1. Tracker

Hashirama twined a cuff of mokuton around each wrist before battle, discreet under Tobirama’s armor. It was casual, the way he’d drape the mantle about his brother’s neck, but his touch lingered and the funeral rains were still dampening the earth, soaking their tread. They left into the gray-early morning before the light could be anything more than water, transient and cold. Hashirama walked with a swaying stride, his brother trailing close behind. He lingered the way that Hashirama’s fingers lingered on his wrists. 

"To keep track of you during battle," he had said. "I don’t want anything to happen to you."

There was a part of it that was unspoken. It was ugly, too ugly to say out loud. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Not like the others. Tobirama would go to the river to visit their ghosts, but it left a sour taste in his mouth. On the surface of the water, he saw a boy with dark hair and red eyes who stole his brother away and brought his smile back.

The trees wove together behind them, an avenue closed off. It was a sign that Hashirama was becoming cautious, closing the way back to the compound, locking the door for sleep. When Tobirama’s heartbeat tripped, he felt it in his wrists. They went to battle in somber silence.

2. Sunburn

Hashirama’s hair was growing long. It brushed against his shoulders when he turned – it was fitting for him, framing his face in the color of the weapon that he used as a tool, the way others would rely on a knife. Versatile. 

Tobirama had a hard time thinking of the mokuton as a weapon. He had worn the cuffs into battle until they felt too much like a part of him to take off. They had come to a silent agreement to keep them on, loosening as he grew.

He had flustered when Hashirama had said, "you’re getting so big," and then, "my otouto," heavy with the affection that Hashirama gave so freely. He wrapped his fingers easily around Tobirama’s wrist, mokuton soon to follow. 

Tobirama didn’t tan or burn, he wore long sleeves and happuri for his face and armor for his arms and legs. He didn’t go out in the sun, either, it was too dangerous to be out where their enemies could see them. Broad daylight was for battle face to face, the cover of night was for stealth, and Tobirama was too great an asset to be lost so easily. Even with red eyes and strange coloring, he was the best sensor in a generation. No, Tobirama didn’t tan or burn, but if he did, there would be lines around his wrists, pale and indented.

"Three months," said Hashirama. "That’s so long! Did you mind?"

He didn’t wait for an answer. Tobirama’s neck was next, a subtle band of smooth wood. It wore a chakra presence of its own, imbued by its creator. It was sensible, easily hidden under a high-collared shirt. It didn’t call attention to itself.

Tobirama was not let out of the compound on his own. Sensing was an asset to the clan, but more important was the value he held in the eyes of his brother. Hashirama got away with more, but he still needed to be kept in check, and that job belonged to Tobirama. 

Hashirama collared the leash around his neck and called him otouto.

3. Kunai

They sparred outside the compound gates, suiton against mokuton. They used to train in the east courtyard with everyone else, but the suiton made ground thick with mud and the mokuton rendered the earth apart in great cracks, water nurturing fresh saplings. There was a forest there, now, breaking up the hard packed dirt, and training had been moved to the west courtyard. 

In the present, Hashirama wove a wall of trees without so much as a hand sign. Creeping tendrils wrapped around Tobirama’s ankles when he struggled, holding him to the earth. He shot out suidan from where he was trapped, but his jet was broken by a tree that hadn’t been there a second before, sending the water out in all directions and sanding bark down to white underbelly.

"You’re getting so much stronger!" Hashirama said from behind him, and then there was a kunai to his throat and wood around his ankles. The only thing between a hammering pulse and a deadly blade was the mokuton collar. 

Tobirama hardened so fast he got dizzy, a desperate pooling throb in his abdomen, almost enough to make him gasp. He was pinned in such a way that he couldn’t cover himself, couldn’t move or breathe for fear of . . . something. He counted seconds by the beat of his heart, rabbit-fast. He could feel his pulse everywhere.

When Hashirama released him to cuff him on the shoulder ("I’m so proud!"), it took everything he had not to run for the treeline.

