While this is technically a 5+1 story, these can all be considered un-related one-shots, I suppose.
Five times Deidara and Sasori had Deep Conversations, and the one time they didn't
1: on falling and Confucius
The first time, Deidara was new to the organisation, seventeen and still boiling over his humiliating defeat. He was far more reckless than Orochimaru or any of the faceless beings that lasted barely seconds as Sasori's partners, and if the puppet master had emotions past impatience, no doubt he'd feel disgust towards the teenager. Young people these days. They were travelling on one of the kid's clay creations – a huge bird, wide enough to even let Sasori's puppet ride along, while keeping his personal space bubble intact. Besides their already old debate between eternal and fleeting art, Sasori couldn't see how Deidara's creations could be seen as art. It's not as though the blond put any effort into them. He didn't spend time adjusting, fixing, smoothing his pieces until picture perfect; no, instead the young man simply took some clay into his mouth and then spat it out, into a generic plaster white form. How crude, how very boring, and how perfect a representation of the artist himself.
Sasori through Hiruko's eyes, looked up and at his young partner. Immediately, his tail swiped out, the sharp edges catching in Deidara's cloak, pulling him away from the very edge of the bird on which he'd been perched.
"Stop that, brat, don't make me train another partner." He growled, in his puppet's deep, gravelly voice. While this might seem like thinly veiled concern, it really was only that Sasori was sick to his core with training new partners. His patience only stretched so far.
Sitting where he'd been pulled by the tail, Deidara's eyes seemed glazed over as he stared at the horizon.
"Have you ever fallen, danna, un?" He asked, voice strangely calm, unlike what Sasori was used to at this point. Hiruko just stared at him, dead eyes unblinking. What a stupid question – every human had fallen at some point.
"No." Deidara muttered to himself.
"No, have you ever fallen from such a great height that you had time to realise you were about to die?" He clarified, still in that measured, dazed tone. Idly, Sasori wondered whether the boy had caught heatstroke riding on this bird of his all day. He watched as a pale hand stretched across the sky, shuttered sun beams lighting up the young face.
"It's a feeling unlike any other." He explained, almost dreamily.
"It makes you feel omnipotent, like every sense has come to life at the same time. You notice everything; every little thing, like the shape of clouds, or the coloured bands of stone in mountains. The universe suddenly seems so thrilling, un. After that, who wants to go back to apathetic every-day life? I think that's what life should be like – short, amazing, and over before you can mourn the loss of the art around you." Deidara mumbled.
"Are you suicidal?" Sasori asked bluntly. This was something a partner should really know – if the boy was going to blow himself to kingdom come in the middle of battle, Sasori wanted to know when to duck. He after all, had plans to live forever.
Instead of being offended, the kid suddenly snapped out of his daze. For a moment, he blinked, before throwing back his head and laughing his head off.
"Not likely, un. Merely philosophising, if you will, un."
Sasori grunted inside Hiruko.
"You're hardly Confucius."
"Tch, Confucius is a bore." The teenager mocked.
"Life if really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. What a bag of wind, un."
The following moment of silence bespoke Sasori's disbelief.
"What? I read!" Deidara exclaimed. With that prompt, he threw himself into a diatribe about old people and not judging based on looks. Sasori simply tuned him out.