Deidara had always figured that if he ever had a truly debilitating injury, he'd just blow himself up.

Reliable medical care wasn't exactly easy to get when you were a missing-nin, but he had accepted that years ago. If he couldn't fix anything that happened to him himself, he'd just move along with his plan for his final masterpiece. It was fine.

It was fine, until one day when it was very much not fine.

"What are you doing?" Sasori asked, sounding even more annoyed than usual.

Deidara couldn't see why his partner was so irritable. All he was doing was eating, a necessary activity that Sasori generally ignored in disdain.

"You're mashing everything up," Sasori said. "It's very inefficient."

Deidara was indeed smushing his fish into his rice to create some sort of homogenous, fishy paste.

"I like it like this, hm," he lied.

"You're wasting time," was Sasori's reply, which was Sasori's justification for most of his nagging.

He dropped it though, and didn't mention it again until days later. Deidara was eating a protein bar on the go, which is how he had to eat most of his meals to satiate Sasori's complete lack of patience. Then Sasori suddenly whipped around, grabbed Deidara's face, and stuck one of Hiruko's creepy old man fingers in his mouth.

"Hrng?" Deidara managed to say. This was… this was pretty weird. Not exactly violent, because Sasori wasn't hurting him, but weird. Really weird.

"You're chewing on one side," Sasori accused like Deidara had committed some heinous crime instead of just innocently eating his lunch.

"Urrgh!" Deidara replied angrily.

Sasori ignored him, poking at his teeth until Deidara let out a cry of pain. He removed his finger.

"What the hell, Danna—"

"Your wisdom teeth are coming in."

Deidara stared at him. He understood, intellectually, that most people had wisdom teeth, and that they could cause a lot of problems. It had somehow never occurred to him, however, that such problems could happen to him.

Sasori had not let go of his face. "I'm going to remove them."

"What, now?" Deidara gargled. Gargled because Sasori's other hand was already prying his mouth open, and it distorted his voice.

At first Deidara thought this seemed like a good idea. His partner was a master craftsman with the human body, afterall. Then, as Sasori nearly dislocated his jaw sticking his hand in and muttered something about getting his wire cutters, it occured to Deidara that Sasori didn't work much with living people.

Deidara replaced himself with a dead branch. Not missing a beat, Sasori sent Hiruko's tail after him, and Deidara ended up hovering just out of reach on a clay bird.

"Calm down and let me do my work," Sasori demanded, as if Deidara were being the unreasonable one in this situation.

"I'm fine," Deidara stressed. "I feel fine. It's fine."

Sasori shot several senbon a him, as if that was supposed to convince him to come down.

Sasori eventually cooled off, as much as Sasori ever cooled off, and Deidara thought he'd given up the topic. Deidara was just getting used to the idea that he'd be suffering jaw pain for the foreseeable future, when Sasori asked him to come see how one turns another into a puppet.

Deidara was not immediately suspicious. Sasori probably just wanted to show off.

Deidara should have learned by then that his partner never gave up.

They'd commandeered a partially abandoned temple for the night– Deidara would get to sleep indoors, and Sasori would have a space protected from the elements to tinker with his puppets.

Sasori had taken one of the ninja that had attacked them earlier with him, drugged him heavily, and left him slumped in a corner. The ninja was probably in his early twenties, with an uninteresting face and a Kumo headband.

"I'm going to show you," Sasori said, laying a set of various types of pliers and scissors and knives in an organized line between him and his new art materials, "exactly why you should let me remove your teeth."

"Oh," said Deidara, suddenly much less excited to see art in action.

There was… a lot of blood. Sasori cut through the ninja's cheek tissue to the back of his jawbone, which Deidara recognized as standard practice for Sasori's puppets but doubted was normal for an oral surgeon.

Sasori was a master, though, and Deidara appreciated watching him practice his art. He did not, however, find himself more inclined to let Sasori removed parts of his body. In fact, he felt absolutely certain he never, ever wanted Sasori bringing any sort of device that might be used for wrenching near his face.

"Well?" Sasori snapped, expectant, his hands covered in blood and his eyes weirdly manic for someone who didn't typically exert the extra effort to move his face. He threw the four wisdom teeth at Deidara, who didn't bother catching them.

"You know I admire your technical skill, hmm," Deidara said diplomatically. "Do you want me to show you what real art looks like?"

Sasori snarled and threw one of his sharper tools at Deidara.

Sasori started using his new puppet preferentially in battle, which was a weird move because that particular ninja had had no special abilities besides possessing wisdom teeth.

