Seigo and his mother didn't linger long at the restaurant after that. Whether his mother – or anyone else – had seen what had transpired in the last few minutes wasn't clear to Ino because, though heavy with threat, Deidara's actions had been quiet and restrained.
In any case, none of the surrounding diners were giving her or Deidara a second look and the waiter who dropped off the bill didn't ask them to leave, so Ino surmised (and hoped) that the unpleasant exchange had gone unnoticed. That would be the best case scenario for Seigo and his wounded pride, and therefore for her and Deidara.
The fire in Deidara's eyes abated a little. Ino's goosebumps subsided and she finished her wine with her composed façade firmly in place.
"That's not a man I would've made an enemy of, myself," said Ino conversationally.
Really, she wanted to scream, what the hell was that, are you out of your mind?
Deidara stared at the door through which Seigo and his mother had exited. "I'm gonna blow him up."
"Please don't."
"Fine. Just his house, then."
"Don't."
"Fine. His car. His cars. He must have lots of cars. I'll blow up his whole collection. Does he have a jet or a helicopter or some shit?"
"See this?" said Ino, twirling her index finger in Deidara's direction. "This is why you spent the best years of your life in jail. You can't just blow things up when they piss you off."
"I can and I do," said Deidara.
His blood was still up, that much was clear. Ino decided that further conversation on this matter would not be fruitful at this time. She signed the bill and stood up.
"Where're you going?"
"Home," said Ino, slipping her purse over her shoulder. "We can continue this discussion there."
"Why there? They have killer whiskey here," said Deidara. He demonstrated his appreciation of said whiskey by downing the remainder of his glass in two swallows.
"So I can bite off your head properly without anyone watching," said Ino.
Deidara was not remotely daunted by this threat. He dropped his glass onto the table. "Let's go."
VVV
Both Ino and Deidara were able to maintain a semblance of civility all the way back to her condo. Deidara even offered her his arm on the walk home, though Ino suspected it was because otherwise he might be weaving a little as he walked more than out of solicitude for her and her heels.
The civil pretense was dropped as soon as Ino clicked the front door shut behind them.
"So," she said, turning to Deidara, "are you actually insane?"
Deidara wrestled off his suit jacket with such vigour it made the exercise twice as complicated. "Probably. Look at this, I'm in a goddamn straitjacket and everything..."
Ino jabbed her thumb over her shoulder towards the door. "What was that back there? You just antagonized one of the most powerful men in New York for no reason."
"No reason?" repeated Deidara. "You wanted him pissy and jealous, didn't you?"
"Yes, but—"
"Now he's pissy and jealous. You're welcome."
Deidara's tone was so self-righteous that Ino struggled to not shriek out her next words. "But you didn't need to manhandle him!"
"Uh, yeah I did." Deidara looked at Ino like she was being thick.
"Why?"
"Because this was supposed to be convincing. What the hell kind of guy would just sit there while his girl's ex comes by and tries to kiss her?"
"The kind you were supposed to be," said Ino.
"Right. I was just supposed to sit there while he put his hands all over you and got all up in your face and treated you like you were a thing he could just buy back—"
"Yes. That is exactly what you were supposed to do. Seigo's behaviour was none of your concern. We were just gathering some intelligence, that's all."
"—and," continued Deidara, "not only does he come around like you're this possession he lost by accident, all it was a mistake, come back to me baby, but then he swoops in for a lil fuckin' smooch? I mean, no boyfriend in the world just sits there and watches another man do that. That guy was an asshole, and I needed to teach him a goddamn lesson because you're not his to kiss."
Ino heaved out a sound of exasperation as she took off her shoes. "Teach him a lesson? You weren't supposed to do anything! You were just a prop!"
"A prop."
"Yes," said Ino, shaking one of her heels at Deidara to punctuate her speech. "Just. A. Prop. Just like I was a prop for you when you went fishing for information with Teruo. I was your dumb pretty prostitute and tonight you were supposed to be my dumb pretty boyfriend. You'll notice I didn't try to strangle Teruo – though I wanted to squeeze information about this goddamned little prince out of his fat neck – because I can keep an actual lid on my emotions!"
