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Despite the slightly rushed circumstances of the move, Madara is particularly pleased with his new home.
It’s the biggest space he’s had all to himself ever, which he’s sure will get lonely at some point but right now he couldn’t be happier. He moved in with Hashirama straight after he left home, so they could afford somewhere nice until they found their feet – and before that he’d shared a room with a sibling or two for almost his whole life.
And now he’d be living alone. He felt almost giddy.
He’d never been so glad Hashirama was getting married.
The apartment isn’t huge, but its more than he’d ever thought he’d own. The building itself is old, which was mentioned vaguely in the apartment description, but he doesn’t particularly care for the details. He had made sure the installations were up to date and that he wouldn’t need to worry too much about the plumbing, and that was all he needed. He’d sort of been expecting a shithole, since he was not paying anywhere near the usual price for this area, but everything seems to be perfect so far.
He has only been here for a few hours. Nothing has actually had the chance to wrong yet.
Whatever. It’s perfect.
Madara doesn’t have anywhere near enough stuff to fill an apartment this size, especially after living essentially out of one room for the past few years. He’s moved in the bare minimum today, and Izuna and Hashirama will bring the rest tomorrow – and then they’ll go shopping for everything else he needs. Madara would prefer not to have them nit-picking his choices all day, but Izuna insisted that without them he’d end up living out of a prison cell Aniki, I know you! You do actually want to enjoy living here, right?
He knows Izuna has a point, left alone he’d buy exclusively for practicality and probably only get half of what he needs. Still, this way around he’s going to end up with so much random shit.
At least Hashirama will probably help pay, out of guilt for making him move. Madara feels no remorse about taking advantage of his friend’s excessive emotions. He’s earned it, after putting up with them all these years.
He should probably make a list for tomorrow, he thinks, so that he can have a slight measure of control over the shopping spree. He’ll need to get groceries too – all he has right now is the ready meal he’ll have for dinner, his collection of spices, and a handful of boxes of tea. He knows the apartment won’t feel like home until he’s used the kitchen a few times.
He goes and digs out a small notebook and a pen from the bags in the room he’s claimed as his bedroom, and settles down at the kitchen island to start jotting things down. Lightshades, definitely. A bathmat. Would it be worth getting new curtains? He knows Izuna would say yes…
There’s a crackle from behind him, and Madara nearly jumps out of his skin. The TV in the living room flickers to life, a news anchor’s steady voice fills the silence.
“…the building of a new nature reserve outside of the city, but the idea is being opposed by those who believe…”
Madara slips out of his seat and pads across the room to the television. He could have sworn he hadn’t even switched the power on for it yet. He frowns.
The screen flickers again, and the channel changes – once, then twice. A documentary plays, something set in a lab.
He reaches down to the remote on the table, and switches it back off. The silence of the room feels like a vice. He waits, watching the screen, but nothing happens.
After a moment, he returns to his list. The TV stays silent and dark.
There’s a plant on his desk in the spare room.
He knows where it came from, obviously – Hashirama made him buy one, insisting that it was necessary to have at least one for ‘a happy home’. Madara even quite likes it, with it’s red and green leaves. That’s not the strange bit.
The strange bit is that the plant should be sat on his coffee table. It’s been there since he got it, when he moved in a fortnight ago. He hadn’t moved it. Had he?
It’s sat in the corner of the desk by the window, as if it has always been there. Madara glares at it accusingly.
He would remember moving the damn thing.
There’s something weird about this room anyway. He loses everything he leaves in here. He’s been using it as an office space, and it’s the tidiest he’s ever kept a desk – whenever he leaves something out, documents or pens or even his laptop, it will be gone by the time he gets back, usually tidied away into a draw or shoved unceremoniously under the spare bed.
It’s very unsettling. He can’t explain it. He has a sensor on the only door into the apartment, so he knows he’s the only one in and out. The window in here doesn’t open. It doesn’t even only happen when the apartment is empty, sometimes his stuff will go missing in the hour or so he takes to make lunch in the kitchen.
He found a steaming cup of tea in the kitchen this afternoon, with no recollection of making it. Every morning, the curtains are open in the living room even when he knows he closed them the night before.
He feels like he’s losing his mind.
He even set up a camera, because of the curtains thing. Every morning, when the sun starts to light the room, they slip open. There’s no one there.
He hasn’t told anyone about it. They’d think he’s mad. Hell, Madara thinks he might be mad.
The tinny voice of the television starts up again. Madara pulled the plug on it yesterday, because the spontaneous starting up was irritating him so much.
He slams out of the spare room, and races to the living room.
He stops dead.
A man is sat on his sofa, legs crossed and his chin propped up on a hand, watching the TV. His hair is white, his skin white, in a black turtleneck and loose grey trousers. He’s barefoot. There’s a thin line of red sliced across his cheekbone.
“How did you get in here?” Madara demands.
The man whips his head round to stare at him, shock clear on his face. His eyes are wide, and shockingly red. He’s silent, only watching Madara with that baffled expression.
“Answer me!”
Then the man vanishes, as if he was never there.
When he checks the camera a few minutes later, there’s no trace of the man on the video. Madara watches himself storm into an empty room and yell at empty air.
Madara can find no trace of the man.
For a day or so, things become normal. The curtains still open by themselves every morning, but the TV stays off, and none of Madara’s things go on walk-abouts.
The encounter with the man in the living room plays on loop in his mind. He can’t grasp how the man just vanished – not even a flicker, just there and gone. He wonders if he’d been hallucinating.
Then he walks into his make-shift office one morning, and the man is stood by the desk, carefully watering the plant that Madara never bothered to move back. He has a glass, and is tipping the water out in small portions one after another.