4. Alone

Tobirama was coming to notice that it was hard to get a moment alone. Hashirama slept in his room, they trained together and they ate together, and then there was the fact that Tobirama got nasty looks when he was on his own – he was the red-eyed boy, the runt with scrawny ankles and wrists, the doe-legged one, ungainly in his poorly distributed baby fat that was stripped away with more every passing year. That left trips to the bathroom, and tonight.

He undressed for the evening, shucking his layers and hanging them up inside. It was the first night he’d had alone in a while, the reason being that Hashirama was off with the elders and their father.

"You’re growing old enough to take on more responsibilities," Butsuma had said. "It’s time that you learned how we operated."

In Tobirama’s opinion, it was a bit late to start. Hashirama was already taller than their father, though he was still as slender and ungainly as a child. He had shot up overnight akin to the growth of weeds in the compound garden.

Tobirama unrolled his futon and dressed plainly for the night. His brother’s chakra presence remained firmly in place, knelt at the table in the meeting room. He was the youngest and the furthest from the table’s head, an outsider who was to be treated as such. Before the gathering, Tobirama had pulled him aside for a reminder of formal etiquette, none of which Hashirama would end up remembering. Nobody would hold it against him. They never did. 

Tobirama knelt on the tatami, savoring a moment of peace. It would be hard to sleep without Hashirama by his side. His brother snored something awful, but the silence was worse, so sleep was off the table. Besides, he had something planned.

He steadied himself, filling his lungs in ones and twos. He would have one chance, only one unless they insisted on taking Hashirama away from him again. He couldn’t say with any certainty which was worse. Tobirama checked the area again, a wide sweep of his perception perimeter to perimeter, and only after verifying that he was alone did he slot the pillow between his legs, directing his pelvis with the tilt of his spine until he was sitting on his growing hardness, legs splayed.

The first press was a relief. The second press stirred heat in his groin. The third press made it hard to lift again, and again, and again – his thighs were trembling, though not for lack of strength. He curled his spine, shoulders bowed forwards, inwards, protective over his core. There was moisture gathering at his tip, soaking through his remaining layers, too thick to be sweat. He adjusted his angle so that the fabric wouldn’t chafe, taking some of the pressure away, but when the pillow dragged down lower, he surprised himself, breath coming choked and wet. He stopped before the nearly painful pleasure of it could gather into something dangerous – it reminded him of being poisoned – sweat and muddy thoughts, an overwhelming heat. His heart was racing, he could feel it in his throat and wrists where the mokuton cuffs held him together, and it made him think of Hashirama, a squirming shame writhed through his abdomen that was pleasure in its own right.

Again. He surveyed the compound, locked on one presence. Hashirama. Hashirama thrummed with life, the overwhelming focus of the summer sun. Hashirama squirmed on the zabuton, Tobirama squirmed on his pillow. Hashirama was locked around his wrists. He thrust again, shaky all over. Hashirama was locked around his throat. It felt like drowning. He was losing his breath. He thought of a kunai against his throat, a wide, radiant smile. Hashirama. He was moving now, silent steps through sleepy streets, but Tobirama was so, so close, drawing up on a great precipice that filled his stomach with hollow dread or its near relative. His mind went fuzzy as he turned the knife in his mind – a hammering pulse. The press of his brother, too close when they woke in the summer, connected by sweat, skin stuck. Hashirama. Was it possible to be closer? He was right outside. The shoji slid open to –

"Anija." 

His elbows gave out. His spine bowed. His heart was everywhere, too fast, too urgent. He was pulsing between his legs, and that was when he noticed that there was something very, very wrong. His pants were hot and sticky. He was pressed against something the consistency of blood. Hashirama stood motionless in the doorframe, speechless for once. 

"I’m sorry," Tobirama scrambled to say, mouth mushy around the words. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. The world was blurring. "I – Anija, I think I’m dying –"

And then Hashirama was spurred into motion, scooping him up as though he weighed nothing at all. Holding him close. Tobirama felt so very precious and so very tainted.