Deidara swatted away the stiletto that was being waved in his face. "So you're so uptight you can't even let go when your dad's life is on the line? Wow, do you want my congratulations, or…?"
"It's because his life is on the line that I kept a lid on it!" spat Ino. "Because I won't do anything that could jeopardize him! Obviously you've never had someone so important to you so close to death or you'd understand…!"
Deidara regarded her in open-mouthed silence for a moment. Then, as though recollecting himself, he took a step back and said, "You're right. I have no idea what that's like."
"Great, so how about you—"
"But if I'm supposed to be your stupid boyfriend then I'll act like a stupid boyfriend would, which includes not letting other guys schmooze up my girl when I'm right fucking there."
Deidara paused to struggle with the top button of his shirt, which was by all appearances giving him whiskey-induced difficulties.
"There was no need to be so, so," Ino struggled to find the word, "protective of me. I was handling it fine—"
"And I did keep a lid on it," said Deidara, giving up on the top button and trying the second, "because if that date had been real, I would've broken his jaw the minute he tried to put his arm around you, the little fuck. Why are you defending him so much? Don't tell me you still have feelings for that asshole."
Ino straightened up and said, "I can assure you that I don't."
"Then what's the fucking problem?"
"The problem is that I didn't want Seigo to take any more notice of you. We were done. I got the information I wanted. But now you've gone and made yourself memorable to him."
"Good," said Deidara. "I hope he remembers me next time he comes sniffing around you…"
"It's not good," said Ino, pulling the pins out of her hair. "Do you have any idea how much trouble a man like that could put you in?"
"It's a good thing I have Ms. Ino Fuckin' Yamanaka as my lawyer, then, isn't it?"
Ino jabbed a hairpin in Deidara's direction. "You are being way too flippant about this. Do you know what Seigo is doing right now? He's got twelve analysts on your case and he's going to dig up all the nastiest dirt he can find on you…God, why'd you give him your real name..."
"So what if he digs up dirt?"
"He basically has access – or can buy access – to any written record, anywhere. He'll find out everything you've ever done…"
Deidara shrugged. "Don't care. I have nothing to hide. All the shit I've done is on the public record, anyway."
His insouciance almost drove Ino wild. "Oh my god, how are you so – so lackadaisical about this?" She ran her hands through her hair and took a breath. "Okay, okay, so you don't care what he could do to you. But he'll figure that out. And if he can't hurt you directly, then he'll find other ways. It'll be through someone else. Is there no one close to you? No one you care about?"
"...No," said Deidara, and Ino, searching his eyes, knew that that wasn't true.
"Seigo is dangerous. Not in the way you are, like he's going to blow up your shit, but in subtler ways. He's clever, he's rich; he has resources beyond your imagining…"
"He can't hurt me," said Deidara. "And if I hadn't roughed him up a bit today – I didn't even hurt him, Jesus – he would've known something was up."
"You could've just said something, you didn't need to choke him," said Ino.
"Maybe if he hadn't been the most annoying, smarmy bastard that ever existed..."
"You can't just beat people up when they annoy you."
"You can't tell me to pose as your boyfriend and endure that kind of disrespect."
"You can't slap around someone like Seigo without thinking of the consequences for the both of us!"
"You can't lecture me about my temper when you're so cold you don't even blink when your father's life is on the line!"
"Don't tell me how to feel!"
"You don't even feel!"
"I promise you I do, just because I don't blow up everyone I don't like–"
"No, you just—"
"No, you just—"
"How can you—"
"You don't—"
"You—"
Tempers flared, chests heaved, lips parted for air, ready to hiss out a retort to whatever heated words might come next. Ino didn't know how she'd gotten so close to Deidara; perhaps she had taken a step towards him with every angry dig, or perhaps he had, and now they stood inches apart, glaring at each other, having interrupted themselves into a stalemate.
