Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Damn.
Notes: This ficlet contains spoilers for the Time Skip. It also has (strong) BL implications.
Also, R&R would be appreciated, if ya don't mind. If you bother to finish the fic, leaving a review will only take you a few extra seconds, right? Please and thank ya.
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"I respect your art, un. You know I do, Sasori-danna." Deidara said from where he sat, perched at the edge of the bed.
Sasori looked up from his close scrutiny of his left elbow joint to stare at Deidara with that perfectly blank face. It was the best poker face Deidara had ever known; that expression of knowing all and not caring one bit. He grinned back at that cold, fixed expression, and was rewarded by a slight drooping of Sasori's upper eyelids--the danna's own little version of a smile. Sasori tapped the edge of his oiled screwdriver on the tabletop absently. "I respect your 'art' as well," he replied, turning back to his arm. It had started squeaking earlier today, and Sasori could do nothing about it until they found an inn to stay at for the night and he felt secure enough to crawl out of Hiruko and work on his squeaky joint.
Stifling a sigh that really had no point in being, Deidara turned his attention to the rectangle of night sky outside the window of their room. It had been a boring day in a boring town that had no magic in its veins and no appreciation for art. Not even a fucking fireworks stand. Every other village had fireworks stands. Some even had a fireworks shop. Deidara narrowed his eye at the darkness outside, where stars punctured through the night like white spatters of paint against a black canvas. The sigh he had previously bitten back worked its way past his lips and fell straight down to the wood-panelled floor.
"If you're bored, go out and do something," Sasori suggested absently, not turning to face his partner. There was only the soft sound of a screw being tightened, and Sasori's right arm shifting ever so slightly to move the head of the screwdriver. "Just don't make a scene."
"Then there's no point in going out, un. What would I do? Wander the streets by myself and get even more bored, un..." He flopped back onto the hard, lumpy bed.
"You've been bored a lot lately," Sasori commented casually.
"'Cause things have been really boring lately, un."
There was the sound of the screwdriver being placed on the tabletop, followed by Sasori experimentally moving his left arm, twisting it every which way it could go. No more squeak; just the rustling of his cloak. Deidara watched him pull the sleeve back down over his arm. "If Sasori-danna would come with me when I went out..."
"The genjutsu I use to disguise Hiruko is tiresome, Deidara."
Deidara fell silent, twisting a lock of blond hair around his finger absently and staring up at the ceiling. Sasori's brows knitted together. Deidara hadn't been himself the last week or so. Admittedly, time had dulled Sasori's human intuition, but he wasn't totally insensitive, and he certainly wasn't blind. Weight loss, restlessness... an incessant need to explode something, where only a moderate desire had existed before... Sasori recognized this. Deidara was depressed. Inasmuch as someone so easily amused as Deidara could become depressed, at any rate.
He turned in his chair to better face the figure lying on the bed with its thin legs sticking out over the side. Somewhere in that riot of cloak and hair was Deidara. "Would it really make so much of a difference," Sasori asked, "if I joined you?"
"Un!" Came the enthusiastic response from the bed.
Sasori watched Deidara curl and uncurl his toes against the floor. "You want to go get dinner?"
"Un."
"...You just want dango, don't you?" He ventured dryly.
"I want dango for supper, un!" A pale face framed by bright blond hair popped up into view, partially obscured by the high collar of a black and red cloak. "Sasori-danna should buy dinner tonight, un."
The corners of Sasori's lips curved gently downwards. "You always say that."
"It never stops being true, un," Deidara answered playfully, propping himself up on his elbows. He watched his partner cross the distance between table and bed in silence, liking the angle he had of Sasori's face when he sat down beside Deidara on the bed. Sasori-danna always had such nice hair. A nice colour. Well-conditioned. Un. He quietly appreciated the play of the lamp on Sasori's mop of red, the colour of arterial blood. They stayed there, on the bed like that, in a companionable silence. Outside of Hiruko, Sasori always sat a little bit closer to Deidara than people normally sat. He didn't know what that meant, if anything. He never bothered to bring it up. "So will you buy dinner?" He asked after a while, and Sasori stared at the wall across the room.