"Look at the seams of his cheeks," Sasori practically crooned, dragging a finger along the facial scar he'd very lovingly stitched back together. "They're perfect."

"Uh," said the hunter-nin they'd cornered in a reverse-ambush. "Cheeks… aren't supposed to… have seams…?"

"That's what I keep telling him," Deidara sighed. It was really a shame that he had to kill the only sane person he'd talked to in days. At least he made beautiful art.

"You draw too much attention," Sasori complained, which is what he always said instead of singing Deidara's praises like anyone who knew anything about art would.

Deidara wondered if Sasori had had his own wisdom teeth removed. His partner had ceased growing at age sixteen, after all. Were they still in his head?

He asked as much and Sasori said, "Of course not. I replaced my skull with movable titanium plates. I perserved my teeth, of course, for speech, but wisdom teeth–"

He went on, and Deidara zoned out.

Sasori, because he could not let anything die, metaphorically or literally, took Deidara to meet one of his little brainwashed spies.

"This is Kabuto," Sasori said, possibly bothering to introduce someone for the first time in his entire life. "He's a medic."

Sasori's unblinking eyes bore into him. Deidara was used to it at this point. Sasori only bothered blinking when he was trying to blend in with civilians, which was almost never.

"So?" he asked.

"If you won't let me remove your teeth," Sasori started, "maybe you'll let him–"

Nope. No. Deidara turned around and walked off.

"I can assure you," Kabuto called after him, "it's a fairly simple procedure–"

Deidara flipped him off.

Akatsuki didn't have a base of operations, but they had several safe houses scattered around the continent. If one was unlucky, they might run into another pair while inhabiting said safe houses.

Sasori and Deidara had been living for about a week in a hunting cabin located in the small patch of forest at the Land of Wind's border. Sasori's art took a lot of time to maintain, and Deidara also needed a lot of stable space to test his own creations.

He did not need stupid Uchiha Itachi sneaking up on him while he was out sketching.

"I'm surprised you have the patience for it," Itachi commented dully.

Deidara, having suppressed a scream of surprise, scowled at him. He was, in fact, doing an anatomical study of wasps to later be used in sculpting. Of course Uchiha wouldn't understand. He didn't understand anything about the artistic process.

"I have patience for a lot of things, hm," Deidara said, raising aggressively to push himself into Uchiha's space. "Unfortunately I seem to be out of patience for you."

He smacked his shoulder roughly against Uchiha as he passed, stomping back towards the cabin. If Uchiha was here, then so was Kisame, and Kisame at least had the good sense to carry booze around with him.

Kisame did not have booze. He did not have any sort of provisions on him at all, actually, and was going through Deidara's stuff.

Sasori, fiddling with a human arm and some springs at the dining table, was just letting him.

"Why don't you have any solid food?" Kisame asked, sounding vaguely disgusted. He was holding one of the pudding cups Deidara was currently living on.

"Why don't you mind your own business, hm?"

"He can't chew properly," Sasori commented, not looking up.

"Danna!" The betrayal.

"He won't let me take his wisdom teeth out," Sasori continued, fixing his eyes on Kisame like Kisame was going to agree with his unsettling obsession with Deidara's teeth.

Kisame, being a rational individual, chose not to comment on that. Instead, he told a very bland story about having his own wisdom removed back in Kiri.

"I assassinated a lord and his two heirs, all the while with dry socket," Kisame said mildly. "Sucked."

Uchiha, who had silently entered the cabin like some sort of nightmarish man-shaped cat, said, "I don't have wisdom teeth. I was born without them."

"Oh, fuck you, hm," Deidara sneered, snatching his pudding cup from Kisame's hands. "Fuck both of you, with your village dental plan and your fancy wisdom toothless genes."

Itachi and Kisame stayed the night. Deidara did the very mature thing and slept outside, as far away from them as he could.

They were still there in the morning. Apparently they were his and Sasori's back-up for infiltrating Suna.

"We don't need back up," Sasori insisted, and at least Deidara could agree with him on that.

Sasori ended up dead. Deidara was almost sad, except this meant that he had been right all along, and nothing lasted forever.

Deidara somehow ended up losing both his arms in the process, and Leader sent Kakuzu to patch him up. This meant that Hidan also tagged along.

"I heard you can't eat 'cause of your fucking wisdom teeth," Hidan mocked. "When mine came in, I just ripped them out."

Deidara considered just making a bird and flying away. Unfortunately, he needed his hands to be able to do that, and he was stuck listening to Hidan ramble about exactly how much he had bled, and how he'd accidentally stabbed the back of his throat.