Each waited for the other to spit out the next jab. But, after a moment punctuated only by staccato gasps that they could feel the heat of on each other's mouths, it became clear that words weren't what would follow if they kept standing here like this with their tempers alight and their eyes ablaze and their chests touching with every breath…
Deidara's glare was the blue heat of a summer sky and Ino found herself reeling as she stared into it with a slow, inexorable vertigo, like she was standing at the edge of a cliff and all there was in front of her was this wide, wide firmament, and it was familiar somehow, this feeling, this wanting to fall…
That feeling – that wanting it – frightened Ino into her senses. She blinked and stepped back and looked anywhere but at Deidara, trying to recover her poise and dissipate the flush that she knew now bloomed on her cheeks.
And Deidara tore his eyes away from her with a painful kind of deliberation and swallowed.
Ino cleared her throat and examined her nails.
Deidara reached for his neck and worked at his buttons again, not only because he wanted the shirt off, but because he was now hot under the collar in the literal sense.
He continued to fail wretchedly at this endeavor, so Ino latched onto it as a distraction from this new tension that thickened the air and made it difficult to look at him. "For Christ's sake, will you figure out how to unbutton that shirt?"
Deidara seemed to welcome the distraction of another squabble just as much as she did. "You try doing this with gloves, goddamn…"
"Pathetic," said Ino, though the unkind word was mitigated by the fact that she approached and reached for his neck.
"These buttons are slippery little fucks," said Deidara with a glower as Ino worked her way down. "And I'm drunk."
Ino tutted and tugged the bottom of his shirt out from his trousers to undo the last few buttons there.
"I think I can manage now, thank you," said Deidara.
Ino backed off, bit back a smile, watched him shrug off the shirt, and said nothing until he got stuck at the wrists. "Cufflinks."
Deidara snarled out something vulgar and looked just about ready to tear the shirt off using his teeth. "Are you serious?!"
Ino couldn't hold back her laughter as he pulled the sleeves back on partially and proceeded to suck at removing cufflinks.
She stepped in when his frustration took over and he pulled at the shirt with enough violence to tear it. "Don't rip it."
"Get this thing off me or I'll…!"
"You'll what? Blow up the shirt? Blow up my condo? Blow up the whole world?"
"...Something like that," said Deidara.
Ino pulled one of his wrists towards her and muttered something about absurd overreactions. Deidara muttered something about perfectly justified reactions and leaned in to watch. Under Ino's cool fingers, the cufflinks opened with soft, obedient clicks – first the right, then the left.
They clinked together in Ino's palm as she held them out to Deidara. "There. Not worth exploding the planet, really. Shall I show you how to do it, so you can be less of an idiot next time?"
Deidara glared at her, which she took as a yes.
"Open," said Ino, snapping one of the cufflinks open, "and closed. You need to twist it a bit. And maybe not fight with it like you're wrestling a – a bear, or something..."
"Not wrestling a bear, right, good tip," said Deidara. He whipped the shirt off, peeled off his undershirt, and shook out his hair. "Finally. Free."
Ino watched the inked-up tousle-headed wild man undressing in her living room and wondered what the hell was going on in her life.
"Free?" she repeated when Deidara caught her staring. "Pff, it wasn't that bad. You're a guy. You don't have to wear a bra or spanx or garter belts or—"
"Garter belts?" asked Deidara, looking Ino up and down with a sudden fierce interest. "Are you wearing a garter belt?"
"…Why?"
"Nothing, never mind."
"Right," nodded Ino, recalling his fixation on the fishnets and his reaction to the thigh highs. "You have a thing for pantyhose..."
Deidara's cheeks grew pink. "I do not."
"You so do," laughed Ino. "Look at you, you're blushing."
"I'm not blushing – I just – I just had an intense fight with some cufflinks…"
Ino dropped the cufflinks into his hands. "Right. Don't lose them – they're Versace. And you are such a liar."
"I'm not."
"Everyone has a thing," said Ino with an airy gesture to the world at large. "Yours is pretty tame, honestly…"
"It's not a thing. I don't have a thing," said Deidara. Then, with almost wary curiosity, he asked, "What's your thing?"
"As if I'm going to be honest with you when you're not being honest with me."
Ino swayed her way into her bedroom and left Deidara to his cufflinks and his weak excuses.
"I don't have a thing," repeated Deidara as she walked away.
