Soul-bound

1. Two separate puzzles

My heart was pounding the entire time.

And I was trembling.

I bit my lip, jumped my leg, fiddled with my hands, all of those stress-related behaviours that were so typical of human nature, all at once. And it was because of him.

I could smell his cologne from across the room.

I despised human nature. It was human nature that did me dirty like this. Made me lose all control. I despised losing all control.

I despised myself when I loved him.

I was only twenty at that point. At that point when I realised what it was I was feeling whenever he walked into the same room as me, or whenever I just thought about him. I tried to convince myself it was perverse, not only because he was a man just like I was, but also because we'd been friends since we were children, only six years old, both of us.

I cast glances at him as we sat down on the opposite side of the room as me, us being two important pieces of the puzzles that were Uchiha and Senju. They were two separate puzzles for now, but this meeting was to see whether we could make it one.

I used to fucking hate the meetings. I didn't believe in them. I wanted to be out in the battlefield, smashing the Senju puzzle with a bloody fist, forcing them into their rightful place which was beneath the Uchiha; beneath me. As a teenager, I was already frightfully skilled, the best soldier they had by far, just as he was their best soldier. I didn't see the point in our meetings when we could settle disagreements in the battlefield without as much as speaking a word.

Of course, me and him wouldn't touch each other. We were friends in secret, and had been for a long time. But we had reached a silent agreement between us that we wouldn't hate the other for killing off members their enemy clan. Because if we did, it would render the friendship between us impossible.

But now, at the age of twenty, I had found I had started to like the meetings. To an abnormal amount.

At first, I put it to maturity, that I had grown older, and thus could see the benefits of a more time-consuming yet softer approach to a problem  than a battle. But no... That wasn't it. I figured it wasn't it when the thought of coming meetings filled me up with the same thirst as the thought of battles. But in battles, it was a thirst for blood. During meetings, it was a thirst for...

I looked at him through my long fringe. He smiled when he caught my eye; he'd been looking at me all along.

"So boring!" Hashirama Senju mouthed at me.

I smiled and looked down. Was I blushing? Surely not.

The only one I loved more than my tall, slender, chestnut-haired best friend was my little brother. He was the only one I dared to speak about regarding this matter. I had revealed it to him one rainy evening, when we had been in his room, me laying with my head on his lap in his bed as he massaged my scalp with soft, able fingers.

He was two years my junior, eighteen years old, and he was the most mature of the two of us. Actually, Izuna was the most mature man I knew, except for my best friend.

"Have you told him?" he asked that day in his bed.

I shook my head.

"No", I said.

It was unthinkable, telling Hashirama.

"Are you ashamed?" Izuna asked.

"Yes", I said.

"Because he's a man?"

"No", I said immediately. "Or, yes. But mostly because we're childhood friends. He's like family to me."

Izuna thought for a while.

"The biology behind not falling for a family member has nothing to do with blood", he said softly. "Our intuition doesn't know who we share blood with. It's about whom we've been with since we were infants. You and Hashirama met when you were six years old. There's nothing strange with your feelings. Actually..." Izuna took my hand and entwined our fingers. I squeezed his hand. "I have been expecting it."

I looked up at Izuna's eyes, the best pair of eyes in the world to me. May the world never go blind to his beauty.

That had been a relief, hearing Izuna's words of tender encouragement.

He was sitting next to me in the meeting, very aware of what was going on between me and Hashi but pretending to ignore it, bless him. I wondered if there would be anything between him and Hashirama's little brother, who was also two years younger than him, but that didn't seem to be the case. The two of them didn't express any interest in each other whatsoever.

At the end of the meeting, after our father and Hashirama's father had shaken hands and we were walking home with our clansmen, Izuna distracted our father, allowing Hashirama to come up to me and nudge me.

"See you tonight", he murmured.

It sent shivers through my spine. It had never sent shivers through my spine before. We had always met up after the meetings, for years.

But now, it meant something totally different to me than what it had done before.