Chapter Text
For someone who had been largely MIA over the past few days Hashirama was disgustingly brief in his request for Madara to come over. He hadn’t even offered so much as a single excuse for his behavior beyond a few murmurs about some family emergency and needing to be home while everyone available tried to pull together and help out. What they were trying to help with Madara had no idea since his idiot best friend had talked around himself several times before asking with uncharacteristic seriousness whether he could come over or not.
Of course Madara had said yes because despite the fact that he would never lower himself to actually admitting to it he did miss his best friend, the man he had spent time with nearly every day since they were around twelve years old. When he got there, though, the first thing he was going to do was badger an explanation out of him for the sudden disappearance. Normally Hashirama was blowing up his phone with meaningless texts from the moment the sun rose over the horizon. To his shame it had actually taken until noon for Madara to realize his pocket had been suspiciously quiet all day and fire off a few texts of his own that never got replied to.
The subway obviously had to be extra crowded when he hopped on because that was just his luck. Only a few days of separation and already he forgot why it was always better to take a cab to Hashirama’s neighborhood. Madara buried his face in the neck of his sweater to block out the stench of body odor and other things he didn’t want to think about until finally he was at the stop closest to his friend’s home. The rush to disembark nearly sent him tumbling off the platform and down on to the tracks but he managed to pull himself out of harm’s way by taking a solid grip on a passing stranger’s backpack and letting himself get dragged along for the ride. Only once the crowd had moved on and he was at least semi-free of the bustling masses did he finally dare to move out on his own again, heading for the western exit.
Since Hashirama’s house was still a fifteen minute walk in to one of the nicer neighborhoods, Madara spent the whole time kicking up fall leaves and going over all of his guesses for what the idiot might have been doing in the past few days, everything from spontaneous amnesia to randomly deciding to join a drug cartel and run coke in to another country. Granted, the second one wasn’t very likely since the man was more terrified of his wife’s wrath than death itself and Mito would certainly have a few things worse than death to rain down upon her husband if he decided to get involved with those sorts of seedy activities. Of all the things Madara had ever threatened his friend with nothing would ever compare to an ominous ‘I’ll tell your wife’ and yet he’d never seen a happier couple.
He would almost be jealous if they weren’t so disgustingly schmoopy about it.
By the time he arrived at the right house on the right street there were several leaves caught in his hair and he was cursing himself for not remembering to restrain it before going out in the wind. The door was unlocked so he let himself in and deliberately kicked his boots off in a messy heap, knowing Hashirama would be the one to get in trouble for not reigning in his guest properly.
“Where are you, dipshit?” he called in to the eerily quiet house. Something thumped on the second floor so he headed that way, thinking perhaps that he might not have heard Hashirama’s response.
Al the lights were off, he noticed. Well, not all of them, but enough of them to make him wonder if Hashirama had gotten in trouble again for being unkind to the environment. It gave the whole place an eerie vibe to follow the singular trail of light from the kitchen close to the entrance all the way up the massive sweeping staircase. Really Hashirama had too much money but at least he had a wife classy enough to know how to show it off properly instead of the three tiered bouncy castle Hashirama used to dream of living in.
Once he had climbed all the way up to the second floor he paused to look left and right down the hallway, wondering which direction to try first. He used to think that a house this big was too much space for just the two people who lived here even with a baby on the way but somehow Hashirama always found a way to fill every damn room in this place – and use them all! He even had a whole room just for his stupid plants where he could be found each day watering them and chattering away like it would help them grow.
Just as Madara decided left was as good a direction to try as any Hashirama popped out of the room right in front of him and shrieked in his face with frightened surprise, probably not expecting to see him there. Startled, Madara shrieked back.
Like idiots the two of them stood there shrieking back and forth until finally Madara could think around the panic enough to clap one of his hands over Hashirama’s mouth, cutting off all sound and plunging the long hallway in to sudden silence. His friend offered him a sheepish look before clawing the hand off his mouth to grin in apology.
“I didn’t realize you were here already!”
“What do you mean ‘already’? I rode the subway, it took forever!”
“Sorry, sorry, I’ve been losing track of time lately. Things have been really…difficult. But I’m glad you’re here. Would you like some coffee?” He sighed and Madara realized the other man did look incredibly tired. “I could really use some myself.”
Grumbling, Madara stepped back and waved for Hashirama to go ahead of him. They wandered back down the stairs and in to the kitchen where his host went straight for the coffee pot. Once it was set up and burbling away he slumped down in to the closest chair, running both hands through his uncharacteristically tangled locks with a harried expression. The bags under his eyes were deep enough to be suitcases and Madara found that sort of offensive; eye bags were his shtick, Hashirama had no right to pull them off so well.
“I meant it, I’m glad you’re here. With Mito as pregnant as she is I’m having trouble dealing with this situation myself and juggling work at the same time.”
“What situation? You’ve been giving me the silent treatment for days, I don’t know what’s going on!”
Hashirama wilted like a flower. “It’s Tobirama. There was an accident at his lab and he’s…” Fear gripped Madara and squeezed tight, choking his heart and closing his throat. Every second that passed without an explanation left him more and more tense until finally he exploded.
“He’s what!? Spit it out!”
“Oh he’s fine!” Hashirama said. “Mostly. He’s in one piece, at least! But the explosion–”
“Explosion!?”
“–burnt his retinas. I know a specialist who owed me a favor and she took a look. Everything should be fine but Tobi isn’t allowed to remove the bandages for a couple of weeks. So he’s effectively blind for a little while, which means he needs a bit of help. He’s staying here with us in his old room and I’ve been trying to take care of him but you know what it’s like when I’m on call. Babies are born when it’s convenient for them, not when it’s convenient for the doctor.”
