Chapter Text
Madara didn’t so much as flinch when the front door slammed shut behind him with an echoing bang but he did pause to wince at the sound of wooden picture frames rattling against the wall. If any of those dropped he would never hear the end of it from Mito. He would prefer not to get banned from his best friend’s house, especially considering how many nights he showed up with his head too full of the world’s darkest realities, nights when he needed Hashirama’s stupid smile to remind him that everything was okay.
Voices drifted out from the other room but Madara ignored them, making his way to the den instead and throwing himself moodily down on the couch. It was a good soft couch with wide cushions and no judgements about the three extra pounds he was pretty sure he’d gained this month. Today’s shift hadn’t quite been filled with as many horrible gruesome things as he had seen in the past few years but it had been stressful just the same and all he wanted to do was relax in a place where he knew he would be safe yet not alone. Maybe later he would work up the energy to call Izuna and berate his brother for moving halfway across the country. Honestly. Who did that?
All of his brothers had done that. Madara himself was the last of the Uchiha siblings left in their hometown. If it wasn’t for Hashirama taking him in during college he probably would have followed them out of sheer loneliness no matter how much he loved this city.
The wave of fondness that was about to roll over him crested and washed back in the opposite direction when he heard his best friend’s voice stage whispering much too loudly from the other room.
“Shhh we should be quiet. He’s had no sleep and you know he has a gun.”
“The safety is on, you moron,” he called out, voice muffled by couch fibers. “But I’ll take it off for you!”
He didn’t realize his own innuendo until he heard Mito snickering away in the kitchen. Then he was thanking his lucky stars that no one was here to watch his attempt to suffocate himself with tacky upholstery. Disgusting. As if he would ever touch that big moose, not with a ten foot pole and three pairs of rubber gloves! Madara liked to think he had more refined taste than that.
Of course, his tastes included an oblivious albino who frequently tortured him with too-familiar contact and yet never seemed to understand what kind of havoc he was wreaking on poor Madara’s heart. So there was that. The memory of the first time he’d visited Tobirama at university two years ago was still vivid in his mind, how he had been used as a glorified electric blanket and then discarded immediately after he was no longer needed. It had never seemed to occur to Tobirama that what they were doing was basically cuddling and could be interpreted as romantic. All he’d cared about was staying warm while the heater wasn’t working.
“Don’t be silly, sweetheart, Madara would never really shoot me!” Hashirama sounded much too confident for a man who had only just been worrying about the presence of a gun. Madara grumbled to himself as he reached down and fumbled at his hip, unclipping the holster and pulling out his standard issue pistol.
He reveled in the terrified squeak that drifted out of the kitchen when he pulled back the slide to co*ck his weapon. There wasn’t even anything in the clip but Hashirama didn’t need to know that.
The sound of the front door opening and closing again had him dropping the gun to gently slide it underneath the couch so curious fingers wouldn’t find it. Having finished his bachelor’s degree last year, Tobirama was home now where the local university had a program he approved of to begin his master’s. Supposedly he had his own apartment but Madara wasn’t truly sure he lived in it. Actually, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain where the man lived at all. The deeper he got in to studies the worse his sleeping habits had become and ever since Tobirama came home Madara had been finding him sleeping in the strangest places around town on a worryingly frequent basis.
Like now as the zombified form of a pale Senju shuffled in to the room with his eyes barely open, his feet leading him unerringly towards the couch that already had someone sprawled out across it. Tobirama had enough awareness left to turn and sit down properly like a real human being. He did not, apparently, have enough to notice that he was sitting on top of Madara.
“Get. Off. Of. Me.”
In his peripheral vision Madara could see Tobirama lift his head and blink around himself foggily. When he didn’t see anyone his eyes slid shut and his body toppled over sideways, almost seeming to melt on to the body underneath him.
“Warm,” he mumbled absently.
“Tobirama, what the f*ck?”
“Shhh, couch. Shhhh. Sleep now.”
And then he was gone, passed out between one breath and the next. Madara wondered if the screaming he could hear was coming from himself or it if was just inside his own head.
No matter how he squirmed or wriggled it did nothing to dislodge Tobirama’s tired form. He wondered how long the idiot had been awake for this time. Twenty hours? Thirty? How many projects could he really have to work on? At least now he was doing only his own homework and not completing other people’s assignments for petty cash like he had when he was off doing his bachelor’s.
Finally Madara gave up and let one of his arms drape down to the floor, his eyebrows bunched together in confused desperation. He hadn’t really planned to stay all that long. Mostly he’d just wanted to come sulk around the place until Hashirama offered to feed him so he wouldn’t have to eat dinner alone in his own too-big apartment. He hated the way the whole place seemed to echo every time he so much as breathed. Izuna used to live there with him and he’d liked things just fine until the traitor moved out west.
Hashirama found him a couple of minutes later, cooing softly when he spotted his sleeping baby brother and then gurgling in shock when he spotted Madara underneath.
“What…are you doing?” he asked slowly, drawing the words out until they could be considered vaguely threatening.
“Don’t stand there like an idiot,” Madara growled. “Help me! I don’t even know what’s happening right now, he just sat down on top of me like I was part of the couch!”
“Hold on, you want me to move him?”
“Yes!”
Hashirama backed away with both hands held in front of himself protectively. “Oh no. No way. The last time I tried to move him while he was sleeping I lost a chunk of my hair. It’s still growing back! My braid looks all lopsided when I go to bed!” He pouted while Madara stared at him incredulously. Partly because he was being dumb and partly because he’d been wondering why that one chunk of hair was shorter than the rest; he had not suspected Tobirama as the culprit – although he really should have.
“Well what am I supposed to do?” he demanded incredulously. “Just lie here until he wakes up?”
“I think that’s the safest option. Should I bring you both a blanket?”
“No! No wait! Hashirama, get back here! I don’t want a blanket, I want to go to sleep in my own bed without one hundred eighty pound of albino on top of me! Hashirama!” Yelling, he discovered just then, was not half as fun when he had to whisper at the same time.
Unfortunately Hashirama had no sympathy for his plight and Madara was smart enough to be afraid of how Tobirama would react if his precious rest was disturbed. A blanket was fetched, a pillow was maneuvered under his head, and Madara resigned himself to lounging in his best friend’s house for much longer than he originally intended to. His head was at least facing the right way at just the perfect angle so he was able to entertain himself with whatever happened to be playing on the television at the moment.
Hashirama even set the remote on the floor where his arm could reach it.
It took an hour or so of rotting his brain but eventually Madara nodded off himself, more comfortable than he thought anyone had a right to be while they were squashed under the weight of another person. When he woke he was alone on the couch, blanket crumpled by his feet and no trace of Tobirama but for the lingering scent of ink and paper. A quick look at his watch told him he’d slept through the night and was due back at work in two hours, just enough time to rush home, shower, grab a bite to eat, and change.
He spent the entire two hours wondering if he’d dreamed the whole thing up.
