In the wake of Tobirama's return, their kisses are stolen – they're flashes of chapped lips pressed together, hidden behind the door of the open fridge the same day that he arrives. They're an open tongue laving over the crook of the neck when Hashirama leans in to look at his textbook, and they’re over before he can protest it at all. They're nothing more than dust to his knuckles, snowfall. Quiet and reverent and stolen.

When he lies down beside Hashirama, the house smells stale, like home and holidays and mint toothpaste, something that Tobirama has drowned in so many times that it's strange to realize he could forget so quickly. 

“You're too daring,” Tobirama says to his brother in the thick of night. Headlights from passing cars illuminate the ceiling in stark panels, and the ever-present street light flickers in dim fluorescence on the corner.

They're not as small as they once were – certainly too large to lay side by side in the narrow top bunk, but with knees slotted together, they fit tightly, two pieces of the same whole. Tobirama's fingers are falling asleep.

Hashirama smiles, a cryptic, shared thing that never fails to send his brother hurtling towards cardiac arrest, biting his tongue and tipping his head the way he does when he's too prideful to ask for more.

“Maybe,” Hashirama says, pressing his lips to Tobirama's temple as if to check for the fevers that had ravaged him as a child. He is momentarily distracted with the peach fuzz that clings to Tobirama's jaw before juttering into motion like a rusted engine. “– Maybe if you stayed home, I wouldn't have to make up for so much lost time,” 

“Hashirama,” Tobirama complains, hating the breathless edge to his tone.

“Shh, I know.”

His breath hitches when a seeking knee comes into contact with the beginnings of an erection. His stomach coils taut.

“What – what do you know?” Tobirama is losing the thread of conversation faster than he can take hold of it. Sparks travel up his spine, pinpricks of light in a gently lilting sea of night.

“You,” the bunk creaks, long, lonesome, and Hashirama comes to a screeching halt, breaths mingling in the small space between their faces. He says, “I know you.”

“I'm going to keep studying abroad,” Tobirama returns, feeling stubborn and taken-apart.

“I know.” It's been so long since they could touch like this. Tobirama so rarely initiates, but tonight he acquiesces before Hashirama has the chance to rend him apart on his own, tucking himself into the crook of his brother's neck. If he were a different man, there would be a confession on his lips, something precious for Hashirama’s ears only. 

He could never put it into words, not really. Distant moths cast fuzzy shadows over brother's face, hopelessly gilded with affection. Hashirama knows already.

“You're so pretty,” Hashirama says. Two kisses to Tobirama’s jaw. He's achingly hard.

“Pretty?” Hoarse.

“Pretty.”

“You should know better than to call another man pretty.”

“Oh, you don't mind.”

“Yes, I do,” Tobirama protests, but he forgets himself when a hand feathers over his jawline. He squirms. He never cares to masturbate more than strictly necessary when he’s alone and it shows in his muffled desperation.

“Shhh,” Hashirama soothes. “Turn around.”

The bed creaks, miserable in the burden of bearing their combined weight. If there were witnesses, Tobirama might have been embarrassed about the speed with which he complied. They’re even closer at this angle, but Tobirama’s ugly flush is mercifully hidden. Pins and needles spark down from his shoulder to his fingers. He grips tight to the guard rail.

There is a dry press of lips to linger at the nape of his neck, stirring embers. His feelings are oversized, racing through his veins with every stuttering pulse of his heart.

Tucked up against him, Hashirama mutters, “I remember the day you were born.”

Tobirama scoffs, too impatient.

“No you don't, you were too young.” Touch me.

“I do,” there is a laugh, aborted in his throat. The press of a hand against the flat plane of his stomach. Tobirama wonders if he feels the new muscle mass he’s been putting on. “It was snowing really hard – these big, fat flakes that clumped together on the ground.” Hashirama pets a slow circle into sensitive skin, soothing a skittish animal. “I watched from the window. Grandma wouldn’t let me go outside and play because she didn’t want to give me a bath afterwards.” Petulant, even now. Tobirama fusses, grinding back. He wants – needs – anything, everything. Hashirama is half-hard and half-distracted. “You were so small.”

“I’m not anymore.”

“And you were always in the hospital.”

“I’m healthy now. I’m working out.”

A curving smile against the crook of his neck. “Yeah, I could tell.”

Hashirama inhales. Tobirama wonders if he’s intoxicated, if their affections are mirrors of each other. He wonders if Hashirama smells stale home and holidays.

“Stop talking.”

Hashirama, mercifully, complies, hand delving lower. He unties the loose double knotted drawstring and clears the soft waistband of Tobirama’s borrowed pants one-handed. Tobriama’s breath hitches, high and quick. He bites his lip as a fist curls around the heart of him, hips twitching forward. His toes curl. He rolls his face into his bicep as the world narrows to a hand with familiar calluses at every joint and junction.

It bears a passive resemblance to that first, fumbling time, but it’s also steadier, tighter, his heart is racing, and he swears he can almost hear the tendons of his brother’s arm creak and adjust in the velvet stillness of night.

“Missed you,” Hashirama says, clumsy and weighed down by oversized lust. Where they press together, Tobirama can feel one heartbeat circulating through them both. Hashirama is hot and heavy, draped over him and smelling of the earth, contact concentrating where his breath comes – wet and open, mint toothpaste – and where he’s pressed to Tobirama’s lower back, grinding in shy, barely-there thrusts. Tobirama is not going to last.

Hashirama adjusts the position of his hand, slicking his strokes with precome. Tobirama dressed down tonight – shirtless, Hashirama’s pants that he could swim in with the drawstring undone.

 Hashirama says, “I love you.”

It’s carbonation when it overtakes him, fuzzy and heady. Laying sideways, Tobirama almost chokes on his tongue, a strangled gasp, breath ragged and desperate, desperate still, desperate now, desperate always. 

“Shh, shh,” Hashirama coaxes, holding him through it the way that he always has. “Almost . . .”

It never goes anywhere. Adrift, Tobirama struggles to get his breath back, coasting gently back to shore on ceaseless waves of pleasure. He’s made a mess of his pants. Hashirama’s breath is still quickening against the junction of neck and shoulder. He rolls his hips, broken, and a hand slides out of his boxers, to the crook between their bodies, breaking the looping heartbeat.

Hashirama’s finish is bitten out of Tobirama’s shoulder, his knees jerking forward as he draws into himself, into Tobirama, who can’t tell where he ends and his brother begins. Some sleepy part of him hopes that he has a bruise in the shape of Hashirama’s teeth, a souvenir for mindless exploration in line at the airport.

He licks Hashirama’s hand clean when it’s offered, spent and compliant. 

“When you’re happy, I’m happy, okay?” Hashirama whispers. “Even if you’re in another country. Even if you’re on another planet.”

“I’m not going to another planet.”

“I’m just saying that if you did –”

“Hashirama,” he interjects. “I’ll come back home soon.” It’s easier to admit to the shifting panes of light on the ceiling and the dusty jar of pencils on the desk, even though he knows that Hashirama will never let him forget it. He says, “I’m happiest when I’m with you,” and, before Hashirama can make another mountain out of a molehill, “I’m going to sleep.”