"If you tell me what you think of my art, maybe."
Deidara smiled. "Sasori-danna is a true artisan. You create 'beauty that will last through eons', and you're good at what you do, un. And even though my art and your art are on two extremes of the same spectrum, I can still appreciate you, one artist to another. Un."
A slight tilt of his head was all that Sasori needed to show his approval of this. "Deidara, your art is... strange to me. Your vision of beauty; an alien concept. But at the same time..." A cool hand slithered on top of Deidara's, just resting there, light as a feather. Sasori's eyes were flat as glass, like the eyes of dolls. Deidara's eyes were locked with Sasori's, but he could feel a smooth, ball-jointed thumb rubbing absently over the knuckles of his index and middle fingers. "At the same time, you can't turn fireworks into puppets," he said.
Deidara's visible eye widened and then narrowed, crinkling happily. He sat up, shifting closer to the cool, thin body beside him. "Sasori-danna..."
"What?"
"Sasori-danna..."
"What?" The hand slipped off of Deidara's and back into the voluminous akatsuki cloak, but Sasori's attention was still fully on him. Deidara knew he was grinning, and could only hope it was coming across slightly more amused than demented. Not that Sasori would care.
"Sasori-danna...!"
A slight scowl. "Don't make fun of me like that."
Deidara chuckled and smoothed the front of his cloak. Sasori wasn't very expressive, but when he was annoyed he looked almost... normal. Deidara was a concept artist alright, and he knew with every fibre of his flesh-and-blood being that the truest beauty and the best art never stayed; it was there one minute, gone the next. Like that humanity that Sasori-danna's face took. Like the flickers of emotion behind Sasori's eyes, and the shadows of expression that sometimes subtly molded his features into something that was more than the perfect, smooth blank it normally was. That was art. Not quite as beautiful as a really big explosion, but close enough--
"Deidara-senpai?"
The warmly lit room flickered in and out of Deidara's vision before guttering and dying, leaving everything inky black.
"Deidara-senpai."
In the unnatural darkness, coloured shapes exploded silently. Drooling patterns of crimson and silver and yellow that shimmered and faded into the darkness. Deidara became aware that the right side of his face was pressed against something hard. He felt like he was floating up, or sinking downwards. He wasn't sure which.
"Deidara-senpai."
Deidara's eye snapped open and the room fell into place; he was back at the akatsuki headquarters. He had been for days, recuperating. 'Convalescing', Tobi called it, because it sounded much better; less like Deidara had been seriously hurt and more like he'd decided to arbitrarily take a small vacation from action.
Opening his mouth took more effort than it should, Deidara noted groggily, stuck on the feeling of his lips separating like someone had soldered them together while he'd slept. He blinked, squinted, and found Tobi's orange-masked face against the backdrop of the white room. "What'd you wake me up for?" He demanded, and was immediately horrified by how dry and cracked his voice sounded to his own ears. He licked his lips with a tongue as dry as sand.
Tobi stared down at him; Deidara had hardly left his bed since they'd returned to the base. "You were talking in your sleep. I heard that usually means you're about to have a nightmare. It's about time you get up, anyway, Senpai."
Deidara rolled onto his back; his arm ached, but his head was even worse. The movement jarred his arm, sending little tendrils of pain shooting up to Deidara's shoulder; the nerves were still sensitive after reattachment, his arm still tingled. He yawned widely and arched his back and legs, stretching as he stared up at the ceiling. What had he been dreaming about? It was already fading. Something about dango...
He looked at Tobi, who was still standing by the side of his bed, and propped himself up on his elbow. He ignored the pain and denied his face the wince it wanted to fold into. Instead he smiled up at the swirling orange mask. "Okay, I'm up, un."