Merry Christmas
An Akatsuki no Deidara One-Shot
Akane glanced up at the sky, watching as small flecks of snow loomed over the city, bustling with cheer and merriment on this icy December evening. One flake was caught on her eyelash, and refused to budge from its position among the many lashes until it melted completely and dripped down the brunette's face.
Her wrist immediately flew upwards towards her cheek and wiped away the small flake's liquid drop and trail from her eye to her chin.
Sighing, she leaned over the ledge of her apartment's miniature balcony and watched the holiday commotion progress beneath her.
Akane had never truly understood why people got so worked up over Christmas. To her, it was just another pointless day that was commercialized in to something much bigger than it realistically was. And, honestly, the whole "present giving" thing was a bit much. If the day was supposed to be a remembrance of Jesus Christ, why was it that the true meaning had become forgotten?
Presents, that's why.
So, on this year's Christmas Eve, Akane Kibumaru sat in her one-bedroom apartment wasting the night away with a bottle of sake and the restless city.
The brunette filled her empty cup once again with the intoxicating beverage and took another swig. It burned her throat, but she had become immune to the sensation by that point. Her eyes narrowed as the sound of a car's tires squealing penetrated through the brisk night's air.
Inside her apartment, a loud buzzing sounded throughout. Akane sighed, pulling herself from the city's commotion and in to the confinements of her small living space. She pushed the sliding door open, stepping in to her living room, and shut it behind her.
Akane's thumb punched the red button beside the doorframe and spoke in to the box. "Who is it?"
"It's Deidara, now let me in," the deep male's voice ordered.
"Fine," she replied drunkenly, allowing the blonde to enter the apartment building. Akane sighed, plopping down on her cheaply worn couch and closing her eyes. The room was cold; she shuddered, and ran her hands up and down her arms as if to create a small flow of heat.
Doesn't help a damn bit, she thought bitterly.
The door opened hastily and closed just as quick. The blonde who had entered cupped his gloved hands and blew a stream of warm air in to them.
He cursed underneath his breath. "It's colder in here than it is out there."
"Get a blanket," Akane suggested dryly, coating on the nonchalance. "They're in the closet of my bedroom." She didn't even bother opening her eyes.
Deidara took off his coat and threw it on the arm of a chair sitting at the end of the couch. He then proceeded towards the kitchen for a glass of water. He filled his glass with the tap water, and made his way back out in to the living room.
"Move over," he said, nudging the brunette's feet.
She groaned, finally opening her eyes and sitting up. She scratched the side of her head and stared down at the stained carpet covering the cement beneath it.
"Hey, Deidara," Akane questioned, "what would you say makes this holiday so damn special?" A distinct frostbitten undertone could be perceived just beneath the surface of her normal voice.
"I dunno," he replied, pausing before continuing the thought any further. "Presents, I guess."
"That's what I thought," Akane muttered.
Deidara reached in to his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes with a sigh. He opened up the carton and slid two out. Handing one to Akane, he asked, "You got a lighter?"
"Yeah," she said, pulling one out of her own pocket. Her thumb flicked out a small flame and lit the end of the cigarette protruding from her lips. She then leaned towards Deidara and lit his.
They each took a drag.
"Thanks the blonde murmured, blowing some smoke from out of the corner of his mouth.
They were both silent for a while before Akane stood up from the couch and made her way towards the bedroom. When she came back, she held an ash tray in her left hand and a heavy blanket underneath her right arm.
"I'm starting to freeze," she explained, sitting back down on the couch. Resting the ash tray on the floor, she unfolded the afghan and wrapped it around herself.
"Not going to leave me any blanket, yeah?" Deidara asked rhetorically, his question followed soon after by a small snort of laughter and sarcasm.
"Nope," she told him simply, leaning up against his shoulder. "But I'll let you be a pillow for me."
"Do I have a choice?" he scoffed.
"Nope," she repeated, taking another drag of her cigarette before twisting the butt in to the small black tray beside her foot.
Deidara sighed before flipping on the TV, only to find himself watching an old holiday special composed specifically of talking marionettes.
"Boo," Akane whined, "change the channel."
Much to the couple's despair, Akane only received public access channels, and almost all were viewing Christmas films. The ones who weren't displayed religious sessions and newscasts.
"Your television stations are about as interesting as my tenth grade English professor," Deidara muttered, flicking the TV off as he ran a hand through his tangled blonde tresses.
"You don't say," Akane mused. "He must have been pretty boring."
"No, he wasn't, yeah," Deidara said with a sarcastic roll of his eyes. "Anyways, you hungry?"
"For what?" Did you bring something to eat with you?"
"No," he answered, "don't you have any?"
She shook her head and gave a light huff. "I've got a jug of milk and some cereal, but not much else."
"Ever heard of going shopping? You know, for groceries?"
"I'm lazy," she said, cuddling closer to the blonde. He was surprisingly warm despite how utterly freezing it was in the apartment.
After a few minutes of pondering, Deidara spoke again. But this time, a smile was worn cleanly on his face. He wrapped his arm around Akane and bent his head down so that his lips met her ear.
"Let's go out to dinner."
Akane turned her head just enough so that she could catch a glance from the blonde out of the corner of her eye. "What the hxll is that supposed to mean?"
"You know," Deidara explained, "it's Christmas Eve. I think we deserve to eat out tonight, yeah."