"Shh," Hashirama said. "You’re not dying."

"How do you know?" Tobirama gritted out, stubborn to the very end. "I’m bleeding," the flow had stopped, but there were aftershocks, radiating out like pain from a wound. 

"Let me see."

Tobirama hesitated, but his brother was insistent, pulling away to strip him with gentle hands. Tobirama’s legs were sprawled across the tatami, awkward and bent protectively. He wasn’t cooperative. Hashirama offered no complaint. 

When he held up the fabric for Tobirama to see, it was white in a way that wouldn’t stain. Not red. Not blood. Not another brother for Hashirama to lose. He shook, tired muscles and relief and exhaustion mixing into something that weighed him down to earth. He used the suiton to help Hashirama wash him with a damp cloth. He let Hashirama dress him. He let Hashirama take him into his arms. He let Hashirama stroke his hair.

"You don’t have to wait until I’m gone," Hashirama said, breath warming the shell of Tobirama’s ear. "I could have helped you sooner. I don’t ever want to see you so scared."

He would be a good clan head, Tobirama decided. His voice was a soothing balm. Hashirama didn’t stop speaking, low and hypnotic, until Tobirama was asleep.

5. Illness

He looped the vines under Tobirama’s clothes. Tobirama watched them go from green to brown, the color of old growth. This wood rasped against his skin, awkward when he moved, so he didn’t. He laid as still as he would if he were the hostage in a hostage negotiation, and he let Hashirama tell the clan that he was sick – "you know how he gets when it’s cold".

Tobirama would have been indignant if there had been anyone in his brother’s head to hear his complaints. He was empty. It was one of those days where Hashirama wouldn’t be argued with, eyes stuck somewhere far away. Tobirama couldn’t tell whether he was caught in the future or the past. Both. Neither. The autumn was muddy brown, shrinking Hashirama into his human skin. The sky was gray. Hashirama held him for a while, leaving midday to collect food to feed Tobirama by hand, and then he held him some more, rocked him, shifted the mokuton against his skin to position him how he wanted him.

Hashirama called him Itama once. He called him Madara once, too. He hummed a strange song that made Tobirama’s head hurt to listen to and he rooted the shoji into the ground, trapping them in together.

"I’m never letting you go again," said Hashirama, pressing his face into the cool skin of Tobirama’s neck.

He believed it.

6. Bruises

"Anija," Tobirama shook his brother’s shoulder. He was slow to wake, turning his head into the pillow. His hair fanned out behind him. It often got in Tobirama’s mouth as he slept. "Anija," he said again. 

"Mm," was his only reply.

"I need you to take off the mokuton," he said. He had hacked away at it with the kunai he kept by the futon, but for every cut he made, the branches seemed to multiply until he was wearing what felt like a second rib cage.

And then there was the matter of . . .

"Anija," Tobirama said, hoping that his urgency would make its way into Hashirama’s dreams. "I need to wash."

Hashirama rolled over and fell back asleep. It was lucky that in times like these, Tobirama had the suiton.

After his instinctive response (more vines, more sprouts, more branches, cloying, choking, holding), Hashirama whined, pitiful as a kicked puppy. "Tobi," he said, drawn out, but he quieted quickly when Tobirama lifted his shirt. His breath was coming shallow. It had to, there was no give to his bindings. The mokuton criss-crossed over his chest, wrapping his arms and his ribs, slipping down into his pants, looped around his thighs.

Hashirama’s eyes darkened in an instant, the air between them going heavy and thick with something akin to humidity, the quiet before the storm. Tobirama let his shirt drop back down over his body – something in the way Hashirama looked at him made him want to cover, to crawl away.

"I did that," Hashirama said, wonder barely suppressed. Tobirama’s stomach writhed and squirmed, the same confused twist of a knife to his guts. Tobirama had been trained to withstand discomfort, his face cut, his arms and legs marked with everything that a fight could throw at him. This couldn’t be any different. He stood his ground, tensing his mouth. Hashirama’s throat bobbed, up-down, slow. The way Tobirama’s stomach tightened wasn’t imagined that time, it came with the slow creak of a branch soon to fall. Hashirama, usually so easy to read, was wholly inscrutable. 