Madara’s voice was faint as he murmured reflexively, “You’re the one who wanted to be an obstetrician.”
Whatever whining answer Hashirama gave went in one ear and out the other as Madara immediately disappeared inside his own head. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have his sight taken away so suddenly and so completely, the terror that would fill him as he worried over whether or not he would ever see again no matter how much the doctors reassured him. Good eyesight was almost a family tradition. He couldn’t think of a single Uchiha who had ever even had to wear glasses let alone gone blind or something. If he had to choose a sense to lose it would not be his sight. Maybe hearing. He could still read if he didn't have his hearing and learning sign language couldn’t be too hard, he thought. Learning English had been a nightmare but he’d gotten through that well enough.
Eventually he tuned back in to the world to hear Hashirama going on still about how hard it was to be on call while also trying to care for his pregnant wife and how adding an injured sibling on top of that just made everything twice as hard to figure out. The flow of words only stopped when Madara reached out to clap a hand over his mouth again, this time with a frown.
“Get to the point already,” he snarled. Hashirama pulled his hand away and tittered.
“Sorry. I got carried away. I called because I need your help. I can’t be in two places at once and I know you have to work too but you can work from anywhere as long as you have your laptop! Could I maybe convince you to come stay here and…keep an eye on Tobi?”
Madara blinked. “You want me to what now?”
“Please!? Tobirama really needs someone to help him out with things and I already worry for Mito when I’m not around but I can’t just ignore my patients–”
“No, stop.” Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, Madara demanded, “Are you asking me to come stay here so I can babysit your little brother? Have you gone insane?” Of all the stupid favors he had been asked for during their long friendship this definitely ranked among the stupidest.
“Come on, it won’t be that bad! He just needs someone to cook meals and help him get around, maybe entertain him a little bit. It’s not like it would be super hard!”
“Have you forgotten the part where he can’t stand me?”
Waving his hand dismissively, Hashirama laughed. “That’s not true at all! You just need to learn how to read him properly. Believe me, you would know if he couldn’t stand you. He’s not afraid to be vocal about that sort of thing.”
Madara shook his head doubtfully but didn’t bother arguing further. Apparently Tobirama was already here in the house somewhere and he’d always had abnormally sharp ears – useful now that he would need to rely on them a little more than usual but even blinded he was unlikely to spare any sharp words if he overheard Madara talking about him.
A cringe put a stop to that line of thought, bringing him up short and forcing him to take a hard look at the reality of what Hashirama was asking him. Friends weren’t something Hashirama lacked but people he could trust to take care of his precious sibling? After the rest of their family had all been taken by the same sickness a few years back Hashirama had seemed to cling to his last brother like a lifeline, holding tightly as though afraid that if he let go he would lose Tobirama as well. Knowing that he was among the few this man would trust with the last of his family was unsurprising, of course, but still touching.
That didn’t mean he was in any way excited to do this. In all the years they had known each other Madara have gotten no impression from Tobirama other than disdain and distaste. Younger he might be but his brain could outrun the both of them put together and he was always quick on the draw to point out when he thought Madara was doing something stupid – which was pretty much all the time. Even if he thought about it Madara couldn’t think of a single pleasant interaction between the two of them. Usually they just avoided each other as much as possible and left it at that; it was easiest.
“Don’t you have a cousin who lives in town?” he asked as a last ditch attempt to avoid the awkwardness he just knew was bound to come with agreeing to this stupidity.
“We do but she’s out of the country on a work retreat and they weren’t even allowed to bring cellphones or anything. She would come home in a heartbeat if I could reach her – probably more to get out of there than for Tobi, to be honest – but I just don’t have a way to do that.” Hashirama sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve had several coworkers covering my ass as much as possible over the past few days but they’re all just as overworked as I am and they can’t keep this up. Please? Please?” Like an inevitable tide he went for the same old move he’d been perfecting since they were twelve, the infamous puppy eyes, at which point Madara understood that he had lost. He gave a sigh of his own and prayed for patience.
“I’ll need to pack some clothes and shit. And it’ll take a while to get all my notebooks together and grab my laptop. Honestly, you could have asked me over the phone so I could do all this before coming over. Now I’ve got to pay for a cab both ways just to get back here!” Grumbling, he shoved his hands in his pockets and spun around to head for the front door.
“Wait! I can give you a ride home! I’ll just need to run upstairs and let Tobi know that I’ll be gone for a little while so he doesn’t try anything adventurous.” Hashirama paused to wrinkle his nose. “The first night I brought him home he tried to find the bathroom by himself and ended up weeing in the hall closet. I had to rewash all my linens and some of those sheets still don’t smell right when I make the bed.”
Madara blinked twice and then roared with laughter. It did make him feel better to know that his new ward had already made a fool of himself a time or two.
Not wanting to waste a good brew, the two of them sat down and enjoyed the coffee Hashirama had been making before they left. It was nice to catch up after several days apart. Trading gossip as they usually did, reestablishing the bond several people in their lives had dubbed worryingly codependent. When they were finished he took the mugs to the sink while Hashirama trotted upstairs to speak with his brother for a minute and then Madara allowed himself to be led outside and piled in to the stupidly expensive car in the driveway. On the way back to his apartment he made his friend regale him with all the silly idiot mistakes Tobirama had made so far in his adventures as a temporary blind man, laughing without shame no matter how he was scolded for it.
With those images in his mind the next couple of weeks were looking a lot more fun.