"Disturbing old gods is impolite after tea". HashiTobi? I'm not sure if you're still doing these.
Sometimes, Hashirama wonders who taught Tobirama etiquette.
He’s pretty sure the official tutor was the same person who taught him, but Tobirama’s understanding of manners is so totally different from his own that it just has to be someone else.
Someone who would teach a boy things he doesn’t need to know – things about the old ways, the forgotten ways, the forbidden ways.
“I’m not sure you should be disturbing old gods at all,” Hashirama says mildly, trying to conceal his concern. His brother has always been wild and free, beyond the boundaries of normal human morality, and Hashirama loves him no less for it.
Loves him too much, if he’s going to be honest. More than a brother should.
But it’s not as though he’d ever act on those impulses, the ones that writhe beneath his skin late at night when his mind drifts and he loosens that little bit of control and falls into those dreams that are so real he would swear he’d based them on memory – no, this isn’t what’s important right now.
What’s important right now is –
“I’m just saying, I don’t think ‘after tea’ is the sticking point here,” he concludes. “The elder gods are dangerous, Tobirama. All the elders say so. We shouldn’t be playing with rituals to summon them at all.”
Tobirama hasn’t stopped drawing the seal for a second. “It’s fine, anija,” he says. “I’m only summoning one god in specific, and he doesn’t mind being disturbed.”
Hashirama frowns, a sudden suspicion arising in his mind. “Tobirama. Have you summoned this god before?”
“Oh, yes,” Tobirama says blithely. “Many times.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t –” Hashirama starts, only for the words to die in his mouth as Tobirama completes the seal and fills it with its chakra until it glows a sickly green that fills Hashirama’s eyes and his mind until there’s nothing else left.
“Sorry for disturbing you,” Tobirama says, utterly insincere. “I know it’s after tea –”
The laughter that comes from Hashirama’s mouth is jagged and vibrant with a thousand different tones all at once; the sound of it twists the air around it until it is stained with something ancient and otherworldly.
“Never apologize to me, otouto,” the god that hides behind Hashirama’s eyes and underneath his false memories says with a smile, drawing Tobirama into his arms for a biting kiss that causes blood to drip from their intertwined mouths. For all that Tobirama is the strange and pale one, it is Hashirama who died at birth; Hashirama whose empty body was given to a god as a shell by their mother, all in secret, and only Tobirama, last of his mother’s children, last of his mother’s disciples and the only one left in the Senju who keeps the faith of the old ways, knows it. “I will always make time for you.”
Tobirama sighs happily, letting his brother’s divinity flow through him. Hashirama has promised him – many, many things, once this human lifetime is over, and he intends to have them all. It’s just that sometimes he gets a little impatient, waiting for Hashirama to finish playing the game of being something he’s not.
That’s why he let Hashirama see the summoning this time.
“Impatient little brother,” Hashirama whispers in his ear. “You just can’t wait, can you?”
“I can’t be without you,” Tobirama says, honest, and lets his brother draw him down to the bed. Next time, he thinks, he’ll be even more obvious – and once Hashirama’s false self realizes the truth, then, at last, they can be together like this even in this lifetime, with Tobirama worshipping his god the way he’s always wanted to for as long as he can remember.