He was pinned in place as Hashirama pushed up his shirt again, tugging it off over his head. Hashirama smoothed a hand up his chest and the mokuton cage tightened again, again, again. There would be bruises, Tobirama was certain of it. Something else was tightening, drawing up in his gut, making the loose fabric of his pants feel cramped. 

"It’s – it’s on my legs, too," he informed Hashirama, urgency seeping through in spite of his best efforts. The sash was undone, Hashirama was gentle to undress him to half down his legs, watching. Wanting, perhaps. Tobirama let himself think so.

The feeling took him by surprise, washing over him at the first touch this time, a loose stroke, tentative. He watched himself finish in pulses in his brother’s hand as he was drowned entirely, a tsunami that kept coming and refused to break. He was capsized, breath too thin to even cry out. 

When Hashirama pulled him onto his lap, his erection pressed, firm and insistent, against Tobirama’s hip. He unwrapped the mokuton one section at a time, the wood becoming slack vines that withered onto the floor, and then Hashirama slipped his hand between their bodies, fingering the worst of the discoloration on the skin of Tobirama’s chest as his breath sped.

7. Hair

Hashirama’s hair came midway down his back. Tobirama cut his off, section by section, with a kunai knife when he stole away to the woods just outside of the compound. Defiance was coming more naturally, in increments by his brother’s example. 

He was past the age where it was acceptable to wear his hair so short, but if it so much as brushed against his neck, he would fall to pieces, elders be damned.

He woke covered in Hashirama’s hair, soft as silk. His nose twitched as the rabbit that had lent him his mantle, and he sat up. The faintest hint of dawn crept into the room through the rice paper, though everything else was heavy with blue sleep-blur and the feeling of the world holding its breath. Hashirama had a furrow in his brow that Tobirama pressed out with his thumb. The touch turned into a palm, clasping the curve of Hashirama’s cheek, not as soft as it once was. His face was thinning. He was getting handsome, though he was all shadows and planes in the darkness.

Tobirama pulled away when the shame began to fill him, heavy against his thigh. He stole away to practice his kata in the west courtyard, though the walk was longer, the morning cold would do him good. The forest exhaled when his brother snored.

8. Festival

Hashirama was his whole world. He only realized this when his world expanded all at once. They gathered for festival food and celebrations inside the compound, the gates opened to merchants and their stalls.

Tobirama was assigned the task of monitoring the vendors, sending out routine pulses of chakra to verify their status as civilians. The sizzling oil and a hundred diluted chakra presences and warm lights hoisted to and fro were giving him a headache, sending the cuffs at his wrists into sprout. Hashirama’s vines trailed up his arms, bulging the shirt he wore under his festival yukata and prickling his skin. Hashirama smiled something secretive through the crowd before disappearing to barter for some grease-laden monstrosity. His voice carried, slicing through dancers shrouded in mask and costume. 

Tobirama tipped his head up to the sky. The vines were to his chest, tightening in a way that gave him an odd clarity. He slipped his sandals off to press his feet against cold earth. He let the wind ruffle his yukata, sitting quietly on one of the wooden walkways. Maybe this was the peace that Hashirama spoke so keenly of, a festival night of bright lights and color and smell. The vines trailed downward. Flowers sprouted beneath his clothes. If this was peace, then tonight was a certain forecast that uselessness would have Tobirama sitting on the sidelines until he wrinkled and died, legs crossed at the ankle. A crowd without the unified incentive to spill blood confused him. Confusion unnerved him.

He wasn’t sure if Hashirama knew what he was doing, but in spite, the vines thickened, curling delicately in a way that Tobirama knew would accentuate how he was put together. Joint and socket were emphasized. He felt like an heirloom decorated with fine gold leaf. A petal fluttered and caught at his obi. He decided to inhale while he still could.