own mokuton—no, do not think about the applications of the mokuton in this context—the revelations are positively flooding his brain; he wants to know how Madara sounds when he's completely at Hashirama's mercy, begging and screaming with breathless desperation, and the one rational thought in his head is that it's criminally unfair that Hashirama is only just now considering these highly exciting possibilities.
Why hasn't he thought of this before? Why the fuck hasn't he thought of this before?
Hashirama briefly considers making a wood clone and slapping himself in the face, but then he reasons that he'll have two erections to deal with instead of one, and one is…more than enough.
So—Madara.
Maybe it's for the better that more people don't see Madara the way he does.
"Oh no," Hashirama says weakly. Forget-me-nots are sprouting out of the floorboards, hundreds of tiny blue blooms bursting to life before his eyes. Madara untangles himself from Hashirama's shoulder and surfaces with his eyes puffy and red and his hair sticking up in odd places. His mouth goes slack as he sees the flowers, and Hashirama has never seen anyone so beautiful in his entire life. It's astounding—he had never even thought to consider any of this before—but now he is considering it and it feels so natural, so right, and in that precise moment he realizes that he's been in love with Madara for a very, very long time.
Even as he thinks this, the forget-me-nots spring up with increased vigor and volume. Hashirama puts his hand flat on the floor and blossoms curl up from the wood around his fingers, tickling his skin. His heart is hammering against his ribcage. A gentle rain begins outside, droplets landing softly against the window. Madara has gone completely still. Then, very slowly, he extends his index finger and brushes it against one of the blossoms, mesmerised.
"I'm so sorry," Hashirama says, blushing furiously, forget-me-nots tangled in his hair. "I didn't—I can clean them up—"
"Hashirama," rasps Madara, placing his hand on top of Hashirama's and running his calloused thumb across Hashirama's skin, "don't you dareclean these up."
Hashirama's heart gives a magnificent leap. Madara is touching his hand—Madara is holding his hand—a sort of heated explosion is taking place in Hashirama's midriff and he doesn't even care that Madara can probably see his erection because Madara is holding his hand—
"I think," Hashirama says, "I have something to tell you."
"Oh?" Madara murmurs. Hashirama leans closer. It smells like rain.
In the end it is Madara who closes the distance first, Madara who puts his hands in Hashirama's hair and kisses him soundly on the lips. Hashirama's vision dissolves into a rosy haze. Madara is kissing him, really kissing him, albeit a little tentatively, and his lips are chapped and Hashirama can hear him exhaling shakily as they come apart.
"You are such a fool," Madara whispers against Hashirama's lips as he draws back.
Hashirama's mouth is dry, and the only thought in his head is something like yes, yes I am. He reaches for Madara's hand, laces their fingers together. Madara. Madara, he loves Madara, and he—he always has, hasn't he. They're still entwined, foreheads resting together, and Madara's arm is around his neck and Hashirama's hand is on Madara's waist and it's wonderful.
"I can't believe this," Madara is saying.
Hashirama is incredulous, giddy, winded. He feels as if someone's lit a fire in his head, one that he couldn't extinguish even if he wanted to. "You…you wanted to kiss me?"
"So," Madara murmurs, squeezing Hashirama's shoulders, "so badly. Now you know."
Hashirama pouts, tangles his fingers in Madara's hair. "You should have just told me!"
"Ha!" Madara laughs, and Hashirama feels all the air leave his lungs—Madara is laughing, Madara is laughing because of him! "Practice what you preach, stubborn bastard."
"I could say the same to you," Hashirama says, but he's grinning and he can't stop.
Raindrops dance against the roof. "You could."
"Stubborn bastard," Hashirama mutters, and kisses him again for good measure.