Madara squints at him. “You’re back.”
The man flinches, and water splashes over the desk. He scowls, and sets the glass down. “I never left.”
“I didn’t see you around. What are you doing in my flat?”
The man’s stare is rather unnerving. From here, closer than last time, Madara thinks the red lines – one on each cheek and one on his chin – must be tattoos. He drums long fingers on the desk.
“People don’t see me,” he answers. “I don’t know how you can see me. It’s very odd.”
Madara scoffs. “Who cares, answer the question. Why are you in my flat?”
The man wrinkles his nose and looks at Madara with an irritated sort of disdain. “Because it’s my home. Why wouldn’t I be here?”
Who does this weird bastard think he is? How did he even get in? “This is not your home,” Madara says, pleased with how steady his voice is. “It’s mine. You need to leave.”
“As much as I would love to leave your presence,” the man sneers. “I can’t. I can’t leave the property.”
“What are you eating then?” Madara snipes back, smugly. “You haven’t been taking any of mine, I’d have noticed.”
The man looks at him like he’s a moron. “Of course I don’t eat, idiot. I’m a ghost.”
Which – well, of all the things Madara was expecting him to say, that wasn’t high on the list. Or even on the list at all. A ghost? Surely he didn’t think that would work. It’s ridiculous. Madara narrows his eyes.
Well, he supposes there’s one way to check.
He strides across the room. The man takes a handful of stumbling steps backward, but he’s already right at the wall. Madara grabs him by the shoulders.
For a brief moment he can feel the fabric of his clothes, and the slight yield of the skin beneath, and triumph swells in his chest – but then his hands slip right through.
He stares in bafflement and mounting horror, at his wrists disappearing into the man’s chest. He can’t feel anything at all.
He jerks backward, pulling his hands back to himself and out of the other’s. “What?”
The man shifts uncomfortably and crosses his arms over his chest. “Please don’t do that again.”
“Sorry,” he says, mostly automatic. “I– a ghost. Right.”
“My name is Tobirama,” the ghost says. Tobirama says.
Madara nods, still a little absent. “I’m not hallucinating, right?”
The ghost, Tobirama, lifts one white eyebrow. “Would I tell you if you were?”
Madara scowls. “You don’t need to be a dick about it.”
Now that he thinks about it though, it does make sense. All the weird things that have been happening – would be normal if he had a flatmate. Hell, he put up with worse with Hashirama. This, as bizarre as it is, would be fine.
“Alright,” he says, nodding decisively. “Alright, this is not what I was expecting, but we can make it work. You’re not that obtrusive, and this apartment is big for one anyway.”
Tobirama blinks at him a little owlish. “That- that’s it? You were ready to throw me out the window two minutes ago. I’d have thought you’d be calling an exorcist.”
Madara waves a hand dismissively. “That was before. Ghost haunting my flat is a very different ball game to weird hot guy periodically breaking in to watch my TV or whatever.”
“Weird hot guy?” Tobirama parrots, bemused.
Madara leers at him, and Tobirama snorts. “I’m ten years older than you.”
“You don’t look it,” Madara says, giving him a once over. He really was hot.
“I died young,” the ghost responds, dry as a desert. Honestly, this whole situation just keeps getting more promising – despite how this conversation started, and the fact that the other man is dead, Madara can’t help but enjoy it. Yeah, Tobirama will make a perfectly tolerable flatmate.
“Madara,” Izuna says, suddenly serious. He’s got a day off of lectures, and invited himself round for lunch. Not that Madara minds – he misses seeing his little brother. “What the fuck was that.”
Madara blinks in confusion. “What was what?”
Izuna stares at him incredulously. Madara scowls back. “What, Izuna.”
“Madara!” his brother shrieks gracelessly, arms flapping. He looks shockingly like Hashirama, to Madara’s eternal amusement. “That cup of tea just made itself!”
Madara looks at the freshly made mug steaming quietly on the countertop. It’s the blue one, patterned like the ocean, that he never uses, and it holds gently brewing green tea – loose leaf – that he never drinks. He only has it for when Hashirama visits.
He turns back to Izuna, and frowns. “No it didn’t.”
Izuna gapes like a fish. He’s staring at Madara like he’s gone insane, or like Izuna’s going insane, or both. “It did! I just watched it happen! The, the mug floated out of the cupboard, the leaves floated into the cup, and the water appeared out of thin air!”
Madara rolls his eyes, and turns back to his food. “Don’t be stupid Izuna.”
Izuna gurgles incoherently, arms once again flailing uncontrollably. Madara takes a bite of his sandwich, and raises a brow. “It didn’t make itself, Izuna. Tobirama made it.”
This, unfortunately, does not seem to sooth Izuna. His brother looks lost, uncomprehending, and Madara rolls his eyes again. They’ll get stuck one day, and it will be all Izuna’s fault.
“Madara,” Izuna manages, when he pulls himself together again. “Who is Tobirama?”
Madara glances over at Tobirama. He’s still stood in the kitchen, frowning at the tea he just made. Madara almost smiles. He doubts Tobirama will ever remember he can’t drink tea anymore until after he’s made it – it’s been almost a decade, and he’s never grown out of the habit. The ghost glances up and meets Madara’s eyes, and scowls slightly. He scoops up the mug and stalks off to his room. Madara will have to clear that up later.
Ah well. Tobirama finds the smell soothing, and Madara is loath to take away the few things from before that the other can still enjoy.
Izuna gapes in mute horror as he watches him – or likely, the mug – glide out of sight.
“Tobirama’s my flatmate,” he tells his brother, smothering a grin. “He stays in the spare room. He’s dead.”
“What the fuck.”