Hiya~

This chapter was such a bitch to write, seriously. It didn't want to be written and I was pretty unmotivated by the low number of reviews on the last chapter (which, for the record, was two) and I was busy and gah.

But hey, thanks to you two lovely reviewers for last chapter~ Alerter and favoriter, too~ You're the only reason I made it anyways~ :D :D

Words: 2,031 (Hey, it's still past the magical 2K, which seemed impossible still an hour ago)
Disclaimer: Surprise of the day! I don't own! OwO
Warnings:
Swearing...

Go on, go on. Chapter 8, 'Failure'.

...I just realized how ironic that is.


Sasori ended up having to take Deidara to a café, since the blonde seemed fully incapable of navigating his way there, even if Sasori gave him the exact directions. And, no matter how involuntary it may have been, with this he ended up confirming Sasori's beliefs of what a brat he in fact was.

"You don't have any special place you want to go to, right?" Sasori asked him once more, just to make sure, to be certain he wouldn't get any complaints afterwards.

Deidara shrugged uninterestedly, "Nope. Just nowhere too fancy and I'll live, un."

"Thought so," Sasori agreed lazily, "Kurenai's it is."

"Kurenai's..." Deidara repeated, seeming to be testing what the name sounded like ever so slowly. "Yeah, sounds alright to me."

With that lop-sided agreement, they started making their way towards the café, which, Sasori grimly realized, ended up being closer to his own home than he would've liked with the unstable blonde trailing behind him.

The bell at the door cheerfully announced Kurenai about their arrival, and the black-haired older woman could soon be heard instructing her daughter, a teenage girl Sasori didn't know the name of, and frankly couldn't really bother to care about.

The black-haired girl soon walked up to them with a wide, friendly smile on her face. "Hello. What would you two like?"

Sasori inwardly grimaced at this. Even though they had come together (which he hadn't even got the chance to actually negotiate about), did she have to talk about 'you two' like they were... actually people who got along or something?

"Tea," Deidara told her simply, probably automatically responding to the smile politely with one of his own, though not nearly as wide as hers. "White, if you will, un."

Sasori, who hadn't even known about the existence of white tea, let alone about the differences of between any tea colors, before this, was surprised to say the least.

The girl, however, nodded at the request, waiting to hear if Deidara felt like continuing with another thing he would've liked.

"And..." Deidara glanced at Sasori like he was contemplating how much he could make the other pay for his sake, since he had already announced before that this trip was indeed paid with Sasori's money. "A simple sandwich would be fine... If you have salad to put in it, the better, un."

She nodded again, now turning to Sasori, her hand moving to her waist as the other traced half a circle in the air. "And for you, sir?"

"Coffee," the still dumb-founded red head muttered indifferently, not bothering to ask her for anything edible to go with it. It's not like he wanted to waste all his money here when he could always go back home and make himself food, in the end getting more and for cheaper than what he ever would here.

He subconsciously noted that Deidara's situation was probably the opposite, or close to it, at least.

She pointed them to a table, one located close to a window facing outside, where the sun had already mostly set, but it wasn't really all that cold. Yet, at least. "I'll be right back," she then noted them, chirping off through the door.

"White tea, huh?" Sasori questioned the blue-eyed blonde as they sat down on the table across each other.

"Yeah, un. I prefer it over yellow," Deidara responded coyly, "But it doesn't make that much of a difference as long as it's tea, un."

"I never took you for the tea-drinking type," Sasori told him, for the sake of continuing the conversation and maybe even directing it to a new subject, one he was undeniably curious to learn more about.

"As mentioned, you know nothing about me, un," Deidara all but snapped, smiling slightly irritably. "So you can as well stop assuming things."

"Maybe if you told me something about yourself, I would be more willing to stop trying to assume I know you when I don't."

Deidara seemed ready to answer, but to Sasori's dismay, that was the exact moment the girl decided to come back, carrying two cups and a sandwich on a wooden lunch tray.

Of course, the blonde seemed pretty happy to see her, for reasons Sasori thought included getting rid of the (to him, at least) bothersome conversation, and also more or less the fact that she was indeed just that; a girl.

She turned to Sasori, for some strange reason, when she remembered about the payment needed for their food.

"That would be twelve bronze coins," she told him sweetly.

Deidara looked away guiltily as Sasori fished his coin pouch for the appropriate amount of coins, handing them to the girl. Only then did the blonde take his sandwich, ridding of it with the guilty look staying on his face, shadowing his expression.

Sasori still cursed the girl for entering right at that moment as he glared at his cup; had that not happened, he might've actually got an answer out of Deidara this time.

After quietly finishing his table, Deidara glanced at the horizon with a glazed over expression for some seconds before absently raising the tea cup from the table, gently blowing on it before carefully raising it to his lips, holding it with his hands like it was the world's greatest treasure when Sasori could practically put his life on line that it actually wasn't that.

Honestly speaking, Sasori had never seen anyone do something like that, treating a mere tea cup like it actually held some sort of importance in the setting.

Though now that Sasori was thinking about it he recalled Hidan may have mentioned something a long time back...

"People are fucking strict about manners at the better circles, you know? They have fucking -rules- for drinking tea! It's just fucking tea, seriously!" was the pretty exact term he had used.

"Rules?" Sasori had repeated amusedly, "Deity damn me before I see you drinking tea like a royal and making small-talk about the weather..."

"What're you thinking about, un?" Deidara suddenly brought him back from his thoughts. When Sasori looked up, he could see that the blonde had stopped his tea cup-worshipping actions in favor of watching him suspiciously, his visible eye just reaching over the tea cup in his hand.