"I'm telling you," Hidan said as Kakuzu finally finished the last stitch on Deidara's arm, "you do not want to deepthroat a kunai–"

Kakuzu stood up, turned around, and punched his partner in the face.

At least there was some justice in the world.

"Where are we going, sempaaaii~?" Deidara's new partner sang.

Deidara had told Tobi he had to call him 'sempai' on their first meeting. He hadn't expected the man to actually do it, or that he could make the title sound so nails-on-chalkboard irritating.

"This town's gotta have a dentist, hm," Deidara grunted.

"Is it because sempai only eats pudding cups?" Tobi asked. "Is sempai going to get dentures?"

Deidara thought about hitting him. His arms were still sore from being blown off, though, and hitting Tobi every time he said something annoying wasn't worth the pain or effort.

And yet, somehow, that was nothing compared to how much his mouth hurt. It was… it was…

When he'd reported to Leader to formally meet Tobi, Konan had slipped him a wad of bills and just… sighed. He knew what it was for.

It was embarrassing.

"You're two thousand short," the receptionist at the dentist's office said. Deidara blew the entire city block to smithereens.

"Wo~o~ow!" Tobi marveled as they stood in front of the blaze. Civilians were screaming. Deidara eyed the fire with glee, chest heaving with heavy breath. This was the first time he'd felt happy in a long while.

"But what are we going to do about your teeth?" Tobi asked, sounding genuinely confused.

Deidara hit him.

Deidara wanted Sasori back. He would take the mild anxiety that his partner might rip his teeth out in his sleep over Tobi's innocent concern any day.

"Tobi has pre-chewed your food," Tobi announced, presenting Deidara with a bowl of… something. Rice and vegetables, maybe. It was colorful.

Deidara smashed the bowl into Tobi's face, its contents splattering down the man's stupid orange mask and cloak. Some of the pieces at the bottom of the bowl were still in tact.

They were jelly beans. Jelly beans in rice.

"You didn't even chew properly!" Deidara yelled.

After Deidara got tired of trying to beat his partner to death, Tobi dared to ask, "Why doesn't Sempai just eat with the mouths in his hands?"

"That's a dumbass question," Deidara snapped back, currently trying to properly mash up a handful of jelly beans with a rock.

Their only nonperishable food, now that Tobi had cooked all the rice, was jelly beans. Apparently Tobi couldn't even do a supply run correctly.

"Why?" Tobi asked. "Do your hands have wisdom teeth too?"

Deidara glared at him. "No, idiot. The mouths don't connect to anything. What, you think I have an esophagus running through my arm?"

Tobi considered that for a moment. "Is that why sempai's hands are always drooling?"

Deidara did not dignify that with a response, instead going back to preparing his food.

Jelly beans weren't hard, per se, but they were sticky and pulled on his teeth in painful ways. He could always just let them sit in his mouth until they dissolved, but that would take more time than he cared to spend.

He had, regrettably, thought about pre-chewing his food himself with his hands. But a lot of explosive clay spent a lot of time in there, and he wasn't sure consuming anything from his hand-mouths was a good idea.

There was also the complication that his hands didn't have full sets of teeth. He had been born with weird, tooth-like nubs, analogous to malformed baby teeth. Iwa had sponsored several surgeries to turn his hands into properly functioning weapons— including forming the openings into actual lips, cutting away some excess tissue that prevented the tongues from moving, and arranging his hands' nerves and muscles in a way that preserved their use as he grew— and his baby teeth had been replaced by implants.

So, maybe his hesitancy over having his teeth removed had a little bit to do with the dozen surgeries he'd been forced through as a child. Maybe. Or maybe Sasori was just a creepy weirdo Deidara didn't want anywhere near his mouth.

Still. Even if his hand-mouths didn't swallow or chew properly, he still had saliva glands. Saliva contained enzymes to break down food, right?

Screw the explosive clay. He already inhaled the dust all the time, anyway.

He filled his hand-mouths with jelly beans. He could eat them as they walked.

Something was poking his side.

"Sempai," a voice whispered.

Deidara jerked awake. Tobi's orange mask was hovering two inches from his face.

"What?" Deidara asked. He'd meant for it to be intimidating. Stern. It came out quite sleepy.

"Tobi found sempai a dentist."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Deidara said, and turned over in his sleeping bag to go back to sleep. They were in the middle of the woods, a day's walk from any sort of civilization. There weren't any dentists or orthodontists or oral surgeons or any sort of medical personnel out here.