"Oh, well. I was going to ask you to help unzip my dress," called Ino from her walk-in closet, "but I mean, what's the point if you don't have a thing…"
Three…two…one…
Right on cue, Deidara's head popped into the closet. "What did you just say?"
"That I need help unzipping my dress, but if you don't care about tights after all—"
"I can help," said Deidara.
"Oh?"
"I mean, you helped me just now, so, like, I owe you a hand..."
Ino turned her back to him to hide her smirk and pulled her curling mass of hair out of the way. "Of course. How kind of you."
She felt Deidara's gloved fingertips fumble at the nape of her neck, unable to undo the tiny clasp there. He turned his attention to the zipper instead and it too eluded him.
He huffed out a sound of aggravation. "Why's everything so tiny…And why'd I drink so much?"
"Take your time," said Ino, holding back a laugh.
Deidara growled out something frustrated. There was a pause, then the sound of leather gloves being pulled off. Ino's ears perked when she heard them hit the floor. This was an interesting development. He hadn't bothered to lose the gloves when wrestling with his own clothing a few minutes prior, but now…
His fingertips were at her neck again, only now they were warmer because it was his skin she felt on hers. Feather-light were the touches that lingered as he found the clasp again; feather-light were the breaths she felt at her nape.
Both were full of hesitation too acute for Ino to abide in silence.
"You can touch me, you know," she said, glancing back at him. Then, because that sounded too much like a general invitation for all kinds of touching, she added, "I mean, we've established that I'm not going to flinch."
Her comment did nothing to ease the hesitation in the fingers that couldn't quite grasp the clasp without touching her. "…It's still weird to me."
"Weird...?"
"I saw you – I felt you recoil the first time you saw." There was a pause. "I can still hear that gasp of yours. The horror in it. Like you'd just discovered that I was some kind of monster or something…"
Ino couldn't deny those things, of course. He'd witnessed her reaction firsthand; he'd felt her jerk back against him, appalled. She had recoiled just like Seigo had recoiled because it was horrifying to see someone's split-open scarred-up hand unexpectedly like that. (Ino told herself that the similarities ended there: unlike Seigo, she hadn't been openly disgusted after the initial shock. Unlike Seigo, she hadn't been cruel.)
But Deidara was right, there was something weird about this. Because between her first reaction and now, there was a disconnect. A few days ago, his touch would've made her skin crawl. And now here she was, repressing a pleasant little shiver that didn't bear thinking about.
Yes. Things had changed. Things were...different. She didn't have the inclination to explore the hows and whys at the moment.
Ino turned just enough to show Deidara her profile. Her diamond earrings glittered among her curls, frost at midnight. "If I still felt that way, do you think I'd be letting you do this?"
Deidara did not respond, and so Ino knew that she had made her point.
"Now you're the one flinching from touching me," she said, facing forwards again. "I'm starting to get offended."
A sharp exhale of amusement greeted this remark. "Well, I'd hate to offend you."
Ino laughed and said she'd never heard a more blatant lie in her life.
So his touch grew less hesitant and, finally, he undid the clasp at the top of her dress. Ino squared her shoulders, expecting him to yank the dress open with his usual impetuousness.
Deidara proceeded to throw her off entirely by being slow and careful. Increment by minute increment, he lowered the zipper, like he was opening a delicate gift or unveiling a sculpture beyond price. And it was strange, but Ino had never felt so cherished by a man as in that moment when Deidara unzipped her dress with such aching slowness it didn't make a sound, there in the shadows of her closet where a thousand silk dresses muffled away the world.
And what were they doing, exactly? Ino didn't know; it had been a joke, inviting him in to help her, or (perhaps she could admit it to herself this one time) maybe it had been flirting... But if it was, it was off-the-cuff, dumb, non-serious flirting that wasn't supposed to lead anywhere except maybe embarrass him about that stupid pantyhose thing. Certainly it was not supposed to lead to this, this head rush, this uptick in her pulse, this blush that burned as she felt her dress split open and his fingers brush the small of her back.
He couldn't see any of that, thank goodness. Thank goodness for the darkness that hid her rosy cheeks and for the muffling effect of the clothes around them so he wouldn't hear her breathing speed up…
…Or the little gasp she gasped when she felt him draw his fingertips along her shoulder blade with the same slow pace as when he'd undone the zipper.