He was nearly honored.

"Nothing," Sasori responded lazily, finding himself enjoying when he had the blonde's attention on himself again.

"Liar," Deidara accused him calmly, taking a breath like he was going to start an actual lecture on the subject, "You can't think about nothing. Even if you are thinking 'nothingnothingnothingnothing', then you are thinking about thinking nothing, which ends up with you actually thinking about something, un."

Rolling his eyes at the technicalities the other had never before seemed too fond of, Sasori went to fix his statement, "Things."

"Good," Deidara agreed, blowing at his tea carefully again, preparing to take another well-thought sip of it, "You don't have to lie if you can refrain from answering or fully evade the question."

"...You always evade mine," Sasori observed, noticing that it was actually more than accurate. It was more common that the blonde gave him a vague answer or none at all than to have him give an actual, straight answer.

"Do I, now, un?" Deidara countered.

"Like what you're doing right now," he agreed, motioning at Deidara with his hand that wasn't holding the cup of coffee absently to further emphasize his point.

Deidara chuckled, setting his beloved tea cup down in order to give Sasori a half-mocking look while leaning on his elbows on the table slightly. "Sorry, un. Wasn't aware that was a question."

"It was a statement," Sasori started, "But you still left it without an answer, so it counts."

"Statements don't need to be answered, un."

Sasori dismissed this by raising the cup to his lips. "You never know… Maybe some of them do require an answer after all…"

Deidara seemed to deem this statement unworthy of being turned into an actual conversation, since he moved to cross his leg on top of the other and then turned to look around the place some, dropping the subject.

Sasori wondered when was the last time the other had got his hands on white tea, especially since his classy tea-drinking manners seemed to suggest that it had happened at some point.

He even contemplated on simply asking the other about this, but decided that he preferred asking questions that would actually earn him an answer, no matter how useless they were.

"Where were you staying before this town?" he asked instead.

"Somewhere else, un," Deidara replied, at least outwardly seeming to be overly bored by the casual subject of their current conversation.

He sighed, knowing that he probably should've seen that coming.

He then decided on a different approach, even though he was aware of the many, many ways it could go wrong.

"Are you a Diamond?" Sasori commented in a half-desperate attempt to get an actual answer to his doubts, though he inwardly grimaced at the thought that this artist, an actually talented one even though Sasori would never admit it aloud, would be something Sasori himself looked down upon - a Diamond, bound to be a normal, boring worker.

Suddenly he got the strange urge to defend his seemingly out of the blue-question, and hastily added, "You have so many Diamond-shaped patches in your clothes that I would hard be surprised if you were,"

He shrugged. "My mother was... is. My father was a Spade, un."

Sasori thoughthe saw Deidara tense ever so slightly. He couldn't have sensed Sasori's disgust towards Diamonds, could he?

"My mother was... Is, un."

That wasn't an answer, either. Why did the blonde insist on making everything so mysterious and difficult?

"Was?"

"She's dead..." Deidara started, frowning, "At least I think she is, un. I can't remember."

"You don't just forget things like that," Sasori noted. He hadn't even forgotten about the fact that both of his parents were dead, and he had never really cared that much about them to begin with.

He shook his head in some strange sort of agreement. "I haven't forgotten, I guess... I just don't really know, un. I barely met her."

"Why?" Sasori knew it came out more as prying to Deidara's life as he originally intended, but he couldn't really help being a little curious. "If she was your mother-"

"Issues, un," Deidara cut him off, "There are some issues I'd rather leave unspoken, okay? I'll tell you about it... If I do, un." He sighed in a sort of depressed way after his words, hanging his head and frowning faintly.

And for some strange reason, Sasori didn't like that expression on the blonde. He claimed in his mind that this was only because he wasn't used to seeing it and because in the end, he liked it when situations didn't change all of a sudden. "Hey, cheer up, brat. That frown looks stupid on your face."

He wasn't sure why, but right after he had said that, Deidara was back to grinning grinning happily again. "Sorry, un. I got all depressed, but I'm over it now! Let's go, un!" With that, he stood up from his chair.

"Wait a minute," Sasori half-groaned. "I'm still drinking this," he muttered, gesturing at his cup of coffee.

Sighing very theatrically, Deidara sat back down. "You'd better be quick, then, un."

"Working on it," Sasori countered, being only a little bit sarcastic.

Deidara's long fingers tapped against the wood of the table like a malfunctioning pendulum as he waited for Sasori to finish unhappily.

The redhead was not actually happy to keep him waiting, either, but he had paid for that cup of coffee and he would too finish that cup of coffee.

"Done yet?" Deidara asked him suddenly, standing up.

"Not."

The blonde seemed to not have heard his answer as he rolled his shoulders lazily. "I'll be right outside, okay? I don't like staying still for that long, un."

Sasori shrugged, letting the blonde dismiss himself, listening to the bell sounding upon Deidara leaving.

Only after hearing that and seeing the blonde leave, he remembered how unnervingly stupid it was of him to have the blonde wandering within 500 metres of his house.


1/23/12 Went back and fixed a silly, silly mistake. Originally, their table was outside, but alas, it made no sense when Deidara comments that he'll be waiting outside. :)

500 metres ~~ one third of a mile or so. Because I'm still doing the European thing... And because I'm tired. You know.

I would like to get reviews... I just now realized that writing and bothering to write is that much easier with every review. :)

Either way, see ya?