"Sempai." Tobi shook him.

Deidara whirled around, intent on landing a right hook in his very annoying partner's face. Tobi dodged, and the momentum took Deidara off the ground just enough to then fall face-first back down.

Ow.

"Come on, sempai!" Tobi grabbed Deidara's legs and started to drag him through the underbrush.

"Tobi," Deidara said warningly. Tobi had started to hum to himself. "Tobi."

Deidara aimed a kick at him. Tobi did an exaggerated and ridiculous looking sort of backbend to avoid it, undeterred from dragging Deidara to… wherever they were going.

Eventually Tobi stopped and yawned.

"Tobi?" Deidara asked. His partner continued to yawn. Deidara tried kicking him again.

He was successful this time, and his kick knocked Tobi right off his feet. Instead of getting back up, Tobi started to snore.

Deidara thought about waking him up just to kick him to death. But, no, he was sleepy himself; his tooth pain had been keeping him up at night.

He could kick Tobi to death in the morning.

In the morning, Tobi insisted they go to some town, which Deidara agreed to because he wanted something that wasn't clay-infused jelly beans. A nice soup, maybe.

Tobi stopped in front of a random building and announced it was the dentist that he'd found.

"This is my sempai!" he very proudly told the receptionist.

"Deidara-san, is it?" the receptionist said. "Fukugawa-sensei has been waiting for you."

"Uh," Deidara said. "Okay?"

He was told to wait. He sat down numbly in one of the padded chairs while Tobi took all the magazines out of a basket and started leafing through them. The wallpaper had a floral print. The room smelled of generic air freshener.

Deidara was sure this was some sort of trap. He couldn't see anything wrong with it, but he was positive it was a trap. It was too good to be true. The building was clean, in a moderately wealthy town. This Fukugawa person had their diploma and certification hanging on the wall.

This… this definitely met his standards. Granted, his standards were 'not Sasori with a set of pliers, or Sasori's mind-controlled slave, and definitely not anything involving deep-throating a kunai.' They were not very high standards. This office went above and beyond his very, very low standards.

Still. Tobi had arranged this. Tobi. Something had to be up.

"Hey," he said, approaching the receptionist's desk. She looked up at him, smiling pleasantly. "You're not expecting upfront payment, right?"

He didn't care if they tried to bill him later. He would just ignore it, like all the clay suppliers he ignored, and all the bar tabs he ignored. He just wanted to make sure no one was going to get upset with him prior to attempting to remove his teeth.

"No sir," the receptionist said. "Fukugawa-sensei has agreed to perform the surgery free of charge."

Deidara turned around, and Tobi gave him a double thumbs up.

He had no idea how Tobi had arranged that. If he didn't know any better, he'd think Tobi used a genjutsu on the poor surgeon. He dismissed the idea immediately– Tobi was too much of a moron for complex genjutsu.

When he was finally called back, he had Tobi come with him because…. because you didn't just willingly let yourself get drugged without back-up, okay?

Fukugawa-sensei was a very professional woman, and Deidara went under without any fear she was going to peel off all his skin and mount it on the wall in the name of art. So, that was good, at least.

When he regained consciousness, he was a little loopy and dazed for a while, but his skin was all in tact and he was not in pain anywhere besides the general vicinity of his mouth. Tobi somehow maneuvered him back to their shitty hotel and… braided his hair.

Maybe he should kill him? That seemed something sober Deidara would do. High Deidara thought it felt nice though, so… maybe later.

"Tobi made sempai soup," Tobi said, and spooned into Deidara's mouth what could only be boiling, liquified jelly beans.

"Nngh," Deidara protested, choking and flailing and trying to knock the spoon out of Tobi's hand.

"Sempai, calm down!" Tobi yelped, somehow getting his knee on Deidara's chest and pinning him down to the bed, ladling more of the boiling bowl of grossness into his mouth. Apparently Tobi could be a competent ninja when it involved torturing Deidara. "Please eat your food. Tobi will take of you."

Ah, though Deidara as he tried and failed to spit the too-hot fruity goop back at Tobi. It rolled down the side of his face instead. So this was the trap.

Later, Tobi tried to force a syringe into his mouth to clean the sockets, but Deidara had regained at least enough sobriety to punch him in the stomach at lock himself in the bathroom.

"Please don't dislodge the clot, sempai!" Tobi called, banging on the door. "Don't listen to Hidan-sempai! Bleeding is bad for you!"

It could be worse, really.