This is a requested love one-shot from a friend. Just to make clear, in all of my one shots the information sent to me was about what kind of story, the personality looks etc of an OC character that the requester created themself, and with whom from Naruto this character will interact. Enjoy!

Bad Sketches, Hidden Emotion

Dixie and Kisame fell on the floor laughing. Sasori was sitting on his bed, glaring at the two with an intense hatred. Kisame, the ever bored and ready to toss a prank, had poured green wood stain on Sasori's left leg in the middle of the night. He let Dixie in on it, knowing very well that Sasori wouldn't dare lift a finger against her, and therefore saved himself from a very troubling situation.

"What's with all the noise, hn?" Deidara was standing in the doorway looking very sleepy and annoyed. "It's freaking seven in the morning, shut the hell up!"

Kisame was still laughing, obviously enjoying Deidara's annoyance, but Dixie had stopped. "Jeeze," he spat, before whirling around and stomping off down the hallway.

"Ne, Dixie-chan, what do you say we switch that bomber's shampoo with green hair dye?"

She had stood up from the floor and was looking at the doorway from which the blonde shinobi had just disappeared. Deidara had been gone for three months on a solo-mission. This was the first time she had seen his face in a long, long time.

"No thanks, Kisame-kun," she said. "I'm a little tired."

As she walked through the open doorway she heard him mumble to Sasori: "What's her problem?"

…………………………………………….

Dixie locked the door to her room and rummaged through her closet. Pieces of long forgotten dirty clothing flew from her frantic hands onto the bed, the floor, and up on the dresser. She spat a stream of curses and slammed the closet door then pulled out her drawers one by one.

"Where is it?"

Finally she found what she was looking for, hidden in the bottom of her pants drawer and stuffed inside the leg of a pair of faded blue jeans. Ignoring the mess in her room she sat on her bed and opened up the little sketchbook with the barely used colored pencils tucked into a pouch on the inside cover. She laid them all out, light to dark, picked up a pencil and placed it on the paper.

After a mere two minutes she looked down at what she had drawn. It was crude sketch of a half-open doorway. Someone was grasping the knob with fat and misshapen fingers, and a shock of blonde hair protruded from an Akatsuki collar. Dixie studied the sketch for a minute before she clenched her teeth and hurled the book across the room.

………………………………………………………….

In celebration of Deidara's return the Akatsuki members (those who were at the lair) ate dinner the next night together when Deidara had recovered from his journey. Eating dinner together consisted of everyone splayed about the kitchen or dining table for at least the first ten minutes of their meal, before they became bored and left.

After the initial ten minutes only Sasori, Kisame, Dixie and Deidara were left. Deidara was ransacking the fridge and the others were sitting at the table.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Kisame demanded.

Dixie looked up from her plate on which she had mashed all the contents together so that it resembled an ugly brown soup. She shrugged.

"You've been so stiff since yesterday. One minute we're having fun and the next you act like someone's dropped a cinder-block on your head. You're so moody!"

Dixie shot him an angry glare and picked up her plate. "Go to hell fish-face" she said, and dumped her leftovers in the trash. "I'm going to bed."

The three shinobi in the kitchen watched her go. This time she didn't bother to listen to what they said.

…………………………………………………………..

Back in her room Dixie flipped through the pages of her sketchbook. Only a few of them were filled, and all of them terrible and made with either angry scribbles or sad and soft swooping lines. One of the reasons why Dixie was able to survive as an Akatsuki member was because she was considered "one of the guys"; with baggy clothes, a loud-mouth, and her moods which frightened everyone. So never, ever, could she tell someone when she was upset. Especially not Kisame. Especially not that she was in love.

It had been three months since she had seen him. Three months in which she convinced herself that he wasn't anything special.

"He looked at me with such hate in his eyes," she said aloud.

"Who?"

Dixie jumped up from her bed and drew her kunai. There was a movement in the corner of her room and she flung it at a blurry figure. It embedded itself into the wall as she drew another but found her hands would not do as she said, and they replaced the weapon and hung down at her sides.

Sasori emerged. "Who hates you?" he asked.

"Sasori no baka!" she screeched. "Get out of my room! If this is revenge for the prank it's not funny at all!"

Sasori threw more strings at her and forced her to sit on the bed. He waited until she stopped struggling before sitting down next to her.