"Tonight is the one night of the year that I'm going to have to nix the special treatments, including dinner out."
"So you're suggesting that we have Frosted Flakes?" Deidara asked incredulously.
"That's exactly what I'm suggesting," she said.
He sighed. "Come on -- why don't you just take a break from your hermit ways and get out of the house? Your place is boring."
Akane was silent for a long while. And then, "Fine. We can leave the house, but we're not getting food or buying anything. Got it?"
Now it was Deidara's turn to supply the couple with a long, drawn-out pause. Truth be told, Akane was making him very irritated. She was set on not having any fun, it would seem. Still, getting out of the house was better than being cooked upstairs with his could-be girlfriend in her dark, cold, stingy apartment.
"Sure," he told her finally. "Come on, let's go yeah."
But while the two of them were bundling up in their coats and boots, Deidara couldn't help but smirk inwardly as a thought overtook him.
She'll be so mad when she finds out what I'm going to do. She'll be so mad.
The pair of them walked out the door, hand-in-hand. Akane wore a look of disgust, while Deidara bore on his lips a smirk nearly the size of a banana.
She'll murder me when she finds out I got her something.
The couple strode down the street, their hands still liked tightly together in a fashion that proved to anyone but themselves that they were indeed romancing. It was nearly eleven o'clock at night, and yet the streets were as busy as ever. They were filled mostly by men, who had so obviously forgotten to buy their spouse a gift.
"They look hungry," Akane murmured, signaling to the men on each street corner.
"Yeah," Deidara said, his mouth turning upwards, "hungry for something to make their wives happy in the morning."
"I wouldn't care if my husband didn't buy me anything," the brunette told him. "I'd still love him, anyways. I'd probably commend him for not buying me anything, actually."
The blonde sniffed. "Yeah, well, a lot of guys aren't that lucky to find someone like you. So they're all scurrying around, trying to find something to make the woman happy in the morning."
"Poor guys."
"They should've seen it coming and gotten a gift sometime earlier," Deidara told her informingly. "Could've gotten it Black Friday, when everyone else was out getting their presents. Guess they're all in trouble tomorrow morning if they don't find anything."
"Yeah, if their wives don't find anything under the tree tomorrow morning," Akane said, now laughing heartily.
Deidara swung her arm upwards in the air, then backwards as if she were a child. He blew a cloud of warm air in to the frozen night, forming a small fog. "Come on, let's go get a coffee."
"No coffee," Akane snapped. "We aren't buying anything, remember?"
"Aw, come on, yeah," Deidara sighed. "You're acting like you've got a stick shoved up your ass. Why don't we just get something small while we're walking around."
"You can," Akane said, "but I'm not."
"God, you can be such a pain sometimes," he muttered, squeezing her hand lightly to show that he was merely aggravated with her.
"So, what?" she asked, turning her head upwards so that her eyes met his. "Are you trying to tell me something there?"
"Nope," he smirked. "Not at all, yeah."
Akane sighed, raising a gloved hand up to her eye to wipe the sleepies out of them. "I'm so tired, Deidara," she told him. "Why don't we just go back home? I'm tired."
"You're just making up excuses not to be out tonight," he said. "Besides, there's something I want to show you."
She huffed. "What could you possibly want to show me that I haven't already seen before?"
"Just something," he said. "But trust me, you haven't seen it before."
The two of them were silent for a moment before Akane spoke once again. "When am I going to see it?"
"I could show you now, I suppose," he told her. "But you've got to promise you won't get mad at me."
"I can't promise anything," she said.
He laughed, then let go of her hand. Grasping her shoulders, he turned her around to face him. Deidara's one visible eye stared in to Akane's, a bit of mischief floating around inside. "I got you something."
And almost immediately Akane set off in to her irate mode. "You dickhead! I specifically told you not to get me anything, and you went off and did the exact thing I told you not to do! Don't you know how to listen? Are you deaf? I can't believe you! I just can't believe you!"
He sighed. "Are you almost done?"
Akane was silent. "Well . . . yeah, I suppose. But I'm just so furious right now, I can't--"
Deidara cut her off. "Close your eyes."
"What in the hell . . . I am not going to close my eyes! I don't want whatever you've got to give me, so you'd better take it back! Even if you give it to me, I'll take it back. You--"
"Fine, don't close your eyes, then, yeah," he said.
"You know, I won't!" she snarled. "Because you can't tell me what to--"
His lips were what cut her off this time. Not his words, but his lips. And this time, she didn't say anything when he was finished. She was completely and utterly silent. Dumbstruck. Her eyes were wide open, and to be quite honest, she looked like a deer caught in the headlights, ready to get run over.
"Merry Christmas," Deidara told her.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. So she shut it again. Then she opened it again. Then she shut it.
"A good present?" he inquired, smirking a bit while taking her hand in his.
It seemed she had found her voice. "You know, I'm usually against the whole 'gift giving' thing. . . ."
A smirk was now clean on his face. "But . . . ?"
"But," she continued. Then she paused.
"You plan on finishing that sentence, yeah?" the blonde asked.
Akane was silent for an instant. Though only an instant, before a smile enveloped her lips and stuck to them like hot glue. "But I think this is one gift I can accept."
Deidara gave her one last on her lips; it was long and deep.
"Come on," he said, "you want to go get a coffee?"
"Sure," she smiled. "I would love a coffee."