Your Depth

A few days had gone by and Madara was just heading home after a long day's work at his office; however, the moment he opened the front door to their house, Naruto urgently skidded over to the foyer from the living room in a hurry and immediately started shouting like the end of the world was coming.

"Madara! There's bad news! Horrible news! The worst news ever!" Naruto exclaimed in desperation, pulling the Uchiha at full attention.

"What? What happened?" Madara asked quickly, and Naruto latched onto his sleeves with woeful eyes like a damsel in distress, until finally he shouted in despair,

"The heater is broken!"

"....." Madara looked at him with a raised unimpressed brow.

Does he have a thing for trying to worry me into sickness? the man thought blandly before pinching the young man's cheek. Madara then went to find the thermostat and test the heating system himself, and it was just as the blond said—the heater was indeed broken. When it was confirmed by Madara that the heater was no longer functioning properly, Naruto wailed in despair and fell to the floor dramatically like a fainting maiden.

"Calm down, I will have someone notified in the morning to repair it," Madara said as he then bent down to throw the grumpy blond over his shoulder like a sack of rice and walked into the living room so that the young man could warm up under the kotatsu. He was already far too accustomed to the blond's over exaggeration about every little thing, and Naruto was also used to being handled by the Uchiha and allowed himself to be carried away like a corpse.

As he was being taken away, Naruto swung his feet wearing the orange knitted socks Madara had bought him and whined, "It's not fine! It was so freaking cold today that I just stayed under the kotatsu literally the whole day! How am I gonna sleep when it's a freezer in here?!" He complained some more.

"Stop fretting, there are extra blankets in the closet. You will just have to bury yourself in them until I can get it fixed," the man stated as he set the young man down, to which Naruto quickly stuffed himself under the kotatsu, and then went to put away his scarf and prepare dinner.

"Man, I don't wanna do that, then it'll be too stuffy and constricting..." Naruto grumbled with a childish pout as he holed himself up under the kotatsu until dinner was ready.

Later on that night, Naruto had already gone off to bed with his pile of blankets and Madara had only just turned in for the night after finishing some work in his study. However, not long after Madara laid down in his futon did he hear a door slide open, followed by footsteps in the hallway, and soon after a light knocking at his bedroom doors. Madara then stood back up and went to answer the door, and once he did he found the blond standing on the other side looking shy and embarrassed.

"Is something the matter?" he asked, and Naruto stayed silent for a moment, his body trembling somewhat from the cold house, until he finally looked up at the man with his big blue puppy eyes and softly asked,

"Is it okay if I sleep with you tonight?"

Upon hearing this, Madara felt his breath caught in his throat as his eyes grew as wide as saucers, and Naruto continued meekly, looking down at his socked feet nervously.

"It's not what you think, okay! I just can't stand this cold anymore, and you're the perfect heater..." he said with pouty lips.

"W-What about the extra blankets?" Madara inquired anxiously, and Naruto's shoulders drooped sadly.

"Ugh, it was as I thought, it was just too uncomfortable to sleep in. I felt like I was being strangled by blankets and it was getting claustrophobic, and when I got to the fifth blanket it started getting too hot..." he informed the Uchiha miserably, "So... can I sleep with you tonight? It's really hard to sleep like this, and you can just think of it as a sleepover! I swear, you won't even notice I'm there!" he pleaded, and the more he stared up at Madara with those big hopeful blues, the more the man began to feel his will power wane. He had no idea what etiquettes had changed or disappeared in the future, but to behave so brazenly as to insist on inviting oneself into a man's bed in the dead of night while wearing such delicate clothing was to solicit danger.