"Get your strings off me! Get out of my room!"

"I know you like him."

Dixie's blood ran cold. Sasori let her go and sat silently beside her, his wooden joints creaking slightly as he placed his hands in his lap and stared ahead with his cold expressionless eyes.

"You are an S-ranked criminal, part of an organization infamous for lacking morality, who kills in cold-blood as a means to their own ends. But despite all of that, you are first and foremost a human, Dixie. I am the only one who must live without feeling. It doesn't suit you to try and copy me when you are still made of flesh and blood."

He rose from the bed and placed his dark eyes upon hers and simply stared at her. Sasori picked up the sketchbook she had dropped on the floor and placed it in her lap. Then turned away and left the room, closing the door behind him.

……………………………………………………………….

It was midnight and Dixie had just stepped out of the shower. The room was much too cold to get dressed so she sat on the bed and waited until she warmed. Her stomach rumbled and she rubbed it absently.

"No one will be up."

She opened her door slowly, wincing at the creak it made and slipped out into the hallway. She tiptoed down the corridor, eyes alert, and ears perked for anyone who might be slinking through the corridors and turned the corner toward the kitchen. She stopped when she heard voices.

"She dresses like that because she's got something to hide, that's what I think," a voice said.

A short burst of laughter followed this comment and Dixie recognized the speaker to be Kisame.

"I dunno…" someone else answered.

"Oh come on, admit it Dei; even if she was the last girl in the world you wouldn't want her. She's like a guy, good for some laughs but not anything serious."

Dixie's eyes began to fill with water. She wanted to run off back to her room, but knew that once she got there she would only draw bad pictures and anger herself more. Not only that, but she was also getting angry. Kisame was her friend, what kinds of friend spoke like that?

"She's so moody too. Acts like a spoiled brat sometimes…"

Kisame stopped talking when a sound came from the hallway. Dixie appeared in the doorway wearing nothing but a towel, hair drenched and dripping, teary eyed and mad as hell. She marched across the room and Deidara stepped out of the way.

"I-I, d-didn't think you were still awake," he stuttered and stepped backwards.

Dixie then pounced on him and proceeded to beat him to a pulp. He shouted and struggled but her anger fueled her strength and he could only manage to land a few scratches on her arms. Finally she rose and turned around, leaving him sobbing and bloody upon the floor, and walked, rather calmly, back to her room.

Once the door was closed she flung off her towel and got dressed. Then she reached to her bedside table and into the little drawer full of knick-knacks and notes and other random items and pulled out a pack of matches. She swiped it on the side of the table and held it to the bottom of the sketchbook. The flames lapped up the paper and she sniffed at the smoke that rose up to meet her ceiling.

A hand grabbed onto her wrist and pulled the sketchbook away.

"What are you doing?"

Deidara frantically patted at the sketchbook until the fire was gone, then opened her window to let the smoke out. "You shouldn't mess with fire unless you're an expert, hn."

Dixie ignored Deidara and sat blankly on her bed. She couldn't even register his presence.

"You shouldn't listen to him. He didn't mean it. He's just angry because all the other members realized and you can't seem to see it."

"See what?" Dixie asked glumly, not caring.

"That he likes you."

Dixie sunk deeper into her bed. Great, just what I need. The one I like telling me that my best friend actually has a crush on me. This sucks. The next thing he's gonna tell me is to give that fish-face a chance.

"But I know you don't like him, because you like someone else, hn."

Finally Dixie was roused from her daze and she snapped her eyes up at Deidara, who was standing above her. He noticed she was looking at him and turned away.

"D-danna told me that you liked um, well…me, hn."

Deidara twisted his thumb with his other hand harshly in nervousness. The silence felt like nothing to Dixie because she was too numb, but it weighed heavily upon the blonde.

"It shocked me, but at the same time it didn't," he said, breaking the silence. "I think I knew all along. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first, but when I saw you again after my long mission, I figured it out."

Dixie willed herself to keep the water in her eyes. It wouldn't do her any good to be reduced to a sniffling mass now, but when the bottle that held her emotions decided to crack, there was no stopping the flow.

"I realized that I liked you too, hn."

He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead as she started to cry. He then sat down beside her and patted her head gently and waited with her until the sun began to rise.