She turned to give him a look that was half reprimand, for having surprised her, and half curiosity, because why...?
He barely noticed the look; in the darkness behind her she saw the face of a man lost in wonder, his eyes darkened to a marvelling midnight blue as though he touched some priceless work of art – this canvas of pale skin, this moonlight made flesh, this living porcelain doll.
"How are you so…" breathed Deidara.
She felt the warmth of a rough fingertip drawing repetitive shapes in the small of her back – circles, she thought at first, until she realized they were the endless loops of an infinity symbol.
Again he spoke, so quietly it was almost a sigh: "…So soft and flawless – it's like – it kills me..."
Ino did not know what kind of answer to give him. She faced forwards again and bit her lip.
His fingers made their way up her spine, hopped politely over her bra strap, and found that place at the base of her neck again.
Then, with a thrill of unexpected shivers, she felt his breath in her ear.
"Sorry. Poor – poor impulse control…" Deidara lurched into her from behind. "I'm pretty drunk."
"Yes, you are," said Ino in a whisper. (His being that close to her had made her voice vanish entirely; what new strangeness was this?)
"I should leave before I do something stupid. Stupider…"
Ino swallowed. "If you – if you say so."
In answering him, she had turned a little. One of her curls escaped the thick twist over her shoulder and danced down her back. Deidara's knuckles skimmed her shoulder as he grasped it. Then there was a gentle pull as he ran his hand down the flaxen strand and let it bounce back into its curl.
Again she felt his breath, this time a little lower, against the side of her neck. "Why's – why's everything about you so…so…"
The sentence fell unfinished. In another time, Ino might've supplied her own adjectives with glee – beautiful? Amazing? Stupendous? – but she found herself curious, wildly curious, about what he wanted to say but didn't.
"So…what?"
There was a pause before he answered. "So goddamn perfect."
The words and the warmth of the breath that spoke them made Ino flush for the twelfth time that evening. It was that 'stupid hot' text message all over again, that pained honesty, that bluntness with no ulterior motive – no flattery for the sake of flattery, just the truth as he saw it and so the truth as he spoke in this whiskey-flavoured whisper against her neck.
And those three words, so unexceptional in and of themselves but uttered with such frankness, meant more to her at that moment than all of Seigo's extravagant compliments combined.
Deidara leaned his forehead on her bare shoulder. His loose hair tickled its way down her back.
"Dunno what you did to me tonight," he said in a voice so low he might've been talking to himself. "That – that soul-staring thing that you said was gonna make him jealous 'cause I'd have you more than he ever did…It worked the other way around, didn't it? It was a way for you to own mine, and you do now. You took a piece of it, damn you…I never should've looked..."
Some part of Ino revelled in these inebriated suppositions, in this muttered admission spoken in warm puffs of breath against her neck that she had a little piece of him now, this too-cool-for-school, anti-establishment, rebellious ex-convict who wanted to hate her so much, but didn't. The idea delighted her; it was like owning a bit of something wild.
These thoughts she kept to herself. Out loud she said, "You're exaggerating dreadfully."
Deidara took in a shuddery breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I probably am." He raised his head from her shoulder. "I'm gonna go."
Ino felt him give her errant curl one last touch. Then he turned and exited the closet with the same kind of pained, torn-away deliberation that had marked his movements earlier, when she'd been glaring at him flushed and breathless and they'd been so, so close to doing something so, so stupid...
When he'd gone, Ino tugged her dress off feeling equal parts amused and bemused. The dumb pantyhose thing had been the whole point of this interlude in the closet, and now Deidara had by all appearances tipsily forgotten about it and drifted off.
She stepped out of the dress.
There came the sound of a throat being cleared: Deidara was silhouetted in the doorway.
He eyed her and her thigh highs up and down. "Fine. I have a thing for pantyhose."
Ino, delighted to have been right, laughed. "I knew it!"
"...But only on you," said Deidara.
He walked away.
Ino's delight turned to a blush. Point to Deidara; there wasn't really an elegant way to get the last word in, after that.
VVV
Author's note: tell me what you think. Tell me.