Tobirama hated how they stood. Too still. Too calm. As if the air didn’t crackle around them like it did around the rest of their cursed clan. Uchiha.

Them.

He hated how his eyes always, always found them across the clearing where Senju and Uchiha now pretended at peace. He hated that peace most of all—paper-thin, like old bark peeled from a dead tree, waiting to snap. And still, there they stood. Eyes too quiet, too perceptive.

Tobirama grit his teeth and turned away.

“Try not to frown so much, brother,” Hashirama said from behind him, voice warm with that eternal optimism Tobirama had long since stopped trusting. “You’ll wrinkle before your time.”

“They’re watching again,” Tobirama muttered, arms folded tight over his chest. His eyes didn’t have to confirm it. He knew. Felt it in the nape of his neck like the prickle of lightning before a storm.

Hashirama chuckled. “Maybe they’re just interested.”

Tobirama didn’t dignify that with a reply.

Later, during a strategy meeting between the two clans, Tobirama could feel the press of them again—just two feet to his right, silent as always, their presence blooming in the space between breath and thought. He focused on Madara instead, glaring holes into that arrogant smirk of his, the way he sprawled across a rock like it was a throne. Madara had already spoken twice—too much, as usual—but Tobirama couldn’t even recall the words. Not really.

Because they had leaned just slightly toward him when Hashirama asked for their opinion. The shift of movement brought a scent—smoke and winter leaves. Familiar. Unwanted.

The back of his neck burned.

He excused himself with curt nods and a tight jaw. Behind him, he heard nothing from them, but his stomach still twisted.

It kept happening.

Training grounds. Patrol shifts. Casual proximity, cursed casualness. Once, he reached out for a scroll and their fingers brushed his. Just brushed. Tobirama had pulled away like burned flesh, heart skipping as though he were still a boy and not a man hardened by war.

It was disgusting.

Worse, it was inconvenient.

They were an Uchiha. They were Madara’s sibling—his little sibling, maybe, if he had to guess, and he hated that he was even guessing.

He hated that he’d noticed how their hair caught the moonlight. That his body stiffened whenever they were too close, not out of threat detection but... anticipation. Some quiet, shameful flutter.

Butterflies. He’d read about that. Children’s stories and old wives’ nonsense. Tobirama crushed butterflies. Dissected them.

He did not get them.

“What is it with you?” Madara snapped one evening, eyes narrow as they shared firewood duties. “You look at my sibling like you want to kill them or marry them. Which is it?”

Tobirama froze mid-stack.

“Neither,” he said flatly.

Madara scoffed, sharp and knowing. “Then stop looking like you’re choking on your own tongue every time they walk past.”

Tobirama flung a log onto the pile with more force than necessary. “Mind your own damn business.”

“They are my business,” Madara muttered, but didn’t push further. Not that night.

One morning, Tobirama caught himself staring again. Long enough that he didn’t notice Hashirama standing beside him until he gave a low hum.

“Do you like them?”

Tobirama's head snapped toward him. “No.”

Hashirama laughed. “You say that like your soul’s trying to escape your mouth.”

Tobirama clenched his fists and said nothing.

Because the truth was this: he didn’t know what he felt. Only that it sat in his chest like a storm caught in a jar—violent, buzzing, hopelessly alive. He didn’t know if it was hate, or hunger, or something worse. Something soft.

And Tobirama Senju did not do soft.

He only knew he could no longer breathe easily when they were near. And that terrified him more than any battlefield ever had.